Wingnut Prophet

Awesome Panelists Discuss 2012 Challenges

2012-01-14T18:36:00.002-06:00

Just listened to the WORT stream of A Public Affair…with Nicole Foss, Dmitri Orlov, James Kunstler, Richard Heinberg and Noam Chomsky… what a killer lineup…. what a disappointment…. not so much for what they said or didn't have a chance to say… but more for the inept handling of the discussion…. and that's not a total insult on the MC for having all those "long of tooth" luminaries on an hour show would be a feat for the best host, but his level of preparedness for this interview was appalling… He could just let em dialog… instead he felt compelled to put his 2 cents worth in… even if can out 3 cents short and completely clueless.

What would have been nice were to have let the panel of luminaries discuss the future and simply make sure they all got a chance to talk and the subject kept focus…. ah well at least they did have quality airtime to cover an important subject…

so to address the content… I thought Nicole presented best, followed by Heinberg and Orlov. They verbalized the issues with the most clarity though at times I wondered if they spoke with more density than the listener could retain. Chomsky suffered for not being online for the beginning so his statement was askew from the tangent and he'd likely have pitched it differently were he listening to the first statements. Kunstler came off a bit the pessimistic know-it-all with an attitude. I know he's not, but that was my take-home. His confrontational attitude earned him little airtime. I do think Chomsky had a valid point that if there is 100 years of Oil left for the USA we've got perhaps even bigger problems with hegemony and its consequences than merely Peak Oil.

Imagine the world facing a crisis of scarcity vs the world facing brutal US Hegemony. At least in collective crisis people will rise up to their higher selves…. that's not true if the US just starts killing off entire populations of people to decrease the surplus population and control the dwindling resources.

Chomsky might be onto something… I've long wondered about the thousands of wells that have been capped off with no oversight… if Big Oil wanted to hide substantial oil deposits for safe-keeping, it merely caps off a drill hole and keeps its rights in tact. We've no oversight to determine the wells are actually dry do we?

Back to the rest of the show, it was great to have several like-minded speakers who were all on-point with each other (even if the MC was clueless)… for as heady as their subject matter was (and our MC even commented on the apparent hopelessness) they all presented it in such a way to bring encouragement to the upcoming "truth" rather than pessimism. Thats where my head is at… the facts about collapse can be shellacked-over by those wishing to keep the public on the dark till the collapse, but very soon they're going realize the truth and most will not have a chair when the music stops.

And whether Chomsky was right that the US was holding some aces in their sleeves or not, the world is going to be faced with some apocalyptic challenges… wish they had a second hour to really debate… What say?

The Second Guilded Age

2011-12-14T08:57:00.003-06:00

It has become difficult not recognize that we are firmly in the grip of a second Gilded Age. Not only is this return obvious in the homage - if not hysteria - that marks a return to the dreamworlds of consumption, commodification and a survival-of-the-fittest ethic, but also in the actions of right-wing politicians who want to initiate policies that take the country back to the late 19th century - a time in which the reforms of the New Deal, the Great Society and the Progressive Era did not exist.

This was a period in which robber barons, railroad magnates and the super-rich spread their corrupting influence throughout the political, economic and cultural landscapes - without having to deal with irritating social reforms such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, child labor laws, environmental protections, affirmative action, civil rights, union rights, antitrust laws, a progressive income tax and a host of other reforms. This was a period when money flowed and privilege shaped practically all aspects of American life, making a mockery out of democracy and imposing massive amounts of suffering on the vast majority of Americans. Women could not vote and were seen as second-class citizens, blacks were treated harshly by Jim Crow policies, young people were exploited through harsh labor, education was limited to the elite, inequality in wealth and income reached extreme disparities, slums festered, and politics was corrupted by the moneyed classes.

In time, protests emerged among students, workers, unions, women, people of color and others to address these injustices. Labor became a potent force in the first half of the 20th century. Then blacks mobilized a formidable civil rights movement, women’s groups organized to address a range of injustices, students infused new life into the drive for democracy both within and outside of higher education. Gay, lesbian and transgender groups - along with a number of other marginalized and oppressed groups - fought to gain basic civil rights. But these movements not only produced notable victories in deepening and expanding the promise and possibilities of a substantive democracy, they also were the object of a powerfully organized backlash on the part of conservatives, who organized a right-wing cultural revolution that successfully rolled back many of the progressive gains that emerged in the first and second half of the 20th century.

The conservative backlash and war against equality, justice and human rights has been reinforced in the last 30 years by the consolidation of the media into the hands of the corporate elite. There are precious few news outlets left that still speak truth to power... not only fighting the corporate propaganda trend, but showcasing a variety of writers and academics who take seriously the role of the Journalism in a Democracy. Journalists that fight for the truth, give voice to those who are powerless report more than the gossip and scripts redlined by executive producers and address issues that are ignored in the dominant and mainstream corporate media.

Please refuse to support the politicians, think tanks, media and anti-public intellectuals who are pushing to create a second Gilded Age. Our Democratic Republic matters to more than the people inhabiting the United States of America.. our policy, programs and newly made corporate citizens are hurting plant, animal and people alike all around this planet. We are the only ones in a position to lead the fight. Our Vote is our weapon to fight for a formative culture that demands we not only retain but improve the social contracts won by blood, sweat and tears of our elders throughout the last century.

The Day Democracy Died— Long live the Oligarchy!

2011-08-13T22:32:00.002-06:00

Wisconsin's recall election was the first major test of the New Era in American Politics. That new era began in January of 2010 when the US Supreme Court ruled in that there was to be a new class of Citizen. The political voice of transnational corporations and billionaires had a bigger say in matters of governance. We The People now means we the Transnationals. In Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that Corporations were entitled to equal and greater "free speech" than living humans have.

Unlike their forefathers and those of great nations like Britain before them, the new Supreme Court ruled that even though a Corporation has no life-span limit, no soul or moral compass, no single body to hold responsible, they should be able to dig deeply into their enormous coffers to pay limitless amounts of money influencing government. And now without need to disclose to whom or how much. Oligarchy, government by the few, is borne.

Yes, our vote insured they can employ scores of minions who's sole job is targeting elections and politicians, funding (and in fact launching) their candidates... as well as sabotaging the opponents through any media, mailing or underhanded method they can concoct and fund, for there is no longer any accountability or tracabililty either. They can run ads that polarize a candidate they don't like and make it look like it was the candidate who authorized it... sound like Constitutionally protected free speech to you?It must if you voted to for retaining th status quo.

Your vote to continue this billionaire corporate agenda sealed the fate of this nation to a new world order.... Congratulations. We the people no longer have the ability to speak up in a system controlled by multinational corporations who are now equals to each of us in rights, and freedoms... oh except you also gave them immunity from paying any taxes or having any rules or regulations to govern their behavior....

So lets all enjoy the air, water, resources and climate while we can.... or simply declare ourselves an entity like General Electric who can pay no taxes, trash the environment and taxpayers to clean it up. We can extract resources without compensating the the peoples who rightfully own it... and own any media outlet that might have a chance to actually report the facts.

For it is now illegal to enter a business whether as an employee or concerned citizen, and take any pictures or describe any improprieties (whistlebowers) as it infringes upon that multinational's newly given rights... This while it is now okay that your phone conversations, emails, financial records and your every location can be tracked traced and recorded by these same companies —all under the protection of law.

A few of America’s most notorious oligarchs – including the Koch and the DeVos Families (Big Energy & Amway) billionaires – as well as countless transnational corporations—who do most of their business here and keep their profits outside the US, are apparently okay to funnel millions to elect their candidates and pass their laws.

Thanks to an irrational and likely illegal Supreme Court ruling, we have moved into an era of oligarch-run politics. As much as $40 million of oligarchy money was spent in Wisconsin in a handful of local races – a testing laboratory for strategies that will now be used against Democrats nationwide in 2012.

And so now we enter the battle of the oligarchs over the next fifteen or so months. Perhaps you thought the politicing was bad for the recall... brace yourself, the 2012 elections are gonna make you pray for an Alberta Darling/Sandy Pasch commercial.

As the old saying goes, when the elephants fight, the mice get trampled. In this case, the mice is democracy itself.

America is now – as proven by Wisconsin – just a few steps from a totally corrupted, totally billionaire- and transnational-controlled political system. The Citizens United election experiment is over, and the oligarchs won. Long live the oligarchy. Three cheers for the Wisconsin voters who with the stroke of a pencil, ended 230 years of an experiment in a Representative Democratic Republic. Hooray for the new Transnational Oligarchy... enjoy.

And if you're interested to see how its all going to turn out... take a look at England, the middle East, the horn of Africa and hundreds of other places today, where the separation of classes is turning into riotous masses... Tonight, in several of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart. London's burning... Israel is roiled in turmoil from within, Italy, France, Ireland, Spain... all are rising up against the power that happens when societies are separated into classes.... united we stand... divided... we will be conquered.

It is with a heavy heart that bears witness to such divisive propaganda clouding the souls, eyes and judgment of so many, who's decision will likely bring about our darkest days here on Earth. Devastation and destruction on a global scale at the hands of a select few who've used power and corruption to quell the only nation capable of stopping the madness. And it all started here in Wisconsin... last week.

Badger Country—Unite!

2011-02-21T05:22:00.002-06:00

I'm from Wisconsin, the Badger State, so listen up to one of our Congressmen, angered by the GOP-led antics... Have you read the Walker Bill? —crafted by minions and corporate creeps, whose numbers far out-strip the paltry staff left to aide each legislator. For such are the rules laid down in GOPher holes. Rep. Hintz's points go far beyond 144 pages! To them who oppose I say Friend, what words has your Drudge Report told you to say of the illegal vote, the pre-release, the silencing of discussion, the unsportsman-like conduct in our Capitol's Halls? If this Game Plan sent from K-Street Corporate lobbyists and billionaire Kochs, is this the way you play fair upon being given a seat at the table in our Badger State—then Friend, you and your GOPhers go find another hole in which to crawl, for if its GOPher games you like, this is Badger Country and we Badgers have begun to Unite! So listen up cuz over the weekend the thunder and lightning did strike!— twas the Night Watchman a givin thunda in da rotunda yesterday— Mess with our rights and watch us Unite!

Vanishing Bees, Vanishing Freedoms

2011-02-14T07:23:00.003-06:00

Today we face a new problem threatening life on our planet. It's not aliens, end-times or islamo-socialist uprisings... its Bees or rather lack of them.

Just in time for Spring Planting, Transnational Agribusiness Corporations have been granted unconditional permits to expand the use of Systemic Insecticides. These water-soluble products initially were sprayed on plants, but moreso now they are absorbed to directly to the seed, expressing themselves genetically in every part of the plant. The sub-lethal neuro-toxins attack the insect's nervous and immune systems after merely eating into the stalk or leaf. However, these poisons are also expressed in the nectar and pollen (and one would surmise fruit). Now Bees and other pollinator insects are suffering similar symptoms. Catastrophic losses are resulting in disruptions further up the food chain into birds and bats.

These Neonicinatoids, particularly Clothianidin, linger and accumulate in the soil long after the plants have been harvested. Studies show a soil toxicity half-life of 19 years after a single application and they accumulate with subsequent plantings.

Honey Bees Colonies have been dying at an alarming rate. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was discovered by pollinator beekeepers in 2006, the same year neonicinatoids were given Conditional Permits for use in Corn. The US has 88 million acres of corn growing within its border. Most of it is laced in neonicinatoids. Even though corn is wind-pollinated, bees are still attracted to the abundant pollen stores regardless of whether they help with pollination. Several EU nations have banned the use of neonicinatoids because their research showed the direct correlation to CCD.

In the US we have several agencies, mandated to protect citizens through regulation and supervision, but nowadays they seem to serve their Corporate citizen's interests rather than constituents. Our newly elected, corporate-sponsored legislature is poised to execute marching orders to finally kill or neuter these agencies, offering instead, self-regulation and supervision by the manufacturers and provider. This would effectively place the wolf in charge of tending the chicken coup. They've begun a two-pronged assault on the EPA, FDA & USDA to either close them down or severely cut their funding. For years these same Corporate giants have employed a revolving-door "if ya can't beat em, infiltrate em" agenda placing execs an insiders in positions of power to systematically dilute or disable their Agency's ability to function, only to return home to lucrative positions following their term in office—and this practice happens regardless of political party affiliation.

With tactics involving media pundits, think tanks, programming, and newly consolidated journalistic and political groups such as the Tea Party Movement, they have not only been successful at focusing attention on how the Agencies are ineffective or broken, but also have forged ways to divide the population against each other over how and why rather than what was responsible. It appears they think a divided population's dissent and polarized ideology will prevent any groundswell from gaining traction to demand reform and restructure, and instead allow them to simply abolish these Agencies.

But to abolish them is to end the only means our citizens have to exercise collective protections, safety and regulations of these products practices, toxins and genetically manipulated flora and fauna by transnational petrochemical and agribusiness corporations who's track record on self-governance stands, in shambles, for itself.

Please listen to this interview with a longtime Beekeeper, UW-Madison grad and ex IBM exec, Tom Theobald. He's the whistle-blower who uncovered much of the information we now know about the agency testing confirming a problem, and subsequent denial, obfuscation and deception by the revolving-door department heads... this is important information.

The American Bee Federation is requesting people call Congress to urge that the small honey bee research program be left intact and remain at least at current spending levels:

—Point out the urgent need for a solution to CCD and other conditions affecting honey bee health.
—Point out the importance of honey bees to agriculture crops $17.9 billion by the latest estimate.
—Point out that USDA honey bee research's program is too important to receive cuts
—Point out how important good honey bee health is to your own beekeeping business.
— But most important Point out that you demand reform and restructure rather than abolishing the agencies.

Call today! The debate is scheduled to begin in the House on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2011.

Capital switchboard: 202.225.3121 (House); 202.224.3121 (Senate). Ask for the individual handling agricultural issues. Or, send a message via the Congressmens Web sites. You can find them at www.senate.gov or www.house.gov.

For more information about the pesticides, laws and real-world accounts of bee colony survival please look over these websites:

http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/

http://beyondpesticides.org/

How is it possible?

2010-11-13T13:52:00.002-06:00

How is it possible that so many people have allowed their indulgences to become the rallying cry to sever the last shreds of that which gave them the freedom to become so duped? Facts bounce off their teflon hatred like the years of truth they chose not to pay attention to... Which has resulted in the creation of this very moment...When we stand divided, against each other rather than together against the true enemies of freedom.

How can we transcend this manufactured line-in-the-sand that pretends to divide us apart from each other while the true wealth and power of our planet is consolidated to soon be wielded against us—the same way its been used to destabilize and topple governments and peoples round the world...

Divide and conquer is the oldest game in the book, and we're getting schooled in it in our own nation right now... how is it so many people think they'll have a chair when the music stops? The chairs are being folded up and this game is turning into a mosh-pit while the band leaders exit the building with all the all our cash, and our coats from coat-check... and still they keep us bickering.

Monsanto's RoundUp of the world!

2010-09-18T07:20:00.002-06:00

Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto: The Story of a Canadian Farmer’s Fight to Defend the Rights of Farmers and the Future of Seeds

Gathered here in Bonn this week are some eighty Right Livelihood Award laureates, including the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, who has battled the biotech giant Monsanto for years. When Monsanto seeds blew into Schmeiser’s property, Monsanto accused him of illegally planting their crops and took him to court. Ultimately his case landed in the Canadian Supreme Court. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1997 for fighting to defend the rights of farmers and the future of seeds.

This is what Democracy looks like....

2010-07-08T16:05:00.001-06:00

This is what Democracy looks like..... corporate citizens with no soul to redeem or body to incarcerate, spending unlimited truckloads of cash (much given them from bailouts by taxpayers) to put their mouthpieces in office to derail rights and freedoms of living people not on the Corporate dole. Yup... this is what we got when we foolishly accepted the token "death tax, war on terror, clear sky, leave no child untested policies, fabricated by K-Street corporate lobby suck-ups.

So now we got a hole in the Ocean floor that BP won't let us touch... let alone study so we can determine how to fix it... no they need to cover their asses at our doom. And what, their Judge overturns the Presidents ban on Drilling cuz it hurts his investments... yes folks while we got fat and lazy letting Bushco steal our nation to rule the world, we lost any chance of governing ourselves without an uprising. Swell... so now MoveOn wants you to sign a silly petition in the hopes someone in Washington might go against the machine that paves their roads in diamonds.... to help you and me.... right.

so I signed... go ahead and sign too... but perhaps tonite as the sun settles on the horizon where ever you live, know that the richest 10% of the world's elite own 85% of the planet's wealth. The bottom 50% own less than 1%.... the 3 richest people (we know of) own more than the cumulative wealth of 48 nations.... BP proclaimed to a deaf MMM agency, run into ruin by their own appointees, to have the means to be able to salvage 480M gals of oil PER DAY in the event of an underwater leak -TWO MONTHS BEFORE the Deep Water Horizon Crisis... TO DATE... BP has skimmed less than 9% of what it said it could skim EVERY DAY.

And yesterday "their" Coast Guard and puppet Judges declared the Gulf Coast OFF-LIMITS TO JOURNALISTS without proper prior approval !!! And so it goes.. our lifestyle, our livelihood, our nation and the planet many of us call home.

Enjoy the sunset... of the day, of Democracy and of mankind... oh, and sign this silly statement.

Beck on the Attack!!!

2010-03-12T08:26:00.003-06:00

Botcott, Divest and Sanction!

2010-01-15T09:08:00.004-06:00

Palestine has been beseiged by Israel with the full cooperation the American Military Complex ever since they selected Hamas in a free and democratic election to rule their nation. The US and Israel did not agree with free speech so they've chose a path of extreme punishment no less gruesome than the Nazi Concentration Camps... Palestine is the world's largest Prison—walled, restricted, patrolled and guarded by forces using exponentially superior might and weaponry, the citizens of palestine are being tortured and starved of human rights and essential means for survival... because they chose the wrong Democracy!

Watch what you're watching

2010-01-14T09:47:00.000-06:00

The Rapper NAS has been censored by media for his lyrics... but gee, who censors the media for its "lyrics"? When the news is lies and coersion... when the truth is hidden or distorted, who censors the criminals wearing business suits and profiting off the deception? Which newsmedia giant is reaping millions in profit while the news industry dies? Whos tellin lies? Better watch what you're watching...

One World Currency

2009-03-26T18:56:00.000-06:00

Has Journalism Died?

2009-03-20T12:12:00.001-06:00

It is important to bring this discussion out into the public discourse. For it is we the people who will soon find ourselves no different than our caricatures of comrades in cold war russia. What needs to be recognized here is not "is journalism dead?" but rather has freedom of speech been restructured and restricted? I fear the worst is right around the corner, as printed "news" dies and everyone "does digital" we all seem quite assured that airwaves are as real and accessible as newsprint. But newsprint does not require a computer, an internet connection and an account login to read the information. Newspapers can be read with little more than a candle and seventh grade education.

Part of the transformational landscape being forged by the destruction of news as we know it - is access, localization and community. During the last seven years we've seen tremendous consolidation of media empires. Whether radio, television or print, corporations and private equity firms have quietly been buying up our media landscape and severing thousands of links to communities, government, local whistle-blowers, great journalists and newsmakers.

All this while simultaneously creating the largest and most available media spectacular known to mankind. As the Springsteen song says, 57 channels and nothing on. Actually, its worse than that, now we've got 1000 channels with the same thing on! We've got fewer than 10 media conglomerates owning all the major newspapers, television, entertainment and radio. They've consolidated into most of the local and regional markets as well. What this means is less reporters actually reporting, less transparency in business and government, and less useful information for the citizens. What it also means is greater ease in controlling the content that does make it out.

Last year a train derailed near a small urban town who's local radio stations were bought up and "upgraded" to nationally syndicated broadcasts. As the highly toxic fumes swept over the town, many turned to the radio for news of the eye-burning, gaseous smell making it hard to breathe. As hundreds vomited into their toilets and put wet washcloths on their children's eyes, the local radio just played song after song with an announcer giving weather and national news.

This is just the beginning of what will become "newspeak" in the future: non-specific corporate-edited, white noise. I can hear Orwell spinning in his grave right now.

Awaken Dorothies!

2008-11-12T12:48:00.002-06:00

Isn't it funny how the right always seems to have the "right" answers for everything... and it never involves the right? Nope, the banking troubles... caused by the left, the war, the deficit the decline of our society and all its ills... yep, liberals... the disgusting state of our union with its unregulated and unprecedented power and wealth-grab by the aristocracy, the systematic deconstruction of our rights and freedoms... caused by socialists.

Do they really think they can just will away reality and truth? Did they watch the Wizard of Oz so many times they think they can just click their heels and wish themselves back to Oz? Well you'd certainly think so round here.

They've fabricated a world that makes the yellow brick road of Oz, with its flying monkeys, talking scarecrows and witches from the four directions, seem par for the course. But even so, they seem as spellbound as the wicked witches minions when it comes to following commands... O wee O, oh waaay oh...

The financial troubles we face today had nothing to do with 8 years of right-wing ideology and their regulators asleep at the wheel... O wee O

Extolling a vibrant fiction of scary trees throwing apples, flying monkeys and goons, they forget the fact that it was right wing leadership who passed the bankruptcy act for the credit industry and has emptied our nation's pockets to pay off the very crooks who stole our nation... oh waaay oh

Or that their privatization policies and consolidation principles allow multinational corporations to hold us hostage for more ransom daily... or face millions of jobs lost... their foreign policy of imperialism has helped corporations expand to middle eastern oil fields, chinese labor pools, latin american resources and simply condoned diabolic chaos and genocide throughout the world and even within our secret "detention centers". O wee O, Oh way Oh!

Not even a wizard behind a curtain serving up their style of sensationalism and grandeur seems to be able to break the spell cast on these "fiscal con-servant-ives". They handily regurgitate hate-speak and lies while forming a fabric of conviction to justify every ill that befalls their little world of make-believe.

As our nation crashes into the very chaos that I and so many "rational lefties" have been warning about for years, these right-wing minions have assumed the costumes and garish colors of Oz and seem to prefer them.

They no longer cling to their true fiscal conservative (black and white tv) roots... they've traded them in for technicolor HDTV realities of consumption and consent. Ignoring the harshness of a desperate truth, they are content with their lazy-boys and surround sound, they enjoy visions of munchkins, and lollypops with occasional visits from witches and wizards.

Well we grayscale farmhands have tried again and again to awaken our "dorothy" friends who fell in with a pen full of pigs and their slop. Awaken them to the reality of the world they truly live in... which ain't no technicolor fantasy. Its troubled, suffering and in dire straits. But even in the darkest moments, our community -our nation- has proven we can, not only seek that sliver-lining in those dark clouds, but we can sew together a world of cooperation and community if only we can all learn to face the truth; that we're not lions, scarecrows, tin men and wizards, but people struggling together to make a just and sustainable future. And that in that struggle, we build tighter bonds and stronger communities than anything in make-believe.

I pray that our Right-wing Dorothies realize there's no place like home... and no benefit to clinging to their technicolor lifestyles of consumption and greed. For it is but a dream, and no wizard or witch can can keep them from realizing there's no place like hope... and no better time than now to awaken to it.

The Time for Action is Now

2008-11-06T09:12:00.003-06:00

To understand the meaning of the U.S. election results, it is worth looking back to the moment when everything changed for the Obama campaign. It was, without question, the moment when the economic crisis hit Wall Street.

Up to that point, things weren’t looking all that decisive for Barack Obama. The Democratic National Convention barely delivered a bump, while the appointment of Sarah Palin seemed to have shifted the momentum decisively over to John McCain.

Then, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, followed by insurance giant AIG, then Lehman Brothers. It was in this moment of economic vertigo that Obama found a new language. With tremendous clarity, he turned his campaign into a referendum into the deregulation and trickle down policies that have dominated mainstream economic discourse since Ronald Reagan. He said his opponent represented more of the same while he stood for a new direction, one that would rebuild the economy from the ground up, rather than the top down. Obama stayed on this message for the rest of the campaign and, as we just saw, it worked.

The question now is whether Obama will have the courage to take the ideas that won him this election and turn them into policy. Or, alternately, whether he will use the financial crisis to rationalize a move to what pundits call “the middle” (if there is one thing this election has proved, it is that the "peoples" middle is far to the left of its previously advertised address). Predictably, Obama is already coming under enormous pressure to break his election promises, particularly those relating to raising taxes on the wealthy and imposing real environmental regulations on polluters. All day on the business networks, we hear that, in light of the economic crisis, corporations need lower taxes, and fewer regulations—in other words, more of the same.

The new president’s only hope of resisting this campaign being waged by the elites is if the remarkable grassroots movement that carried him to victory can somehow stay energized, networked, mobilized—and most of all, critical. Now that the election has been won, this movement's new missions should be clear: loudly holding Obama to his campaign promises, and letting the Democrats know that there will be consequences for betrayal.

The first order of business—and one that cannot wait until inauguration—must be halting the robbery-in-progress known as the “economic bailout.” Author, Activist, Journalist, Naomi Klein, has spent the past month examining the loopholes and conflicts of interest embedded in the U.S. Treasury Department’s plans. She's just published feature articles in Rolling Stone, The New Trough, and her column in The Nation, Bush’s Final Pillage.

Both these pieces argue that the $700-billion “rescue plan” should be regarded as the Bush Administration’s final heist. Not only does it transfer billions of dollars of public wealth into the hands of politically connected corporations (a Bush specialty), but it passes on such an enormous debt burden to the next administration that it will make real investments in green infrastructure and universal health care close to impossible. If this final looting is not stopped (and yes, there is still time), we can forget about Obama making good on the more progressive aspects of his campaign platform, let alone the hope that he will offer the country some kind of grand Green New Deal.

Klein's best selling book, The Shock Doctrine details how terrible thefts have a habit of taking place during periods of dramatic political transition. When societies are changing quickly, the media and the people are naturally focused on big “P” politics—who gets the top appointments, what was said in the most recent speech. Meanwhile, safe from public scrutiny, far reaching pro-corporate policies are locked into place, dramatically restricting future possibilities for real change. Wonder where Cheney's been since the "collapse"... busy busy busy...

But it’s not too late to halt the robbery in progress, though it cannot wait until inauguration. Several great initiatives to shift the nature of the bailout are already underway, including bailoutmainstreet.com. I added my name to the “Call to Action: Time for a 21st Century Green America” and invite you to do the same.

Stopping the bailout profiteers is about more than money. It is about democracy. Specifically, it is about whether Americans will be able to afford the change they have just voted for so conclusively.

(lifted from Naomi Klein)

Independent Electiion coverage

2008-11-05T07:23:00.001-06:00

Track the Vote

2008-11-04T18:34:00.001-06:00

Live updates to the 08 election. MSNBC has an interactive map showing the results.

Paulson's Dirty Litle Secret

2008-10-30T08:22:00.006-06:00

In an article recently, Joe Nocera the economic writer for the NYTimes, revealed what he calls "the dirty little secret of the banking industry"--namely, it has no intention of using the [government bailout] money to save small business. Its essential aim was to engineer a rapid consolidation of the American banking system by subsidizing a wave of takeovers of smaller financial firms by the most powerful banks." In other words, our money is being given to help the financial aristocracy consolidate their wealth and destroy our society.

Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, wants to help his friends the speculative banks to acquire as many smaller, more stable savings banks as possible and is using his power to inject capital (our money) to force a new and hostile round of bank consolidation.

Nocera cites an employee-only conference call held October 17 by a top executive of JPMorgan Chase, the beneficiary of $25 billion in public funds. Nocera explains that he obtained the call-in number and was able to listen to a recording of the proceedings, unbeknownst to the executive, whom he declines to name.

Asked by one of the participants whether the $25 billion in federal funding will "change our strategic lending policy," the executive replies: "What we do think, it will help us to be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling."

Referring to JPMorgan's recent government-backed acquisition of two large competitors, the executive continues: "And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way, and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop."

As Nocera notes: "Read that answer as many times as you want--you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy."

Later in the conference call the same executive states that they will tighten credit and actually SHRINK loaning which will drive up the rates for loans... and their profits.

Paulson and other Treasury officials have made public statements calling on the banks that receive public funds to use them to increase their lending activities. That, however, is pure propaganda. The bailout program imposes no lending requirements on the banks in return for government cash.

The wealth consolidation is already starting to appear, early this month, (in a nearly unnoticed move) Paulson put in place a new tax break worth billions of dollars to his friends, allowing the acquiring bank to immediately write-off any losses on the books of the banks they take over. This will in fact, encourage bank mergers.

We already know the credit crisis bailout has prompted the takeover of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual by JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, Wachovia by Wells Fargo but last Friday, National City Bank was aggressively acquired by PNC ( a Pittsburg-based financial giant)

The Wall Street Journal on Saturday called the acquisition of National City a "strong-arm sale", but also provides a taste of what is to come. Paulson and his Treasury Department sealed the fate of the Cleveland-based National City bank by denying them any government bailout. But then it then Pittsburgh-based PNC $7.7 billion from to help takeover National City. Now PNC can write off all the debt of National City with Paulson's new tax write-off on mergers.

All of the claims that were made to justify the bank bailout seem to be as truthful as the lies BushCo gave for invading Iraq. President Bush, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Paulson told the Democratic congressional leadership and Barack Obama that the bailout had to be passed, and passed immediately, despite massive popular opposition. Those who opposed the plan were denounced for jeopardizing the well being of the American people.
Though this time, several Republican leaders, like Jim Sensenbrenner, held out for and additional $150B in earmarks—but more importantly, they now are on record as opposing the bill so when Americans finally realize this deception... these Congressmen will look like Russ Feingold did after the Patriot Act was exposed— as heroes of the people!

What a sham, what a clever move in a well- constructed plan to topple our rights and freedom.

In a nationally televised speech delivered September 24, in advance of the congressional vote on the bailout plan, Bush said it would "help American consumers and businessmen get credit to meet their daily needs and create jobs." If the bailout was not passed, he warned, "More banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account.... More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs ... ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession."

One month after his bailout was enacted... and all of the dire developments he said the bailout would fix--banks and businesses disappearing, the stock market plunging, unemployment skyrocketing- are happening with accelerating speed.

While Obama talks about the need for all Americans to "come together" in a spirit of "shared sacrifice" what he doesn't want to say--is that this bailout is sucking any and all money he might have used for his social programs.--meaning drastic cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security in addition to not affording universal healthcare, better schools and infrastructure.

But so too, would McCain find this "crisis" will also make it impossible for him to give the wealthy tax cuts and bailout plans he's been touting.... The darker side being... his handlers may actually push the tax cuts through and accelerate the collapse of our nation.

As Naomi Klein theorized in her book "The Shock Doctrine, the "economic rescue" plan is a scheme to plunder society for the benefit of the financial aristocracy. The American ruling elite, utilizing its domination of the state and the two-party political system, is exploiting a crisis of its own making to carry through an economic agenda, long in preparation, that could not be imposed under normal conditions.

The result will be at least greater economic hardship for ordinary Americans but possibly herald the death of Democracy. The few newly consolidated mega-banks will have near absolute market control to set interest rates and provide credit to workers, students, families and small businesses. The government is organizing a restructuring of the financial system that will enable a handful of mega-banks to have ultimate power over society.

How is this not unlike the same aristocratic elite plotting the wealth consolidation and overthrow of our government in 1933 during the last economic collapse?
This time, it seems they may well have succeeded.

Disaster Capitalism

2008-09-25T09:01:00.007-06:00

We’re seeing another very dramatic example of the Economic Shock-Thearapy right now with this extortionist kind of tactic playing out in Washington. BushCo says “Sign this blank check, or we’re all going down, Wall Street, your savings pensions and 401ks—you know, The Sky is Falling!!!”

Just like the days following 9/11 when BushCo pushed through the USA Patriot Act and forced Congress to vote on a (still hot from the duplicator machines) 597 page rewrite of the Constitution before noon that day! I think most every American can agree there are many parts of that "book" that turned out to not be in the best interests of freedom and democracy. But in his rhetoric, Bush said 'yer either with us or against us' and barring our own Russ Feingold it passed nearly unanimously.

Well here we are at the autumn of the Bush residency... and here again we're facing another "sky is falling—pass this by friday" shock doctrine. The game is the same, use fear to keep the flock in line. Scare America into doing the wrong thing because its their ONLY choice... and its gotta happen by tomorrow- or else!

So what is this Economic Shock-Therapy? Milton Friedman coined it as a way to bring about radical economic changes that would normally be highly controversial—Disaster Capitalism. Following a disaster, the citizens are softened up and rally behind perceived leadership. Precisely the time to slip-in radical changes (like torture, spying, wars, deregulation and consolidation) wrapped in the form of a security blanket (or flag).

Naome Klein has written a book detailing many historic examples of this technique and its use. The Shock Doctrine gives perhaps the blueprints for todays financial shock treatment delivered by Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

It’s interesting who Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is, he served as an assistant to Richard Nixon’s assistant, Watergate "plumber" John Ehrlichman. From there he moved right to Goldman Sachs, where he became the head of it.

BusinessWeek magazine ran an article just after Paulson was appointed by Bush in 2006, Mr Risk Goes to Washington, It says, “Think of Paulson as Mr. Risk. He’s one of the key architects of a more daring Wall Street, where securities firms are taking greater and greater chances in [their] pursuit of profits. By some key measures, the securities industry is more leveraged now than it was at the height of the 1990s boom." When Paulson took over Goldman Sachs in 1999, they had $20 billion in high-risk gambles—When he left, they had $100 billion.

Henry Paulson isn't speaking for Main Street, he's bailing out his colleagues for some of the very debts that he himself accumulated.

Last night the pResident addressed the nation urging Congress and the citizens to immediately accept and implement his Economic Plan. A plan he said his economic advisors have been working on for weeks. Well Folks, its all of three pages long.

Paulson said that he thought it would be presumptuous to put in clauses calling for regulation. But this is absolute nonsense. Section 2 of the same document talks about how they have the right to hire contractors to administer this huge operation, and we know that that means contracting with some of the very firms who are going to be bailed out. And then it says that it would be—they would be contracting them without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts.

Hello??? What are we, Iraq? This document grants complete immunity from oversight and prosecution that the contractors have in Iraq, if not more. Basically what they are saying is that Paulson can contract with private companies AND exempt those companies from the existing law. No conflict of interest, no whistleblowing, in fact way to prosecute them if we learn in six months that they've broken every law on the books.

...in times of crisis, when people are panicked, we’ve seen again and again the right push through radical pro-corporate policies, what they call “free market reforms,” precisely because it is in a crisis where the space for debate rapidly closes, and you can invoke this state of emergency to say we have no choice.

They’re getting this—they’re lobbying for this huge bailout, obviously, but this bailout is a kind of a time bomb, because it’s all these bad debts, and they are going to explode on the next administration. I mean, we know that the Bush administration has already left the next administration with huge debt and deficit problems. They’ve just exploded those, expanded them. And what that means is that whoever the next president is is going to be inheriting this economic crisis that is being exacerbated by this bailout.

Welcome to Disaster Capitalism -
and the next installment of The Shock Doctrine.

Obsession: War on the Truth

2008-09-15T11:39:00.014-06:00

Sept 14, 2008 should most certainly be heralded as the day the term "Liberal Media" was finally exposed for the fiction from which it was coined. Yesterday a half-million of copies of a propaganda video were distributed in 75 newspapers across the US...

The Swiftboat-like 501c3 organization, the ClarionFund, paid an undisclosed amount for the inserts to be distributed in Key Swing States including the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and prominent papers within Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Nevada.

careful this is a loud and dramatic piece of propaganda...
click with care!

Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, a hate-film touted as a documentary, produced in Israel by several right wing groups, who are also financial supporters of the McCain Campaign. The film played on FOX and CNN television during the run-up to the 2006 elections and has been repeatedly shown at the bush-controlled CIA and Pentagon as "learning tools" for new agents.

This propaganda is the latest stunt pulled by the right and its media partners. By reaching out to millions of readers with this ready-to-eat propaganda, they controlled the entire message without anyone being able to respond, review or refute the lies, deception and misinformation. Some newspapers who've already been inundated by angry subscribers have responded that the inclusion of paid advertisements with samples are not new.

But as one subscriber noted, "A box of cereal? Toothpaste? Does a box of cereal or a tube of toothpaste encourage me to look with hatred and suspicion on my law abiding neighbors who have a different religion than mine? The trailer for this video is about hate, pure and simple, and shows the video has only one goal -- to instill fear and hatred of neighbor against neighbor."

Touting ridiculous "awards" from right-wing film festivals like the Liberty Film Festival, this slick piece of Israeli propaganda stops at nothing to use the very techniques its sites as the "ways radical Islam and Nazi Germany" fooled their countrymen. It even goes so far as to co-opt several historic quotes by people who spoke against the very schemes and techniques THEY are using... to rally support.

People, you should be outraged. This is a blatant propaganda piece sponsored by a foreign nation, used to coerce the voters of the US to throw another election. If this is what we can expect from for-profit papers and media consolidation, this will become the future of propaganda.

Rich elitists, Multinational Corporations and Foreign Nations with deep pockets, can fabricate lies and deception with flashy packaging and full motion video to reach millions of voters. People, if we tolerate this violation of our public trust, we've truly lost our democracy.

What are you going to say to big media? Will you hold them accountable for the information they provide- or will you quietly sit by and watch fourth branch of government become as corrupt as the rest?

Whats right on Free Sppech

2008-08-17T08:54:00.000-06:00

Andy Griffin tells Opie what the 4th Amendment means... Too bad our Justice System is too busy trampling the Constitution to watch... Do you care?

Some say that the rules have changed since 9/11...

I say yes... with the military Commissions Act and the covert actions of this admnistration the rules certainly hve changed... we're a police-state on the verge of bankruptcy. We're an agressor nation with Imperial motives... oh the bushies tell you we only want to make democracy for all nations. Hello? their definition of Democracy means sujugate that nation and take its resources. Prop up a ficticious government and have multinational corporations run the operations.

George Carlin RIP

2008-06-23T18:09:00.001-06:00

He always played with our sense of the obvious...didn't he?
Were'nt we an interesting lot, for him.
Gonna miss his clarity and wit.

George Carlin Nails It

Vote Republican!

2008-06-19T18:18:00.001-06:00

get what you deserve

gMail's dirty lil secret!

2008-06-09T20:20:00.007-06:00

Google, once a fantastic example of all that is good about Free Market Capitalism and the American Dream... now just another multinational publicly traded corporate monster. Yes Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the darling 20 somethings who, met at Stanford and decided conquer the world... Along the way they were offered an obscene amount of money to sell off their idealism to the devil... tell me, who could resist a $24 Billion IPO?

Fast forward, the company who claims its motto is "do no evil" has some interesting preactices in it gMail division... Yes as the giant internet corporations vie for total control of information, plenty of questionable evil is leveled on an increasingly uneven playfield. Lets look at their email program, which encourages people to keep their private email stored on their online servers as long as they like... because Google has so dog-gone much server space. no biggie!

They tell you to leave you mail on their system and tease you with an "our servers feel unloved" tag if you don't acquiese. But what do they really mean when they say this? Why would anyone encourage us to be messy, to not bother emptying trash cuz they got such big wastebaskets?

Well if the reason they want you to leave your private correspondence is so their internet bots and spiders can back up all your email into their "secure" servers... would you feel like loving their servers? True THEY may have the best of intentions for snooping on your mail... They say its only to help make a better internet experience for you... AdSense and the googleplex idea has been to learn your habits, your friends, your favorite sites and keywords... to help you find more online... And I believe them.

But ever since Dick Cheney gave Retroactive Immunity to the Telcos for giving the neocons access to our emails and browsing logs.... I really have no love for their huge servers. But I believed Google was still an honest corporation... not EVERY one is evil....

But now, their latest email feature has really got me wondering. Custom Time is is a way to backdate your emails so now you can send people emails and claim it went out on time. Have a deadline? not any more! How bout a birthday you missed? never again. Didn't file you eTaxes on time? send it dated April14th!

What the heck is this... Permission to lie? I think "do no evil" has been replaced with "allow for evil" - and thats just not cool. And look who's been invited to attend the ultra-secret shadow world government Bilderberg Group Meeting held last weekend in Virginia... Eric Schmidt, Eric-Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO at Google. No conspiracy or collusion of world corporate interests there... just a myspace party...er thats murdoch's social website.

ChangeCongress.org

2008-06-08T21:39:00.005-06:00

Lawrence Lessig's speech at the National Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis. Lessig has the best interactive presentation style today... and his message is no less important. Here his point that without a fair Congress, how can we begin to reform Media? Washington DC Lobbyists have DOUBLED since BushCo took office... even though an increasing majority of citizens are against Media Consolidation... Congress continues to consolidate media to Corporations.

Before we create fair Net Neutrality Laws, we need PUBLICALLY FUNDED ELECTIONS for Congress, State and Local Government, and for our Justices...

Get Big Business out of our Business!

Moyers @ Media Conference

2008-06-07T18:16:00.002-06:00

Minnesota Media Reform Conference has Bill Moyers' 40 minutes of truth... like light in a dark shadowed corporate vaacuum... here we are now....

Communication Revolution

2008-06-07T00:34:00.007-06:00

We are at an historic moment in our history where we are at a confluence of events that will determine the fate of free speech and access to information for generations to come.

The 2008 Media Reform Conference in Minneapolis is the epicenter of the resistance to Corporate-Owned Media and its newest attack on public property, namely to privatize the ownership, regulation and content of the internet.

Many citizens are as of yet unaware that all forms of communication content will soon be delivered via the internet: Telephone, Television, Movies, Video-links, Information Resources, Commerce, Websites, Blogs, Magazines, News, Games and adult entertainment.

Heretofore separated into a variety of government regulated mediums, like telephone, broadcast and commerce... this new medium, "a series of tubes" as the esteemed head of the Senate department who oversees the regulation of the internet, Republican, Sen Ted Stevens, calls it, is right now having its regulatory future decided by our politicians.

The model for conducting business is migrating to online delivery and now the rules for conducting that business, the policies and regulations are being formed in Washington. So this is the time for the citizens to help guide our leadership to create responsible and fair rules to govern the use, ownership, access and content distribution of the internet going forward.

Already, mighty Corporate Communications giants are heavily lobbying Congress to privatize the internet, granting them free reign to censor, limit and control access to information and content. They are trying to erase all the regulatory laws that have governed their use of telephone and television space by rewriting the internet laws at their discression.

This revolution is going on unbeknownst to the average citizen as these same Communication Giants are doing everything in their power to squelch, censor or discredit any effort to inform citizens and policymakers to keep the internet neutral and regulated.

This is the most important battle of our time. For without neutral access to information, truth can be concealed, access can be denied, ideas can be squelched and our future can be narrowed to fit in the pocketbooks of a small number of multinational corporate feifdoms who will have ultimate control of not only our nation, but our planet.

Condi Must Go!

2008-04-17T13:04:00.004-06:00

Rove Must Go, Rummy Must GO, Ashcroft Must Go,
Libby Must Go, Tenet Must Go, Abermoff Must Go,
DeLay Must Go, Gonzalez must Go, how many must go?

before the quietly content consevatives begin to add it up?

This administration is going... piece by piece...

when are people going to accept the reality that the leadership
MUST GO.... NOW!

This is the perfect example of what you get when you look the other way instead of confronting the truth... now these leaders have become so familiar with their lies and propaganda that they forgot the web they weaved to get to this point... and make careless mistakes....

But no slip of the tongue can compare with the slip of judgment the conservative right are content to accept in order to continue their comfortable lifestyles - at any cost. Well the cost is our freedom, our nation and ... yes... our lifestyles.

This administration has been AGAIN caught in lies. Caught in acts of treason that are punishable- not by simply firing a few close allies- but by jailing and perhaps executing the leadership... if capital punishment is good for minorities and small time offenders... then isn't it good for politicians, businessmen, military leaders and the media leadership guilty of treason?

Yes Condi Will Go... but only if you take action... because the mainstream corporate media is not covering this issue... they are on Pope-a-Dope watch... and this story is being silenced but for a few mentions to keep the illusion of balance.

As long as this administration- CHENEY and Bush, remain in power... amnesty, immunity, and pardons are given away like treats at the dentists office. We can expect no justice or ethics to come til someone hangs like Saddham from a rope.

So much for conservation or belief in ethical moral conduct...

Conservative (as it is presented today)- MUST GO!

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The Brass Is Back

2008-04-10T09:13:00.005-06:00

The Brass Monkey and Lyin Ryan Crock-r shit took to the hill
to spin more yarn about our empire-building in Iraq.

Remember that old Thin Lizzy tune???

Guess who went in front of Congress today?
Those two-faced boys that had been away
Haven't changed much of what they say
like man, those cats are crazy

They were being asked to expound
How Iraq was, whether WMDs could be found
They told us it were safe, living downtown
dodgin all those mortars in the green zone town

The brass are back in town, the brass are back in town

You know that schtick about success
Spewing lies for the corporate press
Man when I tell you they was cool, they was red hot
I mean tellin lies as truth-they was a spinnin'

That day on Capitol Hill, on cspan as the pundits began to grill
Well this congress chick got up and she yelled in Patraeus' face
Man the media all went to commercial break
If the media don't want us to know, we'll forget her

Tuesday morn they'll be dressed to kill
duded up with their suits, shiny stars and frill
The lies will flow about the blood they spill
Cuz these boys want to fight, and congress' gonna let em

The brass are back in town, the brass are back in town

They'll tell us the surge, it worked great-
ignore the mortar fire blowin up all over the place
Increase our troop strength, it won't be long
It won't be long till they'll do the same in Iran
Now that the Brass is here again

The brass are back in town.
their lies, the media expounds

Will justice ever be found?

the brass is back

..... the brass is back

3 Trillion Dollar Lie

2008-03-03T15:09:00.002-06:00

Last week, pResident Bush told Ann Curry on the Today Show that the problem with the US economy has nothing to do with our actions in the middle east, but rather it was because we built too many homes! Saying the war actually supports our economy because making weapons is providing jobs, our imperial pResident inferred that our carelessness and obsession to go shopping is what got us in this mess!

Can anyone say they don't want to ring this jerk's neck? This same scoundrel who within days of 9/11 told us to go shopping and who recently told us to take the silly $300 economic bailout check and go out to eat.... now says its our propensity to shop that got us in the is mess!

Polls show his popularity has dipped to 19% and still refuses to admit we are even headed for recession, let alone as most economists say... that we are IN one! So how can his criminal regime continue to assault anyone who disagrees with their "reality" and get away with it? How can anyone with an IQ greater than an acorn fall for these lies and propaganda?

All the MSM pundits and propagandists have the airwaves on fire with their next character assassination, Nobel Prize-winning Economist, Columbia University Professor and former Chief of Economics at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author Professor Linda Bilmes, who's book The Three Trillion Dollar War, conservatively and judiciously reveals the many lies and deceptions this corrupt administration is using to keep we citizens in the dark while dismantling our nation.

There is no other explanation but that they are soon to overthrow what's left of liberty and freedom to crush the last nation that stands in the way of a one-world rule. And remarkably, large numbers of ignorant conservatives in fear of losing what comforts they've been trained to enjoy... seem eager and willing to give up those very things as they become subjects serving their current masters.

What Does Democracy Mean?

2008-02-20T10:30:00.008-06:00

Yesterday, citizens of Wisconsin went to the polls to decide who would represent their views and ideas in the November Election. At least thats what is supposed to happen in a primary election.

But what we are seeing start to happen here in Wisconsin... the first major primary after super tuesday and after the folding of the Republican party into one candidate... is something far more insidious and destructive of that fragile system we call democracy.

In large numbers, republican voters "decided" (well were instructed but thats the same word to these folk) -decided to jump ticket and vote for the democrat they felt most easy to beat in November!

Yep, thats republiklan for democracy... win at any cost, screw the will of the people, lie, cheat, steal - whatever it takes to keep in office... Oh, and do it wrapped in a flag wearing your lapel-pin with your hand cross your heart, mouthing the words to the national anthem -cuz you probably don't really know em after all! Hypocrites! We as a nation, starting here in Wisconsin, following Charlie Sykes' scheme to destabilize the democratic process (alright I'm giving sykes too much credit) have chosen to be as unethical as the very leadership we have all grown to dislike.

Is it any wonder our nation is in the condition it is? Economically strapped, more divided ideologically and financially than ever in history, acting more like an Imperial power than a representative republic, condoning treason, torture, spying, kidnapping and gross human rights abuses on a global scale, this cancer that has invaded our government has spread down to its citizens.

In 2006 the nation shocked Karl Rove and the GOP by turning out in such numbers to overwhelmingly defeat their agenda. An agenda that preached win at any cost, even if it means stealing elections. Many are still unaware of the antics employed by the radical wing of the GOP to secure the last four erections. But clearly the people were not represented in their vote.

And so today as many "citizens" take their "hot-showers" to cleanse the sin from jumping party-lines to vote for the lesser enemy, we see that the cancer has spread to the minions of the grand old party.

Just as we found in the last four erections, democracy is being transformed into some game like fear-factor or the apprentice... win at any cost, damn the rules or ethical behavior... damn the will of the people. Democracy has been turned into a winner-take-all cage-match with all the hype and pyrotechnics of a WWF pay-per-view event.

If we were to remove all the deceptor-votes from Hillary in yesterday's primary, she would have lost by a far wider margin of 18%... and Obama would have rightfully picked up more delegates... and the will of the people would have been heard.

But yesterday, the cancer spread to the hypocrites as they decided to join in undermining Democracy... They decided their will was more important than the will of the people, than true Democracy. And now the trend has been established... Wisconsin forged ahead "Forward" to spread the cancer of undermining democracy... to the rest of the primaries.

Or perhaps it was here,
on the battlefields of Wisconsin's polling stations
that Democracy proved, as it did in 2006,
that the will of the people can beat
the cancer of unethical greed.

The bigger question remains,
Has the cancer spread to the super-delegates too?

Bush Hides Our Economic Crash

2008-02-13T14:00:00.012-06:00

The Bush Administration is Shutting Down a Major Website that Tracks U.S. Economic Indicators to Keep Citizens Ignorant of the Disaster Ahead!

The U.S. economy is failing. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has exploded. So the Bush Administration and its GOP henchmen are attempting to draw attention away from the upcoming crisis, by blaming the media's negative coverage and STILL insisting the United States is not headed toward a recession, despite what most every economists is predicting.

The Bush administration's latest move is to simply hide the data. Even as Forbes Magazine awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its "Best of the Web" awards, explaining the government site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing U.S. economic data:

This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration combining data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links the data of relevant departmental websites. While this might not seem like a big deal, try "doing it yourself "- Try to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau's site and tie it into the GDP figures, it will convince you why this website is so valuable and important.

Yet the Bush administration has the audacity to claim "Budgetary Constraints" have forced them to shut down the site March 1st ! It's a bit more than ironic that the Economic and Statistics Administration is facing such constraints considering Bush just submitted a record $3.1 trillion budget to Congress for FY ‘09.

The site's Economic Indicators were automatically tabulated from several sources and emailed to anyone who signed up. People received a free email as soon as new economic data from government agencies became available. While the data will still be available online at various federal websites, it will now be the users responsibility to ferret out the information buried deep in dozens of government websites. It will be much less readily accessible to the general public.

In its e-mail announcement on the closing of Economic Indicators, the Department of Commerce acknowledged the "inconvenience" and offered a "free" quarterly subscription to STAT-USA/Internet instead. BUT once this temporary subscription runs out, the public will be forced to pay a fee.

So not only will economic data be more secret,
it will now also cost money just to see it.

The Bush Administration is so certain that the economy is collapsing, it plans to hide the indicators from the already distracted and despondent consumer masses. It might be smart to take your "economic stimulus rebate" and start buying Silver friends.

Senate Grants Immunity

2008-02-13T13:04:00.005-06:00

Yesterday the Senate passed the Bush bill making permanent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act- including the Telcom immunity provision making all the corporate communications companies immune from being held accountable for eavesdropping on Americans since 9/11!

Every Republiklan voted in favor, but so did 19 Democraps! Including my senator Herb Kohl. I called his office to voice extreme objection and listen to his feeble excuse... which he, as any corporate monkey dancing for bananas, said was because the government should take the responsibility for any corporate action it instructs them to take. Corporations no longer have to question authority, merely capitulate- free from harm, conscience or disruption of their bottom line!

Ole Cor-pirate Herb Kohl just exonerated his businesses and all others from ever being held accountable for any action they do for the government. But oddly, as this war has shown, Corporations and government officials are NEVER held accountable for actions.. only enlisted soldiers have been jailed for torture, stealing, disobeying orders and anything else officials and private contractors need to take action on because of public outcry.

ARE YOU WORRIED? YOU SURE SHOULD BE.

With this, any company, say Blackwater, Halliburton, Dyncorp or any other... can freely take any action against the citizens of the US ... so long as they claim the pResident authorized them to do so... and since Dick "national secret" Cheney has set the standard, no government has to divulge who or when anyone gave the authorization!

Get it? when folks begin being rounded up and sent to detention camps.... your neighbors... you won't have rights, or powers to stop it. Kinda like the citizens in Germany prior to WWII.

You get it yet? What are you prepared to do to defend your
Country from the enemy within?

Bush Sees Land

2008-02-13T07:44:00.001-06:00

Bush sees land and prepares for his departure.

Where do they stand?

2008-02-06T12:23:00.000-06:00

Here is an interesting study done to plot where a person's values and ideology puts them on a chart between left and right, egalitarian or autocratic. Take a look at how the full field of presidential candidates are plotted, then test yourself and see where your values put you.... it will surprise you.

Amazing how we see that all the candidates still in the running fall into a very small ideological framework... that coincidentally serves the interests of the elite behind the media, the multinational corporations and the private banking world.

Funny how that works.. a nation with 300 million individuals has narrowed its choice for democratic representation to 2 candidates with obama a dark horse (no pun intended) before the fifth week in the election year. And all the candidates standing, fall into the same ideological quadrant... remarkable how our "melting pot" nation seems to have resolved all our differences when deciding who should rule. or are we really the deciders?

How did you score? Are you closer to Ghandi, Thatcher or Stalin?

What do you think?

And for extra credit.. check out this history test.

Tuff Talk!

2008-01-30T15:01:00.000-06:00

Tuff Talk on Earmarks but what about signing statements

pResident Bush delivered his final State of the Union address on Monday and even before the champagne corks went popping in the GOP section, Bush's Tuff Talk was spun into more lies and deception.

In what can only be described as calculated distain for the nation he serves, an arrogant pResident triumphantly stood before a nation of people who's economic prospects stand in ruins but for those who chose to ignore the basic tenants of our Constitution, human rights and divine doctrine to join in his world-wide pillage. Ever jubilant, this cheerleader/actor delivered the opening monolog to this, hopefully the final act in the saga "Death of a Nation". With but 355 days of this tragedy left, Bush and his corporate sponsors have quite the finale yet to perform.

Not wasting a moment, even his SOU was filled with lies and deception. As he smugly twisted fact to fiction, he sounded almost like a good President. By his account, he has worked hard to create a peaceful middle east, his policies have strengthened our economy, schools and environment. As he spoke it seemed even he enjoyed reading his script and who could blame him, for his entire cast of players were assembled before him, except for those who were spirited away in the previous scenes. And though half the room was scripted to sit somberly though his monolog, he seemed eager for an oscar performance.

As he spoke about all his accomplishments and visions, he sternly spoke of a need for this Congress to step up for the economy. He demanded they pass his stimulus package as-is; that they support his Defense Act with no addendums, earmarks or loopholes. Tuff Talk from our 'Uniter' pResident indeed!

But as he continued, with fools-grin, demanding Congress agree to stop adding pork to all the important bills yet to come in his final days, he quietly and confidently, knew of a loophole with the power of Kryptonite to Superman, that he was prepared to use-again (more than any President in history) were they to not heed his demands. A loophole granting him absolute power and eviscerating the three branches of government... his Executive Signing Statement.

The next day, following his rejecting Congress' first version because it could have "opened the Iraqi government to pursue expensive lawsuits against US Corporations", he decided to sign the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act into law... even with sections he did not approve. Because he would simply add a Signing Statement to ignore the parts he didn't want.

One such provision sets up a commission to probe contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another expands protections for whistle-blowers who work for government contractors. A third requires that U.S. intelligence agencies promptly respond to congressional requests for documents. And a fourth bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq and finally, the part barring the pResident from attempting to privatize Iraq's oil industry without Congressional approval.

In his Statement, his "Memorandum of Justification" for the waiver, Bush cited his Nov. 26 "Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship" between Iraq and the United States as justification to ignore these provisions.

Oddly though, the "Liberal" Mainstream Media... has done little to report his grievous dereliction of duty- which certainly was worth a headline if not a front page intro. No even though his Declaration of Principles has been aggressively opposed by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress as not-only unprecedented, but also potentially unconstitutional because it was enacted without the agreement of the legislation branch, they remain conspicuously silent.

what gives?

Throughout his presidency, Bush has issued more than 151 signing statements overriding 1149 provisions of laws.

How is it that this lying deceiver can again get away with hood-winking the American Public with Tuff Talk and not less than 24 hours later, go back on his own stern words... without so much as a peep from the press???

We read the law is passed that says no perminant bases, mandatory legislative branch oversight, speedy responses from Bush Administrators to Congressional document requests and protection of whistle-blowers... and he evisorates it all with an Executive Statement... and then to boot... he adds he will not tolerate any legislature that seeks to control how the oil money is controlled!

And there isn't even a story on the news! My friends the end times for this once-great nation have arrived... wrapped in the flag and presented in HiDef on every channel... no news, just views... no facts, just their fiction-presented in mindless programing and endless consumption.

At this point are we really to believe that if Congress denies his "Retroactive Immunity" requests for Telcoms and his staff effective 9/11/2001... that he won't just issue another Signing Statement that the MSM will also conveniently forget to report? Liberal-bias my arse!

Bush's Report Card-redux

2008-01-28T11:19:00.000-06:00

The folks at JibJab.com made this for the 2005 year in review...
its sadly still relevant 2 years later.

How will he spin his plans tonite?

Lies, Lies, Lies

2008-01-24T16:39:00.000-06:00

The Center for Public Integrity just released a scathing database study listing all the times a Bush administration officials made false statements about the threat from Iraq, WMDs and AlQaeda connections, leading up to the Bush-bred invasion.

There are 935 entries immediately available for the public to search and scrutinize. The CPI chairman Charles Lewis said the project took nearly a year to complete, and was systematic in its construction.

He stated "We took a two-year period, from September 11th forward, and tracked eight officials, including two White House press secretaries, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, the pResident and the Vice President, looking at all their statements, and interlaced with various fine journalistic accounts, like Bob Drogin’s and others. We looked at government reports, Senate Intelligence Committee reports, the Duelfer Report—you name it, we have all those reports in there. We have whistleblower accounts, the most credible ones, Richard Clarke, of course, and many others. And we wove that into the chronology, so you know what they’re saying at the time, and you know what they are actually discussing privately, hearing and thinking behind the scenes. And it’s very useful, because then you get to put it all in context. "

This database is likely become the "deep throat" of the Bush Administration...
only ironically it comes from the crooks themselves this time.

Already news agencies and governmental offices and the international community are connecting the dots- when things were said and how they became embroidered into consensus. Its going to become quite clear exactly who manufactured the charge for war and how they duped Congress, the Press, our allies and citizens into believing their lies.

As Lewis said "the public has never really seen all this woven together. Most people don’t connect the dots. We felt it was useful for the public to know. "

Dozens of White House coverups and scandals continue to unfold. Last week officials admitted deleting more than 5 million emails and deliberately erasing backup and archive tapes. Karl Rove and his second laptop which he used while acting as King George's "Merlin", magically lost all its eMails too when commanded by court and congress to testify. Yes even ex-Press Secretary Scott McClellon's book comes out stating Cheney told him to lie about the WMD intelligence. Overseas, the UK press is clamoring about a document it wants declassified that too shows the evidence of WMDs was contrived and in that case, the author was found dead days after news was disclosed.

While it seems all the rats are abandoning ship, there's still one "fluffing" Bush, his pinup girl, press secretary Dana Perino, who's been giving blondes a bad name with her "blond-ness" shining through in her press conference as she tries to do damage control only to be "punked" by CPI Chief Charlie Lewis- boooyaah!!!

look at this video!

The right-wing chickenhawk pundits, liars and GOP Congressmen might be fluffing their feathers today...
but lets see who's flapping in a couple weeks!

Nukes, NATO & New World Order

2008-01-24T13:34:00.000-06:00

Calling for a complete restructuring of NATO and a trilateral pact combining the US, NATO and the EU together in a “grand force” to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former military heads from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a “nuclear first-strike” option remains the “indispensable instrument” since there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”.

Their manifesto, written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, sounds so much like the New World Order the media and power-elite keep insisting is a conspiracy, that many are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The matter will surely be discussed at a NATO summit in Bucharest in April.

“The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might need to become possible,” the authors argued in the 150-page manifesto for the urgent transformation of western military strategy and structures. “The use of nuclear first-strike weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” But apparently they forgot about the Depleated-Uranium munitions widely used by coalition forces throughout the middle east leaving 3.5 billion years of radiation poison from the aerosolized ordinances. Just as massively destructive in widespread small doses as a single tactical bomb)

The authors - General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff under Bill Clinton and former NATO Supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany’s former top soldier and ex-chairman of NATO’s military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK - paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and naturally, deliver a withering verdict of our ability to cope.

Not surprising, the five commanders argue that the west’s values and way of life are under threat, and the west needs help to summon the will to defend themselves. The key threats being:

· Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism. Not withstanding the US born-again christian president who admittedly "talks to God"?

· The “dark side” of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organized crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.- As opposed to state-sponsored mercenary death-squads, resource extortion, child slavery and gross human rights violations associated with the "positive" side of corporate greed- oh and the inconvenient fact that most WMD's are made and financed by the west.

· Climate change and energy insecurity, causing a scramble for resources and potential “environmental” migrations on a mass scale. Meaning the west's imperial conquest in the form of "free-market capitalism" consisting of domination of resources and inhabitants by an elite, friendly to powerful corporate interests, who will use such a global military to decrease surplus populations and maintain subjugation of the remainder.

And lastly and most insideously,
· The weakening of the nation-state as well as organizations like the UN, NATO and the EU. Meaning their plans for the ascension of the Corporate Kingdom and a One-World-Government to save the imminent collapse of the west way... but that still might not sit well in the US.

To prevail, the generals call for a complete overhaul of NATO decision-taking methods, a new “directorate” for US, European and NATO leaders to respond rapidly to crises, and an end to EU's obstruction-of and rivalry-with NATO. Among the most radical changes demanded are:

· An end to veto powers by member-nations and a shift to majority rule in NATO: Bully-Rule.

· The end of national "conditions" in NATO operations -meaning the bully rules and all must follow.

· Exclusion of any NATO member in decision-making of NATO operations for alliance members not taking part in the operations. Bully-way or the Highway!

· First-Strike capability without UN security council authorization if “immediate action is deemed necessary (by the bully) to protect large numbers of human beings”.

All this surfaced in the wake of the conspicuous headlines condemning NATO's performance in Afghanistan. Touched-off by Bush administration defense secretary, Robert Gates' comments that some allies could not conduct "proper" counter-insurgencies, the five ex-military goons declared that NATO’s future was "on the line" in Afghanistan's Helmand province. “NATO’s credibility is at stake in Afghanistan,” said Van den Breemen and according to their manifesto, “NATO is at a juncture and runs the risk of failure,”

Coincidentally, this week the Bush Administration named their man in Iraq, Gen Patreas, as a possible head of NATO... So as the latest in a long line of commanders, most of whom left calling for the US to leave Iraq, General Patraes however had no problem ignoring human rights and codes of conduct, to "win at any cost" and bring about a turn in the war. For that barbarism, he will be awarded the command of this New World Order's pretorian guard.

Klaus Naumann, Germany's top military commander who single-handedly revived combat operations and the Luftwaffe, dormant since Nazi rule, delivered a blistering attack on his own country’s performance in Afghanistan. “The time has come for Germany to decide if it wants to be a reliable partner.” By insisting on “special rules” for its forces in Afghanistan, the Merkel government in Berlin was contributing to “the dissolution of NATO”.

Naumann conceded that the plan’s retention of the nuclear first-strike option was “controversial” even among the five authors. Inge argued that “to tie our hands on first use or no first use removes a huge plank of deterrence”. Though again he failed to admit that he feels tactical nukes were not only a reality, but perfectly acceptable to use- which kind of nullifies the word deterrent.

Big words from five fear-mongers who's economic future depends on conflict and strife. Our media seems content to play this one down but its very notion should cause public outcry the likes of which our nation has never heard. For what these mercenaries of terror are proposing is nothing short of the end of democracy and the beginning of a one-world rule.. exactly what the Bilderberg Group has been planning for nearly a century.

Bush-ness as Usual

2008-01-22T11:50:00.000-06:00

Today more allegations that the Bush administration has lost or deleted millions of classified emails were leveled. For years, the Bush administration alleges it relied on an inadequate archiving system for storing the millions of e-mails sent through White House servers, but newly uncovered facts say the White House scrapped the custom archiving system that was ordered by federal court during the Clinton administration. Also,from 2001 to 2003, the Bush White House recorded over computer backup tapes erasing the last line of defense for preserving e-mails, even though a similar practice landed the Clinton administration in legal trouble.

As a result, several years' worth of electronic communication have been lost, including e-mails documenting administration actions in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Valerie Plame incident, both election fraud debacles, the ENRON case and the whole special prosecutor scandal to name a few...

As usual, White House officials said last week that they have "no reason to believe" that any e-mails were deliberately destroyed or are missing. But over the past year, they have acknowledged problems with archiving, saving and finding e-mails dating from early in the administration until at least 2005.
The administration's e-mail policies have been repeatedly challenged by lawmakers and open-government groups, in congressional hearings and in court. Two groups, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, have accused the White House in lawsuits of violating the Federal Records Act because of what they say is its failure to preserve millions of e-mails, a charge the White House rejects.

The White House's record-keeping problems have thrown new attention on a gap in statutory language covering the retention of presidential records."If it is a presidential record, then it does need to be retained. It doesn't matter what the format is -- e-mails can be records," said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration. But the agency has no power to intervene if an administration is not preserving presidential records, inadvertently or not, Cooper said.

The law governing non-presidential federal records is stronger. The National Archives can demand an explanation from any federal agency that it suspects is mishandling records, and it can request a Justice Department probe. Private parties can sue to force compliance with federal records laws, but not the presidential-records statute.
Controversy surrounding the Bush administration's policies intensified on Thursday, when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released details of a briefing by White House special counsel Emmet T. Flood, in which he disclosed that a 2005 White House study had identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more component offices.

In the presidential offices, for example, not a single e-mail was archived on Dec. 17, 20 or 21 in 2003 -- the week after the capture of Saddam Hussein. According to the study summary that the committee released, e-mails were not archived for Vice President Cheney's office on four days in early October 2003, coinciding with the start of a Justice Department probe into the leak of a CIA officer's identity, which later led to criminal charges against Cheney's chief of staff.

This e-mail controversy echoes the GOP-led witch-hunt that rocked the Clinton administration a decade ago, when GOP-led congressional probes found that thousands of White House e-mails had been lost, spending nearly $12 million to retrieve missing e-mails for congressional investigators from backup tapes.

The GAO report concluded that Gore's office "did not implement adequate records management practices to ensure that all e-mail records generated or received were preserved in accordance with applicable law and best practices."

By the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, White House officials said the problem had been solved. But shortly after Bush took office, his administration began taking steps to phase out the system. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel would not comment on why the back-up/archival system was eliminated.

In April, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino referenced the e-mail software change in answering a reporter's question about millions of lost e-mails alleged by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive. "I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost," she said. "There was no intent to have lost them."

Now, true to form, the White House appears to have changed its stance-again. "We have no reason to believe that any e-mails, at all, are missing," spokesman Tony Fratto said Thursday, before declining to answer further questions Friday.

--move along--
nothing to look at here, just your typical despots in action
- step lively - next on our tour-

the ancient artifacts we formerly cared about...

the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Ignorance & Greed!

2008-01-21T09:31:00.000-06:00

Information about the manipulative nature of this administration is widely available, but people don’t want to hear it. Once and a while a story is spectacular enough to break through and attract media attention, but the swell quickly subsides into the general glut of bad news over which we, as citizens, have little control.

Coming at us like this–in waves, massed and unbreachable–knowledge becomes symbolic of our disempowerment–becomes bad knowledge–so we deny it, riding the crest until it subsides from consciousness. We have heard ourselves protesting, “I didn’t know!” but this is not true. Of course we knew about the deceptions –devisive naming conventions, like Patriot Act, Clear Skies, Leave-No-Child-Behind and Islamo-fascist. We knew that Saddham and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; knew that waging war on the other side of the planet would cost billions and that cutting taxes would not help pay for it. We knew that a war on Terror with no end and no defined adversary is unwinable; Knew that capturing votes through pitting gay marriage initiatives, anti-abortion issues and anti-gun rhetoric during an election was deceptive and manipulative. Not a lot perhaps, but we knew a little. We knew enough.

But we wanted the money, the revenge, the feeling of redemption- the security. So when the choice was offered to us, we chose to ignore what we knew. “Ignorance” In this root sense, ignorance was an act of will, a choice that we made over and over again, especially when information overwhelms us and knowledge becomes synonymous with impotence.

We would like to think of our “ignorance” less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that which characterized the end of the millennium. If we can’t act on knowledge, then we can’t survive without ignorance. So we cultivate the ignorance, even go to great lengths to celebrate it. The faux-dumb aesthetic that dominates TV and Hollywood –RealityTV, Fear Factor, faux-life terror dramas– must all be about this. Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement- Our collective norm.

Maybe this exempts us as an individual, but it sure makes us entirely culpable as global consumers.

Where do you stand?

Underwater AlQaeda!

2008-01-18T10:36:00.001-06:00

Once again the Bush Administration shows those watching... that they could care less about our planet and the things that live on it... Except for THEIR interests and need for "national security". Bush policy has long been suspected of having ulterior motivation - either that or they are the most incompetent and inept group of businessmen to ever steal their way into power and bankrupt the most technologically advanced culture in modern history...

Today yet another example of how the neo-con need for funding its defense contractor buddies outstrips any care for citizens, animals, nature or protection of the planet's resources. How far is Cheney willing to go ignoring environmental law when it comes to his personal piggy bank, the principal shareholders of the multinational energy, defense, monetary and chemical corporations?

In today's resource-righteous right-wing reality, fear trumps sanity, and protection from fear -permits atrocity.

Yesterday in an all-to-typical split decision of the 9th circuit appeals court, right-wing judges placed by this administration and its predecessors, decided to overthrow a lower court's decision to uphold the ban on the military using a new sonar device in its submarines that is so powerfully loud, that it has clearly been proven to harm undersea life! -Its also the first presidential override honored since a 1972 law gave states the right to review federal activities that affect their coastal resources.- but clearly no legislating from the bench here.... just acting out marching orders.

One can only assume that the Bush administration's "intelligence" fears AlQaeda is plotting an attack underwater... Presumably Cheney's intel-experts have "undeniable proof" that Bin-Laden has been building " a new breed of silent-running submarines" in mountain caves of Tora Bora... Maybe using that yellow-cake that Valerie Plame's husband "discovered". Or maybe that earthworm gear thingy from that Clancy novel starring Shaun Connery...

They must have classified satellite imagery of these submarines being transported by sherpas down the mountainsides, hundreds of miles across the desert to the Straits of Hormuz where they are no-doubt being deployed to attack our fleets- but of course they can't actually SHOW US them cuz it risks national security and all!

So of course, we must take action... and rather than using all the unbelievably superior surveillance equipment we (as the most technologically advanced nation on earth, who spends more on defense in a year than the entire planet does in three) must utilize an experimental -and no-doubt expensive- killer sonar, regardless of the fact that the blasts emitted from it can kill sea life because of its "sophisticated" technology.

Well I for one am not ashamed to say these TERRORIST EXTREMISTS in office are neither sophisticated nor honest. They have motives that again clearly show they don't care about anything but taking taxpayer money from the middle class, since they exclude wealthy and corporate citizens, and giving it to themselves via their corporate defense contracts.

Nevermind that polar bears have trouble swimming in oils slicks and really need that ice-cap to live on. Nevermind that whales, who's TRUELY sophisticated sonar has allowed them to talk to eachother across thousands of miles underwater for millions of years... No, Cheyenne wants to use some neanderthal sonic club to boom out an image so his undersea mercenary soldiers can spot the terrorists so bent on killing americans that they'd rather build sophisticated submarines than create electricity or running water where they live.... AND WE BUY THESE LIES!

Never have so many been so stupid for so long... but its not for the ruling elite not trying... this brilliant stupidization of the voter public, this consumerization of the citizenry of our nation has been long in making and vast in its execution... why even radical changes in planetary weather and plague-like disfunctions of insects, plants and sea creatures have not swayed the spell cast upon us. Vast exposés of their criminal antics are turned into conspiracy theories and the whistle-blowers have their character assassinated and are put to shame...

So on we go... now killing ever-more animals in our NEED for more advanced weaponry...

Like old W coulda said,

"ya never know how they'r gonna hit cha... heh heh
so ya gotta git-r-done up right - in advance... see...
cuz thats the a-mar-i-kan way .... see... wooohah! ... heh heh"

alright I took liberty to poke fun at our foolish nation and its ridiculous ways... so sue me.

Global Warming Debate-Solved!

2008-01-17T10:25:00.000-06:00

The Bush administration and its multinational corporate friends, motivated by ideology and profit, have repeatedly been sited for censoring reports highlighting global warming and softening scientific findings to lessen the threat of global climate destabilization. This week several scientists have come to Capitol Hill to protest the Bush administration’s alleged interference in science linked to the environment.

Meanwhile a high school science teacher has created a video on YouTube that completely clarifies the debate about Global Warming and explain what our real questions must be... with more than 3 million views, his video has created quite a stir on the viral video medium.

Many harsh criticisms were leveled against him and rather than running away or lashing back, he struggled for several months researching and refining his thesis until he created a sound and irrefutable response... which he presented with humility, kindness and a good sense of humor.

Then he backed it up with dozens of short lessons to overcome the many objections to his initial posting.

In fact so great was his presentation that thousands of people forwarded his original post and several have even created websites to promote his message.

I urge you... though you all know I readily condemn this administration's role in many of our planet's and nation's problems... I freely admit it is not ALL their fault.

Please watch this man's humble arguments and do the right thing...
Politics aside... this is possibly the greatest decision we face in the history of mankind.

Vets Killing Spree -another secret

2008-01-15T09:02:00.001-06:00

The New York Times has revealed at least 121 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been charged with committing murder after they returned home from duty. The Times said the numbers indicated a nearly 90 percent increase in homicides involving active-duty military personnel and new veterans since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

The Times said about one in three of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives and while many of the killer veterans showed signs of combat trauma, most were never evaluated for or diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder until after the homicides.

Couple this with the alarming truth of an unprecedented suicide rate among soldiers both in the field and upon returning home. 6125 soldiers took their own lives in 2005. Thats 120 suicides per week!

Now put this in perspective with the stories you heard a year ago of this administration cutting funding for our medical hospitals, privatizing veterans benefits programs and denying coverage for PTSD thereby insuring most returning vets never receive the care they were promised by recruiters and it becomes clear that this administration has never cared for its soldiers or its citizens. Citizens produce children to be consumed as cannon-fodder for the elite multinational corporation's quest for world domination.

In fact if you look at the staggering migration of multi-national corporation's assets and workforces outside the US, it might become clear that Corporate Citizens are the only ones this administration has been serving and when the dust settles, they will be the only "citizens" left standing.

Our economy is descending into a recession the likes of which it may never recover... The Bush Administration has spent $1.6 Trillion dollars on the war thus far and is likely to double that before the next president leaves office. Thats more than $40,000 owed by each family in the US.

Meanwhile our currency, which is based on debt and our ability to pay it.... is in serious jeopardy. The credit industry is writing off billions of dollars in bad debt and selling off huge sums to foreign interests. Mortgage failures coupled with sharply rising energy costs and subsequent rising prices for all our goods and services have us teetering on the brink of total economic collapse. And if the world economy decides to switch to the Euro as its world currency because the Dollar is so devalued, we will become the next third world nation... in the giving up our last rights and liberties for assurances of protection and safety...

... like the ones they've given to our young men and women as they recruit them into service.... get the picture? Uncover the secrets... Connect the Dots.

Charlie Wilson's War- the sequel

2008-01-11T13:17:00.000-06:00

I recently went to see the Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson's War. Last summer I shared a room with a fellow activist who, like me, was given a chance to lobby our Congress for the Alaska Wilderness Coalition. I noticed a thick book he was engrossed in and asked him about it. He was reading the best-selling novelby George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War and said it was a chilling revelation into the inner-workings of the Congress we were to meet with the next three days.

We talked into the night of the startling truths behind the veil of righteousness that was either required to keep our world at peace-or was the very reason for it being so horrific. Oddly enough, the book, and now movie mirror exactly the same conundrum... but as usual.. only a few will be privy to engage in such discussion. Privy-perhaps the wrong word for it infers elite or special when what I mean is few will have an opportunity to realize that there are deeper questions that need asking after watching this film.

Film Critic James Rocchi said it best-
I didn't leave Charlie Wilson's War, the new film from director Mike Nichols, dissatisfied or unamused. I walked out of Charlie Wilson's War angry. No reasonable person expects a film -- any film -- to capture the complexity and scope of real events with absolute precision; adaptations are translations, and as the old Italian saying goes, "The translator is a traitor." It's one thing to compress, combine and fictionalize a story to fit the sprawling, ugly mess of it onto the big screen; it's another to take only the best, shiniest parts of a real, ugly story and turn it into a feel-good comedy. Translation may be traitorous, but Charlie Wilson's War feels like a conscious act of treason against reason itself. As film critic David Thompson has said, "We learn our history from movies, and history suffers ...." Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more evil, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia.

The movie is ridiculously nearsighted and does a great disservice to our historic perspective. Summed up with the movie's final sentences spoken by Hanks which perfectly illustrate how the truth, like so many headlines, can be manipulated to tell only the part that paints the best reflection of what we want reality to be, rather than what it truly is. Sort of a Dorian Grey Portrait-this story snapshots a moment in time showing the best image possible, while the real truth lies buried, like the portrait hidden in the attic, in the untold history that followed those final words.

“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. And the people who deserved the credit are the ones who made the sacrifice. And then we fucked up the endgame.”

Does anyone realize the endgame was us disowning Afghanistan after arming it to the teeth and training its citizens to be efficient terrorists? That the subsequent struggle for power amid the aftermath, created the Taliban, bin Laden and alQaeda? At least there was a moment, originally in the film, but left on the cutting room floor by the producers, where Gust contacts Wilson years later to tell him to turn on his tv to see the 9/11 attacks.

gee-kinda wrecks the warm-fuzzy afterglow of the film doesn't it?

Charlie Wilson's War stops being funny
...when you realize we're living in the sequel.

Army finds itself Not Guilty

2008-01-11T11:59:00.000-06:00

Army throws out conviction of Abu Ghraib commander.

The US army has thrown out the conviction of the only officer court martialed in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, Commander of Abu Ghraib during the prisoner abuse exposure was instead given an administrative reprimand. Barring any new information, the decision means no officers or civilian leaders will be held criminally responsible for the prisoner abuse.

Now I'm for defending the troops... but this is getting a bit ridiculous. Now a full two years after those horrid pictures were released, just weeks after learning the CIA destroyed (some) of the tapings of interrogations there and the FBI releasing documents chronicling two dozen incidents, after this administration has overturned centuries of law (Habius Corpus) and ignored UN policy regarding torture and abuse, with NO convictions of any suspects to any plots on US soil and NO ability for detainees to have a fair trial or even free speech (Maher Arar)... , six months after another commander of Abu Ghraib, Col. Janis Karpinski, provided proof that Sec of State Donald Rumsfeld sanctioned torture under her watch to German Courts (cuz our wouldn't allow it)...

...the ARMY BRASS decides upon its own investigation, that its done no wrong and should exonerate everyone except the unfortunate ones caught on film at Abu Ghraib! ! ! ! !

Like that stupid banner ad on this site constantly says... HELLLLOOOO!!!! ? ? ? is anyone paying attention? So the actual troops following order... are in jail... but the ones GIVING the orders are free to move about the country... Rumsfeld... Cheney... Tenet... Ashcroft... and now all the way through the ranks up to the folks that were caught on camera... are okay in the eyes of THIS legal system???

I think it WELL PAST time for a change... don't you?

Police State Video

2008-01-10T19:22:00.000-06:00

This is actual f police footage from the 2002 WTO summit... not liberal media.

Its taken dozens of FOIA requests (Freedom Of Information Act) to finally show-by their own video that no bottles were ever thrown, no violence was ever perpetrated by the protesters, none of what the media told viewers ever happened.

By their own words, the riot police attacked peaceful protesters exercizing their Constitutional Right to protest policy and government.... s Previously a vangard of the USA... we were not like those foreign governments who attack their citizens... we do not brutalize and torture....

what a difference the Bush Administration has made.

AT&T 'Ready to Filter' the Web

2008-01-10T11:47:00.001-06:00

During a panel discussion at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, AT&T’s top lobbyist said the company was ready to implement new technologies that would allow it to inspect and filter Web traffic.

James Cicconi, AT&T’s senior vice president for external and legal affairs, said that the time was right to start filtering for content at the network level. “We think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” Cicconi said, according to a New York Times reporter who attended the panel.

It’s no secret that major ISPs have been working with technology companies such as Cisco to filter content with deep-packet-inspection software. Last year, AT&T revealed its plans to work with MPAA, RIAA and broadcasters to use and deploy “digital fingerprinting techniques.

According to public statements, their rationale for playing traffic cop is to ferret out pirated content: sniffing through our digital packets for material that infringe on copyright.

Can You Trust the Filter?

But the technology can be used for other purposes, and the phone giant has shown that it has no qualms invading our communications to hand over our private records to government, or censor speech or block service “without prior notice and for any reason or no reason.”

AT&T has also touted plans to become gatekeepers to the Web with public relations bromides about “shaping” Web traffic to better serve the needs of an evolving Internet.

In reality, Cicconi and his cohorts within the entertainment industry are waging a quiet campaign to control how video and other rich content gets distributed via the Web. The popular trend in video, however, is streaming in the opposite direction. More and more people are becoming their own creators and distributors of homespun video content. YouTube now boasts more than 100 million views each day, but it is just the beginning of this revolution.

Peer-to-peer traffic is spreading via popular technologies like BitTorrent and Gnutella, which allow users to upload and share videos, music and other rich media without a middleman or content gatekeeper. The bulk of this traffic is legal.

Peer-to-Peer Traffic ‘Not Acceptable’

Also at the Las Vegas panel was NBC Universal’s general counsel Rick Cotton, who told the Times that the volume of peer-to-peer traffic online was “overwhelming.”

“That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status,” Cotton said, and AT&T seems more than happy to step in.

These executives’ vision of a better Internet ” AT&T’s “Your World Delivered” ” is not one that is shared by the more than 1.5 million people who have spoken out in favor of a neutral, open and free-flowing Internet.

For us, the Internet isn’t about one company delivering our world or filtering our content. It’s about simply offering a high-speed connection at reasonable rates ” and then getting out of our way.

This article is from SavetheInternet.com. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their Web site and register an account, if necessary, to view all their articles on the Web. Support quality journalism.

Congressional Aide Tracker

2008-01-09T11:12:00.000-06:00

Mr. Duke goes to Washington. Sixty-four of the members of the last Congress resigned, retired, were defeated, are now sitting in jail or have received pardons from pResident Bush. As last Sunday's Doonesbury cartoon featured above points out, many of them are on their way to fulfilling the grand Washington tradition of hiring themselves out as lobbyists to lean on their former colleagues. Ever since Grover Norquist and Tom Delay's 1995 "K Street Project" brought about the GOP takeover of K Street, its been hard to keep track of all the folks cashing in after public service. What often flies below the radar, however, are the huge number of congressional staffers who take the opportunity of their bosses leaving to join the lobbying corps themselves. They are prized by K Street not just for their insider knowledge of how Congress works, but also for the extensive contacts they still have with their former coworkers and subordinates as well as the lack of oversight and attention given them by anyone.

click to enlarge.

Now it's time to drag them into the sunshine, both Democrat and Republican alike. The Sunlight Foundation, CMD's partner in the Congresspedia project, has developed a cool distributed research tool to marry citizen brain power with a fancy new database to figure out who exactly is hiring these insiders, and they want you to participate. Like so many other participatory projects, many hands can make this formerly daunting task light work.

Once the results are in, the CMD staff will work with the participants to get the results entered into the SourceWatch profiles of the corporations and lobbyists, ensuring that professional reporters and citizen journalists alike will be able to use the information to perform some high-caliber muckraking on the DC influence scene. Even Craigslist's Craig Newmark is participating because, as he says, "This 'revolving door' thing is of great concern since some staffers, working for shadowy politicians, might do more damage as lobbyists."

Everything you need to know is at Sunlight's website. This is your chance to become vigilant citizens by participating in Democracy in an unprecedented way

Featured Participatory Project: Find the Newest Congressional Staffers-Turned-Lobbyists

Movie Industry Lobby Censors for Bush

2008-01-08T10:08:00.000-06:00

The Motion Picture Association of America, lobby for big media, doesn't like showing picture the Bush Administration doesn't want you to see. Once again, the myth of liberal media stands exposed to truth... what do you think?

Alex Gibney's new, critically-acclaimed documentary Taxi to the Dark Side follows the path of Afghan taxi driver Dilawar, who was wrongly accused of terrorist ties and was tortured to death by interrogators in the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base. The film critically examines the Bush administration's torture doctrine at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has rejected Taxi's poster as being not suitable for all audiences. The poster for the film simply shows two soldiers walking away from the camera, holding a hooded detainee between them.

The Taxi ad art is an actual photograph taken by Corbis Photographer, Shaun Schwarz, who's original image was intentionaly deleted by the military- but not before he transferred a copy to his flash drive. The original shot was of only one soldier and the hooded detainee, a second soldier was added digitally for balance and effect.

According to ThinkFilm, which produced the documentary, the MPAA objected to the image of the hood.

Last year, the MPAA also censored censored the poster for the documentary The Road to Guantanamo, because it showed a detainee hanging by his handcuffed wrists, with a burlap sack over his head and a blindfold tied around the hood.

Poster images for Taxi and Road are based on factual evidence. But interestingly, many horror films released for Christmas... as well as several slasher films shown on TV during the christmas holiday... show hoods, torture, dismemberment and far more horrific imagery.... but thats okay... cuz the Bush Administration doesn't mind showing images that create terror and fear... just not the ones they're actually doing in our name!!!

A look at some of the posters the MPAA has approved as suitable for all audiences this holiday season.

Morality of Politics

2008-01-05T11:52:00.000-06:00

Adelheid Meirs created some excellent charts visualizing much of the teachings of George Lakoff regarding the differences between liberals and conservatives in todays... newspeak. What do you think?

heres one that focus's on the differences in educational concepts:

and another charting the differences in government spending ideology:

Who Killed John O'Neil?

2007-12-25T11:25:00.000-06:00

Who Killed John O'Neil?

Heard of it? its an art-film made by a couple guys (ty rauber and ryan thurston) who do such a wonderfully disturbing job of not only connecting the dots of the whole conspiracy concept, but effectively showing the downside of such a rabbit-hole experimentations.

Not for your average citizen as its stark set and characterizations force the viewer into the data-intense dialog. Also important in viewing this film is the ability to pause and replay... as some of the connections require a near paradigm-shift to comprehend.

Have you seen it yet? http://www.wkjo.com

I've not been one to advocate for much discourse about this topic as it inevitably illicits a dramatic cessation from what we believe to be true... but that said, I found this very compelling and wonderfully creative in its aesthetics... let me know what you think.

c

One World Currency

2007-12-15T12:34:00.000-06:00

Democracy v Despotism

2007-12-12T12:32:00.000-06:00

Democracy vs Despotism... you decide which way this nation seems headed.
THis is a 1946 film... but surprisingly on point today.

Psychological Torture Okay?

2007-11-18T10:33:00.001-06:00

On Wednesday November 7, 2007, the primary operations manual for running of the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay named Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedure was published by the government transparency group Wikileaks. The 238 page manual clearly exposes among other things, systematic methods for extreme psychological torture and stress as well as clear instructions not to allow prisoners to meet with humanitarian agencies like the International Red Cross- in violation of international law. Even the American Psychological Association, the only remaining body of medicine NOT to condemn these practices is having to re-evaluate its policy and participation.

What the manual also describes are the details to the so-called "Leave No Marks" interrogation techniques that were confirmed recently by release of a handwritten memo by then Sec of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. As Sen John McCain, a vietnam POW who co-authored the McCain-Feingold torture law that was ignored through executive signing instruction by this pResident once said, " I would have gladly chosen physical torture to psychological...mental torture is far more inhumane"

With the release of yet another document clearly illustrating the Bush administration lied to the public on several occasions how has the government responded? The Pentagon is actively seeking to censor the document under the States Secret Act and the Whitehouse spokesmen are backpedaling and avoiding direct questions. Can Congress get to the bottom of yet another clear violation of the peoples trust? We'll have to see how the Bush team spins a cocoon around this story and buries it into its web of lies, distortions and blatant abuses of power. We'll also have to see how the media covers the details. Is this the kind of Leadership you think best emulates Freedom and Democracy?

At a time when we are supposedly trying to help Pakestan's fledgling democracy to be more like us, is this the us we mean? Musharif may already consider himself to be a student of George W Bush.

Support our Troops?

2007-11-18T07:14:00.000-06:00

Do we really care about our Troops? Talk is cheap and our actions of late, even cheaper.... So many citizens, veterans and politicians wrap themselves up in the flag and talk tuff for the troops.... but the reality is far from the rhetoric.

On friday, Congressman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina cackled from the Senate floor against the $87 Billion Dollar troop funding bill with a timeline attached. Citing "our troops are winners, not losers". Veterans and citizen-bloggers have constantly taken to flag-waving and tuff talk about our "supporting our troops" and continuing the constant clammer against "cut and run".

New figures released this week site nearly 4700 troops deserted their posts this year alone, up from 3300 last year. This represents an 80% increase in the desertion rate and is the highest in nearly 30 years— and the pace is accelerating. Additionally figures showing one in four homeless people in the US are war veterans, a point relegated to minor news clips buried in the media. Troops in record numbers are returning home with PTSD and are finding inadequate -if any- treatment or help from the Government. A study yesterday reported that more than 6000 soldiers took their own lives in 2005.... thats 17 soldiers a day!

Meanwhile, with a huge budget for slick ads, flashy powerpoint presentations, uncensored access to our High School and University Student personal records and cafeterias...our proud military has taken to preying on youth through profiling and false advertising. With budgets of between $1600-4000 per recruit, the military sees no reason to invoke the draft.

I don't know about you all, but if thats the pride to which we want to defend our troops, then there is something terribly wrong with this nation and the conditioning these vets, politicians and gung-ho citizens have gotten from the media and the deceptive administration who to this day, says we are winning the war on terror.

Defending our troops... more correctly, our children and loved ones... means being certain our cause is just, our methods are above-board, our treatment of them upon returning is truthful and comprehensive and our media or information is honest and trustworthy. Anything less than that is not only a slap in the face to every soldier who ever served, but a reason to stand up and fight for our soldiers!

Certainly there is an allegiance to our troops from our veteran population, and certainly our citizens owe them a deep debt of gratitude for their service whether in the gulf or at any other time, but allegiance and ignorance are not compatible. The longer we allow our elected leaders to beat their breasts about troops being winners- while waging a war of aggression that we all agree was not started in good faith (no connection to 9/11-no WMDs, no alqaeda)...The longer we accept daily revelations of the staggering costs of this war both in loss of life and loss of integrity to our nation and its allies... The more we continue to listen to the mainstream media make headlines of success while barely covering their redactions and truthful statements of record losses... the more we truly disrespect our troops today, and the honor and dignity of our nation and its armed forces.

Truth is Relative

2007-11-02T08:03:00.000-06:00

Hightower on Oil

2007-10-31T17:43:00.001-06:00

Rally for Peace in Chicago

2007-10-23T14:33:00.002-06:00

Get out and take action...
Be counted and hold our leaders accountable.

MurdockBlock

2007-10-16T16:52:00.000-06:00

The Great Escape

2007-08-30T09:37:00.000-06:00

Watch as the thieving destroyers of the Democratic Republic formerly known as the United States of America all begin to exit stage right. Watch as the visionaries, hitmen and henchmen of the New World Order leave what appears to be the sinking ship of the Bush Administration.

Don't be myopic, just yesterday Atria, parent of Phillip Morris, spun off its most profitable branches of the company from the US to Europe. Last month Halliburton moved its corporate headquarters to Dubai. By doing this, these multinationals are effectively cutting their umbilical cords... their corporate charters... the only legal binding jurisdiction to reign them in... and now they operate above international law.

We regularly appease the local branch of Walmart, McDonalds or Starbucks with tax braks, incentives and slacked enforcement of our laws... what will they ask for next? Once they no longer can be threatened by revocation of their charter, or liquidation of their assets?

There is no law maker saying they need to stay in their country of origin, and because too many law makers helped them leave America through offshore finances, global markets with trade sanctions and a laissez-faire international policy... we're about to fully confront the new world order we've created, and it ain't the warm fuzzy thing GeorgeSr. pledged. Heard of the NAU?

Watch the run on Gold as the Amero becomes the new North American Currency replacing the dollar.

The North American Union - or Security Prosperity Partnership has been the underlying cornerstone of much of the Bush Administration's actions the past seven years. Get the multinational Corporations out from underneath any legal ties, bankrupt the country through an endless war on terror, senseless tax cuts, privatization of our commons and the liquidation of our rights and privacy.

Did you realize both Mexico and Canada's last elections voted in right-wing business friendly candidates amid an unreal public consensus that both elections were hi-jacked... just like our 2000-2004 elections.

This end-game to create a North American Union to support global business interests in a world domination scheme to restructure global power in the hands of the elite sounds like something of a SCI-FI movie or 007Bond fantasy.... but I assure you its real.

Watch as Democratic Senator David Rockafeller speaks of the new world order to his dear friend Dick Cheney.

More last year on the secret plans of the Bush Administration

What we may be witnessing is the mass migration of the neocon fascists from the positions of power in our current governement, to their new leadership roles heading up the Global Corporate Kingdom created by our complacency and desire for materialism and greed. With our short attention span... we'll soon forget the names Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales, Ashcroft, Bolton and Abermoff... We'll barely be able to keep track of the TV wannabees fighting for best chef, best designer, best pickup artist, best slut and best at eating worms. Welcome to the new Fear Factor, the new Real World.

AT&T censors

2007-08-18T09:14:00.000-06:00

Censored Show Proves AT&T’s Bad Faith
From Capital Times, August 16, 2007

By John Nichols

Telecommunications giant AT&T says no one should worry about their aggressive lobbying to eliminate Net neutrality — the First Amendment of the Internet that guarantees equality of access to all Web sites.

AT&T executives claim they would never interfere with Web content.

When Americans hear this spin, they should hang up on AT&T.

The truth is that, within business circles, the company is already promoting its schemes for “shaping” the Internet if Net neutrality protections fall.

And a good sense of how the telecommunications corporation would like to “shape” the World Wide Web can be gleaned from reports of how AT&T managed the live webcast of last weekend ‘s Lollapalooza concert when it came time for Pearl Jam to perform.

The Seattle-based band has a long history of highlighting smart political statements — about war and peace, protecting the environment and promoting tolerance — in its songs and in the on-stage comments of lead singer Eddie Vedder.

But on Sunday, when Pearl Jam was performing the song “Daughter” during the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, the band broke into a version of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” Reworking the lyrics of the classic rock song, Vedder sang, “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush, find yourself another home.”

The lyrics that criticized Bush were muted in the webcast.

Coincidence? Not at all.

AT&T admits that the censorship occurred. The company describes the muting of Vedder ‘s references to a president who appoints the members of the Federal Communications Commission — and thus has a major role in deciding whether AT&T gets what it wants — as “a mistake by a webcast vendor.”

Then, in a nice Orwellian twist, the company declares, “We have policies in place with respect to editing excessive profanity, but AT&T does not censor performances.”

In fact, “editing excessive profanity” is censorship.

And, of course, Vedder’s lyrics about Bush, which were not profane, did in fact get censored.

Web-savvy Pearl Jam fans noted the silencing of the message and immediately contacted the band. Pearl Jam members released a statement on the censorship incident that declared, “This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.”

Pearl Jam’s statement continued: “What happened to us this weekend was a wake-up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.”

The band’s right. The censorship of Pearl Jam by AT&T serves as a reminder of what will be lost if Net neutrality is eliminated and telecommunications corporations are free to decide which Web sites are on “the information superhighway of the future” and which are on the gravel road of slow or impossible connections.

“This event shows that companies like AT&T will risk the appearance of censorship by turning off the sound on a webcast that’s being viewed by thousands of people, just because it works counter to their financial interests,” says Jenny Toomey, the executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, which has been working to defend Net neutrality. “What do you think they will do to protect their financial interests on the Web when no one is looking?”

Tim Karr, of the Save the Internet.com Coalition, adds, “AT&T’s history of breaking trust with their customers includes: handing over private phone records to the government; promising to deliver services to underserved communities and then skipping town; and pledging never to interfere with the free flow of information online while hatching plans … to build and deploy technology that will spy on user traffic.”

“The moral of this story is put Net neutrality permanently into law and never trust AT&T at their word,” says Karr. “The company acts in bad faith toward the public interest and will do whatever it can to pad its bottom line — including sacrificing its users’ freedom to choose where they go, what they watch and whom they listen to online.”

Here's what FCC Chairman Michael Copps had to say about this debacle:

Banking System Revealed

2007-05-16T12:20:00.001-06:00

This five part series explains Money and Debt. From the origins of money as beads and feathers, to the RFID chip, learn whos behind the globalization of a monitary system based on debt. The truth will set you free, what you do with that freedom is up to you. Use it for good, use it for evil, run and hide at what you see, or stand with others and champion our society and its rights under justice and equinimity.
.

Apple Parody More Truth

2007-05-06T12:57:00.000-06:00

Recently, MADtv did a wonderful sketch playing off Apple Computer CEO Steven Jobs' new product rollout at a typical MacWorld Conference. The heavily scripted opening keynote by the co-founder of Apple has always been a thrill to conference-goers. This parody did not disappoint either.

glumbert.com - The Apple iRack

But the ironic the twist beyond this great parody, was that Apple has risen to head the rank and file of corrupter corporations. It has become in my opinion, the most sinister company in the silicon pantheon... like sands through the hourglass, Apple produces ways to keep us distracted from living a life connected in communion with nature... and exiled us to wandering a desert of sand-based silicon iDevices. Rising to heights usurping even Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Apple have revealed the most sinister plan of stealing our souls and has shown us all along with Eden's fruit once bitten as its Logo. Microsoft's Bill Gates never disguised the fact that he was strong-arming society to buy his products. Apple has quietly seeped into our hearts and minds with their iStuff... we quickly move to a more iCentered, iFocused, iSolated... society.

Apple has been no stranger to ethical challenges. In the late 90s Apple was selling 15 different computers to secure price competition while retailers battled over lowest prices. After 2000, Apple began selling computers in stores like Best Buy, WalMart, CircuitCity and Sears undercutting price and services offered by its Independent Apple retailers like North Shore Computers (the nations largest) and my former company Third Millennium Design. Part of a large and loyal network of Mac Evangelists, the independent resellers began closing across the nation just as Apple Stores began springing up in Malls and Mainstreets in major cities. Apple repeatedly assured the remaining resellers of no competition between them and the new Stores... First they would only sell to retail, then they would not perform repairs in the stores, now their free "genius" consultants work long lines of business people carrying their computers to stores rather than hiring independent technicians.

Yes Apple has been conquering the private spaces of people for more than 25 years and like the highest demon in the devil's pantheon, Apple rose to power with the full support of the very people it now subjugates—not too unlike the Bush administration and their spinning of the iRack story to gain our support.

Wolf in the World Bank

2007-04-11T16:40:00.000-06:00

Today it was released that neocon PNAC author and thief of Baghdad, Paul Wolfowitz- the Bush anointed President of the World Bank... has been exposed for yet another series of serious corrupt practices involving some of his staff. This, after the Wolf's first order of business when assuming the throne of the world's humanitarian lending institution, was to clean house of corruption and nepotism....

But as seems the trait of the Bushmen of Washington, what's good for the people, does not apply to the rulers, is the rule at the WB too. Wolfowitz, against World bank policy, was dating Shaha Riza,

a gender specialist and senior communications adviser in the World Bank's Middle East Department (gee perhaps thats how he managed to gain access to the economic data for his hit-men to prey on helpless nations??)... As rumors leaked of their courtship a few years ago, Wolfy tried be removed from the rulings, but had to settle for getting her another job outside the World Bank.

Policy of the World Bank is to forbid any relations with subordinate workers. So Wolfy, got her a sweet tax-free job through the State Department, at an NGO that works with the World Bank by calling Condi.... so now that she didn't work under him, she was free "work" under him... and the worse part, the international NGO had her salary paid by the World Bank!

But wait, there's more! If that don't stink enough, not only did she get hired with none of the normally strict approval processes, she was paid twice the starting salary, and recently got another enormous pay raise of double the limit of raises for the organization. She is the highest paid person in the State Department... making more than Secretary of State, Condolessa Rice! (but then again Condi is black)

Now it turns out there are several other staffers Wolfowitz brought on board with ridiculous salaries and circumventing normal approval proceedings. Of course knowledge of this sent shock waves through rank and file at the World Bank-many of whom suspect Wolfy to have a hidden agenda. Nations and lenders were outraged at the behavior...

Why even the Wolf himself expressed anger and vowed to take decisive action.... but not against him or his staff.... no... against the leakers of this information!!!

This on the heels of the revelations of Wolfowitz collaborating with RNC billionaire Vulture Funders to extort billions of dollars in debt relief from third world nations.

Is there anyone who can still keep a straight face and say they are Bush Supporters who aren't ripping off our nation's wealth???

Are citizens ever going to stand up and demand punishment for these acts of treason.... or at least criminal corruption! NO its not good enough to demand his resignation—throw the bastard in jail! - Gitmo sounds like a nice place!

Followup- heres what he said the next day... "He's Sorry" - in true NeoCon fashion... thats suppoed to mean he keeps on working an we just ignore what he did... Well the banks board is asking him to resign... we'll see if he honors his word of "doing what they request" as much as his friend King George has done about bringing to justice anyone who had anything to do with the outting of Valerie Plame....

Here's more about his job and his his troubles from Times UK.

The latest from the NYT about his"terms for resignation" —gee quite the about face from his "noble" rhetoric about doing the right thing... or perhaps he really meant doing the "right" thing... lets hope he gets whats coming to him. The Wolf may finally be ousted from the henhouse... but will his legacy live on? And where does an ousted Wolf go next???

And more on his trying to weasel out the blame... what a snake.

Solar Powered George

2007-04-09T09:16:00.000-06:00

Check it out, a solar powered chariot propelled by George Bush!

Finally George Bush works for us! THis is such a fun invention and really speaks to our needs and abilities to create a brighter future if only we put the people like George Bush to work for us... rather than them enslaving us to do their bidding.

A brighter future is only a notion away... believe.

Window not only thing Broken

2007-03-24T12:25:00.000-06:00

While I was in DC lobbying Congress and particiapting in demonstrations, friends in Milwaukee were marching too. Apparently some anarchists in the group broke a window to a Military Recruiting Station which really got attention. The local FOX6Blog was ablaze with right-wing questions and comments, this was mine.

Q: Do you think this is a fair way to protest the war? Or does this go beyond the scope of peaceful protests -- since there was property damage involved?

Is violating personal property a bad thing? I think everyone can agree it is, including cvac (a friend of the anarchists who bravely posted a comment on the blog- before being harrassed off the site). Does this go beyond the scope of peaceful protests? Obviously by the very name it does. But, is this a fair way to protest a war? Well here the big assumption is was this a fair war?

This is the real question as it holds the underpinnings to justify the actions of cvac's friends (right or wrong) and the intentions of the peacekeepers and even the basis for the righteous patriotic saber rattling posed by many of our bloggers.

By all accounts the war was unjust, as every day more information is brought into question by our 110th Congress. Justifications based on misinformation (lies), scrupulous partisan appointments and unethical removal of anyone against the leadership's agenda, rampant corruption and enrichment of corporate alliances through contracts and policy, all the way to improper legal actions by top officials, its becoming hard to remain a loyal Bush supporter, and harder to not deny this war has brought about near annihilation to the civilization in Iraq. So I guess its safe to say its not a fair war.

But what is also not fair or balanced, is our media's role in handling the information of our times. Not merely what it does or doesn't not show of the real images of war, but what it chooses to show instead. While we sit at home watching basketball and idol shows, our nation is acting like an imperial power, bringing sovereign nations to their knees and remaking them to suit "our" pleasure.

Media is giving us an "embedded" view that undergoes censorship from many levels. So rather than speaking truth to its people, our media provides a great distortion. But beyond that it also projects distraction and sense of comfort. It creates a shield to protect us from sinking to the carnal-levels of violence we subject our troops, prisoners and innocent iraqi/afghanni citizens to endure. By failing to tell the uncensored truth, it fails to inform us back home, of the full issues. Who is being killed, how many, how brutally and to what psychologically damning ends for our soldiers who have to carry out these policies?

Instead it shows TV dramas with torture and terrorism as themes. These shows wrap up neatly in an hour, or a season, but they make a spectacle the horrors and thereby desensitize us to the reality going on around us today. Our fears are cultivated to bring out responses and tolerances that we would not otherwise exhibit. Here in this Fox6Blog, we regularly see cries for capital punishment, eye for an eye, don't like it—move, or simply rash actions for dealing with complex problems. We've become a society who wants the answers to fit neatly in a time-slot between American Idol and Bones.

Cvec and her friends that call themselves anarchists are responding to a society that is increasingly losing touch with reality. Breaking the window may have been the best thing they could have done... it hurt no-one, but surely got attention.

So now what?

Do we continue to sit, wrapped in our flags of patriotism, holding our crosses or morality while we keep righteously typing our tuff decrees, eating junk food and drinking sodas, til Idol comes on when we plop down on the couch for the rest of the night? Or do we take this moment to move past the anger about a broken window... and perhaps begin to examine the broken part of our own lives?

From the fractured view given us by the media, we seldom see the true faces of the victims to our hostility... be they here, like the increasing numbers of people facing financial turmoil responding in desperation, or in Iraq, Palestine or Afghanistan. Last month, 6000 people died in a region no larger than Wisconsin. Women, children, young and old blown up, tortured, shot, or worse killed for a lack of access to things that were once available to them- even under the brutal former dictatorship. Our soldiers are overwhelmingly against occupation, many more have deserted than the leaders claim. Those that get home face atrocities like Walter Reed or worse, a system that spends all its efforts trying to justify excluding soldiers from the benefits they promised them in recruiting centers like the one in question. Of those Iraqi's left to poll, 90% are against US occupation; Our reconstruction efforts were a hoax to build bases and prisons, and our worst intentions have finally come to realization as we have rewritten Iraq's laws to require foreign Oil company oversight, the agribusiness to require foreign seed and fertilizer, even their business platform is to be built by foreign companies.

We have made a 21th century banana republic of the oldest civilization on earth. Extracting oil and money from the hands of those we came to "liberate". It is plain to see by those not looking at US media, our allies are disappearing as fast as our good will abroad. But at home, life remains peaceful, but for those pesky protesters. Why are a growing number of people angry?

Until we begin to behave like the citizens we are; Until we begin to hold our leadership and our media to a higher degree of accountability; Until we begin to hold our own actions of over-consumption and waste in-check; more windows will break, more burglaries will occur and more people will fear the urban visits.

This will not go away if we watch more tv. It will require sacrifice and compassion... things many hear about during their weekly church services, but fail to put to practice. If we were to behave more like the Christ and less like the Christians, we might begin to see that violence does not solve problems as well as love does.

Behind the Mold

2007-03-06T17:22:00.000-06:00

We've been hearing all this talk of the rancid conditions at some of the Water Reed Hospital buildings where our Brave Fighting Men and Women who've suffered in battle come to be healed. We feel outraged that Mold, Rat Poop, Leaks etc... are not taken care of as we pour Trillions into the "War On Terror"

It would seem that the real "Terror" awaits our injured soldiers when they arrive home to receive "safe modern medical treatment".... WRONG! ... Not in the BushCo "exit is not an option" military, where denial isn't only the answer to reality on the ground in Iraq, its the policy for benefits, compensation, and healing back at home. But heck, many of our citizens loyally defend his actions, if only because they have no idea what's really going on, when watching mainstream media for our views.

How many continue to defend, even as more ugly truths come to light? They protest almost as defiantly as the Pentagon leaders, who spin their propaganda until they've stuck their foot so far in their mouths, they're chewin on their boot straps! Over and over again Leaders deny their actions until proof reaches critical mass —then they say it was a "few bad apples" like Abu Graib, Guantanimo and even Fallujah, where White Phosphorus was used to indiscriminately kill men, women, children and animals in the most horrifying way imaginable.

The chemical, orignally dropped by parachute to light up night skies the battlefields in Vietnam, was discovered to cause horrific trauma to flesh when just traces of the dust comes in contact. Skin burns to bone without effecting fabric. People, and animals melt to death, or worse if it is inhaled. (you may also remember it was precisely such action (gasing civilians) that got Saddam a quick trip to the Gallows Pole- for less fatalities and with less vicious means of mass murder than BushCo's "WhiskeyPete") but again, who's watching eh?

Well heres the next, believe it or not, for you "logic-lovin" patriots who seem to gloss over facts on your way to assert that Clinton got a Blojwob! Guess who's been recently put in charge of maintenance of Walter Reed in an effort to "privatize" yet another public service to make it "less expensive" ?? Francis Harvey took the fall by getting fired for his lack of oversight of War Profiteer — IAP Worldwide Services who received a 5 year 120 Million Dollar Contract to —( let-r-rot )— er provide services to Walter Reed Medical Center.

Yeah, I been to Home Depot lately and their cleaning solutions and paint prices are through-the-roof ! ! No wonder IAP couldn't mop the floors and scrub the walls... that cuts deep into the profits... but you think they might have gotten a discount card at the Depot cuz their CEO only recently left from Halliburton—you know, the Vice President's company —er formercompany. IAP was formed to help share the "burden" of redistributing the tax-payer's money to yet another war-profiteer. (wonder if he leaves his lights on in his mansions like Al Gore?)

Who's gonna be first to start talkin bout Clinton?

The Wombat

2007-03-03T13:56:00.000-06:00

www.global-mindshift.org

This is your wake-up ... its real simple

just listen to the wombat and show him to your friends!

Bush Logic

2007-03-02T20:40:00.000-06:00

All right, let me see if I understand the pResident's logic correct.

We ignored the United Nations
in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein
that the United Nations cannot be ignored.

We waged war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war.

The paramount principle was that the UN's word must be taken seriously,
and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then we will.

Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend.

Did I get that right?

Furthermore, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq
was to destroy the democracy of the Security Council,
then we are honor bound to do that too.

Why? Because democracy, as WE define it,
is too important to be stopped by a little thing
like democracy as THEY define it.

Also, in dealing with a man who endured no dissension at home,
we could not afford dissension among ourselves.

We had to speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's
failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.

We sent our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point
that might does not make right,
as Saddam seemed to think it did.

And we twisted the arms of the opposition
till it agreed to let us oust a regime
that twisted the arms of the opposition.

We went in to rid the world of a ruler
who used weapons
that indiscriminately killed people,
by using that weapons indiscriminately kill people.

We kidnapped and tortured people
to stop a regime that regularly
kidnapped and tortured people.

We could not leave in power,
a dictator who ignored his own people.
And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world,
fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.

Yeah, lets go get Iran!

End of Democracy in USA?

2007-02-28T14:53:00.000-06:00

Listen to the somber lessons of a retired CIA analyst and scholar who's written three books exposing the clandestine operations of the CIA since 1953. Chalmers Johnson is extremely credible and informative as he details several topics from his Book "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Empire."

On a recent interview with Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow, she sounded uncharacteristically impassioned or engaged when talking to Chalmers. For the complete interview please go to the website. I've only heard Amy display emotions twice since watching DN a few years ago. Once was her only smile and laughter while interviewing Studz Turkle, the other was her interview today where she looked alarmed. Otherwise she always takes the neutral-ground and shows no emotion while reporting the news. Our Main Stream Media Actors could learn a lesson on how to behave.

Chalmers is not very optimistic about the future except to say that if we can break the grip of media censorship and control, there is a chance we can save the Republic before it turns into a dictatorship or empire. I'd listen and act if I were you.

Bushmen of the Intifada

2007-02-27T10:42:00.000-06:00

Lets get one thing clear, Anyone who thinks there is any incompetency going on in the Bush Administration had better check their subscription to NYT at the door and get to a re-education program pronto. The APPEARANCE of incompetence is as deliberate as George W's accent and his propensity to do stupid things that get spotlighted in the press. You need only to step back and let the facts assemble to see the big picture—That GW may be making the joker of himself, but this jokers got the laughs on the US citizens....all the way to the bank!

Oil has gone from $27 a barrel to $60 on his watch. His family, bonesmen, their business cabal, and their closest friends in Saudi Arabia are doing cartwheels!!! Now of course the Bushmen never had oil on their minds, they were after Binladen, AlQaeda, Saddam, WMDs, Liberation. er to resist civil war, no actually to fight Iran. But a funny thing happened on the way to whatever reason they gave... the third largest oil reserves were put out of commission and by destabilizing the oil in the region, prices have surpassed even the gas crisis of the seventies! What a coincidence? The Bushmen decided Iran needed to be next- gee, the second largest oil reserves? (who is the largest?- you guessed it the Bush Family friend Prince Bandar's Saudi Arabia)

This week a confidential final draft of the new law governing oil management by Iraq was translated and leaked by Global Exchange's Iraqi Project Director, Raed Jarrar... Surprise, Big Oil has written themselves into a crucial governing board called the Federal Oil and Gas Council- that approves any and all contracts for Iraqi OIl! They guaranteed contracts had a minimum 35yr contract life and left the regions defined by ethnic divides (and coincidentally the same as the Baker Hamilton Report) to bid against each other for the Oil Company contracts.... that THEN are approved by the SAME oil companies! The BBC reported the draft was made law, and made no mention of the Oil Company Controls... gee.

No, the Bushmen are unbelievably sharp and confident - and moving in on their long-sought prize... a global economy controlled by the corporations they and their "Americans" own and influence. Yes nothing short of World Domination... And what is our role in this quest? Well we are the ones paying for it in blood, money, rights, and the most important thing we own— our vote.

The question no one seems to want to ask? Why the World Trade Centers? Why the symbolic attacks? For the answer would not point to our attacking Afghanistan the nation, or Iraq... In fact it would possibly make us reconsider the whole "attacking" notion. Why did they attack the Towers? The symbols of World Trade. The Pentagon and symbol of Military Aggression, and the white house seat of tyranny.... gee perhaps it was the betrayal and abuse by our secret CIA sponsorship of the Muhajadeen during the war with the Soviet Union and then our abandonment to chaos and terror once the battle was won? Could it have been aggrivated by our decades of terror, resource extraction, aggression, sanction and the systematic looting of other nations resources, lives and wealth?.... think maybe that could get some people mad enough to fly planes into towers?

But the crazy thing is Bushmen been plotting for this moment a long time.... they are bankrupting this nation while numbing down our citizens, til they can neuter our vote and have control of our opinion and consent.

They've let nothing stop them from achieving their goals- signaling not only competency, but a real threat to global stability. The Bushmen formed an alliance with Church and State, used all the Hot-Button Issues to polarize the public, looted every coffer of public trust-except SS and Medicaid (they are still trying). They've pimped to any corporate desire for funding and support, built the most amazing propaganda network with FOX and CNN leading the way and neutered the CPB by appointing corporate shills to drain it of objectivity and resources. They couldn't kill it though they've tried numerous times. They've allowed unbridled corruption to also infiltrate many governmental agencies FDA, FCC, & EPA giving shelter to corporations through the evisceration of regulation and accountability. They bought the 109th Congress in exchange for a do-nothing policy and no oversight, and have placed radical judges in lifetime positions all the way to the Supreme Court. They've given billions in tax breaks to the wealthy helping them finally regain their giant income gap, establishing a two-class system of imperial proportions. Even gotten the citizens to allow them to create a private army and intelligence agency with access to the most powerful arsenal on earth.

Using the money formerly earmarked for our children, we are paying private contractors to develop unilateral weapons of mass destruction for fighting urban warfare on a scale that could just as easily be on US soil as the middle east. Now with the in-field training of attacking a first-world economic development like Tehran, what's to stop the private contractors from engaging in NYC or Chicago? Not our access to civilian defense equipment, the "incompetent" Bushmen had all the strong military hardware consolidated to four bases in the US and the rest moved to outposts in sovereign nations round the world during Rumsfeld's BRAC realignment policy that was forced over strong objections from our Military leadership. In the event of an internal action on civilians, we would be no better equipped than the Iraqi militia whom Paul Bremmer dismissed without pay and sent home with their weapons! (gee was that an accident or did he create the first real-time live ammo action adventure game, internally arming for military training on urban conflict)

Newly enriched with billions, his followers give their undying allegiance to the Bushmen for their payback has been huge dividends. The NYSE soars but not for our petty 401ks, no its their wealth that outpaces our paltry fortunes. But what they give up in ignorant greed, will come to haunt them. The contracts worth billions provide artificial fuel to a hollow economy. We build Oshkosh Trucks, malls and buildings roads and coal plants... all providing wages and jobs and pacifying the working class. They love the ROI too... vote Red regardless of the truth. Meanwhile our education system falters, tuition skyrockets while loans and grants vanish or become smaller, but steeped in paperwork. Look to our factories, more and more are cutting hours, wages benefits... jobs are going overseas and down south where they can pay nothing because workers have no vote.

Poor immigrant families increasingly cross the borders in search of something better than the tainted lives our Corporations have made for them at home. But now our confused and misinformed citizens attack them and pay billions to Bushmen Corporations to build walls- using Mexican labor to do it!

We are so duped by fear and resentment we cling to our televisions for a steady diet of light news-katie couric style. We even argue for keeping the bad news away "nobody want to hear bad news" particularly if it points to our complacency as the problem.

Bush is the first President in history to have Imperial powers and the ability to control the US military at will. You thought Nixon's secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos were bad??? The Bushmen have gutted more rights and accountability in more offices, agencies and public trusts than anyone since Jackson and even he'd (jackson) have issues defending that honor...

Since the Bushmen took office (literally) in 2000, they have had their eyes trained on an agenda like a pack of wolves on a pony in a herd.

Connect the dots... Cheney put G up to the job-why? cuz GW's always been the cheerleader... he can play the fool better than anyone. Meanwhile Dick is pulling the strings, and the folks that own him pull his strings... lets explore.

Why did they win the 2000 election at any cost? Supreme Court Seats. Why did they win the 04 election at any costs? Supreme Court Seats... and... cuz they rigged the system to maintain control infinitely... they thought... Why else were no closely contested Dem victories recounted? Perhaps they worried that wide-spread voter fraud might be uncovered. Voter turnout was far higher than anyone had expected... even Rove. Best to shut up and take the agenda covert- like with Nixon.

Cheney has been working the scene since Nixon days... In fact if Ford hadn't have been so "forward" thinking about preventing disunity in the US by pardoning Nixon and halting the investigations into corruption at that time you think it would have stopped with the plumbers at Watergate???

Heck no, there was big-time war profiteering and scores to settle in the intelligence community shoring up the Cointelpro work on US "insurgents". In fact Bush41, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were all brought up from the bullpens at that time. They became Ford's trusted advisers and forged their unholy allegiances with K street and the money-lenders at that time.

Cheney, Rummy and Wolfowitz went right to work manufacturing policy to bring about the "new world order" that Bush41 and Reagan spoke of frequently in the 80s. Remember the bright city on the hill???

Lets fast forward as I know you don't have time to review history here... Who hasn't by this time figured the Neo-Con strategy for control has its roots in Nazi counterintelligence and propaganda techniques? Doublespeak and intentional ownership of vocabulary terms that once meant the opposite- has been their silver bullet for eight years and seems to have a full head of steam even today! The same rhetoric that got us pimped into Afghanistan and Iraq is being used AS EFFECTIVELY on Iran!

Help me... are these the actions of a stupid person? Are these the statistics of people who seem unfocused and irresponsible? Hell no! This is the calculating perfection of a wolf pack stalking a pony. Listen to their words.... the certainty with which they speak.. for they give clues to workings behind the scenes... While America watches goofy characters play Poker on TV, their leaders are chumpin them for all they have and givin tells left and right!!!

But who's watchin?.... isn't there a special on Anna Nicole?.. or what about 24 ? isn't tonight when Jack tortures a suspect to get info from him?

Nascar's on... racing Army and National Guard cars... our taxpayer dollars hard at work changing young man's minds about joining - far better than the $16BILLION in $100 dollar bills we "lost" in Iraq. Eight Semis filled top to bottom with hundred dollar bills.... missing? And we wonder why we have no funding for healthcare or social security or why we are privatizing everything in our government???

Regardless of your position on 9/11 and the physical impossibilities of buildings falling, stacked on-top the unbelievable and numerous coincidences, there is no doubt the reaction plan was in place in the White House for it happened in hours... not so for New Orleans.... in Washington the response to 9/11 was so fast, the patriot act's 974 pages were still hot off the press... literally... as Congress was pressured to sign the bill.

That agenda is now only moments away from a terrible assault on another innocent civilization in Iran. The evidence is mounting and the pattern repeating. While our weak and fearful nation clings to "good news" and must-see tv, our leaders launch us into oblivion for their own greed and thirst for power. We will pay the price, but not nearly as much as our children and grandchildren will... they will just look back to this time in anger and point to us with shame and disgust for leveraging their world for personal pleasure and false security. Or maybe not.... what are willing to do? How far are you willing to explore and expose to prevent this from happening?

Now is the time and we are the ones. If not now—when? If not us—who?

Chomsky 2003

2007-02-26T10:30:00.000-06:00

Noam Chomsky in 2003 gave a brutally honest assessment of the Bush Invasion of Iraq and its consequenses... Today, this assessment sounds like a broken record of scary proportions as we invade Iran. Has everyone been vindicated for 9/11 yet? Have we all forgotten BinLaden and the 17 individuals who struck the symbol of world trade (and opression)? Not in IRAN, Not in Iraq, no Not even from Afghanistan... they were from (our first family's close friends)Saudi Arabia but thats besides the point.

Listen to Noam talk about the REAL reasons for our Quest of the Middle East- ask yourself is this what the founders of our nation had in mind when they wrote We the People...

Iran to America

2007-02-23T11:26:00.000-06:00

This is the full text of a letter sent to American Citizens from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad published at MSNBC November 2006. Read this and tell me Condi's acessment of him being a raving lunitic is hard to swallow. Unless there's a hidden agenda? —Make him a demon and gain the country's support to attack.— Sure seems to be working...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

To the American People

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers.

Noble Americans,

Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and the negative ramifications of those activities on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many wars and calamities caused by the US administration as well as the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries; Were the American people not God-fearing, truth-loving, and justice-seeking, while the US administration actively conceals the truth and impedes any objective portrayal of current realities; And if we did not share a common responsibility to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity; Then, there would have been little urgency to have a dialogue with you.

While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all human beings, have brought our two great nations of Iran and the United States closer together.
Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection. Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies. We are all inclined towards the good, and towards extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need. We all deplore injustice, the trampling of peoples' rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings. We all detest darkness, deceit, lies and distortion, and seek and admire salvation, enlightenment, sincerity and honesty. The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.

Noble Americans,

Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world. Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities. As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.

We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine. In broad day-light, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their families to endless grief. No day goes by without a new crime.

Palestinian mothers, just like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are painfully bereaved by the imprisonment, wounding and murder of their children. What mother wouldn't? For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes. Many of these refugees have died in the Diaspora and in refugee camps. Their children have spent their youth in these camps and are aging while still in the hope of returning to homeland.

You know well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it. Who can deny such broken promises and grave injustices towards humanity by the US administration?

Governments are there to serve their own people. No people wants to side with or support any oppressors. But regrettably, the US administration disregards even its own public opinion and remains in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people.

Let's take a look at Iraq. Since the commencement of the US military presence in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced. Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially. With the presence of the US military in Iraq, nothing has been done to rebuild the ruins, to restore the infrastructure or to alleviate poverty. The US Government used the pretext of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but later it became clear that that was just a lie and a deception.

Although Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about his departure, the pain and suffering of the Iraqi people has persisted and has even been aggravated. In Iraq, about one hundred and fifty thousand American soldiers, separated from their families and loved ones, are operating under the command of the current US administration. A substantial number of them have been killed or wounded and their presence in Iraq has tarnished the image of the American people and government. Their mothers and relatives have, on numerous occasions, displayed their discontent with the presence of their sons and daughters in a land thousands of miles away from US shores. American soldiers often wonder why they have been sent to Iraq.

I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure.

Noble Americans,

You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons that it has established in various parts of the world. God knows who these detainees actually are, and what terrible fate awaits them.

You have certainly heard the sad stories of the Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons. The US administration attempts to justify them through its proclaimed "war on terror." But every one knows that such behavior, in fact, offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment and thereby spreads terrorism, and tarnishes the US image and its credibility among nations.

The US administration's illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders. You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of "the war on terror," civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning. Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon. Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot to death.
I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behavior and indeed deplore it.

The US administration does not accept accountability before any organization, institution or council. The US administration has undermined the credibility of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and its Security Council. But, I do not intend to address all the challenges and calamities in this message.

The legitimacy, power and influence of a government do not emanate from its arsenals of tanks, fighter aircrafts, missiles or nuclear weapons. Legitimacy and influence reside in sound logic, quest for justice and compassion and empathy for all humanity. The global position of the United States is in all probability weakened because the administration has continued to resort to force, to conceal the truth, and to mislead the American people about its policies and practices.

Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections. I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people.

My questions are the following:
Is there not a better approach to governance?

Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?

We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent. But, can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?

If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved?

The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.

What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people? It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world. What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors?
Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?

I recommend that in a demonstration of respect for the American people and for humanity, the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized so that millions of Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum. This will benefit everyone.

Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.

I'd also like to say a word to the winners of the recent elections in the US: The United States has had many administrations; some who have left a positive legacy, and others that are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations. Now that you control an important branch of the US Government, you will also be held to account by the people and by history.

If the US Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America. But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration's policies. These issues had been extensively dealt with in my letter to President Bush earlier this year.

To sum up:

It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.

It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.

It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.

It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.

Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.

What I stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.
I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world. The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realized, Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.

The US governing establishment, the authorities and the powerful should not choose irreversible paths. As all prophets have taught us, injustice and transgression will eventually bring about decline and demise. Today, the path of return to faith and spirituality is open and unimpeded.

We should all heed the Divine Word of the Holy Qur'an:
"But those who repent, have faith and do good may receive Salvation. Your Lord, alone, creates and chooses as He will, and others have no part in His choice; Glorified is God and Exalted above any partners they ascribe to Him." (28:67-68)

I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
29 November 2006

Iraq's Smoking Gun

2007-02-22T13:40:00.000-06:00

In a newly translated and nearly secret draft of the -soon to be proposed- law concerning control and profit from Iraq's Oil, It is clear the Bush Administration's real intentions were in-fact.... OIL! The 32 page contract reads like a mafia extortion contract where the Iraqis get the privielge of giving their wealth, power and control to a board of supervisors consisting of the executives of several major Oil corporations.

The three main points of contention are 1)long-term contracts for leasing and production levels. As long as 35 year contracts will lock in Big Oil to the Iraqi Resources. 2) Iraq will serve a board of financial advisors Federal Oil and Gas Council who will have ultimate say-so on any contracts or deals... and the Fedral Council is made up of Executivesfrom BigOil! Yep they get to rule on the contracts Iraq is giving to their own Companies!!! no conflict of interest here! 3) A regionalized form of contract bidding that will surely cause an uproar. The net effect of this condition will be the creation of three separate region-state that will act independent of eachother- actually trying to outbid one-another! There will be infighting and clashes but even more troublesome, it could break Iraq into three new warring nations.

Quite a nice job at Democracy George....

Wolf in Henhouse

2007-02-20T11:20:00.000-06:00

Followup to Vulture
February 16/2007 OdiousDebt.com
Wolfowitz takes actions to gear up World Bank for Iraq by The Government Accountability Project (GAP)

Washington, D.C.: The Government Accountability Project (GAP) has learned from inside sources that World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is currently negotiating a contract with a new resident Iraq Country Director. This step strongly suggests that Wolfowitz intends to expand Bank-funded projects there dramatically in the near future, despite the deteriorating security situation and recent disclosures of massive corruption in "reconstruction" efforts.

This development bears out the fears expressed by senior career staff and Board members when Wolfowitz was appointed by the Bush administration in June 2005. Only three months after Wolfowitz' arrival, the Bank's Board tried to restrain his management of World Bank operations in Iraq explicitly, issuing an unprecedented directive to his office to "[K]eep the Board regularly updated on developments in the country (Iraq) and implementation of the ISN" (Interim Strategy Note, September 2005, see GAP Web site). One year later, 30-year veteran Christiaan Poortman, vice-president for the Middle East, resigned from the World Bank rather than comply with Wolfowitz's directives to prepare to increase lending and add staff in Iraq.

The unilateral appointment of a resident Iraq country director can only aggravate an already tense standoff between Wolfowitz and the Bank Board. Members of the Board have already expressed concerns about misuse of other donorsí funds in the country and emphasized to the US-appointed President ". . . the need for compliance with the Bank's fiduciary and safeguard requirements," also according to the ISN 2005.

"Wolfowitz's apparent determination to use the World Bank to further questionable American military goals in the Middle East is a fundamental distortion of the Bank's mission, a violation of its founding Articles of Agreement, and a reckless waste of donor resources," said GAP International Program Director Bea Edwards.

Appointing a resident Country Director for Iraq now puts Wolfowitz in opposition to Board members who have expressed increasing concern about the countryís deepening conflict and creditworthiness. Although the Board did approve a limited loan program for Iraq of U.S. $500 million in September 2005, funds were not approved for disbursal, as of December 31, 2006. Disbursement was contingent on "critical progress in several areas important to IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) creditworthiness, including security and external debt-relief," according to an internal memo from December 2006 (See GAP's Web site). The required progress has not occurred. Currently, regular staff travel to Iraq is prohibited, meaning that lending operations cannot be properly monitored.

To date, the Bank has relied on Iraqi staff based in the country, meetings with Iraqis outside the country, videoconferencing facilities in Baghdad, and long-distance supervision from the Interim Office for Iraq in Amman, Jordan. The current director for Iraq, Joseph Saba, is not a resident in the country ñ due to World Bank stipulations detailing terms for re-entry into a post-conflict situation. Instead, Saba manages five countries from Washington D.C.

Unlike the current director, the soon-to-be-named country director will exclusively manage Iraq for the Bank and will be stationed in Baghdad, according to inside sources. Wolfowitz first floated the idea of a resident Country Director and staff in Iraq in May 2006, when optimists in his office predicted greater stability as 2006 advanced. But the past year has seen an increase in violence, and the Bank's lending and staffing plan remains unchanged.

"In fact, the Bank is prohibited from operating in a conflict like this," added Edwards. "In the simplest financial terms, there is no functioning banking system, the government does not control its territory and it cannot guarantee loan repayment. Any emergency or social funding in Iraq should come from donorsí grants, not loans."

To engage in Iraq, the World Bank must justify reconstruction spending on economic grounds. If the conflict is ongoing, and the government is unstable, this cannot be done. Even assuming that the conflict ends soon, which no one is predicting, Bank Procedure 2.30 ("Development Cooperation and Conflict") stipulates that, to operate in a country emerging from a conflict, the Bank must prepare a "watching brief," develop a transitional support strategy, begin transitional reconstruction, then begin post-conflict reconstruction, and finally return to normal lending.

World Bank management under Wolfowitz has not taken these steps. Naming a resident country director and sending Bank staff to Baghdad, although no solution to the conflict appears likely, signifies increasing disagreement between Wolfowitz and the World Bank Board. The Board representative for Germany has long opposed any increase in Bank activity in Baghdad. His government is worried about staff safety. In addition, poorly monitored "reconstruction" projects will constitute a lucrative new source of income for corrupt officials who are party to the ongoing conflict.

The Government Accountability Project is a U.S. whistleblower protection organization. Through litigating whistleblower cases, publicizing concerns and developing legal reforms, GAP's mission is to protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability. Founded in 1977, GAP is a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization with offices in Washington, D.C. and Seattle, WA.

Bush's Vulture Doners

2007-02-16T14:45:00.000-06:00

pResident Bush, The Great Deceiver

George Bush looked solemn in his State of the Union Address as he asked take on the" challenges of hunger and poverty and disease", he asked America to forgive Billions dollars in debt relief to help third world nations by paying off their debt at a fraction of the original price. But who'd have known, behind his face of "honesty" was another of the cruelest Deceptions of all time!

"American foreign policy is more than a matter of war and diplomacy. Our work in the world is also based on a timeless truth: To whom much is given, much is required. We hear the call to take on the challenges of hunger and poverty and disease -- and that is precisely what America is doing. I ask that you fund the Millennium Challenge Account, so that American aid reaches the people who need it, in nations where democracy is on the rise and corruption is in retreat. And let us continue to support the expanded trade and debt relief that are the best hope for lifting lives and eliminating poverty. When America serves others in this way, we show the strength and generosity of our country. These deeds reflect the character of our people. The greatest strength we have is the heroic kindness, courage, and self-sacrifice of the American people."

Greg Palast, investigative journalist from the BBC and Guardian on DemocracyNow! broke this story and today John Conyers announced he'll take it up in Congress. Lets see if it hits the mainstream media and how they will portray this atrocious act of deception by the resident in the whitehouse. What will America think of the level of deception this administration stoops to?

In a followup, as expected Zambia lost case in UK must pay Vultures off to the US to see the ole Decider, George Bush!

For years many of us have been wondering what NeoCon Architect, Paul Wolfowitz would do at the World Bank? Not to disappoint, the wolf in charge of the world's bank has been assisting his friends to get rich bleeding the third world of their debt payments and fleecing gullible American citizens of their generosity.

pResident Bush begged Congress to "do the right thing" and forgive debt with taxpayer money but his REAL PLAN was to have his debt finance friends, like Paul Singer and Michael Sheehan, intercept the funds earmarked go to the struggling nations by buying the debts, and turning round and suing those very nations for penalty and interest worth hundreds of times more than the original debt!

But they can only collect this blood money in the Bush-Run US Court system. The Irony is that only the pResident has the power, with a simple signature to stop this practice. But he refuses as he is making his friends rich while bleeding America dry. The Great Deceiver again shows his disrespect for American citizens, when are we going to wake up?

Peoples History-CliffNotes

2007-02-15T12:32:00.000-06:00

Long before we conquered this land we call the United States of America, and drew lines on a map to say what was ours, the indigenous peoples of central and south America migrated with the seasons as the birds, animals and insects do, to where the land was rich and bountiful, moving back down as the temperatures did. Now rather than staying on our side of the line as I'm guessing you would have it, some of our mercantile forefathers decided long ago (about 150yrs) that they were losing their ability to abuse the labor force here in the US because workers began to unionize and they had this pesky weapon-the vote. With that and their organized strength in numbers, these captains of industry could no longer demand men, women and children work in dangerous factories for 80hrs+ per week for little pay that sometimes they just withheld at will. Because these people could elect representatives who actually cared to defend that silly thing called a Constitution.

So rather than continue employing the Pinkerton Security Forces (predecessor of Blackwater and Bechtel) to savagely beat down the resistance (Haymarket Riot ), they discovered that on the other side of that line on the map, the people had no vote! So if these industrialists just gave into the union demands— 40 hr workweek, child labor laws, minimum wage etc— they could befriend this new middle class, get their vote, and still keep a class distance both socially and economically from this riffraff by exploiting the peoples and resources of lesser nations to the south who had no means to defend themselves from corporate colonialism .

Fast forward a bit as I'm not trying bore to you, as the profits grew, corporate interests and their thirst for resource extraction grew too, (like a turbocharger). Meanwhile the plight of the indigenous peoples grew darker. The Corporate Industrialists began gaining power and influence in our Government and found they could externalize many non-profitable facets of their operations in the south by having our Government do the work for them... Gee that made stockholders happy and the middle class never made the connection. So began our military and economic oppression of these poor indigenous peoples who tried to organize and demand human rights—as we did in 150yrs ago, but they didn't have a vote .

So the Corporations savagely brutalized them and recklessly exploited their lands and resources (after all, they have no pesky EPA or laws our Corporations couldn't fix). These Corporate Colonialists continued to squish anyone who began to organize and found it useful to supplant the governments of the peoples, with puppets of their own choosing. So with the might of our military and the use of all branches of intelligence, economic and financing, they toppled and imposed brutal regimes at will...training death squads at the "School of the Americas" and gee it worked so well, these Corporate Colonialists took the concept on a road-show to every continent on Earth... By advancing loans (debt) for "infrastructure improvements" like highways and electricity, public health and education, agencies like the IMF and World Bank , Corporate Colonialists were able to privatize the lesser nation's Commons ...but I digress, meanwhile the peoples of these oppressed nations, driven from their lands, stripped of their dignity and forced into poverty, began taking to the migratory traditions of their forefathers in increasing numbers. Noticable increases of labor crossing our line on a map and doing the jobs our snobby, spoiled kids won't do, was okay at first, til these Corporate Colonialists began exercising their Imperialist intentions through globalization of their Brands . That means they break the middle class by shipping our jobs overseas.

See the Imperialists just had to find a way to make our votes become useless, then they could treat us like they did before the unions. So now with our jobs leaving and our wages and buying power shrinking, we look to those increasing numbers of people doing what they've done forever, and we begin to hate them. Hate them for our own blindness to what we are losing. And now the Corporate Imperialists are within our Government, step up to build a great wall of isolation to keep the migrants out... they hire their own corporations (who farm the labor out to migrants like New Orleans) to build and defend these walls (for a healthy profit) and they continue to manufacture consent through their Corporate-Owned Media outlets.

As news stations continue to tell us they are fair and balanced, the programming swings more and more towards graphic violence and materialism. Desensitizing the middle class and fooling them into a false patriotism to continue to sap them of their children, wealth, and bounty to battle the wars that benefit Corporate Imperialists. Now with new Corporate appointments to lock up the Supreme Court and judicial branch, and ownership of the executive branch, (they stumbled in November on the legislative branch but it is within reach) they are on the precipice of doing to us what they've done to our neighbors to the south and in the middle east and sub-saharan africa and everywhere else including us 150yrs ago.

Be My Valentine!

2007-02-15T00:12:00.000-06:00

Be My Valentine else I'll rip out your heart!

Seriously, isn't it ironic that the day most ingrained in our culture as being rooted in love, caring and friendship hides some of the most ruthless corporate neocolonial business practices on earth.

While it is customary to give flowers, chocolate or diamonds on this day, how come gifts that bring so much happiness, cause so much suffering.

Flowers- more precisely Roses, 60% of the roses sold in the US come from Dole-owned labor camps in Columbia and Ecquador. In fact a full 30% of Ecquadors entire rose production is bred to harvest for Valentines day. Big Deal? Well these workers are subjected to abuse, low wages and exposure to widespread use of chemicals and pesticides. Dole's largest production center is at the center of another struggle as peasant workers try to organize a union and are being brutally beaten down by Dole.

The US enjoys $13 Billion in Chocolate each year. More than 40% of the Cocoa comes from South Africa where more than 100,000 children are forced into working the cocoa farms. They too are beaten, abused and mutilated to the amusement of their owners.They are poisoned by pesticides and forced to work in unsafe conditions. ADM, the Cargil Corp and Nestles created these communities decades ago when they helped made the farm plantations. These corporations are woven into the economies and welfare of the region. But to avoid legal "headaches" they choose to take a hands-off approach supporting the peoples and infrastructure grating a meger $5M over the past five years while reaping a whopping $65 Billion in sweet profits.

If you're really in love, maybe you'll get a sparkling diamond for your valentine. While its said to signify undying love, there might be more dying than you are willing to hear. Blood diamonds have fueled the most brutal civil wars in sierra leone the past two decades. but through global campaigning and grassroot efforts, awareness has forced the giants in the business like DeBeers to be more concerned about their diamonds origin.

So take a moment from this day to think of a way that you can send a valentine to those who struggle and die for the gifts we give. Rather than ripping their hearts to give to another, why not find a way to spead the awareness and bring these corporate monsters a conscience. Happy Valentines Day!

Buy these chocolates they are conflict-free:
Equal Exchange Chocolate
Divine Chocolate

Hillary's True Colors

2007-02-14T23:48:00.000-06:00

Hillary Clinton spoke at an AIPAC conference yesterday. AIPAC is the gargantuan sinister Israeli special interest group the has deep connections throughout Congress, the Pentagon, the FBI and the neo-cnservatives in the Bush Administration. Clinton revealed beneath her Blue eyes is a heart red as Dick Cheney.

She has repeatedly dodged any questions about her pro-war stance on the war. Here she laid it out for her biggest fans. With AIPEC support, power and influence is unlimited, oppose them and suffer public character assassination... ask Jimmy Carter.

Don't Get Fooled Again?

2007-02-12T19:31:00.000-06:00

Even Bush couldn't get the quote right—are we as foolish too? "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" is the correct quote, but I'm beginning to wonder if the citizens are going to get fooled again? Doesn't anyone remember the exact same fuzzy logic that got us into Iraq? Colin Powell at the UN, holding the vile of Anthrax? Rumsfeld on Meet the Press showing photographic proof of WMDs? Wolfowitz with cartoon drawings of railroad car anthrax labs and BinLadens gigantic bunkers in Tora Bora. The "credible evidence of Iraq's purchasing "Yellow Cake" uranium? Tenent's "Slam Dunk." The fabricated reports from the CIA that VP Dick Cheney, violating protocol, personally went to Langley to have junior analysts write up to support his policy? They have all proved false... zero true, none. nada.

These are facts not fictions, they are admitted truths by both sides. It was this absolute and impending threat of annihilation that prompted unilateral support by the US public and both sides of the aisles. Now many right-leaners like to point out that Dems supported the war and now are flip flops... but then, as now, the people fabricating the intel are the same... and if our politicians are told that the pentagon and the CIA are non-partisan, then they must believe that intel and make a position based on it.

Except we learned later that the pentagon and CIA did fabricate the facts to favor war... just as they are doing now? Defense contractors have made hundreds of Billions of dollars and Iraq never "Greeted us as Liberators" The script is the same... connections to arms deals, a failure to come to the table and talk, desire to create WMDs...

How dumb are we??? Condi Rice just lied to Congress last week about receiving negotiations from Iran via the Swiss consulate... but she wasn't under oath so her words are non-binding (haven't we heard that recently) -how convenient. Again, the weapons are ours, the intel is wrong, the methodology is the same what-if scenario that was dead-wrong in Iraq... so in the immortal words of the great decider, "Fool me....ya fool me, ya can't get fooled again?"

The only fools are the US public who will sorely regret their inability to remember the lead-up to the Iraq War... The war that bankrupt our nation while creating more corrupt millionaires than ever in history. We are sealing our imperialistic future by opening the door to a real conflict that will completely enrich Halliburton, CACI, DynaCorps, GE, Blackwater, KBR and Bechtel. Our troops will die, our worst fears will materialize and our nation will suffer for generations to come.... remembering the fools got fooled again.

Tell the Truth Nigga!

2007-02-11T23:35:00.000-06:00

Check out this amazing flash presentation featuring the Immortal Technique/Green Lantern/Eminem song with fast moving words and graphics.... read it carefully. Sorry for the profanity- you'll understand when you see it.Tell the Truth!

Israel's Lapdog?

2007-02-09T12:24:00.000-06:00

Seems the Presidential hopefuls started their campaign trails a bit far from home..... or perhaps not. Several Presidential candidates went to Israel the other week to speak at a security summit meeting where several high ranking Bush advisors like Richard Perle were there to rally the people behind the apparently imminent strike against Iran. Yes you heard me, Iran.

While the media directs our attention to the troop escalation in Iraq - more specifically the debate over the use of the word "surge" vs "escalation"- Bush and his advisors have moved in for a check-mate with Iran. More than 90 ships are conducting exercises in a highly trafficked waterway no wider than Lake Michigan is to Grand Rapids. Two aircraft carrier groups, several cruise missile ships, submarines and mine-sweepers are "practicing" in the Straits of Hormuz- an essential waterway that traffics most of the middle east oil tankers, the real surge is going on here and has no "embedded journalists" to make the news.

Bush appointed a naval admiral to head up Cent-Com for the first time in history, a naval commander is in charge of ground forces in the middle east... a position that even he claimed little qualifications for during his Senate approval hearings. The question is whether Bush is unable to find any qualified military commanders to replace all the ground commanders who keep disagreeing with his policy, or does he really have another reason for boldly ignoring the will of the public since the overwhelming defeat to his agenda in November? I think the concentration of overwhelming force just off the shores of Iran is saying alot more than Bush and the media about the intentions of this administration in the middle east.

Vice President Cheney has gone on the Sunday talks show circuit to clearly emphasize that he not only thinks everything is still going well in vietnam...er Iraq, but that he is not going to be dissuaded by public opinion in his plan to "liberate the middle east from terror." So who's terror is Iran? People don't seem to remember that over 1,000,000 Iranians rallied in the streets of Tehran in September 2001 —not to say death to America— rather in solidarity with us and people across the globe against violence and injustice! Iran sells the US and our allies its crude oil and has technology sectors with thousands of citizens working with US corporations. It has cities with amenities just like any first world nation. So why the problem? Perhaps we need look no further than where our Presidential candidates decided to do their first campaigning... Israel—our 51st State or the real Washington DC.

Despite the talk, no one has been able to prove there are any weapons-grade nuclear actions or intentions in Iran... NONE. So just like the run-up to Iraq with WMDs, Chemical Factories and underground bunkers loaded with weapons got us into the mess we're in in Iraq... we are doing it again with Iran. Why? When they have said numerous times that they are willing to open negotiations (a fact Condi just lied about to Congress earlier this week). They have said the reactors they are building were solely for power generation as the price of oil continues to rise beyond their citizen's ability to afford. Why do we persist in calling them evil and demonizing them along with Syria, Lebanon, Palestine , Turkey and sometimes Egypt? Because they ARE real threats to Israel... But wait? Isn't Israel a sovereign nation not affiliated with the US? Why are we about to wage what could become a global war on nations that really don't pose a thereat to US foreign policy in the name of Israel?

Exxon posted the biggest quarterly profit on earth, the past three quarters... US and EU companies have been selling into Iran and using their labor forces for years without problems... so why all of a sudden this urgent need to wage war on another democracy? I'm guessing its because Israel told us we should.

My problem is not that we should defend the Nation of Israel when it needs help, just as we defend any other nation in its recognized moment of need, but, when there is no distinction between our needs and urgencies and those of Israel, how is it that our nation simply unites the needs, hope an fears of anothers' without even a debate or question to our citizens? These citizens are the ones shelling out Billions of dollars and our very children and family members to fight and die for this "interest" that gives nothing to our bottom line. How is it that Israel can dictate the policy and rational of our Nation like no other? We aren't sending our troops to France to eliminate the threat to their democracy from the radical Algerian insurgents? We aren't going to Somalia to stop their civil war? So why defend Israel by bankrupting our nation's resources and goodwill? Anyone?

BRAC FLACK!

2007-02-08T14:47:00.001-06:00

What does anyone think of today's Senate Filibuster attempt led by Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson? A few Senators are trying to tie up the hill about the new Senate dropping the 3.1 Billion Dollar earmark funding Don Rumsfeld's BRAC military base realignment plan, in the omnibus appropriations bill. While most of us were enjoying the holidays last year, several high-ranking military officers testified against Rumsfeld's plan saying it weakened our internal defense posture. Of course none of the politicians or public figures were tuned into c-span during their recess, nor were most of us... But I happened to catch a broadcast one nite and I was intrigued by these highly decorated commanders being very vocal in opposition to this strategy.

Why is it that Donald Rumsfeld and this administration can consistently be wrong about policy, strategy, the opposition's capability, intent and determination, yet some Senators continue to press for this policy?

BRAC is a dangerous policy of concentrating and aggregating our forces and assets into forward bases and only a few giant bases within the States. The Vice President, Rumsfeld and several other top Bush administration advisors belong to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) thinktank who's global strategy outlined by them in 1998 essentially stated the global-conquest of the planet, securing their United States as the supreme superpower and ruler of the planet... thereby meaning that some US corporations would have global domination of the market backed by supreme military force. Even the most conservative citizens (both R&D) do not share this radical departure from our country's Constitution and basic principles.

The Generals agreed that moving all our military hardware from cities (like milwaukee) and locations round the country will seriously impede their effectiveness as a defense shield against both environmental as well as terror threats. Unless our intention is to aggregate the assets into an offensive posture, this policy made no sense.

Never-mind too, that all the bases chosen to be closed and realigned would cause serious hardships on the families and communities that grew to support these bases and that these communities would no doubt get angry at their local leadership for letting this happen, but coincidentally, all the bases chosen to close, were in blue states near population centers, and all the bases that were to get the no-bid Halliburton base construction contracts worth millions, happened to be in red states where those congressmen would surely gain great public support by the economic prosperity their action would shower on their voters.

The scariest thing that Rumsfeld's BRAC policy would unleash, beyond the United States confirming a global posture of aggression rather than defense, is that it leaves our nation without an infrastructure of defense or support. We no longer would have national guard troops with substantial machinery to secure an area after a calamity like New Orleans. And God forbid, there should ever come a time when we needed to stand up against a rogue takeover of our own government, whether militarily or economically. If the leadership went against our will, this policy effectively takes all our weapons away and leaves us just like the iraqis were, with only small caliber rifles and handguns.

It is also very interesting to watch the way the media has given so much airtime to the actions of these few Senators who beg for fair play from the new Democratic leadership after there was so little media coverage of the last six years of the GOP led lock-down of Congress the past six years. In reality, the petty claims of exclusion and fair-play that garner headlines today, pale in comparison to the exclusionary actions of the Republican majority that never got mass public coverage. The headlines today deplore actions that compared to the behavior of Bill Frist and Tom Delay are like like equating the actions bank robbers to a schoolboy stealing a candy bar. Both are wrong but there's a mighty big difference between the scale of crimes and oddly, the size of the headlines.

But what's the real reason these Senators fight for Rumsfeld's BRAC policy making America into a world aggressor? Is it their genuine belief that it best serves their nation and its people, or their true constituents the corporate citizens? Hutchinson and the Kansas and Georgia Senators that were so vocal today, all stand to have millions of dollars spent in their States from this $3.1 Billion dollar earmark... has the money trumped the reality that Rumsfeld's policy has dubious underpinnings? Has the will of the people been dismissed by these GOP lapdogs who seem to have forgotten the results of the November Election? I guess only time will tell.

Wikipedia Bush

2007-02-06T23:21:00.000-06:00

George Bush
_________________________
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"duhbya" redirects here. For other uses, see boy-king (disambiguation).

George W, Bush (help·info) (July 6, 1946 — April 30 , 1945 ) was President of the United States from 2000 to 2007, and Commander-and-Chief (Leader) of AmeriCo ® from 2008 until his death. He was chosen of the Grand Old (republican) Party (Großartige Alte Republikanische Partei or GOP), the K Street Party
Bush gained power in the USA facing crisis after 9/11. Using propaganda and clumsy oratory, he appealed to the economic needs of the lower and middle classes, while sounding resonant chords of nationalism, anti-Terrorism and anti-Muslimism. With the establishment of a restructured economy, a rearmed military, and the corrupt 109th Congress and GOP regime, Bush pursued an aggressive foreign policy with the intention of expanding USDemocracy ("living space"), which triggered World War III when US annexed Afghanistan, then Iraq, and invaded Iran, much of which was also annexed to form the "Model of Democracy" (Großdeutsches Reich).
At their zenith, Neo-Con Extremists and the Coalition of the Coerced occupied most of the Middle East, but were eventually defeated by the rest of the World. By the end of the war, Bush's racial policies had culminated in the killing of approximately 11 million people, including the genocide of some 1 million Muslims, in what is now known as War on Terror. In total, the war in the Middle East cost approximately 20 million people their lives.
In the final days of the war, Bush, along with his new wife, Ann Coulter, committed suicide in Crawford Ranch in Texas, as the world was being overrun by the Coalition of the Civil Nations.

Troop Purge!

2007-02-03T11:46:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, the Intelligence_Community finally concurred with hundreds of nonaligned agencies, scholastic studies, scientific surveys, and human right advocacy groups that the sectarian violence in Iraq has escalated to that of Civil War... that makes it the whole world vs Dick and George, the Neo-Conservatives , their puppet government in Iraq and the War Profiteers. Oh and whatever increasingly smaller number of citizens who choose to listen to the propaganda or their investment portfolios rather than face the facts. Caught in the middle, our Brave Fighting Men and Women, Our Troops!

Surge is such a nice word, it sounds refreshing doesn't it? Sure beats escalation in the psychologic observation polls... lets use Surge! But the reality in Iraq doesn't afford the luxury of polling for a kinder, gentler way to describe life. Iraq has become one of the cruelest places on earth and only because of US Occupation. Yes Saddam was an evil dictator, but the US led "liberation" if manifested as a sole leader, would make Saddam look like a schoolyard punk. I like many, refuse to tolerate bully tactics in the schoolyard. But unlike MPS who has banned students from attending Bay View and Bradley Tech games, the means that this administration has used to bring order to the schoolyard is tantamount to destroying the school, and the nation the school belonged to, and the civilization that created the educational system! Perhaps a bit harsh, don't you think?

Like it or not, since we invaded Iraq the lifestyle of the average Iraqi citizen has become completely destitute. As tuff as Saddam was, they had relative security and basic human needs met in ways they've not seen since our invasion. More than half a million citizens have died, there is no water and little electricity or heat, the domestic infrastructure is gone, you risk life and limb to collect wood or seek food. The average age of iraqi citizens is under 15 yrs old. Adult males and females are routinely executed in horrific way, with drill-holes into their heads or simple shot in the face. Their bodies dumped in the streets where they lived to set an example. Even the gated safety of a family's home is threatened by the new directives for the new troops, to bust down every door to clear out every neighborhood.

Whatever your position, in favor or opposed, to whichever excuse Bush has floated out for justification of his conquest of Iraq, if you look at the reality of his escalation plan, it brings no justice and no peace to the region. So tell me, what are we fighting for? We are not going to bring democracy to that region no matter how forceful we decide to be.

Remember, Iraq was once called Mesopotamia and it's capitol, Babylon, dates back to the 23rd Century BC... Our little American Experiment is beginning its 231st year... Who are we kidding? They were experts Astronomy, Mathematics, Language, Art and Literature 1500 years before the Greeks! The land they occupy is known as the cradle of civilization. It has evolved over many millennia to be home for many religions. This alone is why scholars, historians, theologians, and sociologists have said- often to deaf Bush Administration ears- that a democratic society is impossible where religious differences supersede any nationalism. The United States of America was formed because people held the concept of a Nation, free and just, above their own spiritual beliefs and socioeconomic status.

This is never going to be the case in Mesopotamia and the Bush Administration knew it in 2001 just as most of the world knew it. But the reason we are there is because this Administration (more correctly, the Neo-conservatives within this administration) manufactured the "intelligence" to defend their objectives. It is public record and accepted truth in most of the world, that the run-up to conquest was based on false information, whether the Yellow Cake lies involving Joe Wilson, or the Colin Powell UN address with detailed graphics showing underground bunkers, railroad car weapons labs, aerial images of chemical and munitions plants, and the elusive WMDs. Even Bush admitted there were never any ties between Iraq and AlQaeda.

Once again this is not about connections, or facts, or nationalism, or pride, it is about an administration driven by an extremist agenda willing to stop at nothing to force that agenda. The Neo-Cons wrote their extremist agenda in 1998 and it clearly spells out a radical departure from the founding principles of our nation, violating our Constitution in so many ways it would need to be rewritten. (and gee, isn't that what they've been doing the past few years?) Their mission is Global Imperialism starting with the energy resource-rich middle east. They are employing the strategy to leverage 9/11 to get into Afghanistan, Afghanistan to get into Iraq and now Iraq to get into Iran... and we're eating it up hook, line and sinker!

Are we going to listen to a small extremist faction of the Republican party who is bent on the destruction of foreign nations and peoples to enforce their ideology? Listen to the propaganda of the Bush Administration, they confuse with the very definitions to engage and enrage us as could be used against them by any other nation. Look in the mirror America! We are the terrorists we seek to destroy and we are following the words of a few extremists.

Bring the Troops Home Now! Purge the Surge!

Coverup in Najaf?

2007-02-02T00:20:00.000-06:00

What if the heroic battle in Najaf that occurred earlier this week turns out to be no different than Steve Tillman's infamous death? Tillman left the NFL to serve in Iraq and died "in battle", only later it turned out to be a military cover-up for him being shot in the back by friendly fire. Earlier this week there was a story of a big battle in Najaf where 300 heavily armed religious terrorists "Soldiers of Heaven" were killed by US and coalition forces. The US suffered 11 soldier deaths and lost a Blackhawk helicopter. The area was restricted to journalists and civilian tensions are high.

Well independent european journalist Patrick Cockburn released another version of the now famed battle against "soldiers of heaven" covered in a DemocracyNow broadcast. With thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims converging on Najaf to celebrate Ashoura, one of the holiest Shi'ite holidays, there could have been an ideal opportunity for a sectarian attack. But what if it was a horrible miscommunication elevated to epic proportions because of the increased tension of all the converging pilgrims?

What is unfolding through interviews with doctors, the wounded, the morgue and interviewing the hundreds of witnesses, is that there most likely was a thwarted attack, but there possibly were a large number of innocent pilgrims caught in the crossfire and unjustly attacked in a confused frenzy of language and battle chaos. The US used heavy gunfire from Blackhawk helicopters and dropped 500lb bombs from F-18s doing high speed flyovers. The reports to the US say the terrorists were heavily armed and fought for several hours. The other account speaks of a tribe of pilgrims wearing arms because they traveled through the night to Najaf, being mistakenly attacked by security forces, resulting in retaliatory response from the remaining pilgrims. Then US Forces were brought in with only partial information. What resulted was a massacre.... and now another coverup?

If it comes to be true, isn't it an indication of what can happen when there are language barriers between our soldiers and the people we're supposed to be protecting? How many soldiers are fluent in several dialects of arabic? Now our troops are hitting the ground with less than three weeks training... and no language skills. No wonder the military wants to cover this up.

Troop Scourge

2007-01-29T15:01:00.000-06:00

pResident Bush called for a troop escalation to "stop the sectarian violence" in Iraq. Does anyone but he, Cheney and their newest yes-man Col David Petraeus see the truth here? These troops are not going to do anything but kill and die in what may be our worst urban battle to date. Todays new recruits are in such demand they are only given two-weeks basic training before being dropped in hostile territory with live muntions and an adversary they can neither speak to nor understand, let alone recognize. Patraeus wrote the new counterinsergency field manual which defines new rules granted in the controversial 2006 Military Commissions Act, ignoring the Geneva Convention and Human rights, advocating torture and ignoring Habeous Corpus-the right to a fair trial. Recently while testifying before Congress, he boldly stated it was his opinion that Congress could do nothing to stop the pResident from funding any troop action. Does anyone comprehend these facts? Do our citizens? Certainly the media chooses not to report this reality I watched it on C-Span, but our soldiers will certainly wish we did.

Bush also restated the objectives of kill or capture any potential terrorists as part of the new Patraeus policy. It doesn't take much more than a four year old to figure that if a soldier cannot understand an Iraqi, or talk to them, they will simply kill them rather than risk their own life. So what pResident Bush is really saying is "I don't want to leave Iraq because I have my reasons, so its open season on all brown people till we show progress, or something really bad happens and the US citizens rally behind me again."

If you haven't noticed, the "something bad happens" is the real reason why Bush sent only 21,500 troops with targets on their backs, they are a distraction... its Iran. He is going to provoke or fabricate a reason to attack and it will immediately lead to airstrikes in Tehran and military action to stabilize their resources and topple their leadership. And with our strained ground forces, will he use Nukes in Iran?

Did you notice who has replaced Marine Gen Abizaid, the former head of Central Command a ground troop expert, fluent in arabic languages and knowlegable in the regions history and economics? The bewildered Old Navy Admiral William Fallon, an aged, out of touch, self-professed outsider with no knowledge of the region, its needs or any language skills pertinent his command. The former head of the Pacific Command and first non-army commander of the ground operations brings with him two aircraft carrier groups and expertise in airstrikes to a command that is overwhelmingly a ground operation.

Hmmm, another of Bush's great ideas? Like attacking Iraq in the first place, or firing anyone who disagrees with his version of reality? Fallon asks us to wait a while for him to get his hands round the situation, He says he has no knowlege of Iran, Afganistan, Iraq or any of the components needed in CentComm or its additional responsibilities for drug control, rebuilding and that never-mentioned item, negotiations. He asks for time, just like Bush who asks for time for this next policy to take hold...like he's asked the last fifteen other "plans" and appointees.

Well the US soldiers don't have the luxury of waiting when thrown into battle, our citizens don't have the luxury of waiting while their nation slides further into debt, further into a divide between the haves and have-nots. And most importantly millions of Iranians don't have time while in the crosshairs of a nuke-happy war monger. What time does Bush want? Time for what to happen?

The Bush Administration is not listening to the peons who live in this country, it has much bigger aspirations, regieme change and the perminent restructure of the middle east with their partners making enough money to declare independence from the now debt-strapped United States.

Troop surge my arse, this is a troop scourge and it is an abomonation to our Constitution and founding fathers that we let a tyrannt wage global conquest with our tax dollars and our ignorant consent.

Bedding Email Blowup

2007-01-25T21:12:00.001-06:00

Nation-wide criticism has exploded after release of story regarding a Waukesha company's interaction with an Soldier in Iraq. PeaceAction-WI headquartered in Milwaukee has received dozens of calls , hundreds of emails and requests for interviews from across the nation.

The initial story ran on local FOX6 news and the Milwaukee Journal and included a PeaceAction-WI spokesperson who then came in the crosshairs of people nation-wide. Julie Enslow of PeaceAction-WI voiced her concern for the troops and her disappointment regarding the inappropriateness of the email. She then urged viewers to continue supporting the troops by working to find a peaceful resolution that brings our troops home now. Sounds good to me, who can argue with that?

Well apparently alot of people, not just locally, but across the country. The phone lines and email boxes have been burning with disrespectful citizens expressing their disapproval of the discount store's email... to PeaceAction???

Are people so whipped up into a frenzy by our crazy media propaganda that the mere mention of a Peace organization can get them to turn off their ears and hack up a poison response?? I don't get it?

Its true that the mainstream media has been favoring the marching instructions from on high since the war began. There has been little journalism locally or nationally that hasn't been supportive of government talking points and camera angles. Haven't we all seen the staged servicemen asking pre-rehearsed questions? Haven't we heard of the militaristic restrictions given citizens seeking audience with their elected leaders when they speak locally? Why even the act of embedding reporters has proven bad for objective journalism.

Whether its a t-shirt or bumper sticker, a name on a list or an affiliation like the ACLU or Amnesty International, Free speech has been under assault for four years, and the battle fatigue has set in on ordinary citizens to the point where they seem to lash out first, and think later.... I guess its not much different than out president's war policy, but that's no excuse.

Unless these senseless hate mails have another purpose. Perhaps the frenzied behavior of people is just what our leaders want to test. What if it served as a barometer for public sentiment- float the story out there like a weather balloon. See which way the wind is blowing.

Interviewing Peace Action and a vet who collects donations helped to humanize the story, but was the reason for the story to inform, or to get a sense of the community's outrage? - Outrage to the story and company, as well as outrage to the war and those who oppose it- even to those who've stood against the war, and even if their opinion was in support of the position many of the hostile callers took.

How often have we seen this in recent media coverage—calling Barak Obama - Osama, naming Rep Foley a Democrat when referring to his gross abuses with young pages? These acts of misdirection whether intended or accidental, on top of the media's propensity to repeat views rather than report the news... has gotten people mixed up and angry.

Carter Bashing!

2007-01-25T12:24:00.000-06:00

President Carter's recent book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid has enraged many in the Jewish community and resulted in caustic accusations and slander being aimed at the Nobel Prize winning, Former President and noted Peace Activist. How is this possible? What causes this deep-rooted aggression to be served to a man who's life has been dedicated to making peace in that region? He more than anyone, knows the history of that region and in his book he recounts his role in the center of the struggle. Seventeen Jewish funders attempted to discredit him by releasing news to the mainstream media that they abdicated their positions on an advisory board. Though the media spun it as if their departure in some way verified the wild accusations of misstatements, they were strictly a board of donors, people who gave some money in exchange for recognition, who had nothing other than their own self-interests in making public their decisions not to continue supporting Carter. So why the character assassination?

Perhaps Major Scott Ritter, former Chief UN Weapons inspector in Iraq who served in the first Gulf War, knows the reason, and is fearless enough to say it in public. Watch this video as he and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Seymour Hersh discuss the US and its threat of Iran and the influence Israel has in US Foreign Policy. His take is a bit different from that being repeated from Washington and the MSM (mainstream media).

Scott has been relentlessly speaking truth to power since leaving Iraq in 1998. In interviews by FOXNEWS as well as several speaking engagements, he has helped shed light on US actions and intentions in the middle east. His take on Iran is as bold as was his warnings of our interest in Iraq. He alone stood in complete informed defiance of every reason the Bush Administration gave for linking war with Iraq to the events of September 11th. Now he seems to stand alone again, in informed defiance of this administration as it again plays off the fears of a nation of ill-informed viewers. His time, as Scott says, the consequences for our ignorant submission, will be catastrophic.

Too Busy to Watch?

2007-01-23T16:15:00.000-06:00

Can you believe a larger percentage of people in several other nations will watch President Bush's State of the Union Address than the citizens in this nation? I find it appalling to think that people have become so disconnected from their duty as citizens in a Democratic society that they choose to not be bothered. Particularly at this time, when we stand at the precipice of war with Iran, a nation vastly more powerful and vital to our national energy interests than Iraq. Many say they prefer not to listen because Bush makes them angry or frustrated. Some say that time is precious, so why bother listening to him. What— Isn't that the point? If he makes us mad, perhaps we will do something to stop him. If time is so precious, than shouldn't we make the most of it? Isn't stopping the leader of the most powerful nation on earth from seriously messing up the next decade of time worth listening to just a bit— don't you think? Perhaps if we'd all have listened more, we could be doing much more personally satisfying things and not be in such dire straits today.

Who is listening? Israel is listening to several neo-conservative hawks like Richard Perle and former CIA director, James Woolsey tell the people of Israel to ready for war with Iran. Today at a summit conference in Herzliya, several presidential hopefuls started their campaign trails far from American Soil but not too far from an influential political lobby- Israel. Candidates Edwards, Guilani, Romney and McCain took the opportunity to give their own State of the Union address and the citizens of Israel appear to be listening with greater interest than here in the USA.

Who's listening... a billion Muslims that this President seems to want to kill off are interested in what Bush will say. Who's listening... the soldiers and families who are on deck or in the battlefields, desperate to hear some good news from a chaotic hell-hole formerly known as Iraq. (recent polls show more than 74% of ground troops in Iraq feel ending occupation is the only strategy) Who's listening... all the right-wing pundits and mouthpieces who need to deliver the message to the mainstream media so tomorrow and in the days to come, everyone who was too busy to listen tonight can hear the corporate view of the President's message.... yeah, there's no reason to watch the President's most important address since September 12, 2001.... isn't American Idol on? LOL in the years to come, when energy costs soar as Iran cuts off our supply of oil. Don't worry, Bush and his GOP thieves can still afford the gas with all the money they got while we were too busy to watch.

War with Iran Imminent

2007-01-23T15:08:00.000-06:00

Listen to today's news on Democracy Now!

Seems the Presidential hopefuls have started their campaign trails a bit far from home..... or perhaps not. Several Presidential candidates went to Israel yesterday to speak at a summit meeting where several high Ranking Bush advisors and neoconservative hawks (like Richard Perle) were also rally the people behind an apparently imminent strike against Iran. Yes you heard me, Iran.

Seems while our media coerced attention is being directed to pay attention to the troop escalation - more specifically the debate over "surge" vs "escalation"- Bush and neocon global supremacists have moved in for a check-mate with Iran. With three aircraft carrier groups off the persian coastline not much wider than lake michigan... and with a newly appointed commander of Centcom from the Navy, an airstrike is perhaps more likely than any of us think.

This appears to be as good a time as any to begin to do your duty as a citizen in a Democracy... unlike the rest of the world who can only watch and wonder, we have the responsibility, ney duty, to participate in the political process. I know its painful to watch him speak, but its far less painful than to be on the other end of his policy, dying from US firepower and coersive policy. I'd imagine there are millions of people arond the world who are praying that we listen to his speech and do our duty to reign him in before its too late.

Stranger Than Fiction

2007-01-16T07:55:00.000-06:00

In Adam Curtis' BBC documentary, find out how Neocons fear "possible devastating effects" from individual freedom and self-expression, and how their desire to maintain order and stability propel them to to extremes by implementing false policy and national direction based on an ideology joining patriotism and religion rooted in fear, concocted from deliberate fantasy. The real problem begins to snowball as they, and their disciples begin to believe their own myths. To start, we witness the striking similarities and ideological origins of both Neocons and Jihadists (like Bin Laden). Are Neocons and Jihadists alike?

This documentary leaves the viewer wondering if, in the words of Delbert Grady, the steely-eyed british-accented ghost waiter/caretaker of the Overlook Hotel to the completely crazed Jack Torrance (Nicholson) in The Shining,

"I'm sorry to defer with you, sir. But you are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I've always been here."

In this BBC documentary, the Neocons (students of Leo Strauss, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol) create an imaginary threat with the help of new disciple, Donald Rumsfeld. Later attracting dozens of GOP luminaries to form PNAC Project for a New American Century, which then influenced the entire party and its constituents.

In the late 70's, the Neocons seized their opportunity to lay the grass roots that would one day lead to 911 and beyond. The Neocons allied themselves with Donald Rumsfeld and began a fear-mongering campaign that would convince President Ford to authorize an inquiry on the intentions and technological capabilities of the Soviet Union. Thought the idea sounded noble enough, the inquiry dubbed "Plan B" was authorized by Ford under the full-biased control of none other than the Neoconservatives (AKA the "Team-B").

The Neocons had one huge obstacle however, the CIA as well as other international agencies had already proven that the Soviet Union was headed for a collapse and had no intention of attacking America. Regardless of the fact, the Neocons began their assessment. "But however closely they looked" at the CIA's findings, "there was little evidence of the dangerous weapons or defense systems they claimed the Soviets were developing" at the time.

Since Neocons were on a quest to create a simplistic view of the world as "good and evil" and nothing in between, the truth was not about to get in their way. Team-B simply made an assumption: "The Soviets had developed systems that were so sophisticated, they were undetectable." Sadly, with the help of Rumsfeld's hypnotic, all-out chanting and ranting of fear and impeding doom (as shown in the video), the quivering politicians and the government 'ate it up' -- and thus began the era of the Neoconservatives.

The story will continues in the next installments to show how the Neocons help finance, arm, and train the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan, which would later become known as "terrorists."

This gives foundation to the question — Well, How did we get here?

additional resources:
UK Indymedia
Philosophy of Deception
You Can't Handle the Truth
PNAC in Wikipedia
Sayed Kotb(Sayyid Qutb)
BBC producer Alan Curtis

Carter's Bomb

2007-01-15T09:50:00.000-06:00

President Carter has been faced an overwhelming amount of media and social attacks since releaseing his book "Palestine Peace not Aparthied". Even the wording of the "newscasts" take aim to assassinate the character of a nobel-prize winning peace President who's entire life has been dedicated to serving the good of mankind.

So why is it that we do not hear anyone taking the media to task for yet another round of 'assassinate the good guy'? Just like many before him, anyone dropping the "Israel-Bomb" can expect a fierce and relentless attack on their character, credibility and history. Why do you suppose that is?

I've done some research and I have to say - with all respect - that opinions, rooted in bias, born of indoctrination, do not constitute fact and should not be permitted to form consensus. I'm not here to challenge anyone's faith, but I think a good examination of the melding of emotions and doctrine over reason is in order.

Are we reluctantly taking our position because our greater faith community is steering us there? Is it that we are too close to the teachings and not the facts? I don't know, nor am I in a position to make general assertions.

But I pulled together a very good explanation/response by editing a recent story from CNN and adding pieces of a great debate on the Iranian threat by two prominent Jewish scholars- albeit they are polarized within the Jewish community.... like most everything in political debate. (theres a saying you can put three Jews in a room to talk politics and you'll get seven opinions)

Pulitzer Prize winning author Seymour Hersh and retired US chief weapons inspector in Iraq 91-98, Marine Major, Scott Ritter had an exchange that I felt really clarified the facts and indirectly nailed the Carter firestorm. You tell me.

Near as I could tell, the 20 advisers that resigned were of a group of 200, and were all Jewish. As is detailed in my video above, the very mention of anything remotely linkable to something anti-Semitic, like the word apartheid, causes a Pavlovian response to seek distance from the controversy. The twenty responded on cue and the greater community has as well — bringing many of us reluctantly along.

And it is that reluctance that I propose, is our disconnect to the conditioned response, that shows us a path to greater understanding and a true sense of global community.

I agree, as did Carter that the statement the suicide bombing would continue til the occupation and aggression ends, was inappropriate and should be removed. I could find no other articles that falsely claimed fact to here say.

This is Jimmy Carter's book with his reflections based on being in the first-person spotlight in a world geo-political policymaking role. If anyone has a right to write His-Story, Carter certainly does. And it doesn't need to reflect the generally accepted History... that too many of us blindly subscribe to.

Have you read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" because it clearly demonstrates the fulfillment of the ancient African proverb:

"Until Lions have their own Historians, the story of the Hunt will forever favor Man."

Perhaps Carter, Hersh, Ritter and Zinn are trying to share a bit of the Lion's story.

Future of the Internet?

2007-01-15T01:06:00.001-06:00

The Nixon Playbook with a Cheney twist!

2007-01-13T07:32:00.000-06:00

Outgoing NSA Director, the infamous John Negriponti, who's prior information helped us to decimate Haiti, illegally arm Contras in Nicaragua and was the primary information source leading to the Iraq invasion, had this to say before leaving to become Condoleesa Rice's Karl Rove - er deputy. In his final annual threat assessment to the new 110th Congress he warned that al-Qaeda poses "the gravest threat to the United States and is rebuilding its strength from secure hideouts in Pakistan." Negriponte also said that Iraq was at a violent and "precarious juncture," he stressed concern over an increasingly confident Hizbollah and outlined a series of other threats to the United States, including from Somalia, Iran and Syria.

Not unlike Henry Kissinger's communist threat diatribe as America wanted out of Vietnam. We all know now that Nixon's response was to secretly bomb the crap out of Cambodia and Laos as he pulled our troops from Vietnam. Lie to Congress, pull the troops and secretly take it to the air.

And with two new Navy commanders at the helm-- Adm. Fallon, tapped to replace Army Gen Abizaid as head of CENTCOM, previously headed PACOM covering pacific theater with his specialty being carrier group air-strike coordination and new director of the NSA, retired Navy Vice Admiral Mike McConnell-- is it any wonder we have air-strikes in Somalia? Bush has retired most of the ground troop generals and replaced them with "flyboys". Nixon 101.

But Cheney is taking it to the next level, the corporate president, pResident Bush, named McConnell to replace Negriponte as the new chief of intelligence. McConnell said he would work to increase the coordination between the nation's 16 different spy agencies. Privatize intelligence, lie to Congress and prevent anyone from learning the truth.

McConnell, the man tapped to replace John Negriponte, has been a leading figure in outsourcing U.S. intelligence operations to private industry. A former director at the National Security Agency, he was the current director of defense programs at Booz Allen-- one of the nation's biggest defense and intelligence contractors. Under his watch, Booz Allen has been deeply involved in some of the most controversial counter-terrorism programs run by the Bush administration, including the infamous Total Information Awareness data-mining scheme.

McConnell plans to "continue the strong emphasis on integration of the community to better serve all of our customers. That will mean better sharing of information, increased focus on customer needs and service, improved security processes, and deeper penetration of our targets..." Does this sound like the words of a person hoping to help the "citizens" of a nation best use information to prepare for problems? Or the words of a salesman shlepping data access wiz-bang for megabucks? Booz Allen has made billions in recent contracts.

FYI- Information, once privatized, has yet to be ruled on as being intellectual property of the private sector and therefore off-limits to FOIA-freedom of information requests. It will be contested all the way to the Supreme Court. Thankfully with Bush's newly appointed justices Alito and Roberts we will no doubt get a "fair and balanced verdict- can you say check-mate?

The Decisive Ideological Struggle of Our Time!

2007-01-11T01:50:00.001-06:00

Last night the pResident painted an interesting picture of a world that he and the writer of his speech, and his most trusted advisors hope the American Public will buy. Bush figures we haven't succeeded for two reasons, 1) The Iraqis haven't trained enough troops- perhaps cuz they keep getting blown up in the recruiting lines or executed and having their bodies dumped in the streets with hands bound and electric drill holes through their skulls. 2) Cuz our troops have had too many restrictions put upon them in the past- pesky old Geneva Convention, didn't we eliminate that with the Military Commissions Act of 2006?

Bush says Iraq needs a "Green Light" to solve its problems. The reason we've been unsuccessful there the past four years, we've had to be courteous and respectful to the citizens of Iraq. So Bush called for a troop surge of 21,000 and a lifting of any remaining civil rights the citizens of Iraq might have left. Yes, our Army along with who ever's left fighting for Iraq, will go kicking doors into every home in Bagdad.... door to door busting into homes and shooting anyone hostile... Never mind that the soldiers can't understand the language and civilians might panic when frightening green soldiers all jacked up with adrenaline, eyes a blazed in green night vision goggles, come busting down their doors screaming commands they don't understand in the middle of the night... Never mind that Bush's initial strategy in the first days of the "liberation" was to fire the entire Iraq police and militia with no pay, and let them keep their weapons! ... Now after the whole nation has descended into total civil war and chaos with more than 650,000 innocent iraqis brutally murdered in the name of freedom and democracy, Bush figures alls he needs to do is "smoke em out".

Well the pResident has certainly taken a fresh perspective on his policy. He replaced all the Generals-again. Commanding General John Abizaid now joins the huge number of demoted leaders who completely disagree with the pResident's vision... what do they know, they are just highly trained military strategists that were our eyes and ears in the front lines of the battle... Bush and his band of merry ChickenHawks who've never seen a round fired in anger know better than these brass monkeys-right?? So his new leadership recruits are all gung-ho about taking it to the streets and again he's listening to them...

He's also decided to take an active role in attacking Iran and Syria... yes the excellent way the liberation is working in Iraq has incentivised him to take on the entire muslim world. He plans to "seek out and destroy the networks providing training and weaponry" and "bolster our interests in the region using our allies to help eliminate the threat of Iran's nuclear weapons" - translation: Israel will launch a first strike and we'll respond by bombing Iran's military and communications, while protecting the flow of oil.

Bush says "we'll engage our full diplomatic resources to rally allies within the region to bring about change" translation: Utilize the newly created propaganda wing of the pentagon to spread lies and misleading news information, spend millions with right-wing think tank the Lincoln Group to fabricate stories at home, and send in covert operatives to destabilize Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

He has his work cut out for him though, it seems the rest of the free world has real media outlets that still practice the old art of Journalism... you know- the kind that reports the facts, speaks truth to power. Last night our media rendered his visionary painting of Iraq's faded watercolor-- a loose impressionist rendering of a dream needing our troops to help their nation's leaders (our puppets) take a role in their own future. They effectively hid the truth held by a very few industrialists and elites, neo-conservative extremists seeking to gain global domination.

Glaringly absent from the airwaves last night, were any responses from the opposition. I can't recall a time when a standing head of State was able to speak freely on such an important topic and not have any debate or opinion from the opposition... must be new rules for Democracy. Still, Bush was very rigid as his beady eyes nervously read the teleprompter. A few cable networks FOX and MSNBC did air some commetary but the major mainstream networks went back to scheduled programming.

And how ironic was their regularly scheduled programming... CSI:NY tracked down a brutal femme stiletto heel shoe killer; Criminal Minds caged a serial rapist; Medium conjured a mystery killer, and worst of all, number one with a bullet...

Armed and Famous the new lowest common denominator for television... Celebrities become Cops and go after bad guys.... starring Janet Jackson, Jack Osborne (ozzy's boy), a WWF wrestler babe, the Jackass midget, and Erik Estrada from Chips (I'm not making this up!) - So right after listening to pResident Bush tell us of how the insurgents are going to "make sure our televisions are filled with images of death and suffering" viewers are returned to the regularly scheduled images... of death and suffering!

Bush amazingly heralded "the decisive ideological struggle of our time: on one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation, on the other side are the extremists who kill the innocent and who have declared their intention to destroy our way of life." I'm just thinking in truth, he got the roles mixed up.

650,000 dead civilians, complete chaos and civil war, no security in any region of that country... and all because we are there. No one can solve their own problems as our soldiers go shooting everyone in sight. Its insane and we have to stand up against this insanity! What are you going to do?

Get out and make a scene on Water and Wisconsin at 5pm tomorrow. Join others across the nation as DemocracyForAmerica, TrueMajority, MoveOn, and PeaceAction come together for a protest. Write the press, Contact your elected officials... make a difference!

NoMore!- Troops out of Iraq NOW!

2007-01-09T20:09:00.000-06:00

110th Congress- breath of fresh aire or business as usual?

2007-01-05T13:39:00.000-06:00

Welcome 110th Congress... the people have clearly spoken for change. But a listen to the pResident and his lame duck congress left-behinds and you'd think they never heard the news.

pResident Bush again asks for bipartisan courtesy and looks forward to working in a bipartisan way with Congress saying "its time we set aside politics and focus on the future." —hello? Does anyone still believe his doublespeak? He made these same gestures in each of his State of the Union and Inaugural addresses... then promptly instructed his 109th Congress to slam the door in the Democrats faces.

The 109th Congress, arguably the most corrupt Congress in US history excluded the minority voice with an undaunted arrogance not seen since sedition times. No votes, no hearings, no rights to bring bills to the floor, not even an ability to debate so many of the questionable powers being granted to the Bush Administration about war, policy, torture, spying and US sponsored worldwide terrorism.

The109th Congress rolled out bill after bill stuffed with thousands of earmarks granting every member in Congress who promised support of the Bush Agenda, millions of federal dollars to buy votes and influence in their home States. K street lobbies and think tanks ran the legislative branch. Sen. Bill Frist even went so far as to threaten abolishing the right of the filibuster to get his judges nominated (isn't that activist judging). Republican congressmen screamed for up or down votes and silence from the minority.

Before our eyes, Congress was transformed into a legislative street fight. The new generation of aides and Congressmen not only hold each other in contempt but now don't reach out to the other side in formality. Its like watching a WWF grudge match only Hulk Hogan is responsible for our nations well-being, not just an evenings entertainment for some testosterone teens and wannabe teens. pResident Bush, the self-proclaimed Great Uniter has in just six years created the greatest political divide since the civil war.

So today, as the 110th Congress officially takes control, they have a plan. For the first 100 hours they are reprimanding the former majority party and preventing them from throwing a tantrum in Congress, while they right some of the most flagrant wrongs done by the 109th leadership. While many of Americans are concerned the war on terror is not on the agenda, some very important social and civic issues are. And it was the most responsible way to start this session. Though GOP left-behinds cry foul and accuse the Democrats of not playing fair, and the media cameras seem to give them much play, there needs to be some punitive action done to let the will of the people be heard by the GOP leadership who hijacked our constitution to line their pockets and bankrupt our nation. It serves us proud as a nation to have a governing system that can enforce checks and balances in accordance to the will of the people. Right now that will says no more corruption, no more creative interpretation of law.

Now the real proof of change will come after the 100 hours when the Democrats say they will demonstrate a fair bipartisan exchange of ideas in Congress. Speaker Pelosi has taken the position not to pursue Impeachment proceedings nor to stand for immediate removal of funding for the war. Both positions do not sit well with many who voted her into office. Not unlike pResident Bush and his troubles with Christians who didn't feel he valued their contribution to his election. They marched on Washington to demand access and now Cindy Sheehan and the anti war activists are speaking out against the new Pelosi priorities.

This is a momentous time in US History, the last time the people spoke loudly against policy and war, the leadership went covert, bombing of Cambodia, misleading the public on war statistics and abuse of intelligence by targeting US citizens opposing war like John Lennon, then Watergate. With the recent death of President Gerald Ford, we again learn of how his pardon of Nixon halted further investigation into the depth of corruption within the GOP leadership, a group oddly consisting of Kissinger, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush41 and many others still in power today. They were willing and capable then, what's to stop them now? They averted investigation then, will they evade justice again?

Even today as a FOIA (freedom of information act) release of thousands of pages secret FBI documents shows, we learn of Nixon and Reagan's illegal use of the Federal Agents to undermine and coerce opposition to Supreme Court Justice Renquist's nomination. Interesting that it was John (I hate the UN but run it) Bolton who then was asst Atty General, who personally signed off on direct memos advising that use of Federal Agents in this way was not legal. Wiretaps, shakedowns, character assassinations, illegal detentions... exactly what the 109th Congress made legal through the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (S3930).

This appears to be the policy of GOP corruption and the abuse of power, and when not in control, subversive use of the military and intelligence wings. Though it now appears clear that a small cabal of Neo-Conservative thinkers are directly responsible for much of the last thirty years of perversion. Since assention into power in the Nixon house, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Libby Bush41 and a few others, have transformed our nation into an imperial oligarchy bent on world conquest. This has to be reigned in. Will the 110th Congress recognize these threats and take action or will the NeoCons silently continue conquest the middle east and beyond, or worse, create a horrific event by using their completely revamped access to information and intelligence to subvert Democracy at home?

NSA czar Jon Negriponte, the angel of death (ambassador) for Nicaragua, Haiti and Iraq has reluctantly abdicated his throne as master of all intelligence in the world's largest covert agency, to become assistance Sec of State. To one not watching, this seems benign, but what can a ruthless deviant with access to all intelligence do as the person behind Condoleeza Rice wielding our nation's international policy stick? Especially with Paul Wolfowitz controlling the purse strings World-Bank and Bolton fresh from bulldozing the UN? One shudders to think.

Beatles, six years of change

2007-01-04T02:16:00.000-06:00

January 3
Today is an important day... The Beatles first television appearance in England Jan 3,1963... and the Beatles last recording, I Me My, today 1969. Today, Gerald Ford was laid to rest in Grand Rapids, Michigan... a few blocks from my brothers new home. The small community of Grand Rapids was inundated by citizens honoring this man. The eulogies given by Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger praised him for "healing " a nation in the wake of political and military scandal... Ironic that it was these men and BushSr who stood in the shadows of Nixon and were spared criminal penalty by the Pardon only to descend deeper into their abuse of power though their roles in the transitional government of Gerald Ford and then by manipulation and collusion with Iran to hoist Ron Reagan into office by holding the hostages til Reagans Inauguration. Beyond Reagan, BushSr and now his son continue to front these men and their crimes. Today they have single-handedly turned this nation into an imperial dynasty. It was President Ford who gave them the keys to undermine this nation and it is fitting that they exalt him for his service.

But its an odd day for another realization... from Jan 3, 1963 til Jan 3, 1969... four lads from Liverpool created a global movement greater than anything Nixon, Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld could imagine. In the short span of six years, the world moved closer to peace, closer to love and closer to a global sense of self-actualization... than ever before. These four lads struck a fear in the likes of Nixon, Cheney, Bush and Kissinger... they represented a stark change from a society of materialism and wealth/power—by preaching Flower Power.

And for that Nixon, with help from Rummy, Cheney, Bush and Kissinger, had them followed, harassed, wiretapped and besmirched. It was only a week ago that the final records of John Lennon's FBI/CIA files were made public. In the end though the government strongly stated the contents of these files represented a serious threat to national security, there was nothing more than testament that powerful people feared the loss of their power by the influence of a man who preached Love.

In a space of time little more than that from September 11th to now, the human experiment went from McCarthyism and denial, to peace love and civil rights... then back under the diabolic manipulation of the Nixon administration. In less time than it took for BushJr to pit the might and money of our nation into a bankrupting death-march of global conquest in the name of liberty and democracy.... Our planet's attempt to inspire love, peace and came and went.

Ironic that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, the same shadowy ministers of fear who've worked in silence behind Ford, Nixon, Bush, Reagan and now JrBush... are still threatened by the system they hijacked to power... the system they mock with every breath they take for in the true light of history and time, there's was the guilt for the man called Tricky Dick. A president who's staff was far more crooked than just the one incident at the Watergate hotel.

Today, marked by a full moon—the wolf moon—Algonquin for the hungry wolves that howl at the night time sun... Under this full moon, in the presence of God and all the good citizens who came to pay homage to a good man, these bastards presided over his proceedings just as they did, Coretta Scott King, and Rosa Parks. Only a day after brutally executing the leader of a sovereign nation in a manner not seen since the wild west days in our nation. The same day that China reversed its Death Penalty law, the puppet government of Iraq killed their leader in a fevered dash to string him up before daylight but after the night of Sunni Holiday...

An African proverb has never resounded more clear...Tales of the hunt will forever favor Man, til the Lion has his own historian... and like it, History will forever favor the victor no matter the tyranny, til the common voice rises above complacency to tell the truth of history.... and banishes His Story.

Perhaps if we are lucky, Saddam's death will not be in vain. For it sets precedence that speedy biased trials and swift cruel executions of all leaders who abuse their citizens are now accepted in the United States. Perhaps we can prepare the gallows on the Capitol concourse for it is certain that these same men have done far worse crimes on humanity both here and throughout the world than Saddam could ever have hoped to accomplish... even with the help of these same "leaders"!