|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by loquitur
>>>>>>>>>>> ......Host, as for Saudi Arabia, given my druthers I'd have a crash program to come up with alternative energy sources and tell the Saudis to go drink their oil. Our need for petroleum-based energy has seriously distorted our politics and foreign policy. The only reason anyone in this world gives a shit about the two-bit dictatorships, theocracies and kleptocracies in that part of the world is that many of them are sitting on what we use for energy, so if they tell us we need to care, we don't have much choice.
As a national security strategy I'd slap a $2/gallon tax on gasoline, immediately. Of course, it will never ever ever happen. But that would be the single best thing we could do to straighten out our foreign policy. It would bring many alternative energy sources suddenly within the realm of economic feasibility.
|
The main point of my last post was to respond to your comments in your previous post:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by loquitur
......In fact, western countries that have established religions are far LESS religious societies than is the US, which does not have (and is prohibited from having) an established religion. Maybe we can make the country less religious by establishing a religion? <joke>
|
I think that my last post strongly supports my contention that the current administration in DC has injected the most disturbingly pervasive christian fundamentalist influence in the executive branch, ever.....and until 4 months ago, when a new congress convened, the new, stronger influence of christian fundamentalism was also strongly evident in that branch of government, as well....and it's influence has polluted the DOJ, the SCOTUS and other federal courts, as well.
Are you comfortable with every republican presidential candidate, including Giuliani, groveling at the "altar" of either a secret CNP meeting or at Pat Robertson's Regent U., or....at both? Did you know that the contents of Bush's 1999 address to a CNP meeting, which presumably won him the "endorsement" of the "group", or at least did not convince them to work against his candidacy in the 2000 race, has still never been revealed, to this day? Did you know that Fatherland Security deputized CNP member, Erik Prince's 20,000 man, private "army", Blackwater, to protect the property of NOLA during the aftermath of Katrina, instead of hiring them to provide aid or rescue for the stranded populace?
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...301777_pf.html
Storm-Wracked Parish Considers Hired Guns
Contractors in Louisiana Would Make Arrests, Carry Weapons
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 14, 2006; A01
.....Blackwater USA, which protected the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and lost four employees in a brutal ambush in Fallujah in 2004, earned about $42 million through the end of December on a contract with Federal Protective Service, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, to provide security to FEMA sites. Most of the 330 contract guards now working in Louisiana are employed by the company.
The Homeland Security Department's Inspector General said the company's costs in its FEMA contract -- it earns $950 a day for each employee -- were "clearly very high," and it expressed hope that competition would lower them. But costs are not the only concerns raised by critics of the companies.
"Katrina broke all of the rules. It was the first time you had the deployment of armed private security contractors in the U.S.," said Peter W. Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry."......
|
Quote:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news...1fffa81556cc93
The Rise of Blackwater
New America Media, Radio Interview, Sandip Roy, Posted: Apr 22, 2007
.....How did Blackwater get to be so powerful?
A decade ago Blackwater was no more than a 5,000-acre plot in North Carolina. Its secretive founder Erik Prince grew up in Michigan where his father ran a company called Prince Manufacturing, which serviced the auto industry. Erik Prince saw his dad use the business as a cash-generating engine to fuel the rise of the religious right in this country. He gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Erik Prince was an intern there. They were significant bankrollers of James Dobson and his Focus on the Family. Eric had been one of the wealthiest people ever to join the Navy SEALS. When he opened Blackwater, its stated purpose in 1996-97 was to anticipate government outsourcing of training and firearm related activity. .......
|
Quote:
http://content.hamptonroads.com/stor...202519&tref=po
By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 30, 2006
Stepping into a potential political minefield, Blackwater USA is offering itself up as an army for hire to police the world's trouble spots.
Cofer Black, vice chairman of the Moyock, N.C.-based private military company, told an international conference in Amman, Jordan, this week that Blackwater stands ready to help keep or restore the peace anywhere it is needed.
Such a role would be a quantum leap for Blackwater and raises a host of policy questions.
Until now, the eight-year-old company has confined itself to training military and police personnel and providing security guards for government and private clients. Under Black's proposal, it would take on an overt combat role.
"We're low-cost and fast," Black was quoted as saying. "The issue is, who's going to let us play on their team?".....
|
...and who is Cofer Black?
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...301476_pf.html
Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition'
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 4, 2005; A01
.........The Counterterrorist Center
After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.
The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.
<h3>To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group</h3>, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.
Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CTC was the place to be for CIA officers wanting in on the fight. The staff ballooned from 300 to 1,200 nearly overnight.
"It was the Camelot of counterterrorism," a former counterterrorism official said. "We didn't have to mess with others -- and it was fun."
Thousands of tips and allegations about potential threats poured in after the attacks. Stung by the failure to detect the plot, CIA officers passed along every tidbit. The process of vetting and evaluating information suffered greatly, former and current intelligence officials said. "Whatever quality control mechanisms were in play on September 10th were eliminated on September 11th," a former senior intelligence official said.
<h3>J. Cofer Black, a professorial former spy who spent years chasing Osama bin Laden, was the CTC's director.</h3> With a flair for melodrama, Black had earned special access to the White House after he briefed President Bush on the CIA's war plan for Afghanistan.
Colleagues recall that he would return from the White House inspired and talking in missionary terms. Black, now in the private security business, declined to comment.....
|
Quote:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/3/27/8527/72512
DeVos Wages War On Public Education, But Meet His Brother In Law...
By Bruce Wilson Tue Mar 27, 2007 at 08:52:07 AM EST
topic: Education and Public Schools section:Public Education printable version print this story
Last March 31, 2006, I covered the Christian right's war on public education and a Department of Education commissioned study that revealed public schools, if anything, outperform their private school counterparts. But, does Amway fortune heir Dick Devos care, or does he view institutions of public education, that Jefferson saw as integral to American Democracy, as obstacles in the way of a long range scheme to undermine democracy ? In a 2002 Heritage Institute address Devos, a leader in the war on public education who wants Intelligent Design in schools, is associated with Christian Reconstructionist views, and has been a significant funder of the "Council On National Policy" and served as the CNP's president in the late 1980's, outlined a "stealth strategy" for eliminating public schools. If DeVos succeeds in his jihad against public schools and American Democracy, maybe his brother-in-law Erik Prince, who owns Blackwater USA, the subject of a new expose by Jeremy Scahill and possibly the most powerful private mercenary army in the world, could help out with the ensuing anarchy... for a price, of course. (See Nation article on Blackwater, or full story for video with Jeremy Scahill )......http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill
|
loquitur, I don't feel comfortable with a large "private army" in the hands of a billionaire, fundamentalist christian fascist hyper patriot, with the man who was formerly "Mr. Rendition" at the CIA, now one of his chief "henchmen"....maybe it's just me.....I'm a little "funny" in that way.....
Quote:
http://www.pogo.org/m/dp/dp-IG-LATimes-09032005.pdf
Pentagon Investigator Resigning
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer
September 3, 2005
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's top investigator has resigned amid accusations
that he stonewalled inquiries into senior Bush administration officials suspected of
wrongdoing.
Defense Department Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz told staffers this week
that he intended to resign as of Sept. 9 <b>to take a job with the parent company of
Blackwater USA, a defense contractor.</b>
The resignation comes after Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) sent Schmitz several
letters this summer informing him that he was the focus of a congressional inquiry
into whether he had blocked two criminal investigations last year.
E. Schmitz, the Defense Department's inspector general, is suspected of blocking investigations of
senior Bush officials.....
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...083102602.html
Pentagon's IG Takes Job at Contractor
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 1, 2005; Page D03
......Schmitz's new job will be chief operating officer and general counsel for the Prince Group, a firm that's divided between Michigan-based Prince Manufacturing and North Carolina-based Blackwater.........
.........Paul Behrends, a spokesman for Blackwater, said he is unaware of Schmitz's office undertaking any investigations of the company. "Joe has run the process of transitioning from the government to the private sector through the appropriate channels. There's no conflict of interest," he said.
But Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, said, "The inspector general is a standard-bearer for ethics and integrity for the Pentagon. To see a person who has been holding that position cash in on his public service and go work for one of their contractors is tremendously disappointing," she said.....
|
|
Do you and I even live in the same country, loquitur....and I do regard you as a "moderate", when it comes to your political leanings, but even as what passes today for a moderate in the US, the gulf between you and I...what we each perceive is happening with regard to the damage done by six years of "one party" rule, and the rising influence on US politics from the fundamentalist christian right, coupled with the corporatist "overtones" of the entire alliance of nearly all republicans and "money party" democrats...is sooo different....so different!
Last edited by host; 05-15-2007 at 07:16 AM..
|