Bin Laden to the Rescue
finch | 20.01.2006 12:57 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Repression | Birmingham | World
In a desperate attempt to retrieve the tatters that is the Bush government, Bin Laden has again come to the rescue – perfect timing! Who remembers the last major announcement from the person who has done more to assist Bush than any other man on the planet? It was during the last presidential election when Bush was in desperate need of an alarmist boost.
finch
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http://cleaves.zapto.org/
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Why wont this lunatic just die?
20.01.2006 15:30
In an effort to pre-empt the conspiracy theories that he's a US agent of some kind, Id just like to say how insane he must be; he seems to think that he's delivering the coup-de-grace to a faultering government, not realising the effect he has on the everyday flag-waving ass-scratching American idiot.
You just kind of wish he'd shut the hell up.
again and again
Yeah, Documented Fact Is A "Conspiracy"
20.01.2006 17:45
Global Eye
Chain of Fools
By Chris Floyd
Published: January 20, 2006
Things are looking a bit grim for the Bush faction these days. Their chief bagman, Jack Abramoff, is in the clink, naming names. Their top congressional enforcer, Tom DeLay, is in the dock, sinking fast. Their "war of choice" in Iraq) has stalled in murderous quagmire. Their poll numbers are plummeting as scandal after scandal turn the American people against them. What, then, will be the fate of these brutal, bungling, bloodstained goons when they face the voters in the coming elections?
Why, victory, of course!
In fact, this year's congressional races and the presidential contest in 2008 are already over, and the Bushists have won. It's true that some of the candidates have not yet been chosen -- including whatever frontman the goon squad picks to replace the kill-crazy klutz from Crawford -- but the vast machinery of electoral malfeasance that propelled this extremist faction to power over the wishes of the electorate in both 2000 and, yes, 2004, is not only still in place, it's growing stronger all the time.
No one has laid bare the malodorous innards of this democracy-devouring monster better than Mark Crispin Miller, whose new book, "Fooled Again," takes us back to the dastardy of Election Day 2004 and the hydra-headed campaign of vote-rigging that preceded it. This second heist of the White House is one of the great untold stories of our time -- even though it was largely carried out in plain sight. Miller performs the simple but increasingly rare act of journalism and gathers a mountain of overwhelming evidence from publicly available material. This is no "conspiracy theory" stitched together from anonymous sources, strained inferences and dark innuendo, but a solid case based on official records, sworn testimony, eyewitness accounts, news reports and the Bushists' own words.
The game was actually given away long before the balloting, when one of the faction's congressional waterboys, Representative Peter King, was captured -- on film -- boasting that the fix was in. At a White House chow-down in summer 2003, King was asked who he thought would win in 2004. "It's already over," King said. "The election's over. We won. ... It's all over but the counting. And we'll take care of the counting."
Indeed they did. As often noted here, tens of millions of votes are now counted using paperless, easily hackable electronic voting machines programmed -- and often administered -- by a handful of corporations whose officers are unabashed Bush backers. Two of these, the notorious Diebold and lesser-known but equally shadowy ES&S, were kickstarted by right-wing tycoon Harold Ahmanson, once the major backer of the Christian Reconstruction movement -- which advocates total theocratic rule of state and society by Christian mullahs, with death for homosexuals, disenfranchisement for unbelievers and slavery for debtors, among other delights.
With these corporations at the helm, the 2004 vote was the most shambolic in U.S. history, plagued by an epidemic of machine breakdowns and shortages (almost entirely in key Democratic precincts) and by a rash of "glitches" that "inexplicably" switched the voter's intended choice to a different candidate, or added hundreds or even thousands of "ghost" votes to a candidate's total. In every single recorded case of such "accidents," the beneficiary of these unearned votes was President George W. Bush. Meanwhile, as in 2000, strange voting patterns emerged in pockets across the country, where unknown fringe candidates unaccountably received thousands of votes -- at the expense of the Democratic candidate.
Of course, gaming the electronic voting grid was only part of the operation. Voter suppression techniques first unlimbered in 2000 were polished to a high sheen in 2004. These included purges of deliberately misidentified "felons" from the rolls; mass intimidation campaigns in poverty-ridden districts (e.g., "official" notices that anyone owing back rent, child support, unpaid traffic tickets, etc. would be arrested if they tried to vote); reducing the number of polling stations in Democratic-leaning precincts and stocking them with old, derelict machines; and a sophisticated, nationwide scam of deceitfully "registering" Democratic voters -- who then discovered they were not on the books when they showed up to vote. The Republican National Committee paid millions to the man behind this flim-flam, the theocrat and Bush insider Nathan Sproul.
The 2004 vote also saw a repeat of the exit poll debacles of 2002 and 2000, with the final results in each case defying the poll data to a remarkable degree. For decades, exit polls have proven so consistently reliable that they are used by many institutions -- including the U.S. State Department -- to gauge the fairness of elections around the world. Yet only in the United States, and only in the last three elections involving the Bush faction, have they failed utterly to jibe with the official tally.
Miller's book also includes insightful analysis to help us understand how this gaggle of militarists, millenarists and money-grubbers have managed to seize and keep power in a decayed, sclerotic republic whose institutions have proven too weak to withstand the gang's fanaticism -- and too corrupt to resist the bribery, legal and otherwise, that the Bushists dole out from public and private coffers.
Despite the scandals, the indictments, the mounting death toll in Iraq and the ever-deepening unpopularity of Bush and his minions, the faction's tools for "manufacturing consent" -- so ably exposed by Miller -- are greased and ready, unchallenged by the clueless, spineless Democrats and the dollar-dazzled media. So look for more "astonishing upsets" and poll-confounding "surprises" in the coming national elections, as brute power rapes reality once again.
See also:
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/01/20/120.html
Don't Fall for the PsyOps
who?
21.01.2006 01:57
People believe that a digital image is or represents a person. All we know is that Bin Laden 'appears' every time Bush needs him and what appears is an art form - an easily created set of sounds and images. The 'currency' these questionable images have - if any - relates to the level of technological dependence in a given culture and the USA is a techno junkie!
Like it or not, these obviously fabricated renderings of Bin Laden are accepted as real by the majority of Americans. The neocons could care less for the opinions of others. A possible antidote would be to flood the internet with doctored images and audio of well known personalities behaving incredulously.
furry thing
Complicated world; simple people.
24.01.2006 11:25
Yes, it very possible that Bin Laden's dead and these are pre-recorded messages (and yes, possibly even tampered with) what with previous videos making dated references and mistakes, but believe me, humanity is going down the drain, do you seriously believe people would only vote for Bush because they fear Osama, or were whipped into a patriotic frenzy with him as a hate figure?
No, people are greedy - we've advanced our conforts before we advanced our sense of social responsibility, so many (or most) people refuse to give up those comforts, and Bush offers and easy out - cutting taxes (and pretending they'll help the poor) and offering the paliative that everyone else is out to destroy those comforts; if there was no Osama his job would be more diffivult, but not impossible, there are plenty of people he could exaggerate into such a threat (as he did with Saddam).
Claiming Osama is a US agent is like Rice saying he was collaborating with Saddam - an easy way to attack your enemy.
I have no loyalties
Not At All
24.01.2006 19:41
Right, it had more to do with patterns of manipulation, which is exactly what this issue is about.
One reason I think the MSM doesn't have these tapes tested, aside from the fact that they don't have to, is that if they were discovered to be fakes - as has happened in the past - the obvious next question would be, who made the tapes, and for what purpose?
It reminds me of a certain piece of pre-war Propaganda, shown dutifully on American television, which allegedly depicted a poor little puppy being gassed to death by Iraqi scientists, testing chemical weapons.
The only thing is, that the tape turned out to be a fake, which means that it was the Bush/PNAC Regime who ordered the little puppy to be gassed, in order to LIE to the American People, and trick them into supporting an illegal war.
I think this is the very same reason nobody has demanded the Bush/PNAC Regime prove their Conspiracy Theory regarding 911. They're afraid of the conclusions this may lead to ...
"Yes, it very possible that Bin Laden's dead"
If CIA "asset" Tim Osman - OBL - was indeed living in a cave in Afghanistan, then certainly his kidney disease would have claimed his life by now.
"and these are pre-recorded messages"
The only one to be independently-tested proved to be a fake. These are "pre-recrded", they're simply fakes, created in order to lend a "plausible" justification for the continuation of Bush/PNAC's ruinous plans for Perpetual War.
"do you seriously believe people would only vote for Bush because they fear Osama, or were whipped into a patriotic frenzy with him as a hate figure?"
No, I think it's a combination of their poor education, and the Goebells-would-be-proud sustained campaign of propaganda and psychological manipulation aimed at his Useful Idiots.
But Diebold voting machines handed him the "victory" ...
"Claiming Osama is a US agent is like Rice saying he was collaborating with Saddam - an easy way to attack your enemy."
And a good way, since it's true. Osama "was" a member of the CIA, and I've seen nothing that would suggest that he ever stopped doing this, since every single charge of "Al Qaeda" seems to lead directly back to the CIA/Mossad, the terrorist organizations of the Fascists creating, and profiting from, these crises.
al Qaeda = CIA/Mossad