Recommended daily allowance of insanity, under-reported news and uncensored opinion dismantling the propaganda matrix.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Wexler Formally Calls For Cheney's Impeachment
Last night, Congressman Wexler took the House floor, calling for hearings on Rep. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment for Vice President Dick Cheney...
Wexler, who first gained national attention for defending former President Bill Clinton during his impeachment in 1998, said Cheney has to be ousted in order to restore the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, which in his view, has been eroded by an ever-expanding claim of authority under Cheney and President Bush.
"There's a litany of issues that need to be heard," Wexler said. "This administration has abused the power of executive privilege. This administration has completely avoided testifying before Congress on any one of a host of six, seven, eight issues.
“Whether we are talking about the manipulation of intelligence on Iraq,” he went on, “whether we are talking about the outing of a covert CIA agent, whether we're talking about the illegal use of torture, whether we're talking about the potentially unlawful firing of U.S. prosecutors - on all of these issues, the administration has thus far successfully used the power of executive privilege."
But impeachment hearings would be different, Wexler said, since the White House could not raise a privilege claim in order to avoid answering questions from lawmakers.
"In an impeachment hearing, the administration does not have the power of executive privilege," Wexler said, noting that the secret tapes that helped bring down President Richard Nixon did not surface until the House Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings.
The House voted on Nov. 6 on a resolution by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to bring articles of impeachment against Cheney for pushing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, repeatedly suggesting that there ties between al Qaeda and the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and advocating military action to overthrow Iran.
When Republicans, in a bid to embarrass House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, voted for the measure, the House was thrown into a brief deadlock. The measure was eventually approved and sent to the Judiciary Committee, where Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has declined to take action, despite pressure from Wexler and liberal activists outside Congress.
Mitterrand's Great - Unknown - Work
Italy, 1976: The 'British government contemplated supporting an anti-communist coup'
Sporchi trucchi
The revelation that the British government contemplated supporting an anti-communist coup in Italy in 1976 is not as surprising as might at first seem. It confirms a long British tradition of marching in lockstep with the global policies of the United States, even when those policies were morally ambiguous or misguided.
The political conditions of cold-war Italy that emerge from the declassified Foreign Office documents published by the Rome daily La Repubblica on Sunday would appear to justify the prevailing sense of strategic panic. The Italian Communist party (PCI) was threatening to achieve power through the ballot box, held back only by the fragile bulwark of a corrupt and effete Christian Democrat party (DC).
Communist participation in the government of a key Nato ally, as proposed two years later by DC leader Aldo Moro, could have momentous consequences. "The presence of communist ministers in the Italian government would pose an immediate security problem for the Alliance," Britain's ambassador to Nato, John Killick, warned London. The security of nuclear bases in Italy could be at risk, military secrets were likely to leak to Moscow, and the US Sixth Fleet's land base in Naples would no longer be secure.
It was not, then, surprising that a Foreign Office planning document, drawn up on May 6 1976, should consider "Action in support of a coup d'etat or other subversive action." British opinion was by no means monolithic on the subject. The country was, after all, under the Labour government of James Callaghan. Though apparently attractive, the idea of a surgical military coup was "unrealistic" for the Foreign Office planners, and an authoritarian government was considered just as unpalatable as a government comprising communists.
Britain's ambassador to Rome, Sir Guy Millard, wisely concluded there was not much his country could do, lamenting the fact that the fate of the country was in the undependable hands of the DC. But British planners ran through the whole gamut of options, including "Subversive or military intervention against the PCI". The latter included financial support for "democratic forces" and the encouragement of a coup. Callaghan was acutely aware of the sensitivity of the subject, highlighting the "grave harm" that would be caused if the documents became public, revealing Britain's "interference in the internal affairs of a European ally".
All this was at a time when Italy was wracked by industrial unrest, terrorist bombings and authentic coup plots enjoying varying degrees of support from the US government. 1976 saw the arrest on coup-plotting charges of Edgardo Sogno, a former resistance fighter turned anti-communist partisan who had also served as a diplomat in Washington. Sogno claimed in a memoir that his coup project had been given a green light by the Rome CIA station chief, who assured him of US support for "any initiative designed to keep the communists out of government".
In 1990, Sogno told the magazine Panorama that he had made a personal commitment to shoot anyone who was prepared to form a government with members of the PCI. The admission, and the anti-communist planning outlined in the Foreign Office documents, provide an interesting backdrop to the fate of Aldo Moro. The moderate DC leader was kidnapped by the Marxist revolutionaries of the Red Brigades on the day he was due to present a new government - enjoying for the first time the external support of the PCI - for a confidence vote in parliament. He was shot dead after 55 days in captivity, on May 9 1978.
The maverick journalist Mino Pecorelli, who had close ties to the Italian intelligence services and the anti-communist P2 masonic lodge, described the kidnap operation as bearing "the hallmark of a lucid superpower". Moro had to be removed because his "historic compromise" with the PCI was disturbing the post-war balance of power, he claimed. Like the FCO planners, Pecorelli saw the development as potentially destabilising for Moscow as well as for the west, its eastern bloc hegemony threatened by the model of Enrico Berlinguer's democratic "Eurocommunism".
Much plotting evidently went on to underpin Italy's dramatic "years of lead" and much more of it has yet to emerge.
~ Link ~
By Philip Whilan
14 Jan 2008
'Who is Sarkozy in bed with?'
Jean-Michel Quillardet, Grand Master of the Grand Orient, visited the French president last Tuesday. After the meeting he expressed his relief and his satisfaction, assuring the press that the president was committed to leaving untouched the 1905 law separating Church and State except for a “few technical changes.” […]Like the GOF the Grand Feminine Lodge (GFL) had also expressed displeasure at Sarkozy’s Lateran speech last December in Rome in which he had spoken positively about religion. A GFL communiquĂ© stated:
[A]fter his interview with Jean-Michel Quillardet, Nicolas Sarkozy promised to visit the headquarters of the Grand Orient to acquaint himself with the principal doctrines of French masonic thought.
“[We] would regard the return of religion in the public sphere as an historical regression and as an intolerable offense to our fundamental freedoms: the freedom to believe, not to believe, or to believe differently.”The problem with Sarkozy’s positive view on religion in France today is that it has to include Islam. The chances of any gains for Christianity emerging from such a debate are small. Islam is rapidly growing, and Christian churches are often empty. Mosques are being built and churches are decaying.
According to Le Monde:
[T]he Grand Orient confirmed that it had obtained from Mr. Sarkozy assurances that it will soon be granted television time on one of the national channels. Only religions – Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox and Buddhist – have programs on France 2, on Sundays. The freemasons have access to air time on France-Culture radio.
You can’t help wondering if this is a quid pro quo: television time in exchange for a minor amendment to the 1905 law that would allow the building of mosques, possibly as a “cultural” enhancement for the country. Has Sarko cut another deal? ... "
'Cracking the real da Vinci code'
In the darkened hall, Domoretsky projected images of two paintings, "Mona Lisa" and "The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist," as they appear when mirrors are positioned to the right and left of the original artwork.
The resulting twinned images reveal hidden faces and objects and forms that include several chalices and what Domoretsky sees as a high priest of the Knights Templar, a Templar shield and cross and a sarcophagus.
The Knights Templar came into existence after the First Crusade of 1096 to protect European pilgrims en route to sacred sites in Jerusalem. The order was suppressed about 200 years later but, some believe, went underground and survived as a secret society. ... "
'100 Years of Homelessness'
"Cancer Angel: The Explanation of What Cancer Is and Its Prevention and Cure"
" ... Young describes the effect of the protocol that Tinkham followed as the reverse of cancer - by reducing the intake of acid, the body is able to flush out excess acid in the body with proper exercise and hydration.
"We're putting hyper-alkalanization into the tissue. It throws the excess alkalinity in the tissue and this helps neutralize the acidity that is causing the cancer. By using the hyper-alkalanization protocol, we've seen excellent results in various cancer states, particularly in prostate, lung and colon cancers and breast cancers," Young said. "What happens is the body goes into a release or detox where the body starts releasing acid into the blood and through proper hydration and exercise, it is eliminated. I always say you have to pee or sweat your way to health. If you want to get yourself out of a cancerous state, the getaway is through urination and perspiration. We have to maintain the integrity of the fluids of the body.
Tinkham can still feel the encapsulated tumor just underneath the surface of her skin. But she knows it's harmless. Now, it's simply her badge of honor - the reminder that she, Kim Tinkham, defeated cancer without any surgery, invasive procedures, radiation or chemotherapy.
"It (the tumor) is not killing me. It will eventually disappear," Tinkham said. "I'm cancer free by all medical terms."
A blood tests in November of 2007 (nine months after her diagnosis of stage 3 breast cancer) proved that the cancer is absent from her body. But she really didn't need a blood test to tell her that. Just hours after she had her blood taken for the tests, and days before she knew the results, she was confident that her new lifestyle had allowed her body to fight the cancer. ... "
Symbols in Washington D.C. city layout
CIA drug planes: "Tip of the Iceberg"
" ... Two American-registered drug planes busted in Mexico carrying four and 5.5 tons of cocaine are just the "tip of the iceberg" in a blockbuster aviation deal which sold 50 American-registered aircraft to the Sinaloa Cartel, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.
According to an indictment released over the holidays by Mexico’s Atty. General, Pedro Alfonso Alatorre, already indicted as the cartel’s chief financier, purchased the DC9 (N900SA) airliner, the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA), and 48 other planes not yet identified for Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel with laundered drug money, using a company he controls which owns currency exchanges at major airports in Mexico.
Now we know who bought the airplanes. The trickier question is: who sold them? The answer, normally, would be, "Their local counterparts in international organized crime."
But these aren't normal circumstances. Why? Because the U.S. doesn't even have any Drug Lords. Ask anybody at the DEA. Apparently, we don't even bother to field a team. ... "
~ Read on... ~
'How American Democracy Relies on Fascism'
fascists in powerful positions. Once in office, they exploit wars and
national tragedies to roll back hard-won freedoms. They're Democrats
as well as Republicans.
As has happened with increasing frequency in recent years, another
blockbuster story revealing the anti-democratic impulse within the
top echelon of the U.S. government has appeared and vanished
overnight. According to Cold War-era files declassified last week,
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly advised President Harry
Truman to arrest "all individuals potentially dangerous" to national
security, jail them in military prisons and try them before kangaroo
tribunals that "will not be bound by the rules of evidence." ... "