Operation Northwoods

Yes, the Daily Perv Link (TM) is no more. But the world just won’t stop its nastiness. So what’s a concerned blogger to do, except keep on sharing?

Okay, here’s an interesting story out of the UK. Seems a known sex offender has been arrested and charged after altering pornographic photos of adult women to make them look like children. Yes, the man is sick. Yes, he deserves to be punished for his previous crimes. And yes, authorities should continue to monitor him. But really, when did it become a crime to alter photos, if you have no intention of distributing them? Is it, then, also a crime to draw a naughty picture on the back of your napkin? This, to me, has firmly entered the realm of “thought crime” and is thus completely unacceptable in the realm of law.

As “theallseeingear” in the Rotten.com forums put it: “This man made adults look like children? Good for him! There’s far too many children looking like adults these days!”

So on Conan O’Brien last week, the segment titled, “Pierre Bernard’s Recliner of Rage” focused on the recent cancellation of one my favourite TV shows, Stargate SG-1. After Pierre waxed poetically/moronically about how the removal of SG-1 throws a wrench into his “Friday night fantasy threesome”, Conan quipped, “I’m sure there are one or two other people in the world who know exactly what you’re talking about. ” Sadly, I am one of those people. Here’s the clip:



Wanna hear something scary, but not too surprising? Apparently, back in the 1960s, top US military leaders put together a plan called “Operation Northwoods“, which would see the US military committing terrorist acts against US citizens on American soil, then blaming them on Castro’s Cuba, in an attempt to foment a war between the two countries.

This, of course, would not have been the first time a justification for war had been manufactured. The Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964 was the supposed rationale for American involvement in Vietnam, though history questions its authenticity. And back in 1898, the sinking of the USS Maine was used as the justification for the Spanish-American War (also involving Cuba), though the sinking was likely an accident having nothing to do with the Spanish.

As this article, which offers a good summary of Operation Northwoods, quotes:

“The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants.” -James Bamford

Kinda makes them 9/11 conspiracy theorists just a tad less nutty sounding, no?

Speaking of 9/11, today is of course its 5 year anniversary. Eric Margolis has a nice summary of the state of the world in that event’s wake. But back in Jan 12, 2002, I quoted another writer, who said: “On Sep 11 the world changed… except for Asia, Africa and large parts of Europe.” My point? The degree to which the “world has changed” has very little to do with “the world” and everything to do with the overreaction of the West.

I leave you with a quote from Margolis’s article:

“Afghanistan: An anti-al-Qaida operation has turned into a classic 19th-century colonial war against unruly Pashtun tribesmen, costing $2 billion monthly. Washington failed to impose a viable regime. Afghanistan is producing 80% of the world’s heroin. Taliban and its nationalist allies are resurgent. Americans and Canadians are not being told the truth about the growing mess there. Sending troops to Afghanistan, and cheering the destruction of Lebanon, seriously endangered Canada’s national security, though it may help lumber exports.”

 

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