Pakman V Seder

..

How is it legal to PLANT MOLES in a DOJ department, as Hans von Spakovsky did? How is it not treasonous to try to prevent smooth operation of our elections as von Spakovsky now seems to be attempting???

Check out Steven Rosenfeld piece about it here--

http://www.alternet.org/story/153630/is_privacy_act_violated_as_voting_w...

Under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), if your activism effects profits, you are a terra-ist.

Upton Sinclair wrote to expose cruelty and harm to livestock, workers and consumers (all animals, by the way) by the meat industry, and did that for the good of society -- but TODAY his actions would be considered terra-ism! Not good.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/153650/why_you_can_be_branded_a_terrorist...

[excerpt]

When Upton Sinclair published his scathing condemnation of the unsanitary and atrocious labor practices of the meatpacking industry in 1906, the purchase of American meat both nationally and internationally took a 50 percent nosedive. Meanwhile, in less than a year, the public outcry garnered by Sinclair’s invaluable investigative work led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act of, which provided the base structure of the Food and Drug Administration. However, if SInclair had published The Jungle today, he might just be facing prosecution for terrorism.

[read more at link]

=========================================
=========================================

At the link you'll read how the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has filed suit against the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act on the grounds that it stifles free speech.

Shouldn't it also be argued that AETA serves only the profit motives of a FEW and not societal well-being as a WHOLE? Would that be the General Welfare clause of the Constitution?

Chomsky's characterization of the United States as a "propaganda" state like all the rest--distinguishable only by its more effective and seductive salesmanship--is particularly hard to swallow. For every Sidney Hook who dismissed the havoc of Vietnam as "an unfortunate accidental loss of life" and "the unintended consequence of military action," there was a Noam Chomsky, willing--and able--to stand up and decry the madness. Maybe the reaction came to little too late, but Americans eventually rebelled against their own government's policy and, through their action, ended a nightmare.
Published: Saturday, March 06, 1982

;)

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

***

re: nora on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 12:24am.
GRRR!{but glad some have been fighting this but overall to 'this society' ~ WTF

morning folks!

When the government won't test, this citizen does.

Interesting.

Plus this information about a Pallisades, Michigan, nuclear reactor plant--

http://www.enviroreporter.com/2012/01/seasons-readings/

[excerpt]

...

Five miles south of the harbor town sits Palisades Nuclear Plant which we could see from the dunes by the dark choppy water. The 40 year old plant sits on 430 acres and has had a slew of recent problems. The reactor unexpectedly shut down Sept. 25, 2011 when a worker caused an arc in an electric panel.

“This resulted in a series of electrical issues that caused the plant to shut down and sent signals to multiple plant systems causing certain safety pumps to start and some safety valves to reposition,” said a news release.

This came on the heels of a leaking valve Sept. 16 and an Aug. 9 accident when a coupling that holds pipes together ruptured. A similar failure occurred in 2009 at the plant.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently cited improper maintenance by workers that led to a May 10, 2011 shutdown of a water pump at Palisades reactor. The NRC downgraded the plant one notch on a scale of five Jan. 5 for the May incident and may further downgrade the nuclear reactor complex after review of the latest accidents and mishaps.

Palisades spent fuel rods sit outside in 21 16-foot-tall storage casks on concrete pads, each filled with 30 tons of rods even more radioactive than the ones operating in the core of the reactor. Palisades’operating license was renewed by the NRC in 2007 and is valid until 2031 when it will be 60 years old.

...

[read more at link]

sect...

http://www.mmoutreach.org/mormon/articles/facts_mormon_wont_tell.htm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28503

[excerpt]

...

History tells us that an Empire cannot be built on the political foundations of a Republic.

In this regard, it should come as no surprise that the new Iran sanctions regime adopted by the US Congress became law on New Year's Eve, December 31st, on the same day Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012), which suspends civil liberties and allows for the "Indefinite Detention of Americans". (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Inauguration of Police State USA 2012. Obama Signs the “National Defense Authorization Act ", Global Research, January 1, 2012)

The Obama administration is intent upon crushing both social dissent as well as antiwar protest. The American Republic is incompatible with America's "long war". What is required is the instatement of a "democratic dictatorship", a de facto military rule in civilian cloths.

Thousands of Troops to Israel

Advanced war preparations are ongoing. Barely mentioned by the Western media, although confirmed by Israeli press reports, the Pentagon is preparing to send several thousand US troops to Israel.

In the context of ongoing war preparations, these troops are slated to participate in joint US-Israeli military maneuvers in Spring 2012, described by the Jerusalem Post as "the largest-ever missile defense exercise in [Israel's] history." (emphasis added)

Last week [11-18 December], Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US’s Third Air Force based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming drill, expected to see the deployment of several thousand American soldiers in Israel. (US commander visits Israel to finalize missile... Jerusalem Post December 21, 2011 emphasis added)

These war games involve the testing of Israel's air defense system, which is now fully integrated into the US global missile detection system, following the installation (December 2008) of a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system. (See www.defense.gov/news/, December 30, 2011, .See also Sen. Joseph Azzolina, Protecting Israel from Iran's missiles, Bayshore News, December 26, 2008).

...

[read more at link]

There's no rest for the puppet armies of the Global Corporatists...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28520

[excerpt]

Lagos Dissents Under IMF Hegemony

Nigeria: The Next Front for AFRICOM

On a recent trip to West Africa, the newly appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde ordered the governments of Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana and Chad to relinquish vital fuel subsidies. Much to the dismay of the population of these nations, the prices of fuel and transport have near tripled over night without notice, causing widespread violence on the streets of the Nigerian capital of Abuja and its economic center, Lagos. Much like the IMF induced riots in Indonesia during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, public discontent in Nigeria is channelled towards an incompetent and self-serving domestic elite, compliant to the interests of fraudulent foreign institutions.

Although Nigeria holds the most proven oil reserves in Africa behind Libya, it’s people are now expected to pay a fee closer to what the average American pays for the cost of fuel, an exorbitant sum in contrast to its regional neighbours. Alternatively, other oil producing nations such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offer their populations fuel for as little as $0.12 USD per gallon. While Lagos has one of Africa’s highest concentration of billionaires, the vast majority of the population struggle daily on less than $2.00 USD. Amid a staggering 47% youth unemployment rate and thousands of annual deaths related to preventable diseases, the IMF has pulled the rug out from under a nation where safe drinking water is a luxury to around 80% of it’s populace.

Although Nigeria produces 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day intended for export use, the country struggles with generating sufficient electrical power and maintaining its infrastructure. Ironically enough, less than 6% of bank depositors own 88% of all bank deposits in Nigeria. Goldman Sachs employees line its domestic government, in addition to the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is widely considered by many to be the de facto Prime Minister. Even after decades of producing lucrative oil exports, Nigeria has failed to maintain it’s own refineries, forcing it to illogically purchase oil imports from other nations. Society at large has not benefited from Nigeria’s natural riches, so it comes as no surprise that a severe level of distrust is held towards the government, who claims the fuel subsidy needs to be lifted in order to divert funds towards improving the quality of life within the country.

Like so many other nations, Nigerian people have suffered from a systematically reduced living standard after being subjected to the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP). Before a loan can be taken from the World Bank or IMF, a country must first follow strict economic policies, which include currency devaluation, lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies and detrimental budget cuts to critical public sector health and education services.

SAPs encourage borrower countries to focus on the production and export of domestic commodities and resources to increase foreign exchange, which can often be subject to dramatic fluctuations in value. Without the protection of price controls and an authentic currency rate, extreme inflation and poverty subsist to the point of civil unrest, as seen in a wide array of countries around the world (usually in former colonial protectorates). The people of Nigeria have been one of the world’s most vocal against IMF-induced austerity measures, student protests have been met with heavy handed repression since 1986 and several times since then, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. As a testament to the success of the loan, the average laborer in Nigeria earned 35% more in the 1970’s than he would of in 2012.

Working through the direct representation of Western Financial Institutions and the IMF in Nigeria’s Government, a new IMF conditionality calls for the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Olusegun Aganga, the former Nigerian Minister of Finance commented on how the SWF was hastily pushed through and enacted prior to the countries national elections. If huge savings are amassed from oil exports and austerity measures, one cannot realistically expect that these funds will be invested towards infrastructure development based on the current track record of the Nigerian Government. Further more, it is increasingly more likely that any proceeds from a SWF would be beneficial to Western institutions and markets, which initially demanded its creation. Nigerian philanthropist Bukar Usman prophetically writes “I have genuine fears that the SWF would serve us no better than other foreign-recommended "remedies" which we had implemented to our own detriment in the past or are being pushed to implement today.”

The abrupt simultaneous removal of fuel subsidies in several West African nations is a clear indication of who is really in charge of things in post-colonial Africa. The timing of its cushion-less implementation could not be any worse, Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency after forty people were killed in a church bombing on Christmas day, an act allegedly committed by the Islamist separatist group, Boko Haram. The group advocates dividing the predominately Muslim northern states from the Christian southern states, a similar predicament to the recent division of Sudan.

As the United States African Command (AFRICOM) begins to gain a foothold into the continent with its troops officially present in Eritrea and Uganda in an effort to maintain security and remove other theocratic religious groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, the sectarian violence in Nigeria provides a convenient pretext for military intervention in the continuing resource war. For further insight into this theory, it is interesting to note that United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania conducted a series of African war game scenarios in preparation for the Pentagon’s expansion of AFRICOM under the Obama Administration.

In the presence of US State Department Officials, employees from The Rand Corporation and Israeli military personnel, a military exercise was undertaken which tested how AFRICOM would respond to a disintegrating Nigeria on the verge of collapse amidst civil war.
...

[read more at link]

God help America if Tim Tebow has a vision quest to be our next president. Anyone of the Rethug nominees could lockup the nomination overnight if they got Tebow to give up football and run as a vp candidate.

Don't laugh. Tebow more popular than Palin and Jesus.

Tim Tebow: Praising the Player. Hating the Game.
By Dave Zirin

...I further can’t stand that Tim Tebow gets a media pass for his extremist politics—the politics of Christianist hegemony—while so many athletes over the years have had their livelihoods destroyed for daring to speak out for the outnumbered and oppressed. I can’t stand the way we all know but don’t say that if Tebow was a devout Muslim, the media narrative about his “faith” would be profoundly different....
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-01-08-679/index.html

Iran nuclear scientist 'killed' by car bomb
State media reports that magnetic bomb placed on vehicle has killed uranium enrichment supervisor in Tehran.

A nuclear scientist who supervised a department at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility has been killed by a magnetic bomb placed on his car by two assailants in northern Tehran, Iranian media reported.

The attack strongly resembles earlier killings of scientists working on the country's controversial nuclear programme.

The bomb explosion killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz facility in central Iran, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said Israeli agents were behind the attack, but said they cannot "prevent progress'' in what Iran claims are peaceful nuclear efforts.

Safar Ali Baratloo, a senior security official, was also quoted by Fars as saying the attack was the work of Israelis.

"The magnetic bomb is of the same types already used to assassinate our scientists," he said.......

Imad Khadduri, a nuclear expert, told Al Jazeera, "There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such scientists", beyond the five targeted in recent attacks.

He said the string of assassinations was "100 per cent Mossad [Israel's secret service]", but he called the victims "small fish".

Ronen Bergman, an Israeli author and journalist, told Al Jazeera that "for years Mossad has a tradition of assassinating scientists", for two specific purposes.

"One target is to take out people of profound importance [to the project], and the second target is to spread fear among the other scientists that the same fate may happen to them as well."....

There was no immediate word from officials in Israel, which has always declined comment on previous such bombings.

On Tuesday, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, Israel's military chief of staff, was quoted as saying that Iran should expect more "unnatural" events in 2012.

His comments, to a closed-door parliamentary panel, were widely interpreted as alluding to previous acts of sabotage.

"For Iran, 2012 is a critical year in combining the continuation of its nuclearisation, internal changes in the Iranian leadership, continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner," Gantz was quoted as saying.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/01/201211162848691713.html

Saturday, 7 January 2012
The drumbeats of war are getting louder
It is 12 months since the heroic shabab of Tunisia overthrew EU-favourite Ben Ali and set in motion the Arab masses across the region.

Now we see clearly the response of the ailing Western powers which were thrown off kilter as their system of client states creaked, cracked and began to fall apart. It is war - actual and threatened.

The drumbeats for war with Iran are getting louder, and the escalating provocations by Western capitals are developing a logic of their own. It admits of no alternative and points in only one direction – towards military conflict. Or to put it more accurately, towards open military conflict. The head of Britain's MI6 has already called for covert military operations in Iran - which are, of course, an act of war - and they have been taking place. So are the drone overflights, which are also legally an act of aggression.

Are there great difficulties facing any such venture? There most certainly are - huge ones, which would make it a disaster of world historic proportions. But it is a false, if comforting, logic which says that on account of such catastrophic consequences war with Iran is unthinkable. Many will recall that "unthinkable" was the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's response to the proposition a few years ago. We now know, thanks to some first class journalism at the Guardian, that that is no longer the position of the mandarins of the British state. It is, in fact, to sign up our country to a war in advance.

And now we have the British government taking Iran's English language Press TV station off the Sky platform. The justification will bring a smile even to those who are most inured to the catalogue of double standards applied by the West to the Middle East. There was a mistake, you see, in the original application for a broadcasting licence. It should not have been granted because Press TV is not headquartered in Britain and therefore could not pass the tests for editorial accountability required by the regulator. All fair, impartial and very British is the reasoning. Nothing to do with our bellicose foreign policy.

Except there is the rather glaring inconsistency that CNN, Fox News, etc are also not headquartered in Britain, yet were not only given broadcasting licences but still have them and face no prospect of this impartial rule being applied to them. I don't know which of David Cameron's Eton/Oxford-trained chums came up with this wheeze imagining that it would convince anyone, but their parents and the taxpayer have wasted their money on his education.

We already knew, thanks to wikileaks, that the British government was assuring its allies in the Middle East and elsewhere that it was investigating all avenues to get Press TV off Sky. One of those allies is, of course, the bloated House of Saud. With the fall of Mubarak, it has been elevated to the role of gendarme of reaction within the region, invading Bahrain (which was reported on seriously only by... Press TV), leading up Gulf Cooperation Council (the monarchical states, including the distinctly non-Gulf Jordan and Morocco) interference across the region under the shameless guise of promoting "democracy", and fomenting murderous sectarian division aimed at weakening Iran and anyone who supports its independence.

This is the same House of Saud which received the other week $30 billion of war planes from a US which is busy telling us it is for the people against the military in, for example, Syria. And it is a US where the grotesques in the Republican primaries are outbidding each other over who would be first to pull the trigger in the Gulf and who is more enthral to Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu.

The rapid turn of events is alarming even some establishment figures - from foreign policy wonks in Washington to former heads of Israel's internal and external spy agencies. We can be sure that there is tortured deliberating at the highest levels. But it would be light-minded in the extreme to imagine that the existence of those making plausible and rational arguments against unleashing what would turn out to be a major war - much bigger than the one-sided assault on beggared Iraq - means that they will either prevail or necessarily act as a brake on the slide down the bloody slope.

If this was about rationality and plausibility, we would never have gone to war with Iraq. Cast your mind back exactly 10 years ago.

We had gone to war in Afghanistan. Indeed, we were told by Tony Blair and George Bush that it was all but over and there would be a swift move to democracy, development and stability. We know now that there had been a sharp debate in the White House immediately following 9/11 over whether to attack Iraq first, or to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq. Both countries, of course, had nothing to do with 9/11 - not a single one of their citizens was involved. The attackers were overwhelmingly Saudi.

But throughout 2002 as the Stop the War movement rolled into towns and cities across the country we were told by wise-heads in the op ed columns that so great were the risks and so unfeasible the aims of war on Iraq that sense would prevail and it would not take place. And their arguments against the war were cogent. Some of them were a reflection of the some of the arguments we made: that there would be resistance, that the war would lead to further wars, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that there was no Al Qaida in Iraq but that there would be as a result of invasion, and - as anyone who knew anything about the region could see - that toppling Saddam Hussein would massively increase the power and influence of Iran, in Iraq and throughout the region. The establishment divisions grew and the argument escalated internationally. It was not a prelude to an outbreak of sanity, however. It was a precursor to war, the decision for which had already been made; just as the sanctions and UN resolutions were not an alternative to war, but a prelude to it.

Ten years on, we face an eerily similar situation - but with an Iran which, as predicted, is stronger. It would be folly to hope against all the evidence to the contrary that our leaders this time will bow to rational argument, if left to their own devices. For they have their own warped rationality, summed up by one national security insider in Washington who said, "You think war with Iran would be tough now? You're right. But it will be even tougher if we leave it five years."

Even in their own terms, their attempts to defend their hegemony in the Middle East lead to incendiary contradictions as the plates shift afloat a magma of boiling popular anger. So we have a US administration which is desperate to establish some relationship with (and shackles on) whatever government arises in Egypt as an alternative to military rule. Yet at the same time Obama wields an extremely expensive veto at the UN Security Council at the end of last year yet again blocking condemnation of Israel's settlement building. Obama's approval rating in Egypt stands at 3 percent, lower even than George Bush's - and less than a 15th of Presidents Erdogan and Ahmadinejad.

Or we have a French government which knows full well that encouraging a pro-western policy by NATO member Turkey is crucial to attempts to turn the strife in Syria into the imposition of a friendly government that will abandon any notion of resistance to imperialism and Israel. Then the same French government picks a fight with the whole of the Turkish political class by supporting a law that would make denial of the Armenian genocide illegal. As for the systematic murder by French imperialism of the Algerians, Vietnamese and many others - well you can justify that all you want.

Then there is the British government. As well as its own inanities, it also follows the Americans and French in theirs - from Israel to what is increasingly recognised to be the bloody blunder of Libya.

Finally, there is the false counsel that the deepening economic crisis means that they simply don't have the money for war, especially one that would make the previous oil shocks look merely like an irritating case of gazumping. It is true that the Pentagon now faces financial constraint - and the US accounts for 75 percent of Nato military spending. Obama has officially announced what has long been known to be the new military doctrine: to draw down as many forces as possible in Europe and the Middle East and to redeploy into a more aggressive posture encircling China. Hence the withdrawal from Iraq and the doomed attempt to exert influence there from an absurdly named "embassy" of 16,000 people including 5,000 mercenaries (the private sector picks up the bill for their pensions, missing body parts and so on).

But this is precisely the point. For decade after decade the US state could provide guns as well as butter in the form of rising living-standards and economic growth. Now it can provide no butter. But it has every intention of providing guns. Indeed, according to its own warped logic it has no alternative. Facing a growing China and shifting balance in the world economy, the one thing that US capitalists have is a super abundance of guns, which can be used to extract other people's butter.

So don't imagine that financial strictures and the strains of shifting the military balance to the Pacific mean that there is more likelihood of the US, with its allies, accepting Iran as a major, independent regional power in the Gulf - the most important oil producing area on the planet. The opposite is the case. It is more likely to lead them to calculate that it is better to "take down" Iran now (which is why they are concerned about Syria) in order not to leave a gigantic problem as they are forced to refocus elsewhere. It's more likely to leave them more dependent on arming bellicose and volatile allies in the region to hold the fort during and after - Saudi Arabia and Israel. And if you think the dysfunctional US political system has a tendency to produce crazies, it is as nothing compared to Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

Does this mean that war is inevitable? Far from it. The mobilisation of mass opinion can shift the calculus, allied as it now can be with the revolutionary developments in Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere. We need to raise the alarm in order to agitate that mass. We also need to stand foursquare against all the softening up arguments that are being deployed to send us to sleep - from new dodgy dossiers to fanciful arguments that perhaps just a little bit of military action in Libya, or Syria, will be welcome and an alternative to wider suffering and conflagration. It is not. It is what it always has been – stepping stones to greater slaughter.

The Stop the War Coalition national steering committee meets next Saturday. I urge you to follow its deliberations and calls to action.
http://www.votegeorgegalloway.com/2012/01/drumbeats-of-war-are-getting-l...

Super Bowl Viewers Will See Graphic Anti-Abortion Ads With Pictures Of Bloody Fetuses

Super Bowl viewers in 40 cities across the country will see graphic ads featuring images of bloody, aborted fetuses. The ads are being paid for by fringe anti-abortion candidateRandall Terry:

Anti-abortion ads showing graphic images of aborted fetuses covered in blood and surrounded by religious icons will air during the Super Bowl in February, courtesy of Democratic Presidential candidate Randall Terry.

Terry, who has spent a year in jail and been arrested 50 times for his anti-abortion efforts, is using a Federal Election Commission loophole that ensures ads for political candidates cannot be prohibited within 45 days of an election. Apparently, primaries count, so Terry will be running ads on local stations during Super Bowl XLVI February 5....
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/761538/super_bowl_viewers_w...

NPR interview of author of "Intel Wars." Matthew Aid reveals the spying on US.

If only this were a nightmare from which we could wake-up and breathe a sigh of relief.

But it isn't. It is happening while we're wide awake.

This so-called 'incident' reveals that the pro-war rhetoric is baseless. There is no shred of truth in any of the USA military propaganda. Not a shred.

To think, these guys will come back and will be greeted with many, "Thank you for your service" 21st Century imperialist nation salutations. Isn't it time the only thanks these soldiers get come from the imperialist corporatists they are actually serving?

I mean, these thugs in uniforms are enjoying their sick pecking order privileges as much as the corporate thugs enjoy denying medical care to, foreclosing on and bankrupting citizens at home. It is the predators' way. Nothing is of value but their own perceived primacy. Not decency, not kindness, not life itself.

The Powerful Rich and Elite promote a Death Cult at home and abroad with sick glee. It is the same sick glee seen reflected in this military killer club moment as displayed by the troops in service to the Transnational Corporate goals.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/US_troops_defile_dead_Afghans_on_camera/1...

Obama's proposed plan to bring 'justice' to mortgage holders and bank fraudsters criticized here:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30212.htm

[excerpt]
...

Justice isn't served by the suppression of information. (Neither is the free market.) Justice isn't served by letting an entire group of wealthy and powerful individuals remain above the law. And justice isn't served when millions of Americans continue to pay the price of financial ruin or hardship for crimes that will forever remain unpunished.

In fact, justice won't be served unless bankers themselves are forced to pay personally. Many of them made millions by deceiving homeowners, shareholders, and investors. Unless they're required to reimburse their victims they have no reason not to keep defrauding them again and again.

And do we really think that the country's screwed-over homeowners will find justice under this deal? The Administration's Making Home Affordable program was supposed to help homeowners who had missed two or more payments, but new Treasury Department reports show that less than 20 percent of the 4.6 million people who fit that description will even be considered eligible for the program.

Is this bank-managed program likely to do any better, especially with the design flaws we've heard about already? (There are bound to be others that haven't been reported yet.)

Here's the most unjust thing of all: Under this deal,crooks will get away with their crimes without even suffering the embarrassment of being investigated. Whoever said "crime doesn't pay" will have to eat their words - again.

...

[read more at link]

The Corporate Monsters just don't like vegetarians and vegans, do they?

http://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/that-isn-wax-on-your-apple...

So, my question is, why is it that the more WEATHER MODIFICATION (geoengineering) is "applied"/experimented with, the more horrendous weather conditions we see developing?

Interesting overview here, plus it indicates the US military ha$ a heavy hand in altering the weather--

http://theintelhub.com/2011/03/30/secret-presidential-chemtrail-budget-u...

Similar to the USA -- except here we call it BANKING.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9006027/Mafia-is-Ital...

Israeli court ruling on citizenship 'racist'
Rights groups slam supreme court ruling upholding law banning Palestinians married to Israelis from getting citizenship.

Israel's Supreme Court has upheld a controversial law that bans most Palestinians who marry Israelis from obtaining either citizenship or residency in the country.

In a six-five ruling, the court agreed that Palestinians who gain Israeli citizenship through marriage pose a security threat.

Parliament passed the law in 2003, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, a time when fighters from the West Bank frequently entered Israel to carry out deadly attacks.

The law is believed to have prevented thousands of Palestinians from living with their spouses.

Civil rights groups had argued that Israel's Basic Laws, the country's de facto constitution, grant all citizens the right to family life. They also say that few Palestinian spouses of Israelis have ever been involved in violence.

"It is a dark day for the protection of human rights and for the Israeli Supreme Court," lawyers Dan Yakir and Oded Feller, from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in a statement.

ACRI was one of three rights groups that had appealed to the Supreme Court over the law.

'Splitting families'

The 2003 law bans granting citizenship or residency to Palestinian spouses of Israelis, but allows for certain exemptions for people who are not believed to pose security risks, including Palestinian men older than 35 and women older than 25.

Last year, only 33 out of 3,000 applications for exemptions were approved, said lawyer Sawsan Zaher, who filed a challenge to the law on behalf of the Adalah Arab rights advocacy group........
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/01/2012112142810371350.htm...

(Jimmy Carter is, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., one of only two native Georgians to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.)

Carter cites Egypt election 'irregularities'
Former US president serving as election monitor for first post-Mubarak vote says 900 complaints were received.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/01/201211393442772821.html

Thank God.

Robert Fisk: This is not about 'bad apples'. This is the horror of war

So now it's snapshots of US Marines pissing on the Afghan dead. Better, I suppose, than the US soldiers pictured beside the innocent Afghan teenager they fragged back in March of last year. Or the female guard posing with the dead Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib. Not to mention Haditha or the murder videos taken by US troops in the field – the grenading of an old shepherd by an Iraqi highway comes to mind – or My Lai or the massacre of refugees by US forces in Korea or the murder of Malayan villagers by British troops. Or the Bloody Sunday massacre of 14 Catholics by British troops in Derry in 1972. And please note, I have not even mentioned the name of Baha Mousa.

The US Marines' response to the pissing pictures was oh so typical. These men were not abiding by the "core values" of the Marines, we were informed. Same old story. A "rogue" unit, a few "bad apples", rotten eggs. Maybe.

But if there is one game of pissing on the dead, how many others happened without pictures? How many other shepherds got fragged in Iraq? How many other Hadithas have there been? There were plenty of other My Lais................

...For note, it was not the killing of these men that worried the Marine Corps in the US – it was the pissing. Nothing wrong in killing amid the "core values" of the Marine Corps; you just shouldn't urinate on the corpses. And even more to the point: YOU MUSTN'T DO IT ON CAMERA! Too late. It comes to this. Armies are horrible creatures and soldiers do wicked things but when we accept all these lies about "bad apples" and the exceptionalism of crime in war – "there may have been some excesses" is the usual dictator-speak – we are accepting war and going along with the dishonesty of it and we are making it more possible and easier and the killings and rapes more excusable and more frequent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-this-...

giggling { cackling ;) }? ;) ... kinda LOL
{ ... does anyone care ;D }

;)

Thanks Ms_A (@ 10:56am). That's a super video!

I'd like to make a book recommendation along this line of getting at as much 'truth' as one can sneak past the Institutions of Falsehood (I think you know who I mean).

This book is so interesting and eye-opening, and made me realize that when European-style Science was being "invented" -- the wrong fork in the road was taken.

We finally need to start undoing such detours, and this book is one of those that makes the grand effort to tell us, so we can't ask "Why didn't anyone tell me?": The Forbidden Universe. It is fascinating.

The visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Latin America this week caused a frenzy in Washington. The thought of US Enemy #1 just miles away, south of the border, cozying up to nations once dominated by Washington’s agenda was too much to bear for a government desperately trying to isolate Iran and rid the Persian nation of the Islamic Revolution. Days before Ahmadinejad’s arrival to Venezuela, his first stop on a four-country Latin American tour, the US State Department warned the region of receiving the Iranian President and strengthening ties while Washington was intensifying sanctions against Iran and increasing pressure on Ahmadinejad’s government. As a sign of its severity, Washington also expelled a Venezuelan diplomat serving as General Consul in Miami, for alleged links to an unsubstantiated Iranian plot against the United States.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez laughed off Washington’s warnings as words from a “ridiculous empire” that no longer “dominates us in Latin America”. “We are sovereign nations”, Chavez made clear, as he received the Iranian President with open arms. Chavez even ironized about Washington’s accusations that the Iranian-Venezuelan relationship represents a threat to the United States.

“They accuse us over and over again of plans to attack the United States. They say we are building a bomb to launch against Washington. See that hill right there”, said President Chavez to journalists at the presidential palace covering Ahmadinejad’s arrival. “The grass will open up to reveal a big atomic bomb that President Ahmadinejad and I will launch against the White House”, he joked.....

....As President Chavez pointed out recently, the Venezuelan government is investing more in social programs and anti-poverty measures each year while countries such as the United States are cutting back social services. In Venezuela, poverty has been reduced by over 50% during the last ten years, thanks to the social policies of the Chavez administration, while in the United States, 1 in 5 children are currently living in extreme poverty. Unemployment in Venezuela was 6.5% in December 2011, while in the US, the rate sat at 8.5%. Exclusion, lack of opportunity, voter abstention and other social ills are on the rise in the United States.

“Obama, forget about it. Mind your own business and take care of your own country, where you have a lot of problems”, suggested President Chavez during a recent speech. Chavez was also quick to point out that Obama just cut federal assistance for home heating oil costs for low income families, leaving thousands to suffer through a bitter cold winter, choosing between food or warmth. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government just renewed and expanded its home heating oil assistance program to communities in the US through Citgo, its US-based oil company. For the past 7 years, the Venezuelan company Citgo has been the only oil corporation in the US willing to provide reduced-cost home heating oil to those in need. It’s ironic that the Venezuelan government is helping people in the US while the US government and US companies refuse to do so....
http://www.chavezcode.com/2012/01/venezuela-threat-of-good-example.html

...in a world that is two thirds water?"

Martin Luther King Speech - Where do we go from here

Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Atlanta, Georgia
16 August 1967

..."Where do we go from here," that we honestly face the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?" These are questions that must be asked.
http://www.famous-speeches-and-speech-topics.info/martin-luther-king-spe...

End Game

inspire us again....

Did you know that Blackwater has changed its name AGAIN? This time it is Academi.

Ready, everybody? One, two, three -- YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE!

But, darn, Blackwater/Xe/Academi CAN infiltrate, and it looks like they are doing just that for 2011's worst business of the year, that being MONSANTO suicide seed and chemical company...so be vigilant activist groups who activate awareness about the monstrous profiteering and polluting of the Monsanto Frankenstein chemical/GMObiochemical Creator corporation.

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/setting-record-straight-did-monsanto...

...but these people ARE true American Heroes!

Jan 12, 2012 at 09:07 AM PST.
Pennsylvania school district runs out of money to pay teachers, but they keep teaching
by Laura Clawson

(NEA Today)How's this for a crisis in American education? One school district outside of Philadelphia is going broke. Straight-up broke. The Chester Upland school district has already laid off 40 percent of its teachers and professional staff and about half of its support staff, raising class sizes to 40 students. The district has no superintendent and teachers have not gotten raises they were supposed to get. And now the district does not have money to pay its teachers. At all. It is, in case you hadn't noticed, the middle of the school year. What happens to students when the schools just stop paying their teachers? What happens to the teachers who are suddenly without paychecks?

These teachers plan to keep working without pay as long as they're able to do so:

“We need the students to know that we’re here and we’re not abandoning them,” [elementary school math teacher Sara] Ferguson said. “We need them to know they’ll have some place to go.”
Educators say the fear of being abandoned is running rampant among students, many of whom have learned about the district’s financial hardships through news reports and community chatter. As students walk past the shuttered businesses and abandoned homes that dot many of the streets of Chester, they are reminded daily that people sometimes leave. The city has lost 12 percent of its population since 1990, and kids worry that teachers and support staff will be next to go.

“That’s why we have to keep showing up,” said middle school math teacher Fran Santoleri. “It gives them stability.”

Not giving these students stability? Massive cuts in education funding by the state. Poverty—"More than 70 percent of its students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches." Crumbling school buildings. And with teachers facing their own economic struggles, it's unclear how long they will be able to keep showing up every day having lost their already below-average paychecks, no matter how dedicated to their students they are. When the state abandons students, there's only so much individuals can do to mitigate the damage
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/12/1054064/-Pennsylvania-school-di...

...a reThug governor.

That's what the weather modification crowd are trying to sell. What insanity.

I can only surmise that the polluters' plan is: Step one, pollute the planet with external costs of their unregulated industrial, military, etc. chemicals, then, Step Two: step in to 'cure' the pollution with YET MORE pollution, like in the form of Corexit (for oil well/tanker failures) and stuff like dumping weather modification polluting aerosols into the Earth's atmosphere as a 'cure' for "climate change" caused by pollution.

Sheesh.

Polluters just build-in the profit stream for a 'cure' even when they are the profiteering pollution culprits. They really have their criminal method down, don't they?

And there's a journal about it (see below).

I read once that ethics are to the secular society what religiously-derived morals are to theocracy. So this term -- political theology -- is hard to get my brain around, as what I'd consider political theologies are what I've read the most about in the last decade, that being these two: Dominionism and The Free Market Church of Leo Strauss.

Anyway, see what you can make of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_theology

Perhaps this is how the power structures of Western Civilization came to pursue the destruction of the Planet as a way of life and business, as well as the total control of perception of reality in the minds of the populace, including the trickery of mass amnesia [for example, even of the realities of an event witnessed by all -- like the the Twin Towers and Bldg. 7 dropping on 9/11 -- without a sane scientific explanation that even comes close to holding up for all three buildings; but forget I said this 9/11 stuff, because this is bigger than any single event -- this is about history and historiography] -- and why we continue to accept our existence in this relentless mind-vise.

Interesting thumbnail of a book about the transition from (what monotheists incorrectly label) 'polytheism' to monotheism--

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1RBI2IVJV9KQJ/ref=ep_wk_cr_recent#R1RBI2IV...

[excerpt]

...

Our author argues that the truly unique stance of paganism is not its polytheism, rather it is its insistence that the world is divine. Pagans most usually thought that there was indeed a single One above and behind all the various divine beings. Assmann argues that:
-The counterposition to monotheism does not claim 'God is Many,' but rather 'God is One and All.' It would therefore be misleading to label it polytheism. What is important is not that the divine be manifold, but that the fulness and richness of its innerworldly manifestations not be hemmed in by any dogmatic boundary lines. In essence, the issue here is the godliness of the world.-
This is why our author prefers to define these primary religions as 'cosmotheism' (the belief that our mundane world partakes in the divine) rather than the expected 'polytheism'. Of course, over against this cosmotheism is the One God of the Monotheists who is above, and Other to, everything, - and He most decidedly is not a part of nature!

With the rise of the several monotheisms the Sacred (perhaps) irrevocably changes. For our cosmotheists and their rituals, the focus is on "the sacred as it is made manifest in the world." For our monotheists, "the sacred is no longer to be found in our world." The sacred is now found only in holy scripture. The sacred has left the world, it is now found in either transcendence or scripture. "This amounts to a complete volte-face. Rather than being used to stabilize ritual, writing takes its place." The World (land-sea-sky-sun-stars) is no longer sacred: "The step into the religion of transcendence was a step out of the world - one could almost speak in this context of an 'exodus' - into scripture." Our author regards this as a pivotal moment in our history. After this, the natural world itself really can only be, at bottom, an Idol!

We have left the magical world behind. Of course, this doesn't happen immediately, it is a long ongoing process that is not yet complete. But down this road, something like our secular modernity may be almost inevitable once 'book religions' rise. "Prophetic monotheism lacks natural evidence; it walks, as Saint Paul says, not in vision but in faith." But this particular faith is in a God Who is entirely separate from His Creation. What the sociologist Max Weber named 'disenchantment of the world' and the psychoanalyst Freud called 'progress in intellectuality' continually grows along this road. Consider yourself at least a sympathizer of cosmotheism if this doesn't entirely strike you as progress.

The question now is 'how have these sympathies survived?' That is another consequence of monotheism. "None of the new or secondary religions succeeded in completely wiping out the vestiges of the primary religion or religions on which they were built; rather, they frequently adopted such traces and adapted them to their own purposes." This is a process of 'syncretistic amalgamation'. The archaic sacred was not immediately wiped away as if by a sponge. The 'New,' in order to arise, must incorporate aspects of the 'Old'. Our author quotes Theo Sundermeier approvingly on this point: "Here we find an organic syncretism at work that is both inevitable and unobjectionable. The more this synthesis succeeds, the greater are the chances that the new religion will be able to establish itself as a viable popular religion." So you see, secondary religions must incorporate pre-existing 'sacred' material in order to be successful. Without such pre-existing material, one suspects that the religion would be largely ignored and then forgotten.

But our author adds that the origin of these syncretistic elements "has to be forgotten and made invisible." Assmann argues persuasively
-that secondary or counterreligions develop a new form of unconsciousness by enriching themselves with elements of primary religious experience and religious practice, while at the same time having to reinterpret their semantics and refunction their forms to fit them to the new context.-
And it is from this 'crypt' of cultural unconsciousness that supposedly new religious movements often draw their ideas. Of course, as our author notes, this has some similarity to the Freudian notion of the 'return of the repressed'.

[continued]

[continued]

Freud was right about this much, there is always an unacknowledged depth. Out of these depths grow ever new syntheses of the contemporary and the archaic. These deep traces "forms a depth dimension, a 'crypt' of religious tradition, which, like language, bears within it much more knowledge and many more memories than those who live in that tradition can ever fully bring to consciousness." Not only does the individual mind have an unconscious, but culture does too! One suspects that just as psychoanalysis teaches us that all individuals are a bit neurotic so too all cultures, or at least all cultures formed around secondary religions, must also be a little 'crazy'. It is the existence of this crypt of memory that allows our author to say of our secondary religions that they, "are duplicitous; they bear encrypted within themselves the paganism they ostensibly reject."

A third consequence of monotheism, according to our author, is 'the invention of the inner self'. This occurs because monotheism at its inception "sharply delimits itself from its own other, a process for which 'Egypt' and 'Canaan' stand as the central symbols; and it gives itself the form of a 'covenant', modeled on a political alliance, according to which Israel not only agrees to become the people of god, but god likewise vows to become the god of a people." Our author understands this to mark a "conversion from primary to secondary religion, from a lower to a higher state of consciousness, allegiance, and commitment."

Of all this, primary religions knew nothing. They
-do not separate themselves from something else, and they therefore have no need to distinguish themselves from 'culture' or to 'sectorally segregate' themselves within culture. Secondary or counterreligions foster a higher degree of consciousness because the distinction between true and false on which they rest must continually be drawn anew within the soul of the believer.-
(Our author often refers to the distinction between true and false religion as the 'Mosaic Distinction'.) It seems that the old pagan religions were religions almost exclusively of exteriority; one performed the appropriate rituals correctly at the prescribed time and one was done with it. But I doubt that one could ever be 'done' with the God who is interested in the recesses of our very souls!

Exteriority is easy; interiority is hard. Thanks to these secondary religions many distinctions, primarily between True and False Religion (but also between True Religion and 'science, art, politics', and also the natural world), we are told that the "the transition from primary to secondary religious experience is therefore also a consciousness raising experience." Now, if this experience sounds unhappy to you, you may well be a cosmotheist! Our author again approvingly quotes Theo Sundermeier (from an untranslated work) regarding this transition: "Now one can and must decide for the new. It is not enough to go through the motions, inner acceptance is required as well. Belief and discipleship are the order of the day, truth must be separated from lies. ... Now there is 'true' and 'false' religion."

There are people who read these last words and say, perhaps only to themselves, 'welcome to hell'. Our author concludes his discussion of this particular consequence of monotheism by saying, "the distinction between truth and lies does not just carve up external space, it cuts through the human heart as well, which for the first time becomes the stage upon which the religious dynamic is played out." Again, the archaic gods were gods of exteriority and performance; the One God Who Rules Alone is concerned exclusively with our interiority (i.e., our faith). And it is the resulting expansion of human interiority (both terrible and exhilarating) that has irrevocably changed our world.

The last consequence of monotheism that was especially important to our author is its status as what our author calls a 'counterreligion' and its relation to sin. Our secondary religions (i.e., our monotheisms) are counterreligions because they must oppose something that is 'untrue'. The first thing they oppose, of course, are the primary religions. Now, the type of 'sin' our author has in mind has nothing to do with the Biblical 'Fall of Man' (i.e., expulsion from Eden) and the story of Noah and the Flood. As our author points out, there "are numerous parallels to the fall and the flood; this concept of sin is thus nothing new and by no means first came into the world with Monotheism." The 'new form of sinfulness' that our author is interested in is found "in the dance around the Golden Calf."

Ultimately, the difference is that with our monotheisms, one must want to sin. Now, one could certainly, in the primary religions, dishonor the gods. Of course, we are told, the gods "can be neglected, insufficiently venerated, sinned against in a hundred different ways, for example by breaking one of the taboos associated with them, but one can choose neither to initiate nor to terminate a relationship with them." After all, the pagan gods are but names for the various forces in the world. It is obvious that "no one would ever contemplate denying the existence of divine forces. They are there for all to see, in the form of sun and moon, air and water, earth and fire, death and life, war and peace." All these things are either natural or social (i.e., collective); none of them require an inner decision on the part of the individual. My inner decision is no more responsible for war and peace (for the pagans, these too are personified as divine forces) than it is for keeping the sun and moon in their appointed paths.

But my inner decision, and mine alone, decides my relationship to the One True God. A terrible and exhilarating responsibility indeed! We are now forever alone with The One Who Is Forever Other. "In turning to face the world, the One and Only God finds no other partner than the people who believe in him and the human heart that yearns for him, since the world itself is bereft of all godliness."

...

[more at link]

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Western_Oil_Firms_Big_Winners_In_Iraq/174...

[excerpt]

Western Oil Firms Big Winners In Iraq
January 16, 2012

By Sherwood Ross
BlacklistedNews.com

Western oil producers have emerged as the big winners of the Iraq war.

“Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq US and other
western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq’s oil
market,” industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told Al Jazeera wire service.
“But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back
inside Iraq and producing oil there for the first time since being
forced out of the country in 1973.”

“Western producers like BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell are enjoying their
best access to Iraq’s southern oil fields since 1972,” Business Week
noted in its issue of March 4th of last year. (1972 was the year
Saddam Hussein nationalized Iraq’s oil fields.)

Business Week quotes Andy Inglis, BP’s chief executive for exploration
and production as saying, “We see this as the beginning of a long-term
relationship with Iraq and will continue to look for further
opportunities.”

[read more at link]

About the new border X-Ray scanners...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57358146-281/dhs-x-ray-scanners-could-...

[excerpt]
...

Rez says the name that Homeland Security has picked for its border scanners--"Low Energy Drive Through Portal Non-Intrusive Inspection Systems"--is highly misleading. "To call anything based on high energy X-rays 'low energy' is worse than 1984 doublespeak" because radiation emitted by the scanners "goes right through the person" sitting in a vehicle, he says. (High energy X-rays can penetrate not only human flesh, but steel plates that are multiple centimeters thick.)

...

Sedat, the biophysicist, says that the estimates of X-ray radiation dosage from AS&E and CBP are likely to be in error by several orders of magnitude because of the equipment they're using. He says: "If you have a laser pointer that you use for slides, it's a very bright beam. It's very hard to measure because it overwhelms a normal detector. You'll saturate the detector and you'll get the wrong answer. It could well come up with zero, or close to zero. And that's not right. It's not designed for handling that. The same is true for the ionization chambers they're using (as detectors)."

Rez, the physics professor, says the problem with X-ray scanners is that as the resolution increases, the corresponding dose leaps upward as well--and that AS&E's resolution has increased to approximately 5 millimeters. Another problem, he says, is failures: because the scan is conducted by having the vehicle move, if it stops in mid-scan, the radiation concentrated on one place would be above acceptable limits. "The energies are about three times the average energy in CT," he says, meaning an X-ray computed tomography scan.

A paper that (PDF) Rez and two-co-authors published in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry concludes that "serious consideration should be given to the possibility of unintended and unnecessary doses to passengers due to malfunctioning equipment."

[read more at link]

[more at link]

Cynthia McKinney writes--

http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/01/why-is-president-obama-sending-12-000-...

[excerpt]

...A resistance Libyan doctor-become-journalist reported yesterday that all of the petroleum platforms are occupied by NATO and that warships occupy Libya’s ports. Photographs show Italian encampments in the desert with an announcement that the French are to follow.

Another news outlet reports that Qataris and Emiratees are the engineers now at the oil plants, turning away desperate Libyan workers. While long lines exist for Libyan drivers to get their gas, foreign troops ensure the black gold’s export. Libyans lack enough food and the basics, the country has been turned upside down, and contaminated with uranium while the true number of dead and unaccounted for remains high and unknown. Thousands of young Libyans, supporters of the Jahamiriya, languish under torture and assassination in a Misrata prison where a humanitarian disaster is about to unfold because Misrata rebels want to kill them all and have already attacked the prison once to do so. An urgent appeal to contact the International Red Cross was issued yesterday to help save the lives of the prisoners. And finally, Black Libyans continue to be targeted for harassment and murder in Libya by US/NATO allies on the ground. Teaching hate, given the images of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan released yesterday, urinating on Afghani dead bodies, is not a difficult thing to do, it would seem. Videos are posted of Black Libyans being beaten, whipped, threatened, harassed, and humiliated. These videos remind me of the antebellum South–reminiscent of the days of slavery and The Confederacy. So, when I use the word “descend” to describe U.S. anticipated actions, I mean just that: U.S. troops are about to descend into the hell on Earth created by their President and the leaders of other countries who approved of, aided, or participated in the death of Libyan-owned society. A report from last night indicates that one militia, fearing other militias, even invited foreigners in to protect them.

...

[read more at link]

My first reaction at going over this material was "I don't think it is the 'individual' who harms/hamstrings our communities as it is those institutions/methods (like predatory corporations, slavery economics, and elitest enclaves) created by and/or embraced by certain individuals (criminal types/sociopaths/cheats/bullies?) who prefer to exploit and prey on others."

The chart is interesting, but does it hold water if the polarization between community and individual does not hold water?

I must look into this one some more...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism

Corpwatch's overview of the Domestic Surveillence mess, by Pratap Chatterjee--

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15665

Police chiefs meet at WH to discuss terror fight

The Obama administration is providing senior state and local police officials with its analysis of homegrown terrorism incidents, including common signs law enforcement can use to identify violent extremists.

The warning signs identified for police include someone joining a group advocating violence, receiving support from a network that plans attacks or seeking out charismatic leaders who encourage violence. The analysis was conducted by the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center. An overview of the findings was shared with The Associated Press and was being presented Wednesday at a conference at the White House.

The conference marks the first time this unclassified analysis is presented to 46 senior federal, state and local law enforcement officials, many of whom are police chiefs and sheriffs.......
http://www.wmctv.com/story/16545501/police-chiefs-meet-at-wh-to-discuss-...

New Mexico’s Memory of Land: The Legacy of Tijerina

In 1967, a little known community leader caught national attention when he led an armed raid on the Tierra Amarilla county courthouse in New Mexico, fighting for what he said was the defense of land rights. Reies Lopez Tijerina would quickly become one of the most influential leaders of the Chicano Movement. Today, we look back at the story of this nearly forgotten leader and examine why some call him the ‘Ultimate Chicano Nationalist.’........
http://www.latinousa.org/

Chris Hedges

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled "Counter-Terrorism," for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until "the end of hostilities." It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have "disappeared" into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.

Section 1031 of the bill defines a "covered person" -- one subject to detention -- as "a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces."

The bill, however, does not define the terms "substantially supported," "directly supported" or "associated forces."

I met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. I used to visit Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, in Tunis when they were branded international terrorists. I have spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party. All these entities were or are labeled as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. What would this bill have meant if it had been in place when I and other Americans traveled in the 1980s with armed units of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas in El Salvador? What would it have meant for those of us who were with the southern insurgents during the civil war in Yemen or the rebels in the southern Sudan? I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one.

Once a group is deemed to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or an element of the Uighur independence movement, the military can under this bill pick up a U.S. citizen who supported charities associated with the group or unwittingly sent money or medical supplies to front groups. We have already seen the persecution and closure of Islamic charity organizations in the United States that supported the Palestinians. Now the members of these organizations can be treated like card-carrying "terrorists" and sent to Guantanamo.

But I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up. Consider the arcane criteria that can make you a suspect in our new military-corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected "terrorist" who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition -- being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites "until the end of hostilities." Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay.

This demented "war on terror" is as undefined and vague as such a conflict is in any totalitarian state. Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason. Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties. It means we can no longer use the word "democracy" to describe our political system.

The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won't. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. The threat and reach of al-Qaida -- which I spent a year covering for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East -- are marginal, despite the attacks of 9/11. The terrorist group poses no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. Osama bin Laden was gunned down by commandos and his body dumped into the sea. Even the Pentagon says the organization is crippled. So why, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, do these draconian measures need to be implemented? Why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens, as he did in the killing of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen? Why is this bill necessary when the government routinely ignores our Fifth Amendment rights -- "No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law" -- as well as our First Amendment right of free speech? How much more power do they need to fight "terrorism"?

Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren't afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission.

The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn't support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. "The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.

But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-I-m-Suing-Barack-Obama-by-Chris-Hed...

http://www.justicepartyusa.net/

obama/wasserman schultz axis announce the Coalition of the Greedy

DNC: Charlotte's convention to try new twists
Organizers shorten convention to 3 days, plan Labor Day party at Charlotte Motor Speedway

In another break from tradition, Democrats announced Tuesday that they're shortening their national convention and moving events to the Charlotte area's two largest outdoor venues....

The president will deliver his acceptance speech at Bank of America Stadium, replicating his 2008 address at Denver's Invesco Field....

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said at a news conference on the stadium field. "We want this convention to be about more than just the pageantry and speeches you see on TV.

"This is about engaging Americans in a meaningful way."

...Wasserman Schultz and other organizers dismissed suggestions that the changes had to do with fundraising problems. Convention organizers are trying to raise nearly $37 million under self-imposed restrictions that bar corporate donations or individual contributions over $100,000.

Media reports last week suggested that organizers were considering a move to the stadium in part to woo wealthy donors with the promise of skyboxes....

Democrats are getting a break on the stadium, where the convention's red, white and blue logo flashed on electronic scoreboards Tuesday.

Carolina Panthers' owner Jerry Richardson said the team is not charging the convention. He declined to say how much it would rent for, but the team is believed to have charged some takers around $400,000.

A speedway official said the track is still negotiating terms of the Labor Day event, which could draw more than 75,000 people to Concord. Details of the event are sketchy.

It will be sponsored by the convention host committee which, unlike the Democratic National Convention Committee, is under no fundraising restrictions. It's expected to raise up to $15 million, in part with corporate money....
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/18/2934462/dnc-shortens-convent...

("It doesn't matter whose name is on the stadium," one of the party sources said. "President Obama has a record to run on holding Wall Street accountable, and there will be no doubt which candidate in the race is willing to stand up to Wall Street.":

Gingrich?

Alaska expands aerial shooting of bears

In a new package of policies criticized even by some hunters, the Alaska Board of Game on Tuesday opened the door to aerial gunning of bears by state wildlife officials. It also debated a measure that would allow more widespread snaring of bears - including grizzlies, which are officially considered threatened across most of the U.S.

The controversial "intensive management" moves are the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive control methods targeting bears and wolves in Alaska. In some parts of the state, wolf pups can be gassed in their dens, bear cubs and sows can be hunted, and wolves shot from helicopters.

But it removed the historical blanket prohibition against aerial hunting of bears and specifically authorized state game agents to begin helicopter and fixed-wing hunting of bears along the Dalton Highway corridor in the high Arctic, where a precarious population of musk oxen has been threatened by predators.

"That potentially does open up that (aerial) method for other places as well - to take bears with aerial shooting and land-and-shoot," David James, Region 3 supervisor for the state Department of Fish and Game's Division of Wildlife Conservation, said in an interview. "It would no longer be illegal to do that anywhere else in the state."

...The last three administrations, all Republican, have enthusiastically implemented the directive. The Board of Game, appointed by the governor and dominated by hunting advocates, has steadily increased the menu of options available to target predators. Many were strongly pushed by the state's recent wildlife conservation director, Corey Rossi, a friend of former Gov. Sarah Palin's family.

Rossi resigned last week after facing criminal charges alleging that he filed false state reports in connection with a black bear hunt in 2008.

State game officials have argued for even stronger tactics against predators because they say traditional bear hunts - which often target large males - fail to eliminate the females and cubs that they say must be eradicated if there are to be meaningful declines in predator populations.

Opponents of the policies say indiscriminate methods such as snaring can quickly push bear populations - abundant now - into steep decline, especially since grizzlies are so slow to reproduce.

"In a state once known for its scientific approach to wildlife management, we have entered a time tunnel back to the times of the Wild West," said Valerie Connor, conservation director for the Alaska Center for the Environment....
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/18/136184/alaska-expands-aerial-shoot...

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.
Rachel Carson

Thank goodness we don't have to hear Newt Gingrich for a while.

His statement that the Palestinians were an "invented people" marked about the lowest point in the Republican-Christian Right-Likudist/Israel relationship. So deep has this pact now become that you can deny the existence of an entire people if you want to become US president. It's time, surely, to take a look at this extraordinary movement, to remind ourselves – since US "statesmen" cannot – just what its implications really are.......
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-i...

:):(

A Super Bowl of Struggle? The NFLPA’s Demaurice Smith on opposing Indiana’s “Right to Work” agenda
By Dave Zirin
The Super Bowl is supposed to bring attention and even glory to its host city. But thanks to an anti-worker, anti-union assault by Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels and the Republican controlled legislature, the big game, to be held this year in Indianapolis, is bringing a different kind of attention altogether. The NFL Players Association joined the ranks of unions across the state last week in opposing efforts to make Indiana join the ranks of so-called “Right to Work” states. “Right to Work” laws have also been called “Right to Beg” or “Right to Starve” since they undercut wages, benefits and the most basic workplace protections. Coming off their own labor battle, the NFLPA released a statement where they promised that they would not be silent on these laws during the buildup to the Super Bowl. I interviewed NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith about why they felt it was important to take a stand against this legislation.......
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-01-18-684/index.html

I thought the fascists were really on the ropes back then--

Meryl Streep movie about Thatcher has Britain taking sides
The film, with Streep as Margaret Thatcher, Britain's only female prime minister, is stirring up extra passion because it offers the British a look at their past just as they appear to be reliving it.

Love her or hate her — and there are plenty of people on both sides — it seems that hardly anyone here can watch the movie without their personal feelings entering into it.

Put Sam Fogg in the "hate" camp.

"It's not possible for anyone who's lived in the Thatcher era to see it objectively," the 57-year-old art dealer said after a recent screening in London. "I didn't like it — it was a hagiography.... It didn't show a lot of her economic and social policies that turned the country into the selfish modern England we live in now."

The film, which features Streep as Thatcher in a bravura performance as Britain's only female prime minister, is stirring up extra passion because it offers the British a look at their past just as they appear to be repeating it.

After a long hiatus, Britain is once again being ruled by Thatcher's Conservative Party, led by politicians who grew up under her 1979-90 premiership and who consider themselves heirs to her small-government, free-enterprise ideology. In a drive to slash public spending, officials have embarked on a series of stinging budget cuts as deep as any she ever ordered.

The unemployment rate, which soared during her first years as prime minister, is now at its highest since 1994. Like Thatcher, Prime Minister David Cameron is sparring with Britain's unions and with Europe, the Tories' perennial boogeyman. And for good measure, riots erupted across England in August, just as race riots shook Britain not long after Thatcher came to power.

The sense of political deja vu has only sharpened the fault lines that Thatcher opened and that still run through British society...........
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/13/world/la-fg-britain-thatcher-201...

"Some people call you the elites; I call you my base"
new
Submitted by ghettodefender on Wed, 01/18/2012 - 2:06pm.

obama/wasserman schultz axis announce the Coalition of the Greedy

DNC: Charlotte's convention to try new twists
Organizers shorten convention to 3 days, plan Labor Day party at Charlotte Motor Speedway

In another break from tradition, Democrats announced Tuesday that they're shortening their national convention and moving events to the Charlotte area's two largest outdoor venues....

The president will deliver his acceptance speech at Bank of America Stadium, replicating his 2008 address at Denver's Invesco Field....

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said at a news conference on the stadium field. "We want this convention to be about more than just the pageantry and speeches you see on TV.

"This is about engaging Americans in a meaningful way."
...

=======================================
=======================================

So, does this mean somebody -- that is, somebody besides the Dem Party delegates from around the country -- are going to decide on what the Dem Party PLATFORM will be???

Most curious. Usually all those convention days are taken up by delegates' meetings for hammering out the party's platform (and selecting a candidate, but incumbency precludes that this time understandably).

VERY odd!

Streep playing Thatcher?

I'll have to see it sometime, but I really don't intend to spend money to see it. That's because it sounds like it could be a propaganda film, and I'll be darned if I'll give the elite film investors my money to add to their PROFITS OFF THEIR OWN PROPAGANDA.

I finally saw that Helen Mirren film that tried to make the QUEEN look sympathetic in regards to the Princess Diana thang. Raw pro-royalty propaganda. It was a library video. I was glad I never spent money to go to the theater to see that one.

This from Ghettodefender post at 4:16--

>>After a long hiatus, Britain is once again being ruled by Thatcher's Conservative Party, led by politicians who grew up under her 1979-90 premiership and who consider themselves heirs to her small-government, free-enterprise ideology. In a drive to slash public spending, officials have embarked on a series of stinging budget cuts as deep as any she ever ordered.

The unemployment rate, which soared during her first years as prime minister, is now at its highest since 1994. Like Thatcher, Prime Minister David Cameron is sparring with Britain's unions and with Europe, the Tories' perennial boogeyman. And for good measure, riots erupted across England in August, just as race riots shook Britain not long after Thatcher came to power.

The sense of political deja vu has only sharpened the fault lines that Thatcher opened and that still run through British society...........
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/13/world/la-fg-britain-thatcher-201... <<

=========

Note the words "free enterprise" used to describe the conservative approach.

I am getting really tired of reading/hearing the use of the words 'free enterprise' AS IF they are interchangeable with 'FREE MARKET' PREDATORY CAPITALISTIC radical behavior.

It is happening alot lately, and I think it is the result of ignorance on the one hand (perhaps like this movie release coverage piece), but definitely, on the other hand, it is occurring in a bold attempt to mislead those who are just awakening to the discussion of current economics and the destruction of hard-won social/economic mobility.

No matter what terms/labels/words we stick on things at the beginning of the 21st Century, the fact remains that for MILLENIA, mankind successfully engaged in the exchange of goods and services, and that trade was, even then, of global proportions.

Consider the ancient trade routes -- of which ancient Egypt was a conduit for gold and goods coming out of the interior of Africa; also in ancient times there were cross-Atlantic routes between West Africa and the Americas, and trans-Indian Ocean routes between East Africa and India and sites further East; later, the Silk Road and the amazing caravan routes of Africa during the Mali, Niger and Songhai empires were successful and enriching for centuries. All this human economic expression when Europe/Britain was backward, spending most of its time trying to figure out how to scrape by, it's only 'enrichment' of anykind -- economic or intellectual -- coming from its imperialistic/conquest endeavors at home and abroad -- including the continuance of the Roman Empire bureaucracy via THEOCRACY at sword point with the Holy Roman Empire. (Never forget that Islam's armed theocratic sweep to gain geography was a method ALREADY in use by the Holy Roman Empire which crushed pre-Christian paganism everywhere it could get at it. And, indeed, this remains the source of the techniques used today for spreading European so-called civilization -- destabilizing cultures, covertly fomenting ethnic and religious sectarian violence, and reinserting Western so-called values of consumerism and, when it can, instituting conversion to Christianity).

The point being, the world community had workable, longterm economic structures BEFORE the incursion of European notions of FREE MARKET CAPITALISM. These anciently-born economics were used consistently in the world until Europeans, flush with new world gold, began their ascendency. That strange era of European expansion is like a fever that caused a European-born (incurable?) mental illess in its intellectually aberrant dichotomies: Renaissance PLUS Inquisition; Growth-of-Scientific-Objectivism PLUS Growth-of-Unsubstantiated-Racism; Increase-in-Geographical/Cultural-Exposure PLUS Increase-in-Cultural-Prejudice; Increase-in-Capital-and-Possessions PLUS Increase-in-Greed-to-Meet-Feelings-of-Inadequacy.

FREE MARKET CAPITALISM was applied whereever and whenever Europeans went into the lands of their new victims of imperialistic predation; this is the story of European 'economics', first in South America, then in Africa, and later in India, North America, and China -- with no international law to protect the victims. Now THAT'S a free market. And that is also the 'free market' which today's Globalist Elite are rushing to recapture in all its LAWLESS vitality -- pure predation. To label this economic imperialistic technology and behavior by the words 'free enterprise' is ignorance or deliberate hoax.

Why don't they want us to KNOW what we are eating???

Truly shades of the meat-packing industry circa 1900, no?

Here's the commentary in the Western Farm Press magazine--

http://westernfarmpress.com/blog/mandatory-gmo-food-labeling-implies-ris...

[excerpt]

Mandatory GMO food labeling implies risks where there are none

by Harry Cline ...

Dec. 27, 2011

[please read more at link]

This from David Brooks column proves you should be careful speaking to Newt Gingrich if you are twelve-years-old -- Newt will sic the security on you!

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120117/WIRE/120119527?p=3&tc=pg

[excerpt]

I brought my 12-year-old son on this latest trip. My rule is that if a candidate can't relate well to a 12-year-old, they'll never win a general election. He approached all the candidates, and they were all wonderful except Gingrich. But that wasn't Gingrich's fault. My son, whose heroes include John Boehner and Tupac Shakur, picked an argument about gay marriage. Gingrich engaged, but after 10 seconds signaled security to brush my kid away.

[read more at link]

===========

And if you are up in years NEWT may grab your nose, which I'm sure must have hurt, even if caption writers later call it "playful"!

Would link to the photo -- and the woman looks startled! -- but can't find it. Sorry.

Mit, Newt and Rush were all separated at birth.

The world war on democracy
19 January 2012
John Pilger

Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people's resistance to the war on democracy. I first glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a tiny creole nation living midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean. The camera panned across thriving villages, a church, a school, a hospital, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace. Lisette remembers the producer saying to her and her teenage friends, "Keep smiling girls!"

Sitting in her kitchen in Mauritius many years later, she said, "I didn't have to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in the islands, my paradise. My great-grandmother was born there; I made six children there. That's why they couldn't legally throw us out of our own homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out. At first, they tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving [then] they spread rumours we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs."

In the early 1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony, be "swept" and "sanitised" of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. "They knew we were inseparable from our pets," said Lizette, "When the American soldiers arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the trucks' exhausts. You could hear them crying."

Lisette and her family and hundreds of islanders were forced on to a rusting steamer bound for Mauritius, a distance of 2,500 miles. They were made to sleep in the hold on a cargo of fertiliser: bird shit. The weather was rough; everyone was ill; two women miscarried. Dumped on the docks at Port Louis, Lizette's youngest children, Jollice, and Regis, died within a week of each other. "They died of sadness," she said. "They had heard all the talk and seen the horror of what had happened to the dogs. They knew they were leaving their home forever. The doctor in Mauritius said he could not treat sadness."

This act of mass kidnapping was carried out in high secrecy. In one official file, under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", the Foreign Office legal adviser exhorts his colleagues to cover their actions by "re-classifying" the population as "floating" and to "make up the rules as we go along". Article 7 of the statute of the International Criminal Court says the "deportation or forcible transfer of population" is a crime against humanity. That Britain had committed such a crime -- in exchange for a $14million discount off an American Polaris nuclear submarine - was not on the agenda of a group of British "defence" correspondents flown to the Chagos by the Ministry of Defence when the US base was completed. "There is nothing in our files," said a ministry official, "about inhabitants or an evacuation."

Today, Diego Garcia is crucial to America's and Britain's war on democracy. The heaviest bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan was launched from its vast airstrips, beyond which the islanders' abandoned cemetery and church stand like archaeological ruins. The terraced garden where Lisette laughed for the camera is now a fortress housing the "bunker-busting" bombs carried by bat-shaped B-2 aircraft to targets in two continents; an attack on Iran will start here. As if to complete the emblem of rampant, criminal power, the CIA added a Guantanamo-style prison for its "rendition" victims and called it Camp Justice.

What was done to Lisette's paradise has an urgent and universal meaning, for it represents the violent, ruthless nature of a whole system behind its democratic facade, and the scale of our own indoctrination to its messianic assumptions, described by Harold Pinter as a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis." Longer and bloodier than any war since 1945, waged with demonic weapons and a gangsterism dressed as economic policy and sometimes known as globalisation, the war on democracy is unmentionable in western elite circles. As Pinter wrote, "it never happened even while it was happening". Last July, American historian William Blum published his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy". Since the Second World War, the US has:

- Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically-elected.

- Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries.

- Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.

- Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.

- Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in 69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The "enemy" changes in name - from communism to Islamism -- but mostly it is the rise of democracy independent of western power or a society occupying strategically useful territory, deemed expendable, like the Chagos Islands.

The sheer scale of suffering, let alone criminality, is little known in the west, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications, nominally freest journalism and most admired academy. That the most numerous victims of terrorism - western terrorism - are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known. That half a million Iraqi infants died in the 1990s as a result of the embargo imposed by Britain and America is of no interest. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of western policy ("Operation Cyclone") is known to specialists but otherwise suppressed.

While popular culture in Britain and America immerses the Second World War in an ethical bath for the victors, the holocausts arising from Anglo-American dominance of resource-rich regions are consigned to oblivion. Under the Indonesian tyrant Suharto, anointed "our man" by Thatcher, more than a million people were slaughtered. Described by the CIA as "the worst mass murder of the second half of the 20th century", the estimate does not include a third of the population of East Timor who were starved or murdered with western connivance, British fighter-bombers and machine guns.

These true stories are told in declassified files in the Public Record Office, yet represent an entire dimension of politics and the exercise of power excluded from public consideration. This has been achieved by a regime of un-coercive information control, from the evangelical mantra of consumer advertising to sound-bites on BBC news and now the ephemera of social media.

It is as if writers as watchdogs are extinct, or in thrall to a sociopathic zeitgeist, convinced they are too clever to be duped. Witness the stampede of sycophants eager to deify Christopher Hitchens, a war lover who longed to be allowed to justify the crimes of rapacious power. "For almost the first time in two centuries", wrote Terry Eagleton, "there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life". No Orwell warns that we do not need to live in a totalitarian society to be corrupted by totalitarianism. No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake proffers a vision, no Wilde reminds us that "disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue". And grievously no Pinter rages at the war machine, as in American Football:

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things...
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust...

Into shards of fucking dust go all the lives blown there by Barack Obama, the Hopey Changey of western violence. Whenever one of Obama's drones wipes out an entire family in a faraway tribal region of Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen, the American controllers in front of their computer-game screens type in "Bugsplat". Obama likes drones and has joked about them with journalists. One of his first actions as president was to order a wave of Predator drone attacks on Pakistan that killed 74 people. He has since killed thousands, mostly civilians; drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of the lungs of children and leave body parts festooned across scrubland.

Remember the tear-stained headlines when Brand Obama was elected: "momentous, spine-tingling": the Guardian. "The American future," wrote Simon Schama, "is all vision, numinous, unformed, light-headed ..." The San Francisco Chronicle's columnist saw a spiritual "lightworker [who can] usher in a new way of being on the planet". Beyond the drivel, as the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg had predicted, a military coup was taking place in Washington, and Obama was their man. Having seduced the anti-war movement into virtual silence, he has given America's corrupt military officer class unprecedented powers of state and engagement. These include the prospect of wars in Africa and opportunities for provocations against China, America's largest creditor and new "enemy" in Asia. Under Obama, the old source of official paranoia Russia, has been encircled with ballistic missiles and the Russian opposition infiltrated. Military and CIA assassination teams have been assigned to 120 countries; long planned attacks on Syria and Iran beckon a world war. Israel, the exemplar of US violence and lawlessness by proxy, has just received its annual pocket money of $3bn together with Obama's permission to steal more Palestinian land.

Obama's most "historic" achievement is to bring the war on democracy home to America.

On New Year's Eve, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a law that grants the Pentagon the legal right to kidnap both foreigners and US citizens and indefinitely detain, interrogate and torture, or even kill them. They need only "associate" with those "belligerent" to the United States. There will be no protection of law, no trial, no legal representation. This is the first explicit legislation to abolish habeus corpus (the right to due process of law) and effectively repeal the Bill of Rights of 1789.

On 5 January, in an extraordinary speech at the Pentagon, Obama said the military would not only be ready to "secure territory and populations" overseas but to fight in the "homeland" and provide "support to the civil authorities". In other words, US troops will be deployed on the streets of American cities when the inevitable civil unrest takes hold.

America is now a land of epidemic poverty and barbaric prisons: the consequence of a "market" extremism which, under Obama, has prompted the transfer of $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises in Wall Street. The victims are mostly young jobless, homeless, incarcerated African-Americans, betrayed by the first black president. The historic corollary of a perpetual war state, this is not fascism, not yet, but neither is it democracy in any recognisable form, regardless of the placebo politics that will consume the news until November. The presidential campaign, says the Washington Post, will "feature a clash of philosophies rooted in distinctly different views of the economy". This is patently false. The circumscribed task of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic is to create the pretence of political choice where there is none.

The same shadow is across Britain and much of Europe where social democracy, an article of faith two generations ago, has fallen to the central bank dictators. In David Cameron's "big society", the theft of 84bn pounds in jobs and services even exceeds the amount of tax "legally" avoid by piratical corporations. Blame rests not with the far right, but a cowardly liberal political culture that has allowed this to happen, which, wrote Hywel Williams in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, "can itself be a form of self righteous fanaticism". Tony Blair is one such fanatic. In its managerial indifference to the freedoms that it claims to hold dear, bourgeois Blairite Britain has created a surveillance state with 3,000 new criminal offences and laws: more than for the whole of the previous century. The police clearly believe they have an impunity to kill. At the demand of the CIA, cases like that of Binyam Mohamed, an innocent British resident tortured and then held for five years in Guantanamo Bay, will be dealt with in secret courts in Britain "in order to protect the intelligence agencies" - the torturers.

This invisible state allowed the Blair government to fight the Chagos islanders as they rose from their despair in exile and demanded justice in the streets of Port Louis and London. "Only when you take direct action, face to face, even break laws, are you ever noticed," said Lisette. "And the smaller you are, the greater your example to others." Such an eloquent answer to those who still ask, "What can I do?"

I last saw Lisette's tiny figure standing in driving rain alongside her comrades outside the Houses of Parliament. What struck me was the enduring courage of their resistance. It is this refusal to give up that rotten power fears, above all, knowing it is the seed beneath the snow.
http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-world-war-on-democracy

via sis Marpessa

PLEASE GO TO https://www.wepay.com/donations/fund-for-troy-davis-s-family AND DONATE!

PLEASE SHARE BROADLY, THANK YOU!

Information

The Davis family has had to bury three loved ones in the past seven months. Virginia Davis, the matriarch of the family, passed in April, just two weeks after the US Supreme Court denied Troy's final appeal, paving the way for the state of Georgia to set a new execution date. According to Martina, her mother died of a broken heart--she couldn't bear another execution date. Troy was executed on September 21, despite an international outcry over executing a man amid such overwhelming doubt. Troy's sister Martina succumbed to her decade-long battle with cancer on December 1, exactly two months after her brother Troy's funeral, leaving behind a teenaged son.

There are still outstanding medical and funeral bills for Martina that the Davis family must pay.

The Davis family has had to bear more tragedy and sorrow than any family should ever have to. Together, we can ensure that the financial aspect of these losses will not be a burden to them.

Any amount will be highly appreciated. Please note: this initiative will close on Feb 10 so we can get the money to the family, but after that, donations can be made via Kim Davis's paypal account, at aug1970@bellsouth.net

Any questions can be directed to Jen Marlowe at donkeysaddle@gmail.com

https://www.wepay.com/donations/fund-for-troy-davis-s-family

...announced the awards will be presented this weekend for the porn industry.

...double post

Reports: Liberian ex-president had CIA ties
US government files say Charles Taylor, now awaiting war-crimes verdict, had a relationship with the US spy agency.

Liberia's Charles Taylor, the first African head of state to be prosecuted for war crimes by an international tribunal, used to work with the CIA, according to a report in the Boston Globe from this week.

The report, based on information uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request made six years ago, said that Taylor had a relationship with the US spy agency for years, although the details of what he actually did were unclear.

"The Pentagon's response to the Globe states that the details of Taylor's role on behalf of the spy agencies are contained in dozens of secret reports - at least 48 separate documents - covering several decades," the US newspaper said.

"However, the exact duration and scope of the relationship remains hidden."

A spokesperson for the ICC told the Globe that the Taylor-CIA relationship was unrelated to his charges at the court.

The Globe report backed up long-standing rumours of Taylor's work with the CIA, which confirmed a relationship with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.

The Defence Intelligence Agency of the US refused to reveal any details about the relationship, saying doing so would harm national security.

During his trial at the ICC, Taylor claimed that he had been indicted as part of a plot for the US to control West African oil reserves.

Taylor is awaiting the verdict in his war crimes trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Netherlands.

He is accused of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity on claims that he armed Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in exchange for illegally mined, so-called blood diamonds.

The Sierra Leone civil war claimed some 120,000 lives between 1991 and 2001, with RUF fighters, described by the prosecution as Taylor's "surrogate army," mutilating thousands of civilians by hacking off their limbs.

After he was indicted and left the presidency in 2003, he lived openly in Nigeria, which the US considers a regional ally.

Taylor was finally handed over to the international court in 2006, where he pleaded not guilty to all charges...............
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/01/2012120202722392322.html

Never enough news from the world of porn--

Porn Performer: Why I'm Against Government Mandated Condom Use in Porn
Lorelei Lee, who's worked with and without condoms, argues that mandatory enforcement is misguided....
http://www.alternet.org/story/153810/porn_performer%3A_why_i%27m_against...

I know I always give better screen performances with out condoms.

WOW! What say ye Sederistas?
Say good-bye to the Year of the Wabbit!

And say Hello to the YEAR OF THE DRAGON!

So it seems the regressives in SC voted their delegates to the lifelong degenerate morally-spiritually-challenged opportunist 1%'er Gnewt "contract ON Amerika" Gingrich. These are the same people who cheer WAR and DEATH and boo PEACE and The Golden Rule, no?
How you say in Amerika? "Low information voter"? "God-fearin' Christian"? The Kwazy Klown Kar rolls on covered breathlessly by the Beltway Bubulas while Congress schemes to TOTALLY BURY The Bill of Rights NOT COVERED by the same Korporate Media.

See this week's BTV Brick TeeVee and the SOPA PIPA Internet Blackout! for much more coverage the korporomedia WILL NOT talk about.
And we're up to 19 followers on blogger!
BLOGSPOT --> Brick TeeVee and the SOPA PIPA Internet Blackout! Tell everybody! We need more people!

Have a great week Sederville!

Year of the DRRRRAGONNNNN!!!!

And the Corporate Media is heralding Newt's "redemption"?

Yuck.

If this Republican Clown Car of Candidates continues this uneven performance (like a different gopher popping out of each state hole), the Republicans will be going to their convention without a clear candidate -- and that will be a perfect situation for setting the stage for the GOP to allow Jeb Bush to come in to save the day. I've said all along that this field of bottom-of-the-barrel candidates was purposeful and could lead only to the GOP being forced to be willing to turn to another Bush. We'll see.

http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN/

What's the reaction to the SOTU?

Was it awful?

Try here:
http://www.proligarchy.com/?p=1864#comments

GASP!

I can only think the President is referring to toppling a country like Libya and giving it to al Qaeda to rip apart and take over...!

Not good.

All the while claiming he will support clean environment policies.

I call this rhetoric 'TALKING OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH'.

If he did, I missed it.

Tax the Rich? Sure, and then we'll pay back the Rich by giving them the Social Security funds to play with....

As John Nichols points out -- this is a president who like to compromise.

Extremists don't help. That's what I think
-

President Obama would not have a wind at his back.

So it was opportunistic.

hmm.

"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others........."
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle...

Mahalo, amigo.

"Compromise." That's generous. This is a president who sells out the working class wholesale, and pursues empire building with avenge. What Nichols calls compromise is obama's ability to persuade his Democrat followers to embrace conservative principals.
There is no compromise. The corporatists and war mongers get more and more and we get the bill.
Perhaps, John Nichols doesn't really have to get drunk to go on the Mr. Ed show.

"Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colours under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought – and several thousand gave their lives.

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world..........."

US soldier to serve no time for Iraq killings
Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich demoted to rank of private but will not go behind bars, a military spokesman said.

A US marine accused over the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the city of Haditha was demoted to the rank of private but will serve no time behind bars, a military spokesman has said.

Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich was sentenced to 90 days confinement but he will not serve it for procedural reasons, the spokesman said.

The sentencing hearing was held on Tuesday at Camp Pendleton, south of Los Angeles.

Word of the maximum sentence led to outrage in Iraq, where Ali Badr, a Haditha resident and relative of one of the victims, called it "an insult to all Iraqis" and "solid proof that the Americans don't respect human rights"..........

.....The victims included 10 women and children killed at point-blank range. Six people were killed in one house, most shot in the head, including women and children huddled in a bedroom.

Lawyers for the troops involved argued the deaths resulted from a fast-moving situation in which they believed they were under enemy fire.

"No one denies that the consequences of November 19, 2005 were tragic, least of all Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich," his civilian defence attorney, Neal Puckett, said in a statement released shortly after the plea hearing.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/01/201212423947590252.html

"......And we will safeguard America’s own security against those who threaten our citizens, our friends, and our interests. Look at Iran. Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal....."

Published on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 by The Real News
Glen Ford: Obama Pledges to Maintain the Empire
Obama defends Iraq war saying it made the US safer and more respected
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/01/25

Leah.

I agree ghettodefender. It's a bunch of nice words. Most people I think get that by now. And your recommended action is? Should we stop paying taxes or stop payment on property or take shovels and learn how to use them?

You know I'm of the "use discorse" type but that's lame, I know. I stopped trying to influence others and just tried to love others. It's not working but I'm happier.

Has anyone heard from Sunshine Jim? He seemed like a good guy. Is Alice around?

BTW.

The Vatican's 'Holy' Empire and the U.S. Corporations' Empire are very much alike in their responses to having their faults realized by their victims.

Just as the Holy Roman Empire/Catholic Church went into high gear defensive offense/offensive defense response to the Protestant Reformation, so, also, the Corporate Fascist Military Industrial Empire promoted by the USA is in high gear to make sure it doesn't lose a cent of its profit stream and freedom-to-exploit-globally in the face of growing resistance from its victims.

Here's one BIG parallel:

The Protestant Reformation, and other new ideas and rediscovered ideas of human history (imported from the Muslim world and libraries like those in Muslim Spain and Timbuktu in Mali, Africa, during "the Renaissane") were threats to the Vatican's Monopoly on Europe, colonies and the New World. And this information, along with resistance to the Vatican, were gaining rapid exposure via the introduction in Europe of THE PRINTING PRESS. And today? The Corporate Globalizers and their USA Military monopolistic might are being challenged by a reawakening of the ideas of community and human interaction put forward by indigenous peoples and those who test such methods (like the Libyan peoples' use of JAMAHARIYA) and the Occupiers demonstration of people's congresses. And the value of peoples' rule is gaining exposure thanks to THE INTERNET.

And here is another BIG parallel:

What about the Vatican's response to the pressure from the people who gained intellectual and physical stimulus from new information about their victimization at the hands of the Vatican's misuse of power and monopoly? The Vatican's response was to lash out at "heretics", and the Vatican used THE INQUISITION and TORTURED, RUINED LIVES, CONFISCATED PROPERTY, and KILLED so-called "heretics". And today? The Corporate Empire fascists' response to all who are waking up and seeing the exploitation and rip-off of the Earth and the majority of its inhabitants is THE SAME TECHNIQUE AND INJUSTICE -- using TORTURE, RUINING LIVES, CONFISCATING PROPERTY, and SPREADING DEATH. The Catholic's Inquisition also employed censorship; so the current push to censor participants on the Internet is also a parallel of which to take note.)

And here's another parallel, but maybe you spotted it already:

"Heresy" was then used as a bogeyman, like "terrorism" is used as a bogeyman today. And even if a person wasn't a "heretic", they could be falsely accused of being one (based on just about anything) and suffer from the TOTALLY unjust "guilty until proven innocent" prosecution by the Vatican coming out of that accusation. Today the Corporate Globalist USA Empire has systematically and rapidly negated USA Constitutional guarantees of "innocent until proven guilty", due process, habeus corpus, and, now, posse commitatus, as well as ignoring international treaties and laws -- all under their global exploitation policy to expand a War on Terrorism that includes making EVERY CITIZEN ON EARTH a real or potential victim of indefinite detention and disappearance.

For centuries Humankind has sought to find and use the tools of Justice and use them to fight exploiters, tyrants, killers and thieves -- and here we are, watching this accomplishment destroyed ON PURPOSE by an Empire's Ruling Class. The Ruling Class is repeating its past techniques and crimes.

hello all,
just wanted to say bush sucks,
n hello
buffalos crazy but beautiful.
just like all ya'll.

hmmm, my touchpad just auto corrected ya'll.
twice.
the south rises againish.

ecrasez l'infame

Nader astonished by ‘lawless militarism’ in Obama’s address

“I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing,” he said. “I mean, he was very committed to projecting the American empire, in Obama terms.”

“He should be ashamed of himself that he tries to drape our soldiers, who were sent on lawless military missions to kill and die in those countries, unconstitutional wars that violate Geneva conventions and international law and federal statutes, and drape them as if they’ve come back from Iwo Jima or Normandy.”

Nader, who has run for president five times, had tried to organize a primary challenge against Obama to “bring the best out of him.” But the effort never materialized....
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/25/nader-astonished-by-lawless-milita...

of the General Lee in his barn. Good thing he doesn't read much--

The Dukes of Hazzard star who could destroy Newt Gingrich... again

The actor at the centre of Newt's mid-90s tax scandal watches the former speaker's resurrection with amazement and disgust

As Newt Gingrich fights to save his political life, locked in a potentially decisive battle in the final days of the Florida primary with his bitter rival Mitt Romney, one man is following the struggle with peculiarly intense and personal interest.

Ben Jones is best known by millions of Americans as the actor who played "Crazy" Cooter Davenport, the truck driving mechanic in the hit 1980s TV series, The Dukes of Hazzard. But in politics, Jones is credited with having helped destroy Newt Gingrich's Congressional career by leveling accusations of financial improprieties at him, which ultimately lead to his resignation from the speakership.

Jones has watched the improbable resurrection of Gingrich as a presidential contender almost two decades later with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. "It's astonishing to me that this has come back around. It testifies to the fact that Mr Gingrich cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons – he is the abominable Newt Man."

Jones sounded the alarm about Gingrich's dodgy practices in September 1994 at a time when he was locked in his own bitter electoral battle with the speaker over a Congressional seat in Georgia. Jones, who by then had served two terms in Congress as a Democratic member having turned to politics after Dukes of Hazzard went off the air, presented the House ethics committee with 450 pages of documents that proved to be incendiary........
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/26/dukes-of-hazzard-newt-gingri...

(I've driven my neighbor's "General Lee." Feel guilty about enjoying the ride.)

Assange takes chat-show job with state-funded Russian TV

A TV channel funded by Kremlin will air a chat show hosted by the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in an unlikely collaboration announced yesterday.

Russia Today, which broadcasts from Moscow in English, said that the programme will be written and hosted by Mr Assange, and will feature 10 guests who are "iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders".

"The first episode will be in the middle of March," the channel's editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, wrote on her Twitter feed yesterday. "Assange will record it while under house arrest. It will be amazing TV, I'm sure of it."

Working for a Kremlin channel does not seem like an obvious choice for Mr Assange, who has devoted his life to fighting governmental opacity, but Russia Today has made a name for itself as a strident critic of US policy.

"I think it's quite natural that his show will be on RT," said Nikolay Bogachikhin, one of the channel's executives. "RT always tries to go beyond, and see the other sides of any news story." In reality, however, this often means giving airtime to conspiracy theorists, including 9/11 "truthers" and those who believe the Arab Spring was planned and directed by the CIA........
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/assange-takes-chatshow-jo...

Assange takes chat-show job with state-funded Russian TV

Cool!

Really?
Climate change will lead to international socialism.

Published on Thursday, January 26, 2012 by TomDispatch.com
Why Climate Change Will Make You Love Big Government
A Secret History of Free Enterprise and the Government That Made It Possible
by Christian Parenti

....many on the Left now regularly dismiss government as nothing but oversized, wasteful, bureaucratic, corrupt, and oppressive, without giving serious consideration to how essential it may be to our lives.

But don’t expect the present “consensus” to last. Global warming and the freaky, increasingly extreme weather that will accompany it is going to change all that. After all, there is only one institution that actually has the capacity to deal with multibillion-dollar natural disasters on an increasingly routine basis. Private security firms won’t help your flooded or tornado-struck town. Private insurance companies are systematically withdrawing coverage from vulnerable coastal areas. Voluntary community groups, churches, anarchist affinity groups -- each may prove helpful in limited ways, but for better or worse, only government has the capital and capacity to deal with the catastrophic implications of climate change.....

The intensification of climate change means that we need to acknowledge the chaotic future we face and start planning for it. Think of what’s coming, if you will, as a kind of storm socialism.

After all, climate scientists believe that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide beyond 350 parts-per-million (ppm) could set off compounding feedback loops and so lock us into runaway climate change. We are already at 392 ppm. Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels immediately, the disruptive effect of accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere is guaranteed to hammer us for decades. In other words, according to the best-case scenario, we face decades of increasingly chaotic and violent weather.....

To adapt to climate change will mean coming together on a large scale and mobilizing society’s full range of resources. In other words, Big Storms require Big Government. Who else will save stranded climate refugees, or protect and rebuild infrastructure, or coordinate rescue efforts and plan out the flow and allocation of resources?...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-7

About Us
We Act Radio is a new radio station broadcasting from the heart of historic Anacostia and beaming truth directly into the corridors of power. Whether tuning in to 1480AM or joining us on the web at www.weactradio.com, our listeners will hear a lineup with four major components:

Monday-Friday (all times ET)

The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Monday, Wednesday-Friday, 8pm–9pm

Grrr...

President Obama chose to open and close his 2012 State of the Union address with a celebration of the US military. In all the post-show cable punditry, we heard not a peep of critique. Yet US military targets proliferate -- abroad, with the expanding use of unmanned drones against unconvicted people with dire consequences. And at home -- with the just-approved use of the military and military detention against undefined domestic suspects -- under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA.

If only peace activists were on those TV panels! It reminds me why I'm working so hard to bring a new show to public TV. We're currently conducting research among our viewers with a view to getting the show started earlier, even before PBS stations commit. Want to be part of our research? Let me know by emailing laura@GRITtv.org.

Meanwhile, enjoy this conversation with long time peace activist Kathy Kelly from June 2010.

And keep abreast of my grumbling and rumbling at GRITtv.org and The Nation.

UK Panel: Executive Compensation Is a "Market Failure"
Monday 30 January 2012
by: Salvatore Babones, Truthout | Report

...The day after Obama's and Daniels' remarks, the World Economic Forum opened its 2012 conference in Davos, Switzerland. At the opening debate, Professor Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business told the assembled worthies that rising income inequality was unavoidable.

...The World Economic Forum, held each January at the ski resort of Davos, Switzerland, is an annual invitation-only gathering of top CEOs, politicians and pundits from around the world.

Business executives and business school economists are fond of tracing rising inequality to deep historical trends. If you believe that markets are always rational, then high pay merely reflects a person's true economic value.

Historical trends, so the story goes, are making highly intelligent, highly skilled people more valuable - and thus more highly paid - than ever before. Resistance is futile. Inequality is rising due to deep forces beyond human control.

Economists call this line of reasoning the "skills premium" argument. Economists and executives, of course, tend to be highly intelligent and highly skilled. It's just a coincidence that they believe that their own high salaries are the inevitable result.

The main problem with the skills premium argument is that it is wrong.

...While business school economists trace rising CEO pay to a skills premium, a blue-ribbon panel in the United Kingdom has reached a very different conclusion.

The UK High Pay Commission concluded that "top pay is a symptom of market failure based on a misunderstanding of how markets work at their best."

The commission traced rapidly escalating income inequality back to a way of thinking that views "human nature, aspiration and endeavour ... through a prism of self interest."

"It is through looking at executive remuneration that we see the classic problems of corporate governance laid bare," the commission said. In other words, the commission found that people - not deep historical forces - are responsible for rising income inequality.

British politicians from all shades of the political spectrum have rushed to endorse the report's conclusions. In fact, the Conservative-led British government announced on Monday, January 23, that it would propose legislation to rein in executive pay.

The main focus of this legislation? Corporate governance reform.

The proposed British legislation is similar to the 2010 Dodd-Frank law in the United States, in that it will require British companies to publish details of executive pay and the ratio of executive to median worker pay. The British law will go much further, though. It will give company shareholders a binding annual "say-on-pay" for executive compensation and severance pay. Under the US Dodd-Frank law, shareholder say-on-pay resolutions are nonbinding and only have to be held once every three years

...A shareholder vote on executive pay is unlikely in itself to reverse rising income inequality - certainly not in the United States, where these votes are nonbinding. Broader corporate governance reforms would go further to reduce inequality.For example, the UK High Pay Commission recommended that workers' representatives be given seats on corporate boards. This is already done in countries like Germany, where income inequality is much lower than in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The British government, however, categorically rejected the possibility of putting workers' representatives on the boards of UK companies as part of its new reform package.

...Meanwhile, American politicians of both parties have vowed to address rising inequalities. The modest Dodd-Frank provisions on executive pay came into force on January 1, but it is unlikely that further action on corporate governance in the United States will be taken before the November elections.
Read in its entirety.

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the "One Percent"
Monday 30 January 2012
by: George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence | Op-Ed

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”
Continue reading

...they already got it.

Global Non-Violent Action Database
http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/browse

Super!

Thanks, Sam!

Where's the party?
I check their webpage every chance I get. Never anything new. Never any updates. Do they have a staff one?
Very discouraged.

Debating the Super Bowl Protests: Is CBS Columnist Gregg Doyel really proud to know nothing?
By Dave Zirin
I thought I was reading The Onion. Seriously. I was emailed an article written by CBS Sports columnist Gregg Doyel about Occupy activists targeting the Super Bowl because of the state imminent “right to work” legislation, and I thought I was reading The Onion. I thought it was a caricature of the uncurious, apolitical, sports jock-columnist who belches, "Politics are for nerds! Durrrrrrr...." My confusion came from reading lines like, "I'm not here to tell you what 'right to work' legislation would mean to Indiana for two reasons: One, I don't know. Two, I don't care."

When I realized that this was an actual column, and not pretend, I went back and tried to take the arguments seriously. Doyel is "full of resentment that the Occupy movement would use our passion for the Super Bowl against us, infiltrating something we love so we have to focus on something they hate" - namely the “right to work” legislation Doyel doesn't bother to understand.

Doyel wrote primly of the protest, "It's inappropriate." I have to wonder if it was Doyel's paycheck being threatened, whether he would think it appropriate to resist. But for all he knows, "right to work" is a breakfast cereal, so we're left to wonder.......
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-02-01-690/index.html

or the dishonesty of obama:

Obama uses prayer breakfast to call for assistance for the poor
By Amie Parnes - 02/02/12 10:26 AM ET

President Obama used his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday to discuss the need for the country to take care of the poor and needy in society.

The comments came a day after GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney was criticized for saying he was “not very concerned about the poor.”.........

Striking a chord of populism, as he has done in recent months, Obama told the crowd at the Washington Hilton that "faith and values" play a large role in helping to solve the nation's "most urgent problems."

"We can't leave our values at the door," Obama said.

"When I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren't discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren't taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it'll make the economy stronger for everybody," the president said. "But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years and I believe in God's command to love thy neighbor as thyself.

Speaking about his own faith, Obama said Thursday that he has "fallen on my knees with great regularity" and that when he wakes up each morning he says a "brief prayer."

"These moments of prayer slow us down," he said. "They humble us."
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/208237-obama-uses-prayer-brea...

...The land that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought into the United States became, between 1850 and 1912, all or part of ten states: California (1850), Nevada (1864), Utah (1896), and Arizona (1912), as well as the whole of, depending upon interpretation, the entire state of Texas (1845) that then included part of Kansas (1861), Colorado (1876), Wyoming (1890), Oklahoma (1907), and New Mexico (1912)Movement, is scheduled to make a rare appearance at one of many events honoring the anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signing.

...The version of the treaty ratified by the United States Senate eliminated Article X,[19] which stated that the U.S. government would honor and guarantee all land grants awarded in lands ceded to the U.S. to citizens of Spain and Mexico by those respective governments. Article VIII guaranteed that Mexicans who remained more than one year in the ceded lands would automatically become full-fledged United States citizens (or they could declare their intention of remaining Mexican citizens); however, the Senate modified Article IX, changing the first paragraph and excluding the last two. Among the changes was that Mexican citizens would "be admitted at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States)" instead of "admitted as soon as possible", as negotiated between Trist and the Mexican delegation....
...A motion to insert into the treaty the Wilmot Proviso banning slavery failed 15-38 on sectional lines...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo

NM Chicano movement figure Reies Lopez Tijerina to make rare appearance for land grant speech

SANTA FE, N.M. — Reies Lopez Tijerina, a controversial figure from the Chicano
The 85-year-old Tijerina is slated to speak Thursday at the New Mexico Statehouse Rotunda.

Other events are planned include one organized by ranchers who are suing the U.S. Forest Service over its decision to limit grazing on historic land grant areas in northern New Mexico.

In 1967, Tijerina and armed followers raided a Rio Arriba County courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, N.M. to attempt a citizen's arrest of then-District Attorney Alfonso Sanchez over the land grant issue. The raiders shot and wounded a state police officer and jailer, beat a deputy and took a sheriff and reporter hostage.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/f1ff060733c74538bd5cfaf712b80022/N...

Republican Senators: Slash jobs instead of defense spending

A group of Republican Senators will propose on Thursday a bill to stop mandatory defense spending cuts triggered by the failure of the congressional super committee, putting in its place a plan to reduce the number of federal workers and freeze the pay of others....

If lawmakers cannot agree on where to make those cuts, $1.2 trillion will be automatically withdrawn from federal spending next year, and half of it will come from the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned against such a dramatic, across-the-board cut to national defense, saying that a “hasty” move would make the U.S. less secure.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/02/republican-senators-slash-jobs-ins...

ACLU Suit Demands Release of US Government's 'Assassination Memos'
- Common Dreams staff

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to demand that the US government release basic — and accurate — information about the government’s targeted killing program.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/02-4

27 of 35 Bush Articles of Impeachment Apply to Obama
When Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush on June 9, 2008, the 35 had been selected from drafts of nearly twice that many articles.

President Obama has accumulated his own massive list of high crimes and misdemeanors that were unavailable for Bush's list (thing's like openly murdering U.S. citizens, launching massive drone wars, selectively and abusively prosecuting numerous whistleblowers as spies, holding Bradley Manning naked in isolation, attacking Libya without so much as bothering to lie to Congress, etc.).

Nonetheless, it is instructive to review the 35 Bush articles in the Obama age. It quickly becomes apparent that Obama has either exactly duplicated or closely paralleled most of the 35...............
http://www.opednews.com/articles/27-of-35-Bush-Articles-of-by-David-Swan...

or honesty of Romney. Good point, Ghettodefender.

What got to me is that it is clear that THE FAMILY is an organization that exists to further THEOCRACY in opposition to democracy. Why doesn't the media report that? Why would any of our elected officials -- including BO -- pay obeisance to THEOCRATS and their THEOCRATIC AGENDA at this National Prayer Breakfast ("National" reads as "Theocratic" for these underminers of Separation of Church and State!)??? Not good.

Lawsuit: Gingrich security stomped on man's foot

A central Florida man is suing Newt Gingrich, claiming a security officer for the Republican presidential candidate stomped on his foot "like he was stomping out a cigarette."

Edward Dillard claims his foot was fractured by the security team after voting Tuesday in the Orlando suburb of Windermere.

Dillard was wearing a Ron Paul T-shirt and holding a sign when Gingrich arrived. The lawsuit claims a "swarm" of security guards from Patriot Group International surrounded Dillard and one stomped on his foot while he was wearing open sandals, causing a fracture.

Ron Paul's campaign called for Gingrich to apologize. Messages left Saturday with Gingrich's campaign and Patriot Group were not immediately returned........
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10077521

"Patriot Group International," wtf is that? Right wingers beating each other up. Gun loving politicians that get shot. Troubling times.

Trial of judge Baltasar Garzón splits a Spain still suffering civil war wounds

Nearly four decades after Franco's death, Baltasar Garzón, the man who wants the regime's crimes out in the open, is the only person in the dock

...Garzón's failed attempt at opening a case against Franco and his henchmen nevertheless set out a devastating narrative for the 1936 rightwing military rebellion that sparked a civil war and toppled an elected government.

"The armed uprising of this date was planned and organised with the intention of bringing an end to Spain's form of government [and] attacking, detaining or physically eliminating people who held positions of responsibility," he wrote before the case was closed. Franco and his allies had carried out "the detention, torture, forced disappearance and physical elimination of thousands of people for political and ideological motives... a state of affairs that continued, to greater or lesser extent, after the civil war ended".

This simple exposition of history is outrageous to some – especially those who never had to answer for their role as Franco servants and, sometimes, to their descendants. A decade has gone by since the first bodies were pulled out of the ground as relatives summoned the courage to dig up the mass graves left by Franco's death squads. The first exhumations were amateur affairs, involving guesswork, rumours and crude holes scooped out by borrowed yellow diggers. But they sparked something big. Ten years and 5,500 bodies later, they are sophisticated archaeological digs, with DNA testing and public funds to help....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/05/baltasar-garzon-trial-franco...

Barcelona or Tucson the fascists have to the lid on history.

1999 Four plainclothes New York City police officers fired 41 bullets at Amadou Diallo in front of his Bronx home after mistaking his wallet for a gun. The unarmed West African immigrant was killed.

Has anyone come across any advice on how to deal with a sociopath?

The last I read a couple years ago and the last I heard from a psychologist was to give them a wide berth. And, that, unless they break a law and get caught, there is nothing you can do but deal quietly with your victimhood and 'move on'.

It is really sad that our society's means of law and justice have been corrupted (that is, antisocialized) to such an extent that even when sociopaths commit crimes they aren't stopped and prevented from further criminal acts via civilized law, that even now the laws are being rewritten by the sociopaths themselves!

One hundred years of Modern Psychology and we are held firmer in the grasp of the antisocial liars, crooks, profiteers and criminals than ever before.

The pain and loss in the world is palpable, the destruction by antisocial predation is visible everywhere across time and space and mayhem by sociopaths growing in Globalist fashion.

Each time, the sociopaths single out the weak and vulnerable to be tools and victims. And they are singling out wider and wider segments of society and the world.

Well, when we are told to deal quietly with our victimhood and "move on" -- all I can ask is, "Move on to what? The next victimization?" Sheesh.

Well, there are those who want us all to think that NON-VIOLENT ACTIVISTS ought to be abused (left to crouch in one position for hours on end), humiliated (left to urinate and defecate on themselves in custody), ruined (their finances collapsed by destructive fines/bails/legal fights), and ostracized (portrayed as 'extremists/terrorists").

It is the antisocial types and their ANTISOCIALIZED minions who are the abusers, humiliators, ruiners and ostracizers in this case. Their specialty is INFLICTING PAIN and SUFFERING and the creation of a 'society' that is antisocial.

Some Bill Hicks before bedtime...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDtBHJq2FMw&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Hick's comment at about 40:12 into this show.

Like 20-year-old cooking coffee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w56Y6n8Fz4&feature=related

Cheney's One Percent Doctrine is baaaaaaaaaaack!

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/02/04/return-of-cheneys-one-percent-doctr...

And did you see the New York Times Magazine article on Israel (mentioned in the Consortium News piece above? Bizarre how some will think this successfully 'sells' Israel's/GlobalIndustrialWarComplex's war-mongering, while others will see clearly that it is just more of the same fabricated war selling points from war profiteering global imperialists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/magazine/will-israel-attack-iran.html

Today is Day One. Naturally, the IDF stopped the runners about half way through the day's distance. Two runners got arrested and taken off. Fortunately, Randi wasn't arrested. She has black hair and is wearing a long sleeve tee shirt. Later in the day the IDF prevented the runners from planting donated olive trees in an area where they had earlier destroyed the existing trees. As part of the run the plan was to plant olive trees at the end of each day.
Here's a video from today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym-9Nui9zFY&context=C34df5f4ADOEgsToPDskI...

http://onthegroundglobal.org/projects/run-across-palestine/

The Run Across Palestine had gone no more than 10 kilometers between At-Tuwani and Beit Omar, in the southern West Bank, when the Israeli military and border control stopped the run in its tracks.

Confusion over whether the runners had the right to walk on the side of the road culminated in the arrest of a Run Across Palestine supporter and two French activists. Police originally gave no reasons for the arrests. Later, Run Across Palestine supporter Nasser Abufarha was charged with organizing an illegal demonstration, a charge he says is “false” because there was no demonstration.

After a melodramatic two-hour delay, the runners continued to Beit Omar. Their spirits and drive to plant olive trees remain high. Read more about the military stopping the run here.

UpTake journalist Jacob Wheeler is teaming up with Michigan videographer Aaron Dennis to document the Run Across Palestine. See more here.
http://www.theuptake.org/2012/02/05/israeli-military-arrests-slows-run-a...

Published on Sunday, February 5, 2012 by Common Dreams
Obama's Drone Program Includes Targeting Rescuers and Funerals
- Common Dreams staff

A week after President Obama spoke publicly for first time about the CIA's drone campaign in Pakistan, a new investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times in London reports the program has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.

Missiles being loaded onto a military Reaper drone in Afghanistan. Research by the Bureau has found that "since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners."....
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/05-3

The last long note on the last word "brave".

WHAT IS SO "brave" ABOUT DRONES????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1BispjP3zY&list=HL1328571650&feature=mh_...

Any responses?

The "fraudclosure" specialists, Bank of America, refuse the cash payment on a customer's mortgage and call police...

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/02/cashless-society-bank-of-america.htm...

Worldwide ... thus
JFI as I "fly" by , BTW ;)

contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info via mail-list.com

7:46 AM (27 minutes ago)

{to me...}
Alert! 06 February 2012: The Leonard Peltier Walk for Human
Rights has run into trouble on the road. A backup vehicle has
broken down and is in need of repair. The walkers need your
support. If you live in the area of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and
can offer mechanical, housing and/or food assistance please
call Dorothy Ninham at 920-713-8114. Financial assistance
is also needed. Please donate now. Donate securely online at
www.leonardpeltierwalkforhumanrights.com. Or quickly send a check
or money order made payable to Wind Chases the Sun, Inc. Mail your
financial donation to N5679 Skylark Drive, DePere, WI 54115.

Lauched into cyberspace by the
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info via mail-list.com

*** ***
I have tried to 'fly' by, in middle of Night B4. ;) *poof*

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/05/brown-u-student-uncovers-_n_125...

...imagine a boot stamping on a human face-- forever.

On Feb. 8, 1996, in a ceremony at the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed legislation revamping the telecommunications industry, saying it would "bring the future to our doorstep."

What's so brave about drones? What's so brave about any part of society based on the rich and powerful crushing the poor and the weak.
What's so brave about American Airlines trying to charge Ralph Nader two grand for a seat?

Nader: Airline tried to charge me $2,680 for aisle seat

Ralph Nader, a perennial presidential candidate and longtime consumer advocate, ran into something of a problem recently when flying to Texas from Connecticut.

After asking for an aisle seat due to his 6 ft. plus frame, he was informed by an American Airlines representative that there were no more available for coach customers, unless he wanted to pay $2,680 for it. The airline explained that the aisle seats had been set aside for passengers who were “preferred’ flyers or “elite travelers.”

Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Nader called the policy “extortion,” saying: “They’re charging you for knee lengths.”

American Airlines told MSNBC that they were simply doing what all their competitors do — reserving aisle seats for frequent business fliers or “preferred” customers.....
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/08/ralph-nader-airline-tried-to-charg...

What's so brave about my local hospital charging me 600 bucks for five minutes, some foam, surgical tape and a tetanus shot when I cut my finger in December.

Published on Thursday, February 9, 2012 by Common Dreams
Bank Bailout 2: Obama Lets Mortgage Abusers Off the Hook
The Obama Administration has followed a predictable pattern: Leave No One Accountable
- Common Dreams staff

The Obama administration announced this morning that the five largest U.S. banks have agreed to a $26 billion 'settlement' to end lawsuits over abusive practices that forced millions of families from their homes and helped bring about the nation’s financial meltdown.....

....After months of talks with state and federal officials, the banks have reportedly agreed to help some homeowners reduce their mortgage debt or refinance their homes at lower rates. Over 4 million familes lost their homes to foreclosure yet just 750,000 people who lost their homes to foreclosure will receive a one-time check for just $1,800 to $2,000, which for many will barely cover the cost of moving. The deal will only help a fraction of the struggling homeowners affected by the bank’s practices.

New York and California have reportedly signed off on the deal after initially holding it up in protest of lenient treatment of the banks.

The deal gives banks immunity from civil lawsuits for "robosigning," a practice whereby homeowners were rapidly evicted without proper vetting....

The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement....
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/09-5

Hopefully, Santorum will send obama to Gitmo.

John Pilger

This week's Supreme Court hearing in the Julian Assange case has profound meaning for the preservation of basic freedoms in western democracies. This is Assange's final appeal against his extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct that were originally dismissed by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and constitute no crime in Britain.

The consequences, if he loses, lie not in Sweden but in the shadows cast by America's descent into totalitarianism. In Sweden, he is at risk of being "temporarily surrendered" to the US where his life has been threatened and he is accused of "aiding the enemy" with Bradley Manning, the young soldier accused of leaking evidence of US war crimes to WikiLeaks.

The connections between Manning and Assange have been concocted by a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, which allowed no defence counsel or witnesses, and by a system of plea-bargaining that ensures a 90 per cent conviction. It is reminiscent of a Soviet show trial.

The determination of the Obama administration to crush Assange and the unfettered journalism represented by WikiLeaks is revealed in secret Australian government documents released under freedom of information which describe the US pursuit of WikiLeaks as "an unprecedented investigation". It is unprecedented because it subverts the First Amendment of the US constitution that explicitly protects truth-tellers. In 2008 Barack Obama said, "Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal." Obama has since prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as all previous US presidents.

With American courts demanding to see the worldwide accounts of Twitter, Google and Yahoo, the threat to Assange, an Australian, extends to any internet-user anywhere. Washington's enemy is not "terrorism" but the principle of free speech and voices of conscience within its militarist state and those journalists brave enough to tell their stories.

"How do you prosecute Julian Assange and not the New York Times?" a former administration official told Reuters. The threat is well understood by the New York Times, which in 2010 published a selection of the WikiLeaks cables. The editor at the time, Bill Keller, boasted that he had sent the cables to the State Department for vetting. His obeisance extended to his denial that WikiLeaks was a "partner" - which it was - and to personal attacks on Assange. The message to all journalists was clear: do your job as it should be done and you are traitors; do your job as we say you should and you are journalists......

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-assange-case-means-we-are-all-suspect...

withhold essential healthcare from women of child-bearing age (which is the bulk of most women's lives!). These Religious Patriarchs have preserved their hateful policies against women for centuries. Centuries!

"Okay."

George Galloway

Saturday, 11 February 2012
An Imperial Adventure Set To Continue

For readers of a certain age, Bandung in Indonesia recalls a time of tremendous hope and progress. It was there in 1955 that the Non Aligned Movement of countries in what we now call the Global South was in effect born.

A great conference of newly independent nations was held the West Java city. Attending were Nehru from India, Nasser from Egypt, Zhou Enlai from China (who narrowly survived an assassination attempt on his way to the gathering) and many others - all hosted by President Sukarno of Indonesia, who had led the vast country's independence struggle against Dutch colonialism.

It was Sukharno who was more determined than most to ensure that these countries banded together to have a major voice on the world stage. The process was formalised at a further conference in Tito's Belgrade.

Quite naturally, the newly independent states had varying outlooks and policies, internal and external. But they shared a vision of economic development freed from the worst excesses of Western-dominated capitalism and of an implacable opposition to colonial or imperialist interference.
It was not to be an easy path. Ten years after the Bandung conference Sukarno was overthrown in one of the bloodiest counter-revolutionary coups in history. Hundreds of thousands of his supporters and of the Indonesian Communist Party were wiped out. Estimates vary from half a million to three times that number. The American embassy in Jakarta helpfully supplied the military and murder gangs with lists of Communists it had compiled over the years.

All of this came flooding back to me on a recent visit to Indonesia as I stood in awe in the grand hall where the historic Bandung conference took place. I was there to promote the launch of Viva Palestina Indonesia, by people who have been inspired by the siege-breaking efforts the we launched from Britain three years ago - the first Viva Palestina convoy left London for Gaza on Valentine's Day 2009 as the smoke was still rising from Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

The launch was a huge success, demonstrating that Palestine has become the world over the touchstone for those who care about international justice, just as the struggle against apartheid South Africa was 30 years ago.

I met senior politicians from across the party spectrum in Indonesia, as well as renown writers and cultural figures. For a reports of the tour, go to www.vivapalestina.org

Everywhere there was not only a deep sympathy for Palestine in this overwhelmingly Muslim country of 250 million people. There was also a shared understanding - from the nationalist strands that look back to Sukarno to the Islamically-inspired parties and NGOs - that the suffering of the Palestinians results from both the unfinished legacy of the colonial period and from the modern forms that great power domination takes.

In the West, Bandung may be a half-remembered or never-known episode today. It isn't in Indonesia and in many other parts of the world. Despite all the hardship - which included millions dead in the struggles to free just two countries, Algeria and Vietnam - what was once known disparagingly as the Third World did largely achieve national independence. Wealth, military power and the control of international institutions, however, continued to lie with the US and the old colonial powers.

But a process of change was unleashed that could not be held back. So now, against all the odds, we are seeing a rebalancing of the world. The centre of gravity is shifting east, and south. It is not something that the 1 percenters in Washington, Berlin, London and Paris are prepared to take lightly. The latest doctrinal paper from the Pentagon, signed off by the most disappointing president in US history since Andrew Johnson took over from the slain Abraham Lincoln, is tellingly entitled Securing US Leadership in the 21st Century.

It singles out two countries that stand as obstacles to maintaining that "leadership": China and Iran. Wars - really big wars - tend not to happen when empires are at their height. They often occur in history when one empire or regional/global order is giving way to something else. And they often start with clashes around one of other of the hotspots that had boiled up in the previous phase.

So for all these reasons there could scarcely be a better time for civil society in Indonesia to take a more prominent role over one of the most egregious injustices in one of the hottest spots in the world - Palestine.

Under Sukarno, Indonesia punched above its considerable weight. It then disappeared from the world stage under the dictatorship of General Suharto, until he was spectacularly overthrown in revolution in 1998. That came at the time of the East Asian financial crisis - which ricocheted around the world, forcing devaluation and default in Russia. It seemed a terrible economic crisis at the time. Only now do we know how much worse was yet to come.

The fall of Suharto, in retrospect, seems like a harbinger for those who came from the same anti-Bandung stable: Ben Ali and Mubarak.

Three years into the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s more and more parts of the global order are creaking. There are immense dangers. But also signs of the spirit that fought for progress 60 years ago.

You can sense it in Jakarta and Bandung, where next winter, with the help of the local authorities and justice campaigners there will be another gathering which I hope will play a small but significant part in helping to meet those dangers and bring support to the people of Palestine.

Iran and Syria

The orgy of hypocrisy Western capitals over the UN vote on Syria this week was a fitting response from that quarter to the stomach-churning scenes from the incipient civil-war in Syria.

How dare the Russians and Chinese vote no, they said, seemingly oblivious to the scores of no votes, vetoes, cast by the US and its allies not only against moves for progress in the Middle East and criticism of Israel, but ranging from rejecting measures to bring food security to billions of people on the planet to ending the occupation of East Timor.

I can do no better than to point you to two pieces of journalism that cut through this hypocrisy, and with razor sharp intellect explain what stands behind it to make the clear case against the buildup for war in the Middle East - against Iran and, by proxy, through manifold intervention in Syria.

The Star's leader on Monday should go down as one of the most prescient and timely editorials this paper has ever published in its long history. And, if the editor will forgive the indiscretion of citing another publication, my friend Seamus Milne in the Guardian on Wednesday forensically tore away the propaganda campaign of those who seek to exploit the suffering in Syria to advance a policy of, well, securing US "leadership" in the 21st century.

A growing number of people in Britain are rightly worried, very worried, about the prospects of open military conflict with Iran - other forms of war are already being undertaken, assassination, invasion of airspace, economic blockade. It is testimony to the great campaign against the war on Iraq that public opinion is anxious.

Many can see the eerie parallels - supposed weapons of mass destruction, demonisation of a government and people, talking heads calmly debating how to escalate the tension while refusing to rule out its murderous crescendo.

Fewer see the link with our rulers' meddling in Syria, though the opinion polls show that there is equally no appetite for sending troops, fresh from the killing fields of Helmand, to the Levant. There is, however, some support for what they euphemistically called a "no fly zone" over Libya. That turned out to be a free fire zone, which resulted in 30,000 dead, ethnic cleansing and the rupture of the country into rival fiefdoms, run by militias against the will and hopes of the people- a lot of little Gaddafis.

Our masters, however, do see the link. They are have no interest in the people of Syria. But they do have a vital interest in seeking to ensure that the outcome is a weakened Syria with, they hope, a government more pliable, more accommodating to Western suzerainty and prepared to sign a surrender peace with Israel. Crucially, they want a Syria that will join rather than resist the military encirclement of Iran.

So do the Saudis and the Gulf states, who with double-speak even George Orwell could not have imagined, are about to launch a "Friends of Democratic Syria" initiative. These kleptocratic monarchies don't even bother to go straight to the Arab League, but instead gather as the Gulf Cooperation Council, which Morocco - several thousand miles from the Gulf - is to join, presumably by dint of its monarchical and pliant nature.

They are fighting a proxy war in Syria. And they are busy now, through bribery, bulling and bludgeoning, to ensure that they dominate the opposition forces there through the foreign-based SNC, just as they structured the TNC in Libya so it would suit their interests.

A glimmer of what they are up to came with a failed attempt by Israel's supporters, and some claiming to stand with the Syrian people, to turn a leaked email exchange I had two years ago with Damascus into some heinous scandal.

I did indeed write to the government of Syria asking for their permission to take a convoy of aid to Gaza through their country and then by sea to Egypt. I did the same to the governments of Egypt and of Turkey. I did praise Syria for its refusal to beat the path of Mubarak and the Gulf sheiks to collaboration with Israel over the siege of Gaza and with the US in the region. Do those who rile at this not want a Syria that is independent and dignified? I think they do not.

The convoy, planned as people around the world rose in outrage at the massacre aboard the Mavi Marmar (and Western leaders wrung their hands and passed more ammunition to Israel), did pass through Syria, where it was boosted by massive contingents from north Africa, Jordan and the Gulf, and onto Egypt and into Gaza. So I resile from nothing, just as all those who have resisted the Gaza siege and stood against war in the Middle East should resile from nothing.

Remember how the doctrine of liberal humanitarian intervention was deployed by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton in the lands of former Yugoslavia? We were told how the deployment of troops in Bosnia would end the killing. It did not. That ended only with a political settlement - just as the US now recognises in Afghanistan after a decade of bloodshed and when it was on offer even before the war was launched.

We were told the 10-week bombing campaign of Serbia and Kosovo would end suffering. It intensified it. We were told it was done for the highest ideals, indeed contrary to any grubby interest; that it marked the end of imperialist hypocrisy and war. In fact, it was the precursor, lowering the threshold to a decade of war which continues into this decade.

So let no one be fooled. This is a stepping stone to further war; indeed it is a proxy for the big battle, cowing Iran and its people by one means or another in order to secure a refashioned hegemony in the region.

The people who are battling to fulfil the hopes of the successful revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia do not what that. Nor do most of the people in the region. You should stand against it to.

If you fear, as you should, the possibility of the war with Iran that the Israeli hard right are pushing for, then the time is now to stand against the propaganda, meddling and drive for intervention over Syria and across the Middle East.
http://www.votegeorgegalloway.com/2012/02/imperial-adventure-set-to-cont...

This happened once before: I post a blog entry and there's no content!
Last time this happened I posted another entry and had TWO blank entries!
So go read at my "newly designed" blogger site
Brick TeeVee's Valentine Extinction Level Event!
Something for everyone!
How are ya?
We've been picking up some server work and this-n-that on the side so we're engaging in that “You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that" bu$hism 1%'er race-to-the-bottom NewSpeak. I'm beat! But what are ya gonna do?
Hope y'all are doing well!

http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/about/default.asp

I keep hearing that 98% of catholic women have used contraceptives. This flies in the face of all the totalitarian rhetoric that comes from there apologists.

http://theintelhub.com/2012/02/12/the-coming-world-government/

[excerpt]
...

World Government

The dream of erecting a world government controlled by a very small, extremely powerful and elusive minority goes back several centuries. Its roots lie not just on the political stage but, more so, in social, cultural and religious spheres, often with symbolic, “occult” overtones.

In our time it has been variously described under the guise of “New World Order,” “One World,” “Over-World” and, more recently, “Globalisation.”

Call it what you will, the facts are that national sovereignty, which is the ability of the People to organise around nation-states, to make the final decisions on their own affairs, from being a sharply defined concept is now so eroded and diffuse that no one can readily define exactly what sovereignty means today.

Maybe this would be acceptable if national sovereignty were lessened for the sake of better coping with global problems affecting Mankind as a whole – for the Common Good – however increasing famine, disease, contamination and war shows a very different picture. Why?

The reason is that basically World Government is not emerging around robust global public institutions that have (or should have) the Public Good of We the People in the forefront, but rather around private organisations that have sectorial profit and interests at their forefront. In fact, the World Government we see rising before our eyes has one key, seldom mentioned, characteristic: it’s private.
...

[read more at link]

Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
Anonymous Targets US Tear Gas Maker, Marking Bahraini Crackdown Anniversary
US, Combined Sytems Inc. continue arms sales to Bahrain
- Common Dreams staff

As the streets of Bahrain filled with tear gas during two days of intensified protests and a continued government crackdown this week, a group of hackers retaliated. Anonymous, a prominent hacktivist organization, took down the website of Combined Systems Inc., the Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of the tear gas which has been used widely by security forces in Bahrain, Tunisia, and Egypt.

Fifty Medical Doctors for Single Payer Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Individual Mandate

WASHINGTON - February 14 - Fifty medical doctors who favor a single payer health insurance system today urged the US Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate.

In a brief (pdf) filed with the Court, the fifty doctors and two non-profit groups – Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy – said that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The individual mandate is the provision of the ACA that requires Americans to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies if they do not otherwise have coverage.

The doctors are challenging the government’s claim that the individual mandate is necessary to reach Congress’ goal of universal coverage.

“The court should decide the constitutionality of the individual mandate based on the best available evidence,” said attorney Oliver Hall. “That’s why it is so important that these medical doctors provide the court with the information in their brief, which demonstrates that Congress can address the United States’ healthcare crisis by adopting a single payer system.”

“It is not necessary to force Americans to buy private health insurance to achieve universal coverage,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. “There is a proven alternative that Congress didn’t seriously consider, and that alternative is a single payer national health insurance system.”

“Congress could have taken seriously evidence presented by these single payer medical doctors that a single payer system is the only way to both control costs and cover everyone,” Mokhiber said. “Instead, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chair of the Senate Finance Committee which drafted the law that became the ACA, had two of those doctors – Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris – arrested and thrown in jail. Those doctors are now two of the 50 who have signed onto this brief challenging the Constitutionality of the ACA.”

“If the US Congress had considered an evidence-based approach to health reform instead of writing a bill that funnels more wealth to insurance companies that deny and restrict care, it would have been a no brainer to adopt a single payer health system much like our own Medicare,” said Dr. Margaret Flowers. “We are already spending enough on health care in this country to provide high quality universal comprehensive lifelong health care. All the data point to a single payer system as the only way to accomplish this and control health care costs.”

"People will have the greatest control of their own healthcare if the insurance industry is removed from between doctors and patients,” said Kevin Zeese of It’s Our Economy. “And, people will no longer be threatened with increased premiums, decreased coverage and financial ruin caused by a health crisis."

Read the full brief here (pdf)
###

From TRUTHOUT's Jason Leopold --

Last month, I broke news and revealed a highly secretive practice the FBI uses in response to certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, known as "blackballing." The story came together organically: last November, the FBI responded to Truthout’s FOIA request for documents on Occupy Wall Street by stating that the agency did not have any records pertaining to our request, even though internal FBI records related to the protest movement had already been posted on the Internet. Civil rights historian Trevor Griffey read my report and then contacted me to share the details about "blackballing," which he learned about, accidentally, a year ago during the course of one of his FOIA requests. I contacted the agency, confirmed the details (a spokesman said "blackballing" was a "term of art"), and published the report.

By shining a light on the process, Truthout has empowered our fellow journalists and our community of readers - as well as the public at large. We all now know that when we file a FOIA request with the FBI or any other government agency and receive a "no records" response, the records we seek may yet exist, and we should keep pushing and file another request, asking for "processing notes" to find out if records were blackballed.

Journalism that informs AND empowers the public is rare, and I am grateful Mr. Griffey trusted me - and Truthout - with the details of this groundbreaking story.

In a time when the government is waging an all-out war on whistleblowers, this information is incredibly valuable. At Truthout, we promise to continue to challenge the blackballing, the disinformation and the lies, in order to help you see and understand the realities of the world we live in.

To keep doing this essential work, we truly need your help. We have $24,000 to raise in order to make our budget and end this drive. Please make a donation and help us continue speaking truth to power.

http://crooksandliars.com/kenneth-quinnell/mitt-romney-tells-cpac-hell-c...

Would Bizarro Mormonworld gain influence with Romney as President?

Really, polygamy is just a weird subculture practice of some men who want to treat women like farm animals (breeding), slaves (ready workforce), and sex workers (when one or more wives are pregnant, chances are another wife will still be available).

SING ALONG! "If it was good enough for Moses, then it's good enough for me!" Or the Mormon version, "If it was good enough for Joseph Smith, then it's good enough for me!"

Some stuff about weird claim that polygamy should be protected under 'religious freedom'--

http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/polygamy-freedo...

http://debates.juggle.com/can-polygamy-be-protected-under-freedom-of-rel...

http://www.acluutah.org/bigamystatute.htm

Minnesota School District Changes Policy Blamed for Bullying
By Christina Samuels on February 14, 2012 10:02 AM

The Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota on Monday night ended a policy in which teachers had to remain neutral if issues of sexual identity came up in class.

The board replaced the policy, blamed for contributing to a school culture that led to the bullying, and eventually the suicides, of several gay students, with one that promotes "a respectful learning environment in which teachers facilitate student discussions of contentious topics in a balanced and impartial manner," the school district said.
Continue reading here

February 15 In 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor.

Iranian suspects held over Bangkok blast
Police examining possible links between explosion in Thai capital and attacks on Israeli diplomats in two countries.

Two Iranians have been charged with plotting a bomb attack in Bangkok, according to Thailand's foreign minister.

Thai officials believe the incident in the Thai capital could be linked to recent attacks on Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia.

A man carrying an Iranian passport lost his legs and injured four other people in a Bangkok neighbourhood on Tuesday when grenades he was carrying apparently exploded by accident, police said....

Netanyahu's remarks

Reacting to the latest developments, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, accused Iran of targeting diplomats, saying that if the world did not stop Iran's "aggression", the attacks would spread.

"It harms innocent diplomats in many countries and the nations of the world must condemn Iran's terror actions and demarcate red lines against Iranian aggression," he said.

"If such aggression is not stopped it will spread to many countries."

Iran has denied any involvement in the blasts, saying Israel often made such accusations.

Iranian state TV quoted Ramin Mehmanparast, the country's foreign ministry spokesman, as saying that Israel was behind the explosions.

"The main goal of the Zionist regime is to conceal its real essence in carrying out terrorist acts particularly assassinating Iran's scientists," the state news agency IRNA quoted Mehmanparast as saying.....

India 'lacks evidence'

India said it did not have enough evidence to reach a firm conclusion.

"The Indian government does not have any evidence pointing to any individual, entity, organisation or country being involved in Monday's blast, so far," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The attack on an Israeli diplomatic car in the Indian capital left a female diplomat and three other people injured.

Police in Georgia said they had thwarted on an Israeli diplomatic vehicle on the same day.

Russia has condemned the bomb attacks and called on both countries to investigate but did not accuse Iran or any other country of involvement...
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/02/201221555522250455.html

Patriarchal Mormons claim polygamy is a religious freedom
Submitted by nora on Wed, 02/15/2012 - 9:51am.

I like it when women treat like a sex worker. As I child, I always dreamed of being abducted by a pod of mermaids and forced to perform unnatural acts.

The Amazons (Greek: Ἀμαζόνες, Amazónes, singular Ἀμαζών, Amazōn) are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia (modern territory of Ukraine). Other historiographers place them in Asia Minor,[1] or Libya.[2]

Notable queens of the Amazons are Penthesilea, who participated in the Trojan War, and her sister Hippolyta, whose magical girdle, given to her by her father Ares, was the object of one of the labours of Hercules. Amazonian raiders were often depicted in battle with Greek warriors in amazonomachies in classical art....
The myth

In some versions of the myth, no men were permitted to have sexual encounters or reside in Amazon country; but once a year, in order to prevent their race from dying out, they visited the Gargareans, a neighbouring tribe. The male children who were the result of these visits were either killed, sent back to their fathers or exposed in the wilderness to fend for themselves; the females were kept and brought up by their mothers, and trained in agricultural pursuits, hunting, and the art of war. In other versions when the Amazons went to war they would not kill all the men. Some they would take as slaves, and once or twice a year they would have sex with their slaves.[9]

The intermarriage of Amazons and men from other tribes was also used to explain the origin of various peoples. For example, the story of the Amazons settling with the Scythians (Herodotus Histories 4.110.1-117.1, see Wikisource).

In the Iliad, the Amazons were referred to as Antianeirai ("those who fight like men")....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons

Polygamy is the only thing that appeals to me about Mormonism.

“Human Rights” Warriors for Empire

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“NATO wants desperately to identify some sliver of Syrian soil on which to plant the ‘humanitarian’ flag of intervention.”

The largest imperial offensive since the Iraq invasion of March, 2003, is in full swing, under the banner of “humanitarian” intervention – Barack Obama’s fiendishly clever upgrade of George Bush’s “dumb” wars. Having failed to obtain a Libyan-style United Nations Security Council fig leaf for a “humanitarian” military strike against Syria, the United States shifts effortlessly to a global campaign “outside the U.N. system” to expand its NATO/Persian Gulf royalty/Jihadi coalition. Next stop: Tunisia, where Washington’s allies will assemble on February 24 to sharpen their knives as “Friends of Syria.” The U.S. State Department has mobilized to shape the “Friends” membership and their “mandate” – which is warlord-speak for refining an ad hoc alliance for the piratical assault on Syria’s sovereignty.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are swigging the ale with their fellow buccaneers. These “human rights” warriors, headquartered in the bellies of empires past and present, their chests shiny with medals of propagandistic service to superpower aggression in Libya, contribute “left” legitimacy to the imperial project. London-based Amnesty International held a global “day of action” to rail against Syria for “crimes against humanity” and to accuse Russia and China of using their Security Council vetoes to “betray” the Syrian people – echoing the war hysteria out of Washington, Paris, London and the royal pigsties of Riyadh and Doha. New York-based Human Rights Watch denounced Moscow and Beijing’s actions as “incendiary” – as if it were not the empire and its allies who were setting the Middle East and Africa on fire, arming and financing jihadis – including hundreds of veteran Libyan Salafists now operating in Syria.

“Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch contribute ‘left’ legitimacy to the imperial project.”

Under Obama’s “intelligent” (as opposed to “dumb”) imperial tutelage, colonial genocidaires like France now propose creation of “humanitarian corridors” inside Syria “to allow NGOs to reach the zones where there are scandalous massacres.” NATO flatly rejected such a corridor in Libya when sub-Saharan Africans and black Libyans were being massacred by militias armed and financed by the same “Friends” that now besiege Syria.

Turkey claims it has rejected, for now, the idea of setting up humanitarian “buffer zones” along its border with Syria – inside Syrian territory – while giving arms, training and sanctuary to Syrian military deserters. In reality, it is Syrian Army troop and armor concentrations on the border that have thwarted the establishment of such a “buffer” – a bald euphemism for creating a “liberated zone” that must be “protected” by NATO or some agglomeration of U.S.-backed forces.

NATO, which bombed Libya non-stop for six months, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties while refusing to count a single body, wants desperately to identify some sliver of Syrian soil on which to plant the “humanitarian” flag of intervention. They are transparently searching for a Benghazi, to justify a replay of the Libyan operation – the transparent fact that prompted the Russian and Chinese vetoes.

Faced with the certainty of superpower-backed attack under the guise of “protecting” civilians in “liberated” territory, Syria cannot afford to cede even one neighborhood of a single city – not one block! – or of any rural or border enclave, to armed rebels and foreign jihadis. That road leads directly to loss of sovereignty and possible dissection of Syria – which western pundits are already calling a “hodge-podge” nation that could be a “failed state.” Certainly, the French and British are experts at carving up other people’s territories, having drawn the national boundaries of the region after World War One. It is an understatement to say that Israel would be pleased.

“It is the Libya formula, and might as well have come straight from Barack Obama’s mouth.”

With the Syrian military’s apparent successes in securing most of Homs and other centers of rebellion, the armed opposition has stepped up its terror tactics – a campaign noted with great alarm by the Arab League’s own Observer Mission to Syria, leading Saudi Arabia and Qatar to suppress the Mission’s report. Instead, the Gulf States are pressing the Arab League to openly “provide all kinds of political and material support” to the opposition, meaning arms and, undoubtedly, more Salafist fighters. Aleppo, Syria’s main commercial and industrial city, which had seen virtually no unrest, was struck by two deadly car bombs last week – signature work of the al-Qaida affiliate in neighboring Iraq.

The various “Friends of Syria,” all nestled in the U.S./NATO/Saudi/Qatar cocoon, now openly speak of all-out civil war in Syria – by which they mean stepped up armed conflict financed and directed by themselves – as the preferred alternative to the protracted struggle that the regime appears to be winning. There is one caveat: no “Western boots on the ground in any form,” as phrased by British Foreign Secretary William Hague. It is the Libya formula, and might as well have come straight from Barack Obama’s mouth.

Syria is fighting for its national existence against an umbrella of forces mobilized by the United States and NATO. Of the 6,000 or so people that have died in the past 11 months, about a third have been Syrian soldiers and police – statistical proof positive that this is an armed assault on the state. There is no question of massive foreign involvement, or that the aim of U.S. policy is regime change, as stated repeatedly by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (“Assad must go,” she told reporters in Bulgaria).

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have chosen sides in the Washington-backed belligerency – the side of Empire. As groups most often associated with (what passes for) the Left in their headquarters countries, they are invaluable allies of the current imperial offensive. They have many fellow travelers in (again, what passes for) anti-war circles in the colonizing and neo-colonizing nations. The French “Left” lifted hardly a finger while a million Algerians died in the struggle for independence, and have not proved effective allies of formerly colonized people in the 50 years, since. Among the European imperial powers, only Portugal’s so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974, a coup by young officers, resulted in substantial relief for the subjects of empire: the withdrawal of troops from Portugal’s African colonies.

“Of the 6,000 or so people that have died in the past 11 months, about a third have been Syrian soldiers and police – statistical proof positive that this is an armed assault on the state.”

The U.S. anti-war movement lost its mass character as soon as the threat of a draft was removed, in the early Seventies, while the United States continued to bomb Vietnam (and test new and exotic weapons on its people) until the fall of Saigon, in 1975. All that many U.S. lefties seemed to want was to get the Republicans off their backs, in 2008, and to Hell with the rest of the world. Democrat Barack Obama has cranked the imperial war machine back into high gear, with scarcely a peep from the “Left.”

There was great ambivalence – the most polite word I can muster – among purported leftists in the United States and Europe to NATO’s bombardment and subjugation of Libya. Here we are again, in the face of existential imperial threats to Syria and Iran, as leftists temporize about human rights while the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” blazes new warpaths.

There is no such thing as an anti-war activist who is not an anti-imperialist. And the only job of an anti-imperialist in the belly of the beast is to disarm the beast. Absent that, s/he is useless to humanity.

As we used to say: You are part of the solution – or you are part of the problem. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are part of the problem.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/%E2%80%9Chuman-rights%E2%80%9D-...

Slogan for the 2012 Olympics.

Published on Thursday, February 16, 2012 by Common Dreams
Olympic Committee: Dow Not Responsible for Bhopal Tragedy
IOC to keep Dow Chemical as Olympics sponsor despite protests
- Common Dreams staff

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said that it would keep Dow Chemical as a sponsor despite protests and objections from Indian officials. The IOC said Dow was not responsible for the 1984 Bhopal tragedy and that the company has "values of the Olympic movement.........
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/16-0

Published on Thursday, February 16, 2012 by The Nation
Honduras in Flames
by Dana Frank

Tuesday night, February 14, at least 357 prisoners died in a fire at La Granja penitentiary in Comayagua, Honduras, in one of the worst prison fires in the past century. The fire, though, is only the latest deadly outcome of the larger politically-driven firestorm that is Honduras today. The Comayagua fire must be understood in the context of the near-total breakdown of the Honduran state since the June 28, 2009 military coup that overthrew democratically-elected President José Manuel Zelaya.

[Relatives of inmates stand outside the prison in Comayagua, Honduras, Wednesday Feb. 15, 2012. A fire late Tuesday tore through the jail killing 382 inmates. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix) ] Relatives of inmates stand outside the prison in Comayagua, Honduras, Wednesday Feb. 15, 2012. A fire late Tuesday tore through the jail killing 382 inmates. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix) Honduran authorities were quick to insist that the dead were hardened criminals and blame the fire on a crazy inmate who set his own mattress on fire. But human rights advocates, prison experts, and the opposition media have been quick to underscore that the biggest criminals in this story are the police and the Honduran state.

Daniel Orellana, director of prisons until he was suspended in the fire's aftermath, was the mastermind managing the Honduras police during and after the military coup, according to the July 2011 report of the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation convened by the coup government of President Porfirio Lobo.....

....This militarization is being fueled by the US State Department, which continues to throw its financial and diplomatic support behind the corrupt and illegitimate Lobo regime. Obama in his 2013 budget proposed to double the funding for Honduras, despite growing Congressional pressure to suspend all police and military aid to Honduras. US military funding has increased every year since the coup, and the United States is currently pouring $50 million into expanding its strategically important Soto Cano Air Force Base in Honduras, using the fight against drug trafficking as a pretext to expand both its military presence and its direct control of the Honduran police.

The Honduran human rights community and opposition are clear, though: they want the United States to cut the aid—"stop feeding the beast," as the university rector has famously asked—and they want to clean up the state security forces themselves. They do not want the United States, whether itself or through its puppets, to take over their country further through an alleged cleanup operation in service to the very coup regime into which it continues to pour millions of dollars.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/16-9

Virginia delegates pass two of the most restrictive anti-abortion bills ever presented to a state legislature
Bills would require 'transvaginal ultrasounds,' declare life begins at conception

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/virginia-delegates-pass-res...

"In Virginia, rape is defined as the following:

§ 18.2-61. Rape.

A. If any person has sexual intercourse with a complaining witness, whether or not his or her spouse, or causes a complaining witness, whether or not his or her spouse, to engage in sexual intercourse with any other person and such act is accomplished (i) against the complaining witness's will, by force, threat or intimidation of or against the complaining witness or another person; or (ii) through the use of the complaining witness's mental incapacity or physical helplessness; or (iii) with a child under age 13 as the victim, he or she shall be guilty of rape."

http://www.truth-out.org/state-sanctioned-rape-trans-vaginal-ultrasound-...

Interesting research...

http://www.nature.com/pr/journal/v44/n6/full/pr1998580a.html

"We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity's Most Dangerous Moments."

Published on Saturday, February 18, 2012 by Common Dreams
Pakistan Vows To Stand with Iran if US, Israel Attack
- Common Dreams staff

A clear message has been given to the United States through the tripartite summit of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan that Pakistan will support Iran in case of any possible aggression against it.

Presidents from Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai (L), Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari (C) and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad join hands as they pose for pictures after a news conference in the President House in Islamabad February 17, 2012. Ahmadinejad said on Friday foreign interference was the source of all problems in the region. REUTERS/Mian Khursheed Moreover, Pakistan has clearly affirmed that the US will not be allowed to set up any airbases in Pakistan with the purpose of attacking Iran. The joint declaration says: "Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan will ensure respect of territorial sovereignty of each other and would not allow any threat emanating from their respective territories against each other"............
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/18-0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wue0avWGjKI

{... just 'fly'n by... } ;D

the 2ed Hr. was the best imo
with Sam :) , and
alexis goldstein (occupy)

The USA's been consuming a quarter of the Earth's resources for too long -- it was wrong to begin with. People will look back at our 20th Century indulgent lifestyle in the same way we look at European aristocracy's pre-20th Century indulgence. Obvious Imperialist Excess.

But, a REAL CHANGE away from this did not need to be a rapid descent to abject poverty, with homelessness, and all education and future personal expectations shrinking overnight for most of the people of this country. I truly believe the majority of people eagerly would have embraced a visionary transition and accepted alterations in their lifestyles to conserve energy, adopt green energy alternatives away from petro-products, adopt/test/perfect technology for self-sustaining local/regional communities. But the New World Order Elite profiteering minority has prevented any sane transition.

It's the Elite One Twentieth of a Percent who are adverse to real change. They seek to preserve their own over-consumption and obscene wealth and, therefore in its preservation, they fashion their goal to subvert the true health of community if it means they can keep their high profits. The Elite are regressive and reactionary thinkers only: They know that an aristrocratic, even a theocratic, feudalistic set-up favors them and they are willing to go back to that past system at our expense. They are willing and they are DOING it -- one National Prayer Breakfast at a time, one stolen electronic blackbox election at a time, one bankster-engineered "bubble" and "recession" at a time!

I think most people would find excitement in community efforts to make our lives more sane -- sustainable local food, clothing and energy methods -- and less full of pollution and plastic crap. The only segment of society in the way of that developing rapidly through mass education and transformation are the Elite who have stolen the financial resources with which we could have accomplished a sane transition.

Check out this interview wherein it is revealed that Monsanto can in effect tresspass an organic farm with its tainting GMO crop pollens -- and then SUE THE ORGANIC FARMER for violation of GMO patent law!

The interview is in the last half hour...

http://www.goveganradio.com/flashplayer/player32.html?showDate=2012-02-1...

LOTS of other great shows to listen to here, too--

http://www.goveganradio.com/veg/1003/Listen_to_Past_Shows.htm

So, this guy illegally overstayed his visa and our USA authorities allowed him to stay and wander about for years? Then gave him a gun to carry while roaming about WashingtonDC?

WAIT A MINUTE HERE!

The logical purpose of a "sting" is to catch someone doing what you know he's gotten away with before.

But these current "War on Terra" stings look like immature video games or tax-dollar-draining cottage industry pasttimes where -- repeatedly -- delusional types/schizophrenics, the weak-minded or societal outcasts are befriended, enticed and set-up and supplied with the materials of terrorism.

Article on this waste of government money here--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/federal-agents-arr...

[excerpt]

...

In several recent terrorism sting operations, critics have accused federal investigators of provoking suspects and, in some cases, suggesting possible targets or tactics. Legal experts say the FBI sometimes walks a fine line in such cases.

“You want to be very sure that the narrative is not substantially provided by the government,” said Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, who studies terrorism sting operations. “There’s a lot of gray area in these cases.”

But officials said Friday that Khalifi, who allegedly conducted surveillance on the Capitol and engaged in methodical planning, was no unwitting victim.

Khalifi arrived in the United States when he was 16 and was living as an illegal immigrant in Northern Virginia, having overstayed his visitor’s visa for years, officials said....

[more at link]

Callers phone in to talk with Jesus Christ ("Hello, Jesus. Thank you for taking my call....") and ask His/his guidance/advice. Amazing.

At the website below you'll see the crown of thorns "logo" for the show -- so don't say you were not warned!

http://www.thejesuschristshow.com/

Will we ever know the truth on this one?

Has this been used in a movie plot yet? -- like this would be used by the Saudis or CIA or Israelis for payola or a pay-off for somebody doing their dirty work, etc.?

Anyway, so bizarre.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/17/us-usa-bonds-forgery-idUSTRE81...

Or something to that effect -- since they sold the farmer the product Lasso that made him ill. Monsanto not only makes poisons, it fails to put adequate warnings on the product labels....

http://www.truth-out.org/monsanto-found-guilty-chemical-poisoning-france...

The loopholes will stay along with obama's gift of a lower rate. And, the dems will call it a compromise and political genius.
Corporate tax rate: Obama administration to propose cut to 28%

President's first foray into tax code reform will follow 'fairness' principles outlined in state of the union address, officials say
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/22/corporate-tax-rate-obama-pro...

Ecocide & Genocide Are The Secret of Capitalist Efficiency
Wed, 02/22/2012 - 13:18 — Bruce A. Dixon

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

We hear all the time about how the competitive genius of firms like Wal-Mart, Monsanto, GE and Apple Computer have mastered innovative technologies, and global supply chains to bring us all the objects we covet and consume. We understand they did all this by being braver, more far-sighted and just plain smarter than the rest of us, because that's what we've been told all our lives.

But thanks to intrepid journalists who have visited and reported on sites like the massive 400,000 employee Foxconn plant in South China, through which nearly all Apple's Dell's, and the product lines of many of their “competitors” pass, there are many reliable accounts describing how final assembly of all our cell phones, computers and computer subassemblies is done by workers, often children confined to barracks, exposed to toxic chemicals, worked to death and disability for near-starvation wages in 12 to 24 hour shifts, and discarded for newer serfs before they reach their late twenties. This innovative system is backed up by a Chinese state every bit as much the craven servant of capital as our own US government. And this is only one stage in the electronics industry's global supply chain.

It starts in Central Africa, in the Congo where most of the world's coltan, a naturally occurring compound used in every cell phone, circuit board, computer, car, aircraft, missile or electronic device, is mined. To ensure that a strong central Congolese government didn't block Western access to its vital resources, Western powers engineered the invasion of Congo by seven surrounding countries who turned it into a vast free-fire zone and killed 5 to 6 million in the last half of the 90s alone. The ore is shipped to China on freighters fueled by West African oil, where that industry has turned Nigeria's delta region into one of the most ecologically devastated areas on earth.

“Capitalist efficiency then, is nothing more than the murderous offloading of real costs onto powerless oppresssed people and the natural environment.”

In China the coltan is refined and processed using coal fired electricity, with the coal coming from the rape of Australia's indigenous lands................
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/ecocide-genocide-are-secret-cap...

Sounds better than calling my local teabagger rep let alone the WH. (Might be safer too.)

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/scott-galupo/2012/02/22/rick-santoru...

[excerpt]

Rick Santorum Didn't Restart the Culture War--It Never Stopped

by Scott Galupo

...

Make no mistake. Such has been the animating spirit of the Tea Party all along. That's what is fueling the Santorum "insurgency" right now. Culture war is the big picture. Fail to see it, you won't fully understand the 2012 presidential campaign.

[read more at link]

Cooperatives Over Corporations
Friday 24 February 2012
by: Jim Hightower, Truthout | Op-Ed

"...Co-op businesses do everything that a corporation can do, but with a democratic structure, an equitable sharing of income and a commitment to the common good of the community and future generations.

"You might be surprised to learn that such national brand names as ACE Hardware, Best Western Hotels, Organic Valley, REI and True Value Hardware are organized as co-ops, rather than as corporations. The strength of the movement, however, is in the limitless number of local cooperatives flowering all across the country. From Union Cab [5] of Madison to KOOP [6]Radio in Austin, from Evergreen Cooperatives [7] in Cleveland to Circle Pines Center [8] in Michigan, citizen co-ops are highly prized for their unique personalities, human scale, democratic values and community focus.

"Cooperatives are a big, structural reform that ordinary Americans can implement right where they live, giving small groups a pragmatic and effective way to push back against the arrogance and avarice of the centralized, hierarchical corporate model. Not only do co-ops work economically, they also make people important again, offering real democratic participation and putting some "unity" back in "community."
http://www.truth-out.org/cooperatives-over-corporations/1330091031

Déjà Vu in Chicago as Occupying Workers Secure Victory
Friday 24 February 2012
by: Allison Kilkenny, In These Times [3] | Report

More than three years ago, a group of about 200 workers from Republic Windows & Doors organized a six-day sit-in demanding vacation and severance pay after suddenly being laid off near the holidays.

...The occupation drew national media attention almost two years before Occupy Wall Street became a reality, and workers won a settlement and the factory reopened under new management.

While early reports indicated that the new owners, Serious Energy, might hire back the former Republican workers, Leah Fried, a spokeswoman for UE Local 110, told the Chicago Tribune [6] that the new company never hired back more than 75 of the workers.

A new group of about 65 workers locked themselves inside the same factory this week in a desperate move to save their jobs once again.

...A deal has now been struck to try and save the jobs. Serious Energy has agreed to keep the plant operational and people on the job for another 90 days while the union workers and the company work together to find a way to keep the plant open with new ownership because the plant will no longer be part of Serious Energy’s business plan. After 9 hours the occupation has ended with a hopeful workforce.
http://www.truth-out.org/deja-vu-chicago-occupying-workers-secure-victor...

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/812310/at_gop_debate%2C_cnn...

[excerpt]

...

King asked Santorum about his previously stated personal opposition to contraception, but Santorum gave an evasive answer, one King let him get away with.

"When you were campaigning in Iowa," King said to Santorum, "you told an evangelical blog, if elected, you will talk about what, quote, 'no president has talked about before -- the dangers of contraception.' Why?"

"What I was talking about is we have a society -- Charles Murray just wrote a book about this and it's on the front page of the New York Times two days ago," Santorum replied, "which is the increasing number of children being born out of wedlock in America, teens who are sexually active." He then went on for a bit about the dangers of children being raised by single women.

Allow me to unpack this a bit. One would imagine contraception to be one means of reducing the numbers of children "born out of wedlock," as Santorum so quaintly describes it. But Charles Murray, author of the racist screed, The Bell Curve, cited without challenge as an expert? The same Charles Murray who alleged that African Americans are intellectually inferior to whites? And not a peep about that from the moderator?

Instead, King allowed Santorum to meander along, spinning a yarn about the breakdown of society that never clearly addressed his comments on the purported dangers of contraception. Santorum was never asked about the Satan speech or Freiss' smear against women.

...

[read more at link]

==========================

Santorum said on Levine talk radio show that Clarence Thomas was his fav Supreme Court justice because Thomas' thinking is so superior (or something to that effect).

[excerpt]

...Despite links to organ damage and mutated insects, the USDA says that it is changing the rules so that genetically modified seed companies like Monsanto will get ‘speedier regulatory reviews’...

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/usda-to-give-monsantos-new-gmo-crops-special-s...

Chartering Equity: Using Charter School Legislation and Policy to Advance Equal Educational Opportunity
by Julie Mead, Preston Green
February 21, 2012

"Guided by the assumptions that charter schools will be part of our public educational system for the foreseeable future; that charter schools are neither inherently good, nor inherently bad; and that charter schools should be employed to further goals of equal educational opportunity, including racial diversity and school success, this policy brief addresses the challenge of using charter school policy to enhance equal opportunity. Part I of the brief provides an overview of equal educational opportunity and its legal foundations and offers a review of prior research documenting issues concerning charter schools and their impact on equity and diversity. Part II presents detailed recommendations for charter school authorizers, as well as state and federal policymakers, for using charter schools to advance equal educational opportunity. The accompanying legal brief offers model language designed to augment existing charter school laws by adding language particularly aimed at ensuring that charter schools serve as a vehicle of reform consistent with the value of equal educational opportunity."
Read policy brief at -- http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/chartering-equity

"I teach my students to hold their beliefs lightly, that real argument involves being open to changing your point of view based on new information – in other words, to be evaluativist thinkers, not absolutists."
Quote from School Beat: Michelle Rhee’s False Dichotomies by Kelley Leathers & Maggie Terry ‚ Feb. 16‚ 2012

In Arizona, the recently dismantled ethnic studies program and banned books "had been extraordinarily successful in graduating Latino students and sending them to college."
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2011/08/25/hispanic-college-enrollment-spikes...

"America’s public schools were never perfect. But they helped hold the country together through wrenching economic crises that left many communities deeply wounded and many Americans wondering if they had a future. Some of what went on in our most economically depressed schools involved real courage and heroism. All of it required patience and hard work.

"One thing these schools showed is that they could effectively run institutions without huge salaries and bonuses for executives and without a huge gap between the employees and their managers. In most public schools, the principal’s salary was never more than a third higher than the highest paid teacher, rather than the 400 to 1 CEO to worker ratio that now exists in American industry. And maybe that was one of the reasons that public schools survived economic crises better than private companies, whose top executives never missed an opportunity to pillage a failing firm for their “golden parachutes.”

"If I sound ironic, and maybe a little bitter, it’s because I think most elected officials today have it all wrong. It is not American business that is the great success story and public education the dismal failure. Maybe it’s time to bring teachers and administrators into our top firms and have them show how to run things without wasting huge amounts of money on executive salaries, and without making people work in constant fear of being fired."
---Mark Naison,
Read commentary in its entirety: Wednesday, February 15, 2012
A Case of Misplaced Blame- How The REAL Culprits in America’s Decline are Shifting Responsibility to Schools and Teachers

.

Well, alot of art and archeological artifacts are going missing lately. Just the spoils for the One Percent resulting from any national/political problemo out there...

http://www.archaeology.org/1201/features/topten_arab_spring.html

[excerpt]

...

After rebels drove Qaddafi's forces from Benghazi, for instance, the so-called Treasure of Benghazi—around 8,000 bronze, silver, and gold coins and other artifacts from the ancient city of Cyrene near modern-day al-Bayda—disappeared from a bank vault.

Egypt appears to have been affected more than its westerly neighbor. After the revolution erupted in late January, then Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs Zahi Hawass offered assurances that all sites and artifacts were safe. Later, however, this proved not to be true. Looters had attacked dozens of sites and broke into storerooms throughout the country, including in the delta region, Abydos, Abu Sir, Giza, Dashur, Lisht, Saqqara, and Quntara. Thieves also pilfered artifacts from Cairo's Egyptian Museum, while protests and street battles went on outside in Tahrir Square.

Archaeologists in Egypt now say security has returned, but organization has faltered since the Mubarak regime fell. In an attempt to stabilize the situation, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) is no longer part of the Culture Ministry, and instead is part of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf's portfolio. “The SCA is going through a very painful auditing process,” says Tamar Teneishvili, a UNESCO specialist in Cairo. “And the treasury for cultural heritage management, funded by tourism, is empty.”

Tunisia, the first Arab Spring country to evict its dictator, appeared to have avoided post-uprising archaeological problems. Once Ben Ali and his family fled the country, however, an earlier, state-sponsored looting epidemic was discovered. On a program on France 2 television, Complément d'enquête, Fathi Bejaoui of Tunisia's National Heritage Institute was filmed as he entered Ben Ali's daughter's abandoned beach mansion. There they found nearly 200 artifacts used as decoration. Ancient columns held up a large exhaust hood in the kitchen and marble friezes were cut to frame the fireplace.

...

[read more at link]

And so, we get a "debate" at with obama and Mcliar in Rick Warren's mega-church. And then, we get Rick Warren at the inauguration and not the Rev. Wright.
Religion or "culture" in America is just another word for fascism.

Obama’s Corporate Tax Scam
Wed, 02/29/2012 - 13:24 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

President Obama would permanently reduce corporate tax rates, but claims he’ll get even more taxes from companies by closing loopholes. Even if you believe this fantasy, there’s nothing in it for the 99 percent, since “the president has already stated that the additional revenue will go right back into corporate pockets, in the form of new or existing tax breaks.” Have a happy billion dollar election year.

Obama’s Corporate Tax Scam

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“Hardly anyone outside the administration believes that the Obama plan will wind up collecting more corporate taxes than it gives away.”

Barack Obama can’t hide the fact that he is the One Percent’s president. Most of what he is dangling for the rest of us this election year turns out to be smoke and mirrors, yet he offers corporations a huge tax rate reduction – a gift that will keep on giving long after Obama is gone. It is typical Obama behavior. He sprinkles his speeches with phrases that mimic Occupy Wall Street, then turns around and promises the One Percent a bigger prize than George Bush could deliver.

Obama wants to lower the nominal corporate tax rate form 35 percent to 28 percent. For manufacturing industries, the rate would fall to 25 percent. Big Business has long complained – dishonestly – that American companies are put at a disadvantage by the highest tax rates in the world. But that’s only true on paper. When it comes to actually paying taxes, European corporations give a bigger share of money back to their governments and societies than U.S. companies do. The fact that the U.S. posts a higher official tax rate, while in the real world U.S. corporations pay lower taxes than Europe, is proof of the absolute corruption of the U.S. tax system, where corporations write the tax code and all of its loopholes..................

Published on Thursday, March 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
Critics Rebuke Bill Clinton for 'Embracing' Keystone
Unwelcome remarks by former US President and husband to Secretary of State who may ultimately decide passage

Bill Clinton turned heads on Wednesday after saying at an energy conference in Maryland that the Obama administration should 'embrace' the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline which would carry the world's dirtiest oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf coast in the United States. Environmentalists, landowners, clean water and clean energy advocates have all opposed the project, which would -- among other detrimental impacts -- run the risk of contaminating the Ogalla water acquifer which provides drinking water for millions in the heart of US agricultural lands.

Former President Bill Clinton talks with his wife, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a dedication ceremony on Sept. 30, 2011, in Little Rock, Ark. (AP / The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Staton Breidenthal) According to the original report at Politico, Clinton said:

"One of the most amazing things to me about this Keystone pipeline deal is that they ever filed that route in the first place since they could've gone around the Nebraska Sandhills and avoided most of the dangers, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala [aquifer] with a different route, which I presume we'll get now, because the extra cost of running is infinitesimal compared to the revenue that will be generated over a long period of time." And then added, "I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work."

According to the Canadian Press, "Clinton's comments will almost certainly cause a stir given his wife has already been accused of a pro-pipeline bias by the sea of American environmentalists who oppose Keystone XL." As Common Dreams recently reported, TransCanada announced a new plan to get the pipeline approved, and the State Department will still play a crucial role future assessments and be key in any future approvals.............
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/01-0

Iowa lawmakers decide ANY AMERICAN who cares about animals and their welfare (that is, anyone who cares if the animals are being treated in accordance with THE LAW) cannot get a job in their state without being arrested and penalized.

Whoa! Now that's a mighty decree of bigotry! Let's see: So, job discrimination based on gender, ethnicity and skin color wasn't enough prejudice! These bigots in Iowa have to dream up another category -- anyone who cares about/empathizes with animals! What retrogrades.

http://news.yahoo.com/iowa-lawmakers-seek-penalize-animal-rights-activis...

Obama warns Iran would ‘play victim’ if attacked

US President Barack Obama warned a premature attack on Iran would allow it to play the “victim” in the nuclear crisis, in remarks published Friday days before he meets Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

In some of his toughest comments yet on Tehran’s nuclear drive, Obama also said Israel and Iran should take seriously possible US action against Iranian nuclear facilities if sanctions fail to stop the country’s atomic ambitions.

“I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff,” Obama told the Atlantic Monthly magazine.

“I also don’t, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”

Netanyahu arrived in Canada early Friday ahead of discussions Monday with Obama at the White House, and the Israeli leader this week said Iran’s nuclear program will be “at the center of our talks.”.........
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/02/obama-warns-iran-would-play-victim...

(If obama offed Breitbart, I have to at least applaud him for that murder. God knows how many enemies, political and personal, Breitbart had created. Fellow grade-schoolers probable wanted him dead.)

Andrew Breitbart: Autopsy planned to determine cause of death
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/andrew-breitbart-autopsy-p...

[excerpt]

Oceans' Acidity at Highest Point in 300 Million Years

WASHINGTON — High levels of pollution may be turning the planet's oceans acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years, with unknown consequences for future sea life, researchers said Thursday.

The acidification may be worse than during four major mass extinctions in history when natural pulses of carbon from asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions caused global temperatures to soar, said the study in the journal Science.

...

[read more at link]

Interesting...

http://www.opinion-maker.org/2012/03/fatal-holes-that-sink-bushs-911-lie...

Here we have the run up to a possible attack on Iran -- but that Scott Ritter felony verdict at this specific time should REALLY serve to make any potential WHISTLEBLOWERS pause about what will occur to them if any challenge counters the official "need for war" salespitch. Just seems odd.

I read a review of this film in SKEPTIC. Touching, sad, awful.

Egad. Look at this speech by Eric Holder given at Northwestern University.

When the Attorney General of the United States speechifies to young impressionable people, and sez assassination is not assassination, and rogue 'justice' has equal weight with Due Process, and the President is using the National Defense Authorization Act as it was intended to be used, one must wonder -- WHO are these people? Do they have access to the same dictionaries and libraries as we do? Or, now inside the Beltway, are there new NEWSPEAK/DoubleTalk Dictionaries being used by these alleged legal experts? What uses of their appropriation of the word 'justice' are they instituting and spreading, and WHY for Godsake?

And what great Public Relations tools these assassinations-that-aren't-assassinations can be!:

Never again does an agency of the government have to own up to a mistaken murder or a political purge or 'cleansing'. All they have to do is trot out their UNPROVEN claims of guilt -- unproven since there was NEVER any Due Process or substantiated EVIDENCE allowed in the Public Arena of Fact-Based Reality! [They are turning back the clock hundreds of years to where tyrannical kings and churches held that you were "guilty until proven innocent", and also NEVER even gave you the opportunity to prove the impossible -- your innocence!] All the P.R. office has to do from now on is declare the victim was a really bad guy who wore a black hat/turban/fez/headdress in the never-ending "War on Terra", and -- VOILA! -- the USA did not make an error in judgment OR policy, but, instead, was the World's Heroic Purveyor of this new rogue Justice!

Unfortunately, this P.R. tripe will only 'sell' in a world where people are so stupid they can no longer remember their own names.

I sure hope those law students at Northwestern can remember their own names.

Here's some of Holder's speech to law students at Northwestern on March 5--
http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2012/ag-speech-1203051.html

[excerpt]

...

This Administration has worked in other areas as well to ensure that counterterrorism professionals have the flexibility that they need to fulfill their critical responsibilities without diverging from our laws and our values. [Blogger's note: Does this mean the U.S.A. now fashions law and interprets law to fit the alleged needs of the most UNACCOUNTABLE agencies and contractors under the government umbrella?] Last week brought the most recent step, when the President issued procedures under the National Defense Authorization Act. This legislation, which Congress passed in December, mandated that a narrow category of al Qaeda terrorist suspects be placed in temporary military custody.

Last Tuesday, the President exercised his authority under the statute to issue procedures to make sure that military custody will not disrupt ongoing law enforcement and intelligence operations — and that an individual will be transferred from civilian to military custody only after a thorough evaluation of his or her case, based on the considered judgment of the President’s senior national security team. As authorized by the statute, the President waived the requirements for several categories of individuals where he found that the waivers were in our national security interest. These procedures implement not only the language of the statute but also the expressed intent of the lead sponsors of this legislation. And they address the concerns the President expressed when he signed this bill into law at the end of last year.

Now, I realize I have gone into considerable detail about tools we use to identify suspected terrorists and to bring captured terrorists to justice. It is preferable to capture suspected terrorists where feasible – among other reasons, so that we can gather valuable intelligence from them – but we must also recognize that there are instances where our government has the clear authority – and, I would argue, the responsibility – to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force.

This principle has long been established under both U.S. and international law. In response to the attacks perpetrated – and the continuing threat posed – by al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, Congress has authorized the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those groups. Because the United States is in an armed conflict, we are authorized to take action against enemy belligerents under international law. The Constitution empowers the President to protect the nation from any imminent threat of violent attack. And international law recognizes the inherent right of national self-defense. None of this is changed by the fact that we are not in a conventional war.

Our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan. Indeed, neither Congress nor our federal courts has limited the geographic scope of our ability to use force to the current conflict in Afghanistan. We are at war with a stateless enemy, prone to shifting operations from country to country. Over the last three years alone, al Qaeda and its associates have directed several attacks – fortunately, unsuccessful – against us from countries other than Afghanistan. Our government has both a responsibility and a right to protect this nation and its people from such threats.

This does not mean that we can use military force whenever or wherever we want. International legal principles, including respect for another nation’s sovereignty, constrain our ability to act unilaterally. But the use of force in foreign territory would be consistent with these international legal principles if conducted, for example, with the consent of the nation involved – or after a determination that the nation is unable or unwilling to deal effectively with a threat to the United States.

Furthermore, it is entirely lawful – under both United States law and applicable law of war principles – to target specific senior operational leaders of al Qaeda and associated forces. This is not a novel concept. In fact, during World War II, the United States tracked the plane flying Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto – the commander of Japanese forces in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway – and shot it down specifically because he was on board. As I explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee following the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the same rules apply today.

Some have called such operations “assassinations.” They are not, and the use of that loaded term is misplaced. Assassinations are unlawful killings. Here, for the reasons I have given, the U.S. government’s use of lethal force in self defense against a leader of al Qaeda or an associated force who presents an imminent threat of violent attack would not be unlawful — and therefore would not violate the Executive Order banning assassination or criminal statutes.

Now, it is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that some of the threats we face come from a small number of United States citizens who have decided to commit violent attacks against their own country from abroad. Based on generations-old legal principles and Supreme Court decisions handed down during World War II, as well as during this current conflict, it’s clear that United States citizenship alone does not make such individuals immune from being targeted. But it does mean that the government must take into account all relevant constitutional considerations with respect to United States citizens – even those who are leading efforts to kill innocent Americans. Of these, the most relevant is the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which says that the government may not deprive a citizen of his or her life without due process of law. [Blogger's note: What happened to laws pertaining to 'treason'? Is the charge of 'treason' going to die from disuse just so that it can never be relied upon to save us from Presidents like George W. Bush or Vice Presidents like Dick Cheney and their cohorts?]

The Supreme Court has made clear that the Due Process Clause does not impose one-size-fits-all requirements, but instead mandates procedural safeguards that depend on specific circumstances. In cases arising under the Due Process Clause – including in a case involving a U.S. citizen captured in the conflict against al Qaeda – the Court has applied a balancing approach, weighing the private interest that will be affected against the interest the government is trying to protect, and the burdens the government would face in providing additional process. Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat.

...

[read more of this speech at link]

We already know that aggressive/violent male behavior begets aggressive/violent male behavior -- the post football game statistics show that men beat-up women more following televised games.

I've been wondering if Rush Limbaugh's misogynist talk has inflamed bully-men to further brutalize girls and women since hearing Rush 'dis' a co-ed and call her gutter epithets just because she had an opinion on healthcare and women's health needs as these pertain to her OWN life and the lives of other women she knows.

I hope someone with statistical know-how will help out and see if Rush's specificaly disrespectful and misogynist language inflames the very males who perpetrate violence against women and girls -- in civilian life AND in military life. Certainly Rush is broadcast everywhere and can easily reach MANY of these impressionable men. Does violence against women peak after the broadcasts of Rush's misogynist ranta?

With the horrendous stats of violence against women in the military, it certainly seems his words broadcast at military bases may already be a contributing/causative factor in that unacceptable AND INCREASING problem of violence against women in the military. I say take him off the military bases especially because his misogynist attitude is a rotten ifluence. There are already edgy/stressed individuals like abusers of women in the military showing up in the statistical evidence. It seems unlikely that Rush could calm down these types with his Rushian Misogynist rants.

Rush makes his million$ off the institution of FREE SPEECH. But when this young woman had an opinion about healthcare, he clearly desired to prohibit her from exercising her free speech and wanted to shut her up via slander and character-assassination and public shaming in the name of what he purveys as 'comedic' license. Clearly a double standard in Rush's world where men get more FREE SPEECH than women -- that is what Rush Limbaugh peddles in this instance!

Rush uses free speech for his own gain, but also uses it to attempt to deny others their rightful use of free speech. THAT is UNACCEPTABLE.

Isn't the minus one percent just so amusing sometimes?

Take Ann Romney, for instance. She doesn't think she's rich.

I'd just like to ask her -- when was the last time she had to 'cut corners' in order to pay for dental work?

Ha-ha. The Rich, especially the Romney Rich Vulture Capitalist Types who made their money off our suffering -- they really can deliver the chuckles sometimes. Oh, Ann, you're just a riot!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/ann-romney-i-dont-even-cons...

"Spiritual warfare" launched in the arena of secular education...

http://www.alternet.org/story/154435/the_religious_right%27s_plot_to_tak...

[excerpt]

...

Spiritual Warfare in Your Neighborhood

How did it come to this? If you haven’t personally observed today’s aggressive “spiritual warfare,” it may be difficult to imagine that young children are being taught that their school is a battlefield and they are the warriors who must save their classmates from themselves. With a remarkable amount of grace and restraint, Stewart describes the havoc in communities around the nation as initiatives to evangelize public school students have increased. The effect is always the same: the polarization that results when the Good News Club shows up inevitably disrupts the ability of parents and teachers to work cooperatively as a school community. And the resulting dissension and loss of trust in the schools, says Stewart, is exactly the result the right wing has in mind.

[read more at link]

Whoa! And it sounds so good when I hear those news reports how we're all recovering. I want to believe it too, even though my grocery bill keeps climbing but my budget for groceries is the same.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/1-percent-income-inequality_n_1...

[excerpt]

Technically, the economy has been in recovery for two years. But it turns out the rich have been doing most of the recovering.

In 2010 -- the first full year since the end of the Great Recession -- virtually all of the income growth in America took place among the country's very wealthiest people, says an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. The top 1 percent of earners took in a full 93 percent of all the income gains that year, leaving the other 7 percent of gains to be sprinkled among the vast majority of society.

[read more at link]

AIPAC Works for the 1 Percent
By Chris Hedges

The battle for justice in the Middle East is our battle. It is part of the vast, global battle against the 1 percent. It is about living rather than dying. It is about communicating rather than killing. It is about love rather than hate. It is part of the great battle against the corporate forces of death that reign over us -- the fossil fuel industry, the weapons manufacturers, the security and surveillance state, the speculators on Wall Street, the oligarchic elites who assault our poor, our working men and women, our children, one in four of whom depend on food stamps to eat, the elites who are destroying our ecosystem with its trees, its air and its water and throwing into doubt our survival as a species..............
http://www.opednews.com/articles/AIPAC-Works-for-the-1-Perc-by-Chris-Hed...

Dennis gone and the Holder Doctrine of Authoritarianism. What an awful week.
Power down here after a massive wet snow storm. Hopefully, I'll have electricity next week. Thousands of people could be put to work installing underground utility lines. But capitalism isn't about solving problems. It's about creating problems. So more antiquated power poles go up, because it's a certainty that another storm will knock them down. Can't wait for the next electricity rate increase.

The Green Party urges the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act

WASHINGTON, DC -- Candidates and leaders of the Green Party of the United States expressed hope that the Supreme Court will strike down the 'individual mandate' section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when the court issues a ruling on its constitutionality in late March.

Greens, who support single-payer national health care (Medicare For All), have called the passage of the ACA in 2010 a defeat for meaningful health care reform.

"A Supreme Court decision gutting the ACA's individual insurance mandate can bring us closer to real universal health care, because we already know that Social Security and Medicare are constitutional. Medicare For All is based on the same model as these successful programs," said Mayor David Doonan (Green) of Greenwich, New York.....
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=487

by BAR editor and senior consultant Margaret Kimberley

Call a Georgetown law student a slut, and the liberal universe goes into supernova. Destroy Somalia and Libya, or obliterate due process of law, and the same people just yawn. Attorney General Eric Holder “asserts that the president can in fact decide to kill anyone he wants, as long as he claims that person is a terrorist.” Liberals love the guy.

Freedom Rider: Liberal Whores

by BAR editor and senior consultant Margaret Kimberley

“They are people of easy virtue, they don’t really have any principles and they sell themselves pretty cheaply.”

If liberals are good for anything, it is being outraged about all the wrong things. If one were to measure the amount of media debate in the past week, the conclusion might be that a law student being called a slut was the worst thing happening in the nation and the world. Liberals can’t be bothered to protest against war, even if they did so during the Bush administration, or indefinite detention, or targeted killings, or drone strikes, or the destruction of Libya or Somalia.....
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-liberal-whores

Noam Chomsky Endorses Green Party’s Jill Stein For President Of The United States
By: TheCallUp Wednesday March 7, 2012 9:22 pm

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MIT Professor Noam Chomsky:

“Dear friends, I hope you’ll take the opportunity of the March 6th Green-Rainbow primary to cast a vote for resurgent democracy. A democracy that thrives outside of the Democratic and Republican Parties that are sponsored by and subservient to corporate America. And I hope you will consider joining me in supporting Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein – both with your vote and with a contribution to her campaign for people, peace and the planet.As you know, popular anger at the political and economic institutions, and the subordination of the former to the latter, has reached historic heights. And for sound reasons. There could hardly be a better time to open up the political debate to the just anger and frustrations of citizens who are watching the country move towards what might be irreversible decline while a tiny sector of concentrated wealth and power implements policies of benefit to them and opposed by the general population, whom they are casting adrift.

Jill Stein’s campaign is unifying the national Green Party, and ensuring that an urgently needed voice for democracy and justice will have a place on the ballot in the November election. Please join me in supporting Jill on March 6, and securing a voice foe a peaceful, just, green future in the presidential race.”
http://my.firedoglake.com/thecallup/2012/03/07/noam-chomsky-endorses-gre...

Meanwhile the pig-scum-in-chief worked on his reelection:

Published on Thursday, March 8, 2012 by Common Dreams
US/Israeli Arms Deal: No Attack Until After Election?
Better bunk-buster bombs and more on the table
- Common Dreams staff

The United States has offered Israel 'advanced weaponry' in exchange for a commitment to hold off on an attack on Iran until next year, leaving room for US presidential elections, according to a report today in the Israeli daily Maariv. The deal was allegedly placed on the table during Obama and Netanyahu's recent closed-door meeting in Washington. [U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Oval Office, March 5, 2012 (REUTERS/Jason Reed)] U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Oval Office, March 5, 2012 (REUTERS/Jason Reed)

Agence France-Presse reports:

Citing unnamed Western diplomats and intelligence sources, the report said that during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington this week, the US administration offered to supply Israel with advanced bunker-busting bombs and long-range refuelling planes.

In return, Israel would agree to put off a possible attack on Iran till 2013, after the US elections in November. [...]........
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/08-3

Well, President Obama proves he is an American (rather than a Kenyan), by allowing Kenya to 'fall'.

Now, switching to Imperialist Watching Mode: How convenient that the linchpin nation of Kenya is now sufficiently destabilized to prove no impediment for a new imperialist take over of the African continent; Kenya (it is the most Europeanized of the African states and transnational corporations keep their African headquarters there) now will be concentrating on its own stability rather than regional stability.

Hmmmm. I guess this could mean Obama may also have proved he is an imperialist, too.

----------------------------------------

So much going on while we talk about Rush and the issues concerning the women of America.

Why-oh-why does this remind me of the pre-invasion/occupation talk about burqas in Afghanistan and Iraq?!

Back then people talked for hours about the burqas, but all that talk never turned to concrete action for the well-being of females in Afghanistan or Iraq. The situation for those countries' women is worse than before all our talk of the symbolic burqas.

Is it all just going to be nothing but 'talk' again, even here in the USA with the topic of women just another tool in a scheme to displace attention from other issues? I appeal to anyone reading this to watch to see what happens once the election is over in regards to this. I, for one, will be mighty p---ed of if these vital women's issues are being trotted out as a TOOL by the manipulative male politicos.

In the end, will Fundamentalists, Dominionists and misogynists hold ground and even gain ground at the expense of women no matter what is said during this election year? Is the Rightwing Christianist counterpart to aspects of Sharia Law on its way, starting with Virginia's or some other state's anti-female theocratic laws?

Over 35 years since the Equal Rights Amendment activism of women in this country and women never did get equal pay for equal work, and females of reproductive age are still struggling to attain actual reproductive rights, sane reproductive education in biology and civics [PLEASE stop calling it "sex" education], equal representation in legislatures, and comprehensive healthcare for themselves and their children. Odd how the most obvious 'strides' for women were made in the creation of co-ed military forces (where statistically female servicepeople pay a heavy price in regards to being victims of sexual abuse and crimes).

Are the Democrats using women's issues as a mere tactic? Will the Dem platform have any concrete planks for actually bringing to realization the treatment of women as anything more than 'the second sex' out of some Judeo-Christian-Islamic myth?

Does that mean expanding consciousness/awareness of greater capacity for consciousness is a cure for alcoholism?

Wow! This is so interesting!

Good news for people and their families and society as a whole!

Lousy news for the alcohol peddlers who don't mind a bit if you and your liver are pickled in their products.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/831276/study%3A_can_lsd_tre...

[excerpt]

Study: Can LSD Treat Alcoholism?

New research confirms what many psychedelic scientists already knew: LSD helps treat addiction, and in this case, alcoholism.

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology reviewed six old studies on 536 alcoholics, and found that an astounding 58 percent of alcoholics given one dose of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) showed clear benefits from the treatment. The LSD-treated patients were less likely to relapse (59% abstinent) than the control group (38%) and reported "greater self-acceptance and openness," that gave them a new understanding of their alcoholism, as well as the motivation to address it.

Professor David Nutt, former drug adviser in the United Kingdom and an expert in psychedelic research, told the BBC why the treatment worked.

"Curing alcohol dependency requires huge changes in the way you see yourself. That's what LSD does," he said.

His statement echoes the supervisors of one trial in the study, who said, "It was rather common for patients to claim significant insights into their problems, to feel that they had been given a new lease on life, and to make a strong resolution to discontinue their drinking."

...

[read more at link]

Rather than disclose a cancer-causing ingrediant on California-mandated product labelling, Coke and Pepsi will remove the ingrediant from their beverages sold in California.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jA3SKpQ6Ixq2iMlQfImJN...

If only the world community had stopped Germany's atrocities against Africans in Namibia -- would the world have prevented the Holocaust of World War II?

This video clarifies Germany's genocidal policies in Namibia as discussed in the book "Germany's Black Holocaust 1890-1945" by Firpo W. Carr, Ph.D.

Methods used against Africans in German genocidal programs were later used in Europe during WWII -- concepts of government-operated numbering of individuals, transport of people on trains' in non-passenger and cattle cars, concentration camps, experiments on inmates, slave labor until death from exhaustion, death camps. Genocidal policies used German superiority as justification throughout.

The methods used in Namibia by German colonialists were the very methods passed on to Hitler, by those (like Goering's father) who conducted the holocaust against Africans in Namibia. Even Eugen Fischer, the eugenics scientist who studied Namibian victims, came to further Nazi racial policies. In other words, the policies of genocide in WWII were not a Nazi aberration in history, but had precedent in German policy, and no amount of rewriting history could change that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQc04STlHBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=1mnPG9KHLCI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=Qm2d2PHpi24&feature=endscreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=nDVWbisRZq4&feature=endscreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXhR3_Eny_E&NR=1&feature=endscreen

===================================

I watched this with the question in my head-- Why AFRICOM, and why now?

No wonder further destabilization, invasion and re-colonization of Africa is underway; the re-colonizers/imperialists do not want Africans reconnecting with the real history and reclaiming their African lands and resources.

Question confronted in this talk--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhDhd6p-7rI&feature=related

Rush Limbaugh can call women sluts for talking about women's health care, but Gary Trudeau can't do a comic strip? EntertainmentWorld double standard, seems to me! Wierd.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/317-65/10388-focus-papers-r...

The Green Party urges the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act's health insurance mandates, sees a chance for Medicare For All

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Monday, March 5, 2012

Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell 202-904-7614, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@gp.org

Green Party Speakers Bureau: Green leaders available to speak on health care http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-health-care.php

WASHINGTON, DC -- Candidates and leaders of the Green Party of the United States expressed hope that the Supreme Court will strike down the 'individual mandate' section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when the court issues a ruling on its constitutionality in late March.

Greens, who support single-payer national health care (Medicare For All), have called the passage of the ACA in 2010 a defeat for meaningful health care reform.

"A Supreme Court decision gutting the ACA's individual insurance mandate can bring us closer to real universal health care, because we already know that Social Security and Medicare are constitutional. Medicare For All is based on the same model as these successful programs," said Mayor David Doonan (Green) of Greenwich, New York.....
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=487

Heard on Coast to Coast (this past Saturday) in interview with author John Scura (his book of "Battle Hymn: Revelations for a New World Order") that the health care plan has provisions (I thought he said Sec. 2521, but maybe it was something else?) for use of RFIDs in government health care as part of the Affordable Health Care Act.

Title V, Subtitle C, of The Affordable Care Act discusses creation of a National Medical Device Registry paid for through government program, so that does sound like a government interface with the so-called medical use of RFIDs (radio frequency identification devices, which does include chip implants).

I tried for an hour and a half to find the part of the law here
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/AAHCA09001xml.pdf

but couldn't find this part about a National Medical Device Registry, or to what devices exactly the law is referring to.

So I guess this is it at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/H.R._3200/Division_C/Title_V/Subtitle_C#Se....

Get to know the parts of history that are de-emphasized or denied.

Inspiring lecture by Africa scholar, the late Ivan Van Sertima--

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/AAHCA09001xml.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmYczDwNd0w&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0YqT3G9C20&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EBBrY37Q_g&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb5bBEvPA0Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfy7npqUsQI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvJj1jBuV_I&feature=related

according to this information...

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/03/14/the-medica...

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/16/my-one-hou...

Bo is out.

It's surprising why the party heads would want so much attention drawn to them. They wear their Mao suits or whatever, but they are acquiring the capital that makes them the rich elite of China, just the same.

How strange the Elite are where ever they are located.

http://www.themarysue.com/nina-turner-viagra-amendment-anti-choice-legis...

[excerpt]

...this morning, we were all pretty psyched to hear about Ohio State Senator Nina Turner. The Ohio Senate is debating its own anti-choice bill, which would prohibit abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected (which first happens at about six weeks after conception). Sen. Turner thinks it’s high time that men got a taste of their own medicine, so she has introduced an amendment that would require doctors to put men through a variety of tests and counseling before being prescribed the erectile dysfunction pill, Viagra. Why? Because if the Ohio Senate is “only looking out for women’s health,” then darn it, Nina Turner is going to fight for the same concern to be shown towards the menfolk!

That’s right — it’s only out of her love for her fellow men that Sen. Turner introduced this amendment. As she told MSNBC:

“[This bill is about showing] men as much love in the reproductive health arena as they have shown us over the years. My Senate Bill 307 is all about the love and making sure we look out for men’s sexual health.”

And that’s all Turner is doing — looking out for men’s sexual health! The bill would mandate that every man looking to get a prescription for the little blue boner pill be “tested for heart problems, receive counseling about possible side effects and receive information about ‘pursuing celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.’” Because, as we know, those lawmakers who don’t think women should be able to afford contraception, but must then be shamed while trying to end an unwanted pregnancy, apparently believe that sex only occurs within the confines of marriage and with the purpose of bearing children. At least when women want to have sex. Turner thinks this standard needs to be applied to men as well, because after all, what’s the point of all that sperm if it’s not making babies? All those sperms could be precious, numerous babies, you guys! All of them!

[read more at link]

Crazy cartoon here--

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/14/DDASMUSSENBR...

DOJ tells court to keep secret the link between NSA and Google...

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2012/03/doj-asks-court-to-keep-secret-...

[excerpt]

March 09, 2012

DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google, NSA

The Justice Department is defending the government's refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency.

The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency.

...

[read more at link]

Balance is inevitable. It is in the nature of all that is. Out of chaos comes order. Out of nothing comes consciousness.

The cycle of growth and collapse is repeated endlessly.

It's time for growth.

Did President Obama really take David Cameron on Air Force One just to see a basketball game?

That's way out of the realm of expensive tickets there, but into a realm of a multi-million dollar plane ride to get there.

Now that's jet-setting that competes with the run-of-the-mill jet-setting by the Elites, isn't it?

When I hear that young children in America are actually dying from dental infections and inability to get dental care -- I can only wonder how much dental care for kids the cost of that plane ride could've paid for!

Published on Wednesday, March 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
"You're Gonna Feel It:" U.S. Military Unveils New Crowd Control "Heat Ray"
Marine Col: "I think our forces will figure out the many different applications that it would have.”
- Common Dreams staff

The U.S. military has unveiled its newest approach to crowd control, the Active Denial System, a heat ray that sends out a high-frequency electromagnetic ray. People hit with the ray feel an intense, unbearable heat. The military touts the ray's "far-ranging" capabilities and is looking at "many different applications" for its possible use.

"You're not gonna see it, you're not gonna hear it, you're not gonna smell it: you're gonna feel it."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/14-6

...it all makes sense now.

"...People hit by the ray feel an intense, unbearable heat...."

Why doesn't the military speak English???

This new weapon will burn. It causes tissue damage, and damages DNA leading to cancer.

It is anti-science to call this device "non-lethal" since cancer is lethal. Even infections from burns can be lethal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

[excerpt]

The millimeter waves used in ADS only penetrate the top layers of skin, with most of the energy being absorbed within 0.4 mm (1/64").[12]

The ADSʼs repel effect in humans occurs at slightly higher than 44°C (111°F), with first-degree burns occurring at about 51°C (124°F), and second-degree burns occurring at about 58°C (136°F).[13] In testing, pea-sized blisters have been observed in less than 0.1% of ADS exposures, indicating that second degree surface burns have been caused by the device.[13] The radiation burns caused are similar to microwave burns, but only on the skin surface due to the decreased penetration of shorter millimeter waves. The surface temperature of a target will continue to rise so long as the beam is applied, at a rate dictated by the target's material and distance from the transmitter, along with the beam's frequency and power level set by the operator. Most human test subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none could endure more than 5 seconds.[14]

A spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory described his experience as a test subject for the system:

"For the first millisecond, it just felt like the skin was warming up. Then it got warmer and warmer and you felt like it was on fire.... As soon as you're away from that beam your skin returns to normal and there is no pain."

Like all focused energy, the beam will irradiate all matter in the targeted area, including everything beyond/behind it that is not shielded, with no possible discrimination between individuals, objects or materials. Anyone incapable of leaving the target area (eg, physically handicapped, infants, incapacitated, trapped, etc) would continue to receive radiation until the operator turned off the beam. Reflective materials such as aluminium cooking foil should reflect this radiation and could be used to make clothing that would be protective against this radiation.[15]

Many human tests have been performed[16] on over 700 volunteers and including over 10,000 exposures by ADS.[14] A Penn State Human Effects Advisory Panel (HEAP) concluded that ADS is a non-lethal weapon that has a high probability of effectiveness with a low probability of injury[17]
no significant effects for wearers of contact lenses or other eyewear (including night vision goggles)
normal skin applications, such as cosmetics, have little effect on ADSʼs interaction with skin
no age-related differences in response to ADS exposures
no effect on the male reproduction system
the limit of damage was the occurrence of pea-sized blisters in less than 0.1% of the exposures (6 of 10,000 exposures).[14]

In April 2007, one airman in an ADS test was overdosed and received second-degree burns on both legs, and was treated in a hospital for two days.[18][15] There was also one laboratory accident in 1999 that resulted in a small second-degree burn.[14]

[edit] Possible Long-term Effects

Many possible long-term effects have been studied, with the conclusion that no long-term effects are likely at the exposure levels studied.[12] However, overexposures of either operators or targets may cause long-term damage including cancer. According to an official military assessment, "In the event of an overexposure to a power density sufficient to produce thermal injury, there is an extremely low probability that scars derived from such injury might later become cancerous. Proper wound management further decreases this probability, as well as the probability of hypertrophic scarring or keloid formation."[19]

[read more at link]

----------
===================

The Less Than One Percent love stuff like this device because it eventually can be deployed roboticly and require fewer personnel.

Witnesses say there was more than one perpetrator in the deaths of the sixteen Afghan villagers...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHANISTAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HO...

Amazing how much money a company can make when it doesn't pay for its pollution!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/15/shell-oil-spills-207

[excerpt]

Shell boss got £10m pay package amid oil price surge

Energy firm reveals that chief executive's pay doubled in 2011 as it admits to 207 oil spills, up from 195 the previous year

[read more at link]

As the caption reads, "Rejected, male fruit flies turn to alcohol, a new study finds."

Who pays for this research??? Do the grants come from the Alcohol Industry, perhaps?

A generation of girls sold on abstinence would increase alcohol sales -- could that be a possible extrapolation?

Anyway, these researchers were sorting virgin female fruit flies and filling drinking tubes with booze for fruit flies (--ah, the sophistication of modern Science). And the male fruit flies, if they couldn't get a gal, well, they went and got loaded.

Read the whole frontpage NYTimes story here--

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/health/male-fruit-flies-spurned-by-fem...

obamacare What is it good for?

Submitted by ghettodefender on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 1:21pm.

The Green Party urges the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act's health insurance mandates, sees a chance for Medicare For All

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org
...

=========================================

I'm surprised the Greens didn't go for Universal Comprehensive Cradle to Grave Healthcare -- like some Europeans enjoy.

Why settle for Medicare??? If you have an expensive health emergency on Medicare, you still end up with bills that are SO HUGE you lose your home and are reduced to destitution!!!

Let's hope this becomes a trend!

Interesting--

http://darryl-hamson.suite101.com/crystal-eastman-progressive-activist-l...

Crystal Eastman - public domain
In the early 1900s Crystal Eastman was a leading progressive activist and reformer; today she is almost unknown, but her legacy lives on.

Crystal Eastman was born in Massachusetts in 1881; both her parents were protestant ministers. She graduated from Vassar College in 1903, received a master’s degree in sociology from Columbia University in 1904, and finished second in her class at New York University Law School in 1907. She died in 1928 at the age of 47; although her professional life lasted barely two decades, she was an astonishingly influential force in the progressive movement of her time. Her brother and fellow activist, Max Eastman, was hardly exaggerating when he later wrote that Crystal had “played perhaps a critical role in shaping the course of North American history.”

Occupational Safety and Health

Eastman’s first job after obtaining her law degree was to investigate labor conditions for the Russell Sage Foundation’s Pittsburgh Survey. Her report, Work-Accidents and the Law, was published in 1910 and is still in print. In the same year, as the first woman member of New York State’s Employer’s Liability Commission, Eastman drafted the first worker’s compensation law. Three years later, she became investigating attorney for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. In all these activities, she campaigned constantly for safe working conditions.

Suffrage and Equal Rights for Women

Eastman was anything but a single-issue activist, however. In 1913 she helped form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage, which three years later became the National Woman’s Party. Like their British counterparts at the same time, these American suffragists organized protests, picketed government offices, were often arrested, and went on hunger strikes in prison. After women won the vote in 1920, Eastman and others went on to write an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. The Amendment was first introduced in congress in 1923, and after numerous attempts, was finally passed by both houses in 1972. It was then submitted to the state legislatures, but failed to obtain ratification by the necessary three-fourths of the states within the seven-year period specified in the congressional legislation.

Read more at Suite101: Crystal Eastman, Progressive Activist Leader: Lawyer, Journalist, Feminist, Civil Libertarian, Anti-Militarist | Suite101.com http://darryl-hamson.suite101.com/crystal-eastman-progressive-activist-l...

New list of words used by Authorities in spying on social media--

http://animalnewyork.com/2012/02/the-department-of-homeland-security-is-...

Has it come to this -- no matter what the 99 Percent does, the Authorities (the One Percent and their minions) want us to be beat up and silenced?

St. Louis contingency of the Occupy Movement is the case in point...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-taylorcanfield/police-forcibly-evict-...

In Defense of Facing Educational Reality
by Diane Ravitch

"...In my reviews, I contrasted the five-year preparation of teachers in Finland with the American hodge-podge approach to the recruitment and training of teachers. In the U.S., states offer many ways to become a teacher, and our non-system has produced low standards for entry and a revolving door, with 40-50 percent leaving in their first five years of teaching. Finnish teachers are highly respected and seldom leave their profession.

"Kopp dismisses Finland as a model because less than 4 percent of its children are poor. But that's part of the story of their success and should not be waved aside as unimportant. Teacher professionalism is also part of Finnish success. In this country, our public school teachers are constantly criticized and disrespected, and few are recognized for their dedication and hard work despite budget cuts, growing class sizes, and a hostile media. So long as the attacks on teachers continue, so long as the politicians continue defunding the schools, and so long as our society continues to tolerate high levels of child poverty and intense racial segregation, we will continue to have low-performing students and "failing" schools..."

Frightful murder of Trayvon Martin -- like a wave splashing on the beach reminding us of the sea of racist pathology that still exists in the population and institutions of the United States.

The USA Establishment puts out the nationalist propaganda that we are so noble. But the consistent message -- from the national policies that continue to withhold justice from Native Americans, to policies that mistreat Haiti, to the disproportionate prison incarceration of the male population of Americans of color -- is a message of racism and white privilege.

Radio interview with Daniel Rasmussen, author of "American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt."

For racists, it's not enough to kidnap and enslave and profit from it. When the victims become insurgents, they must be destroyed and displayed in likewise barbaric fashion. And then their brave insurgency must be negated by silence.

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/79053

This just talks about events mid-20th century.

Must see documentary--part one--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw-tZ5tFAek&feature=related

Isn't that, as they say, overkill???

Dept. of Fatherland Security orders alotta ammo--

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atk-secures-40-caliber-ammunition-contr...

Reminds me of what they did to Nader after the election.

Sheesh.

A small insight in the middle of the night:

A REPUBLIC is a system where THE PEOPLE RULE.

Even the arrrrrogant ancient Roman imperialists were straightforward (honest?) enough to drop the word "republic" once they allowed their imperialist greed, empire-building, and finance-control-aristocracy class to take over -- and those ancient Romans called their republic-killing system an EMPIRE, reflecting the actuality of the situation!

But today's United States proceeds to dissolve and destroy the rule by the people without any such straightforward use of language. Even the mere idea of Rule By The People -- which, in the past, has been kept alive by free speech and politcal activity/dissent/agitation even in the worst of times -- is being smothered by continued anti-Bill of Rights draconian actions by our government at the behest of the FASCISTS who have created a COPORATE FILTER through which all information (media) and policy (government, politics) pass through.

Dare I say it? Times are worse now than they were in ancient Rome, for our leaders know no honesty whatsoever, not even the honesty of labelling their own actions clearly.

We no longer live in a Republic, and this is indicated by the manipulated elections of 2000, 2004, and 2008 (with the bizarre 2008 prolonged primary dual of Obama and Clinton, and equally bizarre non-competition of GOP contenders McCain/Palin).

In addition, the globalist fascistic Empire that is now the USA has made The People Who Once Ruled the suspects and enemies to be spied upon in the name of National Security Surveillance and crushed in overlords' schemes of financial bubbles and theft, and a debt stranglehold.

Even if the USA and its Corporate Media refuse to use language properly, We The People still must do so, before it is too late.

Only a coincidence?: At the precise time the acceptable (permitted) limits of political behavior are being shrunken (such as Free Speech Zones and the passage of laws that allow the government to 'disappear' its citizens), 21st century Fascism has grabbed holdand is squeezing hard.

The Fascists Perpetual War on Terror for Perpetual Profit (as opposed to a law enforcement/forensic assertive response and prosecution to perpetrators of crimes) is a ploy to make us conform to the new Fascistic World View -- where We The People are seen and accepted as suspects and guilty of being enemies of the state until proven innocent.

Fascism and all its behaviors are the cause of the growing limitations on our liberties and political expression -- plain cause (fascistic repression and tyranny) and effect (The People's loss of participation). No coincidence.

Nice of Seder to keep this up when he has a new show and website. Three months between posts and sometimes many days between comments, and it is still somehow chugging along. Life in the tubes: room for everyone and space for everything. How long will this go on?

Keep on posting.

--

--

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

From whence came the USA's culture permeated with the sick and disgusting notion of white supremacy?

Is it a convenient diversion to distract the unaware from the real class differences between the rich elite (1%-) and everybody else (99%+)?

The sick notion that is perpetuated is that no matter how low in the class or economic/educational hierarchy a so-called 'white' man is, that so-called 'white' man is still 'better' than the most educated, accomplished, economically successful 'black' man.

Could this sick notion be what is the cultural cause of the Trayvon Martin murder and the rabid anti-Obama strategy of the GOP?

by Thomas Allen -- book and premise discussed in this interesting video (if you stick with it).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtS7yUyCsvU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JYYnNzjJrU&feature=relmfu

More on Bacon's Rebellion of 1676--

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5800

Fukushima spent fuel rods -- tons of them -- still not secure and evidently if another quake comes along (and in this Pacific Rim volcano belt another is as predictable as the seasons) those fuel rods will be exposed and the result would be an Earth-contaminating event many times worse than Chernobyl or even the already Chernobyl-surpassing tsunami damage that was released at Fukushima last year!

AND YET there is no concerted effort by the international community to treat this AS THE EXISTING DISASTER AND POTENTIALLY WORSE DISASTER IT STILL CAN BECOME.

This pathological inability to deal with serious human experiences on the global scale is what Immanuel Velikovsky addressed. He applied Freudian/Jungian concepts to this dilemma and theorized that humankind as a whole [or at least the ruling elite, if i may interject] is seriously not only sublimating the reality of past traumatic experiences and repressing clear communication/study/scholarship/historical analysis of them for practical purposes, but is further 'acting out' the part of the traumatizing elements in the 'role' of destructive force [via human creations like pollution and nuclear threats].

Whether it's watching the do-as-little-as-possible policy at Fukushima, or dump COREXIT into the Gulf of Mexico policy, or the Obama Administration okaying more offshore drilling, more nuclear plants, continued water-contaminating fracking, CLEARLY there is some bizarre PSYCHOLOGICAL BLOCK in the way of doing the right thing! It's as if they are driven and obsessed to do the most insane things imagineable to the Earth and the rest of us!

Dr. Margaret Flowers Confronts The Real Death Panels (Wall st. comes to DC Healthcare Conf. )

Dave Zirin

....Capeheart, despite the absence of any financial banking, went deeply into debt and took her case to court. After a four-year legal battle, a federal judge just ruled that he agreed with NEIU’s lawyers. He said professors have no right to free speech under the Supreme Court’s hideous 2006 decision Garcetti v. Ceballos, a case that denied public employees the right to criticize their superiors. But as awful as the Garcetti decision was, the High Court made clear in a footnote that their decision shouldn’t apply to academic settings. The judge in Capeheart’s case disagreed and gave not just Sharon Hahs and NEIU but every school license to crack down.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) said that the judge’s ruling “is chilling and clear: university administrators need not tolerate outspoken faculty dissent on matters of broad public concern or on the university’s institutional response to those concerns.”

Now Loretta Capeheart, despite being $100,000 in debt, has made the difficult decision to appeal the ruling and if necessary take her case to the US Supreme Court. We should joinCenter for Constitutional Rights director Michael Ratner and professor Noam Chomsky and support these efforts. It’s not just the principle of solidarity or the idea that “an injury to one is an injury to all” that should compel us to stand alongside her. It’s the reality that the defeat of Professor Capeheart will, as sure as night follows day, be used to destroy whistleblowers and truth-tellers on campuses across the country. It will isolate students attempting to organize for change and create atmospheres of fear and mistrust, making a mockery of the notion of universities as citadels of free debate and expression.......
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-04-12-718/index.html

visit http://justice4loretta.com/

What must be said
By Gunter Grass

Why have I been silent, silent for so long?,
Our generals have gamed it out,
Confident the west will survive.
We people have not even been considered.

What is this right to "preventive war"?
A war that could erase the Iranian people.
Dominated by it's neighbor, pulsing with righteousness
Smug in the fact that it is they, not Iran,
Who have the Bomb.

Why have I so far avoided to identify Israel by it's name?,
Israel and it's ever increasing nuclear arsenal,
Beyond reproach, Uncontrolled, uninspected.

We all know these things
Yet we all remain silent, fearful of being labeled:
anti-Semitic
hateful
worse

Considering Germany's past these labels stick
So we call is "business", "reparation" take your pick,
As we deliver yet another submarine.
As we provide to Israel the means to deliver annihilation.
I say what must be said.

Why did I stay silent until now?
Because I'm German, of course.
I'm tainted by a stain I cannot wash out
I'm silent because I want so badly to make it right
To put my sins in the past and leave them silently there.

Why did I wait to say it until now?
And write these words with the last of my ink?
Declaring that Israel threatens world peace?
Because it is true and it must be said,
Tomorrow will be too late.

We Germans now carry a new burden of sin on our shoulders
Through the weapons we have sold
We are helping to carry out this foreseeable tragedy
No excuse will remove our stain of complicity.

It must be said. I won't be silent
I've had enough of the hypocrisy;
Please shed the silence with me,
The consequences are all too predictable.
It's time to demand free and permanent control
of BOTH Israel's nuclear arsenal
AND Iran's nuclear facilities
enforced with international supervision.

It's the only way, in a land convulsed with insanity,
Israelis, Palestinians, everybody, will survive.
And we too, will survive.

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/25/mearsheimer_responds_to_g...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17260.htm

Just when The Right sez there is no 'War on Women', The Vatican comes out of the shadows of its costumed past (while still wearing the same costumes) and gets in the act with this INQUISITION of 21st Century women who happen to be nuns! The Vatican's message? I see it as: "You nuns get back into the Dark Ages where you belong." Seems like a possibility.

Some coverage of it here--

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.ht...

In charge is a guy whose track record on Catholic Church sex abuses is not good--Cardinal William Levada--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/28/cardinal-william-levada-v_n_556...

These are about the Vatican's appointee to conduct more nuns-as-suspect actions, Seattle's Archbishop J. Peter Sartain:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018015836_sartain19.htm...
http://www.edgeboston.com/news/religion//132069/seattle_priests_refuse_t...

Those who protect the power of the the patriarchal institutions at any cost -- they are as scary in 2012 as they were in the Middle Ages when they tortured/executed what they called "witches"....

Nice to see something positive going on...

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8636-vermont-legislature-votes-to-overtur...

Two notions that crossed my mind while hearing the news--

o When they wear those dark glasses, are they actually snoozing after a night full of carousing and drugs?

o Is this proof that "The War on Terra" is all hyperbole, since when they're at work outside the USA they can just 'play' without a care in the world, including no cares about getting caught for stuff like sex parties and drug use? (Really, what kind of agency 'culture' exists to create such an air of illicit 'relaxation'? What do these insiders know about the dangers 'out there'? -- That there are no dangers out there equal to or greater than our militarism and robotic/drone impunity to kill? Sheesh.)

"One learns through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect." -- Mark Twain

Wow! I see leah and nora and ghettodefender! Wow! Where is everybody else?
This thread started in the Truman Administration! Haha!

Well for those that are paying attention you can throw bricks at
Brick TeeVee and ALEC, ISSA and the War on Women!
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/6294
http://filthy-rich.blogspot.com/2012/04/brick-teevee-and-alec-issa-and-w...

Nice to see you!
There's a new thread every Sunday over there -------------->

APRIL 23, 2012
The Fed Works for the Very Rich
Why Paul Krugman is Full of Shit
by ROB URIE
Late last week Princeton University economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a piece on his NY Times blog that history will view as the best evidence to appear in at least several decades of the utter irrelevance of mainstream economics. The piece purported to respond to a Wall Street Journal editorial by Mark Spitznagel in which Mr. Spitznagel argued broadly the Austrian economists’ line that all government spending favors one group over another and more specifically that the Fed’s Quantitative Easing (QE) programs of recent years favor banks and the rich.

Mr. Krugman could have argued his New Keynesian shtick that government investment can prevent deflationary spirals in economic downturns and all would be as it was. Instead, he chose to argue (Plutocrats and Printing Presses – NYTimes.com), an astonishing amount of evidence to the contrary, that Fed QE policies have not disproportionately benefited banks and the very rich and were in fact enacted against their wishes and interests.

The basis of his argument has two parts:

(1) conservative economists argue that QE is “printing money,” they also argue that printing money causes inflation, banks hate inflation (because loans get repaid in less valuable dollars), therefore banks opposed QE and

(2) that banks earn profits from the difference between long term interest rates and short term interest rates (NIM, or Net Interest Margin), QE has reduced this difference, therefore the banks have seen their profits fall from QE.

Were these arguments used when writing about a (1) solvent banking system whose (2) profits still came from making prudent loans to creditworthy borrowers and (3) whose shadow banking system was immaterial (couldn’t destroy the global financial system), then Mr. Krugman might have had a point. The facts, however, suggest that if bank loans and other bank assets were fairly valued the big banks would be conspicuously insolvent, that the entire impetus of banking consolidation and deregulation (as explained by bankers) was to reduce the impact of NIM on bank profits, and that building out the shadow banking system was the way that banks intended to accomplish this.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/23/why-paul-krugman-is-full-of-shit/

In Defense of Gilad Atzmon
By Jean Bricmont
Pro-Palestinian friends had repeatedly warned me: Gilad Atzmon is anti-Semitic, he is bad for the Palestinian cause, he may even work for Israel. I must have a contrarian turn of mind, because that kind of talk never stopped me from regularly reading his blog (quite the opposite) with a mixture of fascination and amusement. It struck me that an Israeli Jew living in the U.K., a voluntary exile, who is accused of anti-Semitism, among others by pro-Palestinian Jews and Palestinian militants, and whose conferences draw protesting demonstrations from “anti-racist” organizations, was at the very least an interesting curiosity. Moreover, having myself “escaped” from the religion in which I was forced to grow up (Catholicism), I have an instinctive sympathy for all those who break, often brutally, with the myths and constraints of their childhood. Atzmon’s themes, the politics of identity and memory, are at the very heart of our contemporary social debates. It ought to be possible to listen to a truly politically incorrect viewpoint on these issues, that of someone who defines himself as a “proud self-hating Jew.”

But coming from a non-Jew like me, isn’t there something suspect, or downright unhealthy, in such an interest? When Atzmon’s editor asked me to write the preface to the French edition of The Wandering Who?, I told myself that this would be an opportunity to answer that question and, above all, to explain why Atzmon should be heard and discussed.

It is ever so easy to “demonstrate” the alleged anti-Semitism of Atzmon. Frequently, including at the very start of his book, Atzmon makes a distinction between three meanings of the word “Jewish.” It can apply to persons who adhere to the Jewish religion, with whom he has no quarrel; to people of Jewish origin, with whom he has also no problem; and, finally, to what he calls the third category, that is, those who, without being particularly religious, constantly stress their Jewish “identity” and set it before and above their simple membership in the human race. It suffices thereupon to interpret in the first sense (people of Jewish origin) the word “Jewish” when Atzmon uses it in the third sense, in a style that is often extremely polemical, to “prove” that he is an http://www.ikners.com/?p=51965

It's been a pretty bad year for me...

I lost 4 relatives to cancer in the matter of 2 months, starting with my mother and then next my favorite cousin 2 days later...from whom I caught pneumonia when I went to visit him on his last day.

And now there is a probate fight happening and I get to watch the favored children savage each other and the step father, whom is also dying of cancer use his money advantage to ensure that it all goes to waste...

Luckily, I'm the black sheep and never asked for anything so I don't have to deal with that shit.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about everything that I have down at the farm...I don't even have the wherewithal to reclaim it and the property will probably need sold.

But I still breath and where there is life there is still hope.

I haven't forgotten any of you...I'm just feeling really tired lately.