~OwsleyStanley

U.S./Iraqi Attack on Tall Afar Kills at least 200

In Iraq, at least 200 are dead in the city of Tall Afar after U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major assault on the northern city over the weekend. On Monday the Iraqi Red Crescent Society sent in aid for families displaced by three days of bombardment. It was the largest attack since the siege of Fallujah. U.S. officials originally portrayed the bombing as essential to stop the flow of foreign fighters from Syria. But the Washington Post reports the targets were largely Sunni Turkmen. According to the Post, the Kurdish militia known as the Peshmerga - not the actual Iraqi army - led the assault. Meanwhile the U.S. is denying an accusation that the military used toxic gases in the attack. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi reportedly posted an audio message online claiming the U.S. was using some type of chemical weapons in the city.

Israel Pulls Out of Gaza Ending 38 Years Of Occupation

Israeli soldiers have officially pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Monday giving Palestinians control of the region and ending 38 years of military occupation. Israel retains control over the territory's air and sea space and, at least temporarily, all its borders. Thousands of Palestinians poured across the Egyptian border to reunite with relatives and to buy goods including cigarettes. Egyptian forces on Monday fatally shot one Palestinian during the rush across the border. The UNITED STATES SUPPLIES 98% of Israeli MILITARY SPENDING, ALLMOST 3 BILLION A YEAR!!!! THATS ALLMOST DOUBLE WHAT SADDAM SPENT HIS LAST YEAR IN OFFICE FOR THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF IRAQ!!!

Environmental Disaster: Toxic Landfill Remains Underwater

More environmental concerns are being raised in the Gulf Coast region. The magazine Solid Waste & Recycling reports that New Orleans may be facing a dramatic pollution issue related to a 95-acre toxic landfill site in downtown New Orleans that is still underwater. The landfill is a federally registered Superfund site and is considered a highly contaminated requiring cleanup and containment. The flood has increased the chances that the toxic waste in the landfill could leach out and contaminate the surrounding area. Two Superfund sites in neighboring Mississippi may also have sustained water damage. According to the Washington Post, the flooded Superfund sites contain a range of contaminants that include heavy metals linked to increased cancer risk and developmental problems as well as other carcinogens.

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Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

"The crux of the problem is that FEMA has the power to turn the United States into a police state in time of a real crisis or a manufactured crisis"

Here are just a few Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years signed in by JFK and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports, and waterways.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA's Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA's role as a "new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis." FEMA's powers were consolidated by President Carter to incorporate:

o the National Security Act of 1947, which allows for the strategic relocation of industries, services, government and other essential economic activities, and to rationalize the requirements for manpower, resources and production facilities;

o the 1950 Defense Production Act, which gives the President sweeping powers over all aspects of the economy;

o the Act of August 29, 1916, which authorizes the Secretary of the Army, in time of war, to take possession of any transportation system for transporting troops, material, or any other purpose related to the emergency; and

o the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which enables the President to seize the property of a foreign country or national. These powers were transferred to FEMA in a sweeping consolidation in 1979.

If you believe the corporate media, FEMA is simply a bungling and inept emergency management agency and its director, Michael Brown, according to the Washington Post, is simply an "accidental director" and "the failed head of an Arabian horse sporting group who was plucked from obscurity to become President Bush's point man for the worst natural disaster in U.S. history" and, as the Boston Globe notes, "got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.... Brown -- formerly an estates and family lawyer -- this week has made several shocking public admissions, including interviews where he suggested FEMA was unaware of the misery and desperation of refugees stranded at the New Orleans convention center." In short, the corporate media would have us believe Brown is a clueless lawyer and former horse trader and FEMA an unresponsive federal bureaucratic leviathan wrapped up in red tape. But this does not explain the following:

FEMA refused evacuation help from Amtrak; it turned away experienced fire fighters and first responders; it turned back Wal-Mart supply trucks; refused to allow the Red Cross to deliver food; blocked a 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid; turned away generators and other equipment (see this page with links to news stories). In other words, FEMA went out of its way to deny aid and allow people to die from dehydration, starvation, and lack of medicine and medical help. In addition to denying aid, and thus killing an as of yet (and possibly forever) unknown number of people, FEMA is attempting to control media access to the worst natural disaster in American history (see Journalist Groups Protest FEMA Ban on Photos of Dead). Moreover, journalists and photographers have been assaulted by troops and had their notebooks and cameras confiscated (see The Eye of the Hurricane by Matthias Gebauer).

Regardless of all the corporate media hype, FEMA was not created to respond to natural disasters and help American citizens (in fact, it is an unconstitutional construct, created by Executive Order, and draws its "lawful" facade not from the American people, but the fact Executive Order 12148 was published in the Federal Registry). "FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic," writes Harry V. Martin. "General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA's Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA's role as a 'new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis.'" In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a lot of criticism is focused on FEMA, but this is not the first time the agency has taken heat for "dropping the ball" after natural disasters. Martin writes:

FEMA's deceptive role really did not come to light with much of the public until Hurricane Andrew smashed into the U.S. mainland. As Russell R. Dynes, director of the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, wrote in The World and I, "...The eye of the political storm hovered over the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA became a convenient target for criticism." Because FEMA was accused of dropping the ball in Florida, the media and Congress commenced to study this agency. What came out of the critical look was that FEMA was spending 12 times more for "black operations" than for disaster relief. It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress, only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a "black curtain" around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.
One such black op was REX-84 (Alpha Explan, or Readiness Exercise 1984), exposed by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, and described as "a secret government within a government." Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North "worked closely with FEMA to redraw national contingency plans dealing with nearly everything from nuclear attack to civil insurrection," explains totse.com (FEMA: Blueprint For Tyranny). "FEMA's action plan included the declaration of martial law, suspension of the Constitution and aggressive moves against dissenters. A trigger could be 'violent and widespread internal dissent.' This plan and its failure to clearly define a national crisis caused Attorney General Smith to issue an official protest. The Herald reported that on Aug. 2, 1984, Smith emphatically expressed to National Security Advisor Robert 'Bud' McFarlane his alarm over FEMA's 'expansion of the definition of severe emergency to encompass "routine" domestic law enforcement emergencies.'" Under Reagan, Louis O. Giuffrida, "a stealth-obsessed ex-California National Guard officer who preferred to be addressed according to his former rank in that organization," as Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen describe him, oversaw FEMA. During the late sixties and early seventies, Giuffrida served as then California governor Reagan's terrorism advisor and at Reagan's request founded the California Specialized Training Institute, a school for police and military commandos. "Giuffrida and [Edwin] Meese (then Governor Reagan's chief assistant) helped develop a plan to purge California of its militant and peaceful protesters," Vankin and Whalen write. "Operation Cable Splicer, a variation of the Army Garden Plot, a 'domestic counterinsurgency' scheme, spied on suspected radicals and marshaled maximum force to squash riots and legitimate demonstrations alike."

It appears Hurricane Katrina has provided FEMA with an excuse to "dry run" its unconstitutional powers in New Orleans, rounding up "refugees" (now called "evacuees") and "relocating" them in various camps. "Some evacuees are being treated as 'internees' by FEMA," writes former NSC employee Wayne Madsen. "Reports continue to come into WMR that evacuees from New Orleans and Acadiana [the traditional twenty-two parish Cajun homeland] who have been scattered across the United States are being treated as 'internees' and not dislocated American citizens from a catastrophe. Some FEMA facilities are preventing these internees from leaving on their own. Reports of mandatory registration and the issuing of FEMA ID cards suggest that FEMA, an agency that is rife with right-wing security goons and severely lacking in humanitarian workers, has other motives in treating poor and destitute American citizens as prisoners in their own country." Call it REX-84 revisited.

"The disaster that struck New Orleans and the southern Gulf Coast has given rise to the largest military mobilization in modern history on US soil. Nearly 65,000 US military personnel are now deployed in disaster area, transforming the devastated port city into a war zone," writes Bill Van Auken. "While no doubt incompetence and indifference played a major role [in the supposedly bungled aid effort], there is also strong evidence that aid was deliberately withheld by the White House and the Pentagon as part of a strategy for asserting unfettered military control over the city.... the US ruling elite and both major parties have used September 11 as the pretext for implementing far-reaching attacks on democratic rights and breaching legal barriers -- such as Posse Comitatus -- against the use of military force against the American people." Van Auken mentions "that US military's Northern Command had developed a series of 'war plans' for the military 'to take charge' in domestic crises" allegedly in response to "supposed terrorist attacks, including the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city" and "the catastrophe that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans out."

Briefly, but dramatically, the political failures that turned New Orleans and many other Gulf cities and towns into a human catastrophe, shattered the bonds of conformity between the mass media and the government. Critical reporters described the failure of the government’s Homeland Security to evacuate vulnerable poor people and the absence of basic food and water for the victims. The media contrasted Bush partying with Republican cronies in California, Vice President Chaney on the golfing green, Secretary of State Rice shopping in Manhattan and Homeland Security boss Chertoff claiming that disaster relief was in excellent shape with the cries of desperation and destitution of tens of thousands of poverty-stricken and hungry African Americans and poor whites barely surviving in a dark, filthy convention center and sports arena.

By Day Four of the disaster, the critical impassioned voices were replaced by measured voices of official compassion. Photo opportunities of Bush abounded; the National Guardmen were arriving and the Government was responding. The “news” was about the heroic aid workers with photogenic white guards and nurses cradling black infants, bringing relief to the “refugees” and ending the growing lawlessness, violence and “looting” among the survivors. Interviews with top military officials focused on the threats to the soldiers from violent elements among the “refugees”. Visual images of armored troop carriers, heavily armed Special Forces against a backdrop of angry desolate people, resonated with the war propaganda from Iraq. What was an exercise in humanitarian aid was converted into a counter-insurgency operation. By the end of the sixth day the mass media converted the national government’s political failures to protect citizens into a successful military occupation.

The Militarization of New Orleans

Nothing captures the “revised line” of the media better than the prominent place given to the government’s order to “Shoot to kill looters”. Not a whimper of protest, not a critical voice: The media converted the destitute city into a war zone: New Orleans became Fallujah. The media dredged up every rumor, hearsay, un-substantiated third hand report of child rape and murder to provide a “context” for the “new reality” – the militarization of a devastated American city. The media are well prepared for that scenario: Embedded journalist featured soldiers handing out concentrated military field rations (totally useless for small children and dehydrated elderly) while the beating of blacks carrying groceries (blacks ‘loot’ food; whites ‘find’ food) was omitted. Over a hundred thousand people without homes, jobs and savings, water, food and sanitation, were first and foremost subject to military occupation… to protect the banks, boutiques and jewelry stores from “looters”. Sixteen thousand troops and Special Forces backed by armored carriers and helicopters have taken over the city.

There were no announcements or plans for civil reconstruction – jobs for those without jobs and plans to re-house the tens of thousands of families left homeless. Instead the media repeatedly played on white paranoia: black rapists terrorizing neighborhoods, shelters, anywhere they could flag a rumor… It is surprising that ‘cannibalism wasn’t included in the medias list of ‘outrages’ committed by the “Africanized” destitute. There was hardly any mention of the “looters” who braved the swirling floods and military snipers to bring bottled water to the elderly, dry cereal to children and cans of sardines to the hungry. Ninety-nine point percent of the poor blacks were destitute but the media focused on the 1% of criminals. “Zero tolerance” declared Governor Blanco of Louisiana to titillate the President and to prime the automatic rifles of the Special Forces. The black mayor of New Orleans, caught between the majority of blacks confined to filth, living amidst the decaying dead and the sewage of the living and the militarization of the city, appealed to the outside world.

The daily rape of a city, of an entire population of the most vulnerable, is condoned. While the media pursue a witness to the rumored rape of a 14-year-old several days earlier they ignore reports of mass death, fecal contaminated waters and listless, dehydrated babies. The mass state propaganda machine focuses on the President signing an aid bill and promising Law and Order.

Criminalizing the Victims

Given the government’s total abandonment of tens of thousands of poor, starving and homeless blacks, it was obvious that many people would scavenge for food and water. By deliberately linking the survivors with “looters” and “rapists”, public officials set the stage for the subsequent militarization and de-facto martial law – fertile terrain for the killing fields. The first reports that filtered out from (unembedded) eyewitness reports mentioned groups of Guardsmen beating the self-help survivors. Military reports cited the killing of several ‘snipers’.

No doubt the Government’s first pre-occupation is to saturate the city with the military to prevent the survivors from organizing for justice and to channel all communications about the state of the city through officially approved sources. Even more significantly the military defines the nature of the situation as a problem of criminality and the repressive “solution” through maximum control and minimum aid.

The Magical Powers of the Mass Media

On the seventh day after the human catastrophe, the mass media were flooded with the faces, voices and compassionate rhetoric of all the major and minor spokespeople of the Bush Administration. Every major television network, every featured program presented Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Chertoff and various Generals speaking in mutual admiration of the Herculean efforts, of the courageous and generous Guardsmen, aid workers etc.

The mass media commentators and interviewers wholeheartedly co-operated in decriminalizing the state. The officials guilty of crimes against the humanity of poor and destitute citizens were transformed into humanitarian saviors. Not a single word of self-criticism from the officials and none suggested by the media moderators. The few dissident critical voices of the first few days were chastened and disappeared from the television screen. The US media was the only place in the world in which the guilty officials were exonerated.

Media-State mass propaganda had its impact: Public opinion polls indicated that more (70%) of the public were hostile of the President’s petroleum policy and high gas prices than of the gross political neglect which caused the death of thousands of their, mostly black, compatriots (66%).

By publicizing the President’s belated and inadequate aid and amplifying the extent of criminality among the destitute, the mass media has racially polarized the catastrophe between generous compassionate white humanitarians and ungrateful, hostile black “refugees” – a term stripping the victims of their citizenship and rights.

Washington’s “Shoot to Kill” order applied to water bottle snatchers and the real or imagined snipers. Negative labeling of the victims by the media heightens the public’s distrust of the testimonials of dehydrated children and frail grandmothers. Criminalization, demonization and militarization is what Washington does best. Repeating official propaganda and censoring dissident interviews is what the US mass media does best. Not a single mass media outlet, not a single one of the major television outlets mentioned the highly critical reports of the most prestigious overseas media. Reports from Le Monde, the Guardian, El Pais, Der Spiegel, La Jornada were never mentioned.

Photo propaganda and captions in big print are especially effective in our boobocracy and it is what our mass media does best. Photographs of Bush hugging a cleaned-up, photogenic ‘survivor’, excluded the bodies floating in the debris. Ubiquitous photos appeared of Bush signing the aid bill…seven days after the fact, but not photos of Bush at a Republican fund raiser on Day One of the hurricane. No photos of Vice President Chaney golfing on Day Three, while cadavers floated down Main Street in Biloxi, Mississippi. No photos of the President and CEO of the Red Cross depositing her over $640,000 salary, while 40,000 people lacked clean water in “refugee sites”. No photos of Secretary Rice at a Broadway comedy on Day Four while the bodies of old black ladies decomposed near their outraged and destitute relatives and neighbors.

Conclusion

The mass media made an abrupt turn, adapting and shaping the images of the Administration’s catastrophe. In seven days the magic of the media transformed the Bush team from incompetent and ignorant leaders to decisive and caring officials. At the same time the desperate, dying and furious were converted into an unruly, crime-ridden, ungrateful and chaotic mob. The political message was clear: Repression and militarization were priority conditions for survival and humanitarian aid. The city had to be under de facto martial law before it could be saved. Viet Nam and Falluja come to mind. After all, counter-insurgency is what we do best.

According to the President, his Cabinet members and the media: “America is rising to the occasion.” We won’t forget the 10,000’s of dead and injured, we’ll even lower the flag for a few days – that is if the Congressional Black Caucus raises the issue. As the President would say, “Let’s move on. We’ve got a war to win in Iraq.” !0,000 dead? Another number pulled straight out of his ass...

In the other America, the victims, their friends, their brothers and sisters are not deceived. Certainly the Europeans, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans have images etched in their collective memory: of frantic, desperate New Orleans poor with faces staring angrily at an indifferent government.

What can we do?

We must refuse to be demoralized or degraded. Let's make an extra effort to be kind and en-couraging, to treat each other like brothers and sisters we all are. We need to educate each other. Stand with each other. Because its only gonna get worse for your children and the planet!

This is a major event in the agenda for a New America and a New World Order and it may be a make or break one.

This New America is being controlled by corrupt elite criminals who seek to achieve the degradation and enslavement of humanity through war, "revolution," sickness, starvation, depression, and now "natural" disaster. A disaster has been turned into a drill for martial law. This is not an accident. It is part of a relentless process of demoralization designed to make the people accept tyranny and excessive control over their lives.



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PEACE!

...and share your heads!!!!

"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing . . . a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods." ~Aldous Huxley, 1959.

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