This is a blog for hopeful "realist-idealists", romantics, "People ONLY for, and for ONLY, True Love, Peace, Freedom, Liberalism, "Republic-anism", Conservatism, Liberation, and Justice", and "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of (True) Happiness (and Equality)....", for all people in the U.S. and all over this "Corporate-Fascist" blighted world!
[PLEASE TAKE NOTICE: All entries are in descending order by the dates that they were posted, and in some cases they are in ascending order by the dates that they were written.]
By S. Wolf Britain “And Now The Apocalypse!” http://www.wolfbritain.com/ [Copyright (c) 2008-2012 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by “And Now The Apocalypse!” (wolfbritain.com), and/or S. Wolf Britain. All rights reserved.]
As previously described and explained in “My Complaint to the ACLU” of 27 March 2006 (click here to access), I have been targeted by the U.S. government for retribution due to my nothing but peaceful and non-violent stand in defense of civil liberties, seeking redress of legitimate, non-frivolous grievances for violations of law, both by said government and other corporate and/or private parties, and pursuing due process of law through the appropriate agencies and procedures that the government had theretofore encouraged. I was visited by the “Department of Homeland Security (DHS)” and served what essentially amounts to an unConstitutional “federal restraining order” pursuant to the “U.S.A. Patriot Act” and other unConstitutional “laws” (the “Homeland Security Act”, et al.), restricting me from, and seeking to scare me out of, continuing to carry out my free speech rights, and the seeking of redress of grievances and due process of law from the government, unless I want to incur further government retribution and/or threat of serious ramifications resulting from the continued non-violent exercise of those (/my) civil liberties.
When the wanna-be Napoleonic, absolutely-despotic “dictator” and completely tyrannical and treasonous President of the United States, George W. Bush, signed the “Military Commissions Act of 2006″ and the “John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007″ on October 17th, 2006, effectively signing away all of the rights delineated in the first ten Amendments of U.S. Constitution known as “The Bill of Rights”, throwing away that which distinguished the U.S. from the rest of the world in protected liberties and freedoms that would have very likely been unheard of in the entire world if it hadn’t been for their beacon of “unalienable rights”, I admit that I was so overwhelmed with dismay and a defeatist attitude, I allowed myself to be rendered almost completely unable to function for these past several months. I still find it difficult to even go on automatically breathing, so disheartening is the level of my consternation over this extremely threatening turn of events.
What is just as dispiriting, if not more so, is that most “Americans” aren’t even aware of, or couldn’t care less about, the dire danger that this “state of the nation” puts ALL of us under. In fact, such is the extremity of their ignorance on this state of affairs, that one is obliged to agree with what has been said recently of this completely perilous and disconcerting situation that, unless these circumstances are immediately and thoroughly remedied, it is “the end of the republic” of the United States. This, very unfortunately, is absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever, and that is just how life-threateningly dangerous this predicament is. For, if enough—and we’re talking about most—Americans don’t wake up completely to the extreme degree of danger that we as a country and people are presently in the throes of, and stand en-masse against it, we are about to head into such a period of darkness, mass-imprisonment and mass-murder, right within our own borders, that an ostensibly “free” country has never before seen in the whole history of this planet.
The American flag, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights have now been torn to shreads. “Rest In Peace (RIP)”, Freedom and Liberty. RIP, “the experiment in democracy”.
We have watched in dumb amazement (those of us who have realized what is really going on, that is) as for the past five years the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, liberty, and freedom have been step by step, systematically eviscerated, first with the so-called “USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act (those who criticize it supposedly aren’t patriots)”, and then with the latest afront on domestic freedom and liberty, the “Military Commissions Act of 2006,” also known among other names as the “Detainee Bill”, passed by an almost completely cowed Senate in the dead of night on Friday, the 29th day of September, 2006.
Now NONE OF US is safe. Not civil libertarians, not dissenters, not protesters of even the mildest variety (as virtually everything is now considered “terrorism”), and not even those blind worshippers of the U.S. government or its agents; because, if someone decides they don’t like you, or gets jealous or resentful of you, all they need do is CLAIM you criticized the government, defended “rights”, felt that certain force used against someone was excessive, or committed some other equally innocent “perceived threatening conduct” (some of the federal government’s favorite wording that they now use for those who exercise their inalienable, immutable, inviolable First Amendment rights of Freedom of Speech, Belief and Dissent to disagree with their government), and you will very likely be “disappeared” into custody, stripped of U.S. citizenship, and be interro(r)gated, intimidated, humiliated, terrorized, tortured, and/or very possibly murdered, all without “Due Process of Law” under the Fifth and Fourteen Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, or a fair, unbiased hearing, access to an impartial lawyer, court, judge, or jury; and, if you live through this process, you could be kept secretly imprisoned forever without access to ANYONE important to you. This is NO exageration WHATSOVER; and, if “We, The People” don’t repeal this horrific law, or the U.S. Supreme court doesn’t overturn it, this is the END of our Republic, of Democracy, and of ALL Liberty and Freedom in “the land of the free, and the home of the brave”, and THE END OF ALL protection(s) from a capricious, out of control, dictatorial government.
Impeach for Peace, a Minnesota-based impeachment group, has researched a method for impeaching the president using a little known and rarely used part of the Rules of the House of Representatives ("Jefferson’s Manual"). This document actually empowers individual citizens to initiate the impeachment process themselves.
"Jefferson’s Manual" is an interpretive guide to parliamentary procedure, and is included (along with the Constitution) in the bound volumes of the Rules of the House of Representatives. The section covering impeachment lists the acceptable vehicles for bringing impeachment motions to the floor of the House.
Before the House Judiciary Committee can put together the Articles of Impeachment, someone must initiate the impeachment procedure. Most often, this occurs when members of the House pass a resolution. Another method outlined in the manual, however, is for individual citizens to submit a memorial for impeachment.
After learning this information, Minnesotan and Impeach for Peace member (Jodin Morey) found precedent in an 1826 memorial by Luke Edward Lawless which had been successful in initiating the impeachment of Federal Judge James H. Peck. Impeach for Peace then used this as a template for their "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment." Now any citizen can download the DIY Impeachment Memorial and submit it, making it possible for Americans to do what our representatives have been unwilling to do. The idea is for so many people to submit the Memorial that it cannot be ignored.
Feel free to download it, print out TWO copies, fill in your relevant information in the blanks (name, State, etc.), and send in two letters today (One to the head of the Judiciary, and the other to John Conyers lead Democrat in the House Judiciary). There’s also extra credit for sending a DIY Impeachment to your own representative.
Hold on to the other copy of the two letters until October 12th when we’re having everyone send them in.
Starting at noon on September 1 2006, participating websites and blogs will replace their front pages with the single word “Impeach” in simple white text on a black background. (See this page for an example.) For 24 hours, web surfers and blog readers will see that word first when they visit their favorite sites. In this way, we hope to get the public talking about the one tool guaranteed by the Founders to restore our Constitutional Democracy.
What can I do? If you run a website or blog, then on September 1 2006, replace your home page with the single word “Impeach” in bold Times New Roman white text on a black background. Feel free to help yourself to the code here (getting a single word to display in the center of a page in all browsers is a little trickier than you might think). Back up your existing home page first (often index.html) and display this new one for 24 hours, from noon September 1 to noon September 2. If you use the provided code , we have made the “period” a link which you can customize to allow visitors to enter the rest of your web page.
If you don’t have your own webpage or blog but still think that this is a good idea, then please send this information to your favorite sites and convince them to participate ( click here for a sample message ). Additionally, please feel free to leave a comment here and/or on the Impeachnet.net blog . Just as important as replacing your home page for one day is letting your website visitors know why, so please publicize this both beforehand and afterward. Also, let us know that you plan to participate and we will include a link to your site in our blogroll.
Why just the one word? It is the word. Everyone who sees it will know exactly who and what we are talking about. And it is the one word that most of our elected leaders are afraid to utter.
In honor of Marjorie Cohn, Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, and her TruthOut (.org) articles which she has been absent from writing and posting for the past two months, I hereby post the following series of her last five excellent and very important articles leading up to that absence, as her at-least-weekly articles of truth have been very much missed on TruthOut and by this blogger:
In his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, General Michael Hayden promised to promote autonomy and objectivity in the CIA if confirmed as its new director. Hayden assured the senators he would provide “hard-edged assessments” and be tolerant of dissenting views on intelligence matters. “When it comes to speaking truth to power,” Hayden declared, “I will lead CIA analysts by example. I will… always give our nation’s leaders the best analytic judgment.”
The evidence, however, suggests precisely the opposite. As head of the National Security Agency, this 4-star general walked in lockstep with his commander in chief, George W. Bush. Hayden helped designed the illegal program of spying on our telephone calls and emails and then repeatedly defended it when interrogated by the senators at his hearing, citing “legal” opinions of Bush’s hired guns in the Justice Department.
Judging by the reaction on the web to C-Span’s airing of the American Scholars Symposium, the 9/11 truth movement has been afforded another jolt of momentum in its quest to bring criminal proceedings against those complicit in the attack and its subsequent cover-up.
C-Span repeated the show Sunday and set to re-air it again Tuesday at 6:10PM EST, 5:10 CST.
The show is currently archived on C-Span’s website and you can watch it for free here.
Webster Tarpley, one of the keynote speakers and panel members at the symposium, today calls for a concerted effort to use the C-Span broadcast to discredit phony left-right gatekeepers who have resolved to blindly accept the government’s version of what happened on 9/11.
“Let us mobilize to organize the biggest audience ever by an incessant and sustained intervention in radio and television call-in talk shows, by blast emails, by direct personal contact alerts, by public signs, leaflets, and by every other means at our disposal,” Tarpley wrote.
—————————————————————————————————– See extended highlights of the conference with full speaker presentations, subscribe, download and share with your friends! Click here to subscribe! —————————————————————————————————–
“Let us overwhelm Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Jerry Doyle, Glenn Beck, and the other fascist parrots of the airwaves with the announcement of the Tuesday broadcast. Let us confront Ed Shultz and the other Air America gatekeepers with reality of the Tuesday show. Please do the same in the rest of the world.”
Before its initial screening on Saturday evening, many were concerned that the conference was so unrelenting in its hardcore stance on 9/11, that C-Span would be pressured into canning the show. This proved not to be the case and multiple repeats of the conference within days at peak times prove the program has received very favorable ratings.
This is another hammer blow to the establishment kingpins who had hoped questions about 9/11 would evaporate as we approach the 5th anniversary of the attack.
The Declaration of Independence gives us the true meaning of a patriot, someone who supports a country’s ideals, not necessarily its government.
In celebration of the Fourth of July there will be many speeches about the young people who “died for their country.” But those who gave their lives did not, as they were led to believe, die for their country; they died for their government. The distinction between country and government is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, which will be referred to again and again on July 4, but without attention to its meaning.
The Declaration of Independence is the fundamental document of democracy. It says governments are artificial creations, established by the people, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Furthermore, as the Declaration says, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” It is the country that is primary—the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty.
When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power, while claiming that its motives are pure and moral, (”Operation Just Cause” was the invasion of Panama and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in the present instance), it is violating its promise to the country. War is almost always a breaking of that promise. It does not enable the pursuit of happiness but brings despair and grief.
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the
U.S.A. and Internationally
by AfterDowningStreet(.org)
and/or David Swanson.
All rights reserved.]
Veterans for Peace has drafted a Declaration of Impeachment using nothing but excerpts from the Declaration of Independence (plus a few words in parentheses). It reads as follows, and should be read at picnics and protests on the Fourth of July:
”… (W)henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [’… that all (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these (Rights) are Life, LIBERTY and the pursuit of Happiness…, (and that) Governments are instituted among (the People), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …’], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their [Liberty,] Safety and Happiness …
”… (A)ll experience hath shewn, that (hu)mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations … design(s) to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security …
”The history of the present King (George)… is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States [and the world]. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Written on July 4th, 2004 By S. Wolf Britain ( And Now The Apocalypse http://www.wolfbritain.com/ ) [Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by And Now The Apocalypse! (wolfbritain.com), and/or S. Wolf Britain. All rights reserved.]
Are we really independent,
Or are we blindly believing
The lies being told us by warmongers
Lusting after death and destruction?
Is there autonomy between
What the lying politicians say
And the important truths we’re hopefully
Coming to learn about war versus peace?
Are we choosing life rather than death
Or are we ignorantly condoning murder,
Blindness not making us any less guilty
For our complicity in the endless slaughter?
Is there the seeking of separation
From the senseless, inhumane carnage,
And only standing for blessed peacemaking,
That mercy which glorifies humankind?
Are we the merciful who are the only ones’
God will have mercy upon in the very near future,
Instead of the unmerciful who will be condemned
As they themselves condemned the weak and innocent?
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by Another Day in the Empire (kurtnimmo.com), Kurt Nimmo, and/or Ralph Schoenman. All rights reserved.]
I had a debate with my boss last night about Sy Hersh’s terrifying New Yorker article describing Bush administration plans to attack Iran, potentially with nuclear weapons. After reading the Hersh piece, my boss was understandably worried, describing his reaction to the article in road-to-Damascus-revelation terms. They’re going to do this, he said.
I told my boss that I couldn’t believe it was possible the Bush administration would do this. I ran through all the reasons why an attack on Iran, especially with any kind of nuclear weaponry, would be the height of folly.
Iran, unlike Iraq, has a formidable military. They own the high ground over the Persian Gulf and have deployed missile batteries all throughout the mountains along the shore. Those missile batteries, I told him, include the Sunburn missile, which can travel in excess of Mach 2 and can spoof Aegis radar systems. Every American warship in the Gulf, including the carrier group currently deployed there, would be ducks on the pond.
Written by Kurt Nimmo [Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by Another Day in the Empire (kurtnimmo.com), and/or Kurt Nimmo. All rights reserved.]
National Review Online, the home of many a Straussian neocon, has posted an excerpt from William Arkin on its Media Blog page. Arkin, who writes a column for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post (the editors over there like to call Arkin’s Early Warning a blog), declared on May 16, in regard to the massive NSA snoop program, “there is no enemies list” and the “Bush administration has been arrogant and incompetent in communicating to the American public. It has cynically split the country into red and blue in order to give itself greater power to pursue a wrong-headed national security strategy that it claims is red, white and blue…. The Congress has also utterly failed in five months to get to the bottom of the NSA’s warantless surveillance program and thereby resolve its legality and assuage public anxiety.” In other words, it is simply more partisan politics and splenetic political manipulation la mode de Karl Rove. Nothing to see here, except a bit of unresolved legality. Please move along.
If you believe that Bush and the neocons in the White House and the Pentagon, as Arkin suggests, have not drawn up a comprehensive list of domestic enemies, and are not snooping them right now, I have a chartreuse pony to sell you.
It’s no mistake Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden was breezily selected, as predicted, by a large number of senators (78-15 in his favor) earlier today. Hayden will merge CIA and Pentagon covert and snoop operations and scant little of the work will concentrate on Osama’s cartoonish cave dwellers and the spurious boogieman known as “al-Qaeda.” William Arkin may trust his government to employ a colossal snoop program in a myopic effort to gain short term political gain, but those of us who take a look at not too distant history understand otherwise.
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by TomPaine (.com) and/or John Prados. All rights reserved.]
The National Security Agency’s [illegal] warrantless domestic wiretaps and its logs of Americans’ phone calls are the most controversial, but by no means the only, surveillance initiative underway that has chilling implications for all Americans. American history is littered with examples of similar instances of security programs gone awry. It is three decades now since the Church Committee concluded, “The tendency of intelligence activities expanding beyond their initial scope is a theme which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings.”
In the 20th century, this history of misuse of security programs begins with World War I. A government-sponsored volunteer (read: vigilante) group, the American Protective League, was created to assist the Justice Department and military intelligence, resulting in nearly 2,000 prosecutions for allegedly “disloyal” utterances by Americans.
Immediately after the war, the “Palmer Raids,” named for then-Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, rounded up 10,000 persons for supposed anarchist or revolutionary views. These became a milestone in the creation of the FBI and the career of its first director (and Palmer’s chief assistant) J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover went on to keep books on all manner of Americans; he used the information collected to exert political pressure at various times.
Domestic intelligence programs were revived in 1936 and steadily increased in intrusiveness, impelled first by World War II, then by the Cold War. These began with the intention of monitoring foreign influence on American politics and ended up investigating “loyalty.” We hardly need mention the internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans on hysterical suspicions of contact with the enemy in World War II.
Written on 11 November 2003 By S. Wolf Britain ( And Now The Apocalypse http://www.wolfbritain.com/ ) [Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by And Now The Apocalypse! (wolfbritain.com), and/or S. Wolf Britain. All rights reserved.]
The U.S. government is not a benevolent caretaker
But is rather despotic, malevolent and capricious
While going about fascistically deceiving, colonizing
Serving military-industrial “America” over humans
That don’t profit from insanity, bombing and death
Unlike the many self-serving Machiavellian killers
Who run the corporate murder-for-money machinery
Which gains the whole world but has none of soul’s
Love and mercy for humanity needing to predominate
Over their greed and hate that are compassionless
These “Big Brothers” want to control our thoughts
Leaving us without any True Liberties or Freedoms
And silence our “check and balance” on their aims
Of totally enslaving, dominating and mastering us
While making us absolutely subservient automatons
That do nothing but what we’re told by sociopaths
Seeking to be our completely evil gods and rulers
Who care for nothing and no one except their profits
In the process of sacrificing the freedom of thoughts
For True Liberty and Mastery ONLY over ourselves
In The Time Of Far-Right-Wing U.S. Theo-Fascist Retribution
By S. Wolf Britain ( And Now The Apocalypse http://www.wolfbritain.com/ ) [Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by And Now The Apocalypse! (wolfbritain.com), and/or S. Wolf Britain. All rights reserved.]
Repressive U.S. Government Crackdown on Freedom(s)
The United States and the world are going insane on an express train to hell. That is the ultimate logical conclusion that anyone like myself, who is not anti-religious, or at least anti-Christian, and who truly and fully discerns what is going on right now and refuses to bury their head(s) in the sand about it, has to come to once they cease their avoidance, denial and refusal to believe that it is indeed true, and that IT IS happening.
In particular, the U.S. government and the government of the U.K. are in the process of setting up “panopticon” police states in their respective countries that are almost every day becoming more and more authoritarian, oppressive and repressive like regimes of “third-world dictatorships”. (SEE also Alex Jones’ and Paul Joseph Watson’s great article from the former’s Prison Planet.com website, “The Panopticon: A Mass Surveillance Prison for Humanity.”)
If it wasn’t for the “U.S.A. Patriot Act” recently having been “bipartisanly” (sic) reapproved and extended with very little added protections of civil liberties with any teeth to them, the U.K. would thus far almost appear to be the worst offender, with public video surveilance, invasion of privacy, and arrests of average “anti-war-sentiment” citizens more widespread than in the U.S. as yet, at least as far as most U.S. citizens are thus far aware.
US soldiers killing innocent civilians in Iraq is not news. Just as it was not news that US soldiers slaughtered countless innocent civilians in Vietnam. However, when some rare reportage of this non news from Iraq does seep through the cracks of the corporate media, albeit briefly, the American public seems shocked. Private and public statements of denial and dismissal immediately start to fill the air. We hear, “American soldiers would never do such a thing,” or “Who would make such a ridiculous claim?”
It amazes me that so many people in the US today somehow seriously believe that American soldiers would never kill civilians. Despite the fact that they are in a no-win guerrilla war in Iraq which, like any other guerrilla war, always generates more civilian casualties than combatant casualties on either side.
Robert J. Lifton is a prominent American psychiatrist who lobbied for the inclusion of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders after his work with US veterans from Vietnam. His studies on the behavior of those who have committed war crimes led him to believe it does not require an unusual level of mental illness or of personal evil to carry out such crimes. Rather, these crimes are nearly guaranteed to occur in what Lifton refers to as “atrocity-producing situations.”
The stated mission of Operation Swarmer, launched late last week in an area just northeast of Samarra, in Iraq, was to “break up a center of insurgent resistance” and to disrupt “terrorist activity,” according to the US military.
Comprised of over 1,500 US and Iraqi soldiers, 50 US attack and transport helicopters airlifted the bold force into a flat area of farmland filled not with fighters belonging to the “center of insurgent resistance,” but with impoverished farmers, cows, goats and women baking bread. The first drop of soldiers onto the ground from this air-operation doubled the meager population of 1,500 souls living in the 50 square-mile area.
US troops acted bravely, snatching up 48 “suspected insurgents,” then promptly releasing 17 of them. They were precise in their operations, and did not detain a single cow or goat.
What did the military say about why no resistance was met?
“We believe we achieved tactical surprise,” said Lt. Col. Edward Loomis, the spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division.
Fallaciously hailed as the largest air assault in Iraq since the Anglo-American invasion three years ago, Lt. Col. Loomis said that two days into the operation his forces “continue to move” through the area, and “tactical interviews began immediately.” According to Time magazine reporters:
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the
U.S.A. and Internationally
by t r u t h o u t (.org)
and/or Dahr Jamail.
All rights reserved.]
Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation forces from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history?
Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts?
Why are we hearing such ludicrous and outrageous statements from the highest ranking military general in the United States, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, who when asked how things were going in Iraq on March 5th in an interview on “Meet the Press” said, “I’d say they’re going well. I wouldn’t put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they’re going very, very well from everything you look at.”
I wonder if there is a training school, or at least talking point memos for these Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because Pace’s predecessor, Gen. Richard Myers, told Senator John McCain last September that “In a sense, things are going well [in Iraq].”
General Pace also praised the Iraqi military, saying, “Now there are over 100 [Iraqi] battalions in the field.”
Wow! General Pace must have waved his magic wand and materialized all these 99 new Iraqi battalions that are diligently keeping things safe and secure in occupied Iraq. Because according to the top US general in Iraq, General George Casey, not long ago there was only one Iraqi battalion (about 500-600 soldiers) capable of fighting on its own in Iraq.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story
