quote: ‘…While the photographs convey an atmosphere of crisis, their substance adds little to what is already known, from the 9/11 Commission report, Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side,” and Bob Woodward’s “Bush at War.” Like all three of these accounts, the photos put Cheney at the center of events. Perhaps this is the reason that the National Archives took more than thirteen years to post them to Flickr, whereas photos of Bush making calls from Air Force One were released almost immediately. The Cheney photos might never have come out at all, were it not for a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Colette Neirouz Hanna, a producer who has worked on more than ten documentaries about the Bush Administration for “Frontline.”
It is striking how much information about September 11th still remains secret. Most significant, perhaps, are the twenty-eight sealed pages of the 9/11 Commission report. One congressman told Lawrence Wright that they contain information “about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” More than thirteen years after the attacks, they remain classified. So are large chunks of the F.B.I.’s meticulous reconstruction of the hijackers’ pasts, a table with more than three thousand items running from the September 1, 1968, birth of Mohammed Atta, in Egypt, to the September 12, 2001, discovery of Nawaf al-Hamzi’s car, at Dulles Airport. It is impossible to know what events were redacted from the chronology, but surely they would yield insights into how and why the attacks occurred, and how our systems of defense failed to intervene beforehand.
At the beginning of his Presidency, George W. Bush signed an executive order claiming that the White House has the authority to hold back the records of former Presidents indefinitely. This move was challenged in federal court and later reversed by President Obama. But the decision to withhold the Cheney photographs for thirteen years is evidence that little has changed.
via How Dick Cheney Looked on 9/11 – The New Yorker….’
Tag: Propaganda
Thomas Jefferson’s ‘algebraical’ formula defining ‘negro’
‘…it becomes a Mathematical problem of the same class with those on the mixtures of different liquors or different metals…’
To Francis C. Gray — Monticello Mar. 4. 1815.
Dear Sir
Dispatching to mr Ticknor my packet of letters for Paris, it occurs to me that I committed an error in a matter of information which you asked of me while here. it is indeed of little importance, yet as well corrected as otherwise; and the rather as it gives me an occasion of renewing my respects to you. you asked me in conversation what constituted a mulatto by our law? and I believe I told you 4 crossings with the whites. I looked afterwards into our law, and found it to be in these words. ‘every person, other than a negro, of whose grandfathers or grandmothers any one shall have been a negro, shall be deemed a mulatto, and so every such person who shall have one fourth part or more of negro blood; shall in like manner be deemed a mulatto.’ L. Virga. 1792. Dec. 17 the case put in the first member of this paragraph of the law isexempli gratiâ. the latter contains the true Canon, which is that ¼ of negro blood, mixed with any portion of white, constitutes the mulatto. as the issue has one half of the blood of each parent, and the blood of each of these may be made up of a variety of fractional mixtures, the estimate of their compound, in some cases, may be1 intricate. it becomes a Mathematical problem of the same class with those on the mixtures of different liquors or different metals. as in these therefore, the Algebraical notation2 is the most convenient & intelligible. let us express the pure blood of the white in the capital letters of the printed3 alphabet, the pure blood of the negro in the small letters of the printed alphabet, and any given mixture of either, by way of abridgment in MS. letters.
let the 1st crossing be of a, pure negro, with A. pure white. the Unit of blood of the issue being composed of the half of that of each parent, will be a/2 + A/2 call it, for abbreviation, h (half-blood)
let the 2d crossing be of h. and B. the blood of the issue will be h/2 + B/2, or substituting for h/2it’s equivalent, it will be a/4 + A/4 + B/2. call it q (quarteroon) being ¼ negro blood
let the 3d crossing be of q. and C. their offspring will be
q/2 + C/2 = a/8 + A/8 + B/4 + C/2. call this e. (eighth) who having less than ¼ of a. or of pure negro blood, to wit ⅛ only, is no longer a mulatto. so that a 3d cross clears the blood.
from these elements let us examine other compounds.
for example, let h. and q. cohabit. their issue will be
h/2 + q/2 = a/4 + A/4 + a/8 + A/8 + B/4 = ⅜ + ⅜ + B/4 wherein we find ⅜ of a. or of negro blood.
let h. and e. cohabit. their issue will be
h/2 + e/2 = a/4 + A/4 + a/16 + A/16 + B/8 + C/4 = 5a/16 + 5A/16 + B/8 + C/4 wherein 5/16a. makes still a mulatto.
let q. and e. cohabit. the half of the blood of each will be
q/2 + e/2 = a/8 + A/8 + B/4 + a/16 + A/16 + B/8 + C/4 = 3a/16 + 3A/16 + ⅜ + C/4 wherein 3/16 of a is no longer mulatto.
and thus may every compound be noted & summed, the sum of the fractions composing the blood of the issue being always equal to Unit. it is understood in Natural history that a 4th cross of one race of animals with another gives an issue equivalent for all sensible purposes to the original blood. thus a Merino ram being crossed 1st with a country ewe, 2dly with this daughter, 3dly with this grandaughter, and 4thly with the great grandaughter, the last issue is deemed pure Merino, having in fact but 1/16 of the country blood. our Canon considers 2. crosses with the pure white, and a 3d with any degree of mixture, however small, as clearing the issue of the negro blood. but observe that this does not reestablish freedom, which depends on the condition of the mother, the principle of the civil law, partus sequitur ventrem, being adopted here. but if e. beemancipated, he becomes a free white man, and a citizen4 of the US. to all intents and purposes—so much for this trifle, by way of correction.
I sincerely congratulate you on the peace, and more especially on the close of our war with so much eclat. our 2d and 3d campaigns have, I trust, more than redeemed the disgraces of the 1stand proved that altho a republican5 government is slow to move, yet, when once in motion, it’s momentum becomes irresistable, and I am persuaded it would have been found so in the late war, had it continued. experience had just begun to elicit those among our officers who had talents for war, and under the guidance of these one campaign would have planted our standard on the walls of Quebec, and another on those of Halifax. but peace is better for us all, and if it could be followed by a cordial conciliation between us and England it would ensure the happiness and prosperity of both. the bag of wind however on which they are now riding must be suffered to blow out, before they will be able soberly to settle on their true bottom. if they adopt a course of friendship with us, the commerce of 100. millions of people, which some now born will live to see here, will maintain them for ever as a great Unit of the European family. but if they go on checking, irritating, injuring, and hostilizing us, they will force on us the motto ‘Carthago delenda est.’ and some Scipio Americanus will leave to posterity the problem of conjecturing where stood once the antient and splendid city of London? nothing more simple or certain than the elements of this calculation. I hope the good sense of both parties will concur in travelling rather the paths of peace, of affection and reciprocations of interests. I salute you with sincere and friendly esteem, and if the homage offered to the virtues of your father can be acceptable to him, place mine at his feet.
Th: Jefferson
Source: http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-08-02-0245
100% of White Male American Terrorism Experts Agree….
Shell Oil tried to stop Science Museum climate program
‘…Shell tried to influence the presentation of a climate change programme it was sponsoring at the Science Museum in London, internal documents seen by the Guardian show.
The Anglo-Dutch oil group raised concerns with the museum that one part of the project “creates an opportunity for NGOs to talk about some of the issues that concern them around Shell’s operations”.
The company also wanted to know whether a particular symposium at the museum was “invite only” – as that would ensure “we do not proactively open up a debate on the topic [of Shell’s operations]”.
The concerns are raised in a series of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and once again raise awkward questions about the influence of fossil fuel companies over Britain’s most valued cultural institutions….’
via Shell sought to influence direction of Science Museum climate programme | Business | The Guardian.
NATO foreign ministers sing ‘We Are The World’
Reuters 2015.05.14:
‘Setting aside for a moment all the world’s major problems,
NATO foreign ministers let their hair down at the end of a meeting in Antalya, Turkey.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_wfMrz9_mY
Representative Parliamentary ‘Democracy is a religion that has failed the poor’
Giles Fraser writes about this week’s UK election:
‘…What difference did my vote make? Why indeed do people vote, and care so passionately about voting, particularly in constituencies in which voting one way or the other won’t make a blind bit of difference? And why do the poor vote when, by voting, they merely give legitimacy to a system that connives with their oppression and alienation? The anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee suggests a fascinating answer: elections are like religious rituals, often devoid of rational purpose or efficacy for the individual participant, but full of symbolic meaning. They are the nearest thing the secular has to the sacred, presenting a moment of empowerment.But is this empowerment illusory? Is, as Banerjee asks, “the ability to vote … a necessary safety valve which allows for the airing of popular disaffection, but which nevertheless ultimately restores the status quo. In such a reading, elections require the complicity of all participants in a deliberate mis-recognition of the emptiness of its procedures and the lack of any significant changes which this ritual brings about, but are a necessary charade to mollify a restless electorate.”…’
via Democracy is a religion that has failed the poor | Giles Fraser | Comment is free | The Guardian.
Video » Noam Chomsky explains why America is always on top
Noam Chomsky discusses American White Supremacy, US imperialism and why North America and Europe are always on the top of a map, and not at the bottom…. [2 mins]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGHpWST7l9I
Europe » The Big Mac, The Royale with Cheese and, today, the Grand Big Mac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS_ROi0iiZw
Killer Robots = Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS)
Yes, we have reached the evolutionary level of humanity’s history where civilization will be measured by how we control our killer robots. And again, the role of Mini-Me is played by the UK for the USA — imagine the outrage if Nobel Peace Prize winner President Obama openly opposed this proposal? And, there should be a special war crime tribunal for the Pentagon freaks who come up with newspeak acronyms like this!…
‘…The UK is opposing an international ban on so-called “killer robots” at a United Nations conference that is this week examining future developments of what are officially termed Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (Laws).
[….] The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an alliance of human rights groups and concerned scientists, is calling for an international prohibition on fully autonomous weapons.
Last week Human Rights Watch released a report urging the creation of a new protocol specifically aimed at outlawing Laws….’
via UK opposes international ban on developing 'killer robots' | Politics | The Guardian.
The world of threats to the US is an illusion, by Stephen Kinzer
Stephen Kinzer writes:
‘…When Americans look out at the world, we see a swarm of threats. China seems resurgent and ambitious. Russia is aggressive. Iran menaces our allies. Middle East nations we once relied on are collapsing in flames. Latin American leaders sound steadily more anti-Yankee. Terror groups capture territory and commit horrific atrocities. We fight Ebola with one hand while fending off Central American children with the other.
In fact, this world of threats is an illusion. The United States has no potent enemies. We are not only safe, but safer than any big power has been in all of modern history.
Geography is our greatest protector. Wide oceans separate us from potential aggressors. Our vast homeland is rich and productive. No other power on earth is blessed with this security.
[….] I recently asked a United States Navy officer what threats he believed the United States might confront in the future. To my astonishment, he answered, “Venezuela.” The South American country is in political crisis and careening toward bankruptcy. Its combat navy counts six frigates and two submarines, none of them seaworthy. Yet last month President Obama designated Venezuela an “extraordinary threat to US national security.” The search for enemies can lead to odd places….’
via The world of threats to the US is an illusion – Opinion – The Boston Globe.
Newsweek: Nerve Gas Hit US Troops in Iraq in 1991
Sigh…, I feel old. Old enough to remember the first claims by US veterans complaining about ‘Gulf War syndrome‘ in the early nineties. I also remember that is was the American Left who took up the issue first, and I remember conservative and liberal politicians giving lip service to the issue later and the media attacking it as a ‘conspiracy theory’.
And here we are today, 2015, and it looks confirmed. At last.
Of course, we are left to only imagine the impact of these chemicals on the native Iraqis. They are not even part of the equation.
Much of the following has been known before – the news story here is that Newsweek is publishing it.
‘During and immediately after the first Gulf War, more than 200,000 of 700,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 were exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. Though aware of this, the Department of Defense and CIA launched a campaign of lies and concocted a cover-up that continues today.
A quarter of a century later, the troops nearest the explosions are dying of brain cancer at two to three times the rate of those who were farther away. Others have lung cancer or debilitating chronic diseases, and pain….’
via U.S. Nerve Gas Hit Our Own Troops in Iraq.
Was the co-pilot a muslim?
Gideon Levy: The only democracy in the Middle East, isn’t a democracy
Gideon Levy writes
‘There’s no such thing as half pregnant, and there’s no such thing as half democracy, and what will take place here today is barely half democracy. The occupying people will go to the polls. On a good day, the occupied people can only dream about the polls. Their fate will be determined in their masters’ elections. Their masters will determine their future; they have no right to participate in that process. In the meantime, their prime minister is to all intents and purposes an Israeli general who determines most of their daily lives.
The real hole in the ozone of Israeli democracy is the ongoing lives of over four million people living under a brutal, violent rule, all the while having not even the slightest amount of participation or involvement. There is no other country in the world in which millions of its subjects are denied the right to vote – while that country is labeled a democracy, and not just any democracy, but the only (!) democracy in the region…’
via Israeli occupiers, go to the polls – Israel election 2015 – Israel News | Haaretz.
The U.S. threatens Venezuela
Reminder: Venezuela never actually threatened the the USA.
‘The United States on Monday declared Venezuela a national security threat and ordered sanctions against seven officials in the worst diplomatic dispute with the oil-rich country since socialist President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013.
President Barack Obama issued and signed the executive order…’
via U.S. declares Venezuela a threat, sanctions top officials | Reuters.
Ten US Right wing non-facts
Roy Edroso writes:
As you may have noticed by following their writings, conservatives are not sticklers for historical accuracy, especially when they have a point to defend and not a lot of evidence to support it [….] There are plenty of others. I’ve picked out 10 such ideas
via 10 historical “facts” only a wingnut could believe – Salon.com.
• 10. The Robber Barons weren’t robbers — they were capitalist heroes.
• 9. Sputnik bankrupted the Soviet Union.
• 8. Galileo was a conservative.
• 7. The Founding Fathers really tried to end slavery.
• 6. Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist.
• 5. Conservatives swept MLK and the Civil Rights movement to victory.
• 4. Margaret Sanger was all about the eugenics.
• 3. Women were better off before they got the vote.
• 2. Darwin is a menace to Western Civilization.
• 1. FDR: History’s greatest monster.
Hack the Euro
American right-wing AIDS prevention programs increase AIDS
The more than $1.3 billion the United States government has spent to encourage abstinence and fidelity among Africans in the last 10 years has done little to change sexual behavior and curb the spread of HIV [….]
“NGOs doing good work lost their funding as a result of the prostitution pledge; and as foreign governments, implementing agencies, and USAID program officers exhibited a stunning disregard for the needs of men who have sex with men and other HIV-vulnerable groups,”
via Study Confirms That Abstinence Education Has Utterly Failed At Preventing AIDS In Africa | ThinkProgress.
UK bans misleading Israeli advert
‘Britain’s advertising watchdog banned an Israeli government tourism advert for suggesting that the Old City of Jerusalem was part of Israel [….] The newspaper brochure showed a panorama of the walled Old City with the text “Israel has it all,” and was ruled misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority, which said it implied the UNESCO World Heritage Site was part of Israel.
The international community regards the Old City as occupied Palestinian territory, while Israel has claimed it as part of its capital…’
via UK bans ad for implying Jerusalem Old City part of Israel | Maan News Agency.
Carlos Latuff explains his cartoons
Bibi says: Iran, Iran Iran, and Stand. Down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Txrcpl49GQ
Russian propaganda and The Guardian (UK)
‘….all news is comment, all truth little more than opinion. There is the BBC view. The Fox News view. The Russia Today view. All are expressions of special interests, not so much attempts at the truth as individual perspectives and localised narratives.
[….] What Russian state spin demonstrates is that, by dispensing with what we used to be comfortable calling the truth, we are left with nothing but sheer power. In other words, relativism leads inevitably into nihilism. “What is truth?” said Pontius Pilate, trying to befuddle the issues of innocence and guilt with high-sounding Putin-like misdirection. No news organisation should be sympathetic to this strategy. For while comment is free, the facts are sacred….’
via The Guardian view on Russian propaganda: the truth is out there | Editorial | World news | The Guardian.
Chomsky writes of the American decline
Noam Chomsky writes:
‘…we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops.
The prime target was South Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this, Henry Kissinger’s orders were being carried out — “anything that flies on anything that moves” — a call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. Little of this is remembered. Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists….’
via The hysterical American decline – Salon.com.
Who pays for the USA’s Islamophobia Network?
‘Explore the $57 million network fueling Islamophobia in the United States.’
Start here » https://islamophobianetwork.com/
‘This in-depth investigation conducted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund reveals a small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts guiding an effort that reaches millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grassroots organizing. This spreading of hate and misinformation primarily starts with six key people and their organizations, which are sustained by funding from a clutch of key foundations.’
» https://islamophobianetwork.com/about