Behind the Bushes
The Bush administration’s startling revelation released yesterday by the White House Press office in the person of Bush spokesman Ari Flesher admitting that the CIA provided the president with daily briefings, which included information foretelling the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as well as the Pentagon, is a dramatic departure from past positions.
In the past, the administration’s official stance was that it had absolutely no knowledge of the voluminous intelligence known months ago by the alternative press clearly indicating that radical, fundamentalist Islamic fractions planned a “fatwa” or decree against the US. It persuasively illustrates that knowledge is empowering and why the government is assiduous in its efforts to deliberately keep its naïve denizens blissfully ignorant.
The Bush administration did not release this information of its own volition. It did so in response to the mounting pressure heaped upon it by scathing, thorough, and relentless reporting by a courageous independent media; a media unfettered by the single-minded pursuit of profits and the promotion of a fascistic agenda.
It is a free press determined to present the flip side of what really occurred on September 11th and, more importantly, why it occurred. Publically elected officials save for Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia), Maxine Waters (D-California), and Barbara Lee (D-California) all ought to be preparing for a heaping portion of crow.
What is especially incensing about this revelation is that the Congressional Black Caucus all marched lockstep without nary a word in face of the outrageous liberties, a wholesale rescission of the Bill of Rights, taken by the Bush administration all in the name of national security.
The administration in the persons of Donald Rumsfield, Dick Cheney, John Ascroft, Paul Wolfowitz used 9-11 to promote an agenda reeking of the new world order that conspiracy theorists so love to denounce vociferously. However, where there is smoke, there is fire.
Each one of these officials as well as National Security advisor Condelezza Rice and President Bush all have close ties to the energy and petroleum industry.
It is incredible that except for a blurb or two that may have been buried deep within the recesses of the New York Times (“all the news that is fit to print”) describing those ties, no exhaustive, investigative report has been undertaken by anyone in the so-called mainstream media.
The reason is that money talks, and bullshit walks. The energy and petroleum lobby is able to throw millions of dollars at our publically elected officials in the form of fund raisers, honorariums, campaign contributions and less legitimate means to turn a blind eye to its overwhelming influence on the executive branch; a branch of government virtually overrun with oil, gas, and energy executives; namely Cheney, Rumfield, and Rice (who sits on the board of a number of energy related multi-national corporations).
That may be a major reason that Secretary of State Colin Powell is having such a difficult time in exercising his mandate. US Foreign policy has been co-opted by the powerful, influential energy lobby and, as a consequence, is being run out of corporate boardrooms in Houston, Dallas, and to a lesser degree Los Angeles and New York.
Companies like the famously failed Enron wanting to increase its market share for a selfish American consumer hell bent on driving enormous gas guzzling SUVs, some like the Ford Excursion or Chevy Suburban that are rapidly approaching Charter bus size, just around the block to pick up a sack of burgers from White Castle need to aggressively expand its oil and gas drilling exploration simply to keep up with demand.
Various environmental groups and Native American tribes put up a vigorous fight to preserve Alaskan national refuge from the invasive, destructive exploration necessary to find and drill for “black gold.” To satisfy an insatiable American public and avaricious corporate raiders determined to engorge themselves on increasingly growing profits, the need for the vast oil field found in the region erroneously known as the middle east have taken on an increased significance.
We see a foreign policy being driven solely by these concerns, where young undereducated minority men and women are being put in harm’s way, indeed being used as canon fodder for massive, rich, influential multinational conglomerates seeking to increase their bottom line.
The American people are as guilty as anyone in the administration, though, because no one wants to ask the hard questions for fear of upsetting the apple cart. However, we all know that there are finite natural resources in the world. We use the vast bulk of those limited resources here in the United States.
Nevertheless, we are more concerned with preserving our lifestyles then we are with the sheer havoc that we are reeking over the entire globe to simply maintain this incredibly consumptive, indulgent existence.
But we do not want to admit to it. We want to be lied to. Our leaders just accommodate us. That is why no real reform will come from the current, strident rallying cry for “hearings” in the wake of this latest “unbelievable” revelation.
These cries are just palliatives spouted by career politicians who are loathe to bite the hand that feeds them while enabling us to continue living a collective delusion; an illusion that we are a fair, democratic, and just society.
In the end, though, alternate energy vehicles many that have been on the drawing board for as long as 40 years, will still give way to inefficient 5 mile per gallon behemoths that your children and mine will wind up fighting and dying for in some godforsaken two-city country with an unpronounceable name in the Middle East.
In the past, the administration’s official stance was that it had absolutely no knowledge of the voluminous intelligence known months ago by the alternative press clearly indicating that radical, fundamentalist Islamic fractions planned a “fatwa” or decree against the US. It persuasively illustrates that knowledge is empowering and why the government is assiduous in its efforts to deliberately keep its naïve denizens blissfully ignorant.
The Bush administration did not release this information of its own volition. It did so in response to the mounting pressure heaped upon it by scathing, thorough, and relentless reporting by a courageous independent media; a media unfettered by the single-minded pursuit of profits and the promotion of a fascistic agenda.
It is a free press determined to present the flip side of what really occurred on September 11th and, more importantly, why it occurred. Publically elected officials save for Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia), Maxine Waters (D-California), and Barbara Lee (D-California) all ought to be preparing for a heaping portion of crow.
What is especially incensing about this revelation is that the Congressional Black Caucus all marched lockstep without nary a word in face of the outrageous liberties, a wholesale rescission of the Bill of Rights, taken by the Bush administration all in the name of national security.
The administration in the persons of Donald Rumsfield, Dick Cheney, John Ascroft, Paul Wolfowitz used 9-11 to promote an agenda reeking of the new world order that conspiracy theorists so love to denounce vociferously. However, where there is smoke, there is fire.
Each one of these officials as well as National Security advisor Condelezza Rice and President Bush all have close ties to the energy and petroleum industry.
It is incredible that except for a blurb or two that may have been buried deep within the recesses of the New York Times (“all the news that is fit to print”) describing those ties, no exhaustive, investigative report has been undertaken by anyone in the so-called mainstream media.
The reason is that money talks, and bullshit walks. The energy and petroleum lobby is able to throw millions of dollars at our publically elected officials in the form of fund raisers, honorariums, campaign contributions and less legitimate means to turn a blind eye to its overwhelming influence on the executive branch; a branch of government virtually overrun with oil, gas, and energy executives; namely Cheney, Rumfield, and Rice (who sits on the board of a number of energy related multi-national corporations).
That may be a major reason that Secretary of State Colin Powell is having such a difficult time in exercising his mandate. US Foreign policy has been co-opted by the powerful, influential energy lobby and, as a consequence, is being run out of corporate boardrooms in Houston, Dallas, and to a lesser degree Los Angeles and New York.
Companies like the famously failed Enron wanting to increase its market share for a selfish American consumer hell bent on driving enormous gas guzzling SUVs, some like the Ford Excursion or Chevy Suburban that are rapidly approaching Charter bus size, just around the block to pick up a sack of burgers from White Castle need to aggressively expand its oil and gas drilling exploration simply to keep up with demand.
Various environmental groups and Native American tribes put up a vigorous fight to preserve Alaskan national refuge from the invasive, destructive exploration necessary to find and drill for “black gold.” To satisfy an insatiable American public and avaricious corporate raiders determined to engorge themselves on increasingly growing profits, the need for the vast oil field found in the region erroneously known as the middle east have taken on an increased significance.
We see a foreign policy being driven solely by these concerns, where young undereducated minority men and women are being put in harm’s way, indeed being used as canon fodder for massive, rich, influential multinational conglomerates seeking to increase their bottom line.
The American people are as guilty as anyone in the administration, though, because no one wants to ask the hard questions for fear of upsetting the apple cart. However, we all know that there are finite natural resources in the world. We use the vast bulk of those limited resources here in the United States.
Nevertheless, we are more concerned with preserving our lifestyles then we are with the sheer havoc that we are reeking over the entire globe to simply maintain this incredibly consumptive, indulgent existence.
But we do not want to admit to it. We want to be lied to. Our leaders just accommodate us. That is why no real reform will come from the current, strident rallying cry for “hearings” in the wake of this latest “unbelievable” revelation.
These cries are just palliatives spouted by career politicians who are loathe to bite the hand that feeds them while enabling us to continue living a collective delusion; an illusion that we are a fair, democratic, and just society.
In the end, though, alternate energy vehicles many that have been on the drawing board for as long as 40 years, will still give way to inefficient 5 mile per gallon behemoths that your children and mine will wind up fighting and dying for in some godforsaken two-city country with an unpronounceable name in the Middle East.
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