Sunday, June 21, 2015
White Hate:
The Guardian - (UK)- Leader of group cited in 'Dylann Roof manifesto' donated to top Republicans
"The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum. Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks – including that black people were 'the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the history of the world' – were posted online in his name. After being approached by the Guardian on Sunday, Cruz’s presidential campaign said it would be returning all money the senator had received from Holt. Holt, 62, is the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a Missouri-based activist organisation cited by the author of a manifesto-style text that was posted on a website registered in Roof’s name along with photographs of the gunman..."
Lying A Country Into War:
A scene I will never forget is the footage of Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz, the night the bombs started falling, standing off-stage at the Pentagon press conference, back-slapping, glad-handing and self-congratulating as if to say: "Can you believe they bought it? We did it! We finally got the war we've wanted for 10 years!"
Paul Waldman: George W. Bush didn't just lie about the Iraq War. What he did was much worse
"None of the conservatives running for president want to be associated with the last Republican president — not even his brother (for whom stepping away is rather complicated). After all, George W. Bush left office with an approval rating hovering in the low 30s, and his grandest project was the gigantic catastrophe of the Iraq War, which we're still dealing with and still debating. If you're a Republican right now you're no doubt wishing we could talk about something else, but failing that, you'd like the issue framed in a particular way: The war was an honest mistake, nobody lied to the public, and anything bad that's happening now is Barack Obama's fault...
...What the Bush administration launched in 2002 and 2003 may have been the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and misleading campaign of government propaganda in American history. Spend too much time in the weeds, and you risk missing the hysterical tenor of the whole campaign... ...each and every time the message was the same: If we didn't wage war, Iraq was going to attack the United States homeland with its enormous arsenal of ghastly weapons, and who knows how many Americans would perish...
...This is one of the many sins for which Bush and those who supported him ought to spend a lifetime atoning. He looked out at the American public and decided that the way to get what he wanted was to terrify them. If he could convince them that any day now their children would die a horrible death, that they and everything they knew would be turned to radioactive ash, and that the only chance of averting this fate was to say yes to him, then he could have his war. Lies were of no less value than truth, so long as they both created enough fear..."
The Death of the Boogey Man:
Seymour M. Hersh: The Killing of Osama bin Laden
"It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said..."
Jailbreak:
NY Times: An Array of Oversights Set the Stage for 2 Killers’ Escape
"...Several officials, including the Clinton County district attorney, Andrew Wylie, now say there is a good chance that the two men had been at work on their plan for weeks, maybe months. Night after night, the authorities have come to believe, the two men stuffed their beds with crude dummies, slipped out of holes they had cut in the back of their cells and climbed down five stories using the piping along the walls. They then set to work inside the tunnels under the prison, spending hours preparing their path of escape before returning to their cells unobserved. A major failing, it seems, was the nightly bed checks. Officers are supposed to make rounds every hour from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Corrections department rules say that officers must be able to see the inmate’s skin and detect breathing. But through the years, the inmates have been permitted to completely cover themselves with blankets, wear hooded sweatshirts over their heads and put pillows over their faces, according to current and former officers..."
The Guardian - (UK)- Leader of group cited in 'Dylann Roof manifesto' donated to top Republicans
"The leader of a rightwing group that Dylann Roof allegedly credits with helping to radicalise him against black people before the Charleston church massacre has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans such as presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum. Earl Holt has given $65,000 to Republican campaign funds in recent years while inflammatory remarks – including that black people were 'the laziest, stupidest and most criminally-inclined race in the history of the world' – were posted online in his name. After being approached by the Guardian on Sunday, Cruz’s presidential campaign said it would be returning all money the senator had received from Holt. Holt, 62, is the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a Missouri-based activist organisation cited by the author of a manifesto-style text that was posted on a website registered in Roof’s name along with photographs of the gunman..."
Lying A Country Into War:
A scene I will never forget is the footage of Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz, the night the bombs started falling, standing off-stage at the Pentagon press conference, back-slapping, glad-handing and self-congratulating as if to say: "Can you believe they bought it? We did it! We finally got the war we've wanted for 10 years!"
Paul Waldman: George W. Bush didn't just lie about the Iraq War. What he did was much worse
"None of the conservatives running for president want to be associated with the last Republican president — not even his brother (for whom stepping away is rather complicated). After all, George W. Bush left office with an approval rating hovering in the low 30s, and his grandest project was the gigantic catastrophe of the Iraq War, which we're still dealing with and still debating. If you're a Republican right now you're no doubt wishing we could talk about something else, but failing that, you'd like the issue framed in a particular way: The war was an honest mistake, nobody lied to the public, and anything bad that's happening now is Barack Obama's fault...
...What the Bush administration launched in 2002 and 2003 may have been the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and misleading campaign of government propaganda in American history. Spend too much time in the weeds, and you risk missing the hysterical tenor of the whole campaign... ...each and every time the message was the same: If we didn't wage war, Iraq was going to attack the United States homeland with its enormous arsenal of ghastly weapons, and who knows how many Americans would perish...
...This is one of the many sins for which Bush and those who supported him ought to spend a lifetime atoning. He looked out at the American public and decided that the way to get what he wanted was to terrify them. If he could convince them that any day now their children would die a horrible death, that they and everything they knew would be turned to radioactive ash, and that the only chance of averting this fate was to say yes to him, then he could have his war. Lies were of no less value than truth, so long as they both created enough fear..."
The Death of the Boogey Man:
Seymour M. Hersh: The Killing of Osama bin Laden
"It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said..."
Jailbreak:
NY Times: An Array of Oversights Set the Stage for 2 Killers’ Escape
"...Several officials, including the Clinton County district attorney, Andrew Wylie, now say there is a good chance that the two men had been at work on their plan for weeks, maybe months. Night after night, the authorities have come to believe, the two men stuffed their beds with crude dummies, slipped out of holes they had cut in the back of their cells and climbed down five stories using the piping along the walls. They then set to work inside the tunnels under the prison, spending hours preparing their path of escape before returning to their cells unobserved. A major failing, it seems, was the nightly bed checks. Officers are supposed to make rounds every hour from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Corrections department rules say that officers must be able to see the inmate’s skin and detect breathing. But through the years, the inmates have been permitted to completely cover themselves with blankets, wear hooded sweatshirts over their heads and put pillows over their faces, according to current and former officers..."
