WHY DID YOU SEND US TO WAR OVER A LIE?

It Is Starting, America Is Being Called To Account

Phony War,

Forgotten Troops

And Abused Veterans

By Gordon Duff

Senior Editor

VETERANS TODAY

After 9/11 it started. We raced into Afghanistan looking for terrorist groups that never existed and a terrorist mastermind who had nothing to do with an attack on America. We knew we were lying to our troops then, we know it now and we simply can’t stop, we love lying so much.

Osama bin Laden, isolated in Afghanistan with a few supporters fled into the hills and died in days. There was never a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, no Al Qaeda, a group honest experts claim never existed and still may not, and the real Osama bin Laden, the bin Laden that said Israel was responsible for 9/11, has been dead since December 2001.

Our troops and veterans have to either watch Fox news hide the facts from them or learn of the corruption tied to the 9/11 investigation, the Building 7 scandal, a scandal free of “conspiracy theory,” and the very real “dancing Israelis,” a Mossad film squad positioned to record the planes hitting the twin towers, notified well in advance, an Israel team arrested by New York police as terrorists and released and rushed back to Israel by friends in the Bush administration before the FBI could question them.

We can keep trying to lie to our soldiers about this and about Iraq,

how we sent them to war,

killed 5000 and wounded tens of thousands,

PTSD for hundreds of thousands more

and did it all based on intelligence reports that were treason,

not just wrong,

not just lies,

but a plan to deceive our own government,

an act of war against the United States

by some of her own people,

people who sent us to war because of

their “mixed loyalties” to a foreign country,

loyalties that negated their oaths to America.

Now the questions are flooding in, phone, email,

coming in to those of us who are supposed to know.

Does anyone want to tell a wounded soldier

he was duped by a pack of thieves and cowards

who made billions of dollars on his suffering?

Do we want to keep up the Fox News cover stories about the evils of Islam and the rows of tanks and thousands of missiles threatening poor defenseless Israel?

We are talking to troops who have spent years overseas,

serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,

troops who know dozens, even hundreds of Muslims.

These are troops that were told of a billion ignorant and hateful monsters, the Muslim hoards of subhumans spending their days dreaming of roasting Israeli school children, stories continually repeated on the Armed Forces Network, Pentagon Channel and Fox News.

Now these troops are in Iraq, Afghanistan or home.

They lived and worked with Muslims,

some for years, built friendships and fought wars

filled with confusion and contradiction.

Some of these troops were in our military and, for the first time, tens of thousands of Americans faced combat as civilian contractors, many of whom gave their lives, though better paid, often heroically.

Not all contractors were “Blackwater” killers, far from it.

The vast majority of Americans serving as civilians worked to provide security for their families and now live with the stain of a few “bad apples” run by companies with ties to American right wing political extremists, companies whose aims were fraud, drug running, religious war and deception.

Our troops have seen it all.

33 died, electrocuted by Halliburton barracks.

They drank gallons of sewage polluted water,

another Halliburton gift.

Thousands of tons of high explosives,

left unguarded and unsecured after the invasion of Iraq

were turned against our troops

when poor planning and a corrupt puppet government

led to massive resistance and civil war.

Thousands of Americans died,

tens of thousands were wounded as wrong everything,

tactics, vehicle protection, personal armor,

intelligence and to be truthful,

a totally wrong war, took a massive toll.

We went from “Mission Accomplished”

to “mission unending,”

a war that has even outlived our previous record holder, Vietnam.

VIETNAM REDEUX

Vietnam didn’t invent the forgotten soldier,

Korea did that.

It did invent the “throwaway army” however,

troops sent to war without purpose,

sent to war simply out of “tantrum” politics

and war profiteering.

We poisoned an entire army in Vietnam

with agent orange,

numbers of dead, dying and sick

reaching unimaginable levels,

unimaginable and unreportable.

Of between 2.4 and 2.9 million troops serving in the conflict, we have been told only 711,000 survive though the average age of a veteran is barely 60 years old.

The abuse began early on, now fictionalized by draft dodgers like Sylvester Stallone and his Rambo character, “I came home and there they were in the airports, spittin’.” Thus began the myth of the “airport spitter.” Anyone who flew back in the 1960s and 70s, imagine an airport. Did anyone see “hippies?” Did they park short term or long term? I can picture it now. “Hey, there’s a bunch of Special Forces pussies, lets go spit on them. I’ll bet they cry like babies.” People who grew up believing this buy in on 9/11 fairly tales just as easily.

Vietnam was, in ways, a perfect war, perfect if you are a follower of Marine General Smedley Butler.

Vietnam was a racket, pure and simple,

just like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tens of thousands died in Vietnam, fed garbage, armed with junk, dressed in rags, no fire support, no medical care, sick and wounded left in the field like out of the middle ages.

This is the truth of Vietnam.

More Marines ended up dying in Vietnam than World War 2 but don’t expect Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks to do a documentary.

America is still too busy pushing the remaining, the surviving Vietnam vets away, still denying them decent health care, still shredding their files and still spitting, not in airports but where it counts, where it counted for years.

America, middle and upper class America hated Vietnam vets, even at the height of the war.

Few but the poor served.

Look at congress.

So few Vietnam combat veterans served during the Bush administration that the word “chickenhawk” was coined and lists produced that boggle the mind. How could so many cowards lead a nation to war?

Thus we return to Iraq,

a war started by draft dodgers,

shirkers,

yellow bellies

and war profiteers.

TOO HIGH A PRICE, AMERICA TURNS ITS BACK

Every day, soldiers are thrown out of the military because they are unfit. Many of them ~ an amazing coincidence ~ are only months from retirement.

Many of them are sick, combat vets who have served multiple deployments, sent to fight though medicated to nearly “zombie” levels by the cocktails of anti-psychotic medications that allow the burned out and PTSD ridden to be reprocessed and sent back to war.

How many have committed suicide?

The number 2 years ago was over 14,000.

We gave up counting, as we usually do.

How many have filed for disability compensation, just the recent vets only? 400,000+

Nearly 20% of our troops in Afghanistan are on medications for psychiatric disorders that could easily qualify them for immediate medical retirement and full disability compensation. With a military and veterans service that seek treatments, spending hundreds of millions, why is the primary treatment for troops with PTSD more combat?

Then, when the troops finally break, it wasn’t the combat at all, it was a “personality disorder” or as the military loves to call it, a “preexisting condition.”

Break under half a dozen combat deployments, many while medically unfit and soldiers face bad conduct discharges, a lifetime of dishonor, loss of retirement, medical treatment and benefits, not just for them but their families.

This is what our troops know,

what they see every day

and what thousands of them have suffered.

How do we explain it to them?

Don’t be surprised if their questions aren’t asked politely.

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is currently working on economic development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the effects of poverty and global extremism.Read Full

AMERICA ~ CALLING ALL REBELS

Memorial art for the 2010 anniversary of the murder of Rachel. Rachel Corrie was rebelling against a Zionist soldier in a Caterpillar tank/tractor the size of the one pictured, simply by standing between him and a home.

Rachel paid a high price for her "rebellion" but became an inspiration to millions in the process. She is an international hero revered and remembered annually because she gave her life for Palestine.

The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

“Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” ~ Mark Twain

The reason I am posting this article from Truthdig is because I am astonished. HOW LONG does it take to wake people up to the truth? This journalist, Chris Hedges, is a smart man. Truthdig is supposed to be an alternative paper that "digs deep for the truth." So why is there only a smidgen of truth and a lot ignored in his article?

Mordechai Vanunu, reluctant hero, former Israeli nuclear technician, is the longest serving prisoner of conscience in the world, 'the preeminent hero of the nuclear age." Amnesty International described the conditions of his ordeal as "cruel, inhuman, and degrading." Vanunu never wavered from his principles.

The truth is not being given a passing glance! This is incomplete information from the author. There are a few nuggets of very obvious facts which few refute, but certainly not enough. People need ALL the facts available before deciding on a plan of action and Mr. Hedges is avoiding many issues. You will have to settle for me adding my $.02 of Snippits and Snappits to fill in those spaces.

Also will be included images of a few inspiring rebels of our time. These are people who would not want such a label as hero, they felt that they were just doing what was right by their standards. But that is the way true rebels are created ~ they act with heart and soul for what they feel is RIGHT, just as much as against what is WRONG. These actions are usually the last possible option to right a wrong.

Student Natalia Garcia protests last week on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley during a day of nationwide demonstrations against cuts in education funding.

TRUTHDIG
By Chris Hedges
March 10, 2010

There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism.

Electoral politics are a sham.

The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners.

The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair.

The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests.

Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power.

And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police.

The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable.

Brace yourself.

The American empire is over.

And the descent is going to be horrifying.

Not a single word of the above can be disputed. Not mentioned are the millions of homeless and unemployed, the hundreds of thousands of sick Veterans who will need care when they return, IF they are not just killed off over there by more and more fighting.

Jew Benjamin H. Freedman, Hero, rebelled against the Zionists at great risk to himself. By his actions in words, he turned his back on the Jewish race, and exposed their agenda to the rest of the world.

Those singled out as internal enemies will include people of color, immigrants, gays, intellectuals, feminists, Jews, Muslims, union leaders and those defined as “liberals.” They will be condemned as anti-American and blamed for our decline.

Here I disagree. It is my feeling that feminism is just fine where it is as far as the lawmakers are concerned. It is one of the basic tenets of Communism, and there is a reason that homosexuality is being shoved forward as part of an agenda perhaps Mr. Hedges just avoids thinking about.

The economic collapse, which remains mysterious and enigmatic to most Americans, will be pinned by demagogues and hate-mongers on these hapless scapegoats. And the random acts of violence, which are already leaping up around the fringes of American society, will justify harsh measures of internal control that will snuff out the final vestiges of our democracy.

He has it right here. "Mysterious and enigmatic"? try unheard of, ignored, head in the sand, and not to be noticed until it hurts them itself. The scapegoats will be more the corporate ceo's and the bankers, because the American people have seen those huge bailouts and, although they are not too involved on the whole, when it hits them personally, they will remember.

The corporate forces that destroyed the country will use the information systems they control to mask their culpability. The old game of blaming the weak and the marginal, a staple of despotic regimes, will empower the dark undercurrents of sadism and violence within American society and deflect attention from the corporate vampires that have drained the blood of the country.

I doubt this. Perhaps for the wealthy or the better off, but for the average person, they will remember who sent those notices to evict, or of repossession.

“We are going to be poorer,” David Cay Johnston told me.

Tell them! America is going through the withdrawal process from which she will emerge as a brand new third world country as the shift of international power transits to China and others.

Ernst Zundel is another international hero. This vicious looking man has just been released after spending 8 years in solitary confinement in Germany and been harassed all of his adult life for simply questioning aspects of the Holocaust as the Zionists insist it happened which involves truths they cannot afford to have disclosed. They hold zero tolerance but Mr. Zundel put himself and his principles on the line, another reluctant hero.

Johnston was the tax reporter of The New York Times for 13 years and has written on how the corporate state rigged the system against us. He is the author of “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill,” a book about hidden subsidies, rigged markets and corporate socialism.

“Health care is going to eat up more and more of our income. We are going to have less and less for other things. We are going to have some huge disasters sooner or later caused by our failure to invest.

Dams and bridges will break. Buildings will collapse. There are water mains that are 25 to 50 feet wide. There will be huge infrastructure disasters.

Our intellectual resources are in decline. We are failing to educate young people and instill in them rigor. We are going to continue to pour money into the military.

I think it is possible, I do not say it is probable, that we will have a revolution, a civil war that will see the end of the United States of America.”

Here, omitted is the fact that. if it were not for these bloody unwanted wars, health care reform, repaired infrastructures, education matters could be remedied. If the defence budget was cut down just a bit, these things could be repaired. But this is not mentioned as if it is now acceptable for a country to be run on war at the expense of its hapless citizens.

America is being turned into a country that supplies fodder for the war machine in the form of young males. Increasingly as jobs disappear, the ranks are filled with disenfranchised angry young men with no other options in life. If they stood united and refused to serve, overflowing the jails with their refusals, things might change. As for the crumbling infrastructure, the layout of America is in a state of flux and nothing will move a populace so swiftly and a well placed flood or "assisted" act of nature.

Dr. Jeff Halper, is co-founder and Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).Over the years he has been repeatedly arrested and used his imprisonment time to pen his moving books. Halper has created a new mode of Israeli peace activity based on nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to the Occupied Territories.\

These things are NOT accidental as it seems to be indicated in this last passage. They have been planned this way. Aware people have been telling you about these things for decades but only now is it being noticed. The American eduction system has been being hacked away at for a hundred years and it is just now beginning to be obvious what is being done, by those who still can read of have the power of independent thought and reasoning! This subject is clarified in the three following quotes:

"Some thirty million adults in the U.S. do not have the skills to perform even the most basic tasks such as adding numbers on a bank slip, identifying a place on a map, or reading directions for taking a medication.

Eleven million Americans are totally illiterate in English.

Only twenty-nine percent of Americans have basic reading and computing skills. One out of every twenty Americans lacks the ability to understand what is going on in the world or to develop an informed opinion for voting. With an illiterate, uneducated American citizenry, unable to understand what's happening in the world, it's no wonder that a fascist cabal has been able to take over the United States."

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. " ~ Thomas Jefferson, January 6, 1816

"America today is a combat zone where the War Against Intelligence is constantly being waged. Unfortunately, the rulers are currently winning: Americans are progressively losing their ability to understand what is happening in the world around them.

Americans are unable to see that the cabal is using the pretext of the war against terrorism to destroy essential constitutional liberties. Billions of dollars have been stolen by the wealthy in the bailout scam, while the working class is devastated through unemployment and home foreclosures.

A poor person is jailed for a $20 theft, but a plutocrat is allowed to steal the pension fund of thousands of workers without penalty."

To understand how and why education is taking a beating, reason is disappearing and IQ is being lowered can be found in the following sites:

THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICAN EDUCATION

CHALLENGING THE MYTHS OF MODERN EDUCATION

THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA

“If we see the end of this country it will come from the right and our failure to provide people with the basic necessities of life,” said Johnston.

This is already happening to millions

“Revolutions occur when young men see the present as worse than the unknown future. We are not there. But it will not take a lot to get there.

The politicians running for office who are denigrating the government, who are saying there are traitors in Congress, who say we do not need the IRS, this when no government in the history of the world has existed without a tax enforcement agency, are sowing the seeds for the destruction of the country.

A lot of the people on the right hate the United States of America. They would say they hate the people they are arrayed against. But the whole idea of the United States is that we criticize the government. We remake it to serve our interests. They do not want that kind of society.

William Cooper, assassinated in broad daylight by the CIA who just left him to rot. Cooper had the chutzpah to be not only a brilliant researcher and rebel, but to have a radio station to tell the world the doings of the secret societies. He is much missed but left behind a wealth of material.

They reject, as Aristotle said, the idea that democracy is to rule and to be ruled in turns. They see a world where they are right and that is it. If we do not want to do it their way we should be vanquished. This is not the idea on which the United States was founded.”

It is hard to see how this can be prevented. The engines of social reform are dead. Liberal apologists, who long ago should have abandoned the Democratic Party, continue to make pathetic appeals to a tone-deaf corporate state and Barack Obama while the working and middle class are ruthlessly stripped of rights, income and jobs.

Mr. Hedges, have you not figured out that both parties are owned by the same people, that a two party system is next to useless? That there is a difference between Liberal and Republican is a farce that the American people should be told about. Instead you perpetrate the myth.

The two party system as it stands today should be tossed to the proverbial political scrap heap. Republicans and Democrats no longer have any clue what their respective parties even stand for anymore. The entire process has become a wild farce, a horse race in which the bets are rigged and nobody wins. This is because the leadership of both major parties follows the same globalist agenda.

A Democratic president like Obama claim to be humanitarian "defenders of personal liberty" while supporting the same exact "Big Brother" bills as Bush, and expanding government even further, leading to historical deficits. A Republican like Bush claims to be conservative while implementing enormous government expansion projects, and instituting laws that lead to police state conditions, such as the Patriot Act, or the FISA domestic spying bill.

Liberals self-righteously condemn imperial wars and the looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street but not the Democrats who are responsible. And the longer the liberal class dithers and speaks in the bloodless language of policies and programs, the more hated and irrelevant it becomes. No one has discredited American liberalism more than liberals themselves. And I do not hold out any hope for their reform.

Tristan Anderson, another rebel who paid a price for putting his money where his mouth is, was shot by a Zionist soldier for simply standing in support of a peaceful action in Palestine.

We have entered an age in which, as William Butler Yeats wrote, “the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

"If we end up with violence in the streets on a large scale, not random riots, but insurrection and things break down, there will be a coup d’état from the right,” Johnston said. “We have already had an economic coup d’état. It will not take much to go further.”

How do we resist?

How, if this descent is inevitable,

as I believe it is, do we fight back?

Why should we resist at all?

Why not give in to cynicism and despair?

Why not carve out as comfortable a niche as possible within the embrace of the corporate state and spend our lives attempting to satiate our private needs?

The power elite, including most of those who graduate from our top universities and our liberal and intellectual classes, have sold out for personal comfort.

Why not us?

Rebels are not always what they seem, alas. The enemy, ever vigilant, can twist our feelings and intentions against us if we are not watchful. The two women above, Gloria Steinam and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, leaders of the feminist movement, were both hired by the CIA for the Rockefellers to usher in a wave of feminism that was one of the cornerstones of destroying Western society. To any who deny this truth, notice that their pose attests to their allegiance ~ not to the women of the West but to the Communist party. Hughes' specialty was creating daycares to get the children into state control at an every younger age for earlier indoctrination.

The French moral philosopher Albert Camus argued that we are separated from each other. Our lives are meaningless. We cannot influence fate. We will all die and our individual being will be obliterated. And yet Camus wrote that

“one of the only coherent philosophical positions is revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his obscurity. It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it.”

“A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object,” Camus warned. “But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”

The rebel, for Camus, stands with the oppressed ~ the unemployed workers being thrust into impoverishment and misery by the corporate state, the Palestinians in Gaza, the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the disappeared who are held in our global black sites, the poor in our inner cities and depressed rural communities, immigrants and those locked away in our prison system.

This Palestinian child, the result of 4 generations of suppression, learns to resist and rebel from a very early age. He already knows this is the only hope of freedom some day.

At last, Mr. Hedges and I begin to agree on something. Camus speaks only the truths here.

To stand with them does not mean to collaborate with parties, such as the Democrats, who can mouth the words of justice while carrying out acts of oppression. It means open and direct defiance.

Yes, truly it stands with defiance, but NOT RIOTING. The NWO WANTS rioting in order to justify martial law and our further loss of freedoms.

The power structure and its liberal apologists dismiss the rebel as impractical and see the rebel’s outsider stance as counterproductive.

They condemn the rebel for expressing anger at injustice.

The elites and their apologists call for calm and patience.

They use the hypocritical language of spirituality, compromise, generosity and compassion to argue that the only alternative is to accept and work with the systems of power.

To think I once actually BELIEVED that BS!

The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to stand with the power elite.

The rebel refuses to be bought off with foundation grants, invitations to the White House, television appearances, book contracts, academic appointments or empty rhetoric.

The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion.

The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage ~ anger at the way things are and the courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

The rebel is aware that virtue is not rewarded.

The act of rebellion defines itself.

Prague, 18 August 1990 ~ Prague Castle, Václav Havel receives the Rolling Stones on the day of their legendary appearance at Strahov Stadium, the first concert by in Czechoslovakia after the collapse of the Communist régime

Vaclav Havel said, when he battled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia,

“You do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide
one day to take up this most unusual career.

You are thrown into it by your
personal sense of responsibility, combined
with a complex set of external circumstances.

You are cast out of the existing structures
and placed in a position of conflict with them.

It begins as an attempt to do your work well,
and ends with being branded an enemy of society.

The dissident does not operate in
the realm of genuine power at all.

He is not seeking power.

He has no desire for office and does not gather votes.

He does not attempt to charm the public.

He offers nothing and promises nothing.

He can offer, if anything, only his own skin ~
and he offers it solely because he has no other way
of affirming the truth he stands for.

His actions simply articulate his dignity
as a citizen, regardless of the cost.”

Those in power have disarmed the liberal class. They do not argue that the current system is just or good, because they cannot, but they have convinced liberals that there is no alternative.

But we are not slaves.

We have a choice.

We can refuse to be either

a victim or an executioner.

We have the moral capacity to say no,

to refuse to cooperate.

Any boycott or demonstration, any occupation or sit-in, any strike, any act of obstruction or sabotage, any refusal to pay taxes, any fast, any popular movement and any act of civil disobedience ignites the soul of the rebel and exposes the dead hand of authority.

This Vietnamese Buddhist monk sits impassively in the central market square, he has set himself on fire performing a ritual suicide in protest against governmental anti-Buddhist policies.

“There is a time when

the operation of the machine

becomes so odious,

makes you so sick at heart,

that you can’t take part;

you can’t even passively take part,

and you’ve got to put your bodies

upon the gears and upon the wheels,

upon the levers, upon all the apparatus,

and you’ve got to make it stop,”

Mario Savio said in 1964.

YES, YES, YES!

This is commonly known as

"putting your money where your mouth is".

“And you’ve got to indicate

to the people who run it,

to the people who own it,

that unless you’re free,

the machine will be prevented

from working at all.”

The capacity to exercise moral autonomy,
the capacity to refuse to cooperate,
offers us the only route left to personal freedom
and a life with meaning.

Rebellion is its own justification.

The student placing flowers in the muzzles of rifles at Kent State U in 1970 was killed along with 3 others within moments of the snapping of this famous photo. The students were protesting the war. In this case, peaceful protest and rebellion became the first time that the militia turned on American citizens.

Those of us who come out of the religious left have no quarrel with Camus. Camus is right about the absurdity of existence, right about finding worth in the act of rebellion rather than some bizarre dream of an afterlife or Sunday School fantasy that God rewards the just and the good.

“Oh my soul,” the ancient Greek poet Pindar wrote, “do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.”

We differ with Camus only in that we have faith that rebellion is not ultimately meaningless.

The death of democracy is not likely
to be an assassination from ambush.
It will be a slow extinction from
apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Rebellion allows us to be free and independent human beings, but rebellion also chips away, however imperceptibly, at the edifice of the oppressor and sustains the dim flames of hope and love.

And in moments of profound human despair these flames are never insignificant.

They keep alive the capacity to be human.

We must become, as Camus said, so absolutely free that “existence is an act of rebellion.”

Your voice and actions MUST be heard!
How will you be able to tell your children you did nothing?

Those who do not rebel in our age of totalitarian capitalism and who convince themselves that there is no alternative to collaboration are complicit in their own enslavement.

They commit spiritual and moral suicide.

HUGO CHAVEZ GIVES US TIP #1 FOR WAGING SUCCESSFUL REBELLION:

The first principal of nonviolent action
is that of noncooperation
with everything humiliating.

CENSORSHIP AMERICAN STYLE

THE REALITIES OF WAR ~
PEOPLE DIE! OURS AS WELL AS THEIRS!!!
GET USED TO IT

The first thing I noticed when the Gazan Holocaust began last winter was the unreal imagery that was presented in the West. We saw war machines, Israeli soldiers, an old lady in a bombed area already swept clean of debris and body parts. These images did not fit with what I knew was really happening in Palestine. I knew there were bodies and children and women and why, why were these not being shown in North America?

That is when I took it upon myself to seek out such imagery and post it. Somehow we had to get these photos out there so people could see the truth. Many others had the same idea and within weeks, the web was awash with the blood of the innocent. They were horrific images and even now, I could weep at what we saw, read, and posted.

Westerners were not supposed to see THIS.

Updated July 4, 2010

Israel did NOT want such images shown to the world. They wished to present a sanitized war, despite the fact this was plain and simple violent genocide full of illegalities as has been born out by recent reports by many international agencies, including the UN. They hoped to sweep the atrocities under the carpet so that they could paint themselves once again as victim defending itself against violent terrorist warriors. But, we all know, that was not the truth. Their main target was anyone Palestinian, be it man, woman, child or animal. The pictures told the story that they did not want told.

The Israel office of propaganda was furious! Images of bloodied babies, dying children, dead women carrying white flags, etc were a powerful international weapon that they could not compete with. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how they saw the truth and news regarding Palestine, as a war of public relations and imagery!

The documentary Peace, Propaganda in the Promised Land is an eloquent testimonial to the lock down Israel tried to enforce during this massacre. Israel even targeted international press during this "war".

But such control of the media is not new to Israel. Of course the American media, being primarily owned by Zionists, would follow the lead from Israel itself. And so it has shown almost nothing of the deaths of soldiers in the wars it fights for Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. They show images of the dead civilians, but not the men and women sent over there to fight and die in these ridiculous wars of imperialistic greed. And why don't they show them?

If the public raises its children to be sent as fodder for the war machine, why can they not see the truth of what these children experience and endure. Perhaps then there would also be better understanding of their suffering when they return home broken either physically or mentally, or being rotted from within by the deadly chemicals they have been exposed to?

I came across the following piece at THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING! and in my usual style have added to it, adapted it, put in my $.02 worth as well as a few new photographs.

I believe greatly in the power of media and thank the internet every day for its ability to spread the truth that is hidden from the hoi poloi by our "leaders". People MUST demand honesty from the media and understand just how they are being manipulated by the military for whatever reason they have. It is not just victims who die. It is the soldiers. It is the families of both victims and killers. That pain MUST be seen and people need to understand the true deadly cost of war, especially an illegal war that costs so many so dearly.

Removing a dead American from the field in Afghanistan. For some strange reason, during the Vietnam war, it became taboo to show our own fighters to the world when they were down. Was that because the military wished to appear invincible? It wanted to spare families and sensibilities? Or to hide the ugly face of war?

A grieving American widow. Another victim the media would rather the public not see. Such unfettered grief might frighten them ~ or remind them of their own losses to the war machine.

Blood soaked, a shocked and grieving Iraqi woman shows where, just moments earlier, her husband had been selling his garden produce. Now American snipers have stolen his life and changed her life, and those of their children, forever. Americans are not supposed to see such things. They might begin to feel sympathy for "the enemy".

HIDE THE U.S. WAR DEAD FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Dave Lindorff

September 9, 2009

THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!

The Obama administration's freak out, as expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, over the Associated Press Agency's belated circulation of a photograph of a dying US soldier in Afghanistan, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, is the latest of example of the hypocrisy of US authorities who claim to be concerned about the feelings of American military families, while really simply desiring to censor the war's horrors from the eyes of the American people.

When the US and its small contingent of allied nations invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001and 2003, respectively, most people in the country and government thought warring with these two countries would be a cake walk.

There was no way two underdeveloped nations in the Middle East would put up any kind of Resistance that would cause the largest Military force in the world to even blink an eye. We had the technology, so why not bomb the hell out of them with the most advanced multi-million dollar weaponry on the planet? After the barrage of war planes and naval ship bombings, it seemed as if all hostile parties in both countries were erased.

Then out of nowhere insurgents in civilian clothes started detonating large amounts of explosives in public areas throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. This caused many civilian casualties and chaos but that wasn’t the end. Those same men started to strategically place Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) ~ essentially roadside bombs ~ in position and then let them rip as US soldiers passed by.

This turned out to be one of the most successful tactics the insurgency has used in either country. Along with the combination of small gun battles between insurgents and the US military, this has been the cause of thousands of US soldier casualties.

Mainstream media refuses to report and showcase actual numbers of US military casualties and injuries. If you find the stats, and watch YouTube clips, you might see these wars in a whole new light.

Lance Cpl. Josua Bernard, fatally wounded in Afghanistan ~ The truth: Americans until only the last 18 years, have been able to see the carnage of war as it has been felt by our own troops from as long ago as there were cameras.

Pioneering photographer and war chronicler Mathew Bradey brought home the horrors of the US Civil War with photos like this one of dead Union and Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Antietam.

Dead soldiers at Civil War Battle of Antietam by Mathew Brady

Dead soldiers at Civil War Battle of Gettysburg by Mathew Brady

In World War II, while the military tried to prevent publication of the photos of dead American troops at first, by 1944, President Roosevelt lifted the ban, hoping that the images would fire up American resolve on the home front.

Another attempt by the military to manipulate the populace. It was not to INFORM them, it was to inspire them to greater levels of patriotism.

World War II ~ Invasion of Normandy ~ Allied troops advance on a beach during the invasion of the Allies in Normandy, France, 6 June 1944. The 'Operation Overlord' went down in history as D-Day, the day the downfall of the German Reich was doomed. The surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945 ended the Second World War in Europe.

Although it was a much less popular war, photos of American dead were plentiful from the Korean War.

Vietnam was awash in press photographers, and the Pentagon never banned them from depicting American casualties.

US Dead Prepared for Evacuation After Viet Cong Ambush US Dead Prepared for Evacuation After Viet Cong Ambush

In fact, when American policy-makers talk about the "lesson of Vietnam," they generally aren't talking about the real lesson of not sending American troops to fight unpopular wars, or of not intervening on the side of corrupt regimes in wars of national liberation, or of not fighting in wars where there is no chance of the US winning. They're talking about the "lesson" of not letting the American people learn the real nature and cost of the war in question.

That's why journalists ~ and particularly American journalists ~ since Vietnam have been kept on short leashes, and why they are vetted by Pentagon officials and hired media "experts" before they are allowed to be "embedded" with units in the field. It's why the Reagan administration had a navy destroyer turn its guns on, and threaten to sink a small boat carrying reporters trying to make its way to Grenada to cover the US invasion of that island. And it's why since the Gulf War in 1990-91, photographs of American battlefield dead have been banned.

AP deserves credit for finally breaking the ban and offering its photo of a dying soldier, shot in a firefight with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan ~ even if the news agency did wait three weeks to offer the photo to subscribers. The real shame is that so few American newspapers and electronic media organizations chose to run that photo.

Perhaps it is for the same reason no Western media showed images of the slaughtered civilians of Gaza in the recent Gazan Holocaust. They knew that real images of blood, gore, loss of life, might sway the public to a position that would require "management" and more social manipulation.

Gates claims that AP was "insensitive" to the dead soldier's relatives, but it's hard to see how that can be. The real insensitive thing would be to try to hide his death from the public, as the Pentagon wanted to do. Hell, if the Afghan War is worth fighting, it should be worth dying for, and if it's worth dying for, and if young soldier Bernard gave his life for his country, his death and the manner of his death should not be hidden from his countrypeople. We should all see the terrible price he paid acting in our name.

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed American soldiers dead on the beach in the Pacific in World War II being insensitive?

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed America's dead in Vietnam being insensitive?

Bodies of US Soldiers on Personnel Carrier ~ The bodies of US soldiers lay on the back of an armored personnel carrier which moved through the fighting near Tan Son Nhut Airbase to pick up the dead. Feb 3, 1968.

The Invasion of Grenada US Invasion of Grenada ~The corpse of an American soldier after his helicopterwas shot down in Grenada Island. November 7, 1983

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed America's dead in Korea being insensitive?

Were the photographer and news organization which dared to break the ban and publish a photo of America's dead in the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq being insensitive? Or show the pain of loss and injury America's soldiers suffer? Or those of "the enemy"?

A recent so-called breach of an embed contract yielded images of the aftermath of a suicide-bomb attack. The American photographer incurred heavy criticism for publishing the pictures which his Marine unit had ordered him to erase. But they were published in B&W, which invokes the famous WWII Pacific Theater dead, but it does lessen the realism, doesn’t it? These casualties seem more distant than our losses in Vietnam. And how do you reconcile that the simultaneous photos of the Iraqi casualties were printed adjacent in color? We can handle seeing the red of their blood, but not ours?

Dead Marines in Fallujah, Iraq

American Soldier Grieving for Comrade ~ Ken Kozakiewicz (left) breaks down in an evacuation helicopter after hearing that his friend, the driver of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle, was killed in a "friendly fire" incident that he himself survived. Michael Tsangarakis (center) suffers severe burns from ammunition rounds that blew up inside the vehicle during the incident. All of the soldiers were exposed to depleted uranium as a result of the explosion. They and the body of the dead man are on their way to a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).

Medics clean the Ibn Sina Hospital emergency room after trying to save a severely injured soldier. They report many more such casualties are coming in.

I don't think so.

Moreover, there is a terrible double standard at work here, if news organizations accept the censorship or deem it inappropriate to show dead American bodies, but go ahead and show dead bodies of the enemy, like these:

American Soldiers Dragging Body of Vietcong Soldier ~ Members of the U.S. Army drag the body of a dead Vietcong soldier from their armored vehicle following a Vietcong night attack against the defensive perimeter of elements of the U.S. Army's Infantry Division.

Dead Iraqi fighter

Dead Taliban fighter ~ This is by far the most disturbing image I have ever posted! It is also best advertisement for NOT going to war I have ever seen. I cannot even look at it. But THIS is the reality, the reality we are not supposed to see. And this happens to American and Canadian soldiers as well.

After all, if all we see are dead enemy fighters, it might give the false impression that the war in question ~ in this case the Afghanistan War, or what might now be called Obama's War ~ is a one-sided affair where the only terrible casualties are those suffered by the "enemy," not by "our boys."

So there you have it; the US media was not permitted to depict fallen soldiers, in or out of the coffin. Next military censors forbade photos of US wounded. Most recently US soldiers have been under orders to prohibit the press from photographing them at all, to promote the illusion that our Iraqi surrogates alone are handling security. How infuriated our officials must have been to see the above photograph in the international press.

Do Americans not want to see their fallen boys? When one has an experience with death, it is the norm to most certainly want others to see what happened straight up. Do the families of soldiers really not want to see how their loved one met his/her fate? What utter bullocks! If they don’t I do. Someone should care enough for the poor lost life!

Hopefully the total control our military has been asserting over media images will result in more outright mutiny on the part of international photo journalists.

Enough with the censorship!

If America is going to be a warlike nation,

if they are going to have a public

that cheers every time the government

ships off men and women, their children,

to fight and kill overseas in countries

that most Americans cannot even

locate on a globe,

then make sure that everyone

at least gets to see the blood and gore

in full, including their own,

and of course,

also the civilian casualties of their military.