Invite your listeners to read Alexander Cockburn’s column from December 31, 2007 The Nation “Congress to CIA Torturers: ‘If Only you’d Told Us’”

@ http://www.thenation.com/docprem.mhtml?i=20071231&s=cockburn

In it he writes: “ …as Jeffery St. Clair and I describe in detail in Whiteout, our book on the CIA (available at www.counterpunch.org), the documented record of its savageries in this area goes back decades, starting with the recruitment of Nazi torture technicians in Operation Paperclip.” … “Down the years, the CIA has methodically destroyed records on matters pertaining to torture, assassination and mind control…”

The mainstream media’s focus on water boarding is “the practice of drawing a red herring across a trail to confuse hunting dogs.”

Consider thus:

Americans, people not considered excessively bright on a worldly scale, are easily mis-lead with symbolism. Take a quick analogy of the quality of one’s courage with the size of one’s balls. Yet the truth is that courage is a heart word—as the root is from the French root ‘cour-‘ meaning heart. More importantly the heart is informed from the entirety of one’s being including ones awareness and emotion—not should the size of one’s testicles. If your gonads were strictly the sole or major source of courage then women would never be seen to possess it, and people who were viewed as underdogs would never fight back—nevertheless the psychological warfare against the male mind has dominated this stupid culture for too long.

This American hang-up with penis size has too many overtones. Every time someone has a moment of being stubborn, persistent, aggressive, etc., then the first form of attack is to question a man’s penis. It has of late even surpassed the questioning of one’s anality when one’s gets huffy, or wanting to complain, or see things be cleaner in the presence of a slob, or in the case of Aguirre being a prosecutor, wanting to play for a plaintiff. The point is that there is always something intrinsically wrong with the guy making a complaint or trying to cause change—whereas there was never anything wrong with the status quo or the person offering rationalizations.

Irrespective of the motives about why Aguirre’s staff may or may not be targeting smoke shops, it is simply too cheap an attack to question his masculinity because he may not be six foot three inches.

But this American hang-up about the penis is clearly out of proportion. Ask your self the following: How many times have you heard of a woman bragging about the size of genitalia? How many times have you a guy say: “I’m not going to date that women because her genitalia is too this or too that”? Probably never. Then why is there this constant plebian mentality that a man’s penis is the central fact of his personality and motives—that somehow it must explain away everything one does not immediately understand?

The most central fact about the penis other than it operates as a hose for fluids and has capacity to ejaculate or to “throw” substance beyond its physical terminal is that the penis is heavily inundates with nerves—meaning its sensitivity. How many “macho” men out there are bragging about the nervous investment of sensitivity in their penis? Why? Because the penis might then seem feminine? Oh my! No wonder there is such emphasis on one’s penis size and controlled muscularity to what is essentially a balloon.

As the saying goes, those who think they know it all ought chill out for a while why those of us that do can have our say.

Do you suppose that if the House doesn’t send a retroactive immunity bill covering the telecoms’ dirty hands for spying on U.S. citizens that, as W predicts, there will be another “terrist” attack? W seems to be implying this. Say, maybe right before the next “selection”? Perhaps in another “blue” state? So that maybe “selections would be too dangerous”? (not that we have much choice, but, still….)

On another, but related, topic, anyone else noticing all the tic-tac-toe chemtrails the last week? I guess we’re not eating the requisite amount of fast food poison and need to breathe it. We’re so doomed and deserve it, frankly: greediest and most aggressive, warmongering nation in recent history, “spreading ‘Democracy’” (at the end of a gun) to countries that a) will never be Democratic and b) have, uh, OIL for the taking, all coming from c) a country that lost all so-called Democracy when the goddamned Supremes annointed Jr.

Stock up on water my friends!!!! And tear up the lawns! Plant food–you can get food by just spitting out fruit and vegetable seeds. I don’t want y’all coming and invading me. Well, I guess “fishfinger” has fertile digits–maybe we can take turns planting them? Hey, even bullshit fertilizes, eventually.

Published on Saturday, February 16, 2008.

Source: AFP

US President George W. Bush held talks here Friday with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on what was expected to touch on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and Lebanon, officials said.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Bush planned to meet the Saudi foreign minister in the Oval Office in the morning, with another official confirming that the meeting actually took place.

Bush “looks forward to discussing with him a wide range of regional issues including the president’s recent trip to the Middle East, to the region, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the situation in Lebanon,” Stanzel said.

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council later confirmed that the meeting between the president and Prince Saud took place but declined to provide any details about what was discussed.

The Saudi embassy in Washington also declined to comment.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=5613

Judge: Saudi threats apparently ‘rolled over’ British government RAW STORY
Published: Friday February 15, 2008

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The British government appeared to have “rolled over” in response to pressure from Saudi Arabia to drop an investigation into alleged bribery in an arms deal with BAE Systems PLC, a High Court judge said Thursday.

Lord Justice Alan Moses made the comments while hearing a challenge brought by two lobby groups to the legality of a Serious Fraud Office decision to stop the investigation in December 2006.

“Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday,” David Leigh and Rob Evans report for The Guardian. “Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced ‘another 7/7′ and the loss of ‘British lives on British streets’ if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.”

The Campaign Against Arms Trade and anti-corruption group Corner House argue the decision to halt the probe was illegal because it was based on tainted advice from then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government. The activists also argue it contravened the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s anti-bribery convention, disregarded Saudi Arabia’s obligations under international law and was against British law. Blair took responsibility for the decision to halt the probe, saying the investigation threatened national security interests.

That argument was reiterated on Thursday by the fraud office’s lawyer, Philip Sales, who said the decision was taken by the agency’s director because there was a serious and imminent threat to national security. Sales said Saudi Arabia threatened to withdraw cooperation on issues crucial to British public safety, including those «in light of the Islamist terrorist threat.

However, the two groups argue the government also put pressure on the fraud office to drop the investigation because BAE faced the loss of a lucrative jet fighter contract.

The activists’ lawyer, Dinah Rose, said the government had not disputed allegations that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former ambassador to the United States and now head of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council, told Blair during a meeting in July 2006 to stop the inquiry or BAE would lose a 10 billion pound (US$19.6 billion) contract to buy Typhoon Eurofighter jets.

Rose said Blair then placed “irresistible pressure” on the fraud office’s director, Robert Wardle, to stop the investigation. “We submit that the prime minister, with the greatest respect, crossed the line,” she said.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Judge_British_government_appeared_to_have_0215.html