Tag Archives: USG

The USG trumps up threat then tells us how they’re protecting us from it.

Posted on 2010/12/07 03:31 pm by thepete

This is something I’ve noticed the USG and the FBI doing for a while.  See if you can notice what’s wrong with the following cutting from a November 28, 2010 article at LATimes.com reporting on a 19 year-old naturalized American (originally from Somalia) who wanted to blow up a bunch of Americans (I’ll add italics to make it obvious):

“The threat was very real,” said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. “Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale.”

According to the FBI, they arrested Mohamud after he dialed a cellphone that he thought would detonate a huge bomb — six 55-gallon drums, diesel fuel and a large box of screws — in a large white van parked near the tree lighting.

But the bomb was a fake built by the FBI, and the packed crowds who enjoyed a youth choir and a symphony orchestra at Friday’s holiday celebration at Pioneer Courthouse Square were never in danger, authorities said.

Let me break this down for you:

The FBI finds this teenager who’s pissed at the USG, builds a pretend bomb for him, hands him the detonator and then arrests him when he activates it.

Where’s the crime there, exactly?

I mean, sure, he’s “wrongthinking” like in the Orwell novel, 1984, but wrongthinking isn’t illegal (yet). 

On top of that, this guy had no obvious means to make a bomb to kill anyone on his own.  He’s a kid.  I remember how moody and obnoxious I was when I was 19! (If you think I’m bad now!) 

Why is it that we only hear about these toothless tigers and not actual threats being foiled by the FBI?  Hell, the Times Square Bomber from earlier this year failed in his attempt to blow up a bomb only because he was a complete and utter fucktard.  The FBI didn’t catch him beforehand and nearly lost him as he tried to flee the country. 

Seems the FBI can only catch a terrorist if they arm him and supply him first. It’s like a literal version of the “Straw Man Argument” where you, effectively, make a false statement and then prove it wrong to show how cool you are.  This time, they prop up this kid as a terrorist and then brag about it when they take him down.

There’s something deeply wrong about this.

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Modern Secret-Keeping, USG-Style!

Posted on 2010/09/10 04:30 pm by thepete

housingworksbookstore:

“Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.”

—

Pentagon Plan – Buying Books to Keep Secrets – NYTimes.com

Totally not kidding — we were wondering why 4 people tried to buy this book for $250 last night.

Whoa. Is there an e-book version of this thing?

Because that would be perfect a horrible horrible thing for the USG. ;)

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More fodder for the argument that Republicans are total deceitful hypocrites who will wrap themselves in the flag at one moment and tear it to pieces the next.  Every Republican should be ashamed for not passing this bill which would (as I understand it) cover medical care for 911 emergency responders—as in, the people who were responding to the attacks on September 11, 2001.From officialssay:Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), yelling at House Republicans who opposed a bill that would provide $7.4 billion in health care and compensation to 9/11 rescue workers. The bill failed.Huh, so my congressman is being investigated for ethics violations, meanwhile, my friends out in Brooklyn get this guy.  I may have picked the wrong neighborhood to move to! :)Still, nice to see a dude actually doing his job!Seriously, Republicans—are you guys really so scummy??  What else did the bill do that allowed you to rationalize not paying for health care for 911 responders??  Free condoms for teens? Free abortions for all?  What??This guy needs to get knighted or sainted or something…

Posted on 2010/07/30 05:10 pm by thepete

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Are the Lies the Lying Government Officials tell actually lies? Or…?

Posted on 2010/07/26 03:52 pm by thepete

newsweek:

“What does it mean to tell the truth about a war? Is it a lie, technically speaking, for the Administration to say that it has faith in Hamid Karzai’s government and regards him as a legitimate leader—or is it just absurd? Is it a lie to say that we have a plan for Afghanistan that makes any sense at all? If you put it that way, each of the WikiLeaks documents—from an account of an armed showdown between the Afghan police and the Afghan Army, to a few lines about a local interdiction official taking seventy-five-dollar bribes, to a sad exchange about an aid scam involving orphans—is a pixel in a picture that does, indeed, contradict official accounts of the war, and rather drastically so.”

—

The New Yorker: Wikileaks and the War

  (via southpol)

So, they are lying?

Like it even matters.

Who freaked out in 2000 when it was obvious to anyone paying attention that there was no clear winner in the election?  Or that it’s Congress’ job to settle ties, not the Supreme Court’s?

What public rose up to demand impeachment when it became obvious the Bush Administration’s USG had violated international law several times over, least of all by invading countries unprovoked?

Every single one of us wander the streets of our cities and towns knowing full well that the cash in our pockets isn’t worth anything tangible, yet we just keep pretending that’s not true.

We, The People, are used to dealing with lies—all the time.  Whether it’s God, Santa, our money, our government or the fact that Diet Coke is really no better for you than regular Coke.  We lie to each other and ourselves all the time and this shock that the USG is lying to us about war is, you guessed it: a lie.  This one, like many of them is to make us feel better.

No one in the USG should worry.  Both endless wars can continue. We have no ability to stop them from doing so and even if we did we wouldn’t use that ability.

And that is no lie.

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Posted on 2010/07/19 12:25 pm by thepete



friendlyatheist:

There is one moment, in a film with many such moments, that just punches you in the gut. It was at the public memorial service held for Pat Tillman in early May 2004, a couple weeks after his death in Afghanistan. Government efforts to turn Tillman into a patriotic superhero were at full tilt, and nothing was yet known to counter the official story that Tillman had been cut down in a terrorist ambush even as he saved the lives of his comrades. But this moment—at a memorial attended by pious dignitaries from across the country, all doing their part to assist in the rampant mythologizing of Tillman—should have come as a warning to the government that the Tillman family was not to be trifled with.

After the solemn speakers had their say about who Pat Tillman was in life as well as in death, Tillman’s youngest brother, Richard, skipped the steps and climbed up on the dais, dressed not for a funeral but in T-shirt and jeans, holding a pint of Guinness. He thanked everybody for coming and then, raising the glass, said, “Pat isn’t with God. He’s fucking dead. He wasn’t religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he’s fucking dead.”

Richard Tillman’s grief and rage were so big that he could barely contain them, and that was before he knew that in the government cover story attending his brother’s death, there wasn’t a shred of truth. In spite of the best efforts of the White House and the Pentagon, the world would come to know he had been killed in an act of fratricide that was then covered up in favor of a horrible series of official lies.

-Esquire Magazine 8/10

Wow—I had heard about the whole cover up of the true cause of Tillman’s death, but never the part about his brother in his T-shirt saying all that “Pat isn’t in heaven… he’s fucking dead.” stuff.  That’s pretty amazing.  In the face of the government who was there, he was still brave enough to say and act the way he wanted.  Pat died tragic hero, but his brother is kind of a living hero. 

Richard Tillman rocks.

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