Bush erasing access to history

The Bush Administration has been secretly reclassifying thousands of documents in a clandestine Review Process away from scrutiny. This administration is covering its tracks and erasing history. Can you spell Fascism?

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In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years. Because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy - governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved - it continued virtually without outside notice until December 2005.

Now if a history professor, a writer, or a citizen is in possession of information formerly declassified but now considered secret—they can be arrested and convicted.

The most secret administration in US history... with most of its advisors having served for Nixon and during the Iran-Contra scandals.... now they are covering up history.


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Torture Followup

In mid-2003, when the Iraqi resistance erupted, the United States found it had no intelligence assets; it had no way to contain the insurgency, and they -- the U.S. military was in a state of panic. And at that moment, they began sweeping across Iraq, rounding up thousands of Iraqi suspects, putting many of them in Abu Ghraib
prison. At that point, in late August 2003, General Miller was sent from Guantanamo to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. He brought his techniques with him, the manual of his techniques. He gave them to the M.P. officers, the Military Intelligence officers and to General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. Commander in Iraq.

In September of 2003, General Sanchez issued orders, detailed orders, for expanded interrogation techniques beyond those allowed in the U.S. Army Field Manual 3452. He orders in essence, a combination of self-inflicted pain, stress positions, sensory disorientation, cultural attacks and the use of BISCUIT teams with psychologists.

And it was Rumsfeld in the margins of a memo he wrote, "I stand at my desk eight hours a day." he has a specially made podium desk,"How come we're limiting these stress techniques to four hours?"An with that... our Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld opened the door to the hideous torture images we again see today.

Of course he is not liable and as his ministers of propaganda all say "The bad apples have been brought to justice.... America should not be subjected to seeing these aggredious images... they only serve to stir discontent." But in April 2004 when the photos first went public CBS news and the Times wrote this was the work of creeps, just abuse by a few people on the night shift. “Recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland.” In other words, we could blame these bad apples. But these photos clearly show all the textbook trademarked and newly revised C.I.A. psychological interrogation techniques: self-inflicted pain, sensory disorientation,and cultural psyche attacks.


You might be interested to know only seven low-ranking soldiers have been charged and found guilty of these acts. Lindy Englund and Charles Grainer will serve less than ten years in prison for their roles in this scandal. The latest release of photos show thousands of examples of abuse and torture.... not just a few bad apples.

And just last week, while American peace activist Teresa Grady and four others, known as the St. Patricks Four, were sentenced to four months in prison each for spilling their own human blood at a military recruiting station in upstate New York to protest
the Iraq war, a military jury in Colorado decided not to jail an Army interrogator even though he was found guilty of negligent homicide in the torturing and killing of an Iraqi detainee.

Today's news reported that a judge has thrown out the case against Maher Arar, the Canadian-Syrian who was arrested while on lay-over at JFK airport. Who became our first case of known "extraordinary rendition" a man who was secretly flown to Syria, kept in an under-ground “grave-like” cell, subject to sensory disorientation for almost a year. Clearly,this administration is laying the groundwork for a system that operates above the law and without regulation. From torture to invasion of privacy. Now that the highest court in the land has been seeded with justices that have proven records against civil rights in favor or corporate or government rule, we can expect to see many more such abuses to human rights.



"Torture is an extraordinarily dangerous thing. There's an absolute ban on torture for a very good reason. Torture taps into the deepest recesses, unexplored recesses of human consciousness, where creation and destruction coexist, where the infinite human capacity for kindness and infinite human capacity for cruelty coexist, and it has a powerful perverse appeal, and once it starts, both the perpetrators and the powerful who order them, let it spread, and it spreads out of control."—Alfred McCoy


When the Bush administration gave those orders for, basically, techniques tantamount to torture at the start of the war on terror, one could only hope it was their intention that these be limited to top al-Qaeda suspects. But within months, we were torturing hundreds of Afghanis at Bagram near Kabul, and a few months later in 2003, through these techniques, we were torturing literally thousands of Iraqis. And you can see in those photos, beyond the details of the techniques that have been described, you can see how once it starts, it becomes this Dantesque Hell, this kind of play-palace of the darkest recesses of human consciousness.

That’s why it’s necessary to maintain a no-torture policy. There is no such thing as a little bit of torture. The whole myth of scientific surgical torture, that torture advocates, academic advocates in this country came up with, that's impossible. That cannot operate. It will inevitably spread.

But, one of the problems of talking about this topic in the US, is that we've been conditioned to regard all of this as “torture light,”— not really torture. And we're the only country in the world that does that. The U.N. Anti-Torture Convention defines torture as the infliction of severe psychological or physical pain. The U.N. convention in 1994 banning torture gave equal weight to psychological and physical techniques. But we alone, as a society, somehow exempt all of the psychological techniques.

The reasons date back to the way we ratified the U.N. convention in the first place, and who did the drafting.Back in the early 1990s, when the US was emerging from the Cold War, we began a process of disarming ourselves and getting beyond all of these cold war techniques, trying to sort of bring ourselves in line with rest of the international community. When President Clinton sent the U.N. Anti-Torture Convention to the U.S. Congress for ratification in 1994, he included four detailed paragraphs of reservations that had, in fact, been drafted by the Reagan administration, and when he adopted them without so much as changing a semicolon. He basically outlawed only physical torture. The reservations were carefully written by then Department of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, to avoid one word —in the 26 printed pages. The word, "mental" was exempted allowing psychological torture.


Now, another problem for the United States, as well, was when the U.S. Army, again under the watchful eyes of Dick Cheney, re-wrote the Army Field Manual in 1992, with the intention of strictly observing the letter and the spirit of the U.N. Anti-Torture Convention and other similar treaties.

So what happened is that when the Defense Department gave orders for extreme techniques, when General Sanchez gave orders for his techniques beyond the Army Field Manual, what that meant is when the soldiers like Grainer, were actually investigated, they had committed crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They were prosecuted, and sent to jail. No ties up the ladder... except to Cheney?

Most Americans think that it's over, that in last year, December 2005, the U.S. Congress passed the McCain Torture Ban (Detainee Treatment Act), barring all inhumane or cruel treatment. Written, at least the first draft, by Sen John McCain who endured torture while a POW in Korea. Most people think that’s it, that it’s over, right?


In reality, the Bush administration fought that amendment tooth and nail; they fought it with loopholes. Vice President Dick Cheney went to Senator McCain and asked for a specific exemption for the C.I.A. McCain refused. The National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, went to McCain and asked for certain kinds of exemptions for the C.I.A. Again, he refused. So they started amending it introducing loopholes.

The Bush ordered torture right at the start of the War On Terror... President Bush said right on September 11, 2001, when he addressed the nation saying, “I don't care what the international lawyers say. We’re going to kick some ass.” Those were his words, and then it was up to his legal advisors in the White House and the Justice Department to translate his otherwise unlawful orders into legal directives, and they did it by crafting three very controversial legal principles.

One, the President, as Commander-in-Chief, could override laws and treaties. —The Unitary Executive Theory.

Two, plausible defenses for C.I.A. interrogators who engage in torture. There were two, first they played around with the word "severe," that torture is the infliction of severe pain. That's when Jay Bybee, who was Assistant Attorney General, wrote that memo in which he said, “’severe’ means equivalent to organ failure,” in other words, right up to the point of death. The other, was that they came up with the idea of intentionality. If a C.I.A. interrogator tortured, but the aim was information, not pain, then he could say that he was not guilty.

The third principle, which was crafted by John Yoo, was Guantanamo is not part of the United States; it is exempt from the writ of U.S. courts.

Now, in the process of passing the McCain torture prohibition, the White House has cleverly twisted the legislation to re-establish these three key principles. In his signing statement on December 30, President Bush said “I reserve the right, as Commander-in-Chief and as head of the unitary executive, to do what I need to do
to defend America.”

The next thing that happened is that McCain, as a compromise, inserted into the legislation a provision that if a C.I.A. operative engages in inhumane treatment or torture but believes that he or she was following a lawful order, then that's a defense. So they got the second principle, defense for C.I.A. torturers.

The third principle was – is that the White House had Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina amend McCain’s amendment by inserting language into it, saying that for the purposes of this act, the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay is not on U.S. territory,

and last month -- the Bush administration has gone to federal courts and said, “Drop all of your habeas corpus suits from Guantanamo.” There are 160 of them. They've gone to the Supreme Court and said, “Drop your Guantanamo case.”

They have, in fact, used that law to quash legal oversight of their actions.Just like that shown by Canadian Citizen, Maher Arar, wrongfully imprisoned for a year in a secret Syrian torture prison, subjected to textbook C.I.A. counterintelligence techniques, and now, powerless to do anything about it.

Welcome to the new United States of America.

CIA Torture Techniques

What lies behind the shocking images of torture at Abu Ghraib? Lets look at the history of the CIA and torture techniques. The International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the recently released images of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib show a clear violation of international humanitarian law. The U.S. made a pledge against torture when Congress ratified the UN Convention Against Torture in 1994 - but it was ratified with reservations that exempted the CIA’s psychological torture method.

A new expose gives an account of the CIA’s secret efforts to develop new forms of torture spanning fifty years. It reveals how the CIA perfected its methods, distributing them across the world from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, uncovering the roots of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture scandals. The book, written by UW-Madison history professor, Alfred McCoy is titled "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror." He also authored “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”



If you look at the most famous of photographs from Abu Ghraib, of the Iraqi standing on the box, arms extended with a hood over his head and the fake electrical wires from his arms, you can see the entire 50-year history of C.I.A. torture. It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain.




And those are the two very simple fundamental C.I.A. techniques, developed at enormous cost. From 1950 to 1962, the C.I.A. ran a massive research project, a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind, resulting in the creation of the 1963 C.I.A. Counterintelligence Manual called Kubark. Spending over $1 billion a year they tried to crack the code of human consciousness, from both mass-persuasion and the use of coercion in individual interrogation. And what they discovered -- they tried LSD, they tried mescaline, they tried all kinds of drugs, they tried electroshock, truth serum, sodium pentathol. None of it worked.

What worked was very simple behavioral findings, outsourced to our leading universities -- Harvard, Princeton, Yale and McGill. The first breakthrough came at McGill. Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the C.I.A. in this research, and he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain.

All he did was have student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, earmuffs, so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately a breakdown. And if you look at many of those photographs, what do they show? They show people with bags over their heads. If you look at the photographs of the Guantanamo detainees even today, they look exactly like those student volunteers in Dr. Hebb’s original cubicle.

The second major C.I.A. breakthrough came in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the C.I.A. studied Soviet K.G.B. torture techniques, and they found that the most effective K.G.B. technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand -- okay, you're not beating them, they have no resentment -- you tell them, “You're doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down.” And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they separate, hallucinations start, and the kidneys shut down.

The C.I.A. incorporated this at the Technical Services Division. Most of the in-house research involved drugs and all of the LSD experiments that we heard about for years, but ultimately those gave a negative result. All the drugs didn’t work. They caused disorientation and hallucinations, the information gleened through interrogation couldn't be trusted. But, what did work was this: Sensory Disorientation and Self-Inflicted Pain.

And in 1963, the C.I.A. codified these results in the so-called KUBARK Counterintelligence Manual. If you just type the word “KUBARK” into Google, you will get the manual, an actual copy of it, on your computer screen, and you can read the techniques. Read the report. But also read the footnotes, because that's where the behavioral research is. These findings produced a distinctively American form of torture, the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in centuries, psychological torture, and it's the one that's with us today, and it's proved to be a very resilient, quite adaptable, and an enormously destructive paradigm. Let’s make one thing clear. Americans refer to this often times in common parlance as “torture light.” Psychological Torture, people who are involved in treatment tell us it’s far more destructive, does far more lasting damage to the human psyche than does physical torture. As Senator McCain said, himself, last year when he was debating his torture prohibition, faced with a choice between being beaten and psychologically tortured, I'd rather be beaten. Okay? It does far more lasting damage. It is far crueler than physical torture. This is something that we don't realize in this country. Now, another thing we see is those photographs is the psychological techniques, but the initial research basically developed techniques for attacking universal human sensory receptors: sight, sound, heat, cold, sense of time. That's why all of the detainees describe being put in dark rooms, being subjected to strobe lights, loud music, okay? That’s sensory deprivation or sensory assault. Okay, that was sort of the phase one of the C.I.A. research. But the paradigm has proved to be quite adaptable.

One of the things that Donald Rumsfeld did, right at the start of the war of terror, in late 2002, was to appoint General Geoffrey Miller to be chief at Guantanamo because the previous commanders were too soft on the detainees. General Miller turned Guantanamo into a de facto behavioral research laboratory, a kind of torture research laboratory. And under General Miller at Guantanamo, they perfected the C.I.A. torture paradigm. They added two key techniques. They went beyond the universal sensory receptors of the original research. They added to it an attack on cultural sensitivity, particularly Arab male sensitivity to issues of gender and sexual identity.

And then they went further still. Under General Miller, they created these things called “Biscuit” teams, behavioral science consultation teams, and they actually had qualified military psychologists participating in the ongoing interrogation, and these psychologists would identify individual phobias, like fear of dark or attachment to mother, and by the time we're done, by 2003, under General Miller, Guantanamo had perfected the C.I.A. paradigm, and it had a three-fold total assault on the human psyche: sensory receptors, self-inflicted pain, cultural sensitivity, and individual fears and phobia.

Now armed with these techniques, andthe Bush "Unitary Exuective Theory" the administration will be able to renegotiate the interpretation the Geneva Convention. Showing they will not physically harm prisoners... but will attain their objectives through much crueler methods, PsyOps.

Black Friday!

U.S. Judge Dismisses Maher Arar Lawsuit

A U.S. federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Canadian citizen against the U.S. government for detaining him and sending him to Syria where he was jailed and tortured. Maher Arar was the first person to mount a civil suit challenging the U.S. government policy known as extraordinary rendition. In October 2002, he was detained at JFK airport while on a stopover in New York. He was then jailed and secretly deported to Syria. He was held for almost a year without charge in an underground cell not much larger than a grave. Charges were never filed against him. The federal judge, David Trager, said he could not interfere in the case because it involves crucial national security and foreign relations issues. In Canada, Arar called the decision "very disappointing [and] emotionally very hard to digest." Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights said the law group would still try to proceed with the case. She said "How can this Administration argue before a Federal Court Judge that its practice of outsourcing for interrogation under torture constitutes a state secret? This is a dark day indeed."


Senate Republicans Block Investigation Into NSA Spying

This update on http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifthe controversy over President Bush's warrant-less domestic spying program - on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans have blocked a proposed investigation into the operation. On Thursday, Republican Senator Pat Roberts, chair of the Intelligence Committee said, his panel decided not to conduct an investigation. Roberts said he reached an agreement with the White House to consider legislation and provide more information to Congress on the eavesdropping program. The ranking Democrat on the committee -- Sen. John Rockefeller -- said "Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee once again abdicated its responsibility to oversee the intelligence activities of the United States."


Abu Ghraib abuse far more pervasive than ever revealed!
Lyndi England wasn't the only one torturing prisioners as she claimed. 546 pictures of dead prisoners, 660 pornographic photos, 93 videos of abuse and 1,325 images of torture...


Bush tries to sneak the sale of six major US seaportsto the Arabs!
NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, NEW JERSEY, NEW ORLEANS, MIAMI & BALTIMORE
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.... the arabs! Sold to United Arab Emerites for a paultry $6.8 Billion?


I thought this land was our land.... did anyone get to vote on this sale???

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11404058/
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021706O.shtml

Alito's Volkswagon

Samuel Alito’s interviews are nearly complete. He has shown us what nice person he is, and how intelligent he is. But so was serial-killer, Ted Bundy. Point being, we are nominating him to a lifetime position deciding the law of the land for the next several generations. While Ted Bundy was able to present himself as a friendly, intelligent person, enough to charm unsuspecting women into his Volkswagen Beetle, his views of right and wrong, were very different from those of the average citizen. So too, the next Supreme Court Justice must be more than just a nice person, they must have a clear and proven record of doing things favorable to the average citizen.

Samuel Alito's position on Corporate power and self-determination is his Bundy-like secret. In this age of unregulated corporate power and globalization, corporations like Enron and Tyco are permitted to grow without governance. Monopolies compete to own vast amounts of our nation's airwaves, information and resources. Corporate lobbyists like Jack Abermoff buy off politicians with little oversight. Corporations who make billions on war profits also own the major news media outlets that ordinary citizens watch to make their opinions about the war. We badly need a judicial branch that treats corporate entities with the same objectivity it treats a person.

But since most justices, and ordinary citizens, own stock in these "Corporation-people", it becomes harder to be objective, or trace a conflict of interest. Could a Justice preside over a case involving someone that owed him money? Would we tolerate a Justice deciding a precedent that while not directly affecting a friend or relative, a precedent that would enrich his friends and family? We are no longer talking about the fate of one person... In 1980, when General Electric and Dr Chakrabarty petitioned the Supreme Court to allow for the patenting of a synthesized life-form (bacteria) that was believed to eat oil, the 5 to 4 decision also opened the door to patenting life itself. These are the "incidental" repercussions that will occur more frequently with a corporate-leaning court.

Samuel Alito's record shows clearly his stance on cases favoring Corporate rights over that of the individual. If we accept Alito to replace the former moderate, swing-voting Sandra Day O'Connor, we will be authorizing a Supreme Court who's balance is decidedly in favor of Corporations. The facts prove it, the political ties re-enforce it, and in a time of great corruption of the highest branches of government, are we sure we want this choice, a court with a Bundy-like secret? The sooner we demand our majority leadership question his behavior, his record, and not his outward appearance, the sooner we may avoid giving our nation to a Supreme Court with a Corporate agenda.


What we need to fear is not whether Roe v Wade is overturned, but what rights will be given to the already omnipotent Corporations? Will this justice suddenly have an epiphany and decide giving corporations immunity from prosecution for their actions is not in the best interest of the average citizen? Or will we jump in the Volkswagen Beetle with him and go for what might be the ride of our life?

2000 Dead

PeaceAction-WI organized a candle light vigil to commemorate the 2000th soldier to die in Iraq. Hundreds of people lined Lincoln Memorial Drive holding candles and carrying signs. Cars beeped their horns in support, some voiced their disdain for the message. Police on horseback stood watch on the perimeter and a few television crews were on hand collecting file footage.

Several leaders spoke at the event including myself. Here is the speech I gave at the rally in Milwaukee Wisconsin USA.

Thanks George welcome everyone,
I'm Charlie Koenen and I've prepared something for today,
Peace Action and United for Peace and Justice also prepared for this day... Cindy Sheehan prepared for this day.... People in cities across the nation have prepared for this day...

Unfortunately, another family of an American soldier has to make real the preparation for this day.

And now we gather to send out a message locally and to join people in cities nationally— to SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER- to say BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!

We stand here today to tell the Bush Administration that a WAR BASED ON LIES will never succeed... That A WAR BASED ON LIES that sends our troops out to kill and destroy nations based on false fears and forced sense of duty... will not be tolerated.

We stand united with our soldiers in the knowledge that their duty and devotion to the founding principles of our great nation IS worth fighting and dying for!

But we also must stand together in our outrage against a system of corruption and manipulation that has misled our nation into acts of hideous aggression against people of other nations.

We must stand united in our sense of duty and patriotism to speak truth to power. To risk alienation, persecution and discrimination in order to end this unjust occupation.

We honor our soldiers and their role as defenders of freedom and liberty. We realize that their duty and honor is preserved by their strength and allegiance.

This strength and allegiance is also why so many families seem to object to our actions. For in battle they are trained to not ask why, but rather to do or die. Unfortunately for the families of the 2000 soldiers, this duty has become forever real.

But if their duty is to hold rank and follow command, then what is our role as citizens in this democracy? Are we not the conscience of our governing body? Do not we have the duty to question our leadership?

Our obligation to this great nation is not merely to march to the polls every two or four years to choose a leader--- to read a few talking points or sound bites and then pull a lever or pencil out a spot on a ballot card...

No our obligation is to put in office, leadership that we think will help advance our nation and be true to our sense of place in the world, AND to hold that leadership accountable for the trust and allegiance we granted them through our democratic election process.

It seems to clear that we as a nation have lax in our duty to hold leadership accountable. We are so busy trying to carve out a niche in this world for ourselves and our families... that we have slackened our duty to the Democratic process we so enjoy and defend.

But today we stand united, and today we are beginning to see once again that there is hope- That we the people will again hold our democratic process high and see that liberty and justice prevail over the abuse and greed, of the fear and contempt, that seems to have taken control while many of us were busy with our lives.

Today we mark a milestone, and today as further revelations unfold and incriminate the leadership of our great nation, we have the chance to take back our democracy,
to see that questioning authority, and speaking truth to power can bring about change.... can make right the wrongs, and can make us strong and sensible once again.

We are but one planet, with one people.... the sooner we realize this...the sooner we find the true way to end terror

through love and by peace.

thank you and keep growing the effort....
Patriotism is a duty not an elective.

Come out tonight- Bring forth your light -
Share in our plight - Keep real the fight....
to Make Peace our Right!

Bring them home now!

Do our Morals need a Brake Job?

Insulated by our ready-to-wear materialistic surroundings its easy to loose track of the moral backbone that used to define our nation as the pinnacle of the success of Mankind... Especially when all the typical touchstones to judge our moral barometer have been hijacked and used to support that materialism and moral recklessness.

It is easy to just maintain course, its almost like we keep the cruise control set on "numb", and carry on with life as we know it to be... we don't even notice the changes. We head off to work every morning after getting the kids off to school, we shuttle them from one event to another while finding time to meet with friends or office buddies. On Wed nights we head out for volleyball league... We catch the news on the 24hr news channels when we can... grab a paper to confirm the "facts" - and if we really want to be "involved" - we might even grab a second paper, or watch another news station so we can feel as though we've done our civic duty to fact-check the news views. But for the most part, as long as nothing jars our immediate surroundings, we aren't really concerned about noticing as things change around us—subtle changes by themselves—but collectively they represent a substantial shift in the world around us... and again, as long as it doesn't jar our immediate world... we are too busy to observe them... we've got housework to do, a halloween costume to make, the car to fix, a new television to save for and buy... we keep our moral barometer close to our chest... we've not done anything wrong to speak of... most of our friends seem to be okay too... good enough.

Well what if good enough wasn't good enough? What if by focusing on the immediate and up-close, we failed to see the forest for the trees... we failed to see the big picture because we're busy with our little corner. When's the last time you had the brakes replaced on your car? You've been driving it for years and never thought about brakes... you perform maintenance as the manufacturer directs... but one day the service technician calls to say your brakes are nearly gone and need to be replaced. You approve of course... and they repair the brakes... replacing the worn out pads and bleeding the hydraulic system. You pay the mechanic, jump into your car and head out onto the road.... at the edge of the service station's driveway you go to step on the brakes and screech the tires, nearly causing the car behind you to collide into your car! What happened? You've grown to accustomed to your brake pedal engaging so far down that now the newly restored pedal is pushed to lock-up in a fraction of what you were accustomed to... has that ever happened? You been driving for years and never noticed the subtle degradation of your brake pedal... until someone brings it to your attention.

The same can be said for our brake pedal of morality... slowly over time it has begun to degrade. Almost imperceivably it becomes less critical of transgression, of impropriety, misconduct and corruption. It becomes unaware of immoral behavior and injustice unless they jump in front of us and require us to slam on the brakes to avoid contact.

What does this mean? How does realizing this help you? It's time to take our moral code in for a "brake job". Time to accept responsibility for our deteriorating ethical and moral standards before they fail and involve us in a tragic accident.

Today our collective moral fiber is becoming like a brake without pads. Soon we will be running metal on metal, scraping deep gouges into the wheels and becoming unable to avoid obstacles. If we do not correct the problem, we will meet with catastrophe. And just like the inconvenience and hardship we must endure as the brakes are repaired, we will be required to endure hardship to fix our moral brake pads. We have to seek alternative modes of transportation and adjust our lifestyle as the car's brakes are fixed... So too will we have to consider alternatives and adjust our lifestyle as we attempt to fix our moral brakes.

As we allow ourselves to question our sense of morality, our very way of life comes into question. Have we been riding the brakes? have we driven our car too hard? Have we loaded it too full and caused the brakes to work beyond tolerance? We need to look at our world and see where we have let slacken our moral fabric.

First we need to open our hearts (and minds) to the possibility that many things that make secure our lifestyle, could possibly also have side-effects that keep us comfortable and numb to to truth. We have to temporarily suspend the structures we have grown to depend on to hold our world together... life is terribly busy as it is... but we need to be able to question the things that seem to support the busy chaos we face daily- and call life. Just like it was a good thing for the mechanic to tell us to question our seemingly safe and secure car's brakes because upon closer inspection, they were teetering on the brink of failure... We need to give heed to the social mechanics who are warning of our moral brakes nearing catastrophic failure.

Look around and begin to ask the big questions... what are we doing as America, the leader of the known world— an international world that grows closer and more similar every day? What are the logical outcomes of the lifestyles we lead as they relate to the rest of the world we are so intrinsically involved with?

We might give pause to ponder just that... How has our lifestyle become directly intertwined with the entire planet?... because it is—and we really need to give time to ponder what that means.

What is our lifestyle? How does it come to be? Who do we look to -to create the lifestyle we call our own? TV shows, famous people, nameless people who parade across magazines, television, websites and papers that show us what the "good life" looks like... we go to malls, big box retailers, to stores and online to obtain material possessions that help us define comfort as we are told it is... but what are they? How did they get here? Who was involved in the creation, production, delivery, showcasing and sales of these possessions? Who was behind the making of our desire to covet these items? Who marketed them, who brought the message before us - in print, pixel, proximity, or perception? What was their gain and motivation? More importantly, what was lost in the process??? Dignity, family, community, economy, rights, healthcare, freedoms, will, morality, sense of self... Yes there are many who seem to gain at the process of getting us more material possessions... but i think if we look closer, we'd find the gains for a few, far overshadow the gains of the many and overall, the system itself fails.... if we're looking at the forest—not simply the trees.

How is that possible? How can we find a real understanding of the human condition when many of the very doors of our perception are built to numb our views? Yes- it is said we have a liberal media.... who exactly is saying that? ... conservative talk show hosts, right-wing pundits? our leadership in this administration? ... the media corporations who've been purchased any company with enough money and connections to power? Multinational Corporations who's holdings are as far-flung as toilet paper and machine gun bullets? Recently these Corporations have been allowed -nay- encouraged to swallow up entire sectors of mass communication creating monopolies and changing news into views, reporting into propaganda, and communication into coercion— don't believe it?

Explain the 2002 news media outlets "reporting" of Iraq's WMDs and connections to AlQueada- effectively verifying the Bush administrations need for war. Explain Judith Miller and Michael Gordon breaking story after story on the front pages of the Times after talking with Cheney and Bush aides-then the bush administration taking to the Sunday talk show circuit using the very story they leaked to the times as the justification for their actions! Explain how the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative who happens to be the wife of Joe Wilson the very ambassador who days before had publicly attacked the credibility of the entire Bush administration's case for war... Explain how "propagandist" Judith Miller an operative for the pentagon with close ties to Cheney and Rumsfelt could have unfettered access to the front page of the newspaper without fact checking.... not because people with the paper weren't doing their jobs... but because the editors in charge... who answer directly to the ownership, carried out policy... Explain how a "reporter" who has repeatedly manipulated information in leading news stories, still holds her job... while a scandal of miniature proportion is blown to national attention with the revelation that Jason Blair had fabricated some facts in his stories... Blair is fired, while Miller serves time in jail and comes out to win a 1st amendment award for protecting journalistic rights! Why? Because the media outlets have become propaganda tools for the government.... Miller works for the administration... A government who desperately wanted to create support for a military aggression with Iraq— an effort with tremendous benefit to the owners many multinational corporations and executives with holdings in these multinational corporations. Don't believe it? Time to make an effort to look into who owns the media outlets, and what other outlets these outlets own... what executives run these media monopolies and what interests have they served prior to heading these media outlets... Since 1996 went the Communications Act was passed allowing for Media Monopoly ownership and government oversight of public airwaves.... nothing has been furth from the truth about liberal media.... except that the media tries to sell us that they are still biased... allowing them to put more right wing shows on air... and cancel the remaining real news programs- like Bill Moyers.

How does this matter to us and our little tree in the forest? What's that got to do with our moral brake pads? Well if we don't begin to look beyond our corner of the forest, if we don't listen to the social mechanics telling us our brakes are near failing.... when it comes time to stop these transgressions, our infrastructure will fail us and we'll careen out of control into catastrophe.... our tree and surrounding trees will be no match- no matter how well we pruned and tended them- no match to the corporate machine that will overrun our part of the forest... and our refusal to look to the forest for larger signals or signs, will be our own undoing when the trees nearby begin to fall.

This week in the forest:

Bankruptcy Law went into effect... the law helping the billion dollar credit card corporations from being on the hook for people who are cooerced into massive debt by lending agents. Now folks who get in trouble or lose their jobs, will also lose their homes and possessions to pay back the ultra-rich credit card corporations.

The Leave no Oilman behind bill was passed by a two vote margin. This Bill Actually had members of the house of representative chant "SHAME, SHAME, SHAME" on the house floor as the vote was read.... yes after coming up short in the vote because some members of the republican congress actually stood up against a bad bill... Republican leaders and the now criminal Tom Delay extended the vote an extra 40 minutes while they roamed the room looking to squeeze republicans who voted with their conscience- not their loyalty cards.... they found the two they needed and closed the vote... 210-212 in favor of a bill giving billions in concessions to energy companies- but far worse... worded in the bill is a clause that forces any community or group who objects to an energy company wanting to build or expand a refinery in their community... to pay the energy company's legal fees-regardless if they win or lose!!!

Medical Malpractice Caps were signed into law- limiting the exposure multinational corporations and their doctors can be held liable for wrongdoing.... who else benefitted?? Insurance companies!

The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve ANWAR drilling rights was up for a vote today...
Congress- under pressure from an awoken public and misled by a media that wants to profit from its opening has voted to begin drilling in the disputed AREA 1002... The truth is the oil from ANWAR will not be used in America... it is well documented that it will go to asia because the cost of transporting is much less than sending it to the lower 48. SO while Exxon reports a 4.5 million dollar PER HOUR profit, we are giving them access to and ownership of our natural resources... not even the oil- so much as the wildlife refuge... Truth be told that the 1002 area is the one grazing area for ALL the caribou of the 100 million acre arctic region... its fragile meadows bloom and produce for precisely 1 month every year... the one month that dozens of animals come to sire their young on the lush vegetation... the remaining 11 months of the year... the area is mostly baron... but the very existence of several species of arctic animals depend on that land for that one crucial month per year...

Also today in the forest, Texas Strongman Tom DeLay had a warrant served for his arrest. The once undisputed heavyweight of the House of Representatives now faces multiple charges for corruption, money laundering and fraud. Senate Heavyweight Bill Frist is under scrutiny as well as top whitehouse advisors Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.... rumors point all the way to to Pres and vp in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Harriet Miers moves closer to becoming another presidential crony appointed to a job they have no qualifications to head up... 250 million people in america and the best choice Bush could find was his own lawyer!!! She is on track to become the next Supreme Court Justice... SHAME SHAME SHAME!!!

Saddham went on trial today... in an interesting spectacle of a trial.... only one reporter Dan Murphy from the Christian Science Monitor was allowed into the courtroom... cameras showed the ruler on a 20 minute delay in case he said something america didn't like.

Also the Steroid abuse trial that former Atty General Ashcroft said would be punished to the full extent of the law for their involvement in national sports doping.... were sentenced today to a whopping 4 months in jail.... kids selling grass get more time than that... well it sounded good when Ashcroft spoke to the nation... now little or no press covers the results.

Meanwhile we quickly approach 2000 dead american soldiers in the "skirmish" in Iraq. Condi Rice testified in front of Congress today... saying the war is going along as planned.... but refusing to tell congress what that plan was.... Once again she lies to protect the president and his desire to conquer the oil fields... just as she did countless times in the ramp-up to the invasion of iraq... proof positive of WMD's, Proof of chem/biologic weapons, proof of links to AlQueada and 9/11—yes the Millionaire Condi Rice DID have a supertanker named after her... no conflict of interest here.... business as usual.

Time is running out to wake up and fix those moral brakes... if we truly do believe in god -more than the president does... then we might want to consider our actions here on earth and their repercussions in the afterlife... eternity is much longer than the run time of Friends.... and the almighty is no judge wabner, for (s)he can see through our thinly veiled attempt at looking pious as we feed off the desecration of others... as we profit from others misfortune, as we buy stock in the companies who exploit for riches rather than help for redemption. Jesus ran through the temple overturning the tables of the money-changers.... watch that that doesn't happen to your portfolio. As we ignore the health of the forest, our trees will surely die and no one will be there to help us when the wrecking crew arrives. Look at the cause of our insulated lives, see through the efforts to preoccupy us as all our freedoms are stripped away... fight now to regain our self-determination from the tyrannical corruption of our government leadership and the corporations who hope to win independence from US rule with every new law and judicial appointment.

Corporate Attack of Organic Standards

Hi,
I checked the fraud site and this seems legitimate... and unfortunately it also sounds very plausible. As Americans are/have become the most overweight and obese nation on the planet (yeah I know)... and as the expensive addictive pharmaceutical dietary and health pills are being paraded across television sets around the country... there is a growing movement towards organic foods and local produce as a better way to good health... it seems too big an "opportunity" for the super stores not to want in....and unfortunately the growth, care and most important, distribution methods of local organic food runs counter to the profit-centric mindset of the corporate monopolies who stand to lose market-share as the local organic movement strengthens—taking dollars from their pockets and customers from their shelves... that is unless they can manipulate the organic food standards... weaken the definition of what is organic, to allow them to infiltrate the market.

I don't think you need to play partisanship politics on this one folks... its just as bad for republicans as for democrats... liberals as conservatives, though an argument can be made that the organic standards were established by people other than the current administration and their emboldened masses in tow... it is those masses that need to motivate and join with the movement towards organic foods, if they care about the quality and availability of good wholesome, organically grown, pesticide-free, local nutrient-rich produce— and the struggling farmers who have taken the harder road to agriculture production by refusing to subscribe to the agribusiness model for cash-farming.

Please read on and sign this... share it with your email book and show our leadership that, like public television, some things are better left pure and strong not tainted to allow exploitation.
thanks


BEGIN FORWARD>>>

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) needs your immediate help to stop Congress and the Bush administration from seriously degrading organic standards. After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification to these standards.

Now, large corporations such as Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods--aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are moving to lower organic standards by allowing a Bush appointee to create a list of synthetic ingredients that would be allowed organic production. Even worse these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board's (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will now have more control over what can go into organic foods and products.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 20, acting in haste and near-total secrecy, the U.S. Senate will vote on a "rider" to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that will reduce control over organic standards from the National Standards Board and put this control in the hands of federal bureaucrats in the USDA (remember the USDA proposal in 1997-98 that said that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and food irradiation would be OK on organic farms, or USDA suggestions in 2004 that heretofore banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs would be OK?).

For the past week in Washington, OCA has been urging members of the Senate not to reopen and subvert the federal statute that governs U.S. Organic standards (the Organic Food Production Act - OFPA), but rather to let the organic community and the National Organic Standards resolve our differences over issues like synthetics and animal feed internally, and then proceed to a open public comment period. Unfortunately most Senators seem to be listening to industry lobbyists more closely than to us. We need to raise our voices.

In the past, grassroots mobilization and mass pressure by organic consumers have been able to stop the USDA and Congress from degrading organic standards. This time Washington insiders tell us that the "fix is is already in." So we must take decisive action now. We need you to call your U.S. Senators today. We need you to sign the following petition and send it to everyone you know. We also desperately need funds to head off this attack in the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your support. Together we will take back citizen control over organic standards and preserve organic integrity.

Katrina +4

Well its four days since America's worst natural disaster and we've passed the foreboding 72hr deadline for saving lives.... food has spoiled, water has soiled, the electric grid is foiled and it will has now become a life-threatening situation as survivors run out of life's essential requirements. This rescue operation is turning into a massive post mortum. So how has the most powerful nation on earth handled this catastrophe so far? Yesterday the government took some 1500 local police and safety offices off search and rescue to forcibly stop the looting.... hello?... what difference does a TV make when you are dead? The entire city is under water and it isn't going to drain out.... it was below sea level. New Orleans is gone. Lets not concern ourselves about some petty material possessions while good citizens die waiting to be rescued? Priorities!

What has the all important Homeland Security Department done?... the uber-bureau designed by the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11—claimed to "streamline" our forces in the event of a disaster like a terror plot or natural phenomenon (say Katerina?) ... FEMA, who once held a cabinet position to ensure a close connect to the Commander-And-Chief, now relegated to a back seat in the anti-terrorism-focused Homeland Security Department, has had its infrastructure gutted by the Bush administration.... and is now in the cross-hairs of the media's scapegoat squad... its all their fault... ... What about our leaders?

Well, President Bush waited until yesterday to swing on out from Crawford to take a look at the problems.... of course heading to the oil platforms first... then touring New Orleans and the Mississippi coastline. But even as thousands were dying... he saw it more fitting to give a little speech for VJ day- where he could plug the estate tax cut, the need for more troops in Iraq, and his social security reform.... Priorities

And Vice President Dick Cheney? He's still on vacation! (no doubt he's meeting with his secret energy task force to see how he should protect their assets at the expense of ours... raise the pump price and give us a scare— no doubt these meetings are to be top secret too!)

Meanwhile, the head of FEMA woke up Monday morning and knew America was facing its worst nightmare... He saw the reports of the hurricane growing in intensity from a category 1 storm as it rounded Florida... turning into a category 5 storm as it entered the hot waters of the gulf of Mexico.... he knew of the unprotected coastlines, of the repercussions of Bush's budget cuts in hurricane readiness and relief... he knew that guard troops and the necessary vehicular forces normally in-place were deployed to Iraq... he knew of the ill effects this administration's energy policy has had on energy emissions and how they cause the temperature gulf waters to rise... he knew of the dangers associated with the loss of natural buffers along the coastline due to the "infrastructure" necessary to service all the oil platforms and how these channels cut through the reed-grass coastlines that used to reach some 20 miles from shore have been reduced to a quarter mile in many places.... these channels, that act like a trail bike path cut up a hillside when a storm comes—channeling a rush of water and sediment down the hill or out into the sea... killing the natural ecosystem. He knew and he was worried. But his hands had been tied long ago by Bush's desire to "protect us from terror".

Meanwhile Bush slept soundly in Crawford... his oil buddies might suffer a temporary loss... but they'd just raise the gas price and claim it could have been less troublesome had we been drilling in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Animal Reserves or off the Florida coast or deeper in middle America... then they get a bunch of government contracts to explore and exploit fossil fuels from our nation, build those environmentally unsafe refineries they've desired for so long-- and get huge tax considerations and incentives too!

No, George W woke Monday knowing he could play off this little disaster as a springboard to insure America would pass his energy bills... His secret Energy council could jack the gas prices and he could instill enough fear in America to push through his plan to privatize our resources and make it seem like a good idea.... heck it worked with the Patriot Act after the Twin Towers fell! Bush woke Monday feeling like he had another disaster in the bag— to use as a launch pad for his agenda.

Priorities! He's got us off killing a nation's people, stealing their oil, and propping up a puppet government he can spin as "democracy" while at home.... our nation's people bear the hardships his policy and preferences have bestowed upon us—weakened infrastructure, limited resources, no plan for disaster relief, though that WAS the original purpose of the Homeland Security Department—Monday and Tuesday he went off making stump speeches for his new world order.... kinda like reading a silly kids book to 3rd graders as the twin towers fell. Priorities!

Our Homeland Security Department... the one we've been pouring billions of dollars into to make us better able to respond to trouble... to give us better command and control of our nations resources in the event of a catastrophe.... what have we got? a color-coded warning system, som metal detectors in airports and government offices, a staff to police subway terminals conducting random searches, video cameras for every local law enforcement agency so they can document peace rallies and church group meetings and protests and a very scary database that contains the names, contact info and leanings of every American from 14 to 80... and we've centralized all this information into the hands of a few very questionable few people... (*you look up John Negriponti's history... I wouldn't trust him to hold my dirty socks).... when one of our nations biggest cities is under 20 feet of water with thousands dead and dying.... no alert from our fancy christmas tree warning system was sounded, no distress from Homeland Security is sounded....

While police and fire departments across America have been pleading for better inter-department communication systems... so the police can talk to the fire department and area departments can talk to each other in case of a major disaster... Mr Negriponti and the Bush people have been buying databases, metal detectors and video cameras! They've been spending our money traveling across the nation stumping for increased authorization to invade our privacy.... Priorities!

Look at Wednesday's big news from our Attorney General—they uncovered a "terrorist" plot in San Francisco! Alberto Gonzales went on the air... not to alert America of the collapse of the levies and the subsequent drowning of New Orleans... no, he had more important things on his to-do list.... gotta talk about the "alleged" terror plot they nipped in the bud before it could materialize... justifying their eavesdropping techniques... their extreme violations into our freedoms... to catch a "would-be" terror threat..... the Attorney General saw it more important to scare us with possibility, rather than address reality!

Unfortunately for the millions whose lives are never going to be the same.... they have to be the canary in the coal mine to hopefully wake America up to the reality of our nation's troubles...

Bush, the leader that everyone has such supreme confidence in— is now being put to the test... Watch carefully loyal Bush fans... as the city of New Orleans fades into the sea forever... watch as thousands of our citizens spray "help us" and "no water" signs on their roofs while they wait in vane to be rescued. As they wade in waist-deep water, contaminated by hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals that were stored by the oil and gas industry in "safe" retention pools along the coastline.... watch as no mention is made of their heavy metals and dangerous molecular structures as they invade the wading "survivors" trying to find help from an infrastructure that has given lip-service to this disaster for years.—to an infrastructure hollowed out by troop and vehicle deployment to fight to secure something overseas... I think at last iteration, it was to create a democratic nation — a likeness of our own, in the middle east...

Meanwhile, our nation-building policy has made us unable to protect our own nation from adversity... watch as we slowly respond to the severity of this disaster... how only now, spokesmen for Bush are saying this could be really bad... in 1992 FEMA and a number of environmental scientists ran computer models of a hurricane hitting New Orleans... they are textbook narratives of what we are witnessing... and they have tried for years to ready for such a disaster... but since being relegated to a minor position in the new Homeland Security Department, Bush's and Negriponti's eyes have only been on manufacturing consent for
their terror agenda... not actually helping provide homeland security.

Wake up people... watch him struggle to be than man you all thought he was... he's got no plan for helping America... only exploiting it... watch him hang out on the ropes as he points fingers at one department after another... how he twists the lack of response into a call for reduced freedoms, increased police/miltary preparedness and a need to build refineries and drill-now! ... First he'll prop up the energy prices to scare us, then he'll speak of increased oil drilling.... not alternative energy... he is looking out for his oil interests... not his citizen's interests... watch, listen and learn. We are the smartest nation on earth yet we still run on fossil fuel?

Our collective inventive/creative genius has changed every aspect of the world around us dozens of times since the advent of fossil fuel.... yet we as a people haven't been able to figure anything better than a system of depleting a non-renewable resource to produce pollution generating machines who's very existence is helping to kill the planet! And we don't question why? Now Bush, the Oilman President, is directing our nation into bankruptcy- international turmoil and unprecedented corruption- and who's really behind it? The Oil and Fossil fuel industry... the "secret" energy task force who staffs the governmental regulation bureaus- who establishes the regulatory policy for their own industry- who determines their own penalties, fines and clean-up responsibilities.

time to establish real priorities... time to wake up and take political action... write the congress, demand accountability demand credibility, demand truthfulness...

Wake up America! How much more do these Homeland Terrorists have to do to get you to see their agenda? As thousands perish in Louisiana parishes, see how Bush steps to the plate... swings for the fence, and strikes out!

Now, lets all say a prayer for the dead and dying in in Louisiana and Mississippi... let us pray for the people in need and for the brave Americans who have gone to provide aid... and for the generous hearts who've opened their homes, hearts and wallets to help their fellow Americans.

Pat Robertson says Kill your Neighbor!

On August 22, 2005 Pat Robertson, leader of the Christian television network and self-proclaimed leader of 32 Million people world-wide called for the assassination of a twice-democratically elected foreign head-of-state because he wants unrestricted access to that nation's oil reserves. Please join me and remind Mr. Robertson of the Ten Commandments: I don't know about you... but it should be getting hard to stand up and be a Christian while condoning this behavior. If you REALLY do believe what you say and you value your immortal soul... then stand for the values you preach and speak up against this philistine.

'Thou Shall Not Kill.' and Thou Shall Not Covet, and Thou Shall Not Steal, and Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness and Thou Shall Not Have False Gods Before Me... Commandments 2, 4, 6, 8, 9,10— So what are you going to do?

Do you Keep Holy the Sabbath Day or are you Bearing False Witness as you recite sacred prayers! Looking the other way is harboring the criminal— a crime in God's eyes as well as Man's. Hold this mortal accountable for his actions here on Earth! What is your eternal soul worth?

Vocabulary Lesson

Before we continue to dismantle our language any further...
Lets look at some other words this nation's leaders seem
to have trouble keeping straight!

We have an environmental policy that opens forests for logging,
mountains for mining, rivers for polluting, plains for asphalting,
and lets pollution standards drop to levels before Gaylord Nelson
made Earth Day.... and we call it the CLEAR SKIES ACT!

We cut after school programs, drain our education budget,
gut our national coffers forcing States to find money from us
through other means... We treat our teachers like second class
citizens, we don't provide even marginal accommodations and
equipment for most of our nations poorest schools... while awarding
millions in fees to bussing companies.... and then incarcerating the
children as they don't fit into the suburbs they are bussed into....
and we call that LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND!

We call awarding millions in no-bid contracts to Diebold, Bush's
biggest campaign contributer and maker of the "paperless ballot boxes"
that were set to —reject errors— on rich white ballots causing the ballot
to bounce back til properly cast, but "mistakenly" turned to
—accept all ballots— for poor and democratic voting districts....
and we call that the FAIR VOTING ACT!

We enact sweeping policies to take our freedoms away...
allowing the government to invade our privacy... detain anyone
indefinitely with no access to lawyers, family or friends...
and we call it THE PATRIOT ACT!

We begin a war with a nation—first because it was alleged
to have had involvement in the September 11 attacks....
then to oust a mean dictator— then to find nuclear arms...
then to help them create democracy... now because we're too proud
to just back out.... and we call that PATRIOTIC!

We avoid calling this a WAR because then we'd have to abide by
the Geneva Convention and treat our "DETAINEES" with some
human decency.... instead we call them terrorists...
(people who carry weapons, wear no uniform, operate in secrecy,
answer to no specific chain of command, and commit random acts
of terror to create fear) - but we hire thousands of CONTRACTORS
who carry weapons, wear no uniform, drive unmarked vehicles,
answer to no chain of command, and commit random acts of terror
to create fear---- AND WE'RE THE GOOD GUYS??? and we're not
supposed to have our people abused when they are captured????

NOW we let a man commit treason and go unchallenged....
2 years ago—Karl Rove knowingly exposed an undercover agent
(Valerie Plame) working for our CIA, to punish her husband who
exposed facts that the allegations of Iraq's nuclear threat were false
and unjustified! AND WE CALL THIS JUSTICE!!!

I guarantee if it was a democrat who committed this act
they'd be swinging from a gallows pole!

AND because this administration thinks it gets more media milage
from Robert Novak than a lesser know woman reporter Judith Miller-
a loyal Bush Supporter... they arrest her instead of losing Novak
even though she had nothing to do with the article! She in-effect
took one for the team—and we call this POLITICALLY CORRECT!!!

We tax and jail our less fortunate for petty crimes while we let Enron,
Tyco, S&L Execs go free or with petty sentences... We let
Corporations enjoy powers or citizenship far beyond those of
actual citizens.... grant them unprecedented access to our legislators
in the form of lobbying...give them tax loopholes to allow them to
extort billions from paying what normal citizens have to pay every day...
We allow our legislators to act without ethics or moral standards...
awarding favors and contracts to contributers while accepting
all manner of favors in addition.... AND WE CALL THAT DEMOCRACY!

Sure- lets keep sending this stupid email around telling how some
priest in kansas thinks we have a funny way of twisting our language....

before we all beat our breasts about what great christians we are...
why not start asking the tuff questions like why are we killing
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians? Why are we going broke
paying for a war that seems to only benefit Halliburton and the
terrorists we call CONTRACTORS, why do we let an administration
commit egregious acts of incompetence and continue to operate
without some consequence??? why do we let Karl Rove continue
operate above our nation's laws while loading the offices of our
Public Broadcasting, Defense, Education, Environmental Standards,
Food and Drug, Media regulatory boards, school boards,
Appellate Courts, Supreme Courts.... with people fixed to preserve
his notion of a "FREE SOCIETY"

While we're at it since when did FREE SOCIETY become
synonymous with the RULING CLASS ELITE???

You wanna talk language misrepresentation watch your leaders!
Meantime please stop bringing God into this debacle... I don't think
he 'll like this when you chance to meet him at the end of times.

Ignorance Killed Easter Island- Are We Next?

Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, writes of Easter Island. Once, it was home to a thriving culture that produced the enormous stone statues that continue to inspire awe. It was home to dozens of species of trees, which created and protected an ecosystem fertile enough to support as many as thirty thousand people. Today, it's a barren and largely empty outcropping of volcanic rock. What happened? Did a rare plant virus wipe out the island's forest cover? Not at all. The Easter Islanders chopped their trees down, one by one, until they were all gone. Once the trees were gone, the civilization collapsed and spiraled into cannibalism. Trees were the only means to make the canoes used to fish for food. "I have often asked myself, 'What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?'" Diamond writes, and that, of course, is what is so troubling about the conclusions of "Collapse." Those trees were felled by rational actors-who must have suspected that the destruction of this resource would result in the destruction of their civilization. The lesson of "Collapse" is that societies, as often as not, aren't murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death.

Diamond continues. "The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity."

Actually, the inhabitants of Easter Island were doubly unfortunate – when their
environment collapsed they had nowhere else to go. The example of Easter Island should be chillingly obvious; thanks to globalization, we on planet earth are as interconnected and isolated as the clans of Easter Island. Their fate may serve as a metaphor for a potential worst-case scenario awaiting us.

Hey but its only our children and their children who will suffer for our actions today. One has to wonder what will the children say of us and our edifices to excessiveness

Save the embryo, kill the planet.
Drainability not Sustainability.



ISBN 0670033375

Sensenbrenner's Fiction

While its getting hot and sticky here in Wisconsin- the real heat and stickiness is happening in Washington... and Representative, Jim Sensenbrenner, seems a major source of that hot air and stickiness.

I was raised a few blocks from Jim Sensenbrenner's Shorewood home... I used to walk past his house to Lake Bluff grade school... in fact as a child, I used to avoid stepping on the sidewalk divide lines in reverence to a man my parents supported... Today, this man is conducting an arrogant abuse of power- the likes of which our fine State hasn't seen since Sen Joe McCarthy became the scourge of Wisconsin history. I realize many of you receiving this may be fond of- and supportive of this man... and I grant you at one time, I thought he represented his people in washington.... after all- he is OUR representative!

So before you send me a courteous please remove me from this list response and return to your busy life, please take a moment to view the real life conduct of this arrogant, abusive, and dangerous person... who is OUR elected official... representing the 5th congressional district of Wisconsin, a BLUE state! For other, just send tis on to all your contacts.

For anyone to whom I am cc'ing this correspondence who has not watched the hearing last night, it can be found on www.cspan.org in the center of the page under Video/Audio with the heading:  House Hearing on Patriot Act Reauthorization (06/10/2005).

Watch this c-span coverage of Jim Sensenbrenner chairing a house meeting gathering information regarding the upcoming USA PATRIOT ACT reauthorization.

Look at the facts... not the news media spin. Watch the behavior and actions of this man with your own eyes... without editing, or bias, or media commentary- Watch how the United States is conducting it's business.

I urge you to write him a letter responding to his conduct and his attitude while residing as chair of this important and controversial fact-gathering session. Is justice being served?

sensenbrenner@mail.house.gov

This man deserves the same treatment as Sen Joe McCarthy... to be removed from office and remain another timeless reminder of what happens when the American Public is misled by the arrogant self-interest of a small ruling class.

As many of the people in the US during the communist witch-hunts of the 1950's would say, and as many of the citizens of germany up to and during Nazi rulership... "we didn't know any better". Well consider this another chance to become aware.

This is your country... so ask yourself, what have you done for it lately? There has never been a more urgent time to participate in the political process than now. With corporate control of media, legislature, the soon the judicial system, your financial, agricultural and entertainment lifestyles are being created for you, not by you...

While its easy to go on thinking otherwise, the facts are becoming widespread, and hard to refute. The arrogance some of our politicians display in the presence of the collective ignorance of our nation's upper-middle class is soon going to give way to a reckoning- likes of which will rival the failure of McCarthy's communist witch-hunt, and the realization of Hitler's abuse of power.

If you continue to render a blind eye to the FACTS, by choosing to watch, listen and read the "news" from corporate media giants like GE, Viacom, ClearChannel, Turner, Murdock, and Disney... or if you want to think PBS is still unbiased and a good place to hear both sides of the debate... then be warned that this was another wake-up call.

You are not going to learn about the issues that matter to you on television, radio, or newsprint that is holds its own interests before presenting facts... take another moment to bookmark the daily independent media news show on www.democracynow.org just look at the real news happening to your world... not this fiction about Michael Jackson, StarWars, and who Tom Cruise is dating.

Please take the time to learn the truth, then hold your leadership accountable for their actions. It is not acceptable to simply take what they are feeding you because it is cheap and easy.... unless that is your measure for quality of life?

Shoe on the other foot?

I'm really having difficulty coming to terms with what's happening in the united states right now.... I seriously can't believe anyone is able to support what's happening and have a conscience, or a true sense of morality.

This week this administration will tighten the noose on democracy to near stranglehold - ending filibuster and allowing the appointment of right-wing corporate leaning judges.... look what that means.... more of this....

30 yrs after the Vietnam conflict, Pham Thi Thuy Linh,11 uses her feet to do her mathe homework at the hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Pham was born with no arms as a result of her parents exposre to Agent Orange. This year a US federal judge dismissed the class-acton lawsuit filed on behalf of 4 Million Vietnamese claiming War Crimes against US chemical companies for using Agent Orange during the war.



check this picture out... send it to your "conservative" friends and ask them if they think its okay for us to maim and kill and poison with reckless abandonment and have corporate-leaning judges absolve us of blame... so long as the stock market continues to give return on investments. Ask them what they think if/when other nations (like China) begin to do this to us....

What if the shoe were on the other foot? What would our leaders do if Vietnam poisoned us and created children like this... and their courts absolved them of wrongdoing?

Journalist Bill Moyer's spoke at a conference yesterday in Atlanta for the first time since retiring from PBS. Moyers refuted the allegations of Kenneth Tomlinson, head of PBS, that his program was biased... and went on to outline many facts that are not reaching the public through conventional media. Please take time to listen/watch to his public address on this link.
http://www.democracynow.org/streampage.pl

March Of Madness!

Hi Everyone,

Yes its almost spring and our lives are beginning to get very busy. In the last two weeks I
have had more days with multiple-conflicting events than days without!- how bout you?
Social calendar filling up faster than the price of gas at the pump? March Madness is upon
us, but what we need to realize is that THIS March Madness has nothing to do with
college hoops and brackets, but rather is a fight for our freedoms and a marginalizing of
our rights as citizens. This is the March OF Madness. Our nation's leaders are Marching in
new nominees for leadership roles faster than sportscasters are stumbling over
themselves to pick the outcome of the final four. New Justices, New UN Leaders, New
Ethics Committee Members, New Congressional Leaders, New Ambassadors in the Middle
East, New Rulers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine... New Heads of Corporations,
New Leaders of the FDA, New Supreme Court Justices, and hundreds of New regulations,
laws, mandates and "reforms" and New atrocities across the globe to be scuttled and hid
from our basketball-minded masses!

It is important that we keep focused on our duty as citizens in America, to participate in
the political process. That means we may have to adjust our priorities now and again to
fit-in important actions that help get our voices heard by neighbors and our elected
officials.

We are living in very precarious times... Judges who owe their loyalty to major corporations
and industries are again up for appointment to LIFETIME posts as adjudicators of our well-
being. It is not inconceivable that their ties to big business will affect their judgment. 20 of
these Judge nominees were narrowly refused two years ago by congress... now that the
conservatives control even more seats, these same "unacceptable" judicial nominations are
up again. Without your voice, they stand a chance of being successfully passed... with no
way to renege their seats as they turn our court systems in favor of big business and
against we consumers.

Don't remain silent and while companies like Enron and Tyco, big business' and their
shady banking partners get away with stealing billions of dollars from good citizens and
remain exonerated by a judicial system that is in-their pockets... don't let our leaders
insulate their cronies behind an impenetrable defense they call "democracy" Those same
cronies who boldly divert billions of dollars in off-shore accounts- free from taxation.
While we suffer to make up the balance of their Trillion Dollar Deficits! It's your country
too. Time is coming to defend it from the enemy- within.

Yes, don't sit back and watch March Madness Basketball —while the real March of Madness
happens all around you. The United Nations is being sabotaged by the newest Bush
appointment, US Ambassador to the UN, NeoCon dandy, John Bolton- who has repeatedly
denounced the viability of usefulness of the UN for years... now with the unilateral power
of the US behind him, he can singlehandedly castrate the very institution he has publicly
abhorred... and you won't see highlights of those games on any half-time report.

I hope you take time to participate in some of the many events that either are, or soon will
be coming to debate before our legislators - (Federal, Regional, State and Local). The few
minutes you spend now attending a local meeting does make a difference. The few phone-
calls you make to neighbors or legislators does make a difference. The time you take from
your busy schedule to attend events that educate you in alternative perspectives to the
rhetoric we are told is "news" - does make a difference.

It certainly does seem a good time to be alive for many of us... seems like we have much
to be happy about... great shows on tv, great movies in theaters, wonderful resorts to visit,
terrific vehicles to move about in, fabulous clothes to wear, wonderful clubs to be seen at,
sporting events elevated to near circus-like pagentry...I imagine the citizens of Rome felt
that way too- right up to their collapse. Don't let this artificial buzz our leaders call
"prosperity" lull you into submission... educate, activate, participate. Our children's future
is in the balance and we should feel obligated to do our best for them- as our parents did
for us and theirs before them.

No grandstands, no bleachers, no luxury boxes, no sidelines, its time to get in the game.