Saturday, October 31, 2009

Larry Wilkerson Talks About The End Of The American Empire




Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former assistant to Colin Powell and Pentagon war-planner speaks truth to empire. This half hour video is an intelligent analysis of the future of the USA and its debt-based, militaristic government.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Do Dead Men Make Videotapes?

There is a question that I have been asking myself for a few years now and I do not understand why this question isn’t asked by someone in media, at last in alternative media.

First I’ll write the question and then the reasoning behind it, then I would like as many people as possible to give their opinions as to which is the right answer.
Here’s the question:
Are the US military and intelligence services totally incompetent or is the CIA producing the Osama bin Laden videos and audio recordings?
A or B. Are we pathetically unable to achieve a relatively simple objective or have we killed the chief terrorist and now cynically make him speak from the tomb in order to justify the endless war?

The reason that this question should be asked is that since the 11th of September of 2001, 24 Osama bin Laden tapes have been released and at least some of the tapes have been confirmed by the CIA as authentic.


We have spent well over a trillion dollars and have killed or been the direct cause of the deaths of somewhere between 150,000 and over a million deaths in our far-ranging War on Terror™. We have overthrown a couple of governments, destabilized a few more and are currently threatening another. We have imprisoned tens of thousands, have tortured hundreds and have had at least one hundred men die in our captivity as a result of torture in order to pursue this “war”.


The goal of the War on Terror™ has been changed over the 8 years since it officially began, but its central tenet has always been the destruction of the international Islamic terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. Although there is considerable doubt in some quarters if the organization has ever really existed, the US and British governments have released thousands of press releases over the last 8 years that, when compiled, identify an incredibly capable and powerful organization determined to bury Western liberal civilization. The Al Qaeda we have come to know in released CIA reports has done its job; it is terrifying.

So if the purpose of our brutal and economically ruinous War on Terror™ is the annihilation of al Qaeda, why haven’t we been able to keep Osama and his handsome sidekick from making all those videos that exhort the faithful to keep killing the infidels? And why have George Bush and Dick Cheney and Robert Gates all said the bin Laden is “irrelevant”? Why do we continue to hear that al Qaeda is the reason for our war from Mr. Obama while at the same time we are told that Mr. bin Laden (the leader of al Qaeda) is irrelevant? It does not make any sense whatsoever to think that an organization is dangerous enough to warrant 8 years of war, but the leaders of that organization are irrelevant. Osama was considered irrelevant in 2002 and he still is today . The war against al Qaeda goes on and on and new bin Laden tapes are still distributed three or four times a year. Can't we find this fellow and end his propaganda campaign?

Please step back, clear your mind and look at this anew. We kill thousands, occupy foreign countries, waste trillions of dollars, to dismantle enemy forces, but the leadership of those enemy forces is considered irrelevant. Every time that enemy leadership releases a video it is immediately front page news around the world. This is absurd. It needs to be questioned. It would be side-splittingly funny if so much death and suffering were not involved.

So are we incapable of using our drones and satellites and eavesdropping equipment and data mining and torture and bribery to find a 6´4” Arab in Pakistan? Is the combined might of the US military machine incapable of shutting down his video production? If so, I submit that all our military is suited to do is to kill and menace civilians (thereby creating an endlss supply of "terrorists") and all our intelligence services are capable of is listening in on Americans’ private phone conversations and cobbing together falsified justifications for war.

On the other hand, Osama might just be dead as Benazhir Bhutto made clear a number of times. . But if Osama is dead, then his videotapes must be made by the CIA. The CIA is reputed to be more skilled in video and digital imaging verification than anyone else in the world. So they could not be fooled by a couple of Arabs with a copy of Macromedia. If they say the tapes are real, they are real or the CIA is lying. Why would they lie? Because they want the tapes to justify the Endless War. And in that case, who made the tapes? The CIA of course.

What do you think? A or B?
A.- The US intelligence services are pathetically incompetent
b.- Osama is as dead as a doornail and his tapes are made by the CIA to keep the Endless War going.




Update: Jan 9th 2010:
The BBC has just written an article with the same theme, that Osama is either:
1.- dead and someone is faking the tapes
or
2.-alive and US Intelligence can't find him

However the BBC fails to come to the obviou conclusions that in case #1, the only possibilty of faked tapes is from the CIA and NSA and that in case #2 that US military and Intelligence have spent trillions and have not found Osama bin Laden. They are therefore incompetent.