The Boogeyman and the Smarter Reptile

Consider, for a moment, the Neptunian influence of neocon reptiles as seen in the Bush inaugural chart. They are not just in a constant state of denial as regards their cause and effect status, but are also dishing out a media-driven Orewellian "reality" that is worthy of an Academy Award or two. The antidote, it would seem, is to NOT respond out of fear and to live fearlessly. While their propaganda appeals to the instinctive reptilian brain, that area of our most primitive selves is also highly developed in spotting inconsistencies and false signals, and many already recognize the disconnect between message and their reality even if they don't know the specifics of the 'truth'.

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman? (LA Times)

Robert Scheer

January 11, 2005

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

Stern stuff, indeed. But consider just a few of the many questions the program poses along the way:

• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?

• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?

• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?

• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?...cont'd


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=96964&mesg_id=96964
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BBC: The Power of Nightmares, Part 1 mp4
http://news.globalfreepress.com/movs/PON/PON-1.160x120.mp4

Parts 2&3 coming soon.

Audio video not so hot (GIGO) copied from realplayer

quicktime will play it for ya for free ;->

http://apple.com/quicktime/download
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The Imminent Demise of the Republican Party

by David W. Orr


Following the election of 2004, much has been made of the
weaknesses of the Democratic Party, even its possible end. But it has
escaped the notice of our blow-dry television pundits and political
observers alike that the Republican Party, in the full blush of triumph in
control of all the branches of government and large sections of the media,
stands on the edge of certain extinction. The reasons grow daily more
evident. Over the past three decades, the moderate, business-oriented party
of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower was captured by its
extreme right-wing thereby becoming a party dominated by ideologues,
increasingly divorced from unmovable facts. But no organization, political
party, or nation can long survive by ignoring realities of ecology, social
justice, law, economics, and true security. Sooner or later, it will step
off the proverbial curb into onrushing traffic of events, forces, and trends
that it refused to see.

The Republican Party has already stepped into the road. The
question is not whether it will survive as presently constituted, but what
else will be destroyed as it collapses in ruin and ignominy, sooner than
later. Beneath the noisy spin of its media echo chamber, the true platform
of the Republican Party, its future epitaph, is founded on denial. The rules
of the Republican Party of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Tom Delay,
and their brethren are these:

Deny science when its findings are not agreeable to your base.
Republicans, notably, are on the wrong side of the largest issue in human
history: human driven, rapid climate change. They've chosen instead to live
in a Crichton-esque science fiction fantasy in which real science has no
standing and human actions have no tragic, irreversible, and global
ecological consequences. This is not just boneheaded, it is a form of
criminality for which we have, as yet, no adequate words.
Deny the looming approach of peak oil extraction thereby
advancing the potential of economic, political, and social chaos when global
oil supply and demand diverge as soon they will........

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0112-36.htm
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Cheney's chart for January:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=245x2538
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Outsourcing Journalism:

Reuters' U.S. Journalists Withhold Bylines, Credits to Protest Offshoring,

(Nasdaq: RTRSY; LSE: RTR), working without a contract for nearly two years, are holding a one-day byline strike on Thursday to protest company managers' demands for economic concessions in current contract talks as well as their moves to export editorial jobs to low-wage countries.

The job action by more than 350 editorial employees -- members of the Newspaper Guild of New York -- to withhold bylines and credits from their work, came as executives at the company's London headquarters were scheduled to announce "guidance" about the company's first-quarter financial performance.

"Our members provide the quality and reliability that the world has come to expect from Reuters," said New York Guild President Barry Lipton. "They are angry at their bosses' disregard for quality as they slash the company's budget, experiment with remote control journalism and refuse to offer workers a fair and decent contract."
Reuters became the first major news organization to try to cover Wall Street from India last year when editorial managers started replacing their highly skilled work force in United States and London with cheaper, far less experienced journalists in Bangalore...



http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-13-2005/0002825382&EDATE=