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4 cuts both ways PUBLISH THIS
The propaganda of anxiety
By Kurt Nimmo
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and Tom Ridge say I need to be prepared.
This is what they tell me I need to do: rush out to the local hardware store and buy duct tape,
plastic sheeting, and batteries for the radio. Next run over to the grocery store and stock up on
bottled water and food. FEMA says I should keep some of this stuff separated in a backpack
just in case we need to evacuate quickly.
Bush elevated the color-coded terrorism threat level to orange last week in response to the
possibility of a chemical or biological attack. Ridge told reporters the other day the terrorism alert
issued last week is "the most significant" since Sept. 11, 2001. "The threat is real," he warned.
Yeah, right.
I’m not rushing out to the store. I’m not buying into Bush’s propaganda war. I don’t think
al-Qaida is capable of launching a chemical or biological assault of any measurable significance
against America. In fact, I don’t think al-Qaida is anywhere near as organized and ominous as
Bush and Ridge and the corporate media keep telling us it is. It’s nothing more than a terrifying
and mostly imaginary monster used to frighten the people into acquiescence.
Are there pissed off Muslims who’d kill Americans if given half the chance?
You bet.
There’s also pissed of Israelis who’d kill Palestinians, pissed off Hindus who’d kill Muslims, and
pissed off drivers who’d run you down for making a lane change. I’m more worried about this
last category than I am about anything Osama bin Laden may or (more likely) may not do. I’m
more worried about some nut with a gun freaking out while I’m shopping for my plastic sheeting
and duct tape than I am about becoming a "soft" target for al-Qaida. I’m more worried about
Tom Ridge and the Ministry of Homeland Security, John Ashcroft and the Justice Department,
and what FEMA may have in mind for me and others who not only think these so-called
terrorists alerts are pure and unadulterated bullshit, but who also think Bush is an illegitimate
poseur and the invasion of Iraq will be an immense crime perpetuated against humanity.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think there’s a good chance there will be some kind of "terrorist"
attack in the near future.
Bush needs a terrorist attack, so there will be one.
Remember the anthrax scare that followed on the heels of Sept. 11? Remember how frightened
everybody was? People were scared to go out and collect their mail. Remember the Bushites
attempting to place the blame on Saddam? Well, as it now turns out, Saddam bought the Vollum
strain of anthrax from American Type Culture Collection, a company based in Rockville,
Maryland. The anthrax used in the Washington attacks was traced back to the US Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. It was the Ames strain, not
the Vollum strain.
Put two and two together.
Who do you think sent out those microbe-infested letters? It sure the hell wasn’t Saddam
Hussein. Since it now appears somebody in the US military may have perpetuated this terrorist
attack, the FBI investigation has conveniently stalled. Since Bush couldn’t scam the people into
thinking it was Saddam, the crime will now be allowed to die a neglected death.
I’m more afraid of the CIA and the Department of Defense (DoD) than Saddam Hussein. Why?
Because they actually have an extensive track record of using biological, chemical, and nuclear
agents on unsuspecting Americans.
The CIA has dosed people with LSD without their consent, the Navy released a cloud of
bacteria from ships in San Francisco, the US military released toxic clouds of zinc cadmium
sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in
Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Thousands of people were exposed to the airborne germs
Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii in New York and San Francisco. Mosquitoes infected
with Yellow Fever were released over Savannah, Georgia, and Avon Park, Florida. The US
Army dropped light bulbs filled with Bacillus subtilis variant niger into ventilation grates throughout
the New York City subway system. In 1987 the DoD admitted that, despite a treaty banning
research and development of biological agents, it continued to conduct research at 127 facilities
and universities around the nation. In 1995 the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation
Experiments (formed by President Clinton in January 1994) concluded that several different
agencies of the US government had conducted thousands of human radiation experiments and
several hundred intentional releases of radiation.
No, I’m not particularly worried about Saddam Hussein.
It’s Donald Rumsfeld I’m worried about.
In 1983 Rummy traveled to Iraq to shake hands with Saddam Hussein -- and soon thereafter the
Reaganites showered the brutal Iraqi regime with scads of military intelligence, economic aid, and
covert supplies of munitions (including the aforementioned anthrax) for use in its war against Iran.
"It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq
Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used [as] biological
weapons," writes Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas (the quote is taken from an article
Senator Byrd inserted in the Congressional Record on Sept. 20, 2002).
Rumsfeld the Enabler, now leading the charge against Saddam. These guys are really a piece of
work. Why should you trust them any further than you can throw them?
Is it crazy to think Bush and his Masters of Death and Destruction at the Pentagon would pull off
a bio attack and blame it on Saddam or the now mythical (or apparently invisible) Osama bin
Laden?
Nope.
All you have to do is surf on over to the National Security Archive’s website and search for
"Operation Northwoods." It will return a formerly top secret document titled "Justification for US
Military Intervention in Cuba." It was cobbled together by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Seems the
Joint Chiefs thought it was a dandy idea to stage assassinations, blow up things (like passenger
airplanes), and sink ships jammed full of refugees and blame it all on the Cubans as a pretext for
an invasion of Cuba. The Joint Chiefs were gunning for Castro. Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara and President Kennedy nixed this fantastically fascist idea.
Would Bush and Rummy do the same?
Cui bono? That’s Latin for "who benefits?" It’s a term used a long time ago when the Romans
were investigating crimes. It’s an expression that pops in my head when Ridge and FEMA start
talking about making sure you have a flashlight and battery operated radio and a big roll of duct
tape because you never know when Saddam or al-Qaida or some enemy who hates our way of
life may release anthrax or smallpox or blow up a dirty bomb in the parking lot of the Mall of
America. Cui bono? Not Saddam, because it would give the US a perfect excuse to bomb the
hell out of his country like the US bombed the hell out of Afghanistan after Sept. 11. Saddam
might be a sadist but he certainly isn’t an idiot. Also, as a megalomaniac, he wants to stay in
power. Killing shoppers in Cleveland or Tampa is the wrong way to go about making sure you
stay in power (or remain alive).
It just doesn’t make sense.
Of course, since the Bush administration thinks Americans are so gullible (and, unfortunately, too
many of them are), they keep throwing out flimsy and transparent pretenses in a desperate
attempt to pin terrorism on Saddam.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was no sooner caught with his pants down at the United Nations
-- thanks to his buddy, Tony Blair, who gave him some kid’s homework as evidence against
Saddam -- than he told the Senate Budget Committee he had a transcript "of what Bin Laden, or
who we believe to be bin Laden, will be saying on al-Jazeera during the course of the day... Once
again he speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership
with Iraq." At first al-Jazeera said they had no such tape and then later in the day they said they
did. Maybe the CIA gave Powell the tape before they delivered it to al-Jazeera? Oops.
But even if bin Laden really is on the tape, so what?
He didn’t say he was in "partnership" with Saddam, but the Iraqi people. But then, since the US
will bomb the Iraqi people regardless, maybe this distinction is lost on Powell (who, after all, said
last time the US bombed Iraq the number of dead wasn’t something that "interested" him). It’s
probably irrelevant to Powell, as well, that bin Laden hates Saddam and offered to lead the
mujahadeen against his secular dictatorship.
None of this means squat at the end of the day because the real target of Bush’s attack is the
Iraqi people. For Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney there is no difference between Saddam
Hussein and the Iraqi people. In fact, the Iraqi people (and all the other people on Bush’s hit list)
are more of a threat because they will resist occupation and subjugation.
Even if Saddam moved to Saudi Arabia and shared a guest house with Idi Amin, even if he stood
on his head on the White House lawn and kissed Dubya’s shoes, it wouldn’t change the fact Bush
and Crew are going to kill an additional 500,000 or more innocent Iraqis. Murder’s in the script
and the UN, the French, the Germans, and millions of Americans demonstrating in the street will
not change it.
Bush is attempting to whip up fear and hysteria with these completely transparent threat warnings.
For Americans, his message is: Although we cannot give you specifics on the terrorist threat, you
need to prepare, you need to be in a state of paranoid readiness, you need to hate and fear the
people we say you need to hate and fear (today Saddam, yesterday Osama, next week maybe
Kim Jung-il of North Korea), who are our official enemies, our shifting visage of Emmanuel
Goldstein.
The American people certainly need to be prepared for the next anthrax scare or worse (maybe a
controlled release of chicken pox so you won’t question that needless vaccination) because
there’s one country after another that needs to be invaded.
Oh, and the Son of Patriot Act needs to be steamrolled through Congress. Just in case you get
any funny ideas about freedom and liberty and all that stuff written in the Constitution.
Son of Patriot Act is even more draconian than its predecessor, but then the next attack may be
more draconian and severe than Sept. 11.
As for the Iranians, the Syrians, and the North Koreans -- all they need to do is keep their eyes
on what will soon happen to the Iraqis.
All they need to do if they love their children is submit to the new masters. All they need to do is
give up their oil and other natural resources to transnational corporations. They also need to allow
the US to set up military bases.
In the meantime, I’m not buying sheets of plastic and rolls of duct tape. I’m not watching CNN or
Fox News or tuning in my portable radio to the emergency station. I won’t hide in the closet or
lock myself in the bathroom and tape plastic sheets over the door. I refuse to cringe in fear and
hope Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft, and Dubya will save me from the monsters they created (or,
rather, the monsters the CIA created).
I’m calling a spade a spade.
If the DoD or the CIA or whatever malignant "intelligence" agency decides it wants to gas the
small town where I live, or even parachute in bogus al-Qaida operatives to do us harm, there’s
nothing I can do about it.
Not directly, anyway.
All I can do is continue writing this and attend the anti-war demonstrations here in my small town.
I can speak out, refuse to believe the lies, and urge my neighbors and others I pass in the street to
do the same. If there are enough of us maybe one day soon we can put a stop to all this madness
and send Bush packing back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Or send him signed, sealed, and delivered to International Criminal Court to face charges of
crimes against humanity.
On the day that happens it will be Christmas all over the world.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Source: CounterPunch
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Some Still Scared of LSD,
After All These Years
a letter by Robert Merkin posted at April 17, 2003
photo from Erowid Chemical Vaults
The Hamilton (Ontario Canada) Spectator ran an "anniversary" feature on LSD Wednesday,
April 15, 2003, so Robert Merkin decided he would "drop 'em a line."
Letters to the Editor The Hamilton Spectator
To the Editor:
Re "The LSD Colours: Mostly Shades of Grey" (16 April): It's sort of sweet and childlike to hear retired
Hamilton narc John Gruhl sum up thirty-five years of LSD this way: "... it's a verydangerous narcotic.
And there's nothing good about it -- it's only evil."
If forced to reduce a profoundly rich, vast and complicated phenomenon to an eight-year-old boy's comic-book battle
between good and evil, my experiences and those of most people I know who used LSD were mostly good.
As the decades roll by since our LSD summers, I notice that my richest friendships and deepest admirations linger
with those who indeed chose to spend a season in their young adulthood taking trips to destinations where LSD
sent them. We all came back. But we returned with a deeper understanding of ourselves, a deeper appreciation of
what should be important in life, and a deeper sense of realities beyond just (in the words of a rock song) "birth, school, work, death."
None of us became drug detectives, though it wouldn't at all surprise me if some became "protect and serve"-style community police officers.
Some have suggested LSD destroyed peoples' ambitions. I found quite a different phenomenon. Those who took LSD seemed to make conscious choices to lead less aggressive, less rapacious, less material, less shallow lives.
Beauty, nature, love, friendship, creation and celebration were raised to much higher priorities in their subsequent
lives. They sought to understand the moral and ethical dimensions of life more clearly.
I would not insult or patronize them by justifying their post-LSD lives by their financial achievements --
"I took a lot of acid and now I run a Fortune
500 company." But they did okay, they
kept themselves as afloat as or higher and
drier than most people; I never saw one of
those mythical burnout acidheads in my
years managing a winter homeless shelter.
Though I've heard all the "Dragnet" horror stories about people who used LSD, the only real horror stories I ever personally encountered were the things that happened to people when the cops arrested them.
And LSD didn't cause those horrors; legislators, prosecutors and judges did. That people went to prison for wanting to take LSD is far more surreal than anything I experienced on an acid trip If the music seemed strangely repetitive or unstructured, it wasn't banal, mechanical, predictable and manipulative like most pop music; the most beloved
of the LSD musicians were adored because they were trying to take us on original and unexpected adventures.
In the entire body of acid music, there are no glorifications of gang violence,violence toward and abuse of women,
no gay-bashing, no racism, no encomiums to material possessions and superwealth.Nobody took acid and
suddenly lusted to become super-rich and menace their neighbors. Nobody took acid and suddenly wanted to bomb Vietnamese or Iraqis.
In some unspecified academic and intellectual communities, your Nobel prize in literature and the sciences is inextricably intertwined with your youthful acid trips -- it was a drug of particular appeal to big IQs, the creative
crowd, and the voraciously curious and adventurous. It was a drug for romantics, in most senses of that word.
I do not mean to extol LSD's virtues or make magical, paradisical claims for it. Rather, I would contrast it with the
rigid, simplistic,puritanical, aggressive, hypercompetitive and often warlike culture of LSD's lifelong bitterest enemies. LSD's promise of inner discovery was always attractive to those who had read Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living."
To write LSD off as "only evil" -- this isn't just a cop, this is a dumb cop. In his retirement, he's probably keeping his
health afloat on medicines discovered by old Berkeley acidheads.
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Robert Merkin
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The brave
Joe Vialls, Joe Vialls
Joe Vialls,
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From: TSS (216-119-162-47.ipset44.wt.net)
Subject: MAD COW FEED BAN WARNING LETTER
Animal Proteins Prohibited in Ruminant Feed/Misbranded
Date: September 23, 2003 at 2:21 pm PST
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: MAD COW FEED BAN WARNING LETTER
Animal Proteins Prohibited
in Ruminant Feed/Misbranded
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 15:46:19 -0500
From: "Terry S. Singeltary Sr."
Reply-To: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
To: BSE-L@uni-karlsruhe.de
Public Health Service Food and Drug Administration
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
Food and Drug Administration
Chicago DiStriCt 550 West Jackson Blvd.,
15th Floor August 25,2003 Chicago,
Illinois 60661
Telephone: 312-353-5863
WARNING LETTERCH-19-03
CERTIFIED MAIL
RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
William H. Jenner, President
Lincoln Land Livestock Co., Inc.
436 South Railway Ave.
Maswutah, Illinois 62258
Dear Mr. Jenner:
On April 14 and 15,2003, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted an
inspection at your animal feed handling facility at 436 South Railway
Ave., Mascoutah,Illinois, that, among other things. operates as an own label distributor
of Hot Line brand feeds made for you by The inspection found significant deviations from the requirements set
forth in Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 589.2000 (21 CFR 589.2000) - Animal Proteins Prohibited in
Ruminant Feed. This regulation is intended to prevent the establishment and amplification of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Such deviations cause products being handled by your facility to be misbranded within the
meaning of Section 403(a)(l) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act). The inspection also found significant deviations from the requirements set forth in 21 CFR 501 - Animal Food Labeling.
Our investigator found the following violations during the inspection: Products that contain or may contain prohibited material fail to bear the caution statement - Do not feed to cattle or other ruminants as required by 21 CFR
589.2OOO(c)( l)(i). Specifically, your firm is responsible for preparing the formulations and labeling for Lincoln Land labeled products and some of the products lack the above required cautionary statement.
Product ingredients are not listed on the label of the product Hotline Sow 100 by common or usual name in
descending order of predominance by weight as required by 21 CFR 501.4. Also, the ingredient list on the label
does not reflect all the ingredients.
Page 2
During the inspection FDAs investigator also found that you did not maintain written clean-out procedures to
prevent carryover of protein derived fi-om mammalian tissues to animal protein or feeds that may be used for
ruminants. You had no written procedures that describe the steps used to clean your truck after hauling bulk
meat and bone meal.
21 CFR 589.2000 requires maintenance of written clean-out procedures.
The above is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of violations.
While you handle the animal feed label and distribution operations, the products man are directed, through contract
arrangement with the above mentioned Your firm, as the handler and labeler of materials intended for animal feed use,
is responsible for controlling your part of the operation to ensure that the products manufactured are in compliance
with the law.
You should take prompt action to correct all of these violations, and you should establish a system whereby such violations do not recur. Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in regulatory action without further
notice, such as seizure, and/or injunction.
Please provide this office within 15 working days of receipt of this letter the steps you have taken to bring your firm
into compliance with the law. Your response should include an explanation of each step taken to correct the violations, and prevent their recurrence. Please include copies of any available documentation such as written procedures, corrected labeling, etc. demonstrating that corrections have been made.If corrections cannot be completed within 15 working days, state the reason for the delay and the date by which the corrections will be completed.
Your reply should be directed to Paul A. Boehmer, Compliance Officer, at the above letterhead address.
Sincerely,
\s\
Arlyn H. Baumgarten
District Director