CitizensTruth

The Exception to the Rulers Audiobook is essential listening for anyone concerned with what is going on in the world today. This box set of 10 CD’s is a complete recording of Amy Goodman reading the book she authored with her brother David Goodman. But the audio version has something not in the print editions - numerous audio segments from the daily news broadcast DemocracyNOW. These segments bring the already gripping chapters to life, putting the listener on the scene as the stories unfold.

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BuzzFlash Review:
The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11
What the 9/11 Commission Report Failed to Tell Us
by James Ridgeway

In essence, the 9/11 Commission was a set-up job to protect those responsible for not making a serious effort to stop 9/11 from happening; it was not a Commission that was empowered to go wherever the truth took it. In fact, it set up as one of its primary goals not to “point fingers at” anyone for the failures that led to 9/11 or hold anyone responsible. The Commission was very clear about this: “Our aim has not been to assign individual blame.”

So, the Bush Administration has used the 9/11 Commission as a convenient tool to absolve the White House of any malfeasance in letting 9/11 happen. But, as BuzzFlash has noted ad nauseam, Bush and Rice were notified in August of 2001 of imminent likely Al Qaeda hijackings in the United States. And they did nothing — we repeat, once again — nothing to prevent such hijackings from occurring. If they had acted (instead of Bush going off on a month-long vacation), then 9/11 might have indeed been prevented from occurring.

BuzzFlash has excerpts from Ultimate Sacrifice by Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron.

Seventeen years ago, Thom Hartmann and I [Lamar Waldron] began writing a book about the battles of President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, against the Mafia and Fidel Castro. Drawing on new information and exclusive interviews with those who worked with the Kennedys, in addition to thousands of recently declassified files, we discovered that John and Robert Kennedy had devised and were executing a secret plan to overthrow Fidel Castro on December 1, 1963.

Parallels between 21st century USA and the Roman empire go beyond the superficial. They can help us understand mechanisms at work today.

Paul and Anne Ehrlich point out in One With Nineveh (p. 241), that after the empire began to decline, political leaders went from true military leadership exemplified by Julius Caesar to a sham campaign by Claudius

The Romans increasingly depended on barbarian mercenaries to man their legions as the empire declined. The personal involvement of the Roman elite in actual combat likewise declined — Caesar led his troops in battle; Nero did not. Claudius had a faux campaign in Britain, complete with an elephant. He paraded up and down the beach collecting seashells and the like, which he took back home as booty. It was the first-century equivalent of prancing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a military costume you haven’t earned.