Archive for the 'War' Category

Corporations staging a fascist coup in the U.S.? It almost happened before!

Auto Date Saturday, August 11th, 2007

This is a great cautionary tale, I know I should find it shocking but frankly it doesnt suprise me.  In the Bush neo-conservative world of the current U.S.A. this is always something to worry about.

Perhaps the most alarming slice of twentieth-century U.S. history is
virtually unknown to the general public, including most scholars of
American history. One hopes that a recent BBC documentary titled The
Plot Against America and an article of the same name by Columbia Law
School professor and longtime human rights activist Scott Horton, on
the website of Harper’s magazine, will sound an alert.

In 1934 a special Congressional committee was appointed to
conduct an investigation of a possible planned coup intended to topple
the administration of president Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace it
with a government modeled on the policies of Adolph Hitler and Benito
Mussolini. The shocking results of the investigation were promptly
scotched and stashed in the National Archives. While the coup attempt
was reported at the time in a few newspapers, including The New York
Times, the story disappeared from public memory shortly after the
Congressional findings were made available to president Roosevelt. It
was the recent release from the Archives of the Congressional report
that prompted the BBC and Horton commentaries.

The Congressional committee had discovered that some of the
foremost members of the economic elite, many of them household names at
the time, had indeed hatched a meticulously detailed and massively
funded plot to effect a fascist coup in America. The owners of Bird’s
Eye, Maxwell House and Heinz, among others, totaling about twenty four
major businessmen and Wall Street financiers, planned to assemble a
private army of half a million men, composed largely of unemployed
veterans. These troops would both constitute the armed force behind the
coup and defeat any resistance this in-house revolution might generate.
The economic elite would provide the material resources required to
sustain the new government.

The plotters hoped that widespread working-class
discouragement at the stubborn persistence of the Great Depression
would have sufficiently disenchanted the masses with FDR’s policies to
make the coup an easy ride. And they were appalled at Roosevelt’s
willingness after 1933 to initiate economic policies that economists
and businessmen considered dangerously Leftist departures from economic
orthodoxy. Only a fascist-style government, they thought, could enforce
the kind of economic “discipline” that would reverse the Great
Depression and restore profits.

Interestingly, it was a military man, a prominent retired
general assigned the task of raising the 500,000-man army, who blew the
whistle after pondering the grotesque implications of the undemocratic
installation of a fascist dictatorship in Washington. FDR was thus able
to nip the plot in the bud.

http://www.slepton.com/slepton/viewcontent.pl?id=604

Top US general says he’s received plan for complete Iraq withdrawal

Auto Date Friday, August 3rd, 2007

If this is true then this is great news and a real pullout is in the works.


MSNBC’s Hardball reported Wednesday that Defense Secretary
Robert Gates was recently “in Kuwait, scoping out what will at some
point be a critical staging ground for a US exit plan from Iraq.”

According to correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, “Military officials in
Kuwait suggest that they could easily handle the 160,000 troops in a
matter of months. But that would be extremely risky, because a hasty
retreat would increase the troops’ vulnerability to attack. And then
there’s all that equipment – one million tons – that would have to be
driven out of Iraq and shipped out of Kuwait by sea. … It could take
two years for a complete withdrawal.”

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/NBC_gets_preview_of_Iraq_withdrawal_0802.html

Bush’s grandfather planned fascist coup of U.S. government in 1930′s

Auto Date Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

At this point are any of us suprised? Prescott is the same guy that loved working with Nazi Germany. 

This family tree is rotten from its roots!

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document.shtml

Are Americans mad enough yet? They should be!

Auto Date Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

Heres a quick video that I thought was a nice presentation of the blatant lies the Bush administration have been feeding to the poor American people.

The Tyee, The Feisty One Needs YOU!

Auto Date Friday, June 1st, 2007

This is a cute video put together for The Tyee, an independent online zine with a focus on western Canadian news. 

They are currently looking to expose themselves to new people, so take a minute to check out what they are saying.

http://joinus.thetyee.ca/

Log On, Load Up, Shoot an Iraqi Live

Auto Date Sunday, May 13th, 2007

This is a daring art setup by Wafaa Bilal.  He has locked himself into a studio, hooked up a 24/7 live webcam and if people chose they can shoot him with fake, blood coloured paintballs.

Wafaa calls his art setup “Domestic Tension” and its a great thought provoking idea.  It shows the casual way the west views death as entertainment and the way Iraqis currently are living their lives, constantly staring at a gun, never knowing when it will go off and kill them.

From the article:

“Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal has locked himself into a studio with live webcams for the month of May.

The public can watch him 24/7 over a live webcam; and if they choose, visitors to his website can shoot him with a remote controlled paintball gun. Log on, shoot at an Iraqi. Bilal’s installation – titled Domestic Tension – disturbingly raises awareness about the life of the Iraqi people and the home confinement they face due to the both the violent and the virtual war they face on a daily basis.

The installation takes place at the flatfile gallery in Chicago.”

http://www.artthreat.net/2007/05/210

Stephen Harper: Ballad of the Chickenhawk

Auto Date Thursday, April 26th, 2007

This is a well made video outlining the war mongering side of Harper.

What Harpers Conservatives dont want you to know

Auto Date Thursday, April 26th, 2007

None of this suprises me.

We have to get rid of these neo-cons A.S.A.P., that is if justice, peace and equality mean anything to us.

“The Harper government knew from its own officials that prisoners
held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse
and extrajudicial killing, The Globe and Mail has learned.

But the government has eradicated every single reference to torture
and abuse in prison from a heavily blacked-out version of a report
prepared by Canadian diplomats in Kabul and released under an access to
information request.

Initially, the government denied the existence of the report,
responding in writing that “no such report on human-rights performance
in other countries exists.” After complaints to the Access to
Information Commissioner, it released a heavily edited version this
week.

Among the sentences blacked out by the Foreign Affairs Department in
the report’s summary is “Extrajudicial executions, disappearances,
torture and detention without trial are all too common,” according to
full passages of the report obtained independently by The Globe.

The Foreign Affairs report, titled Afghanistan-2006; Good
Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights, was marked “CEO”
for Canadian Eyes Only. It seems to remove any last vestige of doubt
that the senior officials and ministers knew that torture and abuse
were rife in Afghan jails.

The report leaves untouched many paragraphs such as those beginning “one positive development” or “there are some bright spots.”

But heavy dark blocks obliterate sentences such as “the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in 2006.”

It’s not clear why such internationally agreed and obvious
observations are blacked out of the Canadian report. No
national-security issues seem involved, nor are there personal privacy
issues, reasons often cited for excising information.

A comparison of the full text — parts of which were obtained by The
Globe and Mail — with the edited version shows a consistent pattern of
excising negative findings or observations from the report with
positive ones left in.

There was no explanation for blacking out observations such as
“military, intelligence and police forces have been accused of
involvement in arbitrary arrest, kidnapping extortion, torture and
extrajudicial killing.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070424.wdetaineereport0425/BNStory/Afghanistan/