Open your eyes

The truth is out there

A new one approach

I used to watch the news and feel like an intellectual elitist because i thought i knew what was going on and this somehow made me better than everyone around me. i'd jump online, and rub off one intellectual cumshot after another directed at the uninformed idiots who couldn't bother to get every detail right. i concerned myself about the Fate of the World, just like all the high-minded intelligencia. i was expecting my badge in the mail any day.

you and i, we talk about all this world business, and this news business as though it's all real, like it all matters, and most importantly, like we can do a damn thing about it. in truth, the media is an engine of propoganda that is the mouthpiece of an agenda. the agendas change, the propoganda changes, but the fact that it's not remotely the truth never will. once i'd stopped patting myself on the back for being such a highly-developed and civilized individual, i realized that national and international news rarely, if ever, affected my community or my day-to-day life.

oh, i said. and promptly quit watching the news -- it was, at this point, a waste of time.

then i moved across town. there's a bus stop behind my house, and the people there threw their garbage down on the sidewalk before they got on the bus. the area was completely trashed. walking around, i though about how much that sucked, and how people shouldn't do that, and whatnot. i had a good bitch session to one of my neighbors asking why people were such dicks.

then it hit me. being a dick is easy. if we somehow made 'not being a dick' easy, that is, if we provided an alternative garbage receptacle for these dicks, they'd probably use it. nobody likes to stand in garbage, right?

i'm getting to the important bit .. wait for it.

so after a frustrating morning on the phone with various city departments, each of which referred me to some other www.jasminelive.online department which was responsible, i broke down and called my councilman.

i didn't get to talk to him. i talked to his secretary, and left a detailed message.

the next morning, there was a city trash can next to the bus stop.

so here's the deal: the reason that most otherwise smart people live in a shitty place is because they think of their place as being much larger than it actually is, and they're so busy solving the world's problems that they forget to solve their neighbor's. it's much more noble and dramatic to solve the world's problems than it is joe's in 3691, right? my neighbors don't think so. they like having clean yards.

Wait a second

2. I think there will be a draft in America

These days, I'm pretty sure that starting up the draft would be political suicide for every politician who agreed to it, except, perhaps if the continental US was being invaded. I think it also requires congressional approval, so one nut job can't start it.

3. I think there is a good chance that America is going to find herself at war with Europe before this decade is out.

Now, this reads to me as though you're claiming Europe will attack America. So, Europeans, who as a whole seem to be pacifists, and who don't even like to execute convicted murders, are going to engage in a war of aggression with the US? Europeans won't involve themselves in a conflict with Iraq, when they'd be on the "safe" side (though perhaps not "good" or "morally superior" side), but they'd be willing to go to war with the US?

I've heard others talk about what countries are going to attack the US because of its aggressive tendancies. But if nationalistic aggressive tendancies are something that ought to be prevented, why would other countries start getting aggressive, too?

4. I think we are going to see the Semites, (both Jew and Arab), having a hard, hard time over the next decade. Like, WWII hard. This worries me more than anything else.

WWII hard? Like they're going to have their own little miniature world war? Or perhaps someone will come along and start baking Jews and Arabs in ovens?

Come on, you're just being silly at this point.

You're being naive and stupid

Not to mention paranoid and insecure, and powerless. Pathetic.

Let's begin.

On the way I overheard a pair of men walking up the street, the guy speaking did so with firm karate chop gesticulations in time with his verbs. "We're going to find out who did this," he said, angrily. "We're going to find them, and then we're going to get them!"

It was clear that he was talking more to reassure himself than the fellow walking beside him.

Why was this clear?

he wasn't even an American, so that 'We' stuff was bubbling up from somewhere deep indeed. Fear does funny things.

Heaven forbid you feel any sort of human solidarity with someone who's not a citizen of the nation you live in.

How did everybody know only a few hours after the event. His name was just pulled out of the air and everybody instantly took it up as fact. Where the hell did that come from? I work in news, and I can't even figure it out. Can you tell me?"

I couldn't. And I've to this day yet to hear a reasonable answer to his question.

How about this: Since it is not your job or hobby to track, study, or investigate terrorist groups, can you allow that when people who are in a position to know these things say that X is probably responsible, it could be true? If you don't want to trust anything the US Govt. claims then that is your business, but it has no bearing on what the truth is, one way or the other.

We ate our raw fish and pondered the end of the Chaturbate world.

Some of the Anthrax spores turned out to have been made by the good old U.S. military, a detail which went largely un-dealt with.

It's been public knowledge that the anthrax dude is probably domestic for quite a while. In your defense, given your apparent social circle, that you would be ignorant of this is not unexpected.

Do you agree:

If either of these are wrong, that's pretty shocking news and I'd love to hear about it.

I got scowled at for this. A lot. People were really messed up by 9-11 and they were not into listening to anything but war drums.

That's because you are being a fucking martyr. Offer up a better course of action instead of telling people they are being pawns of the CIA for wanting to get rid of terrorists.

Creepy stories about tractor trailers filled with asphyxiated Taliban soldiers being buried in the desert by American troops circulated on the fringes of the news. --A story which turned out to be true. Few cared.

How should we show our care? I cared; a lot of people cared. Do we show our care by saying, "Bye folks, we're all going home now in atonement for this accident that happened, go about your business, Al-Qaeda." ? Or maybe you just try to not do that again.

Though the part I thought was weird was that somebody had a 342 page bill prepared and ready to go mere days after 9-11.

Some people plan for contigencies, a lesson you would probably do well to learn.

What an eye-opener! See contingency planning.

or you saw him as being harassed by an unfair bully which kept changing the rules of the game whenever Iraq conceded to the latest set of Bush's ultimatums.

Being able to talk to scientists without government minders present = demands of an unfair bully?

Stop being such a naive little bitch. If Saddam had gotten rid of his weaponry in secret, you'd think he would bend over backwards to show this is so. Even though it makes no sense for him to do this in secret. If he was playing some jasminlive game, that's not our fault.

economic sanctions kept Iraq from building new ones. (As well as starving much of its populace in the process.)

Pray tell, where did the money that entered Iraq (via the UN sanctions regime and also from illegal smuggling) go? Let's have a breakdown.

I do agree the administration should have done more to counter the public misnotion that Saddam was connected to 9/11. But his government did indeed support terrorism (re: payoffs to families of Palestinian suicide bombers).

I could post links, but frankly, if you aren't able to see the state Iraq is currently in, then it probably means you don't want to see it, in which case you might as well stop reading this because it isn't going to get any better.

What, you mean that American troops don't just rush in and suddenly everything turns to roses and sunshine? Granted, people expected things to go more smoothly. But come back in five years and let's see what the state of Iraq is then.

Brutal armored strikes against civilian targets, including women, foreign aid workers and journalists, to the point where even 27 members of the Israeli air force, sickened by the inhuman demands placed upon them signed a letter of complaint and formally refused to fly any more missions against civilian targets. Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon promised swift retribution for the pilots.

Wrong-o. The pilots were upset because some of their missions were against militants, and civilians were 'collateral damage'. Whatever you may think of the moral calculus that should be applied here, Israel does not go after civilians.

Arnold the Nazi sympathizer blahblahblah

Do you really think so?

More on the Terminator

From a very conspiracy website.

The Bush Cabal has lusted after California for a long time. And now with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor, they have finally realized their goal: to capture California, the world's 10th largest economy. Even "presidential advisor" Karl Rove signed off on it.

Most importantly, Arnold has been sanctioned by the Olympians. The European Families have authorized the deal and their American cousins at the Bohemian Grove seconded the motion to install Arnold as Governor. On Sept. 24, 2002, Reuters published a story called 'Buffett's Back, with the Terminator' about Arnold and billionaire Warren Buffett visiting the ancestral home of the Rothschilds in England, where they "stepped onto Waddesdon's freshly cut lawn to be greeted by Lord Jacob Rothschild... Among those invited to Waddesdon Manor were the likes of James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, Jorma Ollila, chief executive of Nokia and De Beers chairman Nicky Oppenheimer."

Next Sen. Orrin Hatch wants to end the prohibition against foreign-born citizens like Arnold Schwarzenegger from becoming president [...]

Just thought it looked interesting. I don't know about the veracity of any of these details other than it seems to be agreed by the underground media that this meeting took place.

And this was before Schwarzenegger entered the recall race. Ooooh. Spooky.

Thank you for showing in a brief article, so succintly, just why the antiwar movement got nowhere post 9/11. Quoting you: "What if this is really all about Oil and Opium. . ?" And what if you're an ass? The truth about Afghan oil prospects and Afghan opium is far more boring. Afghanistan is so far inland, and so underserved by roads and rails, that virtually nothing can be exported profitably from there. Except, that is, for opium, which has a high dollars per pound density. So, the Afghans have long grown it. And the US was not able to do much about it (and is still not able to do much about it). As for the pipeline, the loony left always leaves it halfway described to create by innuendo the impression that the Taliban were moved out of the way in order to get it started. The truth is that the Taliban were quite eager to start the pipeline, and that it was Unocal that rejected it. Now Kharzai is quite eager to get it built, and Unocal is still not nearly as eager. Kharzai and the Taliban wanted the pipeline because it would supply Afghanistan with hard currency without any moral taint. Unocal is skeptical because the pipe would have to go through the Pakistani Northwest Frontier Province, because India has announced she would not buy anything that comes through it, and because Russia could retaliate by waiting for the pipeline to be completed and then undercutting it and making the expense a waste.

Next time, try to go lighter on the innuendo. You'd be more likely to convert people who aren't in the choir. Mor critiques to follow if I can be arsed.

You're too pessimistic

I sympathise somewhat with your skepticism about official explanations and despair at how things are going, but I think you underestimate the fragility of the US position internationally and domestically.

1. I think it is reasonable to assume that Iraq isn't going to be the last chip to fall. Nor do I think that Syria or Iran will be the last chips either.

If the US invades another country without absolutely clear cause (no mysterious intelligences, thanks), Britain will not help. There would be riots here, and there is no way the government would survive. The absense of WMD in Iraq has seriously damaged Blair. Millitarily, thats in irrelevance, but internationally it makes a big difference. Without the UK, there is no prop of legitimacy, Australia, Poland and so on would probably follow a British lead.

Quite aside from that, the US millitary is seriously tied down in Iraq and getting to the point of overstretch. Reserves are being used for longer and longer tours.

Fundamentally, the US is very bad at old-fashioned colonial imperialism. This administration in particular does not understand how to do it. 100,000 British civil servants did not rule India by driving around in armoured columns and undermining local power structures.

2. I think there will be a draft in America, and I think it will happen shortly after whoever manages to be 'president' becomes president. --It may well be Bush again, but it hardly matters at this point as the game is so entirely rigged. Nothing short of a miracle or an armed coup, I think, will change the course of the freight train now.

It isn't clear to me that a different administration would continue with the same foreign policy. American foreign policy is notoriously swayed by the groups that have the president's ear. I doubt the neo-cons who drove the Iraq thing, and would necessarily drive any continuation on to Syria or Iran, would have the ear or Wesley Clark or Howard Dean.

Domestic policy is another matter. I'm afraid I don't see any sign of a future administration having much respect for civil rights.

3. I think there is a good chance that America is going to find herself at war with Europe before this decade is out.

That would indicate a massive failure of the international system, which is basically set up to prevent wars withing the "West" by diverting all tensions into political channels. I'm not saying its impossible, but an amazingly large amount of stuff still has to go wrong for it to happen. The trading system would have to collapse into regionalism: its stalled but not in reverse yet. Something would have to undermine the tradition of defense cooperation: its hard to see what. And most of all, Britain, France and Germany would have to rearm, and, frankly, there is no way we could afford it.

Anyway, if it did happen, I'd be emigrating *to* the US. There's no way I'd fight for the EU.