More Stupid Rhetoric

I saw this story last night just around 11 pm, but resisted the urge to stay up to write about it. I figured it would still make me angry in the morning.

Bush compares Bin Laden to Hitler

My first thought: Oh dear, Bush actually believes the crap that comes pouring out of Rumsfeld’s mouth. And once again, the irony weighed heavily upon me.

“Underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake,” he said.

I direct you straight to the words of evil and ambitious men, otherwise known as Project for the New American Century.

But, he added, the US and its allies could be confident of victory in “the great ideological struggle of the 21st Century” because “we have seen free nations defeat terror before.”

Oh, really? Have we? Which free nations have defeated terror? It seems to me that terror goes on and on until it just sort of peters out by itself, if ever. And it also seems to me that the neo-cons are more full of manure than all of the newly fertilised corn fields in Iowa.

“The best way to protect America is to stay on the offence.”

Allow me to interpret that for you. The best way to protect The Amerika is to continue taking away our citizens’ liberties in every way we can and to invade more countries.

Other goals in the US strategy include denying terrorists control of any nation or area they could use as a refuge.

Meaning we are going to invade Iran.

He defended the controversial Patriot Act and terrorist surveillance programme...“If al-Qaeda is calling somebody in America, we need to know why in order to stop attacks.”

And if Max is calling her little sister in The Amerika, we obviously need to hear what they’re talking about too. That Max is really dangerous – I hear she wants to learn how to shoot a gun.

And the audience applauded. Idiots.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5318204.stm

Invasion of Privacy

I was alerted to this one on www.stopthelie.com. From there I was directed to this article, “The New Census: An All-Out Assault on Your Privacy” by Jarret Wollstein. From there I linked to the survey questionnaire.

According to the article, “The American Community Survey” is designed to replace the census. For now, it is being sent to 1 million households in The Amerika each year. I have read the survey. The intrusive nature of the questions is so unbelievably ballsy that my mouth fell open as I was reading.

From the “Assault on Privacy” article:

“This new ‘census’ form is 24-pages long, and demands that you lay bare every detail of your life, including how much you earn, what your home is worth, details of your health, when you leave for work, previous addresses, pregnancies, monies received from government, and on and on.

“I say demand because you can be fined up to $1,000 for each of the 72 questions you don’t answer or which you answer ‘incorrectly’. However, so far no one has been fined for not answering, nor are they likely to be if public resistance is strong.

“The ways the government could use this information to harm you are mind-boggling. For instance, any financial discrepancy with IRS or Social Security records could result in your criminal prosecution. Knowing when you leave for work could enable police, acting under the Patriot Act, to secretly enter your home.

“The American Community Survey also demands that you report on the activities of relatives, employers and roommates. Joseph Stalin could hardly ask for more surveillance powers.”

As the article points out, Article I of the Constitution grants the government the power to conduct a census once every 10 years.

From Article I Section 2 of the Constitution:

“The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

It is entirely clear when you look at Article I Section 2 that the only purpose of the “Enumeration” is to apportion representation in Congress based on the relative populations of the states.

The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the verb “enumerate” as “establish the number of”.

What that all means is that the government is allowed to count the people, and nothing more.

The American Community Survey is simply a clear and obvious penetrating invasion of privacy. It is illegal, immoral and dangerous. If you receive one in the post, my advice is to burn it.

It's a Movie

Death of a President will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and will be shown on UK digital tv channel More4 shortly thereafter. The film is about the assassination of George W. Bush in Chicago in 2007.

Certain people have been offended by the film. I have collected some of their comments from the BBC website so that I could tell them how stupid they are right here on my website.

John Beyer of MediaWatch called the film “irresponsible.” He claimed that it might inspire someone to really assassinate Bush. As he told the Daily Mirror: “There’s a lot of feeling against President Bush and this may well put ideas into people’s heads.”

Max says: Yes, there is a lot of feeling against “President” Bush, but if anyone wants to try to kill him, they are going to do it regardless of a fictional film. They already have the ideas in their heads. Don’t make a movie into more than what it is – a movie.

The White House said, “We are not going to comment because it does not dignify a response.”

Max says: Ha ha, you lose, you just commented. Assholes.

The Texas Republicans don’t like the film either. Spokesman Gretchen Essell: “I cannot support a video that would dramatise the assassination of our president, real or imagined.”

Max says: Thank you for acknowledging that our “president” is only imagined. As for the video - it’s a film, a movie, Hollywood-style entertainment. It neither deserves nor needs your support.

Ms Essell also said, “I find this shocking, I find it disturbing. I don't know if there are many people in America who would want to watch something like that.”

Max says: I want to watch it! I’ll buy the DVD as soon as it comes out so I can watch it over and over and over – if I ever get round to buying a DVD player.

And, by the way, Gretch, you are full of shit. In the world of today, which is filled with terror and illegal wars and other types of indiscriminate violence and human suffering, how the hell could anyone find a mere political assassination shocking? Your view is naïve and pathetic, and you should probably just shut your mouth.

Olbermann on Rumsfeld

I just found this video on Crooks and Liars. It is Keith Olbermann, at his best, delivering a passionate and intelligent criticism of Rumsfeld’s speech of Tuesday night. It is absolutely brilliant – please watch it.

Doublespeak

So yesterday afternoon I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, and flipping through the news. I came upon a story on yahoo about a speech that Donald “I am Satan” Rumsfeld had given the night before. Upon reading the story, I left my body. I simply had to, because the earth had started turning the wrong way and everything was suddenly upside down. I felt really floaty, and not in a nice way.

In his speech, Rumsfeld accused critics of the administration - opponents of the war in Iraq, liberty activists, people that are fond of our Constitution and want to preserve it – of supporting fascism. Those of us who are not with the “president” are foolishly trying to appease the Nazis of the 21st century. We are silly and we have been misled. We are suffering from a “kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong.”

I am having another out-of-body experience.

I did not hear or read Rumsfeld’s entire speech, but the bits I did see were pure examples of doublespeak.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies, when those who warned about a coming crisis -- the rise of fascism and Nazism -- they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War Two, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem.

...some seem not to have learned history's lessons.

The irony nearly killed me.

Max's Problem

Frustration.

My problem, my frustration, comes from feelings of powerlessness and futility. I start my day off listening to The World Today on BBC World Service. Then I listen to the news on Radio Česko. The news is always bad and I always leave my house in a depressed state of mind.

I try to resist buying a newspaper on the way to work. I have just heard all the news and I don’t need to re-experience it. But if I don’t have a book or a magazine with me, I end up buying a paper anyway. What the hell, the magazines I read are full of bad news anyway, and I don’t read very much fiction anymore, so books are not much of an escape either.

Then I get to work and I am sitting on my fat arse in front of a computer all day so I can indulge my addiction to news through the medium of the internet. That is the worst, of course, because on the internet I am not limited to mainstream news. On the internet I can read the libertarian news and the anarchist news and understand that there are other people out there that realise what’s going on, but still it all keeps going on.

Today I found an article by Paul Craig Roberts called Can Anything Be Done? In the article, which I hope you will read for yourselves, Roberts describes being attacked (verbally, I mean) by readers because he doesn’t trust our government.

That is the whole thing for me. We were taught at school and in our homes and in our churches or synagogues that the US government was a good and honest government. And it seems that most Amerikans go on believing that throughout their whole lives. All I can say is, What the fuck?!! Can people really be that unbelievably stupid? Can people not find a way out of their childhood delusions? Well, Max, I say to myself now, you have the answers. The people in The Amerika really have been brainwashed to that extent. And that is why some days I have no hope at all.

The closing line of Roberts’ article: “Government got free of our control when we forgot the teaching of our Founding Fathers that government is always the greatest threat to our liberty.” And there you have it.

America: Freedom to Fascism

I hope this is another one of those things that I heard of later only because I am overseas. I hope every person in The Amerika already knows about Aaron Russo’s film America: Freedom to Fascism. I hope it has been or will be playing in mainstream cinemas all over the country, and then the world. If you hadn’t heard of the film before now, please keep reading and please make sure you see the film.

Aaron Russo is a mainstream Hollywood producer. Wikipedia also lists him as a “Libertarian political figure and tax protestor.” Russo had initially set out to investigate whether or not there was a legal basis for the federal income tax, but a light bulb went off for him and he ended up going much further. He ended up tracking America’s descent into fascism.

“What is being sold to the American people today as ‘Americanism’ – if you peel off the label, you find so much similarity to what we were fighting against…communism, Nazism and fascism.” – G. Edward Griffin, author of Creature from Jekyll Island.

There is a lot in the film about illegal taxation and the Federal Reserve Bank. If you watch the trailers or the promotional video (links below), you will see everything I saw and some of it may surprise you.

One part of the video I found particularly enlightening, and terrifying, was a sample list of executive orders that presidents have created:

“President Bush has signed executive orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, and suspend habeas corpus.

“This gives him dictatorial power over the people…with no checks and balances.

“Executive Order #11921
Provides that the President can declare a state of emergency that is not defined, and Congress cannot review the action for six months.

“Executive Order #10990
allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.

“Executive Order #10995
allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

“Executive Order #10997
allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

“Executive Order #10998
allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

“Executive Order #11002
Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

“Executive Order #11000
allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.”

I checked. All of the executive orders are real. Most of them, however, were signed long before Bush ever got into office.

Another issue Russo addresses is that of a national ID card, which legislation comes into effect in May 2008. I wrote about the Real ID Act last September. Russo goes further into the implications, that RFID chips could potentially be used to track all of our movements, all of our meetings and all of our spending.

“It is absolutely Orwellian – Big Brother looking over your shoulder at absolutely everything you do.” – Katherine Albrecht, author of Spy Chips.

Russo also touches on the confiscation of weapons in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For anyone who did not see a problem with that, given the circumstances, please rethink the situation.

Amendment II to the Constitution says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Do not forget the context in which the Bill of Rights was written. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure that the American people can protect themselves first and foremost against the tyranny of our own government.

There is so much more, and all I have seen are the trailers and the promotional video.

America: Freedom to Fascism promotional video

America: Freedom to Fascism website and trailers

Special thanks to Saigon Dan for the scoop. I miss you.

Saturday, 4.30 a.m.

I had been out drinking and even dancing and had got home a little after 4. It must have been about 4.30 when I turned on my bedside light and scribbled this into my notebook:

Gretchen hanged herself on Thursday. She didn’t do it necessarily because she was unhappy. Maybe she simply didn’t want to live anymore. Those two things probably go together often, but they don’t have to. I am sure they can happen quite independently of each other.
I didn’t know Gretchen.

Max in Meltdown

I am having one of those days – no, one of those weeks. I haven’t been able to write, I’ve been sleeping a lot and I think I nearly became a bunny boiler yesterday.

I know exactly why I have been losing it – it is that recurring overwhelming feeling that the world has gone completely irretrievably mad and there is nothing I, or anyone, can do about it. It’s the feeling that, more than any other, makes me want to go out and drink a lot, find a man to bring home with me and then copulate with him for hours and hours and hours like there’s no tomorrow. Because that is exactly how I feel – like there is no tomorrow.

A local American girl hanged herself yesterday. I didn’t know her personally, but you hear about these things. Suicide doesn’t shock me anymore.

I met a lovely bloke last week. Here is how he stands up on the three basic requirements:

1. Single – I thought so, but now I’m not so sure. Hence why I nearly became a bunny boiler. The worst thing is that I think he might have mentioned a wife, but I don’t hear well on the phone. So it could be that he thinks I know he’s married, but I don’t know, or it could be that he is not married and I am just wacked, or…. I am going to have to straighten that out. Next week.

2. Heterosexual – Oh yes. Most definitely yes. Very nicely yes.

3. Of an appropriate age – I don’t know how old he is, but I would say yes, more or less.

Lovely Bloke knows about my blog. I never gave him the URL, but he knows that if he searches “Marcel Rimel” (wank-a-thon), he will find it. I suppose the worst thing that can happen is that he’ll read this, get some insight into my mindset, and run for his life. Hey ho. Maybe I should just send him the URL and get it over with.

But the thing that does it to me is reading the news and seeing in black and white (and colour) that the world really has turned upside down and nothing makes any sense any more. I can’t name everything that is wrong and there would be no point. We all live in the same world. Read your own internet news and develop your own despondency. Stop feeding off mine.

Bill O'Reilly Hates America, and I love Keith Olbermann

I have just seen a video clip from MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann from June 2006. Maybe some of you in The Amerika already know all about this, but it was new to me.

In the clip, Olbermann blasted Bill O’Reilly so beautifully that it nearly brought tears to my eyes. I stumbled upon the clip at www.ifilm.com, where it was titled Bill O’Reilly Hates America.

Olbermann was exposing O’Reilly, not for the first time, as a liar and an idiot. I love this sort of stuff. The topic was O’Reilly’s fictional account of what had happened in the Belgian village of Malmedy in December 1944.

On two different occasions, October 2005 and May 2006, O’Reilly had presented a shockingly twisted version of what had transpired in Malmedy. O’Reilly claimed that the massacre in Malmedy had been perpetrated by American troops on German troops that had surrendered. In fact, the massacre happened exactly the other way round.

O’Reilly’s version was his lame attempt at defending Abu Ghraib (the October 2005 broadcast) and Haditha (the May 2006 broadcast), by claiming that atrocities were a time-honoured tradition for American troops in overseas wars.

Olbermann said he would be prepared to accept O’Reilly’s story, if it had been told only once, as the mistake of an ignorant man. But the second telling of the warped narrative had infuriated him.

The Countdown researchers made sure they got the facts straight for Olbermann. This is what really happened.

It was during the Battle of the Bulge, one week before Christmas 1944. Near Malmedy, in Liège, a French area of Belgium, Battery B of the 285^th Field Artillery Observation Battalion encountered a German Panzer-SS division. The Americans were in jeeps and trucks, the Germans in tanks.

The battle was short. 11 Americans were killed in the battle, 2 were killed fleeing and 7 escaped. 6 Americans were taken as POWs. Another 113 Americans surrendered, and within 15 minutes, the SS had shot them all.

In January 1945, when the Allies took control of the site of the massacre, 84 bodies were recovered. Many of them had been shot in the head at close range, some of them still had their hands held up above their heads.

When O’Reilly was called on his glaring and disgusting error, even by some of his own viewers, he claimed that he had been referring to American reprisals for Malmedy, which are alleged to have indeed taken place. Fox News, in the meantime, doctored their transcripts of the programmes so that they read “Normandy” instead of “Malmedy”. Pathetic attempts at covering filthy tracks.

It’s a good clip if you enjoy seeing Bill O’Reilly taken down by a man of substantially greater integrity and intelligence.

Additional source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre