Bill O’Reilly is a Christmasy Dude

(Source: serina)

My girl Sita sent me this and I lawled. It was originally made by this cool dude named joost5. I resized/edited it to get it onto tumblr to share with you guys, well cuz.. I had to ♥ yw

occupytheplanet:

@NaomiAKlein: After cops raided #occupysf and tossed their stuff in the dump, garbage workers returned it to the protesters, saying “we r 99 % too”

New Mexico Woman gets Forced Cavity Search – Hospital Bills Her $1122

elledark:

America’s 9/11 Legacy - Insanity or Evil ?

The 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers was a tragedy and my heart goes out to the families of the 3000 innocent victims, in the same way as my heart also goes out to the vastly greater number of innocent  people around the world who suffered the consequences of 9/11. Every wasted Iraqui and Afghan life was equally and absolutely as precious as any American life.

The real tragedy of 9/11, however, was that this single, isolated act of terror acted as the catalyst and enabler for a greater reign of terror that has engulfed the world for a decade in which America has been indisputably the major terrorist.

First there was the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a country innocent of any involvement in 9/11 which  represented no threat whatsoever to America. An estimated 600,000 Iraquis (perhaps as many as 1.2 million) were slaughtered. Over 4 million were made refugees. The infrastructure of Iraq was smashed and the  greatest humanitarian crisis the middle-east has experienced during our lives was created. Iraq was always a dirty, vile occupation with American government-approved torture at Abu  Ghraib and other hell-hole detention centers, civilian massacres, and well-documented war crimes.

Then there was Afghanistan. It need never have happened. The  Afghan government twice offered to surrender Bin Laden but Bush ignored them, being hell-bent on the pre-planned invasion.  After 10 years of bloody war all that exists there is a corrupt puppet regime that can’t rule outside of the  capital. Prisons and detention centers mirror the torture and human rights abuses of Iraq. Civilian deaths are estimated at thousands although no-one keeps proper records. Over 250,000 civilians are refugees and living in desperate poverty. Amnesty International has repeatedly criticized America for the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of air strikes and drone attacks killing civilians.

At home the power of the state has been vastly increased through the desperately unpatriotic ‘Patriot Act’,  which trashed constitutional rights and nudged America well down the road to being a police state. Since 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some  aspect of the ‘war on terror’. The amount of money spent on intelligence has risen by 250 percent, to $75  billion (and that’s the public number, which is a gross underestimate). That’s more than the rest of the  world put together.

We know that the American government lied to its people, put their lives at increased risk, started illegal foreign wars for secret reasons, killed more American soldiers in them than the number of people killed on 9/11,  legitimized torture, kidnapping (rendition), and assassination as government policy, imposed a crushing  weight of surveillance and intrusion on the American public. All supposedly flowing from one act of  terrorism on 9/11 carried out by a tiny, ramshackle outfit that killed fewer Americans than are killed on the roads every month or by Americas crazy gun culture or by its defective health care system. It seems to defy any logic or reason.

The key thing to understand here is that none of the American governments actions post 9/11 were a direct or  inevitable consequence of that day. Any rational, realistic response would not have involved the invasion of  Iraq or the invasion of Afghanistan or the repressive Patriot Act, or the extreme stripping away of civil  liberties and imposition of a police/surveillance state. None of this was necessary. It was all done from choice.  Its crucially important that everyone understands that if they want to make sense of the ‘war on terror’

You really don’t need to be a genius to work out that something is badly wrong here. Something stinks. In reality, the risk of being killed  by ‘terrorist’ action is less than being killed by lightning or by being bitten by a dog. It is truly  miniscule. So what is going on ? One explanation is that 9/11 was such a cultural shock that it drove  America, collectively, into an unreasoning insanity from which it has yet to recover. That is scary, a whole  nation gone mad, but the alternative is much worse. If Americas crazy, irrational and apparently pyschopathic  behaviour since 9/11 is not madness then it must be the result of sane, pre-meditated planning. There must be an agenda.

Personally, I find that infinitely more frightening. The notion that the greatest worldwide reign of terror  seen in my lifetime, the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost, the torture, lies and war crimes, the destruction of civil liberties and human-rights abuses, all of which America is responsible for, have all been  planned and executed in pursuit of American foreign policy goals that have never been admitted or explained. That would be evil rather than insanity.

To me the tragedy of September 11, 2001, horrific as it was, pales utterly into insignificance compared to the horror and suffering America has inflicted on the world since then. I hope that when Americans remember the loss of life in the Twin Towers this 9/11 they also remember the vastly greater number of deaths America has  unnecessarily inflicted around the world since that day, every single one as precious as any American life.  And I hope they look honestly at the legacy of 9/11 and ask their leaders ‘why’.

Ellie

Ellie, so many, so flipping many were brainwashed and did, in fact “go insane” but what is worse is there are many of us left screaming “WHY” at our leaders, to which the response is “you’re crazy” and then deafening silence. I agree with 99.9% of everything you just said and at the same time am totally helpless to do anything about it.

The repercussions of this travesty reach far and wide within this country and right into the pockets of our own hungry children. I don’t know what the plan is, the “agenda” as far as “the big picture” goes but I decided several years ago that there was one.

The systematic and cunning robbery of our rights is explained away so successfully, satisfying so many, that I fear there just aren’t enough people who are still awake remaining, in order to form any real resistance.