June Revolution!

The Ball is Rolling

2007-06-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

We have a new website up and a plan to put presure on the press to start paying attention to what is really important.

Please visit The Press Pretends We Don't Care to find out what we are up to.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy

2007-06-23T12:10:00.000-07:00

On June 22, 2007 George Bush declared both he and Vice President Dick Cheney above the law.

This demands a response.

I am attempting to organize a letter/email campaign with the help of Janet and Ron who comment on Crooks and Liars and everyone else is welcome. The idea is to set up a webpage where people can go and click/sign/send the following letter to every member of Congress, all the newspapers, radio and TV stations across the country. We will also be encouraging people to send letters through the US Postal service to their own representatives and local news outlets.

Here is the letter:

America was founded on the basic principle that Tyranny had no place in government. Suddenly we are faced with a President and Vice President who think the exact opposite. We, as Americans have a choice to make. We can dishonor those who founded our country. We can dishonor those who have stood on principal to defend the values of our country (many with their lives) or we can stand up and demand that the Congress start impeachment proceedings on both the President and the Vice President of the United States of America. On Friday June 22, 2007 both the President and the Vice President of the United States stated that they are not subject to the law; that somehow they are above and beyond the three branches of government. They apparently feel they exist in yet a fourth branch never mentioned in the United States Constitution. They do not specifically name it, but I think we know its name and its name is Tyranny. To all members of the Congress and the media, those who seem to wield the majority of what is left of what little power this Administration has not yet seized we urge you to respond before our nation as it was intended to be by our Founding Fathers ceases to exist entirely.

Anyone interested in helping out should contact me at xoites@gmail.com

We have found a list of all news outlets across the country, 24,000 in all for $330.00. If you feel inclined to contribute to that cost it would be appreciated. We are also looking for ideas on who else should recieve the letter, Federal judges come to mind. Any thoughts or ideas are encouraged and welcome.

Encyclopedia of Life Launched (Update)

2007-05-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

I may not be a scientist, but I am a living organism on Earth. Today the Encylopedia of Life was launched. It promises to make the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy blush over its short commings.

Just Monday I picked up a January 2007 edition of National Geographic in a waiting room. They had fold out photographs of the Amazon Rain Forest. All I saw were vast wheat fields. We are in trouble. Perhaps this project will help us to catalouge what we have before it is lost, interest people in preserving what we have and wake us up to the danger our planet faces not just from global warming but from human expansion and developement.

We are very busy wasting our resources and energy as a species trying to smite our enemies. Meanwhile the vessel preserving our continuing existence is under assault. Even most viruses have adapted to the level of not killing their hosts. Can we?

Here is their press release:

http://www.eol.org/press_release.html

Here is an introductory movie that is two minute long about their project:

http://www.eol.org/home.html

Here is E. O. Wilson who came up with this idea originally speaking at a TED conference:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/83

TED is an amazing place with video dissertations by top scientists, activists and visionaries who have made a difference. Please check out their videos and open your mind up to the possibilities of our potential.

http://tedblog.typepad.com/#

NPR interviewed E. O. Wislon today about the Encyclopedia of Life and promises it will be up by 7:30 pm (eastern time) here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10141652

IMUS

2007-04-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

Of all the hateful things i have heard coming out of the mouths of TV and Radio "personalities" in the last decade what Imus said was rather low on the list. It may well be who his target was, highly competative and gifted athletes and students, more than what he said. I speak from ignorance about his past because i never watched or listened to him so i do not see the pattern that others have told me they see.

When Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh say horrible things about Democrats apparently the anger is not universal as it was in this case. That is what bothers me the most. What they say is far far worse but they are protected because so many of their listeners tacitly agree and are happy someone is saying it for them so they don't have to.
Evil is perpetrated and perpetuated by cowards who hide behind the hate speech of others.

Perhaps this will never change, but getting people who spew hate out of the mainstream of our political and social discourse is paramount to getting back to a healthy society.

Removing Imus is like changing a flat tire on a car with a siezed engine.

Truth Serum Talk Show Host

2007-03-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

“Hi, and welcome to my show. My name is very important to me and I want you to know it. That is why I will repeat it often as the show goes forward.

“My job here tonight is to misinform you. I will repeat things that are untrue as often as I can and when you get tired of that I will bring on “experts” who will say these things for me. The last thing I ever want you to do is have all the facts so you can make an informed decision. What I will do, however is bring on as many people who I can who are either convinced they are correct but are not or who know they are lying and are very, very good at lying so that they can bring you up to date on the latest misinformation available to you, the consumer.

“We will also have special guests on who will not only lie but also vilify. They will make things up about those who oppose our agenda and smear them or ask you to kill them.

“We will pretend to be a news show but in fact what we really are is a mouthpiece for strata of corporations whose profit margins and, yes, whose very existence relies on you believing that the status quo is in your best interests even though it is not.

“Occasionally we will have special reports on the War on Terror, especially about the war in Iraq from reporters in New York and Washington who will tell you what the administration said today. They will also point out that the reporters in Baghdad are very biased in their reporting and should go outside and have a cup of coffee at one of the nice cafes in Baghdad and tell people once and for all how well things are going.

“Finally, we will, from time to time, report that a convicted Republican is a Democrat or that a leading Terrorist’s name is the exact same name as a leading Democrat.

“We will do this because we care. Not about you. This is not about you. We will do this because it serves our best interests and the interests of our corporate handlers.

“If what we say and do on this show makes your eyes glaze over then we feel we have accomplished our goals.”

New Web Site Let's Us Track Congress

2007-03-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

Finally a website that will allow us to see what congress is up to. This site allows you to track a bill from begining to end. You can ask to be notified of each and every change made to the bill and by whom. You can track what individual members of congress are working on as well as commitees. It also tracks blogs commenting on bills and Congress People. This is an unpreceidented tool that should be used by all of us so we can become more informed and stop horrible laws from being passed.

http://www.opencongress.org/

Walmart Takes Cue From Bush Doctrine

2007-03-09T18:58:00.000-08:00

While reading and posting comments on Crooks and Liars just five minutes ago Paul posted this personal experience which makes me want to run out and slap something.

"Where do disgraced politicians go? They go to work for Wal-Mart! So let me tell you what happened to me today after passing the beautiful flower arrangements at the front entrance to Wal-Mart. After admiring the fresh flowers at a great price I walked to the back of the store with a cart to the beer & wine section. I grabbed a 12 pack and two bottles of wine, one red and one white. Now to the check out counter where I lay the items on the conveyor. Now for my surpise; I'm 55 years old. The check-out girl who is young enough to be my daughter asks to see my drivers liscense. "What?" I exclaim. "Are you joking?" No she says. It is a new policy implemented by Wal-Mart that everyone purchasing any liquor must present a valid I.D. or DL. Incredulous, I shake my head while presenting my liscense through the clear plastic holder in my wallet. She states that I must remove it and hand it to her. Unbelievable, but I did so not realizing what she was about to do. When she took the DL she didn't even look at it but instead swiped it through a card reader! What a fucking outrage! I never gave her permission to gather my personal information magnetically stored on my DL! I let her have it with "both barrels" in a tirade that brought consideable attention from those standing close by. I emphatically stated that she had no right to do that and the people standing next to me whole-heartedly agreed. I demanded the store manager's presence immediately whereupon I let her have it as well. Her pitiful excuse was that it was a new policy handed down from on high at Bentonville Corporate. What a crock of shit. I am not the only one outraged at this latest slap in the face from large corporate and government entities gathering private information about people. The FBI spies on us, traffic signals take our pictures, RFID devices in merchandise track our movements and purchases as well as credit card companies tracking and cataloging our purchases and travels. God help the people who will inhabit this Earth a 100 years from now.Paul in Galveston 03.09.07 - 9:56 pm # "

Hasty had this to say and i have a hard time disagreeing.

"Fuck Wal-Mart. Fuck Tom "the Hammer" DeLay. Fuck W. Fuck this whole shitty ass country and everything that's wrong with it. It's not even worth fighting for. We're all slaves of bankers who just watch as their bank accounts grow and sit back as they suck the lifeblood and every penny we ever earned or will ever make right out of us. America the skank! And Demoshits aren't saving us from anything. They're too afraid to lose their jobs to make a real stand.Fuck the FBI. Fuck the IRS. Fuck the NSA. Fuck the USA Patriot Act. Fuck the troops too. Fucking idiots. If you follow orders from criminals YOU ARE A CRIMINAL! Fuck Dickhead Cheney. Fuck the stupid right wing spin machine. Fuck Kaiser Permanente. Fuck McDonalds. Fuck our friends at Merck who can't wait to kill you. Fuck your lawyer. Fuck your dentist. Fuck your doctor. Especially fuck the police. Who the fuck is protecting us from the fucking pig cops? Fuck the cheap shit we buy from China. Fuck the stupid idiots that can't think their way out of a paper bag. And fuck the Cowboys. America's team my ass.We aren't a nation. We ARE a fascist corporation. Nothing more and maybe MUCH less.Hasty 03.09.07 - 10:27 pm # "

Bush's Baghdad Address

2007-02-18T22:18:00.000-08:00

Four swore and seven implied that Iraq would bring forth on this continent, a new mushroom cloud, conceived in Baghdad, and dedicated to the proposition that all cities can be destroyed equally.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, er…I mean War on Terror testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to drill for oil on a portion of that field, as a final testament that our place on the planet is above all others and knows no boundaries when it comes to shame. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men and women, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what I said here, but it can never forget what we did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished task of raping the Middle East of its resources and to decimate its populations to the point they can never unify against us to create a coherent nation that would stand against us. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – no, they died in Iraq. This nation, under a Christian God, shall have a new birth of Capitalist ideology -- and that government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth.

Time to Act!

2007-02-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

Voices for Creative Non Violence has launched a campaign called The Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War.

They are occupying congressional offices across the country in an ongoing effort to demand not only an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq but also money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction to be done, not by Haliburton et. al.; but by the Iraqi people.

Despite this little article in our Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Arrests for attempting redress of grievances have been made.

For those of you who wish to participate in this project I urge you to contact Voices for Creative Non Violence and get involved. Not everyone is willing or able to get arrested even for the very best of reasons but there are certainly other ways to support this effort. You can leaflet outside to let passersby know what is going on inside their Representative’s offices at the time of the action. There is press work to be done which often involves phone calls and hand delivery of press releases. If you have a blog write about these actions. You can go to court to support those who do get arrested.

We have all been waiting for something to do to stop this war. This is a very creative and direct way to put pressure on the people who have the ability to reign in George W. Bush. Let’s all think about what we can do to support and build on this campaign.

Lot’s of information is available at their website: http://www.vcnv.org/
The time is way past due for us all to pitch in and help end this nightmare. Every voice counts. Let’s be creative, non violent and most of all heard!

NPR Has Lost its Credibility

2007-01-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

National Public Radio is devoting itself to diluting the meaning of the November Elections by pushing for Democratic compromise on the Republican Agenda. In a series called "Crossing the Divide," very well covered on NPR Check they trotted out every compromiser they could think of including Rush Limbaugh and Dinesh D'Souza who, among other things said in his book entittled The End of Racism: "The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well." Source Watch has much more.

You can hear his ideas about how Vietnam was a losing cause which is why we lost it and why Iraq is a winnable war which is why will win it here: Iraq Is Iraq; Vietnam Was Vietnam.
Among other things he claims Vietnam had no strategic resources. I wonder how Michellin Tire remembers it?

This is a divide I can not cross. The insidious insipid incincere manipulative racist propaganda machine that is our mainstream media serves no one.

Here is a Bill we can all support by asking our members in congess to pass: Media Ownership Reform Act (MORA).

Here is a Great Juxtaposition of Bush's Many Unjust Positions

2007-01-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

From Brad Blog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZi9RxPW_x4&eurl=

If Bush is Looking for a New Direction

2007-01-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

Then This Is It!

The Bottom Line of the Iraq Study Group

2006-12-07T17:04:00.000-08:00

Privatizing the Oil.

5. The Oil Sector
Since the success of the oil sector is critical to the success of the Iraqi economy, the United
States must do what it can to help Iraq maximize its capability.
Iraq, a country with promising oil potential, could restore oil production from existing
fields to 3.0 to 3.5 million barrels a day over a three- to five-year period, depending on evolving
conditions in key reservoirs. Even if Iraq were at peace tomorrow, oil production would decline
unless current problems in the oil sector were addressed.
Short Term
RECOMMENDATION 62:
• As soon as possible, the U.S. government should provide technical assistance to the Iraqi
government to prepare a draft oil law that defines the rights of regional and local governments
and creates a fiscal and legal framework for investment. Legal clarity is essential to attract -
investment.
• The U.S. government should encourage the Iraqi government to accelerate contracting for the
comprehensive well work-overs in the southern fields needed to increase production, but the
United States should no longer fund such infrastructure projects.
• The U.S. military should work with the Iraqi military and with private security forces to
protect oil infrastructure and contractors. Protective measures could include a program to
improve pipeline security by paying local tribes solely on the basis of throughput (rather than
fixed amounts).
• Metering should be implemented at both ends of the supply line. This step would
immediately improve accountability in the oil sector.
• In conjunction with the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. government should press Iraq
to continue reducing subsidies in the energy sector, instead of providing grant assistance.
Until Iraqis pay market prices for oil products, drastic fuel shortages will remain.
Long Term
Expanding oil production in Iraq over the long term will require creating corporate structures,
establishing management systems, and installing competent managers to plan and oversee an
ambitious list of major oil-field investment projects.
To improve oil-sector performance, the Study Group puts forward the following
recommendations.
RECOMMENDATION 63:
• The United States should encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international
community and by international energy companies.
• The United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a
commercial enterprise, in order to enhance efficiency, transparency, and accountability.
• To combat corruption, the U.S. government should urge the Iraqi government to post all oil
contracts, volumes, and prices on the Web so that Iraqis and outside observers can track
exports and export revenues.
• The United States should support the World Bank’s efforts to ensure that best practices are
used in contracting. This support involves providing Iraqi officials with contracting templates
and training them in contracting, auditing, and reviewing audits.
• The United States should provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Oil for enhancing
maintenance, improving the payments process, managing cash flows, contracting and
auditing, and updating professional training programs for management and technical
personnel.

What Grand Jury Might Talk About

2006-12-03T13:07:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth de la Vega wrote this fictional account into a Grand Jury's investigation into the lies leading us to war. The account may be fictional but the facts are not.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=143920

Deloris' Punch Line

2006-12-03T01:08:00.000-08:00

It was rumored that Robert Allen Parker had been a professor of mathematics. It might be true. It might not. I know that he was an older man who always carried a higher calculus book in his arm and was always making notes in it. He was a gentle guy and we had a special relationship. He was very concerned about two things above all: Nuclear Weapons and Gambling Casinos. I was never sure which had priority.

His mental illness took the form of repetitive statements which I came to believe were used more as a shield. His most famous segway was, “As a gentleman and a scholar…” and then go into what ever point he might be trying to make. He had a pension and he kept a room but at the end of every month he would ask Mary Ellen (who was in charge of the community’s finances) for a short term loan. He did not ask directly, he would say his leg was feeling kind of rough. He always paid it back and he always had to borrow it back at the end of the next month.

The first time I realized he was a lot more together than he would even admit to himself was the time his landlord tried to evict him. He took his landlord to court and won. But living on a fixed income meant he needed to eat at the soup kitchen (this one was in D.C.) and he had to rely on people who he knew cared.

A lot of what he said was rambling but I felt it was a psychological smoke screen. At one point I showed him some of my artwork and it impressed him so much that he turned to me and we had a rational conversation that lasted for about five minutes before he slipped back into his defensive rambling.

Much later I went up and lived in Boston for a couple of years but came down often to visit. Every time I did he would ask me to inquire about a chair for him at Harvard.

Now we get to Deloris. Deloris was mentally ill. I just did not realize how much.

It is 1978[I must correct this error. It was 1979.]and I was running an overnight shelter for women in D.C. with five other people. The five of us lived in the same house. In case you are wondering, two men and three women. But Deloris had to live there as well. She was just unable to be out there alone and survive. I walked in the door one day and she was at the top of the stairs.

“Deloris does not like you but Stacy thinks you are cool. Cynthia could not care less but Sylvia wants to see you dead.”

This was quite the conversation and I was not even participating. After a while she went into one of the women’s rooms and I went looking for some mental floss.

The problem with the overnight shelter was this: we had forced the District of Columbia to open it (more on that in another chapter) and they wanted us out. So what did they do? They sold the land the building was on to the Canadian Government so they could build an embassy on it in 1984 on the condition that they tear the building down immediately.

Neat, huh?

We had fifty homeless women staying each night. They evicted us. What could we do? We could have called it a day. We could have gone off and pursued careers as bankers or drug peddlers or fashion models but no. We decided to have the women move in with us. In our four bedroom two story rental. No problem.

You have to understand some things here. Homeless people have to carry everything they own. Women in general (having observed my mom) keep everything. We had a basement which was shortly filled to the brim with bags of clothing, personal keepsakes and in some cases out and out worthless things found on the street.

Oh, but I was talking about Deloris. Deloris had been living with us and had had relative privacy. Now she was sharing a very crowded house with fifty other women who were literally sleeping in each other’s laps.

Solution? Burn down the house. And that is exactly what she did.

Thankfully she did it in broad daylight.

No one was hurt. She just went down into the basement and set the bags on fire. All of them.

So at first we ended up in a Catholic grade school for about a week. The problem was we interfered with their bingo games so we had to go.

The landlord of the house we burned down found us a large first floor apartment and let us move in. (I would tell you his name but it might jeopardize his chances of being canonized.) It had two very large rooms and two small rooms. We made bunk beds with lumber. I slept on the back porch and our most remarkably crazy resident who I may talk about later moved under the back porch with her imaginary friend.

Very cozy. Thankfully it was summer. Of course someone screamed to high heaven about the fire codes (makes sense considering our recent history) so the fire department came and inspected. They decided that if the back porch had steps leading down to the ground (considering there were three other existing exits leading out of the apartment) that it would pass code. Then they went ahead and built the steps for us.

Nice guys if you ask me

It just so happens that this apartment was a mere block down the alley from our soup kitchen. We were in the 600 block of M Street N.W. and the soup kitchen was in the 600 block of L Street N.W.

But I was talking about Deloris. Yes she is still here. But someone had a brilliant idea. They did not consult me they just sort of went ahead and did it. They put her on a bus and sent her to her mother’s house in Connecticut. That worked really great until we got the phone call. Apparently Deloris’ mom knew her daughter. The conversation between Deloris and whoever answered the phone may have looked entirely normal on this end. On the other end it involved a State Trooper standing outside Deloris’ mother’s house with Deloris and her mom’s telephone while her mother was safely barricaded inside the house. We sent up money so she could get back on the bus.

Sometime later Deloris walked up and punched me right in the face. A real round house. What some people would call a sucker punch. I gently put her on the floor and told her while sitting on top of her that if she ever did that again I would punch her back. Then I let her up and she scrambled away.

The next day Robert Allen Parker happened to stop by and was on his way to the soup kitchen as was I. We walked down the alley together and Robert was half conversing and half rambling in the way he did. He always gave being coherent an honest shot with me but I could tell it was hard.

Deloris was following two steps behind me. At the end of the alley she confronted Robert while pointing at me. She was livid and stuttering, “He! He..He threw me on the gound and sat on top of me!”

Robert was visibly startled, “Why did you do that, Michael?”

“Because she punched me in the face.”

Deloris was flabbergasted, “You…Your…You’re not supposed to tell him that!”

Assertiveness Training

2006-12-02T22:44:00.000-08:00

Baltimore is a place of extremes. In the summer it is hot and humid. In the winter it is cold and damp. One cold winter’s day Tom, who was about 6’6” and built to carry it stumbled into the soup kitchen drunk out of his mind with a large puncture wound in his face just below the cheek bone. Our best bet was that he had fallen on something protruding out of the ground. We called an ambulance but he refused to go. He wanted a drink. Our demands on him to go to the hospital drove him out into the cold in search of drink.

It was weeks before we saw him again. When we did things were much worse. His cheek was huge and oozing. He was so drunk and he smelled. Years later I would know that as the smell of gangrene. A woman who I considered to be very strong who worked at the soup kitchen, Dee Dee was there. So was Richard who was taller than me. As he stumbled toward the three of us he raised his hand to his cheek and pressed against it and a huge gob of puss oozed out and fell on the floor. Dee Dee ran out of the room, I assume to puke. I was too shocked to be sick. It was decided that Richard and I would take Tom to the hospital and Dee Dee would run the kitchen. It was a long twelve block walk. It wasn’t the distance. It was the patient.

We had to talk him into staying with us the entire way. It was a struggle. In a fair fight Tom could kick both our asses stone cold sober or drunk as a skunk, which was exactly what he was. Somehow we managed to get him to the emergency room. The staff was not as pleased as you might think to see us but they took him relatively quickly into the area we were not allowed to be in.

About five minutes later Tom came cruising out the door, through the waiting room and out into the street. There was no stopping him and the staff said there was nothing they could do.

It was months before I saw Tom again. His cheek bone had been removed.

Later I somehow ended up being the “Overnight Coordinator” of the Salvation Army Temporary Overnight Emergency Shelter in Worcester, Massachusetts. To say the least, that is a mouthful. My job was fairly simple. I was to strip and wax the floor twice a week. I had to make sure that anyone who came in after lights out was not allowed upstairs (they had to sleep in a chair.) I had to pitch anyone out into the nearest snow bank if he entered the building with alcohol in his possession. I had to get people up in the morning and make sure they took a shower before going to bed.

It was a little more complicated than that but that was the general idea.

The problem is this simple plan relies on human beings to have no problems. People who habitually get up in the morning and look for the nearest drink do not fit this simple concept in any way.

The police, if they found someone drunk who had committed no crime would often just drop the poor guy off at our door, ring the bell and leave. One night they did just that. This guy comes in who looked like he had been beaten up. He had no jacket. According to the rules I had to make him sit in a chair to sleep. Easy. I put him in a chair and he went to sleep. The problem was he would not stay in the chair. I turned around and he had fallen on the floor. Like any good employee who follows the rules I picked him up and put him in the chair. Again he went down. Again I put him in the chair.

The third time he hit the floor so hard I heard it. We are talking tile on concrete. I realized that trying to get him into the chair again would only lead to him injuring himself. I also reasoned that if he was on the floor he had no place to fall. I got a blanket and covered him to keep him warm.

I was shortly thereafter informed that I would have to pull a double shift because my relief would not be coming in. Ok, I was not digging ditches here. All I had to do was keep order, make sure nobody drank inside the building and make lunch.

Except for the guy who was unable to sleep in the chair.

I had to wake the guy on the floor up. That was not a problem. The problem was he said he had a leather coat on when he came in. The thing was I sincerely doubt he could remember coming in. He accused me of taking it which didn’t wash. If I had to I could have gotten the police to back me up but I convinced him. But he was pissed. He had no money and wanted to use the phone. Did I mention the rules in this place? I could have gotten fired for letting him but I let him. Then he wanted to make another and he did but I told him to make it short and he didn’t. I was in the middle of making lunch when I realized he had been on too long. I went into the office and made him hang up the phone. He went ballistic and started accusing me of stealing his coat. I was twenty, still skinny as shit and not a fighter.

I told him to get the hell out with such conviction (believe me, I was convinced it was either him or me) that he apologized and asked if he could stay if he just sat down and remained quiet. Seemed fair enough to me so he sat down and I continued making lunch.

All of this took place in a room of about thirty hung over men or men who were trying to stay sober.

A few days before this one of the guys had come into some money and bought himself and his best friend new coats. They were nice looking coats and they were warm. The man who was the recipient of the gift was there and quietly went to his locker and took out his old coat and gave it to the guy who I had just confronted. A little while later his ride showed up and he left.

About two weeks later one of our regulars walks in and hands me the very same coat, says somebody drove up and asked him to give it to me.

There was an older man who stayed there all the time. When I first met him he was sober. Then he started to drink. One night he came in so drunk I did not think it was him. He had a bottle of rubbing alcohol in his pocket. Had I obeyed the rules he would have been pitched out in the snow, placed on the banned list and probably would have frozen to death somewhere lonely. What I did instead was put him to bed after his shower. I saved the bottle.

In the morning I sat down with him and showed it to him. “This is what you were drinking last night.”

“No! I have been bad before but never that bad!” But he knew it was true and stopped drinking for a while.

Then one morning he came in drunk as a skunk barely able to stand. He had a puncture wound under his left cheek. I did not have a car but I got a ride to the hospital. All he wanted was a drink. Same old story.

Not this time.

I sat on him as they stitched him up. He was admitted. Not only was he admitted but they placed him in a nursing home.

Why I Started Smoking.

2006-12-02T18:29:00.000-08:00

At seventeen, having been politicized over the course of being exposed to a number of ideas I decided it was about time I did something. I went to the Peace and Justice Center in Baltimore and asked what they thought I could do. The straight answer was, “Go work in the Soup Kitchen.”

Hmmm. Ok, that was not what I was expecting. After thinking it over I decided to give it a try. I went down one Saturday to a non descript row house on Saint Paul Street and walked into a large front room that had been converted into a dinning room with about twelve tables that would each serve four people. The room was filled with older men and a few women dressed in worn overcoats eating bowls of soup. There was a bustle about the place but it was relaxed. The back room was just as large but it was a kitchen with a serviceable stove, a refrigerator, a deep freeze and a three compartment sink. It was separated from the dinning room by a half door with a platform on it. Soup was served from here and there was no limit until the food was gone.

Some people who came in to eat were drunk. Most were not but many of those who were not had the shakes. They had not yet gotten around to scraping up the money for their first drink of the day.

It was 1973 and I was, to say the least, naïve. I had no idea these people did not have a place to live. In fact I did not realize this for a long time. I assumed everybody had a place to sleep. Homelessness was not on my radar. It was not an issue in this country. Most people took it for granted that if you had a problem the government would take care of you.

I was about 6’3” and weighed about 120 lbs. Not exactly intimidating. I was a teenager and the men who came in there were, for the most part World War II Veterans. Not hard to figure out that although they probably welcomed my efforts their respect for me was somewhat limited. “You’re still a kid! You don’t know anything!”

Indeed I was a kid and I had a lot to learn. So I spent a long time there. Almost two years. I learned a few things along the way. I was going through a lot of personal chaos with my mother at the time. I probably spent more time talking and learning than anything else. I helped cook and clean but I talked more. I also listened.

I had a lot of respect for the people I worked with. John Fogarty ran the place. He was a Johns Hopkins Grad who later went on to be on the executive staff of Congressman Peter Rodino (D) New Jersey, the guy that got the tapes out of Richard Nixon. Mid Town Churches Community Association owned the building and paid John a stipend. If I recall correctly the whole thing was John’s idea and he went to them with it and they approved it.

One day these two young guys came in with what they insisted was their vegetarian dog and had a vegetarian meal. So did the dog. To me these guys were so whacked out they mesmerized me. They were hitch hiking around the country. They were hippies and I am certain they did plenty of drugs whenever they could find them.

One of the guys was in desperate need of a pair of pants. His were badly torn. He was John’s size. John traded pants with him right there in the kitchen in such a low key and nonchalant way that even though I was standing right there I almost missed it. The respect I had for John was enormous. He had an easy laugh and listened to me. No matter how long I prattled on he had time for me. We spent a lot of time together and he had me to his house often for dinner with him and his two roommates.

John smoked. He smoked Pall Malls. He smoked a pipe. He really seemed to enjoy it. I had been on my mother for years to stop. After a few months I began to wonder what he got out of it. That background noise of the cigarette companies trying to get me to smoke was without a doubt a contributing factor. So I started smoking. I still do. I still enjoy it. I just wish I never started.

The thing is after I started it was much easier to get into a conversation with the guys who came into the kitchen. They would ask me for a cigarette and talk to me. If someone on the street asked me for a quarter, I could offer them a cigarette and they would be happy I offered. In a way it was part of my becoming an adult. It will also have plenty do with me becoming one of the dearly departed as well.

Let's Make a List

2006-11-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

It is time to ask ourselves the questions: What should the Democrates investigate?

I think it is time to compile a list. I doubt any one of us can come up with all the things we need answers to.

After we get the list compiled we can prioritize it.

Please make your suggestions in the comments or email me at xoites@gmail.com.

Our Survival

2006-11-24T10:33:00.000-08:00

Our country is made up of people from all over the world. Name a country on the planet and someone who was born there lives here. Name a religion and it is practiced here. Name a political idea and someone here advocates it.

So what do we have in common besides traffic jams, wide open spaces, sky scrappers and one room shacks?

Up until George W. Bush hit D.C. we had the United States Constitution. What will become of our society without it? Will we become a land of warring tribes and ethnic cleansings? Will our apparent ability to shrug off Habeas Corpus, wink at torture and accept what the media tells us is true lead to witches being burned at the stake? Or will we graduate to rounding up “others” and putting them in death camps?

There seems to be a concerted effort to make Muslims the enemy in this country. The poor are already the enemy and poorly educated have always been seen as less than important. Gays are objected to on religious grounds and “cooty” grounds.

We need our Constitution back if we are to go forward. A motley crew like us can not be relied on to do the right thing without guidance. Before the investigations begin (and they should) I want our new Congress to at least attempt to rescind the Military Commissions Act and the Patriot Act. They need to end warrantless wiretapping.

Only with a fully intact Constitution will this nation ever survive.

We Will Be In This Quagmire for A Very Long Time

2006-11-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

The number of troops we sent into Iraq was inadequate. It was not because Rumsfeld was not told ahead of time; he was. He cloaks his planning in terms of “a leaner, meaner fighting force.” The truth is his vision was to run the occupation with outsourced contractors. This serves several functions. Contractors do not get pensions which are a continuing expense for the government when it comes to taking care of our veterans. Contractors are not added to the number of troops killed and wounded, thus significantly hiding the actual number from the general public. The contractors hired by the Pentagon have close ties to the members of the Administration. What are friends for if they can’t line your pockets once they hold the most powerful positions on the planet? The contractors we sent in further outsourced their labor by bringing in desperate low paid workers from India and Southeast Asia which let the average Iraqi to fend for himself.

This alienated the Iraqi people but it should be noted that this is the model for all occupations and even disaster relief efforts. It would seem the motto of the Neo Cons is, “In every disaster let there be profit.”

The plainly stated vision of the occupation of Iraq was to set up a Super Capitalist model of how the world should work (at least in their eyes.) Step one is to privatize everything. This does two things. It places the profits in the hands of the few and removes power from the masses. If you want to survive in this model you had damned well better cooperate or you will be out of a job. Never mind that the pay will barely get you by. People busy with two jobs have little time for dissent. Sound familiar?

The Pentagon made a big show of allowing newspapers to start up all over Baghdad but beyond the atrocity of bombing Al Jazeera both in Afghanistan and Iraq they have systematically shut down the press in Iraq. Most recently the Iraqi Government shut down two television stations last week.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction was a lie. Installing Democracy is also a lie.

So where do we go from here?

If we leave the ensuing and further destabilization of the region will be exacerbated. I fear the same will happen if we stay.

If we could start all over again my first suggestion would be to not invade. Obviously that is inadequate now. Having gone in we should have excluded all private contractors, brought in an adequate force, not allowed any looting to take place at all, bestowed a general amnesty on the entire population and hired the Iraqi people to rebuild the country.

We can not start over again. Nothing that I can envision will make things better outside of a Summit Meeting in a neutral country of all concerned factions in the region. And, yes, that would include Iran and Al Qaeda.

At best this process will take years and an entirely different Administration and mindset.

For now we are simply screwed.

Looking Ahead to 2008

2006-11-09T14:27:00.000-08:00

On the heels of this election instead of patting ourselves on the back for more than one day I think we need to look ahead to 2008. There are a couple of things we can do to positively change the course of this country. I think we should explore the possibilities.

There were a lot of referendums on the ballots across the Nation on Tuesday. I would like to first of all suggest a couple and then explore how we can get them on the ballots in our own states.

I would like first of all to propose a referendum making a print out of all ballots at every electronic voting booth in the country that will then be placed in a separate box to be counted later to verify all election results.

I would like a referendum mandating that all candidates that get “x” number of signatures on a petition to qualify him or her to run for office be given public funds for all campaign costs. I want all qualifying candidates to be given the exact same amount of money to spend as he or she sees fit. I want to ban all corporate donations to any campaign. I want to limit all private campaign contributions to $100.00. I want to ban all television, radio and print media advertising of political campaigns. I want all qualified candidates to participate in a round table debate with little or no moderator interference (let the candidates speak freely.) I want a round robin one on one debate among all the candidates under those same conditions. I want all of these debates to be aired on television and radio. I want the money for these campaigns and this airtime to be paid for with tax dollars.

I am sure there are other ideas out there. Please let me know yours in the comment section or by emailing me: xoites@gmail.com

Not Yet Time For Reconciliation

2006-11-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of talk about reconciliation and bipartisanship going on right now. This is the last thing this country needs right now. The Democrats swept Congress and gained six Governors not so we can sit here and watch the war and the torture and the spying go on.

We need to press our newly elected members of the House and the Senate to repeal the Military Commissions Act that allows the torture of detainees and the indefinite detention of anyone the President of the United States deems to be an “Enemy Combatant.” This Act removes Habeas Corpus from our rights and must not stand.

We need to repeal H. R. 5122 SEC. 1076. USE OF THE ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMER- GENCIES. This law allows the President to over ride the Posse Comitatus The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed in 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act was intended to prohibit Federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states. It generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement.

The original act referred only to the United States Army. The Air Force was added in 1956, and the Navy and the Marine Corps have been included by a regulation of the Department of Defense. This law is often mentioned when it appears that the Department of Defense is interfering in domestic disturbances. (From Wikipedia.)

We need to stop domestic spying without a warrant.After Bush decides to help us clean up his mess in Iraq; after he admits he was wrong to lie, torture and detain; after he makes certain that the torture and detentions have stopped then we can harbor thoughts about reconciliation. Until then he remains a criminal at large. Until then we must do what we must to resist him at every level of our society.

November 8, 2006

2006-11-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

I Hope You Voted

2006-11-07T13:32:00.000-08:00

I just returned from voting. While standing in line behind two people who were checking in I just stopped for a moment and took in the scene. There were all kinds of people voting and all kinds of people judging. It struck me perhaps for the first time that this simple act is very precious. We have taken it for granted far too long. I know I have. Until the debacle in 2000 I had not thought enough about how serious it is. I think people are taking it very seriously now. Turnout is high in Maryland and the interest in seeing to it that it is fair bodes well.

The dirty tricks popped up today. Mailboxes in Baltimore had fake sample ballots listing the Republicans as Democrats. In Alexandria, Virginia Jim Webb’s name was reported to be lengthened to “James H. Webb” but showed up on the computer screens as “James H.” Democracy truncated.

I am sure after I post this I will find out about more dirty tricks. They happen every year. We can no longer feel secure about the official results of an election but perhaps in our history we never had a right to. Those people who feel the least secure are often more secure than those who have a false sense of security.

I want to thank everyone who voted. I want to thank every judge. I want to thank everyone who is concerned about the process.

I hope with all my heart that the Republicans lose the House and the Senate.

VOTE!

2006-11-06T15:06:00.000-08:00

On this, the eve of the elections of 2006 there is certainly fear and trepidation in the air. No one can be certain of the outcome. No one can be sure their vote will be counted.

This does not absolve us of our responsibility.

When I was much younger and spent hours, days, weeks, months and even years picketing, protesting, feeding and housing the homeless and getting arrested on their behalf I was fortunate enough (early on) to meet twice a week for almost two years with Phil Berrigan.

His brother Dan was once asked by a frustrated activist, "How do you handle it when you work so hard to change people's minds and you do not get any positive responses?"

His answer was exceedingly simple and straight to the point:

"We do not have a responsibility to be heard. We have a responsibility to speak."

Follow your conscience and vote!

VOTE!

My Computer is Up

2006-11-05T20:00:00.000-08:00

I am back online and will be writing again soon.

My Computer is Down

2006-11-03T15:01:00.000-08:00

Tuesday my computer crashed and will be going into the shop November 4. I have a warranty on the mother board and CPU which I installed last November 8 so i should be ok. My question is, "Why didn't my PC wait until the 9th?"

I have another PC in mothballs which I will set up tommorow as well. I am using my new roommate's PC to write this but he uses it most of the time he is home.

I will try to write something when things settle down.

I wish all the non Republicans luck on Tuesday!

Another Tenant of the Constitution Ends

2006-10-29T16:16:00.000-08:00

Burried in the following Act:

H. R. 5122 One Hundred Ninth Congress of the United States of America AT T H E S E C O N D S E S S I O N Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday, the third day of January, two thousand and six An Act To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.

You will find the follwing:

SEC. 1076. USE OF THE ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMER- GENCIES. (a) USE OF THE ARMED FORCES AUTHORIZED.-- (1) IN GENERAL.--Section 333 of title 10, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:`` 333. Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law ``(a) USE OF ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMERGENCIES.--(1) The President may employ the armed forces, including theNational Guard in Federal service, to-- ``(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that-- ``(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and ``(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or ``(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrec- tion, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2). ``(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a conditionthat-- ``(A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or H. R. 5122--323 ``(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. ``(3) In any situation covered by paragraph (1)(B), the Stateshall be considered to have denied the equal protection of thelaws secured by the Constitution. ``(b) NOTICE TO CONGRESS.--The President shall notify Congressof the determination to exercise the authority in subsection (a)(1)(A)as soon as practicable after the determination and every 14 daysthereafter during the duration of the exercise of that authority.''. (2) PROCLAMATION TO DISPERSE.--Section 334 of such title is amended by inserting ``or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws'' after ``insurgents''. (3) HEADING AMENDMENT.--The heading of chapter 15 of such title is amended to read as follows: ``CHAPTER 15--ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAWS TO RESTORE PUBLIC ORDER''. (4) CLERICAL AMENDMENTS.--(A) The tables of chapters at the beginning of subtitle A of title 10, United States Code, and at the beginning of part I of such subtitle, are each amended by striking the item relating to chapter 15 and inserting the following new item:``15 Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order ....................................... 331''. (B) The table of sections at the beginning of chapter 15 of such title is amended by striking the item relating to sections 333 and inserting the following new item:``333. Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law.''. (b) PROVISION OF SUPPLIES, SERVICES, AND EQUIPMENT.-- (1) IN GENERAL.--Chapter 152 of such title is amended by adding at the end the following new section:`` 2567. Supplies, services, and equipment: provision in major public emergencies ``(a) PROVISION AUTHORIZED.--In any situation in which thePresident determines to exercise the authority in section333(a)(1)(A) of this title, the President may direct the Secretaryof Defense to provide supplies, services, and equipment to personsaffected by the situation. ``(b) COVERED SUPPLIES, SERVICES, AND EQUIPMENT.--The sup-plies, services, and equipment provided under this section mayinclude food, water, utilities, bedding, transportation, tentage,search and rescue, medical care, minor repairs, the removal ofdebris, and other assistance necessary for the immediate preserva-tion of life and property. ``(c) LIMITATIONS.--(1) Supplies, services, and equipment maybe provided under this section-- ``(A) only to the extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession concerned are unable to provide such supplies, services, and equipment, as the case may be; and ``(B) only until such authorities, or other departments or agencies of the United States charged with the provision of such supplies, services, and equipment, are able to provide such supplies, services, and equipment. H. R. 5122--324 ``(2) The Secretary may provide supplies, services, and equip-ment under this section only to the extent that the Secretarydetermines that doing so will not interfere with military prepared-ness or ongoing military operations or functions. ``(d) INAPPLICABILITY OF CERTAIN AUTHORITIES.--The provisionof supplies, services, or equipment under this section shall notbe subject to the provisions of section 403(c) of the Robert T.Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C.5170b(c)).''. (2) CLERICAL AMENDMENT.--The table of sections at the beginning of such chapter is amended by adding at the end the following new item:``2567. Supplies, services, and equipment: provision in major public emergencies''. (c) CONFORMING AMENDMENT.--Section 12304(c)(1) of such titleis amended by striking ``No unit'' and all that follows through``subsection (b),'' and inserting ``Except to perform any of the func-tions authorized by chapter 15 or section 12406 of this title orby subsection (b), no unit or member of a reserve component maybe ordered to active duty under this section''.

What To Do If The Democrats Win

2006-10-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of discussion about what the Democrats should do if they take control of the House and/or the Senate on November 7. Many people are calling for impeachment proceedings and others are arguing that criminal investigations should be created. While I can’t disagree with either of these I doubt impeachment proceedings will be forth coming and criminal investigations will take a lot of time and energy which I believe could be put to far better use.

The first thing Congress should do if it returns to Democratic control is to restore Habeas Corpus and end any loopholes in the laws that have been passed that allow torture. The next project may be even more important in the long run: mandate and fund paper trail voting machines. Make it the law of the land that all voting machines across the nation have a paper ballot back up that is kept and counted by hand if there is ever a dispute. Make it law that any candidate has a right to ask for and expect a recount and provide the money not only for the machines but for the people who will have to do these recounts.

Only then will we be able to ensure that those criminals who do get into office can be properly removed by the will of the people.

Tell Chris Wallace to Ask Rice About the U.S.S. Cole

2006-10-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

Janet requests that we put a little pressure on the media. In this case Chris Wallace.

Go to Think Progress and make him sweat!

http://thinkprogress.org/ask-rice/

Marasmus Speaks pt. 2

2006-10-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

Even as a Green Party Member I like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii6bpRK9KZM

Marasmus Speaks pt. 1

2006-10-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

A new voice has made himself heard! Being articulate and pissed is a great combination. Check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qK5q4sTkMw

Living In A Post Habeas Corpus World

2006-10-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

Within the next few days George W. Bush will put pen to paper and by simply signing his name he will change the world. It will not be for the better. Staying in character he will further plunge the world into darkness but this time in such a dramatic way that few Americans, apparently, will even notice.

When Bush signs the Military Commissions Act he will dissolve Habeas Corpus which is the foundation of all of our freedoms. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody.

The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 ensured that anyone who was arrested had a right to know the charges against him and the right to see and therefore defend himself against the evidence.

Defenders of this act claim it only pertains to “enemy combatants.” Who defines who an enemy combatant is? It’s not the Congress and it is not the courts. It is the President of the United States. In a crises such as 9/11 or perhaps mass protests against the President’s policies the President could decide that leaders of such a movement to be such a threat to the United States that they could be raised to the level of “enemy combatant.”

Once one is declared an enemy combatant one can be not only detained indefinitely without recourse to the courts but tortured “legally.”

We are going to be living in a Post Habeas Corpus World within the next eight days. We had better start preparing ourselves for what comes next. I don’t think I am important enough to be among the first to be detained, if that happens, but if it happens to anyone I know it can happen to me and I have been prepared for that since they detained the “dirty bomber.”

The only way to end the detentions, if they happen, is to fill the detention centers with our bodies. The more of us detained the weaker the arguments to detain us get. My friends and your friends will become radicalized to stand up as we did.

To prevent this scenario from happening we have to get the Republicans out of office and pressure the Congress to rescind this Act. If we don’t hold the new Congress’s feet to the fire they may sit on their hands and do nothing. We can not let that happen.

We can not let this Act stand.

To get an idea of what may await us check out this video on Nate's site:

http://getintheirface.blogspot.com/2006/03/fema-camp-footage-google-video.html

Kara writes about this in more detail on her blog:

http://www.always-a-musing.blogspot.com/

9/11 Theories

2006-10-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

I should have done this long ago. If you want to say what you think happened on 9/11 please feel free to do so here.

Clarification

2006-10-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

I would like to be very clear with every one about why I wrote about my experiences as a child and what transpired because of them. I wrote it to give one example of all the various possible ramifications of a selfish act. From my discussions with people over the years I am convinced sexual abuse and physical abuse is at a much higher level in our society and indeed all over the world than most of us seem to know or care to admit. I want people to truly understand how dangerous a man like Mark Foley really is.

I am not suffering any longer from what happened to me as a child although I think it is fair to say my life would have been very different without the bizarre events I spoke of earlier. I thank all of you for your concern and I also thank all of you for your compliments.

If not having had the experiences I have had would mean that I would be a different person I can honestly say that I would not trade a moment of my past for all the tea in China. I was very lucky. I ran into a lot of good and even some great people along the way. Others who have been abused are still suffering.

In 1979 I was among six people who lived in and ran a shelter for homeless women. Almost all of them were mentally ill and all had been abused as children or adults. A lot of men on the streets were abused as children too. There was a study done on serial killers that found that each one willing to partake in the study was abused horribly as a child and then at some point in their lives had had a serious head injury. Things happen for a reason. Violence and even terrorism does not spontaneously combust. It has roots.

IF

2006-10-03T20:07:00.000-07:00

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

My Two Cents On Mark Foley

2006-10-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is about as personal as it gets so please bear with me.

Before I was born my mother divorced my father because he was a gambler and an alcoholic. After he broke the piggy bank her father had given her she decided she could raise only one child.

My mother was a Roman Catholic and I was born in 1956. Single parenthood at that time was frowned upon. My mother told me as a child that my father died in “the war.” You do not need a calculator to figure out that it would have had to have been a secret war.

When I was still in diapers my mother fell in love with another man. I know this because he paid for my diaper service. I also know that he molested me when ever he came over to visit, which was often. We would play Lions and Tigers and wrestle around and it always ended up with his hands on my genitals.

The way he was able to keep doing this was to instill fear and guilt in me. This was actually worse than the fondling itself. He told me that if my mother found out she would be very mad at me so I should never tell her. He also told me that he had seen me touching myself so why not let him?

At the tender age of two I learned to be a liar. I learned guilt. Most importantly I became a victim. I had a hard time getting along with other children my age when I got older and this would get worse. When I was five my mother and I were watching a show on television that discussed child molestation and my mother turned to me and said, “If anyone ever does that to you I want you to tell me right away.” I do not recall the show but I remember my response, “Well, guess what?”

That was the beginning of the deterioration of my relationship between me and my mother. It was also the beginning of her slide into self destruction and loneliness. She broke off the relationship with this guy immediately. She decided that if she was going to raise me she was not going to risk another relationship while I was living in her house. This came at a high price for her and indirectly for me.

Because I had been trained to be a victim I was an easy target for bullies and sexual predators. Some of these predators were 10 and 12 and 14 years old. Sometimes I wonder what they had been through before I ran into them. The bullies were another problem. There was always one around and I spent much of my childhood being teased and humiliated and beaten up. I had a terrible temper and brought a lot of this on myself. Perhaps I was seeking punishment.

When I was eight the guy who had started all this called my mother on Mother’s Day and arranged to take me out to get me some flowers for her. Of course by now my mother had been alone for three years and was probably hoping things had changed. When we got in the car he asked me if I wanted to drive and being eight I sure did. So he told me I could steer. He pulled me over to him and let me steer and let go of the wheel and grabbed me. I was terrified. All the fear from the past came back but hit me much harder. I wanted to run the car into a parked car and run away but I was much too scared. All he kept saying was, “Be nice. Be nice.”

When we got home I went straight to my room and waited for a very long time for him to leave. Then I went down stairs and told my mother what happened. She called him and got me on the extension to repeat what I had told her. He said that if it were true I would have said it while he was there. I had to explain to my mother how afraid I was.

But he planted a seed of doubt in her mind. Over the following years it festered. Did I tell her this because I was jealous of this guy and did not want him in our life? Was I lying to her? I had lied to her many times before. This guy trained me how to lie when I was two so lying had become part of my makeup. I had all kinds of behavioral problems. I stole, I committed vandalism and I was constantly in fights and a social outcast.

My mother’s self destructive behavior increased in the form of drinking binges and she became so abusive toward me in my early teens I thought I would lose my mind.

To make a long story short I moved out of my mother’s house on my eighteenth birthday and did not see her for two years. I took control of my life in fits and starts, became a deep believer in non violence even as I still struggle with the violence within me. I stopped being a victim which is something everyone who goes through abuse must do if they are ever to get their lives back. This experience did give me empathy. I spent large chunks of twenty years (from the age of seventeen) working with homeless people in soup kitchens and later running shelters and getting arrested to force and or embarrass the Government of the District of Columbia to open shelters and then more shelters.

My mother and I reconciled. She came down from Baltimore to D.C. on her birthday to help prepare a meal for 600 homeless people while I went to the White House and was arrested for demonstrating against Ronald Reagan’s policies in El Salvador. She moved into my house in late 1993 to die, which she did on February 20, 1994. Those last few months were the best months of our lives.

Mark Foley is a sexual predator. There are many others out there. They seem to be oblivious of how their actions affect others. Maybe one of them will come across this and stop and think. I hope so.

Since Holoscan seems to be down on this site right now if you want to make a comment email me at xoites@gmail.com and indicate whether or not you want your comments posted later.

Thank you.

The Day the Music Died

2006-09-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

A long, long time ago...
The King could torture and dismember
If he decided you had done something unworthwhile.
But our Founding Fathers took a chance
Hoping they would not have to dance
At the end of a Royal Wire.

At Lexington Washington’s troops did shiver
For Independence to deliver.
Redcoats on the doorstep;
But they could not take one more step.
I will remember that I cried
When I read about the tortured and vilified
But something touched me deep inside
The day the Constitution died.

So bye-bye, to our fundamental right
To be free of detention
Just because someone has spite
Those good old days are gone with the light
This is the day Democracy died.
But I refuse to run off and hide.

Did you write your Congressmen?
And can you finally find your tongue?
Maybe now it’s time you do.
Do you believe the people rule?
Or is that notion just for fools?
And can you teach me how to die real slow?

Well, I know that you’re as pissed as me
`Cause we all were raised with Liberty
We stood up and pledged as kids
Now Democracy is dying from SIDS
I was a lonely voice or so I thought
Until the internet-it hooked us up
But I knew I was out of luck
The day Democracy died.

I started screaming
“Bye-bye, to our fundamental right
To be free of detention
Just because someone has spite
Those good old days are gone with the light
This is the day Democracy died.
But I refuse to run off and hide.”

Now for six years the press left them alone
No criticizism could be heard at home
But that’s not how it used to be.
Today all the jesters sing for the king,
With a backdrop of his snickering
Ignoring all the voices that come from you and me,

Oh, and while the king was looking down,
The Justice Department whipped out the thorny crowns.
The courtroom was adjourned;
No verdict will be returned.
And while Bush was read a book by Camus
The CIA practiced in the dark
And we sang dirges in the park
The day Democracy died.

We were singing,
“Bye-bye, to our fundamental right
To be free of detention
Just because someone has spite
Those good old days are gone with the light
This is the day Democracy died.
But I refuse to run off and hide.”

Helter skelter in a summer swelter.
While Dick went to live in a fallout shelter,
The criminals were scheming fast.
They sold the masses “Peace through War”
There was no principal they would not whore
With the jesters not on the sidelines but in the cast.

Now the half-time air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune.
We all got up to dance,
Oh, but we never got the chance!
`cause when the players tried to take the field;
The marching band refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the Constitution died?

With appologies to Don Mclean

Under Reported Stories V

2006-09-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage
Source:
In These Times, 02/15/05
Title: “A Corrupted Election”
Authors: Steve Freeman and Josh Mitteldorf
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 26, 2005
Title: “Jim Crow Returns To The Voting Booth”
Authors: Greg Palast, Rev. Jesse Jackson
www.freepress.org, Nov. 23, 2004
Title: “How a Republican Election Supervisor Manipulated the 2004 Central Ohio Vote”
Authors: Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman
Faculty Evaluator: Ann Neel, MA
Student Researcher: Mike Osipoff
Political analysts have long counted on exit polls to be a reliable predictor of actual vote counts. The unusual discrepancy between exit poll data and the actual vote count in the 2004 election challenges that reliability. However, despite evidence of technological vulnerabilities in the voting system and a higher incidence of irregularities in swing states, this discrepancy was not scrutinized in the mainstream media. They simply parroted the partisan declarations of “sour grapes” and “let’s move on” instead of providing any meaningful analysis of a highly controversial election.
The official vote count for the 2004 election showed that George W. Bush won by three million votes. But exit polls projected a victory margin of five million votes for John Kerry. This eight-million-vote discrepancy is much greater than the error margin. The overall margin of error should statistically have been under one percent. But the official result deviated from the poll projections by more than five percent—a statistical impossibility.
Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, the two companies hired to do the polling for the Nation Election Pool (a consortium of the nation’s five major broadcasters and the Associated Press), did not immediately provide an explanation for how this could have occurred. They waited until January 19, the eve of the inauguration.
Edison and Mitofsky’s “inaugural” report, “Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004,” stated that the discrepancy was “most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters.” The media widely reported that this report proved the accuracy of the official count and a Bush victory. The body of the report, however, offers no data to substantiate this position. In fact, the report shows that Bush voters were more likely to complete the survey than Kerry voters. The report also states that the difference between exit polls and official tallies was far too great to be explained by sampling error, and that a systematic bias is implicated.
The Edison and Mitofsky report dismisses the possibility that the official vote count was wrong, stating that precincts with electronic voting systems had the same error rates as precincts with punch-card systems. This is true. However, it merely points to the unreliability of punch-card and electronic systems, both of which are slated for termination under the Helping America Vote Act of 2002. According to the report, only in precincts that used old-fashioned, hand-counted paper ballots did the official count and the exit poll data fall within the normal margin of error.
Also, the report shows, the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official count was considerably greater in the critical swing states. And while this fact is consistent with allegations of fraud, Mitofsky and Edison suggest, without providing any data or theory to back up their claim, that this discrepancy is somehow related to media coverage.
In precincts that were at least 80 percent for Bush, the average within-precinct error (WPE) was a whopping 10.0 percent—the numerical difference between the exit poll predictions and the official count. Also, in Bush strongholds, Kerry received only about two-thirds of the votes predicted by exit polls. In Kerry strongholds, exit polls matched the official count almost exactly (an average WPE of 0.3).
This exit poll data is a strong indicator of a corrupted election. But the case grows stronger if these exit poll discrepancies are interpreted in the context of more than 100,000 officially logged reports of irregularities and possible fraud during Election Day 2004.
Bush campaign officials compiled a 1,886-name “caging list,” which included the names and addresses of predominantly black voters in the traditionally Democratic Jacksonville, Florida. While Bush campaign spokespersons stated that the list was a returned mail log, they did not deny that such a list could be used to challenge voters on Election Day. In fact, the county elections supervisor says that he could see no other purpose for compiling such a list.
In Franklin County Ohio, Columbus voters faced one of the longest ballot lines in history. In many inner city precincts, voters sometimes had three-hour waits to get to the poll before being required to cast ballots within five minutes, as demanded by the Republican-run Board of Elections. Seventy-seven out of the county’s 2,866 voting machines malfunctioned on Election Day. One machine registered 4,258 votes for Bush in a precinct where only 638 people voted. At least 125 machines were held back at the opening of the polls, and another 68 were never deployed. While voters were rushed through the process, 29 percent of the precincts had fewer voting machines than in the 2000 election despite a 25 percent increase in turnout.
Taken together, these problems point to an election that requires scrutiny. Even if the discrepancy between exit polls and actual vote counts is simply a fluke, other flaws and questionable practices in the voting process make one wonder whether or not the people’s voice was actually heard and if we are truly a working democracy.
Update by Josh Mitteldorf: Some news is too important to report. People might get upset, and the smooth functioning of our democracy would be jeopardized. Thus the media has collectively done the responsible thing, and refrained—at great cost to themselves, be assured—from publicizing doubts about the legitimacy of the 2004 election, in order to help assure the “orderly succession of power.”
Unfortunately, some internet sites such as Commondreams.org and Freepress.org do not realize their obligations to the commonwealth, and have thus been less responsible in maintaining silence. And there’s an upbeat radio voice from Vermont, Thom Hartmann, who would be fun to listen to if only he didn’t insist on relating so many discomfiting truths.
But so long as you stay away from these isolated derelicts, you will be gratified to receive a reassuringly consistent story line: George Bush won the 2004 election fair and square. It’s time to stop asking pointless questions. Get with the program!
Update by Greg Palast and Reverend Jessie Jackson: There are conspiracy nuts out there on the Internet who think that John Kerry defeated George Bush in Ohio and other states. I know, because I wrote “Kerry Won” for TomPaine.com two days after the election.
“Kerry Won” was the latest in a series coming out of a five-year investigation, begun in November 2000, for BBC Television Newsnight and Britain’s Guardian papers, dissecting that greasy sausage called American electoral democracy.
On November 11, a week after TomPaine.com put the report out on the ‘Net, I received an email from the New York Times Washington Bureau. Hot on the investigation of the veracity of the vote, the Times reporter asked me pointed questions:
Question #1: Are you a “sore loser”?
Question #2: Are you a “conspiracy nut”?
There was no third question. Investigation of the vote was, apparently, complete. The next day, their thorough analysis of the evidence yielded a front-page story, “VOTE FRAUD THEORIES, SPREAD BY BLOGS, ARE QUICKLY BURIED.”
Here’s a bit of what the Paper of Record failed to record.
In June 2004, well before the election, my co-author of “Jim Crow” Rev. Jesse Jackson brought me to Chicago. We had breakfast with Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards. The Reverend asked the Senator to read my report of the “spoilage” of Black votes—one million African Americans who cast ballots in 2000 but did not have their votes register on the machines.
Edwards said he’d read it over after he’d had his bagel. Jackson snatched away his bagel. No read, no bagel. A hungry Senator was genuinely concerned—these were, after all, Democrats whose votes did not tally, and he shot the information to John Kerry. A couple of weeks later, Kerry told the NAACP convention that one million African-American votes were not counted in 2000, but in 2004 he would not let it happen again.
But he did let it happen again. More than a million votes in 2004 were cast and not counted.
As a reporter, it’s not my job to help the Democratic Party learn to tie its shoes. And, as a nonpartisan journalist, I’m not out to expose the Republican Party’s new elaborate campaign to prevent voters from voting—but I must report it. However, editors and news producers in my home country, the USA, seem less than interested. Indeed, they are downright hostile to reporting this story of the shoplifting of our democracy.
America has an apartheid voting system, denying African-Americans, Hispanics and American Natives the assurance their ballots will count. Worse, America has an apartheid media which denies racial disenfranchisement a seat at the front of the news bus.
It was in November 2000 I first ran into the U.S. news lord’s benign neglect of the “new Jim Crow” methods of denying citizens of color their vote. While working with the British Guardian papers just days before the 2000 presidential election, I discovered that Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, had wrongly purged tens of thousands of Black citizens from voter rolls as “felons”—when in fact their only crime had been V.W.B.: Voting While Black.
Nothing appeared in the U.S. press. However, I admit that the Florida purge story was picked up by the New York Times … fofur years later.
Just before the November 2004 election, BBC television Newsnight discovered new, confidential “caging lists” which we got our hands on from inside the Republican National Committee headquarters. These were rosters of thousands of minority voters targeted to prevent them from voting on election day: a violation of federal law. It was big news in Europe and South America. In the USA, there was nothing except an attack on BBC’s report by ABC’s web site. ABC’s only listed source for their attack on the BBC was the Republican Party.
The story of the purge of Black voters, the million missing Black ballots cast but not counted, the caging lists, and other games used to deny the vote to the dark-skinned and the poor, would have been buried long ago if not for BBC Television, Harper’s Magazine (may it last a thousand years), Britain’s Guardian and Observer, The Nation, the op-ed editors at the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer and, provocatively, Hustler Magazine. Even if ignored or actively ‘dissed by U.S. “mainstream” media, the story will be continue to be reported, due to the passionate insistence of Reverend Jackson, from a thousand pulpits.
Thanks to GeorgeBush.com for capturing the ‘caging lists.’ And bless the blogs, for they shall set the truth free: TomPaine.com, Buzzflash, Working-for-Change and other Internet sites carried the story over the electronic Berlin Wall.
Finally, my gratitude to our indefatigable investigative team, particularly Oliver Shykles and Matt Pascarella for their work on this story—on which they continue today—and to Meirion Jones, producer nonpareil at BBC television’s Newsnight.
For Additional Documentation of Voter Fraud 2004 See Chapters 2 and 3.

A MUST Listen!

2006-09-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why Iraq is such a mess?

Listen to this:

"Journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran is the former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post. His new book about the Green Zone in Baghdad during the first year of the U.S. occupation is Imperial Life in the Emerald City."

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13

Under Reported Stories IV

2006-09-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

Information Management Journal, Mar/Apr 2004
Title: “PATRIOT Act’s Reach Expanded Despite Part Being Struck Down”
Author: Nikki Swartz
LiP Magazine, Winter 2004
Title: “Grave New World”
Author: Anna Samson Miranda
Capitol Hill Blue, June 7, 2004
Title: “Where Big Brother Snoops on Americans 24/7”
Authors: Teresa Hampton and Doug Thompson
Faculty Evaluator: John Steiner, Ph. D.
Student Researcher: Sandy Brown, Michelle Jesolva
“While the evening news rolled footage of Saddam being checked for head lice, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 was quietly signed into law.”1
On December 13, 2003, President George W. Bush, with little fanfare and no mainstream media coverage, signed into law the controversial Intelligence Authorization Act while most of America toasted the victory of U.S. forces in Iraq and Saddam’s capture. None of the corporate press covered the signing of this legislation, which increases the funding for intelligence agencies, dramatically expands the definition of surveillable financial institutions, and authorizes the FBI to acquire private records of those individuals suspected of criminal activity without a judicial review. American civil liberties are once again under attack.
History has provided precedent for such actions. Throughout the 1990s, erosions of these protections were taking place. As part of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism bill adopted in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Justice Department was required to publish statistics going back to 1990 on threats or actual crimes against federal, state and local employees and their immediate families when the wrongdoing related to the workers’ official duties. The numbers were then to be kept up to date with an annual report.2 Members of congress, concerned with the threat this type of legislation posed to American civil liberties, were able to strike down much of what the bill proposed, including modified requirements regarding wiretap regulations.
The “atmosphere of fear” generated by recent terrorist attacks, both foreign and domestic, provides administrations the support necessary to adopt stringent new legislation. In response to the September 11 attacks, new agencies, programs and bureaucracies have been created. The Total Information Office is a branch of the United States Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It has a mission to “imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness.”3 Another intelligence gathering governmental agency, The Information Awareness Office, has a mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone in a centralized location for easy perusal by the United States government. Information mining has become the business of government.
In November 2002, the New York Times reported that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was developing a tracking system called “Total Information Awareness” (TIA), which was intended to detect terrorists through analyzing troves of information. The system, developed under the direction of John Poindexter, then-director of DARPA’s Information Awareness Office, was envisioned to give law enforcement access to private data without suspicion of wrongdoing or a warrant.4 The “Total Information Awareness” program’s name was changed to “Terrorist Information Awareness” on May 20, 2003 ostensibly to clarify the program’s intent to gather information on presumed terrorists rather than compile dossiers on U.S. citizens.
Despite this name change, a Senate Defense Appropriations bill passed unanimously on July 18, 2003, expressly denying any funding to Terrorist Information Awareness research. In response, the Pentagon proposed The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or MATRIX, a program devised by longtime Bush family friend Hank Asher as a pilot effort to increase and enhance the exchange of sensitive terrorism and other criminal activity information between local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. The MATRIX, as devised by the Pentagon, is a State run information generating tool, thereby circumventing congress’ concern regarding the appropriation of federal funds for the development of this controversial database. Although most states have refused to adopt these Orwellian strategies, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Florida have all jumped on the TIA band wagon.
Yet, somehow, after the apparent successful dismantling of TIA, expressed concern by Representatives Mark Udall of Colorado, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Ron Paul of Texas and Dennis Moore of Kansas, and heightened public awareness of the MATRIX, the Intelligence Authorization Act was signed into law December 13, 2003.5
On Thursday, November 20, 2003 Minnesota Representative Betty McCollum stated that, “The Republican Leadership inserted a controversial provision in the FY04 Intelligence Authorization Report that will expand the already far-reaching USA Patriot Act, threatening to further erode our cherished civil liberties. This provision gives the FBI power to demand financial and other records, without a judge’s approval, from post offices, real estate agents, car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses. This provision was included with little or no public debate, including no consideration by the House Judiciary Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction. It came as a surprise to most Members of this body.”6
According to LiP Magazine, “Governmental and law-enforcement agencies and MATRIX contractors across the nation will gain extensive and unprecedented access to financial records, medical records, court records, voter registration, travel history, group and religious affiliations, names and addresses of family members, purchases made and books read.”7
Peter Jennings, in an ABC original report, explored the commercial applications of this accumulated information. Journalist and author Peter O’Harrow, who collaborated with ABC News on the broadcast “Peter Jennings Reporting: No Place to Hide,” states “…marketers—and now, perhaps government investigators—can study what people are likely to do, what kind of attitudes they have, what they buy at the grocery store.”8 Although this program aired on prime-time mainstream television, there was no mention of the potential for misuse of this personal information network or of the controversy surrounding the issues of privacy and civil liberties violations concerning citizens and civil servants alike. Again, the sharing of this kind of personal information is not without precedent.
On November 12, 1999, Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which permits financial institutions to share personal customer information with affiliates within the holding company. The Intelligence Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2004 expands the definition of a surveillable financial institution to include real estate agencies, insurance companies, travel agencies, Internet service providers, post offices, casinos and other businesses as well. Due to massive corporate mergers and the acquisition of reams of newly acquired information, personal consumer data has been made readily available to any agency interested in obtaining it, both commercial and governmental.
With the application of emerging new technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification chips or RFIDs, small individualized computer chips capable of communicating with a receiving computer, consumer behavior can literally be tracked from the point of purchase to the kitchen cupboard, and can be monitored by all interested parties.
Update by Anna Miranda: The United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society. The tremendous explosion in surveillance-enabling technologies, combined with the ongoing weakening in legal restraints that protect our privacy mean that we are drifting toward a surveillance society. The good news is that it can be stopped. Unfortunately, right now the big picture is grim.—ACLU9
The PATRIOT Act
Fifteen ‘sunset’ provisions in the PATRIOT Act are set to expire at the end of 2005. One amendment, the “library provision” went before Congress in June. Despite President Bush’s threat to veto, lawmakers, including 38 Republicans, voted 238 to 187 to overturn the provision, which previously allowed law enforcement officials to request and obtain information from libraries without obtaining a search warrant. Although inspectors still have the “right” to search library records, they must get a judge’s approval first.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales informed Congress in April that this provision has never been used to acquire information, although the American Library Association recently reported that over 200 requests for information were submitted since the PATRIOT Act was signed into law in October 2001.
The overturning of the library provision has been seen as a small victory in the fight to reclaim privacy rights. Rep. Saunders, who was responsible for almost successfully having the provision repealed last year, commented that “conservative groups have been joining progressive organizations to call for changes.”10
The MATRIX
The fight to the right for privacy continues to wage on with more successes, as the MATRIX program was officially shut down on April 15, 2005. The program, which consisted of 13 states—and only had four states remaining prior to its closure, received $12 million in funding from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. By utilizing a system called FACTS (Factual Analysis Criminal Threat Solution), law enforcement officials from participating states were able to share information with one another and utilized this program as an investigative tool to help solve and prevent crimes. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, “Between July 2003 and April 2005, there have been 1,866,202 queries to the FACTS application.”11 However, of these queries, only 2.6 percent involved terrorism or national security.
Although the MATRIX has been shut down, Florida law enforcement officials are pursuing continuing the program and rebuilding it. Officials have sent out a call for information from vendors beginning a competitive bidding process.
RFID Technology and the REAL ID Act
On May 10, 2005, President Bush secretly signed into law the REAL ID Act, requiring states within the next three years to issue federally approved electronic identification cards. Attached as an amendment to an emergency spending bill funding troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the REAL ID Act passed without the scrutiny and debate of Congress.
One of the main concerns of the electronic identification card is identity theft. The Act mandates the cards to have anti-counterfeiting measures, such as an electronically readable magnetic strip or RFID chip. Privacy advocates argue that RFID chips can be read from “unauthorized” scanners allowing third parties or the general public to gather and/or steal private information about an individual. Amidst growing concerns about identity theft, the REAL ID Act has given no consideration to this drawback.
Other privacy concerns regarding the electronic identification card is the use of information by third parties once they’ve scanned the cards and accessed the information. At this time, the Act does not specify what can be done with the information. A company or organization scanning your identification card could potentially sell your personal information if strict guidelines on what to do with the information are not mandated.
Inability to conform over the next three years will leave citizens and residents of the United States paralyzed. Identification cards that do not meet the federally mandated standards will not be accepted as identification for travel, opening a bank account, receiving social security checks, or participating in government benefits, among other things.
Notes
1. LiP Magazine. http://www.lipmagazine.org//.
2. The Washington Post December 01, 1997, Final Edition.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness.
4. Electronic Privacy Information Center http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/. Information Awareness Office, See HR 2417.
5. Ibid.
6. Congressional Record: November 22,2003 pg.E2399.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h112203.html.
7. LiP Magazine. http://www.lipmagazine.org/.
8. ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Primetime/story.
9. http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/PrivacyMain.cfm.
10. http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/20050406114413.asp.
11. http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/press_releases/20050415_matrix_project.html.

Nate Needs Our Help

2006-09-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

Nate is making a huge transition to go to California to unseat a loathesome person who also happens to be a Republican.

Go to his site and see if you like the video he made. (If you don't I will be very surpised.)

Then go down to his next entry and see how you can help him move. He needs less than $800.00. I know we can spare something. I just spent $1200 on my van and had to borrow $850.00 to pay my bills but i am going to send him something anyway.

A Hero Requests One

2006-09-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

The following was written by HillCountryGal.

I WANT A HERO

I've been thinking a lot lately about the meaning of the word hero. Some time ago, I lost interest in acquiring "stuff". I am entering that phase of life when I am more interested in giving back to my fellow humans, and I have found a new purpose in life. It's called passion. I want a hero. I want a President who defines the word, in actions and deeds. I want a President who is compassionate, articulate, diplomatic, and dedicated to uphold, with the highest regard, The Constitution of the United States. I want a President who cherishes our Bill of Rights, and holds those truths to be self-evident.I want a hero.I don't want a presidential imposter who tortures, who denigrates those who question him, who relishes spying on innocent Americans, who lies with every spoken word,and who enriches his friends while impoverishing the rest of us. I don't want a presidential imposter who lets a major city drown, who refuses to listen to dissent, who corrals those of us who protest his crimes in a "Free Speech" zone miles from where he is speaking to his carefully chosen faithful. I don't want a presidential imposter who divides us, derides us, and laughs at our belief in Democracy. I don't want a presidential imposter who launches a war of aggression against a sovereign nation, then refuses to attend the funeral of ONE of the thousands of soldiers killed in his failed war. I don't want a presidential imposter who thinks the Constitution is just a "goddamn piece of paper." I don't want a presidential imposter who smirks while talking down to us, who gropes heads of state, who farts to startled young staffers and then laughs about it. I don't want a presidential imposter who is a dry drunk, an arrogant spoiled brat, a C student, and a former cheerleader who loves to play war, with other people's loved ones. I don't want a presidential imposter who shirked his duty in the military and who embraces those who swiftboat anyone that dares question him about his dereliction of duty.I want a hero. A real one. I want a President who can inspire and uplight our bruised and battered souls. I want a President who can make me do more, care more, and work harder to unite our fractured country.I want a hero.

HillCountryGal

Under Reported Stories III

2006-09-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Lancet, October 29, 2004
Title: “The War in Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities”
Author: Richard Horton
The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2005
Title: “Lost Count”
Author: Lila Guterman
FAIR, April 15, 2004
Title: “CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?”
Author: Julie Hollar
Faculty Evaluator: Sherril Jaffe, Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Melissa Waybright
In late October, 2004, a peer reviewed study was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, concluding that at least 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led coalition in March 2003. Previously, the number of Iraqis that had died, due to conflict or sanctions since the 1991 Gulf War, had been uncertain. Claims ranging from denial of increased mortality to millions of excess deaths have been made. In the absence of any surveys, however, they relied on Ministry of Health records. Morgue-based surveillance data indicate the post-invasion homicide rate is many times higher than the pre-invasion rate.
In the present setting of insecurity and limited availability of health information, researchers, headed by Dr. Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, undertook a national survey to estimate mortality during the 14.6 months before the invasion (Jan 1, 2002, to March 18, 2003) and to compare it with the period from March 19, 2003, to the date of the interview, between Sept 8 and 20, 2004. Iraqi households were informed about the purpose of the survey, assured that their name would not be recorded, and told that there would be no benefits or penalties for refusing or agreeing to participate.
The survey indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is in reality about 100,000 people, and may be much higher. The major public health problem in Iraq has been identified as violence. However, despite widespread Iraqi casualties, household interview data do not show evidence of widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the ground. Ninety-five percent of reported killings (all attributed to U.S. forces by interviewees) were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry.
The study was released on the eve of a contentious presidential election—fought in part over U.S. policy on Iraq. Many American newspapers and television news programs ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines. “What went wrong this time? Perhaps the rush by researchers and The Lancet to put the study in front of American voters before the election accomplished precisely the opposite result, drowning out a valuable study in the clamor of the presidential campaign.” (Lila Guterman, Chronicle of Higher Education)
The study’s results promptly flooded though the worldwide media—everywhere except the United States, where there was barely a whisper about the study, followed by stark silence. “The Lancet released the paper on October 29, the Friday before the election, when many reporters were busy with political stories. That day the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune each dedicated only about 400 words to the study and placed the stories inside their front section, on pages A4 and A11, respectively. (The news media in Europe gave the study much more play; many newspapers put articles about it on their front pages.)
In a short article about the study on page A8, the New York Times noted that the Iraqi Body Count, a project to tally civilian deaths reported in the news media, had put the maximum death count at around 17,000. The new study, the article said, “is certain to generate intense controversy.” But the Times has not published any further news articles about the paper. The Washington Post, perhaps most damagingly to the study’s reputation, quoted Marc E. Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, as saying, “These numbers seem to be inflated.” Mr. Garlasco says now that he hadn’t read the paper at the time and calls his quote in the Post “really unfortunate.” (Lila Guterman, Chronicle of Higher Education).
Even so, nobody else in American corporate media bothered to pick up the story and inform our citizens how many Iraqi citizens are being killed at the hands of a coalition led by our government. The study was never mentioned on television news, and the truth remains unheard by those who may need to hear it most. The U.S. government had no comment at the time and remains silent about Iraqi civilian deaths. “The only thing we keep track of is casualties for U.S. troops and civilians,” a Defense Department spokesman told The Chronicle.
When CNN anchor Daryn Kagan did have the opportunity to interview the Al Jazeera network editor-in-chief Ahmed Al-Sheik—a rare opportunity to get independent information about events in Fallujah—she used the occasion to badger Al-Sheik about whether the civilian deaths were really “the story” in Fallujah. CNN’s argument was that a bigger story than civilian deaths is “what the Iraqi insurgents are doing” to provoke a U.S. “response” is startling. “When reports from the ground are describing hundreds of civilians being killed by U.S. forces, CNN should be looking to Al Jazeera’s footage to see if it corroborates those accounts—not badgering Al Jazeera’s editor about why he doesn’t suppress that footage.” (MediaWatch, Asheville Global Report)
Study researchers concluded that several limitations exist with this study, predominantly because the quality of data received is dependent on the accuracy of the interviews. However, interviewers believed that certain essential charcteristics of Iraqi culture make it unlikely that respondents would have fabricated their reports of the deaths. The Geneva Conventions have clear guidance about the responsibilities of occupying armies to the civilian population they control. “With the admitted benefit of hindsight and from a purely public health perspective, it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error. The invasion of Iraq, the displacement of a cruel dictator, and an attempt to impose a liberal democracy by force have, by themselves, been insufficient to bring peace and security to the civilian population.
The illegal, heavy handed tactics practiced by the U.S. military in Iraq evident in these news stories have become what appears to be their standard operating procedure in occupied Iraq. Countless violations of international law and crimes against humanity occurred in Fallujah during the November massacre.
Evidenced by the mass slaughtering of Iraqis and the use of illegal weapons such as cluster bombs, napalm, uranium munitions and chemical weapons during the November siege of Fallujah when the entire city was declared a “free fire zone” by military leaders, the brutality of the U.S. military has only increased throughout Iraq as the occupation drags on.
According to Iraqis inside the city, at least 60 percent of Fallujah went on to be totally destroyed in the siege, and eight months after the siege entire districts of the city remained without electricity or water. Israeli style checkpoints were set up in the city, prohibiting anyone from entering who did not live inside the city. Of course non-embedded media were not allowed in the city.
update: Since these stories were published, countless other incidents of illegal weapons and tactics being used by the U.S. military in Iraq have occurred.
During “Operation Spear” on June 17th, 2005, U.S.-led forces attacked the small cities of Al-Qa’im and Karabla near the Syrian border. U.S. warplanes dropped 2,000 pound bombs in residential areas and claimed to have killed scores of “militants” while locals and doctors claimed that only civilians were killed.
As in Fallujah, residents were denied access to the city in order to obtain medical aid, while those left inside the city claimed Iraqi civilians were being regularly targeted by U.S. snipers.
According to an IRIN news report, Firdos al-Abadi from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society stated that 7,000 people from Karabla were camped in the desert outside the city, suffering from lack of food and medical aid while 150 homes were totally destroyed by the U.S. military.
An Iraqi doctor reported on the same day that he witnessed, “crimes in the west area of the country…the American troops destroyed one of our hospitals, they burned the whole store of medication, they killed the patient in the ward…they prevented us from helping the people in Qa’im.”
Also like Fallujah, a doctor at the General Hospital of al-Qa’im stated that entire families remained buried under the rubble of their homes, yet medical personnel were unable to reach them due to American snipers.
Iraqi civilians in Haditha had similar experiences during “Operation Open Market” when they claimed U.S. snipers shot anyone in the streets for days on end, and U.S. and Iraqi forces raided homes detaining any man inside.
Corporate media reported on the “liberation” of Fallujah, as well as quoting military sources on the number of “militants” killed. Any mention of civilian casualties, heavy-handed tactics or illegal munitions was either brief or non-existent, and continues to be as of June 2005.
For additional information:
For those interested in following these stories, it is possible to obtain information by visiting the English Al-Jazeera website at http://english.aljazeera.%20net/HomePage, my website at http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/www.dahrjamailiraq.com, The World Tribunal on Iraq at http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/www.worldtribunal.org, Peacework Magazine at http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/www.afsc.org/pwork/0412/041204.htm , and other alternative/independent news websites.

Under Reported Stories II

2006-09-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

Title: “Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone”

Author: Dahr Jamail

Faculty Evaluators: Bill Crowley, Ph. D., Sherril Jaffe, Ph. D.
Student Researcher: Brian K. Lanphear

Over the past two years, the United States has conducted two major sieges against Fallujah, a city in Iraq. The first attempted siege of Fallujah (a city of 300,000 people) resulted in a defeat for Coalition forces. As a result, the United States gave the citizens of Fallujah two choices prior to the second siege: leave the city or risk dying as enemy insurgents. Faced with this ultimatum, approximately 250,000 citizens, or 83 percent of the population of Fallujah, fled the city. The people had nowhere to flee and ended up as refugees. Many families were forced to survive in fields, vacant lots, and abandoned buildings without access to shelter, water, electricity, food or medical care. The 50,000 citizens who either chose to remain in the city or who were unable to leave were trapped by Coalition forces and were cut off from food, water and medical supplies. The United States military claimed that there were a few thousand enemy insurgents remaining among those who stayed in the city and conducted the invasion as if all the people remaining were enemy combatants.
Burhan Fasa’a, an Iraqi journalist, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English. “Americans did not have interpreters with them, so they entered houses and killed people because they didn’t speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and shot people because [the people] didn’t obey [the soldiers’] orders, even just because the people couldn’t understand a word of English.” Abu Hammad, a resident of Fallujah, told the Inter Press Service that he saw people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. “The Americans shot them with rifles from the shore. Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their head to show they are not fighters, they were all shot.” Furthermore, “even the wound[ed] people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed.” Former residents of Fallujah recall other tragic methods of killing the wounded. “I watched them [U.S. Forces] roll over wounded people in the street with tanks… …This happened so many times.”
Preliminary estimates as of December of 2004 revealed that at least 6,000 Iraqi citizens in Fallujah had been killed, and one-third of the city had been destroyed.
Journalists Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell assert that the continuous slaughter in Fallujah is greatly contributing to escalating violence in other regions of the country such as Mosul, Baquba, Hilla, and Baghdad. The violence prompted by the U.S. invasion has resulted in the assassinations of at least 338 Iraqi’s who were associated with Iraq’s “new” government.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq, and more specifically Fallujah, is causing an incredible humanitarian disaster among those who have no specific involvement with the war. The International Committee for the Red Cross reported on December 23, 2004 that three of the city’s water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth badly damaged. Civilians are running short on food and are unable to receive help from those who are willing to make a positive difference. Aid organizations have been repeatedly denied access to the city, hospitals, and refugee populations in the surrounding areas.
Abdel Hamid Salim, spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad, told Inter Press Service that none of their relief teams had been allowed into Fallujah three weeks after the invasion. Salim declared that “there is still heavy fighting in Fallujah. And the Americans won’t let us in so we can help people.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour voiced a deep concern for the civilians caught up in the fighting. Louise Arbour emphasized that all those guilty of violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws must be brought to justice. Arbour claimed that all violations of these laws should be investigated, including “the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons and the use of human shields.”
Marjorie Cohn, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists, has noted that the U.S. invasion of Fallujah is a violation of international law that the U.S. had specifically ratified: “They [U.S. Forces] stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.”
According to David Walsh, the American media also seems to contribute to the subversion of truth in Fallujah. Although, in many cases, journalists are prevented from entering the city and are denied access to the wounded, corporate media showed little concern regarding their denied access. There has been little or no mention of the immorality or legality of the attacks the United States has waged against Iraq. With few independent journalists reporting on the carnage, the international humanitarian community in exile, and the Red Cross and Red Crescent prevented from entering the besieged city, the world is forced to rely on reporting from journalists embedded with U.S. forces. In the U.S. press, we see casualties reported for Fallujah as follows: number of U.S. soldiers dead, number of Iraqi soldiers dead, number of “guerillas” or “insurgents” dead. Nowhere were the civilian casualties reported in the first weeks of the invasion. An accurate count of civilian casualties to date has yet to be published in the mainstream media.

Under Reported Stories

2006-09-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

I will be posting the most under reported stories from the past year so we can savor them.

Author: Karen Lightfoot
<http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0914-05.htm>
<http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/story.asp?ID=692&Issue=Open+Government>
Faculty Evaluator: Yvonne Clarke, MA
Student Researcher: Jessica Froiland
Throughout the 1980s, Project Censored highlighted a number of alarming reductions to government access and accountability (see Censored 1982 #6, 1984 #8, 1985 #3 and 1986 #2). It tracked the small but systematic changes made to existing laws and the executive orders introduced. It now appears that these actions may have been little more than a prelude to the virtual lock box against access that is being constructed around the current administration.
“The Bush Administration has an obsession with secrecy,” says Representative Henry Waxman, the Democrat from California who, in September 2004, commissioned a congressional report on secrecy in the Bush Administration. “It has repeatedly rewritten laws and changed practices to reduce public and congressional scrutiny of its activities. The cumulative effect is an unprecedented assault on the laws that make our government open and accountable.”
Changes to Laws that Provide Public Access to Federal Records
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gives citizens the ability to file a request for specific information from a government agency and provides recourse in federal court if that agency fails to comply with FOIA requirements. Over the last two decades, beginning with Reagan, this law has become increasingly diluted and circumvented by each succeeding administration.
Under the Bush Administration, agencies make extensive and arbitrary use of FOIA exemptions (such as those for classified information, privileged attorney-client documents and certain information compiled for law enforcement purposes) often inappropriately or with inadequate justification. Recent evidence shows agencies making frivolous (and sometimes ludicrous) exemption claims, abusing the deliberative process privilege, abusing the law enforcement exemption, and withholding data on telephone service outages.
Quite commonly, the Bush Administration simply fails to respond to FOIA requests at all. Whether this is simply an inordinate delay or an unstated final refusal to respond to the request, the requesting party is never told. But the effect is the same: the public is denied access to the information.
The Bush Administration also engages in an aggressive policy of questioning, challenging and denying FOIA requesters’ eligibility for fee waivers, using a variety of tactics. Measures include narrowing the definition of “representative of news media,” claiming information would not contribute to public understanding.
Ten years ago, federal agencies were required to release documents through FOIA––even if technical grounds for refusal existed––unless “foreseeable harm” would result from doing so. But, according to the Waxman report, an October 2001 memo by Attorney General John Ashcroft instructs and encourages agencies to withhold information if there are any technical grounds for withholding it under FOIA.
In 2003, the Bush Administration won a new legislative exemption from FOIA for all National Security Agency “operational files.” The Administration’s main rationale for this new exemption is that conducting FOIA searches diverts resources from the agency’s mission. Of course, this rationale could apply to every agency. As NSA has operated subject to FOIA for decades, it is not clear why the agency now needs this exemption.
The Presidential Records Act ensures that after a president leaves office, the public will have full access to White House documents used to develop public policy. Under the law and an executive order by Ronald Reagan, the presumption has been that most documents would be released. However, President Bush issued an executive order that establishes a process that generally blocks the release of presidential papers.
Changes to Laws that Restrict Public Access to Federal Records
The Bush Administration has dramatically increased the volume of government information concealed from public view. In a March 2003 executive order, President Bush expanded the use of the national security classification. The order eliminated the presumption of disclosure, postponed or avoided automatic declassification, protected foreign government information, reclassified some information, weakened the panel that decides to exempt documents from declassification and adjudicates classification challenges, and exempted vice presidential records from mandatory declassification review.
The Bush Administration has also obtained unprecedented authority to conduct government operations in secret, with little or no judicial oversight. Under expanded law enforcement authority in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department can more easily use secret orders to obtain library and other private records, obtain “sneak-and-peek” warrants to conduct secret searches, and conduct secret wiretaps. In addition, the Bush Administration has used novel legal interpretations to expand its authority to detain, try, and deport individuals in secret. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush Administration has asserted unprecedented authority to detain anyone whom the executive branch labels an “enemy combatant” indefinitely and secretly. It has authorized military trials that can be closed not only to the public but also to the defendants and their own attorneys. And the Administration has authorized procedures for the secret detention and deportation of aliens residing in the United States.
Congressional Access to Information
Compared to previous administrations, the Bush Administration has operated with remarkably little congressional oversight. This is partially attributable to the alignment of the parties. The Republican majorities in the House and the Senate have refrained from investigating allegations of misconduct by the White House. Another major factor has been the Administration’s resistance to oversight. The Bush Administration has consistently refused to provide to members of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, and congressional commissions the information necessary for meaningful investigation and review of the Administration’s activities.
For example, the Administration has contested in court the power of the Government Accountability Office to conduct independent investigations and has refused to comply with the rule that allows members of the House Government Reform Committee to obtain information from the executive branch, forcing the members to go to court to enforce their rights under the law. It has also ignored and rebuffed numerous requests for information made by members of Congress attempting to exercise their oversight responsibilities with respect to executive branch activities, and repeatedly withheld information from the investigative commission established by Congress to investigate the September 11 attacks.
Update Rep. Waxman’s companion bill, HR 5073 IH, the Restore Open Government Act of 2004, was not heard by Congress before the Winter Recess in December, and the bill was not reintroduced in the Opening Session in January 2005. However, on February 16, after the commencement of the 109th Congress, John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill entitled the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2005, S. 394 (the Cornyn-Leahy bill), which according to their joint statement “is designed to strengthen laws governing access to government information, particularly the Freedom of Information Act.” On the same day, an identical bill, H.R. 867, was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.).1
For more information on Rep. Waxman’s legislation and work on open government, site, please visit http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/www.democrats.reform.house.gov.

Voices of Dissent are Emerging in Press

2006-09-03T04:41:00.000-07:00

The tide is turning on the War in Iraq and this administration. In three seperate polls approximately 2/3 of the responders seem to think George W. Bush is wrong.

This from Allen L Roland of OpEdNews.com

"Tom Regan, Christian Science monitor, lays out the latest poll numbers including the startling finding that Sixty percent of Americans also say terrorism is more likely in America because of the war with Iraq.

"A new CNN poll shows that only about one-third of Americans now support the war in Iraq, with 61 percent opposed.

...A Princeton Survey Research Associates International poll conducted Aug. 24-25 for Newsweek shows that 63 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the president has handled Iraq. A CBSNews/New York Times poll conducted Aug. 17-21 shows 65 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the president is dealing with Iraq. Among those who identified themselves as independents, 67 percent disapprove.""

Scott Crowder had this letter printed in the Letters to the Editor section of The Salt Lake City Tribune.

"To all GOP supporters, in case you haven't heard, the new GOP buzzword for 2006 is "fascist." If you hear anyone mention the fact that Bush was warned, prior to 9/11, that terrorists were going to fly commercial airplanes into buildings and he did nothing to stop them, call that person a fascist. If you hear anyone say that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, which Bush has admitted, and that we should not have invaded Iraq, that person is a fascist. If someone wonders why we haven't caught Osama, they must be fascists. If anyone resents our government's unwarranted tapping of our private phone calls, they are fascists. If someone mentions that SAT scores are down 25 percent in the past 30 years, despite the supposed brilliance of No Child Left Behind, yep, they are fascists, also. "

Philip Gailey of the St. Petersburg Times wrote:

"Bush fearmongering on Iraq loses its punch.
...the administration's disastrous enterprise in Iraq is a continuation of the last century's battles against Nazism, fascism and communism.
It took President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to open our eyes last week. This time the enemy is a "new type of fascism," Islamic extremism, and Iraq is ground zero in the struggle against this new -ism...

Bush has more than two years left in office. Can we be sure the worst is behind us? The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team is becoming increasingly desperate as Iraq continues its descent into hell, and I worry what they have in mind for Iran. The world is a more dangerous place because of the arrogance, ignorance and tragic incompetence of these men."

Donald Rumsfeld seems to have done more in one speech to turn people off to the policies of the White House than all the dissenters form here to Hawaii.

But of course he just brought his vitriol to the forefront and he would have remained his "lovable" teddy bearish self if we were not out here screaming the truth.

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” ~ Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

Anger on the Left

2006-08-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of anger in this country. This is not a recent phenomenon. This has been one pissed off country all of my life. When I was a kid we were pissed off at the Russians, the Red Chinese, the Niggers, the Wops, the Jews, the Irish and the Labor Unions and the Boss and the Whites (not so much) and the five day work week.

If Oswald acted alone and was not framed then he must have been pretty pissed off at Kennedy. The killers at Columbine High must have been pissed off. The KKK stays pissed off.

Today Ann Coulter is pissed off with anyone left of Adolf Hitler and Ralph Nader is pissed off with Congress. (Ok, I am pissed with Congress too.)

So what do we do with this anger? On more than one occasion I have seen people on blogs say they want to kill all the fascists. Well maybe not all but at least enough to “make a difference.” Some of this I take with a grain of salt. But no more.

Folks, we can not kill people. Period. It is wrong. Not only will it attract a lot of people with badges and Glocks but it is morally and ethically indefensible. A small minority seem to be suggesting that if we are not willing to kill some people that the United States is in deep peril. Well, the United States is in deep peril but no amount of killing is going to rescue it.

If your will to change the world can not transcend the idea of killing or destroying then your imagination and your morals are not worth a hill of beans. NOT WORTH SHIT!

Let me be very clear about this. If you can not see that killing people or destroying things is a bad idea you are functionally retarded. You have no reason to read what I think or comment on this page(although you will still be welcome to.) There is no hope for the human race as long as we, as a species can not see that these “solutions” do not wash.

Yes! The world is in deep shit right now and our President is a self centered greedy bastard who has no legitimate right to do 99% of the things that he does. That does not excuse our acts and does not allow us to cut and run to the gun.

What the world desperately needs is people who are pissed off enough to reach for a gun to refuse to do so and turn their anger and frustrated energies towards a more difficult task: Using their creative talents for real solutions.

This page was set up for discussing creative responses to the Bush Administration and so far it has not gone very far. I have babbled about a lot of things and some of you have made comments, but its true purpose seems to have been lost. Folks you need to start responding or I am afraid it may come down to some really pissed off people killing and getting killed while we stand by and do just about nothing.

How about it folks? Can we start a real dialogue about what we need to do to get the media and the Congress pointed in the right direction again? Or are we going to start reading articles in the paper about local “Terrorists” dying in shootouts?

One Year Later

2006-08-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

I lot of pretty speeches are being made on the anniversary of Katrina. A lot of ugly facts are being left out. They are still recovering bodies. There are still 1300 people missing. The 9th Ward, where all the black people used to live still has no water or electricity. Houses that have been destroyed are still waiting to be cleared. Public Housing that was not damaged at all has had steel shutters put on the doors and windows so the people who lived there may not return. The billions of dollars that were spent seem to have had little real affect. None of this seems to stop the platitudes and the false posturing that is going on.

I wish I could have seen Bush’s reaction when Karl Rove informed him he would have to go back to New Orleans and smooth over, as best he could, the disaster that followed the storm and still continues today. The end of August will haunt Bush for the rest of his term. I hope it continues to haunt him afterward.

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! has done some fine coverage.

Katrina1

Katrina2

Katrina3

Katrina4

Katrina5

Katrina6

I invite everyone to add their own stories about New Orleans and to add any links they find in the “comments” section.

Making a List

2006-08-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a must see video of how Muslim American Citizens are being treated by Homeland Security when they return from vacation overseas:

"I Was Made to Feel Like an Outsider in My Own Country" - Muslim-Americans Say Racial Profiling Led to Detention, Harassment at Airport”

AMY GOODMAN: What happened?

ARWA IBRAHIM: Well, we were arriving on Tuesday, August 15, at 4:30 p.m. from a flight from Dubai, but it was actually a transfer flight from Jordan, where we had spent our vacation. And after we went through customs and the man looked at our passports, we were told to step aside for additional questioning, rather than claiming our baggage. We arrived in a small blocked-off area, and we looked around and we saw 200 other Arabs, South Asians and Muslims with us. We were told to pass up our passports and wait until we were called for questioning. We were held there for around five hours, and then we were questioned, and afterwards our bags were searched
.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What kind of questions were they asking you?

ARWA IBRAHIM: They asked us, I felt, very inappropriate questions that they seemed to be recording into their computer. I don't know for what purpose. They asked us about specifics of where we worked, what school I went to, what I majored in. And they also asked us about some of our political views. They asked my sister whether she felt that Iraq was better now or under Saddam's rule, and they were recording everything they asked us.

Overcoming Fear and Standing up to Violence.

2006-08-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Most people seem to get that Bush’s fear tactics are being used to manipulate the American people into willingly giving him the power to usurp our civil and Constitutional rights. Whenever things get hot for Bush the message boards on Maryland’s interstate highways light up with the message, “REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY CALL 800-942-TIPS.”

A lot of people who can see through this bullshit get nervous about being rounded up and put in detention centers somewhere down the road. Haliburton has been contracted to build them and I think it is safe to assume that they either have built them or are building them. It is reasonable to believe that these detention centers are intended to be used. It is also reasonable to believe that these centers are being built to intimidate those of us who see through the fear mongering by making us as afraid of Bush as other people seem to be afraid of “Terrorists.” (Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology, a sect, or a racial group.)

Many discussions on Crooks&Liars that get into the possibility of suddenly becoming a police state and the government rounding up dissenters or all the Democrat Party members sooner than later have people saying they will “take as many” people who come to get them as they can.

I want to address the logic of this. Or maybe I want to point out the illogic of this.

It is our duty to make sure it never comes to that. How? By making sure we are never silent. Evil works best with tacit consent. The kind of tacit consent the Congress gave Bush after 9/11.

Evil, real evil is about power. Power over us to make us do its bidding and to sit quietly in fear or better yet disinterest while others are wronged.

We have power beyond our imaginations to change this world and strip the greedy murderers of all their power and all their “consent.” We are afraid to use it. We don’t believe in ourselves. We don’t trust each other. All that said we still have that power.

The most perfect tool in the world is the human hand. It can manipulate things in the real world. It can manipulate machines nature can not create. Those machines are made by something even more impressive than the human hand and that is the mind.

We all have minds and we are all guilty of letting our fears retard what they can do. We allow our experiences and lack there of to limit what we think we can do. We project those limitations on each other and say, “people will never get it.”

Well, maybe they won’t, but does that give us the right to stop trying? Is this what there is to life? Accepting our limitations and then giving up?

I think we are better than this. Where we are right now is in the shit hole. We are conducting wars on two continents while other wars we have a hand in are going on all over the place. Bush wants to invade Iran and as far as I can tell he will. Will this satisfy him? I doubt it.

Non violent resistance, whether it be direct and confrontational or by writing or talking to one another or reaching out to someone in need is the only way out of this. We need to listen and we need to speak. We need to be informed and we need to inform.

This world needs justice and curling up in a ball with a gun waiting for the boogey man to come and take us away to a detention center in some nebulous future that right now only our imagination can create is as unimaginative and uncreative as it gets.

Courage is not the absence of fear and nonviolence is not the absence of steadfast stubborn resistance. So look alive out there and take the opportunity given to us and think and act. Or so help me, if they do come for us we will have only ourselves to blame.

Peace.

Mike

Carl Kerstann has Made a Video

2006-08-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

Yet another good video expressing outrage over Iraq:

Liar

Thank you Carl.

Bush Cuts And Runs At Tora Bora, Helps Bin Laden Escapes, Now Blames America for Iraq

2006-08-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

Someone emailed me and suggested I post this link:

Huffington Report

The Expansion of War

2006-08-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

The recent war in Lebanon does not bode well for what lies ahead. Seymour Hersh has written that the US was pressing Israel to go after Hezbollah months ago. It would seem that they agreed. All they needed was a pretext. Iran supplies rockets for Hezbollah and we supply tanks and bulldozers and jets and on and on for Israel. Iran is our final destination but we need Hezbollah out of the way first and we may go after Syria as well.

I recently heard on Democracy Now! that the Bush administration is considering alternatives to Democracy in Iraq if things get any worse. Considering the fact that things will only get worse it will be interesting to see how Bush tap dances his way into an overt dictatorship in a country we supposedly invaded to liberate. It is late August so the push for war with Iran will wait until everyone is back from vacation. It may even wait until after the elections. It depends on how bold our fearless leaders are.

Was Lebanon a testing ground for what they will attempt to do in Iran? Will they carry out a massive air war with limited ground forces? It seems likely considering the size of our military. It may also be in their plans to have us in a major crises come election time in 2008 and I can hear the cries of “Stay the Course” and “Don’t change horses in midstream” already. Would they carry out the threat to suspend elections here if they deemed them to be “too dangerous?”

So far, Bush has gotten away with almost every outrage he has committed. He has the press and the money and military might on his side. Will we continue to allow him to do as he pleases? The recent ruling by a Federal Judge that his NSA wiretapping is unconstitutional has not dissuaded him. Innocents dying in Iraq and Lebanon has not even given him pause.

People will look back at this time in history and wonder why we allowed this to happen. My question to them and to you and to me is, “What are we to do?” There is an almost universal opposition to what Bush is doing in the Middle East and yet the only question about the recent war in Lebanon on NPR that I heard was, “What should we call this war?”

With a press like that who needs ignorance?

"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."
-Issac Assimov

Update

2006-08-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

I have this amazing boss. In October of 2005 he was sitting at a red light and was rear ended at 70 miles per hour. His neck was broken in three places. He lived. He came back to work in a contraption doctors call a “hallo.” He plays the base in a damned good cover band.

I have another boss. He went to the Peabody Conservatory of Music. He plays a damned good jazz guitar.

In my profession everyone is my boss. Our customers are my boss. The people who direct me to do my job are my boss. I really don’t mind, it takes some of the heat off of me. We all work together and do our best.

I have to say, though, that as a team of people we kick ass. We really do. We look out for each other and we care. That is why I like my job and that is why I have been busy at it and have not had the energy to write as much as I would like to for this blog.

If the world were a more congenial place none of you would have read a word I ever wrote. I would not have had a reason to write in the first place.

"Jesus Christ Wants YOU!"

2006-08-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to a funeral so bizarre in nature I had to take a day to write about it. As I wrote earlier my boss was killed in a motorcycle accident. It turns out that for the past two years he has been involved with a Baptist Church so it makes sense that his funeral would be there.

As anyone following this site knows, I am an atheist. That does not mean that I have any disrespect for religion or people who are religious. I quietly hope that someday people will realize that some aspects of religion are really good (“Love Thy Neighbor as thyself”) some aspects are mere ritual (eating only fish on Friday) and some are very harmful (“homosexuality is a sin.”) I think religion had its place before science to provide some acceptable way to explain the world. It is time to move on.

I am certain that most of Pat’s friends are not born again Christians or Baptists but we all went to the service to honor his life. I have been to several funerals. I don’t know about the ones any of you have been to but there is usually an acknowledgement of more than just, “He went to this school, he married this person, had three kids, and worked at such and such a job.” But that is what we got in the eulogy from his mother who, I suspect, was a bit shell shocked.

That irritated me a bit but it was later that I got angry.

The service started off with everyone singing Amazing Grace. A song I happen to love. But it was delivered in a rather flat-bland sort of way. This despite two soloists that came later. Then a preacher stood up and read to us from a script. First a prayer, then a scripture reading. He was just above a monotone. This guy knew Patrick but there was no feeling in his voice.

The first soloist came next and this over produced flowery recording came on. She sang and sang and sang this long song about the greater glory of God until I was convinced the only reason she was up there singing was for the greater inflation of her ego.

At this point my eyes were glazing over and it occurred to me that this ceremony was the most sterile and plastic I had ever been to. Pat’s casket was here and I am certain his body was inside it but it could have been anyone. They would have done the exact same service. There was absolutely nothing pertaining to the deceased at all outside of the eulogy of facts and figures which followed.

Looking at the program I can see that at this point there were supposed to be some comments. None were asked for and none were given. This apparently was not the point of this ceremony. Neither was Patrick.

Then we were asked to sing, “What a Friend we have in Jesus.”

I remained in respectful silence, (Interesting to note here that I was flanked by my roommate on one side and a coworker on the other, both of whom are also atheists.) We had our own little service going.
Another Soloist, not quite as irritating as the first and then came the clincher.

Another preacher came to the stage. No script and a great speaking voice. At first I was relieved. Finally someone would talk with feeling and with his own words. That relief lasted for a few moments. He actually did speak a bit about Pat for a little while but then he launched into the rhapsody which he mentioned four times. Then he got into this weird bit about how when it came all who had believed in Jesus would be resurrected in the perfect body of Jesus Christ at the “perfect” age of 33.

Then it became a recruiting seminar. This diatribe went on and on and on. By the time he asked us to bow our heads in prayer, which out of respect for those who believe I usually do, I just stared at him. Then he asked people to raise their hands if we wanted him to pray for us. There was something i wanted to raise, but believe it or not i am a fairly polite person. To me this was like taking a poll. My best guess was he had about an 18% support rate.

Then he announced that there would be a funeral procession to the grave site followed by a return to the church for refreshments and conversation. Half the attendees got into their cars and sped away at this point.

I was really angry and wanted to go to the cemetery but skipped the procession. The nice thing about the cemetery was it was not wired for sound and I could stand just far enough away without hearing a word he said.

Needless to say I did not return to the church.

One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor

2006-08-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning at 5 and dragged myself out of bed after a very long day yesterday to find that there may have been another plot to blow up jet liners and that we are either on Code Red or Code Orange. (It seems to depend on who you listen to.)

I was happy to note that we were not being bombed into the Stone Age, as Lebanon is, with our help and full support. But then, perhaps that is why there is another plot to do us harm.

We have too much power. We sit back and call the bombing of civilians “birth pains” but go absolutely ape shit if someone gets pissed off enough to take exception to that and plot some form of retaliation.

We are an arrogant and ignorant nation of fools being directed by self centered ideologues and “informed” by cynical sleight of hand charlatans who have the nerve to call themselves a “free press.”

We have an energy problem. We have health care crises. We have a military industrial complex and a prison industrial complex that are out of control. We also seem to have an empathy deficit.

Once again; or maybe I should say, as always; we are killing people in other countries either directly and/or indirectly and we all go on about our business and barely skip a beat. There are bills to pay and things to buy and whatnot we need to do.

That’s what we do, we go about our business. So what is a pissed off victim of US policy to do? There is no doubt he has no voice in this country. We barely acknowledge his existence let alone listen to his cries of grief and anger. With little power or voice one of the options is to visit the violence we foisted on him and his people on us. We in turn make that as difficult as we can.

The victims of US policy will find a way to retaliate. I am not saying this is a good thing but I think it is inevitable. Selfish consumerism, lack of empathy and, in too many cases naked greed have led us to this new world of armed fortress mentality combined with armed military invasion.

Nothing good will come from this unless there is a major sea change. All of this violence is the natural result of over a century of American expansionism driven by corporate greed. It is actually hard to imagine America as anything else but a selfish bully.

We've had predecessors. What King Leopold did to the Congo is just one example. Some of these European countries changed their policies. I wonder if we can. I doubt it.

Loss

2006-08-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

Today I lost my boss. He died in a motorcycle accident. I have other bosses and I have bosses who are closer to me than this boss was. But, today I lost my boss. He was a good man. He had a family who survives him. No, he has two families who survive him. His wife and kids who loved him dearly and his family at work who loved him dearly. He was a serious hard working man who looked out for the people he worked with. He cared. Although I have only worked at the company I now work for a very short time I found out very quickly that he cared about me. This is a rare and beautiful thing in the business world. What is even more rare is to know that all my other bosses care about me as well. I care about them too. How often do you hear that?

Today I lost a new friend even before I got to know how precious he was.

I don’t take that lightly.

The people I work with are devastated. I can’t blame them. We will come together and celebrate his life and mourn his death.

Pat had more of an impact on people than he knew.

All of us know.

We will not forget him.

Mosh Pit

2006-08-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

Open Thread....

Where Fear and Power Meet

2006-08-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

When I was 17 after a very violent childhood I decided to try to become non violent. This was not an easy decision for me and I still have trouble controlling my anger. I have struggled with the issue all my adult life. I intend to keep up the struggle.

The very first thing that happened to me when I made this sea change was that my fear left me. I was no longer a victim because victimizers look for “victims.” That is, people who have been beaten down and have decided to accept it as their lot in life. At some point in my teen years I began to realize that adults did not go around beating each other up and that when I became an adult the bullies, the abusers, and the predators would leave me alone. It took me a little longer to just go ahead and become an adult. I think that happened the day I chose non violence. I became an adult and the fear left me and the victimizers went looking elsewhere.

I bring this up because of the fear that was so prevalent in this country after 9/11. Obviously some people are still living in fear and sadly for many 9/11 might not ever have had to happen for them to be living in fear anyway.

So who are the victimizers? Why are so many Americans afraid and of what?

If Al Queda is all it has been touted as and is responsible for 9/11 then certainly it is one of the victimizers. Then again the same can be said for the Bush Administration but especially for Bush himself. I have read that when his father was President he used to walk into the White House and tell people to, “Work harder!” His staff has been rumored to live in fear of his bad days.

I really don’t want to make a list of all the victimizers out there in this writing, so I won’t.

Americans live in fear. This “Land of the Brave” is afraid of its own shadow. What do we fear? We fear for our family first and foremost. Then we fear for our friends. The list continues from there: jobs, property, social standing, etc. Some of us live in fear of our spouses. Some of us live in fear of our parents or our children.

Too many of us are living in fear of our Government. This is not the country I grew up in. I will give the caveat that I did not grow up black knowing people were occasionally being lynched or gay knowing that if anyone found out I would be ostracized. I grew up in fear for other reasons. Sexual and physical abuse were my demons. But I was not afraid of the United States. I was not afraid of what it might do to Americans. Now I think a lot of us are. The very first thought that came into my head when I saw the towers fall on 9/11 was, “Shit! What are we going to do and to who?” My fears were more than realized. There seems to be more to come.

There is draft legislation to take more of our rights away if we somehow end up on a “suspect” list. The question I have for myself and for you is this: Should we empower these people who would make our Constitution null and void by fearing them? That, my friends, is where they get all their power. Or should we refuse to fear them and strip them of their ability to further erode our rights?

If we make the right choice we take the power out of their hands and place it firmly in our own.

Hate Filled Left?

2006-08-01T02:31:00.000-07:00

"This is no exaggeration: The soul of the Democratic Party - and possibly the future of civility in American politics - is on the line in the Aug. 8 Senate primary in Connecticut."

So starts out a story in The Black Hills Pioneer today.

Turns out Leiberman is, " ... being targeted for defeat by an emergent new left that's using savage, Internet-based attacks to push moderation out of politics."

As a hate group, folks, our reputation not only preceeds us, it precceds the acts themselves.

If you can handle the savage attack on us attacking savages you will find the story here: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1300&dept_id=374730&newsid=16988997&PAG=461&rfi=9

I have to go to work, I am urging everyone not to string up any love filled commentators like Coulter or Savage while I am gone.

The Next Step in the War on Dissent

2006-07-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

The word is that the White House has drafted something they want to put through Congress that will allow them to arrest and detain people without charges. It will allow them to take people to trial using hearsay evidence. It will also allow them to try defendants without the defendants being allowed in the court room to hear the evidence against them.

Right now I do not think they have the credibility or support to even introduce this in Congress but it looks like they are readying themselves for the opportunity to present itself.

To me, it is very tiresome to hear people say that the only purpose, the main purpose of our government, is to protect its citizens. First of all this country does not do that. It never has.

We send young men and recently young women off to die by the thousands to protect the economic interests of major corporations. From Dole Pineapple to Mobil Oil. We have never shied away from sending in the Marines.

Suggest mass transit as an alternative to congested highways and you might as well whistle Dixie. You want Universal Health Care? Forget it.

How can we afford these expensive things when there is a war on? There is always a war on. All my life and all your life.

We are about to be shown another reason to give up our rights. We do not yet know what it will be. Be assured it is coming whether our government is planning it, allowing it to happen or is clueless. When it happens look for this legislation to hit the floor of the house and the Senate.

Look me up if you end up in my cell block.

Drug Dealers A Step Up

2006-07-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

In Baltimore on the streets where they sell the drugs and they fight for and maintain territory people are killed. Sometimes a member of one gang will kill a member of another gang. Sometimes a witness to a murder who may or may not testify in court is silenced permanently. Gun battles between warring factions have killed innocent men women and children who just happened to get into the line of fire. Arrested drug sellers are often turned snitch and often soon after turn up dead. The drug money corrupts cops and judges and politicians. The Prison Industrial Complex thrives on illegal drugs. We all know this. It is in the papers. It is well documented.

But neither the drug dealers nor the cops and not even the politicians go in for wholesale slaughter.

The same can not be said for Israel or the United States. What is happening in Lebanon is desired by the President. He wants a desert he can call “a peaceful oasis.” Well, if he has not figured it out yet he is going to have to kill every last Arab and every last Muslim on the planet to achieve the kind of “peace” he is looking for. It will never happen.
.
The perpetrators of war from the Pentagon to the arms dealers to the oil companies to the Rapture Lunatics all have one thing in common: When they look up the moral ladder they can see that they are several rungs down from the drug dealers in the housing projects in Baltimore. Everything the rest of us do keeps these people in power.

Was 9/11 Worse Than This?

2006-07-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

During the War in Vietnam the United States tested a lot of new weapons. Agent Orange was one of them. The lasting affects were not know at the time or, if they were, that knowledge was kept secret. The immediate affects were well known and that was defoliation. The argument was if we remove the jungle then the Viet Cong have nowhere to hide. The logic soon collapses when you try to understand exactly what the alleged purpose of the war was. You can’t really defoliate a country if your intention is to save it. Was that really our intention? I have my doubts. Vietnam became a training ground for CIA “Black Ops”, weapons systems, and political theories.

A new documentary on Italian Television in Iraq is asking, “Is the US using experimental weapons in Iraq?” The documentary, Star Wars in Iraq is worth a look. There are claims that we are using both lasers and microwave weapons, one witness says a laser turned a bus into a wet dishrag the size of a Volkswagen.

Speaking of weapons, Israel is being accused of using both white phosphorous and cluster bombs in Lebanon, both of which are illegal. They are also targeting bomb shelters with high penetration bombs. It is being reported by doctors in Lebanon that fully 30% of those who are being wounded are dying.

Condoleezza Rice is braying that she wants a “New Middle East.” We certainly need one; the one we have been kicking around is broken. The arrogance of this statement can’t be overstated. Since coming into power in 2001 this administration has not spent one calorie on trying to achieve peace in the Middle East.

The world is sitting by while the Corporate Media couches the conflict in terms so one sided as to be laughable. Please see the excellent movie on Nate’s site: Get In Their Face; that covers how our Congress and White House appear to be an Occupied Territory of Israel.

The Domino Theory in Southeast Asia that justified the War in Vietnam, as twisted as it was has been further twisted. Today the dominos are falling, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and Lebanon with the possibility of Syria and Iran later this year.

I do not support the violence perpetrated by Hezbollah but anyone who thinks Israel’s attacks on a largely innocent civilian population is justified is morally bankrupt. In Iraq 100 civilians a day are being killed. In one way that is the equivalent of twelve 9/11’s a year; except that after the towers collapsed we got a breather.

This is a very obscene way to go about achieving peace in the Middle East. The only logical and moral conclusion is that peace is not the administration’s goal.

My Respectful Apology

2006-07-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that I have overreacted to some actions taken by Crooks and Liars during an argument I was involved in with another commentator a few days ago. As I have stated earlier, this blog came out of that site. I have the utmost respect for C&L and I feel now that I was too hasty to judge and I apologize. If anyone has anything to say that they feel they can not say anywhere else please feel free to do so here.

I apologize to John Amato and all the monitors at Crooks and Liars.

Peace,

Michael Meehan

Oil War in Lebanon?

2006-07-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

At first I was shocked that Israel decided to bomb Lebanon and kill civilians and destroy its infrastructure in the name of disarming Hezbollah. I was shocked that the United States is willing to let it happen. Shocked that Europe, for the most part, is standing by.

Don’t get me wrong, I am angry. I am just no longer shocked.

No, I do not believe that Hezbollah should be kidnapping soldiers and no I don’t believe the Palestinians should be kidnapping soldiers.

There is no high moral ground here on either side.

It appears that each side in this confrontation is setting each other and themselves up for retribution and retaliation. It seems likely that Iran urged Hezbollah to attack when it did, July 12, to take some heat off of itself and the sanctions deadline. The sanctions deadline, on the other hand is yet another form of provocation. As is, of course, the desire of Iran to have nuclear weapons.

We can go back and back and back. The US does not, it seems, attack countries with nuclear weapons therefore it appears the best course of action for Iran would be to attain them. George Bush put Iran on notice after 911 that he considers Iran a target of the US. And we all know the rhetoric coming out of Iran since the Islamic Revolution. Some of us, of course know about the overthrow in 1953 of Mossadeq in Iran by the CIA and Kermit Roosevelt (the grandson of Teddy) because of the nationalization of the oil in Iran.

This destruction of Lebanon is all about oil even though there is not one drop of it in the ground. This is ultimately a war between Islamic Religious Fundamentalists and Robber Barron Capitalists. The Jews in Israel are just being used as surrogates by oil men the corporate media totally ignore.

Domination of the Middle East by the US and its ally, Israel, is all that matters to them and destroying a tiny nation is just a part of doing business.

We will be going to war with Syria and Iran. It is not a matter of “if” it is a matter of “when.”

What happens after that can not be foreseen but it will make us all long for the brighter days of the Iraq insurgency.

Can We Build an Online Community?

2006-07-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

Among the people who have bothered to comment here and Nate and myself I think we have all the talent we need to create a dynamic website full of information and video clips that allows for arguments and dissent.

We have people with technical know how and people who seem to be able to find just about anything of interest in the way of information and/or humor on the web.

I suggest we try to do this.

Anyone with an existing blog (myself included) could simply have anyone who accesses their blog redirected to our new site.

Those of us who create it would be allowed to post on it and as a group decide who could join later. I propose a site that allows full frontal conversation. Comment as you will and take the heat. If there is a way to keep people honest by disallowing anonymous postings (meaning no “Anonymous” signatures) so much the better. I could live with that. Anonymous postings do have their place and I would not reject them out of hand.

We are a strong if loosely connected community, I think we would be wise to consider this.

Crooks and Liars Needs to be Read

2006-07-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

This blog came out of Crooks and Liars dot com. It is a very good site and has a huge audience. I comment there all the time. Sometimes I joke, sometimes I rant and sometimes I let off steam. I mess with the trolls, argue with rational people on both the left and right and I usually learn something.

Last night when i was not looking someone apparently insulted me. The comments were deleted. Not just the insult but the person's point. I have been told it was two people but it could have been one hundred. It does not matter to me.

I can take a verbal punch. I have had a hard but interesting life. Sometimes i get a little too sensitive but that's another story.

I can't learn from people who disagree with me if they are not allowed to speak. Think about this for a second, I Can NOT learn from people who disagree with me if they are not allowed to speak.

We live in a country where the opinions of others are "discluded" in everyday conversations. The President of the United States refuses to hear dissenting voices even though his private words are full of malice for others.

I don't want anything on this blog deleted unless someone tries to put up advertising. If you disagree with me or anyone else, say so. Your comment will stand.

You have a right to get or be pissed off with me. If you want to call me names go right ahead. I will not flinch. If you want my respect all I ask is a rational argument and I will argue with you to best of my ability. I may get angry with you or what you believe in but do not let that hold you back. If you truly believe in what you think that should not deter you.

My deepest feelings surround discourse and interaction. I do not claim to be perfect and I do not expect you to be. I refuse to censor unless the topic is way off target. If you start a dialouge here about Malibu Barbie you can expect it to be lost in the neather regions of the net.

If you have something to say this is the place.

Peace,

Mike

Open Thread

2006-07-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

This is an open thread. That means you can say whatever you want here. You can cuss me out and call me a Communist. You can tell me that you want to have my child. You can fight with each other or have online sex. I don't care.

Just make it real.

Gloom Antidote

2006-07-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks to EZPZ

Did George Bush steal the Election in Mexico?

2006-07-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

This may at first glance seem like a ridiculous question, but it is far from it. FBI files clearly show that Bush contracted with Choice Point, the company responsible for scrubbing African Americans from the voting roles in Florida in 2000, to glean information about voters not only in Mexico but in almost all South American countries.

Guess what? Several left leaning voters were told they were not on the voting lists when they went to the polls two Sundays ago. Ballot box stuffing is on video tape and a leading University professor says that the results are a “statistical miracle.” Not only was Andres Manuel López Obrador leading by 2% until the very end when suddenly the final votes came in 100 to one in favor of Calderon, but four million votes remain uncounted.

You can watch a video made by Greg Palast on Democracy Now! HERE. Greg Palast has done extensive reporting in the U.K. on what happened in Florida only to be blacked out by the U.S. News media. He is from New York.

Why the Press is Losing its Audience

2006-07-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

If there was ever any doubt in your mind that the Corporate Media is merely a mouth piece for George Bush and his puppet masters Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove please consider this: A fourteen year old girl was allegedly raped and she and her entire family murdered by five members of the US armed forces in Iraq. So far, so bad. There is a birth certificate proving she was 14, however the US Command in Iraq at first claimed she was twenty five and then claimed she was twenty. Now they have settled for calling her a “young woman.” This is exactly as accurate as calling her an “elderly infant.”

Despite evidence to the contrary the establishment press, including National Public Radio is referring to her as a “young lady.” Want to know why? Because, apparently, as I heard on NPR the other day there seems to be some controversy over her age. What’s the controversy? “Her Birth Certificate says she was 14, but people in her town thought she was fifteen and the US Command in Iraq says she is a young woman.”

So we will call her a “young woman” and end the controversy.

TO HELL WITH THE TRUTH!

The above Photo was taken at Abu Ghraib.

Iraq's Missing Billions

2006-07-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

There are parts of this movie that will sadden you and parts that will enrage you. From the movie: A "Free-Fire" zone in the military means you're free to shoot anything at all. Iraq has become a "Free-Fraud" zone. Contractors are free to steal anything they want. [UPDATE BELOW]

The brilliant Sans-Culotte.org has done it again and connected some more dots in this nightmare we call Iraq. He recognized the name of one of the journalists (Ali Fadhil) from this movie and went digging. Here's a snippet from an article in the UK's Guardian Media.

US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist
Jan 9, Guardian: American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.

Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later.

Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated.

The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned! Read the Full Article...

If you found the above movie instructional, maybe it's time to start digging a bit deeper. Robert Newmans video on the History of Oil... A fantastic film/lesson/performance and a movie that's sure to change your world outlook.

-Nate

Tags: Iraq, War, Bush, Reconstruction, Haliburton, KBR

The Revolution Needs Our Vigilance

2006-06-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Here in the United States we are often put in the difficult position of seeing the abuses of our government in abstract terms. We all know that rape occurs in our prisons for instance (late night talk show comedians joke about it all the time) but it is never presented to us in tangible terms. We all know that we staged a coup in Haiti on February 29, 2004. Our soldiers simply showed up at the President’s residence in a helicopter and told him the opposition was coming and he had better leave. They flew him to a hide away in central Africa and kept him away from the press until his ouster was official. Hugo Chavez was briefly detained and was going to be whisked out of the country on an American registered airplane until the loyal members of his army put a stop to that and followed the Venezuelan Constitution instead of the misinformation orchestrated by the CIA and broadcast by the opposition media in his country.

Hugo Chavez is dangerous to the moneyed interests in Venezuela and especially in the United States. Why? Because he wants the people, especially the poor people in his country to benefit from its natural recourses; primarily oil. This is inherently anathema to Oligarchy which is the primary export of the US. We did exactly the same thing in Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973; and for exactly the same reasons. This time the CIA and the State Department did not get away with it. I expect they will try again.

That is why it is very important to watch a documentary that was in the middle of being made about Hugo Chavez when the coup of April 12, 2002 occurred. Not only is it important to watch it and understand why the coup occurred but why it failed. Please share this movie with as many people as you can. Hugo Chavez needs our protection and support. Only a deeper understanding of what he is trying to do and what our government is trying to do to him will protect him. A deeper understanding of what is going on and may be going on will help us understand what is happening here in our own country.

I invite people to post further information for all of us to read or view in the comments section so we may all learn more.

The movie is called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and can be seen on Nate’s site at GetInTheirFace where I encourage people to comment as well. If it is slow downloading you can also get it HERE.

In the above photo Hugo Chavez talks to a flood victim nursing her child.

Interesting Intersections

2006-06-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

The past week brought up a very strange personal quandary. I live with a roommate and not very long ago we had to evict a roommate for, among other things, not paying bills, stealing and lying. Obviously the cost of housing being what it is we have been in the market for a new roommate. Having just been burned rather badly we decided to leave it for a month and recover.

Last week my roommate brought a close friend of a close friend over to make some beer. He is looking for a place at the beginning of next month. Sounds perfect. He is trustworthy and has a good job.

The problem?

He works for the NSA.

So I am thinking to myself, “Hmm. How do I explain this to my friends online? Wait! How do I explain this to myself?”

So I say to my roommate, “Uh, have you explained to this guy my views on the NSA? Does he know how I feel about Bush? Did you tell him about June Revolution?”

My roommate explains to me that he needs someone he can trust to live here. Can’t blame him for that. But what about his Security Clearance? Will he lose his job?

I ask my roommate if he knows that after his friend quits he will be followed 24/7 for two years? Standard operating procedure. (Don’t ask me how I know, if I told you I would have to kill myself.)

Back up a few years.

In the late 1980’s I lived near Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. I had two roommates who lived there plus a landlord who lived there and later my cousin who is an entirely different story.

One of the two roommates was a civilian who’s job was to figure out how to protect US soldiers from Chemical Weapons. The conclusion, as far as I can figure out is that it can’t be done. The suits are too hot and uncomfortable to be of any real use in an unsuspected attack and combat conditions do not lend themselves to adequate shower facilities in the heat of battle. The thing that really weirded me out about him was the inordinate amount of hours a week he spent studying the Weather Channel. Nice guy though.

The other guy was a nice guy too. I think he was a Lieutenant but I never thought of him as a military guy. He was involved in computer security and he worked for Military Intelligence. Neither one of them talked to me about their jobs and frankly I was not curious.

Because of my politics I talked to the guy in Military Intelligence about how exactly his superiors would look upon us living in the same house. His response was to ask me if I had ever advocated the violent overthrow of the United States Government. If you have been reading this blog by now you know the answer is an emphatic, “No!”

That settled the matter and that was that. We got along as roommates get along and everything was normal. No problem for him or his job and no problem for me to be able to speak about my opinions.

Back to the past few days. I told my roommate to talk to our friend from the NSA about my beliefs and this blog, etc. and the guy said he would ask about living with me with his boss.

To be honest I am thinking to myself, “This guy’s Security Clearance is going to be revoked if he moves in here. I am going to get very paranoid if this guy moves in here.”

And on and on. The possible complications could make for an entirely humorous or entirely bad situation comedy, depending on the budget for the writers.

A few moments ago I got the word. The NSA is worried I might get arrested, possibly for protesting at the NSA (I had no idea) and they do not want him to move in.

So I breathe a sigh of relief and go on with my life and hope our next prospective roommate is not an insurance salesman.

Since I am in the mood to talk a little bit about my personal history I will take a look back at the first Gulf War or what was so sensitively referred to as “Desert Storm.”

I was opposed to this war (surprise, surprise) and the group I worked with in DC did a series of daily actions where people who came from our group and people who came from all over the country would go through the tour line at the White House and refuse to leave. Most would kneel down and pray. The non religious among us would lock arms or hold hands with the rest and await arrest.

We would be arrested for Unlawful Entry. In DC the second half of the Unlawful Entry Statute is “Failure to Quit.” This means that if the owner or the lawful representative of the owner asks you to leave and you refuse you can be arrested and charged with Unlawful Entry. In the case of the White House the lawful representative is the Secret Service. The maximum fine I forget. The maximum sentence is six months.

Six months is an interesting sentence. If you get a six month sentence there is no possibility for parole. You will serve the entire six months. At six months and a day you become eligible after a third of your sentence is served to get out on parole.

Now the Secret Service may sound like a very scary outfit if you are about to go into the White House and get arrested for refusing to leave. I expect if you were to attempt any violence at the White House or the Treasury Department (which is who they work for) that may very well be the case. If, on the other hand, you are arrested by them while protesting you will be arrested by the best most professional people in uniform you could ask for.

This makes it very hard to dislike them. I don’t.

On the particular day that I was arrested there were only two of us and we wanted to get as close to the front fence as we could before we sat down and refused to leave. We got just a little too close. Having been arrested numerous times in the White House since my first arrest in 1975 and since we had been doing this for several days they knew why I was there and were walking with us through the tour. When we sat down in the driveway they merely picked us up and deposited us on the sidewalk outside the grounds. At this point if we were arrested on the sidewalk for doing something illegal or in the street we would be arrested by the Metropolitan Police. If we went across the street and got arrested in Lafayette Park we would be arrested by the Park Police (Federal.)

Well, Troy (my partner in crime) and I had our hearts set on the Secret Service because they were guarding the White House and there was this guy in there who had set his sights on Iraq and the Metropolitan Police guarded the District of Columbia and as far as I could tell the Mayor, though an ass, had no intention of invading anyone and neither did Smokey the Bear so we left the Park Police out of it as well.

The sidewalk and the street was DC property. But the driveway was White House property. So we sat down in the driveway blocking the Northeast gate.

They picked us up and put us on the sidewalk. We sat back down in the driveway again. They removed us. We returned. (We were stubborn. So were they.)

This went on a few more times and finally they gave in, warned us one last time to move and arrested us. Mission Accomplished and not one life lost. In fact, once placed under arrest I have never been dragged away (I know of a police officer who hurt his back dragging a protester away.) I go with dignity and pride.

We were placed in the back of a Uniformed Secret Service Car which looked like a regular police car except with a lot of gold filigree and of course a Secret Service Seal and taken to a Metropolitan Police Station for processing. The Secret Service does not have one of its own, at least not for lowly protesters.

Troy and I had filled out a questionnaire the night before answering all the questions we would be asked at the police station so the process would go faster. Our group had a lot of experience.

So here we are handcuffed to the chairs we are sitting in next to these two desks with these Secret Service Agents who have to do all this paper work and trust me, it is the last place they want to be. My officer looks at all this paper work in front of him and sighs, “This is my first arrest.”

“Well it is not mine!” I cried and whipped out this piece of paper with the answer to every question on the forms in front of him.

He was delighted.

Troy of course did the same for his officer and they went through the paperwork very quickly. They chatted with us and got to like us. So much so that they did not want us to have to spend the night in jail before seeing a judge. They went and talked to somebody about offering us a bail option.

They came back and said, “If you post a bail of $50 each you can get out until your arraignment.” We declined, explaining that we ran a shelter as volunteers and had no money and that we did not believe in posting bail for what we did, but thank you.

They looked very worried and went away for a while.

When they finally came back they told us that they had arranged to have us released on Personal Recognizance, meaning that if we promised to return for arraignment we would be taken at our word.

Nice guys.

The next day we returned to the White House. The day before our group of about forty people were the only ones there protesting. Today there were a couple of thousand. (Not our fault.) Troy and I were standing next to the fence and our two arresting Officers walked down the lawn with big smiles on their faces and asked us if we were going to be arrested again. We shook hands with them and told them it was not our turn.

The next thing I know all the protestors are moving away from us.

Interesting feeling.

I am sitting here wondering, what would have happened if someone from the NSA had ended up being my roommate. How would I be perceived? The stress would probably kill me just from wondering how he ended up here in the first place.

I guess we will never know.

Stubborn Protesters Attempt Port Blockade

2006-05-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

Protesters in Olympia Washington have been battling with Police who have been using Pepper Spray in an attempt to disperse them. The demonstrators have been attempting to stop the shipment of Styker Armored Vehicles from being shipped to Iraq. At least 22 have been arrested in Protests that began Monday night and continued into at least Wednesday morning.

The Seattle Times had this to say:

OLYMPIA – Dozens of people protesting Iraq-bound military shipments were blasted with pepper spray and 22 people were arrested in continuing war protests at the Port of Olympia.

The Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace has a website that said this:

Olympia Resists Port Militarization On Monday, May 22, the US Army began a massive transport of Stryker vehicles and other war equipment to the Port of Olympia for shipment to Iraq, in advance of the re-deployment to Iraq of the Styker 3rd Brigade. 2006: Olympia Resists Militarization of Our Port We have opposed militarization of our port for two years by direct appeal to the Port Commission and City Council; by writing articles, Op-Eds and letters to the editor; and by holding educational forums, vigils and marches. Our elected officials are not listening. "The weapons shipments, and the use of our public property to prolong and supply the war in Iraq have made us complicit in crimes against humanity. We refuse to be complicit any longer. We will continue to utilize every available instrument of democracy, including direct action and disruption when necessary."--OMJP Press Release, 25 May 2006.

I would like to laud their efforts in the struggle to stand in the way of war and urge everyone to send them words of encouragement.

Contacts The Olympia Movement for Justice & Peace Olympia, WA 360-867-6513 omjp@omjp.org

Above: A police escort of Stryker Armored Vehicles is stranded by continuing protests.

New Iraq Ambassador Has Startling Revelation

2006-05-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

Sumaidaie: Marines shot my cousin
We must 'remove the bad apples,' new Iraqi ambassador says

Tuesday, May 30, 2006; Posted: 9:08 p.m. EDT (01:08 GMT)

SUMAIDAIE: Well, that was not a battle at all. Marines were doing house-to-house searches, and they went into the house of my cousin. He opened the door for them.
His mother, his siblings were there. He led them into the bedroom of his father. And there he was shot.
BLITZER: Who shot him?
SUMAIDAIE: A member of the Marines.

CNN Story

Thanks to Americablog for this link.

Haditha Massacre

2006-05-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

I drive for a living. I listen to NPR from 6AM to 8AM and then I listen to Democracy Now! By 9AM I am ready to turn the radio off for a while. At noon I listen to the Marc Steiner Show on WYPR which used to be WJHU until John’s Hopkins lost interest in it. Marc Steiner is extremely well read and came out of the Civil Rights Movement. He was “merely” the daily talk show host of his own show two hours a day before Hopkins decided to dump the station. He is the main reason the station survived and is thriving. He is the only radio talk show host I respect and you can listen to at least some of his shows here.

I mention all this because I have become very skeptical of NPR. They seem to bend over backwards to get out the Heritage Foundation’s views on every topic from Abortion to Torture. It irritates me. And although Marc has their mouth pieces on as well he goes way deeper into stories especially about Iraq and Palestine and Israel. No need to point out he is Jewish. You can tell by his name. He refuses to take sides and refuses to let things devolve into shouting matches. He is well respected and loved in Baltimore.

This morning I was listening to NPR interview reporters about the Haditha Massacre and the reporters were asked how the Iraqi’s felt about this. They all responded that they took it with a grain of salt because there is so much violence going on in Iraq that it is just one more incident. They said it is a much bigger story over here. I thought, yeah more Corporate Media spin.

I listened to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! ask independent reporters in Iraq the same question and she got the same answer with the addition that there is some anger and that people are still upset about what happened in Falluja. Basically people are seeing horror upon horror every day and the deaths of twenty five innocent civilians is just a continuation of what has been going on every day.

Marc Steiner had a show about Iraq and Afghanistan today and all the reporters said the same things, more or less.

Iraq has been averaging 38 civilian murders a day since January 1, 2006. Executions, beheadings and whatever.

It is astounding that George W. Bush’s adventurism in Iraq has turned out so horribly that US Marines could go into a few homes and shoot 25 people from the ages of two months old to seventy six years old and the people in Iraq can barely react to it because of all the other horrible things that our invasion of the country has wrought.

People here are hardly reacting to any of it. It is just wave upon wave of atrocity after atrocity. From the torture we are committing right now to the domestic spying we are doing right now to the killing we are doing right now to as of today the escalation of the number of troops in Iraq. Another 1500 sent in from Kuwait. Not enough to make a difference. Just enough to enrich the target environment for all the people in Iraq we have taught to hate us.

New Commenting Tool Added

2006-05-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

Nate has upgraded the commenting system so people don't have to sign in every time we post a comment. I am very happy about this unfortunetly we have lost the previous comments, at least for the moment.

I have not had a chance to talk to Nate yet but if we can recover and repost the comments we will.

I love everyone's comments and urge you to yell and scream on our blog all you want. Compliments are even more welcome.

Thank you,

Mike

2006-05-29T17:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I write some of my better posts when I am furious. John Doe was commenting on Crooks and Liars today and fired this off. We tend, sometimes to forget all the strange things surrounding 9/11. There was just so much! But I will let John Doe's words speak for themselves. I post this with his permission.

I edited this for a few spelling errors.

Wrong!

You know what changed on 9/11? We ceased to be a nation of laws and became a dictatorship governed by a criminal racketeering enterprise hellbent on political expediency.Think about it. The worst crimes ever inflicted on American soil in an American city on American civilians in the history of the US and there was NO CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION. All we got was a serendipitous story and summary judgment and a lapdog press tripping over itself to print the legend. Never mind that the government's story is totally full of holes. Never mind that the government obstructed full Congressional investigations, criminal investigations and intimidated the Joint Intelligence Committee. Never mind that there wasn't a single subpoena for information that the government refused to provide to the People. Never mind that massive amounts of criminal evidence was destroyed. Never mind that witnesses were gagged. Never mind that to this day the government has refused to explain why 5 of the alleged hijackers were enrolled at secure US military training installations. Never mind why the government has refused to explain there were 5 war games occurring simultaneous to the attacks. Never mind that the government has not complied with FOIA requests. Just blindly believe the bullshit that they tell you. Kill for the bullshit that they tell you. Hate for the bullshit that they tell you. Trash your cherished liberties for the bullshit that they tell you.What changed on 9/11? Perhaps nothing changed. Perhaps it was just a wake up call to the cowardice and stupidity of America. They still can't talk about anything without predicating it on the bullshit that the government told you. That's how hopelessly brainwashed, worthless and weak America is. Morons with big guns.

John Doe 05.29.06 - 8:19 pm #

Strange String of Events

2006-05-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

Some seemingly connected and seemingly not connected events occurred this week that have me puzzled.

I may not be aware of all of the events so if anyone has any further information please leave a comment and I will add it to this post.

William Jefferson’s house and Congressional Office were raided by the FBI. We have been told that they found ninety thousand dollars in his freezer inside some frozen vegetable boxes. We do not know what was removed from his office.

Following the raid of his office several members of Congress including Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House voiced strong objections to the Executive Branch doing searches of Congressional Offices because it is a violation of the Separation of Powers.

The next day ABC says they have been told by unknown sources that Dennis Hastert is being investigated. Hastert claims their “source” is the Department of Justice.

Without explanation George W. Bush seals the records on the files seized in Jefferson’s office for forty five days.

Alone these events are curious enough.

On Friday “someone” says they may have heard gunshots in the Rayburn Congressional Office Building’s parking garage. The Capital Police shut down the entire building for five hours and told everyone in the building to lock themselves in their offices while they conducted a search. I have been in that building. The doors are solid wood. Who is doing what on the other side of those doors is impossible to see or hear. It is also known that not all members of Congress or their staff members were in their offices at the time.

I don’t believe in coincidences. Something is going on. I just do not know what.

Just after posting this i found this little gem.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department signaled to the White House this week that the nation's top three law-enforcement officials would resign or face firing rather than return documents seized from a Democratic congressman's office in a bribery investigation, administration sources familiar with the discussions said.
The possibility of resignations by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; his deputy, Paul McNulty; and FBI Director Robert Mueller was communicated to the White House by several Justice officials in tense negotiations over the fate of the materials taken from Rep. William Jefferson's office, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Washington Post

Ok, now i get it. The shutdown and sweep of the office building may very well have been exactly what it seemed to be.

After talking to a friend tonight and I have more information. It seems Hastert put his foot down and told Bush if the records were not returned Hastert would lead the charge in Congress to oppose the Administration at every turn. Bush froze the records for 45 days to try to come up with a solution. This does not sit well with Gonzales and he is threatening to resign.

Like my buddy Nate says, things are unravelling for Bush much like they were for Nixon just before he resigned. There is a growing undercurrent of disastisfaction with the President among some very strong Republicans. How much longer Karl Rove can keep his finger in the levie before the tide washes this group right out of D.C. only time will tell.

I live in a Dictatorship

2006-05-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

Not much has changed, really. I still have no one in Congress who knows my name or cares about what I need. I still work hard and can not get ahead. I still do not have health insurance. I still fear living on the streets.

I do not know which country we will invade next, even though I can guess. The media is still lying to me. The President is still lying to me. I am still being told to buy the “right” clothes, the “right” deodorant, and the “right” car.

I am still being told who to associate myself with. I am told who to hate and who to love.

My vote still counts just as much.

I am judged by what I wear, how I cut my hair and who I spend time with.

I am still in debt. I still pay car insurance. I still pay for every mistake I ever made.

My country still kills people in my name. It still does what it wants with or without my approval. It never asks me what I think. It does not care.

Not much has changed.

Manifesto Part II

2006-05-24T18:29:00.000-07:00

As promised I am adding to my "Manifesto."

We need a total overhaul of the Prison System.

We need to eliminate the punitive nature of incarceration. We punish children to make them see the error of their mistakes. We punish adults to exact revenge. Politicians use the motive of revenge to gain political power and to keep the population under control.

We need to end the privatization of prisons. When a corporation’s bottom line is based on how many prisoners they have and how long they remain behind bars justice is not served, it is perverted. A prisoner’s time can be extended if he gets in trouble in prison. There have been accusations that guards encourage certain behavior that can lead to fights and indeed there is at least one case where racial animosity was exacerbated.

We need to end the use of prisoners in all institutions for the purpose of generating a profit. Telemarketing, the making of clothing for a few dollars a day in no way encourages the elimination of prisons as a solution for our social ills. Who needs slaves? We have Neo Slaves and society is loath to support them.

We need an entirely new approach to the concept of rehabilitation. Counseling, job training and mental health care are a must. The total elimination of sexual threat and abuse of all prisoners must be a top priority.

Prolonged isolation must be eliminated. This does more to damage a person’s mental stability than even most severe acts of violence.
Each prison should have a functioning grievance process accessible to all prisoners and conflict resolution professionals should be present in all prisons at least forty hours a week.

This could and should be expanded on but my knowledge on this subject is somewhat limited. Please come up with more ideas with me.

We have 2.2 million people in jail in this country who are being abused and deprived. Some are being tortured. This needs to end.

Manifesto

2006-05-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

The left is often blamed for not having a plan of its own. Sure we can criticize but do we have any ideas? Well here are mine.

We need a total overhaul of the electoral process.
We need to eliminate Electoral Votes. This system has emasculated our campaign process by eliminating states such as Maryland from being visited by candidates running for President. Maryland votes Democrat so the Electoral Votes go to the Democratic candidate. So if this coming election Ohio and Pennsylvania are the swing states then the issues deemed important to voters in these two states will be the issues talked about by the campaigns at large. Issues Marylanders are concerned about are ignored. The votes Republicans cast in Maryland for the President are a waste of time and gasoline. Every vote should count because it would enfranchise us all into the process.
We need to eliminate all Diebold machines and bar this company from manufacturing anything for any state government or local government as well as the Federal Government ever again. We need hand countable paper ballots. We can have computer screens to make things easier for the voters but we need a secondary parallel counting system to verify the results of all elections.
We need public financing of all elections. We need to eliminate all contributions by any individual or any corporation or group of over one hundred dollars. No money what so ever should be allowed to be spent on television or radio advertising. Instead, since the public owns the airwaves each network should be obligated by law to hold debates between candidates in prime time during the campaign process. Local television stations should be obligated to cover local candidates. Federal and local funds should be used to compensate these broadcasters for their programming preemption.
We need more Congress people. We need one congress person for each and every zip code in the country. This would kill two birds with one stone. It would make each member of the house more accountable to his or her constituents while truly giving them a voice and it would eliminate the gerrymandering of voting districts. Obviously with this law we would also need to freeze existing zip codes to eliminate any further manipulation.
We need more Senators. Each state should have one Senator for every ten million residents rounded up.
We need to eliminate paid Lobbyists.

We need a total overhaul of the Defense Department
We need to eliminate the defense industry. The Federal Government needs to develop and manufacture its own weapons and weapons systems. This would not eliminate jobs but it would eliminate corruption through bribes and sleazy lobbyists.
We need to eliminate the use of mercenaries at every level of the Department of Defense.
We need to eliminate the use of outside contractors to provide everything from building military installations to feeding our troops.
We need to rein in the Department of Defense’s burgeoning intelligence gathering activities.
We need to keep all soldiers and National Guard members off the streets of the United States at all times except in times of crisis. Demonstrations and illegal immigrants do not constitute a crisis.

There are more things we need to do to get back to democracy and go forward to a safe, happy and healthy country that looks out for its people and does not trample on the rights of the rest of the planet.

I will be continuing to add to this “Manifesto.” Please join me by commenting.

So Divine

2006-05-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

Six Thousand years ago when George’s (Great) 72 Grandfather created the Universe he looked forward to the day when one of his direct descendants would come to know Him and believe in Him. Of course, being all knowing, he knew exactly when this would happen.

He decided to send forth a prophet at the appropriate time to reach his most faithful and believing offspring who He knew would become the President of the United States by hook or by crook.

The Prophet Siegfried was sent by Him to write his book, My Pet Goat. In the divine nature of things George heard this glorious book for the first time coming from the mouths of babes as the most powerful country on earth, which he was about to take full control of, was attacked.

The book and its teachings mesmerized him. It inspired him. It made him take flight.

It was not until the danger had passed that his Arch Angels cleverly disguised as Secret Service Agents would allow him to touch down. During the flight George the Usurper had his first real epiphany. “I am all powerful!”

Upon landing and surrounded by angels with automatic swords, George took center stage and told everyone to be afraid but to please keep on shopping. He was speaking in tongues as the old traditions that were now flooding his mind had taught him.

In his new found glory he decided to ask The Hillary to stand with him and extend the national treasures to the airline industries that were dropping like flies even without the help of hijackers. George knew now that she had been inspired by My Pet Giraffe and was a heretic but a world without airplanes, George felt, would be difficult to get around in.

He then went on a pilgrimage. He started on the rubble in ground zero. He raised his horn but the walls had already come a tumbling down. So he went to the National Cathedral proclaiming his faith in faith. On he went to an Address to the Nation to proclaim for all to hear that he was all knowing and that he could find men in caves. Then he went to Crawford and burned some bushes. But they did not speak.

He was confused.

It seems the Creator had left him on his own. Having waited and waited all that time for the pinnacle of His plan to have My Pet Goat read at just the appropriate moment to just the appropriate person the Creator had decided to go out for a drink. He had decided after the first drink that there would be many more. Don’t worry, someone is looking into it.

Left on his own George decided to pray. When no one answered he realized he was praying to himself because after all he was the chosen one. So he started talking to himself. That is why George is loath to allow filters. He is getting the straight dope and from someone who has done a lot of it.

So the next time you decide to criticize George consider this: You are going straight to hell.

A Message from George W. Bush

2006-05-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

I have agreed to write something for this site so I can set the record straight about a lot of misconceptions the “blogisphere” seems to have about my Presidency. First of all that photograph of me extending my middle finger just before going on the air to address the public has been misinterpreted. That is my signal to Turd Blossom that I have memorized all the talking points and even if I butcher the English Language (which will soon become the only language America will ever need) all the code words will be covered. Secondly, I would like to address the fundamental issue of fairness. If you examine closely all the talk shows on Fox, ABC, CNN, NBC and CBS you will notice that the four major opinion shapers are represented. The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, The American Enterprise Institute and The Rand Corporation are all there. They are almost absent in your blogs. Where is the fairness in this? I feel you are misrepresenting the ideas that made this country what it is today [editor’s note: A failed democracy transitioning through plutocracy on its way toward theocratic fascism].

I want to turn now to my tax cuts. As some of you may know the price of gas has gone up. Now if you are an average American you may have felt the need to pawn some of your possessions to buy a tank of gas. This has had a devastating impact on the Pawn industry. Their shops have become flooded with items that people can no longer afford. An overstocked Pawn industry is not good for America. Tax cuts will ease this problem by insuring that all Americans will get a tax break equal to one and possibly two tanks of gas. This will reduce the burden in Pawn Shops across the country.

As you know if you pay more taxes you will get a larger tax break. This is only fair. For instance, studies show that higher income earners drive bigger vehicles and therefore require more gas. See the beauty of my program?

Now I have sadly read many derogatory remarks about the ongoing fight against terrorism in Iraq. See, Iraq is an “Over There” kind of place. America is an “Over Here” kind of place. I know for a fact that there are more Americans “Over Here” and that there are more non Americans “Over There.” By sending fewer troops than some recommended I ensured that this would continue to be true. It is plain to see that fewer Americans are dying “Over Here” than are dying “Over There” due to acts of terrorism. This balances out the score card and I expect that before the elections in November that we will have achieved our goal of having more Americans killed by terrorists “Over There” then died on September 11, 2001 “Over Here.”

Domestic spying is another issue I would like to address. We are only spying on those in America who may be terrorists, those in America who may be sympathetic with the terrorists, and those in America who disagree with or who may disagree with tax cuts. We need to find out what these people are up to. Since September 11, 2001 we have stopped all further terrorist activities and thwarted all challenges to tax cuts. Our program is working.

Now some of you claim that this violates the law. We are at war. I am a war President. When a President is at war he can’t violate the law. He is above the law. The Constitution should never be allowed to obstruct our freedoms. We need to stay the course. We need to listen to our President (that’s me) and do what we are told to do in this time of grave danger to the economic interests of our corporations.

Finally, I would like to announce that I will be introducing a bill in congress to greatly reduce the threat to America that dissent creates. Speech will no longer be free but will become a pay as you go process. The people who create the jobs in this country will of course get deep discounts. I am thinking twenty five cents a page. Our detractors will be charged a dollar a word. With this revenue the loud mouths will help us fund new detention centers and help pay for new guards. This is a program that will help keep America moving forward.

I thank you for this opportunity to speak and will be sending fifty cents off to the IRS.

The White House informed me today that i would be audited if i refused to publish this.

SUFFERING IN SILENCE

2006-05-19T15:25:00.001-07:00

My heart is heavy today. After reading this, I wonder how many soldiers are coming home suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I wonder how many will ever actually be able to return to some kind of "normal" life. Will they ever recover? I cry when I think of the damage this senseless, needless war has caused. Not only to our troops, but to the Iraqi troops, the Iraqi citizens, and to the families of all of them. I cry when I think of the personal pain and suffering PTSD brings. I cry when I think of the wives, Mothers, Fathers, sisters, brothers, children, friends.....who will never have any way of knowing or truly understanding what a guy like Blake Miller is going through. I cry when I think of the Iraqi children who suffer in silence. Can you imagine how many of them suffer from PTSD? Children who have seen war first hand.....and will have to live with those visions the rest of their lives. 2,453 U.S. soldiers dead, 17,648 wounded....and how many suffering in silence???

Blake's Story

My friend Xoites is without a doubt, 100% correct. It's time to make a sign and take it to the street corners all over the country. It's time to stand up, even if it be alone to start with, and demand we stop all the death, maiming and destruction of life. Go out this week and support the troops. Support the innocent children and citizens of Iraq. Support the families and friends of our troops, who live with the heartbreak of not being able to do anything to stop the PTSD that their loved ones suffer from. Do it for the U.S. soldiers who have died, who have lost limbs, who have lost their eyesight, who have brain injuries. Do it peacefully and with dignity. Just do it!!!

QuestionGirl was kind enough to write something for me today. Please check out her website, it is very good.

A Modest Proposal

2006-05-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to come up with a viable suggestion on how to protest this President, this war, the scandals, the rape of the US Constitution and the assault on our rights as Americans. It has been noted by many that when mass demonstrations occur “Free Speech Zones” are set up so no one can be heard.

I have a modest proposal. It may sound to some to be a little too simple and to others it may sound a little too difficult.

When thousands of people get together in one place the police and the mayors start talking about potential violence and they respond by creating barriers between the demonstrators and the people who need to be reached. They keep the press away. The press stays away.

We are diverse people scattered all over the country and the planet. We live in different places and traveling to a mass demonstration only to be corralled into pens seems an expensive and lackluster endeavor.

I propose that we demonstrate locally simultaneously every week. I propose we make a sign and go to the busiest intersection in our own areas and stand there for four hours. I am suggesting Saturdays from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon local time. I think this can be done by one individual. I think groups of two or three should be encouraged. If the group gets larger than that I think another corner should be found and then there are two groups.

People go out on Saturdays to go shopping and get their business done. They will see us. If they see us in several places they will start to notice. If they start to notice they will start to think and some may decide to join us.

This is as grass roots as it gets.

It is simple and straight forward. It is legal in most places as long as you do not block the sidewalk and you are on public property. Taking along a snack and something to drink is advisable and sun block is an absolute must. If you are committed enough to do this in the rain wrap your sign in plastic wrap and take rain gear.

If I am correct and as many people as I think are opposed to this nonsense as much as we are we will be joined. We will have an impact. A huge demonstration in DC is far removed. A protester on the corner down the street is real.

Be prepared to talk to people both friendly and unfriendly. Try to stay out of arguments and do not react to hecklers.

Give me your thoughts, please.

The Only Thing We Have to Cheer is - Fear Itself

2006-05-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

Eric was kind enough to write a guest blogg for me.

It has been obvious for some time now that our dear
President has been scrambling for cover.
With poll numbers dropping like the Hindenburg, his
Administration leaking worse than
Harry Whittington's neck and Karl Rove in Patrick
Fitzgerald's sites, he is clearly on the ropes.
The neocon agenda is dead, his own party is divided
and he now lies in state -- a lame duck.

Just like everything else in his life, this child of
privilege has failed miserably as a leader. Plagued by
scandal and zero credibility left, he has only one
card left to play. Fear.

In decidedly milquetoast fashion, President Bush went
before the nation last night and told
us all that we must fear the brown enemy from the
south. After 5 years in office, he has finally
come to the conclusion that it is now such a critical
issue that we must deploy our decimated
National Guard to shore up the borders. To calm the
masses, he vows these brave souls will
not carry weapons. Right. What happens if there is
panic or violent protest to their presence
and they are caught with nothing more than pens in
their hands?

The single most disturbing portion of his speech
detailed the "catch and release" techniques
currently being employed by our border patrol agents.
He stated that the reason behind this
ineffective program was due to a lack of beds in our
detintion centers. Detention centers?
I got chills and my stomach flipped upside down. Not
to worry, says George -- We'll just fill
those centers up with beds, that'll fix everything!
These words conjured up images of the
Japanese interment camps of WWII -- Another national
shame. Am I the only one who felt that
evil rumbling in my gut?

The following is an exerpt from the song Witch Hunt,
by Rush. The words are telling, some
27 years after the song's release -

The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will.
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill.

They say there are strangers who threaten us,
Our immigrants and infidels.
They say there is strangeness to danger us
In our theatres and bookstore shelves,
That those who know whats best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves.

Quick to judge,
Quick to anger,
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand

We're witnessing the implosion of an American
President and he's scared to death.
His transparency is laughable -- like a four year old
child covering their face
with both hands whose convinced "you can't see me" he
makes every effort to
distract us from the truth of his crimes and failures.

We will not cower in fear, Sir.
We will not give up our rights willingly.
We will fight for them tooth and nail.
This great nation wasn't founded on fear.
It was forged from blood and bravery.
And an unquenchable thirst for Freedom!

We will not go quietly....No, Sir.

Eric's Blog

Experiment in Democracy Ends

2006-05-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

It lasted two hundred and twenty five years. It had a good run but a bumpy ride. It was dismantled five years ago and we are just beginning to catch on.

But it is over.

The United States Constitution is dead. May it rest in peace. George W. Bush and all the people who put him in power; from the Supreme Court to Katherine Harris to Diebold, Enron, Exxon and Haliburton and Congress have taken the most talked about document of the past two hundred years and turned it into useless recyclable parchment.

The President can do what he wants, when he wants and to who he wants.

Case closed.

Time to go home and wait for the knock on the door.

Goodnight America.

Revenge of the Turds

2006-05-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

I can’t help but think Vietnam and Richard Nixon are the real reasons we are in Iraq. Weapons of Mass Destruction, Al Qaeda and the “War on Terror” are beside the point.

After our withdrawal from Vietnam and the resignation of Nixon some brashly predicted that the Republican Party was on its way out. Democrats regained the White House and had full control of the Congress. The Supreme Court seemed liberal enough.

But Joseph Coors had other ideas and set up the Heritage Foundation. This non profit “Think Tank” promoted it agenda by sending out two Op Ed pieces a day to every major newspaper in the county. Today you can hardly hear a political debate on a talk show without a member of this group being present to muddy the waters on every important issue we face.

Of course this was only one group pushing hard to regain control of the White House for the far right wing and with the election of Ronald Reagan their power grew exponentially.

It is debated whether Reagan’s first act in office was to remove the solar panels installed by Green Peace from the roof of the White house, dismantle the Peace Academy or have a sit down with all the majors news editors in the country. But all three happened immediately. In the meeting with the editors Reagan officials implored the media not to be critical of them for a couple of years until they had their agenda rolling and saw the results. The media complied. Today that seems like a given. Back then that was appalling.

These Neo Cons have had an agenda for decades and Clinton getting elected twice set their schedule back. This explains a lot about why he was hounded from the beginning.

Vietnam sticks in the craw of the founders of this movement. They wanted to prove we could win a war like the one we didn’t in Southeast Asia. Perhaps they had a better idea than the people who came behind them. We may never know.

So here we are in Iraq thirty years later reliving one of our worst nightmares. Everything we have done there is either morally, tactically or strategically wrong.

To summarize we invaded based either on bad information or outright lies. Take your pick. Information coming out of the early days of the invasion was fabricated by the Defense Department from the orchestrated statue removal to the fake rescue of Jessica Lynch and of course in Afghanistan the cover up of “friendly fire” that killed Pat Tillman.

Beyond the lies distortion and propaganda we have the sweetheart deals with Kellogg Brown and Root. The hiring of mercenaries at outrageous salaries and the importation of desperately poor third world workers to work for peanuts goes all but unnoticed in the Corporate Press.

After destroying the Iraqi economy and firing every last member of the military we watched as Baghdad was looted. Three years later electricity is scarce; leaving your home at night is not an option and during the day is risky business.

Our troops who we are implored to support by keeping our mouths shut are being fed two meals a day and have to go begging food from Iraqi families. Their equipment is shoddy or absent. They have to be on patrol for up to twenty two hours a day and rely on “Go” pills to stay alert.

The press is calling Stephen Colbert “rude.”

The list goes on: Abu Ghraib, Iran clashing with the Kurds and Turkey applauding Iran from the sidelines as they beef up their troops on the border. Sy Hirsch’s revelations about the possible use of Nukes in Iran is more than disquieting.

In Vietnam we made a lot of mistakes. What we learned is hard to discern. Today in Iraq we are making new and improved mistakes. We have a more than compliant press. We have a suspect voting system. We have a President who thinks he talks to God and may in fact believe he is the Messiah. George Bush may believe in a lot of things but the United States Constitution is not one of them. With over 750 “signing statements” under his belt the Constitution is all but void.

If these are the repercussions of our misadventure in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and the resignation of Richard Nixon as I believe they are then I have no way of predicting what lies ahead. Like an animal in a trap we may not be able to get out of Iraq without gnawing our leg off.

Our entire approach is wrong because it appears the Administration’s entire strategy is based on getting revenge on the “dirty hippies,” the Democrats and proving that Vietnam was a winnable war. Policies based on this mentality are doomed to failure and the consequences far reaching and unpredictable.

The Truth Behind "Truthiness"

2006-05-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night Steven Colbert spoke to the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Well, not so much spoke as roared. He stripped Bush of his false charisma and his deluded notions of self worth. George W. Bush walked into the hall as the Commander in Chief and slunk out the door as a scolded spoiled brat.

The press did not fare any better. In fact it would seem that the Corporate Media is as irritated at Colbert’s veracity as Bush is.

After celebrating for three days over this amazing tour de force it is time to look at what this really means.

Steven has thrown down the gauntlet. Not to Bush or the press. He has flatly stated to each and every one of us that the time has come. Time to stop waiting around until someone comes up with a plan of action. Time to stop excusing ourselves because we think the time is not, “right.”

It is time to follow in Steven Colbert’s footsteps and find coherent ways to speak the truth to an audience that feigns deafness.

We are all not comedians. None the less we see the truth. There are millions of ways to voice the truth. Letters, blogs, protests and art are just a few. The truth, unlike “truthiness” is felt not only in our guts but in our heads and our hearts.

Use you heads. Follow your hearts. And get some guts.

Speak out now! Defend your country and the principals it was founded on. It is not too late. It is never too late.

Steven Colbert has shown us by example that it can be done. Let’s build on this inspiration. Let us in turn inspire him and each other!

2006-04-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

Philip Terrie is a member of Blue November and a resident of Port Huron, Michigan. He was kind enough to allow me to post an article he wrote for the Port Huron Times-Herald which declined to print it for, as Philip states it, "a variety of quite unpersuasive reasons."

Philip, here is to free speech.

I wonder how many Americans are paying attention to an important international drama that could determine the fate of our country and our place in the world. President Bush and his neocon cheerleaders are preparing for air strikes against Iran, possibly, according to recent reports, with nuclear weapons. Their claim is that Iran is itself developing nuclear capabilities, despite expert opinions that Iran is at least ten years away from deployable nuclear devices.
While the emergence of yet another nuclear power is surely not something we want, all Americans should think very carefully about what the likely consequences of an American attack on Iran will be. To Iranians, this will be what Pearl Harbor was for the United States in 1941: an unprovoked attack on their homeland by an aggressive, expansive power. It will set them violently and implacably at war with the United States.
Iran, unlike Iraq, is a relatively wealthy and developed country, with a population approaching 80 million and a well-equipped military. While there is widespread opposition to the authoritarian theocracy maintained by fundamentalist mullahs, there is also a profound sense of patriotism and loyalty to the Iranian state. Nothing would unify the country more than an attack by the United States. The notion of regime change, precipitated by American military intervention, is a neocon fantasy.
It is equally absurd to imagine that Iranians would passively accept an assault on their sovereignty. With its air force and missiles, Iran can stop the movement of oil from the Persian Gulf; this would inevitably lead to a world-wide economic depression, lasting as long as the Iranians want it to. Michigan will hemorrhage jobs, and our state will sink closer to third-world misery. Iran commands allegiance from Shiite militias throughout Iraq; if they are ordered to conduct operations against American troops, the result will be horrible loss of American lives, on a scale far beyond anything we have seen so far.
Iran is capable of unleashing terrorist attacks in Israel and in the United States that will make 9/11 seem tame. If attacked, what is to prevent them from striking back with any means at their disposal? If they do, Israeli and American civilian deaths will be counted in the tens of thousands, if not more. It will be a war without end. Does the United States have an army ready and willing to invade and occupy, indefinitely, a country larger, more unified, and better equipped than Iraq was in 2003? If not, will we launch nuclear warheads against Iranian cities?
I do not like the idea of Iran’s joining the nuclear club; Iran is an unpredictable, anti-Semitic theocracy. But we should remember that for decades the United States faced a far more menacing adversary in the Soviet Union. The doctrine of containment and engagement was hardly perfect, but World War III did not break out, and the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Bush administration invaded Iraq on the basis of faulty or contrived intelligence and clearly had no idea what the consequences of an occupation of that country would mean. Can we be confident that it can accurately assess the long-term consequences of an attack on Iran? Given the debacle in Iraq, can we ever trust this administration?

Terrorists in the White House. Really. No, REALLY!

2006-04-23T02:44:00.000-07:00

Big Mitch Schapira was kind enough to let me reprint this.

Thanks Mitch.

Big Mitch Schapira
Identify the Terrorists

It has often been remarked that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The problem is that we need a precise definition of terrorist. Let’s start with the official State Department definition: a terrorist is someone who uses violence or the threat of violence against civilians for political aims.

That’s okay as far as it goes, but it doesn’t help to distinguish the terrorist from the freedom fighter. For instance, when the United States Air Force engages in a program of bombing in Baghdad to provoke “shock and awe,” only the most partisan person could call that terrorism. Therefore, I propose that we add to the State Department definition the following words: “to subvert democratic processes.”

Are we in agreement so far? Our definition of a terrorist – a person who uses violence or the threat of violence against civilians to subvert democratic processes for political aims – is narrower than the State Department definition, but no one can confuse a terrorist under our definition with a freedom fighter.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot today because of this rather disturbing fact. The President’s new Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy is a terrorist.

People have been rejoicing that Karl Rove got a slap on the wrist, and was relieved of his duties as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy as if it were a good thing that he is going to be freed up to run a filthy, vile campaign to control congress for two more years. But not much attention has been paid to the fact that his replacement was part of a group of thugs hired to disrupt an election.

Here are the details. In 2000 the election was incredibly close, and it all came down to who won the State of Florida. On Nov. 22, 2000, Republican thugs stopped a vote recount in Miami -- and showed how far George W. Bush’s supporters were ready to go to put their man in the White House. They were prepared to commit acts of violence to prevent the counting of votes. There’s a name for that. It’s called terrorism.

It may seem over the top to call Republicans activists "thugs," but that’s the name I give anyone who would menace civilians to prevent them from counting votes. The fact that they were well dressed changes nothing, notwithstanding the fact that one of them was so concerned about his image that he coined the phrase, “Brooks Brothers riot.”

But who were the well-dressed thugs? No legal charges were filed against the Republicans, but documents released in the summer of 2002 show that Bush’s recount committee paid at least a half dozen of the publicly identified rioters.

The payments to the Republican activists are documented in hundreds of pages of Bush committee records – released grudgingly to the Internal Revenue Service on July 15, 2002, 19 months after the 36-day recount battle ended. Overall, the records provide a road map of how the Bush recount team brought its operatives across state lines to stop then-Vice President Al Gore’s recount efforts.

The documents show that the Bush organization put on the payroll about 250 staffers, spent about $1.2 million to fly operatives to Florida and elsewhere, and paid for hotel bills adding up to about $1 million. To add flexibility to the travel arrangements, a fleet of corporate jets was assembled, including planes owned by Enron Corp., then run by Bush backer Kenneth Lay, and Halliburton Co., where Dick Cheney had served as chairman and chief executive officer.

Only a handful of the Brooks Brothers rioters were publicly identified, some through photographs published in the Washington Post. Jake Tapper’s book on the recount battle, Down and Dirty, provides a list of 12 Republican operatives who took part in the Miami riot. Half of those individuals received payments from the Bush recount committee, according to the IRS records.

The Miami protesters who were paid by Bush recount committee were: Matt Schlapp, a Bush staffer who was based in Austin and received $4,276.09; Thomas Pyle, a staff aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, $456; Michael Murphy, a DeLay fund-raiser, $935.12; Garry Malphrus, House majority chief counsel to the House Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, $330; Charles Royal, a legislative aide to Rep. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. $391.80; and Kevin Smith, a former GOP House staffer, $373.23. In the summer of 2002, the Miami Herald reported that three of the Miami protesters were then members of Bush’s White House staff.

They include Schlapp, a special assistant to the president; Malphrus, a deputy director of the president’s Domestic Policy Council; and Joel Kaplan, another special assistant to the president. [See Miami Herald, July 14, 2002]

The Brooks Brothers Riot – carried live on CNN and other networks – marked a turning point in the recount battle. At the time, Bush clung to a lead that had dwindled to several hundred votes and Gore was pressing for recounts. The riot in Miami and the prospects of spreading violence were among the arguments later cited by defenders of the 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dec. 12, 2000, that stopped a statewide Florida recount and handed Bush the presidency.

The afore-mentioned Joel Kaplan was the man who coined the phrase “Brooks Brothers Riot” to describe the actions of him and his fellow thugs when they threatened precinct workers with violence to prevent the counting of votes.

Yesterday, he was appointed to replace Karl Rove as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. Yes, there are terrorists in the White House, in service of King George W. What does that make W? Start with worst president ever, and go down from there.

To read a truly informative account of how Republicans tried to thwart majority rule in Florida, including the personal participation of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, look here. Here’s the bottom line: it worked.

After the Supreme Court prevented the counting of votes, an unofficial recount by news organizations found that if all legally cast ballots in Florida had been counted – regardless of which kinds of chads were accepted, whether punched-through, hanging or dimpled – Gore would have won Florida and thus the presidency. Gore also won the national popular vote, defeating Bush by more than a half million votes, making Bush the first popular-vote loser in more than a century to be installed in the White House.

A Non Creative and Violent Response

2006-04-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

This was published on the Santa Cruz Sentinal web page.

April 22, 2006
Cyber war over UCSC protest heats up
By ROGER SIDEMAN
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

In the easy and anonymous world of cyberspace communication, angry partisans on both sides of the anti-war movement can volley threatening barbs at the click of a button. UC Santa Cruz students and conservative pundits alike have seen such messages filing up their in-boxes in the wake of last week's campus protest.

After nationally syndicated columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin posted the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of three members of Students Against War, they received a flood of obscene and harassing messages from around the country, including death threats. When a liberal Web site, in retaliation, published Malkin's cell phone number and home address, a full-blown blog war ensued.

"I am now forced to remove one of my children from school and move my family," Malkin wrote Thursday in an e-mail to the Sentinel.
Malkin, author and Fox News Channel contributor, runs one of the most popular right-wing sites on the Web, attracting 145,000 hits daily, according to Web log rankings on truthlaidbear.com.

On April 11, Students Against War flushed military recruiters out of a campus job fair.

The next day, Malkin copied the cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses of three student activists at the demonstration from a news release intended for journalists and pasted them in her online column titled "Seditious Santa Cruz vs. America."
"I woke up in the morning and my cell had 14 new messages, 25 missed calls and it kept going on," said SAW member David Zlutnick, estimating the group's three media contacts have already sifted through 500 e-mails, more than 100 with death threats.
When students called Malkin to request she remove the student information, Malkin reposted the names and numbers several more times. She defended the decision, blaming SAW for posting a link to the news release on its Web site.

To Zlutnick, the retaliation Malkin got was simply "a taste of her own medicine."
"But to put all our energy into a cyber war with this crazy right-wing lady takes away from our larger mission to end the war," he said.

Contact Roger Sideman at mailto:rsideman@santacruzsentinel.com?subject=Cyber.

Santa Cruz Sentinel

Time For Real Conversation

2006-04-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

The reason a government of checks and balances makes sense is that it can ensure that no one wields so much power that they can do whatever they want regardless of the will of the people. It is supposed to ensure that a large portion of the country does not feel so disenfranchised that it becomes an angry mob. Tonight I saw an angry mob. We really are in deep trouble in this country on many levels. We have an incompetent Administration hell bent on its own agenda. It is supported by people who think logic and understanding are quaint politically correct oxymorons that only dirty hippy atheists believe in. Liberals, leftists and people who just know something is deeply wrong are frustrated to the point they just do not know what to do. That is not a good thing in any society.

If you box people in; if you put them in “Free Speech Zones; ignore their rights, deny them their votes and marginalize them to the point they can’t really have any voice at all…

Well, you have what we have today in America.

I am a leftist, I shower everyday and as far as I can tell, I am not a hippy. Ok, I am an atheist, but I respect religion and people’s belief in it as far as it goes. I don’t consider myself to be a lunatic. I don’t think my ideas are worthless or worthy of contempt. I don’t think, as Anne Coulter does, that I should be locked up in Gitmo.

Michelle Malkin published the phone numbers on her website of some people from Students Against War who had successfully driven out some military recruiters from their school. They have received death threats. Malkin should be ashamed. She should apologize, remove the phone numbers and publicly tell people not to harass these folks. She won’t. She has decided to destroy her credibility (what little there is.)

In response some people have come up with her phone number and home address and the counter campaign of harassment has begun. I shudder to think. This is just not the appropriate response. I can imagine blogs being created for the sole purpose of creating hate targets.

The atmosphere in this country is very bad. We may be on the horizon of using nuclear weapons in Iran. Many people are convinced that there is nothing that can be done to stop George Bush. This kind of frustration leads to violence against people you can get to. Malkin is about to be violated. There is nothing good to come out of this.

People need to wake up and consider some more creative and appropriate responses to the hate coming from the right. For a month I have been pleading with people to come to this site and brainstorm ideas to confront this madness in a non violent way that may, if we are lucky, work.

Scapegoating people is not the answer. We can lead ourselves right into having hit squads, death squads. Do you really think sliding into a civil war is a good idea? That is what would happen next.

You want to change the world? Get off your soft behinds and start planning and implementing some actions that confront power with truth. This website was set up for that specific reason. Tell me to go to hell. Tell me you have an idea. But make some comments and give some input. Time is getting short.

Peace to all of you, friend and foe alike.

Mike

Firedoglake Has a Plan

2006-04-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

Join Us to Stop Bush and Rumsfeld on Iran
By Pachacutec
Bush has proven he cannot be trusted with foreign policy.
This will be short and to the point. A lot has been written about Bush and Iran since Sy Hersh’s New Yorker article, and too little done. This is a time for actions more than blog posts.
We’ve had confirmation that Bush is considering a preemptive nuclear attack against Iran. This is suicidal madness for America, as I described here. We also have word from Joe Biden yesterday that Democratic senators need a serious kick in the ass to wake up on this issue.
Ladies and gentlemen, put yer steel tip boots on.
We’re asking our readers to sign up for our Roots Project, to get together to lobby and meet with their senators in their home states. Since we’ve had time across the blogosphere to refine our message, here’s our current FDL recommneded talking points:
Starting a nuclear war against Iran is seriously nuts. It won’t just destroy part of Iran: its consequences will destroy America.
Through Iraq, Bush and Rumsfeld have proven they are weak failures who can’t be trusted to do the right thing with Iran. Even our military establishment is against Bush and Rumsfeld and is demanding a change in leadership. Rumsfeld must be replaced. Bush’s reckless rush to war must be stopped.
Strength begins with leadership, and yet leadership has not yet been tried on Iran. America must cooperate with our allies to contain Iran and promote its democratically inclined people through engagement and tough negotiations. Congress must act to be sure this occurs. Only people who lied about Iraq deny Iran is many years away from developing a nuclear weapon.
To get involved in the Roots Project, contact me according to the instructions in this post.
Getting groups of citizens to show up at the offices of senators and congressmen is an extraordinarily powerful tool. It’s underutilized and underappreciated. A handful of people going to an office is worth two thousand emails, letters or phone calls. It works. It shows them we are real people, and takes much less effort to coordinate than a peace march. Please get involved today to stop the next next mindless war against American interests, before it’s too late.
I’m on the road this afternoon, but with catch up with your emails tonight, so please be patient.
UPDATE: To get involved, send an email to Pachacutec01 at gmail dot com. Include only your state in the subject line, and please include your commenting name or kos user name in the body of your email if you can.

Death Toll Rising

2006-04-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

Six retired Generals independently called for the Donald Rumsfeld to resign this week. They did not discuss this among themselves. It was spontaneous. After a quiet month of March the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq is exploding. So is the country. Civilians are being slaughtered night and day. Bodies are being discovered when the sun rises.

Vietnam took more than a decade and 58,249 American service members. After three years we have lost 3,272 at this writing.

No one counts the civilians in either war. Estimates vary widely.

Rumsfeld’s resignation will probably not come. If it does as long as Bush is in Office it may not matter.

Making Hard Choices

2006-04-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

You Can Get Out of the Military Even if You Enlisted.

Here is how:

Peace Out

These rules apply for anyone drafted as well.

Emilie Maersk, with a peace sign painted on her face, is taking part in a demonstration in front of the US Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark, in a protest against a possible US-led war on Iraq, Saturday March 15, 2003. Some 5,000 people took part in the demonstration. (AP Photo/Scanpix, Carl Redhead)

Preemptive Nuclear Strike

2006-04-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

The neocons are chomping at the bit for an excuse to use nuclear weapons. George W. Bush wants to go down in history as the man who saved the world from Iran getting the bomb. Iran wants to convince the world it has nuclear capabilities and has a right to them. This is a recipe for disaster.

Approximately 40,000 people live in Natanz, Iran. Thirteen times the number of people killed on September 11, 2001. This is where the United States believes that Iran has its nuclear research facility some seventy five feet under ground. Afghanistan proved that bunker busting bombs do not work. Iraq proved that American Diplomacy is never attempted.

The United States and Iran are not talking. Not to each other.

Our Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton is a belligerent proponent of Preemptive First Strike. No diplomacy is taking place.

Barring tactical nuclear weapons the Bush administration is considering prolonged air attacks on the general population of Iran for the purpose of, “breaking their will.” This had the opposite effect on the British during the Blitz when Nazi Germany bombed London. We can see the results of “Shock and Awe” in Iraq. The people in Iran generally support the United States. George W. Bush will put an end to that..

George Bush is right about one thing; he is a war President.

This country needs a peace President.

Here is the Federation of American Scientists' Fallout Calculator

This is from the Union of Concerned Scientists Bunker Busters