Joel S. Hirschhorn

As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 consider this paradox. In the post 9-11 years the scientific evidence for disbelieving the official government story has mounted incredibly. And the number of highly respected and credentialed professionals challenging the official story has similarly expanded. Yet, to the considerable disappointment of the international 9/11 truth movement, the objective fact is that there are no widespread, loud demands for a new government-backed 9/11 investigation. The 9/11 truth movement is the epitome of a marginalized movement, one that never goes away despite not achieving truly meaningful results, which in this case means replacing official lies with official truth. What has gone wrong?

Akin to the definition of insanity, the hallmark of entrenched but marginalized movements is that they continue to pursue exactly the same strategy and tactics that have failed to produce solid results. They indulge themselves with self-delusion, defensive thinking and acting as if the world at large must surely and finally wake up, see the light and embrace the Truth. Years and, potentially, decades go by, but this quixotic status quo remains embedded, as if set in intellectual concrete. There is no brain tumor to blame. Nor any mass hypnosis of true believers to prove. There is just monumental disinterest among the dominant culture, political establishment and the broad public that is far more engaged with other issues, problems and movements.

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Douglas Drenkow

The well-organized thugs who are disrupting the grassroots democracy at town hall meetings, to discuss the vital issue of health care reform, have the audacity to compare President Obama with Hitler, Stalin, and other dictators: They say that "Obama care" will produce "death warrants" for seniors and millions of others, by the denial of life-saving care or even by euthanasia.

Isn't that more or less what our private insurance health "care" system has been doing for years -- producing worse health outcomes than for people in most other industrialized nations -- and charging us a pretty penny -- up to twice as much per person as in other countries -- for the "privilege"?

Ration that.

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Stephen Lendman

For eight years, the Bush administration relentlessly targeted Muslim, environmental, and animal rights activists as national security or terrorist threats. Shamefully, Obama continues the same practice.

On May 20, the FBI arrested four New York men, claiming they planned to bomb a Bronx synagogue and community center and shoot down Newburgh, New York-based Air National Guard jets with stinger missiles.

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Wanda M. Woodward, MS

(The following is an excerpt from Malignant Masculine Power: The Narcissistic Consciousness of Deceit, Exploitation, Domination, and Destruction that is Leading the World Toward Annihilation, Author: Wanda M. Woodward, MS, Copyright 2007)

Five percent (5%) of the richest Americans own 95% of corporate stocks (Henwood, 1998; 2003). This means that five percent (5%) are reaping excessive and outrageous profits from a forsaking of the American workforce. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Those who are underemployed are being compensated anywhere between 20%-70% less in wages than their prior incomes. Yet, we continue to see very large increases in consumer goods and services from anything as small as vegetables and milk to large ticket items such as cars, homes, and college education expenses. What has occurred over the past three decades in the United States? More skilled jobs that demand higher levels of education and more technical skills have been shipped overseas creating what has been called “the brain drain.” American workers with years of higher level education, greater skills, and more experience are being replaced by either automation or by low income and unemployed foreigners who are glad to work for 1/10 or 1/20 of the pay that an American demands.

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by NanceGreggs

This little diatribe may offend some. And if it does, I really don’t give a flyin’ fuck.

If you’re already offended by the foregoing, you may not want to read any further. And that’s fine with me.

The point is simple: there is the truth, and there are lies. There is information, and there is deliberate misinformation. There are facts, and there are distortions of reality.

And if you don’t know the difference between them, that’s a shame. But that doesn’t mean that the sane, intelligent, fact-seekers among us are responsible for your idiocy – its existence, its perpetration, its promotion, or its consequences.

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Mickey Z.

"Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts." - William S. Burroughs, Thanksgiving Prayer

Once, there were many billions of passenger pigeons in America. Then the "settlers" arrived. As one of those settlers wrote in the 1600's: "There are wild pigeons in winter beyond number or imagination, myself have seen three or four hours together flocks in the air, so thick that even have they shadowed the sky from us."

"By anyone’s estimation, it was the most abundant bird on Earth," writes Alan Wiesman in his book, The World Without Us. "Its flocks, 300 miles long and numbering in the billions, spanned horizons fore and aft, actually darkening the sky." As late as April 1873, residents of Saginaw, Michigan witnessed "a continuous stream of passenger pigeons overhead between 7.30 in the morning and 4 o'clock in the afternoon."

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Jeff Huber

URUKNET: U.S. Army Col. Timothy R. Reese says it’s time for the U.S. to "declare victory" in Iraq and "go home." It was time to declare victory and go home in January 2007, when the Bush administration decided to ignore the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and charged off on its cockamamie "surge" strategy.

The original stated objective of the surge was political reconciliation in Iraq. By September 2007, when it was clear that the political objective was not in sight, Gen. David Petraeus pulled a bait-and-switch and announced that the military objectives of the surge were being met. Petraeus hagiographer Thomas E. Ricks slipped Freudian in February 2009 when he confessed that Petraeus’s goal was never to end the Iraq conflict but to trick Congress and the American public into extending it indefinitely by achieving short-term results though bribing Iraq’s militias.

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Sara Robinson

There are dangerous currents running through America's politics and the way we confront them is crucial.

All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?

And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."

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Paul B. Farrell

Warning: Behavioral economics means one thing to Wall Street and Washington and something quite different to Main Street. It depends on whether you're the nudger or nudgee, the manipulator or the manipulated, the guys making lots of money or the folks being scammed.

Average folks erroneously believe behavioral economics helps them. But behavioral nudgers just want to help themselves.

And both political parties are guilty. Behavioral economics is all the rage since the new president hired some academic behaviorists. That also helped the GOP, made average folks forget the former president had his nudgers, too, like former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Moreover, his party recently hired 350 lobbyists, many former Senators and Congressmen, to kill the new guy's health-care reform.

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Jeff Archer

I have lived in three countries and have spoken to people from many nationalities. All consider human life to be valuable and all are protective of their own countrypeople. However, I have yet to meet someone of non-U.S. origin who holds the opinion that one life is more important that those of millions of people who do not share his/her nationality. Welcome to the U.S., a country that not only considers the life of one U.S. citizen to be superior to multitudes of lives of foreign nationals, but threatens nations who assist the U.S. in returning U.S. nationals to their homes, even though they have been held under criminal charges.

A couple of days ago, former President Bill Clinton became a national hero once again (he had previously achieved this status with talk show comedians during the Monica Lewinsky affair). He went to North Korea and gained the release of two U.S. journalists who had been tried and convicted for crimes against the nation of North Korea. There are those who maintain the two women were innocent, while others point to activities that show their guilt. One thing is sure: North Korea acted in a benevolent manner in releasing the two reporters.

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