- Signs of the Times for Sat, 18 Feb 2006 -

In this week's podcast we discuss what we have identified as the very first problem that must be solved in order for positive changes to be undertaken in American and elsewhere in the world: the Media.

Knowledge is power. Those who control information can control the masses; it's that simple.

As we researched the subject of the media, we came across The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. As everyone knows, this is a vicious anti-Semitic hoax. We agree. We do not for a minute think that this represents Judaism or ordinary Jewish people.

What was shocking for us was our realization that the Protocols is being implemented almost line by line by many of the members of the Bush Administration and the various government 'think-tanks' that formulate their policy. In other words, the Protocols is not a hoax because it is nonsense, but rather it is only a hoax because it was attributed to Jews.

Here, we present the text of Protocol 12 from which several excerpts were read on the podcast and which we jokingly referred to as "The Gospel According to Karl Rove."

Read it and understand that this is, indeed, the number one issue that America must deal with before they can do a single other thing.

PROTOCOL No. 12 Control of the Press

1. The word "freedom," which can be interpreted in various ways, is defined by us as follows -

2. Freedom is the right to do what which the law allows. This interpretation of the word will at the proper time be of service to us, because all freedom will thus be in our hands, since the laws will abolish or create only that which is desirable for us according to the aforesaid program.

3. We shall deal with the press in the following way: what is the part played by the press to-day? It serves to excite and inflame those passions which are needed for our purpose or else it serves selfish ends of parties. It is often vapid, unjust, mendacious, and the majority of the public have not the slightest idea what ends the press really serves. We shall saddle and bridle it with a tight curb: we shall do the same also with all productions of the printing press, for where would be the sense of getting rid of the attacks of the press if we remain targets for pamphlets and books? The produce of publicity, which nowadays is a source of heavy expense owing to the necessity of censoring it, will be turned by us into a very lucrative source of income to our State: we shall lay on it a special stamp tax and require deposits of caution-money before permitting the establishment of any organ of the press or of printing offices; these will then have to guarantee our government against any kind of attack on the part of the press.

For any attempt to attack us, if such still be possible, we shall inflict fines without mercy. Such measures as stamp tax, deposit of caution-money and fines secured by these deposits, will bring in a huge income to the government. It is true that party organs might not spare money for the sake of publicity, but these we shall shut up at the second attack upon us. No one shall with impunity lay a finger on the aureole of our government infallibility. The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification. I BEG YOU TO NOTE THAT AMONG THOSE MAKING ATTACKS UPON US WILL ALSO BE ORGANS ESTABLISHED BY US, BUT THEY WILL ATTACK EXCLUSIVELY POINTS THAT WE HAVE PRE-DETERMINED TO ALTER.
WE CONTROL THE PRESS

4. NOT A SINGLE ANNOUNCEMENT WILL REACH THE PUBLIC WITHOUT OUR CONTROL. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.

5. If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent the they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses; if already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what GOY stupidity calls State secrets: what will our positions be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world ....

6. Let us turn again to the FUTURE OF THE PRINTING PRESS. Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to provide himself with the diploma instituted therefore, which, in case of any fault, will be immediately impounded. With such measures THE INSTRUMENT OF THOUGHT WILL BECOME AN EDUCATIVE MEANS ON THE HANDS OF OUR GOVERNMENT, WHICH WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE MASS OF THE NATION TO BE LED ASTRAY IN BY-WAYS AND FANTASIES ABOUT THE BLESSINGS OF PROGRESS. Is there any one of us who does not know that these phantom blessings are the direct roads to foolish imaginings which give birth to anarchical relations of men among themselves and towards authority, because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has introduced the conception of every kind of emancipation, but has failed to establish its limits .... All the so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in fact, at any rate in thought. Every one of them in hunting after phantoms of freedom, and falling exclusively into license, that is, into the anarchy of protest for the sake of protest....
FREE PRESS DESTROYED

7. We turn to the periodical press. We shall impose on it, as on all printed matter, stamp taxes per sheet and deposits of caution-money, and books of less than 30 sheets will pay double. We shall reckon them as pamphlets in order, on the one hand, to reduce the number of magazines, which are the worst form of printed poison, and, on the other, in order that this measure may force writers into such lengthy productions that they will be little read, especially as they will be costly. At the same time what we shall publish ourselves to influence mental development in the direction laid down for our profit will be cheap and will be read voraciously. The tax will bring vapid literary ambitions within bounds and the liability to penalties will make literary men dependent upon us. And if there should be any found who are desirous of writing against us, they will not find any person eager to print their productions. Before accepting any production for publication in print, the publisher or printer will have to apply to the authorities for permission to do so. Thus we shall know beforehand of all tricks preparing against us and shall nullify them by getting ahead with explanations on the subject treated of.

8. Literature and journalism are two of the most important educative forces, and therefore our government will become proprietor of the majority of the journals. This will neutralize the injurious influence of the privately-owned press and will put us in possession of a tremendous influence upon the public mind .... If we give permits for ten journals, we shall ourselves found thirty, and so on in the same proportion. This, however, must in no wise be suspected by the public. For which reason all journals published by us will be of the most opposite, in appearance, tendencies and opinions, thereby creating confidence in us and bringing over to us quite unsuspicious opponents, who will thus fall into our trap and be rendered harmless.

9. In the front rank will stand organs of an official character. They will always stand guard over our interests, and therefore their influence will be comparatively insignificant.

10. In the second rank will be the semi-official organs, whose part it will be to attack the tepid and indifferent.

11. In the third rank we shall set up our own, to all appearance, opposition, which, in at least one of its organs, will present what looks like the very antipodes to us. Our real opponents at heart will accept this simulated opposition as their own and will show us their cards.

12. All our newspapers will be of all possible complexions -- aristocratic, republican, revolutionary, even anarchical - for so long, of course, as the constitution exists .... Like the Indian idol "Vishnu" they will have a hundred hands, and every one of them will have a finger on any one of the public opinions as required. When a pulse quickens these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims, for an excited patient loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion. Those fools who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp will be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us. In the vain belief that they are following the organ of their party they will, in fact, follow the flag which we hang out for them.

13. In order to direct our newspaper militia in this sense we must take special and minute care in organizing this matter. Under the title of central department of the press we shall institute literary gatherings at which our agents will without attracting attention issue the orders and watchwords of the day. By discussing and controverting, but always superficially, without touching the essence of the matter, our organs will carry on a sham fight fusillade with the official newspapers solely for the purpose of giving occasion for us to express ourselves more fully than could well be done from the outset in official announcements, whenever, of course, that is to our advantage.

14. THESE ATTACKS UPON US WILL ALSO SERVE ANOTHER PURPOSE, NAMELY, THAT OUR SUBJECTS WILL BE CONVINCED TO THE EXISTENCE OF FULL FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND SO GIVE OUR AGENTS AN OCCASION TO AFFIRM THAT ALL ORGANS WHICH OPPOSE US ARE EMPTY BABBLERS, since they are incapable of finding any substantial objections to our orders.
ONLY LIES PRINTED

15. Methods of organization like these, imperceptible to the public eye but absolutely sure, are the best calculated to succeed in bringing the attention and the confidence of the public to the side of our government. Thanks to such methods we shall be in a position as from time to time may be required, to excite or to tranquillize the public mind on political questions, to persuade or to confuse, printing now truth, now lies, facts or their contradictions, according as they may be well or ill received, always very cautiously feeling our ground before stepping upon it .... WE SHALL HAVE A SURE TRIUMPH OVER OUR OPPONENTS SINCE THEY WILL NOT HAVE AT THEIR DISPOSITION ORGANS OF THE PRESS IN WHICH THEY CAN GIVE FULL AND FINAL EXPRESSION TO THEIR VIEWS owing to the aforesaid methods of dealing with the press. We shall not even need to refute them except very superficially.

16. Trial shots like these, fired by us in the third rank of our press, in case of need, will be energetically refuted by us in our semi-official organs.

17. Even nowadays, already, to take only the French press, there are forms which reveal masonic solidarity in acting on the watchword: all organs of the press are bound together by professional secrecy; like the augurs of old, not one of their numbers will give away the secret of his sources of information unless it be resolved to make announcement of them. Not one journalist will venture to betray this secret, for not one of them is ever admitted to practice literature unless his whole past has some disgraceful sore or other .... These sores would be immediately revealed. So long as they remain the secret of a few the prestige of the journalist attacks the majority of the country - the mob follow after him with enthusiasm.

18. Our calculations are especially extended to the provinces. It is indispensable for us to inflame there those hopes and impulses with which we could at any moment fall upon the capital, and we shall represent to the capitals that these expressions are the independent hopes and impulses of the provinces. Naturally, the source of them will be always one and the same - ours. WHAT WE NEED IS THAT, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS WE ARE IN THE PLENITUDE POWER, THE CAPITALS SHOULD FIND THEMSELVES STIFLED BY THE PROVINCIAL OPINION OF THE NATIONS, I.E., OF A MAJORITY ARRANGED BY OUR AGENTUR. What we need is that at the psychological moment the capitals should not be in a position to discuss an accomplished fact for the simple reason, if for no other, that it has been accepted by the public opinion of a majority in the provinces.

19. WHEN WE ARE IN THE PERIOD OF THE NEW REGIME TRANSITIONAL TO THAT OF OUR ASSUMPTION OF FULL SOVEREIGNTY WE MUST NOT ADMIT ANY REVELATION BY THE PRESS OF ANY FORM OF PUBLIC DISHONESTY; IT IS NECESSARY THAT THE NEW REGIME SHOULD BE THOUGHT TO HAVE SO PERFECTLY CONTENDED EVERYBODY THAT EVEN CRIMINALITY HAS DISAPPEARED ... Cases of the manifestation of criminality should remain known only to their victims and to chance witnesses - no more.

Two days ago, online magazine Salon.com announcedd that they had obtained files and other electronic documents from an internal Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal.

The files, from the Army's Criminal Investigation Command contained a total of 1,325 new images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts. Based on time signatures of the digital cameras used, all the photographs and videos were taken between Oct. 18, 2003, and Dec. 30, 2003. Some of the images can be seen here.

Over a period of about 10 weeks in 2003 then, the US military and members of the CIA, acting on the orders of the Pentagon and undoubtedly with the knowledge of members of the US government, tortured 546 Iraqi prisoners to death in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

That 'higher ups' were well aware of, and indeed were deliberately orchestrating these acts is evidenced by the many testimonies by 'lowly' U.S. soldiers who were forced to carry the can for the depravity of their superiors. One notable example is that of Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Chip Frederick who was interviewed by 60 Minutes in April 2004:

“We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things...like rules and regulations,” says Frederick. “And it just wasn't happening."

Six months before he faced a court martial, Frederick sent home a video diary of his trip across the country. Frederick, a reservist, said he was proud to serve in Iraq. He seemed particularly well-suited for the job at Abu Ghraib. He’s a corrections officer at a Virginia prison, whose warden described Frederick to us as “one of the best.”

Frederick says Americans came into the prison: "We had military intelligence, we had all kinds of other government agencies, FBI, CIA ... All those that I didn't even know or recognize."

Frederick's letters and email messages home also offer clues to problems at the prison. He wrote that he was helping the interrogators:

"Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.'"

"They usually don't allow others to watch them interrogate. But since they like the way I run the prison, they have made an exception."

"We help getting them to talk with the way we handle them. ... We've had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours."

No doubt, how long would it take you to "break" if you were being sodomised with a floresent light tube?

Attorney Gary Myers and a judge advocate in Iraq are defending Frederick. They say he should never have been charged, because of the failure of his commanders to provide proper training and standards.

"The elixir of power, the elixir of believing that you're helping the CIA, for God's sake, when you're from a small town in Virginia, that's intoxicating,” says Myers. “And so, good guys sometimes do things believing that they are being of assistance and helping a just cause. ... And helping people they view as important."

Unfortunately, and contrary to government spin that "torture in U.S. prisons is not widespread", there is no reason to believe that Oct. 18th 2003 was the beginning of these acts of torture and murder, nor can we have any hope that they ended on Dec. 30, 2003. If we take the figure of 546 murdered Iraqi detainess during this 10 week period as an average, we are left with a figure of approximately 7,500 Iraqi detainess that have probably been murdered by US military personnel and members of the CIA (and Mossad) since the beginning of the Iraq invasion. Of course, this figure is likely to be on the low side since there is little doubt that the full extent of these atrocities have been revealed, or will ever be revealed, to the general public.

Given the indsicriminate way in which the US military's goes about arresting Iraqi insurgent suspects, it is very likely that many of the murdered Iraqis were in no way connected with armed resistance to the US military presence in Iraq. The International Red Cross has stated that between 75 and 90% of Iraqis arrested are in fact innocent of any crime. Not that being a member of the Iraqi resistance or defending one's life and family against a ruthless invader can ever be construed as a crime, at least not under any just interpretation of man-made law.

In the face of this evidence, and the observable facts from the past five years, who can disagree that the US government is a brutal regime bent on the destruction of the Middle East and its inhabitants? Who can disagree that the American NeoCons are doing the bidding of the Israeli government and their Zionists taskmasters? The day after the September 11th attacks, former (and soon to be again) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamim Netanyahu wrote an article for the New York Post entitled: "Today We are All Americans", where he stated:

"What is at stake today is nothing less than the survival of civilization... I have absolute confidence that if we, the citizens of the free world, led by President Bush, will marshal the enormous reserves of power at our disposal, harness the steely resolve of a free people and mobilize our collective will to eradicate this evil from the face of the earth.... The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Taleban Afghanistan, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and several other Arab regimes such as the Sudan. For the bin Ladens of the world, Israel is merely a sideshow. America is the target"

Does anyone think it is mere coincidence that Netanyahu was able to name the very same countries that have been, or are soon to be, attacked by the US military since that day? The day after the 9/11 attacks, we were told that no one even knew who had carried out the attacks, much less the countries that supported the attackers.

But Netanyahu knew.

Are we to assume that he possesses powers of divination? Or is it that the entire concept of "world-wide Islamic terrorism", the 9/11 attacks and the resulting invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran and Syria, are all a part of one giant conspiracy to reshape the world in the likeness of the Pathocrat?

The facts speak for themselves.

See today's stories on torture for more on this topic.

Earlier today, I called Jack Blood’s radio show on GCN and complained loudly and mightily about how the PATRIOT Act was rubber stamped by the Senate yesterday, paving the way for all manner of continued and increasing malfeasance against the people and the now jackboot trampled and seriously bruised (if not comatose) Bill of Rights.

“The Senate voted 96-3 to move toward final passage of new civil liberties protections to the Patriot Act, which the White House negotiated with a handful of Republicans,” reports Knight Ridder. “Some Democrats remain convinced that the post-Sept. 11, 2001, anti-terrorism law gives the federal government too much power to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. It is set to expire next month unless it is renewed.”

Of course, these are the same Democrats who apparently don’t have a problem with the NSA snooping in on your phone calls and email, almost effortlessly crumbling under “heavy pressure” from the Straussian neocons, according to ranking Senate Intelligence Committee Democrat Jay Rockefeller (the name alone should provide a clue why he has acquiesced).

Instead of protecting the people of the United States from the heavy-handed and authoritarian tactics of the neocons, Pat Roberts has suggested the 1978 FISA law governing electronic “eavesdropping” (basically underwear drawer snooping) be modified to allow “extensive briefings on the closely guarded National Security Agency program,” in other words a select few enemies of the people will be included in the loop.

NSA snooping is nothing new—it has simply taken on a new urgency under the Bushian neocons as they inexorably wend their demented way toward total war and, in the process, strive to silence (if not eliminate) their growing number of critics. General Michael Hayden—the guy who believes the Fourth Amendment contains no requirement for probable cause—made sure to tell us the NSA is operating under Executive Order 12333, signed by Reagan in 1981.

EO 12333 was created to allow the FBI to use intrusive “investigatory” techniques, such as mail openings, wiretaps and burglaries, when there was supposedly probable cause to suspect a “terrorist” threat. “Executive Order 12333, permits the FBI and CIA to surveil individuals even if they are not breaking the law or acting on behalf of a foreign power,” explains Margaret Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Searches need not be limited to offices, or to premises under the control of a suspected agent, nor need they be linked to the alleged commission of an unlawful act.” In short, so-called searches can be conducted in massive, sweeping, and indiscriminate fashion. “Ratner noted with irony that the FBI’s remarkable claim of this unconstitutional inherent authority came after the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ‘turned down an FBI request for a warrant to conduct a black bag job, holding that Congress had given it jurisdiction only over electronic surveillance,’” according to PublicEye (see previous link). FISA was chucked as useless more than two decades ago.

In other words, we have lived under the eye of a fascist and technocratic Panopticon for some time now and the NSA “scandal” is nothing new—instead, under the direction of the Machiavellian neocons, untethered and muscular surveillance has reached a quite natural and logical (under the authoritarian rubric) height. If the technology now currently employed existed in the 1930s, no doubt the Nazis (and Stalin) would have used it in similar fashion.

As the history of COINTELPRO reveals, the idea here is not to monitor Osama’s phone calls placed from an Afghan cave, but instead investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations and individuals (and thus violating the Constitution and the Bill of Rights). First and foremost, the NSA snoop program (and parallel efforts such as CIFA at the Pentagon) is all about psychological warfare, harassment, intimidation, infiltration, black bag jobs, and even so-called extralegal force and violence. COINTELPRO, however, was illegal—but under the newly enshrined PATRIOT, the COINTELPROesque efforts of the Straussian neocons are entirely legal—and will be put to good use.

In the months ahead—as the Straussian neocons shock and awe Iran and other selected enemies—no doubt we will find out how effective massive snooping (and psywar unbound) is against those of us who speak and act out.

How do you talk to your neighbor when he's right in the middle of killing someone?

What if all your neighbors are doing it, what do you do then? Do you also start killing?

And then there are those who are the real victims, the relatives of suddenly mutilated corpses you now so glibly explain away as facile geopolitical rationalizations, exactly what do you say to those folks?

Remember the words of Madeleine Albright: “We think the price is worth it.”

How do you speak to a nation where half the population can’t read?

They want to kill you for what you've done, you know. Can you blame them? Americans who have murdered innocent darkskinned people with bizarre video games in hightech machines ... all that has been created by the Iraq war is a visceral search for vengeance sweeping the entire world to punish America in the same sadistic manner this phony Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave has punished the world, to reverse the same torture techniques that the United States and its overlords Britain and Israel now flash around the world like squalid semen from the devil himself.

Iraq is bleeding with a fatal wound, and very soon, the cyber sentinels tell us, the nation of Iran, one of the oldest countries on the planet, will suffer the same tortured fate.

For what, may I ask?

The Zionist monster, three nations merged together in a capitalist terror machine run by the same people who ran the killing apparatus in the Soviet Union, merged with the sellouts who created Nazi Germany. All of that has been glued together in an epoxy of evil, with the blackmail, bribery and murder coordinated by the state of Israel. As we speak, it spreads like a cancer around the world and stains humanity with its murderous and conscienceless faux justifications.

Justifications for endless murder and robbery.

From the Hindu Kalachakra to Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, we have been adequately warned. But the power of money and media are overpowering, and when combined with pharmaceuticals, nutrition, education, medicine and literature all conspiring to turn us into alienated robots, the average joe doesn’t stand much of a chance against the forces of predesigned slavery that are arrayed against him.

Identifying the perpetrators is always the key step. Exactly who is doing what to whom.

How long will you cling to the excuse that this is the way the system is, that I owe allegiance to my country and my cause? How long will you insist that you are not responsible for the psychopathic banking kingpins who run roughshod over phony laws and rob and kill whomever they choose?

Or will you just waltz quietly into the amorphous white noise of your slavery?

When will you reach the inevitable conclusion that it is the very way you think that has created all this carnage, images of fear that have turned our collective social life a nauseating shade of brown and black? And red, for the innocent blood shed like a savior in every family. How is it you came to be such a whimpering coward, too afraid of losing his own stash of gold that you became willing to overlook the crimes for which you accept responsibility — the Palestinians lying bleeding in the dirt of Gaza, and the crushed red shells of children’s skulls in Baghdad.

When we made that choice in our cowardice, we forfeited the future of the human species for a potful of meaningless currency. And now we're paying the price with our children, though most of us are either too drugged or too dumbed down to even notice.

Deny it if you like, but this is what our world has come to. Do you know how to shoot a gun? And will it do any good?

Can you imagine what it must be like to have to use a gun every day in order just to survive? The scenario is coming sooner than you think to America. Although by then (maybe tomorrow), everyone will be so drugged down from the poison they buy in supermarkets (sing it with me — AS-PAR-TAME!) and mentally twisted from the subliminal dumbdown programming on TV that there will be no revolution this time, only a slow, somnambulent walk as in a grey dream right out of the Talmud into the neocon extermination camps now currently under construction by the fine folks at, you guessed it! — Halliburton.

If you don't know who or what Halliburton is by now, then you should make out your will as best you can, and prepare to meet a violent death in the coming months.

I remember from reading dozens of disaster novels back when I was a young turk. And I remember wondering about the calm, unsuspecting narration just before some colossal disaster. It’s always eerie to contemplate what the writer didn’t know about in advance, like some comet from the human subconscious come to wipe out the species.

Very sad to say (and I proceed with advance apologies) but a popular topic of conversation down at your local therapist these days is to consider how each of you reading this story is likely to die in the coming months.

Tops on the list right now is a nuclear strike on Iran that leads to either retaliation and destruction of the United States (a process of advanced decay already proceeding nicely on the financial and legal levels), or some unforeseen tectonic or atmospheric consequence that will kill billions.

But what perhaps is even more frightening is the formidable list of alternative death scenarios that are right behind it.

No. 2 is probably to be thrown into a Halliburton concentration camp for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt and being tortured to death by teenagers from Connecticut on Prozac and in the Marines, just returned from duty at Abu Ghraib.

Here are some others scenarios.

• Your chemotherapy doctor ups your dose and you’re out of here.

• Some cop decides he doesn’t like the greasiness of your hair, and because he knows he can get away with it, he does, and you’re done.

• You were in the Army, got irradiated in Iraq, and now have infected your wife and kids.

• When you return from Iraq, you realize what you have done to innocent women and children in the name of nothing, and put a gun to your own head.

There are just four random probabilities in your immediate future, in this world of bloody bullshit that you have created for yourself.

Most of us will disappear from the universe very soon without ever knowing who it was that created many of these situations that cause us needless pain and suffering, that have killed so many people needlessly.

And we who finally found out must forever live with the guilt that we knew what we saw but couldn’t stop it.

How would you feel if you could travel back in time and visit a rally in Germany, supporting Hitler.

I spent a few hours in Redneckville yesterday, in the Pocono region of Pennsylvania. I took my son skiing (yes, I DID do deep double diamond moguls) and it was difficult, sitting in the lodge, to not glare at the guys who seemed to perfectly fit the profile of the right wingers in the People's Poll. These men were white, blue collar, with a few kids, wives with too much cheap makeup... some wearing patriotic tee shirts. These are the rural, born-again men who make up the strongest base of the right wing. I saw them as people who would, in the 1930's, have rallied behind Hitler. I felt like putting on a tee shirt that said, Still Like Bush, You'd Have Loved Hitler in the Early 1930's

I'd say that I have about a 90% chance of being accurate on my assessments of these right wing rural white men. It gets harder and harder to be quiet around these kool-aid-brainwashed white boys who are hurrying the end of democracy and the blooming of full-fledged fascism in this nation. Like a time traveller seeing Hitler supporters in the 1930's, I see these average to below average intelligence, sports fanatic, gun toting, self righteous, hyper masculinized guys as a major part of THE problem. I see them as unconscious puppets, easily manipulated by the dark, corporate fascist forces that have been shaping the US since Bush stole the presidency. Call me paranoid. Tell me to lighten up. But I am no longer willing to be cheerful and friendly with these failures of democracy, these losers who have sold out our precious freedoms so they can, even if it's at a subconscious level, feel more manly, more tough, by buying into Bush's war, his pseudo tough, stupid, cowboy talk about evildooers, swamps and caves. These men ARE the swamp and cave dwellers, and they are actively helping to send the US into a third world era.

Rob Kall is editor of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology.

Is there a First Amendment right to steal and transmit vital U.S. secrets to a foreign power? Viet Dinh, the intellectual author of the PATRIOT Act – and a rising star among the neoconservative legal theorists who have commandeered the Justice Department in the service of presidential omnipotence – thinks so.

In the latest development in the AIPAC spy case, in which two longtime employees of one of the most powerful lobbies in the Washington are charged with passing classified information to Israeli officials, Dinh has submitted a legal brief [.pdf] that, in so many words, asserts exactly that.