#3 TELL-A-VISION
Bear Butte International Alliance
http://matopaha.org/wp/factsheet/
"In an 1868 treaty, drafted at Fort Laramie in Sioux country, the United States established the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for exclusive use by the Sioux people. However, after the discovery of gold there in 1874, the United States confiscated the land in 1877. To this day, ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the U.S. government and the Sioux."
rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/06/07/news/top/doc466889c890107729521849.txt
Native American Issues & Causes & NDN News Website - http://www.ndnnews.com/
Bong Hits 4 Repression
by Paul Krassner
The Supreme Court sucks so badly it turned itself inside out. An utterly outrageous 5-4 ruling** has made it acceptable to suspend a high school student for an off-campus act like holding a 14-foot banner saying "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." That simple joke became a federal case ending with a dangerous precedent for suppressing free speech.
** http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070625/scotus-bong-hits/
Chief Justice Roberts agreed with the school principal that "the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one" -- what a ton of bullshit! -- and Justices Alito and Kennedy stated that their decision doesn't address "political or social issues such as the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalized marijuana for medical use."
So this is really about the war on pleasure. I once asked the late Peter McWilliams -- leading activist in the medical marijuana movement who suffered from cancer and AIDS -- "Would you agree with Dennis Peron, the co-author of Proposition 215 [California's medical marijuana referendum], who says -- not as a joke -- that all use of marijuana is medical?"
"In the general sense that everything we do for our health--both curative and preventative--is medical, I'd agree," he replied. "Even a perfectly healthy person who smokes pot once a month purely for its euphoric effects could be said to be doing so to prevent becoming ill, in the sense that people take vitamin C every day to prevent becoming ill, for I believe that euphoria is both healing and health-maintaining....
"While I was using marijuana to treat my nausea, I can't tell you how much I missed getting high. Although I'd smoke it several times a day, the average high school student was getting high more times a month than I was. That's because after the first month, I never got high, and I really enjoy marijuana's high. Simply put, recreational marijuana you use to get high; medical marijuana you use to get by."
Source and Comments:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-krassner/bong-hits-4-repression_b_53798.html
More Information on Paul Krassner:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/Paul_Krassner.html
Live Earth or Divide & Conquer?
Divide and Conquer is derived from the Latin saying Divide et impera.
In politics and sociology, divide and rule (also known as divide and conquer) is a combination political, military and economic strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy. In reality, it often refers to a strategy where small power groups are prevented from linking up and becoming more powerful, since it is difficult to break up existing power structures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
This morning (200707.01), while scanning the morning news, the following headline appeared:
Gore show is set to be biggest on earth
China will broadcast Live Earth, giving the climate change concerts an audience of 2 billion. Will that silence the skeptics? David Smith reports
Sunday July 1, 2007
The Observer
Nowhere, perhaps, will be more important than Shanghai. One of eight cities hosting Live Earth concerts for Al Gore's crusade against climate change on Saturday, it will help deliver a vast audience across China. And with the world's most populous country on board, organizers believe they can reach 2 billion people and eclipse even Live8 as the biggest global media event of all time.
It will begin at 1.10am British Summer Time in Sydney, Australia, then roll around the globe with concerts in Tokyo, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Hamburg, London's Wembley stadium, New York and finally, at 8pm, Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach. A special performance at the British Antarctic Survey Station in Antarctica will ensure all seven continents are included. There will be saturation coverage from TV, radio, the internet and at more than 6,000 parties in 119 countries.
Critics have argued the 24-hour spectacular - featuring more than 150 acts including Madonna, Lily Allen, Genesis, Bon Jovi, Kanye West, Kelly Clarkson, Black Eyed Peas and Jack Johnson - will do more for the stars' careers than raising awareness of climate change.
But Gore will use it to urge people to sign a seven-point pledge calling on governments to agree, within two years, an international treaty that cuts global warming pollution by 90 per cent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide. It also asks people to cut their own pollution, make their homes, businesses, schools and transport more energy efficient, and plant new trees and preserve forests.
With its rapid economic growth and soaring carbon emissions, China is regarded as a crucial target for this message. Kevin Wall, the executive producer of Live Earth, has succeeded where he did not two years ago as a co-organiser of Live8, the centerpiece of the Make Poverty History campaign.
'We're on Chinese TV with 800 million people, ' he told The Observer. 'People often think on a parochial basis, so it's vital to be there. We've got to talk and make the whole world listen.'
Live Earth China, on the steps of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, will feature popular national singers as well as Britain's Sarah Brightman, and be broadcast across the country by the Shanghai Media Group.
Steve Howard, chief executive of The Climate Group, a London-based campaign organization supporting Live Earth, said: 'The US and China are responsible for half the world's carbon emissions. Live Earth will get huge attention in both. The biggest issue on the planet ever requires the biggest media event ever.'
The seed was planted less than two years ago at the Beverly Hills Hotel in California, when Wall, a veteran concert producer, attended a slide show about global warming presented by Gore, as featured in the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth
'Over the course of the 90 minutes my wife and I were very emotionally moved by the climate crisis,' said Wall, 54, a father of three. 'We understood for the first time it was about us, our children and our children's children. This is not just a movie - it's happening.'
Wall met the former US vice-president and discussed taking the message to as many people as possible: 'After Live8 I said never again, but I got the call from Al Gore, the global rock star on this issue. What I can do on the day is deliver 2 billion pairs of eyeballs.'
On Saturday Gore will be at the Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, near New York City, where the Police, Smashing Pumpkins, Alicia Keys and others will perform. 'We don't want him getting on planes burning carbon,' Wall acknowledged.
Profits from Live Earth will go to Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection. But the entire event has been questioned by Bob Geldof, organizer of Live Aid and Live8. In May he said: 'I hope they're a success. But why is he [Gore] actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody's known about that for years. We are all fucking conscious of global warming.'
Skeptics have also pointed to the amount of electricity used to power the speakers and lights, and the fuel spent on ferrying musicians and their equipment to the venues by plane and lorry.
Wall said: 'We are trying to minimize the carbon as much as possible. Most artists are coming from nearby areas. Madonna, for example, lives in London and will be performing at Wembley.'
He added: 'There are 3,000 concerts a year. We're doing 10, but touching 2 billion people about what I think is the biggest issue that's ever faced humanity.'
Steve Howard of the environmental charity Climate Group said: 'Dealing with climate change doesn't mean we have got to stop live performances or call for a moratorium on football matches. There are positive choices for people to make. If we get this right, in 10 to 15 years time every product will be a green product.
'Live Earth is a big step in the right direction.' Howard added. 'Arnold Schwarzenegger put it well when he said in Washington DC: "We need to make the environment cool and sexy."'
Organizers deny that Live Earth will be a one-off that could be soon forgotten. They have produced more than 60 short films, 30 public service announcements featuring stars such as Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz, and a book, The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook by David de Rothschild, that will be published in Britain this week.
Source: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2115785,00.html
We assume it was not the author's intention to point out where DIVIDE & CONQUER appears in the above article.
Simply put, in our words, this is a 24 hour concert with a potential of exposing two billion (2,000,000,000) viewers to the dangers of CLIMATE CHANGE; however, it could be a lot more.
I spent time with Alan Watts during the '60s and one of the things we discussed was, "how to fix the planet."
He suggested "closing it all down" (with exception to emergency and related services) for a month (meaning, everybody gets a month off from work), "getting the best scientists, community, and religious leaders and put them on television for the month", "have international call-ins", and 'let them figure out how to make the world what it should be, 'a better place for everybody'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts
During the '70s Keith Lampe and I tried to encourage people to consider the same thing; i.e., putting the 'best of the best' of those with the ability to "fix it" (the Earth) on television, for a month, and figured the pollution it would eliminate (with businesses closed) would be an excellent first step.
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/Keith_Lampe.html
Live Earth could be used as a platform to initiate World Peace.
Here is their contact page: http://www.liveearth.org/contact_us.php
Give Peace a Chance
Wars happen when intolerance reaches epic proportions,
when the reasons for war become greater than the sanctity of peace. Wars
happen when we fail to realise the value of being alive. World leaders
try to bring peace, but it is not an issue of institutions. It is human
beings who start wars. Before a war begins outside, it starts inside.
The war on the inside is more dangerous because it is a fire that may never
be put out. Wars are being fought because peace is not being found within,
because it is not being allowed to unfold. We are all searching for something,
we may call it success, peace, love, or tranquillity. It is the same thing.
What we are looking for has many names because we do not know what we need.
To find what we need, we look around us. To know where to find what we
are looking for, we first need to ask ourselves where we can find it. Have
we considered looking within?
Living is not an easy task, especially if we want the best of it. We have
to mine for it. Mining is not easy. We have to take out what we need and
leave the rest. If we want to mine for peace, then we have to seek what
is precious and discard what is not. The thing that we are searching for
is not outside of us. It is within us. It always has been and always will
be. Contentment feels good, and it is not an accident. It is not an accident
that peace feels good. Peace is already here, and it resides in the hearts
of all human beings.Peace is something that has to be felt. One of the
most incredible powers we have is that we can feel. When we place peace
in front of that power to feel, we feel peace. We are here to be filled
with gratitude, love and understanding. We carry a lamp within so bright
that even in the darkest night, it can fill our world with light. This
light is waiting to be found. Peace makes no distinctions. It does not
care if we are rich, if we are poor, or what religion we belong to. It
does not care which country we live in.
Peace is waiting to be found. Waiting to once again feel whole, not separated
by all the issues that divide our lives. Peace is when the heart is no
longer in duality, when the struggle within has been resolved. When peace
comes to the heart, serenity follows. Love comes flooding in, uncontrolled.
Joy cannot be held back. It bursts through because it is right. That is
peace. Peace needs to be felt, love needs to be felt, truth needs to be
felt. As long as we are alive, the yearning to feel good, to feel joy,
will always be there, and as long as it is there, there will be a need
for it to be discovered.
Life is a journey. We are passengers in a train called life, and we are
alive in the moment called now. The journey of life is so beautiful that
it needs no destination. On this journey, we have been given a compass.
The compass is the thirst to be fulfilled. The true journey of life begins
the day we begin to seek to quench our thirst. This quest is the most noble
one. For many centuries, a voice has been calling out: "What you are
looking for is within you. Your truth is within you, your peace is within
you, your joy is within you." In our hearts, peace is like a seed
waiting in the desert to grow, to blossom. When we allow this seed to blossom
inside, then peace is possible outside. We have to give peace a chance.
Will we give peace a chance? - Prem Rawat - India Times 2/25/03
Breaking News: Cheney Buys Bush Blue Dress
Monday Morning Rant
I do not care who runs government, as long as
they are honest. - Dahbud Mensch
A Profile in Cowardice
by Frank Rich
THERE was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby's silence. Now we have the answers, and they're at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.
The timing of the president's Libby intervention was a surprise. Many assumed he would mimic the sleazy 11th-hour examples of most recent vintage: his father's pardon of six Iran-contra defendants who might have dragged him into that scandal, and Bill Clinton's pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich, the former husband of a major campaign contributor and the former client of none other than the ubiquitous Mr. Libby.
But the ever-impetuous current President Bush acted 18 months before his scheduled eviction from the White House. Even more surprising, he did so when the Titanic that is his presidency had just hit two fresh icebergs, the demise of the immigration bill and the growing revolt of Republican senators against his strategy in Iraq.
That Mr. Bush, already suffering historically low approval ratings, would invite another hit has been attributed in Washington to his desire to placate what remains of his base. By this logic, he had nothing left to lose. He didn't care if he looked like an utter hypocrite, giving his crony a freer ride than Paris Hilton and violating the white-collar sentencing guidelines set by his own administration. He had to throw a bone to the last grumpy old white guys watching Bill O'Reilly in a bunker.
But if those die-hards haven't deserted him by now, why would Mr. Libby's incarceration be the final straw? They certainly weren't whipped into a frenzy by coverage on Fox News, which tended to minimize the leak case as a non-event. Mr. Libby, faceless and voiceless to most Americans, is no Ollie North, and he provoked no right-wing firestorm akin to the uproars over Terri Schiavo, Harriet Miers or "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.
The only people clamoring for Mr. Libby's freedom were the pundits who still believe that Saddam secured uranium in Africa and who still hope that any exoneration of Mr. Libby might make them look less like dupes for aiding and abetting the hyped case for war. That select group is not the Republican base so much as a roster of the past, present and future holders of quasi-academic titles at neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.
What this crowd never understood is that Mr. Bush's highest priority is always to protect himself. So he stiffed them too. Had the president wanted to placate the Weekly Standard crowd, he would have given Mr. Libby a full pardon. That he served up a commutation instead is revealing of just how worried the president is about the beans Mr. Libby could spill about his and Dick Cheney's use of prewar intelligence.
Valerie Wilson still has a civil suit pending. The Democratic inquisitor in the House, Henry Waxman, still has the uranium hoax underlying this case at the top of his agenda as an active investigation. A commutation puts up more roadblocks by keeping Mr. Libby's appeal of his conviction alive and his Fifth Amendment rights intact. He can't testify without risking self-incrimination. Meanwhile, we are asked to believe that he has paid his remaining $250,000 debt to society independently of his private $5 million "legal defense fund."
The president's presentation of the commutation is more revealing still. Had Mr. Bush really believed he was doing the right and honorable thing, he would not have commuted Mr. Libby's jail sentence by press release just before the July Fourth holiday without consulting Justice Department lawyers. That's the behavior of an accountant cooking the books in the dead of night, not the proud act of a patriot standing on principle.
When the furor followed Mr. Bush from Kennebunkport to Washington despite his efforts to duck it, he further underlined his embarrassment by taking his only few questions on the subject during a photo op at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. You know this president is up to no good whenever he hides behind the troops. This instance was particularly shameful, since Mr. Bush also used the occasion to trivialize the scandalous maltreatment of Walter Reed patients on his watch as merely "some bureaucratic red-tape issues."
Asked last week to explain the president's poll numbers, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center told NBC News that "when we ask people to summon up one word that comes to mind" to describe Mr. Bush, it's "incompetence." But cowardice, the character trait so evident in his furtive handling of the Libby commutation, is as important to understanding Mr. Bush's cratered presidency as incompetence, cronyism and hubris.
Even The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, a consistent Bush and Libby defender, had to take notice. Furious that the president had not given Mr. Libby a full pardon (at least not yet), The Journal called the Bush commutation statement a "profile in non-courage."
What it did not recognize, or chose not to recognize, is that this non-courage, to use The Journal's euphemism, has been this president's stock in trade, far exceeding the "wimp factor" that Newsweek once attributed to his father. The younger Mr. Bush's cowardice is arguably more responsible for the calamities of his leadership than anything else.
People don't change. Mr. Bush's failure to have the courage of his own convictions was apparent early in his history, when he professed support for the Vietnam War yet kept himself out of harm's way when he had the chance to serve in it. In the White House, he has often repeated the feckless pattern that he set back then and reaffirmed last week in his hide-and-seek bestowing of the Libby commutation.
The first fight he conspicuously ran away from as president was in August 2001. Aspiring to halt federal underwriting of embryonic stem-cell research, he didn't stand up and say so but instead unveiled a bogus "compromise" that promised continued federal research on 60 existing stem-cell lines. Only later would we learn that all but 11 of them did not exist. When Mr. Bush wanted to endorse a constitutional amendment to "protect" marriage, he again cowered. A planned 2006 Rose Garden announcement to a crowd of religious-right supporters was abruptly moved from the sunlight into a shadowy auditorium away from the White House.
Nowhere is this president's non-courage more evident than in the "signing statements" The Boston Globe exposed last year. As Charlie Savage reported, Mr. Bush "quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office." Rather than veto them in public view, he signed them, waited until after the press and lawmakers left the White House, and then filed statements in the Federal Register asserting that he would ignore laws he (not the courts) judged unconstitutional. This was the extralegal trick Mr. Bush used to bypass the ban on torture. It allowed him to make a coward's escape from the moral (and legal) responsibility of arguing for so radical a break with American practice.
In the end, it was also this president's profile in non-courage that greased the skids for the Iraq fiasco. If Mr. Bush had had the guts to put America on a true wartime footing by appealing to his fellow citizens for sacrifice, possibly even a draft if required, then he might have had at least a chance of amassing the resources needed to secure Iraq after we invaded it.
But he never backed up the rhetoric of war with the stand-up action needed to prosecute the war. Instead he relied on fomenting fear, as typified by the false uranium claims whose genesis has been covered up by Mr. Libby's obstructions of justice. Mr. Bush's cowardly abdication of the tough responsibilities of wartime leadership ratified Donald Rumsfeld's decision to go into Iraq with the army he had, ensuring our defeat.
Never underestimate the power of the unconscious. Not the least of the revelatory aspects of Mr. Bush's commutation is that he picked the fourth anniversary of "Bring ‘em on" to hand it down. It was on July 2, 2003, that the president responded to the continued violence in Iraq, two months after "Mission Accomplished," by taunting those who want "to harm American troops." Mr. Bush assured the world that "we've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." The "surge" notwithstanding, we still don't have the force necessary four years later, because the president never did summon the courage, even as disaster loomed, to back up his own convictions by going to the mat to secure that force.
No one can stop Mr. Bush from freeing a pathetic little fall guy like Scooter Libby. But only those who paid the ultimate price for the avoidable bungling of Iraq have the moral authority to pardon Mr. Bush.
Published on Sunday, July 8, 2007 by the New York Times
Source: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/08/2376/
Libby 'spared jail to avoid implicating others'
Peter Walker and agencies
Monday July 9, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
George Bush could have spared the former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby from jail to avoid him implicating others in the administration, a Democratic congressman investigating the affair claimed yesterday.
The White House immediately dismissed the allegation - made by John Conyers, the chairman of the House of Representatives judiciary committee - as "ridiculous and baseless".
Last week, Mr Bush intervened to commute the two and a half year jail sentence given to Mr Libby for lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity.
The president said Mr Libby's punishment was too harsh, but stopped short of granting him an outright pardon.
Mr Conyers has scheduled a committee hearing on the matter for Wednesday.
His investigation will also look into pardons made by Bill Clinton and the first President Bush. In the final hours of his presidency, Mr Clinton pardoned 140 people, including the fugitive financier Marc Rich.
Yesterday, Mr Conyers said he suspected the quashing of Mr Libby's jail term could be different from the earlier pardons.
"What we have here - and I think we should put it on the table right at the beginning - is that the suspicion was that if Mr Libby went to prison, he might further implicate other people in the White House, and that there was some kind of relationship here that does not exist in any of President Clinton's pardons, nor, according to those that we've talked to ... is that it's never existed before, ever," he told ABC television.
In response, the White House spokesman, Tony Fratto said: "It may be impossible to plumb the depths of chairman Conyers's suspicions, but we can hope this one is near the bottom."
A Republican member of the judicial committee also took issue with the investigation into the Libby case.
"It's clearly within the authority of the president," Chris Cannon told Fox News. "To go after the president on this issue shows a dearth of any opportunity to go after something substantive in this administration.
"I would prefer that we not waste our time in Congress on these witch hunts and frivolous activities."
Mr Libby, the former chief of staff to the US vice president, Dick Cheney, was found guilty of obstructing a federal investigation into the naming of the covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Although never confirmed, there was suspicion that the Bush administration had exposed her to take revenge on her husband, Joe Wilson, a former ambassador.
Mr Wilson had publicly dismissed the president's claim that Iraq had been seeking uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon as rubbish.
Because he did not receive a complete pardon, Mr Libby still had to pay a £1250,000 fine, which he did on Thursday.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2122086,00.html
Al Qaeda top brass trapped in Pak, US aborted mission at last minute lest it annoyed General
New York Times
Posted online: Monday, July 09, 2007 at 0000 hrs
WASHINGTON, JULY 8: A secret US military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardise relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group's operations.
But the mission was called off after Donald H Rumsfeld, then the Defense Secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J Goss, then the CIA Director, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was cancelled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.
Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and CIA operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, the officials said.
The decision to halt the planned "snatch and grab" operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military's secret Special Operations units, who say the US missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior Qaeda members.
Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan's tribal areas.
In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the planned 2005 mission remained classified.
Spokesmen for the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House declined to comment. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.
Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/204189.html
Where Are The Hippies?
In a day when our country is more fucked up than it ever has been, and our laws are becoming more and more obscure, everyone is pointing the fingers. It's the Bush Administration. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Bush himself. Sure, you may have posted an article on digg about the last dickly atrocity Bush and his followers have committed, but what are you really doing?
In the 60's, when the country was heading in a bad direction, the generation turned to an immense wave of activism, with ferocity and devotion not seen since the time of our American Revolution. It was truly a time when anyone in our country could have easily said "I am proud to be an American." Everyone was doing something. Activism was everywhere.
While bogus laws are being passed which tell us what we can and cannot do to our own bodies, we just do things illegally and don't mind the problem. While this country has disgusting immigration policies, half the country wants to further fuel the fire, while the rest turns a deaf ear to the problem. While our CONSTITUTION is being ripped from our hands, we post articles on Digg.com, and go about our daily lives. While the president is GIVING himself power, HUMILIATING our country, we express our hatred of him, and we take polls, but do nothing more.
And yet the top article on digg is still... "Hack an elevator, go straight to your floor."
Why, at the most demanding time, do we sit idly by and speak without acting? Where are the activists?
What have you done?
Call your senators. Tell them what you think. Make highway signs. Take part in a protest.
The more we speak without applying actions to our words, the more our so-called President will think he can get away with this bullshit.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Posted by Kraut_and_Brit at 10:24 PM
Source, Pictures, Links:
http://myblogfordiggarticles.blogspot.com/2007/07/where-are-hippies.html
Digg Source: Where Are The Activists?
While our constitution is being destroyed and our rights torn from our hands, we do nothing. Why, when our country needs us the most, do we sit idly by and speak without acting? Where are the activists?
digg: http://digg.com/political_opinion/Where_Are_The_Activists
Words and Pictures For Republican Neocon Challenged
Who Is Telling the Truth?
Mr. Bush said, "Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely."
Bush sharpens budget attack
on Democrats By Matt Spetalnick
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070707/pl_nm/bush_congress_dc
These graphs, based on information collected at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dow Jones, and Gross National Debt, of People Looking for Work, New Jobs, Equity Market, and Budget Deficit, do not agree with what the pResident said:
http://www.academycomputerservice.com/economics/charts.htm
Who Is NOT Telling the Truth?
Why George W. Bush's regime is Anti-American
from: The Existentialist Cowboy - Monday, May 22, 2006
It has even been opined that Bush deliberately exploited
a flaw in the U.S. Constitution, that is, it concentrates military power
in the hands of the executive. But, in the longer term, the demise of the
American state will be attributed to the fact that Bush is anti-American;
Bush is on the wrong side of America's very founding. He's at the other
end of the scale with J.S. Mill, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on
the one end - Hegel, Hitler and Stalin on the other.
For Hegelians, the "state" is "God" - the opposite of the American
ideal espoused best by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence
and James Madison in the Bill of Rights. Arguably, the American republic
was but the latest development in a liberal trend that began with the English
Civil War. Certainly, Oliver Cromwell dismissed Parliament in a fit of
pique; certainly he arrogated unto himself the powers of an absolute dictator
but stopped short of taking the title. He was, he said, a Lord Protector.
Charles I was most certainly England's last absolute despot in the Hegelian
sense of the word.
The U.S. Constitution is but a recent development in this liberal tradition
of several hundred years. Bushism, however, flies in the face of
the Magna Carta, the English
Petition of Right, the Mayflower Compact, The
Virginia Declaration of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, The
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, The
Nuremberg Principles, and every Supreme Court decision that has upheld
the right of persons to be secure in their homes.
America might have taken a different road. Alexander Hamilton most certainly
favored a strong central government, perhaps a monarchy. But it was the
liberals who carried the day - Jefferson, Madison, Mason et al! Because
of them, America embraced a different rationale for governmental power.
Americans will not tolerate a reversal. Current polls indicate that America
will no longer tolerate George W. Bush, a man whose very personality is
increasingly disliked. Our founding is at the derivation of the world "liberal" which,
significantly, is demonized by the state absolutist minority that
makes up Bush's dwindling base.
For State absolutists power trickles down. The individual is not
free but literally licensed by the all-powerful state. Freedom in this
situation is reduced to whatever the state will allow. The American tradition
is quite the opposite; it is a different paradigm. In America, the people
are sovereign and, just as Jefferson described so accurately, the government
derives its power from the people themselves. Freedom does not trickle
down. With the ratification of the Constitution, this principle ceased
to be mere theory. It is, in fact, the law! With the Constitution, the "divine
rights" of rulers was consigned to the dust bin of history. And so too,
should Bush's state absolutism, a mere variation on the tired old
theme of absolute state power.
The U.S. Constitution is, in fact, a "contract" between the state and the
people. Monarchists, totalitarians, and other state absolutists will
never recognize that principle. In our Democracy, the government does not
merely tolerate a certain degree of individual liberty; rather, individual
liberty is the only reason governments are empowered. The protection and
preservation of those rights is the sole duty and responsibility of those
in power. To do otherwise, amounts to a breach of contract.
That is why Bush must be impeached. He has broken the contract.
It is a tragic testament to the failure of the American educational system
that Bush's choice for CIA chief has demonstrated a shocking, abysmal ignorance
of the very Fourth Amendment that would restrain him at either the NSA
or the CIA! With his stubborn belligerence - even when confronted with
irrefutable evidence of his wrong-headedness - Hayden betrays his contempt
for this liberating tide of history that is so eloquently assessed by Simon
Schama:
If the Magna Carta is not the birth certificate of Democracy, it is the death certificate of despotism. It spells out for the first time the fundamental principle that the law is not simply the whim of the king. The law is an independent power unto itself. And the King could be brought to book for violating it!"
- Simon Schama, History of Britain
The Constitution itself explicitly establishes the sovereignty of the people. But, if that were not enough to dispel notions of a "state as absolute", a Bill of Rights was insisted upon and ratified by the people. In the 1960's Justice William O. Douglas stated that the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are absolute - beyond the power of Congress or the executive to modify or infringe in any way.
Also in the 60s, the high court expanded the protections given individuals who found themselves accused of crimes; the decisions especially affected the issue of search and seizures (Mapp v. Ohio), confessions (Miranda v. Arizona), and the right to an attorney (Gideon v. Wainwright). Later, Roe v. Wade would uphold a woman's right to privacy.
Bush by advocating doctrines associated with Nazism and Stalinism has found himself an enemy of basic individual rights, most prominently privacy and, by implication, that most basic of American rights: the right of the people to be secure in their homes and in their possessions. Bush has, therefore, found himself to be an anti-American enemy of the people, an enemy of the state.
Let's make it simple. If Bush can spy on you, in secret, without a court order, he can, likewise arrest you in secret, imprison you without charges, and, in other ways, deny you "due process of law". He could even have you executed in secret.(1) The President is now claiming, and is aggressively exercising, the right to use any and all war powers against American citizens even within the United States, and he insists that neither Congress nor the courts can do anything to stop him or even restrict him.- Glenn Greenwald: The NSA Fight Begins - Strategies for Moving Forward, The Huffington Post
This is simply intolerable! This scandal, if mere scandal it is, is about nothing if not about the rule of law. It's not merely about whether the President has the right to break the law; it has become about how Bush will use the power that he now claims by fait accompli; it is about whether Bush has the power to harm and even murder U.S. citizens upon his mere decree.
It's about something greater still. It is ultimately about whether or not the American system will survive George W. Bush.Source, Links, Photos, Comments:
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-george-w-bushs-regime-is-anti.html
digg: http://digg.com/political_opinion/Why_George_W_Bush_s_regime_is_Anti_American
Antiwar support at Different Drummer Cafe
Veterans organize GI coffeehouse
outside military base
By EMILIANO HUET-VAUGHN
For Phillip Aliff, the seeds of doubt over the Iraq war were present prior to his enlistment in the Army. On Feb. 15, 2003, he marched with millions of others around the world not convinced by President Bush's justifications for a war with Iraq.
A year and a half later he joined the military tasked with fighting that war. "I joined skeptical, but I pretty much needed money for college, you know, like every other working-class story," Aliff said.
His skepticism turned to complete disgust with the war after he served his first tour as an infantryman in Iraq from 2005 to 2006.
"We were told the mission was essentially to win the hearts and minds," he said. "So once you get over there and you realize that you are suppressing these people through violence and every day in the middle of the night searching their houses, breaking their stuff, treating them like second-class human beings just day after day after day, it kind of solidified [in me] that what we're doing is wrong and that being a part of that is something that we should all try and fight against."
But how to do that when one's job is to go to war was the question Aliff and other like-minded friends in the service asked themselves upon returning from Iraq last year.
In May, in a coffeehouse in the small military town of Watertown, N.Y., located outside the Fort Drum military base where Aliff is stationed, he and other soldiers met with civilian antiwar allies to answer that question.
The upshot of their meetings was a plan for the first active-duty chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War -- a milestone in the Iraq antiwar movement.
During a demonstration, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War conduct mock patrols and arrests of associates playing the part of insurgents in New York May 27.
Modeled after the highly influential Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which at its height had over 20,000 members, the much smaller Iraq Veterans Against the War has long known that its success at derailing Bush administration war plans depends heavily on the willingness of active-duty soldiers to join the Iraq veterans' organization in dissenting from their mission.
"The role we have is a very special one," said Liam Madden, a Marine from 2003 to 2007 and a national leader of Iraq Veterans Against the War who addressed service members gathered at the chapter formation meetings in Watertown. "We're the soldiers and veterans and the people who have access to soldiers and veterans in the active duty [forces] and this is extremely important. ... We can't be written off."
During the Vietnam era, soldier dissent took many forms and played a critical, but sometimes forgotten, role in bringing to a halt U.S. aggression in Southeast Asia, writes historian of the GI resistance movement David Cortright in his book Soldiers in Revolt. In addition to iconic protests staged in Washington by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, there were numerous actions on military bases involving enlisted service people. Resistance ranged from soldier leafleting and participation in demonstrations to insubordination, desertion and outright mutinies. An internal study commissioned by the Army during the height of the war found such resistance to be pervasive among troops, with 47 percent of low-ranking soldiers surveyed involved in some form of dissent or disobedience.
One important catalyst to that era's GI movement, Cortright writes, was the presence of organized civilian support networks for soldiers opposing the war. Starting in 1967, civilian antiwar activists, many of them former soldiers, began opening "GI coffeehouses" in military base towns. The coffeehouses served up counterculture music and entertainment, functioned as places "independent of military influence where [soldiers] could meet and freely exchange ideas about the war and the Army," Cortright writes. Numbering about 20 throughout the country, they quickly became hubs of soldier dissent and civilian-soldier interchange within the antiwar movement, serving as organizing spaces for GI-led demonstrations, newspapers and soldier strikes that undermined the government's ability to wage war.
Now, some four decades later, civilian antiwar activists once again are using the GI coffeehouse model to encourage a new soldier antiwar movement, with recent Iraq Veterans Against the War developments at Fort Drum at the epicenter of these efforts.
Outside the Different Drummer café
The Different Drummer Café -- promoted by organizers as the first GI coffeehouse of the Iraq war era -- opened in November 2006 in Watertown as a project of the national GI rights group Citizen Soldier and local civilian activists. A coffeehouse in spirit more than an actual cup and saucer establishment, The Different Drummer is a sparsely furnished but spacious lounge-cum-Internet café located in the center of downtown Watertown, just miles from the Fort Drum military base.
Cindi Mercante is the project's lone paid staffer. A former soldier herself from a military family, Mercante took an interest in the coffeehouse in part because she wanted to challenge the conservative mindset of fellow residents living near Fort Drum.
"People would walk by [the coffeehouse]," Mercante said of the opening months in its existence, "and say, 'Are you antiwar or are you for the soldier?' and I'd say, 'Well stop and think about it. Why can't you be both? Where is the quandary?'"
For those soldiers who make use of the facility and identify with its explicit antiwar message, there is no contradiction. They credit the bare-bones operation with "being for them" by providing a space in which they can find their activist footing.
" [The Different Drummer] gives us a place to go, if nothing else. It helps," said the secretary of the Fort Drum Iraq Veterans Against the War chapter, who asked to go only by his first name, Andy, for fear of negative repercussions from superiors.
Military regulations on soldier speech are such that political activism is punished if engaged in on base, in uniform or on duty. This has given the Different Drummer an indispensable role for antiwar soldiers who turn to it as a site for off-duty meetings and organizing sessions.
The coffeehouse has served as a critical link between national leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War and soldiers at Fort Drum interested in war resistance but lacking ties to a broader movement. The group's organizers have repeatedly been brought into Watertown by the The Different Drummer, which hosted the late April meetings at which the Fort Drum chapter was established.
That chapter, not yet two months old, is significant for its existence and location if not yet for its size. With 10 registered members, it is small by the standard of organized GI antiwar activity in the Vietnam era. But as the first registered on-base group of Iraq veterans who oppose the war, organizers recognize its potentially historic importance and hope that the Fort Drum chapter is just the start of things to come.
From left: Former Marine Liam Madden, moderator Eric Ruder and antiwar author Anthony Arnove participate in a soldier-vet-civilian panel at the Different Drummer coffeehouse in late April.
"This is the most important time right now to build a GI movement," said Aliff, the president of the Fort Drum chapter, "because we need to show, especially [as] active-duty soldiers, that it's OK to resist the war, to say that the war is illegal. It's OK to demand reparations for the Iraqi people for the damage done to their country. It's OK to ask for better benefits when you get out as a veteran."
In a follow-up interview held three weeks after the chapter formation meetings, Aliff told NCR that in initial conversations with other soldiers about Iraq Veterans Against the War, many have expressed support for such antiwar sentiments, especially as anger toward superiors has festered following the extension of tours of duty in Iraq for all Fort Drum brigades.
One woman personally affected by those extensions is Angela Mendoza, whose husband is based at Fort Drum but currently fighting in Iraq. She found her way to the Different Drummer coffeehouse for a chapter meeting after seeing an ad for it on the Internet. Though her toddler constantly made demands of her, Mendoza stayed for close to two hours, engrossed in the discussion among soldiers, veterans and civilians unified in their opposition to the war. Her response suggests that antiwar soldiers at Fort Drum could gain much greater influence in the months to come.
" It's really refreshing to find people here who feel the same way I'm feeling," she said, indicating a desire to organize soldier families against the war after attending to the personally inspirational meeting. "I've been waiting for this for a long time."
Emiliano Huet-Vaughn is a freelance writer
living in the Kansas City area.
National Catholic Reporter, June 8, 2007.
--Photos by Emiliano Huet-Vaughn
http://citizen-soldier.org/DDcoffeehouse.html
Legal Fumbduckism
Another Reason for keeping a LYING United States Attorney General Around?
Court dismisses lawsuit on Bush's spying program
Fri Jul 6, 2007 10:50am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court in Cincinnati on Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging President George W. Bush's domestic spying program adopted after the September 11 attacks.
The appeals court panel ruled the groups and individuals who brought the lawsuit, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, did not have the legal right to bring the challenge.
http://today.reuters.com/news/
One Reason for 9/11 Conspiracy Sites
Republicans spent 55 Million (55,000,000) Tax Payer Dollars to discover if Monica Swallowed and spent a little over 3 Million (3,000,000) Tax Payer Dollars, after months of battle with the Bush REPUBLICAN Administration, on the MASS MURDERS OF 9/11. In turn, it would appear,
REPUBLICANS CARE MORE ABOUT BLOW JOBS THAN MURDER of U.S. CITIZENS
9/11 Commission Primer
July 20, 2004
After months of research and testimony, this week the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) will release its final report on the events surrounding 9/11 and recommendations for protecting our country from future attacks. This is a moment the Bush administration sought to prevent. The 9/11 Commission Primer by the Center for American Progress reminds its readers of the administration's attempts to obstruct and discredit the work of the Commission, and abdicate responsibility for protecting our country.
• Obstructing the Investigation
• Stonewalling the Commission
• Attacking the Commission and Its Members
• Abdicating Responsibility
While President Bush hailed the work of the Commission as "important for future administrations," his administration did everything it could to block and impede and the Commission from conducting its vital work. Not only did the White House oppose formation of the Commission, but resisted providing the Commission with the time and resources it needed to carry out its work. [Continue Reading At]:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/07/b124722.html
Claims of lack of cooperation from the White House
In April 2002, Bush said that the investigation into 9/11 should be confined to Congress because it deals with sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence.[5] But by September, the White House came under intense fire concerning the commission from many victims' families,[6] and thus President Bush finally agreed to the creation of an independent 9/11 commission. But many 9/11 victims' families believed that the scope of the investigation by the Commission did not go far enough in investigating the U.S. government's failures because the Commission was not to investigate intelligence failures.[7]
However, the White House insisted that it was to appoint the commission's chair, leading some to question the commission's independence. The initial person appointed to head the commission, Henry Kissinger, has been accused by many of having been involved in past government coverups in South America (specifically, the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile), and of having on-going business relationships with members of the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia.
Even after Kissinger resigned, the White House was often cited as having attempted to block the release of information to the commission[8] and for refusing to give interviews without tight conditions attached leading to threats to subpoena.[9] The Bush Administration has further been accused of attempting to derail the commission by giving it one of the smallest independent commission funding levels in recent history ($3 million),[10] and by giving the commission a very short deadline. The White House insists that they have given the commission "unprecedented cooperation".
While President Bush and Vice President Cheney did ultimately agree to testify, they did so only under several conditions:
* They would be allowed to testify jointly;
* They would not be required to take an oath before testifying;
* The testimony would not be recorded electronically or transcribed, and
that the only record would be notes taken by one of the commission staffers;
* These notes would not be made public.
The commission agreed to these conditions, and the President and Vice President gave their testimony on April 29.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission
Republican Hall of Shame
The Republicans started this witch hunt, and now they cry foul when they become the witches.
Republicans have spent 6 years and 50 million dollars digging into the personal lives of Clinton and all his friends, destroying anybody and everybody who got in their way. Now we know all the sexual details of his encounters with Monica Lewinsky and he has now been impeached. They have spread viscous rumors and lies and have sunk to new lows in order to destroy us and grab power at any cost. This is where we get even.
You would think that the Republicans who are prosecuting the President would have a cleaner sexual history than he does. Not so. As it turns out they are all far worse.
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/rpubsbad.html
I used to think Democrats were bad to sleep around but now after the latest scandals, I think that even Beavis and Butthead would think the Republicans were kool!
For people who consider themselves to be morally superior, they sure aren't setting much of an example.
What I really enjoy about this is that it's putting these Republican morallists in their place. They've been looking down their noses at the rest of us as if they are morally superior and that they are doing the work of God. What an example they set. If these guys represent God, Jesus and Christianity, I'll stay with the Church of Reality. I was just about to get saved, but if Bob Barr isn't going to resign, I just don't have faith anymore. [Continue Reading At]:
TONY SNOW & REPUBLICANS ARE
LYING ROOSTER LOLLIPOPS
& DEMOCRATS KISS THEIR, ASK ME NO QUESTIONS
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/rpubsbad.html
OUR GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME DISHONEST AND
CORRUPT!
Go F*CK Yourself [America]
Vice President Dick Cheney, June 2004
Angler: The Cheney
Vice Presidency
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/
February 11, 2004
Q Yesterday we were told that Karl Rove had no role in it-
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q -- have you talked to Karl and do you have confidence in him-
THE [LYING] PRESIDENT: Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.
And again I repeat, you know, Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information -- outside the administration. And we can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would.
And then we'll get to the bottom of this and move on. But I want to tell you something -- leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them -- there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are.
Supreme Court OKs retail price fixing by manufacturers
By David G. Savage
WASHINGTON -- Manufacturers may set a fixed price for their products and forbid retailers from offering discounts, the Supreme Court said today, overturning a nearly century-old rule of antitrust law that prohibited retail price fixing.
The 5-4 ruling may be felt by shoppers, including those who buy on the Internet. It permits manufacturers to adopt and enforce what lawyers called "resale price maintenance agreements" that forbid discounting.
Until today, the nation has had an unusually competitive retail market, in part because antitrust laws made it illegal for sellers or manufacturers to agree on fixed prices. The Supreme Court, in a 1911 case involving Dr. Miles and his patented medicines, had said that price-fixing agreements between manufacturers and retail sellers were flatly illegal.
The rule's practical effect was to discourage a manufacturer from setting a price, leading, for instance, to stickers on the windows of new cars that list the "manufacturer's suggested retail price."
However, in today's opinion, the high court described this rule as outdated and out of step with modern economics.
Manufacturers of products ranging from watches and computers to golf clubs and tennis rackets compete with other brands, so competition will not suffer, the court majority said. Moreover, manufacturers should be free to control how their products will be marketed and sold, it said.
"Resale price maintenance can increase inter-brand competition by encouraging retailer services that would not be provided ... absent free riding," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said for the court.
He noted that retailers that offer displays and service for customers can be undercut by discounters.
But lawyers for the Consumers Union said that abandoning the rule against retail price fixing will result in higher prices for a variety of products.
The decision is a victory for a Los Angeles-area maker of women's handbags and other leather products. Leegin Creative Leather Products, based in the City of Commerce, makes handbags under the Brighton brand. Owner Jerry Kohl has insisted that shopkeepers sell his bags at prices he sets.
He was sued by the owner of a women's clothing shop near Dallas on the grounds that his pricing policy violated antitrust laws. A jury agreed with the shopkeeper, and the decision led to a nearly $4-million judgment.
The Supreme Court reversed the verdict today in Leegin vs. PSKS. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. also were in the majority.
The decision, coming on the last day of the court's term, was the 15th this year that benefits business and corporations by shielding them from lawsuits and legal claims.
The dissenters, led by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, faulted the majority for overturning a long-established rule that had benefited consumers.
"The only safe predictions to make about today's decision are that it will likely raise the price of goods at retail and that will create considerable legal turbulence," Breyer said.
The ruling leaves open the possibility that price-fixing agreements can be attacked under antitrust laws, but only when a manufacturer's brand dominates the market. This is rarely true with common retail products.
david.savage@latimes.com
Source:
http://www.newsday.com/business/la-ex-prices28jun29,0,6027050.story?coll=ny-business-leadheadlines
'Why Don't You All Just Fade Away?'
by Nick Vineyard
If there's one thing in the newspaper that's more irritatingly predictable than "Cathy" comic strips and stories about Paris Hilton, it's the constant flow of vitriol from flabbergasted old fogies decrying the intellectual ineptitude of the younger generation. Every week, I'll read another scathing letter to the editor written by some cranky old fart bemoaning the fact that "these gol'darn young'ns don't know nothin' bout nothin!" The more astute Polygrip philosophers often grumble about the fact that they're incapable of having intelligent conversations with the kids taking their order at Starbucks - indeed, how could any of these gum-snapping, MTV-addled nitwits possibly begin to comprehend the inner workings of Catullus or Maupassant? Hell, the closest they'll get to Crime and Punishment is watching Law and Order.
I've had enough. To every apoplectic grandpa who feels his worldly acumen is not reciprocated, I wish to offer this response against demographic predestination.
Speaking as a first-time college student in my mid-twenties, I can understand how you feel. I harbor no knee-jerk Pete Townsend loyalty to my generation; in fact, I'll be the first to concede that my generation has some serious shortcomings. Many of my peers harbor little interest in international politics outside of ascertaining the legal drinking age in European countries. They think Henry Miller owns a beer company and that Voltaire is a brand of battery. I don't watch TV very often, but when I do, I bristle at the audition tapes of all these pathetic, desperate losers hoping to get on reality shows, looking as if their entire lives will be shattered if they're denied the chance to dance with a washed-up pop star or shovel maggots into their mouths. After hearing what passes for informed opinion and worldly knowledge in conversational circles, I often fantasize about dragging my peers outside by their obnoxious bed-head haircuts and punching their shiny labret piercings down their tribal-tattooed throats.
But I don't. They're still learning. So am I.
In the meantime, I have a few questions for you, Pops.
First of all, at exactly what age did you achieve your intellectual apotheosis? I'd like to know, so that I can look forward to it with supercilious salivation. I can't wait to tear apart those good-for-nothin' whippersnappers and further alienate them from people my age, thus convincing them that anyone over forty who's not Will Ferrell must be Wilford Brimley. After all, a flamethrower is much more fun than an illuminating candle.
Think back to your early twenties. Were you leisurely pontificating about Joan of Arc and the Spanish civil war, or were you like us, terrified of the future, running low on sleep, working dead-end jobs and wondering how you were going to pay for college? Would your degree even be worth anything? Would anyone ever take you seriously? Were you like me, relegated to serving as a minimum-wage mercenary in Uncle Sam's extended summer camp for kids from the Midwest with limited job prospects?
By the way, kids today are smart in different ways than you were. How many of you in the Metamucil demographic know how to set up a wireless network, or even how to search for a contact on your cell phone? Do you know the difference between USB and a PSP? What's the purpose of defragging a hard drive? When was the last time you set up one of your newfangled gizmos without making at least one frantic phone call to your nephew for tech support? Anyway, I digress.
Here's my final question - Why don't you teach us? Yes, you.
I've come to believe that the initial years after a young man leaves home are spent searching for a succession of surrogate father figures, whether in person, in print or through a pair of headphones. I found several of mine in the military.
I'm referring to the overlooked, unappreciated twenty-year NCOs, the haggard souls with bad knees and rumpled uniforms who had been passed over for promotion because they weren't suited for the sycophantic ass-kissing and hoop-jumping that lubricates the military machine. They weren't there to suck up the glory, they just showed up, did their jobs, and quietly took orders from some baby-faced lieutenant who was born the year they graduated high school. While the officers issued paperwork and spouted insipid platitudes about "duty" and "integrity," these NCOs (some of them, anyway) took me under their wing and explained the rules of the game. They knew how things worked. They had served time in unfriendly places and were happy to tell me about it. They shared stories about being stationed in Germany when the wall came down, the Gulf War, and the best bars in Tegucigalpa. They taught me how to avoid getting overcharged by Korean cab drivers, how to find loopholes in the leave policy and how to get through a 12-hour shift with a brain-busting hangover. I'll always remember them.
This is where you come in. Instead of acting like a jerk and crystallizing our media-inculcated stereotypes of adults as stodgy old farts that ruin everybody's fun, why not share some of your knowledge? A lot of us want to learn, and a lot of us are willing to listen. What was it like seeing Eisenhower's farewell address on television back in the day? What were you doing during the Vietnam War? How did the Watergate scandal affect your perceptions of the government? The next time you fire off an angry, invidious letter to the editor condemning the widespread ignorance of the MySpace generation, why not recommend a few novels, plays or essays for us to check out? Why not toss us a few crumbs from your nourishing breadth of expertise?
If you're not willing to do that, then piss off, Gramps. You're blocking my signal.
July 2, 2007
Nick Vineyard [send him mail] hails from the American Midwest, though he's unsure as to where his home is at this point. He currently works at a print shop in Texas and enjoys talking about himself in a pretentious-sounding third-person narrative.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/vineyard3.html
GOP hoping for more terrorist attacks
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."—Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
GOP hoping for more terrorist attacks
The Republican Party has sunk to a new low, they're now hoping that terrorist attacks on American soil will give a boost to their sagging party. First in line hoping for these terrorist attacks is former Sen. Rick Santorum. Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, he suggested at a series of "unfortunate events" will unfold that will lead to a reversal of the anti-war sentiment now dominating the country.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/070707changeview.htm
"Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view," said the former senator from Pennsylvania.
Well, Santorum is a fearmongering fool, that hasn't changed. He's probably lamenting, at this very moment, that the terrorist attacks didn't happen before the 2006 election.
But this Republican rooting for a terrorist attack goes beyond Santorum, it has become pervasive within the party ranks. Before the 2006 elections, a memo circulated among Republican Party leaders that hoped a new terrorist attack in the US could reverse the fortunes of the Republican Party. It went on to say that such an attack could help President Bush and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."
The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to “unite the country” in a “time of national shock and sorrow.”
The memo says such a reversal in the President's fortunes could keep the party from losing control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.
GOP insiders who have seen the memo admit it’s a risky strategy and point out that such scenarios are “blue sky thinking” that often occurs in political planning sessions.
“The President’s popularity was at an all-time high following the 9/11 attacks,” admits one aide. “Americans band together at a time of crisis.”
Now Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says he has a "gut feeling" that terrorist attacks will happen this summer. More wishful thinking on the part of the GOP or just more of the garden-variety fear mongering they spew to legitimize their unlawful war?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/summer_terror_threats_8
I am not saying that this country is not at risk of terrorist
attacks. I think we always will be. I believe that, despite the best efforts
of law enforcement and intelligence, there will always be an element out
there wanting to kill, confuse, and terrorize us. And whether this person
is disgruntled citizens, like Timothy McVeigh and his cohorts, or a group
of anti-American terrorists from outside our borders, we can't spend our
time wringing our hands and worrying about it. We can be vigilant and we
can be strong, but we shouldn't be afraid.
Fear is how the terrorists market themselves. Fear is how the GOP markets
itself. So, is it no wonder that the GOP is cheering the terrorists on?
Source: http://liberty-in-crisis.blogspot.com/2007/07/gop-hoping-for-more-terrorist-attacks.html
Digg: http://digg.com/political_opinion/GOP_hoping_for_more_terrorist_attacks_on_U_S_soil
Why Is It Illegal to Punch Hippies?
A Frank Legal Discussion: Why Is It Illegal to Punch Hippies?
Posted by Frank J. at 02:00 PM July 09, 2007
Often I'm asked, "Why, if I punch a hippy, would I be arrested for assault? Are we supposed to believe that the Founding Fathers wanted hippies to walk around un-punched?"
First off, the Founding Fathers hated hippies as much as you and in no way intended America to be a place hippies could feel safe. What they knew, though, is that allowing people to punch hippies could lead to abuse of the law where someone would punch a non-hippy and claim he thought he was a hippy. So the reason we can't punch hippies is to protect non-hippies from being punched.
I would support a change in the law, though, where it is legal to punch hippies, but the punched can afterwards legally challenging the punching by claiming to not be a hippy. If the punched was found to in fact be of the non-hippy persuasion, then there will be severe penalties against the puncher for abuse of the hippy punching law.
Some fear this would cause the hippies to overwork our courts by fraudulently claiming after being punched to not be a hippy. I think this shouldn't be too much of a problem. First, there are people who are very obviously hippies, and an officer arriving on the scene would pronounce it a clean hippy punch and congratulate the puncher for his service to the country. For slightly less obvious hippies, if they claimed to a court to not be a hippy but were then determined to be lying, you can expect the hippy will then be punched by everyone in the courtroom.
Now, I'm not saying these legal changes in the area of hippy punching won't cause some problems, I'm just saying it will be worth it to put forth the clear message that if you're a hippy and dare walk the street in America, you will be punched.
Source: http://www.imao.us/archives/008094.html
Digg:
http://digg.com/political_opinion/A_Frank_Legal_Discussion_Why_Is_It_Illegal_to_Punch_Hippies
[Ed. Note: Why it might not be a good idea to Punch Hippies
Hippies had their own unofficial police force that was formed with a pact. I was there.
"The first Family Dog Rock 'n' Roll Dance and Concert, "A Tribute to Dr. Strange," was at the Longshoremen's Hall in 1965. It featured Jefferson Airplane, the Marbles, the Great Society, and the Charlatans. At the event, the first major happening of the 1960s, Ginsberg led a snake dance (a group advancing in a single-file serpentine path) through the crowd. In January 1966, Longshoremen's Hall was the site of the 3-day Trips Festival, organized by rock promoter Bill Graham. The climax was the Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters Acid Test show, which used five movie screens, psychedelic visions, and the sounds of the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company. The "be-in" followed in the summer of 1966 at the polo grounds in Golden Gate Park, when an estimated 20,000 heard Jefferson Airplane perform and Ginsberg chant, while the Hell's Angels acted as unofficial police. During the Summer of Love, in 1967, thousands of young people streamed into the city in search of drugs and sex."
http://travel.latimes.com/destinations/san-francisco/clm/in-depth/history/the-1960s--the-haight
http://www.diggers.org/ringolevio/ring444.html ]
Santorum Dodges Responsibility Again
This stems from a lawsuit brought by several young women who were intimidated by State police down in Delaware at the instruction of Santorum's aides. I wrote then
http://allspinzone.com/wp/2005/08/17/rick-santorum-and-the-book-signing/
(Will Bunch has a nice synopsis of the case)
http://www.attytood.com/archives/003472.html
about such boorish behavior on Santorum's part, but the issue was mostly that he didn't respect his fellow citizens and their opinions. Well, the lawsuit has been settled, and Santorum's name is nowhere to be seen.
http://progressive.org/mag_mc062707
From the Progressive:
On June 27, the ACLU affiliates announced that a settlement has been reached.
"Under the settlement, the Delaware State Police will adopt a policy and training program for its officers on the free speech rights of protesters and pay $15,000 to the plaintiffs in legal fees," says a press release from the state ACLU affiliates. The trooper agreed to write a letter to the plaintiffs, as did the Santorum aides. The aides also agreed to pay $2,500 in damages to the plaintiffs."
Seems Santorum and his people were wrong then, not that he will take one whit of responsibility. I'd like to see a comment by Santorum, letting these women know he is sorry for what happened, but he's probably too busy thinking up a word that will work better than "Islamofascist" to use to springboard his way back into sucking off the public teat.
Source: http://allspinzone.com/wp/2007/07/10/santorum-dodges-responsibility-again/
Digg: http://digg.com/political_opinion/Santorum_Dodges_Responsibility_Again
News Boxers and Briefs, Tuesday 10 July 2007
Senator's number on escort
service list
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - [Republican] Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, whose telephone number was disclosed by the so-called "D.C. Madam" accused of running a prostitution ring, says he is sorry for a "serious sin" and that he has already made peace with his wife. [Continue reading at]:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_co/vitter_dc_madam
U.S. opposition to Iraq war hits new high: poll
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Opposition to the Iraq war has climbed to a record high and President George W. Bush's approval rating dropped to a new low amid growing dissent from members of his own Republican party over his war strategy, according to a new USAToday/Gallup poll.
Bush's approval dropped to 29 percent in the poll taken Friday through Sunday, down from 33 percent in early June, USA Today reported on Tuesday. [Continue reading at]:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070710/ts_nm/usa_iraq_poll_dc
NSA Snooped on Lawyers
Knowing Spying Was Illegal, Suit Charges
by Ryan Singel
The government's surveillance of two attorneys challenging the NSA's warrantless wiretapping of Americans took place partly during a period in which the top secret program operated without the approval of the Bush administration's own Justice Department, according to a newly filed court document. [Continue reading at]:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/07/haramain_appeal
Police accused of tricking
G8 protesters
Tom Kington in Rome, Tuesday July 10, 2007, The Guardian
Six years after Italian police officers smashed their way into a Genoa school and beat up G8 summit demonstrators, including six British citizens, prosecutors have presented evidence that those detained after the raid were tricked out of their right to contact families or embassies. [Continue reading at]:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g8/story/0,,2122498,00.html
The "Liberal" Media
Shibboleth Redux
by Dan Clore
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
In an otherwise generally good article on the alleged liberal bias of the mass media one finds these comments:
Note over the next months how those "liberal" journalists refer to people who intend to, and will, protest during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
I'll start you off with two examples from the past week. A story by two Star Tribune staff writers began this way:
"Anarchists and antiwar organizations preparing for the Republican National Convention are planning dozens of traffic blockades, are targeting perceived vulnerable spots in the Twin Cities metro area and are readying to spring from Internet promises to real-world action."
Anarchists? If there are more than two dozen actual anarchists in the entire country, I'll eat raw toad. [Continue reading at]:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/message/9500
Libby lied, troops died
Liar Commutes Liar's CIA Leak Prison Term
"I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own." George W. Bush on why he signed death warrants for 152 inmates as governor of Texas.
The quote is from his own book, "A Charge To Keep." I think that's a debate-ender, isn't it?
Andrew Sullivan - The Daily
Dish
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/07/quote-for-the-5.html
The Scooter Libby verdict is inextricably linked to Iraq: his lies were an attempt to cover up the disingenuous case for war. 'Scooter' is but a part of a sordid political tragedy.
by Sidney Blumenthal
March 6, 2007
The conviction of I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, on criminal charges of obstruction of justice and perjury brings only a partial conclusion to the sordid political tragedy that is the Bush presidency. Yet the judgment on this matter goes to the heart of the administration. The means and the ends of Bush's White House have received a verdict from the bar of justice.
Foreign policy was and is the principal way of consolidating unchecked executive power. In the run-up to the Iraq war, professional standards, even within the military and intelligence agencies, were subordinated to political goals. Only information that fit the preconceived case was permitted. Those who advanced facts or raised skeptical questions about sketchy information were seen as deliberate enemies causing damage from within. From the beginning, the White House indulged in unrestrained attacks on such professionals. Revealing the facts, especially about the politically-driven method of skewing policy, was treated as a crime against the state.
For questioning the undermanned battle plan for the invasion of Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki was publicly humiliated by neoconservative Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and then cashiered. For disclosing negligence on terrorism before the Setempber 11 attacks, counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke was accused by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice of acting purely out of motives of personal greed to promote his recently published memoir. For exposing the absence of rational policymaking in economics as well as foreign policy, Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill was threatened with an investigation for allegedly abusing classified material. Once he was intimidated into silence, the probe was dropped.
In the aftermath of former ambassador Joseph Wilson's revelation that the most explosive reason given for war against Iraq - that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger to fuel nuclear weapons - had no apparent basis in fact, the Bush White House revved into high gear against the critic. Wilson, however, was even more dangerous than the others because he was a witness to the false rationale for the war.
As Libby's defense counsel insisted, Scooter was merely one of many in the White House assailing Wilson's integrity. Others, including Bush's political strategist Karl Rove, were involved. To a degree, the smear campaign was for a time successful, fueled by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee and elements of the Washington press corps. But the trial exhibits - documents entered by the special prosecutor - knocked down every single one of their falsehoods.
Libby's defenders argued that there was no underlying crime. He was not charged with revealing the identity of Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, as a covert CIA agent, which was a charge raised by the White House gang in an effort to prove she sent Wilson on his Niger mission - another of the lies spread about him.
But Libby committed his crimes to cover-up the role of his boss and to protect his own position in the attack on Wilson. At base, then, the reasons for war were the scandal.
Libby was no mere factotum. He was a central member of the neoconservative cast of characters, who began as a protégé of Wolfowitz and was elevated to the role of Cheney's indispensable man.
Libby's conviction not only indelibly stains neoconservatism. It is a damning condemnation of the Bush White House belief that the ends justify the means and its aggrandizement of absolute power. Ultimately, this is a verdict that can never be erased from the history of the Bush presidency.
Source and Links:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sidney_blumenthal/2007/03/scooter_libby_1.html
Steve Bell
Your enemy is not surrounding your country
your enemy is ruling your country
by Balz
Year after year, George W. Bush has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums of money, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack.
With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, George W. Bush could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region. And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by Scooter Libby and others facing indictment reveal that George W. Bush aids and protects terrorists, including Neocons Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan, et. al. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could create another 9/11, provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.
Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that George W. Bush could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those Neocon hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by George W. Bush. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes. (Applause.)
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of George W. Bush is not a strategy, and it is not an option. (Applause.)
The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages (Shock, Awe, and MK77) -- leaving thousands of Iraqi citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained -- by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. (Applause.)
And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of the United States: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation. (Applause.)
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/Balzac/index.html
World authors on climate change
Coinciding with the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper asked writers from around the world for their perspectives. Read how global warming has effected lives in from Bombay to the high Alps, from The Netherlands to Nigeria and beyond. We present stories by Hans Maarten van den Brink, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Romesh Gunesekera, Kiran Nagarkar, Leo Tuor, Ibrahim al-Koni and more...
Seas of stone
The publication of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change has kicked off a heavy debate which - as EU's the recent climate
protection plans show - is affecting political decision-making. The NZZ
feuilleton asked writers from far and wide to report on climate change
from a personal point of view. The series begins with Swiss author Leo
Tuor, who has felt the effects of the Earth's warming right up to his
belly button. read more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1354.html
Underwater
Continuing with the series, originally published in the NZZ, of first-hand
accounts of climate change by international writers, Hans Maarten van
den Brink talks of arks and dykes and watersport and the Dutch obsession
with the sea. read more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1355.html
Black Christmas
In the NZZ's climate change series, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
tells how Christmas changed in 2006, with choking heat and clammy bedsheets.
read more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1370.html
Rain
Continuing the NZZ's climate change series, Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera
tells how everything is perfect for the model farmer with a mathematical
mind. Until the rain messes up his calculations. read more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1358.html
From Bombay with smog
In a new sequel of the NZZ's climate change series, Kiran Nagarkar affords
a lung-clogging view from Bombay, where this winter the smog was a block
of dirty concrete that started a couple of metres from where you stood
and stretched all the way to the sky. read more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1357.html
Meteorologists versus shamans
Continuing the NZZ's series of first-hand accounts of climate change by
international writers, siberian-born Juri Rytcheu picks fun at polar
meteorologists and admits he wouldn't mind it getting a bit warmer. read
more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1392.html
Grapes from Greenland
Continuing the NZZ's series of first-hand accounts of climate change by
international writers, Danish author Jorn Riel tells of his psychedelic
visions for the future of the Arctic. read more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1394.html
Feasting on the mother's
corpse
In the eyes of most cultures, from time immemorial, the earth has never
been just a planet. It is a holy entity, and it is a sin to defile it.
Says Ibrahim al-Koni, anyone who does so puts himself and all of us at
risk. read more:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1406.html
Source: signalandsight.com World authors on climate change
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1395.html
