You are here

Critical Thinking

America’s “War on Terrorism” ~ Michel Chossudovsky

“The livelihood of millions of people throughout the World is at stake. It is my sincere hope that the truth will prevail and that the understanding provided in this detailed study will serve the cause of World peace. This objective, however, can only be reached by revealing the falsehoods behind America’s “War on Terrorism” and questioning the legitimacy of the main political and military actors responsible for extensive war crimes.” --Michel Chossudovsky

Described in Global Research

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

18 May 2012 | In this expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 bestseller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”. Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

This special edition, which includes twelve additional chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarization of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalization is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Full story…

Should We Let Terrorists Buy Guns?

The Terror Gap, Explained

Progress Report, ThinkProgress

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

May 1, 2013 | 

The Death of Truth

 

The use of vast global resources against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks presages a dystopian world where anyone who exposes corruption, lies and crimes of power will be branded a terrorist. This Dig, centering on Chris Hedges' interview with Assange in the London embassy where he has found refuge since last June, also includes an interactive timeline of events surrounding the WikiLeaks disclosures, a sidebar of reader resources, sound bites and a partial transcript stemming from the interview, and an illustration by the acclaimed cartoonist Mr. Fish. The interview is a joint project of Truthdig and The Nation.

 

Chris Hedges, TruthDig

 

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

 

Mr. Fish

 

May 6, 2013 | A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world’s best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June. British police in black Kevlar vests are perched night and day on the steps leading up to the building, and others wait in the lobby directly in front of the embassy door. An officer stands on the corner of a side street facing the iconic department store Harrods, half a block away on Brompton Road. Another officer peers out the window of a neighboring building a few feet from Assange’s bedroom at the back of the embassy. Police sit round-the-clock in a communications van topped with an array of antennas that presumably captures all electronic forms of communication from Assange’s ground-floor suite.

 

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), or Scotland Yard, said the estimated cost of surrounding the Ecuadorean Embassy from June 19, 2012, when Assange entered the building, until Jan. 31, 2013, is the equivalent of $4.5 million. 

 

Full story…

The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink

  • The doublethink -- continually reinforced by mass media -- remains within an irony-free zone that would amount to mere self-satire if not so damaging to intellectual and moral coherence.
  • Pressure-Cooker and Cluster Bombs
  • Two Obamas, Two Classes Of Children

Norman Solomon, Common Dreams

If you like reading this article, consider contributing a cafe latte to all-reader supported Evergreene Digest--using the donation button in the above right-hand corner—so we can bring you more just like it.

People react as an explosion goes off near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. Two explosions went off at the Boston Marathon finish line on Monday, sending authorities out on the course to carry off the injured while the stragglers were rerouted away from the smoking site of the blasts. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe, David L Ryan)

Wednesday, April 17, 2013 | After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion -- and reflexive “doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”

In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.”

Much less crude and weighing in at 1,000 pounds, CBU-87/B warheads were in the category of “combined effects munitions” when put to use 14 years ago by a bomber named Uncle Sam. The U.S. media coverage was brief and fleeting.

Full story…

Related:

Pressure-Cooker and Cluster Bombs, RootsAction Team

  • Both rip through human flesh causing maximum pain, injury, and death.
  • Both are wrong!
  • Here Comes AIPAC, Lobbying for War

Two Obamas, Two Classes Of Children, Ralph Nader, Nader.org

  • Unless the American people come to realize that a president must be subject to the rule of law and our Constitution, our statutes and treaties, every succeeding president will push the deficit-financed lawlessness further until the inevitable blowback day of reckoning. That is the fate of all empires.

  • A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill

 

 

Jeff Nygaard | The Threat of Venezuala in the Propaganda System

  • If it's true that the legacy of Hugo Chávez is, overall, a positive one, then an obvious question presents itself: Why did U.S. leaders, and the media who take their cues from those leaders, come to hate him so?
  • Nygaard Notes | Venezuala
  • Urgent Action: Call on the State Department to Respect Venezuela's Democracy and Sovereignty

Jeff Nygaard, Nygaard Notes

If you like reading this article, consider contributing a cafe latte to all-reader supported Evergreene Digest--using the donation button in the above right-hand corner—so we can bring you more just like it.

Greetings,

This may be the longest issue of Nygaard Notes I've ever published. Much to my surprise, I've been obsessed with researching the legacy of Hugo Chávez and the fascinating story of his Venezuela, and I think there are important lessons to be learned here.

Here's the main reason I'm spending so much energy on this subject: I think this story illustrates, better than any story in recent memory, how Propaganda really works. In this case, it's true that Hugo Chávez was hated by many powerful people in the United States, and that this hatred was reflected in virtually every media report ever published in this country since the time that Hugo Chávez came to anyone's attention. But virtually no one, outside of the planning and military circles that I quote extensively this week, has been willing or able to honestly state the real reason for their antipathy toward this man.

 

Full story…click here then scroll to Issue #528

Related:

Nygaard Notes | Venezuala, Jeff Nygaard, Nygaard Notes

  • The reality of Venezuela complex, and if some of the complexity of the issues and struggles of a nation undergoing rapid social change had made it into the corporate media in this country, then there would be no need to spend so much energy giving the "other side" of the story, as I do here. But that's not how the corporate media works, so an issue like this is necessary.
  • Special Report | Hugo Chavez

 

Urgent Action: Call on the State Department to Respect Venezuela's Democracy and Sovereignty, School of the Americas Watch

  • Tell the United States government to respect Venezuela's sovereignty.
  • Nygaard Notes | Venezuala

 

 

The Victim Liked It

  • Climate deniers and the cycle of abuse
  • Doubling Down on Our Faustian Bargain

Derrick Jensen,  Orion Magazine

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

October, 2012, was the 323rd consecutive month for which the global temperature was above average. The odds of this happening randomly are literally astronomical: one in ten to the hundredth power. For comparison, there are ten to the eightieth power atoms in the known universe. So if all the atoms in the universe were white, except one was green, your odds of reaching blindly into a bag of all the atoms in the universe and picking out the green one would be greater than that of having 323 consecutive months of above-average temperatures were global warming not happening.

A sane person might think that in the face of this, and with life on earth at stake, the debate over whether global warming is happening would have ended. A sane person might think that in the face of melting glaciers and melting ice caps, we would be desperately discussing how to stop it. A sane person might think that after Hurricane Sandy ripped into New York City (the center of the universe, according to some), the denial would be over.

Full story…

Related:

Doubling Down on Our Faustian Bargain, James Hansen, Reader Supported News

"The principal implication of our present analysis relates to the Faustian bargain. Increased short-term masking of greenhouse gas warming by fossil fuel particulate and nitrogen pollution is a "doubling down" of the Faustian bargain, an increase in the stakes. The more we allow the Faustian debt to build, the more unmanageable the eventual consequences will be. Yet globally there are plans to build more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants and plans to develop some of the dirtiest oil sources on the planet. These plans should be vigorously resisted. We are already in a deep hole -- it is time to stop digging."

 

 

The Consequences of Unconditional Obedience to Authority ~ Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz

  • This essay will attempt to perhaps shed some light on some of the unlearned lessons of the cruelty of militarism, racism, anti-Semitism, and poverty  by examining some of the realities of what the Nazis called the Final Solution and what the rest of humanity calls the Holocaust.
  • Our problem is civil obedience

Gary G. Kohls, MD, Duty to Warn / Evergreene Digest

If you like reading this article, consider contributing a cafe latte to all reader-supported Evergreene Digest--using the donation button above—so we can bring you more just like it.

April 23, 2013 | This month (April) is Holocaust Remembrance month, an annual month-long event that encourages us humans to again confront the sobering reality of one of history’s most egregious examples of man’s inhumanity to man, known in the Jewish community as the Shoah. There have been several well-done public programs offered in the Duluth area, including presentations at The University of Minnesota-Duluth and documentaries on PBS.

Sadly, however, for anyone who has been paying attention to the epidemic of world-wide violence since the end of World War II, it is obvious that the promise of “Never Again” has been repeatedly violated. The cruelty of militarism, racism, anti-Semitism, and poverty seem to be alive and well. Man’s inhumanity to man is clearly not a thing of the past. In fact it appears that nothing has been really learned since the last German Nazi extermination camp was revealed in 1945 or the  last mass murder of innocent civilians was exposed in Vietnam or the last CIA torturers were exposed just last year.

Full story...

Related:

Our problem is civil obedience, scotpeden, Yahoo!

A collection of quotations

 

J’accuse: The War Criminal Rudolf Hoess Speaks, Gary G. Kohls, Duty to Warn / Evergreene Digest 

  • “Do not think you are better than me because you burn up enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.”
  • To History’s Militarists, Including the CIA’s “Drone Warriors”

 

Pages

Subscribe to Critical Thinking