There are several very interesting articles on salon.com.
One of them describes in detail how Sarah Palin came to power through right wing extremists and how she still lends them an open ear even today.
Her bullying, gotcha and personal vendetta style were apparent even back in Wasilla - so no surprise about Troopergate. Check for yourselves:
The essence of it is that while McCain was in captivity in Vietnam he was experimented on and he was brainwashed!
I do mean this in the real sense of the word, see the article below, and it is just really tough. I don't want to discredit him, now that Barack is about to win the election my anger towards him has subsided. I feel very sorry for what happened to John and essentially I just want to understand why he acts more than strange sometimes. No I start to understand and I can pray from my heart for him.
Excerpts of article:
At that time, the Soviets were perfecting techniques designed "to put a man's mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened.".........Psychiatric Journals are flush with reports concluding that former POWs may remain entangled in "harsh psychological battles" with themselves for decades after returning home including difficulty in controlling intense emotions such as anger and stress.....
....Psychologist have identified behavior in which a former prisoner emotionally bonds with an abuser as the Stockholm Syndrome.
Full article below, found on vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com
John McCain:The Manchurian Candidate connection:
McCain was subjected to 5 ½ years of Soviet driven "brain perversion techniques."Is he fit to be President and Commander in Chief of the military?
U.S. Veteran DispatchBy Ted SampleyMarch, 2008For years, the mainstream news media has refused to stop idolizing the so-called straight talking maverick John McCain long enough to question the mental health consequences of the years he spent as a "special" prisoner of the communists in North Vietnam.McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for President, who could one day have his finger on the "red button," claims the communists subjected him to 5 ½ years of nonstop indoctrination sessions so intense that he attempted suicide.Unfortunately for McCain, after his bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire near Hanoi on October 26, 1967, he parachuted into the hands of an evil communist enemy who 7 years earlier had adopted Soviet methods of prisoner interrogation.At that time, the Soviets were perfecting techniques designed "to put a man's mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened."Psychiatric Journals are flush with reports concluding that former POWs may remain entangled in "harsh psychological battles" with themselves for decades after returning home including difficulty in controlling intense emotions such as anger and stress.In political circles, McCain, sometimes referred to as "insane McCain," is well known for having a "volcanic" temper which his colleagues say often erupts into vulgar language and personal insults.Democrat Paul Johnson, the former mayor of Phoenix, experienced McCain's in your face temperament up close. "His volatility borders in the area of being unstable," Johnson said. "Before I let this guy put his finger on the button, I would have to give considerable pause." The Journal of America Medicine reported in an 1996 article that being a former POW is associated with "increased cumulative incidence rates of chronic disorders of the peripheral nervous system, joints, and back and an increased hazard rate of peptic ulcer."The 71 year-old McCain most certainly suffers pain and the weakening effects of chronic arthritis. He broke both arms when he was forced to eject after his bomber was hit. He says the Vietnamese periodically re-fractured his bones during years of interrogation and torture which rendered him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.McCain has never been publicly vetted about what and how much medications he is taking. Aside from his anger and arthritic pain issues, McCain has had reoccurring bouts of malignant melanoma, a deadly form of cancer that can spread quickly throughout the body.These facts alone beg the question on how a President McCain, in the absence of his campaign staff handlers, would deal with a snap decision that had to be made "if the White House phone rang at 3 a.m."McCain's POW experience is unique. His communist captors considered him the "crown prince" of U.S. POWs because his father, Adm. John McCain, was commander of all U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam. Because the communists believed he was from a "royal family" and would when finally released return to the United States to an important military or government job, they held him for two years in "solitary confinement."In February, Reuters news reported that McCain's former captors are expressing delight in the news of his nomination as Republican party Presidential candidate. "In the past Senator McCain has conducted activities that had a positive impact in bringing the two nations [Vietnam/United States] closer. That is a point that Vietnamese people who follow the current affairs do recognize," said retired North Vietnamese Colonel Nguyen Van Phuong, representing retired and present members of the Vietnamese communist military.Since McCain was first elected to Congress 1982 (and later to the Senate), he and his staff have expended tens of thousands of hours pushing U.S. legislation favoring communist Vietnam. In 1995, McCain stood with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. to give President Bill Clinton valuable political cover he needed to disregard the issue of missing U.S. POWs in Vietnam and remove the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.No U.S. POW had any communication with McCain or knew where he was being held during at least 8 to 12 months of McCain's first two years of captivity. He has either been unable or unwilling to account for the months he was missing from the POW system.Within days of McCain's shoot down and after being told the identity of his famous father, the Vietnamese rushed him to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable to treat U.S. POWs. McCain was kept at Gai Lam for six weeks under the control of Soviet medical specialist anxious to test the use of their "mind and behavior modification" drugs on such an important prisoner. McCain said the communists were so effective with their interrogation techniques that he broke on the fourth day after being captured and began cooperating. "Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I [McCain] did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant." Pages 193-194, Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain.U.S. intelligence agents concluded in the early 1950s that Soviet intelligence (KGB) agents were experimenting on their prisoners with "mind control" techniques and behavior modification drugsAllen W. Dulles, the newly confirmed CIA director acknowledged the dilemma in April 1953, when he told a gathering of Princeton alumni that "a sinister battle for men's minds" was underway. The Soviets, Dulles explained "have developed brain perversion techniques, some of which are so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that we have recoiled from facing up to them."During the Cold War, the Soviets and the CIA began competing with secret experiments on prisoners aimed at honing the use of "chemical and biological materials capable of producing human behavioral and physiological changes." The experiments included isolation, sleep deprivation, humiliation, alternating with long hours of interrogation.Since the Russians and Chinese (and our own CIA) have proven they can in a relative short time alter the basic emotional and behavior patterns of captives, it is fair to assume that McCain's unpredictable and often volatile temperament is directly related to his treatment as a 5 ½-year prisoner of the communists.The American public was first exposed to Soviet "brain perversion techniques" during Korean War when the communists launched a propaganda offensive featuring filmed and recorded testimony of captured U.S. servicemen confessing to war crimes including the use of germ warfare.By the end of the Korean War, "70 percent of the 7,190 U.S. prisoners held in China had either made confessions or signed petitions calling for an end to the American war effort in Asia. Fifteen percent collaborated fully with the Chinese, and only 5 percent steadfastly resisted."Military officials were especially alarmed when a significant number of the U.S. prisoners refused to recant their confessions as soon as they returned to the United States.Beginning in 1960, KGB and Chinese agents directed the Vietnamese in establishing Vietnam's original interrogation guidelines for U.S. prisoners. They suggested interrogation techniques and issued specific intelligence requirements to be extracted during prisoner interrogations.Official American position on POW confessions was that they were false and forced while privately expressing grave concern that the collaborations proved the communists had developed techniques that could "put a man's mind into a fog."Psychologist have identified behavior in which a former prisoner emotionally bonds with an abuser as the Stockholm Syndrome. McCain was a strong advocate for prosecuting Bosnian, Yugoslavian and Iraqi war criminals and is adamantly opposed to any form of normalized relation with Cuba until it allows "free elections, human right organizations and a free and independent media."Yet, McCain has resisted any kind of war crimes investigation of his former Vietnamese torturers. Prosecution and subsequent trials could bring to justice the Vietnamese torturers known by the American POWs as the Bug, Slopehead, the Prick, the Soft Soap Fairy, Rabbit, the Cat, Zorba and many others who were responsible for the murder in North Vietnam of at least 55 U.S. POWs and the brutal torture of hundreds of others.In November 1991, Tracy Usry, chief investigator of the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, that the Soviets interrogated U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. McCain became outraged, interrupting Usry several times, arguing that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets."Former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin testified during the hearings that the KGB did interrogate U.S. POWs in Vietnam. Kalugin stated that one of the POWs worked on by the KGB was a "high-ranking naval officer," who, according to Kalugin, agreed to work with the Soviets upon his repatriation to the United States and has frequently appeared on U.S. television.Col. Bui Tin, a former Senior Colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, testified on the same day, but after Usry, that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war he had the authority to "read all documents and secret telegrams from the politburo" pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said that not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but that they treated the Americans very badly.McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he moved to the witness table and physically embraced Col. Tin as if he was a long, lost brother.In 1949 Dr. Andrew Salter authored Conditioned Reflex Therapy, a pioneering work in the field of psychoanalysis. Ten years later, as Richard Condon was writing The Manchurian Candidate, he asked Dr. Salter to help "design" the brainwashed character for the book and subsequent movie.More than 40 years later, in 1992, during the C-SPAN broadcasts of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, Dr. Salter watched the hearings from his New York City apartment. Salter became fascinated with McCain's overly aggressive and angry behavior toward witnesses, especially family members of men still missing in action. After a few hours he called a friend telling her, "the signs are all there, I'm afraid Senator John McCain has been brainwashed."During the Senate Select hearings, McCain opposed all efforts by the POW/MIA families and activists to have the Select Committee expand its investigation to study how successful the Vietnamese, Soviet, Chinese and Cuban interrogation apparatuses were at exploiting American prisoners of war.News pundits have elevated McCain to "the most popular national political figure in the country" by repeatedly describing him as a "war hero" based on his refusal accept a communist offer of "early release" from captivity.What the media has carelessly refused to acknowledge is that the camp's senior ranking U.S. POW (SRO) had issued unquestionable orders that if a POW was to be released, "it would be the longest held prisoner" Because McCain was not the longest held POW, he would have faced a military court-marshal if he had accepted the offer.It is incumbent upon McCain to prove to the American people that the 5 1/2 years he spent at the mercy of communist interrogators did not leave him with mental health issues that could hinder him in making snap decisions "if the White House phone rang at 3 a.m."Is McCain taking any kind of pain or "nerve" medicines? If so, do the medicines cause emotional and physical reactions?McCain was once treated for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is said to get worse over time for former POWs, what is the status of his treatment?Does McCain still harbor stress triggered suicidal tendencies?Where was McCain and what was happening to him during the months he was missing from the POW camp?McCain implies that he made only one propaganda broadcast for the communists, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers say he made over 30. How many did he make and what did he get in return?Why does McCain still deny that the Soviets were involved in the interrogation of U.S. POWs in Vietnam?Does McCain's former interrogators, the communist Vietnamese, Russians, Chinese and Cubans have anything in their secret intelligence files about his behavior as a prisoner with which they could blackmail a President John McCain?
Dear Joe Biden, you did a terrific job. Given all the circumstances it was a very difficult one and you did it very, very, very well. I am so glad the first two debates are over now and I am sure we are going to have a landslide win this year. You were just perfect. Calm, skillful, wise, straightforward, answering the questions clearly, disarming Palins attacks precisely and moreover in a Gentleman way, you were real and warm, and completely trustworthy. The fact that Barack chose you is another sign of his very good judgement. God bless you, Barack Obama, the campaign, America and the world. Karin
I know the campaign is about Barack winning and not about just how bad McCain is. Yet I found a very, very disturbing article about McCain and I think it should be spread everywhere, for it is such a shock a) that something like this can happen at all and b) that this same man who did all this aspires to become the President of the United States. The article is to be found at www.nationinstitute.org and is called "McCain and the POW Cover-Up". It describes in detail how John McCain, after being freed himself, neglected about 600 of his fellow soldiers who remained in prisons in Vietnam. Not only did he refuse to acknowledge that life signals were given by them - they were detected through satelite pictures- he denied those signals and he saw to it that new laws were invented to stop all the investigations about those left back! This is a heinous crime!! Therefore I think we should spread this article. More information also www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com
Unfortunately I can't send the cartoon which was above the article: Beware, America! Palin sounds a lot like Bush. Can anybody tell me how I can get this done. I scanned the picture and it is in the file My pictures now, but I can't copy and paste it here now. If somebody helps me, I could post that cartoon too. It's a good one!!!
Amazingly, the foreign media draw a much clearer picture of what is happening in America. Or did I just not search in the right places? I see mainly what is on yahoo news. The following article was written in cooperation with the N.Y.Times, not sure whether it was published there too. I found it today in Deccan Chronicle India. There are more articles about the subject under www.deccan.com, columnsits.
I have also a HELP REQUEST: can someone tell me how to post articles to the campaign. I end always up with the noreply-thing, and I just can't find the correct webform to send important articles to the campaign.
I’ve been in Alaska only a week, but I’m already feeling ever so much smarter about Russia.
I can’t quite see it from my hotel window, but, hey, I know it’s out there somewhere, beyond all the stuffed bears and cruise ships and glaciers and oil derricks.
The proximity of the country from which William Seward bartered to buy Alaska for $7 million — Seward’s icebox — is so illuminating that I suddenly realise that we would commit a grave error by overestimating Russia’s economic strength. After all, it represents only 2.8 per cent of the world’s GDP, even though its gross domestic product has ballooned from $200 billion in 1999 to $1.7 trillion this year.
But I overanalyse.
An Arctic blast of action has swept into the 2008 race, making thinking passé. We don’t really need to hurt our brains studying the world; we just need the world to know we’re capable of bringing a world of hurt to the world if the world continues to be hell-bent on misbehaving.
Two weeks after being thrown onto a national ticket, and moments after being speed-briefed by McCain foreign-policy advisers, our new Napoleon in bunny boots is ready to face down the Russkies and start a land war over Georgia, and, holy cow, what business is it of ours if Israel attacks Iran?
The trigger-happy John McCain has indeed found a soul mate. Trigger squared. In Fairbanks on Thursday, at a deployment ceremony for her son who is going to Iraq, governor Palin followed the lead of McCain and W. in fusing Osama bin Laden’s diabolical work on 9/11 and the mission in Iraq. She told the departing troops, "You’ll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans."
Asked by Charlie Gibson what insight into Russian actions her Alaskan proximity gave her, Sarah blithely replied: "They’re our next-door neighbours. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska."
Being a next-door neighbour is not quite enough, though. If Sarah had been reading about the world she feels so confident about leading rather than just parroting by rote what Randy Scheunemann and the neocons around McCain drilled into her last week — Drill, baby, drill! — she might have realised that as heinous as Russia’s behaviour toward Georgia was, it was not completely unprovoked. The state department has let it be known that it warned McCain’s friend, Misha, the hotheaded President of Georgia, not to send troops in to crush the rebellion in two breakaway states.
And she might not have had to clench her jaw and play for time when Gibson raised the Bush doctrine, the wacko preemption philosophy that so utterly changed the world.
The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra.
Just as W. once could not name the General-General running Pakistan, so Palin took a position on Pakistan that McCain had derided as naive when Obama took it.
"We must not, Charlie, blink, Charlie, because, Charlie, as I’ve said, Charlie, before, John McCain has said, Charlie, that — and remember here, Charlie, we’re talking about John McCain, Charlie, who, Charlie, is John McCain and I won’t be blinking, Charlie."
She tried to finesse her previous church comments about Iraq, asking worshippers to pray "that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan." Earnestly repeating after her tutors, she said she had meant to echo Abraham Lincoln, that in war we must pray that we are on God’s side rather than that he is on ours. But her original comments sounded more W. than Abe — taking your policy and ideology and giving it the hallowed mantle of a mission from God.
Sarah has single-handedly ushered out the Sex and the City era, and made the sexy new model for America a retro one — the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible.
Her explosion onto the scene made Obama seem even more like a windy, wispy egghead. Like W., Sarah has the power of positive unthinking. But now we may want to think about where ignorance and pride and no self-doubt has gotten us. Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.
