Al Gore endorses Barack Obama

New Al Gore? Nope, same ole shit

Al Gore Illogically Blasts the 9/11 Truth Movement

Richard L. Franklin

I was finally stirred to briefly come out of retirement after listening to a one hour interview with Al Gore discussing his latest book, 'The Assault on Reason'. As a one who has dedicated himself to the encouragement and preservation of clear thinking, arguably the greatest gift entrusted to us by the Enlightenment, I was naturally curious about the apparent subject of his book. I've certainly had never thought of Gore as a rationalist, although he certainly can be quite rational about climate change. I've always viewed him as an aristocratic member of the Washington establishment. His deep interest in climate change was actually anomalous for one of his background and class ethos, but that hardly detracts from the great value of his missionary work in that area. Nonetheless, a leopard does not normally change his spots overnight. If it is a politician who is claiming to work toward X, his or her promise usually lacks credibility. True pols seldom fully change their spots.

I want to focus on one brief exchange in the Gore interview because it says a lot. The interviewer focused on Gore's claim that the invasion of Iraq was the 'single greatest mistake in the history of the United States'. With some prodding, Gore expanded. By 'mistake' he meant the acceptance of a panoply of lies by Bush and his associates that deceived the people into believing Saddam had played a role in 9/11. My ears perked up. Could it be possible Gore was inching toward a hint that something hugely nefarious had taken place behind the scenes? His claim that the American people had committed a monstrous 'mistake' in supporting the war and in allowing themselves to be foolishly deceived by Bush and his accomplices just might open the door for a rational discussion of 9/11. False flag ops are old hat in American history, and Gore knows it. I was on pins and needles.

The interviewer smiled. Did he also hope that Gore might be headed down the right path? The interviewer wasted no time in encouraging such a journey. He noted that grand deceptions were hardly new in American history when it came to preparing the people for the launching of a war. The Spanish-American war was triggered by a false flag operation, namely the blowing up of the Maine. Gore quickly agreed. The interviewer smiled. He then added that the Vietnam War was launched with the Tonkin Bay false flag op. Gore once again was quick to agree. The interviewer's eyes gleamed. They were truly getting somewhere.

At this point in the interview it's possible the interviewer was about to mention the sinking of the Lusitania, which was cleverly triggered by Wilson and the Brits so as to drag the US into WWI. He also may have wanted to add Pearl Harbor, a plot which followed the modus operandi of Wilson in managing to finagle an attack on US ships. In both cases, Germany and then Japan were forced to attack as a matter of national survival. Germany faced losing the war in Europe if the US continued with its generous shipments of war supplies, and the Empire of Japan would surely come to a crashing end if their oil supply lines were cut off as threatened by FDR. In both cases, the American people were led to believe the US had been attacked by evil enemies for evil purposes. 'Evil' is so damned handy as a cause for such events. As always, the existence of 'evil' enemies who had committed 'evil' deeds became key factors in US propaganda that cloaked the true complex mechanisms behind those two shocking events.

At this point in the course of the conversation, a light bulb seemed to go off in Gore's head. He sat up straight with a wary look. I suspect that at this moment he realized he was in danger of being sucked into the question of whether or not 9/11 had been yet another false flag operation in American history.

He quickly said, 'I think I see where you might be heading.' Not wishing to even say the words 'nine eleven' or the words 'false flag', he deftly trashed the ongoing 9/11 truth movement with these few words: 'All that other stuff is outside the range of possibility'.

Gore has named his book 'The Assault on Reason', and yet here he is claiming that the 9/11 truth movement is making claims 'outside the range of possibility'. With that one statement he has stunningly sabotaged his supposed defense of reason in his new book.

Phrases such as 'outside the range of possibility' often come close to being just plain nuts. Here's why. The one place where the concept of impossibility is carefully examined is logic. Please forgive me for using a tired old example, but we logically know there are no square circles anywhere among the furniture of this universe or in any other universe. The nice thing is that we can conclude this simply by looking at the claim itself. The mere locution 'square circle' is illogical. What rules here is the fact that if something is not logically true, it cannot be empirically true. When I was a young lad and this was pointed out to me by a teacher, I was absolutely delighted. It meant one could completely forsake the labor of an empirical investigation to determine the truth of certain claims.

This is hardly a stunning new maxim. When Christian missionaries first flooded Africa and then the Pacific islands to convert the natives, the biggest single block they ran into in converting the natives to Christianity was teaching them about the greater glory of the Holy Trinity. Much to the exasperation and anger of the missionaries, the natives kept rejecting the notion of a god who was simultaneously three discrete beings who occasionally melted into one seamless being. More than one native of the Americas were brutally murdered as a result of their 'stubborn' heathen inability to grasp this concept. One can scarcely find a more ironic and sad moment in the history of the Conquista.

I felt sad when Gore's interviewer allowed him to get away with a totally preposterous, ignoble statement. What was actually 'outside the range of possibility' was any sense to what Gore was so arrogantly claiming. One cannot quite so easily squeeze a false flag operation by our government into the same category as square circles. Trying to do so is the mark of a charlatan.

Undaunted, Gore kept harping on how we Americans had let the gang in the White House get away with all sorts of weak and even preposterous claims; yet Gore had just made himself a partner in the White House cabal's biggest fraud of all, not to mention making his own book title a depressing irony.

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Mr. Franklin is the author of "The Mythology of Self-Worth"

Gore back on the attack. Wonder if he feels any special resposibility for the mess we're in by his cowardly capituation in 2000?

A drive for global domination has put us in greater danger

Moral authority, which is our greatest source of strength, has been recklessly put at risk by this wilful president

Al Gore

The pursuit of "dominance" in foreign policy led the Bush administration to ignore the UN, to do serious damage to our most important alliances, to violate international law, and to cultivate the hatred and contempt of many in the rest of the world. The seductive appeal of exercising unconstrained unilateral power led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that brought to life the worst nightmare of the founders. Any policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the US and recruits for al-Qaida, but also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating terrorists who wish to harm and intimidate America. Instead of "dominance", we should be seeking pre-eminence in a world where nations respect us and seek to follow our leadership and adopt our values.

With the blatant failure by the government to respect the rule of law, we face a great challenge in restoring America's moral authority in the world. Our moral authority is our greatest source of strength. It is our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations of this wilful president.

The Bush administration's objective of attempting to establish US domination over any potential adversary was what led to the hubristic, tragic miscalculation of the Iraq war - a painful misadventure marked by one disaster after another, based on one mistaken assumption after another. But the people who paid the price have been the American men and women in uniform trapped over there, and the Iraqis themselves. At the level of our relations with the rest of the world, the administration has willingly traded respect for the US in favour of fear. That was the real meaning of "shock and awe". This administration has coupled its theory of US dominance with a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, regardless of whether the threat to be pre-empted is imminent or not.

The doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that Iraq is not necessarily the last application. In fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements against a succession of sovereign states - Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran - but the implication is that wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to, or participant in, terrorist operations, the doctrine will apply. It also means that the Iraq resolution created the precedent for pre-emptive action anywhere, whenever this or any future president decides that it is time. The risks of this doctrine stretch far beyond the disaster in Iraq. The policy affects the basic relationship between the US and the rest of the world. Article 51 of the UN charter recognises the right of any nation to defend itself, including the right to take pre-emptive action in order to deal with imminent threats.

By now, the administration may have begun to realise that national and international cohesion are indeed strategic assets. But it is a lesson long delayed and clearly not uniformly and consistently accepted by senior members of the cabinet. From the outset, the administration has operated in a manner calculated to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right, at the expense of solidarity among all Americans and between our country and our allies. The gross violations of human rights authorised by Bush at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and dozens of other locations around the world, have seriously damaged US moral authority and delegitimised US efforts to continue promoting human rights.

President Bush offered a brief and halfhearted apology to the Arab world, but he should make amends to the American people for abandoning the Geneva conventions, and to the US forces for sending troops into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly, he owes an explanation to all those men and women throughout our world who have held high the ideal of the US as a shining goal to inspire their own efforts to bring about justice and the rule of law.

Most Americans have tended to give the Bush-Cheney administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its failure to take action in advance of 9/11 to guard against an attack. Hindsight casts a harsh light on mistakes that should have been visible at the time they were made. But now, years later, with the benefit of investigations that have been made public, it is no longer clear that the administration deserves this act of political grace from the American people. It is useful and important to examine the warnings the administration ignored - not to point the finger of blame, but to better determine how our country can avoid such mistakes in the future. When leaders are not held accountable for serious mistakes, they and their successors are more likely to repeat those mistakes.

Part of the explanation for the increased difficulty in gaining cooperation in fighting terrorism is Bush's attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation that disagrees with him. He has exposed Americans abroad and in the US to a greater danger of attack because of his arrogance and wilfulness, in particular his insistence upon stirring up a hornet's nest in Iraq. Compounding the problem, he has regularly insulted the religion, the culture and the tradition of people in countries throughout the Muslim world.

The unpleasant truth is that Bush's failed policies in both Iraq and Afghanistan have made the world a far more dangerous place. Our friends in the Middle East, including most prominently Israel, have been placed in greater danger because of the policy blunders and sheer incompetence with which the civilian Pentagon officials have conducted this war.

We as Americans should have "known then what we know now"- not only about the invasion of Iraq but also about the climate crisis; what would happen if the levees failed to protect New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina; and about many other fateful choices that have been made on the basis of flawed, and even outright false, information. We could and should have known, because the information was readily available. We should have known years ago about the potential for a global HIV/Aids pandemic. But the larger explanation for this crisis in American decision-making is that reason itself is playing a diminished, less respected, role in our national conversation.

· Al Gore is a former US vice-president; this is an edited extract from his new book, The Assault on Reason, published this week by Bloomsbury

Hat tip to Al Gore for standing up against US crony,human rights abuser, cocaine smuggler and

Uribe defends human rights record

By Will Grant

Alvaro Uribe has rejected accusations against him

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe has defended his human rights record during a visit to the US city of Miami.

His comments came after Al Gore withdrew from a conference on climate change in Latin America, to avoid a joint appearance with Mr Uribe.

Mr Gore said he would not attend because of recent allegations linking Mr Uribe, and government members, to right-wing paramilitary groups.

The scandal in Colombia has become increasingly embarrassing for Mr Uribe.

The former US vice-president and environmental activist said he did not want to share a table with Mr Uribe because of what he called deeply troubling claims.

The record in government, the record in my political life is my only defence [with which] I can oppose this criticism Alvaro Uribe

The accusations against Mr Uribe include one by a key opposition senator that paramilitary groups used farms belonging to Mr Uribe's family to carry out meetings and killings in the 1990s.

Mr Uribe rejected that claim in a televised address earlier this week.

And, when he reached the forum in Miami, he said it was unfortunate that Mr Gore was not prepared to listen to Colombia's plans on environmental protection.

"My strong determination many times is the cause of belligerent criticism against my government," he said.

"But the record in government, the record in my political life is my only defence [with which] I can oppose this criticism."

The US state department has already made it clear that Al Gore in no way reflects the feelings of the current administration towards Mr Uribe or his government.

But the incident comes after another influential member of Democratic Party in the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy, ordered a temporary freeze on tens of millions of dollars of military aid to Colombia in the wake of similar allegations against the head of the Colombian military, Mario Montoya.

Original article posted here.