I blamed Neither side but it is my opinion the Iran/Contra Affair marked a turning point in modern politics. Both parties are of the same mind when it comes to the national security state. I cannot remember who said this but it applies well.

A person puts a big mack and a whopper on a picnic table, the person who put it there knows one is a Big Mack and one a Whopper. A person standing thirty feet away sees two hamburgers.

Mr COnrad though I respect your great years it is you who seem to be lacking in formation on many subjects and simply cut at others and drag topics off topic. Please enlighten me. DID Maggie Thatcher support apartheid south Africa and if not please explain why me and the rest of the thinking public knows better.

Because we support dictators and criminals as long as they are "our dictators and criminals". There is no sense of morality to what the US supports or does not support. We lost the high ground under Reagan.

And apartheid South Africa

Indeed buried at public cost, the public she had such disdain for. Why did the free market not pay for her burial?

Israel's economy is booming as never before, with newly discovered natural gas riches, almost full water independence, and a new Bloomberg study showing the shekel with the strongest rating of 31 major currencies tracked over the last six months. Given all this, several campaigns are asking a vital question more loudly than ever before: Why is a debt-ridden, sequester-suffering, grossly inequitable U.S., bolstered by an ever-greedy defense industry, giving $3 billion a year to a country smaller than West Virginia?

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/04/16-1

BS on that. What was said about her a month ago before her death applies the same today.

She was a horrific woman vile and without remorse for any of the suffering she created. The world would have been a better place had she never existed.

BS on that. What was said about her a month ago before her death applies the same today.

She was a horrific woman vile and without remorse for any of the suffering she created. The world would have been a better had she never existed.

Brilliant and true.

In order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.

It is hard to image a more far-fetched story–except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation.

On 9/11 Doubts Were Immediate
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-911-paul-craig-roberts/

It is hard to image a more far-fetched story–except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-911-paul-craig-roberts/

Who knows anything about the "black ops" world? those that know dont talk and those who talk do not know.

What is pathetic is how the american people were duped and how some still do not see how absurd the events of 911 really were. Those americans who are not so stressed by the economy and actually sit down and think about it know its just absurd. I have heard of teachers telling kids straight up it was an inside job in the classroom, I do not know what they teach in your country Mr Conrad but I know how thinking americans feel.

n order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-911-paul-craig-roberts/

The BBC has come under fire for a decision not to air a song, which has hit top of the charts after the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in its weekly music countdown show.


The song, “Ding Dong! The witch is dead” from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, is now contending to gain the top slot in Britain’s weekly list of the top 40 best-selling singles that are usually played in full on a BBC Radio 1 chart show on Sunday.

However, the BBC has announced it will only air a 5-second clip of the 51 second song in the form of a news broadcast, with the BBC director Tony Hall saying the “tasteless” and inappropriate song may offend Thatcher’s supporters while banning it may lead to public outrage. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/13/297979/bbc-top-40-censors-antithatcher-song/

The BBC has come under fire for a decision not to air a song, which has hit top of the charts after the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in its weekly music countdown show.


The song, “Ding Dong! The witch is dead” from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, is now contending to gain the top slot in Britain’s weekly list of the top 40 best-selling singles that are usually played in full on a BBC Radio 1 chart show on Sunday.

However, the BBC has announced it will only air a 5-second clip of the 51 second song in the form of a news broadcast, with the BBC director Tony Hall saying the “tasteless” and inappropriate song may offend Thatcher’s supporters while banning it may lead to public outrage. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/13/297979/bbc-top-40-censors-antithatcher-song/

Your on the cutting edge JB

U.S.’s Unspeakable Experiments: Hundreds of pregnant women fed nuclear material — Infants drinking radioactive lemonade — “Only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany” -Official


Title: Inhuman Radiation Experiments
Source: Counterpunch
Author: JOHN LaFORGE
Date: April 12-14, 2013

[...] Victims included civilians, prison inmates, federal workers, hospital patients, pregnant women, infants, developmentally disabled children and military personnel — most of them powerless, poor, sick, elderly or terminally ill. Eileen Welsome’s 1999 exposé The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War details “the unspeakable scientific trials that reduced thousands of men, women, and even children to nameless specimens.” [...]

In one Vanderbilt U. study, 829 pregnant women were unknowingly fed radioactive iron. In another, 188 children were given radioactive iron-laced lemonade. From 1963 to 1971, 67 inmates in Oregon and 64 prisoners in Washington had their testicles targeted with X-rays to see what doses made them sterile.

At the Fernald State School, mentally retarded boys were fed radioactive iron and calcium but consent forms sent to parents didn’t mention radiation. Elsewhere psychiatric patients and infants were injected with radioactive iodine.

In a rare public condemnation, Clinton Administration Energy Sec. Hazel O’Leary confessed being aghast at the conduct of the scientists. She told Newsweek in 1994: “I said, ‘Who were these people and why did this happen?’ The only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany.” None of the victims were provided follow-on medical care. [...]
Full report here
http://enenews.com/u-s-s-unspeakable-experiments-hundreds-of-pregnant-women-fed-nuclear-material-infants-drink-radioactive-lemonade-only-thing-i-could-think-of-was-nazi-germany-official

Watch the Vid and decide for yourself if it was cold blooded murder. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLic1Y3re-A

WikiLeaks, a website that publishes anonymously sourced documents, has released video footage of what it says is a US military attack on Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

The Pentagon has verified the footage and WikiLeaks says the images are from a military video from 2007, in which 12 civilians were killed.

Please share this video & support Anti war campaigns in your country
I dont own this video . I have taken it from a documentary. The only purpose of this video is to make people aware of war realities & support anti war movements.

WikiLeaks has released a new trove of documents, more than 1.7 million U.S. State Department cables dating from 1973-1976, which they have dubbed “The Kissinger Cables,” after Henry Kissinger, who in those years served as secretary of state and assistant to the president for national security affairs.Henry Kissinger. (Flickr/Cliff CC-BY)

One cable includes a transcribed conversation where Kissinger displays remarkable candor: “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.”

While the illegal and the unconstitutional may be a laughing matter for Kissinger, who turns 90 next month, it is deadly serious for Pvt. Bradley Manning. After close to three years in prison, at least eight months of which in conditions described by U.N. special rapporteur on torture Juan Ernesto Mendez as “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” Manning recently addressed the court at Fort Meade: “I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information ... this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general, as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.”

These words of Manning’s were released anonymously, in the form of an audio recording made clandestinely, that we broadcast on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. This was Bradley Manning, in his own voice, in his own words, explaining his actions.

He testified about the helicopter gunship video that he released to WikiLeaks, which was later made public under the title “Collateral Murder.” In stark, grainy black-and-white, it shows the gunship kill 12 men in Baghdad on July 12, 2007, with audio of the helicopter crew mocking the victims, celebrating the senseless murder of the people below, two of whom were employees of the Reuters news agency.

Manning said: “The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemingly delightful bloodlust the aerial weapons team. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as ‘dead bastards,’ and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers.”

Reuters had sought the video through a Freedom of Information request, but had been denied. So Manning delivered the video, along with hundreds of thousands of other classified electronic documents, through the anonymous, secure online submission procedure developed by WikiLeaks. Manning made the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, and changed the world.

The WikiLeaks team gathered at a rented house in Reykjavik, Iceland, to prepare the video for public release. Among those working was Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of the Icelandic parliament. She told me: “When I saw the video in February 2010, I was profoundly moved. I was moved to tears, like many people that watch it. But at the same time, I understood its significance and how it might be able to change our world and make it better.”

Jonsdottir co-founded the Icelandic Pirate Party, a genuine political party springing up in many, mostly European countries. A lifelong activist, she calls herself a “pixel pirate.”

The “Collateral Murder” video created a firestorm of press attention when it was first released. One of the soldiers on the ground was Ethan McCord, who rushed to the scene of the slaughter and helped save two children who had been injured in the attack. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He recently penned a letter of support for Bradley Manning, writing: “The video released by WikiLeaks belongs in the public record. Covering up this incident is a matter deserving of criminal inquiry. Whoever revealed it is an American hero in my book.”

In the three years since “Collateral Murder” was released in April 2010, WikiLeaks has come under tremendous pressure. Manning faces life in prison or possibly even the death penalty. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange spent a year and a half under house arrest in Britain, until he sought refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has remained since June 2012, fighting extradition to Sweden. He fears Sweden could then extradite him to the United States, where a secret grand jury may have already issued a sealed indictment against him. Private details from Jonsdottir’s Twitter and four other online accounts have been handed over to U.S. authorities.

WikiLeaks’ latest release, which includes documents already declassified but very difficult to search and obtain, is a testament to the ongoing need for WikiLeaks and similar groups. The revealed documents have sparked controversies around the world, even though they relate to the 1970s. If we had a uniform standard of justice, Nobel laureate Henry Kissinger would be the one on trial, and Bradley Manning would win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2013 Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 1,100 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/11

Around 2,500 people have joined a Facebook campaign to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher via the UK's singles charts. Anti-Thatcher activists hope to mark the occasion by sending Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead to No 1.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/apr/09/anti-thatcher-sentiment-singles-charts