“We have established a global presence and provide training and tactical solutions for the 21st century. Our clients include federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Transportation, local and state entities from around the country, multinational corporations and friendly nations from all over the globe.”

Blackwater corporate website

“I would like to have the largest, most professional private army in the world.”

Gary Jackson, president of Blackwater USA

“Blackwater . right now has contracts that [Gary Jackson] says are so secret that he is not able to tell one branch of the Feds that he’s working for a different branch of the Feds.. Much of the interview I had with them was couched in this — this almost cowboy-like secrecy. They were very proud of being on these top secret missions.”

Barry Yeoman, author of “Soldiers of Good Fortune,” on Democracy Now

Read the rest of this entry »

Nader, a tireless crusader for an America that might one day live up to its promise.

Who Will Confront the Unprecedented and Unconstitutional Concentration of Executive Power?

BY RALPH NADER

The rogue regime of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — so widely condemned for its unconstitutional, criminal Iraq war, its spying on Americans illegally, its repeated illegal torture practices, its arrests and imprisonment of thousands in this country without charges and its
pathological secrecy and corporate corruption — still has not felt the heat of the 800,000 practicing lawyers and their many bar organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

“Don’t wait up for me, darling.” Bush patting one of his European concubines in crime.
By Bill Van Auken | 29 September 2007
A solidarity post with World Socialist Web Site
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE FEBRUARY 2003 discussions between US President George W. Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar published Wednesday by Spain’s largest daily, El Pais, provides fresh documentary confirmation of what is already a widely known historical fact. That is: the Bush administration was determined to wage a war of aggression to conquer Iraq and was not about to allow international law or compromise settlements to interfere with its long-planned invasion. Read the rest of this entry »

Are Warren Buffet and his ilk— “enlightened” capitalists or merely shrewd self-serving plutocrats, and does it really make a difference?

BY SUSAN ROSENTHAL
Dateline: September 17, 2007 CROSSPOST AT AUTHOR’S BLOGSITE: SUSAN’S BLOG

AMERICA IS DEEPLY DIVIDED. For one thing, most Americans want an end to the war against Iraq and some form of universal health care, while the ruling class is committed to the war and to sacrificing social services to pay for it. Read the rest of this entry »

“Hiya folks, I’m John Kerry. I’m full of shit and how do you like it?!” Extrapolate Kerry’s name for any name in the Democrats’ leadership roster, not to mention the GOP, and you get closer to the unspoken truth.

BY BILL VAN AUKEN Dateline: 19 September 2007 World Socialist Web Site | A fraternal site

Little more than 10 months after winning the leadership of both houses of the US Congress thanks to a swelling tide of opposition to the war in Iraq, the Democratic Party has largely abandoned even the pretense of a struggle to bring the war to an end. Read the rest of this entry »

We only wish it were a gross exaggeration.

BY ALLEN L ROLAND

It is not terrorism that motivates George Bush, or patriotism, or even profiteering. It is fear, pure and simple: Fear of the truth, fear of the world, fear of any data that collides with his faith-based bubble-encapsuled worldview, and fear most of all of the people he would represent : —William Pitt

I have always felt that what Cheney & Bush feared most was that the public would finally wise up to their neocon coup and empire building schemes and rise up against them. That their spy programs and internment camps were not set up to protect the country against terrorists ~ but, instead, to protect the government from an outraged public that had finally seen through this administration’s massive deceptions and lies ~ that began with the 9/11 coverup and continues now with the illegal occupation and oil grab of Iraq along with the current flawed and failed surge. Read the rest of this entry »

John McCain a militaristic plutocrat of unregulated fascistic temperament. Thank you, GOP for giving America another great politician…

BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO, Editorial Director, Antiwar.com (Libertarian)
Dateline: April 13, 2007 | Antiwar.com

He’s volatile – and, in the White House, he’d be dangerous

John McCain was really caught off guard not only by the reaction to his recent walk in the Iraqi marketplace – ringed by a veritable wall of security, while US army helicopters hovered overhead – but also by subsequent events on the ground. “I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq,” he told the cadets in a speech at the Virginia Military Institute: Read the rest of this entry »

Gen. Petraeus…”ass-kissing little chickenshit” and wholly owned subsidiary of Bushco. Careerism, as usual, trumps duty.
BY GARETH PORTER
Dateline crosspost: 9.14.07 / http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39235

WASHINGTON, Sep 12 (IPS) - In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus’s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

BY JOHN PILGER
DATELINE August 8, 2007

WITH A BONUS PIECE BY ERIC ALTERMAN (THE NATION)

The truth about most modern journalism: You first become a career media worker, you start climbing the ladder, and then you prostitute yourself. It’s as common as it’s straightforward.

The following is a transcript of a talk given by John Pilger at Socialism 2007 Conference in Chicago this past June:

The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called “professional journalism” was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment-objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, “entirely bogus”. Read the rest of this entry »

BY STEVE LENDMAN
Dateline: Thursday, August 09, 2007

Marjorie Cohn is a distinguished law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego where she’s taught since 1991 and is the current president of the National Lawyers Guild. She’s also been a criminal defense attorney at the trial and appellate levels, is an author, and has written many articles for professional journals, other publications, and for noted web sites such as Global Research, ZNet, CounterPunch, AfterDowning Street, Common Dreams, AlterNet and others. Her long record of achievements, distinctions and awards is broad and varied for her teaching, writing and her work as a lawyer and activist for peace, social and economic justice. Read the rest of this entry »