Atlantic Free Press was launched in September 2006 by Dutch-Canadian R.G.
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands and American Expatriate Chris Floyd of
Oxford, UK.
Brick Ogden, an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
Assistant Editor Canadian Chris Cook hails from Victoria, British Columbia and Senior Writer Paul William Roberts is based in Toronto - but often on the road.
The mission of AF Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. AF Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Death's Factotum: Michael Gordon and the Times Pour Pentagon Poison into Nation's Ear
Judith Miller might have been the poster child for the corporate media's collaboration with the Bush Administration's war of aggression against Iraq — but her New York Times colleague and co-writer, Michael Gordon, was every bit as culpable and complicit, happily playing stovepipe to the bloodthirsty bullshit gurgling up from the White House and Pentagon cesspits.
Miller is gone from the mainstream heights, but Gordon soldiers on at the Times — literally. Although he is probably not paid directly by the Bush Regime to peddle their propaganda, he serves precisely the same function as the military brass that the Administration embedded as "independent analysts" on the network news shows — a nefarious practice most recently exposed in great detail by...the New York Times.
But the Times, like most of our great institutions, piously follows the scriptural injunction, and lets not the right hand know what its left hand is doing. And so while it exposes television's willing collusion with White House warmongering, the paper continues its own collaboration with fomenting aggression — this time, the conflict with Iran.
Gordon's latest is a classic of this sinister genre. He dutifully stovepipes claims by the usual unnamed "American officials" who tell him that Iranian agents have revealed that Hezbollah is training anti-American Iraqi Shiites inside Iran. This information, we are told, comes from "interrogations" of four Shiite militia members who were captured by American forces last year.
“Let’s not be too rough on our own ignorance. It’s what makes America great!”
- Frank Zappa.
Roaring Twenties nightclub queen Mary Louise “Texas” Guinan used to greet every new customer with a cheerful “Hello, Sucker!” Today, our political leaders think the same phrase when performing their various shell games on Americans, but they’re a lot less cheerful about it.
President Bush, last week, confronting the writhing agony known as our economy, did the only thing a stand-up kinda leader could do…he blamed it all on the Democratic Congress. As Dana Milbank wrote in “The Washington Post,” “He faulted lawmakers 16 times in his opening statement alone.”
And you could tell Bush was serious. He wore his patented “constipated ape” expression.
Bush addressed America’s financial woes in lofty, technical terms. “And so I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I’d be waving it, of course.”
He later explained:
“I think that if there was a magic wand to say, ‘OK, drop price,’ I’d do that.”
As reporters waited for Bush to switch metaphors, stick his thumb up his ass, crook his free arm skyward and warble, “I’m a little despot,” he went back to his wand waving, instead.
Further clarifying his trickle-down approach to Harry Potter, he offered:
“But there is no magic wand to wave right now.”
Presumably, a wand will be found in the near future?
Until that time, we will be stuck with Bush’s old magical meanderings. He said that the economy would be helped by making his tax cuts permanent. A lie. He said the current gas crisis would be helped by cracking open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A lie. He said that the current gas crisis would be eased by building more oil refineries. A lie. He also refused to use the word “recession,” feeling that Americans don’t care about labels. This is probably why he also refused to use the word “moron.”
Debate? Was that the word just used? Debate over 9/11?
A patently mad idea, wholly pointless. The debate, after all, is long since over and done with—that is, if it's a debate about whether the "official" theory (nineteen guys with box-cutters, etc., etc.) is the true one or whether the "alternative" theory (inside job, long-planned tactical end, "false-flag op") is the genuine article—then the notion of "debate" is absurd, a waste of time, the issue settled a long, long time ago.
The fact is that 9/11 was an inside job. It's a fact. And it's a fact by now so patently obvious that there wouldn't and couldn't be any point—couldn't or wouldn't be even any substance—in a debate on the question.
I'll make a qualification. Any such debate about the "two theories" would be pointless and absurd for certain people. It would be pointless and absurd for those people, first, who have a genuine interest in the truth about 9/11. And, second, it would be pointless and absurd for those who have such an interest and who also can read and do read—a surprisingly small percentage in our hallowed nation, even among intellectuals.
These are the people who would find a debate of the "which theory" kind to be pointless. They would find it pointless because it's clear to them that the truth of the question is not merely already known but well known, and, further, that it has been well known for years. Not in a court of law, but in a "court of logic," it's even long since been proven.
Is water wet or dry? Hey, let's debate it!
If we still had a "free press"; if the First Amendment were honored in the observance rather than in the breach; and if there'd been fair and open dissemination of 9/11-related thought, research, and ideas in the years since the attacks, everybody in America would have long ago agreed that a debate about the "two theories" would be just as stupid as the debate mentioned above, as to whether water is wet or dry.
But that's not the way it has been, and it's not the way it is now. True as the fact may be that enough authentic information has seeped through the sweating walls of the Ministry of Truth that today only sixteen percent of Americans actually believe the "official" theory—true as that may be, the false theory is still the official theory. The false theory is still the one that remains the fulcrum for launching every one of the murders and crimes the US goes on perpetrating. The false theory is the one that made possible the invasions and then occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The false theory is the one that made possible the wholesale fraud of the entire non-existent "war on terror." And the false theory is the one that makes certain the neocon fruitcake plan continues not to die. That is, the neocon plan for a hegemonic takeover of the globe, its probable next step—it seems just now—to be the fulfillment of six-year-old "Dick" Cheney's birthday dream of atom-bombing Iran.
As three months of news reports of escalating violence in Iraq undercut widespread American propaganda about the "surge's" success, increasing numbers of Americans, once again, are reaching the conclusion that the Bush administration's illegal, immoral and incompetent invasion and occupation of Iraq is a war that never should have been fought. According to the results of CNN/Opinion Research Poll reported on 1 May 2008, 68 percent of Americans now oppose George W. Bush's war in Iraq.
These Americans have (belatedly) gotten it right. Moreover, five years after viewing the sick "Mission Accomplished" propaganda, it's now becoming clear that the "surge" and the implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy detailed in General Petraeus' Counterinsurgency Field Manual were last-ditch and largely propaganda gimmicks chosen by Bush to avoid admitting his stark defeat in Iraq. Thus, Bush and Cheney are sacrificing lives while playing for time — time to escape office without being impeached and convicted, time to assert that the war was not lost during their watch.
Simply consider the words of Andrew Bacevich, in his recent article "Surging to Defeat." Not only are American and Iraqi forces still suffering from nearly 500 attacks per week, "the United States today finds itself with too much war and too few warriors."
Or consider the words of Steven Simon, in the May/June 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Simon concludes: "A strategy adopted for near-term advantage by a frustrated administration will only increase the likelihood of long-term debacle." Why? Because the bottom-up counterinsurgency strategy adopted by President Bush and General Petraeus has strengthened "the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism."
Since the assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh, a leading Hizbullah operative, a sense of foreboding once again grips Lebanon. The Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says the bombing foreshadows Israeli aggression and has declared his willingness to wage 'open war' should there be another invasion. Fighting words are not uncommon to the region; leaders often compensate for lack of action with bravado. However, no one is ready to discount the significance of Nasrallah's statement. Why?
As the Israeli Air Force decimated the exposed Egyptian infantry in 1967 Nasser's propagandists were forecasting success. When the US-UK air armada pummelled the hapless conscripts of the Iraqi army in '91, Saddam's propaganda mill promised imminent victory (which it duly claimed shortly after signing unconditional surrender). Likewise, Saddam's Minister of Information greeted the US-UK invasion in 2003 with similar fanciful flourishes. An object of frequent ridicule, such mendacity is often adduced by born-again Orientalists as a function of the addled 'Arab mind'. That is, until one voice emerged that undermined stereotypes and restored dignity and trust.
Syed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of the Lebanese Hizbullah movement, has established a reputation for saying only what he means and promising only what he is able to deliver. Islamic Resistance, the guerrilla wing of Hizbullah, has evolved under his helm from its ragtag origins to the world's most effective resistance movement, twice defeating the vaunted Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in battle. As a testament to his intelligence and organization skills, Hizbullah has also developed an efficient and extensive social service network – hospitals, educational institutions, a construction company and its own media – that caters to its mostly impoverished Shia constituency. As a result he has emerged as the most popular figure in the Middle East. The Syrian Bashar al-Assad according to Seymour Hersh claims to be in 'awe of Nasrallah' and 'worships at his feet'. Secular MPs in Egypt revere him as an 'heir to Saladin'. Christian divas in Lebanon have immortalized him in song. The modest Shia cleric is a living legend in the mostly Sunni Middle East.
It appears that a majority of conscionable peoples opposed to their nation's war mongering for “imperial mobilization” in the guise of fighting the 'war on terrorism', have actually given up on the idea that they can preemptively prevent wars.
The experience of the dismal failure of anti-war demonstrations since 911, and other inefficacious symbolic protests has taught many of us once again that this isn't the Vietnam era of the 1960s. The social control is enormous, the attachments to the pursuit of the elusive 'American Dream' even stronger, and hence all consuming, and despite tethering at the brink of financial bankruptcy, the nation still persists in participating in the 'war on terror', still persists in paying its taxes to fund the war, and still persists in shedding its own blood. But mainly the 'lesser' blood of economic conscription.
Thus in a sense, with rising disparity in wealth and increasing unemployment in the American nation, there is a concomitant supply of recruits right out of high school from among the lesser privileged class, who, for the lure of a signup bonus, or the promise of an education and good living, are not shy of shedding other peoples' blood to get 'ahead' in life. It matters little that if they even come back in one piece physically, they are usually shattered mentally – for then, these 'rejects' of economic conscription and battle fatigue are as dispensable as those whom they had earlier made dispensable. A self sustaining system of recruiting soldiers is being constructed domestically within the United States that parallels the self sustaining system of creating the 'terrorists' to fight the perpetual 'war on terror' against, for the entire slated lifetime of “World War IV”.
It is amazing how politically astute President George Bush was when he dismissed the anemic protests throughout the United States of America before the buildup of war on Iraq in February 2003, as simply a “focus group”, stating:
“First of all, you know, size of protest, it's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security -- in this case, the security of the people.”
I was reading Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, by Murat Kurnaz, when I came across a passage about Kurnaz being subjected to gruesome electric shock torture at the hands of America's brave volunteer warriors. After passing out and being tossed back in his cell to sleep it off, Kurnaz was soon awakened by harrowing screams.
He saw two valiant American soldiers hitting a man who was lying on the ground-his head wrapped in a blanket. Five more patriotic heroes eventually joined in on the beating, hitting the man's head with the butts of their rifles and kicking him with their heavy boots. "Then," says Kurnaz, "they walked away, leaving him lying there."
The next morning, the man was still lying in the same spot: in a pool of blood. It wasn't until later that afternoon that four US officers came to inspect him and an escort team earned their yellow ribbons by taking away his lifeless body.
"I wondered to myself if had any children," writes Kurnaz. "Whether his mother and father would ever find out that he had been beaten to death. At that moment, I didn't care whether it was him or me. My life was worth nothing more than his. I'd understood for quite some time what this camp was about. They could do with us what they pleased. And I might be next."
In the days of my youth I was lucky enough to have parents as teachers. No, they didn’t beat me for not doing my homework. What this meant is that the whole family had a three-month vacation during the summer. Rather different than today’s world where both parents have ten days personal leave per year and the kids must be tended to by strangers running mystery camps during the summer like… uh… law camp or thespian camp.
Since my dad was a high school science teacher and we were from the Mid-West we’d take long cross-country camping trips. I saw the Great American West up close and personal time and time again. To this day, I am not actually at peace unless I am driving and camping around this magnificent part of the world.
One year, we made the drive up to see Mt. Rushmore. You know the place. It’s that granite rock with the heads of four presidents hacked into it. What a lasting impression to American mentality it made on this lad.
I will ever forget the look on my parent’s faces. They kept their opinions to themselves but I know what they were thinking. Same thing as me: Mt Rushmore must have been really nice when it was known as Six Grandfathers by the Lakota Sioux. Oh but in its infinite nincompoopery, the Federal Government saw fit to procure, rename and mutilate. Now Six Grandfathers is (vernacular relegated to the slag heap) up good as the Four POTUS.
No comment on Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Honest Abe but I can’t believe any of those four men would have approved of this abomination on nature. These monstrous busts and the giant slagheap of rubble below is quite the monument to arrogance. Well, there’s no returning it to nature now!
I’ve been thinking about registrations. Actually I’ve been thinking about the 2008 elections, the endless campaigns, the Supreme Court, endless payment increases, and a growing malaise affecting all US/us. It is really difficult to get fired up for the coming elections which are still some six months off into the future. This is no small observation coming from me – the all-time news and political junkie! I am not alone in this feeling of weariness as many of my readers agree on this.
You see the Tuesday primary elections in Indiana and North Carolina “may” determine who will be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party in the 2008 Presidential election, but I am not counting on it. Both Senators Clinton and Obama claim they are in the fight until the 2008 Denver Convention. Senator McCain has “locked in” the Republican Party spot on the ballot. Campaigning has gone on for two years. The conventions, real debates, and podium combat still loom before us. I was disgusted and undecided about my choice options in 2004. I voted for President last and ended up actually flipping a coin - John Kerry “won” the toss! That is no way to make a voting decision.
This is an edited version of a sermon delivered May 4, 2008, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX. http://www.staopen.com/
The last time I was in this pulpit to deliver a guest sermon, I spoke of the need for each of us to take up the role of prophet, to not be afraid of speaking in the prophetic voice, even when doing so involves risk. Today I want to talk about the other kind of profit, the allure of which can so often quiet the prophetic voice within us.
Living in the most powerful and affluent country in the history of the world, this is not mere word play with homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings). Can we resist the seductive nature of the material rewards that come with profit to find within us the spirit of the prophetic? If we cannot, what is the fate of this country? What is the fate of the world that this country seeks to dominate? And my subject today: What is the fate of our souls?
Let’s start with one of the most well-known verses from the gospels, from Mark, where Jesus says: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” [Mark 8:36]
The last war won't end, but in the Pentagon they're already arguing about the next one.
Let's start with that "last war" and see if we can get things straight. Just over five years ago, American troops entered Baghdad in battle mode, felling the Sunni-dominated government of dictator Saddam Hussein and declaring Iraq "liberated." In the wake of the city's fall, after widespread looting, the new American administrators dismantled the remains of Saddam's government in its hollowed out, trashed ministries; disassembled the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party which had ruled Iraq since the 1960s, sending its members home with news that there was no coming back; dismantled Saddam's 400,000 man army; and began to denationalize the economy. Soon, an insurgency of outraged Sunnis was raging against the American occupation.
After initially resisting democratic elections, American occupation administrators finally gave in to the will of the leading Shiite clergyman, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and agreed to sponsor them. In January 2005, these brought religious parties representing a long-oppressed Shiite majority to power, parties which had largely been in exile in neighboring Shiite Iran for years.
Now, skip a few years, and U.S. troops have once again entered Baghdad in battle mode. This time, they've been moving into the vast Sadr City Shiite slum "suburb" of eastern Baghdad, which houses perhaps two-and-a-half million closely packed inhabitants. If free-standing, Sadr City would be the second largest city in Iraq after the capital. This time, the forces facing American troops haven't put down their weapons, packed up, and gone home. This time, no one is talking about "liberation," or "freedom," or "democracy." In fact, no one is talking about much of anything.
On May 14, Israelis will commemorate the 60th anniversary of their "War of Independence" and founding of the Jewish State. It also marks 60 years of Palestinian Nakba suffering. The web site alnakba.org recounts the history:
— from the late Ottoman empire period; to
— the birth of Zionism; to
— the early Jewish colonization of Palestine; to
— the 1917 Balfour Declaration support for a "Jewish national home in Palestine;" to
— the simultaneous British betrayal of the indigenous Arabs; to
— the British occupation; to
— its delayed promised end; to
— the founding of the Haganah underground military organization; to
— the first British (1922) Palestine census showing a population of 757,182 - 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish and 9.6% Christian; to
— the official 1923 establishment of the British Mandate period; to
— the 1920s Jewish population increase to 16% on 4% of Palestinian land; to
— the terrorist Irgun (IZT) National Military Organization established in 1931; to
— the terrorist Stern Gang founded in 1939; to
— the 1945 Jewish population growth to 31% of the total; to
— the October 1947 US endorsement of partitioning Palestine at a time Palestinians comprised two-thirds of the population and Jews one-third; to
— the November 1947 UN General Assembly Resolution 181 to end the British Mandate by August 1, 1948 and partition Palestine - 56% to Jews, the remainder to Palestinians, and for Jerusalem to be an international city; to
— Britain recommending (in December) an end to Mandate Palestine on May 15, 1948 and independent Jewish and Palestinian states to be established two weeks later; to
— Harry Truman secretly meeting Chaim Weizmann at the White House on March 25, 1948 and pledging support for the declaration of Israel on May 15; to
— the State of Israel established at 4PM on May 14, 1948; to
— the official end of the British Mandate on May 15; to
— Harry Truman recognizing the Jewish State on the same day.
I love it. Obama being race baited by the Clintons – White Right Rush Limbau mounting his scum crusade to urge voters (read, Reagan democrats, and moderate and conservative working white middle class Wal Mart shoppers) to vote for Hillary. Obama making a 3/4s honest speech about "race in America" and his ex-pastor doing a stump dance to rap on national TV, talking about GOD and the election. And any number of currently "established" African Americans talking about not doing nonsense outside the convention if Obama is not chosen as the nominee. And Obama wants to move on!
How can you "move on" when a great part of the body civic is being dragged behind the family mini-van of America with chains around its neck?
And don’t come to me with this shitty notion that "white people" cannot talk about either racism or the effect of African slavery in America!
We know that white people were not chained on ships, tossed to the sharks, mercilessly beaten and murdered, forced into breeding stalls, torn asunder from their parents, native lands and culture, enslaved for hundreds of years and then treated less than human until this date. But to think that the effect of this and the nature of the Master’s Slavocracy did not warp them, effect the health of their circumstance, disfigure their chance at "the American dream," does no justice to either history or them as human beings.
It's like old times in the Persian Gulf. As of this week, a second aircraft carrier battle task force is being sent in — not long after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen highlighted planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran; just as the Bush administration's catechism of charges against the Iranians in Iraq reaches something like a fever pitch; at the moment when rumors of, leaks about, and denials of Pentagon back-to-the-drawing-board planning for new ways to attack Iran are zipping around ("Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq…"); and only days before the U.S. military in Iraq is supposed to conduct its latest media dog-and-pony show on Iranian support for Iraqi Shi'ite militias ("…including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate…"). On the dispatching of that second aircraft carrier, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the following comment:
"I don't see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder."
Let's start with a hypothetical situation: Suppose a small group of people controlled the press, and they wanted to ensure a Republican victory in November. A few weeks ago Obama seemed to be riding a wave of inevitability and positive perception. The Democrats seemed to have settled on a candidate, and he scored well against the Republicans because he was seen as post-racial and post-partisan. If this group were to write a memo to the media, what would it say?
Their game plan would have very specific objectives:
1. Extend the Democratic primary race as long as possible.
2. Remind the public that the seemingly "post-racial" Obama is a black man; make him seem as scary-black as possible.
3. Strengthen Hillary Clinton's image with white working-class voters by making her appear populist, folksy, and one of them. Conversely, characterize Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with "real people."
4. Break down Obama's post-partisan appeal to independents and Republicans by linking him to the divisive left/right politics of the 1960s.
ATLANTIC FREE PRESS - As we celebrate World Press Freedom Day on third of May, we fell sad for the retreat of Palestinian media since the celebration of this day last year, due to the serious violations that occurred, especially the killing of four media men (Suleiman Al-A'shi, Mohammed Abdu from Felesteen newspaper, Isam Al-Jojou from Felesteen Mubasher site news, by Palestinian armed groups, and Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana'a, by the Israeli occupation forces, they also tried to kill Aqsa TV cameraman Imad Ghanem deliberately, which led to the amputation of his legs.
The Israeli occupation forces continued attacks on journalists and media outlets in the occupied Palestinian territories, which have been continuing for several decades, to withhold their crimes and continuous violations of the Palestinian people rights, including the arrest of journalists such as Hassan Abdel Jawad, Waleed Khalid, Muhammad Halaiqa, Tarek Abu Zeid, closed media outlets such as Radio Al-Majd in Jenin, and raided and seized equipment from TV and Radio stations such as Gamma and Afaq TVs in Nablus city, Seraj and Manbar Alhureyah Radios in Hebron, opened fire and used tear gas bombs against journalists covering the weekly march in Bila'in Village (Ramallah) and a number of other areas, wounding many of them, In addition to other forms of attacks.
It’s not that you had an egomaniac poser for a pastor. Your belief in superstition, like that of every religious and spiritual person is your affair. It’s that Wright nailed the US for its imperialism when he said the "chicken coming home to roost." He merely quoted Malcolm X. Do you denounce Malcolm as well?
Or when he likened the US troops placement "all over the world," to Rome that had troops "all over the world."
As a learned person, do you not see the analogy?
Tell us what’s is wrong with that? You can’t because it’s the truth. Or do you want us to believe that it’s a grandiose lie? The concoction of radical leftists, of which Wright is in some form? Aside from the ignorant or the jingoistic fanatics, US imperialism is prima facie if for no other reason than a world map of US military installations. Or count the number of wars that the US has engaged in its short, violent history.
Judith Miller might have been the poster child for the corporate media's collaboration with the Bush Administration's war of aggression against Iraq — but 
