The Plug Nickel Times is proud to bring you website links to select opinion articles that you may not find through your local media. All links are offsite unless otherwise noted - followed links should open in another browser window. Links can become dated or otherwise fail to function, for this reason we quote the actual headline of an article. This may allow you to find an alternate copy of the article through a news index or search engine. Some sites we link to may require a registration process to view an article - this website may be useful to you in those instances. Comments, corrections and submissions are welcome - an email link is at the bottom of the page.
November 16-30, 2005
November 28, 2005
And who is the master of fox hounds?
And who says the hunt has begun?
And who calls the tune in the courtroom?
And who beats the funeral drum?
Roger Waters - Free Four
What's happened to M3? by David Chapman
"Putting aside demand/supply conditions that favour gold right now the recent sharp jump in gold prices can only be explained in light of a realization that a monetary disaster is in the making. Gold is or has been breaking out in a number of currencies recently as well. Gold is the ultimate currency and when it is going up against all currencies it is telling us that something big is going to happen."
Our Money Madness by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"In our own country, we can’t imagine the legalization of drugs, the elimination of the minimum wage, the abolition of Society Security, or not bombing someone every two years. These things seem crazy to us because we have adapted to statism. So it is with money. We are used to the idea that government should run the monetary system. And that’s why when we say we favor the gold standard, people think we are nuts."
Behind the Phosphorus Clouds are War Crimes Within War Crimes by George Monbiot
"But we shouldn’t forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Fallujah were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city, the Marines stopped men 'of fighting age' from leaving. Many women and children stayed: The Guardian’s correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left. The Marines treated Fallujah as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They leveled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN’s special rapporteur, used 'hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population'."
A Massive Empire of Surveillance
"The sweeping surveillance bill introduced in Parliament November 15, 2005, called The Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act, is a gross violation of Canadian civil liberties, of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and of our Constitutional entitlements. It must not be tolerated. Every politician who supports it is an enemy of Canada, our people, and our freedom. Every Canadian who cares about his/her liberty must take a stand now. It is truly a question of liberty vs. a police state. This Act is an attack on not only freedom of speech, but freedom of thought. It is Orwell's 1984 coming to fruition."
November 20, 2005
Heart of Darkness and the Fog of War by Douglas Herman
"Good intentions gone bad. Or bad intentions gone worse. Torture turned on torturers and tortured alike, a sleepwalking step toward greater totalitarianism, auctioned off to suckers as democracy."
Conventional Terror... by Riverbend
"I imagine what it must have been like for some of them. They were probably huddled in their houses- some of them- tens of thousands of them- couldn't leave the city. They didn't have transport or they simply didn't have a place to go. They sat in their homes, hoping that what people said about Americans was actually true- that in spite of their huge machines and endless weapons, they were human too.
And then the rain of bombs would begin... the wooooosh of the missiles as they fell and the sound of the explosion as it hit its target... and no matter how prepared you think you are for that explosion- it always makes you flinch. I imagine their children covering their ears and some of them crying, trying to cover up the mechanical sounds of war with their more human wails. I imagine that as the tanks got closer, and the planes got lower- the fear increased- and parents searched each other's faces for a solution, for a way out of the horror. Some of them probably decided to wait it out in their homes, and others must have been desperate to get out- fearing the rain of concrete and steel and thinking their chances were better in the open air, than confined in the homes that could at any moment turn into their tombs."
Disproving the State: Four arguments against government by Stefan Molyneux
Dahr Jamail on the occupation of Iraq an interview with Don Nash
Their Terrorism, and Ours: Napalm is back in style by Justin Raimondo
"Winning hearts and minds - there's an echo of the past we hear often - was supposedly the goal of the LBJ-Nixon administrations in raining napalm and other chemical weapons, like Agent Orange, on Vietnam. But we have already lost that battle if we have to resort to burning the 'liberated' people of Iraq alive."
Andrew Jackson's Mob by Charles H. Featherstone
"But if tyranny - real tyranny - comes to this country, it will not be because Marxists staged a revolution, or politically correct women studies professors found time between their semiotics lectures to form a national salvation council, or because Dick Cheney calls out the Marines and the Army in response to an indictment, or Islamic revolutionaries march up Independence Avenue and hang the banner of Islam from the US Capitol, or because Hillary Clinton or John McCain declares themselves 'president-for-life.' It will be because enough people in this society want it, wish for it, work for it and support it. They will will it into being with their hearts and their hands.
As attached as Americans are to individual liberty, freedom of thought and conscience, and the ability to live and believe as one chooses, there is a darkness to our culture, a desire to conform, a fear of the outside world, and a need to punish - often brutally - those who fail to or refuse to conform. This goes much deeper than any of the various isms we ascribe our plight to, and are a product of the cultural stew that is America: the intolerance and arrogance of the Yankees, the cussedness and fearfulness of the Scots-Irish, the brutal egalitarianism of the Scandinavians, the tribalism of the Southern and Eastern European migrants, and who knows what else. All of these have contributed to a culture that, while raising high the ideal of liberty and individualism, is as collectivist and authoritarian as any in the world. And is as ready to listen to dictatorship and embrace tyranny as well."
Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse? by Steven E. Jones
"In writing this paper, I call for a serious investigation of the hypothesis that WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned explosives. I consider the official FEMA, NIST, and 9-11 Commission reports that fires plus damage alone caused complete collapses of all three buildings. And I present evidence for the explosive-demolition hypothesis, which is suggested by the available data, testable and falsifiable, and yet has not been analyzed in any of the reports funded by the US government."
Neofascism Invades U.S. Intelligence by Arthur Silber
The Conservative's Socially Suitable Syllabus by Garry Reed
"It was a natural reaction to produce The Conservative's Socially Suitable Syllabus. Our President was the inspiration for this presentation. Pundits with a keener eye than I have noted the following Bushism: His Presidentness wants creationism taught in schools because he believes in Intelligent Design over Evolution, yet he wants the power to deploy the military if the bird flu virus evolves to the point of infecting humans. People are intelligently designed, it seems, but viruses evolve."
To Protect and Serve by Rodger Jacobs
"'When did you get out?' the cop asked. His cold eyes took in every piece of Trace's wardrobe one at a time: the baseball cap, faded denim shirt with a ballpoint pen and a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket, black jeans with a fashionable tear in the knee, old tennis shoes."
