2007-04-14
Name: Vaxen Var
Job Title: CEO
Organization: Vaxen Var & Associates
Phone: ***-***-**** Email: stormulf@gmail.com
Location: *********** ** ***

IT Platform: Multiple

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Will American Bombs Kill My Iranian Dream?
by Tom Engelhardt and Behzad Yaghmaian


Like a giant piece in an intricate, if ugly, jigsaw puzzle, the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, and its strike group are now sailing toward the Persian Gulf. On arrival, they will join the strike groups of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (which it is officially replacing) and the USS John C. Stennis patrolling the region, as stunning an example of "gunboat diplomacy" as we've seen in our lifetimes. I think it's a fair guess that, like most Americans, few, if any, of the Nimitz strike group's 6,000 sailors and Marines, who may become part of a massive Bush administration air assault on Iranian nuclear and other facilities, know much about modern Iranian history. Most may be unaware of the CIA/British coup d'état in Iran, in 1953, that overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (which had just carried out the nationalizing of Iranian oil), reinstalled the Shah, and ushered in a long, contentious relationship between the two countries – with all the "unintended consequences" that may end, whether through miscalculation or cold calculation, in a devastating war.

It was this very "success" to which CIA operatives first applied the term "blowback," for those unintended consequences of covert Agency operations which, when they finally land on Americans, are not recognized as such. Just this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged to the world that Iran was on its way to industrial-scale uranium enrichment. But who today knows that the first seeds of the present Iranian "peaceful" nuclear program came from the United States? Under Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program, one of the planet's first nuclear proliferation engines back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Shah's Iran gained its initial nuclear technology, including a U.S.-supplied 5-megawatt nuclear research reactor. At the time, it was believed, the Shah was dreaming of something far more ambitious than a peaceful nuclear program.

Ah, but that was then, this, of course, is now; and not making historical connections is a great American talent. As it happens, it's not an Iranian one. When covert "operations" occur at your expense, you tend to remember – for a long, long time. Fortunately, Behzad Yaghmaian, author of Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West and a Tomdispatch writer, is here with his remarkable memoir of a life lived in and between two worlds, Iranian and American. His is a tale that can both help us remember how it all began and think more clearly about what an attack on Iran might actually mean in human terms. ~ Tom  Read More

2007-04-13
THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIANCE

If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law: Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849

The stage is set. Cheney and Bush still see themselves as the deciders and their preemptive agenda is still in play. The timid Democrats are about to be sucked into funding the Iraq fiasco and thus setting the stage for being responsible for its consequences when Bush leaves office in 2009.

Even today we see that that the insurgency ( freedom Fighters ) have penetrated the Iraq Green Zone with a suicide bomber and that's not counting the 15 to 20 daily rocket attacks.The time for wishful thinking is over ~ we lost and we deserve to lose and be humiliated in the process of Bush & Cheney's illegal occupation and travesty of justice .

Since we lack a national leader who will speak for the people's agenda ~ I call on Britain's George Galloway who proclaims to the British people " If George Bush bombs Iran, we should bring this country to a standstill. "

Even Lee Iococca, at 82 years old, is fed up with this Administration ~ [link]

" Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding ... This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out ! "

Yes, it's almost time for civil disobediance ~ for we are, indeed, the agents of injustice in Iraq and perhaps in short time Iran and if Congress won't act by cutting off funding or even impeachment hearings ~ we must act even if it means breaking the law . It is our duty !  Read More

2007-04-12
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men... The people of Baghdad shall flourish under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws." (General F.S. Maude, commander of British forces in Iraq, 1917)

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"Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights!" (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798)

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If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law: Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849

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Thought I'd 'putz' this in here just for the fun of it. Not that I, in any way, countenance Eugene Iacocca, but herein you can see some fundamental hypocrisy mixed in with the mans' burden of seeing the monster 'Amerika' for what it is now and always has been.

I grew up in this land and saw the fundamental insanity close up from an early age. This is not my government that sits in the marble halls of an Architectural monstrosity (The "White" House)...

Anyone with half a brain can see the writing on the wall. I will not allow myself, ever again, to participate in the insanity of a supposed 'political' process nor will I listen to supposed 'leaders' shout out their calumny and vapidness expecting me to 'pay' for their errant foolishness at thinking that what they have to say is worth a peanut in a hull rotten with the wasted lives of countless generations of fools who believed that someone else could ever have their best interests at heart.

No, Washington, you've never been ought by pomp and circumstance for me. My earnest desire is to see you and all your denizens sink into the darkest of holes like the ones you create for all earths peoples everyday with your traitorous assumptions to and usurpations of 'our power.'

To me you'll always be nothing but flotsam blowing in the wind and I yearn for the day when we free our planet forever from the likes of you whether you sit in the Kremlin, Jerusalem, or Timbuktu.

Iacoccas' Shpiel:  Read More

2007-04-04
April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain: T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

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The Unearthing: An Awakening Has Arrived

With Truth Comes Awakening

By Manuel Valenzuela

04/03/07 "ICH" -- -- The suppression of truth has long been among the highest priorities for the upper echelons of power and authority. For a minority elite that clings to power by the manipulation of the masses using an omnipresent cocktail of lies, deception, mass-produced ignorance and ingrained propaganda, the destruction of truth is an essential method of control. It is a formula that has worked to unmitigated success for the elite throughout history, whether the shadows of power stretch from ancient pyramids, marble temples, castles, mansions or halls of governance. Those holding the levers of power and control understand, better than most, that the dissemination of truths to a blind majority could spell the end of their reign, for truth brings sight to the blind.

These entities understand that truth is like a massive breath of fresh mountain air, pure and energizing, refreshing and invigorating, and that once inhaled by the masses, the balance of control can easily be disturbed and seriously threatened. Revolution of the many against the few oftentimes results, mostly to the enormous detriment of the powerful. They know that widespread circulation of the truths of what they have done in the past and are at present doing to the majority could light a flame onto a massive cauldron overflowing with dry kindling, sparking an enormous inferno of anger. Truth, in short, could lead to an awakening of hundreds of millions of human beings who for too long have had their minds held captive by the instruments of control used by those in power.

It is for this reason that truth is hidden, fought, ridiculed, destroyed and suppressed, why it is emaciated and torn to bits, why its advocates and defenders are smeared, ostracized and silenced, their reputations purposefully shattered, their lives picked apart and criticized. Truth must never be allowed to gain momentum or be exposed, which is why truth seekers must be made examples. Those in power will fight tooth and nail to destroy the messenger of truth, yet will never answer the questions or investigate the proposition presented by the message itself. Better that truth remain a microcosm of darkness in the American subconscious rather that it be allowed to sprout from the fertile soils of free-thinking minds.

Thus, as can readily be seen on a daily basis, both in the corporatist stenograph called the mass media and inside the halls of governance – for those willing to open their eyes and see, for those that have escaped the slavery of thought – is the perpetual attempt to make extinct all traces of inconvenient truths that might upset the long-standing balance that maintains the few in mastery over the many. The crimes of the elite over the masses must never see light of day. Truth, therefore, is and always will remain the true enemy of those in power; lies, propaganda, manipulation and ignorance are their weapons, the methods by which they have always ruled over the masses, the master key to control.

So it comes as no surprise that over the course of the last sixty years, since the inception of television, since the rise of the military-industrial-energy complex, since the growth and corruption of the corporate world, since the marriage of government with the corporate world, better known as fascism, that all manner of truth has been hidden in the deep recesses of America’s black holes and tight-locked vaults.

In order to keep the beautiful minds of Americans from being distracted, upset or informed, in order to prevent truth from ever reaching the cauldron of mass awakening, the corporate media has purposefully been mutated into a propaganda and manipulation machine unlike the world has ever seen. Mass media has become, in the course of a few decades, a tool of dumbed-down distraction, suppression of truth, creator of ignorance, disseminator of disinformation and a stenograph for the corporatist elements that rule America. It is, quite simply, the elite’s evolved mechanism of control that maintains the masses in quiet and unknown servitude.

There is no innocence and altruism with the corporate media; it has been designed for one purpose: to control human beings, from cradle to grave, to the dictates of our corporatist masters, making us over the course of our lives obedient consumers, producers and slaves to the corporate world. It has been designed, through years of trial and error, to make of us all a grandiose army of good Americans, compliant, acquiescent, passive and ignorant, a nation of serfs in feudal servitude to corporatist lords.

Make no mistake, to those governing over our lives, we are nothing but the cogs in the system of consumer and producer, nothing but the energy that feeds the giant engine of mass production and consumption that only serves to fatten the wallets of the corporatist world and the levers of control over our lives. Thus, inconvenient truths about their methods of control and manipulation will always be massacred in favor of charades and fictions, in favor of propaganda and dumbed down infotainment, lest the truth of what America has become be allowed to permeate throughout the dormant minds of 300 million citizens.

Yet truth always has a way of unearthing itself from the mass graves of suppression, for its virtue, and by consequence its pursuit, is inherent in the minds and spirit of billions of human beings. The thirst for truth is as human as the hunger for justice. It is an absolute of the human experience, especially in the wake of lies and known deceptions, when those in power seek to squash it or when evidence proves incontrovertible. Thus, truth is a passion sought when experience, knowledge, research and the naked eye tell us that the lies and deceits bombarded into our lives do not make sense. For truth does not lie, as evidence and facts and the unmistakable laws of science point in a certain direction, toward a certain reality. Truth in the usurpation of justice compels the human spirit to pursue it unequivocally, in an attempt to right what has been made wrong, to restore justice where it has been trampled.

Human beings do not respond well to lies and deception, and the bigger the lie, the more malignant the truth, the greater is the quest to uncover what has been hidden, especially when the truth is as self-evident to common sense as to logic and reason and analysis and research. Humankind, by and large, craves the truth in everyday life, detesting lies, charades and manipulations. We also seek the concepts of justice where injustice dwells, desiring to bring justice to a world we know is full of injustice. The quest for truth and justice compels us forward, brings us strength, mobilizes energy and unites truth seekers.

It is our love for humankind, our respect for life, our desire for a better world, our hatred of wickedness and injustice and deception and all the evils the truth we seek has created and brought forth that compels in us the responsibility to bring honor and dignity to those whose voice and energy have been silenced, to bring justice to criminals and murderers and malfeasant evildoers, to restore balance to a tilting world, to awaken those yet to see the grand lie for what it is, to bring bravery to those still too frightened of the consequences of knowing the truth.  Read More

2007-04-01
” It happened that Jessie and Bluebell had both whelped soon after the hay harvest, giving birth between them to nine sturdy puppies. As soon as they were weaned Napoleon took them away from their mothers, saying that he would make himself responsible for their education. He took them up into a loft that could only be reached by a ladder from the harness-room and there kept them in such seclusion that the rest of the farm soon forgot their existence.”

(Soonafter the animals take over Animal Farm. Boss Hog, Napoleon, is copping static from a rival which could lead to a “Constitutional Crisis").

“But just at this moment Napoleon stood up.....uttered a high-pitched whimper of a kind no one heard him utter before.
At this there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs wearing brass-studded collars came bounding into the barn.”

George Orwell  Read More

2007-03-28
P.O.W.

By Josh Wolf

My pen is a knife
Stabbing at the bitter truth
My camera is a gun
Shooting reality at 30 frames-per-second.
And my voice is a cannon
Booming into the night, a rallying cry.

I am a prisoner of war.
Captured in the campaign to destroy the press.
A political prisoner accused of no crime,
Another casualty in a civil war for civil liberties

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THE SHAC7 CONVICTION: A BLOW TO FREE SPEECH AND COMPASSIONATE ACTIVISM
MORE... [link]


The SHAC7 are 6 activists and a corporation, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA Inc., that have been found guilty of multiple federal felonies for their alleged role in simply campaigning to close down the notorious animal testing lab, Huntingdon Life Sciences. The six individuals are all currently in federal prison. They are not accused of actually smashing windows, liberating animals or even attending demonstrations, rather reporting on and encouraging others to engage in legal demonstrations and supporting the ideology of direct action.

After being found guilty, they are beginning their appeal. Unfortunately this appeal will be done from prison. During their stay they need your support! Finances, spreading the word about their case, books, letters or just a friendly 'hello'! It just takes a few minutes to brighten the lives of political prisoners!

SHAC7.com is generously hosted by Kaleton.com  Read More

2007-03-24
Of course this has all been said before and anyone who knows the American Military knows that the situation for the 'grunt' is far worse than Karen can portray here. The question, then, is why do so many think they have to play this dirty game whose winners are those who bankroll every single war and make obscene 'profits' whilst the fools that fight the wars die in ignominy like the good little slaves that they are!

I like Karens style and could, theoretically, see someone like her running for the Office of the President in the Big Shit House in Washington D.C. otherwise known as the "White House."

So here is one of her latest articles which I hope will make you think as you contemplate the liers in wait who are running for the highest office in the land.

Abject liars every single one! Vote? Tear the damned White House down and stop posturing!

Her article:  Read More

2007-03-19
I really don't know how relevent this article is or how relevent anything is where the present political dark comedy is concerned. Every rat scurrying for the gulley now that the CAT is out of the proverbial bag.

I tire of this nation and all it represents and, as far as I am concerned, all it has ever represented. The antithesis of freedom and liberty for all.

For those of you who still have one shred of belief in anything 'Amurikin' perhaps there will be something within this article which will jar you out of that famous american ''apathy'' and jolt your consciousness into saying: "Enough!"
Perhaps not...

Crime Blotter: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

by Paul Craig Roberts


DIGG THIS

While serving as President Bush’s White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzales advised Bush that the president’s war time powers permitted Bush to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and to use the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on US citizens without obtaining warrants from the FISA court as required by law. Under an order signed by Bush in 2002, NSA illegally spied on Americans without warrants.

By spying on Americans without obtaining warrants, Bush committed felonies under FISA. Moreover, there is strong, indeed overwhelming, evidence that justice was obstructed when Bush and Gonzales blocked a 2006 Justice Department investigation into whether Gonzales acted properly as Attorney General in approving and overseeing the Bush administration’s program of spying on US citizens. Also at issue is whether Gonzales acted properly in advising Bush to kill an investigation of Gonzales’ professional actions with regard to the NSA spy program.

We are faced with the almost certain fact that the two highest law enforcement officials of the United States are criminals.  Read More

2007-03-12
You who sit on the top of a hundred-foot pole,
Although you have entered the Way, it is not yet genuine.
Take a step from the top of the pole
And worlds of the ten directions will be your entire body.
The student of Zen who is stuck in the vast, serene condition of
nondiscrimination must take another step to become mature.


The old pond has no walls;
a frog just jumps in;
do you say there is an echo?

[link]

Finagles' Law:

1. scribble
2. mangle
3. trash
4. nuke

[link]


Neocortical Warfare

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. -- Sun Tzu

In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, Arquilla and Ronfeldt ed.s, RAND, 1997
Chapter 17 - Neocortical Warfare?

The Acme of Skill (local copy), by Szafranski, originally in Military Review :

"That nonfighting is the attribute and aim of neocortical warfare does not mean that this warfare is passive or inactive. It requires considerable effort, resources and skill—the acme of skill—to subdue an enemy without fighting. The aim is not merely to avoid battles.

The aim is to cause the enemy to choose not to fight by exercising reflexive influence, almost parasympathetic control, over products of the adversary’s neocortex.

In actively enjoining the minds of adversaries to not fight, we must understand the adversary’s culture, world view and the representational systems the adversary recognizes, values and uses to communicate intent. We must understand the adversary’s verbal and nonverbal language.

We might use tools similar to Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s “neuro linguistic programming” to understand how the adversary receives, processes and organizes auditory, visual and kinesthetic perceptions."

[see also neuro linguistic programming on the AWC Gateway]

Thumping the Hive: Russian Neocortical Warfare in Chechnya (local copy), by McIntosh, Naval Postgraduate School, Sep 2004

Anchoring and objectifying 'neocortical warfare': re-presentation of a biological metaphor in Serbian conspiracy literature, by Byford, Loughborough University

Cybercortical Warfare: The Case of Hizbollah.org, by Conway, Trinity College, 2003
(alternate source)

[link] [#neocortical]

You're not who you think you are;
you're not who others think you are;
you're who you think others think you are!
--- Source Unknown

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
--- T. S. Eliot

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
--- Albert Einstein

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
--- Arthur Schopenhauer

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
--- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962 movie)


influence operations

[link]


tools

[link]  Read More