Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LLCF who wrote (42978)	12/18/2005 11:00:40 PM
From: regli	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

I entirely disagree with your post. It is conveniently compliant with the biggest threat to our freedom and liberty. I do BTW not at all think it is leaps in logic but simply basic fact!

To: LLCF who wrote (42978)	12/19/2005 2:07:21 AM
From: regli	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

OT This post does not belong on this board. However, I felt that your post deserved a longer reply than I gave. I believe that this administration has demonstrated on many levels its dishonesty and preoccupation with secrecy. When any organization is preoccupied with secrecy, its motives and objectives need to be seriously questioned especially if it is in control of state powers. Here are some disconcerting facts. It started with conducting an illegal war based on obvious and by now documented lies and deceptions. As Paul O’Neill stated, the administration "began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days after the former Texas governor entered the White House." cnn.com After 9/11 it finally had a cause which it could twist to support its objectives. As a result the administration then proceeded to justify an Iraq war on the basis of the “documented” existence of WMD which were supposed to be a threat to the U.S., in addition it raised the supposed connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Today it is obvious that these statements were lies. In the run-up and aftermath of the war, facts that could dispute the administration’s story were systematically suppressed and many people in the press and outside were intimidated from telling the real story. The Plame affair is a perfect example of this conduct. I was also intrigued by this quote from a member of the administration, Paul O’Neill: "I'm an old guy, and I'm rich. And there’s nothing they can do to hurt me." workingforchange.com On the domestic front, police state tools were deployed to spy not just on groups that could be at least associated with a group that the U.S. was supposedly at war against but against war protesters and several other groups considered inconvenient to the administration. In addition, writers were hired and paid using government funds to spread administration propaganda as we now know. Here is an example of a targeted group: aclunc.org “FRESNO RESIDENTS SEEK RECORDS ON FBI INFILTRATION On January 29, the ACLU of Northern California and Fresno residents filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act seeking information about the government’s infiltration of a local peace group. Peace Fresno discovered that one of its members had actually been a government agent when the Fresno Bee published an obituary about his death in a motorcycle accident. The request was prompted in part by a disclosure in the New York Times of an internal FBI bulletin advising local law enforcement agencies around the country to monitor anti-war activists and to report on their activities to the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The requests were filed with the offices of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney, who maintain a JTTF with local law enforcement agencies in the Fresno area. To use the tools of the state to infiltrate citizen groups that oppose the people in power is clearly not consistent with a free country where individuals can freely assemble and voice their opinions. Though my memory is not exact but I seem to remember that the inquiry about the feasibility of large scale recording and indexing of phone conversations came in the middle of 2001 and not after 9/11. However, without checking into old records, I cannot be certain. As to Al Qaeda, I agree that it is in a state of war with the U.S. to advance its objectives. There are many groups (more or less organized) that subscribe to these objectives because they view the U.S. as a threat to their well being and objectives. These groups were generally identified by the U.S. as terrorists; one simply needs to remember the early days of Al Fatah. However, these groups were and are not nation states and therefore the U.S. congress deemed it unnecessary to declare war for obvious reasons. It doesn’t make sense to officially declare war if the opposition is a group and not well enough organized that it can be clearly targeted. These groups need to be dealt with using criminal statutes. Isn’t it interesting that the U.S. did not want to grant combatants in this “war” the rights of prisoners of war status under the Geneva Convention? It seems that when its convenient, individuals or groups are treated as criminals or something undefined like “enemy combatants” but at other times when things need to be sold to a populous in order to advance hidden agendas that benefit a few then it is called war. This is exactly what Orwell addressed with his quote: "It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist." It is when hidden agendas are advanced using highly questionable techniques that an open society loses its viability. The parallels in the rhetoric used in Germany and in the war on terror are uncanny: Here is the content of a speech by Goebbels to the troops 65 years ago: harrybrowne.org I ask which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect us? [applause] The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust our future and that man's name is Adolf Hitler. [cheering] There are some crazy men who would kill us if they could. So Adolf Hitler has told us, "All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger." [cheers] But where is the national unity in this country when we need it most? [cheering] Now, while young Germans are dying in the mud in Czechoslovakia and the mountains of Poland, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Social Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our Führer. [cheering] What has happened to the nation I've spent my life working in? I can remember when Social Democrats believed that it was the duty of Germany to fight for freedom over tyranny. Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Germans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today. [applause] Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Social Democratic leaders see Germany as an occupier, not a liberator. And nothing makes me madder than someone calling German troops occupiers rather than liberators. [cheering] Tell that to the Czechs, Poles, Frenchmen, and Belgians who have been freed because Adolf Hitler led an army of liberators, not occupiers. [great cheering] Tell that to the millions of men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to the Balkans, because Adolf Hitler built a military of liberators, not occupiers. [cheering] Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the German soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home. [cheering] Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive Germany. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world. In this hour of danger our Führer has had the courage to stand up. And I am proud to stand up with him. God Bless this great country and God bless Adolf Hitler. [wild cheering]