The Militant Libertarian

I'm pissed off and I'm a libertarian. What else you wanna know?

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Charged with Journalism in the First Degree

by Greg Palast

It's true. It's weird. It's nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.

Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a "critical national security structure" in Louisiana.

On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It's been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW's (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident, Pamela Lewis said, "It is a prison set-up" -- except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.

To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation's second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth.

So we filmed it. Without Big Brother's authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a "critical infrastructure" asset.

So now Matt and I have a "criminal complaint" lodged against us with the feds.

The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down.

Frankly, we were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn't be allowed on a plane into New York last night. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.

Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, "This is a 'Critical Infrastructure' . and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property.

Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I'm very nervous that this potential chemical blast-site can be mapped in extreme detail at this Google Map location.

What also makes me nervous is that the Bush Terror Terriers have kindly
indicated on the Internet that this unprotected critical infrastructure can be targeted -- I mean located -- at 30º 29' 11" N Latitude and 91º 11' 39" W Longitude.

After I assured Detective Pananepinto, "I can swear to you that I'm not part of Al Qaeda," he confirmed that, "Louisiana is still part of the United States," subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.

Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See "A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez."]

So I rang America's top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. "Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon's position that reporters should go to jail?" Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what's at stake. And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance.

The Exxon man was coy: "Well, we'll see what we can find out.. Obviously it's important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency."

Really? According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxon's lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher -- resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.

So this silly "criminal complaint" has nothing to do with stopping Al Qaeda or keeping the oil flowing. It has everything to do with obstructing news reports in a way that no one would have dared attempt before the September 11 attack.

Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, "If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11."

Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others.

Yes, I remember "a lot" of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective -- and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.

It's been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President's golf cart at the Crawford ranch.

I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, Matt and I look pretty good in orange.

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Friday, September 15, 2006

Pork


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Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Fred The Money Launderer

Fred's weekly posting is one of the few places on the 'Net that I never miss. I highly recommend you read his musings and rants!

I’m going to tell you how I entered the underworld, and became a money launderer, and international drug wallah, and remorseless criminal, just like Carlo Gambino or Bin Laden or Condoleezza Rice. Yes. I am now of one blood with Pablo Escobar. It is a service of the Anglo-Irish Bank. I imagine that my picture can be seen on wanted posters in European post offices.

How did I come to this frightful pass? I decided a while back to get such money as I have out of dollars. In the White House the Maximum Ferret was playing promiscuously at being Sergeant Rock around the planet, which he seemed to regard as his private litter box, and would one day inflate the currency to pay for it. He doesn’t pay for my hobbies, I thought. Why should I pay for his? Anyway, I didn’t want to kill Moslems. Various other people, yes, but not Mohammedans.

Where to put my minute shriveled pittance, all that is left to me of a misspent life? (I live in a swell house in Mexico with a lovely wife, a splendid if occasionally insupportable stepdaughter, a disturbed dog, a rabbit, and lots of ribs and beer. I don’t have many excuses for feeling sorry for myself. I make the most of them.)

Europe appealed, redolent as it is of stability, solemnity, and stuffy reliability. A couple of years before a shill from the Anglo-Irish Bank of Dublin had come through my Mexican town, which is full of expatriate money. Ireland, I thought. Just the thing. The Irish are a delightful race, mildly crazy, sometimes drunken, and literarily gifted, all of which recommended them to me.

Ireland, I was sure, had few Calvinist Texans with beady eyes like windows opening onto a wall, and impenetrable English you could armor a tank with. I thought of broad green lands and leprechauns and bosomy barmaids with twinkling eyes and countless magnificent authors and Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.

Read the rest here: http://fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

George Carlin on Homeland Security

George Carlin says that if he had been in charge of reorganizing for Homeland Security after 9/11, he would have created the Bureau of What The Fuck Was That? and the Department of What The Fuck Do We Do Now?

Couldn't be any worse than we've got now...

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Monday, September 11, 2006

9/11 - Five Years Later

Well, today marks the fifth anniversary of the attacks on 9/11/01 in which the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were blown up as well as the attempted attack on the Pentagon.

No matter who you believe did this, whether it was Mossad, CIA, NSA, Al'Quaeda, Osama, Saddam, or some combination of these, you have to take a moment and consider that thousands... Thousands of people...not hundreds, not tens, not one, but THOUSANDS were killed.

Nothing about that day is truly understood by anyone. Every piece of evidence shown that proves one theory over another is contradicted by another piece of evidence somewhere else. The question of who did it and why may never be answered in full.

The murders of JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe, and many, many others may never be solved.

Countless other conspiracies will never be solved either.

But in the end, real people were killed. Real people suffered. Real families mourne the loss of their loved ones. Remember that always. Whoever committed the attrocities of 9/11/01 killed real people, mutilated real families, and altered the course of history in doing so.

At the end of it all, no matter who you blame for 9/11/01, it was perpetrated by a monster. Not a human, but a monster of the highest order. A monster that considers the sacrifice of human lives for his own gain to be a trivial matter. No human being can be like that. Only a monster...

So remember those who suffered so that this monster might gain. Remember the real humans, the real men and women who suffered and died for that monster. Most of all, though, remember that monsters like that should be rooted out and exterminated like the vermin that they are.

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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Global Warming, Too Hot or Not?

by Dennis Behreandt of The New American - click here for full article

The theory of global warming proposes that man's activities are causing the Earth to heat up, but there is compelling scientific evidence that does not support this conclusion.

Aaron's note: this article is too large to be reprinted here. It is, however, excellent reading no matter what your opinions on global warming are. There is obvious media bias (not to mention the tripe they tell you in publik skool) on this subject - more so than many political subjects. This bias in reporting has led many to believe something that is still a matter of debate amongst scientists. And I mean scientists of real merit whose credentials cannot be dismissed. So I'd suggest that any thinking person would read this article and search out others like it and form their own conclusions instead of just believing the ABC/NBC/FOX hype as fact.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_4185.shtml - read entire article at this link.

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