WAR MAKING 101 - A USER'S MANUAL
Stephen Lendman

March 23, 2006

I've lived through seven decades and can remember the late 1930s before WW II began. In fact, I began my formal education in kindergarten within days of when Hitler sent his Wehrmacht across the Polish border in an act of illegal aggression and began that near six year horror. I was too young to understand it then, and I can barely remember that fateful "first Pearl Harbor" on December 7, 1941. Franklin Roosevelt wanted in on that fight and did all he could to goad the Japanese to attack us. He knew with enough prodding they would, and when it came, we knew about when and where it would happen. We were ready to mobilize and join the battle, we did it, and nothing's been the same since.

FDR at least took the country to war as the Constitution says we must. On December 11,1941 he asked the Congress to make that declaration against Japan and also Nazi Germany in response to Hitler's declaring it against us. It was the last time a US Congress would ever use the constitutional authority it alone is allowed in Article I, Section 8 of that sacred document. The Founding Fathers thought that authority so important they codified it. They believed that on what is the single most important issue a nation ever faces, that awesome power should never placed in the hands of a single person. They wanted only the Legislative Branch to have it and only exercise it after careful, deliberative debate. That Branch still has it if it so wishes, but for the last 65 years it decided in its infinite indifference to abrogate it's authority and allow the President to usurp it and use it at his pleasure and choice. We've seen the result - a mess without end. We've had war after war after endless war (including the ones fought by others we encouraged and financed plus all the CIA covert mischief and abuse) with no end in sight and in every instance since WW II against designated "enemies" that never threatened or attacked us or had any intention to. Doing that by direct intervention based on no provocation, as we have, is called illegal aggression, which is exactly the crime the Nazis were tried for at Nuremburg. In the words of the Tribunal: "To initiate a war of aggression....is not only an international crime, it is the supreme crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." The worst of those found guilty in that Tribunal were hanged. Think any of our leaders will ever meet the same fate as they should, of course? Fat chance, even though the worst of ours are as guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity as were the worst Nazis.

THE RESULT OF THE CONGRESS SCRAPPING THE MOST IMPORTANT CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY IT ALONE HAS

Here's one definition of a dictator or at least one practicing to become one. It's a head of state able to decide alone with unchallengeable authority whether or not to take a nation to war for any reason. Here's an add-on to that definition. If a leader does it for any reason other than to respond to an attack by another nation or clear evidence an attack is coming, that leader is also a war criminal. Noam Chomsky believes every US president since WW II was and is a war criminal. Ditto, so do I.

This essay will concentrate on the current "war criminal in charge." With some background for the historically uneducated, I'll then fast forward to the present and take you into the heart of the beast we better get to know well and quickly before it eats us alive. I'll lay out what I call a war maker's manual, step by step or rule by rule, from when we were new at this ugly business and still learning to the present. Ready? Here we go.

I can't match the famous Chinese general Sun Tzu who wrote his masterful Art of War 2400 years ago and won't even try. But I've seen the modern day script played out enough times and think I've gotten the hang of it now. First, some basic rules:

A. Get the language right. It's not enough to say Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Venezuela are threats to our national security. We have to say or imply it's the new Hitler Saddam, the "crazed Arabs and mullahs" running Iran (sorry - they're Persians, not Arabs, and only changed the country's name to Iran in 1934......you can call them "crazed Arabs" though, who'll know the difference besides the Iranians), the demonic Taliban who beat up on defenseless women, or the "demagogue" Hugo Chavez "awash in oil money and trying to destroy democracy and destabilize the region"........he happens to have the most vibrant democracy in the Western Hemisphere and is selling the country's oil at a discount to poor nations and poor US communities in need. Think Exxon-Mobil would do that?Now you're getting it.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m21865

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre."

~ Frank Zappa, 1977

I came across a few comments today. Before posting them let me suggest to you that you cannot possibly underestimate how sodden the American Dream is and with that how utterly contrived is the American Way of Life. Now what that has produced is artifact people who are thoroughly dispirited, atomized and all in all ineffectual. Caricature nation. These Peace Marches do at times seem to have a festival like atmosphere about them. We are permanently mediated so feel little for our own circumstances let alone empathetic for our brothers and sisters in Mesopotamia.

Where is the fire and soul in the Anti-War movement? Perhaps its been doused by ipods, cellphones and assassinations.

Now three quotes from people I don't know:
"As a US AID Refugee Advisor in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, I saw these atrocities on a regular bases. GI's carried photos about in plastic pouches of atrocities they'd committed and posed for. One of the most popular was a GI holding a servered head by the hair in either hand with a lit cigarette in either hand. It was the smug smile on the GI's face that was most disconcerting.

Then there were the barbacue runs. Napalm drops on defenseless villages. Burning everyone alive. Oh, we Americans are a nice people. Giving candy to children and then shooting them."

And This:
"I am absolutely outraged at the killing of these children. In England, for such a crime by a civilian, natural life sentence would be mandatory. If you are a member of the armed services, you can do what you like, I have heard testimony from a former national services member that shootings of civilian household members in Northern Ireland, including children, went unreported and unpunished, these incidents never having come under any form of proper legal scrutiny due to 'd' notice enforcement (complete ban on publication). In regard to this, please refer to the draconian nature of the English influence over Northern Ireland as elucidated in a book called 'A Fatal Shore'. What sickens me most is the utter cowardice of the British and American people to physically march on their respective houses of representatives and take these criminals and insist on genuine court proceedings to imprison them (at the very least, but execution is too soft an option for these evil souls). Churchill had the tanks on the streets in London many years ago against a popular uprising. A human wave approach on the houses of representatives, without armaments, nonviolent, to physically oust these so called representatives, and the subsequent and inevitable totalitarian military response would easily demonstrate that these 'leaders' are prepared to kill majority representatives of their own electorate in order to maintain 'government for the benefit of the government and not for the people'. Surely some troops and police could be appealed to, and turn against their masters.
'Demonstrations', 'petitions', and the like are impotent and futile orchestrations often designed by agents provocateurs (I have had this confirmed by a senior official in the British establishment) for the dual purposes only of satisfying a vague public concern that 'someone' is doing something', and that such efforts are entirely ineffectual. Such a small sacrifice resulting from more sincere approaches would surely then serve to wake up the people that we are now in the grip of a primarily parasitic influence. The members of government involved are not truly bothered about the 'horrific' losses of life they daily publish in their newspapers to create a screen of ink to whip up hysteria over extremely localised, daily killings in domestic incidents, killings by released mental patients etc., they only desire to bombard the mental faculties of the electorate with information which is entirely irrelevant to them, till their attention span and critical faculties are uselessly expended and entirely exhausted, so that no one even dreams of searching out sites on the internet concerning birth defects in children resulting from depleted uranium. Just imagine some politician scattering depleted uranium in America or England near children and those who are about to procreate, and, witnessing the horrendous birth defects and fatal cancers produced by their actions, with repeat effects anticipated for another 4.6 billion years. Then, say, we are bringing freedom and democracy. Of course, if you are the government, it is ok, and we are physically scared to do anything, (been beaten up by the police recently?) but if it were to be an individual perpetrating these inconceivably sadistic, extremely distressing and horrific acts whilst not being 'authorised' as a government employee, he would of course be sentenced to natural (whole) life sentence in a top security mental hospital like Broadmoor, or Rampton, and be utterly torn to pieces for decades in the national media. Just what is the fear we feel that disables us from coordinating together to remove these criminally insane psychopaths from power? Let us look deep inside ourselves. Perhaps it was the damage from thiomersal in our vaccinations, the fluoride in our water and toothpaste, or maybe the aspartame in our cola, or the TV and media propaganda hypnosis? Why are we all dying spiritually?. Is is time for a little more than just chanting and walking on demos? Think about it please."

And this:
" To the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Africa, South America and many more, whose peoples endured sufferring from exploitations of coveted resources, and tests of weapons/tactics of mass destruction, I, as an American, do deeply and sincerely apologize for what has been done. I promise that I shall do all in my power to end these atrocities, bring the criminals and liars to justice, and to see that reparations are made.

In 1968, as my brother and I were enlisting in the Marines, my father told us of an old warriors saying...
"Shed no tears for the fallen soldier, for if you come to kill, you must be ready and willing to die should that be your fate." He then brought out that old flag that draped the coffin of his brother, a Marine, killed in WWII in the Pacific. He told us that we represent the people of America and to carry ourselves in a manner of respect so that the sacrifice of his brother and so many more like him would not be dishonored.

The "great statesman" Henry Kissinger revealed a most sinister aspect of American foreign policy when he said...
"Depopulation of third world countries should be a highest priority, as the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals, especially from undeveloped countries.
Kissinger also said, in the presence of General Alexander Haig, that "Military men are DUMB, STUPID ANIMALS, to be used as pawns for US foreign policy."

The oil consumption of the US military is as much as the entire country of Greece. When the oil stops, so does the military. The military Industrial Complex knows this and is trying to secure the worlds oil supply as it is essential to their goal of FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.

If those who profit from war and the misery of others spent their money for peace this could be a better world for all people.
Thank you."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/GlobalRollbackNetwork.html

Surveillance is in these days. Total Info. Total Watchdog. Total Control. Welcome to Panopticon World. It's More Than Your County Survey.

How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move

http://www.spychips.com/

Police state USA and Big Brother's most cool tool

By Amy Worthington

03/01/06 "Idaho Observer" -- -- Senate Minority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) calls this Congress the "most corrupt" in history.1 U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) often uses the term "police state" to describe our national state of affairs. George Bush is making the most expansive claims to unbridled power since America’s War for Independence, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT).2 Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who proved Bush lied to launch us into war with Iraq, says "fascist forces have seized control of the levers of power."3 Americans are being told that their Republic has become a fascist police state—they just need ears to hear.

In a fascist police state, the dictator secures his power with support from private corporations which are given special privileges and, thus, benefit from doing business with dictators. Continuously bribed by 28,000 corporate lobbyists in D.C.,4 Congress is doing its part to build a fascist state in America.

During President Bush’s recent State of the Union speech, these tainted legislators perpetually rose to their feet to applaud the spewing of what a New York Times editorial called "misleading analogies, propaganda slogans and false choices."5 Their bootlicking recalls a by-gone Soviet era when endless rows of robotic Central Party members applauded the likes of Stalin to ensure their next breath of oxygen.

Passing the fascist laws they never read

After passage of the Patriot Act of 2001, Rep. Paul told Insight Magazine that the 2,200-page bill was not made available to Congress to read before the vote.6 So the most corrupt Congress in history rubber stamped the most fascist legislation they had never read. Our constitution enumerates inalienable rights that are emphatically restated in the first 10 amendments commonly known as "The Bill of Rights." Under the Patriot Act, the "right" to free speech, peaceable assembly and security in one’s person, papers and effects have been relegated to "privileges" that government can take away at any time. Patriot Act authority has suspended the right to due process and a prompt and public trial; it even cancelled protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Agents serving the fascist state can freely wire-tap our phones, enter our homes/offices, search and seize without warrant and detain us indefinitely without charges—ostensibly to keep America safe.



Digital Angel: Fascist Big Brother’s most cool tool

Passive ID subdermal chips are the "good news" compared to grotesque ACTIVE implant chips also developed by ADS. The implantable Digital Angel is a grotesque communication device that can continually relay information wirelessly to either ground stations or to satellite systems.96 Developed to be a true tracking chip like the bulky radio ankle bracelets locked onto prisoners, it is tiny enough to be implanted into human flesh. The Angel has a built-in GPS receiver and a wireless transceiver. In December, 2004, ADS signed an agreement with the satellite telecommunications company ORBCOMM. Such collusion will one day turn implanted citizens into walking radio beacons, trackable by satellite.97

Digital Angel is the ultimate in totalitarian control, to date Big Fascist Brother’s most "cool tool."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12121.htm

Exception-Based Reporting - Reducing Offender Management Time
Corrections officers have busy schedules and want to spend the most time with offenders that are not complying to the rules. Adding GPS monitoring data to any EM program creates a lot of information for officers to review to verify offender compliance. iSECUREtrac's exception-based monitoring system gives officers reporting tools that reduce the amount of information that must be reviewed to verify an offender's compliance. As an example, most agencies that utilize iSECUREtrac's GPS systems set up parameters in order to receive "pushed" communications of specific offender violations in accordance with each offender's profile, risk factor, and compliance requirements. This may include curfew perimeter management, GPS exclusion zones, GPS inclusion zones, and dozens of other potential compliance requirements. With iSECUREtrac's tracNET24 monitoring software, corrections officers are not only able to set up any number of compliance criteria, but they are able to set up automatic notification criteria that best fits their needs. This dramatically reduces the time required in reviewing information on every offender they are monitoring. Our experience indicates that iSECUREtrac's exception-based reporting system dramatically increases the number of offenders that can be monitored utilizing GPS systems.

Many other systems may offer the ability to set up GPS inclusion zones or exclusion zones, but do NOT integrate automatic notification when GPS zone violations occur, rather only offer notification when curfew or RF proximity violations occur with home base stations. These other systems add more work of reviewing the tracking maps for every offender to verify compliance to their location while under GPS supervision. These other systems limit a correction agencies ability to grow their GPS programs due to the excessive program management time.

iSECUREtrac's fully functional exception-based automated violation notification system eliminates the need for an agency to constantly check or review an offender's whereabouts, but rather allows an officer to receive pertinent violation information and to review location history information on an as-needed basis. Offenders who are in compliance shouldn't require the same amount of personal supervision that non-compliant offenders require. Exception-based reporting enables agency personnel to identify offenders who require higher degrees of supervision and to respond appropriately. Exception-based reporting has made iSECUREtrac's system integral to any agency that wants to best utilize a corrections officer's time in managing his/her offender caseload.

http://www.isecuretrac.com/tn24_p.asp

Watch What You Say
By Tim Shorrock, The Nation. Posted March 9, 2006.

Two months after the New York Times revealed that the Bush Administration ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance of American citizens, only three corporations--AT&T, Sprint and MCI--have been identified by the media as cooperating. If the reports in the Times and other newspapers are true, these companies have allowed the NSA to intercept thousands of telephone calls, fax messages and e-mails without warrants from a special oversight court established by Congress under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some companies, according to the same reports, have given the NSA a direct hookup to their huge databases of communications records. The NSA, using the same supercomputers that analyze foreign communications, sifts through this data for key words and phrases that could indicate communication to or from suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathizers and then tracks those individuals and their ever-widening circle of associates. "This is the US version of Echelon," says Albert Gidari, a prominent telecommunications attorney in Seattle, referring to a massive eavesdropping program run by the NSA and its English-speaking counterparts that created a huge controversy in Europe in the late 1990s.

So far, a handful of Democratic lawmakers--Representative John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Senators Edward Kennedy and Russell Feingold--have attempted to obtain information from companies involved in the domestic surveillance program. But they've largely been rebuffed. Further details about the highly classified program are likely to emerge as the Electronic Frontier Foundation pursues a lawsuit, filed January 31, against AT&T for violating privacy laws by giving the NSA direct access to its telephone records database and Internet transaction logs. On February 16 a federal judge gave the Bush Administration until March 8 to turn over a list of internal documents related to two other lawsuits, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, seeking an injunction to end the program.

Despite the President's rigorous defense of the program, no company has dared to admit its cooperation publicly. Their reticence is understandable: The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation of the government officials who leaked the NSA story to the Times, and many constitutional scholars and a few lawmakers believe the program is both illegal and unconstitutional. And the companies may be embarrassed at being caught--particularly AT&T, which spent millions advertising its global services during the Winter Olympics. "It's a huge betrayal of the public trust, and they know it," says Bruce Schneier, the founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a California consulting firm.

Corporations have been cooperating with the NSA for half a century. What's different now is that they appear to be helping the NSA deploy its awesome computing and data-mining powers inside the United States in direct contravention of US law, which specifically bans the agency from collecting information from US citizens living inside the United States. "They wouldn't touch US persons before unless they had a FISA warrant," says a former national security official who read NSA intercepts as part of his work for the State Department and the Pentagon.

This is happening at a time when both the military and its spy agencies are more dependent on the private sector than ever before, and an increasing number of companies are involved. In the 1970s, when Congress acted to stop domestic spying programs like Operation Shamrock, in which the NSA monitored overseas telegrams and phone calls, the communications industry was in its infancy. "It was basically Western Union for cables, and AT&T for the telephone," says James Bamford, who revealed the existence of the NSA in his famous book The Puzzle Palace and is a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit. "It's much more complicated now." In fact, today's global telecom market includes dozens of companies that compete with AT&T, Sprint and MCI for telephone and mobile services, as well as scores of Internet service providers like Google, Yahoo! and AOL that offer e-mail, Internet and voice connections to customers around the world. They are served by multinational conglomerates like Apollo, Flag Atlantic and Global Crossing, which own and operate the global system of undersea fiber-optic cables that link the United States to the rest of the world. Any one of them could be among the companies contacted by intelligence officials when President Bush issued his 2002 executive order to obtain surveillance without FISA approval.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/33334/

Thank You for Waiting. Now Watch What You SAy.