Page --- 532 --- 07-08-11 Zorba The Geek By Ernest Stewart "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" ~~~"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" The Aeneid ~~~ Publius Vergilius Maro a.k.a. Virgil "Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite 'The Iliad.'" ~~~ Bruce Sterling "Bernard, I want you to know... that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I'm supposed to control my violent temper, and be passive and nonviolent like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see this girl... of such a beautiful spirit... so degraded... and this boy... that I love... sprawled out by this big ape here... and this little girl, who is so special to us we call her "God's little gift of sunshine"... and I think of the number of years that she's going to have to carry in her memory... the savagery of this idiotic moment of yours... I just go BERSERK!" ~~~ Billy Jack "The only place a prophet isn't honored is in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own house." ~~~ J.C. To paraphrase old Mark Twain, "A Greek joke is no laughing matter!" Certainly what's been happening in the Aegean Sea in the last week or two isn't a laughing matter, either! From holding ships in port, to damaging ships engines and propellers, to kidnapping Americans on the high seas at gunpoint, to torturing said citizens all at the behest of Obamahood, Hillary Dillary and the Zionazis in Tel Aviv, seems to me an act of war against America! The American ship's captain of the "Audacity of Hope" is being illegally held incommunicado and tortured by the Greek regime. New York attorney and ship's passenger Richard Levy reported, "...he (Captain Klismerhad) has no bed or toilet in his cell, and is receiving no food or water." Of course, the American embassy in Athens, who last week said they were standing by for any American's needs hasn't visited Captain Klismerhad, as required, or even protested his treatment. As David Crosby once sang, "We're finally on our own" and Obamahood and Hillary Dillary haven't spoken a peep since this atrocity happened. Perhaps you should write these war criminals and ask them why? Of course, if I were President, the Greek navy would be on the bottom of the ocean, and a couple of aircraft carrier battle groups would be escorting the ships into dock in Palestine; but, of course, I'm not a puppet like Obamahood, Hillary Dillary and Greece are to their Zionazis masters in Tel Aviv! This just in, now they've arrested and are holding Canadian citizens! This should amount to an act of war, as messing with Canadians is our job! Can you guess: I wrote the Greek embassy in Foggy Bottom a letter! I did, and here it is: I see the birthplace of democracy has been reduced to being an Israeli stooge. Kidnapping people on the high seas is an act of war. Torturing American citizens is an act of war. I wonder how you would like it if the rolls were reversed? No doubt, someday, they will be! The boycott of all things Greek is now well underway. If you think your economy sucks now, just give the boycotts a few months to begin to work. I'm sure those 30 pieces of silver that Israel paid you to commit these acts of war and terrorism aren't going to be enough! How does it feel to have to dance whenever your Zionazi puppet masters pull your strings? However, I must thank you for providing the material for this week's editorial, "Zorba the Geek!" I couldn't have done it without you! Now I see you've become the Zionazis' delivery boy; again, I hope it pays well as those Yankee tourist and export dollars dry up and blow away! We thought you were better than this, but you're not! So how does it feel, Greece, to have joined the dark side? Every Palestinian death is now on you; every baby blown to tiny bits is on you! Every atrocity that Israel commits is on you! That blood on your hands won't wash away, try as you might to spin it away. Looking forward to the collapse of your society. Like Israel, the world will be a far better place when you are gone! If the feeling moves you, America, you might want to write the Greeks and Obamahood letters letting them know your opinion on the matter! You can contact the Washington D.C. Greek embassy at: Phone: (202) 939-1300 Email: greece@greekembassy.org In Other News I wasn't expecting much from Obama and the Twitter fiasco. I expected a lot of softball questions and a lot of song and dance answers, so I wasn't disappointed by it at all. Millions of tweets, and yet not a single pointed question about our various war crimes, not a single direct question about balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, the hungry, the sick or elderly, although Barry did hint that the destruction of those programs are on the table. Someone was allowed to ask about the 14th Amendment, but Barry didn't go there -- saying instead he was counting on reducing the debt with his Rethuglican chums instead. He did profess his anti-unionism by first talking about a very few of the many benefits collective bargaining has brought, but said he could understand why some non-union folks were jealous and hence the unions were going to have to give back to the bosses some of those hard-earned gains; I guess so the elites won't have to stop buying those tax free, corpo-rat jets and yachts! He mentioned giving lots more tax breaks to businesses, reminding us on several occasions that we all got a thousand dollar check last December. Gosh, I guess my check is still in the mail... In other words, Barry hemmed and hawed, gave us the old soft shoe, and lied his worthless ass off! I'm wondering why I bother to have a Twitter account after watching their CEO Evan Williams soft peddle the questions from eight supposedly un-biased people, chosen from the millions sent. After an hour of this, I couldn't take any more as I began to look for something to throw through my TV screen, and instead just turned it off. I didn't expect my question to be picked as it was a hardball one, as I'm sure were millions of others that really needed to be answered, but were rejected as too tough. Here's what I sent in: "Are you planning on balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, elderly, sick and hungry instead of the rich? That 3rd rail is hot!" And Finally You have no doubt heard about Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and his fight against people feeding the starving. That right you heard me correctly, Buddy is having the Orlando Gestapo arrest members (21 so far) of Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs is a worldwide organization that feeds the hungry in over 1000 cities worldwide -- Buddy calls them "Food Terrorists" for doing so. Buddy wants the poor and hungry to starve to death so his elitist pals won't have to look at them through the windows of their Rolls Royces and Bentleys as they cruise the downtown areas looking for hookers and cheap, illegal maids and gardeners! Like Billy Jack, I try to follow the peaceful path; I really try; I do, but some people just piss me off -- and Buddy is one of them! You knew I'd write Buddy a note, didn't you...? Hey Buddy, Ernest Stewart here, I'm the publisher of Issues & Alibis Magazine and I have a couple of questions about you and those nasty food terrorists currently destroying Orlando by giving away free food to your large, starving populace. Please explain why these ne'er-do-wells by doing the very same thing that Christ did, i.e., feeding the starving poor have become terrorists! Who are they terrorizing, Buddy? Why do you want the hungry to starve? Should these terrorists be nailed to trees for following Christ's lead? Do you think a city that lets former middle-class people who lost their jobs to some Rethuglican plot puts its best foot forward by showing its uncaring face to the world will cause people to want to come to vacation in such a hell hole as Orlando? Is this some sort of Koch Brothers scheme to kill off the poor? Or are you doing it because you think it's government's job to feed them, instead of those nasty private enterprise types? Oh, and a couple of personal questions, Buddy. How does it feel to be universally-hated by millions of caring people around the world who feel they are their brother's keeper? How do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning without wanting to cut your throat from ear to ear? Have no doubt that my many readers would like to hear your side of the story after reading Amy Goodman's piece in this Friday's magazine. So why do you want to kill the poor, Buddy? What have hungry children ever done to you? Aren't YOU the real food terrorist here? Sincerely Ernest Stewart Publisher Issues & Alibis Magazine http://www.issuesandalibis.org If you would like to send Buddy a piece of your mind via email or phone: Email Buddy at: buddy.dyer@cityoforlando.net Call Buddy at: 407-246-2221 Keepin' On Rumor has it that two of our Canadian readers have sent in some money to forestall our destruction. (I can't get to the post office till this weekend to see what's in the box) If correct, we'll still need to raise $300 in two weeks time. These two contributions puts Canada in the lead in donations for this year which makes me think perhaps I should move this across the border from Detroit to Windsor and start covering more Canadian and less US news? Of course, there are more Americans out of work than there are people in Canada, but in these two cases, i.e., Ernie from Ontario and Terri from Toronto, they're both retired and living off Social Security and yet they can do what fully-employed Americans won't, i.e., keep the truth flowing. Again a little help, Ya'll! We're just about 2/3rds of the way through what we need to raise, to keep publishing for another year! Speaking of Canada, Michael Winship has an interesting column this week that concerns Canada and Michele Bachmann and her ability to get Canadian history just as wrong as she gets American history; imagine that! We also welcome David Swanson to our little band of "Merry Pranksters" with perhaps the most important political article that you'll ever read! To say it is a must-read is a vast understatement! Just scroll on down as it's the next article up. You will see how America has come full circle since the "revolution!" As the great, wise, sage, seer and prophet Pogo, once said: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" ***** Page --- 533 --- 07-15-11 Issues & Alibis
















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In This Edition

Anthony DiMaggio warns of, "Obama's Political Suicide."

Uri Avnery with a must read on, "Instilled Memory."

David Sirota explores, "If Obama Cuts Social Security...."

David Swanson hears, "Congresspeak."

Jim Hightower finds, "Debt Ceiling Hypocrisy."

Helen Thomas wonders if we're, "Ending The Wars?"

James Donahue concludes, "Supreme Gang Of Five Making A Mockery Of U.S. Law."

Medea Benjamin reports, "By Torpedoing The Gaza Flotilla, Israel Sunk Its Own Ship."

Ralph Nader considers, "Corporate Tax Escapees And You."

Ray McGovern From Athens with, "Gaza And A Liturgy For Justice."

Paul Krugman explains, "No, We Can't? Or Won't?"

Chris Hedges with a cauntionary tale, "Carlos Montes And The Security State."

David Michael Green returns with another must read, "Stupid Republicans, Stupid Democrats."

Arizona Sin-ator Jon Kyl wins the coveted "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols says, "Guthrie's 'Land' Is Madison."

Glenn Greenwald returns with, "The Great Generational Threat."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst foresees the need for, "Killer Carnivorous Snails From France" but first, Uncle Ernie watches as Obama and Con-gress are, "Grabbing The Third Rail."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Ed Stein, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, Toon Doo.Com, , Dees Ilustration.Com, Kirk Anderson, Jim Morin, Clay Bennett, Patriot Boy, Big Fur Hat, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Grabbing The Third Rail
By Ernest Stewart

"Social Security is the third rail of American politics. Touch it, you're dead." ~~~ Kirk O'Donnell

"This report builds on our prior work by summarizing information that has since been made public about the role played by US government officials most responsible for setting interrogation and detention policies following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and analyzes them under US and international law. Based on this evidence, Human Rights Watch believes there is sufficient basis for the US government to order a broad criminal investigation into alleged crimes committed in connection with the torture and ill-treatment of detainees, the CIA secret detention program, and the rendition of detainees to torture. Such an investigation would necessarily focus on alleged criminal conduct by the following four senior officials—former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet." ~~~ Human Rights Watch

"What this means is a collapse of our economic system due to the cascading effect of stupidity. The people that get SS checks also feed the economy. To believe that 20 billion dollars worth of people not getting their checks isn't going to do any harm is not only ludicrous but stupid... I'm moving to Denmark." ~~~ Linda Paulson

"And, in the end,
The love you take.
Is equal to the love,
You make!
The End ~~~ The Beatles

A thought that is on many minds currently is, "Does Obama have a death wish?" He must, if he has any real intent of sacrificing the elderly, the sick, the poor, and the hungry to the Rethuglicans to extend the debt ceiling.

You'll recall that Barry and Smirky the Wonder Chimp gave away about $4 trillion dollars to the insanely rich and the banksters and spent another $4 trillion on our illegal, immoral, needless, useless war crimes throughout the world.

You'll also remember that Boner, Ryan, Kyl and Mitch (the bitch) McConnell all had no problems about raising the ceiling on the debt under Smirky -- they raised it 5 times for a little over $4 trillion dollars! Yes, they are what Tweety Bird called "hypo-twits!" And, yes, their corpo-rat string pullers have always wanted to get rid of the entitlement programs, so they could get their greedy paws on all that lovely money. They're called entitlement programs because the people are entitled to that money as they paid for those programs all their lives; they're not a gift; they're savings programs! Even Smirky didn't dare rob them as much as he wanted to, because even that brain-dead knew what would happen if he did -- swift, sure, political death! It's called the third rail of politics for that reason.

So even if Boner and company agreed to a penny's worth of tax raises on the uber-wealthy, it'd never pass in the Sin-ate, because if it did it'd mean the death of the Demoncratic party and a huge loss for the Rethuglicans, too. So what is Obamahood up to this time? Perhaps he's tired of being our beloved fuhrer and wants to take the money that he's obviously been bribed with and run, while the getting is good? Sure, it's a given that the Rethuglicans don't give a rat's ass if Granny is sleeping in a cardboard box or if little Mary Lou starves slowly to death or if little Johnny dies because he couldn't get that simple, cheap operation that would have given him a long, healthy productive life. Unless, of course, somebody was to bribe them to do so, and the Koch brothers aren't doing that! This will also mean the Demoncrats will be exposed for being just like the Rethuglicans, and will no longer be able to pretend to be one of us -- to be on our side!

Why does Barry wants his trillion dollar gifts to the elite and the Banksters to to be paid for by the poor, homeless, sick, hungry, and elderly? It's simple really! Our betters want to get rid of most of us, so they're not so crowded! Just like Hitler did before he started murdering the Gypsies, Jews, Communists, etc., he started murdering what he and Henry Ford considered the worthless, the poor, the insane, and the elderly. This is just the elite's new Eugenics programs. They're planning the deaths of about 6 and 1/2 billion of us, which will leave about 100 million of them and about 400 million people to wait on them and do their bidding. That's been their plan for 80 years. Do you understand now why they're doing nothing about climate change, forced vaccinations, Frankenfoods, endless wars, etc.?

The Earth would sustain 1/2 a billion people a whole lot better than 7 billion! As Barry dances to the same tunes as Boner and the rest, and if one looks at their actions with this knowledge in mind, one can see what's really behind Barry grabbing that third rail and daring us to do anything about it. I'm guessing that after this there'll be no need for political parties -- which are just there to keep us blinded, occupied, and entertained while they take over everything, everywhere. Soon, if you're sent to the left column, it's off to short life of slavery, to the right column and it's off to a Happy Camp! You could have stopped this; in fact, you probably still can, but you won't, will you, America? The Matrix is so comfortable, until it isn't! Until they've sucked you dry!

In Other News

Then on Tuesday there was Obamahood on TV talking to CBS newsman Scott Pelley. Scott interviewed Barry for the CBS Evening News.

Pelley: Can you tell the folks at home that no matter what happens, the Social Security checks are gonna go out on August the third? There are about $20 billion worth of Social Security checks that have to go out the day after the government is supposedly gonna go into default.

Obama: Well, this is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are veterans' checks, these are folks on disability, and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out each month.

Pelley: Can you guarantee, as President, those checks will go out on August the third?

Obama: I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.

This, of course, is bullshit! Those programs are fully-funded, so why the lie by our fearless leader? To scare you and me into scaring our Con-gress criters and Sinators into falling in line. Even if they, do Barry and his Rethuglican allies have plans on reducing or eliminating Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? Whether or not he gets to raise taxes on the uber-wealthy, his puppet masters want those entitlement dollars to flow into their pockets, and Obamahood, being the good little puppet patsy that he is, will move Heaven and Earth to try and make that happen. So, of course, I wrote him, my two Sinators and my Con-gress critter a short and to-the-point note:

"That third rail is hot. Anyone who doubts that will find themselves looking for a new job come 2012!"

You might want to write yours a similar note, too!

And Finally

I see where Human Rights Watch just put out a 107 page report concluding that the Bush Junta was torturing people and need to be brought to justice for their torturing crimes. Imagine that, they've finally come to that conclusion! I came to that conclusion 8 years ago; I guess they were just being thorough? To be fair, they came out in 2005 with a paper that hinted at the fact that the Junta might be involved in torture, but weren't quite prepared to make conclusions and recommend that they be charged with their crimes; but, by golly, they finally have that conclusion and are calling for an investigation. So they're a day late, and a dollar shy; but, at least, they finally came to that conclusion!

Guess what? I wrote them a letter!

Dear Human Rights Watch,

So Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice and company were torturing people? No shit, Sherlock? Where have you been for the last ten years? Why were you the last ones to tumble to that fact? It was in all the newspapers, all around the world, including confessions, color photographs, criminal trials, I guess you were waiting for a smoking gun, huh? Still, better a decade later than never, eh? I wonder when you Einsteins will get around to our 6 current "Crimes against Humanity" that have been running since 2002? I'm guessing you'll come out with facts of war crimes in Afghanistan some time in 2020? Iraq by 2025, Pakistan by 2028 and Somalia, Yemen, and Libya sometime in the following decade? No doubt, you'll have the lowdown on all our many other black-ops wars sometime around 2050. I can hardly wait for those reports, if I'm still alive!

Sincerely yours,
Ernest Stewart
Publisher
Issues & Alibis Magazine
P.S. Here's a tip, Obama is ordering the torture and the murder of American citizens, without a trial -- even as we speak!

If you'd like to express your opinion:

Email: http://www.hrw.org/contact/new
Phone: 1-212-290-4700

Keepin' On

Being in Limbo isn't all that it's cracked up to be! Finally got to the post office only to find nothing there. I have no dount that Ernie and Terri sent me something but neither arrived in more than the normal time it takes to arrive. I'm hoping with the late Canadian postal lockout, it's taking a bit longer due to the huge backlog of mail. However, since a friend mailed me some photographs and they arrived with the one side slit all the way down, I'm beginning to wonder if Big Brother is searching through my mail? It may be needless paranoia, but when you dare to tell the truth that Big Brother doesn't want known, a little paranoia can be a healthy thing!

Be that as it may, we're down to about two weeks when we have to pay up or shut up; ergo, we need your help now, more than ever! If you've ever wanted to be a hero, now's your chance! Step up and take a stand for truth and justice; no one else can take your place! Do it while there's still time; do it while it will make a difference; do it for no other reason than it will shut me up, and we can continue on for another year!

Just go to our donations page and follow the directions. Save not only the magazine, but the archives with all that important information, not only the news, but those vast how-to sections that tell you how to keep your family alive after it hits the fan. The "Happy Camps" sections, the U.S. Documents sections and the Forum will all disappear without the magazine to support them. It's ten years of my life down-the-drain without your help. I've been there for you; now it's your turn to be there for me and for everyone else that is as broke as I am and counts on the magazine to keep them informed!

*****


08-08-1918 ~ 07-08-2011
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!


10-23-1949 ~ 07-09-2011
Thanks for the jams!


11-30-1943 ~ 07-11-2011
Thanks for the jams!


11-14-1916 ~ 07-12-2011
Thanks for Gilligan, I guess?!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












Obama's Political Suicide
By Anthony DiMaggio

The Obama administration is committing political suicide with its debt negotiations, and it's not entirely clear that there should be much of a protest from the American people. Obama's center-right attempts to "compromise" by seeking major cuts to Social Security (a program that is currently not in financial trouble, but in fact running a surplus) and Medicare (in which hundreds of billion in cuts are being sought) will inevitably harm the American middle and working classes. Obama claims that the "sacrifices" (which he will not be forced to endure) are necessary in order to come to an agreement with Republicans over deficit reduction. He is wrong. If he continues to push this agenda, we should organize around an alternative, progressive candidate for 2012.

Obama's proposed cuts concede far too much to the Republicans. He supports ending tax loopholes for the rich and reducing the Bush tax cuts (for the wealthy) in a package that would see less than $1 trillion in total revenue savings from these sources. Compare that to the additional $3 trillion in cuts he's seeking over ten years - much of which will come from popular social programs - and one begins to see that he really is "bending over backwards" to placate Republicans' elitist agenda, as he complained in his recent national address. Such cuts go far beyond the compromise supported by Democrats, in which sacrifices by the masses would equal half of the total revenue increases, and the closing of tax cuts for the wealthy would include another half. Obama's proposed cuts even go beyond those cuts pushed by Republicans, as they had not originally mentioned Social Security payment reductions as part of their demands.

Republicans have no interest in deficit reduction, as seen in their irresponsible "spend like a drunken sailor" mentality whenever they hold political power (a la the Reagan and Bush years). Debt and deficit reduction are merely a class war tactic to be used against the poor and middle class, and in favor of extending deficit increasing tax cuts for the rich. By playing the Republicans' game, Obama is risking his political future by crossing the one political constituency that disproportionately follows politics and participates regularly in national elections - the elderly. Resisting cuts to Social Security is a no-brainer for any Democrat interested in getting re-elected, which is why Democrats in Congress opposed them so ardently in 2005, and continue to do so today. Reagan and Bush learned that elementary lesson when they tried to dismantle Social Security, and it's unclear why the Obama administration is so obtuse as to have forgotten this basic political reality. Social Security has always been the third rail of American politics.

Obama is falling victim to the propaganda theme in Washington that the deficit and debt are the cause of the current economic crisis, rather than a symptom of a much larger problem of reckless speculation on Wall Street. In reality, it was the collapse of the Housing market and the subsequent implosion of the derivatives market that caused the massive hole in the economy, high unemployment, and rapidly expanding deficits under which we now suffer. Contrary to Democratic and Republican propaganda today, it was the stimulus itself, and its accompanying increase in the national debt, that prevented a full-on collapse of the U.S. economy. Debt and deficit spending (in the name of stimulus) are the reason we still have a moderately functioning economy today, rather than the cause of the problem. A forward looking, positive agenda for Democrats must focus on pushing more stimulus and deficit spending until the economy turns around, rather than removing demand from the economy, as will happen with the $4 trillion in budget cuts Obama is supporting.

But what about debt reduction? Isn't this a worthy goal in the long term, lest we are to continue with the unsustainable path of mass tax cuts for the wealthy, continuously escalating military spending, and growing costs for welfare programs such as Social Security and Medicare? At some point in the future, debt levels could become so high as to impede future government borrowing, and lead to the evisceration of popular welfare programs that America's political elites have so long sought. There are simple answers to this question for those seriously interested in deficit and debt reduction: cut military spending, increase the payroll tax (and taxes in general) for the wealthy, and rein in the worst abuses endemic in the Medicare system. The United States currently spends approximately $1.2 trillion a year on the "defense." Cutting the military budget to $800 billion a year would lead to $5 trillion in savings over the next ten years, or $1 trillion more than Obama is promising under his deficit reduction plan. Such cuts are not as radical as they sound, as they would reduce annual military spending to about $100 billion more per year than the approximately $700 billion per year spent on "defense" during the mid-1990s Clinton years - a time when permanent occupations of Middle Eastern countries was not considered the foundation of U.S. foreign policy.

Raising the payroll tax to cover the upper portions of the incomes of the wealthy would ensure the solvency of Social Security into the indefinite future. Putting an end to Congress's legal prohibition on government bargaining over pharmaceutical prices would help rein in escalating Medicare costs. Under current law, the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals - the federal government - is not legally allowed to negotiate prices. This prohibition is a blatant violation of "free market" assumptions that companies should be forced to compete in order to provide lower priced, more effective drugs.

A second major reform that would help reduce Medicare costs entails the introduction of comparative effectiveness measures to lower costs of care, without sacrificing quality. We currently have a weak understanding of the effectiveness of competing and alternative procedures and medical treatments, as provided by doctors. Many medical procedures are far more costly than others, and no more effective. By undertaking comparative effectiveness research, we can reduce the costs of health care, while still providing superior medical services. Republicans vehemently oppose comparative effectiveness because such a reform would cost hospitals and doctors some of their excessive profits. Finally and most importantly, we should seek the introduction of a universal health care, Medicare-for-all system, which would dramatically reduce costs of health care for federal and local government employers, who are forced to pay exorbitant amounts for health care under private-sector run programs. Such a change would do much to reduce escalating health care costs and growing deficit spending.

Obama is playing with political fire by promoting a "compromise" with Republicans. Opinion polls show that Americans favor ending the Bush tax cuts over cutting social programs. The Republican Party, however, will continue to resist termination of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy - their primary political constituency. Obama should be appealing to the public, rather than Republicans, with a budget plan that includes military cuts and preservation of Medicare and Social Security (in addition to his attempts to end the Bush tax cuts). Winning public support for this agenda should not be that difficult, considering the strong public opposition to cutting Social Security and Medicare, and since the cutting military spending (instead of welfare programs) is the most popular choice of Americans whenever they are asked how to reduce the deficit and debt. This alternative approach would allow Obama and the Democrats to preserve programs that are vital in reducing poverty in a time of economic crisis, while reducing the size of a bloated, wasteful, and imperialist military industrial complex.

But what of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which macro-economic data suggest have done little to nothing to promote economic growth over the last half decade? Eliminating those cuts doesn't need to be a part of any immediate deficit plan. It's true that extending these cuts won't promote growth, as our current economic problems stem from a lack of consumer demand that is caused by growing unemployment and rising household debt, coupled with massive personal savings losses following the housing collapse. Extending tax cuts for the rich in the name of spurring investment and growth is an absurd waste of money at a time when the corporate community is hoarding $2 trillion in cash reserves and when average Americans are suffering under high unemployment and growing poverty.

By simply doing nothing on these tax cuts this year, however, Obama could allow them to expire when they are legally scheduled to end in 2012. Letting the cuts expire will not produce the dire consequences in which Republicans warn. The most optimistic supporters of the cuts - such as the reactionary Heritage Foundation - promised they would provide a mere $4,500 over ten years to the average family, or just $450 a year. Taking that estimate at face value, $450 represents less than one percent of the median family's annual income of approximately $46,000. It is entirely reasonable to expect those who already have jobs to make such a miniscule "sacrifice" in order to end the deficit-inducing, inequality increasing Bush tax cuts. These cuts are already providing Republicans leverage in demanding major cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Allowing the privatization of Medicare (as proposed under Republican Congressman Paul Ryan's plan) would cost seniors dearly. As shown in recent empirical research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Ryan's Medicare-voucher-privatization plan would increase the average cost of health care for the elderly by more than 120 percent a year (or an additional $5,750 a year). This is an unacceptable price for Middle Americans to pay as they move into retirement, in exchange for a mere $450 a year in yearly rebates under the Bush tax cuts.

Eliminating the Bush tax cuts will have no effect on the already unemployed (who aren't paying income taxes), and a minimal effect on the employed, when compared to the deadly effects that the current deficit reduction talks will have if Social Security and Medicare are subjected to deep cuts. The elimination of the Bush tax cuts, however, will have a dramatic effect on the richest 5%, who secured a staggering one-half of all the Bush cuts. It is this group, rather than the other 95% of Americans, that Republicans are dedicated to protecting. Of course, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would likely cost Democrats support from Republicans in terms of extending unemployment insurance in the future. Obama could deal with this problem, however, by winning majority control of government for the Democrats in 2012. Simply by taking a stand against the Republican Party's draconian class war, the Democrats could secure impressive victories in the upcoming election, thereby eliminating the need to compromise on unemployment insurance.

Sadly, the progressive options discussed above are not defining the policies of the Obama administration. Those on the left who care about the future of the masses should be asking a simple question: why bother supporting a president who shows no interest in fighting for your interests? By "going public" and appealing to the American people for support against Republicans' draconian class war, Obama could win serious victories for the American people, without having to compromise with those pushing a policy agenda far out of step with the demands of the people. Compromise for the sake of compromise (or in order to protect one's "legacy" as a "centrist) is no virtue. Obama's continuation down the "Republican-lite" path should give us pause and force a re-evaluation of public support for this president. Democrats in Congress would do well to take heed, as a vote against Medicare and Social Security will come with deadly consequences in the 2012 elections. It's really a no-brainer.
(c) 2011 Anthony DiMaggio is the co-author with Paul Street of the newly released Crashing the Tea Party (Paradigm Publishers, 2011). He is also the author of When Media Goes to War (2010) and Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008). He has taught U.S. and Global Politics at Illinois State University, and can be reached at: adimag2@uic.edu





Instilled Memory
By Uri Avnery

FOR SEVERAL weeks now, our army and navy have been in a state of high alert, bravely facing a deadly threat to our very existence: ten little boats trying to reach Gaza. These vessels are carrying a dangerous gang of vicious terrorists, in the form of elderly veterans of peace campaigns.

Binyamin Netanyahu has affirmed our unshakable determination to defend our country: We shall not let anyone break the blockade to smuggle rockets to the terrorists in Gaza, who will then launch them to kill our innocent children.

This is a kind of record even for Netanyahu: not a single word is true. The flotilla is not carrying any weapons - the representatives of respected international media in the boats provide assurance of this. Also, I think we can rely on the Mossad to plant at least one agent in every boat. (After all, what am I paying my taxes for?) Hamas has not launched rockets for a long time - it has very good reasons of its own to keep the unofficial "Tahdiyeh" ("Quiet") agreement.

If the flotilla had been allowed to reach Gaza, it would have been news for a few hours, and that would have been that. Israel's total mobilization, the training of the naval commandos for capturing the boats, the acts of sabotage carried out in Greek ports, the immense political pressure exerted by Israel and the US on the poor, bankrupt Greek government - all this has kept this minor initiative in the news for weeks now, drawing attention to the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

What is this blockade for? There is no ascertainable reason for it now, if there ever was one. To terrorize the Gaza people into overthrowing the Hamas government, the victor in democratic elections? Well, it didn't work, did it? To compel Hamas to change its terms for a prisoner exchange which would release Gilad Shalit? That didn't either. To prevent the smuggling of arms into the Strip? The arms are flowing freely through a hundred tunnels from Egypt, if we are to believe what our army tells us. So what purpose does the blockade serve? Nobody seems to know. But it is the rock of our existence. That much is clear.

As a result of world pressure following last year's flotilla, the blockade was eased considerably. But Gaza manufacturers are still prevented from getting their products out of the Gaza Strip - thus condemning most of the population to unemployment and abject poverty.

The same goes for the disgusting trade in human remains. Netanyahu promised to turn over the remains of 84 "terrorists" (both Fatah and Hamas) to Mahmoud Abbas as a gift. At the last moment, he reneged. His people make believe that these remains, by now hardly identifiable, may serve as bargaining chips in the game for releasing Gilad Shalit.

The same goes for the actions against yesterday's fly-in of international peace activists though Ben-Gurion airport. All they wanted was to go to Bethlehem and Gaza, which can only be reached by crossing Israeli territory. Almost a thousand police officers were mobilized to meet that threat.

All of these unthinking knee-jerk reactions: We must be strong. Everywhere there lurk mortal dangers. Israel must defend itself. Otherwise there will be a second Holocaust.

THIS IS an interesting phenomenon: people see innocent-looking elderly human-rights activists on their TV screens and believe they are seeing dangerous provocateurs, because the government and most of the media tell them so. Sinister "Arab and Muslim" individuals are hiding in the boats. An Arab American on one boat has been unmasked as somebody who has collected money for a Hamas social institution. A dangerous terrorist! How absolutely awful!

The phenomenon of people seeing something and thinking they are seeing something else has always intrigued me. How can people not believe their own eyes but believe the eyes of others?

This week I got an e-mail message from a man who remembered something from the time he was a pupil of my late wife, Rachel, in first grade.

Rachel asked him to raise his right hand. When the boy did so, Rachel said: "No, no. That is your left hand!" She turned to the other children and asked them, which hand it was. Following their teacher, they shouted in unison: "The left! The left!" Seeing this, the first boy started to waver. In the end he conceded: "Yes. It is the left hand."

"No, you were right in the first place," Rachel assured him. "Let this be a lesson to all of you: if you are sure that you are right, insist on it. Never change your view because other people say the opposite."

Quite by chance, straight after reading this testimony, I saw on TV the results of a scientific investigation by Israeli researchers into "instilled memory." Their experiments show that people who have seen something with their own eyes, but are told by everybody else that they have seen something else, start to suppress their own memory and "remember" that they saw what the others had allegedly seen. Neurological research then showed that this is can actually be seen happening in the brain: the imagined memory replaces the real. Social pressure has done its work: the instilled memory has become real memory.

I believe that this is even truer for an entire nation, which is, of course, composed of individuals. I have seen this many times.

For example, for 11 months before Lebanon War I, not a single shot was fired from Lebanon into Israel. Against all expectation, Yasser Arafat had succeeded in enforcing a total cease-fire even on his Palestinian opponents. Yet after Ariel Sharon started the war, practically all Israelis clearly "remembered" that the Palestinians had shot across the border every single day, turning life in Israel into hell.

I call this "Parkinson in reverse" - while advanced Parkinson patients do not remember things that happened, these patients do remember things which never happened.

THERE IS a mental disorder called "paranoia vera". Patients adopt a crazy assumption - e.g. "everybody hates me" - and then build an elaborate structure around it. Every bit of information which seems to support it is eagerly absorbed, every item that contradicts it is suppressed. Everything is interpreted so as to reinforce the initial assumption. The pattern is strictly logical - indeed, the more complete and the more logical the structure, the more serious is the disease.

Among the accompanying symptoms are belligerent behavior, recurrent suspicions, disconnection from the real world, conspiracy theories and narcissism.

It seems that whole nations can fall victim to this illness. Ours certainly appears to have.

The whole world is against us. Everybody is out to destroy us. Every move is a threat to our very existence. Everyone critical of Israeli policy is an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew.

Indeed, even when we do a good thing, it is turned against us.

Witness: "We left the Gaza Strip and even dismantled our settlements there, and what did we get in return? Qassam rockets!"

(Never mind that Sharon refused to turn the Strip over to any Palestinian body, leaving a void. He cut it off from the world and turned it into one big prison camp.)

Witness: "After Oslo we armed Arafat's security forces, and they turned their arms against us!"

(Never mind that we never quite fulfilled our commitments under the Oslo agreements, that the occupation got more oppressive and that the settlements on Palestinian land increased by leaps and bounds. Also, the Palestinian security services never actually acted against Israel.)

Witness: "We withdrew from South Lebanon and what did we get? Hizbollah and Lebanon War II!"

(Never mind that Hizbollah was born in reaction to our 18-year occupation there, and that we ourselves chose to launch the second Lebanon War after a minor border incident.)

IT HAS been said that paranoiacs also have real-life enemies. The trouble is that the paranoid by their offensive and distrustful behavior, create more and more real-life enemies.

The slogan "All the world is against us" may easily function as a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Israel is not the only country to suffer from this affliction. At some time, the Germans have been afflicted. So have the Serbs. So, to some extent, has the US and many others. Unfortunately, the costs of paranoia are very high.

So let us start to behave like sane people. Let the little boats go to Gaza. Let arrivals at Ben-Gurion airport go to the Palestinian territories and pick olives, if that's what they want.

Even if we do behave like a normal nation, Israel will continue to exist. Really!
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom






If Obama Cuts Social Security...
The president indicates that funding for the hallmark Democratic program is on the table. Is this the last straw?
By David Sirota

Wednesday night, the Washington Post reported that on top of the big cuts to Medicare he's already proposed, President Obama is now considering endorsing cuts to Social Security. In making this announcement (which formally embraces the concept of Social Security cuts first proposed by Obama's debt commission), the White House has lost all credibility in arguing that its 2012 political problems are the result of unfair expectations, particularly on the left. At the same time, the White House has finally exposed the strategy behind what so many of its apologists insisted was deft "three dimensional chess" on behalf of old-school liberalism -- and as we see, these tactics have nothing to do with liberalism and everything to do with Orwell-ism.

To review: The Wall Street Journal reports that "across a wide range of measures -- employment growth, unemployment levels, bank lending, economic output, income growth, home prices and household expectations for financial well-being -- the economy's improvement since the recession's end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II." In light of this miserable situation, it's no surprise that Gallup's Frank Newport reports that the president's job approval rating "has been hovering near the fault line between probable re-election and probable 'one-term' presidency."

For most of the president's tenure, he, his staffers and his devoted-but-dwindling army of sycophants have insisted that the political fallout from the crushing recession reflects unrealistic expectations of Obama in the wake of George W. Bush's destructive reign. It is, dare I say, an audacious claim, especially coming from a candidate who asked us all to have the "audacity of hope" -- and it's more than a little insulting. After all, much of the complaints about the president have been about campaign promises that he didn't just fail to fulfill -- but that he refused to even try to fulfill.

Indeed, when a political candidate promises to try to pass a public option to compete with private insurers, attempt to crack down on Wall Street abuse, do what he can to stop unfair trade deals, oppose extending his predecessors tax cuts and avoid initiating initiate costly new wars sans congressional approval, and then once in office works to kill a public option, refuses to prosecute Wall Street crimes, presses the rigged trade deals he opposed, supports the extension of his predecessor's tax cuts and starts a new war in Libya with no congressional authorization -- whose fault is it that he ends up in reelection trouble?

I'd say the answer is obvious -- I'd say that if such a politician wasn't in reelection trouble, it would be a sign that our democracy is in a deeper crisis than it already is.

But, then, merely citing this record brings accusations of treason, at least from Democratic staffers, pundits and activists in Washington. In an age of politics that has melded politicians with celebrity and activism with starfucking, to be a rank-and-file progressive and honestly examine a candidate's record during a reelection campaign is to risk being portrayed as a dangerous, seditious, ideologically zealous revolutionary.

After Wednesday night, though, the power of this kind of with-us-or-against-us partisanship will face it's ultimate test. Because while the intricacies of health care, Wall Street regulations and trade pacts can be muddled with esoterica and while Democratic presidents have shown a deft ability to soothe their base by conflating militarism with humanitarianism (the same trick, of course, that Republicans use for their militarist adventures), this Democratic president is aiding a new war on Social Security, the single most popular social program in American history, a program that the Democratic Party has -- both in principle and out of sheer self-interest -- long based its brand on. Whether Obama ultimately champions specific cuts or just floats the general possibility of such cuts, the larger news is that he has now legitimized them as a negotiating chip -- and importantly, he made such a move on his own, not because of circumstantial necessity.

To appreciate this reality, go back and read every Democratic Party press release during President Bush's 2005 failed assault on Social Security. Those press releases reminded us that Social Security is one of the most fiscally sound programs in American history, projected to run surpluses for the foreseeable future. Additionally, what problems it does face can be easily solved -- as just one example of a solution, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that had President Obama refused to extend the Bush tax cuts and instead worked to repeal them, that move alone would generate revenues equal to two and one-half times the entire Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years (yes, 75 years!).

And yet now, like that gruesome scene at the end of "Fargo," Social Security -- a pay-as-you-go embodiment of fiscal responsibility -- is being rammed into the grisly woodchipper of cynical debt-reduction politics. Only instead of a glowering Peter Stormare (or Mitt Romney) doing the pushing, there's a cheery President Obama insisting that cuts are really just progressive efforts to "strengthen" -- the same Obama who chastised his 2008 Republican opponent for using the same pathetic spin to shroud cuts to the same program.

This is not real politik, it is not triangulation and it isn't even Bush-ism (that is, taking unpopular positions and then just arrogantly pursuing them without regard for public will). No, we are watching a sort of Orwellian dystopia. Indeed, it is a sight to behold: a regime that believes it can say one set of things over and over and over again, and then do exactly the opposite.

Inherent in that ideology is the assumption that Americans -- and particularly Democratic voters -- are either too stupid to see the heist in process, or if they do see the heist, are too entranced by their president's power/fame/celebrity/charisma to want to do anything about it, even if what's being pilfered is Democrats' Social Security crown jewel.

The assumption, in other words, is that ignorance and fealty will permit a president to serve as an accomplice to the very grand larceny he was explicitly elected to office to oppose. Should the assumption prove true -- should Obama now be cheered on for doing to Social Security what no Republican president has ever been able to do -- the date on the calendar may say 2011, but it will really be 1984.
(c) 2010 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.






Congresspeak
The language of impotence
By David Swanson

The House of Representatives would be better off speaking Arabic. See if you can make heads or tails of this.

The House voted down a bill to end the Libya War.

At the same time, it passed a nonbinding House-only resolution that said the President "shall not" use ground troops in Libya, the war is unauthorized, and Congress could defund the war if it wanted to. The resolution requested that all kinds of information be reported to Congress by the President, much of which has not been reported by the specified deadline.

Next, the House passed an amendment blocking any funds, beginning in October, for troops or contractors on the ground in Libya.

At the same time, the House passed an amendment requiring that when the war is completed (and presumably the U.S. has control of Tripoli), the U.S. troops on the ground there must dig up the bodies of other U.S. troops buried there during a war 206 years ago.

Also at the same time, the House defeated an amendment that would have stripped out language dramatically expanding presidents' power to launch wars -- language eventually removed by the Senate.

Then the House rejected an amendment to a Homeland Security bill blocking use of its funds for wars waged in violation of the War Powers Resolution, passed the same amendment to a Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill, and finally passed the same amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act, which kicks in in October. While that amendment may sound particularly meaningless, it might actually benefit a court case in which 10 members of Congress have sued the President to stop the war, on the grounds of its clear violation of the War Powers Resolution.

Then the House voted down an authorization of war in Libya.

At the same time, the House also voted down a proposal to limit the funding of that war to certain types of activities.

In the latest installment of this saga, the House has rejected an amendment that would have defunded the Libya War beginning in October.

At the same time, the House again has passed an amendment defunding ground troops.

At the same time, the House has passed an amendment to prohibit the use of funds for the Department of Defense to assist any group or individual (such as the Libyan rebels) not part of a country's armed forces for the purpose of assisting that group or individual in carrying out military activities in or against Libya. The author of this amendment claims to have defunded the Libya War (as of October, if the Senate agrees, if the President doesn't signing-statement it, etc.).

Also at the same time, the House has rejected an amendment that would have prohibited the use of funds to support military operations, including NATO or United Nations operations, in Libya or in Libya's airspace.

And, just to make sure this is all fully meaningless, the House also rejected an amendment that would have removed the slush fund that allows presidents to fund wars without Congress. The House then proceeded to pass, yet again, a bigger military spending bill than last year.

So, the Libya War is unauthorized and has never been funded with a dime by Congress, but Congress does not object to this -- unless perhaps it does.

Only it doesn't really. If the House (the Senate is hopeless) objected, it would simply enforce existing laws. The War Powers Resolution -- despite the President's claim that bombing people's houses is not "hostilities" -- is actually crystal clear in comparison with recent Congressional communications. That law has been violated. The House could unambiguously block funding for this illegal war or impeach its architect. Nobody currently believes it will do any more than push the envelope of pretended war opposition, even to the point of confusing people as to what it's up to.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Debt Ceiling Hypocrisy

"No," shout Republican leaders at President Obama, like pouty two-year olds. "We won't raise the government's statutory debt limit in order to avoid a national default," they cry.

Four whiney GOP congressional leaders - John Boehner and Eric Cantor in the House, Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl in the Senate - insist that it'd be the height of irresponsibility to raise America's debt ceiling without first slashing spending on programs for the poor and middle class, while simultaneously protecting Big Oil and hedge fund billionaires from any increase in the paltry tax rates they pay. What the four pious partisans don't say is that their pose of resolute fiscal responsibility is an entirely new shtick for them - and they're hoping that you won't remember the Bush years.

George W had strutted into office promising to eliminate the $6 trillion federal debt in 10 years. Instead, he rushed America into his budget-sucking Iraq escapade, handed unwarranted tax cuts to corporations and the superrich, and oversaw a devil-may-care deregulation of Wall Street that caused our economy to crash. To cover these achievements, Bush had to get Congress to jack up the federal debt ceiling - not once, but five times in eight years. Far from eliminating the national debt, he expanded it by $4 trillion!

Guess who was side-by-side with him on this joy ride? Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, and Kyl, that's who. Not only did they gleefully vote again and again for Bush's war, tax giveaways to the rich, and coddling of Wall Street greed, but also to keep raising the debt limit. Kyl voted for four of Bush's five debt-ceiling increases, while Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell had a perfect five-for-five record.

These crybabies aren't against debt, they're against Obama - and the games they're playing with the national budget are putting party politics over country.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Ending the Wars?
By Helen Thomas

President Barack Obama is finally setting goals to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's about time.

Americans are coming around to the futility of all that killing and dying. The timetables are admittedly loose and flexible.

Some interests would keep us in the hostile sites forever. We still have troops in Japan and Germany - thousands of soldiers are still there, so many years after World War II ended. We also have 700 military outposts around the world, some big and some small. Why?

We have yet to hear the real reason we invaded Iraq. I have heard several reasons. Haven't you?

Was it to avenge "Daddy" when Saddam Hussein allegedly put a contract on the first Bush President, George H.W. Bush? Or was it because Israel has targeted Iraq as its prime enemy until it moved onto Iran? Or was it because Iraq, at the time, had the second largest oil holdings? Why are we still asking why we invaded and killed at least a hundred thousand Iraqis, why American people were asked to kill and die? Is there no accountability? Even for history's stake?

Or was Alfred Tennyson right? Ours is not to reason why, but to do and die.

To this day, the American people have been denied an honest answer about why we invaded Iraq. We continue to toss around speculative answers. Isn't that incredible? Truth is the first casualty of war. Hussein, formidable in hiding, was hanged under our so called tutelage.

Hussein was our friend in times of recent history but the neoconservatives, always protective of Israel, marked him as the enemy. Former President George W. Bush was determined to go to war with Iraq. The United States peddled lies that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and close ties to the al-Qaida terrorist organizations. Those allegations turned out to be untrue.

Hans Blix, the former United Nations arms inspector, begged Bush to let him go back into Iraq for one more inspection. Blix knew there were no lethal weapons in Iraq. He begged Bush to let him go back into Iraq with an inspection team to prove there were no weapons of mass destruction.

Bush refused to allow further inspections. He wanted to go to war. He had said in a pre-war interview that only war Presidents are remembered in history. In his memoir, Bush now says his "only regret" is that he did not find the weapons!

Bush is now happily in retirement, and the neoconservatives are ensconced in teaching roles (God help us). Maybe someday they will tell us why they targeted Iraq.

As for pulling our troops out of Iraq, don't hold your breath. There are all kinds of official hints that our withdrawal from Iraq may take a longer time than the end of the year deadline.

James F. Jeffrey, the U.S envoy to Iraq, told reporters recently that the U.S would consider keeping some of the 40,000 troops in Iraq to provide security. Of course, some Iraqi officials who have played ball with the U.S. occupation would like us to remain in the country. But the car bombings and explosions have not stopped.

Obama has ordered the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Afghanistan, the beginning of the end of the 10-year war. As for Afghanistan, we had more reason to go in (although there were neither Afghans nor Iraqis involved in 9/11).

Obama had one big chance to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan - the day after he took the oath of office. He could have saved thousands of lives and would have been called a hero by many. Instead, Obama maintained the Bush War scenario and kept the wars going.

America has to decide who we are - and why we are trying to sell democracy with guns and bombs.

The people of the Middle East and North Africa are fighting for their freedom and independence, while the dictators are using all their might to stay in power, including killing their own people.

We should try to be on the right side of these winds of change. Or, as was once said, "Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come."
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Supreme Gang Of Five Making A Mockery Of U.S. Law
By James Donahue

America has had a history of unpopular rulings by the U. S. Supreme Court. The nation still stands divided over the controversial 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortions throughout the nation. While some decisions were unpopular and often decided by a split court, they were made by a panel of nine judges that we always believed to have been struggling over the correct interpretation of the Constitution as it applied to state and national laws.

There has always been a flaw in the way members of the high court have been selected, however. Vacancies on that bench are filled by presidential appointment and approved by a vote of the Congress. While the judges are supposed to remain non-partisan and balanced, the very way they are culled for the job gets extremely political. Fortunately the balance of power in the United States has been in a constant state of change, and the Supreme Court judges, who serve for life, remained somewhat politically balanced. The court's balance shifted in 2006, however, when George W. Bush succeeded in picking John Roberts to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Sam Alito to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor. Roberts and Alito have since joined Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as the "conservative gang of five" who have created a run-away right-wing and obviously corporate-owned shift in the American justice system.

Analysis of the court members shows Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas as the conservative wing with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor standing on the more liberal wing.

Justice Kennedy has been considered a "swing" member of the bench, but he has regularly joined with the conservatives to generate those scathing 5-4 decisions favoring corporate and big business interests. The ninth justice, Elena Kagan, joined the bench so recently that her position on issues is still under scrutiny. She succeeded retiring Justice Paul Stevens, long considered a stabilizing force on the court.

The first odd involvement by the Supreme Court occurred in 2000 after presidential candidates George W. Bush, Republican, and Al Gore, Democrat, became deadlocked over a final vote count in Florida. The vote was so close Gore called for a recount. There was concern over possible voter fraud, many voters in high Democratic party districts that were turned away at the polls, and paper "chards" that may have caused miscounts in voting machines in some precincts.

The issue went on for days and became so hot the matter went before the Supreme Court for what has gone down in history as an unprecedented and questionable decision that gave Bush the presidency. At the time, Chief Justice Rehnquist, a known conservative, and Justices Scalia and Thomas moved to stop the recount and give the presidency to Bush. Justices Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg and Stevens opposed the decision. The remaining members, Kennedy and O'Connor joined with Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas to create a 5-4 vote.

Professionals who have examined the make-up of the court have since suggested that there were conflicts of interests involved in the decision. Both Rehnquist and O'Connor had expressed concerns that because of political leanings their plans to retire would be delayed if Gore won the office. They wanted to retire under a Republican presidency. Justice Thomas was appointed to the bench by President George H. W. Bush, and Scalia and Kennedy were both appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan.

George W. Bush stacked the deck even farther to the right with the appointments of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito to the bench during his eight-year tenure.

The monkey business became shockingly obvious to the public in 2008 when the court voted 5-4 in support of an opinion written by Kennedy which, in essence, struck down laws and court rulings dating back over a century that prohibited corporations and unions from paying large amounts of money to influence the outcome of elections.

The ruling, supported by Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas, determined that corporations have the same rights as individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who was still on the bench and among the four dissenters, accused the majority of "judicial activism." In his opinion he wrote that "the conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case."

Stevens called the decision a "radical change" in the law and warned that the ruling "threatens to undermine the integrity of eleted institutions around the nation."

Joining Stevens in voting against the ruling were Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Breyer.

The effects of the ruling were quickly felt during the 2010 state and Congressional elections. The media was besieged with smear campaign ads paid for by mystery sources that maliciously attacked Democratic candidates and supported a Tea Party movement that appeared to have started as a grass roots affair, but then quickly became financed and controlled by special interests organizations. The Republicans took control of the House and nearly got a majority of seats in the Senate. The Obama Administration has remained deadlocked ever since.

The situation is set to become even worse in the 2012 campaign. The Supreme Gang of Five voted last month to severely curtail the rule of public funding in backing candidates for office. The case, McComish Vs.Bennett, involved a challenge to Arizona's public funding system. This was a provision granting "trigger funding" to participating candidates facing well-funded (i.e. corporate financed) opponents. Right on que, the high court last month voted 5-4 to declare trigger funds unconstitutional. The decision will have an impact and lead to unbalanced financing for candidates all over the nation.

What the court has helped set up is a well-financed advertising campaign that will convince a nation of angry, unemployed voters that the sitting Democratic President Barack Obama has been responsible for the mess the nation has been in since George W. Bush left office. The Republicans are obviously depending upon voters to switch parties again in a quest for the change that Obama promised but could not deliver.

If you think the court isn't now owned by big corporate interests, consider the latest controversial 5-4 ruling that banned state laws prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children, citing free speech rights. The ruling clearly favored the manufacturers and businesses that sell and distribute the video games.

And then there was the 5-4 decision against the thousands of female Wal-Mart workers who have been denied the right to join in a class action gender discrimination lawsuit against their employer. The court ruled that they are individuals working in different communities so they cannot be considered a class.

Huffington Post columnist Peter S. Goodman summed it perfectly when he wrote: "The justices supplied future historians with a brilliant symbol of how the United States has essentially become a giant gated community enjoyed by the powerful, with most of the citizens living outside and struggling to nourish themselves."
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






By Torpedoing The Gaza Flotilla, Israel Sunk Its Own Ship
By Medea Benjamin

Instead of high-fiving each other for their success in thwarting the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Israeli officials should be throwing overboard the propaganda hacks who catapulted the flotilla into headline news for weeks and left Israel smelling like rotten fish.

Last year, when the Israeli military killed nine aboard the Turkish ship, the incident made waves around the world. But in previous years, the same international coalition had sent boats to Gaza five times, successfully reaching their destination with a symbolic shipment of humanitarian aid. No blood, no military interception, no story. That's why the advice of many of Israel's best buddies, including the lobby group AIPAC, was to just ignore the flotilla.

But no, the Israeli government refused to listen and instead announced with great bravado that it was prepared to stop the flotilla with lethal force-including snipers and attack dogs. Smelling blood, the media frenzy began. Before even leaving home, passengers were besieged with press calls inquiring why we were willing to risk our lives and giving us a chance to talk about the plight of the people of Gaza. Worse yet from the Israeli government perspective, mainstream media began bombarding us with requests to come along. With space for only ten media on our boat, we ended up choosing reps from CNN, CBS, Al Jazeera, AP, The Nation and Democracy Now. Other boats in the flotilla also started scrambling to accommodate more press. Thanks to Israel, we were guaranteed that no matter what happened, the whole world would be watching.

The Israeli government's next blunder was a doozy. It sent a letter to foreign journalists warning them that if they participated in the flotilla, they would be denied entry into Israel for ten years and their equipment would be impounded. The outcry from journalists and media organizations worldwide was immediate. Israel's Foreign Press Association said the threat "sends a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel's commitment to freedom of the press." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to rescind the decision, blaming it on his underlings.

But the blunders continued. A YouTube video of a "gay rights activist" who claimed he was not allowed to join the flotilla because he was gay and linked the flotilla to Hamas was exposed as a hoax disseminated by employees of the Israeli Government Press Office and the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Senior Israeli defense officials told journalists that flotilla activists were intending to dump bags of sulfer on Israeli soldiers to paralyze them and/or light them on fire "like a torch." We countered by holding an open house on the boat, inviting the media to inspect every nook and cranny and meet with nurses, lawyers, musicians, writers, grandmothers and other "terrorists" on board. The Israeli government looked so silly that even cabinet ministers criticized Netanyahu's "media spin" and "public relations hysteria."

Then there was the sabotage of the Irish and Swedish boats, the frivolous lawsuits and legal complaints by the Israeli Law Center (Shurat HaDin), the strong arming of the Greek government to issue a ban on all boats traveling to Gaza, and undoubtedly more dirty tricks that will be exposed in the future.

Through it all, the Israelis helped us turn a potential non-story into a media blitz that has not ended. The passengers are now returning home to the local public spotlight. Rather than being depressed by Israeli maneuvers to prevent the flotilla from reaching its destination, they are more motivated to speak out about the siege of Gaza and bullying tactics of the Israelis. Flotilla organizers are still fighting to get their boats released by the Greek government and vow to try again.

Our modest and peaceful initiative has exposed, for the world to see, the lengths the Israeli government will go to to stop nonviolent international initiatives. We have put the plight of Gaza and the illegality of the siege once again on the radar where it was previously ignored. We have exposed the sad but ultimately unsustainable fact that the Israelis have managed to extend their vindictive siege of Gaza to the shores of Europe and have widened the gulf between the Greek government and Greek popular sentiment with regard to Palestine.

Most importantly, we have given a boost to the larger, massive, multicultural, multinational movement for Palestinian rights. This Friday, hundreds of international activists are flying to Ben Gurion airport where they plan to tell border control agents of their intent to visit Palestine. This "flytilla,"as it has been dubbed, has also aroused a hysterical response from the Netanyahu government. Here again, the world's attention will be focused on Israel's control and blockade of movement in and out of the West Bank. The Knesset is on the verge of passing a bill that will effectively outlaw boycotts, a law that will likely only strengthen the resolve and increase the size of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. And then there will be the showdown at the United Nations, when Palestinians will be calling for recognition as a state.

The Israeli government can only continue its egregious violations of human rights and torpedoing nonviolence initiatives for so long. Eventually, justice will prevail and Palestine will be free. And initiatives like the flotilla will be remembered as part of a continuous wave of resistance that helped turned the tide.
(c) 2011 Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK, which has organized seven humanitarian delegations to Gaza.







Corporate Tax Escapees And You
By Ralph Nader

The all-consuming Washington, D.C. wrangling over debts and deficits, spending and taxing is excluding a large reality of how these financial problems can sensibly and fairly be addressed. These blinders in Congress and the White House come from fact-starved ideologies--mostly from the Republicans--and fear-fed meekness--mostly from the Democrats. Both are furiously dialing for commercial campaign cash.

Take the gigantic world of corporate tax avoidance. Ronald Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 that was designed to increase corporate tax revenues by over 30 percent. Today, President Obama wants to diminish or delete some tax loopholes (technically called tax expenditures) for large corporations, but let most of the revenues be cancelled out by lowering the corporate tax rates. How the world changes.

Obama's mild approach is unacceptable to the big business lobbies and their Republican mascots in Congress.

They want more tax breaks so they can keep trillions of more dollars over the next decade.

Lost in this whirl of vast greed and political calculation are options, which if pursued with a sense of fairness for the people of the country, would go a long way in providing revenues for public works jobs--repairing America--which in turn would generate more consumer demand by these workers.

The ultra-accurate Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) publishes precise reports on the effective taxes paid by corporations that make an utter mockery of the 35 percent statutory tax rate for corporations (see CTJ.org).

On June 1, 2011, CTJ released a preview of its forthcoming study of Fortune 500 companies and "the taxes they paid--or failed to pay--over the 2008-2010 period." Judging by the preview, this report should silence those who say that the U.S. taxes corporations more than other industrialized nations.

What do you think the following profitable corporations paid in actual total federal income taxes in that period: American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo, and Yahoo? Nothing!

CTJ reports that "from 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: $2.5 billion."

CTJ documents that "not a single one of the companies paid anything close to the 35 percent statutory tax rate. In fact, the 'highest tax' company on our list, ExxonMobil, paid an effective three-year tax rate of only 14.2 percent...and over the past two years, Exxon Mobil's net tax on its $9.9 billion in U.S. pretax profits was a minuscule $39 million, an effective tax rate of 0.4 percent."

Next time you hear Republicans like Eric Cantor, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell repeat their statement that corporations are overtaxed and need a break, you can tell them that "had these 12 companies paid the full 35 percent corporate tax, their federal income taxes over the three years would have totaled $59.9 billion." CTJ director, Bob McIntyre noted that these 12 companies are "just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance."

Of course, most Americans suspect as much, even if they don't have the exact figures. A recent Gallup poll asked the public's opinion on where they stand on the tax cuts for the rich and the tax breaks for the corporations. By a 45% margin, they opposed tax cuts for the rich and by a 55% margin, they opposed tax cuts for corporations.

So what are Barack Obama and the Democrats waiting for? They have the undeniable facts and overwhelming public sentiment behind them. Why do they let Cantor, Boehner and McConnell continue to mouth falsehoods without rebuttals of the truth?

It's obvious. The Democrats want big time money from the executives and Political Action Committees of the Fortune 500. The Democrats are willing to let the Republicans fuzz the debate and dare to try and make Medicare and social security benefits absorb the sacrifices. Indeed last week, the Washington Post headlined Obama signaling to the Republicans that social security "is on the table."

Even the meek reporters should no longer fail to challenge the Republican's daily mantras.

Should you have any doubts that the corporate state is in firm control of your government, try this test: If you paid a single dollar in federal income tax in any of the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, you paid more than the giant General Electric (GE) company. In that period GE made $7.722 billion in U.S. profit, paid no taxes and received $4.737 billion from the IRS. As the New York Times reported on March 24, teams of GE tax lawyers and accountants are making sure they avoid taxes altogether, shifting the burden to you.

These big companies are laughing at us all the way to the taxpayer-bailed-out banks. They're even laughing at their own shareholder-owners. The non-financial companies are sitting on about $2 trillion. Inert dollars, producing nothing and earning minuscule interest are better deployed by enlarging the dividend payments to their shareholders. A mere 10% of that sum as dividend payments this year would pump $200 billion into an economy needing more consumer demand.

Reporters and columnists need to start addressing these topics at news conferences with members of Congress and White House staffers. The Washington press corps shouldn't behave like sheep! (c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.







Gaza And A Liturgy For Justice
By Ray McGovern

We passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza represent a cross-section of America. Yet, if there is an emblematic trait that sets us apart from "mainstream" America, it is a common, radical determination to take risks to bring Justice for the oppressed - in this case, the 1.6 million people locked in an open-air prison on a narrow strip of land called Gaza.

While most of those calling us "radical" hurl the word as a barb, we welcome the label - but radical as derived from the underlying meaning of this word, "root." Like radishes, we are rooted in soil, the soil of Justice.

"Extremist?" Yes, we confess to that too - as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. did in his Letter From the Birmingham City Jail.

Replying to those who threw the "extremist" epithet at him, Dr. King acknowledged that he was, indeed, an extremist - "an extremist for love."

He placed this kind of extremist squarely in the tradition of the Hebrew prophet Amos ("Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream"), as well as Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson ("We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal").

"So," wrote King, "the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice - or will we be extremists for the cause of justice."

A Different 'Liturgy'

Our kind of extremism can be seen as rooted in a liturgy that rejects pseudo-worship, which prophet Isaiah warned that God finds sickening:

"Trample my courts no more! ... Your incense is loathsome to me. ... Make Justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow. ... I will strengthen you ... a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of confinement, and from the dungeon those who live in darkness. ...

"Do not dwell on things of the past. See, I am doing something new. Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?"

And, finally, another passage from Isaiah typically read on the Jewish high holy day of Yom Kippur, which often is observed by many secular Jews, as well.

"What is the fast God desires of you? To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, break off the handcuffs from the prisoners. ..."

Nice image, no? Breaking off the handcuffs from the prisoners. Whether literally or figuratively, that takes work.

And, as the passages from Isaiah suggest, this is central to a genuine liturgy - the DOING of Justice, not merely rhetoric about how nice it would be.

From the Greek Word For...

Even though we were able to sail only ten or so nautical miles toward Gaza, it was good to spend two weeks plus in Athens.

Being in Greece again, after more than three decades, brought memories from the ridiculous to the sublime - from the 2002 film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" to the lines from Homer memorized during four years of studying classical Greek more than a half-century ago.

I could not find anyone old enough to try out my 2,500 year-old Greek on. But the incessantly repeated dictum of the proud Greek pater familias in the film kept coming back to me: "It comes from the Greek word for..."

To the ancient Greeks who coined the term, liturgy meant work in service to others. Leitourgia referred to the people and the root ergo "do" denoted public service.

In ancient Greece, it was de rigueur for "people of means" to use a good portion of their own assets for the common good - "to give back," as we might put it today.

Whether or not the early Christians were consciously following Isaiah's admonition against fulsome prancing in ostentatious religious displays, they also applied the word liturgy to the public work of the early church.

And a good thing too: for liturgy/worship should be the Church's central public activity - the work, the DOING which serves others, while affirming what the worshipers truly stand for and who they are.

Thus, in its purest and most faithful sense, liturgy requires a lived commitment to Justice, without which it is not true worship.

Jesus poured scorn, too, on the hypocrite religious leaders of his day: "Their words are bold but their deeds are few. ... They widen their phylacteries and wear huge tassels." (Phylacteries are small leather boxes containing scripture and worn during morning prayers).

In the view of Jesus, these well-adorned religious leaders oppressed, rather than helped, the poor. I'm sure glad that sort of hypocrisy doesn't happen any more!

Tzedakah is a Hebrew word commonly mistranslated as charity. But it is based on the Hebrew word tzedek meaning righteousness, fairness, justice.

Unlike philanthropy, which is completely voluntary, tzedakah is seen in Judaism as a religious obligation to be met by all - rich and poor.

Liturgy and the U.S. Boat

We had no tassels on the boat, nor phylacteries. But in my view, we had lots of authentic liturgy.

Even some of my boat-mate friends may be surprised to see it put that way. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists - all devoted to help bring Justice to Gaza, to break off the handcuffs and open the prison by lifting the Israeli blockade.

For those of us Christians, the spirit - if not the words - of Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, hung in the background, helping to explain why we did all we could to place ourselves "where the battle rages."

"If," wrote Martin Luther, "I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing him.

"Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield except where the battle rages is mere flight and disgrace if one flinches at that point."

For me, it was a special grace of the U.S. Boat to Gaza experience to find myself in the familiar company of so many Jews from New York City - some of them fellow Bronxites.

It brought back the companionship, camaraderie, and humor that were an integral part of my first 22 years on Bainbridge Avenue and 194th Street. The comfort level was there from the start, and it was not just nostalgia.

The more aware I became of the particular courage it takes to weather the inevitable charges of being "self-hating Jews" - even from one's family and close friends - the more respect I gained for my Jewish co-travelers, many of whom gave adroit but unflinching leadership to the entire enterprise.

Whether "observant" Jews or not, they personified in a special way the prophetic Judaism that stood for the idea that only justice yields peace - the Judaism that pulses with compassion for "the orphans, widows, and the exploited poor."

What a wonderful reminder that relying on Israeli kill-power rather than Justice for the Gazans is not truly Jewish. Nor is it safe. As one of my mentors, Daniel Maguire, Professor of Moral Theology at Marquette University, has put it:

"A tribal 'Jewish' state that ignores the prophet Zechariah's warning that Zion cannot be built on injustice and bloodshed will, as the prophets of Israel warned, fall into the pit it is currently and frantically digging."
(c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.







No, We Can't? Or Won't?
By Paul Krugman

If you were shocked by Friday's job report, if you thought we were doing well and were taken aback by the bad news, you haven't been paying attention. The fact is, the United States economy has been stuck in a rut for a year and a half.

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. Turn on your TV and you'll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy's short-run problems (reminder: this "short run" is now in its fourth year), that we should focus on the long run instead.

This gets things exactly wrong. The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. Yes, there are huge political obstacles to action - notably, the fact that the House is controlled by a party that benefits from the economy's weakness. But political gridlock should not be conflated with economic reality.

Our failure to create jobs is a choice, not a necessity - a choice rationalized by an ever-shifting set of excuses.

Excuse No. 1: Just around the corner, there's a rainbow in the sky.

Remember "green shoots"? Remember the "summer of recovery"? Policy makers keep declaring that the economy is on the mend - and Lucy keeps snatching the football away. Yet these delusions of recovery have been an excuse for doing nothing as the jobs crisis festers.

Excuse No. 2: Fear the bond market.

Two years ago The Wall Street Journal declared that interest rates on United States debt would soon soar unless Washington stopped trying to fight the economic slump. Ever since, warnings about the imminent attack of the "bond vigilantes" have been used to attack any spending on job creation.

But basic economics said that rates would stay low as long as the economy was depressed - and basic economics was right. The interest rate on 10-year bonds was 3.7 percent when The Wall Street Journal issued that warning; at the end of last week it was 3.03 percent.

How have the usual suspects responded? By inventing their own reality. Last week, Representative Paul Ryan, the man behind the G.O.P. plan to dismantle Medicare, declared that we must slash government spending to "take pressure off the interest rates" - the same pressure, I suppose, that has pushed those rates to near-record lows.

Excuse No. 3: It's the workers' fault.

Unemployment soared during the financial crisis and its aftermath. So it seems bizarre to argue that the real problem lies with the workers - that the millions of Americans who were working four years ago but aren't working now somehow lack the skills the economy needs.

Yet that's what you hear from many pundits these days: high unemployment is "structural," they say, and requires long-term solutions (which means, in practice, doing nothing).

Well, if there really was a mismatch between the workers we have and the workers we need, workers who do have the right skills, and are therefore able to find jobs, should be getting big wage increases. They aren't. In fact, average wages actually fell last month.

Excuse No. 4: We tried to stimulate the economy, and it didn't work.

Everybody knows that President Obama tried to stimulate the economy with a huge increase in government spending, and that it didn't work. But what everyone knows is wrong.

Think about it: Where are the big public works projects? Where are the armies of government workers? There are actually half a million fewer government employees now than there were when Mr. Obama took office.

So what happened to the stimulus? Much of it consisted of tax cuts, not spending. Most of the rest consisted either of aid to distressed families or aid to hard-pressed state and local governments. This aid may have mitigated the slump, but it wasn't the kind of job-creation program we could and should have had. This isn't 20-20 hindsight: some of us warned from the beginning that tax cuts would be ineffective and that the proposed spending was woefully inadequate. And so it proved.

It's also worth noting that in another area where government could make a big difference - help for troubled homeowners - almost nothing has been done. The Obama administration's program of mortgage relief has gone nowhere: of $46 billion allotted to help families stay in their homes, less than $2 billion has actually been spent.

So let's summarize: The economy isn't fixing itself. Nor are there real obstacles to government action: both the bond vigilantes and structural unemployment exist only in the imaginations of pundits. And if stimulus seems to have failed, it's because it was never actually tried.

Listening to what supposedly serious people say about the economy, you'd think the problem was "no, we can't." But the reality is "no, we won't." And every pundit who reinforces that destructive passivity is part of the problem.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
~~~ Thomas Jefferson





Carlos Montes




Carlos Montes And The Security State
A Cautionary Tale
By Chris Hedges

On May 17 at 5 in the morning the Chicano activist Carlos Montes got a wake-up call at his home in California from Barack Obama's security state. The Los Angeles County sheriff's SWAT team, armed with assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests, as well as being accompanied by FBI agents, kicked down his door, burst into his house with their weapons drawn, handcuffed him in his pajamas and hauled him off to jail. Montes, one of tens of thousands of Americans who have experienced this terrifying form of military-style assault and arrest, was one of the organizers of the demonstrations outside the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., and he faces trial along with 23 other anti-war activists from Minnesota, as well as possible charges by a federal grand jury.

The widening use of militarized police units effectively nullifies the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the armed forces for civilian policing. City police forces have in the last few decades amassed small strike forces that employ high-powered assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, elaborate command and control centers and attack helicopters. Poor urban neighborhoods, which bear the brunt of the estimated 40,000 SWAT team assaults that take place every year, have already learned what is only dimly being understood by the rest of us-in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants. And that is exactly how Montes was treated. There is little daylight now between raiding a home in the middle of the night in Iraq and raiding one in Alhambra, Calif.

Montes is a longtime activist. He helped lead the student high school walkouts in East Los Angeles and anti-war protests in the 1960s and later demonstrations against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was one of the founding members of the Brown Berets, a Chicano group that in the 1960s styled itself after the Black Panthers. In the 1970s he evaded authorities while he lived in Mexico and he went on to organize garment workers in El Paso, Texas. He and the subpoenaed activists are reminders that in Barack Obama's America, being a dissident is a crime.

"It was an FBI action, as I recall," Sgt. Jim Scully told reporters of the Pasadena Star-News. "We assisted them."

Montes was arrested ostensibly because he bought a firearm although a felony conviction 42 years ago prohibited him from doing so. The 1969 felony conviction was for throwing a can of Coke at a police officer during a demonstration. The registered shotgun in his closet, bought last year at a sporting goods shop, became the excuse to ransack his home, charge him and schedule him for trial in August. It became the excuse to seize his computer, two cellphones and files and records of his activism on behalf of workers, immigrants, the Chicano community and opposition to wars. Prosecutors said Montes should have disclosed his four-decade-old felony charge when he bought the shotgun at Big 5 Sporting Goods. Because he neglected to do this he will face six felony charges. The case is to be tried in Los Angeles.

"The gun issue was clearly a pretext to investigate my political activities," he said when I reached him at his Alhambra home. "It is about my anti-war activities and my links to the RNC demonstrations. It is also about my activism denouncing the U.S. policy of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, their support for Israel and the Colombian government. I have been to Colombia twice."

"I thought someone is breaking in, somebody is trying to jack me up," he said. "I was a victim of an armed robbery in December of 2009 in my home. I do have a gun in my bedroom for self-defense. I was startled. I jumped out of bed. I saw lights coming from the front-door area. They looked like flashlights. I saw men with helmets and rifles. I gravitated towards the front door. I didn't take my gun. I could have done that. I have it there. It is a good thing I didn't pick anything up and put it in my hand."

"I yelled, 'Who is it?' " he said. "They said, 'The police. Carlos Montes, come out' or 'come forward,' something like that. I approached the entryway. They rushed in. They grabbed my hands. They turned me around. There were two police officers on each arm. They brought me out holding my arms. I have a little patio. They handcuffed me and patted me down. I am on a little hill. I looked down the street and [it was] full of sheriff's vehicles, patrol cars and two large green vans. They were bigger than vans. People could stand in there. They didn't have any logos on them. I thought it was an Army truck at first. Later on I found it was from the sheriff."

"It was kind of misty," he said. "The ground was wet. They put me in the back seat of the car. I was handcuffed. They closed the doors and the windows. I was sitting there looking around, in a state of shock, thinking is this a dream or the real thing? I tried to close my eyes for a little while to see if I could wake up from this nightmare. I always had it in the back of my mind, one day they will come and raid me. My name was on the anti-war committee FBI search warrant raid in Minnesota. People were saying 'we all got raided and your name is there.' The lawyers said, 'Beware-it could happen to you sooner or later.' They were raided on Sept. 24 last year."

Those who were raided were all issued subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago. They have refused to testify. The March on the RNC organizing committee was infiltrated by an agent although the protest groups had obtained licenses to demonstrate at the Republican National Convention. The Justice Department's inspector general later released a report that criticized the FBI for invoking anti-terrorist laws to justify its investigations and harassment of peace and solidarity groups, including Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Catholic Worker.

While Montes was in the back of the police car a man in a windbreaker and a baseball cap approached the vehicle. The sheriff's deputies rolled down the right rear window. The man in the baseball cap told Montes he was from the FBI and wanted to speak with him.

"I blurted out, 'Do you have a card?'" Montes said. "He laughed and said, 'I don't have a card.' He said, 'I want to talk to you about Freedom Road Socialist Organization.' I didn't say anything. I kept quiet. And then he walked away."

Montes has written articles for the newspaper Fight Back News about Chicano immigrants' rights struggles in Los Angeles, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against the rise of charter schools. He said he was not a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. The organization, a Marxist group, is reportedly being investigated by the FBI because of connections with the Colombian rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Palestinian group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both of which have been labeled as terrorist organizations. The Sept. 24, 2010, search warrant for the anti-war committee offices in Minneapolis lists Montes' name among the group's affiliates.

Montes was taken to the Los Angeles County Jail, known as the Twin Towers, and held for 24 hours until he was able to post a $35,000 bail.

"They called my sister to secure [my] house," he said. "She called the handyman and he put a piece of plywood over my door. I did not have my wallet with me. When I got out of the county jail I did not have any phone numbers or money or an ID. I was walking around in slippers-at least they gave me slippers-and my pajamas. I got back about 5:30 the next morning. I got the door off. There were files and papers on the floor along with photograph albums of the anti-war movement, Latinos Against the War, the '92 Rebellion, my son's wedding, my daughter's birthday, scattered on my kitchen table and floor. It looked like they lined up a bunch of stuff on tables and went through it. It was the same thing with my living room table. They had a file out from 1994 when we did a campaign against police brutality when the sheriffs were going crazy killing people. In my closet I had Chicano archives going back to the 1960s and 1970s. Those were pulled out and on the floor. They went through all my political documents, including my work with the Southern California Immigration Coalition and the campaign to elect a school board member, which we won, to stop the privatization of the local high school and the charters coming in. They went through all those files. It took me a couple of weeks to clean things up. They took a bunch of stuff."

"The government sees the Chicano people as a threat," he said. "We were able to turn out millions of people in 2006. In 1994 we had hundreds of thousands. We are growing. There are millions in the Southwest. We are all over the country, but especially in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California. We are still unorganized, but if we get organized we could really demand changes. We had millions of people out in 2006 and then they came after us hard in 2007. There was a lot of police repression, especially in Los Angeles. They fear the Chicano people challenging the status quo."

"Many of the activists that were raided by the police are anti-war and solidarity activists," he went on. "And even though the anti-war movement is not massive right now, the potential is there because there is an economic crisis. There is mass disgust with this economic system. People are out of work. It is not yet like COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program] started under Hoover and the FBI to carry out surveillance, infiltrate and disrupt domestic political organizations, but the situation is getting worse. That is why we have to have demonstrations to put a stop to it now."


(c) 2011 Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, spent seven years in the Middle East. He was part of the paper's team of reporters who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism. He is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His latest book is, ""Death Of The Liberal Class."







Stupid Republicans, Stupid Democrats
By David Michael Green

There are precious few things that Republicans and Democrats can agree on, but one of them is that Barack Obama is a liberal.

That rare manifestation of consensus might ordinarily be occasion for celebration (according to conventional wisdom, at least - though certainly not mine - which celebrates consensus), except for one pesky problematic detail: the notion is utterly ludicrous.

Consider a batch of recent headlines as merely the most proximate examples of a phenomenon that's been on display since before the president was inaugurated.

Last week, the New York Times ran a front page piece, entitled "U.S. Pressing Its Crackdown Against Leaks," in which it was noted that, "The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined. This week, a grand jury in Virginia heard testimony in a continuing investigation of WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy group, a rare effort to prosecute those who publish secrets, rather than those who leak them." Though the article doesn't mention it, we should also note here that the Obama administration is also all but Gitmo-style torturing Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of releasing documents to Wikileaks.

The article does allude, however, to the gross inappropriateness of the charges in many of these cases, a sentiment that is even joined by several conservative commentators and national security experts. In particular, the White House is bringing down the hammer on individuals who appear to be fully patriotic public servants, who acted as whistle-blowers in order to live up to their own patriotic standards. In other words, the secrets they were publicizing had no effect in terms of jeopardizing national security, unless one defines protecting the nation as covering up malfeasance, corruption or waste in government. No doubt some people do define it as exactly that, since, by some purely random coincidence, doing so happens to serve very well their own interests. Evidently the big liberal now in the Oval Office concurs.

In general, Obama's record on civil liberties is so flat-out abysmal that it has caused a friend of his to publicly repudiate the president for his disastrous undoing of the Constitutional protections he is sworn to uphold. This week, law professor Geoffrey Stone published a New York Times op-ed that began like this: "As a longtime supporter and colleague of Barack Obama at the University of Chicago, as well as an informal adviser to his 2008 campaign, I had high hopes that he would restore the balance between government secrecy and government transparency that had been lost under George W. Bush, and that he would follow through on his promise, as a candidate, to promote openness and public accountability in government policy making. It has not quite worked out that way. While Mr. Obama has taken certain steps, notably early in his administration, to scale back some of the Bush-era excesses, in other respects he has shown a disappointing willingness to continue in his predecessor's footsteps."

Stone goes on to detail the many ways in which the Obama administration has matched Bush/Cheney in its eagerness to shred the Bill of Rights, detailing how the great liberal in the White House has not only "followed its predecessor in aggressively cracking down on [whistle-blowers for] unauthorized leaks," but also "followed Mr. Bush in zealously applying the state secrets doctrine ... asserted the privilege in litigation involving such issues as the C.I.A.'s use of extraordinary rendition and the National Security Agency's practice of wiretapping American citizens" and, most remarkably, blocked legal recognition of a journalist-source privilege which is essential to any hope of investigating government crimes and failings: "In what seems to be a recurring theme, Senator Obama supported the Free Flow of Information Act, but President Obama does not. In 2007, he was one of the sponsors of the original Senate bill, but in 2009 he objected to the scope of the privilege envisioned by the bill and requested that the Senate revise the bill to require judges to defer to executive branch judgments."

In many ways, Stone is actually too charitable, because in many ways Obama has gone even further than the Bush administration in trampling on people's rights and very lives in pursuit of the "War on Everything" which now seems to be the modus operandi for American policy, both foreign and domestic. Obama has radically increased the number of drone strikes in Pakistan, wantonly killing civilians there, and he has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he alone deems enemies of the state.

And, oh boy, we do have a lot of enemies under Barack Obama. Liberals were sickened, as they should well have been, when Boy George lied the country into a war in Iraq that had little to do with anything beyond ameliorating his own massive and well-deserved personal insecurities, and when he promulgated a far too vague, misguided and misguiding ‘war on terrorism', which was of course in fact really a war on anyone who wouldn't play ball with corporate-controlled Washington, DC. (Truth be told, tin-pot potentates could use any tactics or weapons they wanted to, or not do so, and that was irrelevant to whether they would end up on the bad guys' list. It was all about playing ball with the money guys. Ask the once-favored Saddam. Ask Noriega.) In any case, if you put it all together, Bush had us fighting three simultaneous wars, which I'm pretty sure is a personal best, even for a country as addicted to war as America. Or, I should say, it used to be a personal best.

Not to be outdone by a mere actual Republican, Barack Obama has now fully doubled Bush's prodigious achievement. As Tom Engelhardt reports, we are now fighting "Six Wars and Counting": "With the latest news that the U.S. has launched a significant ‘intensification' of its secret air campaign against Yemeni tribesmen believed to be connected with al-Qaeda, the U.S. is now involved in no less than six wars. Count ‘em, if you don't believe me: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and what used to be called the Global War on Terror." It is, of course, a measure of the sickness of our times that we can be fighting six wars at once. But it is even worse that nobody even particularly notices. And it is truly bizarre that those on the left and those on the right would no doubt agree that liberal Barack Obama runs a much less militarist foreign policy than George W. Bush, even whilst fighting double the number of simultaneous wars. Say what?

Well, okay. Maybe Obama is just a captive of the military-industrial complex like every other American politician, and therefore has no latitude to move on any of these fronts, and blah, blah, blah... (I say that not, in the slightest way, to mock this notion of iron triangle control either in concept or in application. It's very real and very powerful. It's just that, what's the point of being president if you're not going to do the hard things?). But at least this progressive president, this socialist chief executive, can move boldly on social issues, right? I mean, we're talking about stuff where the military doesn't have a dog in the race, and - most importantly - there are no Wall Street weenies to control the national agenda so that they can purchase their eighth yacht. So, Kapow!, right? Slam! Bash! Isn't social policy where this presidential product of the civil rights movement can run hard, knees churning high, knocking over any obstacles in his way?

Try again. Here's another New York Times headline for you, from an editorial last week: "Gay Marriage: Where's Mr. Obama?" Where, indeed? Ya wanna know where he was while New York was doing something truly historic (if ridiculously overdue)? Cashing in on the issue without remotely committing to it, that's where: "On Thursday night, when same-sex marriage in New York State was teetering on a razor's edge, President Obama had a perfect opportunity to show the results of his supposed evolution on gay marriage. Unfortunately, he did not take it, keeping his own views in the shadows. The next night the Republican-led New York State Senate, of all places, proved itself more forward-thinking than the president on one of the last great civil-rights debates in this nation's history. Speaking to the Democratic Party's LGBT Leadership Council at a fund-raiser in New York, Mr. Obama ran through the many efforts he has made on behalf of gay rights, including his decision to end the government's legal support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which forbids federal recognition of same-sex marriage. The act should be repealed, he said, since marriage is defined by the states. Mr. Obama's legal formula suggests he is fine with the six states that now permit same-sex marriage, and fine with the more than three dozen other states that ban it. By refusing to say whether he supports it (as he did in 1996) or opposes it (as he did in 2008), he remained in a straddle that will soon strain public patience. For now, all Mr. Obama promised was a gauzy new "chapter" in the story if he is re-elected, and his views remain officially ‘evolving'".

Bold Barack. Brave Barack. He'll come speak moving words to your caucus. You know, shit about "bending the arc of history," and "we'll get there together." He'll take your money. And then, when it comes to actual policy decisions, where it counts, his position will be so lame that he'll manage to be outflanked by Republicans, even the thuggish freaks who are more or less the only kind of Republicans there are in 2011. Brilliant. And so liberal.

And about as sadly ironic as it gets. The heterosexual Obama on gay rights - unquestionably the central civil rights issue of our time - reminds me of nothing so much as the Caucasian Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy trying to fudge the moral imperative of the African American civil rights movement that was shoved in their faces in the Fifties and Sixties, pathetically splitting hairs, trying to placate their racist constituents while history was happening all around them, much to their chagrin. Imagine if, by some certain quirk of science fiction, that Barack Obama had been president then. What would he have done, as his own people demanded justice, prosperity, freedom and democratic rights? He would have done what he is doing to gays today. And for that matter, what he is doing for racial minorities today (which is nothing), an issue on which he has been the most silent president of my lifetime. I'm not joking about this. Even if it were his own people whose lives and fortunes and destinies were in the balance, blacks would have gotten Mr. Bigtalk at the campaign fundraiser, but Mr. Laylow in the Oval Office.

Ah, but timidity is far less the issue with Obama than sometimes seems apparent, and that interpretation of the guy's politics is a fundamental mistake made by most of those Democrats who at least once in a while have the good sense to be disappointed by their president. Think about it. When you're timid, you don't fight six foreign wars at one time. You don't claim the right to assassinate American citizens for their rhetoric. You don't shred the Constitution.

The thing about Obama that neither Democrats nor Republicans understand is that this guy is fundamentally regressive in his politics. That is the essence of his presidency, though - astonishingly - very few people get that. Look at the litany of issues addressed above. If you honestly asked yourself for each of them what, in the abstract, would a progressive president do, and what would a regressive president do, you can immediately decipher the true nature of Barack Obama. A progressive president wouldn't triple American forces in Afghanistan and launch three new wars abroad, but a regressive president would. A progressive president wouldn't out-do Dick Cheney in wrecking the Bill of Rights, but a regressive president would. A progressive president wouldn't follow behind the lead of Republicans on civil rights issues, but a regressive president would.

And that's just what this regressive president has done, all down the line. Never mind that we're just getting started here. We could go on and on with this, issue after issue. What do you think a regressive president would do about the planetary nightmare of global warming? Nothing, perhaps? Gee, does that sound familiar? How about giving out unprecedentedly gigantic oil tracts off the Atlantic coast? Or multiple rounds of additional tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy? Hey, where have I heard that before? Even Obama's signature ‘liberal' issue, his health care plan, was just dandy from the perspective of the insurance industry, with whom he cut a deal at the very beginning of the legislative process. I'm sorry, but if those guys are happy with the bill (maybe - I'm just wildly guessing here - because it forces about 35 million people to buy their expensive and useless product?), what does that tell you about the legislation, and about the president who crafted it?

Democrats are stupid about this. They still mostly like Obama, to the tune of about 75-80 percent job approval, though they might grumble here and there about this or that perceived failing of the president's. It is a measure of their abysmally low standards and our pathetic national political discourse that policies like Obama's can satisfy his base, so much so that he won't even face a primary challenger from his left. We saw the same thing with Clinton as well, who first sold out the party of the New Deal and Great Society. Idiotic Democrats still adore Clinton to this day, not realizing that he was more Reagan than Reagan when it comes to economic policy, including the deregulation of banks that created the current deluge under which so many non-elite Americans are drowning, while the rich are fatter than ever.

These attitudes are also a measure of bias as well, or what one might describe as a sort of political tribalism of the uninformed. On the rare occasion where you might hear an exasperated Republican say of Obama's supporters, "If George Bush did the exact same thing, they'd string him up for it," he or she has got it right. As clearly demonstrated above, Obama actually out-Bushes Bush in many areas - imagine, if you can do so without hurling, what a Dick "Dick" Cheney presidency might have looked like - and yet brain-dead Democrats still support their guy.

Why? I suppose some of it is because he's black. And some of it is because he's young and articulate and energetic and photogenic. Mostly, though, I think it's because he's a Democrat, and people are so tuned out from public affairs - despite what public affairs policy decisions are doing to their lives right now - that they simply go with that in-group vs. out-group rubric: "Democrat good, Republican bad." Chances are they got that from their families and communities, along with their religion and nationalism and so on. Of course, to a certain extent, one of the key functions of political parties has always been simply to serve as precisely that sort of short-hand. Don't know who Smedley Goodfinger is, the candidate for local dog catcher? That's fine, just check his party label and vote accordingly.

But there is a point at which such guiding assistance can cross a line into negligent laziness. More importantly, as in our time, there is a very real danger that today's Democrat is far from being your father's Democrat. At which point, using party labels to make otherwise blind decisions about politics becomes not just laziness or negligence, but complicity in a crime. And a crime where you're one of the victims, no less.

We have been at that point since at least 1992 - and arguably 1976 - when "New Democrats" threw the program of FDR and LBJ overboard, but continued to benefit from the inertial habits of well-trained traditional Democratic voters. Bill Clinton was, historically speaking, every bit as great a national disaster, if not greater, than Ronald Reagan. At least with Reagan you had a clearer sense of his real politics and values. What Clinton and now Obama have been successful at doing is getting Democrats to support them while nevertheless running policies that favor the same plutocratic constituencies as a Reagan or a Bush would. Let's be honest, individuals like Geithner and Summers and Rubin could have just as easily served in a Republican administration as a Democratic one, and their policies would have fit just as well. Or look at Bob Gates, who not only could have done this, but in fact did.

In short, Democratic support and defense of Barack Obama is a sad joke. This guy is no liberal. He is, in fact, using liberal votes to join the Gingriches and Cheneys and Palins of this world in the project of destroying liberalism and its great achievement of massively widening the middle class and sharing national prosperity. Hey, not a bad gig, if you don't mind the whole cynicism part, and the whole spending eternity in Hell thing.

Republican haters of Obama are every bit as guilty of negligent laziness, of course, but for them there is an added element of sickness. They could never admit it, but one simply cannot dismiss all the rhetoric of foreignness and other forms of fundamental illegitimacy they revel in when it comes to Obama. You know... He wasn't really born here. He's a secret Muslim. He's a socialist. He's going to take away our guns. He's not really an American. He bows to foreign princes. He hates America and its core values. He goes around the world apologizing for his country. He's actually really dumb, and can only sound intelligent because he uses a teleprompter. His health care bill is a nefarious plot to kill off grannies.

This shit is so stupid it's embarrassing. Or, it would be, if the folks trading in these tropes were capable of embarrassment. Beyond the fact that they, like Democrats, are unable to decipher Obama's obvious political commitments with the slightest degree of accuracy, despite the plainness of these for all the see, Republicans add to the mix their equally transparent personal insecurities when it comes to Obama. It's not just that he's black and sitting in their White House (though, now that you mention it, that's not right!), or that he's a Democrat that bothers them. What makes them go ballistic is that he is so clearly more mature and responsible in his mien. That undermines their license to be reckless and irresponsible - and to favor national policies that are the same - with impunity. That's what they loved so much about Bush, and what the codes words of "the politician you'd most like to have a beer with" really meant. It's the guy who doesn't threaten your greed and laziness and prejudice and stupidity, as Obama kinda does. It's the guy who doesn't make you think, the guy who provides political cover for your worst instincts.

I think that's the real reason why regressives hate Obama so, despite the fact that his politics are exactly their politics - yes, even including the extravagant spending, where Obama is merely replicating the crimes of Reagan and Bush, though for slightly more defensible reasons.

It's not a good sign when so many people - basically all of us - have politics which are so flat-out wrong. And if these feel like the worst of times politically in America, that is not such an exaggerated perception, notwithstanding the country's more overt crises throughout the past two or three centuries. There are significant differences now, however. One is that the national trajectory is manifestly downward, really for the first time ever in US history. Another is that our body politic is so diminished that it can no longer recognize basic political facts anymore. Nothing is more emblematic of that than the case of Barack Obama. Democrats love him for being a good old liberal Democrat. Republicans hate him for the same reason. Both are so politically dumbed-down that neither can recognize how absurdly wrong they are on such a central question as the politics of the country's chief executive.

But, of course, the biggest single problem facing the polity is that nobody is talking about the biggest single problem facing the polity. The country has been hijacked by hyper-greedy elites, who have demonstrated that there is absolutely no bottom to what they are willing to do to the rest of us, and to the country, to milk it and bilk it of every last remaining penny of value. There have always been people like that, of course, but where in the past they have been effectively countered by those with a sensible and public-oriented agenda, no such beast exists anymore, at least outside of Vermont and one or two odd congressional districts. Your choice at the ballot box today will be between a Democrat who bends you over and screws you with a smile and a modicum of foreplay first, or a Republican who dispenses with such niceties and just gets the job done, to the glee of every insecure cracker cheering from the sidelines, not realizing which end of the pelvic thrust he himself is actually on as well.

But that's not actually the worst news. If you think about it, every disaster facing the country today has been a product of insane right-wing politics deployed over the last thirty years. But, truly remarkably, every such disaster has then produced public acquiescence, if not support, for a yet more regressive response to address the mess made by the initial one (what was it that Einstein said about the literal definition of insanity?).

Keep that in mind while contemplating the fact that our current trajectory is completely unsustainable. Bad conditions are about to get much worse.

Given such a track record, which way do you think the American public will be turning when the shit really hits the fan?

Yeah, me too.
(c) 2011 David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles, but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.





The Dead Letter Office...





Jon gives the corpo-rat salute

Heil Obama,

Dear Uberfuhrer Kyl,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your refusal to raise the nation's debt; without destroying social Security Medicare and Food Stamps, something you happily did four times under Bush adding 4 trillion to the debt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 09-05-2011. We salute you Herr Kyl, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Guthrie's 'Land' Is Madison
by John Nichols

A week into the struggle to defend the working families of Wisconsin from the assault on their rights by Gov. Scott Walker and his legislative allies, a group of rockers from around the country showed up to sing in solidarity with the tens of thousands of Wisconsinites who had gathered outside the Capitol. Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, Wayne Kramer from the MC5, Mike McColgan from the Dropkick Murphys and the Street Dogs, and a band of young musicians packed the stage at the State Street entrance on a February day when it was so cold that they joked about trying to play guitars with frozen fingers.

Yet they played their way through a rousing array of labor and protest music.

The rockers finished with a song that everyone knew: Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land."

Guthrie, a union man who placed his voice in the service of many a strike during the rabble-rousing years of the 1930s and 1940s, wrote some of America's finest labor songs. But "This Land Is Your Land" struck a deeper note. It was not just about the dignity of work. It was about the dignity of Americans and their right to expect more from their country than the same poverty, discrimination and neglect that he associated with the totalitarian states of Europe and the colonies of Africa and southern Asia.

"This Land Is Your Land" has become a sort of people's national anthem. In Wisconsin this year, it has been restored to its radical roots, often with the "lost verses" that Guthrie used to sing resurrected.

The original manuscript was a call to action for economic and social justice:

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

Woody Guthrie died too young, at age 55. If he were living, he would turn 99 on July 14.

As it happens, his son, Arlo, a great songwriter and singer in his own right, will celebrate in Madison on the 14th. He will play the Barrymore Theater, singing his own songs and some of his father's.

Arlo Guthrie will support the labor struggle in Wisconsin as his father did so many times during the good fights that gave rise to the modern labor movement: by donating his entire fee to the We Are Wisconsin Worker's Emergency Rights Fund - a network of religious leaders, community groups, labor union members, student groups and others who oppose the current state budget, which harms Wisconsin families.

There is something so right about a Guthrie singing "This Land Is Your Land," in all its glory, in Madison on the night of Woody's 99th birthday. For more information, contact the Barrymore online at www.barrymorelive.com or call 608-241-5354.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







The Great Generational Threat
By Glenn Greenwald

In just the past two months alone (all subsequent to the killing of Osama bin Laden), the U.S. Government has taken the following steps in the name of battling the Terrorist menace: extended the Patriot Act by four years without a single reform; begun a new CIA drone attack campaign in Yemen; launched drone attacks in Somalia; slaughtered more civilians in Pakistan; attempted to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki far from any battlefield and without a whiff of due process; invoked secrecy doctrines to conceal legal memos setting forth its views of its own domestic warrantless surveillance powers; announced a "withdrawal"plan for Afghanistan that entails double the number of troops in that country as were there when Obama was inaugurated; and invoked a very expansive view of its detention powers under the 2001 AUMF by detaining an alleged member of al-Shabab on a floating prison, without charges, Miranda warnings, or access to a lawyer. That's all independent of a whole slew of drastically expanded surveillance powers seized over the past two years in the name of the same threat.

Behold the mammoth, life-altering, nation-threatening danger justifying this endless -- and ongoing -- erosion of safeguards, checks and liberties, from The Los Angeles Times (h/t Antony Loewenstein):

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Saturday that the United States is "within reach" of "strategically defeating" Al Qaeda as a terrorist threat, but that doing so would require killing or capturing the group's 10 to 20 remaining leaders.

Heading to Afghanistan for the first time since taking office earlier this month, Panetta said that intelligence uncovered in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against Al Qaeda had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives, most of whom are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa.

In one sense, it's commendable that Panetta is acknowledging this, though he's doing so to protect the President from political attacks in the wake of his announced withdrawal of 30,000 troops from Afghanistan. But in another, more important sense, Panetta knows that this disclosure won't even slightly impede the always-expanding National Security State and the War on Terror which justifies it -- just like the acknowledgment long ago that there were fewer than 100 Al Qaeda operatives in all of Afghanistan had no effect on our decade-long war there. That's because -- as the above-described events of the last eight weeks demonstrate -- civil liberties assaults and expansions of executive power are not what the U.S. Government does in response to some actual problem; it's what the public-private consortium composing the U.S. Government is. Terrorist villains are the pretext for, not the cause of, those policies, and they will continue irrespective of the scope or magnitude of Terrorism.

Indeed, even as he described the puny, broken, absurd state of Al Qaeda -- one that has, at most, produced a grand total of one attack on U.S. soil in the last decade and a handful of amateurish, low-level attempts thwarted by regular police powers, and kills fewer Americans each year than intestinal ailments -- Panetta claimed "that it would take "more work'"; that "now is the moment following the death of Bin Laden to put maximum pressure"; that "it was from Yemen -- not Pakistan -- that the U.S. faces the most potent threat of future terrorist attacks, from an Al Qaeda offshoot known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, where "the group has gained strength in recent months as unrest has swept through Sana, the capital, and large swaths of its rugged hinterlands, where militants are growing in strength"; and that we have to kill all the remaining operatives. In other words, he offered multiple reasons why the War on Terror and the civil liberties abuses justified in its name must not only continue but be escalated.

Of course, just in case those propagandistic claims aren't sufficient -- we must wage war in multiple countries and seize ever-expanding surveillance powers to stop this group of two dozen Terrorist masterminds -- the U.S. is doing everything possible to ensure that Terrorism remains as large as a threat as possible:

A NATO air strike has killed at least 14 civilians, including eight children, in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, local police say. . . .The deadly air raid came a day after two children were reportedly killed in a separate air strike in southwest Ghazni province.

The killing of civilians by foreign troops is a major source of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers, and has soured the feelings of many ordinary Afghans towards foreign forces. . . . As violence has spread across the country, casualties have risen, and the United Nations said May was the deadliest month for civilians since they began keeping records four years earlier.

I long believed that the most patently irrational American policy -- the one that would cause future generations to look back in baffled disgust -- was the Drug War: imprisoning huge numbers of citizens for years and years for nothing more than possessing or selling banned substances to consenting adults. But now I think it's this: that the U.S. Government is able to persuade the populace to continue to support and pay for blood-spilling and liberty-destroying policies in the name of Terrorism when nothing sustains and exacerbates the threat of Terrorism more than those very policies. Just like the FBI continues to manufacture its own Terrorist plots that it then flamboyantly boasts of thwarting, the U.S. continues to generate the threat that justifies its National Security and Surveillance State.

* * * * *

In the last week alone, U.S.-allied governments have done the following to their own citizens: killed "dozens of civilians" in Yemen; beaten anti-government protesters in Baghdad while the Iraqi Prime Minister threatened "bloodshed" and "blood to the knees" if protests continued; attacked protesters in Cairo with arms; and beat opposition protesters in prison and branded them "traitors" in Bahrain. As we recently learned, the U.S. cannot and will not "stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy." What, then, can and should the U.S. do in the face of this oppression? Don't we have more of a responsibility to act when such brutality is carried out by regimes that we arm, support and prop up than by ones we don't?
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Ed Stein ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...



Here's an exclusive, the new DJ Monkey video, "Beatnik!"
You may recall that DJ Monkey had five songs in my film, "W the Movie."



Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Killer Carnivorous Snails From France
By Will Durst

You don't need me to tell you that this country is broke. Not just broke. Flat busted. Unflush. Tapped to the max. No bread or cabbage or scratch to speak of. Moolahless. Holes in our pockets. Fresh out of chump change. Sans simoleons. Hands sparkling clean of any filthy lucre. Moths flying out of our wallets. Lot of red numbers. Flinching from the whistle of the wind over our empty piggy banks. Got us a dearth of dead presidents is what we got.

So it's high time we start acting like it. As has been pointed out by pundits and politicians o'plenty, the guvmint needs to do what normal Merican families do when they run into desperate straits: pretend nothing is going on while we watch reality TV shows and drink lots of beer. No, no, no. Tried that. Didn't work.

First off, we got to stop handing over money to rogue nations that simply use it to buy guns they then turn on us. If we insist on helping these toads out, we should eliminate the middleman and furnish the guns direct. We can buy in much bigger bulk than they, procuring them cheaper, saving bundles of cash. And we taxpayers keep the kickbacks instead of the politicians. Win-win.

Secondly, we should take advantage of this Arab Spring democracy movement. Provides the perfect cover to lay off some of our under performing dictators. Isn't it about time we co-opted a new generation of despots? Since they'd be junior journeymen oppressors, they should cost less. Like major corporations lay off expensive senior executives, we'll replace our pricey aging tyrants.

But we all know it's not enough to make a few minor cuts in the budget, we also have to work on increasing revenue. And I don't mean selling off ancient public institutions like various national monuments or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Their resale values ain't what they used to be. Although it might help to seasonally adjust the bottom line.

We need to think outside the box. Direct Research and Development to produce and sell something that every American needs. Like an anti SARS serum. The deal is, we engineer and market the antidote now, then fashion a huge penicillin-resistant SARS scare later, and have the FDA approved shot or salve or cream or clear or whatever available at your local pharmacy in time for cold and flu season? Tie-Ming. Not just a city in China.

Doesn't have to be SARS. Could be anything. If SARS is too scary for the squeamish, lay down a few well-placed rumors of rampaging mutant Killer Carnivorous Snails from France and change the product to Fast Acting Snail Repellent. Same formula. Different packaging. Then ratchet up the panic with a bunch of infomercials. You know: news stories. Fox. CNN. Bloomberg. Create an imaginary vacuum and fill it. Worked for the Tea Party.

Even if it does eventually come out the whole event was manufactured, the residual damage would be minimal. What's the worst that could happen? People lose faith in their elected leaders? Oh no. Not that. The government is already lying to us on a regular basis, the least we can do is figure out how to make some money off of it. Got to ask ourselves: What would Microsoft do?
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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Noam Chomsky reports, "In Israel, A Tsunami Warning."

Uri Avnery exclaims, "It Can Happen Here!"

David Sirota explains, "Why Americans Can't Afford To Eat Healthy."

David Swanson explores why, "Prisoners Have Nothing To Gain By Eating."

Jim Hightower finds, "Michigan Locals Fight For Democracy."

Helen Thomas studies, "The Neo-Con Aftermath."

James Donahue discovers, "Secret Vows Controlling GOP Mindset."

Bernie Sanders with an absolute MUST read, "Congrats To The Gang Of Six, The Powerful, The Wealthy, And Multinational Corporations."

Chris Floyd sees, "The Needle And The Damage Done."

Ray McGovern receives a badge of honor in, "Neocons Fume Over US Boat To Gaza."

Paul Krugman says Obama is, "Letting Bankers Walk."

Chris Hedges examines, "America's Disappeared."

Dean Baker considers, "President Obama's Big Deal."

Nevada Sin-ator Harry Reid wins the coveted "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols concludes, "Rupert Murdoch Has Gamed American Politics Every Bit As Thoroughly As Britain's."

Phil Rockstroh laments, "The Arts Of Life They Changed Into The Arts Of Death."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Onion announces, "U.S. Quietly Slips Out Of Afghanistan In Dead Of Night" but first, Uncle Ernie warns of, "The Gang Of Six."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Jeff Stahler, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Brian McFadden, Dees Illustration.Com, R.J. Matson, John Darkow, RS.Janes, LT Saloon.Org, Armchair Patriots, WTRV.Com, No Sheeples Here.Blogspot.Com, The Onion, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










The Gang Of Six
By Ernest Stewart

"I want to congratulate the Gang of Six for coming up with a plan I think is balanced ... I think we're in same playing field." ~~~ President Barack Obama

Oh Brave New World
Brave New World ~~~ Aldous Huxley.

"People generally will look at it and go, 'That means taking people out of the services.' Not necessarily.
You may just shift the balance of the services from active to Guard or reserve or to - the dirty word - a draft!"
~~~ Marine Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs ~~~

"The willingness to share does not make one charitable; it makes one free." ~~~ Robert Brault

Well, apparently Obamahood is standing by to sign his name on a Bill that will all but destroy Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This new balanced budget amendment will balance itself on the backs of the poor, the hungry, the sick, the elderly, and the working class -- while giving the rich, steady... wait for it... wait for it... another f*cking tax break!

Yes, the so-called "Gang of Six" is made up of both fascist Demoncrats and Rethuglicans, and they have a plan that screws the bottom half -- while making the insanely-rich even richer. Is anyone really surprised by this? I'm not surprised; but I am madder than hell, how about you?

One lone voice in the Sin-ate opposed this outrage and stood against it and began a filibuster which was quickly suppressed by Harry Reid -- again not surprising. Bernie Sanders was that one voice of sanity that Reid squelched.

The Gang of Six are Rethuglican Con-gressman John Boner, Sin-ators Lamar Alexander and Tom Coburn, the Demoncrats are Con-gressman Mark Udall and Sin-ators Dick Durbin and Harry Reid and suddenly Tom Coburn is catching a case of cold feet, after no doubt hearing from the folks back home. This is a bi-sexual, bi-partisan plan to steal trillions from you and give it to the rich. Of course, Obamahood has been smirking and rubbing his hands together in anticipation of this gigantic rip-off. (And when he tries to defend this outrage, I bet he says he did it because it was the best deal he could get. That should set those deja vu bells a ringing!)

Barry has already gotten rid of Elizabeth Warren for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as his bankster puppet masters wanted and replaced her with another Wall Street goon, Richard Cordray. Ergo, not a single, nary a one, zip, zilch, zero liberals have been appointed by Barry after riding to the White House on a liberal groundswell. I know the Sheeple are incredibly dumb; but are they dumb enough to elect Barry to a second term? Well, of course, they are! However, there're fifty million old folks that are just starting to get mad as Hell, and are rising as one to remind our politicians what happens to those who steal from Social Security -- a program that has absolutely nothing to do with the deficit! A program which pays for itself with the Social Security taxes and has nothing to do with this debacle, but will no doubt be looted by this gang of pirates -- to try to sate the unquenchable desire for even more money by our corpo-rat masters.

Is there anyone up for a Third American Revolution, America? Does anyone know where we can lay our hands on about one hundred guillotines? Oh, and how about getting behind a candidacy of Bernie Sanders for President in 2012? He's certainly got my vote!

In Other News

So, how do you climate deniers like the way 2011 is turning out? After 2010 being the hottest year on record comes record tornados, record floods, a heat wave from north to south with parts of the south in three digits for over three weeks, and the north breaking records for heat and humidity. Yes, don't believe your lying eyes, America. Don't believe all those learned men, the science experts and all their undeniable truth. Just keep believing what the nice talking heads on Fox Spews say, or that corpo-rat stooge from the oil, gas and coal corpo-rats, or what that government spin master tells you!

It must be hard to be Oklahoma Sinator -- and national laughing stock -- James Inhofe. James is America's "Global Warming Denier General. After three weeks of temperatures in the triple digits, I wonder what the folks in Tulsa have to say to James on that subject? Can James and the other hardcore deniers be that stupid? Well, of course, they can; but that's not to say that the corpo-rat bag men haven't bought the "Best Congress that money can buy" to deny the obvious truth!

Let's not forget that a new dust bowl is rearing its ugly head over the Southwest -- the last ones, you may recall, were a calling card of the "Great" Depression! Have you seen those dust clouds blacking out part of Arizona, or the huge fires that are burning all across the Southwest and almost burned most of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to the ground? Global Warming is turning vast new areas into desert with severe droughts which are lasting for years, and all that rain is falling elsewhere making floods. With huge tracts of farm lands being destroyed, what are you going to eat if the crops keep failing?

For years, scientists have told us that as the planet warms up, we can expect changes in whole patterns of weather and in trends like how much moisture the atmosphere will hold. Global warming causes more and heavier snowstorms -- that's what happens when there's more moisture in the air in the winter. Some places will get dryer, others wetter, and others hotter. In its "2010 State of the Climate Report," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration traced some 41 indicators showing that "broad shifts and individual extreme events that have occurred over the past year are indeed consistent with scientists' predictions of a warmer world."

You can follow the unbelievers to the hell that they surely have waiting for you and your descendants for decades or centuries to come and face an early death for all, or you can cowboy up and face "An Inconvenient Truth." A coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man dies but once!

And Finally

I see that our military is now threatening our children if we don't keep them fully funded.

Marine Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, offered a timeline for how deep cuts will affect the force during the next decade, including big reductions in operational budgets, slashing the size of the active-duty force and even scaling back entitlements such as retirement and health care, according to the Military Times newspapers.

The Pentagoons are considering massive changes to the force - including a draft - amid fears that new and far deeper budget cuts are looming just over the horizon, a top military official said Thursday.

You got that right, America; if they shrink in size then they won't be able to attract enough recruits even though with a much larger all-volunteer military they won't have to draft to fill it up!

Uh, huh, I'll let Hoss's logic sink in for a while... and I'll repeat that equation again for those of you on drugs.

The good general's math states that "one and one equals 711!"

Should our military be threatening our children as a way to keep their budget-breaking funds intact? I wonder what the Pentagoons will do next to keep their power flowing? This is, however, the essence of the military mind -- somehow "Hoss" has risen to the rank of a four-star general with that logic. With logic like that, it's easy to see why we can't beat a backward, bombed-back-to-the-stone-age resistance in almost three times as long as it took us to win against three first-class armies in WW II!

Truth is, we need less than half of our current military, especially if we stop our current (and committed no more) war crimes for oil. We have more nukes that the entire world combined has, so we could certainly do without half of the navy. Keep all the very new boats and no more than six carrier battle groups - half the the attack and boomer submarines - keep the new - mothball the rest. Do we really need those 60 year-old B-52s? Not really. Do we need over 800 military bases? Not at all. For what we spend on the military for a single week, we could build new schools all over America. New bridges and desperately-needed infrastructure could be built coast-to-coast with another week's military cost. Etc., etc., etc! The cost of rounding-up Osama could have been the cost of plane tickets, had we promised to give him a fair trial -- not over $4 trillion and counting, not to mention the mass murder that we've committed, destruction of whole countries and the deaths and wounding of tens of thousands of our children! Did I factor in the destruction of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

Keepin' On

It's coming on down to it again, folks; but thanks to some of you we're almost there for this bill cycle, i.e., the bills due on August first. Thanks to Ernie from Ontario, Teri from Toronto, Dr. Phil and the mysterious "Mr. Jack" from Manassas, we're within $200 of our goal!

We would've had enough money for this one had we not had to spend the money we had saved for this bill on paying off June's bill, cest la vie, or, as Meatloaf once sang, "It's always something!" From what I can tell, most all of the independent liberal sites are in the same boat. The only ones thriving are the corpo-rat funded sites, which often change direction at the drop of a dime; literally, ask our former columnist Arianna how that works! Most of these sites still back Obama to the hilt, turning their backs on what they used to whine to high heaven about when "Old dead-eye Dick" and "Smirky" did the exact same things that Obamahood does.

Some defended themselves saying so-and-so hates everybody! So? What is wrong with that? That pretty much describes yours truly, does it not? We're against anyone who isn't working solely for the people. If you have a corpo-rat master, then we're going to write it on the wall, so be forewarned. If you like our no-holds-barred intellectual reporting style and want see it continue, please help us if you can.

*****


03-12-1917 ~ 07-15-2011
Thanks for the film noir!



*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












In Israel, A Tsunami Warning
By Noam Chomsky

In May, in a closed meeting of many of Israel's business leaders, Idan Ofer, a holding-company magnate, warned, "We are quickly turning into South Africa. The economic blow of sanctions will be felt by every family in Israel."

The business leaders' particular concern was the U.N. General Assembly session this September, where the Palestinian Authority is planning to call for recognition of a Palestinian state.

Dan Gillerman, Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, warned participants that "the morning after the anticipated announcement of recognition of a Palestinian state, a painful and dramatic process of Southafricanization will begin" -- meaning that Israel would become a pariah state, subject to international sanctions.

In this and subsequent meetings, the oligarchs urged the government to initiate efforts modeled on the Saudi (Arab League) proposals and the unofficial Geneva Accord of 2003, in which high-level Palestinian and Israeli negotiators detailed a two-state settlement that was welcomed by most of the world, dismissed by Israel and ignored by Washington.

In March, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned of the prospective U.N. action as a "tsunami." The fear is that the world will condemn Israel not only for violating international law but also for carrying out its criminal acts in an occupied state recognized by the U.N.

The U.S. and Israel are waging intensive diplomatic campaigns to head off the tsunami. If they fail, recognition of a Palestinian state is likely.

More than 100 states already recognize Palestine. The United Kingdom, France and other European nations have upgraded the Palestine General Delegation to "diplomatic missions and embassies -- a status normally reserved only for states," Victor Kattan observes in the American Journal of International Law.

Palestine has also been admitted to U.N. organizations apart from UNESCO and the World Health Organization, which have avoided the issue for fear of U.S. defunding -- no idle threat.

In June the U.S. Senate passed a resolution threatening to suspend aid for the Palestine Authority if it persists with its U.N. initiative. Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., warned that there was "no greater threat" to U.S. funding of the U.N. "than the prospect of Palestinian statehood being endorsed by member states," The (London) Daily Telegraph reports. Israel's new U.N. Ambassador, Ron Prosor, informed the Israeli press that U.N. recognition "would lead to violence and war."

The U.N. would presumably recognize Palestine in the internationally accepted borders, including the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza. The heights were annexed by Israel in December 1981, in violation of U.N. Security Council orders.

In the West Bank, the settlements and acts to support them are clearly in violation of international law, as affirmed by the World Court and the Security Council.

In February 2006, the U.S. and Israel imposed a siege in Gaza after the "wrong side" -- Hamas -- won elections in Palestine, recognized as free and fair. The siege became much harsher in June 2007 after the failure of a U.S.-backed military coup to overthrow the elected government.

In June 2010, the siege of Gaza was condemned by the International Committee of the Red Cross -- which rarely issues such reports -- as "collective punishment imposed in clear violation" of international humanitarian law. The BBC reported that the ICRC "paints a bleak picture of conditions in Gaza: hospitals short of equipment, power cuts lasting hours each day, drinking water unfit for consumption," and the population of course imprisoned.

The criminal siege extends the U.S.-Israeli policy since 1991 of separating Gaza from the West Bank, thus ensuring that any eventual Palestinian state would be effectively contained within hostile powers -- Israel and the Jordanian dictatorship. The Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, proscribe separating Gaza from the West Bank.

A more immediate threat facing U.S.-Israeli rejectionism is the Freedom Flotilla that seeks to challenge the blockade of Gaza by bringing letters and humanitarian aid. In May 2010, the last such attempt led to an attack by Israeli commandoes in international waters -- a major crime in itself -- in which nine passengers were killed, actions bitterly condemned outside the U.S.

In Israel, most people convinced themselves that the commandoes were the innocent victims, attacked by passengers, another sign of the self-destructive irrationality sweeping the society.

Today the U.S. and Israel are vigorously seeking to block the flotilla. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton virtually authorized violence, stating that "Israelis have the right to defend themselves" if flotillas "try to provoke action by entering into Israeli waters" -- that is, the territorial waters of Gaza, as if Gaza belonged to Israel.

Greece agreed to prevent the boats from leaving (that is, those boats not already sabotaged) -- though, unlike Clinton, Greece referred rightly to "the maritime area of Gaza."

In January 2009, Greece had distinguished itself by refusing to permit U.S. arms to be shipped to Israel from Greek ports during the vicious U.S.-Israeli assault in Gaza. No longer an independent country in its current financial duress, Greece evidently cannot risk such unusual integrity.

Asked whether the flotilla is a "provocation," Chris Gunness, the spokesperson for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the major aid agency for Gaza, described the situation as desperate: "If there were no humanitarian crisis, if there weren't a crisis in almost every aspect of life in Gaza there would be no need for the flotilla. 95 percent of all water in Gaza is undrinkable, 40 percent of all disease is water-borne … 45.2 percent of the labor force is unemployed, 80 percent aid dependency, a tripling of the abject poor since the start of the blockade. Let's get rid of this blockade and there would be no need for a flotilla."

Diplomatic initiatives such as the Palestinian state strategy, and nonviolent actions generally, threaten those who hold a virtual monopoly on violence. The U.S. and Israel are trying to sustain indefensible positions: the occupation and its subversion of the overwhelming, long-standing consensus on a diplomatic settlement.
(c) 2011 Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East & U.S. Foreign Policy: Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice. His most recent book is





It Can Happen Here!
By Uri Avnery

YEARS AGO I said that there are but two miracles in Israel: the Hebrew language and democracy.

Hebrew had been a dead language for many generations, more or less like Latin, when it was still used in the Catholic church. Then, suddenly, concurrent with the emergence of Zionism (but independently) it sprang back to life. This never happened to any other language.

Theodor Herzl laughed at the idea that Jews in Palestine would speak Hebrew. He wanted us to speak German. "Are they going to ask for a railway ticket in Hebrew?" he scoffed.

Well, we now buy airline tickets in Hebrew. We read the Bible in its Hebrew original and enjoy it tremendously. As Abba Eban once said, if King David were to come to life in Jerusalem today, he could understand the language spoken in the street. Though with some difficulty, because our language gets corrupted, like most other languages.

Anyhow, the position of Hebrew is secure. Babies and Nobel Prize laureates speak it.

The fate of the other miracle is far less assured.

THE FUTURE - indeed, the present - of Israeli democracy is shrouded in doubt.

It is a miracle, because it did not grow slowly over generations, like Anglo-Saxon democracy. There was no democracy in the Jewish shtetl. Neither is there anything like it in Jewish religious tradition. But the Zionist Founding Fathers, mostly West and Central European Jews, aspired to the highest social ideals of their time.

I have always warned that our democracy has very shallow and tender roots, and needs our constant care. Where did the Jews who founded Israel, and who came here thereafter, grow up? Under the dictatorship of the British High Commissioner, the Russian Czar, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the king of Morocco, Pilsudsky's Poland and similar regimes. Those of us who came from democratic countries like Weimar Germany or the US were a tiny minority.

Yet the founders of Israel succeeded in establishing a vibrant democracy that - at least until 1967 - was in no way inferior, and in some ways superior, to the British or American models. We were proud of it, and the world admired it. The appellation "the Only Democracy in the Middle East" was not a hollow propaganda slogan.

Some claim that with the occupation of the Palestinian territories, which have lived since 1967 under a harsh military regime without the slightest trace of democracy and human rights, this situation already came to an end. Whatever one thinks about that, in fact Israel in its pre-1967 borders maintained a reasonable record until recently. For the ordinary citizen, democracy was still a fact of life. Even Arab citizens enjoyed democratic rights far superior to anything in the Arab world.

This week, all this was put in doubt. Some say that this doubt has now been dispersed, and that a stark reality is being exposed.

CHARLES BOYCOTT, the agent of a British landowner in Ireland, could never have imagined that he would play a role in a country called Israel 130 years after his name had become a world-wide symbol.

Captain Boycott evicted Irish tenants, who defaulted on their rent because of desperate economic straits. The Irish reacted with a new weapon: no one would speak with him, work for him, buy from him. His name became synonymous with this kind of non-violent action.

The method itself was born even earlier. The list is long. Among others: in 1830 the "negroes" in the US declared a "boycott" of slave-produced products. The later Civil Rights movement started with a boycott of the Montgomery bus company that seated blacks and whites separately. During the American Revolution, the insurgents declared a boycott on British goods. So did Mahatma Gandhi in India.

American Jews boycotted the cars of the infamous anti-Semite Henry Ford. Jews in many countries took part in a boycott of German goods immediately after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

The Chinese boycotted Japan after the invasion of their country. The US boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow. People of conscience all over the world boycotted the products and the athletes of Apartheid South Africa and helped to bring it to its knees.

All these campaigns used a basic democratic right: every person is entitled to refuse to buy from people he detests. Everyone can refuse to support with his money causes which contradict his innermost moral convictions.

It is this right that has been put to the test in Israel this week.

IN 1997, Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. We believe that these settlements, which are being set up with the express purpose of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, are endangering the future of Israel.

The press conference, in which we announced this step, was not attended by a single Israeli journalist. But the boycott gathered momentum. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis do not buy settlement products. The European Union, which has a trade agreement that practically treats Israel as a member of the union, was induced to enforce the clause that excludes products of the settlements from these privileges.

There are now hundreds of factories in the settlements. They were literally compelled, or seduced, to go there, because the (stolen) land there is far cheaper than in Israel proper. They enjoy generous government subsidies and tax exemptions, and they can exploit Palestinian workers for ridiculous wages. The Palestinians have no other way of supporting their families than to toil for their oppressors.

Our boycott was designed, among other things, to counter these advantages. And indeed, several big enterprises have already given in and moved out, under pressure from foreign investors and buyers. Alarmed, the settlers instructed their lackeys in the Knesset to draft a law that would counter this boycott.

Last Monday, the "Boycott Law" was enacted, setting off an unprecedented storm in the country. Already Tuesday morning, Gush Shalom submitted to the Supreme Court a 22 page application to annul this law.

THE "BOYCOTT LAW" is a very clever piece of work. Obviously, it was not drafted by the parliamentary simpletons who introduced it, but by some very sophisticated legal minds, probably financed by the Casino barons and Evangelical crazies who support the extreme Right in Israel.

First of all, the law is disguised as a means to fight the de-legitimization of the State of Israel throughout the world. The law bans all calls for the boycott of the State of Israel, "including the areas under Israeli control." Since there are not a dozen Israelis who call for the boycott of the state, it is clear that the real and sole purpose is to outlaw the boycott of the settlements.

In its initial draft, the law made this a criminal offense. That would have suited us fine: we were quite willing to go to prison for this cause. But the law, in its final form, imposes sanctions that are another thing.

According to the law, any settler who feels that he has been harmed by the boycott can demand unlimited compensation from any person or organization calling for the boycott - without having to prove any actual damage. This means that each of the 300,000 settlers can claim millions from every single peace activist associated with the call for boycott, thus destroying the peace movement altogether.

AS WE point out in our application to the Supreme Court, the law is clearly unconstitutional. True, Israel has no formal constitution, but several "basic laws" are considered by the Supreme Court to function effectively as such.

First, the law clearly contravenes the basic right to freedom of expression. A call for a boycott is a legitimate political action, much as a street demonstration, a manifesto or a mass petition.

Second, the law contravenes the principle of equality. The law does not apply to any other boycott that is now being implemented in Israel: from the religious boycott of stores that sell non-kosher meat (posters calling for this cover the walls of the religious quarters in Jerusalem and elsewhere), to the recent very successful call to boycott the producers of cottage cheese because of their high price. The call of right-wing groups to boycott artists who have not served in the army will be legal, the declaration by left-wing artists that they will not appear in the settlements will be illegal.

Since these and other provisions of the law clearly violate the Basic Laws, the Legal Advisor of the Knesset, in a highly unusual step, published his opinion that the law is unconstitutional and undermines "the core of democracy." Even the supreme governmental legal authority, the "legal advisor of the government", has published a statement saying that the law in "on the border" of unconstitutionality. Being mortally afraid of the settlers, he added that he will defend it in court nevertheless. The opportunity for this is not far off: the Supreme Court has given him 60 days to respond to our petition.

A SMALL group of minor parliamentarians is terrorizing the Knesset majority and can pass any law at all. The power of the settlers is immense, and moderate right-wing members are rightly afraid that, if they are not radical enough, they will not be re-elected by the Likud Central Council, which selects the candidates for the party list. This creates a dynamic of competition: who can appear the most radical.

No wonder that one anti-democratic law follows another: a law that practically bars Arab citizens from living in localities of less than 400 families. A law that takes away the pension rights of former Knesset members who do not show up for police investigations (like Azmi Bishara.) A law that abolishes the citizenship of people convicted of "assisting terrorism". A law that obliges NGOs to disclose donations by foreign governmental institutions. A law that gives preference for civil service positions to people who have served in the army (thus automatically excluding almost all Arab citizens). A law that outlaws any commemoration of the 1948 Naqba (the expulsion of Arab inhabitants from areas conquered by Israel). An extension of the law that prohibits (almost exclusively) Arab citizens, who marry spouses from the Palestinian territories, to live with them in Israel.

Soon to be enacted is a bill that forbids NGOs to accept donations of more than 5000 dollars from abroad, a bill that will impose an income tax of 45% on any NGO that is not specifically exempted by the government, a bill to compel universities to sing the national anthem on every possible occasion, the appointment of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to investigate the financial resources of left-wing [sic] organizations.

Looming over everything else is the explicit threat of right-wing factions to attack the hated "liberal" Supreme Court directly, shear it of its ability to overrule unconstitutional laws and control the appointment of the Supreme Court judges.

FIFTY-ONE YEARS ago, on the eve of the Eichmann trial, I wrote a book about Nazi Germany. In the last chapter, I asked: "Can It Happen Here?"

My answer still stands: yes, it can.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom






Why Americans Can't Afford To Eat Healthy
The real reason Big Macs are cheaper than more nutritious alternatives? Government subsidies
By David Sirota

The easiest way to explain Gallup's discovery that millions of Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than they ate last year is to simply crack a snarky joke about Whole Foods really being "Whole Paycheck." Rooted in the old limousine liberal iconography, the quip conjures the notion that only Birkenstock-wearing trust-funders can afford to eat right in tough times.

It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point's carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile -- if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard -- that's because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own.

As with most issues in this new Gilded Age, the tale of the American diet is a story of the worst form of corporatism -- the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit.

In this chapter of that larger tragicomedy, lawmakers whose campaigns are underwritten by agribusinesses have used billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those agribusinesses' specific commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) that are the key ingredients of unhealthy food. Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to "choose" the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support.

Corn -- which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat -- exemplifies the scheme.

"Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop ... artificially low," reports Time magazine. "That's why McDonald's can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 -- a bargain."

Yes, it is a bargain, but one created by deliberate government policy that serves the corn industry titans, not by any genetic advantage that makes corn derivatives automatically more affordable for the budget-strapped commoner.

The aggregate effect of such market manipulation across the agriculture industry, notes Time, is "that a dollar [can] buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit."

So while it may be amusing to use Americans' worsening recession-era diet as another excuse to promote cultural stereotypes, the nutrition crisis costing us billions in unnecessary healthcare costs is more about public policy and powerful special interests than it is about epicurean snobs and affluent tastes. Indeed, this is a problem not of individual proclivities or of agricultural biology that supposedly makes nutrition naturally unaffordable -- it is a problem of rigged economics and corrupt policymaking.

Solving the crisis, then, requires everything from recalibrating our subsidies to halting the low-income school lunch program's support for the pizza and French fry lobby (yes, they have a powerful lobby). It requires, in other words, a new level of maturity, a better appreciation for the nuanced politics of food and a commitment to changing those politics for the future.

Impossible? Hardly. A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald's feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. It's just a matter of will -- or won't.
(c) 2010 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.






Prisoners Have Nothing To Gain By Eating
By David Swanson

Prisoners risking death by refusing food in the Pelican Bay supermax, and those hunger striking in solidarity in prisons around California are a judgment of our sickness. "The degree of civilization in a society," said Dostoyevsky, "can be judged by entering its prisons."

Civilization is something we no longer seem to aspire to. The United States locks up more people and a greater percentage of its people than anyone else. We lock them in training centers for anger and violence. We subject them to rape, assault, humiliation, and isolation. We throw the innocent in with the guilty, the young with the old, the nonviolent with the violent, the hopeful with those who've lost all interest in life.

And we routinely subject large numbers of prisoners to the torture of near-total isolation. We lock human beings in little boxes for 22 or 23 hours per day. When it's done to an accused whistleblower like Bradley Manning, we protest. But what about when it's done to thousands of people, many of them baselessly accused of being members of gangs? Where is the outrage?

We should be refusing to eat. We should be shutting down our government with nonviolent action. We should be risking the lives we have. Instead the burden has fallen to those who have little or no lives to risk. The prisoners themselves are taking action and gaining power from behind bars.

Look at the prisoners' demands. They want an end to group punishment of individual rules violations. That seems like a basic requirement of justice. Bombing a nation because some terrorists spent time there may make sense to our politicians, but it is horribly unjust to the people living and dying under the bombs. Stopping and searching people who look like they might be immigrants may make sense to those whose hatred of immigrants is distorting their thinking, but it is outrageously unjust from the perspective of the innocent people repeatedly harassed. Punishing everyone in a prison for something one person did make sense if the goal is cruelty. But will the innocent prisoners thus abused eventually emerge from prison believing they've been given fair treatment by a justice system with which they should comply? Or will they be released thirsting for vengeance? Or thirst for vengeance while never being released? And will we be able to keep what we have done to them secret from ourselves? Will we not continue to grow more ill?

They want an end to the use of completely unreliable criteria for labeling a prisoner a gang member and on that basis subjecting them to the torture of isolation. Should a tattoo or the word of someone offered decent food in exchange for a name really be the test of whether a human being should be placed at risk of severe mental damage? Should anything? Would we stand for another nation treating people this way? Don't tell me it's necessary and responsible. It would cost a lot less money to offer children decent schools and food and guidance than it does to imprison men. This is a luxury. It's a sick indulgence of a wealthy country. We can afford to engage in massive sadistic cruelty. But that shouldn't mean that we have to do it.

They want compliance with the recommendations found in the latest study our government produced to make itself feel better despite ignoring it. They want an end to the long-term solitary confinement that takes people's minds away. They are risking death by starvation to end death by deprivation of human contact. We could risk a lot less to do it for them.

They want adequate food provided to all prisoners and an end to the practice of depriving some and feeding others as a tool for manipulating people like wild beasts. They want basic decency, including the ability to make one phone call per week. They want standards of health and humanity that do not even begin to approach those we are required by international treaty to provide to prisoners of war. For that matter, they want to cease being treated in a manner that would get you locked up with them if you treated a dog or a cat that way.

All the prisoners are asking of us is that we spread the word. But in fact they are not asking this of us. They are offering it to us. They are leading us where we need to go, and doing it from behind bars. We would need to go to this place even if we had no prisons. We are allowing our government to destroy the physical environment. Our children will have no more reason to eat than these prisoners do, if we fail to act. We are allowing our government to murder on a massive scale through what it calls the "Defense" Department, a name as skillfully chosen as that of a "Corrections" Department. We need to do some real defending and correcting. Some of us have plans for October. The least among us are showing us how right now.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."




Rick gives the corpo-rat salute




Michigan Locals Fight For Democracy

If Rick Snyder ever comes to help you, run away as fast and as far as you can.

Snyder is the right-wing, corporate-hugging governor of Michigan whose extremist anti-worker, anti-government agenda was handed to him by a Koch-funded front group named the Mackinac Center. Included in the package was a doozy of autocratic mischief-making called the Local Government Fiscal Accountability Act. The new law turns Synder into a perverse hybrid of a Soviet czar and a tinhorn banana republic potentate, and it has infuriated the public. Now trying to backpedal, the governor's new line is that, "It's about helping communities."

Helping? This law allows him to seize control of any city, county, school district, etc. that he decides is in fiscal trouble, authorizing him to appoint an "emergency manager," which may be a private corporation, to run the entity. This autocratic regent is empowered to cancel labor contracts, repeal the public budget, privatize government assets, dismiss elected officials, and even dissolve the local entity.

This is the kind of "help" that a fox brings to the hen house, so the governor is now being sued by his own astonished citizenry. Snyder's tyrannical law, they point out, violates the state's Constitution by usurping the right of local residents to elect their officials. As the director of a community legal group in Detroit puts it, the governor's designated emergency manager would control all, "including the right to enact or repeal local ordinances."

You might be thinking, "Thank goodness I don't live in Michigan." But if Snyder's anti-democratic coup succeeds there, you can bet that various Koch-backed right-wing front groups will bring the Michigan Model to your state. For information on the Michigan fight, contact Detroit's Sugar Law Center
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








The Neo-Con Aftermath
By Helen Thomas

Where are the neo-conservatives who brought on this economic and political mess?

They are evidently hiding in their think tanks or taking asylum in academia. Anyway, they are in safe havens, satisfied that they achieved their stated goals of regime change by toppling their nemesis - Saddam Hussein. Though none of those neo-cons wore the country's uniform, they pushed others to get into the fight.

It was the neo-cons who decided America should have an empire in the 21st century. Their design for the world has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths - not to mention the wounded and displaced.

Many of the neo-cons may have been kicked out of top government positions, but their influence in former President George W. Bush's administration was enormous. They convinced Bush of the need for torture. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has not ended the unlawful practice.

It's not surprising that the neo-con aspiration to get Saddam coincided with Israel's purpose, or that Saddam was accused of holding weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had none. Hans Blix, the former head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, begged Bush to let him go into Iraq to prove Iraq had no such lethal weapons. Bush refused. He wanted to invade Iraq.

Bush once told an interviewer that only war presidents are remembered in history. He will go down in history all right. Ironically, Bush and his cohorts - and the world in fact - know that only Israel had a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East. Top American officials, from Obama on down, have lost their credibility by refusing to say that Israel is a nuclear power.

The next target for the neo-con empire builders is Iran, another major enemy of Israel. If Iran succeeds in developing a nuclear bomb, the United States is supposed to attack Iran. So far, Obama has resisted the neo-con orders, but who knows for how long.

Their agenda was laid out in Project for the New American Century. Their "Statement of Principles" promotes increasing military spending; modernizing our armed forces; strengthening ties to democratic allies to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; promoting the causes of political and economic freedom abroad; and accepting responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, prosperity and principles. These are goals not easily won without war.

By the end of 2006, PNAC was "reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website," with "a single employee" "left to wrap things up," according to the BBC News. In 2006, Gary Schmitt, former executive director of the PNAC, stated that PNAC had come to a natural end.

The PNAC was a platform for a new American colonialism - and the neo-cons continue to lobby in Congress. They also are welcomed on the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post for their ultra-right points of view.

Others on the neo-con team include Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Kagan, both former Reaganites and Bush propagandists.

The neo-cons stated that the failure to depose Saddam would have resulted in a "decisive surrender in the international war on terrorism." They did not estimate the cost in American lives and money - and they probably didn't care.

Critics of the neo-cons have called them "chicken-hawks - men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war." They accuse the neo-cons of taking it a step further than the conservatives, who believe in maintaining a strong national defense. The neo-cons can only succeed in promoting their goals by blurring the lines between policing the world and maintain a strong national defense.

While many Republicans have begun to question the old neo-con foreign policy consensus that dominated Bush's GOP, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is the new neo-con hopeful.

While the neo-cons have achieved some of their goals, they have betrayed the good will of Americans and the decency of the country. They should be ashamed!
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Secret Vows Controlling GOP Mindset
By James Donahue

It was a newsy report when Republican presidential contenders Michele Bachmann and Rich Santorum revealed that they have signed something now dubbed the "Marriage Pledge," a vow of opposition to gay marriage, prostitution, and pornography. And with Republican members of Congress in deadlock with President Barack Obama and the Democrats over the issue of raising taxes on wealthy Americans to help stave off a looming budget crisis and raising the national debt ceiling, reports of a secret "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" have begun to leak into the news.

So just what is in these pledges and how are they affecting . . . or threatening to affect the decisions by our elected leadership? The Taxpayer Protection Pledge is a vow reportedly taken by 41 senators and 236 Congressional representatives . . . all but three of them Republicans . . . that they will stand opposed to any tax increase. And if Congress eliminates tax breaks for special interests, the pledge demands that they be "matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."

The taxpayer pledge is the brainchild of Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group that has secretly risen to power within a shadow government that prevails in Washington. That pledge, which Republicans appear to be so loyal to they are willing to let the nation go into economic collapse rather than allow the Obama Administration to fulfill his election promise to eliminate the Bush era tax cuts for Americans earning $250,000 a year or higher, appears to be the root of the financial deadlock occurring in Washington.

The scary point to this story is that Norquist is not an elected public official. He is a silent power figure operating in the shadows, and wielding enough influence that Republicans believe they must take his demands for a pledge against taxes or risk not being elected to office.

Now that a new presidential election looms in 2012, we learn of yet another pledge, already taken by two ultra-conservative candidates, Bachmann and Santorum, that supports the thread-bare "sanctity of marriage" between a man and woman, opposes marriage among homosexuals, and goes so far as to declare war against anything threatening "normal" marriage such as prostitution and pornography.

This new "Marriage Vow" is a lengthy document put forth by Bob Vander Plaats, head of Family Leader, an ultra conservative organization headquartered in Iowa. Signing the pledge is required before candidates get an endorsement by Vander Plaats' group. While he once ran unsuccessfully for governor in Iowa, Vander Plaats is not an elected political official. But like Norquist, he appears to be wielding a growing secret power within another wing of the shadow government that is having an impact on the legislation occurring in Washington.

While the Taxpayer Protection Pledge is a simple, two point document as described above, the Marriage Vow is much more complex in its ramifications.

Those that take this vow pledge to "defend and to uphold the institution of marriage as only between one man and one woman," swear to "personal fidelity to my spouse," and support "official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices."

The pledge supports "prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended 'second chance' or 'cooling-off' periods for those seeking a "quickie divorce."

It declares "rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control."

After these and numerous other declarations opposing gay marriage and supporting the Christian concept of marriage and child rearing in the home, the Vander Plaats pledge tacks on these zingers for good measure:

"Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA's $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.

"Fierce defense of the First Amendment's rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy."

While most Americans would not argue against some of the doctrines outlined in the Marriage Vow, the document as a whole speaks out against the changing mores of American society, which are already beginning to be reflected in laws protecting the rights of gay marriage, divorce and the protection of women and children following the breakdown of marriage.

The frightening aspect of the two organizations that appear to be gaining control of elected political leadership through secret vows is that documents other than the Constitution appear to be now guiding the thoughts and actions of the men and women in power.

We are witnessing the dangerous result of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge even now, as the Republican controlled House stands firm against raising taxes against the very people who have stolen the wealth and now hold the keys to the kingdom.

We have suspected the existence of a secret shadow government working behind the scenes in Washington for a long time. Now that these two power figures have been revealed, we must wonder what other vows are our elected representatives being goaded into taking? How many boots must our Senators and Congressmen kiss before they can gain those coveted offices in our nation's capital?

The biggest question of them all is: if not the people we think we elect, who really runs our country?
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






Congrats To The Gang Of Six, The Powerful, The Wealthy, And Multinational Corporations
By Bernie Sanders

If there was ever a time in the modern history of America that the American people should become engaged in what's going on here in Washington, now is that time. Decisions are being made that will impact not only our generation but the lives of our children and our grandchildren for decades to come, and I fear very much that the decisions being contemplated are not good decisions, are not fair decisions.

There is increased understanding that that defaulting for the first time in our history on our debts would be a disaster for the American economy and for the world's economy. We should not do that.

There also is increased discussion about long-term deficit reduction and how we address the crisis which we face today of a record-breaking deficit of $1.4 trillion and a $14 trillion-plus national debt.

One of the long-term deficit reduction plans came from the so-called Gang of Six. We do not know all of the details of that proposal. In fact, we never will know because a lot of the decisions are booted to committees to work out the details.

It is fair to say, however, that Senators Coburn, Senator Crapo and Chambliss deserve congratulations. Clearly, they have won this debate in a very significant way. My guess is that they will probably get 80 percent or 90 percent of what they wanted. In this town, that is quite an achievement, but they have stood firm in their desire to represent the wealthy and the powerful and multinational corporations. They have threatened. They have been smart. They have been determined. And at the end of the day, they will get almost all of what they want. That is their victory, and I congratulate them.

Unfortunately, their victory will be a disaster for working families in this country, for the elderly, for the sick, for the children and for low-income people.

Based on the limited information that we have, I think it is important to highlight some of what is in this so-called Gang of Six proposal that the corporate media, among others, are enthralled about.

Some may remember that for a number of years, leading Democrats said that we will do everything that we can to protect Social Security, that Social Security has been an extraordinary success in our country, that for 75 years, with such volatility in the economy, Social Security has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible American. I heard Democrats say that Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. That is right because Social Security is funded by the payroll tax, not by the U.S. Treasury. Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus today. It can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years. It is an enormously popular program. Poll after poll from the American people says doesn't cut Social Security. Two and a half years ago when Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, ran for president of the United States, he made it very clear if you voted for him there would be no cuts in Social Security.

What Senators Coburn, Crapo and Chambliss have managed to do in the Gang of Six is reach an agreement where there will be major cuts in Social Security. Don't let anybody kid you about this being some minor thing. It is not. What we are talking about is that Social Security cuts would go into effect virtually immediately. Ten years from now, the typical 75-year-old person will see their Social Security benefits cut by $560 a year. The average 85-year-old will see a cut of $1,000 a year. Now, for some people here in Washington, maybe the big lobbyists who make hundreds of thousands a year, $560 a year or $1,000 a year may not seem like a lot of money, but if you are a senior trying to get by on $14,000, $15,000, $18,000 a year and you're 85 years old, the end of your life, you're totally vulnerable, you're sick -- a $1,000 per year cut in what you otherwise would have received is a major, major blow.

So I congratulate Senator Coburn, Senator Crapo, Senator Chambliss for doing what president Obama said would not happen under his watch, what the Democrats have said would not happen under their watch.

But it's not just Social Security. We have 50 million Americans today who have no health insurance at all. Under the Gang of Six proposals, there will be cuts in Medicare over a 10-year period of almost $300 billion. There will be massive cuts in Medicaid and other health care programs. There will be caps on spending, which mean that there will be major cuts in education. If you are a working-class family, hoping that you're going to be able to send your kid to college and thinking that you will be eligible for a Pell grant, think twice about that. Pell grants may not be there. If you're a senior who relies on a nutrition program, that nutrition program may not be there. If you think it's a good idea that we enforce clean air and clean water provisions so that our kids can be healthy, those provisions may not be there because there will be major cuts in environmental protection.

Some people think that's not so good, but at least our Republican friends are saying we need revenue and we're going to get $1 trillion in revenue. But wait a minute,. If you read the proposal, there are very, very clear provisions making sure that we are going to make massive cuts in programs for working families, for the elderly, for the children. Those cuts are written in black and white. What about the revenue? Well, it's kind of vague. The projection is that we would rise over a 10-year period $100 billion in revenue. Where is that going to come? Is it necessarily going to come from the wealthiest people in this economy? Is it going to come from large corporations who are enjoying huge tax breaks? That is not clear at all. I want middle-class families to understand that when we talk about increased revenues, do you know where that comes from? It may come from cutbacks in the home mortgage interest deduction program, which is so very important to millions and millions of families. It may mean that if you have a health care program today, that health care program may be taxed. That's a way to raise revenue. It may be that there will be increased taxes on your retirement programs, your I.R.A.'s, your 401(k)'s. But we don't have the details for that. All we have is some kind of vague promise that we're going to raise $1 trillion over the next 10 years, no enforcement mechanism and no clarity as to where that revenue will come from.

That is why it is so terribly important that the American people become engaged in this debate which will have a huge impact on them, on their parents and on their children. The American people must fight for a fair deal. At a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well and their effective tax rate is the lowest on record, at a time when the top 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than 150 million Americans, at a time when corporate profits are soaring and in many instances corporations, these same corporations pay nothing in taxes, at a time when we have tripled military spending since 1997, there are fair ways to move toward deficit reduction which do not slash programs that working families and children and the elderly desperately depend upon.

This senator is going to fight back. I was not elected to the United States Senate to make devastating cuts in Social Security, in Medicare, in Medicaid, in children's programs while lowering tax rates for the wealthiest people in this country.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Elected Mayor of Burlington, Vt., by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms. Before his 1990 election as Vermont's at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Read more at his website.







The Needle And The Damage Done
Toxic Fallout From the CIA's Human Shield Operation
By Chris Floyd

When I first saw the stories about the CIA's super-cunning covert op - setting up a fake vaccination scheme to try to get DNA from Osama bin Laden's children in Abbottabad - I immediately thought: How many innocent people are going to die or suffer needlessly from this unconscionable tainting of medical programmes by Terror War subterfuge? How many people will now turn away from ostensibly genuine humanitarian efforts, wary of being used by foreign spies infiltrating their country? How many more genuine medical relief and health care workers will now be targeted as agents of militarist agendas in troubled lands already rightly suspicious of the murderous spy games being played in their midst?

Now Medecins Sans Frontieres has voiced the same concerns, in public blast on Thursday which called the CIA's toying with the lives and health of vulnerable children "grave manipulation of the medical act."

Of course, the story has already been forgotten in the American media echo chamber, now solely obsessed with the epic battle between Obama and the Republicans to see who can degrade the largest number of American lives and usher in oligarchic rule the fastest. [For more on this, see the superb piece by Arthur Silber.] So we'll let the Guardian re-set the scene:

The CIA recruited a Pakistani doctor and health visitors before the operation in May that killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad in northern Pakistan, to try to ascertain whether the al-Qaida leader was living in the compound. The doctor, Shakil Afridi, set up a vaccination drive for Hepatitis B in the town in order to try to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound and obtain DNA samples from those living there. ..

However, on the ground in Abbottabad the Guardian discovered that while the vaccine doses themselves were genuine, the medical professionals involved were not following procedures. In an area called Nawa Sher, they did not return a month after the first dose to provide the required second batch. Instead, according to local officials and residents, the team moved on, in April this year, to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.

These vaccines are not effective unless the full course of doses is administered. The CIA thus suborned genuine medical professionals, without their knowledge, and then left the children being used as -- dare we say it? -- human shields for the spy agency still at grave risk of contracting Hepatitis B. Having established their front in the poorest part of town, luring in the most vulnerable, they simply "moved on." What of the children of Nawa Sher? Who cares? They're expendable.

The Guardian story spells out the larger implications:

"The risk is that vulnerable communities - anywhere - needing access to essential health services will understandably question the true motivation of medical workers and humanitarian aid," said Unni Karunakara, MSF's international president. "The potential consequence is that even basic healthcare, including vaccination, does not reach those who need it most."

"It is challenging enough for health agencies and humanitarian aid workers to gain access to, and the trust of, communities, especially populations already sceptical of the motives of any outside assistance," said MSF. "Deceptive use of medical care also endangers those who provide legitimate and essential health services."

The impact of the fake vaccination drive may be keenly felt in Pakistan, where the public already sees an American conspiracy everywhere. Polio campaigns could be at particular risk, as Pakistan has the biggest polio problem in the world.

But again, none of that matters. These are non-people, unpersons, Untermenschen. The only thing that matters is that American elites are made to look tough, willing to do "whatever it takes." The Guardian quotes the usual anonymous Obama Administration official defending the use of innocent children as human shields for black ops:

The US official said: "The vaccination campaign was part of the hunt for the world's top terrorist, and nothing else. If the United States hadn't shown this kind of creativity, people would be scratching their heads asking why it hadn't used all tools at its disposal to find Bin Laden."

Yes, inquiring minds want to know: why didn't the United States abuse and exploit and endanger even more innocent children to find bin Laden? (Aside from the thousands of children killed in the post-9/11 Terror Wars, of course.) Thank god the Peace Laureate and his people have more "creativity" than his cloddish predecessors!

Oh, and what was the upshot of this "creativity"? I mean, sure, they put the poorest children in Abbotabad at grave risk of suffering, and yeah, they endangered vaccination and health programs and medical workers all over the world -- but hey, the fake vaccine thing worked, didn't it? It helped them get bin Laden, didn't it?

Er, no. Like so much else in the Terror War -- indeed, like the Terror War in its entirety -- the CIA human shield operation in Abbotabad was a busted flush. The whole thing was designed to suck blood from bin Laden's children to get the DNA that would confirm his presence in the house -- but it didn't even do that. As the New York Times reports:

The American official said that the doctor managed to temporarily gain access to the compound, but that he never saw Bin Laden and was not successful in getting DNA samples from any Bin Laden family members.

Endangering children, increasing mistrust and instability around the world, militarizing medicine, polluting every notion of a greater common good or human fellow-feeling -- and all for absolutely nothing (aside from the perpetuation of the pointless dominance of a witless, brutal, all-devouring elite): that pretty much sums up the foreign policy of our rotting, blundering, bankrupt empire.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd







Neocons Fume Over US Boat To Gaza
By Ray McGovern

My co-passengers and I of the U.S. Boat to Gaza have now gone from "High-Seas Hippies," according to the right-wing Washington Times, to participants in a flotilla full of "fools, knaves, hypocrites, bigots, and supporters of terrorism," says Alan Dershowitz in his usual measured prose.

Poor Alan, he seems upset at our audacity not only to hope for humane treatment of the 1.6 million Gazans, who currently live under a cruel blockade, but to force the issue. To stop our boat before it could leave Greek waters, Israel's Likud government gave itself a self-inflicted black eye and again brought the oppression of Gazans to worldwide attention.

This time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government did not even have to kill people to add to Israel's growing "delegitimization" before the civilized world. Facing growing international condemnation, Netanyahu and his allies have reason to worry.

In recognition of our modest accomplishments, we U.S. boaters have now made it onto Dershowitz's "Dishonor Roll!" At first reading of his intended insults, my laughter was uncontrollable. I've been called a lot of things before, but I cannot remember being labeled a "knave."

Anyone know what a knave is? Does it have something to do with what Damon Runyon used to call "the Harvards," among whom Dershowitz has long toiled as a law professor?

Dershowitz also lashes out at the American Jews onboard, including 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, with the shopworn epithet for Jews who dare to criticize Israel's government as "self-hating."

I suppose if I had criticized some of the ugly extremism in Ireland a few decades back, I would be a "self-hating Irishman."

But the bottom line is this: Dershowitz's Likud friends and their neocon chums in the Obama administration realize they have suffered a stinging - and unnecessary - PR defeat. They could easily have let our peaceful boat carrying passengers, media and letters of goodwill reach the isolated people of Gaza.

What we boaters appear to have accomplished is to provoke the mighty diplomats of Israel and the United States into a full-court press that brought renewed attention to the plight of the Gazans.

Greek authorities, already tied up in knots over their national financial crisis, had their arms twisted to thwart a group of humanitarians and peace activists - including poet Alice Walker, retired Army Col. Ann Wright and Code Pink's Medea Benjamin - from sailing a boat to Gaza.

By putting the issue of Israel's blockade front and center, we also managed to force discomforted U.S. State Department spokespersons to dissemble about the legality of Israel's illegal blockade. They ducked declaring something so clearly illegal legal, knowing that otherwise they would have invited international ridicule.

But caution. The injured-animal syndrome among the Likudniks poses distinct dangers for the people of the Middle East - the more so, as we watch President Barack Obama continue to let Netanyahu walk all over him.

US Appeasement

Official Washington's appeasement of the Likud Lobby seems to encourage Israeli leaders to believe that not only the U.S. Congress but also America's lusting-for-a-second-term President will condone just about any action Tel Aviv might undertake. That makes the situation very volatile.

In my view, there is more danger, in present circumstances, that the extreme right in Israel will flail out in a very misguided way than there has been in several years. The Netanyahu regime is in a very defensive, reactive posture.

It certainly appears that the Likudniks, the U.S. neocons and some of the "Harvards" are running scared as Israel's growing extremism and anti-Muslim bigotry becomes harder to perfume over with every passing day.

Beyond expanding settlements on Palestinian lands and resisting serious peace talks, Netanyahu's government has takento segregating not only Arabs from Jews but secular Jews from ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Plus, over the past two years, Netanyahu's right-wing coalition has lost its co-opted ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt as well as the once-friendly Turks and bit-by-bit its legitimacy. This reality is finally sinking in. Tel Aviv, Washington and Cambridge see a significant weakening of Israel's worldwide standing.

And, as for "delegitimizing" Israel, no one could do that job better than the Likudniks themselves - the more so, given their penchant for knee-jerk overreactions and risible rhetoric.

The likely "legitimization" of a Palestinian state by the U.N. in September is being seen in some Israeli right-wing quarters as the last straw.

But Netanyahu's thuggish regime still can count on influential apologists like Dershowitz to excuse whatever it does. Dershowitz and other neocon voices pipe up whenever Israel's drift toward an unconscionable apartheid system is noted.

As part of that propaganda, we are now hearing, again and again, bizarre accounts about how wonderful life is for the Gazans. In his pro-blockade diatribe, Dershowitz depicted a fun-and-sun existence for these Palestinians, who are, in reality, trapped in what amounts to a squalid open-air prison.

Besides cutting the Gazans off from the world, Israel has strangled their economy by tightly restricting construction material needed to rebuild homes, businesses and schools damaged in Israel's 2008-09 invasion, which killed an estimated 1,400 Palestinians, compared to 13 Israeli deaths.

However, to gloss over the ugly reality, Dershowitz selectively cites a recent New York Times article, which noted that construction material smuggled in from Egypt in the aftermath of Mubarak's ouster is fueling a mini-boom in construction in Hamas-ruled Gaza and slightly lessening the jobless crisis.

Here's Dershowitz's slanted version: "According to reporting by The New York Times, Gaza has been thriving recently. Luxury hotels are being built; stores are stocked with food; beaches are filled with children; and life is far better than in neighboring Al Arish, which is across the border in Egypt."

Yet, the few positives were only part of what the Times' Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner reported. In the same article, he wrote, "So is that the news from Gaza in mid-2011? Yes, but so is this: Thousands of homes that were destroyed in the Israeli antirocket invasion two and a half years ago have not been rebuilt.

"Hospitals have canceled elective surgery for lack of supplies. Electricity remains maddeningly irregular. The much-publicized opening of the Egyptian border has fizzled, so people remain trapped here. The number of residents living on less than $1.60 a day has tripled in four years. Three-quarters of the population rely on food aid."

Strangled Economy

The Israeli human rights group Gisha, which has campaigned against the closure of Gaza, notes that while Gaza now has adequate food supplies, "economic recovery is blocked by sweeping restrictions."

Gisha noted that:

"The continued ban on export, construction materials, and travel between Gaza and the West Bank contradicts the 2010 Israeli government decision to facilitate economic recovery in Gaza.

"At least 83% of Gaza's factories are either closed or working at a capacity of 50% or less, according to the Palestinian Federation of Industries. The manufacturing sector cannot recover under the present Israeli ban on export.

"Even during the winter agricultural season, when Israel allowed the export of agricultural produce, the quantities were economically negligible: an average of two trucks per day, compared to the 400 trucks a day agreed upon in the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access.

"Israel has banned completely goods destined for Israel and the West Bank, even though prior to 2007, 85% of the goods leaving Gaza were sold to Israel and the West Bank." [Emphasis in original.]

In other words, the situation for Gazans remains horribly bleak, although perhaps slightly less bleak now that Egypt is looking the other way on the smuggling of concrete, steel beams and other construction material.

Under international pressure - brought about partly by earlier challenges to the four-year-old sea blockade - Israel also has lightened up somewhat on the land transport of some goods.

But Dershowitz's slanted argument is offensive for other reasons. Arguing that some people in the Middle East might be worse off than the Gazans is reminiscent of the claims by white South Africans that "their" blacks were better off than some blacks living in poorer parts of Africa, thus justifying apartheid.

Or the neocon musings in the United States some years back that slavery wasn't so bad because Africans who were captured by European slavers and forcibly shipped to the New World had a chance for a better life - more so than Africans who weren't lucky enough to be put in chains, crowded into foul slave ships (where many died), sold to plantation owners in a strange land, and then be subjected to whippings, rapes, endless humiliations and lynching. Yes, the "upside" of slavery.

To tout a couple of "luxury hotels" being built in Gaza, some children at the beach and the possibility that some other Arabs might be more miserable than the Gazans - as an excuse for the entrapment and collective punishment of 1.6 million people - is the same kind of rationalizing on behalf of injustice.

As for Dershowitz's insults toward me and the other passengers on our Boat to Gaza, the old saying surely applies: "Names can never harm you." But we would all be well advised to keep a keen eye peeled for future sticks and stones.

We U.S. boaters have just begun; we will get to Gaza. But watch out for Israeli-sponsored provocations, which could become the prelude to even more violence in the months ahead. (c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.







Letting Bankers Walk
By Paul Krugman

Ever since the current economic crisis began, it has seemed that five words sum up the central principle of United States financial policy: go easy on the bankers.

This principle was on display during the final months of the Bush administration, when a huge lifeline for the banks was made available with few strings attached. It was equally on display in the early months of the Obama administration, when President Obama reneged on his campaign pledge to "change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes." And the principle is still operating right now, as federal officials press state attorneys general to accept a very modest settlement from banks that engaged in abusive mortgage practices.

Why the kid-gloves treatment? Money and influence no doubt play their part; Wall Street is a huge source of campaign donations, and agencies that are supposed to regulate banks often end up serving them instead. But officials have also argued at each point of the process that letting banks off the hook serves the interests of the economy as a whole.

It doesn't. The failure to seek real mortgage relief early in the Obama administration is one reason we still have 9 percent unemployment. And right now, the arguments that officials are reportedly making for a quick, bank-friendly settlement of the mortgage-abuse scandal don't make sense.

Before I get to that, a word about the current state of the mortgage mess.

Last fall, we learned that many mortgage lenders were engaging in illegal foreclosures. Most conspicuously, "robo-signers" were attesting that banks had the required documentation to seize homes without checking to see whether they actually had the right to do so -and in many cases they didn't.

How widespread and serious were the abuses? The answer is that we don't know. Nine months have passed since the robo-signing scandal broke, yet there still hasn't been a serious investigation of its reach. That's because states, suffering from severe budget troubles, lack the resources for a full investigation -and federal officials, who do have the resources, have chosen not to use them.

Instead, these officials are pushing for a settlement with mortgage companies that, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, "would broadly absolve the firms of wrongdoing in exchange for penalties reaching $30 billion and assurances that the firms will adhere to better practices."

Why the rush to settle? As far as I can tell, there are two principal arguments being made for letting the banks off easy. The first is the claim that resolving the mortgage mess quickly is the key to getting the housing market back on its feet. The second, less explicitly stated, is the claim that getting tough with the banks would undermine broader prospects for recovery.

Neither of these arguments makes much sense.

The claim that removing the legal cloud over foreclosure would help the housing market -in particular, that it would help support housing prices -leaves me scratching my head. It would just accelerate foreclosures, and if more families were evicted from their homes, that would mean more homes offered for sale -an increase in supply. An increase in the supply of a good usually pushes that good's price down, not up. Why should the effect on housing go the opposite way?

You might point to the mortgage relief that would supposedly be extracted as part of the settlement. But if mortgage relief is that crucial, why isn't the administration making a major push to reinvigorate its own Home Affordable Modification Program, which has spent only a small fraction of its money? Or if making that program actually work is hard, why should we believe that any program instituted as part of a mortgage-abuse settlement would work any better?

Sorry, but the case that letting banks off the hook would help the housing market just doesn't hold together.

What about the argument that getting tough with the banks would threaten the overall economy? Here the question is: What's holding the economy back?

It's not the state of the banks. It's true that fears about bank solvency disrupted financial markets in late 2008 and early 2009. But those markets have long since returned to normal, in large part because everyone now knows that banks will be bailed out if they get in trouble.

The big drag on the economy now is the overhang of household debt, largely created by the $5.6 trillion in mortgage debt that households took on during the bubble years. Serious mortgage relief could make a dent in that problem; a $30 billion settlement from the banks, even if it proved more effective than the government's modification program, would not.

So when officials tell you that we must rush to settle with the banks for the sake of the economy, don't believe them. We should do this right, and hold bankers accountable for their actions.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure. But we're in a stage of denial: we want to re-establish things as they used to be, to put the country back where it was."
~~~ James Hillman









America's Disappeared
By Chris Hedges

Dr. Silvia Quintela was "disappeared" by the death squads in Argentina in 1977 when she was four months pregnant with her first child. She reportedly was kept alive at a military base until she gave birth to her son and then, like other victims of the military junta, most probably was drugged, stripped naked, chained to other unconscious victims and piled onto a cargo plane that was part of the "death flights" that disposed of the estimated 20,000 disappeared. The military planes with their inert human cargo would fly over the Atlantic at night and the chained bodies would be pushed out the door into the ocean. Quintela, who had worked as a doctor in the city's slums, was 28 when she was murdered.

A military doctor, Maj. Norberto Atilio Bianco, who was extradited Friday from Paraguay to Argentina for baby trafficking, is alleged to have seized Quintela's infant son along with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other babies. The children were handed to military families for adoption. Bianco, who was the head of the clandestine maternity unit that functioned during the Dirty War in the military hospital of Campo de Mayo, was reported by eyewitnesses to have personally carried the babies out of the military hospital. He also kept one of the infants. Argentina on Thursday convicted retired Gen. Hector Gamen and former Col. Hugo Pascarelli of committing crimes against humanity at the "El Vesubio" prison, where 2,500 people were tortured in 1976-1978. They were sentenced to life in prison. Since revoking an amnesty law in 2005 designed to protect the military, Argentina has prosecuted 807 for crimes against humanity, although only 212 people have been sentenced. It has been, for those of us who lived in Argentina during the military dictatorship, a painfully slow march toward justice.

Most of the disappeared in Argentina were not armed radicals but labor leaders, community organizers, leftist intellectuals, student activists and those who happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Few had any connection with armed campaigns of resistance. Indeed, by the time of the 1976 Argentine coup, the armed guerrilla groups, such as the Montoneros, had largely been wiped out. These radical groups, like al-Qaida in its campaign against the United States, never posed an existential threat to the regime, but the national drive against terror in both Argentina and the United States became an excuse to subvert the legal system, instill fear and passivity in the populace, and form a vast underground prison system populated with torturers and interrogators, as well as government officials and lawyers who operated beyond the rule of law. Torture, prolonged detention without trial, sexual humiliation, rape, disappearance, extortion, looting, random murder and abuse have become, as in Argentina during the Dirty War, part of our own subterranean world of detention sites and torture centers.

We Americans have rewritten our laws, as the Argentines did, to make criminal behavior legal. John Rizzo, the former acting general counsel for the CIA, approved drone attacks that have killed hundreds of people, many of them civilians in Pakistan, although we are not at war with Pakistan. Rizzo has admitted that he signed off on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. He told Newsweek that the CIA operated "a hit list." He asked in the interview: "How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?" Rizzo, in moral terms, is no different from the deported Argentine doctor Bianco, and this is why lawyers in Britain and Pakistan are calling for his extradition to Pakistan to face charges of murder. Let us hope they succeed.

We know of at least 100 detainees who died during interrogations at our "black sites," many of them succumbing to the blows and mistreatment of our interrogators. There are probably many, many more whose fate has never been made public. Tens of thousands of Muslim men have passed through our clandestine detention centers without due process. "We tortured people unmercifully," admitted retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey. "We probably murdered dozens of them ..., both the armed forces and the C.I.A."

The bodies of many of these victims have never been returned to their families. They disappeared. Anonymous death is the cruelest form of death. There is no closure for the living. There is no way for survivors to fix the end of a life with a time, a ritual and a place. The atrocity is compounded by the atrocity committed against memory. This sacrilege gnaws at survivors. Regimes use clandestine torture centers, murder and anonymous death to keep subject populations off balance, agitated and disturbed. It fuels the collective insanity. The ability of the state to "disappear" people into black sites, hold them for years without charges and carry out torture ensures that soon these techniques will become a routine part of domestic control.

Tens of thousands of Americans are being held in super-maximum-security prisons where they are deprived of contact and psychologically destroyed. Undocumented workers are rounded up and vanish from their families for weeks or months. Militarized police units break down the doors of some 40,000 Americans a year and haul them away in the dead of night as if they were enemy combatants. Habeas corpus no longer exists. American citizens can "legally" be assassinated. Illegal abductions, known euphemistically as "extraordinary rendition," are a staple of the war on terror. Secret evidence makes it impossible for the accused and their lawyers to see the charges against them. All this was experienced by the Argentines. Domestic violence, whether in the form of social unrest, riots or another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would, I fear, see the brutal tools of empire cemented into place in the homeland. At that point we would embark on our own version of the Dirty War.

Marguerite Feitlowitz writes in "The Lexicon of Terror" of the experiences of one Argentine prisoner, a physicist named Mario Villani. The collapse of the moral universe of the torturers is displayed when, between torture sessions, the guards take Villani and a few pregnant women prisoners to an amusement park. They make them ride the kiddie train and then take them to a cafe for a beer. A guard, whose nom de guerre is Blood, brings his 6- or 7-year-old daughter into the detention facility to meet Villani and other prisoners. A few years later, Villani runs into one of his principal torturers, a sadist known in the camps as Julian the Turk. Julian recommends that Villani go see another of his former prisoners to ask for a job. The way torture became routine, part of daily work, numbed the torturers to their own crimes. They saw it as a job. Years later they expected their victims to view it with the same twisted logic.

Human Rights Watch, in a new report, "Getting Away With Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees," declared there is "overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration." President Barack Obama, the report went on, is obliged "to order a criminal investigation into allegations of detainee abuse authorized by former President George W. Bush and other senior officials."

But Obama has no intention of restoring the rule of law. He not only refuses to prosecute flagrant war crimes, but has immunized those who orchestrated, led and carried out the torture. At the same time he has dramatically increased war crimes, including drone strikes in Pakistan. He continues to preside over hundreds of the offshore penal colonies, where abuse and torture remain common. He is complicit with the killers and the torturers.

The only way the rule of law will be restored, if it is restored, is piece by piece, extradition by extradition, trial by trial. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft will, if we return to the rule of law, face trial. The lawyers who made legal what under international and domestic law is illegal, including not only Rizzo but Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, David Addington, William J. Haynes and John Yoo, will, if we are to dig our way out of this morass, be disbarred and prosecuted. Our senior military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw death squads in Iraq and widespread torture in clandestine prisons, will be lined up in a courtroom, as were the generals in Argentina, and made to answer for these crimes. This is the only route back. If it happens it will happen because a few courageous souls such as the attorney and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, are trying to make it happen. It will take time-a lot of time; the crimes committed by Bianco and the two former officers sent to prison this month are nearly four decades old. If it does not happen, then we will continue to descend into a terrifying, dystopian police state where our guards will, on a whim, haul us out of our cells to an amusement park and make us ride, numb and bewildered, on the kiddie train, before the next round of torture.
(c) 2011 Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, spent seven years in the Middle East. He was part of the paper's team of reporters who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism. He is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His latest book is, ""Death Of The Liberal Class."







President Obama's Big Deal
Cuts for Social Security, But No Taxes for Wall Street
By Dean Baker

The ability of Washington to turn everything on its head has no limits. We are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Even though the recession officially ended two years ago, there are still more than 25 million people who are unemployed, can only find part-time work or who have given up looking for work altogether. This is an outrage and a tragedy. These people's lives are being ruined due to the mismanagement of the economy.

And we know the cause of this mismanagement. The folks who get paid to manage and regulate the economy were unable to see an $8 trillion housing bubble. They weren't bothered by the doubling of house prices in many areas, nor the dodgy mortgages that were sold to finance these purchases. Somehow, people like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and his sidekick and successor Ben Bernanke thought everything was fine as the Wall Street financers made billions selling junk mortgage and derivative instruments around the world.

When the bubble burst, one of the consequences was an increased budget deficit. This is kind of like two plus two equals four. The collapsing bubble tanked the economy. Tax revenue plummets and we spend more on programs like unemployment insurance and foods stamps. We did also have some tax cuts and stimulus spending to boost the economy. The result is a larger budget deficit.

All of this is about as clear as it can possibly be. The large deficit came about because the housing bubble, which was fueled by Wall Street excesses, crashed the economy. Yet, we are constantly being told by politicians from President Obama to Tea Party Republicans that we have a problem of out-of-control spending.

The claim of out-of-control spending is simply not true. It is an invention, a fabrication, a falsehood with no basis in reality that politicians are pushing to advance their agenda. And that agenda is not pretty.

According to numerous reports in the media, President Obama wants a "big deal" on the budget, which will involve cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. The last is especially ironic, since Social Security is financed by its own designated tax. Therefore, it does not contribute to the deficit. If there is no money in the Social Security trust fund, then benefits will not be paid. The plans to cut to Social Security also seem perverse since we know that the vast majority of retirees are not living especially well right now and the benefits already are not especially generous. If we exclude their Social Security income, more than 80 percent of people over the age of 65 get by on less than $20,000 per year.

The average Social Security check is about $1,100 a month. This would be less than an hour's pay for many of the Wall Street honchos whose greed and incompetence brought down the economy.

Yet, when President Obama preaches equality of sacrifice, it is the elderly and the poor who are supposed to do most of the sacrificing. His plan to change the annual cost-of-living adjustment formula for Social Security would reduce benefits for someone in their seventies by 3 percent, in their eighties by 6 percent and in their nineties by 9 percent.

These are huge cuts. The Republicans are screaming bloody murder because President Obama wants to raise the top tax rate by 4.6 percentage points. Imagine that he proposed raising taxes on the wealthy by twice as much. That is effectively what he is proposing for people in their nineties who are entirely dependent on Social Security.

And he is proposing to impose this tax on seniors who had nothing to do with the crisis, while leaving Wall Street untouched. A modest tax on financial speculation could raise more than $150 billion a year or $1.5 trillion over the course of a decade.

It is striking that a financial speculation tax (FST) has not been mentioned in the debt discussions. The European Union has been actively debating the imposition of a FST ever since the crisis. The European Parliament voted for such a tax by a margin of more than 3 to 1. The United Kingdom has had an FST for decades. It raises the equivalent, relative to the size of its economy, of almost $40 billion a year just by taxing stock trades. Even the International Monetary Fund has come out in support of increased taxes on the financial sector.

Presumably, the continuing power of the financial industry explains why few in Washington are discussing an FST. After all, a director of Morgan Stanley, Erskine Bowles, was the head of President Obama's deficit commission.

And this explains why we are looking to gut Social Security and Medicare in response to Wall Street's wreckage of the economy. The basic story is that the average worker and retiree will have to sacrifice because of the damage that the Wall Street crew did to the economy. That is what democracy in America looks like now.
(c) 2011 Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University.





The Dead Letter Office...





Harry flips the bird to the hungry, the poor, the sick and elderly.

Heil Obama,

Dear Uberfuhrer Reid,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your refusal to raise the nation's debt; without destroying social Security Medicare and Food Stamps, something you happily did four times under Bush adding 4 trillion to the debt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 09-05-2011. We salute you Herr Reid, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Rupert Murdoch Has Gamed American Politics Every Bit As Thoroughly As Britain's
By John Nichols

Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch has manipulated not just the news but the news landscape of the United States for decades. He has done so by pressuring the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to alter the laws of the land and regulatory standards in order to give his media conglomerate an unfair advantage in "competition" with more locally focused, more engaged and more responsible media.

It's an old story: while Murdoch's Fox News hosts prattle on and on about their enthusiasm for the free market, they work for a firm that seeks to game the system so Murdoch's "properties" are best positioned to monopolize the discourse.

Now, with Murdoch's News Corp. empire in crisis-collapsing bit by bit under the weight of a steady stream of allegations about illegal phone hacking and influence peddling in Britain-there is an odd disconnect occurring in much of the major media of the United States. While there is some acknowledgement that Murdoch has interests in the United States (including not just his Fox News channel but the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), the suggestion is that Murdoch was more manipulative, more influential, more controlling in Britain than here.

But that's a fantasy. Just as Murdoch has had far too much control over politics and politicians in Britain during periods of conservative dominance-be it under an actual Tory such as former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and current Prime Minister David Cameron or under a faux Tory such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair-he has had far too much control in the States. And that control, while ideological to some extent, is focused mainly on improving the bottom line for his media properties by securing for them unfair legal and regulatory advantages.

Over the past decade, as media reform groups have battled to prevent FCC and Congressional moves to undermine controls on media consolidation, Murdoch and his lobbyists been a constant presence-pushing from the other side for the lifting of limits on the amount and types of media that one corporation can own in particular communities and nationally.

The objection was never an ideological one. Media owners, editors, reporters and commentators have a right to take the positions they like. Where the trouble comes is when they seek to turn politicians and regulators into corporate handmaidens-and when they build their empires out to such an extent they can demand obedience even from those who do not share their partisan or ideological preferences.

And the corruptions of the process created by Murdoch's manipulation are not merely a British phenomenon.

Murdoch's political pawns in the United States have been every bit as faithful to the mogul and his media machine as the British pols.

When he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in May of 2003, at a point when he was the chief global cheerleader for George Bush's war with Iraq ("We basically supported...I will say supported the Bush policy," the media mogul would later admit), Murdoch was seeking to secure ownership of the nation's largest satellite television company while pressing for FCC rule changes that would allow him to own newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same cities and for an easing of controls on the extent to which one corporation could dominate television viewership nationally.

Did Murdoch have a hard time of it?

Not hardly.

News reports at the time described the response to the Australian-born media mogul's appearance as "just short of fawning."

The then-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, greeted Murdoch by thanking the media executive for developing the Fox News network. "When my wife doesn't get a good dose of Fox News every day she gets grumpy," chirped Sensenbrenner, "so there are some of us who appreciate what you are doing."

Murdoch was invited to sing the praises of his various operations, and he did just that, claiming, "Innovation and consumer choice are built into our DNA." The whole point of Fox, Murdoch explained, was to "dethrone" more traditional media outlets-outlets that did actual news reporting (Fox is dominated by talking-head commentators) and that were not expressly ideological (in the sense that Fox places itself at the service of the corporate-dominated and militarist wing of the GOP).

That sat well with the Republicans on the committee. "Thank you for what you've done," Utah Congressman Chris Cannon told Murdoch. "Thank you for your risk-taking."

Sensenbrenner was so determined to create a favorable transcript of Murdoch's visit-which he promised to forward to the Justice Department and the FCC, which were examining anti-trust and regulatory issues relating to the expansion of the News Corp. empire-that he prevented Democrats on the committee from asking basic questions.

The ranking Democrat, Michigan Congressman John Conyers, complained that he was prevented from questioning Murdoch about "the connections between [Fox News chairman and CEO] Roger Ailes and the White House. What the hell is that all about? It's like there's a direct line between the administration and Ailes. You can see it. There are plenty of political and policy implications in that."

Conyers was absolutely right. So, too, were consumer groups that complained aggressively about the expansion of Murdoch's media dominance and political reach. But News Corp. got the go-ahead to take over the largest satellite company (DirecTV) and the FCC (which Murdoch had personally lobbied) approved the ownership rule changes he sought.

Ultimately, the DirecTV deal turned out to be problematic for Murdoch, and the courts tripped up the FCC's rule changes.

But Murdoch kept at the latter fight, continuing to push for the FCC to rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation can own the daily newspapers, the weekly "alternative" newspaper, the city magazine, suburban publications, the eight largest radio stations, the dominant broadcast and cable television stations, popular Internet news and calendar sites, billboards and concert halls in even the largest American city.

This "company-town" scheme-a top goal of Murdoch and his lobbying team, as it complemented their US operations in cities such as New York-was again approved by the FCC in 2008, only to again be up-ended by United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit earlier this month.

Notably, while the Murdoch-friendly 2008 rule change was approved by a Republican-dominated FCC, it was defended this year by current FCC chair Julius Genachowski, an appointee of President Obama.

As in England, Murdoch and his managers have for many years had their way with the American regulators and political players who should have been holding the mogul and the multinational to account. Sometimes Murdoch has succeeded through aggressive personal lobbying, sometimes with generous campaign contributions (with Democrats and Republicans among the favored recipients), sometimes by hiring the likes of Newt Gingrich (who as the Speaker of the House consulted with Murdoch in the 1990s) and Rick Santorum (who as a senator from Pennsylvania was a frequent defender of big media companies), sometimes by making stars of previously marginal figures such as Michele Bachmann.

Former White House political czar Karl Rove, who prodded Fox News to declare George Bush the winner of the disputed 2000 presidential election and who remains a key player in Republican politics to this day, still works for Murdoch, as does former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a prospective GOP vice presidential candidate.

But Murdoch is not the rigid partisan some of his more casual critics imagines. He often discovers unexpected political heroes of heroines-such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a former target whose 2000 US Senate run in New York and whose 2008 presidential run earned surprisingly generous coverage from the New York Post and Fox after Murdoch determined that she was on the rise politically. The Clinton embrace was classic Murdoch. He plays both sides of every political divide. But when he is not aiding and abetting the party of the right he looks for conservative and centrist figures (Britain's Blair, America's Clinton) within traditional parties of the left. The point, always, is to assure that those with power are pro-business in general and pro-Murdoch (or, at the least, indebted to Murdoch) in particular.

The strategy has been so successful that, even now, there is some debate about the extent to which Murdoch's influence will diminish in the United States.

Criticism of the media Machiavelli has been muted, and not just from the Republican presidential contenders who are afraid of getting on the wrong side of the Fox team and the equally punitive Wall Street Journal editorial page. Democratic leaders had almost as much trouble finding anything bad to say about Murdoch's alleged wrongdoing-let alone his manipulations of American political life.

After the current scandal began to unfold, a few Democrats with histories of questioning big-media companies, called for inquiries into News Corp. wrongdoing.

Senators Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, and Barbara Boxer asked for an investigation of whether News Corp's extensive use of phone hacking could have violated US laws. "The reported hacking by News Corp. newspapers against a range of individuals-including children-is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics," says Rockefeller said in a statement. "This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken U.S. law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated."

Similarly, Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, asked Attorney General Eric Holder and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Schapiro on Wednesday, to consider whether News Corp.'s allegedly bribery of foreign law enforcement officials violated US law.

"The limited information already reported in this case raises serious questions about the legality of the conduct of News Corp. and its subsidiaries under the [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act]," explained Lautenberg. "Further investigation may reveal that current reports only scratch the surface of the problem at News Corp. Accordingly, I am requesting that DOJ and the SEC examine these circumstances and determine whether U.S. laws have been violated."

New York Congressman Peter King, who represents many families of 9/11 victims, was a lonely Republican advocate for an inquiry.

These requests prompted the US Department of Justice to pursue a limited investigation, with Attorney General Holder saying, "There have been members of Congress in the United States who have asked us to investigate those same allegations and we are progressing in that regard using the appropriate Federal law enforcement agencies."

Holder, a frequent target of abuse from Murdoch media, has taken an appropriate if cautious first step.

An even more appropriate inquiry would go to the heart of the matter and ask: How did Murdoch get such favorable treatment from Congressional committees and regulatory agencies that are supposed to serve the public interest?

Such an inquiry would, undoubtedly, consider the unsettling tale of how former Senate minority leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, seemed to lose interest in challenging media consolidation-an issue on which he had been a good player-after Murdoch's publishing house offered Lott a $250,000 book deal for the senator's forgettable memoir, Herding Cats. It would also consider the strange case of then–Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's decision to take a break from her work at a critical early stage in the war on terror-on a day when a international outcry had stirred with regard to a failed attempt to assassinate a key Al Qaeda leader-to spend a leisurely afternoon briefing Murdoch's editors from around the world.

But the most critical focus of any inquiry into Murdoch's influence over US political and regulatory players would be on those figures, such as the slavishly devoted Congressman Sensenbrenner, who remain in positions where they can do the mogul's bidding.

No doubt, Murdoch's misdeeds deserve to be examined-thoroughly, and aggressively.

So, too, however, do the actions of those American politicians and regulators-Republicans and Democrats-who appear to have been every bit as obedient to Rupert Murdoch as their British counterparts.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







The Arts Of Life They Changed Into The Arts Of Death
Bachmann, Palin and Robertson and the limits of logic
By Phil Rockstroh

As of late, Pat Robertson has been waxing apocalyptic regarding mankind's imminent reckoning with wrathful divinity, while liberals have been sharing scary bedtime stories by the ghostly light of computer screens…telling sleep-banishing tales of Michele ("Crazy Eyes") Bachmann, now stalking primary states, assailing common sense and chewing the scenery of sanity during appearances on the twenty-four/seven Creature Feature Theatre, otherwise known as, Cable News programming.

Granted, the sense of unease displayed by right wing, fundamentalist Christians regarding the state of the nation is understandable; although, their attribution as to the origin and cause of the destructive drift of U.S. culture is so far off the mark they would fail to get wet if they fell into a baptismal pool the size of Lake Michigan.

Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Pat Robertson et al, these late empire zealots of shopping mall, militarism, and heterosexual hegemony, harbor a comic, yet mortifying vision of the conditions they believe would bring rebirth and renewal to the nation. Believing, it seems, all that is good and decent can be salvaged, if only the U.S. would be transformed into an earthly analog of their fantasy of an immaculately scrubbed and deodorized, caucasoid heaven (which, of course, to all others, seems a nightmare world where W.A.S.P. faces are permanently affixed on the whole of multi-visaged humanity -- a death mask made of white bread) -- a creepy, blood-bereft, restricted country club Hyperborea, sustained by holy militarism, where well-turned out, obedient children of the lord await the Second Coming -- a cartoon universe deus ex machina -- vis-a-vis the arrival of their version of Jesus Christ -- who seems to resemble a cross between a muscle-blessed, Hollywood super hero and an eternally vigilant, sin-scouring Tidy Bowl Man.

Invoking an impassioned narrative of blood, thunder and descending, supernatural balm, fundamentalism is an attempt, albeit desperate and misguided, to mitigate the uncertainty and angst incurred by the poetry-decimating literalism of the industrial/consumer age.

This system of belief, internalized in the psyches of the populace of the U.S., falls into the Calvinist/Puritan tradition and therefore carries a nostalgic longing for the imagined innocence of lost paradise, regards imperfection as sin and the imagination as suspect, and believes that a vengeful, omniscient God banished humanity from paradise because of our serpent-gifted lust for life and longing for knowledge.

These lost souls of wanting credulity and noxious certitude believe their shame is their ticket back to paradise... If only they could just hate themselves (and the world enough) -- then they will be made perfect in the perfect love of The Lord. They are, of course, insane.

Accordingly, what events and circumstances are responsible for this free-floating psychotic episode extant as the belief system of contemporary, fundamentalist Christianity?

"And all the Arts of Life they changed into the Arts of Death in Albion."
 ~~~~ Jerusalem, Chapter 3., William Blake.

Early in the Industrial Age, William Blake apprehended humankind had begun to negotiate existence "[a]mong these dark Satanic mills." Blake was not mortified by the mill itself: He was repelled by the imprint the machine left on the mind. This was the factor that he deemed Satanic i.e., positing the image as metaphor for the manner that Satan, the mythical embodiment of the human psyche's unconscious drives, desires and compulsions (and attendant rationalizations) can imprison the human psyche and chain it in his service.

Recognizing and rejecting the principles of the mechanized age for its dehumanizing implications, Blake warned against a view of the world that reduces human life to the sum of machine parts -- for the metaphoric hell-bound train of thought that it is…usurping individual identity by commandeering the hours of fleeting existence by placing one's body at the service of greed-driven, nature-decimating agendas.

"Kept ignorant of its use, that they might spend the days of wisdom 
in sorrowful drudgery, to obtain a scanty pittance of bread:
 In ignorance to view a small portion and think that All,
 And call it Demonstration: blind to all the simple rules of life." ~~~ Jerusalem, Chapter 3. William Blake.

As circumstances stand at present, Blake exhibited caution in his augury: An island of garbage, larger than the state of Texas, floats in the Pacific Ocean. Increasing numbers of U.S. children, obese from corporate processed food, are so unhealthy they're falling prey to the illnesses of middle age. The topsoil of the American mid-west has all but disappeared due to the shortsighted greed of industrial mega-farming.

This is why (to cite only a few examples) the present paradigm's days are numbered. And this is not Old Testament-variety raving…spittle flinging, white beard flapping in the harsh desert wind, dark prophetic fantasy. The examples above simply augur the mundane trajectory inherent to systems locked in entropic runaway.

Fortunately, there is a type of hope that resides at the depths of hopelessness…the perennial truth that arrives when one relinquishes all hope that one's ossified understandings and moribund means of existing in the world cannot be maintained nor salvaged.

"I came into a place void of all light,
which bellows like the sea in tempest,
when it is combated by warring winds."
 ~~~ The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, Canto V, lines 28-30.

Dante's epic poem, The Divine Comedy, resonates on a number of levels. It is important to note how the poet limned the suburbs of Hell…as being, a place reserved for those souls who refused to choose either good or evil -- and, seemingly, a prime location for Wal-Mart big box stores.

"This miserable state is borne by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise." 
~~~ The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, Canto III, lines 34-36.

(Apropos, I offer this completely gratuitous fantasy: Of Sam Walton, ruthless emblem of the age of corporate despotism, with his reptilian rictus forever affixed in a forced smile of tyrannical good cheer, condemned for all eternity to be a greeter at the gates of Hell.)

In contrast, Dante counseled, we are provided with a more propitious option: to walk through Hell, as opposed to remaining locked in the stasis of an insular, unexamined existence.

Dante evoked the descent into the underworld to intimate the understanding that darkness is an aspect of human nature and that self-awareness arrives only after an exploration of the hidden, self-censored regions of one's psyche. Only after passing through the inner most circle of the frozen hellscape does it become possible for Dante to look upward and gaze upon Beatrice’s splendor among the spheres of Heaven.

His Journey began, lost in a dark woods, with his path block by a hungry she-wolf and fierce lion. Then, led there by the pagan poet, Virgil, the adamantine gates of Hell (posting that famous sign regarding hope forever abandoned) slammed shut behind him. But the poet's descent deep into the unsavory aspects of his nature made possible those glimpses of beatific light.

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world, 
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

"But the darkness pulls in everything--
shapes and fires, animals and myself, 
how easily it gathers them! --
powers and people -- and it is possible a great presence is moving near me I have faith in night." ~~~~ Rainer Maria Rilke.

Otherwise, as is the case with the Puritan/Calvinist imagination, an individual risks becoming purity-obsessed and light-intoxicated i.e., lacking in the will and ability to see the dark side of their nature; hence, one is prone to project one's own motives on the actions of others.

Possessed by this state of mind, an individual is capable of inflicting a great amount of damage on his own psyche. Witness: the raging, lower order demons, inhabiting their own personal hellscapes, as channeled by the likes of Bachmann, Palin, and the Reverend Robertson.

Yet, rationalistic devices such as reductionist reasoning and humanistic psychology have proven useless in breaching the high walls of delusion bulwarking fundamentalist, free-floating crazy.

Why? Reductionism is a bi-product of the western Puritan/Calvinist tradition, and as such is prone to the pathologies inherent in the cosmology…wherein there exists: an habitual winnowing down of perception to controllable, exploitable bits; the dismissing of all things (the veracity of imagination, the emanations of nature and the souls of animals) that do not serve narrowed agendas (which are defining characteristics of its scion -- the corporate state -- and those within its institutions who have internalized its raison d'etre).

Both Fundamentalist and reductionist mindsets are cemented in certitude. In fact, each is the shadow side of the other; hence, hyper-rationalists and religious literalists are locked in contemptuous embrace. Both evince, with their obsession with the other, a longing for rapprochement with their missing half, yet their encounters become a courtship dance of animus and antagonism, whereby their mutual yearning for union is expressed as a compulsion to transform the other.

Therefore, the rationalist is driven to proffer balms of superstition-purging logic, as, in turn, the religious true believer frets over the doomed-to-eternal-damnation, mortal soul of the salvation-bereft rationalist. Yet both causation-clutching logicians and credulous lambs of the lord share this trait: both have banished from their respective belief system the appropriation of empathetic imagination and a poetic approach to mystery.

Accordingly, the ideal use of poetic insight, intellectual rigor, and quicksilver wit is to deploy these tools (at times, weapons) of the mind -- in the manner the hubris-hating gods intended -- to confront bullies, rednecks, liars, prigs and hypocrites (including our own self-serving casuistry), to disarm (or, at least, annoy) the brutal, conniving and witless, and, in general, paraphrasing Whitman, "to cheer up slaves and to horrify despots.”

Yet, today, if a poet were to merge his body with the body of America, instead of discovering a Body Electric, he would find himself endowed with the hulking, putrefying corpse of a shambling zombie. Accordingly, he must tear a rotting arm from the monster and beat his own laughing corpse with it. Creating...a movable autopsy...a Book Of The Dead for a dying empire.

Worse, in the world beyond U.S. self-reference, the earth's oceans are dying -- as, on a personal level, Fukushima's isotopes penetrate our bones like parasitic beetles boring into the trunks of dying trees.

And this is not simply a view of the world. In fact, this is the state of the world.

Don't defend the indefensible -- the soul-defying banality of the present system. The neo-liberal superstate is unsustainable and will bring on its own demise.

Instead, like a mourner in a New Orleans funeral march, dance with the dread involved. The music of sorrow is more real than the magical thinking required to believe an insane system is salvageable. Don't stand, back pressed to the wall, frozen in rationalization and equivocation…Exalt in the unfurling mystery of it all.

Crackpot realists demand solutions and Christian Fundamentalist pray for finality. I demur. I stand in awe of the ragged glory immanent in sublime futility.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." ~~~ Samuel Beckett.

I suspect this attitude arrives from the southerner/Native American collision of genes in me. One's broken places allow the spirit in. No need to fix the problem, for the problem is the solution. No call for satanic caulk to seal the cracks in one's soul that reveal one's character.

And why is this important, particularly, at a time when our opponents are unflagging in their certitude? Because even when our reason to fight has merit, and nuance is banished, the larger truth that life itself contains paradox and is comprised of ambiguity remains. Thus, fascist fantasies of infallibility are toppled and the misguided trudge toward the mirage of paradise is waylaid...perhaps leveling a measure of humanizing grace.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." ~~~ Goethe
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Jeff Stahler ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



U.S. Quietly Slips Out Of Afghanistan In Dead Of Night

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN-In what officials said was the "only way" to move on from what has become a "sad and unpleasant" situation, all 100,000 U.S. military and intelligence personnel crept out of their barracks in the dead of night Sunday and quietly slipped out of Afghanistan.

U.S. commanders explained their sudden pullout in a short, handwritten note left behind at Bagram Airfield, their largest base of operations in the country.

"By the time you read this, we will be gone," the note to the nation of Afghanistan read in part. "We regret any pain this may cause you, but this was something we needed to do. We couldn't go on like this forever."

"We still care about you very much, but, in the end, we feel this is for the best," the note continued. "Please, just know that we are truly sorry and that we wish you all the greatest of happiness in the future."

According to firsthand accounts, the 90,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan lay in their beds pretending to be asleep until well after midnight Tuesday. They then reportedly tiptoed out to a fleet of awaiting Humvees, tanks, armored cars, and stealth aircraft; gently eased the doors shut; and departed as silently as possible so as not to wake the 30- million-person nation.

Gen. David Petraeus, outgoing commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, acknowledged that while finally leaving Afghanistan the way they did was perhaps not the "most ideal" way of ending things, emotions in the region had been running too high lately to consider any other alternative.

"We could have slowly and steadily withdrawn from Afghanistan, but trust me, that would have needlessly prolonged what we both knew deep down was an unhealthy, dead-end relationship," Petraeus said. "And we just couldn't bear to look the Afghan people in the eye and tell them flat out that we were packing up and leaving."

"So we decided to sneak out the back through Tajikistan while the country was asleep," Petraeus added. "We're not proud of it, but it was the least painful option for everyone."

According to Pentagon sources, years of growing resentment, deep-seated trust issues, and periods of outright hostility had taken their toll on the relationship, leaving both partners hardened and bitter. After reportedly taking a "long look in the mirror" last week, senior defense officials came to the conclusion that they had "wasted a decade of [their] lives" with Afghanistan, prompting them to finally seek an end to their dysfunctional and destructive long-term engagement.

"When we went into this, everything seemed so perfect-that first democratic election in 2004, Operation Anaconda-those were great times," said Gen. James Mattis of U.S. Central Command, who stated that he would always cherish the warm memory of their early days together in Mazar-i-Sharif. "But we've grown so far apart since then. Sometimes it's hard to remember why we even got involved in the first place."

Despite walking out on Afghanistan, Mattis made it clear that the U.S. still cared deeply about the country and always would. He assured the war-torn nation Americans would never forget about them and promised the U.S. would send several hundred million dollars back to Kabul from time to time to make sure they were getting along okay.

Thus far, Afghans' reactions to the surprise withdrawal have been mixed. While many citizens expressed relief at the pullout, claiming the U.S. had "made [their] lives a living hell," they also admitted the departure had left them feeling deeply unstable and insecure.

"The U.S. told us they cared and that they had our best interests at heart, and I really thought this time might be different, but they were just as selfish as the Soviets and the British," said Pashtun tribal leader Ashraf Rahman Durrani, referring to Afghanistan's history of abusive relationships. "We're a strong, proud nation, though. We've been through a lot, and we'll find a way to get through this, too."

At press time, distraught American officials confirmed they had made a "terrible mistake" ever leaving Afghanistan, and were amassing troops at the border to reinvade the country by week's end.
© 2011 The Onion




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 29 (c) 07/22/2011


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In This Edition

Greg Palast says, "It's Not Default Of Obama."

Uri Avnery recalls, "The Charge Of The New York Times."

Sam Harris compares, "Christian Terrorism And Islamophobia."

David Swanson reports, "Afghan Judges Accuse U.S. Of War Crimes."

Jim Hightower considers, "America's Shameful Leadership."

Helen Thomas examines, "Unfairness In The Debt Debacle."

James Donahue asks, "Why Hasn't Bush Been Charged As A War Criminal?"

Joel S. Hirschhorn explains how, "Semantic Propaganda Feeds Stupidity."

Ralph Nader watches, "Ideological Inebriation On Capitol Hill."

Jeff Cohen reminds us that, "Obama Is NOT "Caving" To Corporate Interests."

Paul Krugman sees Obama, "Messing With Medicare."

Chris Hedges comes out of the closet in, "Fundamentalism Kills."

Maragret Kimberley explores, "Prison Slave Labor."

Crawford County Circuit Court Judge Kimbara Harrell wins the coveted "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols finds, "Obama's Compromising Stirs Talk Of Dem Primary Challenge; Bernie Sanders Says It's A 'Good Idea'."

Vincent L. Guarisco goes, "There And Back Again."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst takes us, "Back In The Fold" but first, Uncle Ernie studies, "The Audacity Of Arrogance."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Mark Streeter, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Ruben Bolling, B Dog 23, Clay Bennett, Tony Auth, Steve Artley, Hetalia Love, Old American Century.Org, Dark Black, Make The Walls Transparent.Com, Rate MY Motivational.Com, Associated Press, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










The Audacity Of Arrogance
By Ernest Stewart

"I think that's a much better path, although serious deficit reduction would still require us to tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform." ~~~ Barack Obama

"In any case; I would rather have preferred a Ruger Mini 30, but I already own a 7.62 bolt rifle and it is likely that the police wouldn't grant me a similar caliber. On the application form I stated: "hunting deer." It would have been tempting to just write the truth; "executing category A and B cultural Marxists/multiculturalist traitors" just to see their reaction!" ~~~ Anders Breivik

"The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik." ~~~ Chris Hedges

"The desire for power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire for knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man or angels come into danger by it." ~~~ Francis Bacon

Yes, I knew before he was elected that Barry was a corpo-rat tool of the far right and tried to warn ya'll about that fact. Granted, it seemed that even if true, he'd just have to be a fresh breeze after the pollution of the "Crime Family Bush." No one, not even I, guessed he'd be far worse than Smirky, Slick Wille, Papa Smirk, or even his hero, Ray-Guns; but, we were all wrong. By the time he was sworn in, it was apparent to everyone that was paying attention that we were so screwed, and the last chance to restore normality was now beyond our reach! Last Monday's speech did nothing to change those thoughts one iota!

Most the Sheeple were full of "The Audacity of Hope" but got instead, "The Audacity of Arrogance!" I remember how are readership dropped when we continued our fight to restore the Republic, just as we had under Bush. The more we exposed, the more they fled! Sure, it's a hard thing to face-- that you got chumped again, but better to be embarrassed then to be "Hood-Winked," again! The old saying: "If you're not outraged, then you haven't been paying attention," is truer now than ever before!

Anyone who had great expectations for Barry and was paying attention soon came to the conclusion that this was just more of the same, when Barry refused to do the things we elected him to do. However, most thought that soon he'd become the person we thought he was, and made this excuse or that for his behavior. I know folks whose life depends on Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, and Food Stamps who refuse to believe that Barry is taking aim at destroying the above "Entitlements" going beyond anything that both Bush's, Slick Willie, or even Richard Milhous Nixon ever dreamt doing, i.e., killing off the non-productive, the sick, the poor, the hungry, and elderly! I mean, we have to pay for those trillion dollar give-a-ways to the ultra-rich, don't we? You historians may recall that Hitler did the very same thing before he got started with a world war. Don't let that "History-is-repeating-itself-again" thingie jump up and bite you on the ass, America!

Does anyone remember how we got this ever-bleeding, red-ink hole in the treasury? It's really simple: the rich and the corpo-rats stopped paying taxes and got trillion dollar welfare checks, instead. So, shouldn't they be paying for this mess, instead of the working class and the poor? Barry and Boner say, "No;" what do you say, America? Get ready to hear Obamahood say, "I didn't want to do this..." when he signs the bill destroying the saftey nets; but, of course, that was his purpose all along!

In Other News

Was anyone surprised by what Anders Breivik did? I wasn't -- not even when we learned that Breivik was aligned with the American Tea Baggers. It all made perfect sense to me. From the land of the midnight sun came a 21st century Vidkun Quisling, fortunately without Quisling's power!

Like our Tea Baggers, Anders is a young, white, fascist, middle class and stupid. He was filled with hate (I'm guessing at his own wasted life), and chose to blame the Muslims who he sees as overrunning Europe, and wants to start a worldwide war against Islam -- sorry, Anders, that's Americas' job! But Anders, like a typical Tea Bagger, choose to take his all-consuming hatred out against Christian children, not Muslim kids. Makes as much sense as the Tea Baggers do -- no doubt a fellow traveler! Anders had to blow them away because he couldn't starve them to death or take their health care away like the Tea Baggers do, and who'll no doubt make Anders look like a piker when their final body count is tallied.

Anders is a follower and a fan of American Tea Baggers, and is hot to trot with Koch Brothers employee and Tea Bagger co-founder Jenny Beth Martin. He also is a fan of Michele Bachmann, Ayn Rand and Peter King! That's some swell company, is it not? And like the Tea Baggers, Anders sees himself as a soldier and not the terrorist that he is, which is why he admits doing the dastardly deeds, but can't understand why they're charging him with 76 counts of murder and for wounding over 100. I'm sure when the Tea Baggers have destroyed healthcare, Food Stamps, and Social Security, and caused the deaths of countless Americans, they'll wonder why everyone is out to kill them. They may wonder why, but I won't!

And Finally

This is Chris Hedges last appearance in Issues & Alibis as a columnist. After reading this week's column and several others that stand out in my memory, I decided to drop his column. I've done this several times over the years to other authors when it becomes quite clear that we had another 5th columnist writing propaganda for the man. His many years working for the Old Grey Bitch should have been a tipoff to begin with!

I've always looked at people as individuals, trying not to group them and charge them with crimes committed by others in their group. I don't blame all Catholics for crimes committed by pedophile priests or the Panzer Pope. I don't blame black folks for the crimes committed by Obama or blame Jews for what the Zionazis do to the Palestinians, but Chris does! All these people with different viewpoints are all the same to him!

So, you know what I did, don't you? I wrote Robert Scheer a note...

Dear Robert,

I just wanted to thank Chris for finally coming out of the closet and announcing to the world that he is a fundamentalist, masochistic, bigoted, fascist, egotistical asshole; but, of course, I'm sure everybody at Truth Dig already knows that, huh? I'm really impressed, he had me fooled for all of these years. As a radical Atheist, I thought I was a man of peace who cared about all of mankind, even all the crazy mythologists. A man who has spent his entire fortune on a fight for the poor and abused. The only thing I've ever peddled was truth, peace and brotherhood; but thanks to Chris, I now know it was all an illusion.

The past 40 years I've spent trying to bring everyone to together was all a lie. Now I know that I'm really obsessed with dominating others and wanting to rule the world and destroy all my enemies -- thanks for clearing that up, Chris! We have a saying in my country that I think applies in this instance, i.e., "WHAT A CROCK OF SH*T!"

Peace,
Ernest
PS. I sent my good buddy, Sam Harris, a copy of this column. I just can't wait until it hits the fan!

As always, if Chris or Robert write back, I'll let ya'll know about it!

Keepin' On

Still short. Still worried. Still hopeful. This could be our last issue!

*****


09-14-1983 ~ 07-23-2011
So how'd that heroin chic thing work out for you?


11-01-1950 ~ 07-24-2011
Thanks for the music!


08-21-1920 ~ 07-24-2011
Thanks for the films!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.











Bush reads from My Pet Budget



It's Not Default Of Obama
Jail GOP deadbeats for debt crisis
By Greg Palast

Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist gave debtors' prison a bad rap. Too bad. I'd say that locking away GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a penitentiary for deadbeats seems like a darn good idea.

Let's talk about how we ended up in this pickle, bucking up against the "debt ceiling." From 2001 to 2008, a Republican President took an annual surplus of $86 billion left for him by Bill Clinton and ran up the budget deficit to over half a trillion in a year ($642 billion in 2008). Altogether, George W. Bush blew up the national debt by over $3 TRILLION--then left the bills to Barack Obama.

For eight years, Bush spent like a drunk monkey. The world was the GOP's Bergdorf's and they had our credit card. If there was a shiny new war on the shelf, they just had to have it: Iraq, Afghanistan, and let's not forget the Fantasy Wars, the half a trillion dollars a year on fancy-ass weapons for a war that won't happen. (Example: the Virginia Class submarine. The V-class was designed to attack Soviet subs. There are no more Soviet subs, but Bush ordered three dozen anyway--at $1.8 billion each.)

And tax cuts? Don't get me started!

The Bush Administration acted just like Sarah Palin when she was set loose in that Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis--grabbing whatever she could carry because Sarah could put it on someone else's account.

The GOP's fattened frat boys feasted--but when the waiter arrived with the bill, the belching rich kids looked around, pointed at some poor schmuck sweeping the floor, Mr. John Q. Veteran, and said, "THAT GUY will pay."

By the way: Congressman Cantor, the guy leading the Republicans' refusal to lift the debt ceiling, voted for the V-class sub as well as Bush's bogus scavenger hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But now Cantor doesn't want to pay the bill.

Y'know, Congressman, maybe you think my parents were fools because they taught me: If you buy it, you pay for it.

Apparently, that's not the rule at Cantor's country club.

The sick assumption of this entire debt ceiling debate, as we hear from talking heads whether on Fox or PBS, is that this is our deficit; as if you and I got a tax break or Amazon delivered that submarine to our door.

And the flapping lips on TV also assume that there must be some kind of "compromise" in which the spending spree by the rich must be paid for by the working class. The Washington elite agree we must pay for tax holidays for hedge funds by closing health clinics.

Of course, the GOP is right abut one thing. President Tiger Wuss will do just that: make the poorest among us pay the debts of the richest. Here we have a bunch of economic terrorists--"Agree to all our demands or the economy gets it!"--and Obama's idea of leadership is to offer the berserkers three-quarters of what they demand.

Thank the Lord and Michele Bachmann that 75% isn't enough for these greedsters.

Solution: Don't pay the banksters

There's another wrong assumption controlling this debate over debt, that the banks, the debt holders, must be paid. When the bankers and the Chinese and the Saudis lent Bush three trillion dollars for his wild-ass buying party, they were betting, like any investor, on the good faith of the borrower to pay it back.

So, let Hu Jintao and King Abdullah stick a collection agency on Cantor and the other Republican shirkers. Repossess their limousines or send The Boys around to remind Cantor what happens when you don't pay what you owe.

The President should say to Hu, the Sheik and Goldman-Sachs:

"I have identified $3 trillion in Treasury notes issued between 2001 and 2008 which were lent to fund President Bush's expenditures. Unfortunately, those who borrowed your money don't want to pay it back. You made a bad investment -- but that's how the free market works. Therefore, I am suspending payments on these Treasury notes until we can round up the deadbeats and make them live up to their commitments.

As President, I have the Constitutional duty to pay the bills of the Veterans Administration, the Social Security fund and other vital services already voted and appropriated by Congress. Military pay before banker pay. Get used to it."

Will the bankers have heart attacks? I hope so. (Maybe if bankers are ill, the GOP will vote for universal health care.) Will China refuse to buy more US debt? Not a chance: The Chinese cannot afford a devaluation of the $2-3 trillion in US Treasury notes they have in their pokey, a devaluation which would surely follow their abandoning the US treasuries.

Note: Argentina defaulted and thrived. We can tango too. But that's all detail for me to argue out with other economists in some effete what-if seminar.

Ultimately, "default" is not the issue. "Default," dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in that age-old battle between Them and Us. They spent the money and now they want Us to pay.

Default lies with the Republican spendthrifts, Mr. President. So I suggest you issue an executive order creating a new wing at Guantanamo: a debtors' prison for trillion-dollar deadbeats.

(Don't you think Eric Cantor would look good in orange?)
(c) 2011 Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigations for BBC TV and Democracy Now! can be seen by subscribing to Palast's reports at.





The Charge Of The New York Times
Or - Baksheesh for the Doorkeeper
By Uri Avnery

A Riddle: Which fleet did not reach its destination but fulfilled its mission?

Well, it's this year's Gaza solidarity flotilla. It could be said, of course, that last year's "little fleet" - that's what the word means in Spanish, much as "guerrilla" means "little war" - is also a reasonable candidate . It never reached Gaza, but the commander of the Israeli navy could well repeat the words of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose victory over the Romans was so costly that he is said to have exclaimed: "Another such victory, and I am lost!"

Flotilla 1 did not reach Gaza. But the naval commando attack on it, which cost the lives of nine Turkish activists, aroused such an outcry that our government saw itself compelled to loosen its land blockade of the Gaza Strip significantly.

The repercussions of this action have not yet died down. The very important relations between the Israeli and Turkish militaries are still ruptured, with Turkey demanding an apology and indemnities. The victims' families are pursuing criminal and civil proceedings in several countries. An ongoing headache.

Flotilla 2 reached its end this week, when a huge naval action led to the capture of 1 (one!) little French yacht and the detention of its sailors, journalists and activists -all 16 (sixteen) of them. Even our tame broadcasters could not help themselves from sneering: "Why didn't they send an aircraft carrier?"

The 14 boats that were prevented from sailing, and the one that did sail, not only kept our entire navy on alert for weeks, but also helped to keep the Gaza blockade in the news. And that, after all, was the whole point of the exercise.

WHAT HAPPENED to the 14 boats which did not sail?

Incredible as it sounds, the Greek navy and Coast Guard forcibly prevented them from leaving Greek ports. There existed no lawful grounds for this, nor was there any pretense of legality.

It would be no exaggeration to say that the Greek navy was acting under orders from the Israeli Chief of Staff. A proud sea-faring nation with a nautical history of thousands of years ("nautical" even happens to be a Greek word) degraded itself to perform illegal actions to please Israel.

It also ignored acts of sabotage carried out by naval commandos - guess whose - against the boats in Greek harbors.

At the same time, the Turkish government, the defiant sponsor of the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which the Turkish activists were killed last year, prevented the same ship from sailing this year.

Also at the same time, groups of pro-Palestinian activists who tried to reach the West Bank by air were stopped on their way. Since there is no direct access to the West Bank by land, sea or air except through Israeli territory or Israeli checkpoints, they had to travel via Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel's gateway to the world. Most did not make it: under instructions from our government, all international airlines blocked these passengers at check-in, using "blacklists" provided by our government.

It seems that the long arm of our diligent security service reaches everywhere, and that its orders are obeyed by countries large and small.

A HUNDRED years ago, the secret police of the Russian Czar, the dreaded "Okhrana", forged a document called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

(In those times, the secret police everywhere was still called Secret Police, before being dignified as "Security Services".)

The document reported a secret meeting of rabbis in the old Jewish cemetery of Prague, to decide upon strategy to secure Jewish rule over the world. It was a crude falsification, which lifted entire passages verbatim from a novel written decades earlier.

In its pages, the real situation of the Jews was grotesquely distorted - they actually had no power at all. In fact, when Adolf Hitler - who used the Protocols for his propaganda - set in motion the Final Solution, almost nobody in the whole world lifted a finger to help the Jews. Even US Jews were afraid to raise their voices.

But if the authors of the falsification were to return to the scene of their crime today, they would rub their eyes in disbelief: this figment of their sick imagination looks like coming true. The Jewish State - as Zionists like to call us - can order around Greek naval authorities, get Turkey to climb down, instruct half a dozen European states to stop passengers at their airports.

How do we do it? There is a simple answer, consisting of three letters: USA.

ISRAEL HAS become a kind of Kafkaesque doorkeeper to the world's sole remaining superpower.

Through its immense influence on the American political system, and especially on the Congress, Israel can levy a political tax on anyone who needs something from the US. Greece is bankrupt and desperately needs American and European help. Turkey is a partner of the US in NATO. No European country wants to quarrel with the US. Ergo: they all need to give us a little political baksheesh.

To cement this relationship, Glenn Beck, the obnoxious protégé of Rupert Murdoch, visited us and was enthusiastically received in the Knesset, where he told us "not to be afraid", because he (and, by implication, Fox and all of America) was supporting us to the hilt.

IT IS because of this that a few lines, which appeared this week in the New York Times, caused near panic in Jerusalem.

The NYT is, perhaps, the most "pro-Israel" paper in the whole world, including Israel itself. Anti-Semites call it the Jew York Times. Many of its editorial writers are ardent Zionists. A news story critical of Israeli policies has almost no chance of appearing there. No mention of the Israeli peace movement. No mention of the dozens of demonstrations in Israel against Lebanon War II and the Cast Lead operation. Self-censorship is supreme.

But this week, the NYT published a blistering editorial criticizing Israel. The reason: the "Boycott Law", passed by the right-wing Knesset majority, which forbids Israelis to call for a boycott of the settlements. The editorial practically repeats what I said in last week's article: that the law is blatantly anti-democratic and violates basic human rights. The more so, since it comes on top of a whole series of anti-democratic laws that were enacted in the last few months. Israel is in danger of losing its title as the "Only Democracy in the Middle East."

Suddenly, all the red lights in Jerusalem started to blink furiously. Help! We are going to lose our only political asset in the world, the pillar of our strength, the basis of our national security, the rock of our existence.

THE RESULT was immediate. On Wednesday, the right-wing clique that now controls the Knesset, under the leadership of Avigdor Lieberman, brought to final vote a resolution that would appoint two Committees of Inquiry into the financial resources of human-rights NGOs. Not all NGOs, only "leftist" ones. This was another item on the long list of McCarthyist measures, many of which have already been adopted and many more of which are waiting for their turn.

The day before, Binyamin Netanyahu appeared specially in the Knesset to assure his followers that he fully approved, and indeed had sponsored, the Boycott Law. But after the NYT editorial, when the Commission of Inquiry resolution came up, Netanyahu and almost all his cabinet ministers voted against it. The religious factions disappeared from the Knesset. The resolution was voted down by a 2 to 1 majority.

But one ominous fact emerged: Apart from Netanyahu and his captive ministers, all the Likud members present voted for the resolution. This included all the young leaders of the party - the coming generation of Likud bosses.

If the Likud remains in power - this group of ultra-rightists, will be the government of Israel within ten years. And to hell with the New York Times.

FORTUNATELY, THERE are signs that a new phenomenon is in the making.

It started innocently with a successful consumer strike on cottage cheese, in order to compel a cartel of fat cats to reduce prices. This has been followed by a mass action by young couples, mostly university students, against the impossibly high prices of apartments.

A group of protesters put up tents in the center of Tel Aviv and have now been living there for over a week. Soon after, such encampments sprang up all over the country, from Kiryat Shmona on the Lebanese border to Beer Sheva in the Negev.

It is much too early to tell whether this is a short-term protest or the beginning of an Israeli Tahrir Square phenomenon. But it clearly shows that the takeover of Israel by a neo-fascist grouping is not a foregone conclusion. The fight is on.

Perhaps - just perhaps! - even the New York Times could be starting to report on the reality of our country.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom






Christian Terrorism And Islamophobia
By Sam Harris

At certain points near the extremity of human evil it becomes difficult, and perhaps pointless, to make ethical distinctions. However, I cannot shake the feeling that detonating a large bomb in the center of a peaceful city with the intent of killing vast numbers of innocent people was the lesser of Anders Behring Breivik's transgressions last week. It seems to me that it required greater malice, and even less humanity, to have intended this atrocity to be a mere diversion, so that he could then commit nearly one hundred separate murders on the tiny Island of Utoya later in the day.

And just when one thought the human mind could grow no more depraved, one learns details like the following:

After killing several people on one part of the island, he went to the other, and, dressed in his police uniform, calmly convinced the children huddled there that he meant to save them. When they emerged into the open, he fired again and again. ("For Young Campers, Island Turned Into Fatal Trap." The New York Times, July 23, 2011)

Other unsettling facts will surely surface in the coming weeks. Some might even be vaguely exculpatory. Is Breivik mentally ill? Judging from his behavior, it is difficult to imagine a definition of "sanity" that could contain him.

It has been widely reported that Breivik is a "Christian fundamentalist." Having read parts of his 1500-page manifesto (2083: A European Declaration of Independence), I must say that I have my doubts. These do not appear to be the ruminations of an especially committed Christian:

I'm not going to pretend I'm a very religious person as that would be a lie. I've always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment. In the past, I remember I used to think;

"Religion is a crutch for weak people. What is the point in believing in a higher power if you have confidence in yourself!? Pathetic."

Perhaps this is true for many cases. Religion is a crutch for many weak people and many embrace religion for self serving reasons as a source for drawing mental strength (to feed their weak emotional state f example during illness, death, poverty etc.). Since I am not a hypocrite, I'll say directly that this is my agenda as well. However, I have not yet felt the need to ask God for strength, yet… But I'm pretty sure I will pray to God as I'm rushing through my city, guns blazing, with 100 armed system protectors pursuing me with the intention to stop and/or kill. I know there is a 80%+ chance I am going to die during the operation as I have no intention to surrender to them until I have completed all three primary objectives AND the bonus mission. When I initiate (providing I haven't been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past. (p. 1344)

As I have only read parts of this document, I cannot say whether signs of a deeper religious motive appear elsewhere in it. Nevertheless, the above passages would seem to undermine any claim that Breivik is a Christian fundamentalist in the usual sense. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik's explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.

I have written a fair amount about the threat that Islam poses to open societies, but I am happy to say that Breivik appears never to have heard of me. He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns-Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye'or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al. He even singles out my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali for special praise, repeatedly quoting a blogger who thinks she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. With a friend like Breivik, one will never want for enemies.

One can only hope that the horror and outrage provoked by Breivik's behavior will temper the growing enthusiasm for right-wing, racist nationalism in Europe. However, one now fears the swing of another pendulum: We are bound to hear a lot of deluded talk about the dangers of "Islamophobia" and about the need to address the threat of "terrorism" in purely generic terms.

The emergence of "Christian" terrorism in Europe does absolutely nothing to diminish or simplify the problem of Islam-its repression of women, its hostility toward free speech, and its all-too-facile and frequent resort to threats and violence. Islam remains the most retrograde and ill-behaved religion on earth. And the final irony of Breivik's despicable life is that he has made that truth even more difficult to speak about. (c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.






Afghan Judges Accuse U.S. Of War Crimes
By David Swanson

I recently sat down for 90 minutes to speak with six Afghan judges, all of them women, and an English-Dari interpreter, a man. They spoke to me as individuals. They aren't preparing any investigations or indictments. The relevance of their being judges is that they know the law. They've studied international law, and they were visiting the United States to learn about our legal and political systems. They believe the United States is guilty of war crimes.

I was the one who raised the subject. I pointed to Italian convictions of CIA agents for kidnapping, Spanish investigations of U.S. officials for torture, etc., and asked what these judges' views were on international law violations, universal jurisdiction, and what appear to be clear crimes committed by the United States in Afghanistan.

The first judge to reply spoke of the horrors of the Taliban, and of the initial gratitude for the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban 10 years ago. But, she said, the mission changed to one of fighting terrorism, and through that "we lost all of our civil rights." She described U.S. troops kicking in doors of houses at night with women and girls asleep in their beds. She described disappearances and accounts of torture. What the United States and NATO are doing, seizing people, locking them up, disappearing them, and torturing them is clearly illegal and against international law, she said. According to international treaties, she went on, when one country occupies another, the host country does not lose its sovereignty, and yet all decisions are now being made by the occupying country without any say by the Afghan government.

A second judge spoke up. "Your Constitution speaks of freedom and a people's government," she said, "but the United States is running secret prisons, torturing, disappearing people, and locking people up for years with no due process." The behavior of the United States, she said, violates everything that she and her colleagues were being taught the United States stands for. "It may seem trivial," she continued, "but it effects our daily lives." If a member of the international occupying forces gets into a hit and run with their car, and you go to the base to complain, you are threatened. They have total immunity from any rule of law, she explained.

She said that in a case involving an Australian, he was turned over to Afghan courts for a murder trial, because the military was not involved. But with U.S. forces, she said, we have to rely on the U.S. court system, and we often hear about these people being acquitted. The judge went on to make a broader point. With the great cost to the United States in blood and treasure, she said, we ought to be grateful. But the perception Afghans have of the U.S. forces, she explained, is of a group of arrogant occupiers who kick in doors.

The first judge to have spoken then joined back in, remarking that "the United States tells other countries how to be democratic and operate within a rule of law, but the United States as role model breaks every one of those things."

A third judge expressed her agreement. She said that she had witnessed helicopters coming and taking away all of the men in a compound, leaving the women and children screaming. This is not war, she said, but if it is a police action then who authorized it? There is no probable cause, she said. None! And the men are disappeared.

Judge number two broadened the discussion to the topic of the occupation itself, expressing her belief that the U.S. public was being kept in the dark about the real motivations behind the war. Al Qaeda isn't there and bin Laden is now dead, she pointed out. People should be given some reason for this going on, she said. I replied that actual motivations included the stationing of bases and weapons, a gas pipeline, profiteering, etc. At that, the women all began nodding and talking. A fourth judge to speak up interjected that even a child in rural Afghanistan knew the truth of what I had said, that the Taliban was simply an excuse.

Then it was my turn to answer questions. What does the average American think of war casualties? Why is there so much militarism and patriotism in the United States? Why is it that for centuries the United States has gone abroad to fight wars in other countries? Do Americans know how the rest of the world sees their country? Why do politicians choose policies that kill people? I answered to the best of my ability.

And then, surprisingly perhaps -- although this is quite common in speaking with Afghans, especially better-off urban Afghans -- the discussion swung around to the judges' concern that things might be dramatically worse if the United States were to leave before establishing stability. I asked them whether, after 10 years, stability was increasing or decreasing. They admitted that it was decreasing but proposed that a change in approach might reverse that. The change in approach that at least one of them recommended was for the United States to get tough with Pakistan, which was to blame for the worst forces within Afghanistan. The interpreter apologetically explained that Afghans blame Pakistan for everything just as every country, he said, blames some other country. Yet it is certainly true that Pakistan has done great damage to Afghanistan for decades, with great assistance from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, not to mention the damage done by the Soviet Union. This does not, of course, mean that a different U.S. approach to Pakistan would create a stable U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviet occupation was destabilizing for the same reason the U.S. occupation is destabilizing: people hate being occupied.

Well, what would I do? That's what they wanted to know: what would I advise Obama? I told them that I would announce that the military occupation was ending soon, that there would be no bases left behind and no weapons left behind, that I would immediately prosecute war crimes, that I would fund educational and civic and aid organizations run and controlled by Afghans, that I would facilitate open and honest elections, and that I would support any temporary international peace-keeping force favored by Afghans' elected representatives. As this was being translated, every one of the six judges began applauding and declaring things like "You speak from our hearts."
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







America's Shameful Leadership

As Bob Dylan famously wrote "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Especially when the wind is right in your face, howling at gale force.

While Washington fiddles with the knobs and levers of budget reduction, America's great working class is being blown down by harsh economic winds. Yet, our country's political and financial elites, sitting in the comfort of their power centers, don't seem to see, hear, or care. If the elites just looked around, here's some of what they find:

* In Central Texas, a surge in poverty is now severely straining the area food bank, which is struggling with more than a 50 percent increase in demand in the past three years.

* Arizona, which has added only 4,000 jobs in the past year, has 10 unemployed job seekers for every opening – and 45,000 Arizonans are set to lose their jobless benefits in the next few months.

* By the end of the Great Recession in 2009, the median white household in America had lost $36,000 in net worth. Worse, the median African-American household had lost 83 percent of its net worth, which is now down to the financially perilous level of less than $2,200.

* While CEOS of major corporations have jacked up their pay by a fourth since the recession technically ended in 2009, average wages for workers have stagnated. Meanwhile, the price of such basics as food and gasoline have risen relentlessly. Real wages today are 1.6 percent lower than a year ago.

So, who is Washington working to help? Not the hard-hit workaday majority – but the $9 million-a-year CEOs and billionaire Wall Street barons who're demanding drastic budget cuts on programs that help working families, while also insisting that their own lavish fortunes be spared from even the slightest dings. What a shameful time in our history! Can't America do better than this?
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Unfairness In The Debt Debacle
By Helen Thomas

The Republicans have a plan to solve the nation's debt limit problem - take it out of the hides of the elderly, the poor and the disabled. The GOP leaders want to cut the social programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention food stamps and other programs - that help the deprived and others suffering in our society.

Are all Republicans rich? Why do they want to protect the millionaires and billionaires (150 in the United States) from any tax increases? Why are they able to take advantage of loopholes that allow them to pay lower effective tax rates than the average middle class American?

Why does it not occur to the Republican leadership in Congress, bolstered by the ultra conservative Tea Party supporters, that it costs money to run this country and to uphold its values? Who are these people who are demanding a free lunch?

Raising the country's debt limit used to be an automatic reflex to allow the country to pay its debts. Now the GOP is saying that the debt payment should fall only on the persons who have paid into the entitlement programs all of their working lives.

The GOP proposals are to boost the $14.3 trillion debt limit, but without any tax increases. Is that fair or real? The deadline for the U.S. to be able to pay up is Aug. 2.

Speaker John Boehner continues to walk out of the fiscal talks like an operatic diva who is being upstaged. Boehner is being shot down by his own party, people who want no tax concessions. President Barack Obama has lost the liberals, who think he has sold out the safety net programs - and these programs are not a giveaway, but paid for by the workers of America.

Veteran lawmakers are appalled at the unrealistic view of the nation's ills and the failure to understand the problems and needs of a modern society.

A pending withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan should cut down the costs, but Republicans claim they have already considered that end.

Both Obama and Boehner have hit a brick wall, each with an eye on the 2012 presidential election and the quest for independent voters.

The GOP hates the idea of tax increases. Most of the proposals show the total spending slashes, exceed new revenue by more than 3 to 1. Is that fair?

What more do the Republicans want to hack out of the social program - and at a time when a new recession is impending and unemployment is as high as 9.2 percent?

Maybe Republicans should try looking for a job in this once-affluent country. The needy are helpless in this country, and will be as long as Republicans rule the House.

Are we in a war between the haves and the have nots? Why do the Republicans think we can solve deficit problems without new revenue? Higher taxes are their anathema. Tough. I hope they are enjoying their private jets.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-VA, is an inveterate enemy of investment taxes. He seems to be more sympathetic toward big corporations. His wife was a former Goldman Sachs vice president.

Where are these rich Republicans riding the gravy train, who are supposedly creating new jobs and helping the country get back on its feet?

Why would anyone in this country vote Republican this time around when they have the power to say no? This is a chance to tell the powers that be - specifically the ones who could care less if those below the poverty line have grown to big numbers - that we are fed up.

The Democrats hold the high ground in terms of protecting the American people. They have already given up too much.

Failure to raise the debt ceiling limit will not only affect America's economy, but it will negatively impact the global economy as well.

Does Congress realize the suffering it will cause if they fail to act? Where are the peoples' representatives? Do they care?
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Why Hasn't Bush Been Charged As A War Criminal?
By James Donahue

When President George W. Bush stepped down from office in January, 2009, we truly expected to read of warrants issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, charging Mr. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA director George Tenent, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice and former attorney generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales with war crimes.

These people fabricated stories linking Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to the 911 attacks against the United States, having an association with the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda, and conspiring to build a nuclear arsenal. The stories were used to justify an invasion of Iraq that led to the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, the arrest and hanging of Hussein, and the open practice of torture of captured prisoners being held in secret detention camps, many without formal charges.

Another war launched against the nation of Afghanistan, because that country was harboring Al-Qaeda terrorists at the time of the 911 attacks, also was questionable. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. Yet the Afghanistan people have died by the thousands from American and allied bombing and ground assaults. Our invasion of Afghanistan has provoked a war against another Islamic group, the Taliban, which had nothing to do with 911. The Taliban only wants the United States to leave Afghanistan and go home.

To date over 6,100 American soldiers have died in these two invasions. Thousands more have returned home maimed and mentally impaired from war injuries. The cost of the wars to date has been over $1.2 trillion and the debt is still rising at an alarming rate.

So why hasn't Mr. Bush and the Washington gang that started this mess been held accountable? There are several reasons that we can see. The Obama Administration has chosen to ignore the criminal acts committed by the previous administration. Mr. Obama announced after taking office that he believed it was "time for reflection, not retribution." He said he would not seek to prosecute any Bush Administration officials for their actions.

Both Obama, who is a lawyer, and Attorney General Eric Holder, appear to be ignoring the War Crimes Act of 1996, which passed both houses by unanimous vote, that make it a federal crime to commit a "grave breach" of the Geneva Convention. This includes the deliberate killing, torture or inhuman treatment of detainees during a time of war. Is this because the acts of torture are still being committed? Several nations of the world, most recently Switzerland and Spain, have formally filed criminal charges against Bush, Cheney and members of the Bush staff for acts committed in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The United Nations, however, has not picked up on the movement. Consequently the accusations by foreign nations carry no weight in national or American courts.

So why hasn't the International Criminal Court gotten involved? This court, established in July 1998 and opened July 1, 2002, has been ratified by 60 nations. A total of 120 states were involved in its creation. The Bush Administration chose not to participate so the United States is not among them. Consequently the court has no jurisdiction over United States leaders who commit international criminal acts.

The final reason Mr. Bush appears to be running free is that the United States seems to be playing the role of a world bully. Our leadership appears to have a double standard for morality. We demand that the leaders of the other nations of the world behave under standards established by international rules of conduct. But we act as if the rules, including those established by our own government, do not apply to ourselves.

Efforts to correct this injustice have been going on behind the scenes, however. Earlier in July, Human Rights Watch released a report calling for a criminal investigation into the actions of Mr. Bush and members of his staff. The report admonishes the Bush Administration for permitting the use of torture, sending suspects to secret CIA prisons, and transferring them to countries where they were tortured by foreign governments, beginning after 911.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of the group, noted that "the U. S. government's pattern of abuse across several countries . . . resulted from decisions made by senior U. S. officials to bend, ignore, or cast the rules aside."

Sadly, little appears to have changed since Mr. Obama moved into the White House. If Obama and Holder choose to ignore the Bush era crimes, it suggests that the door remains open for a continuation of even more criminal behavior under the current administration.

"President Obama has treated torture as an unfortunate policy choice rather than a crime," said Roth. "His decision to end abusive interrogation practices will remain easily reversible unless the legal prohibition against torture is clearly reestablished." Kenneth Roth, is the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






Semantic Propaganda Feeds Stupidity
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

We would already have had a much needed American revolution in response to the tyranny of the money-fed two-party plutocracy that is destroying the middle class except for one big problem: so much of the American population is just plain stupid. Too stupid to behave like angry Greeks and rise up in the streets to rebel against the dysfunctional government.

In the never ending fight of Republicans and their cancerous (make that stupid) Tea Party members to gain even more control of the US political system, economy and culture they have fixed on another semantic weapon. The latest attack on intelligence is the constant use of the term job creators in place of words like the rich or wealthy. Not just plain Republicans in Congress are doing this, but especially the large crop of Republican presidential candidates.

This bit of cleverness surely was deemed necessary because much of the nation was beginning to appreciate the class warfare going on. Rising economic inequality, unemployment set in concrete, and merging of the middle class into the poverty stricken lower class were all becoming clearer.

Keep this in mind: As Zuckerman pointed out, the US "experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment." Business sectors have discovered that they can maximize profits with smaller US work forces; they export jobs and their capital investments. And they benefit from all kinds of tax loopholes protected by Republicans so that they pay very little if any US taxes.

A terrific new article by Jeff Reeves makes the case that unemployment will actually rise to over 10 percent, because of anticipated layoffs in the financial, technology, and aerospace and defense sectors. The data are compelling. All this despite high profits.

Apple is sitting on an amazing $76 BILLION in cash. Other than understanding that people are paying too much for their products, just imagine if they invested a big fraction of that on moving manufacturing of its products from foreign countries to the US. An enormous number of good jobs could be created here.

What were Republicans to do, especially as they used the current crisis surrounding the need to raise the national debt limit to seek huge cuts in federal spending affecting ordinary Americans and prevent higher taxes for the greedy rich and corporate forces?

What better way than to falsely claim and constantly presume that those that should be paying higher taxes are exactly the ones who create jobs and that they would not do so if hit by higher taxes. In truth, this is a bold lie. The richest Americans have been paying the lowest taxes in many decades and corporate profits have been enormous, and this reality has clearly had absolutely no positive impact on the unemployment and underemployment plaguing at least 30 million Americans and their family members.

Go back to the post-World War II era when the richest Americans paid very high taxes and you discover that jobs and fairly distributed wealth were created in abundance.

Neither wealth nor jobs trickle down from the Upper Class. Proper government policies are required to prevent criminally large fractions of the nation's wealth going to the most greedy and selfish elites. Those NOT rich that support Republicans are very stupid; they have been brainwashed by the steady stream of Republican lies and propaganda that are used to serve the rich and corporate interests sustaining Republicans with much money. The return on their investment has proven more than adequate to justify their endless input of money to Republicans.

We probably will soon see President Obama cave in and giver Republicans much of what they want. There will be major cuts in federal programs that will place millions of Americans in even more precarious economic uncertainty and pain. And there will probably be far too little increases in taxes on the rich and corporations. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security may all be cut in ways that harm many people.

Lies are constantly being fed to the public. Will you be smart enough to see them for what they are? The more you face this ugly, disturbing reality, the more embarrassed you will be about the US political system and, hopefully, the more inclined you will be to stop voting for any Republicans or Democrats and participating in our delusional democracy.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.







Ideological Inebriation On Capitol Hill
By Ralph Nader

Legislating while under the influence of ideological inebriation is not yet a statutory offense. It is only a multi-directional menace to much of what anxious Americans hold dear for themselves and their children.

The dominant Republicans in Congress - both the new and many of the longer-term incumbents - are in heat. It is as if a mob psychology has seized them, starved them of facts, and deprived them of reality. Their chief mad dog is Eric Cantor - he of the sneering soundbites so memorably described in a recent Washington Post column by Dana Milbank.

Cantor is the big burr under Speaker John Boehner's saddle; Boehner himself is terrified of the young fanatic from Virginia and the even younger fanatics elected in 2010 on the Tea Party wave. The Republicans have suckered President Obama into a game of chicken, but fanatic Republicans don't blink. Why not raise the nation's debt limit to pay for debts already incurred by Congressional appropriations, as has been routinely done nearly 60 times since the 1930s? "No way!" say the self-styled Tea Partiers.

Polls show that 70 percent of Republicans believe that, along with spending cuts, there need to be some tax increases for more revenue. Nearly half of people polled back home who called themselves Tea Party people even agree.

So what gives with these hard core Tea Partiers behind Cantor? First, it seems they're having fun just hypocritically shaking up Washington on spending while pushing for funding their own pet projects back home, like Republican Steve Fincher's (R-TN) Port of Cates Landing project. The Republicans are having fun with a spineless President Obama who already has given them 80 percent of what they want and seems ready to slip further into their budgetary abyss. Bill Curry, former special assistant to President Clinton, says it isn't that Obama is spineless; it is that he is closer to his opponents in his real beliefs than his liberal/progressive supporters like to think.

They're having fun because many of the House Republican freshmen class don't care about being re-elected if the price is to adopt the old ways of despised Washington. Yet, they are raising campaign money vigorously in the old Washington ways.

Still, most of the newly-elected Republicans are upper-middle-class, come from successful small businesses or professional firms and don't empathize with tens of millions of impoverished or heavily indebted Americans.

It's fun being the center of attention, holding hostage small health and safety budgets such as food safety, auto/truck safety, air and water safety, and needy children's programs, while giving a pass to massively bloated military spending and very profitable corporations like General Electric that pay no federal income taxes.

It's fun going back to the country clubs where the wealthy undertaxed slap them on the back and exclaim, "Way to go, Congressman." After all, the wealthy are paying the lowest rates of taxation, especially on their capital gains and dividends, in modern American history.

Conservative columnist, David Brooks, is not amused with them. He thinks the Republican Party has gotten far more than they envisioned at the beginning of the negotiations with Obama and should take this "mother of all no brainers." That they do not, says Brooks, is because the "Republican Party may no longer be a normal party," but is "infected by a faction that is more psychological protest than a practical governing alternative." He sees this dominant faction as having "no sense of moral decency," having "no economic theory worthy of the name."

The latter is certainly true. For if they are really against Big Government, why aren't they cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, subsidies, handouts and giveaways or gigantic Pentagon over-spending and waste, or enabling federal law enforcement to crack down on corporate crime that is looting Medicare, Medicaid, royalty collections and violating pro-competition laws?

Arrogant fanatics tend to outsmart themselves. Already, 470 business leaders have written Congress urging it to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a financial crisis, along with spending restraints. More than a few of these leaders, Republicans or not, think the Tea Party faction on Capitol Hill is nuts and playing Russian roulette with the American economy. The Senate rules don't help, allowing a minority party to control the Senate.

These fanatical Republicans are playing another game of Russian roulette with their own Party's electoral future. The polls are starting to turn ominously against them. Wait until October when the cuts hit Main Street and Elm Street. Back home, most Republican voters want tax increases, probably on the wealthy and corporations, as part of negotiating a deal. The critical independent vote is starting to turn away from this extremism on Capitol Hill.

The Republican faction that David Brooks is so appalled by may well destroy the Republican Party's chances for electoral victory through and well beyond 2012.

Who said the Tea Party takeover has no redeeming value? (c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.







Obama Is NOT "Caving" To Corporate Interests
By Jeff Cohen

In a campaign almost as frenzied as the effort to get Barack Obama into the White House, liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White House and reported deals that would cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. They accuse President Obama of being weak and willing to "cave" to corporate and conservative forces bent on cutting the social safety net while protecting the wealthy.

Those accusations are wrong.

The accusations imply that Obama is on our side. Or was on our side. And that the right wing is pushing him around.

But the evidence is clear that Obama is an often-willing servant of corporate interests -- not someone reluctantly doing their bidding, or serving their interests only because Republicans forced him to.

Since coming to Washington, Obama has allied himself with Wall Street Democrats who put corporate deregulation and greed ahead of the needs of most Americans.

** In 2006, a relatively new Senator Obama was the only senator to speak at the inaugural gathering of the Alexander Hamilton Project launched by Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, Bill Clinton's treasury secretary and deputy secretary. Obama praised them as "innovative, thoughtful policymakers." (It was Rubin's crusade to deregulate Wall Street in the late '90s that led directly to the economic meltdown of 2008 and our current crisis.)

** In early 2007, way before he was a presidential frontrunner, candidate Obama was raising more money from Wall Street interests than all other candidates, including New York presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

** In June 2008, as soon as Hillary ended her campaign, Obama went on CNBC, shunned the "populist" label and announced: "Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market." He packed his economic team with Wall Street friends -- choosing one of Bill Clinton's Wall Street deregulators, Larry Summers, as his top economic advisor.

** A year into his presidency, in a bizarre but revealing interview with Business Week, Obama was asked about huge bonuses just received by two CEOs of Wall Street firms bailed out by taxpayers. He responded that he didn't "begrudge" the $17 million bonus to J.P. Mogan's CEO or the $9 million to Goldman Sachs' CEO: "I know both those guys, they are very savvy businessmen," said Obama. "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system."

After any review of Obama's corporatist ties and positions, the kneejerk response is: "Yes, but Obama was a community organizer!"

He WAS a community organizer. . .decades before he became president. Back when Nelson Mandela was in prison and the U.S. government declared him the leader of a "terrorist organization" while our government funded and armed Bin Laden and his allies to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. That's a long time ago.

It's worth remembering that decades before Reagan became president, the great communicator was a leftwing Democrat and advocate for the working class and big federal social programs.

The sad truth, as shown by Glenn Greenwald, is that Obama had arrived at the White House looking to make cuts in benefits to the elderly. Two weeks before his inauguration, Obama echoed conservative scares about Social Security and Medicare by talking of "red ink as far as the eye can see." He opened his doors to Social Security/Medicare cutters -- first trying to get Republican Senator Judd Gregg ("a leading voice for reining in entitlement spending," wrote Politico) into his cabinet, and later appointing entitlement-foe Alan Simpson to co-chair his "Deficit Commission." Obama's top economic advisor, Larry Summers, came to the White House publicly telling Time magazine of needed Social Security cuts.

At this late date, informed activists and voters who care about economic justice realize that President Obama is NOT "on our side."

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- widely seen as "America's Senator" -- is so disgusted by recent White House actions that he called Friday for a challenge to Obama in Democratic primaries: "I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition."

Although Sanders has said clearly that he's running for reelection to the senate in 2012 – not for president -- his comment led instantly to a Draft Sanders for President website.

Imagine if a credible candidate immediately threatened a primary challenge unless Obama rejects any deal cutting the safety net while maintaining tax breaks for the rich. Team Obama knows that a serious primary challenger would cost the Obama campaign millions of dollars. And it may well be a powerful movement-building opportunity for activists tired of feeling hopeless with Obama.

It's time for progressives to talk seriously about a challenge to Obama's corporatism. Polls show most Americans support economic justice issues, and that goes double for Democratic primary voters.

If not Bernie, who? If not now, when?
© 2011 Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media - and a cofounder of the online action group, www.RootsAction.org.







Messing With Medicare
By Paul Krugman

At the time of writing, President Obama's hoped-for "Grand Bargain" with Republicans is apparently dead. And I say good riddance. I'm no more eager than other rational people (a category that fails to include many Congressional Republicans) to see what happens if the debt limit isn't raised. But what the president was offering to the G.O.P., especially on Medicare, was a very bad deal for America.

Specifically, according to many reports, the president offered both means-testing of Medicare benefits and a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. The first would be bad policy; the second would be terrible policy. And it would almost surely be terrible politics, too.

The crucial thing to remember, when we talk about Medicare, is that our goal isn't, or at least shouldn't be, defined in terms of some arbitrary number. Our goal should be, instead, to give Americans the health care they need at a price the country can afford. And throwing Americans in their mid-60s off Medicare moves us away from that goal, not toward it.

For Medicare, with all its flaws, works better than private insurance. It has less bureaucracy and, hence, lower administrative costs than private insurers. It has been more successful in controlling costs. While Medicare expenses per beneficiary have soared over the past 40 years, they've risen significantly less than private insurance premiums. And since Medicare-type systems in other advanced countries have much lower costs than the uniquely privatized U.S. system, there's good reason to believe that Medicare reform can do a lot to control costs in the future.

In that case, you may ask, why didn't the 2010 health care reform simply extend Medicare to cover everyone? The answer, of course, is political realism. Most health reformers I know would have supported Medicare for all if they had considered it politically feasible. But given the power of the insurance lobby and the knee-jerk opposition of many politicians to any expansion of government, they settled for what they thought they could actually get: near-universal coverage through a system of regulation and subsidies. It is, however, one thing to accept a second-best system insuring those who currently lack coverage. Throwing millions of Americans off Medicare and pushing them into the arms of private insurers is another story.

Also, did I mention that Republicans are doing all they can to undermine health care reform - they even tried to undermine it as part of the debt negotiations - and may eventually succeed? If they do, many of those losing Medicare coverage would find themselves unable to replace it.

So raising the Medicare age is a terrible idea. Means-testing - reducing benefits for wealthier Americans - isn't equally bad, but it's still poor policy.

It's true that Medicare expenses could be reduced by requiring high-income Americans to pay higher premiums, higher co-payments, etc. But why not simply raise taxes on high incomes instead? This would have the great virtue of not adding another layer of bureaucracy by requiring that Medicare establish financial status before paying medical bills.

But, you may say, raising taxes would reduce incentives to work and create wealth. Well, so would means-testing: As conservative economists love to point out in other contexts - for example, when criticizing programs like food stamps - benefits that fall as your income rises in effect raise your marginal tax rate. It doesn't matter whether the government raises your taxes by $1,000 when your income rises or cuts your benefits by the same amount; either way, it reduces the fraction of your additional earnings that you get to keep.

So what's the difference between means-testing Medicare and raising taxes? Well, the truly rich would prefer means-testing, since they would end up sacrificing no more than the merely well-off. But everyone else should prefer a tax-based solution.

So why is the president embracing these bad policy ideas? In a forthcoming article in The New York Review of Books, the veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew suggests that members of the White House political team saw the 2010 election as a referendum on government spending and that they believe that cutting spending is the way to win next year.

If so, I would respectfully suggest that they are out of their minds. Remember death panels? The G.O.P.'s most potent political weapon last year - the weapon that caused a large swing in the votes of older Americans - was the claim that Mr. Obama was cutting Medicare. Why give Republicans a chance to do it all over again?

Of course, it's possible that the reason the president is offering to undermine Medicare is that he genuinely believes that this would be a good idea. And that possibility, I have to say, is what really scares me.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
~~~ Noam Chomsky









Fundamentalism Kills
By Chris Hedges

The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik. This filth has poisoned and degraded our civil discourse. The looming economic and environmental collapse will provide sparks and tinder to transform this coarse language of fundamentalist hatred into, I fear, the murderous rampages experienced by Norway. I worry more about the Anders Breiviks than the Mohammed Attas.

The battle under way in America is not between religion and science. It is not between those who embrace the rational and those who believe in biblical myth. It is not between Western civilization and Islam. The blustering televangelists and the New Atheists, the television pundits and our vaunted Middle East specialists and experts, are all part of our vast, simplistic culture of mindless entertainment. They are in show business. They cannot afford complexity. Religion and science, facts and lies, truth and fiction, are the least of their concerns. They trade insults and clichés like cartoon characters. They don masks. One wears the mask of religion. One wears the mask of science. One wears the mask of journalism. One wears the mask of the terrorism expert. They jab back and forth in predictable sound bites. It is a sterile and useless debate between bizarre subsets of American culture. Some use the scientific theory of evolution to explain the behavior and rules for complex social and political systems, and others insist that the six-day creation story in Genesis is a factual account. The danger we face is not in the quarrel between religion advocates and evolution advocates, but in the widespread mental habit of fundamentalism itself.

We live in a fundamentalist culture. Our utopian visions of inevitable human progress, obsession with endless consumption, and fetish for power and unlimited growth are fed by illusions that are as dangerous as fantasies about the Second Coming. These beliefs are the newest expression of the infatuation with the apocalypse, one first articulated to Western culture by the early church. This apocalyptic vision was as central to the murderous beliefs of the French Jacobins, the Russian Bolsheviks and the German fascists as it was to the early Christians. The historian Arnold Toynbee argues that racism in Anglo-American culture was given a special virulence after the publication of the King James Bible. The concept of "the chosen people" was quickly adopted, he wrote, by British and American imperialists. It fed the disease of white supremacy. It gave them the moral sanction to dominate and destroy other races, from the Native Americans to those on the subcontinent.

Our secular and religious fundamentalists come out of this twisted yearning for the apocalypse and belief in the "chosen people." They advocate, in the language of religion and scientific rationalism, the divine right of our domination, the clash of civilizations. They assure us that we are headed into the broad, uplifting world of universal democracy and a global free market once we sign on for the subjugation and extermination of those who oppose us. They insist-as the fascists and the communists did-that this call for a new world is based on reason, factual evidence and science or divine will. But schemes for universal human advancement, no matter what language is used to justify them, are always mythic. They are designed to satisfy a yearning for meaning and purpose. They give the proponents of these myths the status of soothsayers and prophets. And, when acted upon, they fill the Earth with mass graves, bombed cities, widespread misery and penal colonies. The extent of this fundamentalism is evident in the strident utterances of the Christian right as well as those of the so-called New Atheists.

"What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry?" Sam Harris, in his book "The End of Faith," asks in a passage that I suspect Breivik would have enjoyed. "If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime-as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day-but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe."

"We are at war with Islam," Harris goes on. "It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked' by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and teachings of the Prophet."

Harris assures us that "the Koran mandates such hatred," that "the problem is with Islam itself." He writes that "Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death."

A culture that exalts its own moral certitude and engages in uncritical self-worship at the expense of conscience commits moral and finally physical suicide. Our fundamentalists busy themselves with their pathetic little monuments to Jesus, to reason, to science, to Western civilization and to new imperial glory. They peddle a binary view of the world that divides reality between black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. We are taught in a fundamentalist culture to view other human beings, especially Muslims, not as ends but as means. We abrogate the right to exterminate all who do not conform.

Fundamentalists have no interest in history, culture or social or linguistic differences. They are a remarkably uncurious, self-satisfied group. Anything outside their own narrow bourgeois life, petty concerns and physical comforts bores them. They are provincials. They do not investigate or seek to understand the endemic flaws in human nature. The only thing that matters is the coming salvation of humanity, or at least that segment of humanity they deem worthy of salvation. They peddle a route to assured collective deliverance. And they sanction violence and the physical extermination of other human beings to get there.

All fundamentalists worship the same gods-themselves. They worship the future prospect of their own empowerment. They view this empowerment as a necessity for the advancement and protection of civilization or the Christian state. They sanctify the nation. They hold up the ability the industrial state has handed to them as a group and as individuals to shape the world according to their vision as evidence of their own superiority. Fundamentalists express the frustrations of a myopic and morally stunted middle class. They cling, under their religious or scientific veneer, to the worst values of the petite bourgeois. They are suburban mutations, products of an American landscape that has been perverted by a destruction of community and a long and successful war against complex thought. The self-absorbed worldview of these fundamentalists brings smiles of indulgence from the corporatists who profit, at our expense, from the obliteration of moral and intellectual inquiry.

Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's "Ulysses" acidly condemned all schemes to purify the world and serve human progress through violence. He said that "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Dedalus in the same passage responded to the schoolmaster Deasy's claim that "the ways of the Creator are not our ways," and that "all history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God." A soccer goal is jubilantly scored by boys in the yard outside the school window as Deasy expounds on divine will. God, Dedalus tells Deasy as the players yell in glee over the goal, is no more than the screams from the schoolyard -"a shout in the street." Joyce, like Samuel Beckett, excoriated the Western belief in historical teleology-the notion that history has a purpose or is moving toward a goal. The absurdity of this belief, they wrote, always feeds fanatics and undermines the possibility of human community. These writers warned us about all those-religious and secular-who call for salvation through history.

There are tens of millions of Americans who in their desperation and insecurity yearn for the assurance and empowerment offered by a clearly defined war against an external evil. They are taught in our fundamentalist culture that this evil is the root of their misery. They embrace a war against this evil as a solution to the drift in their lives, their economic deprivation and the moral and economic morass of the nation. They see in this conflict with these dark forces a way to overcome their own alienation. They find in it certitude, meaning and structure. They believe that once this evil is vanquished, an evil that extends from Muslims to undocumented workers, liberals, intellectuals, homosexuals and feminists, they can transform America into a land of plenty and virtue. But this fundamentalism, which cloaks itself in the jargon of scientific rationality, Christian piety and nativism, is a recipe for fanaticism. All those who embrace other ways of being and believing are viewed, as Breivik apparently viewed his victims, as contaminates that must be eliminated.

This fundamentalist ideology, because it is contradictory and filled with myth, is immune to critiques based on reason, fact and logic. This is part of its appeal. It obliterates doubt, nuance, intellectual and scientific rigor and moral conscience. All has been predicted or decided. Life is reduced to following a simple black-and-white road map. The contradictions in these belief systems-for example the championing of the "rights of the unborn" while calling for wider use of the death penalty or the damning of Muslim terrorists while promoting pre-emptive war, which delivers more death and misery in the Middle East than any jihadist organization-inoculate followers from rational discourse. Life becomes a crusade.

All fundamentalists, religious and secular, are ignoramuses. They follow the lines of least resistance. They already know what is true and what is untrue. They do not need to challenge their own beliefs or investigate the beliefs of others. They do not need to bother with the hard and laborious work of religious, linguistic, historical and cultural understanding. They do not need to engage in self-criticism or self-reflection. It spoils the game. It ruins the entertainment. They see all people, and especially themselves, as clearly and starkly defined. The world is divided into those who embrace or reject their belief systems. Those who support these belief systems are good and forces for human progress. Those who oppose these belief systems are stupid, at best, and usually evil. Fundamentalists have no interest in real debate, real dialogue, real intellectual thought. Fundamentalism, at its core, is about self-worship. It is about feeling holier, smarter and more powerful than everyone else. And this comes directly out of the sickness of our advertising age and its exaltation of the cult of the self. It is a product of our deep and unreflective cultural narcissism.

Our faith in the inevitability of human progress constitutes an inability to grasp the tragic nature of history. Human history is one of constant conflict between the will to power and the will to nurture and protect life. Our greatest achievements are always intertwined with our greatest failures. Our most exalted accomplishments are always coupled with our most egregious barbarities. Science and industry serve as instruments of progress as well as instruments of destruction. The Industrial Age has provided feats of engineering and technology, yet it has also destroyed community, spread the plague of urbanization, uprooted us all, turned human beings into cogs and made possible the total war and wholesale industrial killing that has marked the last century. These technologies, even as we see them as our salvation, are rapidly destroying the ecosystem on which we depend for life.

There is no linear movement in history. Morality and ethics are static. Human nature does not change. Barbarism is part of the human condition and we can all succumb to its basest dimensions. This is the tragedy of history. Human will is morally ambiguous. The freedom to act as often results in the construction of new prisons and systems of repression as it does the safeguarding of universal human rights. The competing forces of love and of power define us, what Sigmund Freud termed Eros and Thanatos. Societies have, throughout history, ignored calls for altruism and mutuality in times of social upheaval and turmoil. They have wasted their freedom in the self-destructive urges that currently envelope us. These urges are very human and very dangerous. They are fired by utopian visions of inevitable human progress. When this progress stalls or is reversed, when the dreams of advancement and financial stability are thwarted, when a people confronts its own inevitable downward spiral, dark forces of vengeance and retribution are unleashed. Fundamentalists serve an evil that is unseen and unexamined. And the longer this evil is ignored the more dangerous and deadly it becomes. Those who seek through violence the Garden of Eden usher in the apocalypse.
(c) 2011 Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, spent seven years in the Middle East. He was part of the paper's team of reporters who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism. He is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His latest book is, ""Death Of The Liberal Class."







Prison Slave Labor
By Margaret Kimberley

Michelle Alexander's ground breaking book, The New Jim Crow, is an outstanding expose of the horrors of America's criminal justice system that are perpetrated against black people. It is well documented proof of what many have long observed, that get tough policies on drug enforcement and "three strikes" laws are targeted towards the masses of often non-violent black Americans and are used to make money for private entities and for all levels of government.

The penitentiary manufactured license plate was long ago joined by more sophisticated methods of exploitation. Prisoners not only work in a variety of jobs without compensation, but are often fined and forced to pay for their incarceration. Obviously they end their sentences owing money and are permanent debtors, susceptible to be consumed by the system again and again.

Recent events indicate a new level of horror in the planning stages. The prison and jail system is perfecting its methods of extracting free labor. Perhaps the system ought to be called the new slavery.

In the state of Georgia, a recently enacted law targeting undocumented workers was deemed insufficiently evil and needed the addition of greater exploitation of people of color. The new legislation allows police to profile brown skinned people and also makes it illegal for the undocumented to work, to be housed, or even to be transported. But as in the rest of the country, Georgia's agricultural work force is comprised almost completely of undocumented migrant workers. Having chased these people away, the state was at a loss as to how to keep its farms afloat after their labor force fled.

The solution to the conundrum was simple but leads to a slippery slope which invites further abuse in an already inherently abusive situation. The state offered to pay probationers to do the farm work instead. The experiment drew a few desperate people, who did not have the wherewithal, knowledge or training needed to harvest crops in the midst of a heat wave.

The plan may have initially failed, but the setback is surely only temporary and the trend towards normalizing labor exploitation is being perfected and honed to make it more successful in many parts of the country. In Racine county, Wisconsin, the evisceration of public employee union rights has spawned an effort to give jobs that were once reserved for union employees to prisoners instead. These prisoners would not be paid with money, they would only earn the right to reduce their sentences. The public union collective bargaining contracts that are now null and void had barred the state from this practice. The right wing have figured out how to kill two birds with one stone. In one fell swoop, public unions were decimated and prisoners will be subject to greater exploitation.

It is difficult to fight against the diminution of rights of persons who are incarcerated or otherwise under judicial supervision. The average American has been given a steady does of fear related to crime, even as crime rates have fallen. The racism which equates criminality with black people makes it all the more easy to continue the rates of incarceration which mark victims with lifetimes of unemployment, loss of voting rights, and even the loss of the right to live in certain places.

Black Americans can be just as susceptible to the appeals to fear and self-loathing. We are afraid too, and don't want to be associated with people who are labeled and stigmatized as deserving of endless punishment, including the punishment of working for nothing. The ability to advocate for the rights of prisoners is therefore a difficult one, with few natural allies other than the incarcerated themselves.

However, it is necessary to persevere before these new schemes gain a stronger foothold. The mania to save government dollars and the American propensity to punish and permanently criminalize vast numbers of black people will combine to make these new policies extremely popular. The prison system is already highly profitable, and any means of making more money will have a high level of appeal for politicians and for the public too.

The United States now has more individuals under the control of the criminal justice system than any other country on earth. Dictatorships universally condemned as "evil" don't put as many people behind bars as the United States does. It is but one sign of America's decline and inevitable demise as a democratic nation. The hunger to exploit and debase people of color is like other injustices. They will be resurrected and they will multiply unless there is a commitment to prevent that from happening.
© 2011 Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.Com.





The Dead Letter Office...






Heil Obama,

Dear Richter Harrell,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your threatening to send people to jail for 75 years for recording audio and video of police in the streets or a judge in a court room based on your warped interpretation of existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 09-05-2011. We salute you Frau Harrell, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Obama's Compromising Stirs Talk Of Dem Primary Challenge; Bernie Sanders Says It's A 'Good Idea'
By John Nichols

At a recent gathering with liberal Democrats and progressive independents in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Obama's home state of Illinois, I have been struck by the extent of the frustration with the president is growing. There has always been a good deal of griping about Obama's maintenance of the Bush administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-and his decision to launch a new fight with Libya-as well as compromises on issues ranging from health-care reform to regulation of Wall Street, but this is different. As Obama has seemed to abandon a commitment to preserve Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, anger with the president has become dramatically more widespread.

A new CNN/ORC International Poll confirms the phenomenon. The number of Americans who say they disapprove of the president's performance because he is not liberal enough has doubled since May. "Drill down into that number and you'll see signs of a stirring discontent on the left," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland, who explains that, "Obama's approval rating among liberals has dropped to the lowest point in his presidency, and roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of him say they feel that way because he has not been liberal enough, a new high for that measure."

The number of Democrats who say Obama should face a primary challenge in 2012 is growing, with almost a quarter of party backers urveyed by CNN refusing to say they thought the president should be renominated.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, gave voice to that sentiment Friday during a regular appearance on Thom Hartmann's popular national radio show. When a caller who expressed frustration with Obama's apparent willingness to accept cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Sanders said: "Discouragement is not an option. I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition."

Sanders explained: "Let me just suggest this: I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president, who believe that with regard to Social Security and other things, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president-who cannot believe how weak he has been for whatever reason in negotiating with Republicans, and there's deep disappointment. So my suggestion is: I think one of the reasons the president has made the move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama believes he's doing."

Sanders says Obama's weak approach to negotiations with Republicans with regard to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and tax cuts for the rich has caused him to "give thought" to encouraging a progressive Democrat to mount such a challenge.

That led to immediate talk about the prospect that Sanders might mount a primary challenge. That won't happen. Sanders is not a Democrat. Besides, he is busy running for reelection in Vermont in 2012.

When Sanders said in March that "if a progressive Democrat wants to run, I think it would enliven the debate, raise some issues," he explained that: "I've been asked whether I am going to do that. I'm not. I don't know who is, but in a democracy, it's not a bad idea to have different voices out there."

No other "name" Democrat has, so far, engaged in a public discussion about making a primary run against the president.

There is some organizing on the ground among Democrats who would, at the very least, like to use Democratic caucuses and primaries to send a message to Obama. Antiwar Democrats in Iowa have talked up the prospect of a challenge in the state where the Democratic nominating process begins with caucuses that attract the party's most activist base. There have also been stirrings in the District of Columbia, where resentment over Obama's failure to defend the interests of the nation's capitol is running high.

But those initiatives aim more toward getting the president's attention and shaking up a complacent national party, perhaps by asking caucus and primary voters to send uncommitted delegates-as opposed to committed Obama backers-to next year's Democratic National Convention. Uncommitted delegates, at the least, could generate platform fights and pressure the president's team on particular issues.

Even this project could be a tough one, however, as the nominating process is largely controlled by Obama operatives, who have already been working the schedule and putting in place structural supports for the president's reelection run. Obama's team is looking at the caucuses and primaries as tools to build enthusiasm for the president's fall reelection campaign against the Republican nominee.

But if they are serious about that fall campaign, they are going to need to recognize and respond to the disenchantment among Democratic activists whose enthusiasm level will decide the fate of Obama's 2012 campaign. Even if there is no primary challenge, Obama must reconnect with liberal Democrats and progressive independents if he hopes to be reelected. And he will not do so by cutting a deal with Republicans to cut Democratic "legacy programs" such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







There and Back Again
Sobering thoughts about the Nuclear Madness we all face
By Vincent L. Guarisco

"Things do not change; we change." ~~~ Henry David Thoreau

When I go down the beaten path of memory lane and revisit all the hurdles my family went through in our life-long participation with the anti-nuclear movement, my breath become fast and quick. But when I think about the future in terms of where we're headed today, I feel like I have no breath left in me. Big difference. The proliferation of today's wide-open nuclear nuthatch is a godforsaken sore that never really healed for many of us who have fought the good battle. I'm not going to candy coat this, so listen up -the multiple reactor meltdowns at Japan's Daiichi's Nuclear Power Plant are a global killer, but it may not be the worst disaster we have to face. I am the offspring of an Atomic Veteran who's been there and back again. I offer this essay as a sober testament of truth as an activist that will continue to fight the tyrannical nuclear industry tooth and nail, or until my last breath is drawn. But I might as well get the bad news out of the way first, I'm sorry to report that after all the hard effort; we may have only prolonged the inevitable...

In continuing, many years ago at the beginning of his journey, my father knew all too well how shrewd people can be. And rightfully so, he was used as a guinea pig in Uncle Sam's nuclear weapons testing program that for him, produced a lifetime of activism. For me, having an atomic veteran father has been a wellspring of lessons, because I too have born witness to the many ostensive lies told by those who do not give it a second thought to kill anybody with impunity -- to play God -- for the glory of power and profit.

Indeed, without the slightest care for the sanctity of human life, the uncaring nuclear industrial complex, along with their enablers disguised as our protectors -- the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA), The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), etc. has callously allowed millions of people to die with no remorse or guilt. Let's be clear -- It makes little or no difference if exposure comes from an "atomic warhead" or from a "nuclear reactor meltdown," the end result is the same -- people horribly suffer and die. And just like the world revolution that's currently being waged around the globe with hardly a whisper in mainstream media, it will not be televised or reported. In war, you must first recognize your enemy before you can fight. Well, we the people are on our own because the enemy is within, and powerful.

During the cold war era, people like my father thought the nuclear arms race and/or atomic bombs would be our ultimate demise. Remember the 2000 classic, "On The Beach." Check it out. I noticed the networks let that little jewel fall down the memory hole. And although that threat will always be a viable concern, it's woefully apparent that after we split of the atom; then insanely decided to build nuclear power plants on coastlines and fault lines, was after all . . . not such a good idea for mankind. In fact, I'm guessing that Einstein's "theory of relativity" can now be applied to man's nuclear karma? Yes, "what goes up must come down." Just as surely as "what goes into the atmosphere is later ingested." And although we may be treated like "cockroaches" by our government, sorry folks -- we're not "radiation resilient" like they are.

Thus, from the birth of the Manhattan Project, to Mother's Nature's ability to (((shake the planet))), we made some really poor choices in how we power-up our cities & towns. I ask you this; did we create the radioactive embryo of our ionizing end-game? Hmmm... .

I think we're all savvy enough to understand our planet is going through some major geological changes. And when we consider the many 2012 scenarios which include scientific proof of planetary alignments, a magnetic pole reversal, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, it's damn right scary what effect all this will have on our infrastructure and our well being! If a big major earthquake (like the 9.0 that hit Japan) hit us, we have at least two nuclear plants sitting on the Pacific "Ring of Fire." Thus, we could quickly find ourselves in a similar situation (here in the U.S.) if mass amounts of radiation is released into our local atmosphere. Like an evil invisible fairy-dust, it would quickly overwhelm us. Well, I can only add -- the effects would be truly "radiating" to say the least.

In keeping it real. Radiation and human health are not friendly co-companions. Exposure attacks the human body at its most basic level -cell structure. Cells carry out the vital functions necessary to sustain and develop all living creatures. Over ten trillion cells make up the human body. The cell takes in food, gets rid of waste, produces protein vital to life, and reproduces itself. Just as all living things are made up of cells, so every new cell is produced from another cell. Thus, the nature of the cell is determined by the genetic material in its nucleus. Genetic "coding" is extremely complex. In brief, our DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is tightly coiled in the forty-six chromosomes, which are stored in the cell nucleus. Surrounding the nucleus is the cytoplasm, the "factory" that carries out the directions of the DNA intelligence center. It is the whole of this cell mechanism -cell wall, cytoplasm, and nucleus -that forms the bases of human life.

When a radioactive particle or ray strikes a cell, a lot can happen. Worst of all: it can damage a cell in such a way that the damage is repeated when the cell divides. Think about that last paragraph for a minute....once DNA is damaged; distorted messages can be transmitted to the cell and passed on through reproduction. Thus thousands of mutated clone cells can reproduce themselves, forming the basis for tumors which in turn -devastates the body system multiplying millions of damaged cells that can later become cancerous. Radiation is also well known for destroying the body's immune system. In simple terms, we get screwed on two fronts: The body gets jacked and then disabled so it can't repair itself.

The most vulnerable is the human fetus, infants and young children -- whose cells are multiplying most frequently and most sensitive to radiation damage, especially the bone marrow. Perhaps that is why in a recent court statement released by independent scientist, Lauren Moret, gave expert testimony in a lawsuit brought against Japanese officials, to force them to do the right thing in evacuating more than 350,000 children from the Fukushima area, where they are forced to endure lethal doses of radiation.

Even though she got zero attention here in the U.S., Lauren Moret's important message was heard loud and clear around the world on the Internet:

"Fukushima's radiation affects thousands of miles across the ocean!"

In continuing, she said "The west coast of North America is thousands of miles across the vast Pacific Ocean, a long way from Fukushima Daiichi and the radioactive solids, liquids, and gases being released daily and recklessly to poison both near and far. Already we are seeing the effects in North America. Air filters from cars in Seattle have been analyzed for hot particles and indicate that Seattle residents are inhaling 5 hot particles a day, in Tokyo it is 10 hot particles a day, in Fukushima Prefecture it is 30-40 times higher - 300-400 hot particles a day. Hot particles and alpha emitters such as Uranium and Plutonium have not even been mentioned by the government or TEPCO, nor has their contribution to total radiation released been considered. Alpha particles are biologically 20 times more damaging than beta particles," she said.

"Iodine 131 in drinking water in San Francisco was reported by UC Berkeley to be 18,100% times higher than the EPA drinking water standard, yet the US government quit measuring it. Infant mortality in Berkeley, CA, and other west coast cities was reported by Dr. Janette Sherman to have increased 35% since March 11, after the Fukushima disaster. The babies are the first to die. Infant mortality in Philadelphia, PA. Where the highest Iodine 131 levels in drinking water measured in the US have been reported, has increased 45% since March 11. People on the west coast of the United States and even in Arizona are reporting a metallic taste in their mouths - an indication of radioactive particles in the air as in Japan."

She went on to say that "On the night of June 14, a nuclear incident occurred in the Reactor 3 building in the spent fuel pool when huge bursts of gamma ray fluorescence lit up the night sky and turned the reactor building as bright as the sun, indicating the spent fuel rods and melted uranium and plutonium were boiling off, vaporized along with the rest of the fission products."

"The radiation from this unreported but very dangerous event was released without protecting the residents of Fukushima Prefecture - especially the children. But the radiation was detected at elevated levels from 2:30 AM until 7:30 AM on a monitor in Ibaraki Prefecture. How many Curies were released? When will this nuclear war against the Japanese people and the Northern Hemisphere ever end? Instead of evacuation, the government gives the children (sick with radiation symptoms) film badges to measure the external exposure dose… another study group like US govt. studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims (they are still being studied), Iraq victims, Gaza victims. And the US government did the same thing to Americans during 1300 nuclear bomb tests in the US."

The video of the interview with her can be seen here. And if that's not enough bad news, we have another big problem. Here at home we have two Nebraska nuclear power stations located near the Missouri River and one is already submerged in flood waters. A hole tore in a 2000-foot, inflatable barrier placed around the facility, allowing over several feet of water to pour into containment buildings and electrical transformers at the plant. This disaster was reported, and then quickly silenced by mainstream media. Cooper Nuclear Station, one of the nuclear power plants in the area, declared a "Notification of Unusual Event" after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released massive amount water from two dams. This event is ongoing…

I wish I knew how all this will play out. All I know is sometimes we all feel like we're just a puny little ants who can never change a thing, but don't despair, for we are many … and when we combine our numbers, we are a very powerful force! I truly believe that we are the ones we have always waited for.

As a lover of American Indian culture, an old Indian wise man once said, "Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it. Those who would douse the flame of memory, in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth, beware of these men...for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember...and of those who seek the truth."

No matter what happens, never forget these events. Pass them down to your children. Because history is being rewritten to protect foolish, dangerous men ... and we are now the elders of truth. God bless.
(c) 2011 Vincent L. Guarisco is a freelance writer from Arizona, a contributing writer for many web sites, and a lifetime founding member of the Alliance of Atomic Veterans. The 21st century, once so full of shining promise, now threatens to force countless millions of us at home and abroad into a dark abyss of languishing poverty and silent servitude; a lowly prodigy of painful struggle and suffering that could stream for generations to come. I'm wishing for a miracle, before it is too late, the masses will figure it out and will stand as one and roar. So, pass the word – its past time to take back what is ours -- the American Dream where the pursuit of happiness, the ability to live in a free and peaceful nation is a reality. We bought it, and we paid for it. It's time to take it back. For replies, contact: vincespainting1@hotmail.com



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Mark Streeter ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Back In The Fold
By Will Durst

Give Congress the benefit of the doubt and say they do work out a compromise on the debt ceiling extension. This country could still slip into default, leading to the worst possible scenario imaginable - We have to move back in with England. Who's going to be happy then? Nobody. You think it's embarrassing slinking home after graduating college, try waiting 235 years.

Already dreading the dressing down we'll be forced to patiently endure should we make it through the front door. "Well, well, well, look who's back. Seems someone couldn't hack it out on our own, could they, Mister I'm Ready for Independence? How's it feel to be labeled a fading superpower? Not much bloody fun being mocked by the neighbors, is it boyo?

Notice you didn't rush right over to your good friend China's house. What's the matter, did you have a fight with your new BFF? Or are they wanting their loans back? What about Egypt? Don't they owe you a bit of something? Or did you squander it away like your post 911 goodwill? Typical.

So. Here you are. I suppose you'll be wanting your old room back. Well, you can forget it. Pakistan has been renting that room for almost three decades. Very tidy people. And quiet. Too quiet, if you ask me. But they cook. Nice break for your mother. Stinks up the kitchen a bit with all those spices, but quite tasty really.

What in Hades is wrong with you? Why couldn't you manage your money better like your younger brother Canada? Yes, they're a bit boring, but solid as Gibraltar. You never see Canada in the foyer with their bags around their feet like a homeless person. Nose to the grindstone, that's Canada in a nutshell. Still respect their Royals. Nothing like you or that drunken lout Australia, but don't get me started.

Okay. Now this is totally against my better judgment but your mother says you can crash on the basement couch. Just for a couple of weeks, mind you. But this isn't the Ritz. While you live in this house, you will live by our rules, mister. That means the TV shuts off at 10pm. Sharp. And yes, there's only 4 channels. Stop whineing.

No more making fun of the Queen. You hear me? And not a single smirking word about Rupert Murdoch. Can't say your hands are altogether clean on that one, now can we? Look at me when I'm talking to you. And get this through your thick skull, health care is free. For everybody. The stitches may be a mite larger than you're accustomed from your fancy Beverly Hills surgeons, but I dare say you'll get used to it.

One last thing, no more wars. If I hear of one more scrape you've gotten yourself into, you'll be back on the street so fast it'll make David Cameron's head spin. Faster. Nobody wants you mucking about with your sticky little fingers in their business anymore. Do we understand each other? Good. Now get yourself downstairs. Unpack and wash up. Put on a tie. Supper's at 5. By the looks of you, I'd wager you haven't missed many meals. And straighten up while you're down there. Make sure there's a clean spot under the stairwell; we're setting up a cot. Ireland just called. They're on their way over."
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 30 (c) 07/29/2011


Issues & Alibis is published in America every Friday. We are not affiliated with, nor do we accept funds from any political party. We are a non-profit group that is dedicated to the restoration of the American Republic. All views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of Issues & Alibis.Org.

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In This Edition

Phil Rockstroh says, "We Would Rather Die In Our Dread."

Uri Avnery asks, "How Goodly Are Thy Tents?"

David Sirota reminds us that, "Obama Isn't Weak (he just isn't a liberal)."

David Swanson announces, "Uranium Safe to Eat With a Spoon!."

Jim Hightower reports, "Obama Says He'll Really Fight For The People ... Next Time."

Helen Thomas finds, "Debt Debate Eclipses Middle East Unrest."

James Donahue concludes, "Racism Is Destroying America."

Ray McGovern reminds us that, "They Died in Vain; Deal With It."

Robert Creamer explores, "Talk About Chutzpah - Wall Street Lecturing America on 'Fiscal Responsibility?'"

Mike Wrathell examines, "Macomb County-Style Injustice."

Paul Krugman considers, "Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt."

Sam Harris replies, "Dear Angry Lunatic."

Greg Palast has been, "Hacked And Attacked."

Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow wins the coveted "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

Tom Englehardt wonders, "Could The Pentagon Be Responsible For Your Death?"

Mary Pitt explains, "The Great American Guilt Trip."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Andy Borowitz discovers, "Moody's Downgrades US Credit Rating to 'It's Complicated'" but first, Uncle Ernie is, "Back From The Shadows Again!"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Gary Varvel, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Tom Tomorrow, Internet Weekly.Org, Don Wright, Jeff Danziger, Jeff Darcy, Tony Auth, Steve Benson, P. Jamoil, Walt Disney Movies, Associated Press, The Mirror, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Back From The Shadows Again!
By Ernest Stewart

You can be anything that you want in America
Any God Damned thing that you want in America
America
America ~~~ Rumor

"We Are Ohio takes our obligation to our more than 1.3 million supporters very seriously, and thus will not back down from this attack on teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses and other hardworking Ohioans." ~~~ Melissa Fazekas

The notion that our deficit problem can be solved solely by cutting spending flies in the face of our experience when, in fact, unwise tax cuts for the wealthy and egregious tax loopholes are significant culprits in our fiscal crisis. I believe too many Republicans are influenced by an ideology so extreme that it promised to wreak economic havoc if they did not get their way. No additional revenues became the battle cry, an approach that prevents the balanced deficit reduction that the American people rightly support. The result is that this legislation incorporates some policies that are profoundly unfair to middle-income Americans. ~~~ Carl Levin

Back from the shadows again
Out where an Injuns your friend
Where the vegetables are green
And you can pee right into the stream (And that's important)
Yes, we're back from the shadows again
Back From The Shadows ~~~ The Firesign Theatre

As I awaited the fate of the magazine, a friend who had been visiting took me on a wild 5 day vacation to that "Paris" of the mid-west, Chicago. Since I'm pretty much trapped by poverty and hence too poor to leave these four walls -- where I'm trapped inside a small room with artificial lights -- in a more or less 24/7/365 capacity, I naturally jumped at the prospect. We made our way west from Detroit, stopping only at Frederik Meijer Gardens to primp and pose for various Leonardo's Horse photo-ops before rounding Lake Michigan and with a drive down Lake Shore Drive from beginning to end, I was soon enjoying Illinois hospitality for which I am grateful. The highlight was a trip to the Field Museum for an up-close-and-personal encounter with Sue and some of her pals! Thanks ya'll, for everything!

While I was thus engaged, our country went from being number one to a third world country. Just as the Reagan attack on the unions with his busting the PATCO union signaled the beginning of the end of the American middle-class. Like that milestone, this one committed on August 2, 2011 by Obamahood and his gang of criminals, i.e., both Houses of Con-gress, will live forever in infamy!

Then, just as if on cue, Standard & Poor's -- that criminal ratings group who was partially responsible for 2008 crash -- stabbed us in the heart, and the market worldwide dropped a trillion dollars overnight with no real end in sight! Does the date of October 24, 1929 mean anything to you, America? And since the destructiveness of this act of treason doesn't kick-in until after the 2012 election, is the date of 12-21-2012 a whole lot less funny than it used to be?

In Other News

The Jews have a saying, "They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind," for them the pity is they don't realize that it applies to them as well as everybody else. Someday they may realize this, if only for a nano-second, while the H-Bombs begin to burst overhead.

Tuesday evening they cut all communications into the Gaza Ghetto. An Israeli army bulldozer cut a communications cable and cut all phone and Internet networks in Gaza. First Tel Aviv denied it had happened, then they said it wasn't done by the army, then they said it was done by the army -- but it was an accident, then they said... etc., etc., etc!

Over in Wisconsin, the recall of 6 of the farthest right-wing whackos in the Wisconsin Senate took place and even with a $40 million blitz by the Koch Brothers and the Amway corpo-rats, ten of thousands of mailers going out telling the people to send in their ballots to non-existent mailing addresses -- an outright act of sedition -- they were only able to save 4 of the 6 Senators being recalled, just one shy of taking control from the fascists. These six were all in staunchly Rethuglican districts, so Governor Hitler, er, Walker will be able to do his worst, (provided he isn't recalled in an action that begins in November) for another year as Wisconsin will remain the Koch Brothers oligarchy until at least the 2012 election.

The pro-labor coalition "We Are Ohio" delivered nearly 1.3 million signatures to repeal SB 5, a new Tea Bagger law restricting the collective-bargaining rights of public employees, placing it on the November 8 ballot.

If America had brain one, the Tea Baggers would be "gone with the whirlwind" come November 2012; but even if that happens, which I doubt very much, we'll still have Obamahood or someone just like him, i.e., the Bachmann/Romney Overdrive and the total destruction of America will continue because Americans can't be bothered to pay attention to what's happening -- even if it's right before their bloodshot eyes.

And Finally

I get mailers from both of my Sinators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow and my Congressman John Dingell and all three Demoncrats, pledging to protect Medicare, Food Stamps and Social Security in their latest mailers before the vote to pay for the phony Debt Crisis. While John voted against it, Debbie and Carl voted to balance the budget on the backs of the sick, hungry, and elderly, and no, I wasn't surprised by their treason as they both voted for the trillion dollar giveaways to the banksters and other Wall Street demons!

So you know what I did, don't you? Here's the letter I wrote Debbie, I wrote a very similar one to Carl...

Debbie, I see you voted for another tax break for the uber-wealthy, paid for by the final destruction of the middle class, not to mention the coming money grab from Medicare, Medicaid, Food stamps and Social Security. Funny how the corpo-rats and uber-wealthy that pay no taxes and are the reason for this phony crisis weren't gone after, just the weak, the sick, the hungry and elderly When you come for those programs, we're coming for you, all 50 million seniors who are now mad as hell and quite aware of who fucked us! You've grabbed a hold of the third rail Deb; now it's time to ride the lightning!

I don't think your corpo-rat masters will save you as you can and will be easily replaced by them with another traitor. But cheer up, Deb, you've just won the Vidkun Quisling Award for next week! That's our weekly award for the biggest traitor in America. Just one question, Deb, did John Bonner buy your new set of Jack Boots, they're stunning and that corpo-rat armband is to die for, literally! Can I get an Heil Obamahood? I look forward to seeing you in the unemployment line!

Your liberal pal,
Ernest Stewart

Carl,

Thanks for selling us out so can give another tax cut to your corpo-rat puppet masters. Now it's time for you to grab that third rail and feel the power of 50 million, mad-as-hell American seniors, and pay for your treason. But do cheer up, you've just won the Vidkun Quisling Award for you act of treason. You'll have to wait a week as your partner in crime Debbie is the winner this week as bitches go first! Now that your political days are numbered, what's next, Carl, stealing candy from babies?

A former supporter and managing editor of Issues & Alibis Magazine,
Ernest Stewart

Perhaps if you haven't already sent your political terrorist a similar letter, you might want to consider doing so. They can be found towards the bottom on our "Friends of the Revolution" page!

Keepin' On

Well, we dodged another bullet but I'm beginning to get a little tired of doing so. We've raised and paid a little over $3700 of our yearly bills of $5200 and that last bit of $1480 is due on or before October 1st. Thanks for the righteous donations Marcy and Paul, without your kind help we wouldn't be holding this conversation!

Needless to say, we need your help to make this final push to keep the magazine going through the end of June 2012. All of our major donors, those who could pay the total bill out their chump change supply are gone, they all left when we continued the fight to restore our Republic when Obamahood came upon the scene and some of them are still waiting for the Barry that they "know and love" to stop being another Crime Family Bush clone and be the person he seemed to be in 2008. Sorry, but as I've said all along, he never was and will never be that person, NEVER! EVER!

If you want to keep the truth and facts flowing into your computer, please consider making a donation or buying some ad space in the magazine. It's all in your hands whether we keep working for you, or whether I go back to writing books and restoring my empty bank account. While my friends and family would like me to do the latter, I still prefer to do the former but I can no longer afford do it alone, so a little help Ya'll!

*****


02-12-1935 ~ 07-29-2011
Thanks for the songs!


02-28-1945 ~ 08-03-2011
Thanks for the laughs!


09-02-1946 ~ 08-07-2011
Thanks for the guitar, neighbor!


04-11-1919 ~ 08-07-2011
Burn Baby Burn!


07-12-1922 ~ 08-07-2011
Burn Baby Burn!


*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
Donations

*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.













"We Would Rather Die In Our Dread"
Moving beyond the debt ceiling canard; much more is at stake
By Phil Rockstroh

At present, most of us negotiate our days so distracted, disillusioned, dazed, buffeted, bought or marginalized by the corporate state/ mass media hologram -- the multi-headed, awareness-addling Hydra that guards contemporary precincts of perception (apropos, the "debate" involving the so-called debt ceiling "crisis") -- it is difficult to apprehend what we are up against i.e., the forces of consolidated and calcified power that degrade almost every aspect of life in the nation.

In contrast, throughout this past year, popular uprisings of varying scope and degree of success have been unfolding worldwide. And the genie is not going back in the neoliberal bottle. The global power elite might not like it, but (unlike the general population of the U.S., whose view of life has been conditioned by the inundating, thus internalized, narcissism proffered by media age hyper-commercialism, and who have come to exist as self-involved consumer state dystopias of one) -- large numbers of the people of the world are declaring to their overlords: We've had enough of the world you've created...time to make it our own.

With this in mind, let us take a moment to pity our own poor, little, economic despots...from the start, so misunderstood...they only built the U.S. on the bones of African slaves and watered the soil with the blood of murdered Indians, and, from that time on, proceeded to pile corpses to the sky, only so they could climb atop and look out for us lesser folks.

And from the soil rose a culture of kitsch, unhealthy food, and creepy, over-priced banal distractions. Consequently, the U.S. seems an over-priced, downscale theme Park -- Six Flags over Denial and Decay -- a grotesque, kitsch-bewitched land of negative enchantment...unprepared for the gathering, denial-sundering storm that, from all indications, will leave the nation devastated.

What are the forces and factors that have wrought this circumstance?

One progenitor of the defiant idiocy of the general population of the U.S. can be traced to the tendency of the consumer state to induce impulsivity rather than reflection i.e., rendering individuals self-involved, infantilized monsters of the id...dazzled by and perpetually reaching for the next bright and shiny.

Antithetically, if a critical mass of the populace of the nation ever gained a semblance of self-awareness that included traits of foresight, critical thinking, empathy, self-restraint and a sense of conviction regarding, for example, the dire state of the planet on an ecological basis, as well as an apprehension as to their position as wage slaves/debt serfs to their corporate overlords -- the corporate/consumer paradigm would be in danger of collapse. While it is true, government is often behind assaults on common sense and common decency, the slickest, most self-serving ploy monopolistic capitalist pulled off against the tenets and foundation of a just, equitable society has been in their cunning framing of the situation e.g., the sales pitch of one of their most effective salesman, that "government is the problem, not the solution."

Ronald Reagan was half right; only, he, conveniently, left out the following: In particular, when the politicians who operate the system are beholden, as he was (and, at present, Barack Obama is) by game-rigging operatives of the moneyed elite.

Ergo, the so-called "debt crisis" involved a similar dance of deceit and distraction. As was the case, early into the Obama presidency, with the healthcare "debate," the deal was struck before the faux rancorous music began. The fix was in. The moneyed class works the system and those without power and influence get worked over.

Regarding the persistent, liberal fallacy: Obama needs to stand up for his convictions. Correction: Throughout his presidency, he has been standing upon his convictions i.e. standing on the throats of the powerless as we're being mugged by his elitist benefactors.

Moreover, how does he or anyone "change the tone" of political polarization so evident in the nation, when the right is a walking landfill of noxious arrogance and inexplicable self-regard? If contemporary conservatives showed any indication of harboring even a molecule of humanity or self-awareness then a dialog might be possible.

But we're dealing with grownups who believe God is some kind of cosmic CEO -- folks who are certain...if one listens closely, one can hear him counting his money.

Therefore, we're warned: not voting for Democratic Party (lesser-of-two-evils) candidates is a treacherous decision, and we're advised we must goad President Obama to govern as the man he sold himself as during the 2008 presidential election campaign. Given the realities of political life within the age of corporate dominance, in which reality is defined and distorted by the media hologram, hasn't the thought occurred to progressive types that the sales pitch is, in fact, inseparable from the product, and, consequently, to the most media-savvy mountebank will go the spoils?

O.K. then, you've been betrayed. Good. Such a turn of affairs serves as a good vehicle for clearing away toxic innocence.

"We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread

Than climb across the moment
And let our illusions die."~~~ W.H. Auden
(Excerpt from: The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue)

Next step: Let the Democratic Party die and allow a true progressive party to rise from the ashes.

Although, first, the hidden in plain sight, inverted totalitarian powers at large need to be drawn into the open e.g., as Dr. King did in regard to Jim Crowe in the U.S. Deep South in the 1950s and 60s.

There is so much more at stake than simply a "debate" regarding the alleged debt ceiling.

To cite one collective peril: The oceans of the earth are the matrix of life on our planet. As did all life on land, we human beings emerged from ancient seas. And we will not survive for long by dramatically altering its nature by the short sighted greed and hubris of the present time. We will be pulled to our death by its destruction, like Ahab lashed to Moby Dick.

Given the degraded quality of life in the nation, why do the people of the U.S. stand for this culture of exploitation and diminished prospects?

We resist the dread incurred by an attempt to climb our way past the proliferate distractions of the moment thus avoiding this extant state of affairs: Beneath the shimmering sea of the media hologram, a monstrous virulence glides. Belying our consumerist habit of mind (evinced in traits of feigned insouciance and blithe disregard) yawns a system sustained by the blood and treasure-depleting apparatus of militarism and economic exploitation -- a system that is reaping vast destruction upon the ecological balance of the earth, the foundation of community, and upon individual psychological wellbeing.

Accordingly, a gnawing emptiness is the constant companion of the denizens of the corporate/militarist/consumer state. This emptiness is the progenitor of its destructive nature. In a vain attempt to sate the hollow ache and banish the gathering dread, the rapacious appetite of empire rises and is perpetually reinforced.

There is the banality of evil and then there is the evil of banality. Witness: The present banality of our ecocide-inflicting mode of being -- one that reduces the world to only those things that can be commodified and thus reduces earth, sky and psyche to controllable (dreamless and dead) bits. We stare at our appliances as exquisite things are extinguished, forever...mistaking configurations of pixels for the breath and brilliance of the world.

On a personal basis, the present system levels this dismal legacy upon the nation: Minds made of internalized shopping malls; bodies built by junk food; libidos informed by celebrity porn; agendas driven by a crass, good versus evil, winners and losers, cartoon cosmology. Congratulations, America, we've done the architects of the republic proud.

Some people are fragile, and the system breaks them for life. In contrast, others are resilient, but will grow callous and conformist. Yes, life is a fistfight and a marriage and a dull evening of laundry and a trundle through trivia and a flight of the sublime. The point: Be alive within life...don't submit to any ass-backwards, assembly line-modeled mode of being, gridded by comforting casuistry, maintained by hierarchies of bullies, and settled for due to fear or convenience.

"When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." ~~~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Insulated in our landscape of silence, we demand the ground beneath us be salted with deceit, begetting the bone-dry wilderness of ignorance and duplicity we know as late, neoliberal empire. Otherwise, fiery incantations of outrage would bloom from within us -- a combustive wildfire immolating to ash our tinderbox rationalizations...perhaps, leaving an ash-fall to nourish sleeping seeds of renewal.

"What is to endure light must endure burning." ~~~ Victor Frankl

Yet, this writer is bereft of a plan to redeem humankind. Who can afford such hubris? In contrast, I negotiate the world with my heart and head, and I sing of its joys and sorrows. Apropos, within the kingdom of this breathing moment, I hear arias rising...auguring the decay of this nation. In short, I am a poet and an essayist not a civic planner.

Accordingly, here are a few heart-wrought observations from the personal ash heap of my poetically archaic sensibility and sent out to the fear-bandying cynics of the elitist political and economic classes -- to those who reduce all of life to the economic sophistry of Disaster Capitalism (who have been disingenuously warning, "run for your lives; the debt-ceiling is falling") -- who just can't envisage a world that is not as degraded as their own mindset -- to those in positions of insular, arrogant power who inflict great harm upon those bereft of privilege and then proclaim, "this is just the way things have to be."

False, that is merely the way things exist in the confines of your miserable cosmology. To the contrary, the world is a vast, ever-changing tapestry...that you merely perceive as a dung rag for your exclusive use.

"The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results." ~~~ Carl Jung

We have a daunting struggle ahead of us. Therefore, I proffer the following short message to those purer-than-thou souls who counsel that art (including the arts of political resistance) should only be uplifting, moderate, and beautiful:

Art (reflecting our world) is often sublimely ugly, monstrously so. The image of a monster opens the soul to awe. Note: The word "awe" is the prefix for both awesome and awful). Often, creating ugliness carries as much purpose as creating beauty.

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live." ~~~ Jean-Paul Sartre

/blockquote> Sartre's words notwithstanding, I am often asked by readers "practical" questions such as: "You view the empire to be in a state of profound decay, beyond repair and reclamation -- then how should we proceed from here?"

I answer, appropriating a phrase from James Hillman: simply proceed into "the thought of the heart and the soul of the world." The problem contains the solution. The poison serves as its anecdote. The vastness and complexity of life that (seemingly) endeavors to destroy me (in contrast) renders me more like myself, and therefore I become more fit for the struggle ahead. Accordingly, Rainer Maria Rilke, from the opening stanza of the Duino Elegies:

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic 
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly 
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
 greater existence. For beauty is nothing but 
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
 and we revere it so, because it serenely disdains 
to destroy us."
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.





"How Goodly Are Thy Tents"
By Uri Avnery

FIRST OF all, a warning.

Tent cities are springing up all over Israel. A social protest movement is gathering momentum. At some point in the near future, it may endanger the right-wing government.

At that point, there will be a temptation - perhaps an irresistible temptation - to "warm up the borders." To start a nice little war. Call on the youth of Israel, the same young people now manning (and womanning) the tents, to go and defend the fatherland.

Nothing easier than that. A small provocation, a platoon crossing the border "to prevent the launching of a rocket", a fire fight, a salvo of rockets - and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.

In September, just a few weeks from now, the Palestinians intend to apply to the UN for the recognition of the State of Palestine. Our politicians and generals are chanting in unison that this will cause a crisis - Palestinians in the occupied territories may rise in protest against the occupation, violent demonstrations may ensue, the army will be compelled to shoot - and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.

THREE WEEKS ago I was interviewed one morning by a Dutch journalist. At the end, she asked: "You are describing an awful situation. The extreme right-wing controls the Knesset and is enacting abominable anti-democratic laws. The people are indifferent and apathetic. There is no opposition to speak of. And yet you exude a spirit of optimism. How come?"

I answered that I have faith in the people of Israel. Contrary to appearances, we are a sane people. Some time, somewhere, a new movement will arise and change the situation. It may happen in a week, in a month, in a year. But it will come.

On that very same day, just a few hours later, a young woman called Daphne Liff, with an improbable man's hat perched on her flowing hair, said to herself: "Enough!"

She had been evicted by her landlady because she couldn't afford the rent. She set up a tent in Rothschild Boulevard, a long, tree-lined thoroughfare in the center of Tel Aviv. The news spread through facebook, and within an hour, dozens of tents had sprung up. Within a week, there were some 400 tents, spread out in a double line more than a mile long.

Similar tent-cities sprang up in Jerusalem, Haifa and a dozen smaller towns. The next Saturday, tens of thousands joined protest marches in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. Last Saturday, they numbered more than 150,000.

This"] has now become the center of Israeli life. The Rothschild tent city has assumed a life of its own -a cross between Tahrir Square and Woodstock, with a touch of Hyde Park corner thrown in for good measure. The mood is indescribably upbeat, masses of people come to visit and return home full of enthusiasm and hope. Everybody can feel that something momentous is happening.

Seeing the tents, I was reminded of the words of Balaam, who was sent by the king of Moab to curse the children of Israel in the desert (Numbers 24) and instead exclaimed: "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, Oh Israel!"

IT ALL started in a remote little town in Tunisia, when an unlicensed market vendor was arrested by a policewoman. It seems that in the ensuing altercation, the woman struck the man in the face, a terrible humiliation for a Tunisian man. He set himself on fire. What followed is history: the revolution in Tunisia, regime change in Egypt, uprisings all over the Middle East.

The Israeli government saw all this with growing concern - but they didn't imagine that there might be an effect in Israel itself. Israeli society, with its ingrained contempt for Arabs, could hardly be expected to follow suit.

But follow suit it did. People in the street spoke with growing admiration of the Arab revolt. It showed that people acting together could dare to confront leaders far more fearsome than our bumbling Binyamin Netanyahu.

Some of the most popular posters on the tents were "Rothschild corner Tahrir" and, in a Hebrew rhyme, "Tahrir - Not only in Cahir" - Cahir being the Hebrew version of al-Cahira, the Arabic name for Cairo. And also: "Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu".

In Tahrir Square, the central slogan was "The People Want to Overthrow the Regime." In conscious emulation, the central slogan of the tent cities is "The People Want Social Justice."

WHO ARE these people? What exactly do they want?

It started with a demand for "Affordable Housing". Rents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere are extremely high, after years of Government neglect. But the protest soon engulfed other subjects: the high price of foodstuffs and gasoline, the low wages . The ridiculously low salaries of physicians and teachers, the deterioration of the education and health services. There is a general feeling that 18 tycoons control everything, including the politicians. (Politicians who dared to show up in the tent cities were chased away.) They could have quoted an American saying: "Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."

A selection of the slogans gives an impression:

We want a welfare state!

Fighting for the home!

Justice, not charity!

If the government is against the people, the people are against the government!

Bibi, this is not the US Congress, you will not buy us with empty words!

If you don't join our war, we shall not fight your wars!

Give us our state back!

Three partners with three salaries cannot pay for three rooms!

The answer to privatization: revolution!

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, we are slaves to Bibi in Israel!

I have no other homeland!

Bibi, go home, we'll pay for the gas!

Overthrow swinish capitalism!

Be practical, demand the impossible!

WHAT IS missing in this array of slogans? Of course: the occupation, the settlements, the huge expenditure on the military.

This is by design. The organizers, anonymous young men and women - mainly women - are very determined not to be branded as "leftists". They know that bringing up the occupation would provide Netanyahu with an easy weapon, split the tent-dwellers and derail the protests.

We in the peace movement know and respect this. All of us are exercising strenuous self-restraint, so that Netanyahu will not succeed in marginalizing the movement and depicting it as a plot to overthrow the right-wing government.

As I wrote in an article in Haaretz: No need to push the protesters. In due course, they will reach the conclusion that the money for the major reforms they demand can only come from stopping the settlements and cutting the huge military budget by hundreds of billions - and that is possible only in peace. (To help them along, we published a large ad, saying: "It's quite simple - money for the settlements OR money for housing, health services and education").

Voltaire said that "the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other." This government takes the money of decent citizens to give it to the settlers.

WHO ARE they, these enthusiastic demonstrators, who seemingly have come from nowhere?

They are the young generation of the middle class, who go out to work, take home average salaries and "cannot finish the month", as the Israeli expression goes. Mothers who cannot go to work because they have nowhere to leave their babies. University students who cannot get a room in the dormitories or afford accomodation in the city. And especially young people who want to marry but cannot afford to buy an apartment, even with the help of their parents. (One tent bore the sign: "Even this tent was bought by our parents").

All this in a flourishing economy, which has been spared the pains of the world-wide economic crisis and boasts an enviable unemployment rate of just 5%.

If pressed, most of the protesters would declare themselves to be "social-democrats". They are the very opposite of the Tea Party in the US: they want a welfare state, they blame privatization for many of their ills, they want the government to interfere and to act. Whether they want to admit it or not, the very essence of their demands and attitudes is classically leftist (the term created in the French Revolution because the adherents of these ideals sat on the left side of the speaker in the National Assembly). They are the essence of what Left means - (though in Israel, the terms "Left" and "Right" have until now been largely identified with questions of war and peace).

WHERE WILL it go from here?

No one can say. When asked about the impact of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai famously said: "It's too early to say." Here we are witnessing an event still in progress, perhaps even still beginning.

It has already produced a huge change. For weeks now, the public and the media have stopped talking about the borders, the Iranian bomb and the security situation. Instead, the talk is now almost completely about the social situation, the minimum wage, the injustice of indirect taxes, the housing construction crisis.

Under pressure, the amorphous leadership of the protest has drawn up a list of concrete demands. Among others: government building of houses for rent, raising taxes on the rich and the corporations, free education from the age of three months [sic], a raise in the salary of physicians, police and fire-fighters, school classes of no more than 21 pupils, breaking the monopolies controlled by a few tycoons, and so on.

So where from here? There are many possibilities, both good and bad.

Netanyahu can try to buy off the protest with some minor concessions - some billions here, some billions there. This will confront the protesters with the choice of the Indian boy in the movie about becoming a millionaire: take the money and quit, or risk all on answering yet another question.

Or: the movement may continue to gather momentum and force major changes, such as shifting the burden from indirect to direct taxation.

Some rabid optimists (like myself) may even dream of the emergence of a new authentic political party to fill the gaping void on the left side of the political spectrum.

I STARTED with a warning, and I must end with another one: this movement has raised immense hopes. If it fails, it may leave behind an atmosphere of despondency and despair - a mood that will drive those who can to seek a better life somewhere else.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom






Obama Isn't Weak (he just isn't a liberal)
The president has the political muscle to enact a progressive agenda, but he doesn't want to
By David Sirota

Barack Obama is a lot of things -- eloquent, dissembling, conniving, intelligent and, above all, calm. But one thing he is not is weak.

This basic truth is belied by the meager Obama criticism you occasionally hear from liberal pundits and activists. They usually stipulate that the president genuinely wants to enact the progressive agenda he campaigned on, but they gently reprimand him for failing to muster the necessary personal mettle to achieve that goal. In this mythology, he is "President Pushover," as the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently labeled him.

This story line is a logical fallacy. Most agree that today's imperial presidency almost singularly determines the course of national politics. Additionally, most agree that Obama is a brilliant, Harvard-trained lawyer who understands how to wield political power.

Considering this, and further considering Obama's early congressional majorities, it is silly to insist that the national political events during Obama's term represent a lack of presidential strength or will. And it's more than just silly -- it's a narcissistic form of wishful thinking coming primarily from liberals who desperately want to believe "their" president is with them.

Such apologism, of course, allows liberals to avoid the more painful truth that Obama is one of America's strongest presidents ever and is achieving exactly what he wants.

Obama is not a flaccid Jimmy Carter, as some of his critics insist. He is instead a Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- but a bizarro FDR. He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor -- but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged.

On healthcare, for instance, Obama passed a Heritage Foundation-inspired bailout of the private health insurance industry, all while undermining other more-progressive proposals. On foreign policy, he escalated old wars and initiated new ones. On civil liberties, he not only continued the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects but also claimed the right to assassinate American citizens without charge.

On financial issues, he fought off every serious proposal to reregulate banks following the economic meltdown; he preserved ongoing bank bailouts; and he resisted pressure to prosecute Wall Street thieves. On fiscal matters, after extending the Bush tax cuts at a time of massive deficits, he has used the debt ceiling negotiations to set the stage for potentially massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare -- cuts that would be far bigger than any of his proposed revenue increases.

As hideous and destructive as it is, this record is anything but weak. It is, on the contrary, demonstrable proof of Obama's impressive political muscle, especially because polls show he has achieved these goals despite the large majority of Americans who oppose them.

Importantly, though, Obama himself has not suffered from equally negative polling numbers. While his approval rating is not terrific, he is in decent shape for reelection -- and, more significantly, he has suffered only a minimal erosion of Democratic support. He is relatively popular, in other words, despite advocating wildly unpopular policies. Thanks to that reality, every one of his stunning legislative triumphs now has the previously unprecedented imprimatur of rank-and-file Democratic support.

In forging such bipartisan complicity with what were once exclusively right-wing Republican objectives, Obama has achieved even more than what he fantasized about when he famously celebrated a previous bizarro FDR. In an illustrative 2008 interview with a Nevada newspaper, Obama lauded Ronald Reagan for "chang[ing] the trajectory of America" and "put[ting] us on a fundamentally different path."

Reagan was a truly strong executive -- but the Gipper was nothing compared to our current president.
(c) 2010 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.






Uranium Safe to Eat With a Spoon!
By David Swanson

Carefully ignoring Fukushima, Los Alamos, Vermont, and Nebraska, a comforting new announcement informs us that "nuclear energy is safe."

A series of soothing television ads and videos tells us that mining uranium in Virginia would produce jobs and protect us from scary foreigners.

Virginia newspapers carried an article from the Associated Press this week that did not pretend to be anything but one-sided, reporting on the agenda of corporations that would profit from mining uranium while including no other views or any verified facts. The Washington Post did the very same thing. These articles are essentially press releases that have been tweaked. The online versions even include the videos.

We can expect even less actual news reporting than that (yes, less than nothing) to come through our televisions. But these ads hyping uranium mining as a job solution will be aired. And the television networks will consequently view the mining corporations as customers not to be needlessly offended or inconvenienced.

Meanwhile, local Congressman Robert Hurt pays for his own campaigns with money "contributed" by uranium miners; and the Congressman's father stands to make a bundle if uranium is mined.

Uranium, by the way, is used for four things: producing dangerous nuclear energy, producing dangerous nuclear weapons, producing deadly depleted-uranium weapons, and generating tons of dangerous radioactive waste.

While wrecking the Grand Canyon to get at some more uranium will make more news, poisoning the water of Southern Virginia may kill more people. The town of Halifax, Va., has banned it.

Uranium Free Virginia suggests why:

"Uranium is highly toxic heavy metal that emits alpha radiation and is soluble in water. When consumed, it may cause kidney failure and birth defects. Mining of only 4 lb of high quality uranium ore produces at least one ton (more than 2200 lb) of radioactive waste, known as uranium mining tailings, which contain polonium, radium, radon, thorium, lead and many other toxic elements that are responsible for causing cancer and birth defects. Uranium mining tailings remain highly toxic and radioactive for thousands of years and must be contained to prevent seepage into groundwater, overspills into surface water, and dispersion by air. The task of containing radioactive uranium mining tailings becomes nearly impossible in Virginia's climate with its high precipitation levels, strong winds, frequent floods and major storm events that hit this coastal state. All other mines in the United States are located in dryer climates with sparse population."

Thousands of years of danger, to provide what the uranium mining companies claim might be 65 years of uranium use. That seems like the kind of deal only a U.S. president could consider a bargain. Let's hope Virginia still has more life left in it than Washington.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Obama Says He'll Really Fight For The People ... Next Time

Sheesh. In his big battle over the debt ceiling, Barack Obama waved his white hankie of surrender, allowing the loopiest of the tea party extremists in the Republican House to slash some $1 trillion from national programs that ordinary Americans count on. Obama's bad deal also puts Social Security and Medicare at risk, while promising to make our depressed economy (and even the deficit) worse. And he cravenly conceded to the demand by GOP/tea party extremists that tax-dodging corporations, hedge-fund profiteers and the richest 1 percent of our nation's plutocratic elite keep every dime of their subsidies, tax breaks and other federal giveaways.

Not to worry, though, for Obama now says that stage two of the deficit reduction process will be better. The pampered and privileged few, he insists, will also have to "chip in," and that he'll be "fighting for" fundamental principles of fairness.

But we've all seen again and again that this guy "fights" by backing up and begging for compromise. He talks tough about fighting for fairness "next time." When will next time be now?

I know a bit about fighting, having been a small guy growing up in a small Texas town where confrontations often popped up. I learned early on that you should never hit a man with glasses; you should hit him with something much heavier. The heavy "something" that Obama has at his disposal is the fact that the American people are overwhelmingly on his side in this fight.

Rather than playing budgetary patty-cake with Republicans in the backrooms of Washington, negotiating over how much of FDR's New Deal to throw out the window, Obama needs to FDR-up, get out of Washington, and rally the majority to go after the greedheads and screwballs with a bold program to get America moving again - moving upward and moving together.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Debt Debate Eclipses Middle East Unrest
By Helen Thomas

This week, Congress voted to raise the United States debt ceiling. The Republicans managed to overcome the deficit problem without any tax increases. As usual, the GOP laid the issue on the backs of the American people with forthcoming huge cuts in social programs, including adjustments to current Social Security benefits. Congress put off major decisions until after the 2012 elections. While Congress debated and dithered for months on the question of raising the debt ceiling so it could pay the bills, there were several headline-grabbing stories that were passed over.

One of the big stories that has been generally ignored is the brutality of Syrian Arab Republic President Bashar al-Assad, who has initiated a slaughter campaign against his people. Bashar is following in the footsteps of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who launched a massacre and killed some 10,000 Syrians at Homs several years ago. In the latest Syrian crackdown, at least 70 people have been killed in Hama and other cities near Damascus.

President Barack Obama has called the younger al-Assad's ruthless drive against his own people "horrifying." Al-Assad knows the writing is on the wall. The Syrian people are hostile to his regime and have suffered too much under his dictatorship. Unfortunately, Assad has the arms and enough military support to temporarily hold off the opposition, but probably not for long.

Another recent story overlooked, again in the Middle East, was the Israeli blockade of the second U.S. flotilla headed for Gaza. The humanitarian flotilla was stopped in Greek seaports and prevented from sailing on to Gaza after the Israelis apparently sabotaged propellers on the ship. Nine Turkish citizens were murdered by the Israelis when they tried to launch its first flotilla headed for Gaza. But Turkey - apparently willing to let bygones be bygones - accepted the humiliation of the Israeli intervention of its national sovereignty, which tarnished Turkey's dignity.

The U.S. and Cyprus joined Turkey and Greece to assist the Israeli blockade. Bankrupt Greece accepted billions in bank loans from the International Monetary Fund, and played ball with Israel in important ways against the second flotilla from the U.S.

The U.S. had warned against the launching of the flotilla, which was aimed at helping 1.6 million Gazans to break out of the so-called "open prison."

Shame on the U.S.-educated Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, who collaborated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in support of the illegal blockade of Gaza.

Shame on hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well, who as usual supported Israel's aggression against the beleaguered Palestinians. Ironically, the ships of the sabotaged flotilla were called Audacity of Hope - the title of a memoir by President Obama.

Another ship was named after an American heroine Rachel Corrie, who used her body to block an Israeli bulldozer from destroying a Palestinian home. The Israeli commander asked his Israeli authorities for orders in advance of the calamity, and he was told to go ahead. Corrie was killed as she continued to stand in front of the bulldozer.

Medea Benjamin, a founder of the freedom fighting Code Pink group, said the Greek government had been working, "hand in glove with the Israelis to set up obstacles to the flotilla." Those aboard the ships that had expected to go to Gaza included citizens from many countries, such as Americans and Israelis who believe they cannot continue the oppression of the Palestinians in good conscience.

The first vessel to penetrate Israel's naval blockade of Gaza waters was in 1948. The Israelis have acted in direct violation of international law by barring any ships access to Gaza ports.

Any supplies meant for the Palestinians are detoured to Israeli ports and the cargo is checked out by the Israelis before delivery to the Palestinians. Israel has been able to exert power by stretching the 12-mile international limit in the sea, reaching to the Greek Aegean, according to an observer.

When is America going to wake up and do the humane thing? How long can the U.S. continue to sully its reputation for human decency? U.S. strategies seem to follow the diplomatic motto, "We have no permanent friends - only permanent interests."
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Racism Is Destroying America
By James Donahue

Public statements by top Republicans referring to President Barack Obama as "tar baby" and "boy" are beginning to bring to the surface the reason GOP and Tea Bagger-backed legislators are unable to come to terms with the Obama Administration on just about any issue.

They won't follow because they object to the fact that our president is black. And this is driving the nation and the word economy into disaster.

Colorado Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn isn't the only one who has used the term "tar baby" in recent weeks, although he made headlines when he did it. Appearing on a Denver talk radio show Lamborn said he didn't want to have to be associated with Mr. Obama because "it's like touching a tar baby and you get it, you're stuck, and you're a part of the problem now and you can't get away." Lamborn has since apologized for his remarks.

Other Republicans, including Senator John McCain and Mitt Romney have also apologized for using the phrase "tar baby" in reference to government policies. Their comments went almost unnoticed.

The term tar baby comes from the old Uncle Remus stories, and the Disney children's film Song of the South, were B'rer Fox uses a doll made of a lump of tar shaped like a baby to trap B'rer Rabbit. The phrase has become a racial slur.

Another former Republican presidential candidate and MSNBC personality Pat Buchanan, in a television appearance with the Rev. Al Sharpton, referred to Mr. Obama as "your boy." Sharpton took issue with the comment and Buchanan has since apologized.

And, of course, the GOP pig radio bad-mouth Rush Limbaugh has had no problem attacking Mr. Obama with phrases like "the magic negro" and even "tar baby." Limbaugh went so far as to tell his listeners to watch out for Obama to seize the nation's farms which happened in Zimbabwe, a black nation of Africa.

That comments like these are slipping from the mouths of major political leaders in television and radio appearances is a disturbing indication that the unspoken problem in Washington has been racism ever since the day Mr. Obama took office. And this is a great tragedy. If true, it means that the man elected by a majority of Americans . . . this bright, charismatic and energetic president . . . is being rejected by his colleagues because of the color of his skin and possibly for no other reason.

Racism has been a millstone on this nation since its origins, when black Africans were imported as slaves for the farms along the south and eastern seaboard. The founding fathers, many of the slave owners, knew it was wrong but could not deal with the issue when drafting the Constitution. It took a Civil War that left an estimated 620,000 Americans dead, including President Abraham Lincoln, and nearly another century of conflict before black Americans gained their right to equality when the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

But tragically, we have all discovered that merely passing a law does not make Americans truly equal. No one can generate love from the heart by merely passing a law that orders us to love one another. While bigotry and racism has been slowly slipping away from the American society on the surface, it still hangs around in the shadows. And this ugly rot is now threatening to destroy us like a cancer, from the inside out.

The latest effect is being seen on world stock markets, which appear to be in free-fall after the Republican controlled House of Representatives and U. S. Senate failed to reach a solid plan for dealing with the national financial crisis and nearly thrust the nation in default on its debts to foreign nations. The compromise reached at the last moment is being viewed by many as a way of extending the fight for yet another year.

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan was spot on last week when he told his television viewers that the big August 4 drop in world markets was a reaction by investors to Washington's inability to come to terms with this issue.

"We are witnessing well-informed investors conclude future employment and production in the West is in jeopardy as a result of the government's apparent inability to solve problems," Ratigan said. "They are seeking to reduce their exposure to the future production of Western countries because it does not appear that these governments can deal with expectations of sustained unemployment and diminished prosperity in a way that is constructive."

It is due time for Americans to trash their religious, social and political implants and start learning how to love one another, unconditionally. If we cannot do this, the United States is in great danger of collapsing in upon itself from racial rot of our own creation.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






They Died in Vain; Deal With It
By Ray McGovern

Many of those preaching at American church services Sunday extolled as "heroes" the 30 American and 8 Afghan troops killed Saturday west of Kabul, when a helicopter on a night mission crashed, apparently after taking fire from Taliban forces. This week, the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) can be expected to beat a steady drumbeat of "they shall not have died in vain."

But they did. I know it is a hard truth, but they did die in vain.

As in the past, churches across the country will keep praising the fallen troops for protecting "our way of life," and few can demur, given the tragic circumstances.

Caskets

But, sadly, such accolades are, at best, misguided - at worst, dishonest. Most preachers do not have a clue as to what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan and why. Many prefer not to think about it. There are some who do know better, but virtually all in that category eventually opt to punt.

Should we fault the preachers as they reach for words designed to give comfort to those in their congregations mourning the deaths of so many young troops? As hard as it might seem, I believe we can do no other than fault - and confront - them. However well meaning their intentions, their negligence and timidity in confronting basic war issues merely help to perpetuate unnecessary killing. It is high time to hold preachers accountable.

Many preachers are alert and open enough to see through the propaganda for perpetual war. But most will not take the risk of offending their flock with unpalatable truth. Better not to risk protests from the super-patriots - many of them with deep pockets - in the pews. And better to avoid, at all costs, offending the loved ones of those who have been killed - loved ones who can hardly be faulted for trying desperately to find some meaning in the snuffing out of young lives.

Best to Just Praise and Pray

Far better to pray for those already killed and those who in the future will "give the last full measure of devotion to our country." In sum, by and large, American preachers are afraid to tell the truth. They lack the virtue that Thomas Aquinas taught is the foundation of all virtue - courage. Aquinas wrote (to translate into the vernacular) that all other virtue is specious if you have no guts.

Writer James Hollingsworth hit the nail on the head: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." Like the truth.

Those who often seem to ache the most in the face of unnecessary death are mothers. Many mothers do summon the courage to say - and say loudly - ENOUGH. Yes, my son (or daughter) died for no good purpose, they are strong enough to acknowledge, painfully but honestly. He (she) did die in vain. Now we must all deal with it. Stop the false patriotism. And, most important, stop the killing.

Cindy Sheehan, whose 25 year-old son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, is one such mother. She and others have tried to put a dent into the strange logic that attempts to translate unnecessary death into justification for still more unnecessary death. But they get little air or ink in the Fawning Corporate Media. Rather, what you will hear in the days ahead from the FCM is well honed rhetoric not only about how our troops "cannot have died in vain," but also that Americans must now redouble our resolve to "honor their sacrifice."

President Barack Obama set the tone on Saturday:

"We will draw inspiration from their lives, and continue the work of securing our country and standing up for the values they embodied."

Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, also primed the pump for the FCM, saying Saturday, "All of those killed in this operation were true heroes who had already given so much in the defense of freedom."

And Joint Chiefs Chairman went even further in professing to know "what our fallen would have wanted" us to do - namely, "keep fighting." Mullen added that, "it is certainly what we are going to do." All this was duly reported in Sunday's Washington Post and other leading U.S. newspapers -without much comment.

Over the next several days, TV viewers will get a steady diet of this kind of disingenuous logic from talk show hosts feeding on the grist from Obama, Mullen, Allen, and others. After all, many pundits work for news organizations owned or allied with some of the same corporations profiteering from war.

Too bad CBS's legendary Edward R. Murrow is long since dead; and the widely respected Walter Cronkite, as well. Taking the CBS baton from Murrow, who had challenged the "red scare" witch hunt of Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cronkite gradually saw through the dishonesty responsible for the killing of so many in Vietnam. He finally spoke up, and said, in effect, any more who die will have died in vain.

(The very long hiatus between Cronkite and Scott Pelley, newly appointed "CBS Evening News" anchor, has been particularly painful. The jury is still out, but I harbor some hope that Pelley may try to follow CBS's earlier, prouder tradition, if by some miracle his corporate bosses allow him to. Given today's prevailing atmosphere of obeisance to Establishment Washington, Pelley certainly has his work cut out for him. We shall have to wait and see if he has it in him to take the risk of rising to the occasion.)

Corporal Shank & Specialist Kirkland

Five years ago I was giving talks in Missouri, when the body of 18 year-old Cpl. Jeremy Shank of Jackson, Missouri (population 12,000) came home for burial. He was killed in Hawijah, Iraq on September 6, 2006 while on a "dismounted security patrol when he encountered enemy forces using small arms," according to the Pentagon.

Which enemy forces? Two weeks before Shank was killed, Stephen Hadley, George W. Bush's national security adviser, acknowledged that the challenge in Iraq "isn't about insurgency, isn't about terror; it's about sectarian violence." Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Makiki added, "The most important element in the security plan is to curb the religious violence."

So was Shank's mission to prevent Iraqi religious fanatics from blowing up one another? What do you think; was that worth his life?

On September 7, 2006, the day after Shank was killed, President Bush, in effect, mocked his unnecessary death by drawing the familiar but bogus connection between 9/11 and the "war on terror," of which he claimed Iraq was a part. Bush said, "Five years after September 11, 2001, America is safer - and America is winning the war on terror."

Flowery Funeral Words

Back at the First Baptist Church in Jackson, Missouri, Rev. Carter Frey eulogized Shank as one of those who "put themselves in harm's way and paid the ultimate sacrifice so you and I can have freedom to live in this country."

Correction: It was not Cpl. Shank who put himself in harm's way; it was those who used a peck of lies to launch a bloody, unnecessary war - first and foremost, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, not to mention the craven Congress that authorized it and most of the FCM that led the cheerleading for it.

Was separating Shia from Sunni a mission worth what is so facilely called the "ultimate sacrifice," or - for other troops - the penultimate one paid by tens of thousands of veterans trying to adjust to life with brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and/or missing limbs?

Despite the self-serving rhetoric about "heroes," the young, small-town Shanks of America stand low in the priorities of Establishment Washington. They are pawns in the war games played by generals and politicians far, far from the battlefield.

Even in the Army in which I served, troops were often referred to simply as "warm bodies;" that is, at least before they became cold and stiff. But that term was normally not accompanied by the mechanistic disdain reflected in the memo by a Fort Lewis-McCord Army major that came to light last year.

On March 20, 2010, Specialist Derrick Kirkland, back from his second tour in Iraq, hanged himself in the barracks at Fort Lewis-McCord, leaving behind a wife and young daughter. Kirkland had been suffering from severe depression and anxiety attacks, for which he had to bear severe ridicule by his comrades.

Expendable

As for his superiors, it was Army policy to do everything possible to avoid diagnosing PTSD. And so, Kirkland ended up becoming a new entry on a little-known statistical table; namely, the one that shows that more active-duty soldiers are currently committing suicide than are being killed in combat.

Not a problem for Maj. Keith Markham, Executive Officer of Kirkland's unit, who put the prevailing attitude all too clearly in a private memo sent to his platoon leaders. "We have an unlimited supply of expendable labor," wrote Markham.

And, sadly, he is right. Because of the poverty draft (aka the "professional Army"), more than half of U.S. troops come from small towns like Jackson, Missouri and the inner cities of our country. In both these places, good jobs and educational opportunity are rare to nonexistent.

I suspect that one factor behind the very high suicide rate is a belated realization among the troops that they have been conned, lied to - that they have been used as pawns in an unconscionably cynical game. I would imagine that corporals and specialists, as well as high brass like the legendary two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Marine Gen. Smedley Butler, often come to this realization belatedly, and that this probably exacerbates the pain.

Butler wrote "War is a Racket" in 1935, describing the workings of the military-industrial complex well before President Eisenhower gave it a name. It is not difficult for troops to learn that the phenomenon about which Eisenhower warned has now broadened into an even more pervasive and powerful military-industrial-corporate-congressional-media-institutional-church complex. Small wonder the suicide rate is so high.

And for what? Please raise your hand if you now believe, or have ever believed, that the White House and Pentagon have sent a hundred thousand troops to Afghanistan for the reason given by President Obama; namely, "to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" the 50 to 100 al-Qaeda who U.S. intelligence agencies says are still in Afghanistan.

And keep your hands up, those of you who fear you might throw something at the TV screen the next time Gen. David Petraeus intones that wonderfully flexible phrase "fragile and reversible" to describe what he keeps calling "progress" in Afghanistan.

Troops returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan know better. It must be particularly hard for them to hear the lies about "progress," and then be ridiculed and marginalized for having PTSD. It seems a safe bet that some of those have read Kipling, and on occasion wish they had found release by following his morbid advice - awful as it is:

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains And go to your gawd like a soldier."

The Establishment Church

I added "institutional church" into the military-industrial-corporate-congressional-media-institutional-church complex coined above because, with very few exceptions, the institutional church is still riding shotgun for the system - and the wars.

I find that most men and women of the cloth avoid indicting "wars of choice," even though such wars were quite precisely defined at the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as "wars of aggression" and labeled the "supreme" international war crime). They know that in such wars thousands upon thousands die - civilians as well as military.

But then fear seems to walk in, for preachers all too often fall back on platitudinous, fulsome praise for those who "have given their lives so that we can live in freedom." And, as the familiar phrase goes, they say/think, "I guess we'll have to leave it there."

And there continue to be relatively few outspoken folk like Cindy Sheehan, painfully aware that courage and truth are far more important than fear, even when that fear includes the painful recognition that the life of a beloved young son was ended unnecessarily. There are some who dare to point out that the mission given our troops has made us less, not more, safe at home, and ask what is so hard to understand about Thou Shalt Not Kill? The FCM ignores these Justice folks, so all too few know of what they say and do.

It is a curiosity that the Bible and the teachings of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, seem to have become OBE (overtaken by events) and no longer inform the sermons of many American preachers. Odd that the relevant teachings from this treasure trove seem to have become passé or, as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the Geneva Conventions, "quaint" and "obsolete."

I have this vision of Stephen Decatur smiling from the afterlife as he watches more and more acceptance being given in recent years to his famous dictum: "Our country, right or wrong."

Let me suggest that preachers consider drawing material from yet another source in thinking about the wars in which the U.S. is currently engaged. Instead of fulsome encomia for those who have made "the ultimate sacrifice," they might be directed to Rudyard Kipling for words more to the point, if politically and congregationally incorrect.

Two passages (the first a one-liner) shout out their applicability to U.S. misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and - God help us - where next?

"If they ask you why we died, tell them because our fathers lied."

and

"It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles,
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.
At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;
And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."

(c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.







Talk About Chutzpah - Wall Street Lecturing America on 'Fiscal Responsibility?'
By Robert Creamer

Standard and Poors' downgrading of the US treasury bills - and its sanctimonious lecture about its "concerns" that the U.S. won't get its fiscal house in order - are like a reckless, drag-racing teenager teaching a safe driving class.

Wall Street in general - and Standard and Poors in particular - have done more to contribute to America's budget deficit than anyone else in America.

This is the same firm that maintained their AAA rating of the mortgage-backed securities that were being used to gamble on Wall Street right up until the time that Lehman Brothers collapsed and set off the global market meltdown.

Their reckless disregard for any modicum of due diligence in determining the soundness of the financial instruments traded by Wall Street allowed the speculative bubble that caused the Great Recession to grow and ultimately explode. The US Gross Domestic Product has yet to recover to pre-meltdown levels. That is the single greatest contributor to the all of the increases in the budget deficit that have happened since.

And of course it is directly responsible for the jobs deficit that is the real underlying disease afflicting the American economy - directly costing eight million Americans their jobs.

But that's not all. The big Wall Street banks lobbied for years to deregulate their operations. That lack of oversight - including lax regulations of rating agencies like Standard and Poors -- led directly to the meltdown. And, of course, the big Wall Street banks did everything that they could to stop the Wall Street Reform bill that passed last year. They continue to work hard to undermine the regulations intended to implement it.

And when it comes time to pay their fair share to reduce the deficit, Wall Street has done everything it can to lower tax rates on the rich to the lowest levels since before the Great Depression. Let's remember that the people with the highest incomes in America - hedge fund managers - pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries do - just 15%.

All the while as they pontificate about the need to get America's fiscal house in order, they twist arms to make sure that people like hedge fund manager John Paulson - who made $5 billion in income last year (that's $2.4 million an hour) - don't have to pay higher taxes. Paulson had more income last year than the Gross Domestic Product of five nations.

Just a little over ten years ago, America had budget surpluses into the foreseeable future. That was largely because President Clinton and the Democrats voted in 1993 to modestly increase taxes on wealthy Americans. Wall Street worked hard to roll back those modest tax increases on the rich by passing the Bush tax cuts ten years later. Those Bush tax cuts, together with two unpaid-for wars and an unpaid-for Republican Medicare pharmaceutical bill - tipped the Federal budget into huge deficits.

Of course their recklessness continues. The financial analysis that Standard and Poors used to argue for its downgrade of U.S. debt had a two trillion dollar mathematical error that was caught by the Treasury Department. That's the kind of error that would get an "F" in elementary school.

The very idea that Wall Street - and Standard and Poors - would have the chutzpa to lecture the rest of America about fiscal responsibility should infuriate each and every American.
(c) 2011 Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win. He is a partner in the firm Democracy Partners. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.







Macomb County-Style Injustice
The Story of A. J. Young
By Mike Wrathell

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Henry VI, Part 2 ~~~ Shakespeare

When I ran for Macomb County Prosecutor in 2008, I ran mostly to defend the right to a robust election, a right guaranteed by the First and Ninth Amendments, and I got my point across, even though I lost. Every American has a constitutional right to run for office and support the candidates of their choice. Anyone who tries to restrict that right doesn't belong in public office and is absolutely abusing their power. (By the way, no local reporter bothered to interview a constitutional law professor to verify my legal opinion, even though Michigan has over five law schools; one local columnist, in fact, acted like Eric's lapdog and didn't mind that Eric used his taxpayer-funded office as his de facto campaign headquarters. His primary concern was that I am an artist, musician, and writer. Duh!) And, if you swear an oath to defend the U. S. Constitution (as all attorneys must), you're treating that oath (and the U. S. and Michigan Constitutions) like toilet paper. Period. Nothing personal, Eric; that's just the way it is, and you should know that, or do you just not care? The Massachusetts Democratically-led Senate knew such a restriction wouldn't pass constitutional muster when they changed the law regarding gubernatorial appointments of U. S. Senators after Ted Kennedy died, per The New York Times. Maybe you should try getting a clue, Eric - your own party in Massachusetts knows better - what's your major malfunction?

However, there is something else gravely wrong going on in Macomb County. Arthur Jason "A. J." Young, son of Art Young, an attorney and former Roseville City Councilman, got railroaded into prison back in the days when Carl Marlinga ran the Prosecutor's Office in Mt. Clemens.

Maybe, like Rupert Murdoch claims, he didn't know of the shady goings-on during A. J.'s murder trial, and I am not going to ask him to accept responsibility in this article, but if he or Eric Smith (the current prosecutor), or Steve Kaplan (the assistant prosecutor who conducted the trial for the People), or Judge Schwartz, or anyone else, player or non-player in this travesty of justice would like to write Governor Rick Snyder a letter asking for A. J. Young's immediate release from prison, that would be nice, not to mention honorable and just.

One day A. J. and Misty McGinnis, his girlfriend, went down to Detroit to get their money back from a purchase of some street drugs that wasn't to their satisfaction. Yes, they weren't saints, but they didn't deserve to be kidnapped, carjacked, robbed, and raped by a long-time felon. A. J. now regrets ever getting into drugs, by the way.

They were told that "Fila" Frank Tipton was the man who could rectify the situation and they followed him into a house. Mr. Tipton was an ex-con, a bad news guy from the get-go. But when you're Jonesing for a high, you aren't always looking for individuals of high character and breeding. Once inside the house, "Fila" Frank brandished a hidden weapon in his coat, telling A. J. to remove his leather jacket, and for Misty to give up her jewelry. Frank put the leather on over his own coat, and put Misty's jewelry on, too. He also put A. J.'s pager into his pants pocket.

"Fila" Frank had them all pile into A. J.'s van and the three of them hit the road. Misty was crying, terrified. A. J., perhaps fearing no good end to this kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery, told Frank that he had money at his home in Roseville - in exchange for Misty's and his freedom.

There being no end to "Fila" Frank's greed and base desires, he readily accepted the proposition, too dim-witted to realize a ruse.

As the van pulled up to A. J.'s home, "Fila" Frank told A. J. he had three minutes to get the money before he killed Misty. He told Misty to get into the front seat as A. J. hurriedly exited the passenger seat and ran to the house.

A. J. knew he had no time to lose, so he didn't call 911. He knew that might take a lot of time. We've all heard horror stories of incompetent 911 dispatchers. A. J. did what a hero would do. What Clint Eastwood does in all his movies. He got a gun. A 9mm.

Meanwhile, the scumbag, "Fila" Frank Tipton, had already begun to sexually assault Misty. Incredibly, Assistant Prosecutor Steve Kaplan, who once ran for Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney, now works in Wayne County, and also has taught at my alma mater, Cooley Law School, characterized the sexual assault as an episode of consensual sex, defying common sense and a witness, Claire May, who Kaplan intimidated before trial such that she was afraid to testify truthfully. Ms. May had earlier told Roseville police, ".....this did not look like funsies, but a rape going on...." Mr. Kaplan was allowed, though, to have a former boyfriend of Misty's testify that she probably enjoyed having sex with "Fila" Frank, due to his race - something rape shield laws usually protect against. A nurse wasn't allowed to testify about physical evidence of rape trauma to Misty's body, either, even though a comprehensive report had been made, a report the jury was not allowed to hear about. Art Young, A. J.'s father, told me he's heard it said of Steve Kaplan, "He never lets the facts get in the way of a conviction." Sure sounds like it to me! There were some assistant prosecutors at the time (and I have names in case a local journalist feels like investigating this further) who felt A. J.'s actions were justified and he shouldn't have been charged at all, but they were afraid to speak up for fear of being fired. For America being "the home of the brave," we sure have our fair share of cowards, huh? Of course, they're lawyers - not regular Americans. There were many Roseville police officers, too, who felt A. J. got railroaded, but they weren't allowed to testify, either.

This win-at-all-costs mentality is rife in the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office. I can tell you this from personal experience. I have personal knowledge of a witness who told an assistant prosecutor that she didn't witness what was alleged in a petition to hospitalize someone - that it was another employee at the group home who did. She was told she should testify, anyway. "Don't worry; I won't ask you about that." In that case, the defendant won his trial, though. A. J. Young is doing 27 to 50 years.

When A. J. got back to the van, he saw "Fila" Frank raping Misty in the front seat. Misty's head was being forced into Frank's lap, and both their pants were down. A. J. repeatedly fired his 9mm into Frank and the van took off, crashing into a parked truck 200 feet in front of A. J.'s carjacked van. "Fila" Frank was dead. Unfortunately, a bullet passed through him and hit Misty, too. Maybe it ricocheted around in the van. A. J. was distraught. He called out loud for help, first yelling to Misty to jump out of the out-of-control van before the crash; when he reached the van, he saw Misty, gravely injured (and soon to die); he cursed "Fila" Frank, now dead, using some salty language that Mr. Kaplan later used against A. J. at trial to mischaracterize the incident.

A. J. told Mr. Bato Simich at the crash site that he and Misty were "being held hostage" by "Fila" Frank Tipton. Kaplan tried to, and succeeded, in making sure Judge Schwartz and the jury never heard that testimony, either—for it showed A. J. wasn't making up an elaborate yarn after the fact as he stewed in jail, awaiting trial. We can't let the truth come out in a Macomb County courtroom, can we? Kaplan intimidated that witness by saying, "You probably heard that somewhere else." Mr. Simich never relayed A. J.'s excited utterance to the jury, due to Kaplan's intimidation tactics. Mr. Simich signed an affidavit as to what he heard, too. In United States v. Koubriti, Judge Gerald Rosen ruled that the prosecution had "materially misled the court, the jury, and the defense" by withholding exculpatory evidence. The intentional suppression of exculpatory evidence, which includes the prosecutorial intimidation of witnesses, denies a defendant their constitutional right to a fair trial and is grounds for a mistrial. A. J. Young still awaits the justice has has been so egregiously denied.

In a Michigan Court of Appeals case called People v. Springs, 101 Mich App 118 (1980), the Springs court noted that, "Nothing can bring more contempt and suspicion on the administration of justice than the failure of its ministers to respect justice." You will forgive me if this article drips of contempt, I hope.

In case you aren't keeping count, we now have two witnesses that weren't allowed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - thanks to the repulsive corruption of the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office under Carl Marlinga, the man who hired Eric Smith, the current county prosecutor, who has never gotten back to Attorney Art Young regarding the fish-smelling nature of A. J.'s conviction, even though he told Art he would.

"Fila" Frank was wearing A. J.'s leather jacket and Misty's jewelry at the time of his more-than-timely demise. He also had A. J.'s pager and a screwdriver, the hard weapon he used to simulate a gun during the horribly-ending (for Misty and A. J.) crime spree.

No evidence of Mr. Tipton's long criminal history, with similar offenses and modus operandi, was allowed to reach the jury's ears, incredibly. "Fila" Frank was cast as a perfect angel, a victim of racism and jealousy. Misty was portrayed as a worthless slut, inexplicably cheating on her boyfriend in front of his house with a man wearing her jewelry and her boyfriend's leather jacket and pager. A. J. was only wearing a tee shirt above-the-waist in ten degree weather.

All this defies common sense, I know. Yet, despite numerous state and federal appeals, and letters to the Governor, the conviction stands, and A. J. rots in prison. I've seen some of the letters he's written his father, and they are heart-rending. A. J. should be a free man. He had a legal right to defend Misty from being sexually assaulted and feared for her life, thinking "Fila" Frank had a gun - a "gun" he and Misty had been threatened with during the entire ordeal.

There's evidence A. J. was only in his Roseville home for a minute and a half, yet Kaplan tried to convince the jury that he was in there for 20 minutes, trying, perhaps, to imply A. J. had traded Misty's sexual services for the bag of pot found on "Fila" Frank's dead body. Go ahead and ask him if you see him. Maybe you're some hot shot reporter dreaming of a Pulitzer; maybe you're a plain, ole American who believes lawyers shouldn't be allowed to behave as though they're the scum of the Earth (even if they are) with absolute impunity. Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe I should strike the word "maybe."

In Berger vs. U. S., a 1935 case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor who tries to "win at all costs" is costing the taxpayers a lot of money for incarcerating innocent people, and costing innocent people their freedom and their right to pursue happiness. The Supreme Court in Berger further elaborated, that a prosecutor ".....may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones." If Thomas Jefferson knew of the shady, foul blows going on in Macomb County courts by its prosecutors, he'd surely be rolling in his grave.

Looks like I'm going to have to run for Macomb County Prosecutor again and lead by example; I know I must write a letter to Governor Snyder, too. If you'd like to write him, as well, asking for a full pardon, or at least clemency, for A. J. Young, here is the address.

Attn.: The Honorable Governor Rick Snyder

Re: Mr. Arthur Jason Young, MDOC #321897

Office of Governor Rick Snyder
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, Michigan 48909

The more letters Governor Snyder gets, the greater chance A. J. will be freed. His father is 62 now. A. J. is 31. A. J. has done 10 of his 50 years max. Art may be 102 before A. J. gets out of the slammer. How would you feel if it was your son wrongly imprisoned as a result of prosecutorial misconduct? Not too good, I bet. Thank you in advance to all who feel, like me, something must be done to help A. J. Young, and who take the time to write a letter and lick a stamp.

POSTNOTE

I don't want A. J.'s freedom to hinge on my beating Eric Smith in 2012, though; any prosecutorial candidate (and victor in the election) should want to reopen this case - why the smell of it must permeate the entire office!

There is a good chance the field will be quite crowded in 2012. Lawyers, like sharks, can smell a drop of blood a mile away. Eric Smith appears wounded by controversy; and, like vultures circling above a dying jackal, there may be quite a few brave barristers who, not caring that the Bill of Rights has been disrespected in Macomb County in the Smith Era (and the Marlinga Era before it, thanks to Mr. Kaplan), and, thus, not opposing him like I did in 2008, suddenly feel inspired by the tortured writhings of a bellowing beast, inches away from a watering hole, but, to their sharkish minds, unable, perhaps, to reach the refreshing fount.

To these noble champions of the rights of the citizenry, I ask not where were you in 2008 (I already know where you weren't, and that says it all....), but I do ask this: will you promise to end the Smith Era policy forbidding assistant prosecutors from running against Eric or supporting anyone who dares to run against him, even with the donation of a penny or putting a lawn sign on their own property?

If not, why? Why don't you think the entire U. S. Constitution is a sacred document? Did you forget you swore an Oath to defend it? Why are you acting like a clone of Eric Smith? Afraid to get your hands dirty? Why did you bother to run if your candidacy is tainted with corruption and cowardice from Day One?

And, will you, once confronted with the facts of the kangaroo courtroom antics (and behind-the-scenes intimidation of witnesses) of Steve Kaplan, openly and fervently try to see that A. J. Young finally gets the true justice he deserves and is freed from prison with a clean record? Will you do your best to see that such antics are never used again in Macomb County? If you answer, "No," please stay out of the race; you are a disgrace. Macomb County needs to turn over a new leaf. A leaf that is beautiful and not befouled by buffoonish, cowardly, lying and/or manipulative lawyers that make Shakespeare's words ring true.
(c) 2011 Mike Wrathell is an artist, attorney, actor and a reporter for Issues & Alibis Magazine and America Jr.. Contact Mike.







Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt
By Paul Krugman

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor's, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it's the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation's prospects.

Let's start with S.& P.'s lack of credibility. If there's a single word that best describes the rating agency's decision to downgrade America, it's chutzpah - traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan.

America's large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.

Nor did the bad judgment stop there. Notoriously, S.& P. gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise. And how did the rating agency react after this A-rated firm went bankrupt? By issuing a report denying that it had done anything wrong.

So these people are now pronouncing on the creditworthiness of the United States of America?

Wait, it gets better. Before downgrading U.S. debt, S.& P. sent a preliminary draft of its press release to the U.S. Treasury. Officials there quickly spotted a $2 trillion error in S.& P.'s calculations. And the error was the kind of thing any budget expert should have gotten right. After discussion, S.& P. conceded that it was wrong - and downgraded America anyway, after removing some of the economic analysis from its report.

As I'll explain in a minute, such budget estimates shouldn't be given much weight in any case. But the episode hardly inspires confidence in S.& P.'s judgment.

More broadly, the rating agencies have never given us any reason to take their judgments about national solvency seriously. It's true that defaulting nations were generally downgraded before the event. But in such cases the rating agencies were just following the markets, which had already turned on these problem debtors.

And in those rare cases where rating agencies have downgraded countries that, like America now, still had the confidence of investors, they have consistently been wrong. Consider, in particular, the case of Japan, which S.& P. downgraded back in 2002. Well, nine years later Japan is still able to borrow freely and cheaply. As of Friday, in fact, the interest rate on Japanese 10-year bonds was just 1 percent.

So there is no reason to take Friday's downgrade of America seriously. These are the last people whose judgment we should trust.

And yet America does have big problems.

These problems have very little to do with short-term or even medium-term budget arithmetic. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its current deficit. It's true that we're building up debt, on which we'll eventually have to pay interest. But if you actually do the math, instead of intoning big numbers in your best Dr. Evil voice, you discover that even very large deficits over the next few years will have remarkably little impact on U.S. fiscal sustainability.

No, what makes America look unreliable isn't budget math, it's politics. And please, let's not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided - specifically, they're caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.

The truth is that as far as the straight economics goes, America's long-run fiscal problems shouldn't be all that hard to fix. It's true that an aging population and rising health care costs will, under current policies, push spending up faster than tax receipts. But the United States has far higher health costs than any other advanced country, and very low taxes by international standards. If we could move even part way toward international norms on both these fronts, our budget problems would be solved.

So why can't we do that? Because we have a powerful political movement in this country that screamed "death panels" in the face of modest efforts to use Medicare funds more effectively, and preferred to risk financial catastrophe rather than agree to even a penny in additional revenues.

The real question facing America, even in purely fiscal terms, isn't whether we'll trim a trillion here or a trillion there from deficits. It is whether the extremists now blocking any kind of responsible policy can be defeated and marginalized.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"... the establishment can't admit [that] it is human rights violations that make ... countries attractive to business -- so history has to be fudged, including denial of our support of regimes of terror and the practices that provide favorable climates of investment, and our destabilization of democracies that [don't] meet [the] standard of service to the transnational corporation..."
~~~ Edward S. Herman









Dear Angry Lunatic
A Response to Chris Hedges
By Sam Harris

Over at Truthdig, the celebrated journalist Chris Hedges has discovered that Christopher Hitchens and I are actually racists with a fondness for genocide. He has broken this story before-many times, in fact-but in his most recent essay he blames "secular fundamentalists" like me and Hitch for the recent terrorist atrocities in Norway.

Very nice.

Hedges begins, measured as always:

The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik. This filth has poisoned and degraded our civil discourse. The looming economic and environmental collapse will provide sparks and tinder to transform this coarse language of fundamentalist hatred into, I fear, the murderous rampages experienced by Norway. I worry more about the Anders Breiviks than the Mohammed Attas.

The editors at Truthdig have invited me to respond to this phantasmagoria. There is, however, almost no charge worth answering in Hedges' writing-there never is. Which is more absurd, the idea of "secular fundamentalism" or the notion that its edicts pose a greater threat of terrorism than the doctrine of Islam? Do such assertions even require sentences to refute?

However, Hedges' latest attack is so vicious and gratuitous that some reply seemed necessary. To minimize the amount of time I would need to spend today cleaning this man's vomit, I decided to adapt a few pieces I had already written. But then I just got angry...

I sent the following to Truthdig:

****

After my first book was published, the journalist Chris Hedges seemed to make a career out of misrepresenting its contents-asserting, among other calumnies, that somewhere in its pages I call for an immediate, nuclear first strike on the entire Muslim world. Hedges spread this lie so sedulously that I could have spent years writing letters to the editor. Even if I had been willing to squander my time in this way, such letters are generally pointless, as few people read them. In the end, I decided to create a page on my website addressing such controversies, so that I can then forget all about them. The result has been less than satisfying. Several years have passed, and I still meet people at public talks and in comment threads who believe that I support the outright murder of hundreds of millions of innocent people.

In an apparent attempt to become the most tedious person on Earth, Hedges has attacked me again on this point, and the editors at Truthdig have invited me to respond. I suppose it is worth a try. To begin, I'd like to simply cite the text that has been on my website for years, so that readers can appreciate just how unscrupulous and incorrigible Hedges is:

The journalist Chris Hedges has repeatedly claimed (in print, in public lectures, on the radio, and on television) that I advocate a nuclear first-strike on the Muslim world. His remarks, which have been recycled continuously in interviews and blog-posts, generally take the following form:

"I mean, Sam Harris, at the end of his first book, asks us to consider a nuclear first strike on the Arab world." (Q&A at Harvard Divinity School, March 20, 2008)

"Harris, echoing the blood lust of [Christopher] Hitchens, calls, in his book 'The End of Faith,' for a nuclear first strike against the Islamic world." ("The Dangerous Atheism of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris," AlterNet, March 22, 2008)

"And you have in Sam Harris' book, 'The End of Faith,' a call for us to consider a nuclear first strike against the Arab world. This isn't rational. This is insane." ("The Tavis Smiley Show," April 15, 2008)

"Sam Harris, in his book 'The End of Faith,' asks us to consider carrying out a nuclear first-strike on the Arab world. That's not a rational option-that's insanity." ("A Conversation with Chris Hedges," Free Inquiry, August/September 2008)

Wherever they appear, Hedges' comments seem calculated to leave the impression that I want the U.S. government to start killing Muslims by the millions. Below I present the only passage I have ever written on the subject of preventative nuclear war and the only passage that Hedges could be referring to in my work ("The End of Faith," pages 128-129). I have taken the liberty of emphasizing some of the words that Hedges chose to ignore:

It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime-as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day-but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world's population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher's stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side.

I will let the reader judge whether this award-winning journalist has represented my views fairly.

I hope Truthdig readers appreciate the irony here. In his latest fever dream of an essay, Hedges declares that Christopher Hitchens and I (along with our pals on the Christian right) are incapable of "nuance." Amazing. Nuance is really what one hopes Hedges would discover once in his life-if for no other reason than it would leave him with nothing left to say.

I don't think I have ever met anyone so determined to live as a Freudian case study: To read any page of Hedges' is to witness the full catastrophe of public self-deception. He rages (and rages) about the anger and intolerance of others; he accuses his opponents of being "immune to critiques based on reason, fact and logic" in prose so bloated with emotion and insult, and so barren of argument, that every essay reads like a hoax text meant to embarrass the humanities. A person with this little self-awareness should be given a mirror-or an intervention-never a blog.

An editorial (rather than psychoanalytic) note: Hedges claims that I "abrogate the right to exterminate all who do not conform" to my rigid view of the world. I'm afraid this is true. I do, as it turns out, abrogate that right. But Hedges surely means to say that I "arrogate" it. Advice for future skirmishes, Chris: When you are going to insult your opponents by calling them "ignoramuses" who "cannot afford complexity," or disparage them for being incapable of "intellectual and scientific rigor," it is best to know the meanings of the words you use. Not all the words, perhaps-just those you grope for when calling someone a genocidal maniac.

Leaving no canard unemployed, Hedges accuses me of being a racist-again. In truth, he has raised the ante somewhat: My criticism of Islam is now "racist filth." It is tempting to own up to this charge just to see the uncomprehending look on his face: "You know, after a lot of additional study and soul-searching, I realized that you are right: My contention that the doctrines of martyrdom and jihad are integral to Islam, and dangerous, is really nothing more than racist filth. Sorry about that."

However, the response I offered years ago still seems in order:

Some critics of my work have claimed that my critique of Islam is "racist." This charge is almost too silly to merit a response. But, as prominent writers can sometimes be this silly, here goes:

My analysis of religion in general, and of Islam in particular, focuses on what I consider to be bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behavior. My antipathy toward Islam-which is, in truth, difficult to exaggerate-applies to ideas, not to people, and certainly not to the color of a person's skin. My criticism of the logical and behavioral consequences of certain ideas (e.g. martyrdom, jihad, honor, etc.) impugns white converts to Islam-like Adam Gadahn-every bit as much as Arabs like Ayman al-Zawahiri. I am also in the habit of making invidious comparisons between Islam and other religions, like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Must I point out that most Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains are not white like me? One would hope there would be no such need-but the work of writers like Chris Hedges suggests that the need is pressing.

As I regularly emphasize when discussing Islam, no one is suffering under the doctrine of Islam more than Muslims are-particularly Muslim women. Those who object to any attack upon the religion of Islam as "racist" or as a symptom of "Islamophobia" display a nauseating insensitivity to the subjugation of women throughout the Muslim world. At this moment, millions of women and girls have been abandoned to illiteracy, forced marriage, and lives of slavery and abuse under the guise of "multiculturalism" and "religious sensitivity." This is a crime to which every apologist for Islam is now an accomplice.

I have participated in many debates over the years and engaged many of my critics. In fact, I once debated Hedges at a benefit for Truthdig. You can watch our exchange here. I am happy to say that these encounters are usually very pleasant-for even when they grow prickly on the stage, the exchange in the green room is generally quite warm. My meeting with Hedges was a notable exception. In fact, Hedges is the one person I have told event organizers that I will not appear with again for any reason-which is a pity, because his inability to present or follow an argument makes everything one says sound incisive. The man is not only wrong in his convictions, but dishonest-and determined to remain so. I trust this is a consequence of his most conspicuous quality as a person: sanctimony. There is a main vein of sanctimony in this universe, and it appears to run directly through the brain of Chris Hedges. He has staked his claim to it and will follow it wherever it leads. The results can be seen weekly on this page. And I'm sorry to say that this is why I stopped writing for Truthdig years ago.
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.




The September 29, 1998 cover of Piers Morgan's newspaper,
the Mirror, targeted reporter Greg Palast.





Hacked And Attacked
How Piers Morgan's Fabricated Story Almost Ruined This Reporter
By Greg Palast

The September 29, 1998 cover of Piers Morgan's newspaper, the Mirror, targeted reporter Greg Palast.

I am not surprised that Piers Morgan has been outed for allegedly hacking phones (listening, in one case, to personal messages between Heather Mills and Paul McCartney.) I learned about the creepy antics of this one-man TV-host crime spree the hard way: as a victim of his crime-and-slime form of "journalism."

On September 29, 1998, Piers Morgan's Mirror ran a screaming full-page headline: SEX SCANDAL ROCKS LABOUR CONFERENCE. His paper had caught a rival paper's reporter who'd broken into the hotel room of a comely, young, rising star of the Labour Party. The reporter was caught there half undressed.

I was that reporter.

And the story was a complete load of crap. But Morgan, "editor" of the Mirror, ran the report on Page One, and pages 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 - even though he knew it was fabricated. He knew because he had fabricated it.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's press chief personally thanked Morgan for running the bogus story.

This was not the first time Pirate Morgan had worked me over. Months earlier, on Page One again, he ran a full-page photo of me (one that made me look bald!) under the words THE LIAR in letters bigger than the Mirror's headline, Hitler Defeated.

(Private Eye, the Onion of Britain, ran a response - a photo of me under the headline,
IS THIS THE MOST EVIL MAN IN THE WORLD? by "Piers Moron.")

O.K., I'm bald. But I am not a liar. I was in that hotel room to get a story, not get the young lady's panties. But I did not break in. That's what Morgan would do. A sworn affidavit by the hotel clerk said the female in question had left me a key with instructions to meet her in her room.

In other words, I was set up like a bowling pin.

As an investigator, it is quite embarrassing to have fallen so easily into a honey trap, but the honey was quite something: I was lusting after information about her mentor, the man known in England as The Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson, or I should say, the Right Honorable Lord Mandelson.

I'd already busted open a story about how Mandelson, Blair's claw, Blair's Karl Rove, had aided a "cash-for-access" scheme by his lobbyist cronies. He helped fiddle a bid for a contract to run Britain's National Lottery to give the deal to the guys who ran the Texas Lottery. (If you smell George Bush's connection, you'd be right.)

The story I wrote for The Observer (The Guardian's Sunday paper), "Lobbygate: Cash For Access" won my co-writer Antony Barnett and I the British equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize - and nearly won me time in a lock-up: The Daily Mirror encouraged Mandelson's gal to file charges against me with the constabulary for breaking into her room - though they knew she left me the key.

This is not just fun and games. Piers' phony file on me was used by Reliant Corporation of Houston to attempt to discredit my investigative reports on their frighteningly dangerous operation of nuclear plants. (A judge in Holland threw the book at them.)

Maybe you don't care, but you should. Reliant is the company, under a new corporate alias, which has just been approved to receive the first multi-billion-dollar loan guarantee from the Obama administration to build a new nuclear plant. (Reliant's partner, by the way, is Tokyo Electric Power.)

Obviously, there's a hell of a lot more to this story. I could write a book - and I am. I've decided that, in the public interest, I will add a chapter to the book about Pus Moron, the nuclear hucksters of Houston and why it was that I was half undressed. (There really is an innocent, or nearly innocent, explanation, I promise you.)

Of course, by the time my book comes out in November, Piers may no longer be prancing about on CNN, but breaking rocks on a chain gang. However, CNN is reported as concluding that Morgan's fibs and fabrications - this is Morgan's third run-in with the law - would have "no effect" on his hosting on their network. This only confirms my experience with US television executives that when they need a new on-air journalist, they just wait for a toilet to overflow.
(c) 2011 Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigations for BBC TV and Democracy Now! can be seen by subscribing to Palast's reports at.





The Dead Letter Office...






Heil Obama,

Dear Uber Fuhrer Stabenow,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your helping us do away with Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicade and Social Security, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Demoncratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 09-05-2011. We salute you Frau Stabenow, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Could The Pentagon Be Responsible For Your Death?
The Military's Marching Orders to the Jihadist World
By Tom Engelhardt

Put what follows in the category of paragraphs no one noticed that should have made the nation's hair stand on end. This particular paragraph should also have sent chills through the body politic, launched warning flares, and left the people's representatives in Congress shouting about something other than the debt crisis.

Last weekend, two reliable New York Times reporters, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, had a piece in that paper's Sunday Review entitled "After 9/11, an Era of Tinker, Tailor, Jihadist, Spy." Its focus was the latest counterterrorism thinking at the Pentagon: deterrence theory. (Evidently an amalgam of the old Cold War ideas of "containment" and nuclear deterrence wackily reimagined by the boys in the five-sided building for the age of the jihadi.) Schmitt and Shanker's article was, a note informed the reader, based on research for their forthcoming book, Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.

And here's the paragraph, buried in the middle of their piece, that should have stopped readers in their tracks:

"Or consider what American computer specialists are doing on the Internet, perhaps terrorist leaders' greatest safe haven, where they recruit, raise money, and plot future attacks on a global scale. American specialists have become especially proficient at forging the onscreen cyber-trademarks used by Al Qaeda to certify its Web statements, and are posting confusing and contradictory orders, some so virulent that young Muslims dabbling in jihadist philosophy, but on the fence about it, might be driven away."

The italics are mine, and as the authors urge us to do, let's consider for a moment this tiny, remarkably bizarre window into military reality. As a start, just where those military "computer specialists" are remains unknown. Perhaps they are in the Pentagon, perhaps somewhere in the National Counterterrorism Center, but whoever and wherever they are, here's the question of the week, possibly of the month or the year: Just what kind of "orders" can they be posting "so virulent that young Muslims dabbling in jihadist philosophy, but on the fence about it, might be driven away"?

And even if our computer experts really were capable of turning wavering young Muslims back from the shores of jihadism -- and personally I wouldn't put my money on the Pentagon's skills in that realm -- what about young Muslims (or older ones for that matter) who weren't on that fence and took those "orders" seriously? What exactly are they being "ordered" to do?

Talk about a potential Frankenstein situation -- and all we can do is ask questions. Just what monsters, for example, might the military's computer specialists be helping to forge? And who exactly is supervising those "specialists" and their vituperative messages? (Especially since they are unlikely to be in English, and we already know that Arabic, Pashto, Dari, and Farsi speakers at the higher levels, or even lower levels, of the Pentagon are, at best, few and far between.)

Keep in mind that we already have an example of a similarly wacky program lacking meaningful oversight that went awry, hit the headlines, and resulted in the perfectly real deaths of at least one U.S. Border Patrol agent and undoubtedly many more Mexicans. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives launched its now infamous gun-tracking program in Arizona in late 2009, under the moniker "Operation Fast and Furious" (a reference to a series of movies about street car racers). It was meant to track cross-border gun sales to Mexico's drug cartels by actually letting perfectly real weapons cross the border -- more than 2,000 of them, as it turned out. ATF agents, according to a Washington Post report, would be "instructed not to move in and question the [gun runners] but to let the guns go and see where they eventually ended up." And so they did for more than a year and, not exactly surprisingly, those weapons ended up "on the street" and in the ugliest of hands.

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart asked an apt question about the program:

"The ATF plan to prevent American guns from being used in Mexican gun violence is to provide Mexican gangs with American guns. If this is the plan that they went with, what plan did we reject?"

Assumedly, the same question could be asked of the military's online anti-jihadist program, involving as it evidently does messages believed to be too extreme for wavering young Muslims with an interest in the jihadi "philosophy." Shouldn't someone start asking whether those Pentagon's "orders" to jihadis might not turn out to be the online equivalent of so many loose guns?

After all, what are those specialists ordering them to do? And if actual jihadis actually tried to follow those "confusing and contradictory orders," possibly being confused and contradictory kinds of guys, if they took them seriously and interpreted them in ways not predicted by their putative Pentagon handlers, is there a possibility that anyone could die as a result? And if such messages turn off some prospective jihadis, isn't it possible that they might turn on others? And could they, for instance, have been ordered to commit confused and contradictory acts that might end up involving Americans?

Really, someone should blow Schmitt and Shanker's paragraph up to giant size, tack it up somewhere in the Capitol, and call for a congressional investigation. If the ATF could do it, why not the Pentagon? And honestly, is this how Americans want to see their tax dollars spent?

Read the Schmitt and Shanker piece and you'll get a sense of what Shakespeare might have called the "oerweening pride" rife in the Pentagon when it comes to their skills and their ability to put one (or two, or three) over on the jihadist community. So pleased with themselves were they, that they evidently couldn't help bragging to the two reporters about their skills. The old phrase "too smart for your own good" comes to mind. It's enough to make you worry, even based on so little information (which the new book from the two reporters may significantly amplify).

And by the way, if you want another unsettling analogy, when it comes to off-the-wall ideas for "deterring" jihadist networks, check out the major record companies and their efforts to deter communities and individuals from illegally downloading music. The Recording Industry Association of America, representing the four major record labels, decided to make a cautionary example of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Minnesota mom, by suing her "for illegally downloading and sharing 24 songs on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Kazaa in 2006." So far, the organization has dragged her through three trials, getting terrible publicity. Even if they win and leave her in hock for the rest of her life, do you think for one second that they will have made a dent in the world of illegal downloads or deterred anyone? Just ask your kid.

Don't think deterrence here, think blowback.

Honestly, if Schmitt and Shanker's claim is accurate, you should be shaking in your boots. And someone on Capitol Hill should be starting to ask some relevant questions, including this one: Could "computer specialists" in the employ of the Pentagon be responsible for your death in a future terrorist attack?
(c) 2011 Tom Engelhardt is co-founder of the American Empire Project. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His most recent book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).







The Great American Guilt Trip
By Mary Pitt

We have all listened and laughed as comedians talk about the guilt that is trained into them by their Jewish or Catholic mothers, the Sisters who taught them in schools, or the preachers in their churches. It is very funny. But the latest guilt trip that is being inflicted is no joke. It is being done by the wealthy and the greedy of our nation and is being perpetrated on our senior citizens!

Having been reared with the idea of self-sufficiency that is prevalent in American society, the aging person is acutely aware of the biblical definition of life spanning "three score and ten years", we have become accustomed to the idea that that is the greatest age we can expect to be on this earth. In early times, this goal was rarely reached, especially by the female of the species. Death in childbirth was at one time the greatest threat to female existence in our rather primitive nation but, over time, the profession of medical care increased and this became less of a threat. We no longer must tramp through primeval forests in search of fierce wild animals for food, we no longer must expose our fragile bodies to the elements without warm clothing or sturdy footwear and most of us have medical care available in the event of illness or accident. Consequently, the average lifespan for Americans has soared.

Some eight decades ago, we had an agrarian society and the care of the elderly was rather simply managed. As in biblical times. by the time the family patriarch became so weakened by age that they could no longer work, adult sons were prepared to return to the family home with their own wives and children. They would, in their turn and without question, assume the burden of their parents in return for assuming their assets and position in the community.

Once the nation became industrialized, families began to scatter and to live great distances apart. As the distance increased, so did the connection to the family and increasing numbers of elderly found themselves alone with no means of support. President Roosevelt was sufficiently compassionate to notice this and he instituted the present system of Social Security. This, in effect, put the government in the position of becoming one giant insurance company to whom we each paid "premiums" to insure that we would not be subjected to penury when we were no longer able to work. It was a great comfort to us to know that hunger would be an unmet stranger. Some years later, based on the enormous success of Social Security, Congress saw fit to do the same with the health care for the elderly. The premiums were collected in the same way, based on the ability of the laborer to invest in his future.

Now we are told that the dwindling of the funds in the Social Security Trust are threatening to run out and it's all our fault! We have lived too long! We have had too many children!

This writer until recently was experiencing some twenty years of caring for a beloved man who had been diagnosed with a disabling and incurable disease which would surely take his life. This man had been a formidable character, large in size and gifted with "people sense" so that his every word bore import and whose physical strength had been seemingly super-human. As his health deteriorated and he was unable to do the tasks that he once accomplished with such ease his former life became impossible for him, and his greatest enemy became depression. Then, as he dwindled into a virtual "bag of bones", he would plead for relief. I will never forget the look in his rheumy eyes as he would ask, "Why can't I just be helped to die? We do it for old, sick dogs, why am I denied that relief?"

Now our government is in the grip of the Fundamental Religious Right. Not only do they want to deny people the right to determine the size and the spacing of their families, but they would be aghast if someone suggested the legitimizing of "assisted suicide". If they bothered to really read their Bible, they would see that the leaders of the early Israelites, as they grew old and lost their efficacy "went up to the mountaintop and gave up the ghost." No mention was ever made of the actual cause of death but their "right to die" was never questioned. Just so did the heroes of the American Indians quietly slip away from their tribal homes and "disappear" as the years sapped their strength and stamina. Now, with pace-makers and other artificial mechanisms, medical science has the capability to keep our bodies alive long after any philosophical "usefulness" has ended and, many times, long after our desire to continue living.

It is simply unconscionable to force us to continue to live in suffering and debilitation while refusing us the pittances that allow us to keep body and soul together so that the wealthy can "maintain their lifestyle." If all our many sacrifices and the triumphs of the durability and genius of mankind no longer have any meaning, the least we can ask of them is to bow to the dignity which we have so richly earned and allow us the privilege of deciding whether we would prefer to die in pain, whether from disease or hunger, or, with reason intact, to end our struggles with the compassionate medical assistance of a physician.

That is the least that should be provided to The Greatest Generation!
(c) 2011 Mary Pitt is an octagenarian who has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System. Huzzahs and whiney complaints may be sent to tfolbrd@cox.net



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Gary Varvel ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Moody's Downgrades US Credit Rating to 'It's Complicated'
China Unresponsive to Treasury Dept.'s Friend Request
By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - The US economy suffered another setback today as Moody's downgraded the US's credit rating to "It's Complicated."

At the Treasury Department, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledged that an "It's Complicated" rating was not ideal but added that he was hopeful it would not affect the Chinese government's level of interest in Treasury bonds.

"We have sent a friend request to China this morning," Sec. Geithner told reporters. "We are still waiting for them to friend us back."

But in an extraordinary step, the Chinese government announced today that it was "blocking" the United States, suggesting that its relationship with US Treasuries was at an end.

Perhaps attempting to soften the blow, the Chinese government later issued this official statement: "It's not you, it's us."

In other economic news, the US added jobs in the auto sector, which for many Americans is now the same thing as the housing sector.
(c) 2011 Andy Borowitz




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In This Edition

Noam Chomsky watches, "America In Decline."

Uri Avnery considers, "Dichter's Law."

David Sirota warns of, "What We Lose When We Lose Anonymity."

David Swanson examines, "The Military."

Jim Hightower wonders, "'Gov. Supercuts' For President?"

Helen Thomas studies, "Murdoch's Undoing."

James Donahue asks, "Are You Ready For Soul Catcher 2025?"

Joel S. Hirschhorn over sees, "Brain Dead Obama"

Patricia Cunliffe exposes corpo-rat death panels in, "Beware Of CUNA Mutual Insurance Group."

Naomi Klein does the introductions, "Daylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery."

Paul Krugman covers, "The Texas Unmiracle."

Chris Floyd visits, "Ishaqi Again."

David Michael Green returns with yet another absolute must read, "The Grubby Species."

Michigan Senator Carl Levin wins the coveted "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols reports, "Bernie Sanders Talks Up Primary Challenge To Obama As 'A Good Idea for Our Democracy And For The Democratic Party.'"

Phil Rockstroh explores, "Life In An Age Of Looting."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Onion announces, "New GOP Strategy Involves Reelecting Obama, Making His Life Even More Miserable" but first, Uncle Ernie sez, "Where Is V Now That We Need Him?"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Monte Wolverton, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, Dees Illustration.Com, Mike Keefe, Kirk Anderson, Nick Anderson, Asa Mathat, The Onion, Rita Pereira, Social Times.Com, Warner Brothers, The BBC, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Where Is V Now That We Need Him?
By Ernest Stewart

"People should not fear their government. Government should fear their people!"
V For Vendetta ~~~ V

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." ~~~ Donald Rumsfeld

"The American people now, by a large majority, are saying we have been overseas too long. We don't need an American empire. We need to protect our borders and forget about the borders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's time to bring the troops home."
~~~ Second place Iowa "straw poll" finisher ~ Ron Paul

Keep up your spirit,
keep up your faith, baby
I am counting on you
You know what you've got to do

Fight the good fight every moment
Every minute, every day
Fight the good fight every moment
It's your only way
Fight The Good Fight ~~~ Triumph

So exactly when was it that David Cameron became a clone of John Hurt's character Adam Sutler in "V for Vendetta;" when did that happen? Was he always that noticeable and I not see it, or what?

Wasn't it David who said, as brave Egyptians were overthrowing the fascist Mubarak regime, of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, "...freedom of expression should be respected "in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square...." just last February?

When a similar revolt took place all over England against David and his fascist regime, David's demeanor seemed to rapidly change into High Chancellor Sutler -- crazy eyes and all! David screamed:

"And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So, we are working with the police, the intelligence services, and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality!"

Maybe the people are revolting because their government and their corpo-rat masters have been robbing them blind with David's help! Wouldn't what's good for the goose also be good for the gander? Nor, apparently, is David hip to "what goes around comes around" and sometimes, David, it comes around with a vengeance, or perhaps as a vendetta!

But relax, England, American help is on the way! Former Boston -- New York -- L.A. -- "Police Commissioner Gordon," oops, Police Commissioner William J, Bratton, will soon have your bobbies shooting unarmed citizens 30 or 40 times, just like he did in New York, Boston and L.A., yippie! Something to look forward to, SoHo! Where is "V" now that we need him?

Not to pick on Britain, our own BART, a.k.a. Bay Area Rapid Transit, cops are blocking out all media sources onboard their trains, lest a flash mob be called together to protest their latest murder of an unarmed civilian. BART, of course, was doing it for safety, not our safety, but theirs; and when the knowledge of this hit the fan they already had a propaganda film all set to go! However, their film triggered other films, especially in the Indie Media. Free Speech is not allowed in BART-controlled America or phone service for that matter! BART's action of blocking cell phone use at San Francisco's Civic Center BART Station was illegal. It's a direct violation of Federal law, specifically Section 333 of The Communications Act of 1934. While I doubt that the law will hold them accountable, at least those Merry Pranksters Anonymous defaced the BART site, leaked user data, and left this calling card!

Thank Zeus for small victories!

In Other News

As the prophet Richard Pryor once said "I went to court looking for justice and that's just what I found, 'Just Us.'" And for the most part that's what you'll find in America's courts: minorities and poor whites. Normally, there are two forms of justice -- two sets of laws -- one for the elites, and the other for everybody else.

So, it was a bit of shock to hear that former Deputy Fuhrer Donald Von Rumsfeld was to be tried for the torture of at least three American citizens!

The court ruled last Tuesday that two U.S. citizens who worked for a private security firm in Iraq can proceed to take Donald Rumsfeld to trial for the torture they assert they endured during months of imprisonment in 2006 in a prison set up by the Pentagon at Camp Cropper.

The two men say they were arrested and then brutally tortured after they tried to expose bribery and corruption in the private security firm (Blackwater) that was, and still is, on the Pentagoons' payroll.

After months of imprisonment and torture, they were taken from Camp Cropper without even an "oops, we bad" and dropped at the airport without ever having been charged with a crime.

The court ruled, "We agree with the district court that the plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts to show that Secretary Rumsfeld personally established the relevant policies that caused the alleged violations of their constitutional rights during detention."

In another lawsuit filed by another American who was taken to Camp Cropper and tortured, U.S. District Judge James Gwin said U.S. citizens are protected by the Constitution at home and abroad during wartime.

"The court finds no convincing reason that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously-declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad," Judge Gwin wrote in a ruling issued Tuesday.

Gwin cited District Judge Wayne R. Andersen in Illinois who last year ruled that two other Americans who worked in Iraq as contractors and were held at Camp Cropper, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, can pursue claims they were tortured using Rumsfeld-approved methods after alleging illegal activities by their company. Rumsfeld is appealing that ruling.

Even if Rumsfeld is convicted, his case will no doubt go before the Extreme Court, whose majority was appointed by the "Crime Family Bush," and hence, I'd be willing to bet Donald will never see the inside of a jail cell! Not for these crimes or any of the many acts of treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for which he is no doubt guilty!

And Finally

The tin-foil-hat crowd came out in full force in Iowa the other day and had their "straw poll," which was won by America's favorite Con-gress person: old "Crazy Train" Bachmann. Bachmann won it hands down, and now leaps forward towards her next challenge, i.e., Governor Rick "Good Hair" Perry! Rick just threw his hat into the ring and joined this traveling lunatic circus by following in Mitt Romney's footprints. Mitt, you may recall, got into a little faux pas with a crowd in Iowa by insisting that corporations were people, too! Rick had no sooner tossed in said hat when he felt it necessary to lose the votes of about one third of the voters. Here in an interview with the Daily Beast's Andrew Romano, Perry cuts his own throat by saying that the way he reads the Constitution, Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional! Here's a bit of the interview:

Andrew: The Constitution says that "the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes... to provide for the... general Welfare of the United States." But I noticed that when you quoted this section on page 116, you left "general welfare" out and put an ellipsis in its place. Progressives would say that "general welfare" includes things like Social Security or Medicare-that it gives the government the flexibility to tackle more than just the basic responsibilities laid out explicitly in our founding document. What does "general welfare" mean to you?

Perry: I don't think our founding fathers when they were putting the term "general welfare" in there were thinking about a federally-operated program of pensions, nor a federally-operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that. From my perspective, the states could substantially-better operate those programs, if that's what those states decided to do.

Andrew: So, in your view, those things fall outside of general welfare. But what falls inside of it? What did the Founders mean by "general welfare"?

Perry: I don't know if I'm going to sit here and parse down to what the Founding Fathers thought "general welfare" meant.

Andrew: But you just said what you thought they didn't mean by "general welfare." So, isn't it fair to ask what they did mean? It's in the Constitution.

Perry: Silence.

Shades of 2008! The Rethuglicans, so far, haven't a single candidate that can beat Obama in 2012, seems a pity, huh?

Keepin' On

If you're middle age or older, you'll no doubt remember a famous cat poster from the past. It was a picture of an orange kitten hanging on to a black bar with a concerned look on his face with a caption saying, "Hang In There, Baby!" I know exactly how that cat felt!

Since the bottom starting falling out of the economy back in 2007, we've gone from a small ad and a link at the top of the page to raise the money we needed to keep publishing, A couple dozen of you would send in $25 or $50 and sometimes $100 and about half a dozen of you were sending in $500 to $2500. With those righteous donations, we soon had all the money we needed and we quit bugging you about it almost as soon as we had begun! Any money beyond what we needed bought extras for the magazine. Since 2007, we've had to keep up begging 24/7, running various and sundry ads every week, and I dedicated part of my column to keep beating a dead horse week after week, month after month, just to raise the monies needed to keep on keeping on.

Sure, the problem isn't that people have stopped being generous, but the folks in our readership are, for the most part, the first to take those financial hits -- losing their jobs, losing their houses, their online capabilities, their cars, and family -- and have to scramble just to stay alive. Ergo, the longer this depression lasts, the less active members of the middle class have the extra money to support our fight to restore the Republic, and our lives. You may recall that Ronald Ray Guns, and every president since, did whatever they could to destroy the middle class. A class without which all that is left is the rich and the poor -- exactly how it's been from the beginning of recorded history, until FDR made the scene and developed a thriving middle class! The terrorists who control the government are working around the clock to destroy our way of life; shouldn't there be someone fighting to preserve it? Please help us fight the good fight!

This week we'd like to thank Ernie from Ontario for another nice donation for the cause, thanks, brother! We couldn't do it without you!

*****


02-01-1964 ~ 08-11-2011
Thanks for the jams bro!



*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.













America In Decline
By Noam Chomsky

"It is a common theme" that the United States, which "only a few years ago was hailed to stride the world as a colossus with unparalleled power and unmatched appeal is in decline, ominously facing the prospect of its final decay," Giacomo Chiozza writes in the current Political Science Quarterly.

The theme is indeed widely believed. And with some reason, though a number of qualifications are in order. To start with, the decline has proceeded since the high point of U.S. power after World War II, and the remarkable triumphalism of the post-Gulf War '90s was mostly self-delusion.

Another common theme, at least among those who are not willfully blind, is that American decline is in no small measure self-inflicted. The comic opera in Washington this summer, which disgusts the country and bewilders the world, may have no analogue in the annals of parliamentary democracy.

The spectacle is even coming to frighten the sponsors of the charade. Corporate power is now concerned that the extremists they helped put in office may in fact bring down the edifice on which their own wealth and privilege relies, the powerful nanny state that caters to their interests.

Corporate power's ascendancy over politics and society -- by now mostly financial -- has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate.

For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. Under current circumstances, that crisis can be overcome only by a significant government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state and local spending -- though even that limited initiative probably saved millions of jobs.

For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72 percent, 27 percent opposed), reports a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Cutting health programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69 percent Medicaid, 78 percent Medicare). The likely outcome is therefore the opposite.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed how the public would eliminate the deficit. PIPA director Steven Kull writes, "Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House (of Representatives) are out of step with the public's values and priorities in regard to the budget."

The survey illustrates the deep divide: "The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. The public also favored more spending on job training, education and pollution control than did either the administration or the House."

The final "compromise" -- more accurately, capitulation to the far right -- is the opposite throughout, and is almost certain to lead to slower growth and long-term harm to all but the rich and the corporations, which are enjoying record profits.

Not even discussed is that the deficit would be eliminated if, as economist Dean Baker has shown, the dysfunctional privatized health care system in the U.S. were replaced by one similar to other industrial societies', which have half the per capita costs and health outcomes that are comparable or better.

The financial institutions and Big Pharma are far too powerful for such options even to be considered, though the thought seems hardly Utopian. Off the agenda for similar reasons are other economically sensible options, such as a small financial transactions tax.

Meanwhile new gifts are regularly lavished on Wall Street. The House Appropriations Committee cut the budget request for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the prime barrier against financial fraud. The Consumer Protection Agency is unlikely to survive intact.

Congress wields other weapons in its battle against future generations. Faced with Republican opposition to environmental protection, American Electric Power, a major utility, shelved "the nation's most prominent effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant, dealing a severe blow to efforts to rein in emissions responsible for global warming," The New York Times reported.

The self-inflicted blows, while increasingly powerful, are not a recent innovation. They trace back to the 1970s, when the national political economy underwent major transformations, ending what is commonly called "the Golden Age" of (state) capitalism.

Two major elements were financialization (the shift of investor preference from industrial production to so-called FIRE: finance, insurance, real estate) and the offshoring of production. The ideological triumph of "free market doctrines," highly selective as always, administered further blows, as they were translated into deregulation, rules of corporate governance linking huge CEO rewards to short-term profit, and other such policy decisions.

The resulting concentration of wealth yielded greater political power, accelerating a vicious cycle that has led to extraordinary wealth for a fraction of 1 percent of the population, mainly CEOs of major corporations, hedge fund managers and the like, while for the large majority real incomes have virtually stagnated.

In parallel, the cost of elections skyrocketed, driving both parties even deeper into corporate pockets. What remains of political democracy has been undermined further as both parties have turned to auctioning congressional leadership positions, as political economist Thomas Ferguson outlines in the Financial Times.

"The major political parties borrowed a practice from big box retailers like Walmart, Best Buy or Target," Ferguson writes. "Uniquely among legislatures in the developed world, U.S. congressional parties now post prices for key slots in the lawmaking process." The legislators who contribute the most funds to the party get the posts.

The result, according to Ferguson, is that debates "rely heavily on the endless repetition of a handful of slogans that have been battle-tested for their appeal to national investor blocs and interest groups that the leadership relies on for resources." The country be damned.

Before the 2007 crash for which they were largely responsible, the new post-Golden Age financial institutions had gained startling economic power, more than tripling their share of corporate profits. After the crash, a number of economists began to inquire into their function in purely economic terms. Nobel laureate Robert Solow concludes that their general impact may be negative: "The successes probably add little or nothing to the efficiency of the real economy, while the disasters transfer wealth from taxpayers to financiers."

By shredding the remnants of political democracy, the financial institutions lay the basis for carrying the lethal process forward -- as long as their victims are willing to suffer in silence.
(c) 2011 Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East & U.S. Foreign Policy: Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice. His most recent book is Gaza In Crisis.





Dichter's Law
By Uri Avnery "THE PEOPLE Demand Social Justice!" 250 thousand protesters chanted in unison in Tel Aviv last Saturday. But what they need - to quote an American artist - is "more unemployed politicians."

Fortunately, the Knesset has gone on a prolonged vacation, three months. For as Mark Twain quipped: "No man's life or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

As if to prove this point, MK Avi Dichter submitted, on the very last day of the outgoing session, a bill so outrageous that it easily trumps all the many other racist laws lately adopted by this Knesset.

"DICHTER" IS A German name and means "poet". But no poet he. He is the former chief of the secret police, the "General Security Service" (Shin-Bet or Shabak).

("Dichter also means "more dense", but let's not dwell on that.)

He proudly announced that he had spent a year and a half smoothening and sharpening this particular project, turning it into a legislative masterpiece.

And a masterpiece it is. No colleague in yesterday's Germany or present-day Iran could have produced a more illustrious piece. The other members of the Knesset seem to feel so, too - no less than 20 of the 28 members of the Kadima faction, as well as all the other dyed-in-the-wool racist members of this august body, have proudly put their name to this bill as co-authors.

The very name - "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People" - shows that this Dichter is neither a poet nor much of an intellectual. Secret police chiefs seldom are.

"Nation" and "People" are two different concepts. It is generally accepted that a people is an ethnic entity, and a nation is a political community. They exist on two different levels. But never mind.

It is the content of the bill that counts.

WHAT DICHTER proposes is to put an end to the official definition of Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic State."

He proposes instead to set clear priorities: Israel is first and foremost the nation-state of the Jewish people, and only as a far second a democratic state. Wherever democracy clashes with the Jewishness of the state, Jewishness wins, democracy loses.

This makes him, by the way, the first right-wing Zionist (apart from Meir Kahane) who openly admits that there is a basic contradiction between a "Jewish" state and a "democratic" state. Since 1948, this has been strenuously denied by all Zionist factions, their phalanx of intellectuals and the Supreme Court.

What the new definition means is that the State of Israel belongs to all the Jews in the world - including Senators in Washington, drug-dealers in Mexico, oligarchs in Moscow and casino-owners in Macao, but not to the Arab citizens of Israel, who have been here for at least 1300 years since the Muslims entered Jerusalem. Christian Arabs trace their ancestry back to the crucifixion 1980 years ago, Samaritans were here 2500 years ago and many villagers are probably the descendents of the Canaanites, who were already here some 5000 years ago.

All these will become, once this bill is law, second-class citizens, not only in practice, as now, but also in official doctrine. Whenever their rights clash with what the majority of the Jews considers necessary for the preservation of the interests of the "nation-state of the Jewish people" - which may include everything from land ownership to criminal legislation -their rights will be ignored.

THE BILL itself does not leave much room for speculation. It spells things out.

The Arabic language will lose its status as an "official language" - a status it enjoyed in the Ottoman Empire, under the British Mandate and in Israel until now. The only official language in the Nation-State etc will be Hebrew.

No less typical is the paragraph that says that whenever there is a hole in Israeli law (called "lacuna"' or lagoon), Jewish law will apply.

"Jewish law" is the Talmud and the Halakha, the Jewish equivalent of the Muslim Sharia. It means in practice that legal norms adopted 1500 years ago and more will trump the legal norms evolved over recent centuries in Britain and other European countries. Similar clauses exist in the laws of countries like Pakistan and Egypt. The similarity between Jewish and Islamic law is not accidental - Arabic-speaking Jewish sages, like Moses Maimonides ("the Rambam") and their contemporary Muslim legal experts influenced each other.

The Halakha and the Sharia have much in common. They ban pork, practice circumcision, keep women in servitude, condemn homosexuals and fornicators to death and deny equality for infidels. (In practice, both religions have modified many of the harsher penalties. In the Jewish religion, for example, "an eye for an eye" now means compensation. Otherwise, as Gandhi so aptly said, we would all be blind by now.)

After enacting this law, Israel will be much nearer to Iran than to the USA. The "Only Democracy in the Middle East" will cease to be a democracy, but be very close in its character to some of the worst regimes in this region. "At long last, Israel is integrating itself in the region," as an Arab writer mocked - alluding to a slogan I coined 65 years ago: "Integration in the Semitic Region."

MOST OF the Knesset members who signed this bill fervently believe in "the Whole of Eretz-Israel" - meaning the official annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

They don't mean the "One-State solution" that so many well-intentioned idealists dream about. In practice, the only One State that is feasible is one governed by Dichter's law - the "Nation-State of the Jewish People" - with the Arabs relegated to the status of the Biblical "hewers of wood and drawers of water."

Sure, the Arabs will be a majority in this state - but who cares? Since the Jewishness of the state will override democracy, their numbers will be irrelevant. Much as the number of blacks was in Apartheid South Africa.

LET'S HAVE a look at the party to which this poet of racism belongs: Kadima.

When I was in the army, I was always amused by the order: "the squad will retreat to the rear - forward march!"

This may sound absurd, but is really quite logical. The first part of the order relates to its direction, the second to its execution.

"Kadima" means "forward," but Its direction is backward.

Dichter is a prominent leader of Kadima. Since his only claim to distinction is his former role as chief of the secret police, this must be why he was elected. But he has been joined in this racist project by more than 80% of the Kadima Knesset faction - the largest in the present parliament.

What does this say about Kadima?

Kadima has been a dismal failure in practically every respect. As an opposition faction in parliament it is a sad joke - indeed, I dare say that when I was a one-man faction in the Knesset, I generated more opposition activity than this 28-headed colossus. It has not formulated any meaningful stand on peace and the occupation, not to mention social justice.

Its leader, Tzipi Livni, has proved herself a total failure. Her only achievement has been her ability to keep her party together - no mean feat, though, considering that it consists of refugees (some would say traitors) from other parties, who hitched their cart to Ariel Sharon's surging horses when he left the Likud. Most Kadima leaders left the Likud with him, and - like Livni herself - are deeply steeped in Likud ideology. Some others came from the Labor Party, arm in arm with that unsavory political prostitute, Shimon Peres.

This haphazard collection of frustrated politicians has tried several times to outflank Binyamin Netanyahu on the right. Its members have co-signed almost all the racist bills introduced in recent months, including the infamous "Boycott Law" (though when public opinion rebelled, they withdrew their signature, and some of them even voted against.)

How did this party get to be the largest in the Knesset, with one more seat than Likud? For left-wing voters, who were disgusted by Ehud Barak's Labor Party and who dismissed the tiny Meretz, it seemed the only chance to stop Netanyahu and Lieberman. But that may change very soon.

LAST SATURDAY's huge protest demonstration was the largest in Israel's history (including the legendary "400,000 demo" after the Sabra-Shatilah massacre, whose real numbers were slightly lower). It may be the beginning of a new era.

It is impossible to describe the sheer energy emanating from this crowd, consisting mostly of 20-30-year-olds. History, like a gigantic eagle, could be felt beating its wings above. It was a jubilant mass, conscious of its immense power.

The protesters were eager to shun "politics" - reminding me of the words of Pericles, some 2500 years ago, that "just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean that politics won't take an interest in you!"

The demonstration was, of course, highly political - directed against Netanyahu, the government and the entire social order. Marching in the dense crowd, I looked around for kippa-wearing protesters and could not spot a single one. The whole religious sector, the right-wing support group of the settlers and Dichter's Law, was conspicuously absent, while the Oriental Jewish sector, the traditional base of Likud, was amply represented.

This mass protest is changing the agenda of Israel. I hope that it will result in due course in the emergence of a new party, which will change the face of the Knesset beyond recognition. Even a new war or another "security emergency" may not avert this.

That will surely be the end of Kadima, and few will mourn it. It would also mean bye-bye to Dichter, the Secret Police poet.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom






What We Lose When We Lose Anonymity
Ridding the Web of incognito users may increase civility, but it destroys an essential tool for whistle-blowers
By David Sirota

From warrantless wiretapping to ever-present surveillance cameras, our world is right now in the midst of a long war on anonymity.

In the media and political arenas, we've seen paparazzi culture famously fetishize the outing of anonymous iconoclasts, from Watergate's Deep Throat (Mark Felt) to a top CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction (Valerie Plame). Likewise, in our communities, we now know that we are almost always being monitored in highly trafficked parks, malls, airports and stadiums -- and as Slate recently reported, we may soon have apps on all of our smartphones that let us identify random faces in a crowd.

Teeming with incognito bloggers and commenters, the Internet seemed to be the last bulwark against this trend -- a rare public space that let us broadcast opinions from the shadows. But even cyberspace will likely be exposed to the white-hot spotlight of identity, as a new campaign for disclosure now starts in earnest.

Launched in response to cyber-bullying, this campaign made headlines last month when Facebook executive Randi Zuckerberg declared that "anonymity on the Internet has to go away." Her statement echoed that of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who previously called for "true transparency and no anonymity" on the Web.

As advertising corporations always seeking new information about their users, Facebook and Google have an obvious financial stake in these positions. Regardless of these firms' particular motives, though, they set standards for the entire Internet. So when their luminaries declare war on anonymity, it's presumably a fait accompli.

Thus, the key question: Will the end of Internet anonymity be good or bad for society? Probably both.

The big potential benefit of users having to attach real identities to their Internet personas is more constructive dialogue.

As Zuckerberg and Schmidt correctly suggest, online anonymity is primarily used by hate-mongers to turn constructive public discourse into epithet-filled diatribes. Knowing they are shielded from consequences, trolls feel empowered to spew racist, sexist and other socially unacceptable rhetoric that they'd never use offline. Compare a typically friendly discussion on the non-anonymous Facebook with the usual flame wars that dominate anonymous comment threads, and you'll understand why a new Zogby poll shows that most Americans believe anonymity makes cyberspace less civil. Ending that anonymity, then, probably guarantees an online world that is a bit more cordial.

The downside, though, is that true whistle-blowers will lose one of their most essential tools.

Though today's journalists often grant establishment sources anonymity to attack weaker critics, anonymity's real social value is rooted in helping the powerless challenge the powerful. Think WikiLeaks, which exemplifies how online anonymity provides insiders the cover they need to publish critical information without fear of retribution. Eliminating such cover will almost certainly reduce the kind of leaks that let the public occasionally see inconvenient truths.

Encouraging civility while preserving avenues of dissent is a tough balancing act, and the core debate over whether one should have a right to anonymity in public spaces is long overdue. However, it comes with a danger -- namely, that legitimate arguments for disclosure will be expanded to justify illegitimate spying on private interactions.

If you think that's far-fetched, recall that this is precisely what happened in Congress last month, when a House committee moved forward a proposal forcing Internet service providers to keep logs of all online activity by their users.

Clearly, if it ultimately becomes law, this legislation would undermine not just anonymity in public spaces, but privacy in general. Should it succeed, we may achieve transparency, but at far too high a cost.
(c) 2010 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.






The Military
Closer to You Than Your Family
By David Swanson

Two blocks from my house in a nondescript little building on the edge of our residential neighborhood is an office with a small sign reading "DVBIC of Charlottesville" which turns out to mean "Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center."

Now, I'm in favor of caring for people with brain injuries. Heck, I wish we had universal comprehensive health coverage like other countries do. But it disturbs me how difficult it is in this country to get any distance away from the military. It's almost certainly closer to you than your relatives' homes.

What author Nick Turse calls the military industrial technological entertainment academic media corporate matrix is even closer than that. I am typing this on an Apple computer, and Apple is a major Pentagon contractor. But then, so is IBM. And so are most of the parent companies of most of the retail chains around the country. Starbucks is a major military supplier, with a store even in Guantanamo. Not only are traditional weapons manufacturers' offices now found alongside car dealers and burger joints in suburban strip malls, but the car dealers and burger joints are owned by companies taking in huge amounts of Pentagon spending. A $4,311 contract back in 2006 went straight to Charlottesville's Pig Daddy's BBQ.

Almost no neighborhoods lack members of the military and military supporters, Marine Corps flags and Army bumper stickers. If you wanted to get away from it, where would you go? (Please don't shout "Leave the country!" The U.S. military has troops in the majority of the nations on earth.) When one family tried to get away from jet noise in Virginia Beach by moving to a rural farm, the military quickly opened a new base right next to them. There is no escape.

Charlottesville is not "a military town" except in the sense that every town in the United States is now. Other towns in Virginia have big bases; men and women in uniforms are a common sight. But look more closely, and Charlottesville is the home, as almost everywhere is, to some obscure branch of the military -- in this case the "National Ground Intelligence Center." We're also home to a university. Most universities these days are huge recipients of military contracts, and UVA is no exception. In fact, the University of Virginia has built a research "park" adjacent to the aforementioned "intelligence" center. There's a Judge Advocate General's Legal Center attached to UVA Law School as well.

Back in March, the New Yorker magazine noted that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) "invited interested literary theorists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and related 'ists' to the Boar's Head Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month to answer a question frequently posed to junior-high-school students: 'What is a story?'" DARPA is the same agency that has moved on from mechanical killer elephants and telepathic warfare to exploding frisbees, cyborg wasps, and Captain America no-meals and no-sleep soldiers.

Many people in Charlottesville, as elsewhere, aren't asking "What is a story?" so much as "Where do I get a job?" But most of the jobs paying anything above poverty wages that can be found at local job fairs are military industry jobs. This includes both jobs supporting the U.S. military and jobs providing weapons to dictatorships and democracies alike all over the world. The United States is far and away the leading seller of weapons to others. The two sides in the Libyan War can exchange parts in their weapons, because both have weapons made by us.

I've seen local job ads for the National Guard, and for work "researching biological and chemical weapons" at Battelle Memorial Institute, and for work producing all kinds of weaponry at Northrop Grumman. Then there's Teksystems, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Pragmatics, and Wiser, and many others with fat Pentagon contracts. Employers also recruit here for jobs in Northern Virginia with Concurrent Technologies Corporation, Ogsystems, the Defense Logistics Agency, BAE Systems, and many more. BAE, by the way, paid a $400 million fine last year to the U.S. government to settle charges of having bribed Saudi Arabia to buy its weapons -- just the cost of doing business.

From 2000 to 2010, 161 military contractors in Charlottesville pulled in $919,914,918 through 2,737 contracts from the federal government. Over $8 million of that went to Mr. Jefferson's university, and three-quarters of that to the Darden Business School. And the trend is ever upward. The 161 contractors are found in various industries other than higher education, including: Nautical System and Instrument Manufacturing; Blind and Shade Manufacturing; Printed Circuit Assembly; Computer Systems Design; Real Estate Appraisers; Engineering Services; Recreational Sports Centers; Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences; Commercial and Institutional Building Construction; Analytical Laboratory Instrument Manufacturing; Sporting Goods Stores; Professional and Management Development Training; Research and Development in Biotechnology; New Car Dealers; Internet Publishing; Petroleum Merchant Wholesalers; and on and on and on. I think I mentioned Pig Daddy's BBQ.

What could be wrong with so much socialistic job creation? Well, just this: investing money through the military actually produces fewer and lower paying jobs than investing the same amount of money in most other industries, or even in tax cuts for working people. It's worse economically than nothing, and yet it's all Washington wants to do. We are putting over half of every dollar of federal income tax and borrowing into the military. We could cut this by 85% and still be the top-spending nation in the world militarily. Meanwhile we are failing to invest in infrastructure, green energy, education, housing, jobs, and care for our young, old, and ill. The current trend will ruin us economically, as well as in terms of civil liberties, representative government, environmental destruction, social cohesion, hostile blowback, and weapons proliferation. Reining in the military industrial complex has become a matter of survival.

Our current unpopular but unending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia, and our smaller military operations in over 100 other countries are part of what President Eisenhower warned of 50 years ago in speaking of the military industrial complex. No nation has tried anything like this before, and it's not clear we can survive it. We're shortchanging everything else to fund wars and overseas bases that make us less safe. There's a crisis in our towns, but in the midst of a phony budget crisis in Washington, the House this summer passed the largest military budget ever seen on the planet.

On September 16-18, 2011, in Charlottesville, a conference called "The Military Industrial Complex at 50" will welcome over 20 prominent speakers, strategists, and organizers. Plans will be developed to move money from the military to human needs.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







"Gov. Supercuts" For President?

GOP-Land is all a twitter, now that Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced that he's ready to ascend to the White House.

His candidacy was actually launched the week before at a Prayer-A-Palooza he held in Houston, where he consecrated himself as the Christian candidate. Only about 30,000 evangelicals attended Perry's public prayer spectacle in a cavernous football stadium, but the presidential wannabe got saturation coverage by the media, which has gone ga-ga over yet another small-minded, right-wing, Texas governor.

If the media had any real journalistic curiosity about what kind or national "leader" this guy would be, they could have slipped away on that same day to the city's convention center. There, a much larger crowd of 100,000 Houstonians had gathered in bleak testimony to Perry's gubernatorial "leadership." They were some of Houston's many low-income children and parents, struggling to make ends meet in Perry's hard-scrabble Texas economy.

These needy families had come to a citywide back-to-school event where backpacks, school supplies, uniforms, haircut vouchers, immunizations, and bags of food were being provided by the school district. Officials had expected 25,000 to show up, but four times that number came – some families had camped out for hours before the doors opened, and many were turned away as supplies were exhausted by 10 a.m. "It shows the need," said a solemn school spokesman.

Perry is known in Texas as "Governor Supercuts," not only for his spiffy hairdo, but also for cutting the budgets of schools and poverty programs and holding down wages. In his 10-year tenure, Perry has created more minimum wage jobs than all other states combined, and his superrich state now has more families in poverty than any other. Can you say "President Supercuts?"
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.




Rupert gives the corpo-rat salute!




Murdoch's Undoing
By Helen Thomas

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch suffered what he called the most humble day of his life when he appeared before a British Parliamentary Committee and the world, when the unethical invasions of privacy of public officials by his staff were made public.

The staff had been hacking into the private telephones of well-known politicians of Great Britain. Murdoch's vast media holdings of newspapers and broadcast outlets in Great Britain, Australian and the United States, have known no bounds in wire tapping and allegedly bribing government officials.

The head of Scotland Yard resigned in disgrace. Additionally, 10 former staffers and executives are under arrest in Britain, accused of hacking the phones of citizens. It appeared that no public officials were immune from the scandalous intrusions of Murdoch's reporters.

To Murdoch, the end justified the means. He denied personal involvement amongst all of the revelations of unethical activity by his organizations. The blame fell on his staff, even though Murdoch was well known to be a controlling owner of his media operations. One of the leading members of his staff, Rebecca Brooks, became the fall guy, although Murdoch publicly displayed his admiration for her.

Nearly everyone associated with Murdoch, as high as British Prime Minister David Cameron, seems to be affected by the scandal.

Several of those who took the fall, especially Murdoch's journalists, have lost their jobs. It's been open season on Murdoch staffers who have been accused of plagiarism and slandering their targets.

Murdoch apparently has tried to forestall the spread of his tarnished name and the scandal to his U.S. media holdings. He also has shut down his popular weekly newspaper, News of the World, and given up on his bid for British Sky Broadcasting, a satellite broadcasting company. Of course, it is impossible for Murdoch to protect his properties in America, like Fox Broadcasting Company, from being tainted somewhat by this scandal.

The name Murdoch is indelible in its connection to the radical right in the United States.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Israeli leaders and American supporters of Israel are worried that a diminished Murdoch presence "may mute the strongly pro-Israel voice of many of the publications he owns." Murdoch's publications and media "have proven to be fairer on the issue of Israel than the rest of the media," said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "I hope that won't be impacted," he added. Jewish leaders said Murdoch's view of Israel's dealings with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors "seem both knowledgeable, and sensitive to the Jewish state's self-perception as beleaguered and isolated."

Murdoch's media stable includes the Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and The Australian, as well as tabloids including The Sun in Britain, and the New York Post.

There is no question Murdoch's powerful intrusion in American journalism has been popular and profitable. American journalists have been taught that truth is the holy grail of their profession, but phone tapping some of the world's highest dignitaries is not the way the game is played. Such unethical methods lead to a question of creditability of Murdoch's publications and broadcast holdings.

Murdoch's media empire had been freely expanding in the U.S., but it is now doubtful that he will be able to maintain the reputation he has created in the profession.

Murdoch's rivals broke the scandal in London. Something happened to Murdoch in the late years of his life. His freewheeling tactics and approach to journalism caught up with him. He is paying a price at the expense of his international reputation. Even worse, he has hurt the profession of journalism and its credibility in the public eye.

It is doubtful Murdoch will ever be the same, and his reporters will have to scramble to reassert the high standards of their profession. It is a sorry fate for a media mogul who thought anything goes, but he is paying the price to recoup his once ever-growing audience.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Are You Ready For Soul Catcher 2025?
By James Donahue

A company called British Telecom in England is working on a tiny microchip that can be placed in people's bodies that will put them on permanent record in a master computer. The plan is to implant this chip in the skull just behind the eye, where it can record a person's every thought, experience and sensation.

The name of this chip will be Soul Catcher 2025. That is because the company once believed it would be ready for use in the year 2025. Some people believe versions of this chip may already be in use, and is being implanted in unwilling subjects.

Once ready, the chip will be designed to attach directly to the optical nerve. There it would store incoming sensory impulses. Company spokesman Peter Cochrane said the chip would be tiny but have storage capacity of 10 terabytes, enough for an entire lifetime's experience.

"This is the end of death," said Dr. Chris Winters, another member of the research team. Winters said the chip could be removed from the body and everything played back through a computer. "By combining this information with a record of a person's genes, we could recreate a person physically, emotionally and spiritually."

Authorities perceive the chip as something similar to the "black box" installed in aircraft and automobiles. In the event of a criminal charge, the chip could be used to prove or disprove a person's innocence or guilt.

Prison authorities in the UK already are considering a chip like it to replace the ankle bracelet worn by prisoners released on restricted probation.

The Christians will obviously see the chip as the dreaded "mark of the beast" as warned in the strange prophetic Biblical Book of the Revelation.

The warning in Rev. 14:9-10 is severe: "If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God . . ."

Millions of people, especially the Bible believers, have been programmed by these verses to be on the lookout for something like this in the so-called "end times," and to reject the mark for fear of facing eternal judgment by a vengeful God.

Indeed, there is something even more problematic about the potential use of the Soul Catcher chip once it comes into existence. Writers for both the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail have suggested that once the memory, sights, sounds and personal emotions of a person's lifetime experience goes into this chip, what would stop science from taking the next step? That would be transplanting the information into a new-born baby, thus transferring the "spirit" of an elderly and dying person into another new body.

Imagine the moral and religious implications of doing something like that. How do we go about protecting the "soul" or "spirit" of the newborn if the body is invaded by the memories of another person. The scientific thought is that the baby would start life where the dead person left off.

While this may sound a lot like reincarnation, we perceive extreme danger in such an experiment. If we accept the belief that every person possesses an individual spirit and is linked to the light or "soul" of the creator, downloading the memory of another person into the DNA of a newborn baby might create a state of insanity. The baby could develop into a person with his own spirit, but the peculiar memories, habits and personality of a second person. It would be similar to having a split personality. And who knows where that might lead?

Carrying such a chip around in our heads would certainly change the way we live, especially if we know that somebody can someday look back at all of our thoughts, experiences and emotions. That could be an uncomfortable concept for anybody with secret perversions and hidden agendas, which most of us have at one time or another. What reader of this story can honestly say that they do not have at least a few skeletons in their personal closet?

On the other hand, because of the population growth, the speed of communications and the fast paced way the world is changing, the microchip may soon be an inevitable part of our lives. Some see it as an important tool for eliminating the volumes of paperwork connected with establishing identities, handling finance, medical records, and a variety of other things involved in daily living.

Another dark side of the chip may lie in the more distant future. Once the planet gets too polluted to support life, consider this scenario. Suppose that people develop complex computerized robotic machines that can survive without air and food. They could then transfer their memory chips and consciousness into these computer matrix systems.

The question, however, becomes a spiritual one. Just by collecting the memories of all of the experiences and sensations a person has during a lifetime, is it the same as catching the spirit or soul of that person? Is it technically possible to capture a person's soul and move it from one body to another?

If this kind of foolishness occurs, we perceive a future planet of robotic and computerized zombies, going through the motions of being living humans, but lacking the soul of the god that exists in each of us.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






Brain Dead Obama
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Everyone who voted for Obama should feel betrayed, ashamed and disgusted. Anyone who still trusts, admires and respects Obama is a fool. Here is my political fantasy: I wake up one day soon and hear the news that President Obama has a fatal brain tumor and will soon resign. Praise the Lord!

If you have any doubt whatsoever about how bad a president Obama is, then take the time to read this incredibly fine essay by Drew Westen "What Happened to Obama?"

Obama has no real, meaningful principles, nor passion and courage to say and do what the US desperately needs. He repeatedly fails to publicly identify the enemies of the state and rally public support for fighting evil and corruption in the political system. For a supposedly smart guy he appears to ordinary people as brain dead. His presidency makes a compelling case why we need a constitutional amendment creating the option for American voters to recall a president.

Far too many people will wrongly believe that voting to reelect Obama is better than voting for any Republican. They are dead wrong. Better to not vote at all for any presidential candidate or vote for a third party candidate. Lesser evil voting has been one of the primary causes of the decline of American democracy, allowing the total corruption of the political system by money representing the interests of the rich and powerful.

Sticking with Obama or giving him another term is idiocy on steroids, like remaining on the sinking Titanic rather than escaping in a lifeboat.

There is only one thing that everyone can see Obama stands for and is totally committed to: staying in office.

Even more depressing than having a failed president is that Americans are not doing what citizens in Greece, England and Israel have been doing in response to their economic suffering: rioting in the streets. Our brain dead president seems matched by a brain dead public, victimized by evil forces controlling the economy. The wealth of the nation has been extracted by greedy elite and corporate interests. Even in this awful economy that rivals the Great Depression in the pain inflicted on a large fraction of the public consider these remarkable facts revealed in a recent article.

Tiffany's first-quarter sales were up 20 percent to $761 million. LVMH, which owns expensive brands like Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, reported sales growth in the first half of 2011 of 13 percent. PPR, home to Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and other brands, said its luxury segment's sales gained 23 percent in the first half. Profits are also up by double digits for many of these companies.

BMW more than doubled its quarterly profit from a year ago as sales rose 16.5 percent; Porsche first-half profit rose 59 percent; and Mercedes-Benz said July sales of its high-end S-Class sedans - some of which cost more than $200,000 - jumped nearly 14 percent and sold more cars in the United States than it had in any July in five years.

Nordstrom has a waiting list for a Chanel sequined tweed coat with a $9,010 price. Neiman Marcus has sold out in almost every size of Christian Louboutin "Bianca" platform pumps, at $775 a pair.

Get the point? The cancerous political and economic corruption in the US is in a terminal stage. The core reason why we have a dysfunctional government is that we have a two-party plutocracy owned by rich and powerful interests. Obama has shown that he too is a puppet of moneyed interests; he does not fight for the poor or the middle class.

Americans seem paralyzed by distraction, delusion and outright stupidity. If not we would be witnessing the beginnings of sorely needed Second American Revolution. With two corrupt political parties controlling the political system the only solution is using what the Founders had the wisdom to give us in the Constitution: an Article V convention of state delegates that could propose constitutional amendments, which are the only route for obtaining genuine reforms of our political system, such as getting all private money out of politics.

Harvard Law School is hosting a Conference on the Constitutional Convention this September. The justification for it includes this correct view: Reform of any kind is stalled by a status quo that profits from blocking change.

In other words, things have gotten so awful that we cannot vote our way out of our national mess. We must work through out states to reform government.

Pay attention to this: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 17 percent of likely US voters think the federal government today has the consent of the governed, the lowest level ever measured. Sixty-nine percent believe the government does not have that consent. Fourteen percent are undecided. Time for the revolution.

Consistent with this finding was a new Washington Post survey that found 78 percent dissatisfied with the way this country's political system is working. But proof of how brainwashed or stupid Americans are is that 77 percent believe: "Whatever its faults, the United States still has the best system of government in the world." This means that they still do not understand the urgent need for restructuring and reforming the political system. Mass riots in the streets may be needed to fix the system. As more and more Americans suffer in a terrible economy that may be coming.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.







Beware Of CUNA Mutual Insurance Group
By Patricia Cunliffe

My parents had been firm believers in life insurance policies for as long as I can remember. I recall, even in my teens, calculating premium payment amounts over a number of years, looking at the face value and wondering why anyone would bother buying insurance policies. So, you see, life insurance had been an ongoing topic in my family for many years, but even with that in mind, we were totally unprepared for what actually did happen:

In December 2008, my mother, Mary Sina, who was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, called to say that she would not be joining us for the holidays, because she was having trouble shaking a head cold. Four months later, she was still claiming to have the same cold so in April 2009, my husband and I went to Santa Fe to celebrate her 84th birthday with her.

What we found upon our arrival amid piles of newspapers, unopened mail and Christmas gifts in an uncharacteristically filthy apartment, was a woman who had seemed to have lost interest in most everything, which included such basic necessities as grocery shopping and paying bills. Long story short, she was diagnosed with Dementia.

We arranged meal delivery, automatic prescriptions, cleaning lady and online bill pay so that she could continue to live on her own without liability. Then began the task of taking care of other matters that had come unraveled during that period of neglect. She had managed to keep up with household expenses with the help of friends or by making payments if a service was interrupted; occurrences that were completely out of character for my mother.

Among the unopened mail, we discovered that she had several life insurance policies purchased from various companies, all of which had lapsed. I can equivocally say that, although time consuming, across the board, reinstating the policies was a simple enough matter of providing the proper paperwork and a check for the outstanding balance and her polices were reinstated as before.

All except for one company, CUNA Mutual Insurance Group, from whom she had purchased policies in 1992 and in 2000 which would automatically convert from whole life insurance coverage to term life coverage, in the event of a default on her premium payments. Despite the extenuating medical circumstances and the longevity of the account, CUNA refused to revert the policies back to their original state. It was also the amount that CUNA claimed that she owed them, to bring what were now term life polices up to date, in relation to what I had paid to reinstate the other policies, that called my attention to some serious discrepancies between what was printed on the policy and what was owed on the billing statement.

CUNA Mutual Insurance Group is the insurance arm of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), who according to their website, is the premier national trade association serving 90% of America's credit unions. In a written testimony before The Senate Banking Committee dated March 24, 2009, Dan Mica, President and CEO of the Credit Union National Association counted "92 million members."The actual purpose of the document was to "express the need for maintaining an independent federal regulatory agency for federally-insured credit unions" separate from those that regulate other US financial institutions. In it Mica claimed that "Credit Unions did not in any way contribute to the current financial debacle... Therefore it is imperative that credit unions not be swept up in the tide of regulatory reform that is so essential for some other parts of the financial system." The Credit Union National Association was also lobbying strongly, in 2009, for a raise in member business cap lending.

CUNA Mutual Insurance Group sends out insurance materials to credit union members immediately upon their joining, announcing $1,000.00 of accidental death & dismemberment coverage, provided free of charge, and the opportunity to purchase other plans. In my parent's case, their introduction to CUNA Insurance came through the Land of Enchantment Federal Credit Union.

I spent several months communicating with various departments at CUNA Mutual, trying unsuccessfully to get a copy of her file so I sought out the help of the NM State Superintendent of Insurance and eventually did receive it. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed what fragmented paperwork exists in the inner files of such a lucrative company. The CUNA files contained a handwritten application for a policy conversion that was conducted over the telephone, which apparently required no signature verification from my mother. I couldn't help but wonder how any prudent person would elect to change an $81.00 yearly premium to a $138.79 quarterly premium for the exact same amount of coverage. Prior to the onset of Mary's illness, she had been a very practical individual, but by this time was not able to shed any light on how this actually took place.

So I wrote another letter directly to Jeff Post, CEO of CUNA Mutual Insurance Group; Dan Mica, then President of the Credit Union National Association; Mo Chavez, the NM State Superintendent of Insurance; and Joe Maldonado, President of Land of Enchantment Federal Credit Union.

I heard back from Gregg Gonzales, from the NM Superintendent of Insurance Office, who basically told me that it was common knowledge that insurance companies were in the business to make a lot of money off of their customers and there was nothing to be done about it. Joe Maldonado, President of Land of Enchantment Credit Union, dismissed me with a shrug and said, "We don't really have anything to do with the insurance that gets offered to our members."

I received a letter from CUNA President, Dan Mica's office telling me that they had forwarded my letter to Jeff Post, who was the CEO of CUNA Mutual Insurance. By then Jeff Post's office would have been in receipt of my letter twice, first from me and then from Dan Mica's office, so Jeff Post arrogantly ignored both letters. Incidentally, former CEO of CUNA Mutual Insurance Group, Michael Kitchen, resigned in 2004 after it was disclosed his offering money to employees to go against their union, resulting in a lawsuit against CUNA Mutual by the National Labor Relations Board.

In July of 2010 Mary Sina moved to Southern California to be with her family and her health has improved considerably. While packing up her apartment of 27 years, we discovered that the one questionable policy in our possession was, in actuality, yet a different policy purchased from CUNA Mutual Insurance Group for a ridiculously low "burial"amount, of which there was never any mention from CUNA. We realized that even if we had continued to pay premiums; had my mother died, we would have had no policy with which to collect.

CUNA Mutual Insurance Group thrives on an automatic customer base in the consumer who has chosen to invest their money in a credit union, and trusts that credit union's choices regarding benefits provided to their members. Because of that automatic customer base, CUNA Mutual Insurance Group appears to be operating with little, if any, restriction or accountability. It would be interesting to see what percentage of their revenue has accrued through people who have just gotten tired of fighting. Although in June, 2009, a South Dakota jury awarded Teri Powell's estate $6.2 million for a disability claim that she filed when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and CUNA continually denied until her death in 2006. The article also stated that CUNA was appealing that decision on technicalities.

Most lawsuits appear to be over disability insurance, while others include a 2008 filing by Veronica Keith of Washington over the Accidental Death & Dismemberment policy, which apparently excludes "accidental death caused by, or resulting from, committing or attempting to commit a felony" plus the argument that the 3-year period to file suit had expired. In 2009 Southeast Financial Credit Union filed suit against CUNA Mutual Insurance Society and CUNA Brokerage Services Inc. for misrepresentations regarding deferred compensation plans and variable annuities.

A quick visit to the employee review of employer website glassdoor.com gives the overall impression that CUNA Mutual Insurance's management team is unqualified, unapproachable, and complacent with very little respect given to their staff in general, resulting in a high turn over rate. That might explain why everyone was so hateful to me on the telephone.

Recently, CUNA Mutual Insurance Group advertising mediums have increased exponentially. Not only do I strongly discourage anyone from doing business with them, but please take the time to make sure that your parent's insurance policies are updated and intact before it is too late. We need to protect our parents from the nice, smiling salesperson who assures them that checking the little provision box is really in their best interest.
(c) 2011 Patricia Cunliffe is a freelance journalist, documentary filmmaker & Santa Fe native living in Southern California

SOURCES:

Michael Kitchen/NLRB story:

http://www.scfl.org/?ulnid=957
http://www.scfl.org/?ulnid=1019
http://www.allbusiness.com/banking-finance/banking-institutions-systems/14725798-1.html

Teri Powell story:

http://law.freeadvice.com/insurance_law/insurers_bad_faith/cuna-mutual-laible-for-bad-faith.htm

Veronica Keith story:

http://wa.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.%2FFDCT%2FWWA%2F2009%2F20090623_0001469.WWA.htm/qx

Southeast Financial story:

http://www.cutimes.com/2009/09/09/southeast-financial-cu-files-suit-against-cuna-mutual

CUNA Mutual CEO chronological history 2004-2007:

http://keepcunamutual.com/4.pdf
http://www.waxingamerica.com/2008/01/does-cuna-mutua.html
http://www.cuna.org/newsnow/09/system070909-10.html
http://www.cujournal.com/departments/insurance.html







Daylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery
By Naomi Klein

I keep hearing comparisons between the London riots and riots in other European cities-window smashing in Athens, or car bonfires in Paris. And there are parallels, to be sure: a spark set by police violence, a generation that feels forgotten.

But those events were marked by mass destruction; the looting was minor. There have, however, been other mass lootings in recent years, and perhaps we should talk about them too. There was Baghdad in the aftermath of the US invasion-a frenzy of arson and looting that emptied libraries and museums. The factories got hit too. In 2004 I visited one that used to make refrigerators. Its workers had stripped it of everything valuable, then torched it so thoroughly that the warehouse was a sculpture of buckled sheet metal.

Back then the people on cable news thought looting was highly political. They said this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves. But London isn't Baghdad, and British Prime Minister David Cameron is hardly Saddam, so surely there is nothing to learn there.

How about a democratic example then? Argentina, circa 2001. The economy was in freefall and thousands of people living in rough neighborhoods (which had been thriving manufacturing zones before the neoliberal era) stormed foreign-owned superstores. They came out pushing shopping carts overflowing with the goods they could no longer afford-clothes, electronics, meat. The government called a "state of siege"to restore order; the people didn't like that and overthrew the government.

Argentina's mass looting was called El Saqueo-the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country's elites had done by selling off the country's national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatization deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centers would not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the real gangsters were the ones in charge.

But England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn't theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behavior.

This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G-8 and G-20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuitions, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatizations of public assets and decreasing pensions – mix the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about the need to give up these "entitlements?" The bankers and hedge-fund managers, of course.

This is the global Saqueo, a time of great taking. Fueled by a pathological sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights left on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears, however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94 percent of millionaires were afraid of "violence in the streets." This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.

Of course London's riots weren't a political protest. But the people committing nighttime robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious.

The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously offered-a union job, a good affordable education-being rapidly sealed off. The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our increasingly fortressed borders.

David Cameron's response to the riots is to make this locking-out literal: evictions from public housing, threats to cut off communication tools and outrageous jail terms (five months to a woman for receiving a stolen pair of shorts). The message is once again being sent: disappear, and do it quietly.

At last year's G-20 "austerity summit" in Toronto, the protests turned into riots and multiple cop cars burned. It was nothing by London 2011 standards, but it was still shocking to us Canadians. The big controversy then was that the government had spent $675 million on summit "security" (yet they still couldn't seem to put out those fires). At the time, many of us pointed out that the pricey new arsenal that the police had acquired-water cannons, sound cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets-wasn't just meant for the protesters in the streets. Its long-term use would be to discipline the poor, who in the new era of austerity would have dangerously little to lose.

This is what David Cameron got wrong: you can't cut police budgets at the same time as you cut everything else. Because when you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance-whether organized protests or spontaneous looting.

And that's not politics. It's physics.
(c) 2011 Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."







The Texas Unmiracle
By Paul Krugman

As expected, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has announced that he is running for president. And we already know what his campaign will be about: faith in miracles.

Some of these miracles will involve things that you're liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it's often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.

So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.

It's true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state's still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.

Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.

In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state's small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the "job-killing" Affordable Care Act.

So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.

For this much is true about Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America - about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.

And just to be clear, there's nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there's a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and that this is one area where Texas does in fact do something right.

But what does population growth have to do with job growth? Well, the high rate of population growth translates into above-average job growth through a couple of channels. Many of the people moving to Texas - retirees in search of warm winters, middle-class Mexicans in search of a safer life - bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, the rapid growth in the Texas work force keeps wages low - almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average - and these low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State.

So Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population - and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what's needed.

If this picture doesn't look very much like the glowing portrait Texas boosters like to paint, there's a reason: the glowing portrait is false.

Still, does Texas job growth point the way to faster job growth in the nation as a whole? No.

What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is "Well, duh." The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs - which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice - involves a fallacy of composition: every state can't lure jobs away from every other state.

In fact, at a national level lower wages would almost certainly lead to fewer jobs - because they would leave working Americans even less able to cope with the overhang of debt left behind by the housing bubble, an overhang that is at the heart of our economic problem.

So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, don't believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end Texas's crippling drought.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A..
Democracy Is Coming To The U.S.A.
~~~ Leonard Cohen









Ishaqi Again
Another Day, Another Atrocity in the Endless Iraq War
By Chris Floyd

There was a raid in Ishaqi last week. Armed men crept upon the sleeping houses in the dead of night. Armed men stirring in the darkness, in a land still open, like a flayed wound, to violent death and chaos from every direction, many years after the savage act of aggression that first tore the country to pieces.

They crept toward the houses. They said nothing, gave no warning, could not be clearly seen, did not identify themselves. "Thieves!" someone shouted. Someone grabbed a rifle - one kept ready at hand to guard the sleeping family - and fired a shot to scare away the raiders.

But men creeping in the darkness were not local thieves. They were soldiers of the foreign army that still occupied the land. Foreign invaders, accompanied by forces from the local army they had raised for the government they had built on the mound of a million rotting corpses.

Armed to the teeth with expensive gear bought with public money from bloated war profiteers in the invaders' home country, the creeping men were not to be frightened off by a rifle shot fired blindly in the darkness. They saw the flash - and lit up the village with heavy gunfire and grenades. They called in a helicopter gunship hovering nearby to support them against the rifle of a villager awakened by the sound of unknown, unidentified, armed men creeping near his house and family.

In the tumult, a 13-year-old boy began running through the garden, frightened, confused, trying to escape the hellish metal flying all around him. But the metal found him; it tore into his fleeing body - the body of this scared, unarmed boy running away from the well-armed soldiers - the bullets tore into his body and killed him in the garden where he used to play.

The armed men then stalked through the village. Kicking down doors, dragging people out, hogtied, and throwing them into the dirt. They ransacked, they smashed, they ripped, they broke - and, like thieves, they stole.

"We heard gunfire near our house, and my son woke up and went to the garden because he was afraid," said the boy's mother, Nagia Gamas, 51. "They shot him and my husband."

... Muhammad Farhan, a 62-year-old farmer in Ishaqi ... said Iraqi and American forces knocked down his door around 2 a.m. Friday, tied him and three of his relatives up and took them outside.

He said that the Iraqi and American forces searched his house, stole a check from him and took his brother's passport. "The Americans were telling us we are liars and terrorists," Mr. Farhan said. "Why do you attack us? We are just innocent people."

It was just another night in the unending American war against Iraq. It was just another non-combatant death added to the million or more such deaths caused, by direct or collateral hand, by the illegal American invasion, now in its eighth year.

And it was just another atrocity in Ishaqi, where the American invaders and their colonial helpers had already inflicted horror and death on the area's children in years past. The 13-year-old boy - who had been only five when the invasion began, so many years and so many deaths ago, probably knew the little children, some just a few months old, killed in the earlier attacks. As I noted here in March 2006:

We know that U.S. forces conducted a raid on a house in the village on March 15. ... We know that two Iraqi police officials, Major Ali Ahmed and Colonel Farouq Hussein - both employed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government - told Reuters that the 11 occupants of the house, including the five children, had been bound and shot in the head before the house was blown up. We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police told Reuters that an American helicopter landed on the roof in the early hours of the morning, then the house was blown up, and then the victims were discovered. We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police said that an autopsy performed on the bodies found that "all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head."

We know that Ahmed Khalaf, brother of house's owner, told AP that nine of the [11] victims were family members and two were visitors, adding, "the killed family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children. The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death."

We know from the photographs that one child, the youngest, the baby, has a gaping wound in his forehead. We can see that one other child, a girl with a pink ribbon in her hair, is lying on her side and has blood oozing from the back of her head. ... We know from the photographs that two of the children - two girls, still in their pajamas - are lying with their dead eyes open. We can see that the light and tenderness that animate the eyes of every young child have vanished; nothing remains but the brute stare of nothingness into nothingness. We can see that the other three children have their eyes closed; two are limp, but the baby has one stiffened arm raised to his cheek, as if trying to ward off the blow that gashed and pulped his face so terribly.

Later, the Pentagon changed its original story about the raid, in which it claimed that "only" one man, two women and a single child had been killed. Following an "investigation," the Pentagon said that one terrorist had been killed, along with "three noncombatant" deaths and an estimated nine "collateral deaths." (As I noted at the time: The difference between these two categories is not explained. And of course it doesn't matter to the innocent people killed; whether they are "non-combatants" or "collaterals," they're still just as dead.) The invaders categorically denied that any children had been shot in the head. But the evidence indicated differently:

First is the photographic evidence: pictures taken of the aftermath by Agence France Presse, and a video that emerged this week on BBC. These clearly dispute the Pentagon's account, which holds that the house was first raked with gunfire, then attack by helicopter gunships, then finally bombed by American jets: a massive barrage of firepower that left the house in ruins. But the video shows that part of the house was left standing. The photographs, which have been widely available for months, show five dead children, one of them only a few months old. They have been laid out by grieving relatives. Their bodies show no signs of having been ripped up or damaged in the course of an all-out air and ground assault; as the BBC's John Simpson points out, they had not been crushed by the collapse of the house, as the Pentagon claimed. Instead, they are unmarked, their clothes dusty but in most cases untorn. In the photographs I saw, one child clearly has blood oozing from the back of her head, while the baby has a hole in his forehead, and other damage to his face. The other children are laid on their back, with their wounds invisible, their bodies remarkably whole. Simpson, shown viewing the film, said it was clear that the children had been shot.

Second is the testimony of the villagers, and of two officials of the U.S.-backed Iraqi police, Major Ali Ahmed and Colonel Farouq Hussein. These are men who risk their lives by their cooperation with the Coalition. The villagers say soldiers entered the house and killed the occupants; the house was later hit by the helicopter then bombed, apparently to cover up the killings, some of the villagers surmised. The Iraqi police said "all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head." Later, a Knight-Ridder reporter saw a preliminary report indicating that the 11 victims had multiple wounds. This tallies with Simpson's viewing, which showed that one of the dead children had been shot in the side. Everyone who saw or examined the bodies agreed that the victims had been shot, most likely by bullets from the large pile of American-issue cartridges found inside the house, which can also be seen on the video.

This was in March. Just a few months later, there was an even greater massacre:

So what happened on December 9 in the village of Taima in the Ishaqi district, on the shores of Lake Tharthar? The official U.S. military version states that unidentified "Coalition Forces" entered the village shortly after midnight and targeted a location "based on intelligence reports that indicated associates with links to multiple al-Qaeda in Iraq networks were operating in the area." During a search, they took heavy fire from a nearby building. Returning fire, they killed "two armed terrorists" but couldn't quell the attack, so they called in an airstrike that killed "18 more armed terrorists." ...

The identification of the victims as terrorists was made through a "battle damage assessment," said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. "If there is a weapon with or next to the person or they are holding it, they are a terrorist," he said.

Garver firmly refused to identify the troops involved in the raid; he wouldn't even say if they were American, Iraqi, or from some other Coalition ally, the Daily Telegraph reports. "There are some units we don't talk about," he said. But the conclusions of the official report were unequivocal: 20 terrorists killed, no collateral damage. ...

But local officials from the U.S.-backed Iraqi government had a different view: they said the raid was a bloodbath of innocent civilians. Ishaqi Mayor Amir Fayadh said that 19 civilians were killed by the airstrikes that destroyed two private homes. Fayadh said that the victims included seven women and eight children. An official in the regional government of Salahuddin said six children had been killed. All Iraqi officials agreed that the victims were mostly members of the extended families of two brothers in the town, Muhammad Hussein al-Jalmood and Mahmood Hussein al-Jalmood, the NYT reports.

... Soon after the attack, reporters and photographers from Associated Press and Agence France Presse arrived on the scene. They took pictures, shot video and talked to grieving members of the al-Jalmood family. Local police gave them the names of at least 17 of the victims, which indicated they were from the same family. The names of at least four women were among them. Many of the bodies had been charred and twisted beyond recognition; some were "almost mummified," AP reports. However, AFP videotaped at least two children among the dead.

When shown the pictures later, Garver said: "I see nothing in the photos that indicates those children were in the houses that our forces received fire from and subsequently destroyed with the airstrike." He did not speculate on where the dead children being mourned by family members after being pulled from the rubble of the bombed-out houses might have come from otherwise. Perhaps the al-Jalmoods kept them in cold storage for just such a propaganda opportunity.

All of this was back in the bad old days of George W. Bush. But it is still going on, and has been going on, throughout the tenure of the Great Continuer. And if the Nobel Peace Laureate has his way, it will keep going on. Read carefully the statement on the most recent raid by a PR mouthpiece for the invaders, where he bravely and boldly heaps all blame for any "collateral damage" on the colonial troops:

"This was an Iraqi-planned and -led counterterrorism operation," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, an American military spokesman, said in a statement. "The operation was enabled by U.S. support that included helicopters. Also, there was a small number of U.S. advisers taking part in the operation, although it was predominantly Iraqi forces, and they were in charge of all activities on the ground."

"Advisers." This is the new term-of-art for invasion forces. This is the word now being used by the Obama Administration and the Iraqi government in their relentless efforts to weasel out of the agreement to withdraw all American "military forces" from Iraq by the end of the year. This follows the line of the Peace Laureate's earlier scam, when he claimed to have kept his promise to withdraw "all combat troops" from Iraq by simply renaming the tens of thousands of occupying soldiers left behind as "non-combat troops" - although they continued, and continue, to carry out combat missions. (And of course, the "withdrawal" agreement doesn't include the thousands upon thousands of "security personnel" and mercenaries who will guard the vast embassy-fortress the invaders have built in the center of Baghdad.)

So we will no doubt see more of Ishaqi's children shot and killed by occupiers and their colonial proxies in the months and years to come. We will no doubt see more villages and neighborhoods invaded in the dead of night by armed men creeping up on their houses, kicking down their doors, shooting, looting, breaking and beating, in this now-hidden, now-forgotten but still-ongoing act of mass murder.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd







The Grubby Species
By David Michael Green

Nobility is a bitch, and a real seductive one at that.

I'm capable of some serious cynicism, but these days I kinda wish I had a lot more of it. I kinda wish I had born and raised in a more cynical time. Then maybe I wouldn't get my heart broken so often.

That's a funny thing to say about the time I grew up in, in a way. It was the era of Vietnam and Watergate, the era of police attack dogs and burning cities. My Lai, Kent State, Nixon, Watts. What's uglier than that? And can't one make a very compelling case that these are significantly better times today? I mean, after all, the government isn't beating and murdering our kids on America's streets. And while we're still fighting wars (of course), there are a lot less casualties on either side these days. Aren't things better?

No. They're worse. What's absent today from the America of my younger days is hope and understanding. Back then, everyone understood there was a struggle going on, and lots of people did just that. And they generated enormous successes, ranging from changing both racial civil rights laws and norms, to doing the same for gender equality, to demanding cleaner government, to improving the New Deal social safety net, to ending the Vietnam war, to distributing the national wealth more fairly, to changing environmental consciousness and law, and more.

It was a painful process, but one that came with an outstanding record of achievement, a record which therefore justified the sense of hope. There was solid and robust empirical evidence to prove that having high expectations for the country was not some pollyannaish exercise in naivete.

That's all gone. It's been replaced by something far worse than a tired stasis. And, really, when you consider the present picture in its full glory, you're left with something beyond despair. For this is not only a story of deceit and hypocrisy, of rampant greed, of sociopathic disdain for the lives of others, but, finally, also a story of complete betrayal and the predatory exploitation of innocent people.

As in any crime story, it's crucial to understand the who, what, when, why and how in order to unravel the true tale, and to have any hope for crime prevention and remediation in the future.

The 'what' of this crime scene is crucial, and so many people still don't understand it (despite the rampant prevalence of CSI dramas all across the television dial - or perhaps because of it). It's been said that the perfect crime is one of which the victim isn't even cognizant. That's all too true here. This lack of comprehension of what has been done, who did it, and why is the single most depressing feature of American politics today. How can 300 million people hallucinate so deeply all at once? Is there really that much LSD to go around? Or do we just get our drugs from the end of a cable nowadays?

There's really only one main theme to the story of American politics in the last century (if not more), and that is the question of the distribution of wealth. This is particularly true of the last three decades, a period during which other important things - not least including wars and civil rights struggles - transpired, but were ultimately peripheral to the real story. And yet people still don't understand this central concept and the crime committed around it.

A hundred years ago the distribution of wealth in this country looked like that of any standard issue banana republic. The rich had almost everything, and all of the rest of us barely got by, working (alongside our children) long hours in horrid conditions, for low pay, no benefits and zero respect for us as humans deserving of an equal regard for our welfare, happiness, opportunities, fortunes and basic dignity. We were 'human resources' (though the term was not in use until the ethos was revived in the present era), who were to be used and abused in the processing of natural resources, and discarded when our usefulness ceased. This approach to class relations within the society produced the expected result: wealthy Americans lived long and highly comfortable lives, while the rest of us resembled something nearer to characters out of Hobbes.

But then Franklin Roosevelt, easily the most transformative figure in American history, gave us a New Deal, which was quite literally that. Roosevelt and his fellow travelers in and out of government changed the essential terms of political economy in America, such that it was no longer a game entirely for the benefit of the wealthy. Mind you, those rich folks still did real well, thank you very much, and it is correctly argued that Roosevelt actually saved capitalism from capitalists - so, when it comes to FDR, we're not talking about Leon Trotsky here. But Roosevelt's program changed the rules of labor relations, taxation, government spending, regulation and so on, a reform that had the ultimate effect of redistributing wealth in America, so that the richest among us no longer had it all. And, in the process, this massive sea change in public policy also created a giant middle class that had not existed before, and launched an era of prosperity in this country that may have no equal across all of human history.

Which brings us to the 'who' of this murder mystery. They are the predatory plutocrats who hated FDR and the New Deal then, and have not stopped doing so down to this day. They despised Roosevelt so much for being "a traitor to his class" that many of them had to refer to him as "that man", because they couldn't bear to actually spit out his name. These people, with their infantile obsession for acquisition coming right out of some Freud 101 textbook, have never gone away. But they were marginalized during the half-century of the New Deal era. In fact, they were marginalized by the core mainstream of even the Republican Party. Dwight Eisenhower referred to them - in particular, to those who wanted to abolish Social Security twenty years after its launch - as "stupid."

Eisenhower's comment points to another answer to the 'who' question here. Plutocrats need agents to commit their crimes for them. That includes cadres of cops and soldiers who are either clueless as to their place in the scheme of things, or satisfied to be bought off for a few shekels and/or a pittance of prestige in the social hierarchy. In the contemporary context, however, it mostly means politicians. In our time these (alleged) people are little more than kabuki dancers, who job is to maintain a layered set of illusions. On top is the idea of political debate, as if there was fundamentally any difference between the two parties in America. As if Harry Reid and Barack Obama get up every day wondering how they can spend their waking hours fighting off Republican intransigencies to make life better for you and me. At the next level down is the idea of patriotism and the national interest. This facade brainwashes us to believe that while we may disagree with leaders of the other party, at least they are well meaning patriots who just happen to be wrong-headed - but right-hearted! - in their prescription for what ails the country. Finally, we have the last veil, the democracy ruse, where we are told that our government is responsive to the public will. Never mind all that corporate money washing around in the system - it doesn't actually effect anything. It's one person, one vote. Where your representatives are concerned, you count every bit as much as the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Almost without exception, our contemporary political class serves the function of acting out this tawdry little soap opera, this elaborate diversionary scheme. That's why there's so much overlap between Madison Avenue and Hollywood and Washington, America's politicians are B-rate actors (sometimes literally), playing a role in a lame white-hat-versus-black-hat pseudo-drama filmed on a soundstage called Washington, and doing the commercials in-between as well. But it wasn't always thus. We used to have (at least some) limits, and we used to have (at least some) politicians genuinely committed to the public interest.

That crucial difference gives us the 'when' to this tale. For fifty years there was a broad consensus in America around the values of the New Deal and the lessons learned from the period preceding it. That consensus began unraveling in the 1980s, and has continued to do so ever since. The essential narrative of the last thirty years is the story of the dismantling of the New Deal, and with it the broad and shared prosperity that Americans once enjoyed. This process has occurred piecemeal, because it had to, because in fact both the deal of the New Deal era and the values it personifies are highly popular with the American public.

So the 'how' was to lie, cheat and steal in order for the rich to redress the 'crime' of the New Deal and get 'their' money back. Trade deals that seemed on their surface plainly to be disastrous for American workers - perhaps because that is exactly what they were - were sold to us as beneficial. Union busting, a la Reagan and PATCO, was made to seem an act of necessary national toughness. And who needed unions, anyhow? Didn't we already have good wages? Deregulation - hey, what a great idea! Let Wall Street banks do whatever they want - you know, like in the 1920s! They didn't call 'em "roaring" for nuthin', pal! Tax slashing for millionaires and billionaires was another big winner. It'll trickle-down to the rest of us when these job-creators create jobs, it won't cost the government any revenues, and it will jump-start the economy. So what if regressives went zero for three on those claims? We have to cut taxes even more! And then there are the diversions to keep you voting for the kleptocrats at every turn, such as foreign evil-doers (Ooooohhh, Saddam! Very scary! Noriega! Plenty bad man! Castro! An athiest, for Christ's sake!), job-stealing Mexicans (you would have wound up being a rich attorney - even though you didn't go to law school, or even college - but some sneaky wetback crossed the border and took your job), and predatory gays who want to deflower your innocent daughter - er, well, something like that.

Really, you have to give this country credit where credit is due. No contemporary developed nation in the world can touch us where political stupidity is concerned. We're the best at that! American exceptionalism, man! Take that, you cheese-eating European socialists! Having repudiated the rampant regressivism of the last president - a shit-kicker Texas Republican governor who made his bones frying people on death row - and having spent four years with more of precisely the same politics (except with much more niceness) from our present Social Worker-in-Chief, we are now very likely to turn again next to an even more radical version of the Bush debacle, that being the current shit-kicker Texas Republican governor, Rick Perry. I mean, it all might even have a certain entertainment value to it if Americans had any sense of irony whatsoever. Alas, that is far from the case, and this will all somehow make perfect sense to voters in 2012. The Democrat who governs like a Republican couldn't do squat to fix the crises created by the Republicans, so we'll need to get an even more Republican Republican in there to do it right! Far, far right.

I have to confess that I am deeply despondent about politics today, in a way I don't remember feeling, even during the ugliest days of George W. Caligula. It was awful then, but those actions and ethics were only a natural extension of what had already been going on within the GOP for twenty years. Each successive wave of thuggish animals was uglier than the last (as continues to be the case today), from Reagan to Gingrich to Bush. The Obama presidency, on the other hand, has been crushing to the spirit, and more so because even disappointed liberals still don't get it, thinking he's a wimp or a lousy poker player, when in fact he is - like Clinton before him - just another kleptocrat, come to sell out not just the country, but also the ideology of liberalism and the political party which once embodied those principles. That's quite a trifecta, really. Most horror story politicians would be satisfied just to wreck their country in the name of personal narcissism. Obama is additionally destroying a set of crucial and hard-won ideas along with a political party in the bargain.

He is the anti-FDR in every meaning of that term. FDR saved the country. Obama is burying it. FDR created the Democratic Party as we (used to) know it, once probably the most formidable political machine in American history. Obama is dragging it curbside. FDR gave America its social contract. Obama is dismantling it. FDR reveled in the hatred of the greedy thuggish scum who despised him. Obama keeps hoping they'll like him and invite him over for a beer if only he lets them pass his limp body around the jail cell one more time. FDR was America's greatest president. Obama is undoubtedly one of its worst.

This cuts deep, man. Perhaps I should have been used to it after eight years of Clinton (whose adoration to this day by Democrats is a thing of sad wonder and another unrelenting source of despondency) and the absolute nothingburgerness of Nancy Pelosi and crew following the 2006 election. Just the same, I'm having an "Et tu, Brute?" moment as I watch the complete sell-out of 300 million people by a handful of traitors. I'll give Obama credit for achieving one goal, though. This is a truly bipartisan act of treason. Good for him. Working together with Republicans seems very important to this president.

Meanwhile, though, what is there to do, say and think when the avenues for seeking solutions - hell, even for just ending our suicidal tendencies - all seem to be closing up at once, and every iteration of American politics is about losing more of what matters? Like I said, it's getting harder and harder to have hope, and even to care. I guess at some point if stupid people want to do stupid things to themselves, you gotta let them. I kinda wish the rest of us weren't dragged down the toilet with them, though. That's just rude.

It's even tempting to think that a Republican sweep in 2012 would be good for the country. Since conservative prescriptions can only continue the destruction they've begun, perhaps this disaster could mark the repudiation of the ideology forever. 'Course, that's what some of us thought in 2008, and now it is only worse. Far worse. Who could have imagined that, after a decade of Bush, regressivism and disaster that two years later the right would be back with the tea party and stronger than ever? Kafka? Dali? Timothy Leary?

The most disheartening thing about the American political condition is the degree to which people don't get what has happened to them, and still continues to happen, destroying the body politic. It's as if you were staring at an x-ray of a giant tumor in your belly, and nevertheless still sat there in befuddled consternation, wondering what the hell was making you feel so ill. It's as if you then thought to yourself, "Oh, what the hell, I guess I'll just drink a keg or two of this here Tumor Growth Potion. Maybe that will cure me." In the latest sign of this diagnostic idiocy, voters in Wisconsin this week had the opportunity to respond to the tumor that is their Republican governor, through the mechanism of recall elections. The results were hardly a ringing endorsement for sanity, or even self-protection from the predators for whom Scott Walker and his party (as well as most of the other party) shills. That's really depressing.

What is most disheartening is that Americans don't even understand the experiment they've been subjected to these last thirty years. They seem to get the fact that it has failed, but they don't know what "it" is. How many people know that regressives have won more or less every single economic policy battle of the last three decades, from taxes to trade to labor relations to deregulation to privatization to subsidies and beyond? How many Americans know this? How many know, to simply choose the most obvious example (but the same logic applies across the board), that taxes are far lower in America today than they have been for almost a century? And how can they possibly reject this regressive experiment in political economy if they don't even know that it has been conducted?

One reason they don't know, of course, is that nobody is telling them this. Sure, there are a couple of real liberals in Congress and even a socialist senator. But the real truth is that there is absolutely no left in America today, as a serious political movement. None. Liberalism hasn't had a real voice in America for thirty years, perhaps forty. What we have today, instead, is an insane tea party right, whom people like Eisenhower would have utterly abhorred. Then we have the 'mainstream' GOP, like John Boehner, who are simply yesterday's regressive tea party revolutionaries, and who therefore look moderate only through (faux) comparison to the Michele Bachmanns and Allen Wests of this world. Then you have the so-called 'centrist' or moderate Democrats in Congress, who can always be relied upon to provide any non-GOP votes necessary to stuff the plutocratic stocking with Xmas gifts, not to mention the one in the White House who signs the bill a day or two later. Finally, there are the Nancy Pelosis and Chuck Schumers of our political firmament, whose job it is to provide the image of an opposition to oligarchy and the military-industrial complex. "We'll shut down the war as soon as we get control of Congress," they say. Until they actually do win majorities, that is, when it becomes, "Oh, did we say that?"

And so on. Like I said, there is no one out there - and hasn't been for over a generation - who is leading the progressive charge, or even trumpeting the liberal narrative, to counter the absurdly manifest lies of the right. Fox News only makes sense if you're stupid. Similarly, more tax cuts for billionaires as a solution to an economy and a federal budget wrecked by tax cuts for billionaires only makes sense if no one else is out there pointing out that this particular imperial monarch is standing before us buck naked (if you catch my drift). I wouldn't mind quite as much that my country was committing national suicide if I thought that was the intention. In fact, it's more like murder by giving poisoned lollipops to middle-aged babies who gleefully grab for them. Hence my despondency.

If there is a small ray of hope out there, it is that more people are beginning to catch on. There has been a large spate of articles in the media lately with the theme of Obama's complete ineptitude and insignificance as a serious political force. Liberals are by and large finally, amazingly, beginning to understand that he is not a liberal champion by any stretch of the imagination. That's progress, at least, over reading for the last two years that Obama is a liberal or socialist or has a far-left agenda. What sickening, Orwellian, bullshit that is. Sadly, however, while commentators and the voting public are starting to recognize that Obama is not one of us, they have not yet realized the full truth, which is that he is one of them. As if somebody else picked Larry Summers and Tim Geithner and Bob Gates to serve in his cabinet. As if someone else decided to bail-out Wall Street while doing nothing about jobs or mortgages. As if there was another guy in the White House who tripled American forces in Afghanistan, or maintained Guantánamo in its fully operational state. This is what is, ultimately, so sickening about our current political condition. As a country, we don't even know what it is.

If there is another slightly larger a ray of hope on the horizon, it is the premise that there is a breaking point out there somewhere. We're seeing it in Israel (though, of course, the US media declines to cover the story), where huge swaths of the population have been on the streets protesting against - not Palestinians - but rather plutocratic plundering and the diminished lives it has left them with. We've seen that right across the Arab Spring countries, and in Greece and Britain.

Just the other day someone correctly noted that, "There is no excuse for violence, no excuse for looting, no excuse for thuggery, and those who are responsible must know that they will be brought to justice. I think this is about sheer criminality." I couldn't agree more, except that I was thinking it applies to the greedy bastard thugs whose sheer criminality, looting and - yes - violence has brought the world's economy to its knees, rather than to the response to that on the streets of London, which was what Tory Home Secretary Theresa May meant when she made that comment. In any case, maybe we're seeing the beginnings of the breaking point. Perhaps people are at last starting to say Basta! to impoverishment of the many in order to serve the greed of the few.

Maybe such restored political nobility will even come to America.

Maybe it isn't the entire human species that tramples on nobility in its grubby pursuit of greed, but just Homo Sapien Americanus.

And maybe even we children of the Neanderthal can do better, if pushed hard enough.
(c) 2011 David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles, but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.





The Dead Letter Office...





Carl gives the Corpo-rat salute

Heil Obama,

Dear Uber Fuhrer Levin,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your helping us do away with Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicade and Social Security, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Demoncratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 09-05-2011. We salute you Herr Levin, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Bernie Sanders Talks Up Primary Challenge To Obama As 'A Good Idea for Our Democracy And For The Democratic Party'
By John Nichols

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continues to argue that a Democratic primary challenge to President Obama would be "good for democracy and for the Democratic Party."

Another court has ruled against the individual mandate on which Obama's healthcare reform scheme is built-that will make the insurance companies mad. What happens if the Supreme Court kills the individual mandate? Robert Reich says "I'd recommend President Obama immediately propose what he should have proposed in the beginning-universal health care based on Medicare for all, financed by payroll taxes."

Sanders will not be a candidate. The Vermont independent, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, is running for re-election in 2012.

But Sanders, who has been sharply critical of Obama's compromises with the Republican right on economic and fiscal policy, continues to talk up the idea of a primary challenge as a vehicle to pressure the president from the left. He is not alone. Ralph Nader is actively encouraging a primary race. And one-third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents tell pollsters that they favor a primary challenge to the president, while just 59 percent oppose such a run.

Referencing his regular appearances on Thom Hartmann's nationally syndicated radio show, Sanders said: "I do a radio show every week. Over a million people hear it in almost every state in the country. Those are working-class people, progressive people. There is a lot of disillusionment. They want the president to stand up for the middle class, for the working class of this country, and they want him to take on big money interests in a way that he has not done up to this point."

Who might challenge Obama? Sanders isn't naming names. But in an appearance on C-SPAN's Newsmakers program that was taped Friday, Sanders said, "I am sure there are serious and smart people out there who can do it,"

That's an optimistic take. In fact, potential challengers have been reluctant to step up.

Critics of a primary challenge fear that it would not snatch the nomination from Obama but would weaken him in fall competition with a Republican such as Texas Governor Rick Perry or former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

But Sanders says: "Here's the point: If you're asking me, do I think, at the end of the day, that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2012? I do. But do I believe that it is a good idea for our democracy and for the Democratic Party-I speak, by the way, as an independent-that people start asking the president some hard questions about why he said one thing during his previous campaign, and is doing another thing today on Social Security, on Medicare. I think it is important that that discussion take place."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







Life In An Age Of Looting
"Some will rob you with a sixgun and some with a fountain pen"
By Phil Rockstroh

As the poor of Britain rise in a fury of inchoate rage and stock exchanges worldwide experience manic upswings and panicked swoons, the financial elite (and their political operatives) are arrayed in a defensive posture, even as they continue their global-wide, full-spectrum offensive vis-à-vie The Shock Doctrine. Concurrently, corporate mass media types fret over the reversal of fortune and trumpet the triumphs of the self-serving agendas of Wall Street and corporate swindlers…even as they term a feller, in ill-gotten possession of a flat screen television, fleeing through the streets of North London, a mindless thug.

According to the through-the-looking-glass cosmology of mass media elitists, when a poor person commits a crime of opportunity, his actions are a threat to all we hold dear and sacred, but, when the hyper-wealthy of the entrenched looter class abscond with billions, those criminals are referred to as our financial leaders.

Regardless of the propaganda of "free market" fantasists, the great unspeakable in regard to capitalism is its wealth, by and large, is generated for a ruthless, privileged few by the creation of bubbles, and, when those bubbles burst, the resultant economic catastrophe inflicts a vastly disproportionate amount of harm upon those -- the laboring and middle classes -- who generate grossly inequitable amounts of capital for the elitist of the fraudster class...by having the life force drained from them by the vampiric set-up of the gamed system.

Woody Guthrie summed up the situation in these two (unfortunately) ageless stanzas:

"Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a sixgun,
And some with a fountain pen.

"And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home."
--excerpt from Pretty Boy Floyd.

Although, at present, U.S. bank vaults contain little tangible loot for a Pretty Boy Floyd-type outlaw to boost. How would it be possible for an old school bank robber such as Floyd to make-off with a haul of funneling electrons?

Here's the lowdown: The Wall Street fraudsters of the swindler class want to refill their coffers and line their pockets (that is, offshore accounts) with Social Security and Medicare funds. That's the nature of the unfolding scam, folks. Oligarchic rule has always been a system defined by legalized looting that leaves a wasteland of want, deprivation, and unfocused rage in its wake.

Consequently, in the U.K. (and beyond): When poor people's hopes dry up, cities become a tinderbox of dead dreams, and we should not be stricken with shock and consternation when these degraded places are set aflame, nor should we be surprised when the bribed, debt-beholden and commercial media propaganda-bamboozled middle class (who helped create the wasteland with their arid complicity) cry out (predictably) for police state tactics to quell the fiery insurrection.

There have been incidents in which a fire has smoldered for years in an abandoned, sealed-off mineshaft, and then the fire, traveling through the tunnels of the mine, and up the roots of dead, dried trees have caused a dying forest to bloom into flames. The rage that sparks a riot can proceed in a similar manner -- and the insular, sealed-off nature of a nation's elite and the willful ignorance of its middle class will only make the explosion of pent-up rage more powerful when it reaches the surface.

We exist in a culture that, day after day, inundates its have-nots with consumerist propaganda, and then, when the social order breaks down, its wealthy and bourgeoisie alike express outrage when the poor steal consumer goods -- as opposed to going out and looting an education and a good job.

Under Disaster Capitalism, the underclass have had economic violence inflicted upon them since birth, yet the corporate state mass media doesn't seem to notice the situation, until young men burn down the night. Then media elitists wax indignant, carrying on as if these desperate acts are devoid of cultural context.

A mindset has been instilled in these young men and boys that they are nothing sans the accoutrements of consumerism. Yet when they loot an i-Phone, as opposed to creating economy-shredding derivative scams, we're prompted by the corporate media to become indignant.

When the slow motion, elitist-manipulated mob action known as our faux democratic/consumerist culture deprives people of their basic human rights and personal dignity -- then, in turn, we should not be shocked when a mob of the underclass fails to bestow those virtues upon others.

The commercial mass media's narrative of narrowed context (emotional, anecdotal and unreflective in nature) serves as a form of corporate state propaganda, promulgated to ensure the general population continues to rage against the symptoms rather than the disease of neoliberalism. The false framing of opposing opinions -- of those who state the deprivations of neoliberalism factor into the causes of uprisings, insurrections and riots as being apologists for violence and destruction is as preposterous as claiming one is an apologist for dry rot when he points out structural damage to a house due to a leaking roof.

Because of the elements of inverted totalitarianism, inherent within the structure of corporate state capitalism, and internalized within the general population by constant, commercial media re-enforcement, one should not be surprised when a sizable portion of the general populace is inclined to support police state tactics to quell social unrest among the disadvantaged of the population.

Keep in mind: When watching the BBC or the corporate media, one is receiving a limited narrative (tacitly) approved by the global power elite, created by informal arrangements among a careerist cartel comprised of business, governmental and media personality types who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, even if, in doing so, they serve as operatives of a burgeoning police state.

Accordingly, you can't debate fascist thinking with reason nor empathetic imagination e.g., the self-righteous (and self-serving) pronouncements of mass media representatives nor the attendant outrage of the denizens of the corporate state in their audience -- their umbrage engineered by the emotionally laden images with which they have been relentlessly pummeled and plied -- because their responses will be borne of (conveniently) lazy generalizations, given impetus by fear-based animus.

Through it all, veiled by disorienting media distractions and political legerdemain, we find ourselves buffeted and bound by the predicament of paradigm lost…that constitutes the onset of the unraveling of the present order.

"The kings of the world are growing old,
and they shall have no inheritors.
Their sons died while they were boys,
and their neurasthenic daughters abandoned
the sick crown to the mob."
--Rainer Maria Rilke, excerpt from "The Kings of the World"

Yet, while there is proliferate evidence that, even as people worldwide are rising up against inequity and exploitation, the economic elite have little inclination to do so much as glimpse the plight of those from whose life blood their immense riches have been wrung, nor hear the admonition of the downtrodden…that they are weary of life on their knees and are awakening to the reality that the con of freedom of choice under corporate state oligarchy is, in fact, a life shackled to the consumerism-addicted/debt-indenturement that comprises the structure of the neoliberal, global company store.

"The rotten masks that divide one man
From another, one man from himself
They crumble
For one enormous moment and we glimpse
The unity that we lost, the desolation
...Of being man, and all its glories
Sharing bread and sun and death
The forgotten astonishment of being alive"
--Octavio Paz, excerpt from "Sunstone"

Accordingly, the most profound act of selfless devotion (commonly called love) in relationship to a society gripped by a sociopathic mode of being is creative resistance. Submission is madness. Sanity entails subversion. The heart insists on it; otherwise, life is only a slog to the graveyard; mouth, full of ashes; heart, a receptacle for dust. (c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Monte Wolverton ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



GOP leaders say "messing with the president's head"
must be their one and only priority in 2012 and beyond.


New GOP Strategy Involves Reelecting Obama, Making His Life Even More Miserable

WASHINGTON -- Calling a GOP victory in the 2012 presidential election antithetical to the party platform, top Republicans revealed a new long-term political strategy Tuesday: reelecting Barack Obama and making his life even more of a living hell than it already is.

"For three years, the Republican Party has coalesced around the single goal of making President Obama's every waking moment sheer and utter torture," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. "But we can't continue to do that if he's not in office."

"If we are going to make the president a haggard shell of a human being by the time he leaves the White House, we need four more years of never compromising, four more years of miring every piece of legislation in unnecessary procedural muck, four more years of pretending we want to work with the president and then walking away from the table at the last second," McConnell added. "Four more years! Four more years! Obama 2012!"

According to GOP sources, the decision to cede the 2012 election to Obama came after rank-and-file Republicans agreed that grinding the president down to nothing and pushing him to the brink of insanity was far more in line with the Republican Party's core principles than actually controlling the White House, making laws, or governing the country.

Republican officials said that because they won't be burdened with a time consuming presidential campaign, they can start looking beyond the 2012 general election and begin developing a four-pronged attack designed to ruin the president emotionally, physically, personally, and professionally.

Moreover, giving the president a second term in office would reportedly allow GOP lawmakers to build on the mental distress they've already caused him.

"If you look at what we've accomplished as a party in the last four years-making President Obama lose his temper on multiple occasions and even causing him to storm out of a meeting in frustration-it doesn't make sense for us to throw all that away, not when we could do so much more," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said. "If by being impossible to work with we are able to make the president physically shake with frustration during every single meeting, give him the nervous tick of mumbling angrily under his breath, tarnish his entire legacy, and in the process completely destroy his faith in humanity, then we've succeeded as lawmakers."

"If you thought this debt ceiling thing was bad, wait till you see how unbearable we are when it comes time for the Bush tax cuts to expire," Cantor added. "We are going to pummel this man over and over and over until he regrets ever getting into politics."

In order to make the president's next four years the worst of his life, GOP legislators are reportedly working on a new "Destroy Every Fiber of Barack Obama's Being" initiative, a plan that includes benchmarks such as making Obama look 10 years older than he is just six months into his second term; ruining his marriage before the 2014 midterm elections; and, by the time he leaves office, making him break down in front of the entire nation and say the words "I give up. Just please stop."

"If Barack Obama doesn't go to bed fuming with deep primal rage every single night, then we haven't done our job," said House Speaker John Boehner, who later called the residual effect of getting to watch Obama's supporters become more and more disillusioned with their country as their president's posture deteriorates, his face becomes exceedingly gaunt, and his once booming voice turn shaky and unconfident "definitely a plus." "Mark my words: The Republican Party is committed to giving the American people a president who has a chronically bleeding gastric ulcer that makes it almost impossible for him to stand up."

"To be honest, I'm glad we're pulling out of this election, because I really don't know what we would focus on if we won," Boehner added. "Health care?"

While a major party forgoing a presidential campaign is considered unorthodox, Beltway insiders were not surprised by the Republican announcement, saying the GOP was simply playing to its strength.

"Making Barack Obama's life a waking nightmare is what we do best," Republican strategist Todd Harris said. "It's also just smart politics. After all, getting the man reelected and watching him whither away to nothing before our very eyes will fire up the base more than any of the current Republican presidential candidates will."
(c) 2011The Onion




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In This Edition

Ray McGovern sings, "Lemmingly, We Roll Along."

Uri Avnery sees, "The Return Of The Generals."

David Sirota weighs, "The Vegetarian's Dilemma."

David Swanson asks, "Will Obama Denounce MLK As Memorial Dedicated?"

Jim Hightower wants, "A Little Less Corporate Political Corruption."

Helen Thomas concludes, "Funds Don't Flow In Trickle-Down."

James Donahue reports on, "The Media Boycott Of Ron Paul."

Glenn Greenwald returns with tonge in cheek, "Obama Administration Takes Tough Stance On Banks."

Ralph Nader sees a, "Dark Horizon For Verizon."

Randall Amster considers, "A Mountain Of Greed Vs. Sacred Balance."

Paul Krugman says, "Fancy Theorists Of The World Unite."

Chris Floyd examines, "Process Of Elimination."

Robert Scheer finds, "Amnesty For The Indefensible."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wins the coveted Vidkun Quisiling Award!

John Nichols writes, "Mitt Romney, Dark Prince Of Oligarchy, Battles The Demons Of Democracy."

Sam Harris wonders, "How Rich Is Too Rich?"

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst follows, "The Great Concessionaire" but first, Uncle Ernie asks, "Whatever Happened To What's His Name?"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Don Wright, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, Brian McFadden, Ruben Bolling, Cam Cardow, Dees Illustration.Com, Matt Bors, Ashleigh Brilliant, Stuck In Customs, Tracy Krauss, David Shankbone, Real Truth For A Change.Com, CWA District 6, Comedy Central, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Whatever Happened To What's His Name?
By Ernest Stewart

"Corporations are people, my friend. Of course they are." ~~~ Willard "Mitt" Romney

"The American people mistakenly empowered the federal government during a fit of populist rage in the early twentieth century by giving it an unlimited source of income (the Sixteenth Amendment) and by changing the way Senators are elected (the Seventeenth Amendment)." ~~~ Rick Perry

"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place," ~~~ US Senator Dick Durbin

"We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery." ~~~ Charlie Chaplin

I see the Rethuglicans are going through candidates like "sh*t through a goose." Most of this batch no one has ever heard of before they tossed their hat in the ring, and no one will ever hear from again once they have. All of the current front-runners have absolutely no chance of beating Barry. Except for one, but even though he came within 200 votes of taking Iowa, he's missing from any notice from the talking heads on Fox Spews, viz., Ron Paul, who only appears to be half insane, which puts him light years ahead of all the rest! Still, with a total news boycott of Ron, there doesn't seem to be a Rethuglican who can beat Barry.

A close examination of Michelle, Willard, or Rick finds brain-dead traitors in Armani suits or a K-Mart dress!

Michelle has so many skeletons in her closet, there's no way she could win, nor is she even capable of doing the job; she's Sarah Palin's dumber sister! Wrap your mind around that if you can! If you talked with her, you'd soon realize you wouldn't trust her to babysit your kids, much less run the country!

Willard, well, whenever I hear his name I think of a giant rat -- which isn't a bad analogy of old Mitt. Start with his magic underwear, his plans of ruling a solar system someday, and his being the unashamed "Corpo-rats are people too" spokesman, and this front-runner hasn't a prayer!

Rick Perry? To know him is to hate him, and I do! When America gets to know him, too, he can kiss his candidacy goodbye! These three will soon join the other what's-his-names like Duncan Hunter, who? Or Tim Pawlenty -- again, who? Does the name Jon Huntsman ring any bells? I thought not! What about pizza godfather, Herman Cain? Perhaps a vote for Gary Johnson, uh huh?

A friend suggested that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie should run as he'll never be reelected in Jersey. Yes, what the Rethuglicans need to run is old Man-Bear-Pig, since he couldn't beat Barry, he could at least, sit on him!

That's not the only problems in store for the Grand Oil Party. Consider the reaction to the Tea Baggers and their bright ideas. They will certainly get no support from the fence sitters - i.e., middle-of-the-roaders - none from the left and they've even managed to piss off their hardcore supporters, so we may see a shift back in the control of the House to the Demoncrats. Not to mention the Rethuglicans losing a few seats in the Senate. I wonder who the new Tea Baggers will be come next August recess? I'm sure the Koch brothers and the rest are working on that, even as we speak!

In Other News

Old "good hair" as the late, great, Molly Ivins used to call Governor Perry was in the news again this week. You'll recall that Perry took the destruction of Texas under Dubya a few steps further, until today it's our national embarrassment nudging out the always popular Mississippi for that title.

If elected, Perry has plans to rewrite the Constitution and Bill of Rights -- to get rid of all those liberal thoughts and replace them with his idea of fascism, er, Americanism.

He'd get rid of Section I, Article III of the Constitution, limiting all federal judges to two year terms. He'd also overturn the Extreme Court by allowing Con-gress to overrule any decision with a 2/3 vote. While these two might sound good, have no doubt that the devil is in the details -- which Rick isn't too detailed and forthcoming about.

His third proposal would scrap the 16th amendment which gives Con-gress the power to level income taxes. Well, there goes the infrastructure; I wonder what he proposes to replace it with -- so far there's not a word from Perry about that!

While we're in the teens, Rick would scrap the 17th amendment, as well. You know, the one that allows for direct elections of US Sinators. I guess we're not smart enough to chose for ourselves; Perry wants the state legislatures to elect them as the Romans did, who needs a voice from the mob? Now the rich and powerful can speak for all!

He also has a couple of Amendments to the Constitution he'd like to add. First, a balanced budget amendment, sounds good again -- until you think about what programs will be cut to do so. Perhaps an end to our illegal wars and trillion dollar gifts to our ruling elite? Yes I know, "Fat Chance Of Fong!" More like getting rid of all the social programs. We'll set grandma out on an ice flow for the polar bears!

Secondly, he'll protect all the gays and lesbians from the horrors of marriage by making an Amendment to limit marriage to a man and a woman. So much for those states rights he normally loves, funny thing that, huh?

Finally, he would outlaw abortions for any reason, including to save the life of the mother -- by Amendment. He also supports women as second-class citizens and the reestablishment of slavery as he said in a Christian Broadcasting Network interview; he said that "I would support a federal amendment outlawing abortion because it is so important...to the soul of this country and to the traditional values [of] our founding fathers." You'll recall some of those traditional values were slavery, women as sex toys and no votes for anyone who isn't a rich, white male property owner. And let's not forget those traditional genocidal pogroms against the natives and concentration camps for the survivors, et cetera!

Finally, Perry is often called by fellow Texicans George W. Bush without a brain. Perry, like Bush, gets a kick out of executing people, and pride in signing the death warrant for Cameron Todd Willingham, a man who was shown to be innocent of the crime, and then bragging about killing an innocent man, which in Texas gave him a 20% boost in the polls during the last election. Perry is George W. Bush (who set a record for assembly-line executions in Texas) without a heart. Some say Perry is Genghis Khan, without the compassion!

Rick Perry -- what's not to like, America?

And Finally

Americans are without a doubt the dumbest creatures on this planet, perhaps the dumbest creatures that ever existed. Sometimes I just want to grab them by their throat and slap the sh*t out of them. In fact, the next one that defends Obama after all the mayhem and destruction that he's caused and continues to cause, I may just, as Billy Jack once said, "Go Berserk!"

Let me explain why Obama is the monster that he is. No, it's not just his evil white side, his black side is equally evil, but he comes by it honestly, not to say that he's ever been honest with us. No, Mom and pretend-Dad and Grand Ma and Grand Pa were CIA agents, so what did you expect? Let's take it a step further, Grand Ma also ran the CIA's bank in Hawaii, ergo, he was raised by a fascist banker, so what did you expect?

Raised by spooks and the banksters is all that he knows, it's his reason for living. Are those trillion dollar bank giveaways starting to make sense, now? You know, the ones we'll soon be giving up our prepaid Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Food Stamps, etc. for? His current slap on the wrist to the banksters that he's peddling to us and fighting tooth-and-nail to keep the Attorney Generals in several states in line for the Banksters. It's to keep the AGs from locking up these banksters and throwing away the key. Even that is too light a punishment for the grief, deaths and destruction of millions of peoples lives and futures that they've caused.

Obama is pulling out all stops to keep these AGs, who have sworn an oath to protect us, from seeing that these monsters get what's coming to them, by any and all means necessary. From his favorite closed-door sessions, to outright open threats to everyone he's appointed, it's a never-ending, grind-them-down ploy, but so far it hasn't worked.

So don't come to me when 2012 rolls around and say we have to vote for him, the lesser of two evils, lest the Rethuglican candidate will win, because I'll be damned if I can see any difference, except maybe Bachmann, Perry or Romney just might be the lesser of two evils? Couldn't happen, huh? Then explain every time that Barry's "caved" he's always offered more than what the Rethuglicans demanded. You'll recall the last time, he offered up all of the social programs, even the ones that pay for themselves, to the Tea Baggers when they never asked or even dreamed to ask for them. And that's been Obamahood from Day One. I call him Obamahood because he steals from the poor and gives to the rich, and is doing everything in his power to destroy the middle class. To be fair, he's doing this just like Smirky, Slick Willie, Papa Smirk and Ray-guns did before him. He works for the very same people as they did, and it's not us that he's working for, but the banksters! As I said when he won the nomination, "We are so fucked, America!"

Keepin' On

On Monday, Obama's appointed, former corporate media executive and traitor, Julius Genachowski got rid of that pesky old rule about media fairness, i.e, the Fairness Doctrine amongst much joy and celebration. The Fairness Docrine, which dates back to 1949, hasn't been enforced since old Dementia Head Ray-Guns told the FCC not to enforce it; this is just the final nail in the coffin of American media.

Julius, with a stroke of his pen, destroyed the Fairness Doctrine and 82 other rules governing electronic media. They and the truth were deemed obsolete, and, therefore, abandoned by the FCC.

"FCC chairman Julius Genachowski called the rules "outdated" and said they were being removed to lessen the burdens of regulation on media companies. The decision also includes significant reductions in satellite and broadcasting license fees. The FCC said the moves are part of its focus on eliminating rules that are no longer needed and revising others to reflect changes in technology, "thereby clearing the path for greater competition, investment and job creation."

Now that the gloves are officially off, Issues & Alibis becomes just that more important, without us where will you be? Mark well what Julius said:

"The elimination of the obsolete Fairness Doctrine regulations will remove an unnecessary distraction. As I have said, striking this from our books ensures there can be no mistake that what has long been a dead letter remains dead. The Fairness Doctrine holds the potential to chill free speech and the free flow of ideas and was properly abandoned over two decades ago. I am pleased we are removing these and other obsolete rules from our books."

Please help us to continue fighting the good fight. We're still $1500 short with time running out. A little help, Ya'll!

*****


12-31-1928 ~ 08-20-2011
We'll remember always, graduaction day!


04-25-1933 ~ 08-22-2011
Thanks for all the songs!


05-04-1942 ~ 08-22-2011
Thanks for all the songs!


03-09-1939 ~ 08-22-2011
Thanks for all the films!


04-25-1920 ~ 08-24-2011
Thanks for the R & B!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.













Lemmingly, We Roll Along
By Ray McGovern

When soldiers die, the politicians who sent them to their deaths typically use euphemisms and circumlocutions -like "lost," "fallen," or "ultimate sacrifice." On one level, the avoidance of blunt language can be seen as a sign of respect, but on another, it is just one more evasion of responsibility for the snuffing out of young lives.

There has been unusually wide (and for the most part supportive) reaction to my article of August 8 (They Died in Vain: Deal With It) on the killing of 30 American troops when their helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan on the night of the 6th. One website posting the article clocked 181 comments; scanning through them, I found many substantive, helpful ones.

Let me share one telling comment, which seemed to me particularly -if sadly -apt:

"Two lemmings are chatting while standing in the line to the cliff. One says to the other, 'Of course we have to go over the edge. Anything else would dishonor all the lemmings that have gone before us.'"

And so it goes, thought I, with our Lemming-in-Chief (LIC) Barack Obama ... and those who lemmingly follow him.

The President's and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's words about the 30 dead soldiers, including members of the elite Seal Team 6, were very carefully chosen. But they bore the telltale earmarks of "the Lemming Syndrome."

"We will honor the fallen by showing our unyielding determination to press ahead ... to move forward with the hard work," said Panetta on Aug. 8.

That same day, President Obama also stressed how "our troops will continue the hard work. ... We will press on." There was also subdued talk from both leaders about how the troops were "lost."

Gosh, I thought, I did not know that the 30 U.S. troops were just "lost" or that they had simply "fallen." Sounds like maybe we can still find them and help them get up -when the hard truth is that they're dead.

Similarly, persistent use of "helicopter crash" seems to be a deliberate attempt to hide the hard reality that it was a rocket-propelled grenade that downed the helicopter and that this is why the troops ended up "fallen." The anodyne language helps soft-pedal the fact that Afghans who don't like American troops making middle-of-the-night raids all over their country have access to RPGs capable of downing aircraft.

These angry Afghans are usually described as "militants" or, in a sad reflection on the primitive level of the conversation on the war, simply as "the bad guys."

Perhaps others of my (Vietnam) generation are hearing what I am hearing as background music -the plaintive lyrics of the song, "When Will They Ever Learn?"

More evocative of such times -then and now -are the words Pete Seeger put to music during a large lemming infestation 44 years ago:

"We were neck-deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool said to push on." Pete Seeger, 1967 (c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years --from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.





The Return Of The Generals
By Uri Avnery

SINCE THE beginning of the conflict, the extremists of both sides have always played into each other's hands. The cooperation between them was always much more effective than the ties between the corresponding peace activists.

"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" asked the prophet Amos (3:3). Well, seems they can.

This was proved again this week.

AT THE beginning of the week, Binyamin Netanyahu was desperately looking for a way out of an escalating internal crisis. The social protest movement was gathering momentum and posing a growing danger to his government.

The struggle was going on, but the protest had already made a huge difference. The whole content of the public discourse had changed beyond recognition.

Social ideas were taking over, pushing aside the hackneyed talk about "security". TV talk show panels, previously full of used generals, were now packed with social workers and professors of economics. One of the consequences was that women were also much more prominent.

And then it happened. A small extremist Islamist group in the Gaza Strip sent a detachment into the Egyptian Sinai desert, from where it easily crossed the undefended Israeli border and created havoc. Several fighters (or terrorists, depends who is talking) succeeded in killing eight Israeli soldiers and civilians, before some of them were killed. Another four of their comrades were killed on the Egyptian side of the border. The aim seems to have been to capture another Israeli soldier, to strengthen the case for a prisoner exchange on their terms.

In a jiffy, the economics professors vanished from the TV screens, and their place was taken by the old gang of exes -ex-generals, ex-secret-service chiefs, ex-policemen, all male, of course, accompanied by their entourage of obsequious military correspondents and far-right politicians.

With a sigh of relief, Netanyahu returned to his usual stance. Here he was, surrounded by generals, the he-man, the resolute fighter, the Defender of Israel.

IT WAS, for him and his government, an incredible stroke of luck.

It can be compared to what happened in 1982. Ariel Sharon, then Minister of Defense, had decided to attack the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, He flew to Washington to obtain the necessary American agreement. Alexander Haig told him that the US could not agree, unless there was a "credible provocation."

A few days later, the most extreme Palestinian group, led by Abu Nidal, Yasser Arafat's mortal enemy, made an attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in London, paralyzing him irreversibly. That was certainly a "credible provocation". Lebanon War I was on its way.

This week's attack was also an answer to a prayer. Seems that God loves Netanyahu and the military establishment. The incident not only wiped the protest off the screen, it also put an end to any serious chance of taking billions off the huge military budget in order to strengthen the social services. On the contrary, the event proved that we need a sophisticated electronic fence along the 150 miles of our desert border with Sinai. More, not less, billions for the military.

BEFORE THIS miracle occurred, it looked as if the protest movement was unstoppable.

Whatever Netanyahu did was too little, too late, and just wrong.

In the first days, Netanyahu treated the whole thing as a childish prank, unworthy of the attention of responsible adults. When he realized that this movement was serious, he mumbled some vague proposals for lowering the price of apartments, but by then the protest had already moved far beyond the original demand for "affordable housing." The slogan was now "The People Want Social Justice."

After the huge 250,000-strong demonstration in Tel Aviv, the protest leaders were facing a dilemma: how to proceed? Yet another mass protest in Tel Aviv might mean falling attendance. The solution was sheer genius: not another big demonstration in Tel Aviv, but smaller demonstrations all over the country. This disarmed the reproach that the protesters are spoiled Tel Aviv brats, "sushi eaters and water-pipe smokers" as one minister put it. It also brought the protest to the masses of disadvantaged Oriental Jewish inhabitants of the "periphery", from Afula in the North to Beer Sheva in the South, most of them the traditional voters of Likud. It became a love-fest of fraternization.

So what does a run-of-the-mill politician do in such a situation? Well, of course, he appoints a committee. So Netanyahu told a respectable professor with a good reputation to set up a committee which would, in cooperation with nine ministers, no less, come up with a set of solutions. He even told him that he was ready to completely change his own convictions.

(He did already change one of his convictions when he announced in 2009 that he now advocates the Two-State Solution. But after that momentous about-face, absolutely nothing changed on the ground.)

The youngsters in the tents joked that "Bibi" could not change his opinions, because he has none. But that is a mistake -he does indeed have very definite opinions on both the national and the social levels: "the whole of Eretz Israel" on the one, and Reagan-Thatcher economic orthodoxy on the other.

The young tent leaders countered the appointment of the establishment committee with an unexpected move: they appointed a 60-strong advisory council of their own, composed of some of the most prominent university professors, including an Arab female professor and a moderate rabbi, and headed by a former deputy governor of the Bank of Israel.

The government committee has already made it clear that it will not deal with middle class problems but concentrate on those of the lowest socio-economic groups. Netanyahu has added that he will not automatically adopt their (future) recommendations, but weight them against the economic possibilities. In other words, he does not trust his own nominees to understand the economic facts of life.

AT THAT point, Netanyahu and his aides pinned their hopes on two dates: September and November 2011.

In November, the rainy season usually sets in. No drop of rain before that. But when it starts to rain cats and dogs, it was hoped in Netanyahu's office, the spoiled Tel Aviv kids will run for shelter. End of the Rothschild tent city.

Well, I remember spending some miserable weeks in the winter of the 1948 war in worse tents, in the midst of a sea of mud and water. I don't think that the rain will make the tent-dwellers give up their struggle, even if Netanyahu's religious partners send the most fervent Jewish prayers for rain to the high heavens.

But before that, in September, just a few weeks away, the Palestinians -it was hoped -would start a crisis that will divert attention. This week they already submitted to the UN General Assembly a request to recognize the State of Palestine. The Assembly will most probably accede. Avigdor Lieberman has already enthusiastically assured us that the Palestinians are planning a "bloodbath" at that time. Young Israelis will have to exchange their tents in Tel Aviv for the tents in the West Bank army camps.

It's a nice dream (for the Liebermans), but Palestinians had so far showed no inclination to violence.

All that changed this week.

FROM NOW on, Netanyahu and his colleagues can direct events as they wish.

They have already "liquidated" the chiefs of the group which carried out the attack, called "the Popular Resistance Committees". This happened while the fire-fight along the border was still going on. The army had been forewarned and was ready. The fact that the attackers succeeded nevertheless in crossing the border and shooting at vehicles was ascribed to an operational failure.

What now? The group in Gaza will fire rockets in retaliation. Netanyahu can -if he so wishes -kill more Palestinian leaders, military and civilian. This can easily set off a vicious circle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, leading to a full-scale Molten Lead-style war. Thousands of rockets on Israel, thousands of bombs on the Gaza Strip. One ex-military fool already argued that the entire Gaza Strip will have to be re-occupied.

In other words, Netanyahu has his hand on the tap of violence, and he can raise or lower the flames at will.

His desire to put an end to the social protest movement may well play a role in his decisions.

THIS BRINGS us back to the big question of the protest movement: can one bring about real change, as distinct from forcing some grudging concessions from the government, without becoming a political force?

Can this movement succeed as long as there is a government which has the power to start -or deepen -a "security crisis" at any time?

And the related question: can one talk about social justice without talking about peace?

A few days ago, while strolling among the tents on Rothschild Boulevard, I was asked by an internal radio station to give an interview and address the tent-dwellers. I said: "You don't want to talk about peace, because you want to avoid being branded as 'leftists". I respect that. But social justice and peace are two sides of the same coin, they cannot be separated. Not only because they are based on the same moral principles, but also because in practice they depend on each other."

When I said that, I could not have imagined how clearly this would be demonstrated only two days later.

REAL CHANGE means replacing this government with a new and very different political set up.

Here and there people in the tents are already talking about a new party. But elections are two years away, and for the time being there is no sign of a real crack in the right-wing coalition that might bring the elections closer. Will the protest be able to keep up its momentum for two whole years?

Israeli governments have yielded in the past to mass demonstrations and public uprisings. The formidable Golda Meir resigned in the face of mass demonstrations blaming her for the omissions that led to the fiasco at the start of the Yom Kippur War. The government coalitions of both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak in the 1990s broke under the pressure of an indignant public opinion.

Can this happen now? In view of the military flare-up this week, it does not look likely. But stranger things have happened between heaven and earth, especially in Israel, the land of limited impossibilities.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom






The Vegetarian's Dilemma
By David Sirota

As a new father who (ages ago) did a short stint as a press secretary, I'm already thinking ahead to the questions my son will throw at me. Yes, I know 8-month-old Isaac can't even say "Dad" yet, but these questions are coming, and I'm sure they're going to be way tougher than the ones reporters usually lob at Washington politicians. (OK, in the current age of media obsequiousness, that's not saying much.)

So I'm planning for answers -and, as any press secretary knows, that requires thinking about what evokes the queries in the first place.

The toy pistol question, for instance -Isaac will see a friend with a cap gun and ask why he can't have one. (Answer: Devices that kill people shouldn't be the basis for playthings.) The tackle-football question -he'll ask me why I don't want him to play. (Answer: because football can cause long-term brain damage.) The existential questions about God and life and death -ugh, I don't want to even begin thinking about those.

But before any of these inquiries are but a twinkle in Isaac's eye, I know I'm going to face an interrogation about vegetarianism. At some point soon, he'll ask why our family doesn't eat this stuff called "meat" that's everywhere.

I have my substantive answers already lined up, so I'm not worried about what I'll tell him. (We don't eat meat because it's unhealthy, environmentally irresponsible, expensive and inhumane.) With this question, I'm more concerned about the prompting. Why is he almost certainly going to ask at such an early age?

I think I know the answer -and it's not the ad campaigns that make meat seem like a rational choice ("Beef: It's What's for Dinner"), a healthy alternative food ("Pork: The Other White Meat") or a compassionate cuisine decision (Chik-fil-A's billboards, which show a cow begging you to spare his life by choosing chicken). No, Isaac's going to have questions because of the grocery -more specifically, because of the vegetarian aisle that subliminally glorifies meat-eating.

I realize that sounds like an oxymoron, but the next time you go shopping, imagine what a kid gleans from veggie burgers, veggie bacon, veggie sausage patties, veggie hot dogs, Tofurky and all the other similar fare that defines a modern plant-based diet. While none of it contains meat, it's all marketed as emulating meat. In advertising terms, that's the "unique selling proposition" -to give you the epicurean benefits of meat without any of meat's downsides.

Obviously, this isn't some conspiracy whereby powerful meat companies are deliberately trying to bring vegetarians into the megachurch of flesh eaters. If anything, it's the opposite: It's the vegetarian industry selling itself to meat eaters by suggesting that its products aren't actually all that different from meat. The problem is how that message, like so many others in American culture, reinforces the wrongheaded notion that our diet should be fundamentally based on meat.

For those who have chosen to be vegetarians, this message is merely annoying. But for those like Isaac who are being raised as vegetarians, the message is downright subversive. It teaches them that as tasty as vegetarian food may be, it can never compete with the "real thing."

That message will undoubtedly inform Isaac's early curiosity -and maybe his questions won't be such a bad thing. Maybe they'll motivate me to spend more time in the supermarket's raw produce section, and maybe my ensuing discussion with Isaac will help him better understand why our family has made this culinary choice.

However, that doesn't mean the subtle propaganda won't ultimately win out, thus adding another carnivore to a destructively meat-centric society.
(c) 2010 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.






Will Obama Denounce MLK As Memorial Dedicated?
By David Swanson

That sounds like a crazy question, doesn't it? Why would President Obama denounce Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Well, the reason I ask is that he's done it before.

Really? But surely he wouldn't do it on such a solemn occasion?

Well, the time he did it before was in a Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech.

When President Barack Obama joined the ranks of Henry Kissinger and the other gentle souls who have received Nobel Peace Prizes, he did something that I don't think anyone else had previously done in a Peace Prize acceptance speech. He argued for war. And he opposed the position of a previous Peace Prize Laureate, namely Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: 'Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones' ...But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by [King's and Gandhi's] examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history.... So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace."

But, you know, I've never found any opponent of war who didn't believe there was evil in the world. After all, we oppose war because it is evil.

Did Martin Luther King, Jr., not face the world as it is? Was he delusional? Did he stand idle in the face of threats? This is President Obama's position.

Did King oppose protecting and defending people? Of course not. He worked for that very goal!

Obama claims that his only choices are war or nothing. But the reason people know the names Gandhi (who was never given a Nobel Peace Prize) and King is that they suggested other options and proved that those other approaches could work. This fundamental disagreement cannot be smoothed over. Either war is the only option or it is not -- in which case we must consider the alternatives.

Couldn't we have halted Hitler's armies without a world war? To claim otherwise is ridiculous. We could have halted Hitler's armies by not concluding World War I with an effort seemingly aimed at breeding as much resentment as possible in Germany (punishing a whole people rather than individuals, requiring that Germany admit sole responsibility, taking away its territory, and demanding enormous reparations payments that it would have taken [in fact did take] Germany several decades to pay), or by putting our energies seriously into a League of Nations and International Court as opposed to the victor-justice of dividing the spoils, or by building good relations with Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, or by funding peace studies in Germany rather than eugenics, or by fearing militaristic governments more than leftist ones, or by not funding Hitler and his armies, or by helping the Jews escape, or by maintaining a ban on bombing civilians, or indeed by massive nonviolent resistance which requires greater courage and valor than we've ever seen in war.

We have seen such courage in the largely nonviolent eviction of the British rulers from India, in the nonviolent overthrow of the ruler of El Salvador in 1944, in the campaigns that ended Jim Crow in the United States and apartheid in South Africa. We've seen it in the popular removal of the ruler of the Philippines in 1986, in the largely nonviolent Iranian Revolution of 1979, in the dismantling of the Soviet Union in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, as well as in the Ukraine in 2004 and 2005, and in dozens of other examples from all over the world, including Tunisia and Egypt. Why should Germany be the one place where a force more powerful than violence could not possibly have prevailed?

If you can't accept that World War II could have been avoided, there is still this crucial point to consider: Hitler's armies have been gone for 65 years but are still being used to justify the scourge of humanity that we outlawed in 1928: war. Most nations do not behave as Nazi Germany did, and one reason is that a lot of them have come to value and understand peace. Those that do make war still appeal to a horrible episode in world history that ended 65 years ago to justify what they are doing -- exactly as if nothing has changed, exactly as if King and Gandhi and billions of other people have not come and gone and contributed their bit to our knowledge of what can and should be done.

Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda to lay down its arms? How would President Obama know that? The United States has never tried it. The solution cannot be to meet the demands of terrorists, thereby encouraging terrorism, but the grievances against the United States that attract people to anti-U.S. terrorism seem extremely reasonable:

Get out of our country. Stop bombing us. Stop threatening us. Stop blockading us. Stop raiding our homes. Stop funding the theft of our lands. Stop taking out natural resources. Such grievances are being aggravated rather than alleviated in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere.

We ought to satisfy those demands even in the absence of negotiations with anyone. We ought to stop producing and selling most of the weapons we want other people to "lay down." And if we did so, you would see about as much anti-U.S. terrorism as the Norwegians giving out the prizes see anti-Norwegian terrorism. Norway has neither negotiated with al Qaeda nor murdered all of its members. Norway has just refrained from doing what the United States military does, although sometimes participating.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama disagree, and only one of them can be right. In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, King said:

"Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

Love? I thought it was a big stick, a large Navy, a missile defense shield, and weapons in outerspace. King may in fact have been ahead of us. This portion of King's 1964 speech anticipated Obama's speech 45 years later:

"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.…I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up."

Other-centered? How odd it sounds to imagine the United States and its people becoming other-centered. It sounds as outrageous as loving one's enemies. And yet there may just be something to it. King was a moral man who, if alive today, would be an environmentalist. He might very well be risking arrest at the White House right now to demand clean energy rather than the opening up of enough new dirty fuel use to finish off the planet. He would likely be committed to nonviolent actions of the aort planned for October 2011 at http://october2011.org.

A year ago, on October 2, 2010, a broad coalition held a rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The organizers sought to use the rally both to demand jobs, protect Social Security, and advance a hodgepodge of progressive ideas, and also to cheer for the Democratic Party, whose leadership was not on board with that program. An independent movement would back particular politicians, including Democrats, but they would have to earn it by supporting our positions.

The peace movement was included in the rally, if not given top billing, and many peace organizations took part. We found that, among all of those tens of thousands of union members and civil rights activists who showed up, virtually all of them were eager to carry anti-war posters and stickers. In fact the message "Money for Jobs, Not Wars," was immensely popular. If anyone at all disagreed, I haven't heard about it. The theme of the rally was "One Nation Working Together," a warm message but one so vague we didn't even offend anyone enough to produce a counter-rally. I suspect more people would have shown up and a stronger message would have been delivered had the headline been "Bring Our War Dollars Home!"

One speech outshone all others that day. The speaker was 83-year-old singer and activist Harry Belafonte, his voice strained, scratchy, and gripping. These were some of his words:

"Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 'I Have a Dream' speech 47 years ago, said that America would soon come to realize that the war that we were in at that time that this nation waged in Vietnam was not only unconscionable, but unwinnable. Fifty-eight thousand Americans died in that cruel adventure, and over two million Vietnamese and Cambodians perished. Now today, almost a half-a-century later, as we gather at this place where Dr. King prayed for the soul of this great nation, tens of thousands of citizens from all walks of life have come here today to rekindle his dream and once again hope that all America will soon come to the realization that the wars that we wage today in far away lands are immoral, unconscionable and unwinnable.

"The Central Intelligence Agency, in its official report, tells us that the enemy we pursue in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, the al- Qaeda, they number less than 50 -- I say 50 -- people. Do we really think that sending 100,000 young American men and women to kill innocent civilians, women, and children, and antagonizing the tens of millions of people in the whole region somehow makes us secure?

"Does this make any sense?

"The President's decision to escalate the war in that region alone costs the nation $33 billion. That sum of money could not only create 600,000 jobs here in America, but would even leave us a few billion to start rebuilding our schools, our roads, our hospitals and affordable housing. It could also help to rebuild the lives of the thousands of our returning wounded veterans."

In November 1943, six residents of Coventry, England, which had been bombed by Germany, wrote to the New Statesman to condemn the bombing of German cities, asserting that the "general feeling" in Coventry was the "desire that no other people shall suffer as they have done."

In 1997, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica, the president of Germany wrote a letter to the Basque people apologizing for the Nazi-era bombing. The Mayor of Guernica wrote back and accepted the apology.

Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights is an international organization, based in the United States, of family members of victims of criminal murder, state execution, extra-judicial assassinations, and "disappearances" who oppose the death penalty in all cases.

Peaceful Tomorrows is an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11, 2001, who say they have, "united to turn our grief into action for peace. By developing and advocating nonviolent options and actions in the pursuit of justice, we hope to break the cycles of violence engendered by war and terrorism. Acknowledging our common experience with all people affected by violence throughout the world, we work to create a safer and more peaceful world for everyone."

So must we all.

A memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr., should be a celebration of nonviolent resistance to habits of thought that allow and promote cruelty, inlcuding the worst cruelty of all: war. Candidate Obama said "I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place." One way to help end that mindset would be to cease defending it in the most inappropriate manner imaginable.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







A Little Less Corporate Political Corruption

Come on, Obama, do it! Stand up, stand tall, stand firm! Yes, you can!

The president is thinking about issuing an executive order that would mitigate some of the damage done to our democracy by the Supreme Court's dastardly Citizens United edict, which unleashes unlimited amounts of secret corporate cash to pervert America's elections. Obama's idea is simply to require that those corporations trying to get federal contracts disclose all of their campaign donations for the previous two years, including money they launder through such front groups as the national Chamber of Commerce.

This approach says to those giants sucking up billions of our tax dollars for endless war, privatization of public services, etcetera: You're still free to shove trainloads of your shareholders' money into congressional and presidential races, but -hey, just tell the public how much you're giving and to whom.

Neat. It would be a clean, direct, and effective reform -so, of course, the corporate powers and their apologists are squealing like stuck pigs. Steven Law, a Bush-Cheney operative who is now both a Wall Street Journal editorialist and the head of a secret corporate money fund, recently decried the very idea of public disclosure of contractor campaign contributions: "When I was in the executive branch," he sniffed, "mixing politics with procurement was called corruption."

Yes, Steve, and y'all were corruption experts! Perhaps you've forgotten that we remember Halliburton, the Cheney-run corporation that helped put Bush in office and then was handed tens of billions in contracts, becoming the poster child of corrupt, no-bid procurement.

Come on, Obama, you can do it, don't back down from these corporate sleazes -sign that disclosure order! If they're going to steal our elections, at least make them admit it.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Funds Don't Flow In Trickle-Down
By Helen Thomas

Will we ever recover from the mess the Republicans have gotten us into? Most of us may not understand all the complexities of our current economic debacle, but the bottom line is we have way more money being paid out by the federal government than revenue being collected.

We continue to fight in two of the longest-running wars in U.S. history. Obama has had many opportunities to pull out of the wars, and yet he hasn't.

Between retiring baby boomers and an unemployment rate over nine percent, entitlement payouts are at an all-time high. Now is hardly the time to cut Social Security, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid benefits with so many people in the country sick, hungry and living hand to mouth.

Compounding our problems is the fact that trickle-down economics did not work. Since the Bush tax cuts, the super rich have paid less than their share in taxes. What did they do with all of this extra money?

Unfortunately, the rich don't get rich by building things and creating more jobs, but by moving paper around on Wall Street. Today, Wall Street creates more money for people with money. They seem to no longer be in the business of raising capital to invest in factories and businesses, which in turn would create jobs and help all of us.

Since Reagan, Republicans have fought tooth and nail against any regulation by the federal government on Wall Street. Deregulation has allowed derivative and short-sale markets to flourish and grow -ultimately causing the 2008 meltdown.

As chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from Aug. 26, 1996, to June 1, 1999 Brooksley Born warned Congress of the fraud and potential damage which would occur if the derivative market continued unregulated. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers insisted regulation would stifle economic growth, and that ultimately free markets correct themselves. Both resigned, and unfortunately Born's predictions panned out in September 2008. Is it OK for Wall Street to sell products such as derivatives that are so complex the buyer doesn't even understand what he is buying?

Regarding the short sale market -isn't there a serious conflict of interest when people are allowed to bet against the success of a company? Why did the government allow a company like AIG to insure so many Wall Street bankers against all of the junk assets they were bundling with American retirement accounts?

We have to address what is going out, but now is not the time to focus on cutting entitlements. Social Security checks and food stamps are benefits that are spent immediately, providing cash infusions into our economy -unlike tax cuts for the rich, which are often added savings in their pockets.

Increasing the retirement age could be considered, but before we look at cutting anymore from entitlement programs, we need to raise taxes. Even American investor and billionaire Warren Buffet thinks the super rich are not paying their fair share.

What is wrong with the Republicans? Do they want the country to go bankrupt? Do they think it is OK for other people to die for their freedom and let fellow Americans go hungry?

Obama sold the country -and in particular the people who put him in office -out by allowing the same low tax rates for the top earners in this country. We need a President, and politicians in Washington, to lead with a heart and compassion for the people. Sometimes this means taking a stand for things that may jeopardize a re-election campaign.

The selfishness and greed is out of control in this country. As a young girl during the Great Depression, I have fond memories of our entire neighborhood pitching in to help families who were out of work. My father owned a grocery store and he never gave a second thought to feeding someone who didn't have money.

Now is not the time for the country to fight about who should get what, and who may be right or wrong. We need to pull together -as we have in the past -to work together, and through compromise, solve the issues we face today. We actually are our brother's keeper.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







The Media Boycott Of Ron Paul
By James Donahue

If there is one Republican presidential candidate that is speaking with any degree of clarity this year it is Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Yet Paul, who is making his third run for the nation's top job and last week scored second in the Iowa Republican straw poll, is being literally ignored by the national media as a serious contender.

The strange news blackout was made public by comedian Jon Stewart who showed a variety of television news clips by commentators who listed poll frontrunner Michele Bachmann and lesser poll contenders like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, but failed to mention Ron Paul's second place position.

Paul, who is an outspoken libertarian holding office under the G.O.P. banner, might just be the closest thing this nation can generate as a third party candidate in 2012. And many disillusioned voters, after over two years of watching a total debacle occurring in Washington, may be seriously searching for someone like Paul who offers a different approach to solving the nation's problems.

As Stewart quipped: "He's the one guy in the field, agree with him or don't agree with him, who doesn't just regurgitate talking points or change what he believes to fit the audience in front of him."

So why is the media pretending Paul isn't there when they report the Republican candidates? Some say they have concluded that Paul has virtually no chance to win the nomination and they are not taking him seriously. But if they were playing fair, and giving this man an equal place in daily media coverage, Paul's supporters believe he could be a viable candidate . . . one that might just give President Barack Obama a run for his money in 2012.

We suspect that Paul's Libertarian views may be challenging the massive industrial military complex now feeding at the taxpayer's trough, which has a lot to do with the unwillingness of the media to give him news space. Paul makes no bones about his belief that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been unwarranted and a total waste of lives and money. Neither war has had anything to do with national defense. Neither war has much to do with what happened on 9-11.

Paul's plan for repairing the nation's economic crisis is to demand a balanced federal budget, establish a permanent debt ceiling so politicians can no longer spend recklessly, call for a full audit and shut-down of the Federal Reserve, and end the corporate stranglehold on Washington.

His energy plan would call for removal of restrictions on off-shore and on-shore drilling to increase oil production at home, repeal the federal tax on gasoline, lift government roadblocks for the use of coal and nuclear power, offer tax credits for purchase and production of alternative fuel technologies, and eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, which Paul believes in ineffective.

A medical doctor by profession, Paul's health care plan would include a repeal of ObamaCare and its mandate that all Americans must buy government approved health insurance, allow competitive health insurance purchases across state lines, provide tax credits for all medical expenses, maintain Medicare and Medicaid and insure that the money taken from taxpayers for these services is not raided for other purposes, and stop the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission from blocking public knowledge of and access to dietary supplements and alternative treatments.

Paul also calls for what he calls a "Liberty Amendment to the Constitution" that would abolish the income tax and capital gains taxes. He says he would like to "turn off the lights at the IRS for good."

Some say Paul's views are wild and unworkable in today's government. While we don't agree with everything he advocates, and we understand that getting a reluctant Congress to go along with such a plan may be next to impossible, we believe that Paul has the right to have equal time in the national media spotlight. He offers what may be a viable plan which, in the long run, might just work for the benefit of most Americans.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






Obama Administration Takes Tough Stance On Banks
By Glenn Greenwald

In mid-May, I wrote about the commendable -- one might say heroic -- efforts of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to single-handedly impose meaningful accountability on Wall Street banks for their role in the 2008 financial crisis and the mortgage fraud/foreclosure schemes. Not only was Schneiderman launching probing investigations at a time when the Obama DOJ was steadfastly failing to do so, but -- more importantly -- he was refusing to sign onto a global settlement agreement being pushed by the DOJ that would have insulated the mortgage banks (including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo) from all criminal investigations in exchange for some relatively modest civil fines. In response, many commenters wondered whether Schneiderman, if he persisted, would be targeted by the banks with some type of campaign of destruction of the kind that brought down Eliot Spitzer, but fortunately for the banks, they can dispatch their owned servants in Washington to apply the pressure for them:

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.

In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.

Mr. Schneiderman and top prosecutors in some other states have objected to the proposed settlement with major banks, saying it would restrict their ability to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing in a variety of areas, including the bundling of loans in mortgage securities.

But Mr. Donovan and others in the administration have been contacting not only Mr. Schneiderman but his allies, including consumer groups and advocates for borrowers, seeking help to secure the attorney general's participation in the deal, these people said. One recipient described the calls from Mr. Donovan, but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.

Not surprising, the large banks, which are eager to reach a settlement, have grown increasingly frustrated with Mr. Schneiderman. Bank officials recently discussed asking Mr. Donovan for help in changing the attorney general's mind, according to a person briefed on those talks.

In response to this story, the DOJ claims that the settlement is necessary to help people whose homes are in foreclosure, an absurd rationalization which Marcy Wheeler simply destroys. Meanwhile, Yves Smith, whose coverage of banking and mortgage fraud (and the administration's protection of it) has long been indispensable, writes today:

It is high time to describe the Obama Administration by its proper name: corrupt.

Admittedly, corruption among our elites generally and in Washington in particular has become so widespread and blatant as to fall into the "dog bites man" category. But the nauseating gap between the Administration's propaganda and the many and varied ways it sells out average Americans on behalf of its favored backers, in this case the too big to fail banks, has become so noisome that it has become impossible to ignore the fetid smell.

The Administration has now taken to pressuring parties that are not part of the machinery reporting to the President to fall in and do his bidding. We've gotten so used to the US attorney general being conveniently missing in action that we have forgotten that regulators and the AG are supposed to be independent.

Her entire analysis should be read. The President -- who kicked off his campaign vowing to put an end to "the era of Scooter Libby justice" -- will stand before the electorate in 2012 having done everything in his power to shield top Bush officials from all accountability for their crimes and will have done the same for Wall Street banks, all while continuing to preside over the planet's largest Prison State . . . for ordinary Americans convicted even of trivial offenses, particularly (though not only) from the War on Drugs he continues steadfastly to defend. And as Sam Seder noted this morning, none of this has anything to do with Congress and cannot be blamed on the Weak Presidency, the need to compromise, or the "crazy" GOP.

I particularly regret that my book to be released in October -- examining America's two-tiered justice system, whereby political and financial elites are immunized from accountability even for the most egregious crimes while ordinary Americans (particularly poor and minorities) suffer unfathomably harsh punishments for minor transgressions -- won't include this incident, as it so perfectly highlights the book's argument (though it's long been obvious that Wall Street criminals would be immunized from accountability and the book deals with that extensively). Also worth reading in that regard is this article from Joseph Stiglitz on how failure to criminally prosecute mortgage fraud would destroy the rule of law. As I wrote at the end of my May post on Schniederman:

It is worth keeping a watchful eye on Schneiderman's investigative efforts and doing everything possible to provide what will undoubtedly be much-needed support if, as appears to be the case, he is serious about taking on these pernicious factions and impeding the conspiring by the political class to protect their benefactors/owners.

When I wrote that, I assumed the pressure would come from the banks themselves, not from top Executive Branch officials. At this point, though, the mistake is to consider those entities as separate and distinct at all. As Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said of the branch of government in which he serves: banks "frankly own the place." Capitol Hill is obviously not the only property they own on Pennsylvania Avenue.
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.




Verizon Picket Local 6016 Verizon keeps saying that what they're doing just "reflects the changing times."
The times are changing - skyrocketing executive pay packages and corporate profits - slashing benefits
for the workers and their families - shredding of all moral authority by example from the top.




Dark Horizon For Verizon
By Ralph Nader

It was only a matter of time before the "pull down" NAFTA and WTO trade agreements on U.S. wages and jobs would be followed by "pull down" contract demands by U.S. corporations on their unionized workers toward levels of non-unionized laborers.

The most recent illustration of this three-decade reversal of nearly a century of American economic advances for employees is the numerous demands by Verizon

Here are just a few of the concessions the new Verizon CEO, Lowell McAdam, is insisting upon:

--More power to contract out and offshore jobs to add to the 25,000 already in that category; thereby undermining job security.

--a freeze on pensions;

--elimination of the sickness and death benefit program;

--reduction in sick days; and

--a major increase in employee contributions to and deductibles under their health insurance coverage.

Mr. Lowell McAdam would surely have trouble feeling the pain of his workers who brave the elements storm or shine to afford him a salary of over 1.5 million dollars PER MONTH plus perks and benefits.

Watching Verizon profits soar year after year, noticing Verizon stock rise faster than its competitors, knowing that the company's top five executives took in over $250 million between them in the last four years, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) took their members on strike on August 7, 2011. "Unfair and unacceptable" was their cry on the picket lines up and down the east coast.

These workers pay their taxes. While the tax lawyers for their bosses have figured out how to turn Verizon into a vast tax escapee. According to the super-accurate Citizens for Tax Justice, Verizon Communications made a total of $32.5 billion dollars in pretax U.S. profits during 2008, 2009, 2010. Far from paying the maximum federal corporate income tax rate of 35 percent on these ample profits, Verizon's federal income tax was negative $951 million or negative 2.9 percent!

Some of these saved tax revenues have been getting into expensive daily full page advertisements (not deductible it is hoped) in the Washington Post, The New York Times, and other large newspapers. Verizon's brazen assertions reflect the limitless arrogance of a multinational behemoth.

Verizon's headlines its ad with these words: "They claim we're asking union-represented employees to contribute to their own health care premiums. THEY'RE RIGHT. Verizon is proposing that its union-represented employees contribute more toward the cost of rising health care. 135,000 non-union Verizon employees already pay a portion of the healthcare premium. We're just asking our union -represented employees to chip in like everybody else. We think that's fair."

There you have it - the "pull down" ultimatum to the level of the voiceless majority of Verizon workers. Of course Verizon bosses with their fat paychecks do not have to worry at all about co-payments and larger deductibles in their gold-plated health plan.

Another anti-union Verizon ad featured this assertion: "They claim we want to strip away 50 years of contract negotiations. THEY'RE RIGHT. The union contracts that have expired were drafted over 50 years ago, when people still used rotary phones. Verizon is proposing to update the contracts in a reasonable manner to reflect the changing times."

The CWA leaders recognize that some changes need to be made and have offered compromises. But fifty years ago, a telephone company CEO never dared pay himself anywhere near the multiple that today's Verizon executives get compared to the average workers. Maybe then the CEO would get 20 times the entry level wage. Now it is between two hundred to four hundred times.

Verizon does have one last argument. At the bottom of each full-page ad, it describes exacting concessions from its workers as "all in an effort to best position Verizon to serve our customers." Are those the same customers who are subject to all kinds of extremely one-sided fine print that spells suppression of rights, overcharges, termination fees, penalties and other straitjackets of contract serfdom? Are those the same customers who have to wait and wait to get their service and billing complaints addressed and questions answered? Are those the same customers who can never get Verizon to put what its spokespersons say on the phone in writing?

The CWA workers went back to their jobs on August 22, 2011. Verizon had threatened to cut off their medical, dental and optical benefits by August 31.Their 2008 contract continues until ongoing negotiations with the company are concluded for a new contract.

Verizon keeps saying that what they're doing just "reflects the changing times." The times are changing - skyrocketing executive pay packages and corporate profits - slashing benefits for the workers and their families - shredding of all moral authority by example from the top.

If negotiations break down in the coming weeks and the CWA goes out on strike again, consumer advocates and their organizations should make it explicitly clear that Verizon can't excuse what they're doing to workers in order to better "serve our customers."

Verizon is going increasingly wireless. They are also going increasingly shameless!
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.







A Mountain Of Greed Vs. Sacred Balance
By Randall Amster

You might not be aware of this news from our own backyard, since the reporting of it in the media has been less than robust, but in recent weeks, there have been dozens of arrests at the Snowbowl ski expansion site in the San Francisco Peaks. Following years of rancorous public debate and on the heels of circuitous court proceedings, the developers of the site have begun excavation in order to expand the slopes and lay a pipeline for the bringing of wastewater to make artificial snow on the mountain.

Can you say, "yuck" (expletive implied)? Shortsighted thinking combined with unaddressed health risks and insufficient environmental impact assessments, threatens to turn the sacred peaks into yet another sacrifice zone for the sake of a buck. This is "dirty money" in every sense of the phrase, from digging into the home of the kachinas to trampling on the integrity of the earth beneath our feet.

Is nothing sacred anymore? This is not a rhetorical question. The answer will decide whether our essential humanity has a future in a world increasingly dominated by technological abstractions and the relentless pursuit of profit over the interests of people and places.

Prioritizing the recreational desires of the leisure class over the spiritual needs of indigenous nations is a travesty of historical proportions. But it isn't just native consciousness that suffers in this process; the exploiters eventually render their own habitat unlivable and, in the process, sow the seeds of their own destruction as well.

Whatever your views on the environment, surely we can agree that some places simply ought to remain wild, if only as symbolic reminders of the natural wellspring from whence come the essentials of human existence. Symbols matter -just ask the advertising industry. Relegating the most iconic geographical feature in this region to the status of just another place for wanton development represents a narrow-minded and ultimately self-defeating enterprise.

If you've ever been up to the peaks, you can attest to its special qualities as a pristine landscape rife with biodiversity and life-giving properties. Visible from a hundred miles in any direction and adjacent to the Grand Canyon to the northeast, these mammoth desert mountains reflect the austere beauty of our region, asking us to recall a healthy humility to balance our heartless hubris.

The residents and activists protesting the further desecration of the peaks are keenly aware of the magnitude of the stakes involved. When explicitly sacred areas are subject to the developer's merciless blade, it renders everything disposable. The anachronism of skiing in the desert likewise connotes an attitude of human superiority that turns the world -including the people in it -into little more than a commodity to be bought and sold according to the whims of an unsustainable market ideology.

Among those arrested in defense of these sacred vestiges were Klee Benally, filmmaker, activist and lead singer of the internationally renowned native punk band Blackfire. As he was chained to an excavator, Benally -who has been deeply committed to the cause for years, including making the award-winning film "The Snowbowl Effect" -spoke about his motivations: "This is not a game. This is not for show. This is not for the media. This is to stop this desecration from happening."

Also arrested for attempting to halt the destruction was noted local author Mary Sojourner, who addressed the crowd that had gathered in support of the activists as she was being handcuffed and led away: "I took action not just for the mountain, but ... so that older women and men would see that one doesn't have to be young to stand up for a place and community that you love." Friends, foes and fellow community members -please heed these voices. The time to sit idly by and watch the remaining natural landmarks in our midst be sacrificed on the altar of greed has long since passed. Visit truesnow.org to find out how you can help, and make some noise to save sacred spaces and forestall the ongoing avalanche of avarice.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).




Stephen Moore with both his heads visible. The small female
head is called Lucrezia and whispers talking points in his ear!




Fancy Theorists Of The World Unite
By Paul Krugman

A number of people have pointed me to this remarkable editorial by Stephen Moore in the WSJ. What's remarkable isn't the views; it's the all-out embrace of anti-intellectualism. It actually denounces "fancy theories" and rejects them because they "defy common sense."

Gosh, if that's the way the right is going, the next thing you know they'll reject the theory of evolution. Oh, wait. There's a lot to critique here, if you have the stomach -among other things the question of what constitutes common sense. Some people find it commonsensical that if the government puts people to work, that adds to employment; it takes fancy arguments from the likes of the WSJ to convince them otherwise. But the main thing I'd like to point out is that the past three years have in fact been a stunning confirmation of one fancy theory -namely, the theory of the liquidity trap, which is part of the broader construct of Keynesian economics.

I mean, common sense -or at least common sense as the WSJ sees it -would tell you that massive government borrowing would send interest rates soaring. And that's certainly what the WSJ editorial page told its readers would happen. Only us fancy-schmancy Keynesians said otherwise; and here's what actually happened:

Similarly, common sense as defined by the WSJ said that a tripling of the monetary base would lead to a huge increase in prices; clearly, one should disregard those fancy-schmancy types who said that the money would basically just sit there. Hmmm:

OK, someone is going to point out that inflation has run somewhat higher than I predicted; yes, it has. But I think the figure above shows that the outcome has nonetheless been a lot closer to what people like me said would happen than to what you would have expected from reading the WSJ.

But the stimulus failed! Well, I told you in advance -based on the same model -that it was much too small. So that's not evidence against fancy theories.

The truth is that recent events have been a stunning confirmation of the usefulness of hard thinking in general, and the Keynes-Hicks model in particular. And the WSJ has been wrong every step of the way.

So now they're tuning to anti-intellectualism. Well, of course they are; it's all they have left.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers."
~~~ David Hume









Process Of Elimination
The West's Rapid Slide Into Slaughter
By Chris Floyd

As it is written: "Though we seemed dead, we did but sleep." We have finally returned from a series of grueling and at times bewildering traversals of the planet in several directions. Still a bit dazed, we will shortly be back in fighting trim.

In the meantime, I would by no means insult your intelligence by suggesting you go immediately to Arthur Silber's site to partake of the feast of biting, bitter yet buoyant wit and slashing insight that he has produced during our time away. Surely it would be superfluous in me to point the readers of this site to Silber's work; surely your own discernment and good sense have already led you there on a constant and continual basis. But on the off chance that some stray pair of eyes (among the ever-dwindling pack of peepers that wander by these precincts) have not yet hied to Silber --do so, now. For there are ugly things afoot --an acceleration of the already long-accelerating on-rush of the nations of the West into the hardest, most brutal kind of authoritarianism. It is happening on an array of fronts, aggressively, simultaneously, from every direction. As Silber notes in this landmark piece, "Caught Up in Nightmare: Killing Jack Rabbits":

The ruling class now visits on its domestic populations the same fate it has delivered for hundreds of years to those deeply unfortunate peoples who lived in targeted foreign countries. In their pursuit of power, wealth and dominion, the ruling class systematically brutalized, tortured, "relocated" and murdered those foreign peoples in vast numbers. (All this continues today, of course; see Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, et al.) ....

England and the United States are hollowed-out societies, with their former productive capacity vanishing at an ever-increasing rate. In close alliance with the State, the most powerful and wealthiest corporations continue to amass record profits, but only by siphoning up every last bit of wealth held by the numerically greatest, but otherwise weakest and most defenseless, part of the population. Every significant piece of legislation must be viewed in this context. This is true even of legislation which styles itself as concerning matters which would not appear to be directed to policing the "undesirable" elements of the population. Thus, Obama's heralded "health reform" bill, which I dubbed The Fuck You Act, has very little to do with providing health care, but everything to do with brutally controlling the weakest segments of society and extracting what little money they have left for the benefit of already vastly wealthy insurance companies and their constant partner, the State.

Although it is perilous to make such judgments as events continue to unfold, the evidence strongly compels the conclusion that we have entered the death spiral for the West's ruling class. The disfavored members of society have less and less economic resources of their own to be extracted, and fewer (and often non-existent) opportunities for improving them. Simultaneously (and inextricably connected to this point), the same disfavored members are increasingly unable to defend themselves in any area of their lives. The growing surveillance State watches over them day and night, privacy approaches the point of complete eradication, and the State continually adds to the weapons it uses to harass, intimidate, brutalize and imprison them. The State's methods of control are increasingly, brazenly explicit and crueler by the day. ...

If we broaden our perspective, and if we look beyond particular developments and attempt to grasp what is happening over a longer period of time, the nature of the horror that awaits us takes on a clearer shape: The West's ruling class is embarked on a program of killing and elimination. A general caution should be kept in mind. I'm not suggesting that this program is one that the ruling class has explicitly identified, even to itself, at least not necessarily. The ruling class is intent upon increasing its own power and wealth; in one sense, that is its only concern. I suppose, in some fantasy world, the ruling class would be content to enjoy its immense power and wealth while "ordinary" people pursue their own lives of contentment. This, of course, is the goal which the ruling class announces, and which it desperately tries to convince both itself and us is true.

But we don't live in that fantasy world. In this world --and, I would argue, in any world where brute power is the final means of settling every dispute, especially when that power is consolidated in the State --the ruling class seeks power and wealth by dominating and controlling the weaker segments of society. The ruling class may not set out to kill those people it finds unnecessary for its aims, but if the ruling class can maintain and increase its power and wealth only by eliminating them, it will eventually eliminate them. This is the logic of the ruling class's desires. It is certainly true that the ruling class could change much of this if it wished to: the productive capacity of both England and the United States could be reinvigorated, and much new wealth could be created and enjoyed by many more members of society. But the ruling class believes that would necessitate the diminishment of its power and wealth, so they will not consider the possibility seriously.

The ruling class dreamed a nightmare, and made it real. We are now caught up in it. For many of us --certainly for me, and very possibly for you --the end result is clear: the ruling class intends to kill us. Not today or tomorrow, the ruling class hasn't reached that point of desperation quite yet, but they'll kill us soon enough. We have no value to them; we're superfluous; we're not needed.

Here Silber is giving more eloquent and deeper voice to a theme I was trying to sketch out some years ago, in a piece called "Worm Turning." Written in 2004, it focused on the Bush family, then in power; but of course, the critique applied --and applies --far more generally to our thoroughly bipartisan elite. As I put it then (with slight editing here to broaden the point):

... Underneath all this bristling array there is nothing but a tiny white maggot of greed, wriggling and gorging on scraps of rotting meat. No deep beliefs or high ideals inform the [elitist] ethos, which can be boiled down to one sentence: Grab your pile and screw anybody who gets in the way. War, energy and corporate finance just happen to be where the money is at. And raw, secretive political power --unfettered by courts, laws, legislators or public scrutiny --is the most effective way to safeguard and augment these investments.

That is not to say that the [elitist] credo lacks all nuance. There is in fact a very important refinement to their wormy greed: Loot should always be obtained without the slightest risk to your own financial position. The "free market" must be shunned at all costs --and manipulated by string-pulling, deceit and intimidation when competition is unavoidable. Thus the [elite] model is to cozy up to governments --preferably strongman regimes free to ladle out public money to their favorites with no questions asked. ...

[Our elites] don't sit in dark corners and cackle over the idea of children being chewed to pieces by American bombs. Nor do their nostrils flare with righteous rage at the thought of homosexuality or abortion or nipples on national television. It's just that war profiteering, corporate rapine and cynical pandering to the public's worst instincts are the easiest way to get the unearned riches they crave ...

Perhaps if they could obtain these same privileges as easily by other, less horrific means, they would. As it is, they take the world as they find it, and go about their business without fretting over the consequences --the dead, the ruined, the spreading hate, the poisoned planet. Why should they care? As the maggot cannot see beyond the meat, so too these men of greed-stunted understanding can see nothing of worth outside their own bottomless appetites.

Back to Silber, and to our garishly nightmarish present-day:

Before the ruling class finally eliminates the "undesirables," there is a necessary preceding step: the most disfavored, weakest elements of society must be demonized. I heard the following article first mentioned by Rush Limbaugh; it was quickly picked up by many conservative commentators (including self-identified "libertarians"). Limbaugh praised the article in glowing terms; he thought it identified the crucial issue in especially eloquent terms. For Limbaugh, the crucial issue was one made familiar in connection with history's bloodiest and most horrifying episodes of mass murder, although Limbaugh himself failed to note that fact. I'm sure it was merely an oversight. The crucial issue is, obviously, that the rioters are, as Limbaugh summarized it, "human only by virtue of their DNA." The rioters are not actually human at all; they are sub-human, animals deserving only to be put down.

There is much, much more in this single post by Silber --including the deeper historic context of our landslide into eliminationism --not to mention the other recent offerings: here, here and here. Again, if you have not yet read them, I urge you most strongly to go there and read them now.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd







Amnesty For The Indefensible
By Robert Scheer

They will get away with it, at least in this life. "They" are the Wall Street usurers, people of a sort condemned in Scripture, who have brought more misery to this nation than we have known since the Great Depression. "They" will not suffer for their crimes because they have a majority ownership position in our political system. That is the meaning of the banking plea bargain that the Obama administration is pressuring state attorneys general to negotiate with the titans of the financial world.

It is a sellout deal that, in return for a pittance of compensation by banks to ripped-off mortgage holders, would grant the banks blanket immunity from any prosecution. That is intended to short-circuit investigations by a score of aggressive state officials, inquiries that offer the public a last best hope to get to the bottom of the housing scandal that has cost U.S. homeowners $6.6 trillion in home equity in the past five years and left 14.6 million Americans owing more than their homes are worth.

The $20 billion or so that the banks would pony up is chump change to them compared with the trillions that the Fed and other public agencies spent to bail them out. The banks were given direct cash subsidies, virtually zero-interest loans, and the Fed took $2 trillion in bad paper off their hands while the banks exacerbated the banking crisis they had created through additional shady practices, including fraudulent mortgage foreclosures.

Yet the administration has rushed to the aid of the banks once again and is attempting to intimidate the few state attorneys general who have the gumption to protect the public interest they are sworn to serve. As Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times reported:

"Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices. ...

"In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement. ..."

Donovan has good reason not to want an exploration of the origins of the housing meltdown: He has been a big-time player in the housing racket for decades. Back in the Clinton administration, when government-supported housing became a fig leaf for bundling suspect mortgages into what turned out to be toxic securities, Donovan was a deputy assistant secretary at HUD and acting Federal Housing Administration commissioner. He was up to his eyeballs in this business when the Clinton administration pushed through legislation banning any regulation of the market in derivatives based on home mortgages.

Armed with his insider connections, Donovan then went to work for the Prudential conglomerate (no surprise there), working deals with the same government housing agencies that he had helped run. As The New York Times reported in 2008 after President Barack Obama picked him to be secretary of HUD, "Mr. Donovan was a managing director at Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., in charge of its portfolio of investments in affordable housing loans, including Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration debt."

The HUD website boasts in its bio of Donovan that "under Secretary Donovan's leadership, HUD has helped stabilize the housing market and worked to keep responsible families in their homes." If that is so, we have to assume that the tens of millions savaged by an out-of-control banking industry were not "responsible." And if the housing market has in any way been "stabilized," why did the Commerce Department report Tuesday that new home sales have dropped for the third month in a row?

Shifting the blame from the swindlers to the victims is the cynical rot at the core of the response of both the Bush and Obama administrations to the housing collapse. It is a response that aims to forgive and forget the crimes of Wall Street while allowing ordinary folks to sink deeper into the pit of debt and despair. It infects Donovan and many others who claim to be concerned for the very homeowners they are betraying by undermining the few officials such as Schneiderman who seek to hold the bankers accountable.

In her article about the pressure being brought to bear on Schneiderman to go along with the sellout, Morgenson reported that according to an attendee at a memorial service this month for former New York Gov. Hugh Carey, as Schneiderman was leaving he "became embroiled in a contentious conversation with Kathryn S. Wylde, a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who represents the public."

When interviewed by Morgenson, Wylde claimed that her conversation with Schneiderman was "not unpleasant" but that she told him "it is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street—love 'em or hate 'em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible."

When haven't they done that?
(c) 2011 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. A journalist with over 30 years experience, Scheer has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.





The Dead Letter Office...





Julius explains how big "it" is and why he's so sexually frustrated!

Heil Obama,

Dear Deputy Fuhrer Genachowski,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your whiping the Fairness Doctrine and 82 other laws off the books, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Demoncratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 09-05-2011. We salute you Herr Genachowski, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Mitt Romney, Dark Prince Of Oligarchy, Battles The Demons Of Democracy
By John Nichols

The gaffe-prone candidacies of Michele "Elvis" Bachmann and Rick "C'mon, Men, Let's String Us Up Some Bernanke" Perry, and the slapstick non-candidacy of Sarah "Two If by Sea" Palin, are merely the cheap theater of an ill-defined Republican presidential race. The real drama of the 2012 race continues to come from the CEO party's CEO candidate: Willard Mitt Romney.

It is Romney, the buttoned-down professional who was born to the corporate class and remains its truest exemplar in the current contest, who framed the 2012 debate as starkly it ever will be with his sincere declaration that "corporations are people."

Romney gets it.

There's a class war going on in America.

And the dark prince of oligarchy has taken a stand.

Provoked by a grassroots activist who refused to take spin for an answer, the GOP's CEO candidate revealed why he is running.

Corporations need unapologetic and aggressive representation not just in the judicial branch but in the executive branch of our federal government.

After all, It's not just conservatives on the US Supreme Court who think that corporations should enjoy the same protections and privileges as human beings.

Romney is standing up for the principle that conservatives who would be president must be just as bold when it comes to bending the intent and language of a Constitution that opens with the words "We the People" in order to make it a corporate charter.

If we needed any more confirmation of the necessity for a movement to renew the democratic promise of the American experiment, it came when Romney was confronted by members of Iowa Citizens for Community Involvement. When Romney appeared at the Iowa State Fair to pitch his candidacy for the nomination, the Iowa CCI activists demanded to know whether he was going to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Romney tried at first to stick to the spin he was supposed to be peddling to fair-goers who needed some pablum to go with their corn dogs and cotton candy. But the grass-roots activists of Iowa CCI-a multiracial, urban-and-rural group aligned with the National People's Action movement-made a "where's-the-beef" demand. And Romney delivered.

The activists wanted to know why CEO candidate-like so many other politicians of both major parties-would even consider undermining needed programs that care for the elderly, the disabled and the disadvantaged when billionaire CEOs and corporations pay little or nothing into the federal treasury.

When Romney began to ruminate on how he would not "raise taxes on people," the Iowa activists shouted: "Corporations!"

As the crowd began to cheer on the idea of taxing corporations that enjoy the benefits of government bailouts and subsidies without-in all too many cases-giving anything back, Romney became incensed.

The former corporate CEO shouted: "Corporations are people, my friend."

The crowd shouted: "No, they're not!"

"Of course they are," replied Romney, with a "there, I said it..." statement that he and his staff would later confirm as his true faith.

The Republican presidential contender's bizarre certainty that faceless corporations, many of which enjoy the benefits and protections of the United States while shuttering factories and moving jobs overseas, are somehow human drew a stinging rebuke from National People's Action director George Goehl, who declared: "The corporations Mr. Romney believes are filling people's pockets are the ones who crashed our economy and hijacked our democracy." Of course, Romney won't change. He's a class warrior, and he knows which side he is on.

Nor, frankly, will any any change in position be forthcoming from a lot of the Democrats who have bought into the big-money politics that accepts the landscape outlined in the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision-which accords corporations the same political rights as citizens-as the new normal.

But there is nothing "normal" or "acceptable" about a circumstance-illustrated by the Wisconsin recent recall election fights, which saw an expected $40 million in campaign spending-that makes candidates and voters electoral bystanders in a process that is bought and paid for by corporations and unaccountable special-interest groups.

"The court's ruling in Citizens United demands that, once again, we the people use the constitutional amendment process to defend our democracy. We must press for a 28th Amendment-a People's Rights Amendment-to restore democracy to the people and to ensure that people, not corporations, govern in America," says John Bonifaz, director of the Free Speech for People project. "We call on all 2012 presidential candidates to make clear that corporations are not people with constitutional rights and to support the People's Rights Amendment."

Bonifaz is right. Romney has with his "corporations are people" comment disqualified himself from serious consideration as a contender for any position of public trust.

But Romney and his kind will remain a threat to American democratic life for as long as activist judges read the Constitution as an invitation to corporate dominance of our politics.

Romney's statement has clarified the urgent need for a constitutional amendment that renews the supremacy of "We the People."

That's going to be a central focus of the national Democracy Convention, which will be held August 24-28 in Madison, Wisconsin. A project of the Madison-based Liberty Tree Foundation (with which this writer has been associated over the years), the convention has drawn strong support from the Alliance for Democracy, the Move to Amend campaign, The Progressive magazine and labor, farm and community groups. As such, it will bring together activists from across the country who seek to "strengthen democracy where it matters most-in our communities, our schools, our workplaces and local economies, our military, our government, our media, our Constitution."

The focus on multiple issues and challenges will make the convention an exciting and necessary gathering at a point when America is suffering from so many democracy deficits. But central to the convention will be an understanding that the crisis created by the Citizens United ruling and the abuses of power inflicted upon the republic and its citizens by unrestrained corporations must be addressed.

"As far as we know, Mitt is not coming to the 2011 Democracy Convention," Democracy Convention Chair Ben Manski jokes. "But if he did, he'd learn a thing or two."

What the Americans who happen to stand on the other side of the class divide can learn at the Democracy Convention is how to prove Romney wrong by ensuring that the fantasy of corporate personhood is not used by corrupt politicians and activist judges to prevent "We the People" from realizing the full promise of the American experiment.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







How Rich Is Too Rich?
By Sam Harris

I've written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of "wealth redistribution" that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles-producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance.

Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many times before, he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary is. Many conservatives pretend not to find this embarrassing.

Conservatives view taxation as a species of theft-and to raise taxes, on anyone for any reason, is simply to steal more. Conservatives also believe that people become rich by creating value for others. Once rich, they cannot help but create more value by investing their wealth and spawning new jobs in the process. We should not punish our best and brightest for their success, and stealing their money is a form of punishment.

Of course, this is just an economic cartoon. We don't have perfectly efficient markets, and many wealthy people don't create much in the way of value for others. In fact, as our recent financial crisis has shown, it is possible for a few people to become extraordinarily rich by wrecking the global economy.

Nevertheless, the basic argument often holds: Many people have amassed fortunes because they (or their parent's, parent's, parents) created value. Steve Jobs resurrected Apple Computer and has since produced one gorgeous product after another. It isn't an accident that millions of us are happy to give him our money.

But even in the ideal case, where obvious value has been created, how much wealth can one person be allowed to keep? A trillion dollars? Ten trillion? (Fifty trillion is the current GDP of Earth.) Granted, there will be some limit to how fully wealth can concentrate in any society, for the richest possible person must still spend money on something, thereby spreading wealth to others. But there is nothing to prevent the ultra rich from cooking all their meals at home, using vegetables grown in their own gardens, and investing the majority of their assets in China.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the two richest men in the United States, each have around $50 billion. Let's put this number in perspective: They each have a thousand times the amount of money you would have if you were a movie star who had managed to save $50 million over the course of a very successful career. Think of every actor you can name or even dimly recognize, including the rare few who have banked hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years, and run this highlight reel back half a century. Gates and Buffet each have more personal wealth than all of these glamorous men and women-from Bogart and Bacall to Pitt and Jolie-combined.

In fact, there are people who rank far below Gates and Buffet in net worth, who still make several million dollars a day, every day of the year, and have throughout the current recession.

And there is no reason to think that we have reached the upper bound of wealth inequality, as not every breakthrough in technology creates new jobs. The ultimate labor saving device might be just that-the ultimate labor saving device. Imagine the future Google of robotics or nanotechnology: Its CEO could make Steve Jobs look like a sharecropper, and its products could put tens of millions of people out of work. What would it mean for one person to hold the most valuable patents compatible with the laws of physics and to amass more wealth than everyone else on the Forbes 400 list combined?

How many Republicans who have vowed not to raise taxes on billionaires would want to live in a country with a trillionaire and 30 percent unemployment? If the answer is "none"-and it really must be-then everyone is in favor of "wealth redistribution." They just haven't been forced to admit it.

Yes, we must cut spending and reduce inefficiencies in government-and yes, many things are best accomplished in the private sector. But this does not mean that we can ignore the astonishing gaps in wealth that have opened between the poor and the rich, and between the rich and the ultra rich. Some of your neighbors have no more than $2,000 in total assets (in fact, 40 percent of Americans fall into this category); some have around $2 million; and some have $2 billion (and a few have much more). Each of these gaps represents a thousandfold increase in wealth.

Some Americans have amassed more wealth than they or their descendants can possibly spend. Who do conservatives think is in a better position to help pull this country back from the brink?

*****

ADDENDUM (8/19/11)

I have received a fair amount of push back for this post-much of it, frankly, a little crazier than normal.

If you are an economist and believe that you have detected any erroneous assumptions above, please write to me here. If your comments are significant, I will be happy to publish our exchange on this website.

Specifically, I would be interested to know if any economist has an economic argument against the following ideas:

Future breakthroughs in technology (e.g. robotics, nanotech) could eliminate millions of jobs very quickly, creating a serious problem of unemployment.

I am not suggesting that this is likely in the near term. I am saying that it is possible. Many people believe that there is some fundamental principle of economics (even of physics) that rules this out. Drawing a lesson from the information revolution, many readers have written to inform me that the birth of the computer led to new industries and new jobs (thank you). Needless to say, I do not disagree. I am suggesting, however, that there is nothing that rules out the possibility of vastly more powerful technologies creating a net loss of available jobs and concentrating wealth to an unprecedented degree.

The federal government should levy a one-time wealth tax (perhaps 10 percent for estates above $10 million, rising to 50 percent for estates above $1 billion) and use these assets to fund an infrastructure bank.

Contrary to many readers' assumptions, I am not recommending that the federal government confiscate productive capital from the rich to subsidize the shiftlessness of people who do not want to work. Nor do I imagine that a mere increase in income tax can erase the national debt. However, to the eye of this non-economist, it seems obvious that spending a few trillion dollars wisely, on projects that will improve our infrastructure, create jobs, and hasten our progress toward energy independence, would be a good thing to do. Yes, I share everyone's fear that our government, riven by political partisanship and special interests, is often incapable of spending money wisely. But that doesn't mean a structure couldn't be put in place to prevent poor uses of these funds. Leaving aside fears of government ineptitude, please tell me why it would be a bad idea for the rich to decide to fund such a bank voluntarily.

Needless to say, if there are any economists who want to write in support of these ideas, I would be happy to hear from you.

In the hopes of receiving feedback that I can publish, I encourage you to keep your responses as concise as possible.

Best,
Sam
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Don Wright ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...





The Great Concessionaire
By Will Durst

Sorry if you settled into your recliner ready to enjoy the blessed silence destined to descend on the political playing field in the aftermath of the Debt Ceiling Death Match. Lasted as long as the life cycle of an adult mayfly. That momentary blissful peace was rudely broken by a cacophony of squeaks and grunts and shouts as each camp tried to out blame the other for the thudding crash Wall Street made falling down a well. Quick, go find Lassie.

It appears the Market is not impressed with the two-step deal Congress agreed to kicking and screaming. Look close and you can see the bones of the middle class sticking out of the confetti left over from the banking and oil industry celebrations. Spending cuts during a recession. There you go. Starve a fever and feed a cold, or the other way around? What the hell, starve them both. We'll eat when we're dead.

Hard to understand why Progressives are so mad at Obama. After all, he didn't do anything. Besides cave faster than an overused supply tunnel in a Chilean coal mine. The difference is, nobody's rushing out to organize any rescue parties. Happy Birthday Mister President. Sorry we couldn't get Marilyn to sing. Doubt if Pelosi hummed it either.

The Tea Baggers won, confusing both Democrats and Republicans, by refusing to act like politicians eschewing all the usual motivations such as their own self-interest or party affinity or even the general welfare of the country. You can't negotiate with cement. Giving proof to the old adage: "never get in a fight with an ugly person, they got nothing to lose.

One fascinating thing to come out of the debt debacle was watching the only adult in the room turn from Great Facilitator into Great Enabler before our very eyes. Obama is so determined to govern from the middle, there should be a double yellow line down the center of his forehead. Democrats may desert him, but he remains king of the Road Kill Party. Would hate to get stuck behind Barack in a grocery line after he was asked "Paper or plastic?" Your ice cream would liquefy waiting for him to convince the clerk he wanted "plaper" or "pastic."

The Tea Party held the government hostage, and the President fell victim to a wicked case of Stockholm Syndrome, bonding with his captors, until at last, he was able to successfully convince the kidnappers to accept more than they originally asked for.

The administration called the deal a compromise. The same kind of compromise the Titanic arranged with that iceberg. Like how Nagasaki and Hiroshima compromised with Fat Man and Little Boy. Brokered as many concessions as New Orleans got from Katrina. The financial equivalent of handing over Czechoslovakia after extracting a vague promise to possibly leave Poland alone. Trust he got a rolled up umbrella for his birthday.

At this point, you can't even accuse the Democrats of being afraid of their own shadow because they don't cast one. Besides, it's hard to see your shadow when your head is so far up your butt you can tickle your spleen with your elbow. And if they expect any chance at all in 2012, they'd be wise to invest heavily in stem cell research in hopes of regenerating their spine.
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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In This Edition

Phil Rockstroh feels an, "Idiot Wind."

Uri Avnery goes, "To The Shores Of Tripoli."

David Sirota states the obvious, "Yes, Black People Still Face Discrimination."

David Swanson tries, "Drowning Government In A Hurricane (Why Wait for a Bathtub?)."

Jim Hightower finds, "Michigan Locals Fight For Democracy."

Helen Thomas examines, "The U.S. & The Two-State Solution."

James Donahue considers, "Cheaper Environmentally Friendly Body Disposal."

Ted Rall remembers, "911."

Ralph Nader weighs, "Sun And Sanity."

Randall Amster is, "Saving Sacred Spaces."

Paul Krugman warns of, "Republicans Against Science."

Chris Floyd explores, "Dead Sirte."

Robert Scheer presents a, "Deceit Of Shakespearean Proportions."

CIA Director David Petraeus wins the coveted Vidkun Quisiling Award!

John Nichols follows, "The Democrats' Rural Rebellions."

Sam Harris shows us, "How To Lose Readers (Without Even Trying)."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Andy Borowitz reports, "Internet Outages from Hurricane Could Force People to Interact with Other People, Officials Warn" but first, Uncle Ernie sings, "Good Night Irene."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Adam Zyglis, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, MoPaul, Dees Illustration.Com, Cameron Cardow, Mike Luckovich, B' Dog 23, Internet Weekly.Org, Jim Morin, Jay Ward, Jae Rhim Lee, Living Off Grid, Arizona Snowbowl, A.P., You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Good Night, Irene!
By Ernest Stewart

Irene good night Irene good night
Good night Irene Good night Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
Irene Good Night ~~~ Lead Belly

"NATO's top commanders may have acted under color of international law, but they are not exempt from international law. If members of the Gadhafi Regime are to be held accountable, NATO's top commanders must also be held accountable through the International Criminal Court for all civilian deaths resulting from bombing. Otherwise, we will have witnessed the triumph of a new international gangsterism." ~~~ Dennis Kucinich

Run to the hills
Run for your life
Run To The Hills ~~~ Iron Maiden

You got to pay your dues
If you want to sing the Blues
And you know it don't come easy!
It Don't Come Easy ~~~ Ringo Starr

It must be getting harder and harder to be a climate denier. Hurricane/tropical storm Irene sowed a path of destruction from the Bahamas to the Northeast, leaving behind in its wake, death and despair with the worst of it yet to come. Sure, 7 million people lost power -- some of whom will be waiting weeks to have it restored, and rivers throughout the East Coast are bringing even more destruction than the storm caused initially! To paraphrase the Firesign Theatre, "And there's Hurricane all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut!"

The only good thing to come out of Irene is she was, for the most part, not much more than a tropical storm. What if a category 5 would've slammed into lower Manhattan? NYC would have been unlivable for months, if not years. With global warning, it's just a matter of time before that happens, but Rethuglican frontrunners Perry and Romney deny that man-made global warming is the culprit. They say it's just the Earth, and the Earth's climate varies. Yes, it does; but up until now, it took tens of thousands of years to go from one climate to another -- not the two hundred years that we've had in the machine age, where we went from a beginning ice age into the hottest years on record.

Perry thinks it's all god's doing, as the Rethuglican mantra says god's doing it to get even with all the faggots and liberals! Except Michele Bachmann, who says the earthquake and Irene were acts of God to get politicians' attention to the debt and deficit problem. Romney, who used to believe in global warming, now doesn't know, because the Rethuglicans have convinced their base that the people who are causing it, viz., big Coal, big Gas and the corpo-rats in general, aren't the ones causing it. It's either the great cosmic space muffin, or Mother Earth who are the culprits, if global warming even exists. Meanwhile, the corpo-rats are paying our politicians to be deniers, lest they lose a few trillion dollars extra and have to clean up their disasters! So, for the tradition 30 pieces of silver, Perry, Romney, and the rest are willing to sell out their souls and our environment and lie their asses off!

Take a look at this year's climate disasters -- just in the United States alone -- and see if you can recall any other year like this one? The massive flooding, now going on throughout New England, is just like the floods that wiped out the Midwest this spring. Not only wiping out towns, but vast areas of farm land, making for starvation situations throughout America come harvest time. You'll recall that a great chunk of the Southwest burned to the ground. Tornadoes that destroyed great swaths of the South. Droughts throughout the South and West that had Governor Perry holding an official state prayer meeting, asking his god to bring rain. I guess his god doesn't like Governor Perry very much, huh?

Yes, America, you can pin all this on Yahweh, the Bronze Age god of wandering, barbarian, syphilitic sheepherders. Or you can put the blame where it belongs -- on the Corpo-rats and us. With Yahweh, you can blame it all on god's will, or you can face reality and put the blame where it belongs, and then do something about it to keep it from getting worse. If we do nothing, then Mother Earth will soon rid herself of us; and it won't be very pretty -- and praying to ancient mythologies won't do any good! Last year was the hottest year on record, and this year is looking to be worse! What will next year be like? I'm guessing being a climate denier in this day and age must be a little like being a Christian Scientist with appendicitis?

Finally, for all of you waiting for the power to come back on, take a lesson from this towards a day when the grid goes down, and doesn't come back up! What will you do then? You better get prepared!

In Other News

Some call it "The Obama Doctrine" others call it what it is, "international gangsterism." Call it what you may, it all means the same thing -- an act or acts of treason according to the US Constitution, or as Dubya called it, "just a goddamned piece of paper!" Our six illegal, immoral wars of terrorism will continue, and no doubt grow to other countries because since old Dementia Head made the scene, the laws protecting us (and the rest of the world) from our government no longer apply! Obama knows he can commit any acts of murder and mayhem his heart desires; and as long as he doesn't get a blowjob from an intern, he's good to go!

Barry's gone out of his way to piss off the left -- not caring or considering the backlash he's created, thinking we must vote for him, because otherwise we'll get a Perry or Bachmann. I, of course, would ask Obamahood what exactly's the difference between the Rethuglicans and the Demoncrats? I can't see any real difference between them, can you? Instead of our savior, Barry, you've turned out to be worse than Dubya ever thought about being -- so if Willard is elected, perhaps things would be slightly better that they are now? Zeus only knows what Barry would do as a lame duck for four years with all the restraints off of him!

There are, of course, the Greens, and many other parties; but no matter who they pick, they'll never have a chance because of how the media is owned and operated for the elites' benefit, and not for our own! The other option is what most everybody does when they can no longer choose the lesser of two evils, they simply sit it out, which the majority of Americans do. That's right, more Americans choose not to vote than those who choose to vote. I can't say I blame them, either!

I have a simple solution for this, i.e., mandatory voting. Everyone over 18 would be required to vote under penalty of law -- and those who don't get 90 days at hard labor! Of course, this solution would also include the choice (like Australians have) of voting for "None Of The Above!" If a majority of the voters chose "None Of The Above," then all candidates for that office would have to be replaced with new ones until we finally got some ones we could vote for! Of course, like they do in Australia, they could keep running pre-approved candidates our corpo-rat masters decide for us, as they are people, too! NOT! This guarantees nothing, but at least we the people would regain our voices and get to at least embarrass some political wankers before we get screwed again by the people who are supposed to be working for us!

And Finally

I see where General Betray-us, oops, Petraeus, is no longer responsible for murdering men, women and children in Afghanistan! No, he'll soon take over the CIA, where he will be responsible for murdering men, women and children all over the world, not just in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq -- what an advancement!

Betray-us, who was so beloved by his own men that one of them shot him in the chest and another one didn't quite pack his parachute correctly -- no doubt, innocent mistakes -- will bring that leadership ability to Langley, Virginia. Yippee! He'll replace Deputy-Fuhrer Leon E. Panetta, who moves to take over the defense department as Secretary of Defense.

You may recall, Petraeus earned his sobriquet Betray-us by being Dubya's military stooge, and lying his ass off in favor of our war crimes and such before Congress, where he was charged by Move On.Org of "cooking the books" on said war crimes. He went on to surge American children in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Our kids quickly passed on the surge by murdering men, women and children all over the Middle East! A note to the world: if America ever shows up on your doorstep, wanting to bring democracy to your country, "run to the hills, run for your life!"

Obamahood is adopting Betray-us, like he's done with the many acts of treason, sedition and such from the Crime Family Bush's two terms in the White House (instead of prosecuting them for all their crimes and rounding up all their stooges), and has made Betray-us the head of the CIA. I'm guessing that Heinrich Himmler wasn't available, huh, Barry? David will now do to the world what he's already done to the Middle East. That should make America some new friends, eh? I rather think, NOT! How about you?

Keepin' On

As Ringo once sang, "You know it don't come easy." Few good things in life ever do come easy, like respect -- most of them have to be earned. Got them dues that got to be paid. So it is with this magazine.

As magazines go, Issues & Alibis' cost is pretty much "chump change." With most Internet magazines, the yearly cost is in the seven figures. A few get by on six figures. We get by with the help of sponsors -- from a six figure cost to just five figures. Our total cost is just above $11,000 -- after our sponsor picks up about half of that, leaving us to raise just $5400 a year to keep bringing you the important news you need to know, without ever having to charge anyone for the information.

That's a good thing, because the majority of our readership couldn't afford to subscribe and since these are the very people we're trying to reach that "chump change" can be hard to get! Thanks to Barbara from Boston, Gary from Indianapolis, and Ernie from Ontario's latest help, we are now lacking just $1400, down from last week's $1750. We need to raise that $1400 within the next month to continue the magazine for another year -- well, until the end of June 2012 to be accurate!

A little help, Ya'll!

Oh, and John, if you want to shut me up, begging for resources, why not send your dear old Uncle Ernie a nice check!??! As soon as this money is raised, I'll stop begging until next year! Perhaps by then we'll have some more sponsors, and I won't have to come before you cap-in-hand!

*****


02-31-1969 ~ 08-28-2011
Thanks for your thoughts!


06-28-1915 ~ 08-29-2011
Thanks for dem blues!


08-14-1913 ~ 08-30-2011
Thanks for the entertainment!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.













Idiot Wind
The Eternal Return Of The Politics Of The 1970s
By Phil Rockstroh

Unpopular wars drag on, gas prices erratically rise and inexplicably fall, as clouds of cynicism, dark as Richard Nixon's perpetual five o'clock shadow, brood over the length of the U.S. At times, it seems as though Nixon's 1970s never ended: Only Ronald Reagan's/Bill Clinton's/Barack Obama's Quaalude-laced, faux populist snake oil caused the nation collectively to slip into a soporific sleep -- and now, with the effects of the drug wearing off, we begin to awaken...hung over, groggy, queasy... still in the midst of that ugly and odious era.

At least, that's the encrypted message I've deciphered using my Super-Secret, Zeitgeist Decoder Mood (disorder) Ring, special limited, Michele Bachman edition.

Thus far, in this dismal century of the nation's history, both men who have occupied the office of the U.S. presidency, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, are as much products of the 1970s as were Naugahyde pit group sofas and outbreaks of the Herpes Simplex Retrovirus at Plato's Retreat. From a historical perspective, future generations will regard the Bush Administration and its Democratic Party doppelganger as the Dacron Polyester of American presidencies: Bush's legacy will carry all the beauty, style, and enduring appeal of a powder blue Leisure Suit -- and Obama will be remembered as the Pet Rock of the U.S. oligarchic class.

Accordingly, if there is a presiding spirit possessing our age, it is the gray ghost of Richard Nixon who sat, stoop shouldered and scheming, in the Oval Office, in the early 1970s, as the U.S. began hitting the limits of its imperial might and economic power, and who set the tone of duplicity and denial that define daily life in the nation to this day.

During the Watergate Era, Karl Rove and other ruthless sleight-of-hand artists of the politics of demagogic distraction and displacement grasped this fact, so troubling in its implications that it was banished from the official narrative: Nixon was not driven in disgrace from office because the people of the U.S. were troubled by having a sick, corrupt bastard as their president; in truth, most simply found the situation embarrassing...to have the curtains of the living quarters of the White House pulled open, thus allowing the world to witness the dismal spectacle of Nixon...pacing the floors, draped in a dingy bathrobe, muttering whisky-fueled expletives at the yellowing wallpaper.

"Now, Watergate does not bother me
 Does your conscience bother you? 
Tell the truth." -- excerpt, Sweet Home Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Moreover, Rove perceived that Nixon's paranoia, rage, envy, and resentment merely mirrored those of the white, U.S. middle and laboring classes. Nixon knew from the depths of his black spleen to the tips of his twitching nerve endings the hidden in plain sight, ugly side of the American character and how the pathologies therein could be exploited for political gain.

Nixon's legacy remains our lode star because most of the U.S. populace accepted the false narrative that Watergate and Vietnam were aberrations, and that, by Nixon's resignation from office in August of 1974, the country's psyche had been purged of the demons...conjured and given sustenance by U.S. global-wide imperium and that still abide within the collective psyche of the nation --- an unseen, insidious presence to this day.

Ergo, even after Nixon was exiled to San Clemente, and the nation's citizenry was induced to take up the mantra, "the system worked...time to move on...Our long national nightmare is over" -- Americans remained uneasy, clinging to the casuistry that we were mere bystanders when the crimes were committed -- and, as a consequence, we transformed ourselves into willfully ignorant marks for political flimflammers (embodied by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama et al) whose comfortable lies exalt the inviolable grace of our collective cluelessness.

Otherwise, we would have been forced to face our individual complicity in Nixon's crimes; otherwise, a million Vietnamese corpses would have risen accusingly in our dreams -- as tens of thousands of Iraqi and Central Asian dead would haunt our sleep tonight.

At present, Democratic Party apologist for U.S. military imperium seem to have little inclination to lament the deaths of the children of Central Asia, whose bodies have been ripped asunder by attacks by U.S. predator drones, because (Could they possibly believe?) their lives were violently torn from this world by the policies of a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- not Bush nor Cheney nor any (admitted) neocon.

In the compartmentalized confines of their casuistry, how is it possible that Obama's liberal supporters actually believe that the souls of these children are now at peace only because they had not befallen the misfortune of having been slaughtered, by say, the caprice of a President Perry or Bachmann?

The demonstrable madness of the Republican party's presidential hopefuls serve as living emblems of the forces of negative entropy riddling the empire. Accordingly, Michele Bachmann embodies its urge towards outright self-destructive mania. In contrast, Barack Obama's style is axiomatic of the effects of its all-encompassing, reality-denying PR apparatus i.e., reality viewed as a mere marketing problem.

Moreover, as the tattered veracities of U.S. exceptionalism continue to be buffeted by the realities of the wider, indomitable world, political types, such as Obama and Bachmann, both scions of the nation's dismal and deranged political class -- risen from the political landscape since the 1970s -- will embody the cognitive dissidence inherent to declining empire.

The larger the specter of decline looms, the more desperate the political and economic elite have become...contriving to consolidate even more outrageous amounts of wealth and power, hence further circumscribing the already severely diminished societal milieu of the less privileged classes of the nation.

Such desperate circumstances can bring peril: The rights and liberties of a nation's people can be forsaken, like good music and a sense of fashion in a 70's era disco, when a group of fanatical outsiders (for example, rank and file teabagger types) forge ad hoc alliances, based on political and economic expediency, with a corrupt business and political, ruling elite.

"I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind/ I can't remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed, your eyes/ don't look into mine." -- Bob Dylan, excerpt, Idiot Wind.

In my own experience, I first began to take note of the acceptance of authoritarian impulses in the cultural banalities evinced in the 1970s. I noticed my peers (teenagers born during the peak years of the Baby Boom) were not the progeny of The Woodstock Nation, as our beleaguered authoritarian elders had feared. Instead, we were the free floating spirit-incarnate of a pop culture Weimar Republic e.g., unlike our predecessors in the 1960s, we used drugs neither to expand our awareness nor as an act of social or political rebellion; rather, they were appropriated as apolitical agents of anesthetization.

Like the sound and fury of our pinball machine distractions, our Muscle Car imperialism, and the pseudo-edginess of the so-called FM radio revolution (that was, in reality, the advent of corporate rock) -- our surface-level rebelliousness was, below the lank-haired, faded denim-clad, reefer-reeking exterior, the metastasizing of an insidious indifference -- to a large measure a radical renunciation -- of anything more challenging than those things available within the immediate confines of our comfort zones.

Our mode of being, even then, revealed our obsession with comfort, the devices of escapism and an avidity for insularity -- our right to the pursuit of numbness. We were fledgling Weimar Republicans, clad in faded, frayed bell-bottom jeans...primed to surrender freedom to the corporate/national security state for the illusion of safety and control.

All along, beneath the pot reek, redolent on polyester fabric...the Muscle Car rumble...Quaalude spittle...the tribally-administered, prototypical serotonin/dopamine/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (perhaps precursors of the Huxleyesque pharmaceutical authoritarianism to come) we baby boomers were scions of the Cold War military/industrial/consumer empire's death-sustained dynamo.

The empire is as noisy, distracting and meaningless as a vintage, 1970s pinball machine -- as self-aware as a baby boomer, suburban pothead teenager who, as the years have passed, transformed into a self-absorbed, Starbuck's-slurping, SSRI-popping consumer zombie, possessed of mindless appetite, begot by deep, inner desolation who has spent his existence devouring the resources of the entire planet in the manner he devoured food from his mother's pantry while possessed of a bad case of reefer munchies in the 1970s.

As the decades have passed, an internalize mall and mcmansion -- an architecture of instant gratification and compulsive insularity -- has supplanted primordial forests of collective imagination; hence, our roots no longer reach deep into the dark, renewing loam of ancestral intelligence; our branches no longer lift towards the sky of possibility. We feel devoid of nourishment and hope, because the internalized empire has clear cut it all, reducing sequoia forests to toothpicks in order to pick the bits of charred flesh of those slaughtered in our wars of imperium from its rotting teeth.

Consequently, if our corrupt political parties did not exist, we would need to invent them, for they are emblems in the flesh of the true face of U.S. empire...What rises from the toxic soil of the inverted totalitarian powers of the corporate/military state.

Yet, more than likely, the readers of this essay are as mortified, heartsick, and enraged by the actions of the U.S. government and the corporate overlords who own and operate it, as is this writer. Nevertheless, we carry U.S. imperium within us as deeply as we hold the imprint of our parents' faces. The empire is too pervasive and invasive to avoid our being carriers of its proliferate pathologies; this system weaned us and socialized us, and, even when we rebel against it, our actions are generally restricted within limits set by it.

Otherwise, the consequences would be too crushing for most of us to endure: financial ruin, destitution, homelessness.

Accordingly, here's a plot spoiler regarding the stagecraft of the next presidential election cycle. Republicans -- Bachmann, Perry et al will play their roles as scary, scary psychos -- escapees from the Right Wing Christian Madhouse For Social Program Ax Murderers -- as Obama will play the calm, reasonable, deliberate authority figure who, after the crazies are dispatched, will calmly and deliberately slash to bits Social Security and Medicare -- and then feed the remains to the economy-devouring cannibals on Wall Street.

Mojo Nixon (no blood relation, I suspect) sang, "Everybody has a little Elvis in them." Nowadays, regrettably, we must sing: "Everybody has far too much Nixon in them." Internally (even those born long after the 1970's) in larger and smaller degrees, carry Nixon's dismal legacy.

Apropos, proceed to the closest mirror, look yourself in the eye, and repeat the risible (as well as demonstrably false) phrase, "I am not a crook"-- then, at long last, face the Richard Milhouse Nixon within, and thus come face to face with the cause of why, collectively, we in the U.S. seem perpetually in the thrall of the corrupt political forces and degraded social criteria that have gripped and grappled us since Nixon slunk from the scene in the summer of 1974.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.





To The Shores Of Tripoli
By Uri Avnery

THOUGH THE Bible tells us "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth" (Proverbs 24:17), I could not help myself. I was happy.

Muammar al-Gaddafi was the enemy of every decent person in the world. He was one of the worst tyrants in recent memory.

This fact was hidden behind a facade of clownishness. He liked to present himself as a philosopher (the "Green Book"), a visionary statesman (Israelis and Palestinians must unite in the "State of Isratine"), even as an immature teenager (his innumerable uniforms and costumes). But basically he was a ruthless dictator, surrounded by corrupt relatives and cronies, squandering the great wealth of Libya.

This was obvious to anyone who wanted to see. Unfortunately, there were quite a few who chose to close their eyes.

WHEN I expressed my support for the international intervention, I was expecting to be attacked by some well-meaning people. I was not disappointed.

How could I? How could I support the American imperialists and the abominable NATO? Didn't I realize that it was all about the oil?

I was not surprised. I have been through this before. When NATO started to bomb Serbian territory in order to put an end to Slobodan Milosevic's crimes in Kosovo, many of my political friends turned against me.

Didn't I realize that it was all an imperialist plot? That the devious Americans wanted to tear Yugoslavia (or Serbia) apart? That NATO was an evil organization? That Milosevic, though he may have some faults, was representing progressive humanity?

This was said when the evidence of the gruesome mass-murder in Bosnia was there for everyone to see, when Milosevic was already exposed as the cold-blooded monster he was. Ariel Sharon admired him.

So how could decent, well-meaning leftists, people of an unblemished humanist record, embrace such a person? My only explanation was that their hatred of the USA and of NATO was so strong, so fervent, that anyone attacked by them must surely be a benefactor of humanity, and all accusations against them pure fabrications. The same happened with Pol Pot.

Now it has happened again. I was bombarded with messages from well-meaning people who lauded Gaddafi for all his good deeds. One might get the impression that he was a second Nelson Mandela, if not a second Mahatma Gandhi.

While the rebels were already fighting their way into his huge personal compound, the socialist leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was praising him as a true model of upright humanity, a man who dared to stand up to the American aggressors.

Well, sorry, count me out. I have this irrational abhorrence of bloody dictators, of genocidal mass-murderers, of leaders who wage war on their own people. And at my advanced age, it is difficult for me to change. I am ready to support even the devil, if that is necessary to put an end to this kind of atrocities. I won't even ask about his precise motives. Whatever one may think about the USA and/or NATO - if they disarm a Milosevic or a Gaddafi, they have my blessing.

HOW LARGE a role did NATO play in the defeat of the Libyan dictator?

The rebels would not have reached Tripoli, and certainly not by now, if they had not enjoyed NATO's sustained air support. Libya is one big desert. The offensive had to rely on one long road. Without mastery of the skies, the rebels would have been massacred. Anyone who was alive during World War II and followed the campaigns of Rommel and Montgomery knows this.

I assume that the rebels also received arms and advice to facilitate their advance.

But I object to the patronizing assertion that it was all a NATO victory. It is the old colonialist attitude in a new guise. Of course, these poor, primitive Arabs could not do anything without the White Man shouldering his burden and rushing to the rescue.

But wars are not won by weapons, they are won by people. "Boots on the ground," as the Americans call it. Even with all the help they got, the Libyan rebels, disorganized and poorly armed as they were, have won a remarkable victory. This would not have happened without real revolutionary fervor, without bravery and determination. It is a Libyan victory, not a British or a French one.

This has been underplayed by the international media. I have not seen any genuine combat coverage (and I know what that looks like). Journalists did not acquit themselves with glory. They displayed exemplary cowardice, staying at a safe distance from the front, even during the fall of Tripoli. On TV they looked ridiculous with their conspicuous helmets when they were surrounded by bareheaded fighters.

What came over was endless jubilations over victories that had seemingly fallen from heaven. But these were feats achieved by people - yes, by Arab people.

This is especially galling to our Israeli "military correspondents" and "Arab affairs experts". Used to despising or hating "the Arabs", they are ascribing the victory to NATO. It seems that the people of Libya played a minor role, if any.

Now they blabber endlessly about the "tribes", which will make democracy and orderly governance in Libya impossible. Libya is not really a country, it was never a unified state before becoming an Italian colony, there is no such thing as a Libyan people. (Remember the French saying this about Algeria, and Golda Meir about Palestine?)

Well, for a people that does not exist, the Libyans fought very well. And as for the "tribes" - why do tribes exist only in Africa and Asia, never among Europeans? Why not a Welsh tribe or a Bavarian tribe?

(When I visited Jordan in 1986, well before the peace treaty, I was entertained by a very civilized, high-ranking Jordanian official. After an interesting conversation over dinner, he surprised me by mentioning that he belongs to a certain tribe. Next day, while I was riding on a horse to Petra, the rider next to me asked in a low voice whether I belonged "to the tribe". It took me some time to understand that he was asking me if I was a Jew. It seems that American Jews refer to themselves in this way.)

The "tribes" of Libya would be called in Europe "ethnic groups" and in Israel "communities". The term "tribe" has a patronizing connotation. Let's drop it.

ALL THOSE who decry NATO's intervention must answer a simple question: who else would have done the job?

21st century humanity cannot tolerate acts of genocide and mass-murder, wherever they occur. It cannot look on while dictators butcher their own peoples. The doctrine of "non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states" belongs to the past. We Jews, who have accused mankind of standing idly by while millions of Jews, including German citizens, were exterminated by the legitimate German government, certainly owe the world an answer.

I have mentioned in the past that I advocate some form of effective world governance and expect it to be in place by the end of this century. This would include a democratically elected world executive that would have military forces at its disposal and that could intervene, if a world parliament so decides. For this to happen, the United Nations must be revamped entirely. The veto power must be abolished. It is intolerable that the US can veto the acceptance of Palestine as a member state, or that Russia and China can veto intervention in Syria.

Certainly, great powers like the US and China should have a louder voice than, say, Luxemburg and the Fiji Islands, but a two thirds majority in the General Assembly should have the power to override Washington, Moscow or Beijing.

That may be the music of the future, or, some may say, a pipe dream. As for now, we live in a very imperfect world and must make do with the instruments we have. NATO, alas, is one of them. The European Union is another, though in this case poor, eternally conscience-stricken Germany, has paralyzed it. If Russia or China were to join, that would be fine.

This is not some remote problem. Gaddafi is finished, but Bashar al-Assad is not. He is butchering his people even while you read this, and the world is looking on helplessly.

Any volunteers for intervention?
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom




Orlando Payton looks for work at JobTrain employment office in Menlo Park, Calif.



Yes, Black People Still Face Discrimination
Despite widespread claims that racism is dead, new data shows that white privilege still dominates America
By David Sirota

Republican guru Karl Rove recently appeared on Fox News to dispute the idea that America is a "Christian nation." And he was right to do so, but not because our country lacks an overarching canon. We certainly do have a national religion -- it's just not Christianity. It's Denialism.

Some branches of this religion deny the science documenting humans' role in climate change. Others deny tax cuts' connection to deficits and deregulation's role in the recession. But regardless of the issue, Denialists all share a basic hostility to facts.

As this know-nothing theology expands, none of its denominations claims a bigger membership than the one obsessed with race. Today, many reject the fact that black people typically face bigger obstacles to economic and political success than whites. Instead, they insist that whites are oppressed.

If you've followed politics, you're familiar with this catechism. In the 1980s, lawmakers often implied that welfare programs persecuted whites. In the 1990s, the same lawmakers demonized affirmative-action initiatives that tried to counter college admission preferences for white "legacy" families. These days, demagogues cite Barack Obama's political ascendance as supposed proof that black people are unfairly privileged.

The late Democrat Geraldine Ferraro first floated this specific fable in 2008, when she said that Obama was "very lucky" to be black and that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in [his] position." Obama rightly noted that "anybody who knows the history of this country ... would not take too seriously the notion that [being black] has been a huge advantage."

But the meme nonetheless persists. In May, Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., said Obama's election "comes back to who he was: he was black." Now, it's Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who last week declared that "as an African American male," Obama received a "tremendous advantage from a lot of [government] programs."

Though Coburn's dog-whistle racism is (sadly) mundane, his statement is news because of its timing.

In the same week the Oklahoman insinuated that government gives African-Americans a "tremendous advantage," the New York Times reported on data showing black scientists are "markedly less likely" to win government grants than white scientists. A few weeks earlier, the Pew Research Center had reported that "the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households." These representative snapshots remind us that despite Denialist rhetoric, institutional racism and white privilege dominate American society.

This truth is everywhere. You can see it in black unemployment rates, which are twice as high as white unemployment rates -- a disparity that persists even when controlling for education levels. You can see it in a 2004 MIT study showing that job-seekers with "white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews" than job seekers with comparable résumés and "African American-sounding names." And you can see it in a news media that looks like an all-white country club and a U.S. Senate that includes no black legislators.

Denialists imply that this is all negated by Obama's success. But while his rise to the Oval Office certainly was an achievement, Obama was correct when, upon becoming Harvard Law Review's first black president in 1990, he said, "It's crucial that people don't see my election as somehow a symbol of progress in the broader sense, that we don't sort of point to a Barack Obama any more than you point to a Bill Cosby or a Michael Jordan and say 'Well, things are hunky dory.'"

Of course, things aren't "hunky dory" for most people in this recession -- but they are particularly awful for black Americans. Unfortunately, if you refuse to acknowledge that truth, there's a whole Church of Denialism ready to embrace you.
(c) 2010 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.






Drowning Government In A Hurricane (Why Wait for a Bathtub?)
By David Swanson

"Shrinking government" in American political discourse has, for decades now, meant the following. We enlarge the government's budget through taxation and penalties on working people and through borrowing and printing money. We not only tax the wealthy and corporations less, but we massively subsidize them with public funds. We move away from taxes and fees meant to limit the damage greed can do to the world, and we defund regulation of and law enforcement against the oligarchy. We transfer an ever greater share of the budget to the military. We expand the domestic and international surveillance-police states while merging the two. This, again, we call "shrinking government."

"Shrinking government" means a larger and more oppressive but less representative and less useful government. The military gets the money and gets privatized (employs non-competitive corporations working exclusively for the government). Education and public services get slashed and get privatized. Vote counting gets privatized. The privatized money gets to flow into election campaigns. The districts are re-gerrymandered with the latest modern technology. The media conglomerates get a monopoly and the monopoly limits electoral possibilities. "Shrinking government" means shrinking popular influence on government while government grows. But it grows in its ability to wage wars, occupy territories, and subsidize coal, oil, nuclear, and gas. It shrinks in its ability to give people anything in return for their taxes and fees. If this process continues it must result in ever greater repression or in revolt.

But why is THAT called "shrinking government"? It doesn't look like shrinking government.

It's called that in part because there is a movement from the right that talks about shrinking the government to a size that will permit drowning it in a bathtub. But a good portion of this movement wants to shrink everything except the military-police state, which is the most difficult thing to shrink. And the Republican politicians who co-opt this movement want to enlarge the military and police.

Perhaps more importantly, the Democrats and their loyal pseudo-activist groups want to protect or enlarge education and public services, but when it comes to the military they either want to enlarge it or are content to step aside and watch it grow. Advocates of tearing down everything useful in the government are winning, while advocates of making greater public use of government are losing, and so we talk about the "shrinking government" while the "security" budget balloons to $1.2 trillion per year.

I recently complained to the staffers of a large activist organization (which I'll be badgered for not naming, but which I am not naming because this exchange was on a confidential listserve) that they were producing television ads blaming "the Republicans" for everything. They replied that this was in fact a good way to alert the Democrats that if they became as bad as the Republicans they'd be criticized too.

How so, I asked. The Democrats split right down the middle on their votes for the Satan's Sandwich Super-Congress Budget-Destruction Deal. Half of them voted yes and half no. Didn't an ad blaming the Republicans signal to those Democrats who had voted Yes that they would have a free pass up until the moment they called themselves Republicans? Wouldn't it be better to address the government as the people, leave the parties out of it, praise those who did right, and pressure those who did wrong?

Oh no, I was told, nothing critical must be said of the government, because the right-wing position is that government is bad and must be "shrunk"; the good liberal position is that government is good.

But hold on a second, I replied, are you actually suggesting that the government isn't broken? We've got 85% of the country believing correctly that our government is broken, and you want to pretend it's working in order to avoid "shrinking" it?

The reply I received was that I was adopting a right-wing discourse by speaking of "government" in a manner that did not include firefighters and sanitation workers.

Huh?

We can't notice that our government is destroying the planet as a habitable space, slaughtering people, and impoverishing us because there are still fire fighters who put out fires and sanitation workers who clean streets (even though they sometimes now stand and watch houses burn, and even though they are being defunded by the part of the government that funds and defunds things)? The fact is that the government is broken. Any reality-based politics has to start there. The majority of Americans understand the solution to that problem as creating better government. It's only an obnoxious and intimidating fringe group that believes "government is broken" leads inevitably to "shrink government."

And so, we talk about the "shrinking government" because nobody will talk about the breaking government from the left. Not just groups, but individuals as well, have embedded their souls in the Democratic Party. They can only bring themselves to criticize the Republican Party while maintaining that, after all, the government is doing a pretty good job, even when the government is dominated by Republicans and right-wing Democrats who are at least as far to the right as the Republicans. This incoherence is created by liberal civilians, not presidential broken promises or pre-compromises or lack of resolve.

This is where hurricanes and earthquakes come in. "Shrinking government" is never going to get the thing down to the size that can be drowned in a bathtub, because it keeps growing as it "shrinks." But oil wars, fracking, clean coal, safe nukes, global warming, and the weirding of the weather are going to reach our government where its most sensitive nerves are situated: in its ass. The Pentagon sits along the Potomac River, and that river can do more damage than an airplane. The slaves who built the U.S. Capitol, and White House did not employ the latest earthquake-resistant technology. No array of metal-detectors, cancer-radiators, groping guards, or concrete barriers can withstand the quaking of the earth.

When the plagues of locusts reach Washington, no transformation to democracy will immediately result. The billions of dollars lost won't be credited to the renewable-energy side of the public ledger. The coastal homes of the gazillionaires will be rebuilt at public expense. Eric Cantor's district will suck down plenty of socialistic disaster relief. The Pentagon will be protected in ways that New Orleans just doesn't deserve. The machine will be oiled and tuned up and keep on rolling along.

But the chance of the public actively and effectively resisting ( http://october2011.org ) will increase, and the chance of certain Congress Members finding their consciences unprompted will increase as well.

I'm not hoping for natural disasters; and hoping for natural disasters doesn't actually cause them. I'm suggesting that as they come in greater strength and frequency, we be prepared to speak honestly about what is needed. It's not shrinking or growing the government. It's not rebuilding dreams or retaking parties or winning the future.

What's needed is independent resolve that government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."




Michigan's governor Rick Snyder




Michigan Locals Fight For Democracy

If Rick Snyder ever comes to help you, run away as fast and as far as you can.

Snyder is the right-wing, corporate-hugging governor of Michigan whose extremist anti-worker, anti-government agenda was handed to him by a Koch-funded front group named the Mackinac Center. Included in the package was a doozy of autocratic mischief-making called the Local Government Fiscal Accountability Act. The new law turns Synder into a perverse hybrid of a Soviet czar and a tinhorn banana republic potentate, and it has infuriated the public. Now trying to backpedal, the governor's new line is that, "It's about helping communities."

Helping? This law allows him to seize control of any city, county, school district, etc. that he decides is in fiscal trouble, authorizing him to appoint an "emergency manager," which may be a private corporation, to run the entity. This autocratic regent is empowered to cancel labor contracts, repeal the public budget, privatize government assets, dismiss elected officials, and even dissolve the local entity.

This is the kind of "help" that a fox brings to the hen house, so the governor is now being sued by his own astonished citizenry. Snyder's tyrannical law, they point out, violates the state's Constitution by usurping the right of local residents to elect their officials. As the director of a community legal group in Detroit puts it, the governor's designated emergency manager would control all, "including the right to enact or repeal local ordinances."

You might be thinking, "Thank goodness I don't live in Michigan." But if Snyder's anti-democratic coup succeeds there, you can bet that various Koch-backed right-wing front groups will bring the Michigan Model to your state. For information on the Michigan fight, contact Detroit's Sugar Law Center: www.sugarlaw.org.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








The U.S. & The Two-State Solution
By Helen Thomas

If the United States blocks the Palestinian petition for statehood in the United Nations in September, it will betray the great principles of our founding fathers.

Apparently that does not bother President Barack Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who seem to support Israel's occupation of Palestine.

How long will the U.S. support Israel's land grab? When will there be a courageous U.S. leadership to defy Israel's rule of the legitimate people of Palestine? Obama has indicated he plans to veto any move on behalf of the Palestinians.

Why does Israel have such a strong hold over Americans, especially Americans who are aware of the brutality of the Israel military against the Palestinians? The Israelis have literally stolen Palestinian farm land to build walls, and have cut off access to clean, fresh water. In many cases, Palestinians have to pay five times the price for fresh water as Israelis living in the same land.

How can the U.S. stand against a people who seek freedom from such brutal tyranny? The Palestinians have no other choice. They cannot continue to live barricaded behind walls, as Israel continues to take more and more of their land.

U.S. support for the Arab awakening may seem hypocritical if they vote against statehood for Palestinians. How can we support democracy in the Middle East - cheering Egyptians, Libyans and Tunisians who rebel from evil dictators - and not support the Palestinians' recognition as a state? Don't the Palestinians deserve to be free also?

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, has the support of all of the Arab countries and millions of Arab people who sympathize with the plight of their Palestinian brothers. The Arabs also support the goals of the Palestinians for self rule in land Israel annexed in defiance of international law.

The U.S. influence in the Arab and Islamic world is already on the decline. Between our unwavering, blind support of Israel and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are arousing great hostility. Do we blame them?

The State of Israel was created almost immediately after British Colonial troops pulled out. The terrorist gangs Haganah, Irgun and Lehi formed the National Military Organization in Israel. They swept through, torturing and running helpless Palestinians out of their once peaceful villages.

President Harry S. Truman was awakened at 3 a.m. by pro-Israeli Americans to recognize the State of Israel - which he shamelessly did.

Jews were horrifically persecuted and gassed by the Nazis, but this does not give them the right to inflict their revenge on the Arab people who did nothing to them.

We just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the freedom riders. I think back to the civil rights movement in our own country, and I am very proud of the many Jewish Americans who bravely risked their lives for the freedom of their American brothers. The Jews in this country led many of the peaceful protests, and persevered during impossible times. As a result, Civil Rights legislation was passed and history was literally changed.

Why have we given up on Israel? Many pro-Israeli Americans believe Israel has no choice but to use brutal force against the Palestinians. And yet, never in history has it ever worked to separate people we are fearful of, putting them behind walls. Why can't the Israelis take a lesson from their American brothers who used peaceful protests to evoke change? Walling people off and forcing them off of their land did not work for the South African government during the Apartheid era and it will not continue to be a sustainable path for Israel.

The only hope for peace in the Middle East is for both sides to replace fear with compassion. When we are driven by fear we will never truly achieve peace.

When I see how much power and influence the Pro-Israeli lobby has over our politicians, I wonder if they are fearful of not being reelected if they go against Israel.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee sponsored multiple junkets to Israel for both Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress and the Senate. Many Americans are probably unaware that AIPAC pays our representatives to visit Israel. This is yet another example of undue influence AIPAC has over American politicians.

In order to live up to our ideals and not be hypocritical, as a nation we need to press for a two-state solution in Israel.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Cheaper Environmentally Friendly Body Disposal
By James Donahue

Most people in America buy life insurance, a title that is in a sense an oxymoron. That is because the insurance has nothing to do with life. Instead it provides survivors the financial means to deal with death. And like everything else, the cost of dying has become very expensive.

The traditional way of dealing with the disposal of the remains of friends and relatives has, for years, been to get the person declared dead by a physician or certified mortician then send it by hearse to a funeral home. There the blood is drained and replaced with embalming fluid, a toxic formaldehyde that preserves the remains long enough for the family to hold three days of mourning over an open casket.

The mortician literally paints the body to make it appear as if the body is merely asleep. It then lies in state as people come to pay their respects and fill the room with flowers. This period lasts about three days. Then there is a funeral service, usually conducted by a religious leader. Sometimes people are hired to sing. Family and friends eulogize. Then the body is moved to a cemetery where it is lowered into a concrete encasement in the ground and sealed there for all time. The sealing of the coffin is now required by law to prevent the toxins formaldehyde and other chemicals injected into the person prior to death from seeping into the surrounding earth and ground water.

All-in-all, the traditional American funeral is a costly affair, ranging from $6000 to over $10,000, depending on how extravagant the family chooses to have it.

Now that hard times are back, and with most people living from paycheck-to-paycheck, providing they still have jobs, the option of cremation has grown in popularity. If the family chooses the cheap route, the cost of embalming, three days of mourning, buying and burying a casket and all of the other unnecessary customs can be skipped. Even at that, disposing of the remains by fire and smoke can cost up to $1,000 and we do not escape polluting the atmosphere. Other than secretly burying the remains in the orchard or dumping the body in a landfill, is there an even better and less costly alternative?

Artist and inventor Jae Rhim Lee, a Research Fellow in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology at Cambridge, MA, thinks she may have a better idea. She is working to train a toxin-cleaning mushroom that will feed on bodies. Her name for the concept is the Infinity Mushroom.

Lee, in a recent interview with New Scientist magazine, said she believes people need to develop a new way of thinking about death. The idea would be to simply place the deceased body inside a "mushroom death suit" where the mushrooms go to work, quickly consuming the remains.

Creating a workable death suit where mushrooms will do their work is not as easy as it sounds. Lee said mushrooms spores must have the right environment before they grow so the suit must be made of the right fabric and the body may even have to be covered with some kind of substance that will attract the mushrooms to it. But she thinks the idea is possible.

For the death suit to be accepted, however, people need to change their long-held traditional methods of disposing of the dead. That most people are too poor to pay the cost of a traditional funeral may be a big attraction.

"It's the idea that somehow death acceptance is needed for environmental stewardship," Lee told the magazine. "All the industrial toxins we emit into the atmosphere and the soil become part of our bodies. That is difficult to accept because it means we are also physical beings, animals, who will die and decay."
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






9/11
Ten Years Later, Americans Still Stupid And Vulnerable
By Ted Rall

They say everything changed on 9/11. No one can dispute that. But we didn't learn anything.

Like other events that forced Americans to reassess their national priorities (the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Sputnik) the attacks on New York and Washington were a traumatic, teachable moment.

The collective attention of the nation was finally focused upon problems that had gone neglected for many years. 9/11 was a chance to get smart—but we blew it.

First and foremost the attacks gave the United States a rare opportunity to reset its international reputation. Even countries known for anti-Americanism offered their support. "We are all Americans," ran the headline of the French newspaper Le Monde.

The century of U.S. foreign policy that led to 9/11—supporting dictators, crushing democratic movements, spreading gangster capitalism at the point of a thousand nukes—should and could have been put on hold and reassessed in the wake of 9/11.

It wasn't time to act. It was time to think.

It was time to lick our wounds, pretend to act confused, and play the victim. It was time to hope the world forgot how we supplied lists of pro-democracy activists to a young Saddam Hussein so he could collect and kill them, and forget the "Made in USA" labels on missiles shot into the Gaza Strip from U.S.-made helicopter gunships sold to Israel.

It was time, for once, to take the high road. The Bush Administration ought to have treated 9/11 as a police investigation, demanding that Pakistan extradite Osama bin Laden and other individuals wanted in connection with the attacks for prosecution by an international court.

Instead of assuming a temperate, thoughtful posture, the Bush Administration exploited 9/11 as an excuse to start two wars, both against defenseless countries that had little or nothing to do with the attacks. Bush and company legalized torture and ramped up support for unpopular dictatorships in South and Central Asia and the Middle East, all announced with bombastic cowboy talk.

Smoke 'em out! Worst of the worst! Dead or alive!

By 2003 the world hated us more than ever. A BBC poll showed that people in Jordan and Indonesia—moderate Muslim countries where Al Qaeda had killed locals with bombs—considered the U.S. a bigger security threat than the terrorist group.

In fairness to Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld and Bush's other leading war criminals, everyone else went along with them. The media refused to question them. Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, cast votes in favor of Bush's wars. Democrats and leftist activists ought to have pushed for Bush's impeachment; they were silent or supportive.

9/11 was "blowback"—proof that the U.S. can't wage its wars overseas without suffering consequences at home. But we still haven't learned that lesson. Ten years later, a "Democratic" president is fighting Bush's wars as well as new ones against Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Now he's saber-rattling against Syria.

American officials correctly inferred from 9/11 that security, particularly at airports but also in ports where container ships arrive daily from around the world, had been lax. Rather than act proactively to close gaps in transportation security, however, bureaucrats for the new Department of Homeland Security created a gauntlet of police-state harassment so onerous that it has threatened the financial health of the aviation industry.

"Aviation security is a joke, and it's only a matter of time before terrorists destroy another airplane full of innocent passengers," wrote Barbara Hollingsworth of The Washington Examiner after the 2009 "underwear bomber" scare. As Hollingsworth pointed out, the much-vaunted federal air marshals have been removed from flights because the TSA is too cheap to pay their hotel bills. (This is illegal.) What's the point of taking off your shoes, she asked, when planes are still serviced overseas in unsecured facilities? No one has provided an answer.

Ten years after 9/11, there is still no real security check when you board a passenger train or bus. Perhaps the sheer quantity of goods arriving at American ports makes it impossible to screen them all, but we're not even talking about the fact that we've basically given up on port security. While we're on the subject of post-9/11 security, what about air defenses? On 9/11 the airspace over the Lower 48 states was assigned to a dozen "weekend warrior" air national guard jets. Every last one of them was on the ground when the attacks began, allowing hijacked planes to tool around the skies for hours after they had been identified as dangerous.

Which could easily happen again. According to a 2009 report by the federal General Accounting Office on U.S. air defenses:

"The Air Force has not implemented ASA [Air Sovereignty Alert] operations in accordance with DOD, NORAD, and Air Force directives and guidance, which instruct the Air Force to establish ASA as a steady-state (ongoing and indefinite) mission. The Air Force has not implemented the 140 actions it identified to establish ASA as a steady-state mission, which included integrating ASA operations into the Air Force's planning, programming, and funding cycle. The Air Force has instead been focused on other priorities, such as overseas military operations."

Maybe if it stopped spending so much time and money killing foreigners the American government could protect Americans.

On 9/11 hundreds of firefighters and policemen died because they couldn't communicate on antiquated, segregated bandwidth. "Only one month away from the 10th anniversary of 9/11," admits FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, "our first responders still don't have an interoperable mobile broadband network for public safety. Our 911 call centers still can't handle texts or pictures or video being sent by the phones that everyone has."

Because the corporate masters of the Democratic and Republican parties love the low wage/weak labor environment created by illegal immigration, American land borders are intentionally left unguarded.

A lot changed on 9/11, but not everything.

We're still governed by corrupt idiots. And we're still putting up with them.

What does that say about us?
(c) 2011 Ted Rall is the author of the new books "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East,?" and "The Anti-American Manifesto."




You can see the corner Obama is in because he
didn't come out strongly for major solar, wind power, energy
conservation and immediate retrofit programs in 2009. (photo: Living Off Grid)




Sun And Sanity
By Ralph Nader

This is the second week of protests, led by Bill McKibben, in front of the White House demanding that President Barack Obama reject a proposed 1700 mile pipeline transporting the dirtiest oil from Alberta, Canada through fragile ecologies down to the Gulf Coast refineries. One thousand people will be arrested there from all fifty states before their demonstration is over. The vast majority voted for Obama and they are plenty angry with his brittleness on environmental issues in general.

Following the large BP discharge in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama gave the OK to expand drilling over 20 million acres in the Gulf and soon probably in the Arctic Ocean. He delayed clean air rules over at EPA. Following the worsening Fukishima nuclear disaster last March in Japan, he reaffirmed his support for more taxpayer guaranteed nuclear plants in the U.S. adding his Administration's hopes to learn from the mistakes there.

He proposed an average fuel efficiency standard for 2025 at 62 miles per gallon, quickly conceded to industry's objection and brought it down to 54 mpg. The industry's trade journal Automotive News calculated the loopholes and brought it down to "real-world industry wide fleet average in the 2025 model year" of about 40 mpg. No wonder the auto companies effusively praised Obama's give-it-up negotiator, Ron Bloom at the Treasury Department of all places.

Were Obama to look out his White House window and see the arrested and handcuffed demonstrators against this $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline, he might think: "This will upset my environmental supporters, but heck, where can they go in November 2012?"

He is right. No matter what Mr. Obama does to surrender environmental health and safety to corporatist demands, they will vote for him. They certainly won't vote for the Republican corporate mascots. They wouldn't vote for a Green Party candidate either. This is not only the environmentalists' dilemma, it is the liberal/progressive/labor union dilemma as well. They have no bargaining power with Obama.

He did not propose a carbon tax when the Democrats controlled Congress in 2009-2010. Even Exxon prefers a carbon tax to the corruption-inducing complex cap and trade bill the House passed only to have the Senate sit on it. So doing nothing on climate change is soon to be followed by approval of the destructive tar sands pipeline which will add significantly to greenhouse gases.

Pipelines have been busting out recently in California, near Yellowstone and in Pennsylvania. People died and water was polluted. Pipeland standards are old, weak and hardly enforced by the tiny pipeline safety office at the Department of Transportation. Obama hasn't been pushing for needed money and stronger standards with tougher enforcement.

Over-riding, in Obama's mind, is being accused of blocking job formation. But had he pushed for a major public-works program in 2009, as many economists still beg him to do, he wouldn't be in the position of being called a job-destroyer. He also is sensitive to rebuttable charges that he would be preferring future oil from unfriendly countries abroad to Canadian oil.

You can see the corner he is in because he didn't come out strongly for major solar, wind power, energy conservation and immediate retrofit programs in 2009. Instead he swallowed the oil industry line that his proposed energy policy should be a mix of fossil fuels, nuclear power, solar and conservation in that order. No, Mr. Obama, some energy sources are too superior in too many ways to be a part of this manipulative greenwashing propaganda displayed in oil company newspaper ads.

Even nature contradicts Mr. Obama. Obama's Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently gave a pass to the Indian Point Unit 2 Reactor, a menacingly-troubled reactor 30 miles north of Manhattan, after its inspectors discovered a refueling-cavity liner had been leaking for years at rates up to 10 gallons per minute. Just last week the strongest earthquake in 140 years struck the east coast. Even though the liner's "sole safety function is the prevention of leakage after a seismic event," according to David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the NRC did not require the plant's owner to repair the design defect.

This is only one of many defects, inspection lapses, close calls, corrosions, and ageing problems with many U.S. nuclear plants that Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu and President Obama have not seriously addressed. This is the case even though the news from Fukishima becomes worse every week. More food is found contaminated. Radiation readings at the site reached their highest level in August. Now the Japanese government is about to declare a wide area around the nine destroyed or disabled nuclear plants uninhabitable for decades to come due to radiation.

Nearly fifty years ago, the industry regulator and vigorous promoter, the Atomic Energy Commissions estimated that a class nine nuclear meltdown in the U.S. would contaminate "an area the size of Pennsylvania." That was before we had dozens of even larger ageing nuclear plants whose owners are brazenly pressing for license extensions beyond the normal life expectancy of many over-the-hill nuke plants. Please face up to it Mr. President.

At moments of reflection, those 1000 citizens standing tall before the White House must look up at the sun and all the forms of available renewable energy it gave this planet zillions of years ago and wonder how nuts our life-sustaining star must think Earthlings have been all these years.
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.







Saving Sacred Spaces
Make Some Noise to Ward Off an Avalanche of Avarice
By Randall Amster

You might not be aware of this news from northern Arizona, since the reporting of it in the media has been less than robust, but in recent weeks there have been dozens of arrests at the Snowbowl ski expansion site in the San Francisco Peaks, just outside of Flagstaff. Following years of rancorous public debate and coming on the heels of circuitous court proceedings, the developers of the site have begun excavation in order to expand the slopes and lay a pipeline for the bringing of wastewater to make artificial snow on the mountain.

Can you say, "yuck" (expletive implied)? Shortsighted thinking, combined with unaddressed health risks and insufficient environmental impact assessments, threatens to turn these Sacred Peaks into yet another sacrifice zone for the sake of a buck. This is "dirty money" in every sense of the phrase, from digging into the home of the native kachinas to trampling on the integrity of the earth beneath our feet.

For the Hopi in particular, the kachinas (spirit beings that represent manifestations of nature) -including the well-known fertility deity, Kokopelli -are said to live on the Peaks. Thirteen local tribes accord religious significance to the Peaks, including the Havasupai, Zuni, and Navajo, for whom the Peaks represent the sacred mountain of the west, called the Dook'o'oostiid.

The development of the Peaks has been a longstanding point of contention, dating to the earliest days of Forest Service-sanctioned recreational development in the 1930s. In the early 1980s, when outside investors sought to greatly expand the ski area on the Peaks, the tribes unsuccessfully sued to block the expansion as a violation of their religious freedom. In 2008, additional major expansions were announced by developers, including the use of reclaimed sewage effluent to make artificial snow. Another suit followed, in which native elders testified in federal court as to the Peaks' essential spiritual significance. The tribes initially won this lawsuit, but it was reversed on appeal, and the development is now proceeding despite numerous concerns about both the cultural issues as well as the health effects of wastewater, including the presence of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other potential endocrine disruptors.

The net effect has been to squarely raise the pointed query: is nothing sacred anymore? This is not a rhetorical question. The answer will decide whether our essential humanity has a future in a world increasingly dominated by technological abstractions and the relentless pursuit of profit over the interests of people and places.

I know that some may be uncomfortable with invocations of the sacred, preferring that arguments remain grounded in rational "facts." In the case of Snowbowl, however, the facts have been argued for years in city council proceedings, legal briefs, Forest Service public comment processes, and more. Still, the powerful interests aren't listening, and the excavators are now rolling, making it necessary to dig a bit deeper into ourselves (and our comfort zones) in order to keep these special mountains from being dug into any further.

Would it help if nature had "In God We Trust" stamped on it, or if you had to raise your right hand and swear an oath before entering it? Perhaps then people would be okay with icons like the Peaks being called "sacred" -a word which, by the way, derives in part from the idea of being "set apart" or remaining "whole." Can't we have even a few places in our midst set apart from human conquest?

Prioritizing the recreational desires of the leisure class over the spiritual and cultural needs of indigenous nations is a travesty of historical proportions. But it isn't just native consciousness that suffers in this process; the exploiters eventually render their own habitat unlivable and, in the process, sow the seeds of their own destruction as well.

Whatever your views on the environment, surely we can agree that some places simply ought to remain wild, if only as symbolic reminders of the natural wellspring from whence come the essentials of human existence. Symbols matter -just ask the advertising industry. Relegating the most iconic geographical feature in this region to the status of just another place for wanton development represents a narrow-minded, and ultimately self-defeating, enterprise.

If you've ever been up to the Peaks, or similarly intact habitats in your bioregion, you can attest to their special qualities as a pristine landscape rife with biodiversity and life-giving properties. Visible from a hundred miles in any direction and adjacent to the Grand Canyon to the northwest, these mammoth desert mountains reflect the austere beauty of the region, asking us to recall a healthy humility to balance our heartless hubris. Indeed, ecologists have found the Peaks to contain six distinct "life zones" (Sonoran desert, Pinyon-juniper woodlands, Ponderosa pine forest, mixed conifer forest, spruce-fir forest, and alpine tundra) in an arid region where life in general is arduous and oftentimes a struggle to sustain.

The residents and activists protesting the further desecration of the Peaks are keenly aware of the magnitude of the stakes involved. When explicitly sacred areas are subject to the developer's merciless blade, it renders everything disposable. The anachronism of skiing in the desert likewise connotes an attitude of human superiority that turns the world -including the people in it -into little more than a commodity to be bought and sold according to the whims of an unsustainable market ideology.

Against this narrative of relentless commodification, activists have been working to tell another story. Among those recently arrested in defense of these sacred vestiges were Klee Benally, filmmaker, activist, and lead singer of the internationally-renowned native punk band, Blackfire. As he was chained to an excavator, Benally -who has been deeply committed to the cause for years, including making the award-winning film, The Snowbowl Effect -spoke about his motivations: "This is not a game. This is not for show. This is not for the media. This is to stop this desecration from happening."

Also arrested for attempting to halt the destruction was noted local author Mary Sojourner, who addressed the crowd that had gathered in support of the activists as she was being handcuffed and led away: "I took action not just for the Mountain, but … so that older women and men would see that one doesn't have to be young to stand up for a place and community that you love."

Friends, foes, fellow community members, and far-away readers -please heed these voices. The time to sit idly by and watch the remaining natural landmarks in our midst be sacrificed on the altar of greed has long since passed. Visit truesnow.org to find out how you can help, and make some noise to save sacred spaces and forestall the ongoing avalanche of avarice wherever you are.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).








Republicans Against Science
By Paul Krugman

P Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn't a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that's too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. -namely, that it is becoming the "anti-science party." This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

To see what Mr. Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the G.O.P. nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as "just a theory," one that has "got some gaps in it" -an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples' attention was what he said about climate change: "I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change."

That's a remarkable statement -or maybe the right adjective is "vile."

The second part of Mr. Perry's statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming -which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences -is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.

In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.

But never mind that, Mr. Perry suggests; those scientists are just in it for the money, "manipulating data" to create a fake threat. In his book "Fed Up," he dismissed climate science as a "contrived phony mess that is falling apart."

I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, which asserts that thousands of scientists all around the world are on the take, with not one willing to break the code of silence. I could also point out that multiple investigations into charges of intellectual malpractice on the part of climate scientists have ended up exonerating the accused researchers of all accusations. But never mind: Mr. Perry and those who think like him know what they want to believe, and their response to anyone who contradicts them is to start a witch hunt.

So how has Mr. Romney, the other leading contender for the G.O.P. nomination, responded to Mr. Perry's challenge? In trademark fashion: By running away. In the past, Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has strongly endorsed the notion that man-made climate change is a real concern. But, last week, he softened that to a statement that he thinks the world is getting hotter, but "I don't know that" and "I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans." Moral courage!

Of course, we know what's motivating Mr. Romney's sudden lack of conviction. According to Public Policy Polling, only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates, one that Mr. Romney is determined to pass at all costs.

So it's now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party's base wants him to believe.

And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change.

Lately, for example, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page has gone beyond its long-term preference for the economic ideas of "charlatans and cranks" -as one of former President George W. Bush's chief economic advisers famously put it -to a general denigration of hard thinking about matters economic. Pay no attention to "fancy theories" that conflict with "common sense," the Journal tells us. Because why should anyone imagine that you need more than gut feelings to analyze things like financial crises and recessions?

Now, we don't know who will win next year's presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world's greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges -environmental, economic, and more -that's a terrifying prospect.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms."
~~~ John Stockwell, former CIA official









Dead Sirte
Another Murderous Twist in NATO's Coil of Lies
By Chris Floyd

I was going to write about the NATO bombing of Sirte, where in order "protect civilians" from the now non-existent regime of Moamar Gadafy, the humanitarian lords of the West are now killing civilians at the behest of the new, non-elected regime of the murky and murderous "Transitional National Council."

But as I sat down to the keyboard, I saw that Craig Murray was already on the case. Murray, you'll recall, was the courageous UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who dared expose the horrific tortures being practiced by the "friendly" regime there, which was acting as one of the many foreign proxies for the Anglo-American "war on terror." For his pains, he was dismissed, demonized, marginalized. (And accused at one point of being "psychologically disturbed;" why else would anyone oppose the benevolent policies of our humanitarian honchos?)

Here is his quick take on the attack on Sirte:

The disconnect between the UN mandate to protect civilians while facilitating negotiation, and NATO's actual actions as the anti-Gadaffi forces' air force and special forces, is startling.

There is something so shocking in the Orwellian doublespeak of NATO on this point that I am severely dismayed. ... I had hoped that the general population in Europe is so educated now that obvious outright lies would be rejected. I even hoped some journalists would seek to expose lies. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

The "rebels" are actively hitting Sirte with heavy artillery ... they are transporting tanks openly to attack Sirte. Yet any movement of tanks or artillery by the population of Sirte brings immediate death from NATO air strike.

What exactly is the reason that Sirte's defenders are threatening civilians, but the artillery of their attackers - and the bombings themselves - are not? Plainly this is a nonsense. People in foreign ministries, NATO, the BBC and other media are well aware that it is the starkest lie and propaganda, to say the assault on Sirte is protecting civilians. But does knowledge of the truth prevent them from peddling a lie? No.

It is worth reminding everyone something never mentioned, that UNSCR 1973 which established the no fly zone and mandate to protect civilians had

"the aim of facilitating dialogue to lead to the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution;"

... Plainly the people of Sirte hold a different view to the "rebels" as to who should run the country. NATO have in effect declared being in Gadaffi's political camp a capital offence. There is no way the massive assault on Sirte is "facilitating dialogue". it is rather killing those who do not hold the NATO-approved opinion. That is the actual truth. It is extremely plain.

I have no time for Gadaffi. I have actually met him, and he really is nuts, and dangerous. There were aspects of his rule in terms of social development which were good, but much more that was bad and tyrannical. But if NATO is attacking him because he is a dictator, why is it not attacking Dubai, Bahrain, Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, or Uzbekistan, to name a random selection of badly governed countries?

"Liberal intervention" does not exist. What we have is the opposite; highly selective neo-imperial wars aimed at ensuring politically client control of key physical resources.

Wars kill people. Women and children are dying now in Libya, whatever the sanitised media tells you. The BBC have reported it will take a decade to repair Libya's infrastructure from the damage of war. That in an underestimate. Iraq is still decades away from returning its utilities to their condition in 2000.

I strongly support the revolutions of the Arab Spring. But NATO intervention does not bring freedom, it brings destruction, degradation and permanent enslavement to the neo-colonial yoke. From now on, Libyans -- like us -- will be toiling to enrich western bankers. That, apparently, is worth to NATO the reduction of Sirte to rubble.

All too true. The only slight demurral I might make is with this is Murray's surprise at the disconnect between the noble-sounding natterings of NATO's nabobs and the murderous reality of their actions. (Of course, Murray himself notes that "I suffer from that old springing eternal of hope, and am therefore always in a state of disappointment..") There isn't anything startling about the way the Libyan adventurism has played out. It has followed the old Kosovo template nearly to the letter, with most of the same outright lies by the leaders and self-blinding justifications by the "serious" commentariat.

Murray is quite right to point to the "sanitized" version of the war that we have gotten. No doubt in the months and years to come, the true death toll notched up by the humanitarians will come out ... in dribs and drabs, in obscure corners, or even -- why not? -- in a "major" feature in a respectable publication, whose years-late revelations will be swiftly brushed aside and forgotten. (Like the LA Times' award-winning, multi-part expose in the 1990s of the corrupt and criminal machinations that led up to the first Gulf War.) After all, we live in a militarist-corporatist-police state, but not a totalitarian one; information is out there, facts can be obtained, trenchant criticism can be found -- you can go and see Noam Chomsky speaking in public any time you like. Our masters learned long ago that manipulating and massaging information (and misinformation) is much more effective, and longer-lasting, than attempts at total suppression and control.

Thus Craig Murray was not jumped in an alleyway, or killed in an obscure and ambiguous "accident" of some sort, as might have happened in imperiums of old. He was simply shunted to the sidelines and rendered "unserious" by official disapproval.

But however they twist and torment the facts, the truth remains what it is. And the truth is that we are seeing, yet again, in Libya is the murder, in our name, of innocent people by the preening, lying, self-righteous, silk-suited thugs of NATO.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd







Deceit Of Shakespearean Proportions
by Robert Scheer

Behold this unctuous knave, a disgrace to his nation as few before him, yet boasting unvarnished virtue. The deceit of Dick Cheney is indeed of Shakespearean proportions, as evidenced in his new memoir. For the former vice president, lying comes so easily that one must assume he takes the pursuit of truth to be nothing more than a reckless indulgence.

Here is a man who, more than anyone else in the Bush administration, trafficked in the campaign of deceit that caused tens of thousands to die, wasted trillions of dollars in resources and indelibly sullied the legacy of this nation through the practice of torture, which Cheney defends to this day. Still this villain claims that, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the horrid methods he endorsed were a necessary response to the threat of Osama bin Laden. How convenient to ignore that it was Barack Obama, a resolutely anti-torture president, who made good on the promise of Cheney and the previous administration to take down the al-Qaida leader.

Not to mention that bin Laden was killed in his hiding place in Pakistan, a nation that the Bush administration had befriended after 9/11 by lifting the sanctions previously imposed in retaliation for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, a program connected with the proliferation of nuclear weapons know-how and the sale of nuclear material to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Pakistan joined with only two other nations, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in granting diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government that provided a safe haven for al-Qaida as bin Laden orchestrated the 9/11 attack. But instead of focusing on the source of the problem, Cheney led the effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who had ruthlessly hounded any al-Qaida operatives who dared function in Iraq.

You don't have to slog too deeply through Dick Cheney's advertisement for himself to grasp not only the wicked cynicism of the man but also how shallow are his perceptions. He recalls his college years in the 1960s, when he was a draft-deferred young Republican during America's murderous adventure in Vietnam-in which more than 3 million Indochinese and 59,000 Americans were killed-as a time of career advancement through strategic Washington appointments.

The war that left Martin Luther King Jr. condemning his own government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" is condemned in Cheney's memoir only for the reactive violence that he attributes to anti-war student protesters. We are told, in a reminiscence of his days as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, that "in May 1969, students threw rocks and bottles at police trying to shut down a party on Mifflin Street," but there is nothing of napalmed Vietnamese or U.S. troops in body bags.

That same May, young Cheney's Republican contacts in Washington would pay off when he secured an appointment in the Nixon administration working for none other than Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney recalls that he didn't know he was "signing up for a forty-year career in politics and government-but that was exactly the right call."

Those 40 years, interrupted by a lucrative stint at defense contractor Halliburton, saw Cheney rise to become secretary of defense and later vice president, presiding over wars that put him in considerable conflict with Colin Powell. It is Powell-who was experiencing the reality of war in Vietnam at the time Cheney was winning bureaucratic battles in Washington-who is scorned in Cheney's memoir as the hopeless dove.

It was the more cautious war veteran Powell who, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Iraq war, proved to be far more effective as a leader than Cheney, who was then secretary of defense. What is confirmed by Cheney's memoir is that he seized upon the second Iraq invasion as a way of settling scores with his adversary by assuming the role of an ultra-militarist.

Powell, who, inside the administration, clearly opposed the invasion of Iraq-"If you break it, you own it"-was cast as a puppet who in a dramatic appearance before the United Nations lied to the world when he said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But despite Powell's woefully misplaced sense of loyalty to President George W. Bush, Cheney is merciless in condemning the general for allegedly undermining the administration. Powell has fired back at what he termed Cheney's "cheap shots" and reminds us that "Mr. Cheney and many of his colleagues did not prepare for what happened after the fall of Baghdad."

It is not clear that Cheney is a true believer in military mayhem as much as he is an uncontrollable careerist who finds war talk a convenient tool for advancement. He seems to have no real sense of the cost of the Iraq War beyond what it might have done to hurt his own legacy. If his memoir has any enduring value, it is not as another offering of hollow excuses for an unjustifiable war but rather as a study in what the famed historian of European fascism, Hannah Arendt, termed the "banality of evil."
(c) 2011 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. A journalist with over 30 years experience, Scheer has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.





The Dead Letter Office...





David gives the Corpo-rat salute.

Heil Obama,

Dear Deputy Fuhrer Petraeus,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your support of the Crime Family Bush's and Obamahoods many illegal wars, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Military Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 09-05-2011. We salute you Herr Petraeus, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





The Democrats' Rural Rebellions
By John Nichols

Democrats looking to Washington during the long, hot summer for signs of their party's renewal got little in the way of relief. President Obama's approval ratings tanked after he compromised away historic Democratic positions in the debt-ceiling fight. The party's Congressional leaders, who in the spring had seemed prepared to fight off Republican attempts to erode Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, sent so many mixed signals that it was difficult to tell whether the party wanted to fight austerity or embrace it.

Yet beyond the Beltway, a different story has been unfolding. And it holds out promise for a party that needs not just hope but a coherent strategy for the 2012 election season. Dramatic overreach by newly elected Republican governors, who sought to curtail labor rights, undermine local democracy and slash spending for education and local services, has provoked a backlash that draws stark ideological and political lines on fundamental economic questions. And that is winning substantial Democratic victories in unexpected territory, including rural areas where the party suffered its greatest setbacks in 2010.

In Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker and his allies stripped most collective bargaining rights from public employees and teachers in an attempt to render public unions toothless, unions and their allies bit back. The same Wisconsinites who protested in the streets in February and March forged a grassroots recall campaign against the politicians who had denied the will of the people. The initiative so rattled Walker's Republicans that they spent millions organizing recall campaigns against three Democratic senators from Republican-trending districts. That set up a summer of nine recall elections-all of them in districts that had voted for Walker in 2010.

Against an onslaught of outside spending by billionaire conservative donors and their front groups, Democrats defeated two Republican senators and retained all three of their incumbents. This gave the Democrats a 5-4 winning record and a majority of the votes cast in districts that had favored Walker by higher margins than the rest of the state had just nine months earlier. The results collapsed the GOP advantage from 19-14 in the Senate to 17-16, meaning that Democrats and a moderate Republican who broke with Walker on the collective bargaining issue can form a majority to block the governor's most extreme initiatives. That's not the clear control Democrats had wanted, of course, but even the Senate's Republican leader says the emphasis now will have to be on cooperation. And Walker-whose approval ratings are lower than Obama's-is talking up bipartisanship as he scrambles to avert a recall threat to his tumultuous tenure.

Ohio Governor John Kasich, an ideological soulmate of Walker's, got the message. After the Wisconsin results were announced, Kasich began pleading with opponents to help him rework legislation he had signed to undermine collective bargaining rights in Ohio. His hope was to thwart a November referendum that seeks to overturn the law using an old reform tool that allows voters to veto offensive legislation. Taking a signal from Wisconsin, and from Ohio's own remarkable effort to collect 1.3 million signatures (four times the necessary total) to qualify the statewide vote, the We Are Ohio coalition's Melissa Fazekas declared, "We're glad that Governor Kasich and the other politicians who passed SB 5 are finally admitting this is a flawed bill. Just like the bill was flawed, this approach to a compromise is flawed as well. Our message is clear. These same politicians who passed this law could repeal it and not thwart the will of the people."

There's a confidence level on display in the states that goes far beyond what is being heard in Washington these days. It is rooted in the fact that state-based Democrats have found winning issues in their fights to defend labor rights, public services and public education against a GOP austerity agenda that cuts taxes for billionaires and corporations while placing greater burdens on working families in a period of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. In New Hampshire, where Republicans scored unprecedented victories in 2010, the GOP is losing House seats in special elections that have turned on the question of whether legislators will override Democratic Governor John Lynch's veto of an antilabor "right to work" law.

In Maine, where Governor Paul LePage may well be the most extreme of the new Republican leaders, Democrats are not just winning special elections. They are seeing spikes of nearly 20 percent over the party's 2010 vote totals for candidates who bluntly declare that they are determined to fight the LePage agenda, which has extended so far as to attack child-labor protections. The national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee notes that Democrats are running on average nine points better than they did in the same districts in 2010. And the DLCC says they are "performing as well now as they were in [the 2008] election-and in fact winning additional seats lost in that election," as was the case with the defeat of the two Wisconsin Republican senators who survived the Obama landslide.

Perhaps most remarkable is where the Democrats are winning. Most of the recall elections in Wisconsin, as well as many of the special elections in other states, have taken place not in cities but in rural areas. Of the forty Wisconsin counties that were entirely or partially in Senate districts that saw recall races, twenty-three voted Democratic, and four more gave the Democrats 49 percent or more of the vote. Democrats were not just winning counties that voted for Walker in 2010; they even won several counties that voted for John McCain in 2008. That's a big, big deal, because the national Democratic setbacks in 2010 came overwhelmingly in rural areas, with thirty-nine US House seats in the most rural Congressional districts flipping from the Democrats to the Republicans. That represents two-thirds of GOP Congressional gains, and it parallels patterns that tipped gubernatorial elections and control of legislative chambers.

President Obama and the DC Democrats know they must do better in rural areas; that was the whole point of the president's mid-August bus tour of small-town Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. But the president and his aides still don't quite get what's working at the grassroots. It's not soft messaging about rural development, and it's certainly not comments like the one Obama made in Iowa about the need for "shared sacrifice" from teachers and public employees, who long ago began taking cuts to help balance local and state budgets. What's working is a clear "Which side are you on?" message when it comes to defending rural schools and services, and the teachers and public employees who provide them, against a Republican austerity message that shifts even more of the burden from the wealthy to working families.

"Schools and services are what keep small towns strong," says Wisconsin Senate Democratic leader Mark Miller, who represents a number of rural communities. "If the fight is between Democrats who want to defend pubic schools, public services, and Republicans who want to sacrifice them in order to give tax breaks to the rich, that's when you'll see rural voters shifting back to the Democrats. It's started working in Wisconsin, it will work in Ohio and, if they get the message in Washington, it will work nationally in 2012."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







How To Lose Readers (Without Even Trying)
By Sam Harris

Do you have too many readers of your books and articles? Want to reduce traffic on your blog? It turns out, there is a foolproof way to alienate many of your fans, quickly and at almost no cost.

It took me years to discover this publishing secret, but I'll pass it along to you for free:

Simply write an article suggesting that taxes should be raised on billionaires.

Really, it's that simple!

You can declare the world's religions to be cesspools of confusion and bigotry, you can argue that all drugs should be made legal and that free will is an illusion. You can even write in defense of torture. But I assure you that nothing will rile and winnow your audience like the suggestion that billionaires should contribute more of their wealth to the good of society.

This is not to say that everyone hated my last article ("How Rich is Too Rich?"), but the backlash has been ferocious. For candor and concision this was hard to beat:

You are scum sam. unsubscribed.

Unlike many of the emails I received, this one made me laugh out loud-for rarely does one see the pendulum of human affection swing so freely. Note that this response came, not from a mere visitor to my blog, but from someone who had once admired me enough to subscribe to my email newsletter. All it took was a single article about the problem of wealth inequality to provoke, not just criticism, but loathing.

The following should indicate the general gloom that has crept over my inbox:

I will not waste my time addressing your nonsense point-by-point, but I certainly could and I think in a more informed way than many economists-whose credentials you seem to think are necessary for your consideration of a response. Do you see what an elitist ass that makes you seem? I think you should stick to themes you know something about such as how unreasonable religion is. I am sure I am not the only one whose respect you lose with your economic ideology.

Nothing illustrates why people should not leave their comfort zones than this egregiously silly piece….You make such good points about the importance of skeptical inquiry and about how difficult it is to truly know something that your soak the rich comments are, as a good man once said, not even wrong. Take care.

Sorry Sam. I used to praise and promote your works. You've lost me. Your promotion of theft by initiating force on others is unforgivable. You're just a thug now, attempting cheap personal gratification by broadcasting signals which cost you nothing, just like Warren Buffett.

Many readers were enraged that I could support taxation in any form. It was as if I had proposed this mad scheme of confiscation for the first time in history. Several cited my framing of the question-"how much wealth can one person be allowed to keep?"-as especially sinister, as though I had asked, "how many of his internal organs can one person be allowed to keep?"

For what it's worth-and it won't be worth much to many of you-I understand the ethical and economic concerns about taxation. I agree that everyone should be entitled to the fruits of his or her labors and that taxation, in the State of Nature, is a form of theft. But it appears to be a form of theft that we require, given how selfish and shortsighted most of us are.

Many of my critics imagine that they have no stake in the well-being of others. How could they possibly benefit from other people getting first-rate educations? How could they be harmed if the next generation is hurled into poverty and despair? Why should anyone care about other people's children? It amazes me that such questions require answers.

Would Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, rather have $10 billion in a country where the maximum number of people are prepared to do creative work? Or would he rather have $20 billion in a country with the wealth inequality of an African dictatorship and commensurate levels of crime?[1] I'd wager he would pick door number #1. But if he wouldn't, I maintain that it is only rational and decent for Uncle Sam to pick it for him.

However, many readers view this appeal to State power as a sacrilege. It is difficult to know what to make of this. Either they yearn for reasons to retreat within walled compounds wreathed in razor wire, or they have no awareness of the societal conditions that could warrant such fear and isolation. And they consider any effort the State could take to prevent the most extreme juxtaposition of wealth and poverty to be indistinguishable from Socialism.

It is difficult to ignore the responsibility that Ayn Rand bears for all of this. I often get emails from people who insist that Rand was a genius-and one who has been unfairly neglected by writers like myself. I also get emails from people who have been "washed in the blood of the Lamb," or otherwise saved by the "living Christ," and who insist that they are now praying for my soul. It is hard for me to say which of these sentiments I find less compelling.

As someone who has written and spoken at length about how we might develop a truly "objective" morality, I am often told by followers of Rand that their beloved guru accomplished this task long ago. The result was Objectivism-a view that makes a religious fetish of selfishness and disposes of altruism and compassion as character flaws. If nothing else, this approach to ethics was a triumph of marketing, as Objectivism is basically autism rebranded. And Rand's attempt to make literature out of this awful philosophy produced some commensurately terrible writing. Even in high school, I found that my copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged simply would not open.

And I say this as someone who considers himself, in large part, a "libertarian"-and who has, therefore, embraced more or less everything that was serviceable in Rand's politics. The problem with pure libertarianism, however, has long been obvious: We are not ready for it. Judging from my recent correspondence, I feel this more strongly than ever. There is simply no question that an obsession with limited government produces impressive failures of wisdom and compassion in otherwise intelligent people.

Why do we have laws in the first place? To prevent adults from behaving like dangerous children. All laws are coercive and take the following form: do this, and don't do that, or else. Or else what? Or else men with guns will arrive at your door and take you away to prison. Yes, it would be wonderful if we did not need to be corralled and threatened in this way. And many uses of State power are both silly and harmful (the "war on drugs" being, perhaps, the ultimate instance). But the moment certain strictures are relaxed, people reliably go berserk. And we seem unable to motivate ourselves to make the kinds of investments we should make to create a future worth living in. Even the best of us tend to ignore some of the more obvious threats to our long term security.

For instance, Graham Alison, author of Nuclear Terrorism, thinks there is a greater than 50 percent chance that a nuclear bomb will go off in an American city sometime in the next ten years. (A poll of national security experts commissioned by Senator Richard Lugar in 2005 put the risk at 29 percent.) The amount of money required to secure the stockpiles of weapons and nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union is a pittance compared to the private holdings of the richest Americans. And should even a single incident of nuclear terrorism occur, the rich would likely lose more money in the resulting economic collapse than would have been required to secure the offending materials in the first place.

If private citizens cannot be motivated to allocate the necessary funds to mitigate such problems-as it seems we cannot-the State must do it. The State, however, is broke.

And lurking at the bottom of this morass one finds flagrantly irrational ideas about the human condition. Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.

Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky-and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky-and they did not deserve it. And yet I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren't born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic wisdom in some circles. And it is pernicious. Followers of Rand, in particular, believe that only a blind reliance on market forces and the narrowest conception of self interest can steer us collectively toward the best civilization possible and that any attempt to impose wisdom or compassion from the top-no matter who is at the top and no matter what the need-is necessarily corrupting of the whole enterprise. This conviction is, at the very least, unproven. And there are many reasons to believe that it is dangerously wrong.

Given the current condition of the human mind, we seem to need a State to set and enforce certain priorities. I share everyone's concern that our political process is broken, that it can select for precisely the sorts of people one wouldn't want in charge, and that fantastic sums of money get squandered. But no one has profited more from our current system, with all its flaws, than the ultra rich. They should be the last to take their money off the table. And they should be the first to realize when more resources are necessary to secure the common good.

In reply to my question about future breakthroughs in technology (e.g. robotics, nanotech) eliminating millions of jobs very quickly, and creating a serious problem of unemployment, the most common response I got from economists was some version of the following:

1. There ***IS*** a fundamental principle of economics that rules out a serious long-term problem of unemployment:
The first principle of economics is that we live in a world of scarcity, and the second principle of economics is that we have unlimited wants and desires.

Therefore, the second principle of economics: unlimited wants and desires, rules out long-term problem of unemployment.

2. What if we were having this discussion in the 1800s, when it was largely an agricultural-based economy, and you were suggesting that "future breakthroughs in farm technology (e.g. tractors, electricity, combines, cotton gin, automatic milking machinery, computers, GPS, hybrid seeds, irrigation systems, herbicides, pesticides, etc.) could eliminate millions of jobs, creating a serious problem of unemployment."

With hindsight, we know that didn't happen, and all of the American workers who would have been working on farms without those technological, labor-saving inventions found employment in different or new sectors of the economy like manufacturing, health care, education, business, retail, transportation, etc.

For example, 90% of Americans in 1790 were working in agriculture, and now that percentage is down to about 2%, even though we have greater employment overall now than in 1790. The technological breakthroughs reduced the share of workers in farming, but certainly didn't create long-term problems of unemployment. Thanks to "unlimited wants and desires," Americans found gainful employment in industries besides farming.

Mark J. Perry
Professor of Economics, University of Michigan, Flint campus and Visiting Scholar at The American Enterprise Institute and Carpe Diem Blog

As I wrote to several of these correspondents, I worry that the adjective "long-term" waves the magician's scarf a bit, concealing some very unpleasant possibilities. Are they so unpleasant that any rational billionaire who loves this country (and his grandchildren) would want to avoid them at significant cost in the near term? I suspect the answer could be "yes."

Also, it seemed to me that many readers aren't envisioning just how novel future technological developments might be. The analogy to agriculture doesn't strike me as very helpful. The moment we have truly intelligent machines, the pace of innovation could be extraordinarily steep, and the end of drudgery could come quickly. In a world without work everyone would be free-but, in our current system, some would be free to starve.

However, at least one reader suggested that the effect of truly game-changing nanotechnology or AI could not concentrate wealth, because its spread would be uncontainable, making it impossible to enforce intellectual property laws. The resultant increases in wealth would be free for the taking. This is an interesting point. I'm not sure it blocks every pathway to pathological concentrations of wealth-but it offers a ray of hope I hadn't seen before. It is interesting to note, however, what a strange hope it is: The technological singularity that will redeem human history is, essentially, Napster.

Fewer people wanted to tackle the issue of an infrastructure bank. Almost everyone who commented on this idea supported it, but many thought either (1) that it need not be funded now (i.e. We should take on more debt to pay for it) or (2) that if funded, it must be done voluntarily.

It was disconcerting how many people felt the need to lecture me about the failure of Socialism. To worry about the current level of wealth inequality is not to endorse Socialism, or to claim that the equal distribution of goods should be an economic goal. I think a certain level of wealth inequality is probably a very good thing-being both reflective and encouraging of differences between people that should be recognized and rewarded. There are people who can be motivated to work 100 hours a week by the prospect of getting rich, and they often accomplish goals that are very beneficial. And there are people who are simply incapable of making similar contributions to society. But do you really think that Steve Jobs would have retired earlier if he knew that all the wealth he acquired beyond $5 billion would be taxed at 90 percent? Many of people apparently do. However, I think they are being far too cynical about the motivations of smart, creative people.

Finally, many readers said something like the following:

If you or Warren Buffett want to pay more in taxes, go ahead. You are perfectly free to write the Treasury a check. And if you haven't done this, you're just a hypocrite.

Few people are eager to make large, solitary, and ineffectual sacrifices. And I was not arguing that the best use of Buffett's wealth would be for him to simply send it to the Treasury so that the government could use it however it wanted. I believe the important question is, how can we get everyone with significant resources to put their shoulders to the wheel at the same moment so that large goals get accomplished?

Imagine opening the newspaper tomorrow and discovering that Buffett had convened a meeting of the entire Forbes 400 list, and everyone had agreed to put 50 percent of his or her wealth toward crucial infrastructure improvements and the development of renewable energy technologies. I would like to believe that we live in a world where such things could happen-because, increasingly, it seems that we live in a world where such things must happen.

What can be done to bridge this gap?
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Adam Zyglis ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...





Internet Outages from Hurricane Could Force People to Interact with Other People, Officials Warn
FEMA: Prepare for Unwanted Eye Contact, Awkward Silences
By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - As Hurricane Irene prepared to batter the East Coast of the United States, federal disaster officials warned that Internet outages caused by the storm could force people to interact with other people for the first time in years. News of the possible interpersonal interactions created panic up and down the coast as residents braced themselves for the horror of awkward silences and unwanted eye contact.

And as officials warned people in the hurricane zone to stay indoors, residents feared the worst: conversations with members of their immediate family.

At the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA chief Craig Fugate offered these words of advice for those who may be forced into direct contact with other human beings: "Be prepared. Write down possible topics to talk about in advance. Sports is a good one, and of course the weather. Remember, a conversation is basically a series of Facebook updates strung together."

He also offered these words of hope for those trapped interacting with other people due to an Internet outage: "At some point, the wifi will go back on, and hopefully you won't have to go through anything like this again for a long, long time."

In a related story, the Rev. Pat Robertson said the best way to prepare for Hurricane Irene is not being gay.
(c) 2011 Andy Borowitz




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In This Edition

Noam Chomsky examines, "9/11 And The Imperial Mentality."

Uri Avnery warns Israel will soon unleash the, "Dogs Of War."

David Sirota considers, "The Lesson Of The Chinese Invasion."

David Swanson with a discovery, "I Just Found 29 Million Jobs."

Jim Hightower tells a few, "Perry Tales: job creation."

Helen Thomas reviews Cheney's new book, "In His Time."

James Donahue concludes that the, "Last Light Of Real Journalism Just Went Out."

Michael Winship finds, "Eric Cantor: Mean, Ornery And Just Plain Wrong."

Ralph Nader envisions, "Obama's Laborious Labor Day."

Mike Folkerth returns with, "Job Creation? I'm Thinkin' Not."

Paul Krugman explores, "The Fatal Distraction."

Chris Floyd explains, "He Who Gets Slapped."

Robert Scheer reminds us of, "How Little We Know About The Origins Of 9/11."

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!

John Nichols asks and answers, "How Will We Pay For Obama's New Jobs Push? Answer: Tax Wall Street."

Phil Rockstroh tells, "A Labor Day Tale Of Three Cities."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Onion reports, "Ongoing Iraqi Violence Almost Makes American Invasion Seem Pointless" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "Remember, Remember, The Eleventh Of September!"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Lalo Alcaraz, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Tom Tomorrow, Kevin Siers, Mike Wrathell, Erich Origen, Stuart Carlson, 9Q9Q.Com, Regisser.Com, The Onion, WikiLeaks, Life Magazine, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
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The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Remember, Remember, The Eleventh Of September!
By Ernest Stewart

"It is already possible to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, one very important thing: the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own government." ~~~ David Ray Griffin, Ph.D.

"I don't get Obama anymore - he can't even beat Boehner on what day his speech is? He's a Sphinx to me - by that I mean a giant pussy." ~~~ Bill Maher

"We are returning cash assistance to its original intent as a transitional program to help families while they work toward self-sufficiency." ~~~ Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

It's always something,
There's always something going wrong
That's the only guarantee,
That's what this is all about
Life Is A Lemon ~~~ Meatloaf

Well, gosh, how time flies when you're having fun, huh, America? Has it really been ten years since the PNAC project came to fruition?

You'll recall the proud PNAC statement on this subject, right?

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor"

You'll also remember that we knew about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor long before it happened, as the British had broken the J-25 purple naval code in March of 1941, and had given it to us in early May! Was 9/11 a conspiracy? You betcha it was. Did those two airliners bring down the WTC without the aid of explosives? Most probably not! Did Building Seven have some help for insurances' possibilities? Most likely. Having seen films of Building Seven's collapse, I have no doubt -- from the bow in the roof, to how it fell, it's like every other building I've seen brought down by explosives. Did Flight 93 crash because of heroic passengers, or was it shot down by a missile, like a dozen witnesses said? I'm voting for the missile -- a crashed airliner doesn't leave a debris field miles away, covering a lake. One shot down from 35,000 feet does!

Was that a plane or a missile that hit the Pentagon? Until I see definite proof, I'll go with the missile. The hole it left in the building was circular, no signs of wings or tail, and it punctured all five rings (ten strengthen walls) of the Pentagon, and left a circular hole through all of them, like a missile that's hardened for punching through concrete and steel. The FBI got all the film from cameras in the surrounding area -- in fact, from miles around; some of which should have clearly shown that airliner. They say they have such evidence, but in ten years have failed to release a thing. Doesn't it seem to be to their advantage to do so? It would end all those conspiracy thoughts in a heartbeat! I've no doubt if they really had such evidence, it would've been shown years ago!

But for the sake of argument, let's say that all the commission reports are true. They still don't explain why we didn't stop the plot -- we knew without a doubt that it was coming, who was behind it (again, for the sake of argument, let's say that it wasn't the CIA, PNAC and the Crime Family Bush), when it would happen, and what the targets would be. We knew because the spooks from eleven countries from England to Israel, Saudi Arabia to Germany, warned us that they knew.

In fact, yours truly predicted it back in July of 2001, and said so. I didn't get it quite correct, as I thought it would happen a week earlier and I thought the targets would include the CIA and NSA. Don't know why I didn't see the 9/11 thing. My bad! So if I could figure it out simply by mining world news, I'm sure our unelected government knew, too, without any outside help. Remember Kinda-sleazy said "I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." When Bush took a missile battery with him to Italy in the spring to the G-8 summit, because the Italian spooks stopped a plan to do the very same thing -- fly a hijacked airliner into the G-8 conference building. Later, when all this was brought out, she changed her story that we knew, but who could believe such a thing? Anyone that was paying attention, that's who, Kinda-sleazy! Oh, and did I mention that twelve times in the seven years before 9/11, the CIA reported that hijackers might use airplanes as weapons!??!

You'll recall in June, Bush stopped allowing airline pilots to carry side arms -- every president since JFK had allowed them to do so -- and a week later announced that no members of his government would fly commercial flights. What does that tell you? Then, of course, it was all over the European newspapers that a major attack was coming that summer; it wasn't all that hard to figure out the how and where it would go down. I figured it out by simple deductive reasoning. We figured out at the time that seven governments had warned us but when Tony (the Poodle's) main man Robin Cook who left Tony's cabinet and said that it was eleven different countries that had tried to warn us, then Robin committed "suicide" with the help of MI5! That knowledge brought up a question! The question was rather simple, and either way, there should be a lot of Rethuglican heads on stakes a long time ago. So, were they involved in the actual planning? Remember that Osama was a CIA spook, on their payroll up until September 12, 2001, or did they just let it happen? I could go on and on for hours with various pieces of evidence that point to the conspiracy, but life is short! Either way, they got the Pearl Harbor they were looking for, and changed the world for the worse ever since; in fact, it very well may be what destroys America as a world power.

To paraphrase V (and only Zeus knows who the original poet was) so Ya'll forgive me for this:

Remember, remember, the Eleventh of September
The airliner treason and plot
I know of no reason
Why the airliner treason
Should ever be forgot!

Do you know of a reason, America?

In Other News

Some of you have asked if I was going to wait and publish on Friday so as to wait and hear and comment upon Obamahood's speech on jobs Thursday night. Nope; what would be the point? It will be full of pretty words, sound and fury at the Rethuglicans, and signifying... can you guess... all together now... NOTHING! Not a god-damned thing!

Barry, who has spent most all of his tenure destroying jobs and making the rich richer, only now turns to the 50 million Americans who are unemployed or under-employed, as his ratings slide toward oblivion! Barry could've done great things for the middle and working classes when he had a majority in the House and Senate, but chose instead to fatten the bloated wallets of the elite, and leave the rest of us to blow in the wind. This not only cost him control of the House, but brought those wonderful brain-dead tea baggers into power, helping him destroy what's left of America. Now that 2012 looms large, he's turning back into the Barry who pretended to be a liberal, who said he'd work tirelessly for the people, instead of turning his back on them, and doing everything in his power to destroy the middle class.

The folks that turned out in Detroit were as dumb as dumb can be, not just the black folks who were gushing with pride over Obama partial blackness, but white unionists, who gave him an ovation every time words came out of his cake hole -- people who knew better, and yet cheered and applauded him at every chance. So, what's the point of tuning in Thursday night for some more shucking and jiving? 95% of what he promised to do back in 2008 has never reached the light of day, so why would I bother wasting my time listening to him tell some new lies? I will go to the online White House site and read the speech on Friday.

As to what his speech will entail, whether said out loud or read between-the-lines, it might be summed up by what he said in Detroit on Labor Day:

"So, I'm going to propose ways to put America back to work that both parties can agree to, because I still believe both parties can work together to solve our problems."

That's what I call belaboring over Labor Day! I'm going to repeat that again, for those of you on drugs...

Barry thinks that the Rethuglicans are willing to compromise with him and can be worked with for our benefit!

Well, hasn't that worked out well for America in the last 33 months? Can you think of single instance where Obamahood got them to agree to anything, without giving them not only what they wanted, but volunteering to give them things that even they would've never hoped to get! He gave them a million dollars and got us a dime in return! An incredible waste of the bully pulpit!

The highlight of the Detroit Labor Day event was when Jimmy's little boy, Teamsters President James Hoffa, made a speech before Obama took the stage. Hoffa likened union fights to a "war" and a "battle" between union workers and tea baggers. In his speech, he said about the tea baggers:

"Everybody here has got a vote. If we go back and we keep the eye on the prize. Let's take these sons of bitches out and give America back to America where we belong!"

And, believe you me, James knows how to take someone out! Just like his daddy, Jimmy, did--who got taken out himself, and became the fenders and hood of a 1978 Cadillac, after being taken out to dinner. More power to you, James! I have no doubt that if Barry is re-elected, he'll continue to do the same things which will continue the fall of America, the loss of millions of new jobs, and our continued slide down the road to the Third World! Trouble is, the Presidency of Rick Perry could make things even worse! Or not? We'll see!

And Finally

I see where our beloved fascist Governor Rick Hitler, er, Snyder, has just put the ink to a law that will throw 30,000 children out in the street, with a brutal Michigan winter coming on! Along with the kids, another 11,000 adults will find themselves out in the cold, with many more joining them everyday, starting October 1st.

Rick, the millionaire Rethuglican businessman, has spent his time in the Governor's shack giving Michigan tax money to his rich friends and the shaft to the people. I guess Rick thinks they can all go out and get a job with all those other millions in Michigan that are unemployed or under-employed as Michigan has the third highest unemployment rate in the nation. An unemployment rate of 10.9. With the folks that they don't count, you can double that rate to over 20%.

I wonder how many of the morons that voted Rick in will find themselves cast loose into the gale of this depression? I have no problem with them succumbing to their own stupidity as some folks are far too stupid to live -- just a culling of the herd -- but the children that will be hurt or murdered by this is quite another thing! And to throw them to the wolves is no doubt murder!

Of course, I wrote Rick a letter, but unfortunately I couldn't print it here as we have young folks that visit the magazine, and I came off sounding like a pissed-off, drunken sailor! Fortunately for Michigan, after January, we can impeach Rick, and send him back to Ann Arbor, but not into the frozen wastelands of Michigan in the winter; seems a pity, does it not? Rick says not to worry, because they can still get food stamps and Medicaid, which is, of course, bullshit, because you have to have an address to receive those. You also need a permanent address to enroll in school, and since it's illegal not to send your kids to school, I can see where the vast majority of those kids will be taken from their families. Perhaps Rick will open up the doors to his mansion just outside Ann Arbor so those 40,000 + folks can get a hot meal and a warm place to sleep and have a permanent address? What do you think, America? Do you think he will?

Keepin' On

Letters, we get letters, and one of those letters informed me that the Warren County Public Library of Bowling Green, KY has blocked Issues & Alibis on their computer system county-wide, in all five of their locations. So, you know what I did, don't you?

That's right, I wrote their director Lisa Rice a note asking why:

Dear Lisa,

It has come to my attention via several readers that your library system, i.e., the Warren County Public Library of Bowling Green, KY is blocking our news magazine Issues & Alibis http://www.issuesandalibis.org. Why? What other news organizations are being blocked? Is it just liberal sites? I'm sure our many readers would like to know why a library system would block the news? Was it done at the behest of Rand Paul?

Sincerely yours,
Ernest Stewart
Managing editor
Issues & Alibis Magazine

Don't get me wrong, folks; I take this as a badge of honor, just like when I made Nixon's enemies list! Still, a library system should be unbiased and neutral, shouldn't it? If you think it should, do call or write Lisa and let her know. Call or write Lisa at:

Lisa Rice
(270)781-4882 x202
lisar@warrenpl.org

This just in, Lisa wrote back saying that she's looking into it. I'll let you know how it turns out!

If this pisses you off and would like to see us keep fighting the good fight against the fascists, then please send us a donation so that we can keep it up and get blocked by every fascist library system in America. Seems to me a worthy goal! Think of the MSM news that would generate and the readership that would bring!

*****


04-13-1938 ~ 09-07-2011
Thanks for all that jazz!



*****

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So please help us if you can...?
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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.













9/11 And The Imperial Mentality
Looking Back on 9/11 a Decade Later
By Noam Chomsky

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. "He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them," Eric Margolis writes. "'Bleeding the U.S.,' in his words." The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden's trap... Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction... may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States" -- particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

That Washington was bent on fulfilling bin Laden's fervent wishes was evident at once. As discussed in my book 9-11, written shortly after those attacks occurred, anyone with knowledge of the region could recognize "that a massive assault on a Muslim population would be the answer to the prayers of bin Laden and his associates, and would lead the U.S. and its allies into a 'diabolical trap,' as the French foreign minister put it."

The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, wrote shortly after that "bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. [He] is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world," and largely succeeded: "U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden's only indispensable ally." And arguably remains so, even after his death.

The First 9/11

Was there an alternative? There is every likelihood that the Jihadi movement, much of it highly critical of bin Laden, could have been split and undermined after 9/11. The "crime against humanity," as it was rightly called, could have been approached as a crime, with an international operation to apprehend the likely suspects. That was recognized at the time, but no such idea was even considered.

In 9-11, I quoted Robert Fisk's conclusion that the "horrendous crime" of 9/11 was committed with "wickedness and awesome cruelty," an accurate judgment. It is useful to bear in mind that the crimes could have been even worse. Suppose, for example, that the attack had gone as far as bombing the White House, killing the president, imposing a brutal military dictatorship that killed thousands and tortured tens of thousands while establishing an international terror center that helped impose similar torture-and-terror states elsewhere and carried out an international assassination campaign; and as an extra fillip, brought in a team of economists -- call them "the Kandahar boys" -- who quickly drove the economy into one of the worst depressions in its history. That, plainly, would have been a lot worse than 9/11.

Unfortunately, it is not a thought experiment. It happened. The only inaccuracy in this brief account is that the numbers should be multiplied by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, the appropriate measure. I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called "the first 9/11": September 11, 1973, when the U.S. succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet's brutal regime in office. The goal, in the words of the Nixon administration, was to kill the "virus" that might encourage all those "foreigners [who] are out to screw us" to take over their own resources and in other ways to pursue an intolerable policy of independent development. In the background was the conclusion of the National Security Council that, if the US could not control Latin America, it could not expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world."

The first 9/11, unlike the second, did not change the world. It was "nothing of very great consequence," as Henry Kissinger assured his boss a few days later.

These events of little consequence were not limited to the military coup that destroyed Chilean democracy and set in motion the horror story that followed. The first 9/11 was just one act in a drama which began in 1962, when John F. Kennedy shifted the mission of the Latin American military from "hemispheric defense" -- an anachronistic holdover from World War II -- to "internal security," a concept with a chilling interpretation in U.S.-dominated Latin American circles.

In the recently published Cambridge University History of the Cold War, Latin American scholar John Coatsworth writes that from that time to "the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of non-violent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites," including many religious martyrs and mass slaughter as well, always supported or initiated in Washington. The last major violent act was the brutal murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, a few days after the Berlin Wall fell. The perpetrators were an elite Salvadorean battalion, which had already left a shocking trail of blood, fresh from renewed training at the JFK School of Special Warfare, acting on direct orders of the high command of the U.S. client state.

The consequences of this hemispheric plague still, of course, reverberate.

From Kidnapping and Torture to Assassination

All of this, and much more like it, is dismissed as of little consequence, and forgotten. Those whose mission is to rule the world enjoy a more comforting picture, articulated well enough in the current issue of the prestigious (and valuable) journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. The lead article discusses "the visionary international order" of the "second half of the twentieth century" marked by "the universalization of an American vision of commercial prosperity." There is something to that account, but it does not quite convey the perception of those at the wrong end of the guns.

The same is true of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which brings to an end at least a phase in the "war on terror" re-declared by President George W. Bush on the second 9/11. Let us turn to a few thoughts on that event and its significance.

On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in his virtually unprotected compound by a raiding mission of 79 Navy SEALs, who entered Pakistan by helicopter. After many lurid stories were provided by the government and withdrawn, official reports made it increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law, beginning with the invasion itself.

There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 79 commandos facing no opposition -- except, they report, from his wife, also unarmed, whom they shot in self-defense when she "lunged" at them, according to the White House.

A plausible reconstruction of the events is provided by veteran Middle East correspondent Yochi Dreazen and colleagues in the Atlantic. Dreazen, formerly the military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is senior correspondent for the National Journal Group covering military affairs and national security. According to their investigation, White House planning appears not to have considered the option of capturing bin Laden alive: "The administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive."

The authors add: "For many at the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency who had spent nearly a decade hunting bin Laden, killing the militant was a necessary and justified act of vengeance." Furthermore, "capturing bin Laden alive would have also presented the administration with an array of nettlesome legal and political challenges." Better, then, to assassinate him, dumping his body into the sea without the autopsy considered essential after a killing -- an act that predictably provoked both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

As the Atlantic inquiry observes, "The decision to kill bin Laden outright was the clearest illustration to date of a little-noticed aspect of the Obama administration's counterterror policy. The Bush administration captured thousands of suspected militants and sent them to detention camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration, by contrast, has focused on eliminating individual terrorists rather than attempting to take them alive." That is one significant difference between Bush and Obama. The authors quote former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who "told German TV that the U.S. raid was 'quite clearly a violation of international law' and that bin Laden should have been detained and put on trial," contrasting Schmidt with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who "defended the decision to kill bin Laden although he didn't pose an immediate threat to the Navy SEALs, telling a House panel... that the assault had been 'lawful, legitimate and appropriate in every way.'"

The disposal of the body without autopsy was also criticized by allies. The highly regarded British barrister Geoffrey Robertson, who supported the intervention and opposed the execution largely on pragmatic grounds, nevertheless described Obama's claim that "justice was done" as an "absurdity" that should have been obvious to a former professor of constitutional law. Pakistan law "requires a colonial inquest on violent death, and international human rights law insists that the 'right to life' mandates an inquiry whenever violent death occurs from government or police action. The U.S. is therefore under a duty to hold an inquiry that will satisfy the world as to the true circumstances of this killing."

Robertson usefully reminds us that "[i]t was not always thus. When the time came to consider the fate of men much more steeped in wickedness than Osama bin Laden -- the Nazi leadership -- the British government wanted them hanged within six hours of capture. President Truman demurred, citing the conclusion of Justice Robert Jackson that summary execution 'would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride... the only course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear.'"

Eric Margolis comments that "Washington has never made public the evidence of its claim that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks," presumably one reason why "polls show that fully a third of American respondents believe that the U.S. government and/or Israel were behind 9/11," while in the Muslim world skepticism is much higher. "An open trial in the U.S. or at the Hague would have exposed these claims to the light of day," he continues, a practical reason why Washington should have followed the law.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress "suspects." In June 2002, FBI head Robert Mueller, in what the Washington Post described as "among his most detailed public comments on the origins of the attacks," could say only that "investigators believe the idea of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon came from al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, the actual plotting was done in Germany, and the financing came through the United Arab Emirates from sources in Afghanistan." What the FBI believed and thought in June 2002 they didn't know eight months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know) to permit a trial of bin Laden if they were presented with evidence. Thus, it is not true, as President Obama claimed in his White House statement after bin Laden's death, that "[w]e quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda."

There has never been any reason to doubt what the FBI believed in mid-2002, but that leaves us far from the proof of guilt required in civilized societies -- and whatever the evidence might be, it does not warrant murdering a suspect who could, it seems, have been easily apprehended and brought to trial. Much the same is true of evidence provided since. Thus, the 9/11 Commission provided extensive circumstantial evidence of bin Laden's role in 9/11, based primarily on what it had been told about confessions by prisoners in Guantanamo. It is doubtful that much of that would hold up in an independent court, considering the ways confessions were elicited. But in any event, the conclusions of a congressionally authorized investigation, however convincing one finds them, plainly fall short of a sentence by a credible court, which is what shifts the category of the accused from suspect to convicted.

There is much talk of bin Laden's "confession," but that was a boast, not a confession, with as much credibility as my "confession" that I won the Boston marathon. The boast tells us a lot about his character, but nothing about his responsibility for what he regarded as a great achievement, for which he wanted to take credit.

Again, all of this is, transparently, quite independent of one's judgments about his responsibility, which seemed clear immediately, even before the FBI inquiry, and still does.

Crimes of Aggression

It is worth adding that bin Laden's responsibility was recognized in much of the Muslim world, and condemned. One significant example is the distinguished Lebanese cleric Sheikh Fadlallah, greatly respected by Hizbollah and Shia groups generally, outside Lebanon as well. He had some experience with assassinations. He had been targeted for assassination: by a truck bomb outside a mosque, in a CIA-organized operation in 1985. He escaped, but 80 others were killed, mostly women and girls as they left the mosque -- one of those innumerable crimes that do not enter the annals of terror because of the fallacy of "wrong agency." Sheikh Fadlallah sharply condemned the 9/11 attacks.

One of the leading specialists on the Jihadi movement, Fawaz Gerges, suggests that the movement might have been split at that time had the U.S. exploited the opportunity instead of mobilizing the movement, particularly by the attack on Iraq, a great boon to bin Laden, which led to a sharp increase in terror, as intelligence agencies had anticipated. At the Chilcot hearings investigating the background to the invasion of Iraq, for example, the former head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5 testified that both British and U.S. intelligence were aware that Saddam posed no serious threat, that the invasion was likely to increase terror, and that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had radicalized parts of a generation of Muslims who saw the military actions as an "attack on Islam." As is often the case, security was not a high priority for state action.

It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos had landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he was not a "suspect" but the "decider" who gave the orders to invade Iraq -- that is, to commit the "supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country and its national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.

To say that all of this is uncontroversial, as it is, is not to imply that it is not denied. The existence of flat earthers does not change the fact that, uncontroversially, the earth is not flat. Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Stalin and Hitler were responsible for horrendous crimes, though loyalists deny it. All of this should, again, be too obvious for comment, and would be, except in an atmosphere of hysteria so extreme that it blocks rational thought.

Similarly, it is uncontroversial that Bush and associates did commit the "supreme international crime" -- the crime of aggression. That crime was defined clearly enough by Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at Nuremberg. An "aggressor," Jackson proposed to the Tribunal in his opening statement, is a state that is the first to commit such actions as "[i]nvasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State ...." No one, even the most extreme supporter of the aggression, denies that Bush and associates did just that.

We might also do well to recall Jackson's eloquent words at Nuremberg on the principle of universality: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

It is also clear that announced intentions are irrelevant, even if they are truly believed. Internal records reveal that Japanese fascists apparently did believe that, by ravaging China, they were laboring to turn it into an "earthly paradise." And although it may be difficult to imagine, it is conceivable that Bush and company believed they were protecting the world from destruction by Saddam's nuclear weapons. All irrelevant, though ardent loyalists on all sides may try to convince themselves otherwise.

We are left with two choices: either Bush and associates are guilty of the "supreme international crime" including all the evils that follow, or else we declare that the Nuremberg proceedings were a farce and the allies were guilty of judicial murder.

The Imperial Mentality and 9/11

A few days before the bin Laden assassination, Orlando Bosch died peacefully in Florida, where he resided along with his accomplice Luis Posada Carriles and many other associates in international terrorism. After he was accused of dozens of terrorist crimes by the FBI, Bosch was granted a presidential pardon by Bush I over the objections of the Justice Department, which found the conclusion "inescapable that it would be prejudicial to the public interest for the United States to provide a safe haven for Bosch." The coincidence of these deaths at once calls to mind the Bush II doctrine -- "already... a de facto rule of international relations," according to the noted Harvard international relations specialist Graham Allison -- which revokes "the sovereignty of states that provide sanctuary to terrorists."

Allison refers to the pronouncement of Bush II, directed at the Taliban, that "those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves." Such states, therefore, have lost their sovereignty and are fit targets for bombing and terror -- for example, the state that harbored Bosch and his associate. When Bush issued this new "de facto rule of international relations," no one seemed to notice that he was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and the murder of its criminal presidents.

None of this is problematic, of course, if we reject Justice Jackson's principle of universality, and adopt instead the principle that the U.S. is self-immunized against international law and conventions -- as, in fact, the government has frequently made very clear.

It is also worth thinking about the name given to the bin Laden operation: Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound that few seem able to perceive that the White House is glorifying bin Laden by calling him "Geronimo" -- the Apache Indian chief who led the courageous resistance to the invaders of Apache lands.

The casual choice of the name is reminiscent of the ease with which we name our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Blackhawk... We might react differently if the Luftwaffe had called its fighter planes "Jew" and "Gypsy."

The examples mentioned would fall under the category of "American exceptionalism," were it not for the fact that easy suppression of one's own crimes is virtually ubiquitous among powerful states, at least those that are not defeated and forced to acknowledge reality.

Perhaps the assassination was perceived by the administration as an "act of vengeance," as Robertson concludes. And perhaps the rejection of the legal option of a trial reflects a difference between the moral culture of 1945 and today, as he suggests. Whatever the motive was, it could hardly have been security. As in the case of the "supreme international crime" in Iraq, the bin Laden assassination is another illustration of the important fact that security is often not a high priority for state action, contrary to received doctrine.
(c) 2011 Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East & U.S. Foreign Policy: Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice. His most recent book is Gaza In Crisis.





Dogs Of War
By Uri Avnery

Such terrifying dogs have not been seen since the Hound of the Baskervilles.

They have been bred by an ardent admirer of the late "Rabbi" Meir Kahane, who was branded by the Israeli Supreme Court as a fascist. Their task is to protect the settlements and attack Palestinians. They are settler-dogs, or, rather, dog-settlers.

All our TV stations have reported on them at length and lauded their effectiveness and ardor.

All in preparation for "September."

SEPTEMBER IS not just the name of a month, the seventh in the old Roman calendar. It is the symbol of a terrible danger, an unspeakable existential menace.

In the next few weeks, the Palestinians will ask the UN to recognize the State of Palestine. They have already mustered a large majority in the General Assembly. After that, according to the official assessment of our army, all hell will break loose. Multitudes of Palestinians will rise, attack the "Separation" Wall, storm the settlements, confront the army, create chaos.

"The Palestinian Authority is planning a bloodbath," Avigdor Lieberman cheerfully asserted. And when Lieberman predicts violence, it would be unwise to ignore him.

For months now, our army has been preparing for just such an eventuality. This week it announced that it is training the settlers, too, and telling them exactly when they are allowed to shoot to kill. Thus it confirms what we all know: that there is no clear distinction between the army and the settlers - many settlers are officers in the army, and many officers live in settlements. "The army defends all Israelis, wherever they are," is the official line.

One of the scenarios the army is preparing for, it was stated, is for Palestinians shooting at soldiers and settlers "from inside the mass demonstrations." That is an ominous statement. I have been at hundreds of demonstrations and never witnessed anyone shooting "from inside the demonstration". Such a person would have to be insanely irresponsible, since he would expose all the people around him to deadly retaliation. But it is a handy pretext for shooting at non-violent protesters.

It sounds so ominous, because it has happened already in the past. After the first intifada, which was considered a Palestinian success story (and brought about the Oslo agreement), our army diligently prepared for the second one. The chosen instruments were sharpshooters.

The second ("al-Aqsa") intifada started after the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David conference and Ariel Sharon's deliberately provocative "visit" to the Temple Mount. The Palestinians held non-violent mass demonstrations. The army responded with selective killings. A sharpshooter accompanied by an officer would take position in the path of the protest, and the officer would point out selected targets - protesters who looked like "ringleaders". They were killed.

This was highly effective. Soon the non-violent demonstrations ceased and were replaced by very violent ("terrorist") actions. With those the army was back on familiar ground.

All in all, during the second intifada 4546 Palestinians were killed, of whom 882 were children, as against 1044 Israelis, 716 of them civilians, including 124 children.

I am afraid that the preparations for the third intifada, which is anticipated to start next month, are proceeding on the same lines. But the circumstances would be quite different. After the events in Egypt and Syria, Palestinian protesters may react differently this time, and the "bloodbath" may be much more severe. So will international and Arab reactions. I imagine posters condemning Binyamin al-Assad and Bashar Netanyahu.

But most Israelis are not worried. They believe that the entire scenario has been invented by Netanyahu as a trick to end the huge social protest movement that is rocking Israel. "The young protesters demand Social Justice and a Welfare State, like children demanding ice cream while disaster is lurking around the corner," as one of the colonels (ret.) put it.

THE SETTLERS and their dogs loom large in the upcoming scenarios.

That is quite logical, since the settlers now play a pivotal role in the conflict. It is they who prevent any peace agreement, or even meaningful peace negotiations.

It is quite simple: any peace between Israel and the Palestinian people will necessarily be based on ceding the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip to the future State of Palestine. A world-wide consensus on this is now in place. The only question is where exactly the border will run, since there is also a consensus about minor mutually agreed swaps of territory.

This means that peace would necessarily entail the removal of a large number of settlements and the evacuation of the settlers throughout the West Bank.

The Settlers and their allies dominate the present Israeli government coalition. They object to giving up even one square inch of occupied territory of the country God has promised us. (Even settlers who do not believe in God do believe that God has promised us the land.) Because of this, there are no peace negotiations, no freeze on building activities in the settlements, no move of any kind towards peace.

The settlers went to their locations in the West Bank specifically for this purpose: to create "facts on the ground" that would prevent any possibility of the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. Therefore it is quite immaterial whether it is the settlers who prevent the return of the occupied territories for peace, or whether the government uses the settlers for this purpose. It comes to the same: the settlers block any peace effort.

As the Americans would put it: It's the settlers, stupid.

SOME NICE Israelis are indeed playing stupid, or really are.

It is now the fashion in certain circles to "embrace" the settlers in the name of national unity. Jews should not quarrel among themselves, they say, drawing on ancient Ghetto wisdom. Settlers are people like us.

Prominent among those who say so is Shelly Yachimovitch, a member of the Knesset and one of six candidates for the chair(wo)manship of the moribund Labor Party. For years she has done a good job as an advocate of social justice, never wasting a word on peace, occupation, settlements, Palestine and such trifles. Now, as part of her campaign, she has come all out for loving the settlers. As she put it: "I certainly do not see the settlement enterprise as a sin and crime. At the time, it was completely consensual. It was the Labor Party which promoted the settlement in the territories. That is a fact, a historical fact."

Some believe that Yachimovitch is only pretending to feel this way, in order to garner mainstream votes for a takeover of the party, and that she intends to merge what remains of the party with Kadima, where she would try to displace Tzipi Livni and perhaps even become Prime Minister.

Perhaps. But I have a lurking suspicion that she really believes what she is saying - and that is an awful thing to say about any politician, male or female, of course.

BUT SERIOUSLY, there is no way to embrace the settlers and fight for social justice at the same time. It just can't be done, even though some of the leaders of the social protest movement advocate this on tactical grounds.

There can be no Israeli welfare state while the war goes on. The border incidents of the last two weeks show how easy it is to divert public opinion and silence the protests when the banner of security is unfurled. And how easy it is for the government to prolong any incident.

Sowing the fear of "September" is yet another example.

But the reasons for the impossibility of separating social justice from security go deeper. Serious social reforms need money, lots of money. Even after reforming the tax system - more "progressive" direct taxes, less "regressive" indirect taxes - and breaking the cartels of the "tycoons", tens of billion of dollars will be needed to rescue our schools, our hospitals and our social services.

These billions can only come from the military budget and the settlements. Huge sums are invested in the settlements - not just in heavily subsidized housing for the settlers, government salaries for many settlers (a far higher percentage that in the general population), but also for the infrastructure (roads, electricity and water supply etc.) and the large number of troops needed to defend them. The preparations for "September" show again how much this costs.

BUT EVEN this is not the full story. Beyond all these facts there is the main reason for the deformation of Israel: the conflict itself.

Because of the conflict, we are obliged to keep a huge military establishment. We pay for the armed forces, per capita, far more than the citizens of any Western country. Israel, a country of a mere 7.5 million people, maintains the fourth or fifth largest military establishment in the world. US military aid pays for only a small part of this.

Therefore, putting an end to the war is a necessary precondition for any real effort to turn Israel into a "Scandinavian" welfare state, with a maximum of social justice. The conflict is not just one item among many that must be considered. It is the main item.

You can love the settlers or hate them, oppose them or embrace them as much as you like - the fact remains that the settlements are by far the main obstacle to peace and the welfare state. Not just because of their cost, not just because of the pogroms their inhabitants carry out from time to time, not just because of the way they dominate the political system. But because of their very existence.

Unlike the hound of the Baskervilles, the dogs of the settlements are barking loudly. It is the sound of war.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







The Lesson Of The Chinese Invasion
The growing success of our Asian rival shows that we are no longer willing to invest in our own future
By David Sirota

Many economic Nostradamuses have long predicted that the epitaph on America's tombstone will ultimately read "Made In China." But casual observers probably didn't think the funeral procession would happen this fast. In the last year, though, most have wised up. Thanks to a spate of mind-blowing headlines, we are learning that the Chinese invasion isn't just a distant possibility -- it's happening right now.

First, in February, ABC News reported that almost every Americana-themed trinket sold in the Smithsonian Institute is made in China. Then news hit that San Francisco is importing its new Bay Bridge from China. Then came the New York Times dispatch about the Big Apple awarding Chinese state-subsidized firms huge taxpayer-funded contracts to "renovate the subway system, refurbish the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem River and build a new Metro-North train platform near Yankee Stadium."

Astounding as all of that is, it was quickly topped by news last week reminding us that the new Martin Luther King monument in Washington was designed by a Chinese government sculptor and assembled by low-wage Chinese workers.

The trend is enough to trouble any American. After all, when a memorial for a civil rights leader who deplored "starvation wages" and died supporting a sanitation union's strike is built by non-union serfs from China, it's a good sign there's a big problem.

But then, what exactly is that problem?

Xenophobes will say China's ascendance threatens America's global cultural hegemony and promises to create a dystopia forcing us all to endure the supposed horrors of speaking Mandarin and using chopsticks.

Such misguided and bigoted demagoguery, though, distracts from the real crisis staring at us in our own mirror -- a crisis not of other, but of self. Indeed, for all the fears of external assault, the Chinese invasion tells us the true problem is that America is no longer willing or able to invest in its own future.

This problem is most obvious -- and shocking -- in our government. As opposed to multinational corporations, which care only about maximizing shareholder profit, our public-policy arena is supposed to be focused on building America. But in this golden age of big-money politics, with multinational corporations buying our lawmakers, we get the opposite -- even during an unemployment crisis. Today, municipalities outsource public works projects, congresses water down "Buy America" laws, and presidents champion trade deals that encourage companies to send jobs overseas. That trickles down to give us American iconography made in Chinese factories, American real estate owned by Chinese companies, and American civil rights memorials constructed with Chinese slave labor.

The public excuse from our corrupt politicians is that Americans don't really want the jobs that could be created if lawmakers prioritized domestic investment. Last week, for instance, the White House's U.S. trade representative, Ron Kirk, said we shouldn't be concerned with jobs that are about "making things that, frankly, we don't want to make in America -- you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs." It was a reprise of 2006, when Sen. John McCain told union members the same thing.

The truth, of course, is the opposite -- millions of jobless Americans are desperate for some shred of economic patriotism that would put them back to work. But our political system isn't about patriotism anymore. It's about the deception embodied in Kirk's talking points.

Thanks to that, the idea of successfully legislating a domestic investment agenda seems not like mere wishful thinking. It seems as wholly inconceivable as walking into a big-box store and finding lots of products that are still made in the USA.
(c) 2010 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.






I Just Found 29 Million Jobs
By David Swanson

No, not 29 million job offers. I'm no better at applying for jobs than you are, and my town offers nothing but dead-end McJobs or positions in the military industrial complex, just like yours. I mean I just spotted an easy way to create 29 million jobs, one for every unemployed or underemployed U.S. worker.

No, I'm not about to say "Just raise taxes on gazillionaires and hire people to build stuff." I'm all in favor of that, for lots of reasons, including the political corruption created by a concentration of wealth. We might have to disempower gazillionaires before we can enact any sensible policies, including the one I'm about to propose, but it can itself be done without raising a dime in revenue. This means that the President, who has broad, albeit unconstitutional, powers to move funding around from one program to another could do this himself. Or Congress could.

Whichever branch of government found the decency first could create 29 million well-paid and rewarding jobs improving the world. And this could be done through policies long favored by a majority of Americans.

How, you ask?

Well, I noticed that we didn't create any more jobs in August, but did see a record number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan. Then I saw all the reports on the $60 billion "wasted" by the Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan. This started me thinking.

Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe looked at that $60 billion and asked what else could have been done with it. Drawing on a 2009 study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), they concluded that instead, we might have created 193,000 jobs. That is to say, given all the military and contractor jobs that in fact were created for the U.S. workforce by that $60 billion, we could have created 193,000 MORE jobs. This is, in fact, the tradeoff found in the 2009 study between military spending (not even "wasted" military spending) and tax cuts for working people.

There are some other calculations in the same study, however. If we had spent that $60 billion on clean energy, we would have created (directly or indirectly) 330,000 more jobs. If we'd spent it on healthcare, we'd have created 480,000 more jobs. And if we'd spent it on education, we'd have created 1.05 million more jobs.

But isn't it strange to make this calculation using the $60 billion that was supposedly wasted rather than with the $1.2 trillion that has been spent in total on two wars that a majority says should be ended and should never have begun? If we look at the $1.2 trillion that has been worse than wasted on killing large numbers of people and making us less safe, we find that we could have instead created anything in the range between 3.9 million to 21 million more jobs, depending on whether we moved the war spending to tax cuts or education or something in between. Ideally, of course, we'd have put some into education, some into clean energy, etc., resulting in a figure somewhere between those two.

But this is all looking at the past. What about going forward? Well, I also noticed Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's calculation that $1.8 trillion could be saved over 10 years by ending the wars now. That's a figure taking a broader view of war spending, to include veterans' care, and that fact almost certainly alters the calculations. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the same tradeoffs still held, by choosing to save that $1.8 trillion, we could add between 5.8 million and 31.5 million jobs over the next 10 years.

Or, sticking with the "wasted" military spending angle, we could start with the $2.3 trillion the Pentagon is unable to account for. That kind of tradeoff would give us 7.4 million to 40.3 million jobs depending on how we chose to invest the money. Of course, the $2.3 trillion is in the past, but given the dramatic trend toward more no-bid contracts (now 45% of military contracting) it seems a safe bet that corruption will hold steady or increase in the years to come.

But let's forget about "lost" trillions and look at typical military spending, which is what the study we're basing this on looked at. Of the $1.2 trillion spent each year now on the military, about $700 billion goes through the Department of Defense, which is what the study we're using looked at. (Another $75 billion, for example, is spent on protecting cows and lakes while enriching campaign funders through the Department of Homeland Security.) We're spending about half of discretionary spending on the military, and several times as much as the next highest spending nation in the world.

Let's say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That's 2.9 million each year. Here's one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There's an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There's another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane.

Of course I'm writing about numbers here and the numbers represent actual people with particular needs and abilities. A major effort would be needed to convert military factories and workers to green energy and other industries. Net job gains reflect a lot of job losses and redirected careers. But that conversion is part of this process and will involve job creation itself. If additional funding is needed, then, you know what, the hell with it, go ahead and tax a few multi-billionaires. It won't hurt them.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Perry Tales: job creation

Presidential wannabe Rick Perry is flitting hither, thither and yon, spreading little "Perry Tales" about the economic miracles he has produced in Texas.

Fantasy number one is a creationist story about jobs. As he recently flitted across Iowa, he gushed that he has built "a job-creating machine in the state of Texas," and a Perry aide flatly said, "The governor's job-creation record speaks for itself."

Actually it doesn't. Probe even an inch into the million-job number that Perry tosses around like fairy dust, and you'll learn that these are mostly "jobettes" that can't sustain a family. Most come with very low pay and no health care or pension, and many are only part-time or temporary positions. Indeed, more than a half a million Texans now work for minimum wage or less – a number that has doubled since 2008, leaving Texas tied with Mississippi for the nation's highest percentage of its workforce reduced to poverty pay.

Spreading even more fairy dust, Perry claims that his Texas Miracle is the result of him keeping the government out of the private sector's way. But peek behind that ideological curtain and you'll find this startling fact: during Perry's decade, the growth in private sector jobs has been a relatively paltry nine percent, while the public sector has more than doubled that, increasing the number of local, state, and federal workers in Texas by 19 percent. One out of six employed Texans are now teachers, police officers, highway engineers, military personnel, and other government workers – and many of these jobs were created with federal money, including cash from Barack Obama's stimulus program. There's his "miracle."

Meanwhile, joblessness is on the rise in Texas, and the whole Perry Tale is about to go poof – thanks to his recent multibillion-dollar budget cuts that will destroy more than 100,000 good jobs throughout the state.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








In His Time
By Helen Thomas

Past public officials luckily have the luxury of writing their own versions of history. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has his second rendition of his role in recent national events with no mea culpas.

The new book by Cheney and his daughter, Liz, titled In My Time, puts the best face on the invasion of Iraq. Thousands of Iraqis are dead. The 9/11 attack on the United States has been the perpetual excuse for the attack on Iraq and Afghanistan.

He brags about his support of torturing suspects - that is, terrorist suspects in a country we invaded (Iraq) under lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction and no ties between the slain Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

I became acquainted with a docile Cheney who first served as chief of staff to Gerald Ford. Earlier, he twice flunked out of Yale. Although his father was a civil servant and a staunch Democrat, Cheney served in Congress as a strong conservative Republican.

He continued in his career as the head of Halliburton, growing rich from fat government contracts. Cheney, incidentally a war hawk, had five deferments for education and marriage during the Vietnam era.

Such people survive to write their memoirs twice, and all while living in two multi-million dollar homes, one in McLean, Virginia, and the other on the eastern shore of Maryland, next door to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Cheney has had heart problems for years, and his prolonged health care was provided by the federal government. Don't you think that the man who lived on free medicine during his many public roles should be a supporter of Medicare and other social programs? Think again.

There were times when Cheney seemed to steal the show, diminishing President George W. Bush's role. After 9/11, some called him "President Cheney."

I'll never forget, a short time before he left his number two post in the nation, Cheney said, "We know where they (the weapons) are." Nobody told him to put up or shut up. The weapons were not found.

Cheney took power in the White House and tried to justify his overreach in the face of a rebellion by other top aides. Bush was left in the dark about the internal strife.

"From day one, George W. Bush made clear he wanted me to help govern ... to the extent that this created a unique arrangement in our history, with the Vice President playing a significant role in the key policy issues of the day, it was George Bush's arrangement," Cheney writes.

We are bound to learn more in other memoirs over the ruckus between Cheney and the Department of Justice regarding spying on American citizens.

Cheney also boasts that he urged Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007, but he said the President decided on a diplomatic approach upon the advice of others. "Bombs Away Cheney" claimed he was a lone voice in pushing for military action. Cheney's hawkishness almost makes Bush look like a dove.

Cheney attacked Secretary of State Colin Powell who knew war as a general, claiming Powell tried to undercut Bush by privately expressing doubts about the Iraq war. Cheney admits in his book that he tried to have Powell kicked out of the cabinet after the 2004 election. Cheney said Powell's resignation was "for the best." In addition to Powell and other Bush advisors, Cheney also tangled with National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, demeaning her as naive when she sought a peace agreement with North Korea. She will get back at him in her forthcoming memoir, telling her side of the Bush administration's history.

Cheney is never wrong, and never a gentleman. Unfortunately we are still in a war he pushed for, and Americans and Iraqis are still dying.

Cheney also writes that he was happy Obama failed to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Cheney is worthy of the nickname Darth Vader, and leaves the legacy of violations of international treaties, which tarnished the U.S. reputation of treating adversaries with civility and decency.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Last Light Of Real Journalism Just Went Out
By James Donahue

The news this week that Julian Assange, the creator and editor of the controversial electronic whistleblower site Wikileaks and his staff have chosen to publish the publication's entire collection of secret U. S. diplomatic cables along with the names of the sources, has probably put that interesting experiment in journalism out of business.

Wikileaks said it made the decision after about half of the documents with the names of their sources were discovered on a public Internet server. Wikileaks and all of the mirror publications and websites connected with Wikileaks have all disavowed responsibility for leaking the information.

Consequently more than 250,000 cables, the entire cache downloaded from government files and made available to Wikileaks last year, is now public record. Not only this, but the people involved in making them secretly available to Wikileaks, are also named and perhaps subject to prosecution.

The cables include private communiqués between State Department officials and political figures in embassies around the world. There also were documents revealing misbehavior on the part of American soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and allegations that U.S. troops murdered innocent civilians and then attempted to cover up their crimes.

That these sources have been named should be sending shivers up the spines of everyone involved in supplying cables to Wikileaks. Everyone knows the story of Bradley Manning, the U. S. Army soldier charged with downloading the passing classified military data to Wikileaks while stationed in Iraq. Manning has been held in a military prison awaiting hearing and possible trial on numerous charges of "aiding the enemy," a capital offense that could make him subject to the death penalty.

With the names of all of Wikileaks' whistleblowers now made public, the case against Manning may appear to dim in comparison to the volume of potential legal cases the government may bring against those involved in the Wikileads revelations.

To date, however, none of the published information appears to have done anything more than prove to be an embarrassment to certain high ranking public figures and governments for misbehavior, often at public expense. This was information that never should have been declared classified. Revealing these documents to public scrutiny certainly does not warrant imprisonment or the death penalty.

That this information got in the hands of some irresponsible individuals who chose to make it public was a thoughtless action that defied all of the rules of journalistic ethics.

Since founding the WikiLeaks site in 2006, Assange has introduced a new spirit of real journalism to electronic media. This occurred at a time when major media outlets have obviously sold out to corporations and are no longer practicing real journalism. The public is told only what corporate officials want the people to know and nothing more.

Because of his work, Assange has received numerous awards and nominations for awards for excellence in journalism. In 2009 he won the Amnesty International Media Award after publishing material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya. He also was awarded the Readers Choice award for Time magazine's 2010 Person of the Year.

Before the current barrage of controversial cables, WikiLeaks published information about toxic waste dumping in Africa, the Kaupthing and Julius Baer banks, and Church of Scientology manuals. He began getting in trouble after the cables started exposing the extreme waste of money, lives and resources in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Assange also says he is in possession of documents that will shed sunlight on big banking operations.

All of this was made possible because of the promise of anonymity awarded all that "leaked" copies of secret documents, letters and transcripts to Wikileaks. Now that Assange has been forced to reveal his sources, any new information is bound to disappear.

Every working journalist uses "sources," or anonymous shadow figures to find out what is happening behind the closed doors of government, big corporations, and other places where suspicious activity may be happening. And when challenged, real journalists have chosen to go to jail rather than disclose their sources to judges and other authority figures. In this profession, protecting sources has been of the utmost importance. We can't get the story if our word can't be trusted.

Assange's action this week has obviously signed the death warrant for Wikileaks and possibly all of the other new journalism sites of that yoke. And it will mean that the steel wall between officialdom and the general public has been raised that much higher than it already was.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.




5th columnist traitor Eric Cantor
promises FEMA funds will go instead to Israel



Eric Cantor: Mean, Ornery And Just Plain Wrong
Cantor's ideological purity overrules common sense and heart
By Michael Winship

For Manhattan at least, last week was the weather week that wasn't. But the minor earthquake and weakened Hurricane Irene served as reminders of the caprice of nature and -- only a couple of weeks before the tenth anniversary of 9/11 -- the knowledge that at any given moment calamity literally is just around the corner.

Both also should serve as wake-up calls to those know-nothings and kleptocrats who reject the value of government and would like it rendered down to nothingness -- the helpless infant that Eric Cantor, Grover Norquist and their pals wish to see drowned in the bathtub.

I've never been through a major earthquake, although I've experienced some minor tremors, the first early on a New Year's Day in upstate New York while I was still a teenager. Just as you read about in animal behavior books, the dog, lying at the foot of my bed, apparently sensed something was up, jumped off and scurried out of the room mere seconds before the shaking began. Not a word of warning from her. So much for man's best friend.

The 5.8 we had on the afternoon of August 23 was like an aftershock I experienced out in Burbank a number of years ago, while working in post-production on a documentary. It felt like a truck had hit the building. This time, there was a thump and I looked out the window to see if something heavy-duty was rolling down Seventh Avenue. Nothing -- but the apartment kept wobbling up and down. Then another hard thump and more wobbling.

Hours later, just off the phone with my brother and sister in Washington, DC, who had been in a taxi and felt nothing, I noticed that several of the pictures on the walls were now hanging at peculiar angles. That was the extent of damage at my house.

As for Irene, I live in what the city has designated Evacuation Zone C, meaning we would be sent out of the neighborhood if a direct hit by a Category 3 or 4 storm -- or maybe an asteroid -- seemed imminent. That didn't happen, but my girlfriend Pat was moved to a hotel in midtown because the television newsroom at which she works needed her close at hand. Graciously, she invited me along.

(Coincidentally, the hotel was the first at which I ever stayed in New York City alone, also during my teenage years. The student rate back then was $12 a night.)

Fearing high winds, in parts of the hotel they weren't placing guests above the tenth floor. We had a small room, on the third floor away from the street, so little chance of windows blowing in, which was good, facing the airshaft, which was bad. One look out the window and we quickly drew the shades; it looked like the place where pigeons go to die -- or at least throw their trash. Maybe the storm would give it a good wash.

It didn't. Irene weakened as it reached Coney Island and we slept right through the main action, finally returning to my place early Sunday afternoon. Branches and leaves littered the streets and trees were down by a nearby playground. Plenty of rain and wind but nothing like the loss of life, power outages and billions worth of wind and flood damage inflicted outside the city. Beyond the media centers of New York and Washington, where reporters were quick to judge the storm "not so bad," there was more than enough disaster to go around, bringing misery to millions.

I remembered Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes in June 1972. It roared through central Virginia and Pennsylvania up into the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, creating more damage than any hurricane in the United States before it. (That time, Agnes hit DC with a vengeance -- more than a foot of rain in parts of the area and 16 deaths as people were swept away in the floodwaters. I was there, and will never forget the usually placid Rock Creek roiling like Colorado River rapids. The Potomac overflowed into the C & O Canal, and a crowd of us stood in Georgetown watching the water slowly creep up lower Wisconsin Avenue.)

Fresh water from Agnes' floods flushed into the saltwater of Chesapeake Bay, damaging the seafood industry there for years, and the damage inflicted on the tracks of already financially crippled railways in the Northeast helped lead to the creation of the federally funded Conrail freight system (later divided into CSX and the Norfolk Southern Railway).

Storms like Agnes and Irene are insidious, often striking slowly over time in ways that can be unpredictable and far more damaging than anticipated. Government preparedness and response are critical. There was no Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1972; in fact, like Conrail, its origins can be traced, in part, to the Agnes disaster. Jimmy Carter signed it into creation seven years later. Since then, FEMA has had noteworthy ups and downs, performing reasonably well when those who believe in the value of government are in power, suffering lamely when they're not.

By all accounts, and at this writing, the White House, FEMA and other government agencies, including state and local, have acquitted themselves ably during the lead-up to Irene, the actual hurricane and its aftermath, although many remain in need. Eighteen FEMA teams were positioned along Irene's path from Florida to Maine, spreading north as the storm proceeded toward New England, providing support, supplies and experienced advice all along the way.

As even The Washington Post's resident smartass Dana Milbank had to admit, "Don't expect anybody to throw a tea party, but Big Government finally got one right... a rare reminder that the federal government can still do great things, after all other possibilities have been exhausted."

However, he continued, "Americans won't have long to savor this new competence in government. NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] has already been hit with budget cuts that will diminish its ability to track storms, and FEMA, like much of the federal government, will lose about a third of its funding over the next decade if Tea Party Republicans have their way...

"Tea Partyers who denounce Big Government seem to have an abstract notion that government spending means welfare programs and bloated bureaucracies. Almost certainly they aren't thinking about hurricane tracking and pre-positioning of FEMA supplies. But if they succeed in paring the government, some of these Tea Partyers (particularly those on the coasts or on the tornadic plains) may be surprised to discover that they have turned a Hurricane Irene government back into a Katrina government."

Cuts have been approved by the House Appropriations Committee to the program that sends "hurricane hunter" aircraft into storms to measure data crucial for hurricane forecasts. Weather satellites are on the chopping block, too. At a May press conference, NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco warned, "The future funding for our satellite program is very much in limbo right now... We are likely looking at a period of time a few years down the road where we will not be able to do severe storm warnings and long-term weather forecasts that people have come to expect today."

She noted that cutbacks had forced the agency to delay the launch of a much-needed satellite. As per NPR's Jon Hamilton, "It would have traveled in a polar orbit, beaming down information for weather and climate forecasts. As a result, when the current satellite doing that job stops working, there will be no replacement." It's these polar orbiting satellites that also warn of deadly tornadoes and other severe weather conditions.

In the short term, the cost of Irene means diverting monies from the government's Disaster Relief Fund, cash intended for tornado clean up in Joplin, Missouri, and other towns. Congress will need to vote for more, probably billions more. And hurricane season isn't even over yet. (As I write, New Orleans faces Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Katia lurks in the Atlantic.)

But even though his own Seventh Congressional District was damaged by Irene, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, our national scold, says no, not unless spending cuts are made elsewhere to offset the cost, dollar for dollar. (That includes earthquake damage, too, by the way, despite the fact that the epicenter of the August 23rd quake was in his Virginia district.)

"Just like any family would operate when it's struck by disaster," Cantor told Fox News, "it finds the money to take care of a sick loved one or what have you, and then goes without trying to buy a car or put an addition onto the house." It's more like "selling the family station wagon for spare parts," the website Media Matters said, and a far cry from 2004 when Cantor came running to fellow Republicans George Bush and Tom Ridge for no-strings-attached federal disaster assistance after Tropical Storm Gaston hit home. Nor when Bush was president did Rep. Cantor ever scream for offsets when it came to tax breaks for the wealthy, waging war, or -- surprise -- raising the debt ceiling.

What he's doing now is ornery, mean and just plain wrong -- ideological purity overruling common sense. Even New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, fresh off his pre-Irene "Get the hell off the beach" performance and no stranger himself to pigheadedness, declared, "We don't have time to wait for folks in Congress to figure out how they want to offset this stuff with other budget cuts... I don't want to hear about the fact that offsetting budget cuts have to come first before New Jersey citizens are taken care of."

Approving emergency aid in a national crisis is not to be held over our heads like some vindictive ransom note. It's neither penny wise nor pound foolish; it's immoral and, yes, un-American. This is not the way we were raised, not the way we were taught to treat one another. We lend a hand and figure out the costs later.

Yet in a time of national crisis, whether in or out of hurricane season, Cantor continues to spout pettifoggery and right wing Republicans go along with him, mindlessly nodding in obeisant agreement like so many bobble head dolls, even as the economy burns, infrastructure crumbles, funds are slashed and untold millions suffer.

Heckuva job, Eric.
© 2011 Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and former senior writer of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.








Obama's Laborious Labor Day
By Ralph Nader

Dear President Obama:

Happy Labor Day! This is your third opportunity as President to go beyond your past tepid Labor Day proclamations.

You could convey to 150 million workers that you're going to start doing something about your 2008 campaign promises to labor. Recall that you clearly promised to press for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011. Arguing that having millions of Walmart type workers make the leap from the present $7.25 per hour will pump nearly $200 billion in consumer demand for our recessionary economy.

You can add that a $9.50 minimum is still less than what workers made under the minimum wage in 1968, adjusted for inflation, when worker productivity was half of what it is today. Besides, businesses like Walmart have received windfalls year after year due to the minimum wage lagging behind inflation for decades.

Your second promise in 2008 was pushing for card-check legislation-a top priority for the AFL-CIO whose member unions helped elect you. "Give me the cardcheck," Rich Trumka, now AFL-CIO president, told me in 2004, "and millions of workers will organize into unions."

I may have missed something but when was the last time you championed card check after you took your oath of office? Did you bring labor together, the way you brought big business together for their demands, and launch a public drive to overcome many of the obstructions workers now have to confront under the present corporate driven union-busting climate?

I met with Mr. Trumka recently. It seemed he's given up on you for the card check or minimum wage. With such low expectations, you probably can make organized labor a little more enthusiastic for you if you simply mentioned these two measures in your next State of the Union address. You could even break an old taboo and say that the notoriously anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 needs to be changed. Just talking about those issues will "keep hope alive," for "change you can believe in."

Even better, mention these with a paragraph on the spreading poverty-yes, finally use that word "poverty" which is decidedly not "middle-class." Last January, your State of the Union address ignored poverty-accelerating child poverty, hunger, homelessness, mass unemployment and underemployment do add up to that phenomenon. If not deeds or action, at least just give them some words.

As big business abandons American workers and takes jobs and industries to communist and fascist regimes abroad-regimes that know how to keep workers in their place at 50 or 80 cents an hour-reactionary Republican governors are stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights. These Republicans are laying off their teachers and other workers so they do not have to repeal the corporate welfare drains on their state treasuries. Dozens of corporate welfare tax abatements, subsidies, giveaways, bailouts and other freebies are embedded in their state laws.

When the Wisconsin workers protested and filled the square in Madison, Wisconsin, they were expressing your "fierce urgency of now." But you would not go and address just one of their rallies to support their jobs and rights.

Just before the last big rally of some 100,000 people from all over Wisconsin, the state federation of labor invited the Vice President to speak to them in Madison. The White House said no. Isn't Joe Biden known for saying "I'm a union guy?"

Can you imagine a national Republican presidential candidate refusing an invitation to speak to 100,000 Tea Partiers by comparison?

But then these Democratic workers, you may believe, have nowhere to go in November 2012. That's right, they don't have to go anywhere; they can stay right at home along with their volunteer hours and Get-Out-The-Vote calls. Political withdrawal is real easy to do. Remember 2010. Remember the sharp drop in the youth vote. You may be met with less enthusiasm than Congressional Democrats encountered in 2010.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.







Job Creation? I'm Thinkin' Not
By Mike Folkerth

As real employment continues to fall year after year in the U.S., each day, and several times per day, we hear the words "jobs creation." Creating axe handles is possible; jobs, not so much.

To make matters even worse, we look toward government for providing the magic to create this mystical employment; which of course they promise to do. Consider the utter folly of expecting government to actually create anything other than taxes and turmoil.

The factual problem however (and you heard it here first), is that real jobs can't be created; not by anyone, and especially not by government. Bad news huh?

The late English Mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, stated, "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." Let's utilize the analysis of the obvious to analyze the term "jobs creation."

It all boils down to this simple statement, "If jobs could merely be created, then everybody would have one." Jobs would roll off an assembly line like toothbrushes; you have a toothbrush don't you? But maybe not a job?

Jobs simply cannot be created, at least not real jobs. Instead, real jobs materialize to fill real needs. Therefore, when most real needs are satisfied, it becomes necessary to "create" fictitious jobs in a nation that is hell bent on increasing population.

The late American geophysicist, Marion King Hubbert, made the following statement well before his death in 1989. "Most employment now is merely pushing paper around. The actual work needed to keep a stable society running is a very small fraction of available manpower."

Apparently, our government and certainly our unemployed masses, choose not to believe the world's most well known Geoscientist, and have elected instead to remain seated together like mushrooms in a dark space, ingesting oats that had already been run through the horse one time.

We live in a nation that has hard physical limits and consequently employment is subject to those same limits. The frontiers have been settled, the resources have been discovered and utilized, and we're now well our way down the other side of Mount Resource.

Add to this the fact that our population has now surpassed 310 Million and continues to grow exponentially in the same space that was discovered by Europeans in 1492, and we now have what is referred to as an unsolvable problem.

But then, Americans have never scored all that that high in Reality 101, so like Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy, we believe in job creation.

You may ask, "If job creation is impossible, why then does government and the talking news heads continue to insist that job creation is our sole remedy for recovery?"

Look at it this way, government at all levels can hardly be expected to be reelected by explaining to 20 Million unemployed Americans that stale bread and thin broth will be on the menu for the foreseeable future. Instead, government incurs massive debt and temporary jobs are created as a side effect of continual deficit spending.

Another way of viewing the current solution to our unemployment conundrum is that jobs are being purchased with long term debt that is unsustainable. We have reached the top of our economic mountain and there is no way out but down.

You may remember that the only thing the Democrats and Republicans have agreed on since the last vote involving a congressional wage increase was that America needed to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 TRILLION. Yep, deficit spending creates temporary jobs so long as that deficit spending is increased year over year. But as I stated earlier, there are limits, and we have reached those limits.

Let's also consider, that not to be outdone by our government, personal debt in the U.S. has risen meteorically to the neighborhood of $14 TRILLION, while at the same time, student loan debt eclipsed all combined credit card debt in this banner year of 2011.

As all of the former borrowed money was spent, the same created temporary demand, which in turn created temporary employment, that is better known as the perfect recipe for boom and bust. Big time bust!

As an example, when a home is built, a temporary surge in employment and material purchases creates economic activity during the construction phase which lasts about 120 days. When construction ends, so then does the economic activity...however, the mortgage lives on for 30 long years complete with compounding interest!

A home loan then, is nothing more than deficit spending on a personal level that created jobs as an unsustainable side effect for a short, sweet, period of time.

In conclusion, it is my long studied opinion that only through exponential (ever greater) deficit spending can jobs be "created." The insistence of ever greater debt creation as a catalyst to create the side effect of nonessential employment has simply reached the predictable mathematical limits of any such Ponzi based scheme. Perhaps Robert Hickerson said it best back in March of 1995:

"All attempts to reduce the deficit, balance the budget or pay off the national debt are futile. The deficit and the national debt represent the subsidy the government has paid in its attempt to keep growth and unemployment at the level of social tolerance."
(c) 2011 Mike Folkerth is not your run-of-the-mill author of economics. Nor does he write in boring lecture style. Not even close. The former real estate broker, developer, private real estate fund manager, auctioneer, Alaskan bush pilot, restaurateur, U.S. Navy veteran, heavy equipment operator, taxi cab driver, fishing guide, horse packer...(I won't go on, it's embarrassing) writes from experience and plain common sense. He is the author of "The Biggest Lie Ever Believed."








The Fatal Distraction
By Paul Krugman

Friday brought two numbers that should have everyone in Washington saying, "My God, what have we done?"

One of these numbers was zero - the number of jobs created in August. The other was two - the interest rate on 10-year U.S. bonds, almost as low as this rate has ever gone. Taken together, these numbers almost scream that the inside-the-Beltway crowd has been worrying about the wrong things, and inflicting grievous harm as a result.

Ever since the acute phase of the financial crisis ended, policy discussion in Washington has been dominated not by unemployment, but by the alleged dangers posed by budget deficits. Pundits and media organizations insisted that the biggest risk facing America was the threat that investors would pull the plug on U.S. debt. For example, in May 2009 The Wall Street Journal declared that the "bond vigilantes" were "returning with a vengeance," telling readers that the Obama administration's "epic spending spree" would send interest rates soaring.

The interest rate when that editorial was published was 3.7 percent. As of Friday, as I've already mentioned, it was only 2 percent.

I don't mean to dismiss concerns about the long-run U.S. budget picture. If you look at fiscal prospects over, say, the next 20 years, they are indeed deeply worrying, largely because of rising health-care costs. But the experience of the past two years has overwhelmingly confirmed what some of us tried to argue from the beginning: The deficits we're running right now - deficits we should be running, because deficit spending helps support a depressed economy - are no threat at all.

And by obsessing over a nonexistent threat, Washington has been making the real problem - mass unemployment, which is eating away at the foundations of our nation - much worse.

Although you'd never know it listening to the ranters, the past year has actually been a pretty good test of the theory that slashing government spending actually creates jobs. The deficit obsession has blocked a much-needed second round of federal stimulus, and with stimulus spending, such as it was, fading out, we're experiencing de facto fiscal austerity. State and local governments, in particular, faced with the loss of federal aid, have been sharply cutting many programs and have been laying off a lot of workers, mostly schoolteachers.

And somehow the private sector hasn't responded to these layoffs by rejoicing at the sight of a shrinking government and embarking on a hiring spree.

O.K., I know what the usual suspects will say - namely, that fears of regulation and higher taxes are holding businesses back. But this is just a right-wing fantasy. Multiple surveys have shown that lack of demand - a lack that is being exacerbated by government cutbacks - is the overwhelming problem businesses face, with regulation and taxes barely even in the picture.

For example, when McClatchy Newspapers recently canvassed a random selection of small-business owners to find out what was hurting them, not a single one complained about regulation of his or her industry, and few complained much about taxes. And did I mention that profits after taxes, as a share of national income, are at record levels?

So short-run deficits aren't a problem; lack of demand is, and spending cuts are making things much worse. Maybe it's time to change course?

Which brings me to President Obama's planned speech on the economy.

I find it useful to think in terms of three questions: What should we be doing to create jobs? What will Republicans in Congress agree to? And given that political reality, what should the president propose?

The answer to the first question is that we should have a lot of job-creating spending on the part of the federal government, largely in the form of much-needed spending to repair and upgrade the nation's infrastructure. Oh, and we need more aid to state and local governments, so that they can stop laying off schoolteachers.

But what will Republicans agree to? That's easy: nothing. They will oppose anything Mr. Obama proposes, even if it would clearly help the economy - or maybe I should say, especially if it would help the economy, since high unemployment helps them politically.

This reality makes the third question - what the president should propose - hard to answer, since nothing he proposes will actually happen anytime soon. So I'm personally prepared to cut Mr. Obama a lot of slack on the specifics of his proposal, as long as it's big and bold. For what he mostly needs to do now is to change the conversation - to get Washington talking again about jobs and how the government can help create them.

For the sake of the nation, and especially for millions of unemployed Americans who see little prospect of finding another job, I hope he pulls it off.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"In the past 30 years, the "masters of mankind," as Smith called them, have abandoned any sentimental concern for the welfare of their own society, concentrating instead on short-term gain and huge bonuses, the country be damned -- as long as the powerful nanny state remains intact to serve their interests."
~~~ Noam Chomsky









He Who Gets Slapped
The Progressive Perpetuation of Past and Present
By Chris Floyd

Five years ago, I wrote several articles about a horrific massacre of Iraqi civilians in Ishaqi. Credible evidence and eyewitness testimony indicated that American soldiers, in the course of a raid, had executed unarmed civilians -- including several small children -- then called in an airstrike to destroy the house, and the evidence of these murders.

At the time, these articles were criticized by some for putting the "worst case" construction on the evidence. After all, in the "fog of war" -- that clapped-out rhetorical trope which has hidden a multitude of sins down through the years -- who could know what really happened? Yeah, some mistakes might or might not have been made -- crossfire, collateral damage, etc. -- but surely no one could believe that American soldiers would deliberately do such a thing. My take -- and that of this blog's co-founder, Rich Kastelein, who put together a devastating flash film on the incident -- was just the usual overblown, knee-jerk, anti-war hissy fit, etc.

But thanks to a recent WikiLeaks revelation, we now know that at least two other groups of knee-jerk, anti-war freaks were also pursuing the "worst-case" interpretation of the massacre: UN investigators, who delivered a detailed report on the evidence to the American occupation forces -- and the invaders themselves. It turns out that American authorities regarded the UN evidence very seriously; so seriously that they took immediate, decisive action .... to cover it all up.

Publicly, of course, the invaders had solemnly promised to investigate the "allegations" with all due speed and diligence; this promise was, of course, an outright lie -- as has been the case countless times with similar "allegations" in America's decade-long war on the world. The atrocity was never investigated by the Americans, who simply tossed aside not only the work of the UN investigators, but also the mountain of first-hand evidence gathered by the US-trained, pro-American Iraqi officials on the scene.

So here we are: we now know that the Americans themselves strongly suspected that the "allegations" were true, that U.S. soldiers had entered a house in an Iraqi village and executed five children under the age of five -- including a five-month old -- and four women, including a grandmother, and the children's father, a young man in this 20s. They had credible evidence for this, they took the evidence seriously -- and they bent all their efforts toward burying the case and protecting the perpetrators (and their commanders). They have sat on this evidence for five years, beyond the end of the Bush Regime and deep into the reign of the Nobel Peace Laureate.

This would be the same Nobel Peace Laureate whose forces, along with their local proxies, carried out yet another mass killing of civilians in Ishaqi last month, as we noted here. Barack Obama has never repudiated the War Machine that routinely produces such atrocities; on the contrary, he has embraced it, praised it, identified himself with it at every opportunity. He has never repudiated the criminal occupation of Iraq, but has instead sought frantically, for months, to extend it, in any way possible, with tens of thousands of "advisers," "trainers," and mercenaries disguised at "State Department security personnel." Along with his favorite general -- now his spymaster -- David Petraeus, he has intensified the Ishaqi-style "home invasion" system in the other war of domination and profiteering that he has not only embraced but boldly escalated, in Afghanistan. He has taken deadly home invasions to new heights -- literally -- with his cowardly drone missile campaign against homes and neighborhoods in undefended villages in Pakistan. And in Yemen. And in Somalia. (And in who knows what other countries in the secret wars and covert ops that his security apparatchiks boast of conducting all over the world?)

Yet it is this figure -- this xerox copy of the despised Dubya -- whom all good liberals and progressives are being urged to support. His election is far more important than the mounds of dead children piling up under his command. His personal political fortunes are far more important than the national bankruptcy engineered by the War Machine he proudly leads and the Money Power he faithfully serves -- a bankruptcy that has opened the door to the destruction of programs, hopes and ideals that liberals and progressives have nurtured for generations. His electoral fate is more important than the generations of hate, extremism, violence and instability being bred by his policies. Indeed, Barack Obama's re-election is even more important than the well-being and dignity of one's own child.

So we are told by the Big Progressive Kahuna himself, Markos Moulitsas. In a recent, super-savyy analysis of the Obama Administration's manifest failures to promote its image properly and thus secure the president's re-election, Moulitsas produces this remarkable passage:

Bottom line, if Obama's approach to governing was proving popular, then there'd be little fault. If triangulating against liberals bolstered his numbers with independents, then that'd be cool! Heck, if slapping my first-born in the face bumped his numbers up with independents, I'd tolerate it. But it's not. His current approach isn't working.

"If slapping my first-born in the face bumped his numbers up with independents, I'd tolerate it." I realize this is offered as a deliberately over-the-top rhetorical flourish (perhaps even as a cack-handed, piles-producing strain toward humor), but it bespeaks a partisan obsequiousness -- and a moral blindness -- that staggers the mind. After all, Obama has actually been killing, not just slapping, first-borns (and other children) at a steady clip for more than two years now. And this certainly hasn't hurt "his numbers" with serious, savvy progressives like Kos.

It is just possible, of course, that these on-going atrocities have in themselves kept Obama from "bumping his numbers up with independents," some of whom might object to seeing mass murder committed by their government. But this is not a factor in our progressives' earnest cogitations. No, it's all about the process, the PR framing, finding the "popular approach" and "not looking weak."

These vast outpourings of innocent blood literally do not matter to our serious, savvy progressives. The only thing that really matters is Obama's re-election, his chance to continue grinding up bones and bodies with his beloved War Machine and his runaway Security Organs for another four years.

This is what it's come to: "Take my child, slap her in the face, if it will help you keep on killing." This is all that's left of the "professional left."
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd







How Little We Know About The Origins Of 9/11
By Robert Scheer

For a decade, the main questions about 9/11 have gone unanswered while the alleged perpetrators who survived the attacks have never been publicly cross-examined as to their methods and motives. It is not conspiratorial but rather obviously plausible to suggest that they have been kept out of sight because legal due process, constitutionally guaranteed to even the most heinous of criminals, might provide information that our government would find embarrassing.

We remain in ignorance as to what drove religious zealots formerly allied with the United States to turn against us, and what was the role of our ally, Saudi Arabia, the country of origin for most of the hijackers and their financing. Why in the aftermath of the attack did the United States embrace Pakistan, which was one of only three governments (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the others) to diplomatically recognize the Taliban and which turned out to be harboring the fugitive Osama bin Laden? And why did we instead invade Iraq, a nation known to be engaged in a deadly war with bin Laden and his al-Qaida?

How little we know about the origins of the Sept. 11 attacks is laid out in the disclaimer on Page 146 of the official 9/11 presidential commission report. A box on that page states clearly that the conventional narrative of how those portentous events unfolded is based largely on the interrogation under torture of key witnesses who have never been permitted a single moment in a publicly observed court of law.

As the bipartisan commissioners ruefully conceded, their examination of the motives, financing and actions of the alleged 9/11 perpetrators had to "rely heavily on information from captured al Qaeda members" that the commissioners, despite having been granted the highest security clearance, were never allowed to seriously vet:

"We submitted questions for use in the interrogations but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process."

That sensitive interrogation process included the waterboarding of the key witnesses, led by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was scheduled to go on public, civilian trial in Manhattan last spring, until the Obama administration caved in to hysterical Republican-led pressure and called off the trial.

The fear of a public trial is apparently that it will be an occasion to humanize the presumed perpetrators of barbaric acts, but by that standard no alleged murderer should ever be tried in civilian court. The counterargument is that we as a society have, from the drafting of our Constitution, been committed to due process of law. But an even more compelling objection to the present secrecy flows not from the inalienable rights of the accused to justice but rather from the need to fully inform the public as to the dangers faced by our society.

Major policy developments, including two undeclared wars, were conducted in the name of defeating the perpetrators of 9/11 without the pubic being made aware of the relevant facts. Surely a public trial would have revealed, to the deep embarrassment of the Bush administration, that there was no connection between the 9/11 hijackers and the government of Iraq that the United States overthrew.

At the very least, such testimony would have shed light on the cozy relationship between the U.S. government and the key leaders of al-Qaida, particularly the American-educated Mohammed, recruited by the CIA to join the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It certainly could also have proved embarrassing to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who, during the Bush administration, opposed public trials and managed last March to get President Barack Obama to reverse his pledge of civilian trials. Gates boasted in his 1996 memoir of his long history of working with Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, dating to his days in the Carter administration. As his book publisher bragged at the time, Gates exposed "Carter's never-before revealed covert support to Afghan mujahedeen-six months before the Soviets invaded."

Of course 9/11 changed everything; nations were invaded, trillions of dollars were wasted, hundreds of thousands of civilian and military lives were lost, torture became acceptable and the public has come to tolerate a daily governmental assault on privacy as normal. But for all of the high drama and cost of the U.S. response, when it comes to understanding the forces behind the attack, we still do not know what we are talking about.
(c) 2011 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. A journalist with over 30 years experience, Scheer has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.





The Dead Letter Office...





Rick smiles for the camera

Heil Obama,

Dear Gouverneur Snyder,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your throwing tens of thousands of children into the street with winter coming on, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute you Herr Snyder, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





How Will We Pay For Obama's New Jobs Push? Answer: Tax Wall Street
By John Nichols

President Obama is right: the United States needs a jobs program that spends federal tax dollars to retain jobs, to create jobs and to put tens of millions of Americans back to work.

Unfortunately, President Obama does not have a Congress that will work with him to implement a jobs agenda.

Rather, he has a Congress that says the United States is broke.

That's a lie. The United States is a wealthy country with immense resources. It can fund wars of whim, back bailouts and tax breaks for billionaires.

So there is money. The problem is that the money is misallocated.

But that's not the worst of it.

The most frustrating reality of the current moment is that the federal government places too much of the tax burden on working families, small farmers and small business owners-all of whom contribute mightily to society while struggling to make ends meet-and too little on the Wall Street speculators whose greed and irresponsibility has done so much to destabilize the economy.

Obama's increased focus on jobs is important. But it is not enough at a moment when Republicans in Congress-and their echo chamber in the media-refuse to allocate the resources that are necessary to fund jobs initiatives.

The demand for a jobs programs must be coupled with demands for better budgeting priorities and for new sources of revenue. National Nurses United, the activist union that has been in the forefront of pushing for a genuinely progressive politics and economics in the United States, is addressing the revenue issue with a bold campaign for a tax on Wall Street financial speculation.

They're taking the campaign to the offices of sixty members of the US House-Democrats and Republicans-with a "National Day of Action to Tax Wall Street." At a number offices, such as that of House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, they will set up 1930s-style soup kitchens to feed hungry families that have been left without work and in some cases without homes by plant closings and layoffs. (Ryan's hometown of Janesville, a historic manufacturing center, has been devastated by the shuttering of major employers, such as a General Motors plant that once employed 7,100 area workers.)

NNU allies, such as Progressive Democrats of America and local unions and activist groups, will join the "Day of Action" drive to get members of Congress to sign a pledge to "support a Wall Street transaction tax that will raise sufficient revenue to make Wall Street pay for the devastation it has caused on Main Street."

"It's time for Wall Street financiers, who created this crisis and continue to hold so much of the nation's wealth, to start contributing to rebuild this country, and for the American people to reclaim our future," says NNU executive director Rose Ann DeMoro.

NNU co-president Deborah Burger, RN, says a tax on Wall Street trading of stocks, bonds, derivatives, currencies, credit default swaps and futures-the very financial speculative activity linked to the 2008 financial meltdown and resultant recession-could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for the programs that "are desperately needed to reduce the pain and suffering felt by so many families who feel abandoned in communities across this nation."

That's not just idealism talking. It's practical economics, as accepted by a growing array of world leaders-including many conservatives-as well as top economists.

University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor Nancy Folbre, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient who has consulted with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Office professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, praised the NNU's "Tax Wall Street" campaign in a recent New York Times piece that explained the push in an international context.

"Purchases of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments in the United States go untaxed but for a tiny fee on stock trades that helps finance the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Britain, by contrast, a 0.5 percent tax on stock transactions raises about $40 billion a year. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany recently announced plans to introduce a similar tax in the 27 nations of the European Community," wrote Folbre. "Our current tax policies favor speculative investment in financial instruments over productive investments in human capabilities. This imbalance helps explain why nurses' unions in the United States (NNU) have been particularly outspoken advocates of a financial transactions tax. As they put it: 'Heal America. Tax Wall Street.'"

The fiscal arguments for taxing Wall Street are sound.

So, too, are the political arguments.

At a point when so many politicians and pundits claim that America is "broke"-too "broke" even to pay for essential jobs programs in a time of high unemployment-the "Tax Wall Street" proposal provides a proper response. America is not broke. It just needs to follow the example of the rest of the world and demand that the speculators pay their fair share to heal the real economy.

Of course Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan will scream. But it will sound mighty shrill if they are claiming America can't help the jobless because we're "broke"-and that America can't tax speculators and raise the money that would make us not "broke."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







A Labor Day Tale Of Three Cities
Pittsburgh, Birmingham and New Orleans
By Phil Rockstroh

As Hurricane Irene made her way up the Eastern Seaboard, my wife and I packed a few changes of clothes and trundled westward out of her path to spend the storm's duration in Pittsburgh, PA.

The excursion did us some good, in particular, leaving insular Manhattan, and facing the faded, crumbling Industrial Age grandeur of Pittsburgh. Walking, once again, among the plaintive rasps of the ghosts of the devastated laboring class (the social setting of our youth) provided us with a humanizing contrast to our present day circumstances stranded amid the manic chattering of the preening demons of banal self-regard possessing Manhattan careerists.

Nowadays, the island of Manhattan is tediously bright and shiny -- a sterile, oligarchic controlled dystopia. Accordingly, any sign of redemptive decay and hint of shabby ass human glory has been banished by official caveat and collective collusion.

In contrast, while in Pittsburgh, because I was born in a steel and coal town, Birmingham, Alabama, I shuffled among familiar shades. Deep in my being, I know the social setup -- once manifested in forged steel, living flesh and human longing -- now lost to the ravages of time (more accurately, the consequences of neo-liberal economic doctrine).

In Birmingham, under the statue of the Roman god of the forge, Vulcan, his mortared gaze lording over the city from atop Red Mountain, I witnessed men, hardened by years of grinding labor and demagogic political manipulation, sacrifice their bodies to (Pittsburgh plutocrat-owned) mines, foundries and smelting plants for subsistence pay.

In childhood, when I watched local men labor in the city's metal foundries, their sweat-lacquered faces, reflecting the fiery glow of smelted steel, seemed to glisten with rage, as angry blue sparks showered the heat-seared air around them.

These were hard-drinking, short-tempered men who were calloused of hand and possessed of humiliation-hardened hearts...rendered so, by a life of the strenuous labor, mandated by an exploitive economic system that bequeathed to them little but a hard scrabble existence--and the promise of a future bearing more of the same.

Little wonder, they swore into the soot-choked air, brawled among themselves, and clutched (self-defeating but politically useful to the ruling elite) racial animus, as their vitality was harnessed to build the structure and infrastructure of the industrial state and increase the wealth, privilege and political power of steel and coal plutocrats up in Pittsburgh (the absentee owners of the area's coal and iron mines, smelts, and processing plants) -- but, in so doing, we locals further diminished the steerage of the course of our lives.

I learned early the girding lie that sustains the oligarchic state i.e., the illusory promise: Work hard and you will set yourself free. In fact, as was the rigged economic setup of the Birmingham of my youth, the harder one works within the inverted totalitarian structure of the corporate state, the more one increases the wealth, hence the political power of the ruling elite...by enabling the parasitic class to consolidate yet more power. Therefore, by working harder and longer for their benefit, one further diminishes one's control over the trajectory of one's fate.

(Caveat: This is not to be confused with hard work and diligent effort -- a million acts of responsibility create freedom. The distinction being...be aware of who benefits from your efforts and mindfully choose where to apply your labors.)

At present, in cities such as Birmingham and Pittsburgh, the structures, built in the mechanized fury of the Industrial Age, stand idle...decaying around legions of the unemployed and the woefully underpaid and under-compensated. In the oxidized scream of rust, one can almost hear the wails of rage of those souls who surrendered their life force to erect and work the now abandoned factories, mills and foundries of the nation.

Outsourcing, downsizing, work speed-ups, i.e., the most recent mechanisms of capitalism's death cult of dehumanizing efficiency goes all but unchallenged in the official narrative of the corporate state. By means of intimidation and the proffering of small bribes, the work force is induced to transmute their body's vitality and soul's pothos into the profits of an advantaged, ruthless few. In this way, one's pothos (Greek: yearning plus libido) is rendered into the convenient pathos (alienation, paranoia, displaced rage, consumer addiction) of the corporate age.

Why do so many in the U.S. accept this pernicious, self-defeating setup? Perhaps, because they have been convinced by constant saturation by the commercial propaganda of the consumer state that capitalism will bestow to those who abide by its (rigged) rules and (gamed) economic arrangements everything one could possibly need and desire.

Accordingly, all an individual needs to know and experience is at his impulsive, electronic mass media-happy fingertips. He can click from virtual reality enactments of explicit porn to obscene interpretations of Christian prophecy (e.g., the present field of Republican presidential hopefuls) thus, in an instant, transmigrating from fake sin to phony salvation ... What more, in the whole of boundless creation, could one possibly want?

Yet, where does a veritable (as opposed to virtual) sense of place exist in social and economic arrangements such as these?

The present era of weightless perception serves to obscure the crushing consequences of the short-sighted cupidity of both the economic elite and underclasses alike. Reflecting this, wealth now exists as constellations of electrons; money is no longer the vaulted riches of miserly plutocrats nor payday cash of the laboring class burning in the pockets of worn work clothes.

Currency exists in precincts of pixels--a fever dream of appliances--the effluvia of the schemes of the elitist illusionists of high finance whose machinations have wrought an age of electronic razzle-dazzle and devastating real world consequences...whereby the solid architecture and durable accoutrement of the Machine Age, manifested as the sturdy structures of Industrial Era cities, such as Pittsburgh and Birmingham, has been transmuted into the manic, evanescent imagery of the mass media hologram.

In the years since Katrina, I've been known to rage at the indifferent sky, why the Hell (or, at least, its earthly exurb -- Houston) did nature's impersonal fury have to descend on New Orleans, about the last outposts within this corporate simulacrum of a country where an individual pulse and collective heart beat could be found -- where the primordial songs of bone, heart and flesh -- of the arias rising from steam-caressed sidewalks and the riffing currents of rivers -- have not been forced into the Clear Channel/Disney/Time-Warner uberculture blandification machine?

In order for the U.S. -- a nation whose populace possesses the collective capacity for cognitive depth and emotional resonance of a Louisiana gnat flurry in high summer -- to rise from its destructive swoon of insularity-engendered anomie, the embrace of a view of the world imbued by anima mundi, embodied in the living architecture of a city like New Orleans, is essential.

In New Orleans, interred corpses will not remain buried in the earth...the water sodden ground causes the dead to rise to the surface. Axiomatically, we must not deep-six our grief and rage. In the name of Katrina's dead and walking wounded, we must not allow the casuistry-shattering verities of the human heart to be buried and forgotten nor allow mass media schlock to drown out the lamentations of the city's restless dead from memory.

To honor her dead, displaced and deeply scarred, we must remember the mortifying sights and heart-shaking sounds of both the natural disaster that was Katrina and the official shit storm of human negligence, flat-out deceit and malevolence that rendered the Crescent City a corpse-choked drowning pool. Instead, we must gaze down into the dark water of memory, remembering the water-deluged streets of the city...awash with bloated bodies, raw sewage, industrial sludge and the floating debris and submerge detritus of peoples' lives.

Yet, to properly mourn what was lost to the storm (in the tradition of the city itself) one must allow one's grieving heart to be seduced by the soul of the world. Personally, as is the case with many who knew the city, pre-Katrina -- beautiful, disloyal, capricious creature she was (and remains) - I retain a lover's ardor for her.

For: Being enveloped by the redolence of orange blossom and jasmine, held on her humid, late afternoon air, as I sat, swigging a Turbo Dog, on the banks of the Mississippi, as evening tilted over the Lower Ninth. For: The exquisite indifference of starlight above the Bywater, and the manner those distant, celestial bodies would stand in stark contrast to the redemptive immediacy of the sweat-soaked bodies near me, as we would lie on our backs, upon the sidewalk, watching steam (borne of the mass of humanity within) rise from the roof of Vaughan's Lounge...listening, as inside, Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers wailed into the early morning hours.

I suspect my years in New Orleans saved/cursed me from being agenda-prone. I'm not of the reductionist school. I'm drawn to swamps...not so much the muck - but the mindfulness needed to negotiate the terrain. Of course, swamps will bog one down; yet, I'm drawn to the cacophony and filtered light, to its minute gradations of green upon green ... One is forced to slow down in order to take in the revealed beauty and hidden dangers therein.

Moreover, the swamp exists for its own sake and feels no obligation to explain its mystery. It can be known, but its mystery is just that ... ever growing, always dying.

One must not, and this is a habitual misstep of the contemporary left, approach politics, personality and place as a strictly intellectual exercise -- as a thought experiment that will yield to logic. If the swamp of the human psyche were that simple to negotiate, then life would be a dry, blood-bereft trudge indeed.

And yet, how the world wounds us; at times, delivering an aching sorrow that one will always carry. But rejoice in your wounded condition...for the open wound harbors a mouth to kiss...a womb from which to be perennially reborn. As Octavio Paz testifies, "Love is a wound, an injury...Yes, love is a flower of blood."

As far as the struggle to be included in the present political narrative, we, on the left, remain marginalized to the point of near invisibility. But don't lose heart: The problem is the solution. Apropos, empire carries the seeds of its own demise. Therefore, in the shadow of the house of cards economy, now tottering over the ruins and detritus of the nation's shuttered factories, foreclosed upon farms, and abandoned mills, one should go about the business of working on what will replace the hollow and decayed system when it collapses from within.

Accordingly, Rainer Maria Rilke averred (paraphrasing) everyone has a letter written within and if you refuse the life your heart wants to live, you don't get to read this letter before you die. An individual must risk the world, with all its attendant woundings, or he risks having a dead letter office piling up lost correspondence from his neglected heart.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Lalo Alcaraz ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



A scene that nearly makes the invasion of Iraq appear foolish.


Ongoing Iraqi Violence Almost Makes American Invasion Seem Pointless

WASHINGTON-Following the latest surge of violence in Iraq, a Pew Research Center poll released Monday has found that a substantial majority of Americans now believe the continuing bloodshed in the country almost makes it seem as if the 2003 U.S. invasion might have actually been somewhat pointless.

Approximately 83 percent of Americans surveyed said recent incidents such as a car bomb explosion that killed 40 in the city of Kut, the executions of seven worshippers outside a mosque in Youssifiyah, and a series of other attacks that have left scores of Iraqis dead and wounded were the kinds of events that, if they didn't know better, might make them think the lengthy occupation really wasn't worth it in the slightest.

Forty-three percent of Americans said if someone wanted to, they could very nearly make the assessment, based on current conditions on the ground, that perhaps the United States wasted valuable resources on an unwinnable, nearly impossible endeavor.

"If I didn't have the full story of how and why we got into Iraq, I could see how the continuing violence might, possibly, make the whole war seem almost misguided or something," Atlanta resident Arnold Grover said. "You read about terrorists dressed as police officers gunning down men at a recruiting station and catch yourself wondering for a moment if maybe, just maybe, we might have actually made a terrible decision that just made a bad situation worse and squandered the international goodwill we enjoyed after 9/11."

"I'm just saying that one could think that" Grover added. "I don't. But, just taking a step back and looking at the broader picture of how Iraq is today versus how it was before we invaded, I can see how one could come to that conclusion."

A majority of Americans also agreed that the spate of roadside bombs, suicide attacks, and ethnic murders might-and this is just an opinion, they claimed, which may or may not actually hold water-cause one to deduce that the federal government had sacrificed 4,500 troops, not to mention more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, in a campaign that ultimately, perhaps, proved ruinous for both nations.

"Sure, through the narrow prism of the violence that has resulted, I guess it'd be possible to conclude we accomplished nothing and threw away a staggering number of human lives as well as trillions of dollars for no real reason," Boise, ID resident Tricia Booth said. "This latest carnage almost makes it seem as if this war were something we shortsightedly got ourselves into and were woefully underprepared to conduct. Fortunately, I have the benefit of all the facts."

In response to the poll, officials who helped orchestrate the war told reporters they understood why people might momentarily pause in their support for the effort.

"With all the chaos, it's understandable that Americans were on the cusp of thinking no amount of money or military force could ever have stabilized a region so unmanageably volatile and dangerous to begin with," said retired U.S. general Tommy Franks, who led Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. "I'm honestly not at all surprised that so many people were briefly tempted to challenge the moral underpinning of the war, as well as its execution."

"But that's why it helps to have the big picture," Franks added. "It really puts everything into perspective. Right?"

Even former president George W. Bush, who launched the Iraq War and presided over much of the subsequent occupation, told reporters he understood how the recent violence in the region could almost cause Americans to regret the military involvement, and much else besides.

"I see where these folks are coming from," Bush said. "I bet a lot of them came this close to wishing I'd never been president, too."
(c) 2011The Onion




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 35 (c) 09/09/2011


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In This Edition

Bernie Sanders asks, "Is Poverty A Death Sentence?"

Uri Avnery introduces, "Daphne And Itzik."

Medea Benjamin exposes, "The Congressional 'Supercommittee.'"

Amy Goodman considers, "Troy Davis And The Politics Of Death."

Jim Hightower shows us, "Perryism In Action."

Helen Thomas explains, "The Statehood Stakes."

James Donahue wonders, "Why Did We Ever Think We Needed More Police?"

Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford warns that, "Little Brothers Are Watching."

Robert Scheer studies, "Obama's Economic Policies."

Joel Hircshhorn sees, "Two Paths To Reform."

Paul Krugman foresees, "An Impeccable Disaster."

John R. MacArthur discovers, "Some Liberals On To Obama's Betrayal Of Liberalism."

William Rivers Pitt examines, "The Cult Of Death."

Kansas Con-gressman Mike Pompeo wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!

John Nichols finds, "Congress Should Mark Anniversary of the 'War On Terror' by Deauthorizing It."

Sam Harris looks into, "September 11, 2011."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst witnesses a, "Red Meat Slam Dance" but first Uncle Ernie explores, "The Theory And Practice Of Oligarchical Collectivism."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Rex Babin, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Ruben Bolling, Derf City, Destonio, Clay Bennett, Article V Convention.Com, Politifake.Org, Logan Williams, Collins, European Union, Amnesty International, A.P., You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










The Theory And Practice Of Oligarchical Collectivism
By Ernest Stewart

The oligarchs are the lords of the earth. Everything exists for their benefit.
The ordinary people, the workers - are their slaves." ~~~ George Orwell

"American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region." ~~~ Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence

"What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen. When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another. So there's total disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are going to have a whole new crop of victims in the next place. This is happening all over the world." ~~~ Father Tom Doyle, former Vatican lawyer

"All for one, one for all, that is our device." ~~~ Alexandre Dumas

I got to thinking the other day; yes, I know, a very dangerous thing for me to do, about what the kids who are too young to remember life before 9/11 must think of our brave new world -- a world brought to us by those wonderful folks down at PNAC and the RNC.

Those kids have known nothing of peace, known nothing but a continuous war for all of their lives, and while Orwell was actually describing what was going down in 1948 in his book "1984," many of his warnings have long ago come to pass here in Oceania.

For example, America has turned from a Republic of sorts into a government totally controlled by the oligarchs instead of the people, with our current Emmanuel Goldstein being Obamahood, who, like Goldstein, was part of the conspiracy and went along with it for personal gain. The 9/11 Conspiracy was how we got sucked up in a never-ending war that was in the planning for decades, until they could make it happen.

Today's children are taught to hate Muslims like the folks in the book were taught to hate folks from Eurasia and Eastasia, as were the folks in Eurasia and Eastasia taught to hate us in Oceania. Just like in the book, we are in state of constant war, a war that doesn't cost too much, i.e., a war without many of our troops being killed, but one that allows our Oligarchical Collective to keep control and keep us as good, little, brain-dead slaves to them. And, unlike their elders, our kids have nothing to compare our current mess to, so they think everything that goes down is normal -- the way things have always been, and with the military and the politicians doing whatever they're told by the oligarchs, that's all they're going to know. Oh, and how to "be a loyal, plastic robot for a world that doesn't care!"

However, I do see some change up ahead, but it's not necessarily a change for the better. The trouble with the 1984 scenario is that it's a bit too expensive to continue for much longer with all that money going to the Pentagoons for their games. I've always maintained that if the Civil War hadn't happened slavery would've died out by the turn of the century because of steam power and the fact that slaves are rather expensive to buy, keep, and maintain! It's much cheaper to keep us as vassals where our food, shelter and upkeep are ours to deal with -- not the princes!

It's far better to get rid of war and give the people bread and circuses as in the somewhat brilliant 1975 film Rollerball. (Not the new version garbage, but the film starring James Caan.) Set in the year 2018, it told a story of the world controlled by seven corporations: one controls food, one entertainment, one transportation, etc. Caan plays Rollerball for Huston, which is the home of the energy corporation. The game Rollerball is what has replaced war, yet it is a blood sport much like the gladiatorial games were to the Romans! Of course, we have Football, but compared to Rollerball, it's rather wimpy and boring, but the concept of this is all but here already! The Oligarchical Collective is in place and gaining power everyday with just a few differences to Americanize it and make it our own. While the Koch brothers, their Tea Bagger puppets like old ManBearPig, and others are leading the charge, they're not the puppet masters, but mere assistants -- much like Obamahood and Boner are!

In Other News

Sometime next week, Benjamin Netanyahu will pull Obamahood's puppet strings, and Barry will dance all the way to the U.N. to deny the Palestinians their right to have a state of their own. Trouble is for both Barry and Benny is that they're likely to get overridden by the General Assembly, and made to look like the terrorist SOB's they are before the entire planet.

Even worse, if we can twist enough arms to keep the override vote from going through, you can bet all hell is going to break loose in Palestine, and throughout all of the Muslim world. Israel is counting on this, because they know another Intifada is bound to be heading their way, so they can use it as an excuse to perhaps begin the "final solution" of the Palestinian question, and steal the rest of old Palestine for themselves, and then look beyond their borders for more "Lebensraum." Now, where have I heard that word before?

Barry will mumble something about how we've always stood for democracy and will continue to do so, but "unfortunately not in this case, because blah, blah, blah, and it will help me get reelected, and then I'll fix the problem and give them a state of their own, perhaps Texas?"

We will, of course, do nothing about it, and let Israel kill off the rest of their apartheid slaves, much like we did to the Indians, followed shortly thereafter with huge hydrogen mushrooms sprouting all over Israel.

In America, a few dirty bombs will be set off (either theirs or ours) at various sporting events and downtown areas, and we'll be surging up to attack some more countries with brown-skinned people who have oil and minerals; well, you know the drill, don't you! The U.N. will wring their hands, and send some troops into Africa to rape and pillage, i.e., same ole, same ole! And you, too, America, will do nothing about it, just like before; then the cattle cars will arrive to take you away -- just like they did before! So, tune in next week, America, for a ringside seat to the beginning of the end! Damn those pesky Mayans!

And Finally

I see where there just might be some justice for Catholic clergy sex abuse victims. They're righteously upset that no high-ranking Roman Catholic leaders have ever been prosecuted for sheltering guilty priests, so they went to the International Criminal Court in The Hague last Tuesday, demanding an investigation of the pope and top Vatican cardinals for possible crimes against humanity. Now you're talking! The Vatican called it a "ludicrous publicity stunt."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit legal group, requested the inquiry on behalf of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, arguing that the Catholic Church has maintained a "long-standing and pervasive system of sexual violence" despite promises to swiftly oust pedophile priests.

The Vatican's U.S. lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, called the complaint a "ludicrous publicity stunt and a misuse of international judicial processes."

The complaint names Pope Benedict XVI, a.k.a. Joey Rats, former Youth for Hitler Werewolf, for his role as leader of the "Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," which has the responsibility for overseeing abuse cases; Cardinal William Levada, who now leads that office, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state under Pope John Paul II; and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who now holds that post.

Attorneys for the victims say "rape, sexual violence and torture are considered a crime against humanity as described in the international treaty that spells out the court's mandate." The complaint also accuses Vatican officials of "creating policies that perpetuated the damage," constituting an attack against a civilian population.

I guess it's just a case of "Holy See No Evil?" or "Monkey See, Monkey Do." I know it's one of those two, maybe both?! It's about time someone put an end to this, and made not only the offending priests pay, but the ones that helped them continue their crimes, and hid them from the people and from punishment. I put child abusers right up there with politicians as the scum of the Earth, don't you?

Keepin' On

Our good friend Rex Babin is back in the magazine for the twelfth time this week as our spotlighted cartoonist. Rex was the first professional cartoonist to join our little band of "merry pranksters" and allow us to use his art. Here's his bio:

Rex Babin has been the political cartoonist for The Sacramento Bee since 1999. A native of Walnut Creek, California, Babin previously worked at the Albany, NY Times Union for 10 years. He also worked at the Orange Coast Daily Pilot and the Denver Post. His cartoons are distributed nationally by King Features Syndicate. Rex was the winner of the National Press Foundation's 2001 Berryman Award and was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize.

Rex joined us for our second edition (way back in February 2001) and has been with us ever since! Welcome back, Rex!

While Rex allows us to use his copyrighted work for free, many don't, and it's because of folks like Richard from New York that we can afford to bring you the rest. Thanks, Richard! I took your advice, and changed that photo on the donations page; and, in fact, I'm using it for this week's column, too! Richard, like me, no longer supports the ACLU, and instead sends us the money that he used to give to them every year. Have no fear, Richard, we'll never betray you, brother, like they have us!

For those folks who read us for free, week after week, and year after year, who are working and can afford to help us out, what are you waiting for? Time to step up and take a stand; we're all for one and one for all! For those of you who are in as bad a shape financially as I am, don't worry about donating; however, if you appreciate what we do for you, please do spread the word about us; the more the merrier!

*****


09-09-1923 ~ 09-10-2011
Thanks for the films!


07-17-1972 ~ 09-11-2011
Thanks for the films!


07-30-1935 ~ 09-13-2011
We'll always have Ann Arbor!


02-24-1922 ~ 09-13-2011
Thanks for the art!


*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
Donations

*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.













Is Poverty A Death Sentence?
By Bernie Sanders

The crisis of poverty in America is one of the great moral and economic issues facing our country. It is very rarely talked about in the mainstream media. It gets even less attention in Congress. Why should people care? Many poor people don't vote. They certainly don't make large campaign contributions, and they don't have powerful lobbyists representing their interests.

Here's why we all should care. There are 46 million Americans -- about one in six -- living below the poverty line. That's the largest number on record, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. About 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, the report also said. That number has soared by 13.3 million since 2000.

Moreover, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. This comes at a time when the U.S. also has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth with the top 1 percent earning more than the bottom 50 percent.

According to the latest figures from the OECD, 21.6 percent of American children live in poverty. This compares to 3.7 percent in Denmark, 5 percent in Finland, 5.5 percent in Norway 6.9 percent in Slovenia, 7 percent in Sweden, 7.2 percent Hungary, 8.3 percent in Germany, 8.8 percent in the Czech Republic, 9.3 percent in France, 9.4 percent in Switzerland. I suppose we can take some comfort in that our numbers are not quite as bad as Turkey (23.5 percent), Chile (24 percent) and Mexico (25.8 percent).

When we talk about poverty in America, we think about people who may be living in substandard and overcrowded homes or may be homeless. We think about people who live with food insecurity, who may not know how they are going to feed themselves or their kids tomorrow. We think about people who, in cold states like Vermont, may not have enough money to purchase the fuel they need to keep warm in the winter. We think about people who cannot afford health insurance or access to medical care. We think about people who cannot afford an automobile or transportation, and can't get to their job or the grocery store. We think about senior citizens who may have to make a choice between buying the prescription drugs he or she needs, or purchasing an adequate supply of food.

I want to focus on an enormously important point. And that is that poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death. Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people which is why the high childhood poverty rate in our country is such an outrage.

Some facts:

* At a time when we are seeing major medical breakthroughs in cancer and other terrible diseases for the people who can afford those treatments, the reality is that life expectancy for low-income women has declined over the past 20 years in 313 counties in our country. In other words, in some areas of America, women are now dying at a younger age than they used to.

* In America today, people in the highest income group level, the top 20 percent, live, on average, at least 6.5 years longer than those in the lowest income group. Let me repeat that. If you are poor in America you will live 6.5 years less than if you are wealthy or upper-middle class.

* In America today, adult men and women who have graduated from college can expect to live at least 5 years longer than people who have not finished high school.

* In America today tens of thousands of our fellow citizens die unnecessarily because they cannot get the medical care they need. According to Reuters (September 17, 2009), "nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and cannot get good care. Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday."

* In 2009, the infant mortality rate for African American infants was twice that of white infants.

I recite these facts because I believe that as bad as the current situation is with regard to poverty, it will likely get worse in the immediate future. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street we are now in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Millions of workers have lost their jobs and have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Poverty is increasing.

Further, despite the reality that our deficit problem has been caused by the recession and declining revenue, two unpaid for wars and tax breaks for the wealthy, there are some in Congress who wish to decimate the existing safety net which provides a modicum of security for the elderly, the sick, the children and lower income people. Despite an increase in poverty, some of these people would like to cut or end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, home heating assistance, nutrition programs and help for the disabled and the homeless.

To the degree that they are successful, there is no question in my mind that many more thousands of men, women and children will die.

From a moral perspective, it is not acceptable that we allow so much unnecessary suffering and preventable death to continue. From an economic perspective and as we try to fight our way out of this terrible recession, it makes no sense that we push to the fringe so many people who could be of such great help to us.
(c) 2011 Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. Elected Mayor of Burlington, Vt., by 10 votes in 1981, he served four terms. Before his 1990 election as Vermont's at-large member in Congress, Sanders lectured at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Read more at his website.





Daphne And Itzik
By Uri Avnery

IT SOUNDS like the title of a romantic movie. "Daphne, Itzik and all the Others."

It starts off with a friendship between two youngsters, he in his early thirties, she in her mid twenties. Then they quarrel. He leaves. She remains.

The audience knows exactly what it wants: it wants the two to reunite, kiss, marry and walk arm-in-arm into the sunrise, to the accompaniment of a soft melody.

As for the actors, they are perfect. They both play themselves. Hollywood's Central Casting couldn't have done better.

She is an attractive young woman, wearing a man's hat for easy recognition. He is the Israeli young male, vaguely handsome, easily recognizable by his nose.

THE STORY starts with Daphne Leef, an editor of short films, daughter of a composer, unable to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv. She is fed up. She announces on Facebook that she is going to live in a tent on Rothschild Boulevard and asks if anyone will join her.

Some do. Then more. Then even more. In no time, there are more than a hundred tents on the avenue, one of the oldest in town, a quiet residential neighborhood. Other tent cities spring up all around the country. A mass movement has come into being. Last Saturday, 350 thousand people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, 450 thousand throughout the country. That would be something like 18 million in the US, or three million in Germany.

Some time after the whole thing started, the Israeli National Student Union, lead by its chairman, Itzik Shmuli, joined the protest. Daphne and Itzik were seen as the leaders, together with some others, notably Stav Shaffir, also easily recognizable with her flaming red hair. (Stav means autumn.)

The media loved them. They embraced them with a fervor never seen before. In a way that was quite remarkable, since all the media are owned by the very same "tycoons" against whom the protesters are railing. The explanation may be that the average working journalist belongs to the same social group as Daphne and the other protesters - young middle-class men and women who work hard and still do not make enough to "finish the month".

Also, the media need the "rating": the public wanted to see and hear the protests. No one could afford to ignore it, not even a tycoon eager for profit.

THREE WEEKS ago, the first signs of a split started to appear. After first treating the protest with disdain, Binyamin Netanyahu saw the danger and did what he (and politicians like him) always do: he appointed a commission to propose "reforms". He neither promised to implement its recommendations, nor did he allow the commission to break the bounds of the two-year state budget already enacted by the Knesset.

For some, this was just a maneuver to gain time and let the protest movement lose its momentum. Others pointed to the fact that the commission is headed by an independent, 61 year old professor in good standing, Manuel Trajtenberg (a German name written in the Spanish way) who could be expected to do his best within the limits dictated to him. Netanyahu himself, something between a pious Reaganite and a devout Thatcherite, promised to change his economic views altogether.

That's how the split started. Daphne, Stav and most of the others refused to cooperate with the commission. Itzik embraced it and met with its members. Daphne was not satisfied with the limited reform likely to emanate from the commission, Itzik was ready to accept what was achievable.

Actually, the controversy was not inevitable. Daphne and her colleagues could do what Zionists have always done with immense success: at every stage, take what you can get and move on to get more.

But the split is much more than a disagreement over tactics. It reflects a basic difference of world view, strategy and style.

DAPHNE IS anti-establishment. She is not doing this for slight changes within the existing system. Though she was born into the heart of the establishment, Jerusalem's sedate Rehavia neighborhood, she wants to overthrow it and to create something completely new.

Itzik wants to work within the establishment. He talks about the "New Israeli", but it is not at all clear what is new about him.

Just before the huge demonstration, a terrible fact was disclosed: Daphne had not served in the army. When it emerged that the reason was her suffering from epilepsy, something even more terrible was dug out: when she was 17 years old, she had signed a petition of high school pupils condemning the occupation and refusing to serve in the occupied territories, or even to serve altogether. (Obviously, these disclosures must have come from the files of the Shin Bet Security service, or from one of the neo-fascist "research" centers financed by far-right Jewish billionaires in the US.) Itzik, of course, had done his duty.

The fact that the masses joined the protest in spite of these disclosures shows that the old militaristic language has lost its luster. Daphne and her followers stand for a different discourse.

Some believe that it is basically a gender clash: male versus female. Daphne's style is soft, inclusive, affirmative, reaching out to all parts of society. Itzik's style is much more exclusive. Daphne and Stav never say "I", always preferring "we". Itzik uses "I" freely. He raised quite a few eyebrows when he said at the demonstration: "You are all partners in MY struggle..."

The protest movement is heavily influenced by women. Women founded it, women are its main spokespersons. Does this change its texture?

(I had an argument about this with a feminist friend. She insisted that there is no basic difference between the genders, that the existing difference is created by culture. Boys and girls are educated to follow different role models from age zero. I believe that there is a basic biological difference, going back to the primates and before. Nature intended the female to bear and rear children, while the male had to fight and hunt for food. But in the end it comes to the same: the modern human being has the ability to shape him/herself, so we can design our culture according to our will.)

DAPHNE SEEMS to have no ego, no political ambitions. Almost everybody believes that Itzik, on the other hand, has his eyes set on a seat in the Knesset - using his new-found public stature in order to join the Labor (or any other) Party, if he cannot win the leadership of the protest movement and turn it into a party in his image.

The latter seems unlikely. At the huge demonstration, his speech was well received. But it was undoubtedly Daphne who really touched the heart of the masses. Itzik spoke to the head, Daphne to the heart.

Something very strange - or perhaps not so strange - happened to the media on this occasion. All three major TV stations covered the event live and at length. Itzik's speech was carried in its entirety by all three. But in the middle of Daphne's speech, as if on orders from above, all three stations cut off her voice and started broadcasting "comments" by the same tired old gang of government spokesmen, "analysts" and "experts".

From then on, almost all the media overplayed Itzik and underplayed Daphne. The tycoons, it seems, have taken over again.

FROM THE start, the leaders of the protest insisted that the movement is not "political", neither "left" nor "right". It is solely concerned with social justice, solidarity and welfare, not with affairs of state like peace, occupation and such.

How long can this stance be maintained?

This week, General Eyal Eisenberg, commander of the home front (one of the four geographical commands of the army) made a speech in which he forecast a "general war, a total war" between Israel and an "Islamized" Arab world. In this war, weapons of mass destruction would be employed.

Military and political leaders immediately downplayed this speech, saying that no such danger existed for the near future. But the implications were clear: the need to expend huge sums to equip all of Israel with "Iron Dome" anti-missile defenses, expend huge sums to buy submarines for our nuclear arm (only partly paid for by the Germans), and expend even more huge sums for buying the latest American stealth fighters. Billions and billions of dollars on top of the existing huge military budget.

Israel is becoming more and more isolated. Just before stepping down, the US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, warned that Netanyahu is "endangering Israel". The Palestinian application to the UN for recognition of the State of Palestine may lead to a severe crisis; the conflict with Turkey is becoming more dangerous by the day; in Egypt and other awakening Arab countries, anti-Israeli sentiments are reaching new heights.

Can one really pretend that all this does not affect the chances of creating a welfare state? That the momentum of the protest movement can be maintained and increased under these darkening clouds?

THE NEXT stage will arrive with the recommendations of the Trajtenberg commission in a few weeks.

Will they enable Itzik to celebrate and call the whole thing off? Will they confirm Daphne's prediction by offering only crumbs from the table around which the politicians and tycoons are feasting? Will they extinguish this historic movement or give it new life?

How will this movie go on? Ah, there we have to wait and see. We wouldn't disclose the end, would we? Assuming we knew it.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







The Congressional 'Supercommittee'
Debt Panel or Death Panel?
By Medea Benjamin

When it comes to government handouts, there's no bigger welfare queens than the Pentagon and the legions of mercenaries and weapons manufacturers profiting from America's half-dozen ongoing wars and its global empire of military bases. In fact, more than half of U.S. income taxes are funneled, not to welfare mothers and underprivileged youths, but to what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex."

Endless war and a global empire are costly, as it turns out, with U.S. military spending roughly doubling since 2001 thanks largely to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's not counting the moral costs associated with being a nation whose greatest export these days is violence, the perpetration of which Barack Obama notably defended even as he was accepting a Nobel Prize for Peace. Military aggression doesn't just take its toll on those of the receiving end of America's liberating Hellfire missiles and cluster bombs-our last domestically manufactured goods.

Yet despite the riches it receives courtesy of the American taxpayer, no group feels more entitled than military contractors and their intellectual mercenaries on Capitol Hill fighting for ever more handouts, fear-mongering talking points in hand. War profiteers have even banded together to safeguard the money they make from death and destruction, forming the group "Second to None" to counter the "threat" of military spending cuts.

Unfortunately for taxpayers and poor foreigners alike, no one in a position of real power, conservative Republican or liberal Democrat, is seriously entertaining the idea of dismantling the U.S. empire. And that's a shame, because U.S. spending on "national security"has become so divorced from the idea of defense and so bloated - coming in at more than $1 trillion a year, according to some estimates - that it now roughly equals what the rest of the world spends on bombs and tanks combined. But that trillion-dollar-a-year entitlement is not the one lawmakers are talking about cutting.

Take Washington Senator Patty Murray, co-chair of the recently created debt commission tasked with slashing federal spending. Murray is generally considered one of the more liberal members of the Senate and is the only woman on the panel, with that latter fact alone enough to win her praise from some progressive groups. One organization, MomsRising, is even urging the nation's mothers to sign a petition preemptively praising Murray's work on the panel, promising to "deliver a real superhero cape, tennis shoes with wings, and your signatures directly to Senator Murray."

We suggest that mothers who don't want their children sent off to kill and be killed in unjust wars hold off for a bit. After all, there's nothing heroic - or motherly - about sending other people's kids off to kill and be killed in a foreign land, something Murray has voted to do time and again.

Though she laudably opposed the invasion of Iraq, Murray has consistently voted to fund America's wars and has been silent in the wake of evidence her fellow Democrat, President Obama, has killed dozens if not hundreds of mothers and their children as part of his expansion of the war on terror. Indeed, according to Amnesty Internatinoal 14 women and 21 children in a single cluster bomb attack in Yemen. At least 140 civilians were killed in a single strike as part of Obama's escalated war in Afghanistan, including 93 children. Yet Murray has provided the administration a blank check, only meekly repeating boilerplate platitudes such as the need to "ask tough questions" and "insist on a clear plan," which we suspect doesn't mean a whole lot to any Afghan mothers.

Murray has been such a reliable friend of the military-industrial complex that she has taken in well over a quarter-million dollars from the war industry in the last four years alone, more than any other member of the debt panel she co-chairs. And Murray's worth every penny. In a recent ad, she celebrates the fact she "put Boeing back in the game" to win a lucrative Air Force contract it originally lost - you can't make this up - after it was caught committing bribery, which is illegal when it involves government procurement officials but not, so it seems, politicians. It's hard to find a better example of the endemic corruption in Washington than a corrupt lawmaker helping a corrupt company get a contract it gained - and at one point, lost - because of corruption.

"Senator Murray leveled the playing field," the senator's ad boasts. "Because we should build these planes. And that means jobs." Jobs for Americans, obviously: it would be macabre to brag about creating work for Pakistani funeral directors.

Don't expect much from Murray's colleagues on the debt committee, either. According to the Associated Press, the six Republicans and six Democrats on the debt panel "represent states where the biggest military contractors - Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co. and Boeing Co. - build missiles, aircraft, jet fighters and tanks while employing tens of thousands of workers." That means they're even more anxious to please the military establishment and weapons manufacturers than your average politician. Collectively, members of the committee tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion in federal spending have, since 2007, taken in around $1 million in campaign contributions from military contractors.

And as Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe observe, "these companies plan to 'cash in' on these donations to stop real cuts to big war contracts." They have good reason to feel optimistic. Just look at who else is on the panel.

Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, has been an even more reliable supporter of the warfare state than Murray, having backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and every subsequent escalation of the war on terror, a fact that's netted him more than $139,000 in campaign cash over the last four years, second only to his colleague from Washington. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, meanwhile, has been in favor of just about every U.S. military intervention in the last two decades, from Iraq to Libya. Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen's top campaign contributor is none other than Lockheed Martin.

And while some self-styled spokesmen for the Tea Party have said they are open to cutting military spending, the same can't be said for Republicans on the committee. Asked about the impact of reduced military spending on his state's war industry, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey responded that "we all have very good reasons to try to prevent" such cuts. So much for that.

The Obama administration has also been clear about its desire to safeguard spending for empire. Leon Panetta, the president's hand-picked choice to lead the Defense Department, even declared that cuts to the military "would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military's ability to protect the nation." So much for subtlety. His suggestion? Raise taxes and cut Social Security and Medicare instead.

Like a James Bond villain, you have to hand military contractors this: they're diabolical, yes, but they're also pretty smart. Beyond just campaign donations, they have spent decades consciously spreading their operations across the country to the point that no congressional district lacks its own well-paying weapons factory. As a result, almost every lawmaker is in their pocket, with even the staunchest conservatives channeling their inner Keynesians to promote militarism as a jobs creator.

Fifty years ago President Eisenhower warned Americans that this would happen - that the rise of a massive arms industry, an industry that profits from war and loses money as a result of peace, threatened to "endanger our liberties [and] democratic processes," creating an institutional incentive for ever more spending on war and empire. That's no longer a threat, these days: it's the sad reality.

Doing something about it will require a lot more than politely asking our politicians to, pretty please, stop funneling our money to those who profit from war. Instead of sending superhero capes and tennis shoes to our lawmakers' offices, as the group MomsRising suggests, we ought to be occupying them; instead of just sending letters, we ought to be engaging in direct action and demanding that they end the wars that have wracked the U.S. economy. Politicians, being politicians, respond to pressure, not politeness.
(c) 2011 Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK, which has organized seven humanitarian delegations to Gaza. She is author of Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart.






Troy Davis And The Politics Of Death
By Amy Goodman

Death brings cheers these days in America. In the most recent Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., when CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked, hypothetically, if a man who chose to carry no medical insurance, then was stricken with a grave illness, should be left to die, cheers of "Yeah!" filled the hall. When, in the prior debate, Gov. Rick Perry was asked about his enthusiastic use of the death penalty in Texas, the crowd erupted into sustained applause and cheers. The reaction from the audience prompted debate moderator Brian Williams of NBC News to follow up with the question, "What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?"

That "dynamic" is why challenging the death sentence to be carried out against Troy Davis by the state of Georgia on Sept. 21 is so important. Davis has been on Georgia's death row for close to 20 years after being convicted of killing off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah. Since his conviction, seven of the nine nonpolice witnesses have recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining the testimony. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the murder.

Last March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Davis should receive an evidentiary hearing, to make his case for innocence. Several witnesses have identified one of the remaining witnesses who has not recanted, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, as the shooter. U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. refused, on a technicality, to allow the testimony of witnesses who claimed that, after Davis had been convicted, Coles admitted to shooting MacPhail. In his August court order, Moore summarized, "Mr. Davis is not innocent."

One of the jurors, Brenda Forrest, disagrees. She told CNN in 2009, recalling the trial of Davis, "All of the witnesses-they were able to ID him as the person who actually did it." Since the seven witnesses recanted, she says: "If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row. The verdict would be not guilty."

Troy Davis has three major strikes against him. First, he is an African-American man. Second, he was charged with killing a white police officer. And third, he is in Georgia.

More than a century ago, the legendary muckraking journalist Ida B. Wells risked her life when she began reporting on the epidemic of lynchings in the Deep South. She published "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" in 1892 and followed up with "The Red Record" in 1895, detailing hundreds of lynchings. She wrote: "In Brooks County, Ga., Dec. 23, while this Christian country was preparing for Christmas celebration, seven Negroes were lynched in twenty-four hours because they refused, or were unable to tell the whereabouts of a colored man named Pike, who killed a white man ... Georgia heads the list of lynching states."

The planned execution of Davis will not be at the hands of an unruly mob, but in the sterile, fluorescently lit confines of Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Butts County, near the town of Jackson.

The state doesn't intend to hang Troy Davis from a tree with a rope or a chain, to hang, as Billie Holiday sang, like a strange fruit:

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

The state of Georgia, unless its Board of Pardons and Paroles intervenes, will administer a lethal dose of pentobarbital. Georgia is using this new execution drug because the federal Drug Enforcement Administration seized its supply of sodium thiopental last March, accusing the state of illegally importing the poison.

"This is our justice system at its very worst," said Ben Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Amnesty International has called on the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Davis' sentence. "The Board stayed Davis' execution in 2007, stating that capital punishment was not an option when doubts about guilt remained," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "Since then two more execution dates have come and gone, and there is still little clarity, much less proof, that Davis committed any crime. Amnesty International respectfully asks the Board to commute Davis' sentence to life and prevent Georgia from making a catastrophic mistake."

But it's not just the human rights groups the parole board should listen to. Pope Benedict XVI and Nobel Peace Prize laureates President Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, among others, also have called for clemency. Or the board can listen to mobs who cheer for death.
(c) 2011 Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback.







Perryism In Action

As governor of Texas, Rick Perry has been a five-watt bulb sitting in a 100-watt socket.

When the hot and dry tinderbox of Central Texas recently exploded into dozens of raging wildfires that killed four people and burned over a thousand family homes down to their slabs, Perry wasn't even in his socket – he was in South Carolina campaigning for president. So he had to rush back, a day late, to pose as governor. He did a mess of photo ops – and even took a political potshot at Barack Obama, blaming him for shortchanging Texas on federal firefighting help.

But, wait – Perry wasn't just a day late, he's been months late in providing the most basic state leadership to deal with such disasters. Texas has been ablaze with hundreds of wildfires since late last year, torching millions of acres all across the state. Yet, scrambling recklessly this spring to fill a gaping deficit he had created in the state budget, guess whose funding Perry whacked by 75 percent. Volunteer fire fighters! Volunteer departments make up about 80 percent of the state's firefighting force, and they are the first responders to about nine out of 10 Texas wildfires. Even with Texas on fire, and as a withering drought was making more fires inevitable, the governor-who-wants-to-be-your-president slashed state funding for these volunteers from $30 million to an abjectly inadequate $7 million, leaving them having to spend their own money for supplies.

Ironically, Perry is campaigning as a states' rights, small government ideologue who wants to shrink the federal role and turn governing responsibility over to state officials like him. You might ask some Texas Volunteer firefighters how well such Perryism is working out in practice. This guy couldn't be trusted to run a small town, one-truck fire department, much less the United States of America.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








The Statehood Stakes
By Helen Thomas

President Barack Obama is about to veto the Palestinians' well-supported bid in the United Nations for statehood. In doing so, he will betray the tide of the Arab spring, and the long standing commitment of the United States of promoting democracy in the Middle East and throughout the world.

How could he? Well, his reelection obviously means more to him than freedom for the brutally oppressed Palestinians who have been occupied for 63 years by the well-armed Israelis. Pro-Israeli voters might run away. Certainly the right wing, including the Tea Partiers, has already been co-opted by the pro-Israeli lobbyists.

The New York Times reported 20 Israeli left-wing intellectuals and artists had urged President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to go to the United Nations to pursue the resolution, despite their government's opposition. Abbas said he is willing to live in peace with Israel upon Palestine being declared a state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood, of course, and declared it would be a setback for peace.

What peace? Israel has illegally grabbed, with U.S. support, 76 percent of Palestinian land. Palestinians would be stupid to return to the lure of negotiations.

The U.S. has made it clear it is ready to block statehood for the Palestinians. A group of senior American officials are on their way to Jerusalem to urge the Palestinians to drop their hopes for statehood. The Palestinians would be fools to heed that advice. With statehood, they would be on an equal footing with Israel at the negotiating table.

Obama will prove his hypocrisy if he bows to the Israelis once again, par for the course. No doubt he faces a dilemma - to do the right thing or play ball for his own political gain. If his mother was alive, she would undoubtedly tell him to do the right thing and let his conscience be his guide.

I believe if a segment of Americans are so sympathetic to the needs of Israel for housing, they should give up their own land, homes and resources here. As an American I would say that is their individual right, but they have no right to give up what does not belong to them. Most Americans must know that.

Pro-Israeli lobbyists in the U.S. put the pressure on Americans to forget their ideals of freedom and self government. Recently Congressman have been wined and dined in Israel to persuade them against supporting statehood for the Palestinians.

It would be a great step for Obama to show his support by not vetoing Palestinian yearning for statehoood. Courage is not easy.

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower had courage. In 1956, when he was running for reelection against Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, an intellectual and idealist, Eisenhower ordered Britain, France and Israel to get out of the Suez Canal, which they were invading. With the clout of the U.S., and even though his reelection was at stake, Eisenhower took that heroic stance. It was a blow for ally Britain, especially considering that Prime Minister Anthony Eden's government fell as a result of Eisenhower's righteous stance, and Eden never recovered.

The American people understood, and Eisenhower was reelected to his second term. Generals do understand war sometimes. It was a proud moment for the U.S. in history.

Eisenhower showed the same courage in his first presidential campaign when he promised to get out of the no-win Korean War. He did what he promised, and wound up with a demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. The major fighting stopped and South Korea prospered in its U.S.-backed independence. So there are some good and worthy lessons in history.

President Obama should take the giant step and practice what he preaches about democracy. When it comes to his own personal political fate, though, perhaps the Arab longing for freedom from the brutal occupation of the Israelis may be too much to ask.

But Obama would make America look great in supporting those seeking freedom, rather than selling out on America's ideals. Millions around the world count on America and have been sold on our ideals of freedom and democracy. It behooves us to live up to those aspirations. In that way, we will exemplify true leadership in the world.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Why Did We Ever Think We Needed More Police?
By James Donahue

If there is anything to be gained about the fact that governments are going broke it has to be the looming loss of all those police officers in our midst.

This is not to say that our police officers are not an important part of our society. Everybody probably agrees that the men and women trained to maintain law and order is a key ingredient to maintaining peace and security on the home front. Our concern is that we appear to have too many police officers. There seem to be so many that they are getting into mischief for the sheer lack of having anything important to be doing.

Consequently we read stories about officers turning tazers, their new electronic stinging toys, on citizens that refuse to jump as quickly as the police think they should. And we frequently hear of deaths by heart failure from the shock of being struck by these devices.

There has been video evidence of unwarranted police beatings, sometimes in public places.

Now that local and state governments are struggling to generate enough money to balance their budgets, the police appear to be busy doling out traffic tickets for every possible infraction. And court fines are steep. Thus leery drivers are forced to keep one eye on the road and the other on their rear view mirrors. A friend recently paid a fine of $400 after receiving a citation for driving ten miles per hour over the limit.

We appear to have more police and police cars around than we have streetlights. They are so plentiful that the general public no longer feels protected by them. Instead we are feeling threatened.

There is good reason for us to feel threatened. Many of us watched in horror while armed and armored police officers kick, club and gas their way through crowds of peaceful protesters demonstrating in various government protests occurring around the country.

We occasionally hear of police drug raids that go wrong. The officers use battering rams to smash their way into private homes then enter with guns drawn, only to find out that they bashed their way into the wrong house.

Emily Good, of Rochester, New York, was arrested and jailed because she stood in her yard and used a video camera to film a police traffic arrest occurring in the street. The officers said they felt “threatened” by her camera.

Our jails are so crowded we are constantly building more of them. A recent report said we have 5.9 million people under some form of incarceration, either in prison, in jail or on probation for various "criminal" offenses. That breaks down to one out of every 34 adults. The prison population alone is approaching 2 million people, and they are costing the American taxpayer nearly $40 billion a year to house. Yet annual FBI reports indicate that crime in this country is on the decline.

On any "average" evening, it is common to drive along one of the major US highways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I-40 or I-75 and see flashing red lights over every hill. There are so many police I suspect they are stopping drivers on whims, sometimes making up reasons, to make drug searches, check for alcoholism, and keep personal records to justify their jobs.

The situation is getting so bad that most drivers instantly expect to be stopped and issued a summons to appear in court for something, God only knows what, the moment a police car appears in their rear view mirror.

Because they are such a nuisance in our daily lives, we have created cultural myths about how to protect ourselves from police harassment while we are traveling. One of the reasons white cars got so popular is that the story was circulating that police don't stop them as often. Flashy red cars and bright yellow sports vehicles are among the most frequently stopped. Also older people driving stripped-down, tan, green or pale blue four-door sedans are less frequently stopped than younger drivers in vans, four-wheel-drive trucks and sporty vehicles covered with chrome.

The time of day that we travel also makes a difference.

About two years ago I was stopped by a city police officer while driving through a well-known speed trap in Payson, Arizona. I had my wife and son with me. We had been visiting our daughter, who was attending school in Phoenix, and we left quite late that night for a four-hour trip back to Show Low, where we lived. It was about 2 a.m. and there wasn't a car on the road. Nevertheless, because I knew the reputation of the police in Payson, I was checking my speed. I made sure I was driving within the limit. In spite of my precautions, a police car began following me. And sure enough, the officer turned on those flashing red, white and blue lights, flipped on those alternating flashing headlights that confuse the mind, turned on his intensive white spot lights that leave you totally blinded, and stopped me.

If you haven't been stopped by the police while driving at night, let me say that it is a frightening experience. The glaring lights that silhouette armed uniformed officers dressed in black and leather when they appear at your window, is carefully designed to make even the most daring soul turn into a submissive mouse.

The officer said he saw my car "weave a little" and suspected that I had been drinking. He found me quite sober. Yet he held me there for some time, obviously using his radio to check my driver's license number and auto registration plate number. I am sure he was hoping that I might be a fugitive who failed to pay a traffic ticket somewhere and that a judge had written a bench warrant for my arrest. Or, better yet, that the car might be stolen. Or that I was carrying improper plates. I live a relatively clean life and he could not find anything out of order. My only crime was that I dared to drive through Payson at two o'clock in the morning. He ended up writing me a speeding ticket. It said I was driving ten miles over the limit. What does one do about something like that? It was the middle of the night and the municipal judge wouldn't be in his office for hours. If I argued with the officer he probably would have arrested me for resisting arrest, obstruction of justice, or even assaulting a police officer. He had the badge. He had the gun. He owned that stretch of the road. We lived about two long hours of mountain driving away. If I chose to plead innocent and return for a trial, it would have cost me a day of work and lost pay, just to try to beat a $100 speeding ticket. Then it would have been my word against that of the police officer. I was sure the dice would have been loaded in that game. I paid the fine and wrote it off as a bad experience after having encountered a crooked cop.

There was a time, early in my career as a newspaper reporter, when I had nothing but respect for the police. I worked in Michigan, where the Michigan State Police were among the finest, best trained, and brightest officers in the nation. I had many friends not only in the State Police, but among the deputies for the many different Sheriff's Departments and City Police departments whom I worked with over the years.

The police didn't seem to start "going bad" until recently, after the federal government began pumping millions of dollars into local coffers to beef up the nation's police protection and wage the country's fake "war on drugs." Now the police departments all seem to be mixed with thugs and bullies who enjoy using the authority of their badges and guns to make life miserable for the common folk. I don't want to think that all police are bad. I think we just have a few rotten apples who are giving all police departments a black eye.

It does appear, however, that the old police motto: To serve and protect, has been forgotten. Police now exist as enforcers of law.

I think it may be a good thing that local governments are forced to start lying off excess police officers. The ones left on staff might just be busy enough and smart enough to remember why they chose their profession.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.




Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority subway platform, Cambridge, Massachusetts.



Little Brothers Are Watching
The Example of Massachusetts
By Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford

Early in the morning on March 13, 2008, Australian-born Peter Watchorn, one of the world's foremost harpsichordists, was standing on a subway platform in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a professional cellist from Australia who had his instrument with him. They were on their way to Logan International Airport to catch a plane.

After going a few stops, all the trains in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) subway system were brought to a halt while theirs was searched with sniffer dogs. They thought they still could make their plane when their train started up again and they made it to the connecting bus. But before they reached their terminal, they were hauled off the bus and subjected to an abusive search - by no fewer than eight officers - during which the cello, valued at $250,000, was nearly tipped out of the case.

After they were interrogated for 30 more minutes, one state trooper told them they had been overheard at the Cambridge station, "having conversations we were not supposed to be having." They missed their plane and never got any kind of apology from the police. The incident left Watchorn wondering whether he had done the right thing becoming an American citizen.

On the basis of an anonymous tip - possibly a hoax, or maybe just an overreaction from a well-intentioned "if you see something, say something" citizen spy - the MBTA police decided that these travelers posed a "credible threat." The MBTA had been preparing for years to disrupt such threats by creating a robust intelligence unit that partners with the fusion center, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), numerous other state and federal agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Metropolitical Transportation Authority (MTA) Interagency Counterterrorism Task Force in New York City. By 2005, the unit was maintaining 14 stand-alone databases to track all suspicious activity and crime, information which was forwarded directly to the JTTF. It had a weekly bulletin, "Reporting on Terrorism-Related Activity," that was disseminated across the nation, and it was working with Raytheon and Draper Labs to develop special software to track people, since the facial recognition software available at that time was not effective in the subways.

The MBTA had also introduced a "Security Inspection Program" to search passengers on a random basis at the time of the 2004 Democratic National Convention and made it permanent in October 2006. Even as the subway infrastructure deteriorated and the MBTA ran out of funds to pay injury and damage claims, groups of four or five transit officers were paid to "deter terrorists" by inspecting the bags of randomly selected passengers at various stations on a rotating basis - activity that security expert Bruce Schneier calls "security theater." The MBTA also announced the deployment of "behavior recognition teams" with the authority to stop anyone anywhere for unspecified reasons.

The airport to which the musicians were heading piloted such teams shortly after two of the planes involved in the 9/11 attacks took off from its runways. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the precursor of the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques program (SPOT) when the head of its national Campaign against Racial Profiling – a tall African-American man with a beard - was spotted behaving "suspiciously" by talking on a pay phone after deboarding an airplane. A jury agreed that he had been wrongly detained.

Evidence that "behavioral profiling" is just another term for racial profiling did not prevent SPOT from being rolled out at other airports, at a cost of some $400 million. In a 2010 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) claimed the program had no scientific validity and caught no terrorists, despite the fact that some 16 individuals alleged to be involved in terrorist plots (including the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad) moved through airports deploying SPOT on at least 23 occasions.

Nevertheless, an additional $1 billion was designated for the next version of SPOT, which was unveiled at Logan beginning in August 2011. It involves the Israeli-style screening of passengers who are asked questions to see if they seem unduly nervous or display evidence of Orwell's "facecrime." The $14 billion spent by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on airport security has been handed over to dozens of contractors, with little attention paid to what actually works, and even less to notions of privacy and the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches - especially in the case of "backscatter" whole-body screening, which is bringing a hefty commission to the company headed by former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Michael Chertoff.

What are the chances that Watchorn and his fellow musician now have a permanent record of being regarded as "credible threats"? Given what the ACLU of Massachusetts has been able to discover through its multiple public records requests, it seems quite likely. For Massachusetts, which has received at least $170 million from the DHS for surveillance-related programs, has been at the forefront of efforts to build the new, data-hungry intelligence apparatus, thanks to the efforts of its governor from 2003 to 2007, Mitt Romney.

As lead governor on homeland security issues at the National Governors Association and a member of the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Council, Romney was ardent about enlisting the public "to be on the lookout for information which may be useful" and expanding government surveillance: "Are we wiretapping, are we following what's going on, are we seeing who's coming in, who's coming out, are we eavesdropping, carrying out surveillance on those individuals that are coming from places that have sponsored domestic terror?"

So, it is not surprising that Massachusetts had two of the earliest fusion centers in the country. The Commonwealth Fusion Center (CFC) was established under the supervision of the state police in 2004 without any public notice or legislative process. The Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) was set up the following year, also under cover of official silence.

The CFC, which soon moved from a terrorism focus to an "all hazards, all threats, all crimes" mission, is staffed by members of the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Massachusetts National Guard, the US Army Civil Support Team, the DEA, the Department of Correction, the DHS Office of Intelligence Analysis, the Geographic Information Systems Department and at least one private corporation, CSX Railroad. In addition, local police officers with security clearance work at the CFC.

Under the CFC standard operating procedures, police officers attached to the CFC behave more like FBI agents than local cops. They are permitted to conduct "preliminary inquiries," during which "all lawful investigative techniques may be used" (including the use of undercover operatives or informants) without reasonable suspicion that a target is involved in criminal activity. If they go undercover "to attend meetings that are open to the public for purpose of observing and documenting events," they are not required to identify themselves or leave the gathering if it is requested that police officers make themselves known, and they don't have to leave the room if legal advice is being given.

The CFC shares data with local police departments, with state police in other states, with various state agencies and through the national Information Sharing Environment (ISE) with federal and state agencies around the country. Its personnel have been granted clearance by the DHS and the FBI to access classified information.

BRIC is under the supervision of the Boston police and staffed by the MBTA transit police, employees from various local police departments, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office and various business interests. A pioneer of Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR), the Boston Police Department, through BRIC, shares information with the CFC and the FBI, and has entered into information-sharing agreements with agencies as far away as Orange County, California via COPLINK, police information-sharing software designed to "generate leads" and "perform crime analysis."

Massachusetts has developed other databases to aid information-sharing. Among them is "MassGangs," which collects a vast range of personal and associational information on anyone and everyone who could be a member of a "gang" - defined as an "association or group of two [emphasis added] or more persons, whether formal or informal, whose members or associates engage, either individually or collectively, in criminal activity." There is also SWISS (the Statewide Information Sharing System), which enables multiple agencies to contribute police reports in real time to a state repository and then access and search reports remotely through a computer. The database creates a permanent record not only of arrests, but of all incidents based on "calls to service" - from fighting neighbors to a barking dog - as well as information about each time a police officer stops someone on the street and makes a search.

As the CFC and BRIC steadily expand the number of public and private sources from which they collect information and the mountain of data grows ever larger, accessing agencies have less knowledge about the kind and quality of information that they retrieve. The CFC disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy of the data it collects and shares. Its privacy policy does more to shield its operations from public scrutiny than it does to protect individual privacy, and it creates no enforceable rights. Without any independent oversight mechanism or public reporting, Massachusetts' fusion centers have been left to police themselves, even though they have every incentive - as well as the stated intention - to sidestep laws they find inconvenient.

The public is not just being left in the dark about the operation of fusion centers. It has little solid information about the network of DHS-funded surveillance cameras that has been installed in cities and towns of the Greater Boston Urban Area Security Initiative. These powerful cameras have the capacity to pan, tilt, and zoom, rotate 360 degrees in a fraction of a second, and "see" for a mile. They could eventually be fitted with facial recognition software, eye scans, radio frequency identification tags, and other forms of software, and connected to large law enforcement databases - if they are not already.

Like other states and cities, Massachusetts and Boston law enforcement officials have received federal funding for a broad range of other surveillance-related technologies. Some, at first glance, may seem like sensible policing tools. For instance, automatic license plate readers - provided to state and local police through a federal Department of Transportation grant - can help police spot stolen cars and parking violators.

But they also capture digital images of thousands of license plates per minute and store this information in databases, along with travel information indicating the time and place a particular vehicle was "pinged." In Massachusetts, this information is required to be submitted to the state's criminal justice information services database, which can be freely accessed by other states' and federal law enforcement. Absent a formal policy on data retention and sharing - which the state does not have - the personal travel information of millions of Massachusetts residents can be shared with agencies throughout the nation.

Massachusetts police may soon have an even more powerful tool at their disposal - if they do not already. Imagine a database containing billions of data entries on millions of people, including (but not limited to) their bank and telephone records, email correspondence, biometric data like face and iris scans, web habits and travel patterns. Imagine this information being packaged "to produce meaningful intelligence reports" and made accessible via a web browser from a handheld mobile or police cruiser laptop.

In 2003, the Massachusetts State Police put out a request for proposals to create just such an "Information Management System" (IMS). In May 2005, they awarded a $2.2 million contract to Raytheon to build, install, troubleshoot and maintain the IMS. Welcome to policing in the age of total information awareness.
© 2011 Nancy Murray is director of education at ACLU Massachusetts. Kade Crockford is the ACLU Massachusetts privacy rights coordinator.








Obama's Economic Policies
One Betrayal Too Many
By Robert Scheer

It's getting too late to give President Barack Obama a pass on the economy. Sure, he inherited an enormous mess from George W., who whistled "Dixie" while the banking system imploded. But it's time for Democrats to admit that their guy bears considerable responsibility for not turning things around.

He blindly followed President Bush's would-be remedy of throwing money at the banks and getting nothing in return for beleaguered homeowners. Sadly, Obama has proved to be nothing more than a Bill Clinton clone triangulating with the Wall Street lobbyists at the expense of ordinary folks.

That fatal arc of betrayal was captured by a headline in Tuesday's New York Times: "Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on 'Lost Decade.'" The Census Bureau reported that there are now 46.2 million Americans living below the official poverty line-the highest number in the 52 years since that statistic was first measured-and median household income has fallen back to the 1996 level. As Harvard economist Lawrence Katz summarized this dreary news: "This is truly a lost decade. We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we're looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s." The late 1990s, it should be noted, is when President Clinton, working with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed through two critical pieces of legislation ending effective regulation of the banks. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act smashed the wall between high-flying Wall Street investment firms and the once staid commercial banks entrusted with the deposits and mortgages of America's innocent souls. The next year Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, banning any effective regulation of the rapidly expanded trade in the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that have since haunted the world's economy.

The collapse of those toxic securities led to the housing crisis and resulted in 15.1 percent of Americans now living in poverty, the same level as when Bill Clinton took office. But thanks to another one of Clinton's grand triangulation strategies, the one he called "welfare reform," the impoverished are now denied the safety net that existed before the Clinton presidency. Although 22 percent of U.S. children are now below the poverty line, the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program no longer exists.

Some of us who voted for Obama thought he was no Clinton, but he was and is, as was demonstrated in his first days in office when he appointed two key veterans of the Clinton Treasury Department, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, to head up the Obama economic team. Geithner, as treasury secretary, is the point man for the administration's push to pass the so-called American Jobs Act, which the president hyped in his Sept. 8 speech to Congress and the nation. It was pure Clinton bull: I feel your pain while I help the superrich pick your pocket.

Space permits only one example, that of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom Obama selected to head his "Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs." Was that some cruel joke? GE under Immelt has grown and created jobs, but they are abroad rather than in our own troubled country. As a result, by the end of last year, only 134,000 of GE's workforce of 304,000 were based in the United States; the remainder-and 82 percent of the company's profit-were sheltered abroad.

Ironically, GE's ability to avoid taxes was restricted by President Ronald Reagan, who had once been a spokesman for GE but was outraged by the company's use of tax loopholes. It remained for President Clinton to offer GE some new tax breaks. As a result of being able to shelter profit abroad last year, GE had profits of $14.2 billion but claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Immelt was the elephant in the room when Obama said in his speech last week: "Our tax code should not give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs right here in the United States of America."

It has been a long time since GE was creating jobs here during its "better light bulb" days, and the last spurt of GE participation in the U.S. economy came through its unit GE Capital, which specialized in toxic mortgage lending that once produced more than half of the company's profits but ultimately led to a taxpayer bailout.

Someone who knows a great deal about that sort of scam is Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Harvard law professor pushed out of Obama's inner circle. In launching her campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts this week, Warren posted a video that clearly defined the enemy:

"Washington is rigged for big corporations. A big company, like GE, pays nothing in taxes, and we're asking college students to take on even more debt to get an education?"

Obama in appointing Immelt last January praised him as a business leader who "understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy." Apparently, what Immelt understands is that what it takes to satisfy corporate interests instead of national needs is conning a president into looking the other way while you send jobs abroad.
(c) 2011 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. A journalist with over 30 years experience, Scheer has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.







Two Paths To Reform
Violence or Convention
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

By every one of countless measures the US is in a death spiral. Its political system, government and economy are hopelessly broken. No wonder that the vast majority of Americans express severe dissatisfaction with Congress, both major parties, and increasingly with President Obama. And only the wealthy elites have any reason to be positive about corporate powers, Wall Street and the whole banking and finance sector. They not only own the nation, they run it.

Only the truly delusional still speak about the US being the leading and best nation. About a third of the population is suffering from one or more of these epidemics: unemployment, underemployment, hunger, homelessness, home foreclosure, no useful health insurance, income so stagnated that keeping up with rising living costs is next to impossible, and slippage from the middle class into the working poor class. What is to save the nation?

Once you acknowledge the profound and insidious corruption plaguing the political system which is nothing more than a dysfunctional two-party plutocracy or oligarchy serving the rich and corporate interests, then you must also see that elections will not deliver salvation. Nor can you depend on the media to rise above corporate ownership to help fix the nation.

It matters little whether you vote for and support Republicans or Democrats. All those politicians are corrupt and unable to exercise bold, creative solutions for the good of the nation, not those special interests that get them elected, on the left and right.

Once mighty nations and superpowers have fallen before. History speaks truth, unlike just about everything spoken by today’s politicians.

There are two paths that have the power to bring about the major, radical reforms needed. Everything else you hear is pure garbage designed to maintain the status quo.

First, there is what brought about the birth of the US and so many other democracies: violent revolution. Not rebellion against some foreign power, but rather against domestic tyrannical forces. There is a limit to what many millions of Americans will endure, especially as they see the rich Upper Class enjoy every conceivable type of luxury. True, it is hard to understand how even now we have not seen millions of angry, suffering Americans protesting violently in the streets of all major cities, as we see happen in so many European countries. Americans seem to have been drugged into a distracted, delusional state of mind, still buying the scam that they can depend on elections. Eventually, however, as government is financially unable to provide various kinds of assistance because of the broken economy, those most struggling to survive will inevitably resort to violence. History speaks truth.

Second, is the peaceful route to dramatic, necessary reforms that the Founders had the wisdom to put into the US Constitution: an Article V convention of state delegates with the constitutional power to propose constitutional amendments. At this time there are more diverse groups seriously examining and, increasingly, demanding the first Article V convention. Why? Because it has become crystal clear to more and more people that only through constitutional amendments that Congress will never propose is it possible to rid the political system of the corruption and dysfunction permeating it. Get private money out of politics. Remove the fiction of corporate personhood. Compel Congress to balance the budget. Worthy ideas are everywhere.

At other times attempts to get the first Article V convention met stiff opposition from the right and left. But times have changed. It is clearer than ever that the political and government system is so broken and corrupt that the basic rules must be amended, just as the Founders believed would become necessary.

A major upcoming conference at Harvard, using the tag line "Democracy in America is Stalled," will surely help focus both support and opposition to using the convention route.

There are now many websites providing solid information and analysis about the convention option, particularly one by the national, nonpartisan Friends of the Article V convention that does not advocate for specific amendments.

Every time you hear some argument against using the convention option ask yourself whether the risk of sticking with the current system outweighs any conceivable risk of a convention that can only propose amendments, which still must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. If you are not in the top levels of the economy, but rather are in the majority suffering and losing ground, then the answer rings as clear as the liberty bell.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.








An Impeccable Disaster
By Paul Krugman

On Thursday Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank or E.C.B. - Europe's equivalent to Ben Bernanke - lost his sang-froid. In response to a question about whether the E.C.B. is becoming a "bad bank" thanks to its purchases of troubled nations' debt, Mr. Trichet, his voice rising, insisted that his institution has performed "impeccably, impeccably!" as a guardian of price stability.

Indeed it has. And that's why the euro is now at risk of collapse.

Financial turmoil in Europe is no longer a problem of small, peripheral economies like Greece. What's under way right now is a full-scale market run on the much larger economies of Spain and Italy. At this point countries in crisis account for about a third of the euro area's G.D.P., so the common European currency itself is under existential threat.

And all indications are that European leaders are unwilling even to acknowledge the nature of that threat, let alone deal with it effectively.

I've complained a lot about the "fiscalization" of economic discourse here in America, the way in which a premature focus on budget deficits turned Washington's attention away from the ongoing jobs disaster. But we're not unique in that respect, and in fact the Europeans have been much, much worse.

Listen to many European leaders - especially, but by no means only, the Germans - and you'd think that their continent's troubles are a simple morality tale of debt and punishment: Governments borrowed too much, now they're paying the price, and fiscal austerity is the only answer.

Yet this story applies, if at all, to Greece and nobody else. Spain in particular had a budget surplus and low debt before the 2008 financial crisis; its fiscal record, one might say, was impeccable. And while it was hit hard by the collapse of its housing boom, it's still a relatively low-debt country, and it's hard to make the case that the underlying fiscal condition of Spain's government is worse than that of, say, Britain's government.

So why is Spain - along with Italy, which has higher debt but smaller deficits - in so much trouble? The answer is that these countries are facing something very much like a bank run, except that the run is on their governments rather than, or more accurately as well as, their financial institutions.

Here's how such a run works: Investors, for whatever reason, fear that a country will default on its debt. This makes them unwilling to buy the country's bonds, or at least not unless offered a very high interest rate. And the fact that the country must roll its debt over at high interest rates worsens its fiscal prospects, making default more likely, so that the crisis of confidence becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And as it does, it becomes a banking crisis as well, since a country's banks are normally heavily invested in government debt.

Now, a country with its own currency, like Britain, can short-circuit this process: if necessary, the Bank of England can step in to buy government debt with newly created money. This might lead to inflation (although even that is doubtful when the economy is depressed), but inflation poses a much smaller threat to investors than outright default. Spain and Italy, however, have adopted the euro and no longer have their own currencies. As a result, the threat of a self-fulfilling crisis is very real - and interest rates on Spanish and Italian debt are more than twice the rate on British debt.

Which brings us back to the impeccable E.C.B.

What Mr. Trichet and his colleagues should be doing right now is buying up Spanish and Italian debt - that is, doing what these countries would be doing for themselves if they still had their own currencies. In fact, the E.C.B. started doing just that a few weeks ago, and produced a temporary respite for those nations. But the E.C.B. immediately found itself under severe pressure from the moralizers, who hate the idea of letting countries off the hook for their alleged fiscal sins. And the perception that the moralizers will block any further rescue actions has set off a renewed market panic.

Adding to the problem is the E.C.B.'s obsession with maintaining its "impeccable" record on price stability: at a time when Europe desperately needs a strong recovery, and modest inflation would actually be helpful, the bank has instead been tightening money, trying to head off inflation risks that exist only in its imagination.

And now it's all coming to a head. We're not talking about a crisis that will unfold over a year or two; this thing could come apart in a matter of days. And if it does, the whole world will suffer.

So will the E.C.B. do what needs to be done - lend freely and cut rates? Or will European leaders remain too focused on punishing debtors to save themselves? The whole world is watching.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"A great many people think they are thinking
when they are just rearranging their prejudices."
~~~ William James ~~~









Some Liberals On To Obama's Betrayal Of Liberalism
By John R. MacArthur

As a self-proclaimed independent journalist normally content to attack politicians from outside the establishment, I've found it very lonely criticizing Barack Obama these past three years. Before then it was easy to be at odds with power, since the Bush nightmare rallied all sorts of disparate foes of the administration.

But with Obama's arrival in the White House, ordinarily skeptical liberals thought they had found their redeemer, a genuine reformer with leftist instincts who, even better, was the son of a black African father and a liberal white mother. It didn't matter what Obama's actual record was - how (or if) he voted in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate, who his political sponsors or donors were, or what sort of people he expressed admiration for in "The Audacity of Hope." Because he said he opposed the invasion of Iraq, wanted to reduce corruption in Washington, would close Guantanamo, would rein in Wall Street's recklessness and would "renegotiate" the North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama was a dream come true.

So when I began challenging the assumptions about Obama's progressive potential, months before the 2008 election, people who had once joined me in raucous denunciations of Bush started looking at me funny, their voices turning testy, their faces tense. I recall a prominent academic I know recoiling from me and placing a protective hand on his wife when I contradicted his excited chatter about an Obama presidency. Another time a prominent left-wing editor went so far as to defend Obama's sponsor, the thuggish and reactionary former mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, by lamely insisting, "He's better than his father."

Now, as the "first black president" almost daily moves further to the right, I'm still usually alone, but I am beginning to feel a tiny pulse on the liberal end of the spectrum. It began in June with Obama's fake withdrawal from Afghanistan and from an unlikely source. If Obama worship was once epidemic in the U.S., it was virulent in Britain and France. But here was an Englishwoman, Jemima Khan, better known for her glamorous looks and ex-husband than her political writing, finally calling out Obama on his outrageous doubletalk.

"Alhamdullilah!" (Arabic for "Praise to God"), she wrote in Britain's Independent newspaper. "President Obama is finally withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Except he's not - only those he deployed in the 'surge' of 2009; 68,000 will remain, double the number sent by his predecessor, George Bush." Khan knows something about Middle Eastern and Islamic politics, having lived for years in Pakistan with Imran Kahn, an opposition politician and former cricket star. And she got to the heart of matter about America's mad, counterproductive occupation of Afghanistan. Noting that U.S. drone bombs had killed roughly one al-Qaida leader for every 10 Pakistani civilians, she wrote, "There comes a point when you have to ask: What is more dangerous, terrorism or counter-terrorism? The irony of the 'war on terror' is that the U.S. can win it only when it stops fighting it."

Now, she lamented, many Pakistanis hate America at the same time that the war's supposed objective - says Obama, "to defeat al-Qaida" - has been shredded. As the astute Khan pointed out, "more safe havens exist and terrorists operate now outside of Afghanistan, from Peshawar to Sanaa."

Granted this was only one column in one Western paper. But Obama soon angered a broader audience. His concessions to the Tea Party during the debt-ceiling fight at last roused economist and columnist Paul Krugman to near-fury in The New York Times. Calling the deal "a disaster" for the economy, he slammed Obama for "folding" in the face of "blackmail." Krugman said: "He surrendered last December, extending the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it's just me, but I see a pattern here."

Even the deeply conflicted Nation magazine began to remark on Obama's increasingly spurious liberal credentials, though not quite with its full-throated institutional voice. In a signed "comment," the estimable William Greider argued that "people who adhere to the core Democratic values Obama has abandoned need a strategy for stronger resistance," which "would not mean running away from Obama but running at him - challenging his leadership of the party, mobilizing dissident voices and voters, pushing congressional Democrats to embrace a progressive agenda in competition with Obama's."

Perhaps Greider had heard the apparently impromptu statement of Rep. John Conyers (D.-Mich.) at a press conference on July 27 during the debt-ceiling battle: "I say we have to educate the American people at the same time as we educate the president of the United States. Because the Republicans, Speaker [John] Boehner [and] Majority Leader [Eric] Cantor, did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The president of the United States called for that. And my response to him is to mass thousands of people in front of the White House to protest this." And Conyers hadn't yet heard the president's Sept. 8 "jobs" speech in which he called for "modest adjustments to health-care programs like Medicare and Medicaid." We can just imagine how modest.

Things died down a little in August after the "compromise" to lift the debt ceiling. But Obama just won't stop insulting liberals; indeed, there doesn't seem to be any concession to the right that his chief of staff, Chicago's first brother William Daley, can't persuade him to make. On Sept. 2, Obama stuck it to the liberals once again when he said he was backing off from a stricter air-pollution standard, supposedly to save jobs. Environmentalists were predictably upset and expressed their feelings of betrayal. The journalist and activist Bill McKibben called the decision "flabbergasting," adding, "somehow we need to get back the president we thought we elected in 2008."

Maybe it's just me, but I see a pattern here.
(c) 2011 John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine. Among other books, he is the author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War.







The Cult Of Death
By William Rivers Pitt

Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. ~~~ Matthew 25:40 (King James)

Trying to figure out what this whole "Tea Party" phenomenon is all about is a lot like trying to peer into the bottom of a muddy pool. The "mainstream" news media has accepted them as a legitimate, powerful force in American politics, as evidenced by CNN's so-called "Tea Party Debate" for the Republican presidential candidates on Monday night. A group that did not exist three years ago suddenly has enough clout to rate a television banner and a chunk of prime-time coverage.

But who are these people, really?

Clearly, they are made up of what used to be quaintly called the "GOP base." In large part, they are the people who voted for George W. Bush twice, and would have happily pulled the lever for him a third time had he been on the ballot in 2008. They struggled mightily with John McCain's nomination in 2008, thanks to McCain's occasional political heresies against Mr. Bush, and their reticence to get behind McCain is a sizeable part of the explanation for why his campaign chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. No matter how galactically absurd the decision to tap Palin turned out to be, it was a calculated gamble because GOP base voters - now reborn as "Tea Party" voters - absolutely adore her. McCain needed those votes, and chose to roll the dice.

Ergo, these people have real muscle, at least within the party. Few voting blocs are as reliable as the GOP base, and they always turn out en masse for presidential primaries and caucuses. Thus, they are coddled and catered to, even by candidates who don't necessarily share their orthodoxy on far-right conservative issues.

After the 2008 election, that GOP base was transmogrified into the "Tea Party," thanks in large part to massive financial assistance from people like the Koch brothers, who have been using their vast financial resources to undercut the Obama administration and congressional Democrats at every opportunity. Their money helped to organize "Tea Party" rallies, as well as the much-documented bedlam that broke loose at a variety of health care town halls around the country. The "mainstream" news media fell in love with the spectacle, and all of a sudden, this new thing became all the rage (pardon the pun) on the nightly broadcasts.

There's more than a bit of sad irony in this. "Tea Party" people like to think of themselves as a grassroots "movement" born of, so they believe, a national sense of horror at the fact that Barack Obama is president. They peddled the farcical idea that Mr. Obama's birth certificate didn't exist, that he is a secret socialist fascist communist Muslim Islamist terrorist mole...but in the main, they are nothing more than useful idiots following the beat of drummers who couldn't care less about them at the end of the day.

And yes, "idiots" is the proper word. We've seen it often enough by now: the astonishingly poor spelling on protest signs carried by pear-shaped blivets wearing ill-fitting camouflage gear while packing rifles and pistols to public rallies, best personified by the brain donor who proudly held up a placard reading, "Keep Your Damned Government Hands Off My Medicare." It's like a zen koan. The dizzying stupidity represented therein literally stops the mind.

Whatever else these "Tea Party" people are, they are most definitely White Christians, with a strong strain of the evangelical, due in large part to the GOP-base DNA most of them share.

And that's where things get really interesting.

During the GOP debate last week, Rick Perry burnished his law-and-order credentials by bragging about the 234 executions - at least one of which took the life of an innocent man - he has presided over while governor of Texas. The GOP crowd at the debate went absolutely wild, cheering and hooting their approval of the taking of so much life.

On Monday night, candidate Ron Paul was given a hypothetical about providing health care to a dying man who lacked health insurance. Wolf Blitzer, who moderated the debate, asked Paul, "Are you saying society should just let him die?" Before Paul could cobble together an answer, the "Tea Party" audience again erupted, this time yelling "Yes!" in answer to Blitzer's question.

Hmmm.

These "Tea Party" people profess to be representatives of average Americans, despite being a complete creation of the 0.1% wealthy elite. They claim government is too big, even as many of them hail from states (think Texas) that would utterly collapse without federal funding. They bring guns to public rallies. They like Medicare, until they are reminded that Medicare is a government program.

And they are Christians, members of the faithful, who enjoy executions and who think uninsured people should be left to die.

Correction: they are "Christians," because it is impossible to build any kind of bridge between the teachings of Jesus and the beliefs these people espouse at the top of their lungs.

They are not Christians, but are in fact a death-worshipping cult. The best response to the vile display broadcast by CNN on Monday night was provided by former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, who has had more than a few go-rounds with this particular breed of cat. "What you saw tonight," said Grayson, "is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare plan. It's sadism, pure and simple. It's the same impulse that led people in the Coliseum to cheer when the lions ate the Christians. And that seems to be where we are heading - bread and circuses, without the bread. The world that Hobbes wrote about - 'the war of all against all.'"

Thanks to the "mainstream" news media, to ardent yet covert supporters like the Koch brothers, and to the sweaty intensity of their own deranged ideals, these "Tea Party" people have emerged as a true force in American politics. What we saw last week, and on Monday night, is a glimpse of what the world would be like if these people achieve the supremacy they seek.

Jesus wept.
(c) 2011 William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is available from PoliPointPress.





The Dead Letter Office...






Heil Obama,

Dear Unterfuhrer Pompeo,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your many attempts to totally destroy the Environmental Protection Agency, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute you Herr Pompeo, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Congress Should Mark Anniversary of the 'War On Terror' by Deauthorizing It
By John Nichols

Brussels-Anniversaries offer an opportunity to assess, with the perspective afforded by the passage of time, who got things right and who did not.

Unfortunately, in an age when so much of our media bows more to power than accuracy, that does not mean that those who got things right will be turned to for advice and counsel.

In fact, quite the opposite.

So it is that, as the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon approached, the most prominently featured 9/11 figure was former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The term employed most frequently by commentators-aside from "Darth Vader"-to describe Cheney's recollections of 9/11 and its aftermath has been "no apologies." That is because Cheney has so very much to apologize for.

But not everyone got 9/11 wrong.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the attacks, I joined Mary Robinson, the former Irish president and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in keynoting the "Journalism in the Shadow of Terror Laws" conference at the Centre de Presse International in Brussels.

Robinson said many striking things in her remarks to the session we addressed, but what stuck with me was an off-hand reflection. "I remember," she said, "the loneliness of speaking out against the declaration of a 'war on terrorism.' "

The language we use to characterize events defines our response to them and when crimes against humanity were defined as acts of war, explained Robinson, then an appropriate demand that those responsible for horrific violence be brought to justice was replaced with the overwrought and overarching demands of "a perpetual war of terror."

This is a vital reference point for what is actually a week of anniversaries.

September 11 marks a vital anniversary, but so, too, does September 14, the day that the Congress of the United States authorized a "war on terror." The human toll of that war has been immense, as has the political toll for a United States that has lost both good will and authority over the past decade. And the financial cost, according to new accounting by the National Priorities Project, is staggering: more than $7.6 trillion in defense and homeland security spending.

It is not realistic to suggest that, had there been no attacks on September 11, 2001, all or even most of that $7.6 trillion would have been spent on more necessary and fruitful projects. America had a military-industrial complex before 9/11 and it would have one even if terrorists had not attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But the seemingly permanent "war on terror"-which has redefined America is precisely the way that James Madison worried it would when the father of the Constitution wrote in 1795:

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Just as the voice of Mary Robinson-then serving in her UN High Commissioner role-was a lonely one in opposition to declaring a "war on terror" that would define a decade for the world, so Congresswoman Barbara Lee was the lonely voice in the US Congress.

Lee cast the sole vote against Public Law 107-40, the Authorization of the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which effectively launched what is now know as the "war on terror."<> "September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us," Congresswoman Lee said on September 14. "Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States."

"[We] must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target," Lee concluded. "We cannot repeat past mistakes."

That wise counsel was not heeded. Cheney's "war on terror" language carried not just the day but the decade.

But, now that the decade is done, Lee is back with a proposal to draw down the "war on terror."

"In reflecting on the rush-to-war in Afghanistan and President Bush's misguided war-of-choice in Iraq, my worst fears have unfortunately been realized," Lee said when she introduced legislation to sunset and repeal over a six-month period the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists.

"Over the past [decade], this broad authorization of force has had far-reaching implications which shake the very foundations of our great nation and democracy. It has been used to justify warrantless surveillance and wiretapping activities, indefinite detention practices that fly in the face of our constitutional values, extrajudicial targeted-killing operations, and a policy of borderless and open-ended war that threatens to indefinitely extend U.S. military engagement around the world. It is time for Congress to reexamine, and ultimately repeal this flawed authorization. The alternative, to concede Congress's constitutional responsibilities and blindly accept the persistence of war without end, is unacceptable."

Lee is right.

Her proposal has for the most part been neglected by the same media that have celebrated Cheney in recent weeks.

But Lee has a few more allies as we approach September 14, 2011, than she did on September 11, 2001.

Her proposal has been cosponsored by Democratic Representatives John Conyers Jr. (Michigan), Donna Edwards (Maryland), Keith Ellison (Minnesota), Bob Filner (California), Raul Grijalva (Arizona), Mike Honda (California), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Jesse Jackson Jr. (Illinois), John Lewis (Georgia), Jim McDermott (Washington), Pete Stark (California), Maxine Waters (California) and Lynn Woolsey (California). One Republican, North Carolina's Walter Jones Jr., has joined them.

It is still lonely to speak out against the declaration of a "war on terrorism." But it is a little less lonely today than it was a decade ago. And our media could-and should-make it less lonely by highlighting the current legislative initiative of the woman who got it right on September 14, 2001.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







September 11, 2011
By Sam Harris

Yesterday my daughter asked, "Where does gravity come from?" She is two and a half years old. I could say many things on this subject-most of which she could not possibly understand-but the deep and honest answer is "I don't know."

What if I had said, "Gravity comes from God"? That would be merely to stifle her intelligence-and to teach her to stifle it. What if I told her, "Gravity is God's way of dragging people to hell, where they burn in fire. And you will burn there forever if you doubt that God exists?" No Christian or Muslim can offer a compelling reason why I shouldn't say such a thing-or something morally equivalent-and yet this would be nothing less than the emotional and intellectual abuse of a child. In fact, I have heard from thousands of people who were oppressed this way, from the moment they could speak, by the terrifying ignorance and fanaticism of their parents.

Ten years have now passed since many of us first felt the jolt of history-when the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. We knew from that moment that things can go terribly wrong in our world-not because life is unfair, or moral progress impossible, but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions of our ignorant ancestors. The worst of these ideas continue to thrive-and are still imparted, in their purest form, to children.

What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them-for they are badly posed-but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we must create the conditions for human flourishing in this life-the only life of which we can be certain. That means we should not terrify our children with thoughts of hell, or poison them with hatred for infidels. We should not teach our sons to consider women their future property, or convince our daughters that they are property even now. And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with magic and will end with bloody magic-perhaps soon, in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest. One must be religious to fail the young so abysmally-to derange them with fear, bigotry, and superstition even as their minds are forming-and one cannot be a serious Christian, Muslim, or Jew without doing so in some measure.

Such sins against reason and compassion do not represent the totality of religion, of course-but they lie at its core. As for the rest-charity, community, ritual, and the contemplative life-we need not take anything on faith to embrace these goods. And it is one of the most damaging canards of religion to insist that we must.

People of faith recoil from observations like these. They reflexively point to all the good that has been done in the name of God and to the millions of devout men and women, even within conservative Muslim societies, who do no harm to anyone. And they insist that people at every point on the spectrum of belief and unbelief commit atrocities from time to time. This is all true, of course, and truly irrelevant. The groves of faith are now ringed by a forest of non sequiturs.

Whatever else may be wrong with our world, it remains a fact that some of the most terrifying instances of human conflict and stupidity would be unthinkable without religion. And the other ideologies that inspire people to behave like monsters-Stalinism, fascism, etc.-are dangerous precisely because they so resemble religions. Sacrifice for the Dear Leader, however secular, is an act of cultic conformity and worship. Whenever human obsession is channeled in these ways, we can see the ancient framework upon which every religion was built. In our ignorance, fear, and craving for order, we created the gods. And ignorance, fear, and craving keep them with us.

What defenders of religion cannot say is that anyone has ever gone berserk, or that a society ever failed, because people became too reasonable, intellectually honest, or unwilling to be duped by the dogmatism of their neighbors. This skeptical attitude, born of equal parts care and curiosity, is all that "atheists" recommend-and it is typical of nearly every intellectual pursuit apart from theology. Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under.

Ten years have passed since a group of mostly educated and middle-class men decided to obliterate themselves, along with three thousand innocents, to gain entrance to an imaginary Paradise. This problem was always deeper than the threat of terrorism-and our waging an interminable "war on terror" is no answer to it. Yes, we must destroy al Qaeda. But humanity has a larger project-to become sane. If September 11, 2001, should have taught us anything, it is that we must find honest consolation in our capacity for love, creativity, and understanding. This remains possible. It is also necessary. And the alternatives are bleak.
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Rex Babin ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...





Red Meat Slam Dance
By Will Durst

A full complement of Republican presidential candidates gathered for the battle royalle at the Ronald Reagan Library in Seamy (Simi) Valley, California. And though he was only there in spirit, the Great Communicator could easily have supplied the power for the entire proceedings had the networks harnessed him spinning in his grave like a rotisserie chicken in the middle of a power surge.

The 8 challengers for his mantle didn't just break the Gipper's 11th Commandment, "Thou shall not speak ill of other Republicans," they stomped on it with football cleats and shoved it down a sewer grate with a broken rake handle. It was a red meat, power-tie slam dance with operatic overtones.

Anticipation ran higher than Charlie Sheen on New Year's Eve that a hockey match would break out and the blood thirsty audience was not going to be satisfied until lecterns dripped with copious spillage. Before Rick Perry could answer Brian Williams' question about the execution of 234 inmates on his watch, they erupted into applause like an emeritus alumni crowd at Assassins State University during homecoming. Creeping the moderator out more than pinworms in the bottom of his footie pajamas.

Eyes on the prize, Newt Gingrich cautioned panel mates to keep the attacks focused on Obama, while castigating the media for trapping them in this internecine warfare. The rest of the contingent affectionately dismissed his admonition the way a group of Oakland Raider tailgaters would an elderly aunt wandering into a discussion on blitz protection. Newt Gingrich- the soul of reason. Something has gone horribly awry.

We did learn that Michele Bachmann believes in $2 a gallon gasoline and "a strong bold leader who will lead," and that she spent the last three weekends going to restaurants and thinks drilling for oil in the Everglades is a good idea. So, apparently she's planning an electoral strategy that disincludes Florida's mighty 27.

Rick Perry hates cancer and called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme," not once, but three times, so Florida is obviously not on his front burner either. Arch-enemy to all things science, Perry supported his "climate change, what climate change" philosophy by comparing himself to Galileo. You can't make stuff up like this.

Ron Paul has been mauled by the TSA and is not happy about it or much of anything else. Second time through, it is virtually impossible for Willard Mitt Romney to be out-smugged by anybody, even an unctuous Texan. Hermann Cain likes Chile. The country, not the food. And the major difference between Elvis Presley and Rick Santorum's candidacy is... there is none, they're both rock salt, shaved-dust, dead.

Jon Huntsman may be running for the wrong party's nomination. Trying to steer the group from the edge of various abysses, he and Newt shared the big boy babysitter role, while Bachmann lost more momentum than a dark matter anvil hitting a freeway sound wall. Big winner... Sarah Palin. For being prescient enough to not to have made up her mind yet.

But there's plenty of time. This was just the premier stop for the traveling abattoir. There are dozens of chances for continued bloodletting until either Perry or Romney drops from the death of 1000 cuts, or they take each other out in a murder-suicide pact. While Team Obama roots for Perry from the sidelines the same way Jimmy Carter cheered on Bonzo's sidekick back in 80. Be careful what you wish for.
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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In This Edition

Phil Rockstroh says, "'Rome Wasn't Burned In A Day' Replacing Liberal Timidity With Leftist Passion."

Uri Avnery finds himself both, "Sad And Happy."

Medea Benjamin looks, "Through AIPAC-Colored Glasses."

Alex Pareene discovers, "The "Bloomberg View" Is That Michael Bloomberg Shouldn't Pay More Taxes."

Jim Hightower explains, "Obama's "Bold" Jobs Plan."

Helen Thomas is, "Putting America Back To Work."

James Donahue warns, "Americans Should Be Very Afraid."

Maureen Dowd studies, "Egghead And Blockheads."

David Swanson sings, "There Must Be 50 Ways To Leave The Military Industrial Complex."

Peter Finn sees, "A Future For Drones."

Paul Krugman considers, "The Bleeding Cure."

Glenn Greenwald returns with, "The Mainstreaming Of Walt And Mearsheimer."

Robert Scheer concludes, "Murder Is Good Politics, Bad Justice."

California Con-gressman Darrell Issa wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!

John Nichols reports, "Thousands Cheer Bernie Sanders' Appeal To Obama, Super Committee."

Mary Pitt asks, "How Many Poor People Do You Know?"

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Andy Borowitz annoucnces, "In Rare Public Statement, God Tells Pat Robertson To Shut The Fuck Up" but first Uncle Ernie sez he's, "Living In The Land Of Merchant Princes."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Pat Bagley, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Married To The Sea.Com, Dees Illustration.Com, L.T. Saloon.Org, Recube Jim, J. Lavery, McFachem & Dawneway, Armchair Patriots, Charles Dharapak, Columbia Pictures, M.G.M., You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Living In The Land Of Merchant Princes
By Ernest Stewart

"So then," said [Ankor] Jael, "You're establishing a plutocracy.
You're making us a land of traders and merchant princes.
Then what of the future?"
Foundation ~~~ Isaac Asimov

Well, well,
Hey lawdy mama,
Can't afford no shoes
Maybe there's a bundle of rags that I could use?
Hey anybody,
Can you spare a dime?
If you're really hurtin', a nickel would be fine
Hey everybody
Nothin' we can buy
Chump Hare Rama, ain't no good to try
Recession
Depression
Can't Afford No Shoes ~~~ Frank Zappa

"The Chinese are looking for a beachhead in the United States. Idaho is ready to give them one."
~~~ Don Dietrich ~ Idaho Commerce Secretary ~~~

I'm going down
Down, down, down, down, down!
Going Dowm ~~~ Jeff Beck

I just watched our national embarrassment addressing the U.N. with some song and dance that his Israeli puppet masters gave him to read before that august body, showing once again our genocidal maniacs' "tough tittie" speech to the slaves in the Gaza ghetto and ever-shrinking West Bank. Obamahood said:

"Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians - not us - who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and on security; on refugees and Jerusalem."

Oh, where, oh, where, to begin? (Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now.) It would have come in 1948, if we hadn't vetoed every U.N. resolution that was against the Zionazis. It seem only the full weight of the law applies to Palestine, but never, ever, to Israel. I wonder who Obamahood thinks he's jiving with that "Cosmic Debris?" (Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians - not us - who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and on security; on refugees and Jerusalem.) Yeah, that will work out just as it has over the last 63 years. The Jews have nukes, the Arabs have slings and bottle rockets, so it's sure to be a fair and equal negotiations. Not!

Oh, and did I mention when Netanyahu heard Barry's speech, he had an orgasm and began dancing to Hava Nagila, and telling everyone who would listen that the 30 shekels they've paid Barry was the best bribe money they've ever spent? No, I didn't think that I mentioned that!

Once again, Barry has tried to make us look like an honest broker, when nothing could be further from the truth. We are the greatest terrorist nation that the world has ever seen, followed closely by our client states of England and Israel. Compared to us, Russia and China are relatively sane nations -- but only when compared to us!

Until someone nukes Israel back to the stone age, we'll continue to have a never-ending war, which is why Israel is so important to us. Our merchant princes are making too much money in Israel, England, and America to ever let peace come to that region. All Israel knows is war, and its been in a state of war with the world since 1948; if peace would come, their economy would crash,; and most of the Jews would leave; so we can't have that. And since, America is controlled by the same merchant princes, and the Pentagooners, we are in a permanent state of war, which will only end with our destruction -- whether external or internal. One more market crash should do the trick, and Barry and his Rethuglican allies are doing everything in their power to cause our end. For the rest of the world, that end can't come soon enough!

On Friday, the Palestinians will seek membership as a State; our Nobel Peace laureate will veto it; the rest of the world will override it; the Israelis will slaughter the Palestinians; the sh*t will hit the fan; and we'll lose what little respect we had in the rest of the world.

In Other News

Have you heard the news? Obama is starting a class war? I have to laugh out loud about that on several levels. Especially loud, as it comes from Mitch, Lyndsey, Paul, and their likes. Our corpo-rat masters have been in a class war with "we the people" since before they had their little war with the British Corpo-rats during what they call their Independence War. A war, which the sheeple fought for them, just like they've done in every war since, as most all of those wars were class wars. So when I hear Bullshit like this, I just have to laugh -- to keep from crying!

Trouble is, the same sheeple that fought and died and froze to death for our floundering fathers bottom line are still lining up to die for Wall Street, and will help the Kochs fight their war against the last elements of the Middle Class. I just hope I live long enough to see the looks on the Sheeple's faces when they find out, just like the German Brown Shirts did, that they were chumps, and will be the first up against the wall when it goes down. Surprise surprise, surprise, Sergeant!

Some of the comments made by the Rethuglicans who were having a hissy fit while twisting their panties into a bunch were old Mitch (the Bitch) McConnel who said of the Buffet rule:

"If he's feeling guilty about it, I think he should send in a check, but we don't want to stagnate this economy by raising taxes."

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Rethuglican from South Carolina, dismissed "the Buffet rule" as:

"Just a political move by the president. Increasing taxes on millionaires would add a de minimis amount of money to the Treasury to pay off the debt. Tax code should be reformed for one purpose -- generate jobs. When you say we'll tax one percent of the economy, that's class warfare."

Did you by-any-chance see Lindsey when he said that? Don't you wish he'd finally come out of the closet, for god's sake? I mean, DON'T YOU?

Echoing Graham, Con-gressman Paul Ryan, a Rethuglican from Wisconsin, said:

"The administration's proposal is going in the wrong direction.

Class warfare... may make for really good politics, but it makes rotten economics. We don't need a system that seeks to divide people. We don't need a system that seeks to prey on people's fear, envy and anxiety."

Yes, you read that last sentence right, Paul seems to be saying, do correct me if I'm wrong, not to do as he has always done, i.e., using fear, envy and anxiety. You may, like moi, hate Paul Ryans guts, but you have to admit he has balls! Your tax dollars at work, America! Yes, our fascist brothers want no new tax on millionaires, but have no problem with a tax on everybody else! And we're the ones fighting class warfare. N-----, Please!

And Finally

Have you ever wondered what China was going to do with all that worthless debt they've bought from us? They wouldn't dare call it in, for then it would be totally worthless and our crashed economy would crash theirs as well. Not to mention the trillions they've made selling us cheap stuff that used to be made in this country. How about they use all those trillions to buy up chunks of America and bring in a few million Chinese. Did you think of that? Probably not, huh?

Well, that's exactly what they're going to be doing, if they're not stopped. What they have decided to do is to buy up pieces of the United States and set up "special economic zones" inside our country from which they can continue to extend their world domination. "One of these "special economic zones" would be just south of Boise, Idaho and the Idaho government is eager to give it to them. China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach for short) plans to construct a "technology zone" south of Boise Airport which would ultimately be up to 50 square miles in size. The Chinese Communist Party is the majority owner of Sinomach, so the 10,000 to 30,000 acre "self-sustaining city" that is being planned would essentially belong to the Chinese government. The planned "self-sustaining city" in Idaho would include manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail centers, and large numbers of homes for Chinese workers. Basically, it would be a slice of communist China dropped right into the middle of the United States." Of course, they won't be hiring many Americans but using 99% Chinese.

If you think what various embassies do, i.e., bring in a dozen or so diplomatic spies is bad, wait till they bring in hundreds of thousands of spies, soliders, weapons etc. with our blessings so that a mere handful of US citizens can get a job. mostly white collar, scientific-type jobs.

Not only Idaho is being targeted for these "special economic zones," but at this time Sinomach has recently dispatched delegations to Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well. No doubt, the fascist-controlled governments in these states will sign on as quickly as they can.

Can you imagine that during the cold war we would have done the same thing for the Soviet Union, i.e., given them their own little private zones in America to set up any kind of mischief they wanted? My guess is we would have said, "Hell, no!" But that is exactly what we are doing with our current number one enemy. Where are our pinko-hating fascists, now that we need them? No doubt, in line to collect some bribe money. If China can get her foot inside the door with this obvious ploy, we will wake up some morning to discover a large standing, fully-equipped army of occupation in our midst, doing to us what we've been currently doing to the Muslims, and so many others over the years. Actually, it only seems fair, does it not? Does not what goes around, come around?

Keepin' On

As it stands at this moment, next Friday's edition may be our last as we are still $650 short of paying our bills. If that is the case, I'll keep writing my weekly rants in a blog but the magazine as you know it will be gone, and you'll be on your own. When I was a DJ, $650 was chump change, a terrible night -- today we live or die by it. C'est la guerre!

If you want us to keep fighting the good fight for you, send us cash, check or postal money order made out to me asap to this address:

Ernest Stewart
Post Office Box 1096
Taylor, Michigan 48180-1096

If by October first the money is there, we'll go on, if not we won't!

*****


01-23-1919 ~ 09-15-2011
Thanks for the films!



*****

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So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












"Rome Wasn't Burned In A Day" Replacing Liberal Timidity With Leftist Passion
By Phil Rockstroh

Why is it that self-termed progressives are in full retreat (and have been for decades) from the witless army of angry clowns and hack illusionists of the U.S. rightwing?

One contributing factor involves the sterile cultivation of the persona of the "reasonable liberal," a type favored and rewarded by the status quo-protective power brokers of the Democratic Party and by corporate media organizations that find useful his trait of rendering himself feckless (e.g., the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) by the passion-annihilating (but self-serving) device of his preening amiability?

But in so doing, the self-gelded liberal has sacrificed libido and discarded sacred vehemence for careerist privilege. Worse, the rest of us are advised to follow suit...that, in order to gain credibility, one must slouch towards center-hugging irrelevance.

We are counseled that in order to navigate this age of corporate dominance that one's irascible apprehensions and unruly aspirations must be suppressed, for such passions are deemed too radical for mainstream sensibilities, and are therefore regarded as impractical as they are untoward by the crackpot realists of the corporate bottom line whose dictates dominate the political discourse and economic arrangements of our time.

"Prune down [a human being's] extravagance, sober him, and you undo him." ~~~ William James

Yet these self-termed "realists," by means of their ad hoc machinations and hidden-in-plain-sight schemes, are responsible for the creation, promotion and maintenance of a financial system (and its attendant economic, political and ecological consequences) that is as sound as the flight plan of Icarus.

When a nation displays this degree of a noxious mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, an age of peace and plenty becomes as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami.

Yet facing folly is difficult. Stunned by the implications of one's mistakes and misapprehensions, initially, one will reel in the direction of a familiar road--or be seized by an impulse to retreat from the casuistry-sundering fury of the larger world. Yet, as Thomas Paine averred, "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." And as Albert Camus counseled, "Freedom is the right not to lie."

With this in mind, shall we blunder off-road into the landscape of unquestioned narratives?

For example, the following is a topic, when broached, that rarely fails to incur the manipulative rage of the perpetually adrenaline intoxicated right and causes liberals to drop to their knees in penance for sins never committed: The questioning of this culture's reverential, unflagging "support of our troops" blunderbuss and attendant comic book hero-level palaver, such as, "all good Americans stand firm in our support of our troops and our war against the forces of international terrorism."

A bit of personal perspective as to why I demur: Forty-eight years ago, this month, four young girls were murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Ala. At the time of the tragedy, I was a child living in Birmingham. I remember the event to this day. My father, freelancing as a photojournalist at the time, arrived on the scene not long after the blast. I remember him coming home shaken and pale. The event is seared into my memory...how the blind hatred of the vicious can erupt into daily life and inflict irreparable harm and abiding sorrow.

Accordingly, this is why I can not abide U.S. wars of imperium e.g., its Shock and Awe bombing campaigns...the same modus operandi of those despicable, redneck bombers.

The dead of Iraq, Central Asia and Libya were no more responsible for committing acts of terrorism against the people of the U.S. than those little girls, readying for a choir performance in the basement of that church in Alabama, were guilty of any crime perpetrated against the "white race."

Moreover, the attacks staged on 9/11/2001 did not "change everything." The event merely sped up the trajectory of the national security state/military industrial complex towards the landfill of history.

For more than a century, whether the propagandists of U.S. Empire promulgate the subterfuge...of fighting "to make the world safe for democracy" or defending against "the evil empire," or waging a "war on terror"--the objective remains, to secure resources for the U.S. homeland. And that is what we, the populace of empire, can "thank a veteran" for providing.

From the Blue Coats at Wounded Knee to the baby-faced tools of imperium at My Lai and Fallujah to the predator drones scouring Central Asia, the U.S. is the single largest perpetrator of terrorism worldwide. As all the while, guilty by their complicity citizens of the U.S. sit on their sofas, oblivious or unmoved by any event transpiring beyond their self-circumscribed field of reference. There should be a monument erected to the tragic legacy wrought by the acts of terrorism at "Ground Zero" -- and it should be a statue representing a willfully ignorant fat-ass sitting on his couch, TV remote in hand, Cheetos crumbs stippled in the folds of his mouth.

Granted, Lower Manhattan took a tragic hit, a decade ago, and many people suffered as a result (I know I live a couple of neighborhoods upwind) but none worse than the people of Iraq and Central Asia. Somehow, I suspected (and was proven sadly correct) that their experiences would not be evoked, as part of the 9/11 hagiography foisted and verbal monuments cast to sacred victimhood, as part of the official ceremony commemorating the event.

Moreover, not long after 9/11, an attack was launched from Lower Manhattan that collapsed the global economy. I, for one, would like to hear a bit more about that.

By parroting the self-serving hagiography of 9/11/01, as well as, "I support the warrior, but not the war" type fallacies, liberals continue to play right into the sustaining narratives of the national security state.

Case in point, the empty, oft-heard, liberal pundit assertion, "My idea for a 9/11 tribute would involve bringing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan home, with proper benefits." Nonsense. Worse than nonsense: Precious, cloying, self-congratulatory piffle. The statement is axiomatic of the feckless calls and specious cries common to that species of walking cliche known as "troop-supporting" liberals.

As far as I'm concerned, "our troops" - human delivery systems of U.S. government sanctified terrorism--can walk home...that way, maybe, they might learn something about the larger world, other than their mission to kill the people they happen upon without question, and then share with their fellow belligerently ignorant countrymen what they learned about life (its sacred quality) on their long, Odysseusian journey home.

Apropos, reasonable liberals counsel such declarations serve as "bad public relation" tactics. "Don't you realize that you risk alienating Middle America? Remember, the reactionary fallout created by the radicalism of the 1960s?"

The fact is: The passionate questioning of the entire war effort in Southeast Asia, the role of soldiers included, helped to bring an end to the war and factored into the soldiers' rebellion at the later stages of the protracted conflict. In increasing numbers, the conscripts began to refuse to kill and die for a dubious cause...they went hippie on the ass of the military state.

The activist left ended the war; self-serving liberals blew the peace.

The "bad PR" involving "spitting on the troops" was after the fact, rightwing confabulation...promulgated to intimidate liberals into shamed silence, and, of course, liberals being liberals, it worked. True to form, they "distanced" themselves from the "troop-demoralizing radicals of the irrational left." In reality, they fled in fear from arrays of rightwing created strawmen.

PR itself is the dubious craft of professional lying--corporate era legerdemain. In fact, the craft is the opposite of the resonate truth carried by deepening poetry, poignant prose and challenging political speech--the near exclusive domain of the left in the 1960s.

You ask what makes me sigh, old friend
What makes me shudder so
I shudder and I sigh to think
That even Cicero
And many-minded Homer were
Mad as the mist and snow.
--William Bulter Yeats, except from Mad As The Mist And Snow

The inspired, enduring (very threatening to some) art, music and political action of the era were not the result of liberal accommodation and compromise. Antithetically, the cause of peace and justice (briefly) made some headway despite liberals not because of them.

As a famous literary drunk once quipped, "Rome wasn't burned in a day." Change will not come with a victim-centered view of the world...including viewing the nation's toxically innocent, economic conscripts as mere victims of circumstance. Yes, young people make stupid choices--but treating them as victims does not serve them or the nation well.

"Liberal compassion" should not be extended to countenancing acts of mass murderer. Time and time again, liberals play into rightist propaganda, by allowing the discussion of U.S. militarism to be framed as exclusively pertaining to the sacrifices of individual soldiers, whose fates, in the larger context of events, have been appropriated a device of imperial plunder. By truckling to this narrative, liberals play into the propaganda of those who prosper by the homicidal designs of the present day U.S. military state.

Instead, let us endeavor to disabuse the culture of the delusion that there exists noble sacrifice in the act of killing and dying for the agendas of empire. When an individual U.S. soldier begins to stagger in the direction of his own humanity (renouncing his complicity in the death-sustained system, as many did during the Vietnam era) then we should open our arms and embrace him with a fierce compassion.

On a personal basis, my family had little money. And I made many self-destructive choices, but I also had tenacious mentors who challenged me...called me on my destructive nonsense...pointing out the bulwark of denial and hubris that sustained its shabby, ad hoc structure. Making a home in being lost, I took up residence in the enduring structure of poetry, literature and music...Whitman, Kerouac, Rilke, Dylan, the Allman Brothers, Leonard Cohen, Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer, and others too numerous to name taught me to question, as the expression went, "everything."

This is not rocket science; this is far more important; this is the essential subject matter that informs the propulsion and guidance systems of the human heart. Withal, instruct the young how to build and inhabit the structure of a cogent argument and to navigate a soul-suffused landscape of poignant verse, lyric, and insight.

To do so, one must not shy away from confrontation. During the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War era, before the left was manipulated into fearing the libido borne of sacred vehemence, stupid opinions were not coddled; they were challenged.

Feelings were hurt. Egos were bruised. But an illegal war was shortened and a number of (long over due) rights were granted.

[...]Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!
--Wendel Berry, excerpt from "Ripening"

At present, among the things we can ill afford are fantasy prone kids, duped into believing modern soldiering bestows nobility and involves heroic sacrifice. Instead, the times call for brave misfits, encouraged to embrace rejection by a dysfunctional society and primed to endure the inherent bumps and buffeting inflicted from a culture that has gathered into the formation of a flying wedge of self-destructive, crash-fated crazy.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.





Sad And Happy
By Uri Avnery

"WILL THIS be the happiest day of your life?" a local interviewer asked me, referring to the approaching recognition of the State of Palestine by the UN.

I was taken by surprise. "Why would that be?" I asked.

"Well, for 62 years you have advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and here it comes!"

"If I were a Palestinian, I would probably be happy," I said, "But as an Israeli, I am rather sad."

LET ME explain.

I came out of the 1948 war with four solid convictions:

(1) There exists a Palestinian people, though the name Palestine had been wiped off the map.

(2) It is with this Palestinian people that we must make peace.

(3) Peace will be impossible unless the Palestinians are allowed to set up their state next to Israel.

(4) Without peace, Israel will not be the model state we had been dreaming about in the trenches, but something very different.

While recovering from my wounds and still in uniform, I met with several young people, Arabs and Jews, to plot our course. We were very optimistic. Now everything seemed possible.

What we were thinking about was a great act of fraternization. Jews and Arabs had fought each other valiantly, each fighting for what they considered their national rights. Now the time had come to reach out for peace.

The idea of peace between two gallant fighters after the battle is as old as Semitic culture. In the epic written more than 3000 years ago, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (in today's Iraq) fights against the wild Enkidu, his equal in strength and courage, and after the epic fight they become blood brothers.

We had fought hard and had won. The Palestinians had lost everything. The part of Palestine that had been allotted by the UN to their state had been gobbled up by Israel, Jordan and Egypt, leaving nothing for them. Half the Palestinian people had been driven from their homes and become refugees.

That was the time, we thought, for the victor to stun the world with an act of magnanimity and wisdom, offering to help the Palestinians to set up their state in return for peace. Thus we could forge a friendship that would last for generations.

18 years later I brought this vision up again in similar circumstances. We had won a stunning victory against the Arab armies in the Six-Day war, the Middle East was in a state of shock. An Israeli offer to the Palestinians to establish their state would have electrified the region.

I AM telling this story (again) in order to make one point: when the "Two-State Solution" was conceived for the first time after 1948, it was as an idea of reconciliation, fraternization and mutual respect.

We envisaged two states living closely together, with borders open to the free movement of people and goods. Jerusalem, the joint capital, would symbolize the spirit of the historic change. Palestine would become the bridge between the new Israel and the Arab world, united for the common good. We spoke of a "Semitic Union" long before the European Union became a reality.

When the Two-State Solution made its extraordinary march from the vision of a handful of outsiders (or crazies) to a world-wide consensus, it was this context in which it was viewed. Not a plot against Israel, but the only viable basis for real peace.

This vision was firmly rejected by David Ben-Gurion, then the undisputed leader of Israel. He was busy distributing new Jewish immigrants across the vast areas expropriated from the Arabs, and he did not believe in peace with the Arabs anyhow. He set the course that successive Israeli governments, including the present one, have followed ever since.

On the Arab side, there was always support for this vision. Already at the Lausanne Conference in 1949, an unofficial Palestinian delegation appeared and secretly offered to start direct negotiations, but they were roughly rebuffed by the Israeli delegate, Eliyahu Sasson, on direct orders from Ben-Gurion (as I heard from him later).

Yasser Arafat told me several times - from 1982 to his death in 2004 - that he would support a "Benelux" solution (on the model of the union between Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg), which would include Israel, Palestine and Jordan ("and perhaps Lebanon too, why not?")

PEOPLE SPEAK about all the opportunities for peace missed by Israel throughout the years. That is nonsense: you can miss opportunities on the way to a goal that you desire, but not on the way to something you abhor.

Ben-Gurion saw an independent Palestinian state as a mortal danger to Israel. So he made a secret deal with King Abdullah I, dividing between them the territory allocated by the UN partition plan to the Arab Palestinian state. All Ben-Gurion's successors inherited the same dogma: that a Palestinian state would be a terrible danger. Therefore they opted for the so-called "Jordanian option" - keeping what is left of Palestine under the heel of the Jordanian monarch, who is no Palestinian (nor even Jordanian - his family came from Mecca).

This week, the present Jordanian ruler, Abdullah II, flew into a rage when told that yet another Israeli former general, Uzi Dayan, had again proposed turning Jordan into Palestine, with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as "provinces" of the Hashemite kingdom. This Dayan is, unlike his late cousin, Moshe, a pompous fool, but even a speech by such a person infuriates the king, who is mortally afraid of an influx of Palestinians driven from the West Bank into Jordan.

Three days ago, Binyamin Netanyahu told Cathy Ashton, the pathetic "foreign secretary" of the European Union, that he would agree to anything short of Palestinian statehood. That may sound strange, in view of the "historic" speech he made less than two years ago, in which he expressed his support for the Two-State Solution. (Perhaps he was thinking of the State of Israel and the State of the Settlers.)

In the few remaining weeks before the UN vote, our government will fight tooth and nail against a Palestinian state, supported by the full might of the US. This week Hillary Clinton trumped even her own rhetorical record when she announced that the US supports the Two-State Solution and therefore opposes any UN vote recognizing a Palestinian state.

APART FROM the dire threats of what will happen after the UN vote for a Palestinian state, Israeli and American leaders assure us that such a vote will make no difference at all.

If so, why fight it?

Of course it will make a difference. The occupation will go on, but it will be the occupation of one state by another. In history, symbols count. The fact that the vast majority of the world's nations will have recognized the State of Palestine will be another step towards gaining freedom for Palestine.

What will happen the day after? Our army has already announced that it has finished preparations for huge Palestinian demonstrations that will attack the settlements. The settlers will be called upon to mobilize their "quick-reaction teams" to confront the demonstrators, thus fulfilling the prophecies of a "bloodbath". After that the army will move in, pulling many battalions of regular troops from other tasks and calling up reserve units.

A few weeks ago I pointed to ominous signs that sharpshooters would be employed to turn peaceful demonstrations into something very different, as happened during the second intifada. This week this was officially confirmed: sharpshooters will be employed to defend the settlements.

All this amounts to a war plan for the settlements. To put it simply: a war to decide whether the West Bank belongs to the Palestinians or the settlers.

In an almost comical turn of events, the army is also providing means of crowd dispersal to the Palestinian security forces trained by the Americans. The occupation authorities expect these Palestinian forces to protect the settlements against their compatriots. Since these are the armed forces of the future Palestinian state, which is opposed by Israel, it all sounds a bit bewildering.

According to the army, the Palestinians will get rubber-coated bullets and tear gas, but not the "Skunk".

The Skunk is a device that produces an unbearable stench which attaches itself to the peaceful demonstrators and will not leave them for a long time. I am afraid that when this chapter comes to an end, the stench will attach itself to our side, and that we shall not get rid of it for a long time indeed.

LET'S GIVE free rein to our imagination for just one minute.

Imagine that in the coming UN debate something incredible happens: the Israeli delegate declares that after due consideration Israel has decided to vote for recognition of the state of Palestine.

The assembly would gape in disbelief. After a moment of silence, wild applause would break out. The world would be electrified. For days, the world media would speak of nothing else.

The minute of imagination has passed. Back to reality. Back to the Skunk.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







Through AIPAC-Colored Glasses
By Medea Benjamin

During August recess this year, 81 members of Congress went on a junket to Israel funded by the Israel lobby group AIPAC (well, funded by the American Israel Education Fund, but they are really one and the same) to "learn first-hand about one of our closest friends and allies." While the representatives insist they got a balanced view, their itinerary belies that claim: 95 per cent of their time was spent hearing the Israeli government point of view, with only one token meeting with Palestinian reps.

CODEPINK has filed a complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee stating that these trips-and the upcoming ones scheduled for December–violate the Congressional prohibition on traveling with a lobby group. We feel these voyages are part of AIPAC's grand plan to control and monopolize Congress, which is not just unethical, but dangerous. Their bias reinforces a disastrous U.S. policy of unconditional support for Israel that obstructs peace and runs counter to our national interests.

At a recent Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, entitled "Promoting Peace? Reexamining US Aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)", we got a glimpse of what happens when Congress views the Middle East through AIPAC-colored glasses. Here are a few of examples of their tunnel vision:

Asking the wrong questions: Congress is intent on looking into the $600 million a year U.S. taxpayers give to the Palestinian Authority, especially at a time, as a few members brought up, of economic hardship in the United States. But they would not dare hold a hearing about the more important issue: the $3 billion a year we are giving to the Israeli government–which is five times what we give the Palestinian Authority. The question they should be asking, but won't, is: How can American taxpayers afford to give "military aid" to the wealthy government of Israel, especially when that government uses our funds to drop white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza, kill international humanitarians on boats trying to break the Gaza siege, bulldoze Palestinian homes and orchards, and imprison peaceful protesters?" CODEPINK was in the hearing with signs saying "No More $$ to Israel," but we were not even allowed to quietly hold them.

Listening to the wrong people: While the hearing was about Palestine, not one of the four witnesses was Palestinian-American, Arab-American, or even sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view. Like the AIPAC-junkets to Israel, this Washington hearing was completely one-sided. Three of the four people testifying before the Committee were Jewish, and all four were white men from conservative think tanks that take the side of the Israeli government. One of the witnesses was none other than convicted criminal Elliott Abrams, who, after the Iran-Contra scandal, went on to covertly arm Fatah after Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza, leading to a bloody conflict and inadvertently, to a Hamas takeover of all of Gaza. What great credentials for giving Congress advice on the Middle East!

When we asked the committee staff why there was not one pro-Palestinian voice on the panel, we were told to be quiet or we'd be ejected from the hearing.

Polluting the atmosphere with racist comments: Not once was the plight of the Palestinians under occupation even mentioned. Instead, Democrats and Republicans across the board made sweeping statements that were embarrassingly racist. "Sending aid to the PA reinforces bad behavior," said Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lethinen. "The Palestinians refuse to negotiate and they glorify violence," she added. Cong. Carnahan wanted to know why there are no "honest actors" among the Palestinians. Elliot Abrams added, "The Palestinians have been cursed by a failure of leadership for 100 years." There was no mention, of course, that some of the best Palestinian leaders can be found in Israeli jails. 

At the end of the day, one message that could clearly be taken away from the hearing was that all Palestinians (except perhaps Salem Fayyad, who they didn't think was so bad) are ungrateful, Jew-hating, terror-worshipping freeloaders who are too lazy to work for peace and who glorify violence. It obviously didn't fit into the AIPAC junket agenda to introduce any of the committee members to peace activists in the West Bank who organize nonviolent protests against the occupation on a weekly basis.

Ignoring history/denying reality: It was painful to listen to the whole hearing, but one particular lament of Congress was arguably the most offensive. "Ah, Israel has given up so much land, and done so much for peace. When are the Palestinians going to make some concessions and do anything at all for peace,?" asked Cong. Rohrbacher, throwing up his hands in disgust. The Palestinians still want the right to return "so that they can destroy Israel," he added. Cong. Poe complained that Israel has given so much land for peace that "pretty soon they're gonna run outta land." Witness Schanzer denounced "100 years of Palestinian nationalism, which has been more concerned with destroying Israel than constructing a viable Palestinian state."

Putting aside the fact that the West Bank and Gaza territories represent a fraction of historical Palestine, Congress completely ignores the fact that thousands of acres of Palestinian land have been confiscated by the Israeli government to establish dozens of settlements and populate them with hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers. When the word settlement came up, it was not in the context of land theft but to chide the Obama administration for focusing too much on settlements in its first two years and creating a rift with the Israeli government.

Targeting the victims: As if pointing the finger at the Palestinians for all the Middle East's woes wasn't enough, to its delight the committee found a new target to defund and shut down: UNRWA, the United Nations Refugee Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. UNRWA assists about 5 million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East, including those who were displaced during the creation of the state of Israel and their descendants. UNRWA provides these refugees with basic services such as education and healthcare. The surrounding Arab countries where millions of Palestinian refugees live refuse to grant many of them citizenship, thus denying them the ability to work and receive social services. Without UNRWA, these people would basically be left with nothing.

Instead of acknowledging this sad reality, members of Congress nodded their heads in eager agreement as witness Jonathan Schanzer, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, insisted that UNRWA be shut down. "UNRWA treats the Palestinians more like clients than refugees," he claimed, thus perpetuating the refugee problem. The only dissenting voice around shutting down UNRWA was David Makovsky, who cautioned that the Israeli government might hate UNRWA, but it would not like to see it shut down because then Israel would have to pay for those services it provides, including schooling Palestinian refugee kids.

Shutting off the lights: One witness, Schanzer, had just returned from Ramallah with news about the "electricity scam." The PA, he said, was supplying power to Palestinians in Gaza, but Hamas–which controls Gaza–was charging people and pocketing the money. Since the US funds the PA, we were enabling this scam. Committee Chair Ros-Lethinen was horrified and indicated that cutting off funds for electricity (i.e. turning out the lights on 1.6 million people) might be in order. No one mentioned that Israel bombed Gaza's sole power plant during the 2008 invasion, and today it is still only partially functioning. No one mentioned that Israel continues to restrict the entry of spare parts to rebuild the plant and fuel to run it, leaving the people of Gaza with severe power shortages of up to 12 hours a day!



Tying aid with plenty of strings: While most representatives expressed a desire to cut all funds to the PA, the witnesses cautioned them–not for humanitarian reasons but for Israel's interests. The PA security forces have been cooperating with the Israelis on everything from stopping attacks on Israelis to repressing demonstrations. David Makovsky from the Washington Institute speculated that cutting off funds to the PA security forces would only hurt Israel. Schanzer said that cutting off the PA could lead to an "intrafada" in which Hamas could emerge even stronger. He stated that money is the U.S. leverage to control the PA. "If we cut the funds, we lose our leverage and open the door for Iran and other anti-Israel actors."

Eviscerating the UN: The United States claims that it will veto the Palestinian statehood bid because the peace talks should take place between the two parties directly and not through an outside entity-in this case, the UN. Many of the reps could not contain their distain for the UN. "The UN would vote for any resolution that is anti-Israel," said Cong. Poe in disgust, even if it said that the world is flat. They suggested defunding any UN organization that endorses Palestinian statehood. Some went even further, suggesting we cut off aid to any country that endorses statehood! Hungry Haitians or Ethiopians will simply have to pay the price. There is no such thing as "going too far" when it comes to standing up for Israel!

Sheer stupidity: One thing the representatives just couldn't understand is that if we are giving the Palestinians so much money, how come they don't like us? "Anti-Americanism among the Palestinians is only second to anti-Israel invective," said witness Schanzer, to the nods of the representatives. Rohrbacher seemed incredulous that we've given the Palestinians all this money, and it hasn't even bought us goodwill. Duh! Of course the Palestinians don't like us-we are supplying billions of dollars of weapons to their oppressors! 

The stranglehold AIPAC has over Congress is putting our nation on a collision course with history. The vast majority of the world's nations support the Palestinian bid for statehood (120 of them already recognize the state of Palestine). The democratic movements sweeping the Arab world are clamoring for Palestinian rights. Unconditional U.S. support for Israel keeps the region in turmoil, pits us against world opinion and jeopardizes our national security. It's time for Congress to take off the AIPAC blinders.
(c) 2011 Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK, which has organized seven humanitarian delegations to Gaza. She is author of Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart.






The "Bloomberg View" Is That Michael Bloomberg Shouldn't Pay More Taxes
By Alex Pareene

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also a billionaire media mogul. His financial information company recently unveiled an opinion section, promising only "ideology-free, empirically-based editorial positions." Bloomberg installed his ideology-free opinion-writers at the office of his foundation where the mayor can have direct, personal involvement in their work. All of this adds up to a mess of potential conflicts of interest. Today, the "Bloomberg View" is that very rich people -- like Michael Bloomberg, say -- should not pay more taxes.

Of course, the unsigned editorial is very reasonable. It's a Bloomberg View editorial, and the Bloomberg brand is all post-partisan reasonableness. But the bottom line is that billionaire mayor and hypothetical third-party presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg opposes the Democratic president's plan to raise taxes on billionaires. Why? Out of greed or self-interest? No, of course not! Because it's "silly."

However, we don't support a special tax on millionaires. Not because it's damaging to the economy in and of itself, but because it's silly. And silly can be dangerous if it stands in the way of sensible reform.

A debate over taxing millionaires (and Buffett urges yet another bracket for ten-millionaires) will eat up time and attention that needs to be hoarded for the important debate about quarter-millionaires (i.e., the $250,000 crowd), because that's where the real money starts.

Millionaires and ten-millionaires do not have "real money," apparently. And proposing to tax them is a waste of time, time that could be spent on "sensible reform." ("Sensible" seems like a pretty subjective term, but in this case "sensible" means "whatever Michael Bloomberg thinks.")

A special millionaires' tax would affect three taxpayers out of 1,000. Absurdly, it would let people making, say, $900,000 off the hook. We have no idea how much revenue it would bring in -- exact figures aren't available because Obama is going to leave the exact structure of the tax to the so-called supercommittee of senators and representatives that grew out of last month's debt-ceiling jamboree. It's largely symbolic. Worse, it's a distraction.

"Absurdly, it would let people making, say, $900,000 off the hook." Haha well, Mr. Mayor, that is how tax brackets work. Raising the top marginal tax rate on people making $250,000 lets people making $249,000 off the hook!

We mustn't raise taxes on anyone because we need to fundamentally rewrite the entire tax code is an argument for doing nothing at all. Fundamentally rewriting the tax code is a fantasy. Anyone who has paid any attention to the Republican party's oppositional tactics over the last two years should dismiss "rewriting the tax code" as a complete non-starter.

"There is nothing inherently evil or even objectionable about making $1 million a year," says the official political opinion factory of billionaire mogul Michael Bloomberg, whose townhouses are decorated with million dollar couches and $40,000 sconces. There's no point in raising taxes on a man who owns a $50,000 "antique snooker table," when we can instead rewrite the entire tax code, eventually, someday.
(c) 2011 Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene.







Obama's "Bold" Jobs Plan

President Obama has joined the perky posse of national leaders who're urging Americans to be more upbeat about the economic doldrums we're in. "Shake off all the naysaying and the anxiety and the hand-wringing," he recently told us, sounding a lot like a football coach telling a player to shake off a concussion and get back in the game.

The President's pep talk came the day after he made his "bold" jobs proposal to Congress. But Obama's plan is more Walter Mittyish than Rooseveltian. While it does have some useful provisions to keep from losing still more jobs, the core of his plan consists of two more corporate tax breaks – a form of bribery to induce enormously rich corporations to hire American workers. This is the same old same-old that Washington keeps throwing at the problem and – hello, Washington – it's not working. Sure enough, corporate chieftains say they'll gladly take the latest handout, but we should not expect them to go on a big hiring spree. Mostly, they'll use the money to cover the few people they were going to hire anyway – and pocket the rest.

Nontheless, Obama is now barnstorming the country, rallying crowds to demand that Congress "stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy" by passing his plan. Fine... but what about the corporate circus? And the Wall Street circus?

It's time to stop coddling these gluttonous narcissists. America is in crisis, sinking toward depression. The President should really get bold by calling out and shaming corporate executives who suck up America's wealth, then turn their backs on us, as though the only loyalty they owe is to their own avarice – none to their country. Likewise, he should kick the bailed-out bankers right in their ample butts and insist publicly that they start making loans to America's smaller businesses that do want to create good jobs in our country.

Let's stop begging and start demanding.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Putting America Back To Work
By Helen Thomas

Republican presidential candidates were supposed to debate their job creating plans last Monday evening. Instead, they took the time to attack one another.

President Barack Obama's $447 billion job plan touched all bases and left the GOP candidates relatively speechless. They were quiet until Obama unveiled the details, which included the horror of all horrors - tax increases. According to White House aides, the President's employment package would raise $467 billion while covering all the costs of the hiring legislation. But the "just say no" Republican leaders seem unaware that there is a near depression engulfing the country.

House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman, Michael Steel, said, "We remain eager to work together on ways to support job growth, but this proposal doesn't appear to have been offered in that bipartisan spirit." The GOP's anathema of taxes is well known, but unrealistic.

"This is the bill that Congress needs to pass," Obama said in a Rose Garden speech Monday. "No games, no politics, no delays," he added. But this is not the season for such starry eyed candidates who have only one goal - to win the White House trophy in November 2012.

It appears the Republican hopefuls only care about destroying Social Security as we know it. Millions of Americans - retired, elderly and disabled - depend on that monthly check for their survival. It's not a hand out. It is the product of the New Deal, which Franklin D. Roosevelt established in 1935, and the heart of the Great Depression recovery program.

Starting with George W. Bush's administration, Republicans have tried to move Social Security to the stock market. Thank heaven that failed.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry - the so-called front runner for the GOP Presidential nomination - called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme" and "monstrous" - words that he has already lived to regret.

In his recent debate with fellow candidates, Perry appeared to back off from such harsh words about a social program. Now he says, "Social Security is open for discussion." Someone obviously got to him. Is he really ready for prime time?

Obama has said his job recovery program would put teachers and veterans, as well as construction workers, back to work.

GOP leaders more than sensed the need to support some of Obama's job plans with the public now getting fed up over the continuing political divisions. They said they may go along with the President's proposal to slash payroll taxes. But they drew the line and rejected the most urgent parts of Obama's package, which would benefit teacher salaries, school construction and road projects.

None of the candidates, except for Rep. Ron Paul, have suggested pulling out of the wars which are so costly in service men and women, as well as national treasuries. Pulling out of Afghanistan alone would save $2.5 billion every two days.

Obama also called for new measures, including a tax cut to provide $1,500 in savings for the average family, and another tax slash for businesses that add new employees to their payrolls.

"The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: To put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working," Obama said. "It will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled and give companies confidence that if they invest and hire, there will be customers for their products and services."

At several points in his speech, the President urged Congress to "pass this bill." Afterwards, Obama hit the road to exhort potential voters to support his anti-recession program.

There is some similarity to the Congressional and public reaction to the pain of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the present. In those days we saw compassion for our fellow man, including the long lines of the unemployed freezing workers in front of the Ford Motor Company seeking jobs. But the main difference then was that the American people seemed to care about the welfare of their fellow man. Everyone in the labor class was in the same boat.

Obama would do well if he can restore America's great spirit of compassion and fellowship.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Americans Should Be Very Afraid
By James Donahue

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Living under a cloud of fear has become a way of life for the people of the United States since the events of September 11, 2001. But the fear factor has been cleverly manufactured by political factors and the talking heads of a sold-out media.

We have been constantly bombarded by warnings of plots by secret Islamic cults to attack us again. Consequently we have been goaded into launching five wars against Moslem nations, accepting new laws severely restricting our freedoms and privacy, and submitting to increased suppression by police and other authority figures.

As all of this has happened, we have seen our economy tank, our factories and jobs move overseas and our "elected" national leadership go into a state of such incredible impotence it seems as if this nation is a rudderless ship adrift in a storm.

At least this is the way it appears. We suspect that in reality, there is a plan being hatched by a secret power structure designed to tear down this once great nation brick-by-brick. It is a plan that is already in its advanced state but most Americans are so unaware of what is happening they are still trusting Uncle Sam to keep them protected from the big bad wolf at the door. They do not realize that the wolf is already in the house and about to devour them alive.

The 9-11 attack itself was carried out with such amazing skill by a supposedly pack of young and unprofessional assailants using box cutters and home-schooled training to fly commercial airliners. The fact that three large aircraft successfully flew into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon was quite incredible. Home and surveillance video footage of these events have raised so many questions that professional analysts suspect that the attack originated from within our own military. That Osama Bin Laden, the so-called leader of the secret El-Qaeda network blamed for the attack, was a former CIA agent during Russia's war in Afghanistan seems to have been totally overlooked, as was the Bin Laden family ties to former presidents Bush.

With all of these questions falling out of the fog of the 9-11 attack, the corporate-owned national media went out of its way during the 10th Anniversary to help remind the public of the original story and laud the "heroes" of the day, the fire fighters and other first responders that died trying to save lives.

No one seems to want to question how three buildings in the heart of downtown Manhattan could implode so perfectly after two of them were hit, even though demolition experts say accomplishing such a feat would take specific skills in planting explosives throughout such massive buildings. Film maker Michael Moore and others have asked these questions in various documentaries but to date all we have heard are reports from hired engineers who have gone to great lengths to explain away the unexplainable.

No one appeared to question the fact that within less than two months Congress passed a comprehensive 342-page Patriot Act that dramatically reduced restrictions on government access to electronic and telephone communications, medical, financial and other personal records, and gave the Secretary of the Treasury authority to regulate financial transactions. The act passed both the House and Senate with an almost unanimous vote although most legislators later admitted they never read it.

While caught up in the constant fear of further attacks, most Americans seem to be ignoring the quick erosion of their freedoms to move about, provide for their families, choose valid candidates for public office and live without fear of suppression.

Airport security is so strict that people are X-rayed, excessively patted down and their luggage thoroughly searched before they can board an aircraft. Police dogs guided by ATF agents sniff people in public places for drugs or explosives. Our telephone conversations, computer activities, FAX messages and all other electronic communications are under constant surveillance. Police make random traffic stops, sometimes blockading highways, to test for alcohol consumption, drugs or other suspicious cargo in our vehicles.

Since the choosing of George W. Bush by the Supreme Court to be America's president after the controversial 2000 election, it has become obvious that both the high court and the majority of elected Republican (and some Democratic) legislators have sold out to the interests of big corporations, including the military industrial complex.

The Supremes stacked the deck for the 2012 presidential election when the judges voted 5-4 to give corporations the freedom to pour large amounts of money in support of the candidates of their choice. That means voters will be directed by a clever and well financed advertising campaign to select the candidate of corporate choice. Another troublesome development has been a so-called "taxpayer protection pledge," a vow reportedly taken by 41 senators and 236 Congressional representatives . . . nearly all Republicans . . . that they will stand against any increase in taxes. The pledge, promoted by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, appears to have prevented any chance for raising extra revenues to offset the nation's multi-trillion dollar deficit.

We are living in a nation with a crumbling infrastructure, with roads, bridges, dams, levees, sewer and water systems, electric power grids and gas lines falling into poor repair. Our railroad, bus and airplane services are failing to meet a growing need for public transportation at a time when rising fuel prices and the high cost of owning and operating a personal automobile are making it harder for people to get around.

States and local municipalities also are feeling the financial pinch. The problem has become so acute that local services, including education programs are being slashed.

In spite of all the rhetoric expressed on the anniversary of the 9-11 attack, or on holidays like the Fourth of July, this is no longer the America we once knew and enjoyed.

Terrorism like poverty and disease has always existed and it will always exist. The random acts of terrorism that have gained so much attention since 9-11 have been no more of a threat to us now than they ever were. If Americans have anything to fear it is their own failure to maintain good educational programs and remain keenly aware of what is going on among those who govern. And if they take a good look . . . they will have reason to be very afraid.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.







Egghead And Blockheads
By Maureen Dowd

THERE are two American archetypes that were sometimes played against each other in old Westerns.

The egghead Eastern lawyer who lacks the skills or stomach for a gunfight is contrasted with the tough Western rancher and ace shot who has no patience for book learnin'.

The duality of America's creation story was vividly illustrated in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," the 1962 John Ford Western.

Jimmy Stewart is the young attorney who comes West to Shinbone and ends up as a U.S. senator after gaining fame for killing the sadistic outlaw Liberty Valance, played by Lee Marvin. John Wayne is the rancher, a fast-draw Cyrano who hides behind a building and actually shoots Marvin because he knows Stewart is hopeless in a duel. He does it even though they're in love with the same waitress, who chooses the lawyer because he teaches her to read.

A lifetime later, on the verge of becoming a vice presidential candidate, Stewart confesses the truth to a Shinbone newspaperman, who refuses to print it. "When the legend becomes fact," the editor says, "print the legend."

At the cusp of the 2012 race, we have a classic cultural collision between a skinny Eastern egghead lawyer who's inept in Washington gunfights and a pistol-totin', lethal-injectin', square-shouldered cowboy who has no patience for book learnin'.

Rick Perry, from the West Texas town of Paint Creek, is no John Wayne, even though he has a ton of executions notched on his belt. But he wears a pair of cowboy boots with the legend "Liberty" stitched on one. (As in freedom, not Valance.) He plays up the effete-versus-mesquite stereotypes in his second-grade textbook of a manifesto, "Fed Up!"

Trashing Massachusetts, he writes: "They passed state-run health care, they have sanctioned gay marriage, and they elected Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Barney Frank repeatedly - even after actually knowing about them and what they believe! Texans, on the other hand, elect folks like me. You know the type, the kind of guy who goes jogging in the morning, packing a Ruger .380 with laser sights and loaded with hollow-point bullets, and shoots a coyote that is threatening his daughter's dog."

At a recent campaign event in South Carolina, Perry grinned, "I'm actually for gun control - use both hands."

Traveling to Lynchburg, Va., to speak to students at Liberty University (as in Falwell, not Valance), Perry made light of his bad grades at Texas A&M.

Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. "Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me," said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.

"His other D's," Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, "included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare,'Feeds & Feeding,' veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called'Meats.' "

He even got a C in gym.

Perry conceded that he "struggled" with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated "in the top 10 of my graduating class - of 13."

It's enough to make you long for W.'s Gentleman's C's. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale. Even Newt Gingrich's pseudo-intellectualism is a relief at this point.

Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C's, D's and F's and still run for president.

The Texas governor did help his former chief of staff who went to lobby for a pharmaceutical company that donated to Perry, so he at least knows the arithmetic of back scratching.

Perry told the students, "God uses broken people to reach a broken world." What does that even mean?

The Republicans are now the "How great is it to be stupid?" party. In perpetrating the idea that there's no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers "Dumb and Dumber" primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

Having grown up with a crush on William F. Buckley Jr. for his sesquipedalian facility, it's hard for me to watch the right wing of the G.O.P. revel in anti-intellectualism and anti-science cant.

Sarah Palin, who got outraged at a "gotcha" question about what newspapers and magazines she read, is the mother of stupid conservatism. Another "Don't Know Much About History" Tea Party heroine, Michele Bachmann, seems rather proud of not knowing anything, simply repeating nutty, inflammatory medical claims that somebody in the crowd tells her.

So we're choosing between the overintellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn't be know-nothing candidates.
(c) 2011 Maureen Dowd is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. Read her weekly column in the NY Times.








There Must Be 50 Ways To Leave The Military Industrial Complex
By David Swanson

And we heard all of them from two dozen brilliant speakers during a three-day conference this past weekend. If you missed it, the video is all online. So is the text of many of the papers presented. Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite:

"Let's say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That's 2.9 million each year. Here's one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There's an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There's another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane." -- David Swanson

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, and even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, and every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society." -- President Eisenhower in a play by Wally Myers

"In addition to the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on World Peace Day, in violation of its commitment to disarmament under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States will fire an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California over Hawaii and the Pacific Missile Range tracking facility (PMRF) to crash into the Pacific Ocean near Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands." -- Ann Wright

"And when I met with Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, an ostensibly very progressive Democrat early in her freshman term of office, I told her that her constituents wanted her to cut military spending and bring the war dollars home. But she said it wasn't that easy. Once she got to Washington 'they' asked her, 'What do you want to do, put 3,000 people out of work your first term in office?' This made reference to the largest employer in the state, Bath Iron Works, which has contracts to build the Aegis destroyers that the Navy hopes will be docked on little Jeju Island off the coast of China that Ann Wright spoke of last night." -- Lisa Savage

"It occurred to me over the past couple of days that there is a common thread across these issues of drones, torture, and illegal wars. The unifying thought was that the use of drones, interrogation, and armed conflict each have various legal regimes that shape them and form the universe of what we see as what is legally permissible. The legality of the manner in which state actors operate in these areas are derived from both domestic and international law rules. The powers of any individual official to act are derived from the internal state structure such as the Constitution. Just like there is the known universe of these rules that apply for these areas, I started to wonder about what is not seen in the universe: when state actors act with malice aforethought or sufficient mens rea and actus reus to be a crime. It occurred to me that this part of the universe of law might also be viewed as the dark matter in a similar fashion to how the term is used in astrophysics. Dark matter has not been seen but is used as a way to explain certain phenomenon that are inexplicable by what is seen in the known universe." -- Ben Davis

"In 1942, the 3,000 residents of five rural Tennessee mountain communities were given just a few weeks' notice to vacate their homes and ancestral farms. Thus was the 'secret city' of Oak Ridge established, and the 60,000 acres of Tennessee valleys and ridges expropriated for the war effort. The Manhattan Project was developed to enrich the uranium used for the Hiroshima bomb. In subsequent decades, and in the name of national security, officials knowingly subjected atomic industry workers, soldiers and nearby residents to deadly doses of radiation at nuclear sites throughout the country. 'Some 300,000 people, or half of those who ever worked in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, are believed to have been affected by exposure to radiation,' asserts Michael Renner, of the World Watch Institute writing in the 1997 book War and Public Health. Every step of the nuclear bomb-making process involves severe environmental contamination that lingers for generations." -- Clare Hanrahan

"In 2004, a North Carolina child protection group analyzed sixteen years of records involving the murder of children by parents or step-parents. The rates of such homicides were steady across the state's one hundred counties, with two exceptions: in Onslow and Cumberland counties, the childhomicide rates were consistently twice as high. Onslow County is home to Camp Lejeune; Cumberland County hosts Fort Bragg." -- Mia Austin-Scoggins

"Put your ear to the railroad tracks and you can hear the train coming. Now that the new 12-member Congressional 'Super Committee' has essentially been given the power of God (and the Devil) the military industrial complex, and their appendage called the corporate media, are swinging into action. Their message? We can't cut Pentagon spending because it will hurt an already tight job market.....and we need these troops to keep knocking countries off the "Non-Integrating Gap" list (those countries that refuse to play ball with corporate globalization)." -- Bruce Gagnon

"The more famous stories we do know. Daniel Ellsberg was harassed and attacked, caricatured by the state as a criminal, not a hero. The many witnesses against the U.S. military regarding Agent Orange, and years later, the vaccinations and experimental drugs that are part and parcel of what would become known as Gulf War Syndrome, which today has killed more U.S. citizens than the Vietnam War, all of these men and women were treated as enemies of the state. Those who would tell the truth about the propaganda, and original intent, on the way to the wars in and continuing occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq, are all made to be enemies of the state. Think about Bunny Greenhouse observing in pre-Iraq invasion contracting, and Sibel Edmonds in the months before 9-11. Fired, stifled, harassed, treated badly by our own government for simply telling the truth. And those who would bear witness to mistreatment and unlawful acts of war and interrogation by the United States here and around the world, are, you guessed it, enemies of the American state." -- Karen Kwiatkowski

"From a strategic, economic, and security perspective, our response to the attacks on September 11th has created many more problems than it has solved. For example, invading the Greater Middle East violated the most basic principles of military strategy. According to Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War, one of the worst things a leader can do in war is become angry. Sun Tzu knew that when people are enraged, they cannot think clearly and will make self-destructive decisions. This is why one of the best things a leader can do in war is make his opponent angry, because when leaders – whether military or civilian – become angry they lose concern for consequences, and they become reckless and careless. An angry and reckless opponent is much easier to lure into a trap than a calm and rational opponent." -- Paul Chappell

"I was there. All the stories that were in the Western media about Gaza are completely untrue. I’ve been to Gaza many times before. On this occasion we were told there’s no need for flotillas and such because the borders of Gaza are open. Not true. Absolutely not true. We’re told that the people who are ruling Gaza, who were they elected authorities (they were elected in 2005) are irrational, Islamist madmen who want to oppress women. Not true." -- Helena Cobban

"Many Americans have developed what Bob Marley -- the poet laureate of oppressed people around the world -- called 'mental slavery.' Social scientists have also recognized this phenomenon of subjugation resulting in demoralization and defeatism. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Ignacio Martin-Baró, the El Salvadoran social psychologist and popularizer of 'liberation psychology,' understood this psychological phenomenon of fatalism, and they helped their people overcome it. We must first acknowledge the reality that for millions of Americans, subjugation has in fact resulted in demoralization and fatalism. Then, we can begin to heal from a “battered people’s syndrome” of sorts and together begin to fight for democracy." -- Bruce Levine

Click the authors' names above to read more, or for a better taste of the conference that brought these and many more opponents of militarism together, check out the videos and photos.

The conference closed with a song:

For Bradley Manning

When Bradley comes marching home again Hurroo, hurroo
When Bradley comes marching home again Hurroo, hurroo
We’ll charge the war makers with their crimes
Put ‘em in the dock, make them pay for those crimes
When the peace is won and Bradley comes marching home
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







A Future For Drones
Automated Killing
By Peter Finn

One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp.

After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look.

Target confirmed.

This successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial "Terminators," minus beefcake and time travel.

The Fort Benning tarp "is a rather simple target, but think of it as a surrogate," said Charles E. Pippin, a scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which developed the software to run the demonstration. "You can imagine real-time scenarios where you have 10 of these things up in the air and something is happening on the ground and you don't have time for a human to say, 'I need you to do these tasks.' It needs to happen faster than that."

The demonstration laid the groundwork for scientific advances that would allow drones to search for a human target and then make an identification based on facial-recognition or other software. Once a match was made, a drone could launch a missile to kill the target.

Military systems with some degree of autonomy -such as robotic, weaponized sentries -have been deployed in the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea and other potential battle areas. Researchers are uncertain how soon machines capable of collaborating and adapting intelligently in battlefield conditions will come online. It could take one or two decades, or longer. The U.S. military is funding numerous research projects on autonomy to develop machines that will perform some dull or dangerous tasks and to maintain its advantage over potential adversaries who are also working on such systems.

The killing of terrorism suspects and insurgents by armed drones, controlled by pilots sitting in bases thousands of miles away in the western United States, has prompted criticism that the technology makes war too antiseptic. Questions also have been raised about the legality of drone strikes when employed in places such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, which are not at war with the United States. This debate will only intensify as technological advances enable what experts call lethal autonomy.

The prospect of machines able to perceive, reason and act in unscripted environments presents a challenge to the current understanding of international humanitarian law. The Geneva Conventions require belligerents to use discrimination and proportionality, standards that would demand that machines distinguish among enemy combatants, surrendering troops and civilians.

"The deployment of such systems would reflect a paradigm shift and a major qualitative change in the conduct of hostilities," Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said at a conference in Italy this month. "It would also raise a range of fundamental legal, ethical and societal issues, which need to be considered before such systems are developed or deployed."

Drones flying over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen can already move automatically from point to point, and it is unclear what surveillance or other tasks, if any, they perform while in autonomous mode. Even when directly linked to human operators, these machines are producing so much data that processors are sifting the material to suggest targets, or at least objects of interest. That trend toward greater autonomy will only increase as the U.S. military shifts from one pilot remotely flying a drone to one pilot remotely managing several drones at once.

But humans still make the decision to fire, and in the case of CIA strikes in Pakistan, that call rests with the director of the agency. In future operations, if drones are deployed against a sophisticated enemy, there may be much less time for deliberation and a greater need for machines that can function on their own.

The U.S. military has begun to grapple with the implications of emerging technologies.

"Authorizing a machine to make lethal combat decisions is contingent upon political and military leaders resolving legal and ethical questions," according to an Air Force treatise called Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047. "These include the appropriateness of machines having this ability, under what circumstances it should be employed, where responsibility for mistakes lies and what limitations should be placed upon the autonomy of such systems." In the future, micro-drones will reconnoiter tunnels and buildings, robotic mules will haul equipment and mobile systems will retrieve the wounded while under fire. Technology will save lives. But the trajectory of military research has led to calls for an arms-control regime to forestall any possibility that autonomous systems could target humans.

In Berlin last year, a group of robotic engineers, philosophers and human rights activists formed the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and said such technologies might tempt policymakers to think war can be less bloody.

Some experts also worry that hostile states or terrorist organizations could hack robotic systems and redirect them. Malfunctions also are a problem: In South Africa in 2007, a semiautonomous cannon fatally shot nine friendly soldiers.

The ICRAC would like to see an international treaty, such as the one banning antipersonnel mines, that would outlaw some autonomous lethal machines. Such an agreement could still allow automated antimissile systems.

"The question is whether systems are capable of discrimination," said Peter Asaro, a founder of the ICRAC and a professor at the New School in New York who teaches a course on digital war. "The good technology is far off, but technology that doesn't work well is already out there. The worry is that these systems are going to be pushed out too soon, and they make a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes are going to be atrocities."

Research into autonomy, some of it classified, is racing ahead at universities and research centers in the United States, and that effort is beginning to be replicated in other countries, particularly China.

"Lethal autonomy is inevitable," said Ronald C. Arkin, the author of "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots," a study that was funded by the Army Research Office.

Arkin believes it is possible to build ethical military drones and robots, capable of using deadly force while programmed to adhere to international humanitarian law and the rules of engagement. He said software can be created that would lead machines to return fire with proportionality, minimize collateral damage, recognize surrender, and, in the case of uncertainty, maneuver to reassess or wait for a human assessment.

In other words, rules as understood by humans can be converted into algorithms followed by machines for all kinds of actions on the battlefield.

"How a war-fighting unit may think - we are trying to make our systems behave like that," said Lora G. Weiss, chief scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Others, however, remain skeptical that humans can be taken out of the loop.

"Autonomy is really the Achilles' heel of robotics," said Johann Borenstein, head of the Mobile Robotics Lab at the University of Michigan. "There is a lot of work being done, and still we haven't gotten to a point where the smallest amount of autonomy is being used in the military field. All robots in the military are remote-controlled. How does that sit with the fact that autonomy has been worked on at universities and companies for well over 20 years?"

Borenstein said human skills will remain critical in battle far into the future.

"The foremost of all skills is common sense," he said. "Robots don't have common sense and won't have common sense in the next 50 years, or however long one might want to guess."
(c) 2011 Peter Finn is a National Security correspondent for The Washington Post.








The Bleeding Cure
By Paul Krugman

Doctors used to believe that by draining a patient's blood they could purge the evil "humors" that were thought to cause disease. In reality, of course, all their bloodletting did was make the patient weaker, and more likely to succumb.

Fortunately, physicians no longer believe that bleeding the sick will make them healthy. Unfortunately, many of the makers of economic policy still do. And economic bloodletting isn't just inflicting vast pain; it's starting to undermine our long-run growth prospects.

Some background: For the past year and a half, policy discourse in both Europe and the United States has been dominated by calls for fiscal austerity. By slashing spending and reducing deficits, we were told, nations could restore confidence and drive economic revival.

And the austerity has been real. In Europe, troubled nations like Greece and Ireland have imposed savage cuts, even as stronger nations have imposed milder austerity programs of their own. In the United States, the modest federal stimulus of 2009 has faded out, while state and local governments have slashed their budgets, so that over all we've had a de facto move toward austerity not so different from Europe's.

Strange to say, however, confidence hasn't surged. Somehow, businesses and consumers seem much more concerned about the lack of customers and jobs, respectively, than they are reassured by the fiscal righteousness of their governments. And growth seems to be stalling, while unemployment remains disastrously high on both sides of the Atlantic.

But, say apologists for the bad results so far, shouldn't we be focused on the long run rather than short-run pain? Actually, no: the economy needs real help now, not hypothetical payoffs a decade from now. In any case, evidence is starting to emerge that the economy's "short run" troubles - now in their fourth year, and being made worse by the focus on austerity - are taking a toll on its long-run prospects as well.

Consider, in particular, what is happening to America's manufacturing base. In normal times manufacturing capacity rises 2 or 3 percent every year. But faced with a persistently weak economy, industry has been reducing, not increasing, its productive capacity. At this point, according to Federal Reserve estimates, manufacturing capacity is almost 5 percent lower than it was in December 2007.

What this means is that if and when a real recovery finally gets going, the economy will run into capacity constraints and production bottlenecks much sooner than it should. That is, the weak economy, which is partly the result of budget-cutting, is hurting the future as well as the present.

Furthermore, the decline in manufacturing capacity is probably only the beginning of the bad news. Similar cuts in capacity will probably take place in the service sector - indeed, they may already be taking place. And with long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression, there is a real risk that many of the unemployed will come to be seen as unemployable.

Oh, and the brunt of those cuts in public spending is falling on education. Somehow, laying off hundreds of thousands of schoolteachers doesn't seem like a good way to win the future.

In fact, when you combine the growing evidence that fiscal austerity is reducing our future prospects with the very low interest rates on U.S. government debt, it's hard to avoid a startling conclusion: budget austerity may well be counterproductive even from a purely fiscal point of view, because lower future growth means lower tax receipts.

What should be happening? The answer is that we need a major push to get the economy moving, not at some future date, but right now. For the time being we need more, not less, government spending, supported by aggressively expansionary policies from the Federal Reserve and its counterparts abroad. And it's not just pointy-headed economists saying this; business leaders like Google's Eric Schmidt are saying the same thing, and the bond market, by buying U.S. debt at such low interest rates, is in effect pleading for a more expansionary policy.

And to be fair, some policy players seem to get it. President Obama's new jobs plan is a step in the right direction, while some board members of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England - though not, sad to say, the European Central Bank - have been calling for much more growth-oriented policies.

What we really need, however, is to convince a substantial number of people with political power or influence that they've spent the last year and a half going in exactly the wrong direction, and that they need to make a U-turn.

It's not going to be easy. But until that U-turn happens, the bleeding - which is making our economy weaker now, and undermining its future at the same time - will continue.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
~~~ Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Lecture ~~~









The Mainstreaming Of Walt And Mearsheimer
By Glenn Greenwald

There were numerous reasons that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were accused in prominent venues of all sorts of crimes -- including anti-Semitism -- when they published The Israel Lobby, but the most common cause was the book's central theme: that there is a very powerful lobby in the U.S. which is principally devoted to Israel and causes U.S. political leaders to act to advance the interests of this foreign nation over their own. In The New York Times today, Tom Friedman -- long one of Israel's most stalwart American supporters -- wrote the following as the second paragraph of his column, warning that the U.S. was about to incur massive damage in order to block Palestinian statehood:

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel's leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America's.

Isn't that exactly Walt and Mearseimer's main theme, what caused them to be tarred and feathered with the most noxious accusations possible? Indeed it is; here's how the academic duo, in The Israel Lobby, described the crux of their argument as first set forth in an article on which the book was based:

After describing the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel, we argued that his support could not be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds Instead, it was due largely to the political power of the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seeks to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel . . . We suggested that these policies were not in the U.S. national interest and were in fact harmful to Israel's long-term interests as well.

Is that not exactly the point which The New York Times' most "pro-Israel" columnist himself just voiced today? This thesis has long been self-evidently true. Indeed, many of the same Israel-loyal neoconservatives who accused Walt and Mearsheimer of promoting an anti-Semitic trope of "dual loyalty" -- by daring to suggest that some American Jews cast votes based on what's best for Israel rather than the U.S. -- themselves will explicitly urge American Jews to vote Republican instead of Democrat because of the former's supposedly greater support for Israel (you're allowed to argue that American Jews should make political choices based on Israel but you're not allowed to point out that some do so). Ed Koch just ran around the 9th Congressional District in New York successfully urging American Jews to vote for the GOP candidate based on exactly that appeal ("Koch, a Democrat, endorsed [the GOP candidate] in July as a way to 'send a message' to Obama on his policies toward Israel"). And in The Wall Street Journal this week, Rick Perry excoriated President Obama because of the small handful of instances where Obama deviated ever-so-slightly from the dictates and wishes of the Israeli government.

Walt and Mearshiemer merely voiced a truth which has long been known and obvious but was not allowed to be spoken. That's precisely why the demonization campaign against them was so vicious and concerted: those who voice prohibited truths are always more hated than those who spout obvious lies. That the foreign affairs columnist most admired in Washington circles just expressed the same point demonstrates that recognition of this previously prohibited fact has now become mainstream.

Unfortunately, though, it is still a fact. While there is little doubt that blocking Palestinian statehood will damage the U.S. in substantial ways, there is a reasonable debate to be had about whether Palestinian statehood is actually beneficial to the Palestinians. But American politicians won't be entertaining that debate as they exercise their veto because, as The Israel Lobby documented and Tom Friedman today put it, "the powerful pro-Israel lobby . . . can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America's." Obama officials recognize how vital it is to improve how the U.S. is perceived in the Muslim world and go to great lengths to achieve that goal -- including, supposedly, just fighting a war in Libya in part to accomplish that -- yet (predictably egged on by Democratic Congressional leaders) are prepared/required to throw all of that away because of the imperative of honoring the Netanyahu government's obsession with denying Palestinian statehood.

UPDATE: China yesterday "warned of a spike in tensions in the Middle East if the United States vetoed the Palestinian bid for membership," pointing out: "If the US chooses to fly in the face of world opinion and block the Palestine UN bid next week, not only will Israel become more isolated but tensions in the region will be heightened even more." The New York Times this morning ponders what will happen when the veto "fuels deeper resentment of the United States." A normal, healthy government would be eager to avoid those harms, but as Tom Friedman says, American leaders are "hostage" to "the powerful pro-Israel lobby" and will thus subject the country to that damage in order not to incur its wrath.
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.







Murder Is Good Politics, Bad Justice
By Robert Scheer

I don't know if Troy Davis was innocent, but I do know that the evidence for demanding a re-examination of his conviction, including the recanted testimony of most of the witnesses against him, was overwhelming. But of course that is now beside the point, which is exactly what is so wrong about the use of the death penalty. No matter what evidence of innocence might be produced in the future, it is of consequence no longer.

That is a compelling argument against the death penalty-no room for correction-but there are others. The most egregious argument for capital punishment is the claim that the finality of officially condoned killing is a necessary guarantor of civilized order. Egregious because it is not possible to make that case without explaining why most of the democratic societies that we admire shun the death penalty as contrary to their most deeply held values.

Or is it China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen, which, along with the United States, led the world in government executions, that we most admire? There is something stunningly disgraceful about the company we keep on this issue.

As Amnesty International-the world's premier human rights organization, which deserves high marks for its anti-death penalty campaign-points out, more than two-thirds of the world's nations have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. I defy anyone to compare the list of countries that have retained the death penalty with those that have abolished it and then conclude that it serves a needed purpose.

It is obvious from the experience of those nations without the death penalty and our own 17 states that have banned capital punishment that this barbaric custom is not a necessary, let alone efficient, means for ensuring public safety. Due process in the United States, which claims to have an enlightened legal system, requires death penalty procedures that are costlier than appropriate incarceration.

Governments that cling to this primitive ritual of state-sanctioned murder do so not to induce respect for law but rather to indulge a lust for vengeance. Toward that end it would be far more honest to have the bound prisoner stoned to death by the governors, state legislators, prosecutors and judges who support the death penalty rather than employing lethal injections by disengaged technicians. Forcing them to be the executioners in actual practice rather than as a matter of legal theory would compel a far greater sense of personal responsibility than politicians and some others tend to exhibit on the matter.

From my own experience as a journalist covering this issue, the vast majority of politicians who defend capital punishment do so out of rank opportunism, which they demonstrate, particularly when the conversation is off the record, by citing polling numbers rather than evidence of the death penalty as a capital crime deterrent.

As I waited for the news of Troy Davis' fate, my thoughts kept returning to that day in 1960 when we Berkeley students picketed the California governor's office in pleading for a stay in the execution of convicted rapist Caryl Chessman, who was never accused of murder. It didn't come because Gov. Pat Brown, despite his deep reservations about the case, had succumbed to public opinion. I never imagined then that more than half a century later the death penalty would still be enforced. That it is mocks our claim to be a moral leader in this world.

It is appropriate that we grieve for the slain police officer, Mark MacPhail, but if Davis was not the one with the gun, as he claimed to the end, the true murderer will have gone unpunished, as suggested by Davis' haunting plea to the MacPhail family minutes before he died: "I did not personally kill your son, father, brother. All I can ask is that you look deeper into this case so you really can finally see the truth."

Execution is a means of summarily ending the pursuit of justice rather than advancing it.

This case was so freighted with contradictions that a stay of execution was clearly in order. As Amnesty International spokesperson Laura Moye stated: "Today Georgia didn't just kill Troy Davis, they killed the faith and confidence that many Georgians, Americans, and Troy Davis supporters worldwide used to have in our criminal justice system."
(c) 2011 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. A journalist with over 30 years experience, Scheer has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.





The Dead Letter Office...





Darrel explains why he's so mean. It's only this big!

Heil Obama,

Dear Unterfuhrer Issa,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your many plans to roll back hundreds of existing or pending regulations, including on smog, a major contributor to several lung ailments, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute you Herr Issa, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama




"Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of working families,
the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable, it is
time to ask the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations
in this country to pay their fair share." ~~~ Bernie Sanders


Thousands Cheer Bernie Sanders' Appeal To Obama, Super Committee
Make the Rich Pay for Deficits
By John Nichols

Declaring that "Social Security is the most successful government program in our nation's history," and decrying threats to Medicare and Medicaid that would punish Americans who did not cause the current economic crisis, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders brought thousands of progressives from across the Midwest to the feet Saturday, as they cheered his message to President Obama and the congressional "Super Committee":"We can deal with deficit reduction in a way that is fair and responsible."

"Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable," Sanders said, "it is time to ask the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in this country to pay their fair share."

In several speeches to crowds numbers in the thousands who gathered for Fighting BobFest events in Madison, Wisconsin, Sanders continues to spell out the progressive economic agenda that argues against cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to balance budgets and address deficits and for tax policies that end special breaks for the wealthy and multinational corporations that offshore jobs from the United States.

President Obama is expected to deliver a major speech Monday on deficit reduction and the White House has indicated that the president's plan will not include "changes to Social Security." Sanders is glad of that: "I am delighted that the White House has decided not to cut benefits under the program that has kept millions of retirees out of poverty," the senators said in Madison. "Social Security has $2.5 trillion surplus, can pay out every benefit for the next 27 years and has not contributed one nickel to the deficit. Social Security should be strengthened, not cut."

That does not mean the House-Senate "Super Committee" on deficit reduction -- which is ramping up its work as members of Congress return to Washington -- will do so, however. Nor does it mean that related and equally vital programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare, are off the chopping block.

"Rumors persist that President Obama may embrace the idea of raising the age of Medicare eligibility, an idea he put on the table in his negotiations with Republicans during the debt ceiling debacle." notes the Campaign for America's Future, which has been closely monitoring threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"The report that Social Security is not going to be on the chopping block is welcome news – especially since Social Security contributes nothing to America's deficits," says CAF director Roger Hickey. "However, if the President again proposes raising the age of Medicare eligibility on Monday, he would be making a huge mistake, and such a policy would harm America's most vulnerable citizens. Medicare is a target for deficit cutters because many of them never liked the program; however they claim they want to change the eligibility age because health care costs are skyrocketing. The solution is instituting policies that control overall health costs: hit the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies, not low income and sick Americans. We can't afford to let profiteers from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries make millions off of taxpayers any longer. The President should propose letting Medicare use its buying power to negotiate discount prices with the drug companies."

Sanders has taken the lead in the fight against balancing budgets on the backs of working Americans.

He's pushing a number of plans designed to strengthen the safety net, while demanding that the richest Americans -- who have enjoyed massive increases in their income and wealth in recent years -- begin to pay their fair share.

Some of the loudest applause for Sanders -- when he joined Dr. Cornel West, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, radio host Thom Hartmann and others in addressing an arena filled with labor, farm and community activists for Saturday's main BobFest gathering -- came when he spelled out a plan to assure the long-term stability of Social Security.

Arguing that the most effective way to strengthen Social Security for the next 75 years is to eliminate the cap on the payroll tax on income above $250,000, Sanders declared: "Lift the cap and cause the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share."

Thousands of activists whose level of commitment will decide the fate of Democratic contenders in 2012 leapt to their feet and cheered.

If President Obama and other Democrats in Washington want to know how to leap the enthusiasm gap that will be needed to win battleground states such as Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania next year, Bernie Sanders has provided the answer.

Asked at a packed Friday night gathering in Madison to explain how Obama and the Democrats can win next year, the senator answered: "Clearly, you are not going to win over the American people unless you are prepared to stand and fight."

Again, the applause was thunderous.

Let's just hope it was loud enough to be heard in Washington by the president and by the Democrats who have been assigned to the "Super Committee."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.




Ron gives the Corpo-rat Salute




How Many Poor People Do You Know?
By Mary Pitt

This is a question that should be asked of any person who is running for a national office. We don't mean how many poor people one sees on the streets as one drives by in an automobile, not just those who show up at the soup kitchen with whom a photo opportunity is in progress. We mean the people who live constantly at or slightly above the poverty line, constantly worrying as they juggle their meager budget to try to prioritize and keep their heads above the fiscal disaster that lurks everywhere, who work even when they're ailing because they cannot feed the family without that paycheck and "doctors cost money."

Pediatricians are becoming alarmed because more women are foregoing prenatal medical care and even having their babies without medical assistance of any kind due to lack of money to pay. Without free breakfasts and lunches at school many children would be going all day with an empty stomach when Daddy's or Mommy's money runs out before the next payday.

Do you know any of these people? Have you visited them just because you value their company and are interested in their opinions? Have you asked them to your home for an evening? If you answer in the negative, something is lacking, not only in your knowledge base but in your religious education. If you did know them, you would know of how offended they would be if you offered to give them money, but how willing they would be to find the time to do a job for you if you were to need some temporary chores. However, they would happily do the same chore for you without pay should you ask them.

You see, these people are not the scum of society as so many politicians would term them. Your familial antecedents would have called them "the salt of the earth." They are the same kind of people who would sell themselves into bondage for the opportunity to take their families and their poor possessions aboard a frail ship to reach a far-off land where they could work hard to build a better life for their children and for generations to come. They would serve out their bondage, gather their belongings again, and set out, bag and baggage, for lands unknown in order to fell trees for a shelter so they could till the soil and create a home.

But now we live in a settled land where everything belongs to somebody else; there is no virgin land there for the taking, there are no more frontiers to settle and there is no choice but for mankind to learn to live with one another. We are all in the same boat. The problem is that too many want to stand in the bow and captain the journey while those who man the oars are taken for granted. As the boat starts to sink from having the weight unevenly distributed by too many captains, those captains think the answer is to scuttle the oarsmen! Thus, we are faced with silly ideas like "trickle down."

There was a time that candidates would campaign door-to-door, visiting with potential; voters in their homes and listening to their concerns. Now campaigns are limited to televised speeches and rallies among the faithful where the candidates never talk to anybody who is not already disposed to support them. The questions usually come from those who already know the canned answers which they will receive, and neither candidate nor voter actally learn anything.

It is easy for a candidate like Ron Paul to espouse leaving sick and uninsured to just die and to receive great applause from his supporters which leads him to believe that his answer was correct. Do you suppose Congressman Paul has any close friends or relatives who are truly poor? So why should he care should a constituent or a hired minion should die for lack of medical care?

To some of a gentler persuasion, it would seem necessary for a successful candidate to know those whom he is bound to represent in the government of the United States. Try asking the question at the next political rally you attend, "How many poor people do you really know?"
(c) 2011 Mary Pitt is an octagenarian who has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System. Huzzahs and whiney complaints may be sent to tfolbrd@cox.net



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Pat Bagley ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...





In Rare Public Statement, God Tells Pat Robertson To Shut The Fuck Up
'Enough Already With That Moron,' Says Almighty
By Andy Borowitz

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - Rev. Pat Robertson's controversial remarks in which he advised that it was acceptable to divorce a spouse with Alzheimer's drew a harsh rebuke from God Almighty, who held a press conference today to tell him to "shut the fuck up."

The bearded King of the Universe, dressed in His trademark flowing white robe and carrying a lightning bolt, spoke to reporters at New York's Hyatt Grand Central for forty-five minutes in a press conference specifically called to denounce the televangelist.

"I've held my tongue while he's jabbered on and on about me punishing this group and that group with floods and earthquakes and such, but this was the last straw," He said. "Enough already with that moron."

In addition to debunking Rev. Robertson's Alzheimer's statement, the Almighty categorically denied using natural disasters in the past to punish gays, Haitians, and other targets of Rev. Robertson's scorn.

"Oh, please," He said. "That's just weather."

On another topic, God attempted to put distance between Himself and the presidential candidacy of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas: "Rick Perry is qualified to be President in the same way that Olive Garden is qualified to be Italy."
(c) 2011 Andy Borowitz




Email:issues@issuesandalibis.org



The Gross National Debt




Iraq Deaths Estimator


The Animal Rescue Site
















View my page on indieProducer.net









Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 37 (c) 09/23/2011


Issues & Alibis is published in America every Friday. We are not affiliated with, nor do we accept funds from any political party. We are a non-profit group that is dedicated to the restoration of the American Republic. All views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of Issues & Alibis.Org.

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In This Edition

David Michael Green returns with, "All The Bad News Fit To Print."

Uri Avnery studies, "Abu Mazen's Gamble."

Abby Zimet hears, "Voices For Peace."

David Sirota explains, "How The Two-Party Duopoly Operates."

Jim Hightower says, "Obama Stands Up, Knocks GOP Down."

Helen Thomas follows, "The Man And The Plan."

James Donahue tastes, "The Fruit Of American Conquest: Civil War!"

Randall Amster is just a cockeyed optimist when it comes to, "The Arc Of The Moral Universe."

David Swanson orates, "When the World Outlawed War."

Ralph Nader explores, "As the Drone Flies...."

Paul Krugman takes a, "Euro Zone Death Trip."

Glenn Greenwald examines, "What Media Coverage Omits About U.S. Hikers Released By Iran."

Joel S. Hirschhorn sees, "Class War Winner."

Orange County Deputy District Attorney Dan Wagner wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols discovers, "'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'The Human Side Of Government.'"

Lisa Romero informs us, "What The Media Aren't Telling You About American Protests."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Onion reports, "Biden Asks White House Visitor If He Wants To Check Out Roof" but first Uncle Ernie asks if it's the, "Last Chance For America's Spring?"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Nate Beeler, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Married To The Sea.Com, Don Wright, Matt Bors, Ken Bingham, Banksy, Salon.Com, U.S. Air Force, Stockfresh.Com, MGM, The Onion.Com, U.S.P.S., Warner Brothers Pictures, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










Last Chance For America's Spring?
By Ernest Stewart

"I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that criminal occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine to demand that our resources are invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning." ~~~ October 2011.Org

"I'm here to understand what's going on and to lend my support. There's a lot of different kinds of people here who want to shift the paradigm to something that's addressing the huge gap between the rich and the poor." ~~~ Susan Sarandon

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." ~~~ Ovid

Even when we're down to the wire, babe.
Even when it's do or die.
We can do it, baby, simple and plain
cuz this love is a sure thing.
All I Want Is You ~~~ Miguel Jontel

By the time the next edition comes out, (if we're still publishing) the people will have taken Washington D.C. back from the corpo-rats and will hold it until the traitors in the Con-gress and the White House begin to start doing our business and not the business of our elite masters. Either that, or they'll be all slaughtered by Washington's Jack Booted Thugs! Which do you think will happen?

I remember marching in May of 2001 in Washington D.C.. There were tens of thousands of us, and we marched right by the Washington Post -- funny thing the Post apparently didn't see us march by as nary a word about the protest was found in the paper, just as the corpo-rat-controlled mainstream media ignored the Wall Street protesters for 10 days. I suggested at the time that perhaps next time we marched by The Post we lob a couple of hand grenades through their windows to get their attention! This was my second march on Washington; the first was as a veteran against the Vietnam war; I also marched in Chicago in 1968 as a member of the SDS. However, since COPD and poverty have set in, my marching days are over, so I won't be going to occupy the capital this time around.

Since the 60s, millions have marched through "Foggy Bottom," and nothing has changed; I wonder how Martin Luther King was so successful as it seem to me that since his day protest marches change nothing except the bottom line of businesses in DC and Baltimore!

Hell yes, we are overdue and ready for an "Arab Spring;" if any country on Earth needs to change its government, it's these good old United Snakes that desperately needs such! However, I rather doubt that peaceful protests -- no mater how many millions show up -- will change one iota of the corpo-rat plans for their vassals! I truly hope that my analysis is wrong, and this is the protest that finally makes a difference, but I won't hold my breath until it does!

Still, if it lasts a month, it might by then garner a little MSM coverage and let the folks back home know what's going down. I, for one, will be interested to see if our brothers and sisters on the far right will stop tea-bagging one another long enough to join their brothers and sisters on the left, helping effect much needed change, or will they sit on the sidelines and criticize the effort of others? Now's the time to step up or shut up, America. What will you tell the kids when you're strapped into a box car on the way to a Happy Camp; why Mater and Pater couldn't be bothered to go to Washington and raise some righteous hell before it was too late? What will you tell them, America?

In Other News


NYC Police Captain Anthony Bologna

Could someone explain to me whenever there is peaceful, legal, protest in New York City why they automatically have a police riot? Could it be because they were only following ze orders, Ja? Talk about your Jack Booted Thugs; if you want to know what it was like living in Nazi Germany, look no further than Manhattan! Just move in and disagree with Mayor Hitler, er, Bloomberg, and see what happens to you! If you're white, you'll be beaten and tortured; if you're black, you'll be gunned down! "To serve and protect," my ass!

The cowardly cops have been busting heads and macing grandmothers who were doing absolutely nothing illegal. In case you were wondering, that's why they call them PIGS! There is nothing random about this mega-violence; they're cracking skulls to keep the number of protesters down and keep others from using their constitutional rights! Isn't that treason?

Can you guess what I did? Well, of course you can; you're very smart! I wrote Michael a brief note, and you can, too, at:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html.

To reach NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mailnypd.html

And the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board: https://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/html/complaint.html.

Here's the note:

I am writing to see what will be done about the police riot being led by Captain Anthony Bologna, who is obviously a coward and a criminal and should be fired and jailed. Of course, he might have been operating under your direct orders, in which case, you should resign, Michael, and fall on your sword!

As always, I'll share any correspondence I get from Michael!

Not to be outdone by the city, Burger King decided to also violate the 1st amendment to the US Constitution and various federal, state and city laws by refusing to sell coffee to protesters. For no other reason except that they're protesting.

I spent an hour or so getting the run-around by Burger Kings corpo-rat headquarters trying to get their side of the story -- a story like the police riot that has gone viral all over the Internet. Ergo, we'll be boycotting Burger King until they apologize to the protesters and buy every one of them a cup of coffee! This boycott will be easy on most of you, if you're like me and haven't visited a Burger King in decades.

Oh, and one more thing, as far as I can tell, there is no truth to the rumor (that I just started) that Burger King uses fresh ground worms instead of beef in their burgers. It's probably untrue as worms cost more than beef, and they're better for you than chemically-tainted beef, because Burger King doesn't care about your health, as long as their bottom line isn't affected!

And Finally

East Coast, West Coast, all across the land! You've no doubt heard about the "Irvine 11" and their recent free speech conviction for daring to address the Israeli Ambassador at UCI. I guess the 1st Amendment no longer applies if you say something unpopular with the status quo in Orange County.

Sure, the kids were protesting and disrupted the meeting, and were properly punished and chastened by the school, but to be prosecuted and persecuted by the county is just one toke over the line when it comes to justice. Yes, I'm saying that the deciding factors in this travesty were that they were leftist, brown, and Muslim. Why, you may ask, is this not justice? Because when a group of white, Rethuglican, youth-for-Bush types all but murdered a Muslim speaker on the same campus -- in the very same building -- and then tried to run the speaker over when he fled for his life with their cars, nothing, I repeat nothing, was done about it, by the same prosecutor's office. Nary a slap on the wrist for attempted murder! It must have been just a fluke, huh?

Of course, I wrote this turkey a letter...

Orange County Deputy District Attorney
To Dan Wagner,

I see that free speech is dead in Orange County. Any other articles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that are against the law in Orange County? How does it feel, Dan, to be an Israeli 5th columnist, puppet? Did you declare on your income tax the 30 pieces of silver you were no doubt paid for your treason? Remember, Dan, tax is how they got Al Capone. Just one question for my readers, if you please, Dan, how do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning without wanting to cut your throat?

Sincerely,
Ernest Stewart
Managing editor
Issues and Alibis Magazine

So far I haven't heard a thing from Dan, funny thing that, huh?

Keepin' On

It's that time of the year again when we go down to the wire and hold our breath to see if there are enough crumbs in the cookie jar to pay all our bills for another year; and let me tell you folks, it's starting to get just a little bit old! I got one nice check from a reader whose name I can not mention (how cool is it to not want credit for a good deed?), but it still isn't enough.

As it stands today, we're still a little short, and while I'm on a mission to keep the truth flowing out, my creditors couldn't give a rat's ass whether we go on or not, only caring for their material gain; but that's capitalism for ya!

It's coming down to what's in the my PO Box whether we go on or not. I have a couple of friends who will loan me the difference in case it isn't there, but I can hardly afford to pay them back, and won't accept their loans unless I can, and I wouldn't want to put them through it, otherwise. So, for maybe the last time, HELP, ya'll!

*****


01-23-1945 ~ 09-21-2011
Death walks behind you!


09-07-1922 ~ 09-27-2011
Thanks for the laughter!



*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
Donations

*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












All The Bad News Fit To Print
By David Michael Green

Sometimes, when certain species (you know who you are) are too utterly daft to recognize the obvious, the Universe sees fit to scream it out in the form of big, bold block letters.

Such was the case just last week, when all of the following headlines were published, by one journal alone (the New York Times), and just in one 24-hour period. Read them and weep:

"Poverty Levels in 2010 Reach 52-Year Peak, US Says"

"Obama Looks For Big Health Cuts, Worrying Democrats"

"G.O.P. Scores Upset, Claims Win As Omen For Obama"

"Two-Tier Pay Now the Way Detroit Works"

"In Suburb, Battle Goes Public On Bullying of Gay Students"

"Student Loan Default Rates Rise Sharply In Past Year"

"What's a Presidential Library to Do? An Admiring Approach at the Reagan. History, Warts and All, at the Nixon."

"Obama Offers Jobs Bill, And the G.O.P. Balks"

"Government Pays More In Contracts, Study Finds"

"Ex-Senate Aide Will Be a Lobbyist"

"Fast-Track for Disaster Aid Is Blocked"

How's that for a litany of shame and destruction? I didn't even include the garden variety domestic violence scandals of mayoral aides and schools cheating on standardized tests, or anything in the sports section.

What's most amazing, however, is the degree to which the American public still can't put it together. Imagine if you were capable of recognizing letters on a page, but not able to string them together into meaningful words. Imagine if you could identify individual biological organs but not add them up to constitute a person. Imagine if every Cheerio in your cereal spoon was a source of fresh wonder, as if you'd never seen one before. Now imagine 300 million people who can encounter news stories like the ones above and still not tie them together into a coherent narrative.

Let me make it simple, in case anyone wants to share this essay with their idiotic, Republican (pardon the redundancy) cousin Buford: The story of American politics over the last generation is the story of the transfer of wealth from the people to the plutocrats. If you think there is anything else essential going on here, you don't get it.

Of course, you're not supposed to get it. And one reason why so many people can't put the narrative together is because there is no one in the political class who is articulating that vision for them to consider. Not a single one among the elites in American politics and government.

Here's what's not being said, and not being understood:

That, thirty years ago, the 'heroic', venerated, practically deified, Ronald Reagan ushered in the age of plutocratic piracy, artfully hiding it behind any kind of fear that would sufficiently stimulate the amygdala of your garden variety troglodyte enough to hide the real agenda. You know, commies, fags, fur'ners, whatever.

That the folks who had traditionally been advocates for the rest of us who don't own yachts were now every bit as bought off as those in the more overly corrupted Republican Party. These Democrats would mouth the words about "fighting" (if I hear that word again from another politician, I swear I will projectile vomit) for the middle class, but that they would actually screw us at every opportunity. Have you noticed how when they don't control the institutions of government they are always somehow unable to block the Republicans' worst crimes. But when they do control these institutions the Republicans are somehow always able to prevail from a minority position. Go figure. It almost seems like the Democrats aren't really serious about the rhetoric they employ. But, of course, that would be dishonest...

That regressive policies have, with almost no exception, prevailed in every contest over the last thirty years, especially on questions of political economy. Taxes? Regressives won. Deregulation? Regressives got what they wanted. Labor relations? What's this thing they used to call the "union"? Privatization? Why not? Debt? "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter". Trade policy? Dude, where's my job? (Hint: it speaks Mandarin now.) Bailouts for big banks? A hundred pennies on the dollar. Need I go on?

That we are now where we are, precisely because of regressive economic policies. This is the single most crucial and most frustrating fact of our time. It's not exactly theoretical physics to figure out that slashing taxes will produce debt. And it did. Or that trade deals will ship our jobs overseas. As they did. Or that banksters with all the same latitude to indulge their greed that they possessed in 1929 will produce the same results as their grandfathers. Which they did. Or that the much-vaunted private sector is no more efficient and inexpensive at doing things than the government. And it's not.

That the American public has simply and utterly been downsized over the last thirty years. That people work longer and harder to make less, and live with far greater insecurity than before, while corporations and plutocrats are far richer than they were three decades ago. That people are more miserable, have less time to spend with their families, are less healthy, more stressed, more insecure and more poorly compensated - when they can scratch out a job at all - than their parents were. All so that the uber-rich can now be uber-uber-rich. So that millionaires can be billionaires.

That people are sick to death (often quite literally) of a government that is unresponsive to their most basic needs. That they have lost all faith in the once-given notion that someone in Washington has their back. But that they still continue to believe in the dream of democracy, and will cast a vote (no matter which way they choose) for precisely the folks who brought us this nightmare, and who will accelerate its delivery after the election of 2012.

This situation is becoming acute, and I foresee about sixteen different ways in which it will only get worse from here. It is a fact of stunning proportions and epic significance that - less than three years since the end of the Bush nightmare - America is about to turn back to a more extreme version of the same disastrous politics brought to us by the same disaster-loving politicians.

Rick Perry will be the next president of the United States, you can count on that. (A fact which does, believe it or not, have its certain virtues. At the very least it means that both the oleaginous scumbucket, Ken-Doll Romney, and the inner-circle-of-hell traitor, Barack Obama, will both be humiliated in losing.) And Perry will seek to Texafy the rest of the country as fast as he can. His state is one of the worst in the union on practically every measure of quality of life that there is (except for creating new, low-wage, non-union, no-benefit jobs, that is, and the wholesale murder of poor blacks and Hispanics on death row), and he will run successfully on the basis of his record as governor of Texas.

I tell you, some days it just feels like you've fallen into an alternative universe where the laws of nature cease to apply... Perhaps that little problem with physical reality also accounts for why regressives have such a hard time with evolution and global warming.

But I digress. A Perry presidency can only happen because the status quo is so untenable, and people therefore so badly crave change. Such seeming oscillations chart the course of American electoral politics during this Era of Corporate Rape. Where once we had stable centrist politics and even stable majorities in Congress, now every election is a referendum on the failed policies of the current incumbents. We make radical u-turns, switching from one party to the next, without switching from one policy to another. Every politician pretends to be for the people. Every one of them actually serves the oligarchs who buy them their stations and a small bit of relief for their raging personal insecurities. Nothing changes but the letter after their names.

This is precisely why Obama and his party are sinking so rapidly now. He is nothing more than Bush's third term, and Bush was nothing more than a continuation of the Wall Street-friendly policies of Clinton, and so on, back to Reagan. Of course Obama is failing utterly. He is pursuing policies that are utterly failing the American people, as they have for three decades. The only difference between him and the public he's meant to serve is that he well knows that that is precisely what they're designed to do, while the American public still - still! - doesn't get it.

I was delighted (not really) to see Obama do his big speech and finally get some spunk going, nearly three years since he was elected, to start "fighting" for jobs in America. The only problem is that his is the only job he's actually trying to protect. Idiotic liberals need to face reality. The only significant difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama is that the latter is the more skilled lying corporate hack. Look at his policies. Look at what he hasn't done. Look at the people he's surrounded himself with.

This will be even more clear than it already is for anyone who has the interest and the courage to observe the guy accurately (sorry, regressives, that leaves you out) when he details his big no-cost jobs plan. Why it took three years into his presidency to notice there is a small jobs problem in America (and the administration evidently still hasn't noticed the mortgage holocaust going down), and why Obama couldn't have had his big plan actually formulated when he gave the speech incessantly exhorting Congress to pass 'it', tells you a lot about his real priorities. We already know how fast he'd jump if the banks were hurting, because we saw him do it, giving them full public (that means your money and mine) bail-outs, with no restrictions and no requirements to loan taxpayer money, and doing so even though these are the very criminals who wrecked the global economy in the first place. For all you regular folk, it takes a lot longer to get some help, I'm afraid.

The speech was textbook bully pulpit. Apart from the small matters of content, timing and motivation, it was precisely what a president should be doing, and precisely the way it is effectively done by successful presidents. If you doubt that, recall that when the Bush junta began in late 2002 to market its plan for a wee skirmish in the Middle East, only about a third of Americans saw the wisdom in that manifestly ludicrous idea. By the time Karl Rove and his Mad Men were finished making their relentless and ruthlessly amoral pitch for invading Iraq, the figure had become about two-thirds on the eve of the attack. People who give Obama a pass for having to work in a difficult political environment fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the American presidency. The most effective ones are effective because they make their own realities through the power of persuasion.

But the only thing that Obama is serious about is appearing to be serious. This speech was excellent political theater, but substantively as hollow as a Hostess Twinkie. And about as nutritious for the country as well. But hollow well suits a president who capitulates so frequently he's starting to be known around DC as the Caveman of Pennsylvania Avenue. In any case, he doesn't care. The whole point of the exercise was to communicate to the American people (read: voters he'll soon be needing again) that "I care", and to trap the Republicans into either going along with his plan - which he knows they won't, so no serious danger to the aristocracy there - or providing him with a nice campaign cudgel ("they don't care") to be used between now and November 2012.

Either way, this is likely to be one of the most sickening campaigns ever in modern American history. By all rights, according to the essence of the democratic idea, Obama should lose. He has failed dramatically, by any serious measure, and the voters' natural inclination is to seek change - which, by the way, is precisely why he is today president himself. So the White House will be desperately seeking to change the story such that the election is about anything but themselves. This is just what the chickenhawk-in-chief Bush did in 2004, with the assistance of the hapless John Kerry (or was it the hapless Jimmy Carter? or the hapless Walter Mondale? or the hapless Michael Dukakis? I get all these punching-bag Democrats so confused!). Bush the Vietnam coward actually managed to turn the Silver Starred and Purple Hearted Kerry into a knock-kneed wimpy-burger threat to American national security. Anything to get people talking and thinking about something besides the dismal incumbent.

Watch Obama do the same in this cycle, and do it hard because Perry will not be coming at him with wiffle balls. What that means is that the 'hope and change' guy who won hearts in 2008 with his appeals to our better angels will now be running a campaign Nixon and his Plumbers could be proud of. And it's all the more reason why he'll lose. I mean, how inspirational, Barack! It also explains why he'll continue in his remarkable efforts to eviscerate the Democratic Party - even the corporate obeisance version we have today. I mean really, in what bizarro universe is this worthless chump not being shown to the nearest home for retired politicians by members of his own party? First there was Scott Brown snagging the more-or-less-most-Democratic-Senate-seat-in-the-country because of Obama, then a wholesale mass bloodletting in the 2010 midterms, also because of the president, and last week the loss - by nearly ten points - of what is probably the most Democratic congressional district in the entire country, for yet again the same reason. Now he's hurdling headlong into pissing away the White House and loads of Congress and state-level Democratic-held positions along the way in 2012. Does Obama have to launch predator drone missiles against the FDR monument on the Washington mall for Democrats to realize the extent of his destructive capacity against their party?

In any case, 2013 is when history will get interesting, in a Chinese curse sort of way. The Republicans will own Washington, and will viciously destroy the welfare state and otherwise turn over every bit of national wealth and middle class prosperity to the country's plutocrats that they can, as fast as they can. Their program will, of course, have no effect on stimulating the economy (shhh!, don't tell anyone, but it's not intended to), and will very likely make it worse through reducing government spending and laying off public sector employees. As if we've learned nothing this last century. As if Keynes had been a botanist or something.

What then? It is possible, as happened to Reagan, that the GOP will get lucky and happen to be sitting in the White House at the moment the economy recovers. That's a nightmare scenario, for it means that progressive, New Deal-style, ideas about the national social compact will be utterly buried for a generation or more.

Alternatively, and more likely, the economy will remain awful or get worse. It's then possible that the public will just tolerate their downsizing like docile lambs, just as the Japanese have done for over a decade now. But the moment may also provide an occasion for people to rise up and demand an end to he national theft that's been plaguing them for thirty years now. Perhaps that seems unlikely, but there are signs of stirring in Europe and Israel and elsewhere that are rather promising. If the Arabs can have their Spring cleaning of kleptocratic oligarchs, why shouldn't Americans too?

The thing is, though, there's pretty much nothing that I put past the right in this country. And, if they're about to head down the toilet because people are starting to catch up to the bankruptcy of their policies, the question becomes what might they do to change the channel before it's too late? A little racism or gay bashing, maybe? Nope. It wouldn't be on a grand enough scale for this project. They'll need something powerful, like a good national security scare or a full-on war, just like the Argentinean regime invaded the Falklands/Malvinas when they were in trouble domestically, and just like Margaret Thatcher responded in kind when she was in trouble domestically herself. Scary, eh?

It is scary, actually. And not just for, oh, I dunno, the Iranians or Cubans or Venezuelans in a desperate GOP's crosshairs, either. This is the sorriest state I've seen the country in during my lifetime. What were once political outrages of epic proportions are now standard issue Republican Party rhetoric and policies. What was once a Democratic Party largely for the people is now a bunch of corporate hacks hiding behind faux political cowardice to mask their real commitments. You know you're really hurting when appearing to be a coward is more attractive than telling the actual truth about your politics.

Meanwhile, the country adopts stupider and stupider policies, turning to more and more idiotic characters, in hopes of salvaging our sinking ship. Iraq, tax cuts for the wealthy, unabated global warming - those sure turned out great, eh? Hey, well then, let's do even more of that!

Sorry, but nowadays the only thing that makes me feel better about the present is thinking about the future.
(c) 2011 David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles, but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.





Abu Mazen's Gamble
By Uri Avnery

A WONDERFUL SPEECH. A beautiful speech.

The language expressive and elegant. The arguments clear and convincing. The delivery flawless.

A work of art. The art of hypocrisy. Almost every statement in the passage concerning the Israeli-Palestinian issue was a lie. A blatant lie: the speaker knew it was a lie, and so did the audience.

It was Obama at his best, Obama at his worst.

Being a moral person, he must have felt the urge to vomit. Being a pragmatic person, he knew that he had to do it, if he wanted to be re-elected.

In essence, he sold the fundamental national interests of the United States of America for the chance of a second term.

Not very nice, but that's politics, OK?

IT MAY be superfluous - almost insulting to the reader - to point out the mendacious details of this rhetorical edifice.

Obama treated the two sides as if they were equal in strength - Israelis and Palestinians, Palestinians and Israelis.

But of the two, it is the Israelis - only they - who suffer and have suffered. Persecution. Exile. Holocaust. An Israeli child threatened by rockets. Surrounded by the hatred of Arab children. So sad.

No Occupation. No settlements. No June 1967 borders. No Naqba. No Palestinian children killed or frightened. It's the straight right-wing Israeli propaganda line, pure and simple - the terminology, the historical narrative, the argumentation. The music.

The Palestinians, of course, should have a state of their own. Sure, sure. But they must not be pushy. They must not embarrass the US. They must not come to the UN. They must sit with the Israelis, like reasonable people, and work it out with them. The reasonable sheep must sit down with the reasonable wolf and decide what to have for dinner. Foreigners should not interfere.

Obama gave full service. A lady who provides this kind of service generally gets paid in advance. Obama got paid immediately afterwards, within the hour. Netanyahu sat down with him in front of the cameras and gave him enough quotable professions of love and gratitude to last for several election campaigns.

THE TRAGIC hero of this affair is Mahmoud Abbas. A tragic hero, but a hero nonetheless.

Many people may be surprised by this sudden emergence of Abbas as a daring player for high stakes, ready to confront the mighty US.

If Ariel Sharon were to wake up for a moment from his years-long coma, he would faint with amazement. It was he who called Mahmoud Abbas "a plucked chicken." Yet for the last few days, Abbas was the center of global attention. World leaders conferred about how to handle him, senior diplomats were eager to convince him of this or that course of action, commentators were guessing what he would do next. His speech before the UN General Assembly was treated as an event of consequence.

Not bad for a chicken, even for one with a full set of feathers.

His emergence as a leader on the world stage is somewhat reminiscent of Anwar Sadat.

When Gamal Abd-al-Nasser unexpectedly died at the age of 52 in 1970 and his official deputy, Sadat, assumed his mantle, all political experts shrugged.

Sadat? Who the hell is that? He was considered a nonentity, an eternal No. 2, one of the least important members of the group of "free officers" that was ruling Egypt.

In Egypt, a land of jokes and jokers, witticisms about him abounded. One concerned the prominent brown mark on his forehead. The official version was that it was the result of much praying, hitting the ground with his forehead. But the real reason, it was told, was that at meetings, after everyone else had spoken, Sadat would get up and try to say something. Nasser would good-naturedly put his finger to his forehead, push him gently down and say: "Sit, Anwar!"

To the utter amazement of the experts - and especially the Israeli ones - this "nonentity" took a huge gamble by starting the 1973 October War, and proceeded to do something unprecedented in history: going to the capital of an enemy country still officially in a state of war and making peace.

Abbas' status under Yasser Arafat was not unlike Sadat's under Nasser. However, Arafat never appointed a deputy. Abbas was one of a group of four or five likely successors. The heir would surely have been Abu Jihad, had he not been killed by Israeli commandoes in front of his wife and children. Another likely candidate, Abu Iyad, was killed by Palestinian terrorists. Abu Mazen (Abbas) was in a way the choice by default.

Such politicians, emerging suddenly from under the shadow of a great leader, generally fall into one of two categories: the eternal frustrated No. 2 or the surprising new leader.

The Bible gives us examples of both kinds. The first was Rehoboam, the son and heir of the great King Solomon, who told his people: "my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions." The other kind was represented by Joshua, the heir of Moses. He was no second Moses, but according to the story a great conqueror in his own right.

Modern history tells the sad story of Anthony Eden, the long-suffering No. 2 of Winston Churchill, who commanded little respect. (Mussolini called him, after their first meeting, "a well-tailored idiot."). Upon assuming power, he tried desperately to equal Churchill and soon embroiled Britain in the 1956 Suez disaster. To the second category belonged Harry Truman, the nobody who succeeded the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt and surprised everybody as a resolute leader.

Abbas looked like belonging to the first kind. Now, suddenly, he is revealed as belonging to the second. The world is treating him with newfound respect. Nearing the end of his career, he made the big gamble.

BUT WAS it wise? Courageous, yes. Daring, yes. But wise?

My answer is: Yes, it was.

Abbas has placed the quest for Palestinian freedom squarely on the international table. For more than a week, Palestine has been the center of international attention. Scores of international statesmen and -women, including the leader of the world's only superpower, have been busy with Palestine.

For a national movement, that is of the utmost importance. Cynics may ask: "So what did they gain from it?" But cynics are fools. A liberation movement gains from the very fact that the world pays attention, that the media grapple with the problem, that people of conscience all over the world are aroused. It strengthens morale at home and brings the struggle a step nearer its goal.

Oppression shuns the limelight. Occupation, settlements, ethnic cleansing thrive in the shadows. It is the oppressed who need the light of day. Abbas' move provided it, at least for the time being.

BARACK OBAMA's miserable performance was a nail in the coffin of America's status as a superpower. In a way, it was a crime against the United States.

The Arab Spring may have been a last chance for the US to recover its standing in the Middle East. After some hesitation, Obama realized that. He called on Mubarak to go, helped the Libyans against their tyrant, made some noises about Bashar al-Assad. He knows that he has to regain the respect of the Arab masses if he wants to recover some stature in the region, and by extension throughout the world.

Now he has blown it, perhaps forever. No self-respecting Arab will forgive him for plunging his knife into the back of the helpless Palestinians. All the credit the US has tried to gain in the last months in the Arab and the wider Muslim world has been blown away with one puff.

All for reelection.

IT WAS also a crime against Israel.

Israel needs peace. Israel needs to live side by side with the Palestinian people, within the Arab world. Israel cannot rely forever on the unconditional support of the declining United States.

Obama knows this full well. He knows what is good for Israel, even if Netanyahu doesn't. Yet he has handed the keys of the car to the drunken driver.

The State of Palestine will come into being. This week it was already clear that this is unavoidable. Obama will be forgotten, as will Netanyahu, Lieberman and the whole bunch.

Mahmoud Abbas - Abu Mazen, as the Palestinians call him - will be remembered. The "plucked chicken" is soaring into the sky.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







Voices For Peace
We Are Young Jews, and We Get to Decide What That Means
By Abby Zimet

Rosh Hashanah begins tonight at sundown, marking the start of the Jewish New Year, the day of Judgment, when God decides "who shall live and who shall die." In its honor, and with the issue of Palestinian statehood roiling the U.N., video and commentary from the young Jewish Voice for Peace group who last year protested Netanyahu in New Orleans. They insist on being heard, and on forging an identity not dependent on the oppression of the Palestinians. Shana Tovah.

The Next Generation

"How do we reach Jewish young people?" has long been one of the central mantras of the organized Jewish community - as those of us who work as Jewish professionals can surely attest. But while we wring our hands over the state of the Jewish future, a remarkable new generation of Jews has been knocking insistently at our door.

Case in point: Almost one year ago, five young Jews disrupted the keynote speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans. One by one, at five different points during the speech, the activists stood on their chairs, unfurled banners and shouted out in turn:

Young Jews say the settlements delegitimize Israel!
Young Jews say the Occupation delegitimizes Israel!
Young Jews say the siege of Gaza delegitimizes Israel
Young Jews say the loyalty oath delegitimizes Israel!
Young Jews say silencing dissent delegitimizes Israel!

With each successive interruption the shouts from the crowd grew louder and angrier. As security attempted to safely walk them out, one protester was put in a choke hold by a convention attendee and wrestled to the floor. Another conventioneer grabbed a banner and tore it in half with his teeth.

At the very same moment, "Young, Jewish, Proud" launched its website, featuring the "Young Jewish Declaration" - an astonishing statement of purpose that seemed to come directly from the collective heart, mind and gut of this newly-formed youth movement:

We exist. We are everywhere. We speak and love and dream in every language...

We remember how to build our homes, and our holiness, out of time and thin air, and so do not need other people's land to do so...

We refuse to have our histories distorted or erased, or appropriated by a corporate war machine. We will not call this liberation...

We commit ourselves to peace. We will stand up with honest bodies, to offer honest bread...We are young Jews, and we get to decide what that means.

Predictably, the Jewish establishment wasted no time in excoriating the protesters. Some chided them condescendingly for their "misguided" behavior. Others angrily criticized them for "aiding the enemy."

As for me, I watched these events unfold with genuine hope for our Jewish future.

After all, weren't these young people claiming and proclaiming their Jewishness in classic Jewish fashion? Like young Abraham destroying his father's icons, they stood up to the hypocrisy and corruption of their elders. In the heart of the the largest gathering of American Jewish leaders, these proud young Jews called out their community on its most sacred of sacred cows: namely, the unquestioning, unconditional support of the state of Israel.

In all honesty, I can't say I've ever witnessed as authentic an act of young Jewish self-expression as I did that afternoon at the New Orleans General Assembly.

Yes, as a professional Jew, I've participated in the "how can we inspire young Jewish adults?" conversation more times than I care to admit. I've watched a myriad of Jewish community-sponsored initiatives come and go. And invariably, all of them focused on what we believed was best for Jewish young people.

But while the Jewish establishment has been excellent at creating and funding expensive projects, we seem to be chronically incapable of actually listening to Jewish young people. We love to tell them how we think they should express their Jewishness, but rarely do we stop long enough to really, truly learn what Jewish passions are driving young Jewish adults today.

Taglit-Birthright Israel - the Jewish establishment's signature youth initiative - is the most obvious case in point. For well over a decade, we have invested literally hundreds of millions of dollars in providing free, all-expense-paid trips to Israel. The essential goal of these trips, as Birthright's Marketing Director puts it plainly, is to make Israel "an integral part of every Jew's identity."

It's well known that Birthright was born in response to growing reports that American Jewish young people were becoming increasingly disconnected to the state of Israel. But by rushing to address this issue through a massive multimillion dollar community initiative, we successfully avoided asking some deeper questions.

Could it be that we were afraid to know the answers?

Could it be that young people are becoming disenchanted with Israel because they are becoming increasingly troubled by its treatment of Palestinians? Could it be that growing numbers of young Jews regard Israel more as an oppressive colonial project than a source of Jewish pride? Could it be that in the 21st century world, the identities of young Jews are tied less to Jewish ethno-nationalism than to a more universal vision of liberation?

"Young, Jewish, Proud" is decidedly not the product of a Jewish communal initiative. On the contrary it is a grass-roots, self-organized effort of young Jews who seek to express their Jewish identity in a time-honored Jewish manner: by speaking truth to power, by advocating unabashedly for peace, justice and liberation, by standing up to oppression, racism and persecution in Israel/Palestine - and throughout the world. They simply aren't buying what the Jewish establishment has been selling them. They are finding their own voices.

We are young Jews, and we get to decide what that means...

I am well aware that it is not easy for a Jewish community so thoroughly focused on Zionism to hear it challenged in such a fundamental way. But aren't these young Jews doing precisely what they were raised to do? They are taking a good, educated look around them, thinking critically about what they see and are taking a stand for what they believe in as Jews. Are we really prepared to disown them because their conclusions make us uncomfortable?

In the Torah portion for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we read that when God saves the life of young Ishmael in the wilderness, "God heeded the cries of the boy where he is." (Genesis 21:17) In other words, God was able to find Ishmael by truly listening to him. Not where God wanted him to be or were God thought he should be, but where he was.

On this New Year, I fervently hope our community can do the same with our newest adult generation. These young Jews certainly have every reason to be disenchanted with the organized Jewish community, but for some reason they refuse to go away. They're here and they're knocking loudly at our door.

Do we, the gatekeepers of the Jewish community, have the vision, the faith and the courage to open it up and let them in?

Shanah Tova
Rabbi Brant Rosen
(c) 2011 Abby Zimet






How The Two-Party Duopoly Operates
The behavior of two Colorado politicians shows how superficial the differences between the parties are
By David Sirota

By now, probably everyone reading this is already sick of America's quadrennial political spectacle -- the one in which politicians and media outlets ask us to believe that there remain vast differences between our two political parties. It's like cheaply staged pornography on a red and blue set, with words like "polarization," "socialist" and "extremist" comprising the breathless dialogue in a wholly unconvincing plot.

Some of this tripe can be momentarily compelling, of course. And as the 2012 election climax draws nearer, many Americans will no doubt submit to the fantasy. But before that happens, it's worth looking a few levels beneath the orgiastic presidential campaign for a last necessary dose of nonfiction, if only to remind us that the parties are often two heads of the same political monster.

As good a place as any to get such a dose is my home state of Colorado, which this month provided two emblematic examples of how the two party duopoly really operates.

Exhibit A is our Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler. Though his job is to enforce campaign finance rules and protect voting rights, he's proudly using his office for exactly the opposite.

After being elected in 2010, he first reduced campaign finance fines against the local Republican Party in Larimer County, then announced that he will headline a fundraiser to help that local party pay off the levies. Now, this GOP hack is suing the overwhelmingly Democratic bastion of Denver in an attempt to prevent ballots from being sent to 55,000 of the city's registered voters. Gessler's public rationale? He says that because these citizens chose not to vote in the last election, they shouldn't get ballots this year.

Exhibit B is Democrat Tom Strickland -- a flesh-and-blood monument to revolving-door corruption.

Back in the 1990s, Strickland got his start serving as Colorado's U.S. attorney. He then slid into a lucrative job at one of Colorado's top corporate law firms. A few years later, he jumped back into public service, making two failed Democratic bids for the U.S. Senate. From there, it was on to the executive vice presidency of UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's most rapacious health insurance companies. When Barack Obama was elected president, Strickland headed back into government, as the chief of staff of the Interior Department -- the agency that's supposed to regulate the oil and gas industry. Then, this week, Strickland got himself a job at the law firm defending BP in the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Despite being tied to major issues and a crucially important electoral swing state, and despite the overtly public nature of their moves, Gessler and Strickland's actions received almost no national media attention, which reminds us that these two political figures are not special cases -- their behavior is today's unquestioned norm.

Gessler represents both a bipartisan effort to undermine campaign finance regulations and an ends-justify-the-means-ism that has become pervasive in American politics -- in this case, his is the Republican kind that is aimed at suppressing the vote. Strickland, meanwhile, embodies the Democratic side of a permanent bipartisan elite that has made corporatism and public service completely synonymous. The two Coloradans may exemplify different pathologies, but those pathologies both contribute to our political system's overarching dysfunction.

So the next time you tune into a cable TV pundit-a-thon or a talk-radio screamfest that tells you how "divided" American politics is, and how one party is so much more honorable than the other, remember Colorado and all the other examples like it before you head down the rabbit hole of election-year delusion.
(c) 2011 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.







Obama Stands Up, Knocks GOP Down
Wow - someone must've slipped a dose of special Viagra to Barack Obama, for his backbone has suddenly stiffened!

Finally showing a bit of real populist fervor, the President drew a line in the sand for plutocratic Congressional Republicans. He declared that the would veto any deficit plan that cuts Medicare but lets multimillionaires keep paying a lower tax rate than middle class families. He called for a minimal tax hike on those making more than a million dollars a year, an uptick that would affect fewer than 450,000 privileged Americans who can easily absorb the increase.

But - oh! - the operatic screams of agony from the chorus of Republican harpies in Congress. So jolted were they by the very idea that the rich would be required to share our nation's budgetary burden, that they raced to the barricades of wealth, from which they lobbed rhetorical firebombs at Obama. "Class war!" shrieked the GOP's House budget chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan. For Ryan to utter that phrase is such gross hypocrisy that I'm amazed he didn't gag on the words, choke, and expire on the spot. This is, after all, the guy who rammed a budget through the House this spring that would've killed Medicare for America's seniors, while protecting the multibillion-dollar subsidies for Big Oil. How classy is that?

Ryan & Party have consistently voted for policies that've held down the poor, knocked down middle-class income, and shoved practically all of the wealth created in America during the past decade straight uphill into the pockets of the superrich. That, Mr. Ryan, is classic class war.

Obama nailed the GOP's whine for the poppycock it is, noting that his proposal "is not class warfare. It's math." Yes - and it's something else, too, something essential for a democratic society. It's basic fairness.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








The Man And The Plan
By Helen Thomas

It's no more "Mr. Nice Guy" for President Barack Obama. He has found his ties to the waning Democrats and thrown down the gauntlet to the hard-nosed Republican leaders.

Obama wants to tax the richest Americans to lift us out of our ever-growing deficit. The GOP has given a flat "no" to new taxes for the very rich. The wealthy have not paid their fair share of taxes in years. Even Warren Buffet has publicly acknowledged it is not fair that his secretary pays a higher percentage of her income in taxes than he does. Now is the time for the rich to face the music and pay their share.

Why not increase taxes for the megawealthy when we have 46 million people living below the poverty line in this country? Is there anyone out there making over $500,000 a year who can honestly say they cannot afford to pay more taxes?

The President apparently has given up on compromise with the Republicans. He is finally taking a stand and taking a hard line. The gloves are off.

He could be tearing a page out of Harry Truman's playbook. Truman stymied and shamed the "do nothing" Congress with his cross-country "whistle stop" campaign by train.

Reporters fast aboard the train had written off Truman's bid for reelection against New York Governor Tom Dewey in 1948. Truman had lost ground politically, but reporters began to observe the growing crowds waiting at the train depots even at midnight to see Truman and his wife, Bess, waving from the back of the train as Truman taunted his Republican opponents.

On Election Day, some newspapers, such as the Chicago Tribune, declared Dewey the winner. They were wrong, and a sleepy Truman, with a big smile on his face, held up the front page of the Chicago Tribune for the press to see.

Obama has now staked out his position, and he should stand his ground. He has nothing to lose but the country, to the aristocrats who seek economic recovery on the backs of the poor.

In a Rose Garden speech Monday, Obama said "I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing the deficit on the ordinary Americans ... and I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare, but does not raise revenues by asking the wealthiest or biggest corporations to pay their share." The President added, "We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are the most vulnerable."

Obama seems to be getting a grip on the situation. Known for compromises and cave-ins that he must now regret, he apparently has decided his opponents are not ready to play ball for the sake of the country. Their only goal is to depose Obama. Fair enough, but let's hear the job growth plans of the Republican presidential candidates. Have you heard of any?

With the USA in such dire straights, where are the caring Americans? Do the Republicans still believe trickle down economics will work? Let's not forget, besides Reaganomics, during that administration, ketchup became a vegetable for the hungry school children's menu, and the unemployed were told to "vote with your feet." Starvation was called "anecdotal" by top Reagan aides.

What's wrong with yacht and jet plane owners, and the megamansion home owners, kicking in more money - or at least paying their fair share? Prior to the 2001 Bush tax cuts, these super-wealthy who currently only pay between 9 and 16 percent of their income in taxes, would have paid 30 percent in taxes - more in line with what out current middle class pays in taxes.

The poor, and what's left of the middle class, should stand up against the super-rich Americans who do their business abroad, and move more and more American jobs overseas.

Enough is enough. Come on American voters. Tell the Republicans you want fairness in taxation, and back Obama in pushing for the rich to pay more. We need more revenue for the treasury, and cutting spending is not going to get us out of this mess.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.




An English commando leads Arabs in the overthrow of Gaddafi Duck




The Fruit Of American Conquest: Civil War!
By James Donahue

The constant intervention of the affairs of Middle Eastern nations by the United States and its allies has only succeeded in destroying social stability and setting the stage for constant civil war. That is because the region has never been composed of larger nations but rather many tribes co-existing under the iron fist of dictatorial power.

We are witnessing civil war in Iraq following the fall of Sadam Hussein. Instead of bringing peace and stability to that country, the decision by President George W. Bush and the U. S. military to attack Iraq in 2003 established a state of war between the Shiite and Sunni Arabs, the Kurds, the Assyrians, Yazidis and Turks that were all co-existing in the region.

The "war" on Iraq all but destroyed that nation's infrastructure, left an untold number of innocent civilians dead or severely wounded, and caused an estimated 2 million Iraqis to flee to neighboring countries, mostly to Syria and Jordan. Another 1.9 million people have been displaced after their homes were destroyed.

The American assault on Afghanistan, triggered by the 9-11 attack on the United States, has left that nation foundering in what appears to be a constant state of war that cannot be controlled. The tribal groups there include the Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimak, Turks and Baloch. The people are divided by over 30 different languages and a complex mixture of religious sects . . . mostly of Islamic origin.

Afghanistan has suffered from an almost constant state of war since 1979 when the tribes collectively fought off Russian invasion, experienced a Taliban instigated civil war in the 1990s and then the US-led military attack in December, 2001.

Even though the United States has imposed the appearance of democratic forms of government and nation-wide elections in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the fires of civil unrest have not been quenched. Tribal loyalties and local power struggles appear to be making it impossible for these different ethnic groups to live together peacefully.

Now with the overthrow of Libya's dictator Muammar Gaddafi by rebel forces, aided by the United Nations with lots of help from the United States, some analysts fear the stage has been set in that nation for still another civil war. The ethnic groups there are mostly Berber and Arab, with Sunni Muslim standing as the predominant religious faction. One report stated that there are at least twenty-eight distinct tribal groups in existence in that region so the possibility of a power struggle is high.

Sadly it appears that America's efforts to bring stability to the Middle East and establish a military influence by overthrowing the power figures that were successfully holding the tribes in check by force, is having the opposite effect. We have only succeeded in murdering thousands of innocent people and setting their world on fire. It was all done at great cost to the United States in both lives and finance.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.







The Arc Of The Moral Universe
Justice May Be Just Around the Bend
By Randall Amster

Let's face it: things are bad and getting worse every day. Even a casual glance at the daily headlines provides ample reason for dismay, from perpetual warfare and the ravages of climate change to economic collapse and the abject brutality of the "criminal justice" system (a cruel misnomer if ever there was one). It doesn't take a rocket scientist, a millenarian, or even an avowed cynic to surmise that the ship is sinking and that actual justice is but a faded memory.

Still, despite all evidence to the contrary, I maintain that we might not be as bad off as it seems. This isn't an exercise in wide-eyed optimism, strategic denial, or the power of positive thinking. Rather, it is reflective of what I take as an inexorable impulse in nature -- and thus within humankind, as part of its workings -- toward productive, sustainable, and ultimately just relations at all points in the web. In short, I want to suggest that life is good, and that it matters.

What is the alternative? That we are part of some predestined machinery of death and decay, bent on nothing except ushering in our own demise? Seriously? The narrative of a self-fulfilling apocalypse is merely another way of keeping us in fear and giving our innate power over to the immanence of "security" and "order" -- whether its edicts are delivered to us by fiat or artifice.

Now, this is not intended to justify any of the calamities we have wrought in the modern era; in fact, precisely the opposite. The belief in a just universe is not a static, passive principle, but one that must be struggled for and actively promoted at all levels of our lives. We don't get to relax and bask in the goodness of creation, nor to indulge ourselves in the hedonism of abdication. Instead, we need to wake up every day and be the architects of the world we desire to inhabit.

These teachings have been reflected to us myriad times throughout history, and we likely know the names of many of the (oftentimes martyred) proponents. As Peace Pilgrim once said, the only thing new about any of this would be actually doing it. We can make the choice at every turn to humanize our relations with one another, and to reorient our roles within the balance of nature. Manmade law, as Thoreau argued, may turn us into the agents of injustice, but perhaps there are even higher principles to be found all around us and within ourselves alike.

Martin Luther King, Jr., summoned this potential power on many occasions, entreating us to consider the active manner in which we might align our intentions with a greater good:

"I know you are asking today, 'How long will it take?' I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow.... How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

King delivered these words more than once, including at the end of the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 25, 1965. He was, of course, invoking scripture and spiritual teachings in many of his speeches, yet we can also discern that "the arc of the moral universe" is equally an expression of science and politics as much as it is one of theology or philosophy.

The origins of the phrase actually date to 1853, with the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker, who said: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice." In this sense, the notion can be read as part observation and part intuition, simultaneously a projection of reality and a longing for a better world all at once, both practical and idealistic.

This integration of the empirical and the intuitive represents the best of modern thought's spirit of interconnection, by viewing pieces of the whole as mutually reinforcing rather than oppositional. King added to this sensibility with his famous insight that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," again indicating the holistic, integral nature of moral inquiry.

Another way of thinking about this is conveyed by the notion of traveling "full circle," which is actually inspired by the physics of the cosmos itself. If one was to trace the edge of a small arc and project it out to infinity, eventually it would intersect itself at the place of origin. Indeed, even the orbits of planets and stars -- which appear elliptical in nature -- are actually straight-line movements that lead to cyclical motions based on the curvature of space itself. From whence we came, so we return, yet each revolution also brings new insights and challenges.

Interestingly, this potent historical phrase referencing the moral arc has been described as "Barack Obama's favorite quotation." On April 4, 2008, the 40th anniversary of King's assassination, then-Senator Obama declared:

"Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice." And in June of 2009, President Obama again invoked the phrase in support of the "universal rights to assembly and free speech" being exercised by demonstrators in Iran.

So now what? Obama seemingly gets it, at least rhetorically, yet still we find ourselves steadily descending into moral oblivion rather than ascending on the arc of justice. In a recent article asking "What Happened to Obama?" Drew Westen eloquently spells out the conundrum:

"When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs.... But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks."

Westen's stark prose is an effective statement of the tenor of these angst-ridden times. Yet while it rightly reflects the proactive sense in which we must be participants in destiny rather than mere observers, it also makes a strategic miscalculation in assuming that the force of the entrenched "powers that be" can somehow use economic coercion and political chicanery to forestall the advance of justice in the long run of human and/or natural affairs.

King (and Parker before him) did not promise immediate returns on our activist investment in the service of righteousness; indeed, things didn't get to be this way overnight, and it will take a long time -- even an eternity, perhaps -- to set it right again. In this sense, justice is asymptotic, something to be forever and vigilantly pursued without regard for its ultimate realization. Still, as we continue to work toward it and increasingly approach its arc, we can see it begin to infuse our relationships with one another and with the balance of existence as a whole.

Part of the task is to relieve ourselves of the unattainable burden of fixing it all or making some sort of "heaven on earth," focusing instead on the small steps we can take (often thanklessly) at each moment in our lives. Being a good person -- or a good people, for that matter -- isn't about being perfect and never doing wrong. Such a quest for moral certitude, especially in a fully wired postmodern world, is pragmatically impossible and thoroughly immobilizing. Rather, the signs of "goodness" are more about what we make of our missteps, whether we regret them appropriately and strive to learn their lessons as we forge ahead. In this manner, the essence of morality isn't about absolutism or punishment for inevitable letdowns, but more so about the direction in which we are moving.

In fact, we might say that this sense of directionality is the arc of justice. It proceeds regardless as a function of the "unity in diversity" inherent in the cosmos, with or without our willing engagement. The question before us is whether we want to be part of it, or instead remain on a course toward self-imposed annihilation. We can help shape the moral arc by promoting economic fairness, environmental sustainability, and nonviolence; through our efforts toward ending warfare, rejecting consumerism, and stabilizing the biosphere; and by the virtue of teaching ourselves and our children to abandon hatred, embrace non-monetary values, and work in concert with others to produce both sustenance and justice in our communities.

This is the nascent arc now coming into view, calling upon us to help imagine and implement it. The journey may be long and the destination unfixed, but I have no doubt that we will "get there" someday. Indeed, by embarking on the enterprise at all, we may have already arrived.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).








When the World Outlawed War
By David Swanson


Remarks at Lynchburg College on September 26, 2011

I'd like to thank Dave Freier for inviting me, and all of you for being here. I think I was invited to speak about my most recent book, War Is A Lie, but I asked Professor Freier if it would be all right to speak about my next book, not yet finished, and he agreed. So, the following is a relatively very short summary of a forthcoming book that is not yet finished, and which I need your help with. It would be very helpful to me if you let me know when I've finished these opening remarks what was unclear, what didn't make sense, or what didn't persuade you, as well as what -- if anything -- seemed useful or inspiring.

It would also help me a lot if you would raise your hands to show your views on a few questions. First, raise your hand if you believe that war is illegal. I don't mean particular atrocities or particular types of wars, but war. And I don't mean bad or regrettable, but illegal. If you're not sure or think it's not a good question don't raise your hand. OK, thank you. Now, raise your hand if you think war should be illegal. OK, thank you. And now raise your hand if you know what the Kellogg-Briand Pact is. All right, that was very helpful. Now, let me tell you a little story, or at least a few pieces of it.

In 1927 and 1928 a hot-tempered Republican from Minnesota named Frank, who privately cursed pacifists, managed to persuade nearly every country on earth to ban war. He had been moved to do so, against his will, by a global demand for peace and a U.S. partnership with France created through illegal diplomacy by peace activists. The driving force in achieving this historic breakthrough was a remarkably unified, strategic, and relentless U.S. peace movement with its strongest support in the Midwest; its strongest leaders professors, lawyers, and university presidents; its voices in Washington, D.C., those of Republican senators from Idaho and Kansas; its views welcomed and promoted by newspapers, churches, and women's groups all over the country; and its determination unaltered by a decade of defeats and divisions.

The movement depended in large part on the new political power of female voters. The effort might have failed had Charles Lindbergh not flown an airplane across an ocean, or Henry Cabot Lodge not died, or had other efforts toward peace and disarmament not been dismal failures. But public pressure made this step, or something like it, almost inevitable. And when it succeeded -- although the outlawing of war was never fully implemented in accordance with the plans of its visionaries -- much of the world believed war had been made illegal. Wars were, in fact, halted and prevented. And when, nonetheless, wars continued and a second world war engulfed the globe, that catastrophe was followed by the trials of men accused of the brand new crime of making war, as well as by global adoption of the United Nations Charter, a document owing much to its pre-war predecessor while still falling short of the ideals of what in the 1920s was called the Outlawry movement.

"Last night I had the strangest dream I'd ever dreamed before," wrote Ed McCurdy in 1950 in what became a popular folk song. "I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war. I dreamed I saw a mighty room, and the room was filled with men. And the paper they were signing said they'd never fight again." But that scene had already happened in reality on August 27, 1928, in Paris, France. The treaty that was signed that day, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, was subsequently ratified by the United States Senate in a vote of 85 to 1 and remains on the books to this day as part of what Article VI of the U.S. Constitution calls "the supreme Law of the Land."

Frank Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State who made this treaty happen, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and saw his public reputation soar -- so much so that the United States named a ship after him, one of the "liberty ships" that carried war supplies to Europe during World War II. Kellogg was dead at the time. So, many believed, were prospects for world peace. But the Kellogg-Briand Pact and its renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy is something we might want to revive. This treaty gathered the adherence of the world's nations swiftly and publicly, driven by fervent public demand. We might think about how public opinion of that sort might be created anew, what insights it possessed that have yet to be realized, and what systems of communication, education, and elections would allow the public again to influence government policy, as the ongoing campaign to eliminate war -- understood by its originators to be an undertaking of generations -- continues to develop.

One way to revive a treaty that in fact remains law would, of course, be to begin complying with it. When lawyers, politicians, and judges want to bestow human rights on corporations, they do so largely on the basis of a footnote added by a clerk to a Supreme Court ruling from over a century back. When the Department of Justice wants to "legalize" torture or, for that matter, war, it reaches back to a twisted reading of one of the Federalist Papers or a court decision from some long forgotten era. If anyone in power today favored peace, there would be every justification for recalling and making use of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It is actually law. And it is far more recent law than the U.S. Constitution itself, which our elected officials still claim, mostly unconvincingly, to support. The Pact, excluding formalities and procedural matters, reads, in full:

"The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.

"The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means."

The French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, whose initiative had led to the Pact and whose previous work for peace had already earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, remarked at the signing ceremony:

"For the first time, on a scale as absolute as it is vast, a treaty has been truly devoted to the very establishment of peace, and has laid down laws that are new and free from all political considerations. Such a treaty means a beginning and not an end."

The peace movement that made the Kellogg-Briand Pact happen, just like the militarism against which it competed, was given a huge boost by World War I, by the scale of that war and its impact on civilians, but also by the rhetoric through which the United States had been brought into the war in 1917. According to U.S. Socialist Victor Berger, all the United States had gained from participation in World War I was the flu and prohibition. It was not an uncommon view. Millions of Americans who had supported World War I, came during the years following its completion on November 11, 1918, to reject the idea that anything could ever be gained through warfare.

The propaganda machinery invented by President Woodrow Wilson and his Committee on Public Information had drawn Americans into the war with exaggerated and fictional tales of German atrocities in Belgium, posters depicting Jesus Christ in khaki sighting down a gun barrel, and promises of selfless devotion to making the world safe for democracy. The extent of the casualties was hidden from the public as much as possible during the course of the war, but by the time it was over many had learned something of war's reality. And many had come to resent the manipulation of noble emotions that had pulled an independent nation into overseas barbarity.

However, the propaganda that motivated the fighting was not immediately erased from people's minds. A war to end wars and make the world safe for democracy cannot end without some lingering demand for peace and justice, or at least for something more valuable than the flu and prohibition. Even those rejecting the idea that any war could in any way help advance the cause of peace aligned with those wanting to avoid all future wars -- a group that probably encompassed most of the U.S. population.

Some of the blame for the start of the World War was placed on secretly made treaties and alliances. President Wilson backed the ideal of public treaties, if not necessarily publicly negotiated treaties. He made this the first of his famous 14 points in his January 8, 1918, speech to Congress.

Following the war, disillusioned with its promises, many in the United States came to distrust European peace efforts, as it was European entanglements that had created the war. When the Treaty of Versailles, on June 28, 1918, imposed a cruel victors' justice on Germany, Wilson was seen as having betrayed his word. When he promised that the League of Nations would right all the wrongs of that treaty, many were skeptical, particularly as the League bore some resemblance to the sort of alliances that had produced the World War in the first place.

Both jingoistic isolationists, and internationalist peace activists with a vision of Outlawry that shunned the use of force even to punish war, rejected the League, as did the United States Senate, dealing a major blow to those peace advocates who believed the League was not only advantageous but also the reward due after so much suffering in the war. Efforts to bring the United States in as a member of the World Court failed as well. A Naval Disarmament Conference in Washington in 1921-1922 did perhaps more harm than good. And in 1923 and 1924, respectively, the members of the League of Nations in Europe failed to ratify a Draft Pact for Mutual Assistance and an agreement called the Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, both of which had adopted some of the language of the U.S. Outlawry movement to somewhat different purposes.

Remarkably, these set-backs did not halt the momentum of the peace movement in the United States or around the world. The institutional funding and structure of the peace movement was enough to make any early twenty-first century peace activist drool with envy, as was the openness of the mass media of the day, namely newspapers, to promoting peace. Leading intellectuals, politicians, robber barons, and other public figures poured their resources into the cause. A defeat or two, or ten, might discourage some individuals, but it was not about to derail the movement. Neither was political partisanship, as peace groups pressured Democrats and Republicans alike, and both responded. It was during the peaceful Republican interlude of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, in between the Democratic war-making of Wilson and Roosevelt, that the peace movement reached its height.

European trade unions were pacifist and were working to recover the pre-war idea of a general strike to prevent any movement towards war. Many political parties in Europe were strongly in favor of working to ensure peace. European peace organizations themselves were smaller and less influential than their U.S. counterparts, but they were more unified in their agenda. They favored both disarmament and the League of Nations, as well as other treaties, alliances, and arbitration agreements.

U.S. and European peace advocates came from opposite directions. Americans viewed peace as the norm and as consisting of the absence of war. But Europeans, dealing with constant threats, provocations, grievances, and divisions, believed peace to require an elaborate system of checks on hostilities and means of resolving disputes. The United States imagined the world at peace and sought to preserve it. Europeans strove to build a peace they did not know, with a keen awareness that they could never possibly solve every dispute to everyone's satisfaction.

Many U.S. peace groups, it should be said however, inclined toward the European perspective, while others did not. The United States had a larger peace movement than Europe did, but a more deeply divided one. Sincere advocates of peace came down on both sides of the questions of joining the League of Nations and the World Court. Nor did they all see eye-to-eye on disarmament. If something could be found that would unite the entire U.S. peace movement, the U.S. government of the day was sufficiently representative of the public will that whatever that measure was, it was bound to be enacted.

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace had profited from the war through U.S. Steel Corporation bonds. Its president, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, and its director of the Division of Economics and History Professor James Thomson Shotwell, would play significant roles in the creation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, after having advocated unsuccessfully for U.S. membership in the League of Nations. Shotwell had a $600,000 annual budget, or about $6.8 million in today's terms. Other peace groups had even larger budgets. More radical peace groups, often with less funding, in some cases supported the League and the Court, but in addition pushed for disarmament and opposed militarism more consistently, including U.S. imperialism in Central and South America.

One organization deserves particular attention, although it was largely a front for a single individual and largely funded out of his own pocket. The American Committee for the Outlawry of War was the creation of Salmon Oliver Levinson. Its agenda originally attracted those advocates of peace who opposed U.S. entry into the League of Nations and international alliances. But its agenda, of outlawing war, eventually attracted the support of nearly the entire peace movement, when the Kellogg-Briand Pact became the unifying focus that had been missing.

Levinson's mission was to make war illegal. And he came to believe that the effective outlawing of war would require outlawing all war, without distinction between aggressive and defensive war, and without distinction between aggressive war and war sanctioned by an international league as punishment for an aggressor nation. Levinson wrote:

"Suppose this same distinction had been urged when the institution of dueling was outlawed. . . . Suppose it had then been urged that only 'aggressive dueling' should be outlawed and that 'defensive dueling' be left intact. . . . Such a suggestion relative to dueling would have been silly, but the analogy is perfectly sound. What we did was to outlaw the institution of dueling, a method theretofore recognized by law for the settlement of disputes of so-called honor."

Levinson wanted everyone to recognize war as an institution, as a tool that had been given acceptability and respectability as a means of settling disputes. He wanted international disputes to be settled in a court of law, and the institution of war to be rejected just as slavery had been.

Levinson understood this as leaving in place the right to self-defense, but eliminating the need for the very concept of war. National self-defense would be the equivalent of killing an assailant in personal self-defense. Such personal self-defense, he noted, was no longer called "dueling." But Levinson did not envision the killing of a war-making nation. Rather he proposed five responses to the launching of an attack: good faith, public opinion, nonrecognition of gains, the use of force to punish individual warmakers, and the use of any means including force to halt the attack.

Levinson would eventually urge the nations signing the Kellogg-Briand Pact (also known as the Pact of Paris) to incorporate the following into their criminal codes: "Any person, or persons, who shall advocate orally or in writing, or cause the publication of any printed matter which shall advocate the use of war between nations, in violation of the terms of the Pact of Paris, with the intent of causing war between or among nations , shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof shall be imprisoned not less than ______ years." This idea can be found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966, which states: "Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law." It was an idea that also influenced the Nuremberg prosecutions. It may be an idea worthy of revival and realization.

Levinson wrote on August 25, 1917:

"War as an institution to 'settle disputes' and establish 'justice among nations' is the most barbarous and indefensible thing in civilization. . . . The real disease of the world is the legality and availability of war . . . . [W]e should have, not as now, laws of war, but laws against war; there are no laws of murdering or of poisoning, but laws against them."

Many in the United States were averse to the sort of alliances created, for example, in 1925 in Locarno, Switzerland. Under these aggreements, if Germany were to attack France, then England and Italy would have to attack Germany, whereas if France were to attack Germany, then England and Italy would have to attack France. Aristide Briand made a name for himself as a peace negotiator in Locarno, but the Outlawrists' criticism of such arrangements as sheer madness looks wiser through the lens of later history.

Rather than alliances and unpredictable adjudications, the Outlawrists favored the rule of the written word. The most popular criticism of Outlawry was that it intended to simply wish war away by banning it. The most popular criticism of international alliances was that they would create wars to end wars. While NATO and even the United Nations have indeed been used to launch wars (although the European Union has rendered wars within Western Europe unimaginable), the Kellogg Briand-Pact and the United Nations Charter have banned war, and wars have proceeded merrily on their way not noticing. But all of this criticism is overly simplistic. The United Nations is a corrupt approximation of an ideal never yet realized. And Outlawry, despite passage of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, has never been fully tried.

Outlawry, in Charles Morrison's outline of it (Morrison was a close ally of Levinson), required that a world court ruling on a body of world law be substituted for war as a means of settling disputes. The International Criminal Court (ICC), finally created in 2002 and having taken jurisdiction over the crime of aggression in 2010, begins to approach this idea, but the United States is not a member, and yet the court is under the thumb of the United States and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The 1920s critics of the then existing World Court as a creature of the League of Nations would, if brought forward in time, no doubt have a similar critique of the ICC.

Where the argument for Outlawry gets a little hairy is in its refusal to consider any distinction between aggressive and defensive war, while nonetheless countenancing armaments and self-defense. Morrison argues that distinguishing aggressors from defenders is a fool's errand, as every nation always claims to be fighting in defense, and an initial attack may have been provoked by the other side. (In 2001 and 2003 the United States attacked the distant, unarmed, impoverished nations of Afghanistan and Iraq and claimed to be acting in defense.) Morrison believes that self-defense will almost certainly not be needed, in the future of outlawed war, because war just won't happen. But were it to happen, self-defense clearly must be envisioned in Morrison's scheme as something that does not resemble war. For, otherwise, how can the world court of Outlawry determine which nation(s)' leaders to put on trial?

Ultimately, outlawing war is a process of moral development. Changing the law and establishing a court to enforce it is a means toward changing people's conception of what is morally acceptable. Viewed in this way, the work of the 1920s that brought about the Kellogg-Briand Pact can be seen as a partial success to be built upon, whether or not any court will ever be able to both prosecute warmaking and avoid the distinction between aggression and defense.

Morrison argued that Outlawry was so clear and so popular that no statesman would dare oppose it. He urged popularizing the peace movement, taking it out of the hands of experts. And he was right about that. He was right about the United States and about the entire world. Nobody opposed banning war. While we still have wars, most people do not want them. Wars may be Tyrannical Ruler Nature, or Corporate Profiteer Nature, but they are the furthest thing from Human Nature.

In 1922, the Lion of Idaho, Republican Senator William Borah, slowly began to roar. Levinson produced a pamphlet on Outlawry at Borah's request, and Borah republished it as a Senate document, placing it in the Congressional Record. Senator Borah and Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas mailed it to their lists. Meanwhile, Raymond Robins barnstormed the country making speech after speech for Outlawry, and Levinson corresponded at length with anyone and everyone who expressed interest or raised objections. Organizations of all varieties passed countless resolutions in support of Outlawry. School boards and labor unions distributed pamphlets. Prominent figures gave their endorsements.

Groups that supported the Outlawry of war early in the campaign included some organizations that are still around today, but which one cannot imagine even considering taking the same step again, even with the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the U.N. Charter already in existence and formally a part of our law. Among these were the National League of Women Voters, the Young Women's Christian Associations, the National Association of Parents and Teachers, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, and the American Legion.

When President Harding up and dropped dead in 1923, his Vice President Calvin Coolidge got the top job and the Republican nomination to remain in it after 1924. Indeed, he remained until March 1929. Levinson helped persuade Coolidge to pick Borah for the vice presidency and Borah to accept, but this deal fell through, Borah declined, and Charles Dawes accepted. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg would have occasion to refer to Dawes as "an unmitigated ass" prior to organizing the nations of the world in support of brotherly love. Borah would instead end up in the job of Chairman of Foreign Relations. Outlawry made it into Coolidge's speech accepting the Republican nomination but not into the Republican Platform. It did, however, make it into the Democratic Party Platform.

While the struggle for women's suffrage had used marches and civil disobedience, and conscientious objectors to the war had used noncooperation, those were not the primary tools of the Outlawry campaign. Instead there were countless public meetings and packed lecture halls, signed petitions and resolutions, and the support of numerous newspaper editorials.

In 1923, Borah introduced an Outlawry resolution in the Senate, following a tireless lobbying effort by Levinson. Outlawry began to unite peace groups in a way that the League and the Court did not. In 1924 Levinson and the Outlawrists sought unity with their fellow peace-activist League supporters, offering support for World Court membership in exchange for support for the Borah Resolution on Outlawry. In 1925, League and Outlawry supporters reached an agreement, known as the Harmony Plan, backing adherence to the Court Protocol and within two years the backing of Outlawry and the holding of a conference to embody in a treaty the principles that war be made a crime and the Court be given jurisdiction. A third and final plank in this agreement was that the United States would withdraw from the Court if the Outlawry provisions were not put into effect within two years. The plan was reported in national and international newspapers and served as a guide for local peace organizations, even though the peace-movement leadership was back to quarrelling by the end of the year.

Butler met with Briand in June 1926, at which point Briand asked "What can we do next?" Butler replied: "My dear Briand, I have just been reading a book . . . . Its title is Vom Kriege, and its author was Karl von Clausewitz . . . . I came upon an extraordinary chapter in its third volume, entitled 'War as an Instrument of Policy.' Why has not the time come for the civilized government of the world formally to renounce war as an instrument of policy?" Briand's reply was "Would not that be wonderful if it were possible? I must read that book."

In 1927 the pressure on world leaders for steps to ensure peace reached a climax, and the pieces of a plan to do something about it began to be fitted into place. Political organizations and clubs pushing for peace were springing up by the hundreds. And the question of the League of Nations was no longer there to divide them.

Shotwell met with Briand in Paris on March 22nd. France had just refused a U.S. invitation to a disarmament conference and was still upset about its treatment at the one in Washington and about U.S. accusations of militarism, not to mention U.S. insistence on war debt payment, and U.S. refusal to join the League or the Court. Shotwell suggested removing U.S. suspicions of French militarism by proposing a treaty to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.

On April 6, 1927, Levinson was on a train to New York where he would sail to Europe. He read the day's newspapers on the train and was overjoyed and overwhelmed by an Associated Press report on a public statement from Briand, the Foreign Minister of France. Shotwell later told both John Dewey and Robert Ferrell that he had written Briand's message himself. The message proposed that the United States and France sign a treaty renouncing war.

This was public diplomacy at its most public. The Foreign Minister of France was proposing a treaty through the Associated Press. The only downside to such methods was that a response could not be required. And in fact, no response from the U.S. government was forthcoming. And the newspapers didn't see any story worth pursuing. On April 8th Butler and Borah publicly debated the outlawing of rum, which was of much more interest to the media. Butler, who wanted to abolish war believed banning rum was too difficult. With regard to Briand's offer, Butler took matters into his own hands. He published a letter in the New York Times on April 25th demanding action in response to Briand's proposal.

Butler's letter in the New York Times and a supportive editorial published by the New York Times caught the wider news media's attention. Newspapers turned it into a big story in the United States and even abroad. This was Butler beginning a dialogue with his colleague Shotwell, but with Butler speaking for the United States and Shotwell having spoken through Briand for France. Not a bad bit of ventriloquism.

Numerous senators spoke up in support of answering Briand's offer. Borah was opposed to an alliance with France and proposed that the treaty be expanded to include all other nations. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, when he read Butler's letter, told a friend that Butler and the French were a set of "--- ------ fools" making suggestions that could lead to nothing but embarrassment. If there was anything he hated, Kellogg said, it was "-------- pacifists."

But as public pressure grew, Levinson and Borah worked to educate Kellogg on Outlawry. When Senator Capper introduced a resolution in November 1927 in support of renouncing war, the nation understood that the farmers of the Midwest were behind Briand's proposal, or at least not against it. The Pocatello Tribune arrived at this cynical interpretation:

"The real significance of the Capper plan . . . lie in its showing the belief of western politicians that the voters who prevented American entry into the league are aware that if Europe spends a disproportionate share of its limited funds in military preparation it will have little left for American wheat and corn."

This was, of course, before the weapons exporters came to hold more sway in Washington than the wheat and corn exporters.

The combination of a number of Republican leaders backing former Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes for the 1928 Republican presidential nomination and Capper introducing a resolution coming out of the Butler-Shotwell camp, a resolution that defined aggressive war, may have helped motivate Borah, with his own presidential ambitions, to manipulate Briand's offer in his own direction. The treaty would end up banning all war in order to (1) avoid banning only aggressive war, and (2) avoid doing nothing. The latter was not an option, given the pressure coming from the peace movement. On December 10, 1927, Jane Addams led a delegation to the White House and delivered a petition with 30,000 names. Coolidge assured her that he would try to achieve the treaty with France. Addams sent the same petition to Briand who thanked her. By January, 1928, to the shock of his staff at the State Department, Kellogg was working hard to achieve a universal treaty, which France did not want, and writing to his wife that he hoped to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

On February 5th, with negotiations stalemated, Senator Borah published a front-page article in the New York Times Magazine, largely prepared by Levinson. The headline was "One Great Treaty to Outlaw All Wars." Borah claimed that a breach of the treaty by one nation would release other nations from complying with it in relation to that violator. This would allow self-defense. It would also allow France to sign such a treaty while still upholding its treaties forming alliances to respond to war. Kellogg continued to push France, and in March asked the U.S. ambassador to point out to Briand the wisdom of acting while Kellogg was still in office. Coolidge had less than a year remaining as president.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom passed a resolution commending Kellogg on May 5th. So did the American Peace Society. The National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War's 12 million women planned 48 state conferences through which to influence the Senate when it came time to ratify a treaty renouncing war. On June 23rd, Kellogg wrote to 14 countries. Germany formally agreed on July 11th, and France three days later. Agreeing to sign the pact by July 20th would be Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, India, the Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And these additional nations would sign on to adhere to it: Afghanistan, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Romania, the Soviet Union, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Siam, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. Eight further states joined at a later date: Persia, Greece, Honduras, Chile, Luxembourg, Danzig, Costa Rica, and Venezuela.

Does anybody know what Persia is called today?

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was put together in an extremely public manner, and as these things go was agreed to very quickly, and with an unusually high number of adhering nations. Most observers give public opinion and public pressure the credit. The U.S. peace movement was fully behind it, and that unity was a new and powerful force. About the public opinion in favor of the Peace Pact it is worth noting a couple of things. First, the propaganda campaign that had brought public opinion around to supporting war in 1917 had been far more extensive, vastly more expensive, and backed up by a police force. The peace movement did not have to intimidate or lie to anyone in the United States to gain their support for Kellogg-Briand. Secondly, the same was true with foreign heads of state acting in accordance with the wishes of their peoples. Unlike the formation of a coalition of nations to invade Iraq in 2003, this coalition of nations to outlaw war was put together without bribery or threats being required.

The highest hurdle remained, namely the U.S. Senate. The peace movement buried it in letters, petitions, resolutions, and lobbying visits. Supportive senators read the petitions into the congressional record. President Coolidge persuaded Vice President Dawes to whip every senator in support of the Pact. The Federal Council of Churches brought the White House a petition with 180,000 signatures. In mid-January 1929, a thousand women peace leaders from around the country lobbied their respective senators in Washington, delivering thousands of petitions. Carrie Chapman Catt, who led this effort, suffered a heart attack during it. The vote was 85 to 1. The Wisconsin state legislature censured its U.S. senator who had voted No. Other senators who had expressed concerns all voted Yes. One explained his Yes vote by saying he did not want to be burned in effigy back in his state.

It would take me another hour to begin to cover the hypocrisies, weaknesses, and shortcomings of this accomplishment. I'll limit myself here to claiming that it was an accomplishment. It was not just a second-rate effort after the League of Nations failed, nor just a pretense or a fraud. The Kellogg-Briand Pact established the practice of not recognizing territorial claims gained through war, and its revival by another crusading lawyer during World War II (the Pact having been largely forgotten by then) created prosecutions of the crime of aggression -- ironically so, in that the Pact had been created precisely in order to avoid creating a crime called aggression. Victors' justice is not full justice, but punishing leaders following World War II worked out a whole lot better than punishing an entire nation after World War I had.

A new and more faithful revival of Outlawry might again serve us well. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, which has never been repealed, makes a stronger case against wars like Afghanistan and Iraq than does the U.N. Charter. To comply with Kellogg-Briand, wars need not be defensive or U.N.-authorized. Rather, wars need to simply not exist.

Outlawry also removes a major reason why young men and women join the military, namely to make war as a means to achieving peace. If there is no way to peace other than peace, if war cannot have a noble cause, if war has been -- as it formally has been -- renounced as an instrument of policy, then idealistic militarism goes away from recruiting offices, and the propaganda of humanitarian war suffers as well.

We may also have something to learn from the activism that promoted Outlawry. It was principled, non-partisan, cross-ideological, and unrelenting. More internationalist and more principled anti-imperialist or disarmament proposals, and the proposal to create a public referendum power to block wars, helped to make Outlawry mainstream by comparison. The campaign was built over a period of years through both education and the cultivation of powerful supporters. It was not overly distracted by elections. Its analysis included cold cost-benefit calculations, but front and center was always the morality of the cause of ending war. This campaign worked internationally, nationally, and locally. And its members did not believe victory would come in their lifetimes. But neither were they so self-focused as to imagine that this somehow made eventual victory impossible.

There is one thing that we can say with certainty, and I will close with this: if Outlawry does not win, humanity will lose.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







As the Drone Flies...
By Ralph Nader

The fast developing predator drone technology, officially called unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, is becoming so dominant and so beyond any restraining framework of law or ethics, that its use by the U.S. government around the world may invite a horrific blowback.

First some background. The Pentagon has about 7,000 aerial drones. Ten years ago there were less than 50. According to the website longwarjournal.com, they have destroyed about 1900 insurgents in Pakistan's tribal regions. How these fighters are so clearly distinguished from civilians in those mountain areas is not clear.

Nor is it clear how or from whom the government gets such "precise" information about the guerilla leaders' whereabouts night and day. The drones are beyond any counterattack--flying often at 50,000 feet. But the Air Force has recognized that a third of the Predators have crashed by themselves.

Compared to mass transit, housing, energy technology, infection control, food and drug safety, the innovation in the world of drones is incredible. Coming soon are hummingbird sized drones, submersible drones and software driven autonomous UAVs. The Washington Post described these inventions as "aircraft [that] would hunt, identify and fire at [the] enemy--all on its own." It is called "lethal autonomy" in the trade. Military ethicists and legal experts inside and outside the government are debating how far UAVs can go and still stay within what one imaginative booster, Ronald C. Arkin, called international humanitarian law and the rules of engagement. Concerns over restraint can already be considered academic. Drones are going anywhere their governors want them to go already--Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and countries in North Africa to name a few known jurisdictions.

Last year a worried group of robotic specialists, philosophers and human rights activists formed the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) (http://www.icrac.co.uk/). They fear that such instruments may make wars more likely by the strong against the weak because there will be fewer human casualties by those waging robotic war. But proliferation is now a fact. Forty countries are reported to be working on drone technology or acquiring it. Some experts at the founding conference of ICRAC forshadowed hostile states or terrorist organizations hacking into robotic systems to redirect them.

ICRAC wants an international treaty against machines of lethal autonomy along the lines of the ones banning land mines and cluster bombs. The trouble is that the United States, unlike over one hundred signatory nations, does not belong to either the land mines treaty or the more recent anti-cluster bomb treaty. Historically, the U.S. has been a major manufacturer and deployer of both. Don't count on the Obama White House to take the lead anytime soon.

Columnist David Ignatius wrote that "A world where drones are constantly buzzing overhead--waiting to zap those deemed threats under a cloaked and controversial process--risks being, even more, a world of lawlessness and chaos."

Consider how terrifying it must be to the populations, especially the children, living under the threat of drones that can attack through clouds and dark skies. UAVs are hardly visible but sometimes audible through their frightful whining sound. Polls show Pakistanis overwhelmingly believe most of the drone-driven fatalities are civilians.

US Air Force Colonel Matt Martin has written a book titled Predator. He was a remote operator sitting in the control room in Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada watching "suspects" transversing a mountain ridge in Afghanistan eight thousand miles away. In a review of Martin's book, Christian Cary writes "The eerie acuity of vision afforded by the Predator's multiple high-powered video cameras enables him to watch as the objects of his interest light up cigarettes, go to the bathroom, or engage in amorous adventures with animals on the other side of the world, never suspecting that they are under observation as they do."

For most of a decade the asymmetrical warfare between the most modern, military force in world history and Iraqi and Afghani fighters has left the latter with little conventional aerial or land-based weaponry other than rifles, rocket propelled grenades, roadside IEDs and suicide belted youths.

People who see invaders occupying their land with military domination that is beyond reach will resort to ever more desperate counterattacks, however primitive in nature. When the time comes that robotic weapons of physics cannot be counteracted at all with these simple handmade weapons because the occupier's arsenals are remote, deadly and without the need for soldiers, what will be the blowback?

Already, people like retired Admiral Dennis Blair, former director of National Intelligence under President Obama is saying, according to POLITICO, that the Administration should curtail U.S.-led drone strikes on suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia because the missiles fired from unmanned aircraft are fueling anti-American sentiment and undercutting reform efforts in those countries.

While scores of physicists and engineers are working on refining further advances in UAVs, thousands of others are staying silent. In prior years, their counterparts spoke out against the nuclear arms race or exposed the unworkability of long-range missile defense. They need to re-engage. Because the next blowback may soon move into chemical and biological resistance against invaders. Suicide belts may contain pathogens--bacterial and viral--and chemical agents deposited in food and water supplies.

Professions are supposed to operate within an ethical code and exercise independent judgment. Doctors have a duty to prevent harm. Biologists and chemists should urge their colleagues in physics to take a greater role as to where their know-how is leading this tormented world of ours before the blowback spills over into even more lethally indefensible chemical and biological attacks.
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.








Euro Zone Death Trip
By Paul Krugman

Is it possible to be both terrified and bored? That's how I feel about the negotiations now under way over how to respond to Europe's economic crisis, and I suspect other observers share the sentiment.

On one side, Europe's situation is really, really scary: with countries that account for a third of the euro area's economy now under speculative attack, the single currency's very existence is being threatened - and a euro collapse could inflict vast damage on the world.

On the other side, European policy makers seem set to deliver more of the same. They'll probably find a way to provide more credit to countries in trouble, which may or may not stave off imminent disaster. But they don't seem at all ready to acknowledge a crucial fact - namely, that without more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in Europe's stronger economies, all of their rescue attempts will fail.

The story so far: The introduction of the euro in 1999 led to a vast boom in lending to Europe's peripheral economies, because investors believed (wrongly) that the shared currency made Greek or Spanish debt just as safe as German debt. Contrary to what you often hear, this lending boom wasn't mostly financing profligate government spending - Spain and Ireland actually ran budget surpluses on the eve of the crisis, and had low levels of debt. Instead, the inflows of money mainly fueled huge booms in private spending, especially on housing.

But when the lending boom abruptly ended, the result was both an economic and a fiscal crisis. Savage recessions drove down tax receipts, pushing budgets deep into the red; meanwhile, the cost of bank bailouts led to a sudden increase in public debt. And one result was a collapse of investor confidence in the peripheral nations' bonds.

So now what? Europe's answer has been to demand harsh fiscal austerity, especially sharp cuts in public spending, from troubled debtors, meanwhile providing stopgap financing until private-investor confidence returns. Can this strategy work?

Not for Greece, which actually was fiscally profligate during the good years, and owes more than it can plausibly repay. Probably not for Ireland and Portugal, which for different reasons also have heavy debt burdens. But given a favorable external environment - specifically, a strong overall European economy with moderate inflation - Spain, which even now has relatively low debt, and Italy, which has a high level of debt but surprisingly small deficits, could possibly pull it off.

Unfortunately, European policy makers seem determined to deny those debtors the environment they need.

Think of it this way: private demand in the debtor countries has plunged with the end of the debt-financed boom. Meanwhile, public-sector spending is also being sharply reduced by austerity programs. So where are jobs and growth supposed to come from? The answer has to be exports, mainly to other European countries.

But exports can't boom if creditor countries are also implementing austerity policies, quite possibly pushing Europe as a whole back into recession.

Also, the debtor nations need to cut prices and costs relative to creditor countries like Germany, which wouldn't be too hard if Germany had 3 or 4 percent inflation, allowing the debtors to gain ground simply by having low or zero inflation. But the European Central Bank has a deflationary bias - it made a terrible mistake by raising interest rates in 2008 just as the financial crisis was gathering strength, and showed that it has learned nothing by repeating that mistake this year.

As a result, the market now expects very low inflation in Germany - around 1 percent over the next five years - which implies significant deflation in the debtor nations. This will both deepen their slumps and increase the real burden of their debts, more or less ensuring that all rescue efforts will fail.

And I see no sign at all that European policy elites are ready to rethink their hard-money-and-austerity dogma.

Part of the problem may be that those policy elites have a selective historical memory. They love to talk about the German inflation of the early 1920s - a story that, as it happens, has no bearing on our current situation. Yet they almost never talk about a much more relevant example: the policies of Heinrich Brüning, Germany's chancellor from 1930 to 1932, whose insistence on balancing budgets and preserving the gold standard made the Great Depression even worse in Germany than in the rest of Europe - setting the stage for you-know-what.

Now, I don't expect anything that bad to happen in 21st-century Europe. But there is a very wide gap between what the euro needs to survive and what European leaders are willing to do, or even talk about doing. And given that gap, it's hard to find reasons for optimism.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent."
~~~ Charles Eliot Norton









What Media Coverage Omits About U.S. Hikers Released By Iran
By Glenn Greenwald

Two American hikers imprisoned for more than two years by Iran on extremely dubious espionage charges and in highly oppressive conditions, Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer, were released last week and spoke yesterday in Manhattan about their ordeal. Most establishment media accounts in the U.S. have predictably exploited the emotions of the drama as a means of bolstering the U.S.-is-Good/Iran-is-Evil narrative which they reflexively spout. But far more revealing is what these media accounts exclude, beginning with the important, insightful and brave remarks from the released prisoners themselves (their full press conference was broadcast this morning on Democracy Now). Fattal began by recounting the horrible conditions of the prison in which they were held, including being kept virtually all day in a tiny cell alone and hearing other prisoners being beaten; he explained that, of everything that was done to them, "solitary confinement was the worst experience of all of our lives." Bauer then noted that they were imprisoned due solely to what he called the "32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran," and said: "the irony is that [we] oppose U.S. policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility." After complaining that the two court sessions they attended were "total shams" and that "we'd been held in almost total isolation - stripped of our rights and freedoms," he explained:

In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they'd remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.

We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments - including the government of Iran - to act in kind.

[Indeed, as harrowing and unjust as their imprisonment was, Bauer and Fattal on some level are fortunate not to have ended up in the grips of the American War on Terror detention system, where detainees remain for many more years without even the pretense of due process -- still -- to say nothing of the torture regime to which hundreds (at least) were subjected.]

Fattal then expressed "great thanks to world leaders and individuals" who worked for their release, including Hugo Chavez, the governments of Turkey and Brazil, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky, Mohammad Ali, Cindy Sheehan, Desmond Tutu, as well as Muslims from around the world and "elements within the Iranian government," as well as U.S. officials.

Unsurprisingly, one searches in vain for the inclusion of these facts and remarks in American media accounts of their release and subsequent press conference. Instead, typical is this ABC News story, which featured tearful and celebratory reactions from their family, detailed descriptions of their conditions and the pain and fear their family endured, and melodramatic narratives about how their "long, grueling imprisonment is over" after "781 days in Iran's most notorious prison." This ABC News article on their press conference features many sentences about Iran's oppressiveness -- "Hikers Return to the U.S.: 'We Were Held Hostage'"; "we heard the screams of other prisoners being beaten" -- with hardly any mention of the criticisms Fattal and Bauer voiced regarding U.S. policy that provided the excuse for their mistreatment and similar treatment which the U.S. doles out both in War on Terror prisons around the world and even domestic prisons at home.

Their story deserves the attention it is getting, and Iran deserves the criticism. But the first duty of the American "watchdog media" should be highlighting the abuses of the U.S. Government, not those of other, already-hated regimes on the other side of the world. Instead, the abuses at home are routinely suppressed while those in the Hated Nations are endlessly touted. There have been thousands of people released after being held for years and years in U.S. detention despite having done nothing wrong. Many were tortured, and many were kept imprisoned despite U.S. government knowledge of their innocence. Have you ever seen anything close to this level of media attention being devoted to their plight, to hearing how America's lawless detention of them for years -- often on a strange island, thousands of miles away from everything they know -- and its systematic denial of any legal redress, devastated their families and destroyed their lives?

This is a repeat of what happened with the obsessive American media frenzy surrounding the arrest and imprisonment by Iran of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, convicted in a sham proceeding of espionage, sentenced to eight years in prison, but then ordered released by an Iranian appeals court after four months. Saberi's case became a true cause célèbre among American journalists, with large numbers of them flamboyantly denouncing Iran and demanding her release. But when their own government imprisoned numerous journalists for many years without any charges of any kind -- Al Jazeera's Sami al-Haj in Guantanamo, Associated Press' Bilal Hussein for more than two years in Iraq, Reuters' photographer Ibrahim Jassan even after an Iraqi court exonerated him, and literally dozens of other journalists without charge -- it was very difficult to find any mention of their cases in American media outlets.

What we find here yet again is that government-serving American establish media outlets relish the opportunity to report negatively on enemies and other adversaries of the U.S. government (that is the same mindset that accounts for the predicable, trite condescension by the New York Times toward the Wall Street protests, the same way they constantly downplayed Iraq War protests). But to exactly the same extent that they love depicting America's Enemies as Bad, they hate reporting facts that make the U.S. Government look the same.

That's why Fattal and Bauer receive so much attention while victims of America's ongoing lawless detention scheme are ignored. It's why media stars bravely denounce the conditions of Iran's "notorious prison" while ignoring America's own inhumane prison regime on both foreign and U.S. soil. It's why imprisonment via sham trials in Iran stir such outrage while due-process-free imprisonment (and assassinations) by the U.S. stir so little. And it's why so many Americans know Roxana Saberi but so few know Sami al-Haj.

An actual watchdog press is, first and foremost, eager to expose the corruption and wrongdoing of their own government. By contrast, a propaganda establishment press is eager to suppress that, and there is no better way of doing so than by obsessing on the sins of nations on the other side of the world while ignoring the ones at home. If only establishment media outlets displayed a fraction of the bravery and integrity of Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, who had a good excuse to focus exclusively on Iran's sins but -- a mere few days after being released from a horrible, unjust ordeal -- chose instead to present the full picture.
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.







Class War Winner
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Much is being said by Republicans about a class war being waged by President Obama and Democrats. In their fantasy world this class war is attacking so called job creators. All this talk is pure nonsense, absolutely false and misleading, intentional political garbage designed to intentionally mislead gullible Americans stupid enough to believe the lies. Here is the truth: There has, indeed, been a class war waged in the US; it has been going on for a good thirty years. And this real war has been won.

There are official data over time called the Gini index or coefficient between zero and one that is a statistical measure of economic inequality. When it is zero national income is evenly distributed among all citizens, and when it is one all the income goes to one person. Obviously the Gini figure will be somewhere between zero and one. Some nations have very low values and others very high ones. In the high category is the US. But more important is that the index has changed over time, rising from about 1980 to current times, after it had remained fairly stable over several decades. That significant rise from about .37 to .45 shows unequivocally that the rich got richer as most of the population in the middle class and below lost ground.

To truly appreciate what has happened you must seriously examine some data. For example, between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That is very slow growth, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II when inequality actually decreased. More importantly, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. Absorb that number for a few moments. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million. Those numbers describe the true class war in which the rich and powerful were the clear winner.

Presently, according to new estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, one-fourth of those with incomes of more than $1 million a year pay income and payroll tax of 12.6 percent of their income or less, putting their tax burden below that of many in the middle class who are likely pay twice that amount or even more. The class war winners are clear.

Need more convincing? Consider data from the Tax Foundation. Between 1987 and 2008, the share of income controlled by the top 1 percent grew to 20 percent from 12 percent. That equates to a total share growth of 67 percent. During the same period, their share of taxes went to 28 percent from 24 percent, indicating a share growth of 17 percent. Follow that? The top 1 percent share of income grew nearly five times faster than their share of taxes: 67 percent versus 17 percent. Pretty darn good deal. So forget all that malarkey from Republicans that the rich pay so much of the nation’s taxes unfairly. The class war winners are reaping the rewards of a two-party plutocracy that they own.

Here is another dose of class war reality. The top 1 percent share of total pre-tax income rose from about 10 percent in 1980 to 21 percent in 2008, a nice doubling that helps explain the rise in economic inequality. It really pays to win the class war.

The idea that raising taxes on the rich in these dismal economic times in any way represents some injustice is such baloney that one should wonder how any American can possibly eat this Republican garbage. Similarly, the nonsense about job creators somehow not creating new jobs because of higher taxes flies in the face of reality, because very low taxes have not caused them to create significant new jobs. Nor did higher taxes for some decades for decades after World War II stop high rates of new job creation.

The rich class own most of the wealth of the nation after winning the class war for some thirty years. They accomplished this victory by using money to buy and corrupt the political system. The most perplexing aspect of all this is why most Americans have not risen up in revolt against the political system that has so screwed them. Those on the right keep supporting Republican candidates that lie to them and actively work against the economic interests of all but the rich. Those on the left fall victim to the lies of Obama and other Democrats that promise much but deliver next to nothing to bring economic justice to most Americans. Democrats have also contributed to the killing of the middle class.

Odds are that those who have lost the real class war will continue to suffer until they wake up to the need to overthrow the political system. The only peaceful strategy being use of the Article V convention option in the Constitution by which state delegates could propose amendments that would reform the political and government system to take away the power used by the rich to steal the wealth of the nation. Do not ever believe that voting for new Democrats or Republicans will fix our corrupt and dysfunctional system.

One important thing to keep in mind: Raising taxes on the rich is necessary but not sufficient to turn the class war already won by the rich around.

Finally, the path to economic justice must include what Dylan Ratigan is advocating, a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics, which I urge readers to support. This is the way to remove the key tool used by the rich and powerful to pervert the economy in their favor. Congress will never propose such an amendment, only a convention will.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.





The Dead Letter Office...






Heil Obama,

Dear Unter Bezirksstaatsanwalt Wagner,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your outlawing of free speech, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute you Herr Wagner, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'The Human Side Of Government'
By John Nichols

When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill. The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born only a little more than a century after the Constitution was adopted.

Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-building that focused on the affirmative role of government and the necessary role of the extension of the federal government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet and urban neighborhood: the post office.

Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential project of the federal endeavor.

Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the local facility, be it a frame building at a country crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.

The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem distant and, at times, ominous.

As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer, Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role that government could play in the lives and communities of Americans had better make the defense of the post office a high priority.

"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he said. "When the human side of government closes its doors, we're all in trouble."

Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D" Democrat.

But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we know it."

There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and inner cities, where there services (and the employment they provide) are most needed.

There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive more business away from the US Postal Service and toward private-sector competitors that will not match its standard of universal service to all Americans.

There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of thousands of postal workers and gut the service.

Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented. Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a "political" crisis.

The postal service is running the deficits that so concern conservative politicians and pundits not because it is inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of digital competition. It is running deficits because it was forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal pension funds by more than $80 billion.

The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates argue, "manufactured."

Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association and the National Association of Postal Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500 locations (post offices, congressional offices, state capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of support for public services the nation has seen in many years.

Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that "when the human side of government closes its doors, we're all in trouble."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








What The Media Aren't Telling You About American Protests
By Lisa Romero

I am lately reminded of an assignment when my metro editor sent me to cover a "gentle protest" over the Gulf War of the 1990s in Jackson, Mich. (Don't remember that war - or what it was about? That's OK - because it was probably "security" and "oil," and George W. ultimately righted his dad's failure to see that war action through to its completion: killing Saddam Hussein, or at least dismantling his government. But I digress.)

It was an after-hours event, likely on a weekend (as that was my beat). And when I arrived at the designated time, well after sundown, I found one lone woman walking the length of a wall at an armory or similar government-type outpost with, not a flashlight, but a real, flickering candle. Back and forth, in the dark, trudging in the snow.

No one else had shown up - except me, that is. The place was deserted and, as I recall, not on a busy road. I actually had to drive by twice before I even saw her candle and a small chair she set up for herself when she got tired. It occurred to me that, if I walked away, it would have been the same as if she'd never been there at all. Yet, incontrovertibly, there she was: protesting a war that, at the time, no one was particularly riled up about. It wasn't a story, really.

But I decided to speak with her anyway. I walked with her for about an hour and asked questions. Apart from understanding that my editors expected my story for the next day's edition, I also sensed that there could be a story to tell - and that, if I didn't, no one might ever consider an opposing view that, while solitary, might be worth listening to.

I'd have to dig through years of clips to find that story now. (I'm sure it resides in the Jackson Citizen Patriot morgue). But it's not the story that's important to me now.

It's that I covered it at all - and that my editors were grateful I did. And that readers seemed to value the fact we were there to capture a moment in their community they would otherwise not have known about.

More than a week ago, a small band of peaceful protesters descended on Zuccotti Park (formerly Liberty Park) in New York City, not far from Wall Street. They dubbed their little movement "Occupy Wall Street." And, on the first weekend, starting Sept. 17, they had quite a number of people join them in marches and speeches that essentially claimed the 99% of Americans who aren't the 1% of uber-rich are disenfranchised - and have critical needs related to unemployment, cost of living, and a range of other social issues that are either being ignored outright or largely swept under the rug by our finance-focused government.

These young people, accompanied by like-minded Xers and a few Boomers, didn't get much coverage to start. (I doubt any authentic movement, at the outset, ever does.) The media that did arrive briefly aired the same complaint: "They are a loosely organized group of disaffected youth who are more like hippies and have no real goal," they yawned. "Nothing to see here, but we've done our job by ‘covering' it in our blogs," they seemed to say to New Yorkers and anyone outside the Big Apple paying attention. "This too shall pass."

The only problem is, it hasn't. And I suspect after this weekend, it isn't going to.

Now in its 10th day, protestors are very much entrenched at Zuccotti Park (with people across the United States and around the world watching their activities via live-streaming video, as well as sending them supplies and money, even pizza via local vendors). This past Saturday afternoon, there was a large march to Union Park, through Washington Square (and, at times, through moving traffic - which was pretty incredible to watch in real time) - and all seemed to be going well with chants and songs as the trek was covered by Occupy Wall Street's new media team, such as the young woman Net followers dubbed "50/50 Anchor Lady," with hair that was half blonde, half brownish-black.

As I say, all was well - that is, until a phalanx of NYC police moved in and started making mass arrests. Twitter was the only way most of us knew it actually happened; the media team, scarily, was picked off shortly after the march gained momentum near Washington Park.

It's not like no one was aware the police were coming. I myself could hear what was going down on the police scanner, which I alternately monitored while toggling back and forth between live-streaming and searching for news updates on Google.

The tension was building - you could feel it while watching from hundreds of miles away as the protestors kept dodging orange fencing and an increasingly ominous presence of officers. The marchers were peaceful - but resolute in their efforts to keep marching.

Then, right in the thick of things, the live-streaming ended just before the mass arrests and some disturbing instances of outright police brutality (documented and later distributed via cellphone photos). But, I should note, not before the world had already witnessed some of those protestor/cop encounters. It was shocking, actually, to watch people pushed with real force or slammed to the ground when, to my eye, they hadn't provoked anything remotely requiring that kind of police-state response.

I had been one of the hundreds, then thousands, to witness the march from nearly beginning to end - and that was not how I'd expected things to turn out. But, almost on cue (as if to underscore the government's fear this would spread), things escalated quickly and publicly in the glaring view of the Twitterverse, very likely to the chagrin of the NYPD, Michael Bloomberg and anyone on Wall Street who didn't want this little movement to earn attention or gain credibility.

Within a matter of minutes, thousands of people were logging into the live-streaming site or retweeting the police presence. Yet, the media still weren't covering the event, except as an aside, almost. I recall the Village Voice reported on several key tweets from Occupy Wall Street - laudable in providing "real time" updates, but I never could tell if they sent an actual reporter to the site at the time. (Back in the day, my own editors would have pushed me out the door. And sent back-up reporters.)

Not to be flip, but if 60-80 people were arrested for dog-fighting, or for wrangling outside a tony nightclub, or protesting at the United Nations, that might have gotten coverage. I'm pretty sure that would have received some attention. But this: In my humble opinion, it got very little. Some, finally - but people had to be hurt, and the police department's reputation tarnished, when neither was necessary if the media were operating as it should.

Since then, media coverage has been defensive. (Said one reporter, and I'm paraphrasing here: "It's not fair to say Occupy Wall Street hasn't been covered." And then a short list of stories was included to prove the point.) And the coverage has been light: I was impressed Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and even Stephen Colbert have noted this is more than dismissive hippy-ism; but no major news organization has (to the best of my knowledge) paid more than the barest attention thus far.

Why?

Perhaps it's because no one wants a popular movement or peaceful rebellion to spread at a time when many Americans are fed up with their dysfunctional government leaders. We have enough problems, the leaders and media friends might be thinking: Why stir the pot?

Perhaps it's because they sense, as does Bloomberg, that once a train like this gets going, it can be hijacked by the wrong people and cause real damage. (That, alone, is worthy of another story altogether.) But is that a reason to quell coverage, really?

In the end, though, a large-scale failure to acknowledge and cover this "small" group of protestors - now growing in numbers, thanks to outrage at the rough-housing NYPD, and quickly propagating similar groups in other cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., etc. - is akin to a media blindness.

The media's job is not to turn a blind eye. The media's job is to report. Period. Which is yet another reason why Americans are not trusting the modern media. And I have to say, given what I've witnessed in recent days in and around Zuccotti Park, that I clearly understand why my profession is much maligned these days.

If people are there, and they have something worthwhile to say - regardless of whether it is popular or potentially alarming or against the political status quo - it is news. Good reporters should be covering it, regardless of their personal political preferences - and let Americans come to their own conclusions.

Is it a media blackout?

Sure seems that way to me. If I can cover one voice about a Gulf War, and contribute to society's understanding of our greater human experience, then the media can certainly begin paying attention to thousands of marchers - and what appears to be the beginnings of an American movement.

I would call upon our news organizations to acknowledge their collective mistake in ignoring this story, remember that their calling is higher than the profit motive, and begin covering news that engages our thinking skills.

America needs the media now more than ever. To find it absent, while the entire world is watching this unfolding and increasingly important story (and they are) is a travesty and a statement about how far we have fallen as a nation built on freedom of speech and thought.

These are voices worth hearing at this time of trouble and strife. Hundreds of those voices are gathering in New York and other cities right now, representing diverse people and backgrounds and views - and trying to send a message that change, Real Change, must happen.

I want to hear what they have to say. As an American, I need to hear. As a media consumer, I demand to hear. Don't you?
© 2011 Lisa Romero is a journalist and writes a blog at OpenSalon.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Nate Beeler ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



The vice president assures Ambassador Reinart that
"there's plenty of good skin mags up there."


Biden Asks White House Visitor If He Wants To Check Out Roof

WASHINGTON—Claiming it was "pretty fucking cool up there" and not to be missed, Vice President Joe Biden reportedly asked Estonian ambassador Väino Reinart on several occasions Sunday if he wanted to check out the White House roof.

"So, you ready to see this sweet-ass roof or what?" the vice president was overheard telling Reinart, one of several foreign dignitaries who visited the White House this weekend. "Come on, it'll be a lot of fun. It's a killer spot to just chill out. Everyone thinks this place is all about the Oval Office, but I guarantee the best seat in the house is right up top."

"Real beaut of a view, too," Biden added as he threw an arm around the 48-year-old diplomat. "You can see tons of shit. Be a damn shame if you didn't at least take a gander."

Sources confirmed Biden invited Reinart to go up to the roof on at least a dozen separate occasions during his three-hour White House visit, telling the ambassador that he'd "have a blast" and that "Diamond Joe" would never steer him wrong.

Reinart told reporters the vice president repeatedly said the roof would "totally kick ass," while a tour of countless bedrooms filled with boring antique furniture would "seriously blow."

Despite Reinart's polite assertions that he had a busy itinerary with a visiting Estonian delegation and senior White House officials, Biden insisted the two of them should "lose the suits" and cruise up to the roof where they could unwind with a couple of brews.

"Fuck it—let's go up," said Biden, who opened a Coors tallboy and handed the overflowing can to the ambassador, ignoring his gentle protests. "I'll get the grill going, and we can just throw whatever we want on there. I got some sweet lawn chairs, a cooler, even some fireworks. I usually do my own Fourth of July thing up there."


A shirtless Biden washes his car in White House Driveway

"Just gotta snag my tuneage," Biden added while retrieving a boom-box stereo and a handful of cassette tapes from a vacant office. "I'll bring the binocs, too. Never know when a few topless chicks with balconies might be out catching some rays."

As he explained that going to the top of the White House was "the only way to truly fucking experience D.C.," Biden said the one rule when they got on the roof was that they definitely couldn't throw beer bottles over the side of the building anymore.

Biden, whom Secret Service officials confirmed is not permitted to be on the roof, then reportedly removed a small bag of marijuana from his pocket and explained to Reinart that he was running low but still had enough to roll a pinner joint.

Although the ambassador reminded Biden they were expected to attend a state dinner that night, the vice president assured Reinart it would be "way cooler to get blazed" beforehand, as doing so makes the food at official White House events taste much better.

"I've spent a lot of time on this roof," Biden said. "Even slept up there once and it rained on me. By the way, if you're thirsty, don't drink anything from those Gatorade bottles."

In the past, Biden has reportedly taken numerous guests up to the White House roof, including, on one occasion, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and German chancellor Angela Merkel, a visit Biden described as pretty hot and heavy."

The vice president, who eventually convinced Reinart to journey to the roof after making numerous pleas, apologized to the ambassador for the oversight of not "scoring some shrooms" and arranging for a couple of local babes to accompany them on the rooftop excursion.

"We gotta enjoy it while we still can, you know," Biden said. "The sweet times will all be over if [Energy Secretary Steven] Chu ever figures out how to get his solar panels up here."
(c) 2011The Onion




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In This Edition

Paul Craig Roberts with a must read, "The Day America Died."

Uri Avnery sees a, "Mutiny On The Titanic."

Ted Rall watches, "America's New Radicals Attack A System That Ignores Them."

Phil Rockstroh is, "Occupying The Heart Of The Beast."

Jim Hightower concludes Eric Cantor is, "Playing Politics With Humanitarian Aid."

Helen Thomas sees Obamahood, "Dealing The Veto Blow."

James Donahue considers, "The Capital Punishment Issue."

Sam Harris with some good news, "Twilight Of Violence."

David Swanson invites you to, "Rebuild The Dream In The Streets."

Ralph Nader is, "Putting The Lie To The Republicans."

Paul Krugman demands, "Holding China To Account."

Glenn Greenwald introduces, "Andrew Ross Sorkin's Assignment Editor."

William Rivers Pitt sends, "An Open Letter To Wall Street."

Wilson Intermediate School Principle Terri Bryant wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols says, "As Obama Goes Abroad Searching for Monsters to Destroy, Ron Paul Rightly Rejects Assassinating Americans."

Matthew Rothschild reports, "Obama Wrong To Rub Out Al-Awlaki."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst oversees, "Prom Queen Anguish" but first Uncle Ernie wonders, "When Did Tony Soprano Take Over The White House?"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Steve Benson, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Ruben Bolling, Peter Berman & Phil Fountain, Angela Tyler-Rockstroh, BDog23, Radical Graphics.Org, Brent Murray, Damon Winter, Steve Janke, Viking Adult, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










When Did Tony Soprano Take Over The White House?
By Ernest Stewart

The precedent set by the killing of al-Awlaki establishes the frightening legal premise that any suspected enemy of the United States - even if they are a citizen - can be taken out on the President's say-so alone. Part of the very concept of citizenship is the protection of due process and the rule of law. The President wants to spread American values around the world, but continues to do great damage to them here at home, appointing himself judge, jury, and executioner by Presidential decree.

When Nazi leader and Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann was convicted and executed by the Israeli government in 1962, it was after he was captured, extradited, and tried. Respect for the rule of law never has been for the protection of monsters like Eichmann or al-Awlaki, who should meet their just fate - but for the protection of the vast majority of innocent citizens who should never become subject to mere governmental whim. ~~~ U.S. Congressman Ron Paul

Fight the good fight every moment
Every minute every day
Fight the good fight every moment
It's your only way
Fight The Good Fight ~~~ Triumph

I saw cotton
And I saw blacks
Tall white mansions
And little shacks.
Southern man
When will you
Pay them back?
I heard screamin'
And bullwhips crackin'
How long? How long?
Hoooooow long?
Southern Man ~~~ Neil Young

"Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin." ~~~ Sly and the Family Stone

After last week, you may, be asking when was it exactly that Tony Soprano took over the White House? Did you intend to elect a Gangsta, America? When Obamahood put out a contract on an American citizen, without a charge, evidence, a trial, and a conviction, we're told that it was done for convenience; we couldn't catch him; ergo, we murdered him, but I don't believe convenience was a major player in that decision. I think it was about reaching out for more power over us all. If today no one arrests Barry for murder, who will Barry murder tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that? Who will President Perry (the killer) kill?

I'm not defending Anwar, nor will I prosecute him, as I have no facts at my disposal, and neither does anyone else -- they're all top secret! Nor will anybody else see them, as Barry says there is not a single judge in all of America who can be trusted to see the evidence -- so you certainly can't be trusted. Evidence? We don't need no stinking evidence!

Hell, I got in an argument about this with a friend who is a lawyer, an officer of the court who has sworn to uphold the law, who has made it his life's work to not only to obey the law, but to see that others do, too, and he was jumping for joy, wallowing in the blood, excited to near orgasm that Anwar al-Awlaki was murdered. Since there was no evidence of any kind presented, like with Osama, no habeas corpus; in fact, no evidence presented to a court, not even the FBI charged bin Laden with 9/11, and certainly no proof of death, we need no evidence about Anwar, either. Lawyers have always been shysters, but generally not blind to reality! They may be crooked as can be, but they still know the truth, or, until now -- that was my assumption!

Sure, Anwar MAY have been the SOB that the government said he was, hell maybe worse, and the planet MAY be a better place without him? But the matter that matters is that we're supposed to be a nation of laws -- of checks and balances. You may recall that we fought two major wars with the British to keep from having Kings and Queens dictate our laws. Supposedly, American law applies equally to all Americans, without exception, whether President or cleric, but it's becoming more obvious that it doesn't. Of course, it's always been this way; that great genocidal maniac George Washington put out hits on whole Indian nations for their lands, towns, and farms. In fact, George had become the richest man in America from stealing from the tribes; so Obama's murder of Anwar is nothing new, but because it's being done so openly, Barry has no fear of being held accountable; he's above the law! You should be afraid, America! You should BE VERY AFRAID of your own government!

In Other News

By the time this sees the light of day, we will have another major occupation going on, this time in Washington D.C.. Methinks we finally have learned our lessen about how to get attention to our cause! As they did in Washington in 2001, as tens of thousands marched by, the media turned a blind eye, because we were there and then we were gone -- so now we're here to stay! Also, in the last ten years, the bottom has dropped out of the newspaper business, and for those struggling to stay alive, ignoring what's gone viral and all over publications on the Internet will certainly have a bad effect on your bottom line -- no matter who is pulling your puppet strings!

That's the nice thing about working on the Internet, I have but three advertisers, all of whom are behind what we are doing 100%, and won't leave us dangling, as we are all in this together: ergo, they can't get to us the way they would normally, i.e., going after our sponsors! So, I can tell you the truth without the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. Of course, Barry could put out a contract on me either by spook or drone, but he hasn't quite got to that stage as yet; apparently, that's not going to be here for another 14 months!

While "Occupy Wall Street" is more or less a happening without leadership, the occupation of Washington is made of a federation of folks under the umbrella of October 2001.Org with a long list of famous and not-so famous folks, but has no single spokesman. While this is slightly confusing, for it to really work, it has to be this way so everyone in America can join in, regardless of their political leanings. Occupying Washington is important, as the city is a partnership between the banksters and politicians that have caused all of our current, and many of our past, problems. With 60 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, the potential for building another Hooverville on The Mall is outstanding. However, protestors beware; you may recall what happened when that went on too long for the power elite. The last time General "Dugout Doug" MacArthur sent in tanks and calvary to destroy Hooverville with the charge of the horse soldiers being led by Major Dwight David Eisenhower. The Army was used against American men, women and children! Ike's only combat duty in his entire career. Which begs the question, how did Ike go from a Lt. Colonel at the beginning of the war to a five star general without the combat infantry badge? I wonder which unknown major will lead the next charge against US citizens for daring to use their Constitutional-guaranteed rights to assemble and peacefully protest, or will they just use a couple of drones and a half dozen Hellfire missiles? It couldn't happen? Of course, it could; Barry now has the right, or at least he thinks he does, to murder US citizens by simply calling them terrorists. Ask those two U.S. citizens in Yemen that Barry murdered last week if that could happen! Oh yeah, you can't; because Barry murdered them!

To those of you who are going, good luck, kick ass, take names, and fight the good fight, and remember the whole world is watching our "American Spring!"

And Finally

In these daze of constant change, isn't it good to see some of the old values are still with us? No, not really! For example, if you are black or brown way down yonder, then you're in for a heap of trouble, boy, and they do mean "boy." Yes, racism is still alive and well down in Dixie! Yes, I know, no sh*t!

That little nest of vipers commonly called Arkansas was in the spot light once again. Can I get a Hot Damn? Or a Yeee Hawww?

Just a few burning crosses southwest of Little Rock (where they use to have to bring out the US Army to allow kids to go to school) is Malvern, Ark. home of pee wee football and a rule to keep those pesky darkies in their place if they achieve and excel in sports. It's called the "Madre Hill Rule" for former student Madre Hill, who got out of Malvern after being held back by this act of infamy, and went on to star at the University of Arkansas and for the Oakland Raiders, amongst other pro teams, before becoming a coach. Madre was so good, and made those white kids look so bad, that they came up with this rule to hold him down by making him leave the game after two touchdowns; the rule was retired after Madre graduated and went on to junior high; well, that is, until school Principle Terri Bryant and Demias Jimerson came upon the scene.

Principle Bryant is also in charge of the Pee Wee league in Malvern and when Demias began to do what Madre had done decades before she whipped out the darkie rule and Demias took his seat on the bench. Did I mention that this "rule" has only applied to black children? So, you know what I did? No, let's not see the same hands every time! That's right, I sent Terri an email:

Hey Terri,

Boy, did you screw up, huh? Whenever a black child achieves something over the white kids, it's time to whip out the "darkie rule!" Oh, I know; it's not about that. Really, who else has this been applied to? Oh yeah, just one other student, the student that rule is named after, who by a strange coincidence is also a black achiever. Imagine that! What are the odds? Has there ever been any white kids that the "Madre Hill rule" was applied against? Funny thing that, huh? Yes, another black child taught a valuable lesson about the red neck, dark ages, racist, south. The next time ya'll want to secede, we're going to let you and good riddance to you ignorant, fascist, bastards!

Anything to say for yourself, Terri? I'm sure my readers would really like to hear your defense, that is, if you have one! And "I was only following ze orders" doesn't work anymore. Still, I must admit, Terri, that I do admire your shiny-new Jack Boots and that Rethuglican armband is to die for, quite literally!

Sincerely,
Ernest Stewart
Managing editor
Issues & Alibis Magazine
PS: Thanks for helping me write next week's editorial, oh, and congratulations, Terri; you've just won the Vidkun Quisling Award for the week of October 7-13! That's the magazine's weekly award for the biggest traitor in America!

That's my note to Terri; if you'd like to share your thoughts with her, too, just write her at: tlbryant@malvernleopards.org.

Keepin' On

Well, we came right down to the wire, but didn't make it! However, we did come within $250 of reaching our goal, thanks to Marc from Florida and our good neighbor to the north, Ernie from Ontario! Thanks, guys; we'll spend it wisely. The $250 we're short, I've borrowed from a friend who'll let me pay him back at $50 a month.

Considering how bad off our readership is, it's a bit amazing that we did manage to raise $5150 of the $5400 needed to pay half our bills for the year. We'd like to thank our sponsors and advertisers who picked up the other half! We'd like to thank everybody who helped us out in this fund raising drive as I personally know how hard money is to come by in this day and age! Thanks, Ya'll!

In the past year since I got run out of North Carolina, it was only the kindness of our readership that kept me afloat and fighting the good fight for us all! If for whatever reason, you didn't contribute to the cause, but would like to, please send us what you can, and we'll put it on next year's bills, because it never ends; it never ends! Once again, thanx, and it's back to the trenches; ya'll keep your heads down!

*****


06-13-1941 ~ 09-30-2011
Thanks for the R&B bro!


07-19-1945 ~ 10-04-2011
Thanks for the acid folk!


02-24-1955 ~ 10-05-2011
Thanks for making a computer that even I could use!


04-12-1936 ~ 10-05-2011
Thanks for the films!


*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
Donations

*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












The Day America Died
By Paul Craig Roberts

September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.

Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from "patriots" who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.

In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president's authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences.

Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a "threat," without due process of law.

In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence.

On September 30 Obama used this asserted new power of the president and had two American citizens, Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan murdered. Khan was a wacky character associated with Inspire Magazine and does not readily come to mind as a serious threat.

Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an advisor to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington's use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat.

All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington's indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington's argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.

Obama's assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz on antiwar.com concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.

Having murdered its critic, the Obama Regime is working hard to posthumously promote Awlaki to a leadership position in Al Qaeda. The presstitutes and the worshippers of America's First Black President have fallen in line and regurgitated the assertions that Awlaki was a high-level dangerous Al Qaeda terrorist. If Al Qaeda sees value in Awlaki as a martyr, the organization will give credence to these claims. However, so far no one has provided any evidence. Keep in mind that all we know about Awlaki is what Washington claims and that the US has been at war for a decade based on false claims.

But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama's assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama's decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary.

In a decision that sealed America's fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution's requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates' acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush.

Attorneys Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley point out that Awlaki's assassination terminated the Constitution's restraint on the power of government. Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone.

Before some readers write to declare that Awlaki's murder is no big deal because the US government has always had people murdered, keep in mind that CIA assassinations were of foreign opponents and were not publicly proclaimed events, much less a claim by the president to be above the law. Indeed, such assassinations were denied, not claimed as legitimate actions of the President of the United States.

The Ohio National Guardsmen who shot Kent State students as they protested the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 made no claim to be carrying out an executive branch decision. Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen entered a self-defense plea. Most Americans were angry at war protestors and blamed the students. The judiciary got the message, and the criminal case was eventually dismissed. The civil case (wrongful death and injury) was settled for $675,000 and a statement of regret by the defendants.

The point isn't that the government killed people. The point is that never prior to President Obama has a President asserted the power to murder citizens.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has had its own Mein Kampf transformation. Terry Eastland's book, Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, presented ideas associated with the Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers that works to reduce legislative and judicial restraints on executive power. Under the cover of wartime emergencies (the war on terror), the Bush/Cheney regime employed these arguments to free the president from accountability to law and to liberate Americans from their civil liberties. War and national security provided the opening for the asserted new powers, and a mixture of fear and desire for revenge for 9/11 led Congress, the judiciary, and the people to go along with the dangerous precedents.

As civilian and military leaders have been telling us for years, the war on terror is a 30-year project. After such time has passed, the presidency will have completed its transformation into Caesarism, and there will be no going back.

Indeed, as the neoconservative "Project For A New American Century" makes clear, the war on terror is only an opening for the neoconservative imperial ambition to establish US hegemony over the world.

As wars of aggression or imperial ambition are war crimes under international law, such wars require doctrines that elevate the leader above the law and the Geneva Conventions, as Bush was elevated by his Justice (sic) Department with minimal judicial and legislative interference.

Illegal and unconstitutional actions also require a silencing of critics and punishment of those who reveal government crimes. Thus Bradley Manning has been held for a year, mainly in solitary confinement under abusive conditions, without any charges being presented against him. A federal grand jury is at work concocting spy charges against Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange. Another federal grand jury is at work concocting terrorists charges against antiwar activists.

"Terrorist" and "giving aid to terrorists" are increasingly elastic concepts. Homeland Security has declared that the vast federal police bureaucracy has shifted its focus from terrorists to "domestic extremists."

It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the US government. Police states do not originate fully fledged. Initially, they justify their illegal acts by demonizing their targets and in this way create the precedents for unaccountable power. Once the government equates critics with giving "aid and comfort" to terrorists, as they are doing with antiwar activists and Assange, or with terrorism itself, as Obama did with Awlaki, it will only be a short step to bringing accusations against Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU.

The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, is a regime that does not want to be constrained by law. And neither will its successor. Those fighting to uphold the rule of law, humanity's greatest achievement, will find themselves lumped together with the regime's opponents and be treated as such.

This great danger that hovers over America is unrecognized by the majority of the people. When Obama announced before a military gathering his success in assassinating an American citizen, cheers erupted. The Obama regime and the media played the event as a repeat of the (claimed) killing of Osama bin Laden. Two "enemies of the people" have been triumphantly dispatched. That the President of the United States was proudly proclaiming to a cheering audience sworn to defend the Constitution that he was a murderer and that he had also assassinated the US Constitution is extraordinary evidence that Americans are incapable of recognizing the threat to their liberty.

Emotionally, the people have accepted the new powers of the president. If the president can have American citizens assassinated, there is no big deal about torturing them. Amnesty International has sent out an alert that the US Senate is poised to pass legislation that would keep Guantanamo Prison open indefinitely and that Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) might introduce a provision that would legalize "enhanced interrogation techniques," an euphemism for torture.

Instead of seeing the danger, most Americans will merely conclude that the government is getting tough on terrorists, and it will meet with their approval. Smiling with satisfaction over the demise of their enemies, Americans are being led down the garden path to rule by government unrestrained by law and armed with the weapons of the medieval dungeon.

Americans have overwhelming evidence from news reports and YouTube videos of US police brutally abusing women, children, and the elderly, of brutal treatment and murder of prisoners not only in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prisons abroad, but also in state and federal prisons in the US. Power over the defenseless attracts people of a brutal and evil disposition.

A brutal disposition now infects the US military. The leaked video of US soldiers delighting, as their words and actions reveal, in their murder from the air of civilians and news service camera men walking innocently along a city street shows soldiers and officers devoid of humanity and military discipline. Excited by the thrill of murder, our troops repeated their crime when a father with two small children stopped to give aid to the wounded and were machine-gunned.

So many instances: the rape of a young girl and murder of her entire family; innocent civilians murdered and AK-47s placed by their side as "evidence" of insurgency; the enjoyment experienced not only by high school dropouts from torturing they-knew-not- who in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but also by educated CIA operatives and Ph.D. psychologists. And no one held accountable for these crimes except two lowly soldiers prominently featured in some of the torture photographs.

What do Americans think will be their fate now that the "war on terror" has destroyed the protection once afforded them by the US Constitution? If Awlaki really needed to be assassinated, why did not President Obama protect American citizens from the precedent that their deaths can be ordered without due process of law by first stripping Awlaki of his US citizenship? If the government can strip Awlaki of his life, it certainly can strip him of citizenship. The implication is hard to avoid that the executive branch desires the power to terminate citizens without due process of law.

Governments escape the accountability of law in stages. Washington understands that its justifications for its wars are contrived and indefensible. President Obama even went so far as to declare that the military assault that he authorized on Libya without consulting Congress was not a war, and, therefore, he could ignore the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a federal law intended to check the power of the President to commit the US to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress.

Americans are beginning to unwrap themselves from the flag. Some are beginning to grasp that initially they were led into Afghanistan for revenge for 9/11. From there they were led into Iraq for reasons that turned out to be false. They see more and more US military interventions: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and now calls for invasion of Pakistan and continued saber rattling for attacks on Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The financial cost of a decade of the "war against terror" is starting to come home. Exploding annual federal budget deficits and national debt threaten Medicare and Social Security. Debt ceiling limits threaten government shut-downs.

War critics are beginning to have an audience. The government cannot begin its silencing of critics by bringing charges against US Representatives Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. It begins with antiwar protestors, who are elevated into "antiwar activists," perhaps a step below "domestic extremists." Washington begins with citizens who are demonized Muslim clerics radicalized by Washington's wars on Muslims. In this way, Washington establishes the precedent that war protestors give encouragement and, thus, aid, to terrorists. It establishes the precedent that those Americans deemed a threat are not protected by law. This is the slippery slope on which we now find ourselves.

Last year the Obama Regime tested the prospects of its strategy when Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced that the government had a list of American citizens that it was going to assassinate abroad. This announcement, had it been made in earlier times by, for example, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, would have produced a national uproar and calls for impeachment. However, Blair's announcement caused hardly a ripple. All that remained for the regime to do was to establish the policy by exercising it.

Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government's "righteous intent" in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as "it doesn't serve our interests."

Voting has no effect. President "Change" is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is "the most disastrous president in our history." Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him.

To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.
(c) 2011 Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and professor of economics in six universities. He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions," co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, was published by Random House. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com





Mutiny On The Titanic
By Uri Avnery

HERE IS a story that has never been told before:

When the Titanic was well out into the Atlantic, its crew mutinied.

They demanded higher wages, less cramped quarters, better food. They assembled on the lower decks and refused to budge from there.

A few old hands from the engine room tried to extend the scope of the protest. They claimed that the captain was grossly incompetent, that the officers were nincompoops and that the voyage was bound to end in disaster.

But the leaders of the protest resisted. "Let's not go beyond our practical demands," they said. "The course of the ship is none of our business. Whatever some of us may think about the captain and the officers on the bridge, we must not mix matters. That would only split the protest."

The passengers did not interfere. Many of them sympathized with the protest, but did not want to get involved.

It is said that one drunken English lady was standing on deck, a glass of whisky in her hand, when she saw the huge iceberg looming. "I asked for some ice," she murmured, "but this is ridiculous!"

FOR A WEEK, or so, all the Israeli media were riveted to the goings on at the UN.

Ehud Barak had warned of a "tsunami". Avigdor Lieberman foresaw a "bloodbath". The army was prepared for huge demonstrations that were certain to end in unprecedented violence. No one could think of anything else.

And then, overnight, the bloody tsunami faded like a mirage, and the social protest reappeared. State of war Out, welfare state In.

Why? The commission appointed by Binyamin Netanyahu to examine the roots of the protest and propose reforms had finished its work in record time and laid a thick volume of proposals on the table. All very good ones. Free education from the age of 3, higher taxes for the very rich, more money for housing, and so on.

All very nice, but far short of what the protesters had demanded. The almost half a million demonstrators some weeks ago did not go out into the streets for that. Economics professors attacked, other economics professors defended. A lively debate ensued.

This can go on for a few days. But then something is bound to happen -perhaps a border incident, or a settlers' pogrom against a Palestinian village, or a pro-Palestinian resolution at the UN -and the whole media pack will veer around, forget about the reforms and return to the good old scares.

In the meantime, the military budget will serve as a bone of contention. The government commission has proposed reducing this budget by 3 billion shekels -less than a billion dollars -in order to finance its modest reforms. Netanyahu has voiced agreement.

No one took this very seriously. The slightest incident will enable the army to demand a special budget, and instead of the suggested tiny reduction, there will be another big increase.

But the army has already raised hell -quite literally -describing the disasters that will surely befall us if the diabolical reduction is not choked in its cradle. We face defeat in the next war, many soldiers will be killed, the future investigation committee will blame the present ministers. They are already shaking in their shoes.

ALL THIS goes to show how quickly national attention can swing from "protest mode" to "security mode". One day we are shaking our fists in the street, the next we are manning the national ramparts, resolved to sell our lives dearly.

This could lead to the idea that the two problems are really one, and can only be solved together. But this conclusion meets with resolute resistance.

The young leaders of the protest insist that the demand for reform unites all Israelis -male and female, young and old, leftist and rightist, religious and secular, Jew and Arab, Ashkenazi and Oriental. Therein lies its power. The moment the question of national policy comes up, the movement will break apart. End of protest.

Difficult to argue with that.

True, even so the rightists accuse the protesters of being leftists in disguise. Very few national-religious people appear at the demonstrations, and no orthodox at all. Oriental Jews, traditional voters for the Likud, are underrepresented, though not altogether absent. People speak of a movement of the "White Tribe" -Jews of European descent.

Still, the movement has succeeded in avoiding an open split. The hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have not been called upon to identify themselves with any particular political party or creed. The leaders can rightly claim that their tactic -if it is a tactic -has worked up to now.

THIS CONVICTION has been reinforced by recent events in the Labor Party.

This moribund congregation, down in the polls to a mere 7% of the votes, has suddenly sprung to new life. A lively primary election for the party leadership has restored some color to its cheeks. In a surprise victory, Shelly Yacimovich has been elected party chairwoman.

Shelly (I dislike these long foreign surnames) was in the past an assertive, abrasive radio journalist with very pronounced feminist and social-democratic views. Six years ago she joined Labor and was elected to the Knesset under the wing of Amir Peretz, the then leader, who she has now soundly beaten.

In the Knesset, Shelly has distinguished herself as a diligent and relentless militant on social issues. She is a girlish-looking 51, a lone she-wolf, disliked by her colleagues, devoid of charisma, not at all the hail-fellow-well-met type. Yet the party rank and file, perhaps out of sheer desperation, preferred her to the members of the bankrupt old guard. The atmosphere in the country produced by the social protest movement certainly contributed to her success.

In all her years in the Knesset, she has not mentioned any of the national problems -war and peace, occupation, settlements. She has concentrated exclusively on social issues. On the eve of the primary, she shocked many members of her party by publicly embracing the settlers. "The settlements are no sins or crimes," she asserted, they were put there by Labor Party governments and are a part of the national consensus. Shelly may really believe this or she may consider it good tactics -the fact is that she has adopted the same line as the protest movement: that social affairs should be separated from "national" affairs. Seems you can be rightist on the occupation and leftist on taxing the rich.

BUT CAN YOU?

On the morrow of the Labor primaries, something amazing happened. In a respected opinion poll, Labor rose from 8 to 22 Knesset seats, overtaking Tzipi Livni's Kadima, which sank from 28 to 18.

A revolution? Not quite. All the new Labor votes came from Kadima. But a move from Kadima to Labor, while interesting in itself", is not important. The Knesset is divided into two blocs -the nationalist-religious and the center-left-Arab. As long as the rightist bloc has a 5% edge, there will be no change. To effect change, enough voters must jump from one side of the scales to the other.

Shelly believes that by shunning national issues and concentrating on social matters, voters can be moved to make the jump. Some say: that's all that counts. What's the use of putting forward a program of peace, if you can't change the government? Let's first come to power, by whatever means, and than see to peace.

Against this logical argument, there is the contrary contention: that if you start to embrace the settlers and ignore the occupation, you will end up as a minor partner in a right-wing government, as has happened before. Ask Shimon Peres. Ask Ehud Barak.

And then there is the moral question: can you really chant "the People Demand Social Justice" and ignore the daily oppression of four million Palestinians in the occupied territories? When you abandon your principles on the way to power, what are you likely to do with that power?

THE JEWISH High Holidays, which started the day before yesterday, provide a pause for reflection. Politics are at a standstill. The protest leaders promise another huge demonstration, restricted to the social demands, in a month's time.

In the meantime, the Titanic, this beautiful masterpiece of naval architecture, is riding the waves.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







America's New Radicals Attack A System That Ignores Them
By Ted Rall

"Enraged young people," The New York Times worries aloud, are kicking off the dust of phony democracy, in which "the job of a citizen was limited to occasional trips to the polling places to vote" while decision-making remains in the claws of a rarified elite of overpaid corporate executives and their corrupt pet politicians.

"From South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street," the paper continues, "these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over. They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box."

The rage of the young is real. It is justified. It is just beginning to play out.

The political class thinks it can ignore the people it purports to represent. They're right--but not forever. A reckoning is at hand. Forty years of elections without politics will cost them.

Americans' pent-up demand for a forum to express their disgust is so vast that they are embracing slapdash movements like Occupy Wall Street, which reverses the traditional tactic of organizing for a demonstration. People are protesting first, then organizing, then coming up with demands. They have no other choice. With no organized Left in the U.S., disaffected people are being forced to build resistance from the ground up.

Who can blame young adults for rejecting the system? The political issue people care most about--jobs and the economy--prompts no real action from the political elite. Even their lip service is half-assed. Liberals know "green jobs" can't replace 14 million lost jobs; conservatives aren't stupid enough to think tax cuts for the rich will help them pay this month's bills.

The politicians' only real action is counterproductive; austerity and bank bailouts that hurt the economy. Is the government evil or incompetent? Does it matter?

Here in the United States, no one should be surprised that young adults are among the nation's angriest and most alienated citizens. No other group has been as systematically ignored by the mainstream political class as the young. What's shocking is that it took so long for them to take to the streets.

Every other age groups get government benefits. The elderly get a prescription drug plan. Even Republicans who want to slash Medicaid and Medicare take pains to promise seniors that their benefits will be grandfathered in. Kids get taken care of too. They get free public education. ObamaCare's first step was to facilitate coverage for children under 18.

Young adults get debt.

The troubles of young adults get no play in Washington. Pundits don't bother to debate issues that concerns people in their 20s and 30s. Recent college graduates, staggering under soaring student loan debt, are getting crushed by 80 percent unemployment--and no one even pretends to care. Young Americans tell pollsters that their top concerns are divorce, which leaves kids impoverished, and global warming. Like jobs, these issues aren't on anyone's agenda.

This pot has been boiling for decades.

In 1996 I published "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids," a manifesto decrying the political system's neglect and exploitation of Generation X, my age cohort, which followed the Baby Boomers.

We were in our 20s and low 30s at the time.

Un- and underemployment, the insanity of a job market that requires kids to take out mortgage-sized loans to attend college just to be considered for a low-paid entry-level gig in a cube farm, the financial and emotional toll of disintegrating families, and our fear that the natural world was being destroyed left many of my peers feeling resentful and left out--like arriving at a party after the last beer was gone.

Today the oldest Gen Xers are turning 50. Life will always be harder for us than it was for the Boomers. If I had to write "Latchkey Kids" for today's recent college grads, it would be bleaker still. Today's kids--demographers call them Gen Y--have it significantly worse than we did.

Like us, today's young adults get no play from the politicians.

The debts of today's Gen Yers are bigger ($26,000 in average student loans, up from $10,000 in 1985). Their incomes are smaller. Their sense of betrayal, having gone all in for Obama, is deeper.

Young adults turned out big for Obama in 2008, but he didn't deliver for them. They noticed: The One's approval rating has plunged from 75 percent among voters ages 18-29 when he took office in January 2009 to 45 percent in September.

Politicians like Obama ignore young adults, especially those with college degrees, at their--and the system's--peril. Now, however, more is at stake than Obama and the Democrats' 2012 election prospects. The entire economic, social and political order faces collapse; young people may choose revolution rather than accept a life of poverty in a state dedicated only to feeding the bank accounts of the superrich.

As Crane Brinton pointed out in his seminal book "The Anatomy of Revolution," an important predictor of revolution is downward mobility among strivers, young adults whose education and ambition would traditionally have led to a brighter future.

In February Martin Wolf theorized in The Financial Times that the Arab Spring rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia owed their success to demographics; those countries have more young people than old ones. On the other hand "middle-aged and elderly rig political and economic life for their benefit in the U.K. [he could also have said the U.S.]: hence the way in which policies on housing or education finance are weighted against the young."

Right here and right now, though, the young and the old are on the same side. Though the young are getting screwed the hardest, almost everyone else is getting screwed too. And with 80 percent unemployment, the young have a lot of free time to rise up.
(c) 2011 Ted Rall is the author of the new books "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East,?" and "The Anti-American Manifesto."






Occupying The Heart Of The Beast
Observations, Impressions And Images From Amid The Multitudes In Liberty Plaza
By Phil Rockstroh

The ongoing exercise in democracy transpiring in and around the Occupy Wall Street site in Lower Manhattan imbues one's heart with resonances of the real. Many reasons factor into the phenomenon: Here, for example, one does not feel scammed and demeaned...gripped by the sense of futility, even embarrassment, experienced at even the thought of participating in the big money-skewed, sham elections staged in the corporate oligarchic state.

In our era, in which our mind's are distracted and circumscribed by relentless, manic formations of instant information and evanescent imagery, we too often dwell in domains devoid of musk and fury, of the implications carried by mind meeting flesh; therefore, one is often nettled by an abiding hollowness resultant from voluntary exile in these weightless realms of electronic ghosts.

The events unfolding in this place bear little resemblance to contrived reality TV tawdriness or pro sports/corporate rock, empty spectacle. Although some of the event transpiring here have been broadcast, webcast and tweeted in "real time" -- in vivid contrast -- events are unfolding in time that is real.

In Liberty Plaza, both the winged spirit of commitment and the rag and bone shop of the heart abide. Acting upon the human yearning not to live in chains, those assembled here are attempting to navigate their way out of the wasteland of isolation and alienation inflicted by the inverted totalitarianism of the corporate/consumer/national security state.

"Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence." ~ Wendell Berry

The barriers: This photo (of Occupy Wall Street protesters entrapped on the Brooklyn Bridge by the NYPD) is emblematic of existence within the constraints of inverted totalitarianism. The image is evocative of how the present order works to contain and narrow (if you will, kettle and cage) our conception of both the right to free expression in the public sphere and, by implication, within the psyche of an individual.

For instance: Notice, under "normal circumstances," how even the thought of pamphleteering or making an attempt at public oration in those areas of hyper-commercialized commerce - e.g., malls, big box retail stores and sports arenas -- squatting upon most of the landscape of the U.S. is summarily dismissed. An individual who attempts to exercise his right to free speech and free assembly in those locations is expelled on sight by private security types maintaining that the reach of one's rights to free expression ends where private property begins.

In general, in daily life, living under the inverted totalitarian nature of the corporate state, the walls that imprison an individual are invisible to the eye, even as they create bleak barriers within. For example, if you are arrested while exercising your (allegedly) constitutionally guaranteed rights during an act of public protest, future employers will be privy to the information and chances are that such information will not be exactly helpful in your attempt to gain employment; hence, many are dissuaded from protest.

Yet, the New York City power elite can be thanked for the following: By actions such as these, captured in photos like this one, they reveal to us the true nature of the society that they have created, both extant and internalized within.

And this is what the implicit oppression of the corporate oligarchic state transforms into when challenged. Take a good look, then, ask yourself, as the song goes, which side are you on?

The agenda of the parasitic corporate and criminal Wall Street elite (whose financial power and political influence has increased unchecked for more than thirty years) has been: to attain maximum profits by maximum exploitation of labor and resources. To ensure the labor pool remains submissive, the corporate class tyrannizes the workforce with threats to their job security and other Shock Doctrine strategies designed to beat an individual down, as all the while, their PR flacks promulgate the Orwellian doublethink at the empty core of corporate/consumer state propaganda i.e., submission to exploitation will, one day, yield to financial freedom...that the economic shackles that yoke an individual to a life of "free" market-enforced submission are, in fact, his wings of liberty.

And that is something one should bear in mind when considering the subject of the attitudes and actions of the NYPD regarding popular uprisings such as the one ongoing in Lower Manhattan.

In the first few days of the occupation of Liberty Plaza, I stopped by and spoke with protesters and police. (The latter only agreed to speak to me, with much hesitation, and, in a few cases outright contempt, if I promised not to record them or reveal their badge numbers.) I told them that I understand and experience the sort of fear that such dictates, issued from above, level upon a person. I averred the fear instilled in rank and file officers by their "superiors" in the department is similar to the fear that folks in the park possess for police in general.

And the fear is identical to that OWS protesters hold in regard to the power Wall Street exerts over their lives.

In this, we, the beleaguered "99 percenters," share a common plight--an affinity of fear instilled within us by economic coercion.

One cop told me it was nothing personal: He appreciated the protest because of the overtime pay he was pulling as a result of it. I asked him if he feared that Wall Street might squander his pension fund, and that, "if you come down with a case of 'billy club elbow' from beating on the folks here...that the crooks on Wall Street might make off with your medical benefits."

Moreover, that if he saw a man trying to rob the pizza restaurant on the end of the block, he had the power to make an arrest, and, by that token, would it be possible for he and his crew - who it appeared didn't have a lot to do at Liberty Plaza - could see fit to move down the street a bit...to where the real criminal activity comes down - billion dollar heists, in fact - and make a few arrests when the banksters open for business tomorrow? He said he couldn't comment on the subject...but I could tell he found the fantasy appealing.

But, bear this in mind, when considering the uncivil attitudes and unconstitutional actions of the NYPD regarding street protest such as the Occupy Wall Street activities ongoing in Lower Manhattan, in particular, and the lack of deference to the rights of the public, in general, displayed by police agencies, at both the local and federal level: Police forces, by and large, are bureaucratic organizations, comprised of authoritarian personalities who evince a topdown, militarized organizational structure. Most of the individuals therein harbor a hierarchical concept regarding the exercise of power and possess an unquestioning fealty to the maintenance of order.

Therefore, the police will serve as a defacto private security force for the corporate oligarchs and Wall Street elite, as well as the structure of the National Security State. Accordingly, the safeguarding of individual rights and providing security for those groups and individuals bereft of power means little to them. Even if an individual officer harbors sympathy for those who dissent, his mission is not to protect the powerless; conversely, the mission of police organizations is to maintain the status quo; and the status quo of the present order translates into vast wealth inequity created by an entrenched system in place to protect the powerful (in this case Wall Street Banksters) from the consequences of their criminal activities.

(Apropos, the 4.6 million dollars with which J.P. Morgan Chase, last week, greased the palm of the NYPD.)

Thus Freedom will be pepper sprayed and thrown face first upon the pavement, while Wall Street Banksters' Gulf Stream Jets lift off from the ground and slice the clear, thin air.

There is a sign in Liberty Plaza proclaiming, "occupy everything" and its sentiment arrives at the essence of the situation. Yes, occupy everything, starting with your own heart. Otherwise, it will be commandeered by the forces of the church, the state, the corporation, the bully on your block, the passive-aggressive friend who is "just here to help", even the demands of your own egoist agendas that bore to indifference the heart of the world and soul of the age. If you don't recognize your humanity, who will? Who is more qualified to occupy your life than you? Who is closer to the situation? Who else is qualified to arrive at an original take of the question at hand?

And you might find the place to make a stand in the struggle to retake your essential self is in public space, among throngs of others engaged in likeminded struggle...among others who have heeded a similar call and thus have arrived in those equally troubled locations -- the U.S. public arena and the American heart.

Occupy your own heart; the soul of the world longs for your companionship.

"The question is not what am I doing in here, but what are you doing out there?"
~~~ Henry David Thoreau ~~~

(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.







Playing Politics With Humanitarian Aid

"You saw the House act," snapped Rep. Eric Cantor. Yeah, act like a petulant four-year-old!

The GOP's House majority leader has long been a whiney ideological brat who stamps his tiny feet in peevish anger whenever he can't get his way on legislation. This time he was sabotaging federal aid for thousands of Americans devastated by natural disasters.

"Federal aid" is a four-letter word to right-wing ideologues like Eric, so for weeks he stalled the emergency funding, turning a straightforward humanitarian bill into his political football, insisting that any funding increase must first be wholly paid for by cutting spending on other public needs. Deficit purity first, people's needs last!

Actually, his this-for-that demand could've easily been met if he'd agreed to cut things America definitely does not need, such as the $4-billion-a-year subsidy for Big Oil. But - whoa! - in Cantorworld, oil giants are gods that shower manna from heaven on Republican campaigns, so it's blasphemy even to think of cutting that money.

Instead, Cantor went after Big Oil's most-dreaded nemesis: companies making fuel-efficient and clean energy vehicles. Thus, the Cantorites decreed that there'd be no more disaster relief until the federal loan program to foster development of this job-creating, green industry was slashed by $1.5 billion. This would have been a political hat trick for the GOP extremists - striking a blow for anti-government absolutism, doing a favor for a major campaign funder, and defunding an Obama-backed program that helps him with voters.

Luckily, his nuttiness was so extreme that a bipartisan vote by 79 senators killed his political scheme - this time. You'd think that aid for storm victims would be beyond politics. But nothing is too far out for right-wing cultists like Cantor.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Dealing The Veto Blow
By Helen Thomas

President Barack Obama is all for freedom and democracy in the Middle East, but not for the brutally occupied Palestinians.

U.S. officials have made it clear that Obama intends to veto the Palestinian bid for statehood in the U.N. Security Council. This is an obscene act that will shame America - especially when Arabs are dying throughout the region for freedom from autocratic one-man rule.

Obama's brazen obedience to the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) is understandable. He's running for reelection. The problem is the Republicans; especially the new Evangelical Tea Partiers, who have already been wined and dined by the Israeli government. Furthermore, they don't quite trust Obama even when he gives them the sun, moon and the stars.

There is no question Obama and his team did everything to block Palestinians seeking human dignity after living for more than 60 years in serfdom under the Israeli heel.

The Israeli oppressors have been subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars and aim to win wars against the freedom-seeking Palestinians in the West Bank and the blockaded Gaza.

If the Palestinian government fails to get statehood, Israel will retaliate, keeping Palestinian tax money in its own well-padded treasury. Who wouldn't fight for his land? Palestinian land has never been negotiable.

The Zionist movement began in the 19th century under Theodor Herzl, a Pole who decided the world's Jews needed their own country. The problem is the country he chose was already occupied by the Palestinians. Many falsely claimed, "A land without people, a people for a land."

The U.S. used all its power to beat down the Palestinians' hope for statehood. Israel, of course, did not want to go to the negotiating table with an opponent that has as much status and recognition as it has.

Israel has always had the upper hand. She has broken international laws by expansive occupation, building illegal walls and kicking Palestinians out of their homes and off of their land.

Obama evidently doesn't mind the oppression of the Arab people, who had counted on his sympathy and heart.

Palestinians fled, hearing of the massacres of their neighbors. Many of the refugees are still in camps run by the U.N.

President Harry S. Truman mentioned in his memoirs his later regret to being awakened at the White House, May 15, 1948, by Israeli supporters who insisted Israel become a state at 3 o'clock in the morning, while the issue was still being debated at the U.N.

The British eventually pulled out of Palestine, having been killed by the Zionists. British soldiers were hung from trees. Perhaps Mr. Blair, special envoy to Quartet on the Middle East, needs a history lesson.

The Western powers betrayed the Palestinians who at first sold their homes and holdings to rich Israelis. By the time the Palestinians realized that the Israelis planned to take over their land by military force, it was too late.

The influx of the Jews after the horror of Hitler gave them the sympathy of the world - but a world not ready to give them their land. With U.S. military support, the Israelis managed to take three quarters of Palestinian land for their own.

Now the nuclear armed Israelis are being urged to negotiate. Why should they with all the cards and military backing of the U.S., bother negotiating?

No American Jew can visit Jerusalem and not see the hundreds of Arabs going through brutal checkpoints. The rank humiliation of the natives is much like the treatment of the blacks in the segregated south before the civil rights laws.

David Kuttab, a journalist and former professor at Princeton, wrote in Newsweek, "The impasse over direct talks has given cover to Israeli expansionism; Palestinian lands continue to be confiscated. Jewish only settlements continue to be built, and the Israeli constructed security wall strangulates the Palestinians."

The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in 2004 that the wall built inside Palestine territory is illegal, according to international law, yet it continues to be a concrete example of the oppressive occupation.

So I say to the President, "What does it matter if you win the whole world and lose your soul?"
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







The Capital Punishment Issue
Murdering The Murderer
By James Donahue

Americans like to think they have evolved since the old days when teams of vigilantes held instant trials and hung horse thieves and alleged black rapists of white women from the nearest tree.

Indeed, we have become more refined at the way we arrest and convict, but the United States still remains high among the nations of the world that still execute convicted felons. Horse thieves usually don't get the death penalty, but rapists who kill and anyone convicted of pre-meditated murder and especially the killing of innocent children and police officers end up on death row in most states of the union. And more black than white males appear to find their way to the modern killing rooms. It's an ugly and barbaric practice.

We are happy to say that 14 states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty. They are Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

The other states have maintained the death penalty, with some like Texas apparently operating almost assembly-line killings since the Supreme Court opened the door to capital punishment in America in 1976.

The issue has risen to national attention since Troy Davis was put to death in Georgia, in spite of new evidence suggesting that witnesses in his alleged fatal shooting of an off-duty police officer were coerced by police into fingering him as the shooter.

Capital punishment has been brought into the public spotlight because of the controversial presidential candidacy of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has presided over 235 executions, more than any other governor in any state in history. Many believe that some of the people put to death under Perry's watch were wrongly convicted. They say Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed after being charged with setting fire to his house and killing his children, was later found innocent after it was determined that the fire was never a case of arson.

Groups like Amnesty International have been working hard to get the death penalty abolished in all 50 states. Opponents of capital punishment argue that new DNA testing has been used to prove the innocence of a number of people convicted of rape and murder cases. They argue that testimony by witnesses at the scene of any crime cannot always be trusted.

When we look at the practice of capital punishment around the world, it is shocking to realize just how barbaric the United States appears. We are the only nation in the Americas to conduct executions and we stand among the top five nations in the world in the number of people put to death each year.

The others are China, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan.

So what does anyone gain by murdering the murderer? Is justice truly served? The violent act of killing the killer may appear to be the correct thing to do in the heat of the moment but does it really appease the victims of such heinous acts? If the truth were to be told, further acts of violence only create more victims.

We believe the old and outmoded religious dogmas that preach "an eye for an eye" have had a lot to do with the belief that capital punishment is correct justice for killers in the eyes of the Creator. After all it is so commanded in the Old Testament.

But who really recorded the old laws found in the Old Testament books? Did a mighty force really carve them in stone when it confronted Moses on the mountain or was that merely one of the many ancient myths that found their way into religious books from the shadowy past?

If an almighty God in the clouds really gave humanity these laws, then we also should be executing the adulterers, masturbators and fornicators in our midst. The Old Testament laws also issued a death penalty for men who are not circumcised, people who eat leavened bread, drink blood (or ate raw meat), commit blasphemy, practice forms of magic or spiritualism, or worship idols and other gods than Jehovah.

A lot of children would be sentenced to death for striking, cursing or just disobeying their parents or coming home drunk. If we stuck to those Biblical laws the way some fundamental Christians think we should, we fear that few contemporary children would have a chance to grow up.

There is one positive thought about all of this. If we followed all of the old laws to the letter we might quickly solve our problem of overpopulation. But then we would create another problem of disposing all the bodies.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.







Twilight Of Violence
An Interview with Steven Pinker
By Sam Harris

Steven Pinker is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, the author of several magnificent books about the human mind, and one of the most influential scientists on earth. He is also my friend, an occasional mentor, and an advisor to my nonprofit foundation, Project Reason.

Steve's new book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Reviewing it for the New York Times Book Review, the philosopher Peter Singer called it "a supremely important book." I have no doubt that it is, and I very much look forward to reading it. In the meantime, Steve was kind enough to help produce a written interview for this blog.

*****

I suspect that when most people hear the thesis of your book-that human violence has steadily declined-they are skeptical: Wasn't the 20th century the most violent in history?

Probably not. Data from previous centuries are far less complete, but the existing estimates of death tolls, when calculated as a proportion of the world's population at the time, show at least nine atrocities before the 20th century (that we know of) which may have been worse than World War II. They arose from collapsing empires, horse tribe invasions, the slave trade, and the annihilation of native peoples, with wars of religion close behind. World War I doesn't even make the top ten.

Also, a century comprises a hundred years, not just fifty, and the second half of the 20th century was host to a Long Peace among great powers and developed nations (the subject of one of the book's chapters) and more recently, to a New Peace in the rest of the world (the subject of another chapter), with unusually low rates of warfare.

Need I remind you that the "atheist regimes" of the 20th century killed tens of millions of people?

This is a popular argument among theoconservatives and critics of the new atheism, but for many reasons it is historically inaccurate.

First, the premise that Nazism and Communism were "atheist" ideologies makes sense only within a religiocentric worldview that divides political systems into those that are based on Judaeo-Christian ideology and those that are not. In fact, 20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judaeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems. They were based on the ideas of Hitler and Marx, not David Hume and Bertrand Russell, and the horrors they inflicted are no more a vindication of Judeao-Christianity than they are of astrology or alchemy or Scientology.

Second, Nazism and Fascism were not atheistic in the first place. Hitler thought he was carrying out a divine plan. Nazism received extensive support from many German churches, and no opposition from the Vatican. Fascism happily coexisted with Catholicism in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Croatia.

Third, according to the most recent compendium of history's worst atrocities, Matthew White's Great Big Book of Horrible Things (Norton, 2011), religions have been responsible for 13 of the 100 worst mass killings in history, resulting in 47 million deaths. Communism has been responsible for 6 mass killings and 67 million deaths. If defenders of religion want to crow, "We were only responsible for 47 million murders-Communism was worse!," they are welcome to do so, but it is not an impressive argument.

Fourth, many religious massacres took place in centuries in which the world's population was far smaller. Crusaders, for example, killed 1 million people in world of 400 million, for a genocide rate that exceeds that of the Nazi Holocaust. The death toll from the Thirty Years War was proportionally double that of World War I and in the range of World War II in Europe.

When it comes to the history of violence, the significant distinction is not one between theistic and atheistic regimes. It's the one between regimes that were based on demonizing, utopian ideologies (including Marxism, Nazism, and militant religions) and secular liberal democracies that are based on the ideal of human rights. I present data from the political scientist Rudolph Rummel showing that democracies are vastly less murderous than alternatives forms of government.

Your claim that violence has declined depends on comparing rates of violence relative to population size. Is that really a fair measure? Should we give ourselves credit for being less violent just because there has been population growth?

You can think about it in a number of ways, but they all lead to the conclusion that it is the proportion, rather than the absolute number, of deaths that is relevant. First, if the population grows, so does the potential number of murderers and despots and rapists and sadists. So if the absolute number of victims of violence stays the same or even increases, while the proportion decreases, something important must have changed to allow all those extra people to grow up free of violence.

Second, if one focuses on absolute numbers, one ends up with moral absurdities such as these: (a) it's better to reduce the size of a population by half and keep the rates of rape and murder the same than to reduce the rates of rape and murder by a third; (b) even if a society's practices were static, so that its rates of war and violence don't change, its people would be worse and worse off as the population grows, because a greater absolute number of them would suffer; (c) every child brought into the world is a moral evil, because there is a nonzero probability that he or she will be a victim of violence. 


As I note in the book, "Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence, accident, or disease. So the number of people in a given time and place who enjoy full lives has to be counted as a moral good, against which we calibrate the moral bad of the number who are victims of violence. Another way of expressing this frame of mind is to ask, `If I were one of the people who were alive in a particular era, what would be the chances that I would be a victim of violence?' [Either way, we are led to] the conclusion that in comparing the harmfulness of violence across societies, we should focus on the rate, rather than the number, of violent acts."

Where did you get your data?

It depends. For the contrast between nonstate and state societies, I used data from forensic archeology and from quantitative ethnography. For the history of homicide in Europe, data from coroners and town records go back centuries. Western governments today keep good data on homicides (the violent crime of choice, because a dead body is hard to explain away), and several of them conduct crime victimization surveys for other crimes (which avoid the distortion of how willing victims are to report crimes to the police). For wars large and small, and other kinds of armed conflict since 1946, we have the Uppsala Conflict Data Project/Human Security Report Project and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo. For larger wars since 1816, I used datasets from the Correlates of War Project. Some historians and political scientists (such as Pitirim Sorokin, Quincy Wright, Peter Brecke, and Jack Levy) have tried to quantify war deaths in earlier periods, and "atrocitologists" such as Matthew White and Rudolph Rummel have done so for genocides, deliberate famines, and other kinds of mass violence. And of course in recent decades almost no aspect of life has gone unquantified by pollsters, government bureaucrats, and social scientists.

Haven't we just been lucky? If Churchill hadn't stood up to Hitler, if Stalin hadn't been willing to sacrifice tens of millions of Russians, if German scientists had succeeded in their nuclear program, then most of the world would be living under the horrors of the Third Reich.

True, but these counterfactuals go both ways. As John Mueller has put it, "had Adolf Hitler gone into art rather than politics, had he been gassed a bit more thoroughly by the British in the trenches in 1918, had he, rather than the man marching next to him, been gunned down in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, had he failed to survive the automobile crash he experienced in 1930, had he been denied the leadership position in Germany, or had he been removed from office at almost any time before September 1939 (and possibly even before May 1940), Europe's greatest war would most probably never have taken place."

One could argue that in fact the world has just emerged from a run of stupendous bad luck, one in which three extraordinarily bloodthirsty men-Hitler, Stalin, and Mao-managed to take over powerful states, and were responsible for a majority of the deaths from war and genocide in the 20th century. Many historians have argued as follows: No Hitler, no Holocaust; no Stalin, no Purge; no Mao, no Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.

I repeat: Haven't we just been lucky? On a number of occasions, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world seems to have come dangerously close to nuclear annihilation.

According to the most recent analyses of documents from the Cuban Missile Crisis (see, e.g., Max Frankel's High Noon in the Cold War), both the US and USSR desperately tried to get out of the crisis, avoiding unnecessary provocations and offering greater concessions than they had to. Other allegedly just-this-close brushes with Armageddon, such as the Vietnam and Yom Kippur wars, were even less perilous. As Mueller puts it, the metaphor of an escalator, in which one misstep could have carried leaders up and away to all-out nuclear war, is misleading. A better metaphor is a ladder: each rung made leaders increasingly acrophobic, and in every case they nervously sought a way to step back down.

You attribute a part of the decline of violence to the forces of modernity and enlightenment. Yet Germany before the Nazi takeover was the most cultured, advanced, and cosmopolitan society in the world. Doesn't this show that cultural and intellectual sophistication are no protection against barbarism?

It's misleading to essentialize an entire society as if it were a single mind. Weimar Germany did have subcultures that were sophisticated and cosmopolitan. But it also had subcultures, both elite and grassroots, that loathed secular modernity and Enlightenment universalism and signed on to Counter-Enlightenment sentiments of romantic militarism and nationalism-the valorization of blood and soil. The problem was that members of the second subculture murdered the members of the first. In a section called "Ideology" I discuss social psychology experiments showing how the silencing of dissenting views can result in the takeover of a society by a belief system that few of its individual members hold individually-the phenomenon of "extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds."

Have there been times in history when violence has increased? If so, couldn't it happen again?

Of course. Examples of increases of violence I discuss include a rise in the concentration of destructiveness of European wars up until World War II, the heyday of genocidal dictators in the middle decades of the 20th century, the rise of crime in the 1960s, and the bulge of civil wars in the developing world following decolonization. Yet every one of these developments has been systematically reversed.

The decline of violence isn't a steady inclined plane from an original state of maximal and universal bloodshed. Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with. The point of Better Angels is that in each case humanity has succeeded in reducing them. I even present some statistical evidence for this cycle of unpleasant shocks followed by sadder-but-wiser recoveries.

As to whether violence might increase in the future: of course it might. My argument is not that an increase in violence in the future is impossible; it's that a decrease in violence has taken place in the past. These are different claims.

Most people seem to think that wars erupt over scarce resources? Is this true?

Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, and most shortages of resources don't lead to war. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s did not lead to an American Civil war; nor did the tsunamis of 2003 and 2011 lead to war in Indonesia or Japan. And several statistical studies of recent armed conflicts have failed to find a correlation between drought or other forms of environmental degradation and war. Climate change could produce a lot of misery and waste without necessarily leading to large-scale armed conflict, which depends more on ideology and bad governance than on resource scarcity.

Are you willing to make any predictions about violence in the future?

I think that the humanitarian movements that have gathered momentum since the Enlightenment will continue to make progress. The burning of heretics, gruesome executions, blood sports, slavery, debtors' prisons, foot-binding, eunuchism, and wars between developed states won't make a comeback any time soon. Most likely capital punishment, violence against women, human trafficking, the beating and bullying of children, and the persecution of homosexuals will continue to decline, albeit bumpily and unevenly, over a span of decades. I'm willing to go out on this limb because international moral shaming campaigns in the past (such as those against piracy, whaling, and slavery) have generally succeeded over the long term. I think there is also a non-negligible chance that within the next 25-50 years there will be fewer bloodthirsty despots, and that nuclear weapons could be abolished. But terrorist attacks, civil war, and wars involving non-democracies are too capricious to predict, since they depend so much on the actions of individuals. Also, crime rates have defied every expert prediction, and it would be foolish to say that they could not go back up.

One of my great concerns is that technology is making it easier for one person to harm vast numbers of other people. It is certainly conceivable that one event-a hugely successful act of bioterrorism, for instance-could suddenly displace us from this historical trend toward pacifism that you describe. And, as Jonathan Glover pointed out in his fine book Humanity-technology has made it so that those things that are most harmful are not necessarily most disturbing. Thus, if waging war becomes increasingly like playing a video game, the gamer-soldiers of the future might be appalled by the brutality of a bar fight but capable of annihilating whole populations by remote control with a clear conscience. There is also the worry that the most destructive technologies will find their way into the hands of people who have not had their moral intuitions tuned by modernity-think Mongols with nuclear weapons. I'm wondering to what degree you share these concerns.

Yes, I discuss all of them. It's an interesting question-almost a philosophical question-whether a single kook with a nuke, or a small number of fanatics with other weapons of mass destruction, would count as displacing the world from its historical trend toward pacifism, if the vast majority of the world were appalled by the destruction and continued its pacific trajectory. A large number of deaths from a single renegade perpetrator would be a misleading indicator of the state of the world. But more to the point, I don't think that it's inevitable, or even particularly likely, that a terrorist group will get its hands on a loose nuke or build a garage nuke, nor that it would engineer an epidemic-scale pathogen.

I also admire Glover's Humanity (I wrote a glowing review of it for the New York Times when it came out), but I don't think that the transition from face-to-face to remote-control styles of killing have led to an increase in deaths. In past centuries, men with swords, spears, daggers, bows and arrows, pikes, bayonets, and muskets could kill people by the millions, while today's drones are targeted to take out enemies in the single digits-and when an errant drone in Afghanistan killed ten civilians (which would have been a rounding error in previous wars), it was an international incident that brought out profuse apologies. I argue in the book that weaponry is overrated as a driver of violence-human intentions are vastly more important. And while it's true that people have an aversion to causing direct bodily harm to a stranger, this skittishness is easily set aside, or even inverted into a ferocious savagery, under a variety of circumstances, including vengeance, panic, and sadism.
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.








Rebuild The Dream In The Streets
By David Swanson

Remarks at Take Back the Dream conference, October 3, 2011.

For videos of this speech and of remarks by Derrick Crowe and Jo Comerford click here: http://warisacrime.org/content/rebuild-dream-streets

Back around May or June a bunch of us announced plans for this coming Thursday, October 6th, to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., not for a march or a rally, and not for a day or a weekend, but to create a central space for an ongoing occupation from which we would engage in nonviolent resistance.

We were inspired by the Arab Spring and Wisconsin and working for a U.S. Autumn. Now of course we are also inspired by the Occupation of Wall Street. It's been wonderful to see more and more people and organizations compelled to join in that action, and to see militarism and plutocracy opposed together by a movement that refuses to be dumbed down into a sound bite.

Over 150 organizations are part of the planning for Freedom Plaza at October2011.org and all are encouraged to join. Wall Street's servants on K Street, in the Pentagon, and in our government may be feeling comfortably distant from Wall Street right about now. But I don't see any reason to support protests of the wealth that corrupts our government and not protests of the government corrupted by that wealth. Choosing to be corrupted is an active choice. Corruption is not something imposed on helpless victims.

We chose October 6th because the Afghanistan War was due to begin its second decade. Over 4,000 people have taken this pledge:

"I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine to demand that our resources are invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning ."

I hope you'll go and pledge the same at October2011.org

It has been three years now since a Russian ambassador to Afghanistan said the United States had repeated all of the Soviet Union's mistakes in Afghanistan and had moved on to new ones. Mistakes is a common euphemism for crimes and other words that we would be applying were ours the country violently occupied, were ours the bulk of the deaths and misery, were our doors being kicked in and our loved ones disappeared, were the missiles hitting our homes.

Every year, of course, as British Member of Parliament Rory Stewart recently pointed out, top western officials have claimed that whatever year it was would be the decisive one. And each year it has not been. This past week, the United Nations reported an increase in violence in Afghanistan of about 40 percent over last year. NATO deemed that story inappropriate and announced its own findings the very next day. It turns out that, if you believe violence isn't violence when it's committed by the United States and allies, then you can look at certain types of violence initiated purely by Afghans and identify a dramatic decrease of . . . wait for it . . . 2 percent.

But don't book that Afghan vacation just yet.

Migratory birds have been avoiding Afghanistan for some years now. Afghans with higher educations have been leaving for decades. War profiteers, and occupation profiteers, and so-called reconstruction profiteers seem to know their way out. But imperial rulers, whether British or Soviet or U.S., Nobel Peace Prize winners or otherwise, seem utterly incapable of withdrawing other people's kids from Afghan wars until no other option remains.

And why this inability to leave? Why stay? It's not to track down Osama bin Laden on the off chance he wasn't really given that proper Muslim sea burial. It's not to find the number 8 regional leader in al Qaeda, and certainly not to oppose the Taliban which feeds off the occupation. It may be for politics, but U.S. opinion polls could hardly scream "Get out!" more clearly. It is almost certainly for profits and pipelines and permanent bases. A U.S. executive, er excuse me "job creator," told NPR this summer that if the occupation of Afghanistan were scaled back he really hoped there could be a big occupation of Libya.

But there's apparently another reason why armed U.S. citizens and their foreign workers are still in Afghanistan, and it's not to keep us safe. The 2006 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, among other studies, made clear that these wars make us less safe, not more. Almost four years ago, at a conference in Washington, D.C., on al Qaeda, former State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Daniel Benjamin listed ways to reduce the threat of terrorism. Afterwards, journalist Gareth Porter asked him whether ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should have been on his list.

"You're right," he answered. And then he added, "But we can't do that."

"Why not," Porter asked.

"Because," he said, "we would have to tell the families of the soldiers who have died in those wars that their loved ones died in vain."

Since then, of course, a lot more people have died in vain.

This is what it comes to, and why nonviolent occupations of our own back in Der "Homeland" are required. Our government has gone insane. It is killing people purely because it has already killed people.

War was banned by the nations of the world in 1928 and an 85-1 vote in the U.S. Senate in 1929 following a decade of work by a peace movement that refused to give up. And now we accept war as the air we breathe. In 2008 we may not have voted in "four more years," but we did get four more wars: Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, added to Iraq and Afghanistan, with routine murders of particular human beings and those standing too close to them now openly inclusive of U.S. citizens.

To a growing extent, we see through this just as we see through austerity, environmental destruction, corporate welfare, and political corruption. But merely waiting for another money-soaked, gerrymandered, cable-tv-controlled election on unverifiable voting machines is not going to be sufficient. We're not against elections. This is not either-or. We're not against elections: we're demanding reforms that would allow us to have meaningful elections. But redirecting OccupyWallStreet energy into elections, as was done to Wisconsin, would be an act of betrayal.

Super Congress Member John Kerry's home state is fifth in the nation in military spending, employing lots of registered voters building machines of death for Raytheon, the former head of which company was brought in by the Obama administration as Deputy Secretary of Defense and who told the Washington Times in June, "The wars of the future will be longer, deadlier and waged against a more diverse variety of enemies than ever before."

Super Congress Co-Chair Patty Murray, Democrat from Boeing, since 2007 has taken $276,000 from war industries, Max Baucus $139,000, Dave Camp $130,000, John Kerry $73,000, and so on. The President who must sign or veto whatever comes out of the Super Congress and the Less Than Super Congress took over $1 million from war industries just in the 2008 election, not to mention $39 million from finance, insurance, and real estate. Targeting our social safety net is a goal that Wall Street and the military industrial complex have shared for many years. And of course the general corporate exploitation of foreign resources and workers depends on the threat of military force. Military spending has increased at the President's request each year since 2008 as well as since 2001.

Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, a conversation has been launched about the damage the wealthiest one percent is doing to the rest of us. California just pulled out of a mortgage fraud settlement deal that is expected to let the crooks off easy. Who's to say Occupy Wall Street didn't influence that decision.

The Super Congressional crusade to slash spending can only be carried through without causing massive misery and death in one of two ways, neither of which the U.S. Congress or President wants to touch, but both of which are central demands of the Occupation movement. The first is to significantly raise taxes on the super wealthy. The second is to significantly cut spending on the military. A progressive demand right now is not "Jobs Not Cuts" but "Jobs Not Wars."

Seventy members of Congress have pointed out that ending the two biggest current wars in fiscal year 2012 would save $1.8 trillion over the following decade, above planned savings from promised reductions in troops. But war spending is pocket change in comparison with the overall military and security budget. Economists have studied the impact on job creation of various types of government spending. It turns out that we could have full employment in the United States purely by redirecting a fraction of the Pentagon's budget. We could create 29 million jobs above and beyond reemployment for workers displaced in a conversion, just by moving funds from the Pentagon into education, healthcare, clean energy, and tax cuts. This calculation, if not my ideal plan, would leave military spending in several departments including Homeland Security untouched and leave the Department of So Called Defense more money than it had 10 years ago.

Leon Panetta, who holds the position that we used to more usefully call "Secretary of War," considers $350 billion over 10 years, or $35 billion per year, to be serious cuts to the national security budget. But he's discussing cuts to dreamed of future budgets. The current budget would still increase under those so-called cuts. But imagine really taking $35 billion from a budget of well over a trillion. (According to Chris Hellman of National Priorities Project, the security budget is $1.2 trillion, including the spy agencies and various other departments.) That would be a cut of less than 3.5 percent.

China spends about $114 billion per year on its military. Let's generously assume there are enough hidden costs in China's budget to double it to $228 billion. And let's assume that we must spend twice as much as they do, because . . . well, just because. Now we're at $456 billion. How do we get from there to Panetta describing a U.S. security budget of $965 billion as the lowest we can safely go, and a budget of $950 billion as "doomsday"? Is the danger here to us or to the profits of the weapons makers who are also demanding that any cuts made be made to troops' benefits rather than to weaponry?

"Every gun that's made," said Dwight David Eisenhower, "every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed." It also signifies death and injury to those on the receiving end, almost all of whom are non-Americans. But we cannot have a movement in this country demanding funding for anything decent or humane without having a movement to restrain the machine that is sucking down over 63 percent of discretionary spending (including care of veterans but not including Homeland Security or interest payments on war debt), serving as our biggest polluter of the natural environment, and providing the leading justification for eroding our civil liberties.

These are the demands we will bring to Freedom Plaza beginning Thursday:

* Tax the rich and corporations

* End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending

* Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and improved Medicare for all

* End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests

* Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation

* Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages

* Get money out of politics

There's a widespread belief that such a list of demands must be reduced to one bumper sticker. But is what I just read really too many words for people who pass 10,000-word laws meant to govern us? There are 100s of times as many words as in this list of demands in the instruction booklet for a blueray player, something your average American seems able to handle. Nobody insisted that Thomas Jefferson reduce the Declaration of Independence to an eight-second sound bite. We aren't going to win this by getting pithier, and let me let you in on a little secret: Corporate television doesn't dislike resistance to corporate power because its advocates are unskilled at framing and messaging. We aren't going to win this by kicking ourselves. We aren't going to win this by dividing ourselves: we need to be willing to stand in uncomfortably large coalitions, side by side with people who like different parties or candidates or who hold what we think are bizarre views of the world. In Freedom Plaza there will be no promotion of any party or any candidate. We will be speaking as we the people to them our government.

And we will have a lot more fun than can be had sitting home and griping or even engaging in all variety of other useful activities, from phone calling to emailing to tweeting to sitting in conferences listening to me. I mean way more fun, the kind of fun in solidarity with others that medical science says is good for our health, the kind of fun that can take young people buried in student debt and joblessness away from enormous signing bonuses offered by the war machine. Young people will be reached in Freedom Plaza through seminars, libraries, outdoor films, and the experience of democratic decision making and risk taking. And the price is right. Compared with $259 per night here in the Hilton, the accommodations in Freedom Plaza will be priceless.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand," said Frederick Douglass. "It never did and it never will."
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Putting The Lie To The Republicans
By Ralph Nader

Masters of the repeated lying sound byte, the craven Congressional Republicans are feasting on the health and safety of the American people with gleeful greed while making the corporate and trade association media swoon. "Job-killing regulations," exudes daily from the mouths of Speak John Boehner, his Wall Street-licking side-kick Eric Cantor and Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Then all the way down the line, the Republicans are on cue bellowing "job-killing regulations" must be revoked or stopped aborning over at OSHA (protecting workers), EPA (protecting clean air and water), FDA (safer drugs and food), and NHTSA (making your vehicle safer). Imagine how much more civil servants could do to accomplish the statutory missions of their respective agencies if they could get the Republicans and their corporate pay masters off their backs.

These same Republicans get in their cars with their children and put on their seat belts. Out of sight are the air bags ready to deprive them of their freedom to go through the windshield in a crash. Who makes those seat belts and air bags? Workers in the USA.

The jobs these regulations may be "killing" are those that would have swelled the funeral industry, or some jobs in the healthcare and disability-care industry. On the other hand, by not being injured, workers stay on the job and do not drain the workers' compensation funds or hamper the operations of their employer.

About twenty years ago, Professor Nicholas Ashford of MIT came to Washington and testified before Congress in great detail about how and where safety regulations create jobs and make the economy more efficient in avoiding the costs of preventable injuries and disease. He received a respectful hearing from members of the Committee. It is doubtful whether Messers Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and Dr. Coburn (Senator from Oklahoma) are reading Professor Ashford these days, who just co-authored a book with Ralph P. Hall called Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development.

The corporatist Republicans' minds are made up; don't bother them with the facts. But we must keep trying to dissolve the Big Lie.

In 2009 Professor David Hemenway published a stirring book titled While You Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention which in clear language described the success stories of people, often with the support of a past, more enlightened Congress, made lives safer and healthier in the U.S. Yes, life-saving, injury-preventing, disease-stopping regulations resulting in life-sustaining technology produced by American industry and workers.

Wake up Democrats. Learn the political art of truthful repetition to counter the cruelest Republicans who ever crawled up Capitol Hill. You've got massive, documented materials to put the Lie to the Republicans.

President Obama should set an example. For instance, on September 2, 2011 President Obama fell for the regulation costs jobs lie. He said: "[I] have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover."

Pete Altman, from the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote:

"In reversing his Administration's previously strong support for ozone regulations to protect the health of American children, President Obama (in the words of one observer): "drank the conservative Kool-Aid, and agreed that tightening ozone emission rules would have cost billions and hurt the economy. But clean air is very popular politically, and the EPA's own studies show that a tighter standard could have created $17 billion in economic benefits."

Earlier this month, Public Citizen issued a report about five regulations that spurred innovation and a higher quality of economic growth. As one of the authors Negah Mouzoon wrote, when federal agencies implement rules for efficiency, worker safety, or public health and welfare, companies need to reformulate their products and services to comply. And so begins good ol' American competition. To comply with federal standards, companies need to invest in research and development, which often yields to new products and systems that both solve public policy problems and, often, boost business. The result? A brighter idea emerges.

It is important to note that such regulations give companies lengthy lead times to comply and, under the daily sandpapering of corporate lobbyists, regulations issued lose much of their early industry-controlling reach.

Here are the report's five innovation-spurring products or processes that at their outset encountered significant industry resistance and inflated estimates of complying with the regulations. Before that is, the companies came to their senses, responded and found that such changes were not just good for the people but for their own bottom line.

1. Protecting workers from poisonous vinyl chloride.
2. Reducing sulfur dioxide emissions.
3. Preventing ozone-layer-destroying CFC emissions from aerosols.
4. Improving the energy efficiency of home appliances.
5. Utilizing energy-efficient light bulbs.

For the full report go to http://www.citizen.org/regulation-innovation. Maybe some "kids"-between the ages of 10 and 12 - having learned from their parents the importance of telling the truth, can start a Kiddy Corps for a Truthful Congress drawn from the Internet-savvy children all over the U.S. What a wonderful expression of grassroots truth-telling directed toward the Great Prevaricators on Capitol Hill. Yes -job-producing, life-saving, economy-stimulating, innovation-producing regulations for a more secure future for our children.

Interested parents may contact us at info@csrl.org.
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.








Holding China To Account
By Paul Krugman

The dire state of the world economy reflects destructive actions on the part of many players. Still, the fact that so many have behaved badly shouldn't stop us from holding individual bad actors to account.

And that's what Senate leaders will be doing this week, as they take up legislation that would threaten sanctions against China and other currency manipulators.

Respectable opinion is aghast. But respectable opinion has been consistently wrong lately, and the currency issue is no exception.

Ask yourself: Why is it so hard to restore full employment? It's true that the housing bubble has popped, and consumers are saving more than they did a few years ago. But once upon a time America was able to achieve full employment without a housing bubble and with savings rates even higher than we have now. What changed?

The answer is that we used to run much smaller trade deficits. A return to economic health would look much more achievable if we weren't spending $500 billion more each year on imported goods and services than foreigners spent on our exports.

To get our trade deficit down, however, we need to make American products more competitive, which in practice means that we need the dollar's value to fall in terms of other currencies. Yes, some people will shriek about "debasing" the dollar. But sensible policy makers have long known that sometimes a weaker currency means a stronger economy, and have acted on that knowledge. Switzerland, for example, has intervened massively to keep the franc from getting too strong against the euro. Israel has intervened even more forcefully to weaken the shekel.

The United States, given its special global role, can't and shouldn't be equally aggressive. But given our economy's desperate need for more jobs, a weaker dollar is very much in our national interest -and we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued, and thereby standing in the way of a much-needed decline in our trade deficit.

That, above all, means China. And none of the arguments against holding China accountable can stand serious scrutiny.

Some observers question whether we really know that China's currency is undervalued. But they're kidding, right? The flip side of the manipulation that keeps China's currency undervalued is the accumulation of dollar reserves -and those reserves now amount to a cool $3.2 trillion.

Others warn of bad consequences if the Chinese stop buying United States bonds. But our problem right now is precisely that too many people want to park their money in American debt instead of buying goods and services -which is why the interest rate on long-term U.S. bonds is only 2 percent.

Yet another objection is the claim that Chinese products don't really compete with U.S.-produced goods. The rebuttal is fairly technical; let me just say that those making this argument both overstate the case and fail to take the indirect effects of Chinese currency policy into account.

In the last few days a new objection to action on the China issue has surfaced: right-wing pressure groups, notably the influential Club for Growth, oppose tariffs on Chinese goods because, you guessed it, they're a form of taxation -and we must never, ever raise taxes under any circumstances. All I can say is that Democrats should welcome this demonstration that antitax fanaticism has reached the point where it trumps standing up for our national interests.

To be fair, there are some arguments against action on China that would carry some weight if the times were different. One is the undoubted fact that inflation in China, which is raising labor costs in particular, is gradually eliminating that nation's currency undervaluation. The operative word, however, is "gradually": something that brings the United States trade deficit down over four or five years isn't good enough when unemployment is at disastrous levels right now.

And the reality of the unemployment disaster is also my answer to those who warn that getting tough with China might unleash a trade war or damage world commercial diplomacy. Those are real risks, although I think they're exaggerated. But they need to be set against the fact -not the mere possibility -that high unemployment is inflicting tremendous cumulative damage as we speak.

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said it clearly last week: unemployment is a "national crisis," with so many workers now among the long-term unemployed that the economy is at risk of suffering long-run as well as short-run damage.

And we can't afford to neglect any important means of alleviating that national crisis. Holding China accountable won't solve our economic problems on its own, but it can contribute to a solution -and it's an action that's long overdue.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great - greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources....

And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order. There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people's money. And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency. These, my friends, are the lines of attack."
~~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 ~~~









Andrew Ross Sorkin's Assignment Editor
By Glenn Greenwald

The Occupy Wall Street protest has been growing in numbers, respectability, and media attention for several weeks now. Despite that, The New York Times‘ financial columnist who specializes in Wall Street coverage, Andrew Ross Sorkin, has neither visited the protests nor written about them - until today. In a column invoking the now-familiar journalistic tone of a zoologist examining a bizarre new species of animal discovered in the wild, Sorkin explains what prompted him to finally pay attention (via Michael Whitney):

I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthand after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week, before nearly 700 people were arrested over the weekend during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?" the C.E.O. asked me. I didn't have an answer. "We're trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this," he continued, clearly concerned. "Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?"

How interesting that when a CEO "of a major bank" wants to know how threatening these protests are, he doesn't seek out corporate advisers or dispatch the bank's investigators, but instead gets the NYT‘s notoriously banker-friendly Wall Street reporter on the phone and assigns him to report back. How equally interesting that if this NYT financial columnist can't address the concerns and questions of a CEO "of a major bank," he hops to it to find out what was demanded of him. Sorkin did what he was told, cautiously concluding:

As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don't have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn't seem like a brutal group - at least not yet.

As I noted last week when critiquing the patronizing, dismissive and scornful attacks on these protests from establishment circles, the "message" is clear and obvious enough, and Sorkin had no trouble discerning a significant part of it: "the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap." He added: "that message is a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge - as we've seen in some European countries - if our economy continues to struggle." His CEO banking friend is right to be concerned: if not about this protest in particular then about the likelihood of social unrest generally, emerging as a result of their plundering and pilfering. That healthy fear on the part of the oligarchs has been all too absent.

Though it's not evident in Sorkin's column (nor in this characteristically snotty, petty, pseudo-intellectual condescension of yesterday from The New Republic), the prevailing media (and progressive) narrative about the protests has rapidly shifted from these-are-childish-vapid-losers to there-is-something-significant-happening-here. In part that's because the protests have endured and grown; in part it's because the participants are far less homogeneous and suscepitble to caricature than originally assumed; in part it's because they are motivated by genuine and widespread financial suffering that huge numbers of Americans know intimately even though it receives so little attention from insulated media stars; in part it's because NYPD abuse became its own galvanizing force and served to highlight the validity of the grievances; and in part because their refusal to adhere to the demands from the political and media class for Power Point professionalization and organizational hierarchies has enabled the protests to remain real, organic, independent, and passionate.

What will determine how long-lasting and significant is the impact of these protests is whether they allow themselves to be exploited into nothing more than vote-producing organs of the Democratic Party - the way the GOP so successfully converted the Tea Party into nothing more than a Party re-branding project. There is no question that such efforts are underway, as organizations that serve as Party loyalists try to glom onto the protests and distort them into partisan tools.

I have a hard time seeing that working. After all, the reason this is a street protest movement (rather than, say, a voter-registration crusade or an OFA project) is precisely because the protesters concluded that dedicating themselves to the President's re-election and/or the Democratic Party is hardly a means for combating Wall Street's influence, rising wealth inequality or corporatist control of the political process. Still, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that the reason these protests are now receiving more respect in establishment venues is because those venues now see some potential use to be made of them. Those dedicated to the original purpose and message of the protest - and Matt Stoller defined that as well as anyone here - will need to make resisting those efforts a top priority if they want to succeed. Though the Tea Party was effectively annexed into the GOP, it did succeed in creating itself as a force within the Party which must be heeded and which cannot be entirely controlled by party leaders. Aaron Bady suggested today that perhaps that's the best-case scenario to be realistically hoped for here: that these protests metastasize into a genuine protest movement that at least forces the Democratic Party to take heed, pay attention, and periodically make substantial concessions. That's a reasonable view, but the unique value and promise of these protests is that they are independent of prevailing political institutions, and it's difficult to see how these protests can simultaneously be fully integrated into those institutions while preserving that value. The dynamics they are contesting are overwhelmingly systemic, not partisan. The call between Sorkin and his banking-CEO-friend that caused the NYT columnist to make his anthropological foray into the street jungle to report back on the discontented animals is a perfect symbol of the institutional forces that are the target of this unrest. Dedicating oneself principally to the Democratic Party's electoral prospects or Barack Obama's re-election campaign would seem a glaring non sequitur to those concerns.

UPDATE: Last week's NYT article scoffing at the protesters (that one by Ginia Bellafante) ended by noting what NYT editors apparently thought was the towering irony that some of the protesters use Apple computers; Sorkin today invokes the same trite mockery, ending his column with the pierecing observation that he saw "two of them walking over to the A.T.M. at Bank of America." Apparently, you're not allowed to protest rampant criminality on Wall Street and the corruption of corporatist control of the political process unless you keep your money under your mattress and communicate by carrier pigeon - at least not without incurring the derision of those wicked satirists at the NYT.

As usual, note that these brave, intrepid watchdog journalists heap huge amounts of scorn on the most marginalized and powerless segments of the society, yet would never dare direct even a fraction of that mockery to those who wield power, such as Sorkin's "CEO of a major bank" friend. Modern establishment journalists have taken what should be the credo and mission of actual journalism - afflict the powerful and comfort the powerless - and completely reversed it (note, too, that Sorkin, for no journalistic reason whatsover and in violation of the NYT's own guidelines, protects the identity of his CEO-friend with anonymity when writing this story; is it not newsworthy that a CEO of a major bank fears these protests)?

I genuinely wonder whether, before descending into the protesting hordes, Sorkin donned one of those masks popularized in Asia during the height of the SARS epidemic. When visiting strange and exotic cultures, one can never be too careful. Is it any mystery that the severe economic suffering and anxiety pervading American society recieves so little attention and concern from establishment media outlets and their stars?
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.




Protesters, some dressed as zombies, walk the streets as part of the
Occupy Wall Street protests, which began three weeks ago, in New York.





An Open Letter To Wall Street
By William Rivers Pitt

Cancel my subscription
To the resurrection
Send my credentials to the
House of detention
I got some friends inside...
James Douglas Morrison

Before anything else, I would like to apologize for the mess outside your office. It's been three weeks since all those hippies and punk-rockers and students and union members and working mothers and single fathers and airline pilots and teachers and retail workers and military service members and foreclosure victims decided to camp out on your turf, and I'm sure it has been quite an inconvenience for you. How is a person supposed to spend their massive, virtually untaxed bonus money on a double latte and an eight-ball with all that rabble clogging the sidewalks, right?

Your friends at JP Morgan Chase just donated $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation, the largest donation ever given to the NYPD. You'd think that much cheese would buy a little crowd control, but no. Sure, one of the "white shirt" commanding NYPD officers on the scene hosed down some defenseless women with pepper spray the other day, and a few other protesters have been roughed up here and there, and having any kind of recording device has proven to be grounds for immediate arrest, but seriously...for $4.6 million, you'd think the cops would oblige you by bulldozing these troublemakers right into the Hudson River. Better yet, pave them over with yellow bricks, so you can walk over them every day on your way in to work.

That's what you do anyway, right? Every single day. I know it. You know it. We might as well be honest about it, and if some shiny golden bricks wind up serving as anonymous tombstones for your working-class doormats, well, that's just what they call in Wisconsin "hard cheese." You're a Master of the Universe, after all, and this recess(depress)ion hasn't touched you to any great degree. Sure, you have to shoulder your way through more homeless people these days, and damn if there aren't a lot more potholes to tax the undercarriage of your Audi R8 GT, but your money is making money at a fantastic rate, and paying taxes is for other people; I mean, come on, your accountant bursts out laughing whenever he hears the words "capital gains tax," so your egregious sense of entitlement is entirely understandable.

Now is the time to bone up on your coping skills, because three weeks is nothing. The people camped out on Wall Street are not leaving unless and until they are cleared out by force. They look all kinds of silly in their outfits, and some of their statements don't make a whole lot of sense to people like you, but they have put down roots, and you better get used to them. I'm sure the whole phenomenon is quite perplexing to you - really, why don't they just go home? Don't these people have jobs?

I hate to be the Irony Police, but that's pretty much the whole point. They can't, and they don't. Have homes and jobs, I mean. There was a guy out there a few days ago holding a sign in front of a mortgage-lending institution that read "These People Took My Parent's Home." There are all sorts of people walking around Wall Street yelling their lungs out at you because, well, they really would like the opportunity to find gainful employment, as well as a future, but that nifty shell game you and yours pulled off (on our dime) wound up immolating the economy of the common man/woman, and so the common man/woman has decided - in lieu of anything else better to do - to spend their you-created idle hours on your doorstep.

Let's face it: the mess outside your office is your doing. You and your friends bought this democracy wholesale - ah, yes, the irony of freedom is found in the way you were able to corrupt so many legislators with your money, always legally, because the legislators you bought are the ones writing the laws covering political contributions, and thus the wheel of corruption turns and turns - and now you want this democracy to do your bidding after the bill for your excess and fathomless greed has come due.

You are always taken care of - see the Citizens United decision, which unleashed you in a way not seen since the dregs of the Roman empire - but, still, there are those pesky protesters, exercising their freedom of expression in order to expose you for the brigands that you are.

They're staying put, with many more on the way - to New York as well as every major city from sea to shining sea - and none of them are going anywhere else until people like you are taken from your citadels in handcuffs and made to pay for the ongoing rape of what was once quaintly called the American Dream...a dream that used to be something other than a dated metaphor, and can be something true and real and genuine once again, but only after we pave you under, and walk over you, on our way to a better, brighter future.
(c) 2011 William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is available from PoliPointPress.





The Dead Letter Office...






Heil Obama,

Dear Schulleiterin Bryant,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your bringing back Jim Crow laws to Arkansas, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross, first class, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute frau Bryant, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





As Obama Goes Abroad Searching for Monsters to Destroy, Ron Paul Rightly Rejects Assassinating Americans
By John Nichols

President Obama's authorization of the assassination of an American citizen, New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki-in a drone attack that also killed American citizen Samir Khan, who was raised in New York City and North Carolina-drew high praise from execution-enthusiast Rick Perry, who congratulated Obama by name for "getting another key terrorist."

But the bipartisan disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law stopped when Texas Congressman Ron Paul was asked about the air strike that on Friday killed the two Americans in Yemen.

The congressman, who is competing with Perry and others for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has long complained about "war on terror" abuses that he sees as part of "the disintegration of American jurisprudence."

And he was blunt in rejecting the victory-lap mentality that saw Obama Democrats and Perry Republicans celebrating the killing of American citizens.

"I don't think that's a good way to deal with our problems," Paul said in New Hampshire. "Al-Awlaki was born here; he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. Nobody knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually-that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys-I think it's sad."

Noting that no move was made to assassinate Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was arrested, tried and executed, Paul said: "To start assassinating American citizens without charges, we should think very seriously about this."

The congressman, who has been an outspoken critic on the expansion of the September 2001 Congressional authorization of a response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to support a perpetual "war on terror," said, "I voted to authority to go after those individuals responsible for 9/11. Nobody ever suggested that [Awlaki] was a participant in 9/11."

Paul's statement, and a slightly less pointed response from another libertarian-leaning presidential contender, reflects a more traditionalist view of the Constitution. As recently as the 1950s, "old-right" Republicans such as Ohio Senator Robert Taft and Nebraska Congressman Howard Buffett (Warren's father) opposed undeclared wars and military adventures. Their stances extended from founding principles outlined by James Madison, when he warned that "no nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

It was a successor to Madison, John Quincy Adams, who warned against searching the globe for targets of assassination and military conquest.

"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be," Adams told Congress in 1821. "But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








Obama Wrong To Rub Out Al-Awlaki
By Matthew Rothschild

Forgive me while I don't cheer the assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born cleric whom the United States just killed in Yemen.

He was a U.S. citizen, after all.

He had never been indicted for a crime here, much less convicted of one, much less sentenced to death.

Still, the President rubbed him out.

We are told that he was a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and there is some evidence that his preachings influenced Al Qaeda terrorists, including a few of the 9/11 attackers and the shoe bomber.

He's no angel. No doubt about that.

But does that give the President the right to summarily execute a U.S. citizen?

Did FDR have the right to murder Ezra Pound during World War II for vocally supporting the fascists?

President Obama asserts that right, not just to bump off Al-Awlaki but also other U.S. citizens, too.

On what basis? Where will it end?

The ACLU, which, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, represented Al-Awlaki's father last year in an attempt to block his assassination, denounced this action.

"The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law," says ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer. "This is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts. The government's authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the President - any President - with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country."

"If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the President does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state," added Ben Wizner, ACLU National Security Project litigation director.

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, much to his credit, also objected to the hit.

"To start assassinating American citizens without charges-we should think very seriously about this," Paul said.

Yes, we should.

Who does Obama think he is, Michael Corleone?

His Justice Department went into court last year to make the claim that no judge in the entire United States has the right to oversee the President's assassination policy.

The President has become judge, juror, and literally executioner, and that's not the way our system is supposed to work.

And it sets a new low, and a terrible precedent, for the abuse of Presidential powers.
(c)2011 Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Steve Benson ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Prom Queen Anguish
By Will Durst

It's human nature. We mostly want what we can't have. Grass is greener. The romantic lure of the unattainable. Knowledge that high school girls have long-since weaponized. Nothing entices a hormonally imbalanced freshman like flouncing down a crowded hall laughing through a gaggle of friends with a flip of the pony- tail and nary a backwards glance. Of course, a short skirt doesn't hurt.

Same holds true in politics. A short skirt doesn't hurt. No matter how many dance partners the Republicans convince to attend their courtship gala, you'd swear their head was on ball bearings the way they keep swiveling to the door to see who might be lurking outside. Waiting for the bad boy rock stars to finish their smokes in the parking lot and make a grand entrance. Or spin out to the highway spitting a rooster-tail of gravel.

Can't blame them. The Right is just getting over its relationship with an older man, which ended badly, and hungering for some excitement.

The reason they can't get it up for the geeks and dorks and stalwarts like Huntsman and Paul and Santorum and Cain. Oh sure, they're tolerated and marginally encouraged but with an enthusiasm one normally associates with favorite dish- towels and serviceable oil filters. Library boys. Not the smooching kind.

But to the GOP's dismay, all the heartthrobs have left the building. Donald Trump flirted extensively this spring, but then ran away with his true love, reality television, that tramp. Ms. Popular Transfer Student, Sarah Palin, dragged out her coquettish tease so long, even the most bewitched of beaus lost interest. On the rebound, blushing and gushing, Michele Bachmann accepted a corsage, but shortly after was discovered cheating with a corn dog, and jittery suitors fell out of love faster than a middle school girl vis-a-vis Justin Beiber.

After extended entreaties, Rick Perry triumphantly waltzed in to the fanfare of a conquering quarterback, and was immediately voted Homecoming King. No more calls, we have a winner. For about a week. Then, the Texas Governor unraveled like a badly knitted letter sweater caught in a threshing machine. A series of threshing machines. Seven to ten.

Even he admits he may have stumbled in debate class. Yeah. Stumbled being a polite way of saying "dug a hole deep enough to hide at least half of those very threshers of which earlier we spoke." The more the cheerleaders saw of Captain Haircut, the more the bloom vamoosed the rose. Zero to 60 in 5.6.

With the dance but a couple months away, conservatives are franticly whining and pining for a savior to rise from these streets, turning their attention east to woo another Governor, Chris Christie of New Jersey. They're Crazy for Christie. The right Mr. Right. Too big to fail. Flattered, Christie toned down his persistent "Not interested" to a titillating "let's wait and see." Oooh. Shivers.

Christie clearly relishes the role of vamping vixen, but continues to dither, aware that his date is a bit fickle, having tossed prospective partners like Kleenex in the midst of a bad cold. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney patiently waits dressed in his gown standing at the door. Wondering when the GOP will settle down, come to their senses and get their philandering over with. Might want to change out of those heels, and while you're at it, a short skirt doesn't hurt.
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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In This Edition

Tom Engelhardt gives, "The Warning Occupy Wall Street Has For President Obama."

Uri Avnery explores, "The More Enemies, The More Honor."

Randall Amster considers, "Occupational Therapy."

Naomi Klein orates at, "Occupy Wall Street."

Jim Hightower supports, "Occupy Wall Street."

Helen Thomas with, "Kennedy On Kennedy."

James Donahue asks, "What Secret Does The CIA Know About Climate Change?"

Amy Goodman wonders is it, "A New Bush Era or a Push Era?"

David Swanson is, "Dancing On Our Occupation Permit."

Ralph Nader hears a, "Rumble From The People."

Paul Krugman examines, "Panic Of The Plutocrats."

Glenn Greenwald explains, "The Real Danger From Classified Leaks."

William Rivers Pitt warns of, "A Delicate Moment for the Occupy Wall Street Movement."

Attorney General of the United States. Eric H. Holder, Jr wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols reports, "Wisconsin Drive To Recall Walker Starts November 15."

Phil Rockstroh is, "Punching A Hole In Bubbles Of Denial And Addiction."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Andy Borowitz finds, "Potential Race Between Black Guy and Mormon Poses Dilemma for Bigots" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "We're Occupying The Heart Of Darkness."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Chip Bok, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Brian McFadden, Derf City, Drew Sheneman, Jeff Danziger, Jim Morin, Tauntr.Com, Angela-Tyler-Rockstroh, Michael Appleton, David Shankbone, Vanity Fair, U.P.I., You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."












We're Occupying The Heart Of Darkness
By Ernest Stewart

The horror! The horror!
The Heart Of Darkness ~~~ Trader Kurtz

Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)
Celebrate Good Times ~~~ Cool And The Gang

"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~~~ Unknown

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard,
To give the poor dog a bone:
When she came there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.
The Comic Adventures Of Old Mother Hubbard And Her Dog ~~~ Sarah Catherine Martin

Guess who came out of the woodwork the other day to make trouble for the peaceful, legal protestors in Washington? Why, none other that perpetual bad boy and agent provocateur Patrick Howley, Assistant Editor of The American Spectator.

As the protestors approached the National Air and Space Museum, Pat rushed forward and joined the crowd, and when they walked up the steps to begin protesting the museum's connection to mass murder via our drones, Pat pushed through the doors and assaulted a guard, and then entered the museum. As Pat tells it, he had consciously infiltrated the group on Friday with the intent to discredit the movement. He states that: "as far as anyone knew I was part of this cause, a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator, and I wasn't giving up before I had my story."

According to Howley's story, he joined the group in its march toward the Air and Space Museum, but the protesters on the march were unwilling to be confrontational. Pat says, "they lack the nerve to confront authority. From estimates within the protest, only ten people were pepper-sprayed, and as far as I could tell, I was the only one who got inside."

The truth of the matter was that a couple of dozen people got sprayed -- a few protestors near the front door (one of whom is our reporter David Swanson) -- but most were innocent museum visitors who had nothing to do with the protest. I'm waiting to see if Pat is arrested and charged with the various crimes that he acknowledged and that were caught on camera by the prosecutor, and if he is open to lawsuits by the people that were hurt by his stunt? I have no doubt that if you or I had done Pat's crimes we'd be awaiting trial without bond in some sewer-infested D.C. jail cell!

We got the story, Pat; you're an asshole!

In Other News

We've been celebrating a couple of old favorites in the last week. First our tenth anniversary of murdering tens of thousands of innocents under the cover of trying to root out between 50 and 100 members of the CIA black-oops program called "The Method" or in Arabic, Al-Qaeda. Funny how we managed to defeat the three largest armies in the world in less than a third of the time we've wasted in Afghanistan in "Operation Enduring Misery" er "Operation Enduring Freedom," when in reality it's really what I've called it from the very beginning, "Operation Secure The Pipeline!" A Dick Cheney war to build a pipeline from the former USSR oil & gas rich states to the sub-continent and beyond. So far, it's the second-longest running war in US history!

So far, we've murdered tens of thousands of innocent Afghanis. Bombed them back to the "Stone Age" and in some cases, the "Dust Age," while draining our treasury of trillions of dollars, seriously wounding about 20,000 of our kids, and killing about 1600 or so in Cheney's petroleum war.

So how did you celebrate our tenth anniversary? Did you blow up an unsuspecting village? Did the kids bomb a wedding reception? Did Grand Ma and Grand Pa blow up an elementary school? Or did you try to wash all that blood off your hands that you got when you went along with this war crime? It won't come off, by the way, so save the soap, alcohol, and gasoline!

Another holiday has come again celebrating the longest war that we've been in, that makes the second-longest one look like a Swiss picnic by comparison. I refer, of course, to the war that's now in its 519th year -- the war against the natives. The holiday celebrates old Chris Columbus, who doubled down on Hitler and his Jews by beginning the slaughtering of 12 million Caribbean Indians that lasted 50 years. By the time they were finished in 1542, there wasn't a single Caribbean Indian alive! The Spanish were good at murder, but not quite as professional as the Germans, who killed half that many Jews in 10% of the time as us Americans here in Vespucciland who carried on Chris's pogroms. We've been murdering natives for their lands and property since 1588! Thanks to Chris for showing us the way!

So how did you celebrate this holiday? I kept looking for the postman, who had the day off to clean his shotgun and prepare to go "postal" in a few months when they shut down his post office. Did your family go the traditional celebratory route? An early breakfast, then off to the parades, followed by a trip to a ghetto reservation to burn down their trailers and blow up their trading posts? Did you kidnap a few of their children and send them off to Indian school? Or did you just sit on the couch and watch Fox Spews all day?

And Finally

I'm beginning to have deja vu, all over again, about the various protests going on all over the country. I'm having flashbacks to my youth, when similar protests were going on all over America about the Vietnam police action that began our long slide to where we are today -- fast approaching oblivion!

The elite thought by making this war strictly volunteer they could avoid the mass protests of young men who didn't want to go murder and die for Wall Street; so in all that time very little has changed. The banksters began that war to make a profit as they began this depression to make an obscene profit!

Trouble is, that all the protests, all the marchers didn't bring the war to an end. What ended the war was we ran out of real money. We gave so much to the arms dealers and banksters that we could no longer back our currency with gold and "the Trick" took us off the gold standard. What this means is our money today; after 40 or 50 trillion spent on our elites, is totally worthless. Prices really aren't rising; the dollar is worthless! Before we went off the gold standard, $35 would buy you an ounce of gold. Brand-new, fully-loaded Cadillacs were about $5,000, a new Rolls Royce would set you back about $18,000; a three-bedroom brick ranch with attached garage around $25,000, in the city perhaps $15,000 in small town America. Today's current price for an ounce of gold is $1682, so the dollar is really worth slightly over 2 cents, i.e., 1/48th of what it was worth before our worthless, needless wars! As the Firesign Theatre once said, "You're not paying more, you are getting less!"

Also, back in the day, all that a family needed to thrive, i.e., buy a house, a new car, put the kids through school, could be had by one parent, working a 40 hour week and they'd still have money left over, thanks to the brilliance of unions, which made us a thriving middle class. The middle class in America is only about 70 years old, and can be directly traced back to the beginning of the unions. The one percent were still filthy rich and yet they paid a 91% tax rate and the economy boomed and we were about half a trillion light, and it had taken almost 200 years to rack up that deficit. Go ahead and compare and contrast with today. They say we're about 14 trillion short, but the truth is a whole lot closer to $60 trillion than $14! But don't worry, because Barry and the Congress are getting ready to print up even more money, which will send that 2 cents reeling to 1 cent and beyond! Does what happened in the Weimar Republic ring any bells for you, America?

I hope that todays' youth can do a better job than "the Boomers" did with our protests. Fight the good fight Ya'll! This may be our last chance!

Keepin' On

This also maybe the last time I come to you hat in hand until after the first of the year? I still need to raise that last $250 as I can't really afford to pay that money that I borrowed to pay off our bills for the year. I'd much rather have oral surgery without the cocaine than have to do this week after week for seven or eight months at a time.

It's not like it's going into my pocket; it's not. It all goes for the cause. The only time I ever spent any money that was sent to me was when two of you sent me some grocery money so I could get by until the food stamps kicked in which took me five weeks to get and without which money I couldn't have gotten by. Thanks to Ernie from Ontario and Tom from Florida for that!

I have to raise $5400 every year and find it harder and harder to do. Some of my competition raises ten times that every 3 months and we have the same amount of readership, and I have better product, so I need either to get much better at begging, or pick up some more sponsors? If one of you would be kind enough to send in the money, I'll shut TFU, which will, no doubt, be a good thing for all of us!

*****


04-01-1931 ~ 10-07-2011
Thanks for the film!


10-01-1924 ~ 10-08-2011
Thanks for the music!


04-20-1971 ~ 10-08-2011
Thanks for the music and the art!


05-21-1925 ~ 10-11-2011
Thanks for fighting the good fight!


*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
Donations

*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












The Warning Occupy Wall Street Has For President Obama
By Tom Engelhardt

On Wednesday afternoon, we marched out of Zuccotti Park, where the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have bedded down for the duration. Drums were pounding and shouts of "Whose streets? Our streets!" "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street," and "This is what democracy looks like, that is what hypocrisy looks like!" rang out as we headed directly into New York City's version of a police state. The helicopters with the high-tech sensors and high-resolution cameras hovered in the distant sky, the security cams peered down from walls, the barriers the police had set up hemmed us in -- no street, just sidewalk for these demonstrators -- and the cops, scores of flexi-cuffs looped at their belts, were lined up all along the way, while empty buses wheeled past ready for future arrestees.

This was not exactly a shining Big Apple example of the "freedom" to demonstrate. It was demonstration as imprisonment and at certain moments, at least for this 67-year-old, it was claustrophobic. This is the way the state treats 15,000 terrorist suspects, not its own citizens.

Still, the energy and high spirits were staggering. The unions were out -- nurses, teachers, construction workers -- the bands were lively ("... down by the riverside, ain't gonna study war no more..."), and hand-made signs were everywhere and about everything under the sun: "Crime does pay in the USA -- on Wall Street," "When did the common good become a bad idea," "4 years in college, $100,000 in debt, for a hostess job," "Eat the rich," "Arab Spring to Wall Street Fall" (with the final "L" in "Fall" slipping off the sign), "We are the 99%," "Legalize online poker, occupy Wall St."

Amid the kaleidoscopic range of topics on those signs and in those chants and cries, one thing, one name, was largely missing: the president's. In those hours marching and at Foley Square amid the din of so many thousands of massed people, I saw one sign that said "Obama = Bush" and another that went something like "The Barack Obama we elected would be out here with us." That was it. Sayonara.

It's as if the spreading movement, made up of kids who might once have turned out for presidential candidate Obama, had left him and his administration in the dust. Like big labor, the left, and the media, the administration that loved its bankers to death (and got little enough in return for that embrace) is now playing catch-up with a ragtag bunch of protesters it wouldn't have thought twice about if they hadn't somehow caught the zeitgeist of this moment. (Don't forget that the Obama administration was similarly left scrambling and desperately behind events when it came to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo last January.)

The best Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner could say a few days ago, when asked about his sympathies for the Occupy Wall Street movement, was: "I feel a lot of sympathy for what you might describe as a general sense among Americans that we've lost a sense of possibility." Really? White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley didn't know if the movement was exactly "helpful" for the White House agenda. Truly? And White House press spokesman Jay Carney commented blandly, "I would simply say that, to the extent that people are frustrated with the economic situation, we understand." Do you?

Suddenly, last Thursday, with news about the anti-Wall Street movement whipping up a storm, the Obama administration found itself out of breath and running hard to reposition itself. Vice President Joe Biden said, "The core is the bargain has been breached with the American people," while at his news conference addressing questions about the movement the president added, "I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel... [T]he protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works."

Still, those signs with everything but Barack Obama on them should be considered a warning. Recently, Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean writer and activist, penned a message from a man who died in the attacks of September 11th. His name was Salvador Allende, he was the elected president of Chile, and the "terrorists" on that day in 1973 were the Chilean military backed by the CIA. (Strangely enough, afterwards no one declared a global war on anyone.)

Dorfman, author most recently of Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile, channels warning words from "the dead" to Barack Obama. But mark my words, Allende's isn't the only warning to the president at this moment. Those kids in downtown Manhattan (and increasingly across the country and the world) are offering their own warning, and theirs, after a fashion, comes from the future, one in which Obama's presidency could someday be seen as little but an irrelevancy.
(c) 2011
Tom Engelhardt is co-founder of the American Empire Project. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His most recent book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).





The More Enemies, The More Honor
By Uri Avnery

AN OLD photo from World War I shows a company of German soldiers getting on the train on their way to the front. On the wall of the car somebody had scribbled: "viel Feind, viel Ehr'" ("The more enemies, the more Honor".)

In those days, at the very start of what was to be the First World War, country after country was declaring war on Germany. The spirit of the graffito reflected the hubris of the supreme commander, Kaiser Wilhelm, who relied on the war plan of the legendary German General Staff. It was indeed an excellent war plan, and as excellent war plans are apt to do, it started going awry right from the beginning.

The foolish Kaiser now has the heirs he deserves. Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Moshe Ya'alon, a former army Chief of Staff whose intelligence is below the average even of that rank, has announced that Israel could not possibly apologize to Turkey, even though its national interests may demand it, because it would hurt our "prestige."

Many enemies, much prestige.

It seems that we shall soon run out of friends whom we can turn into enemies to gather even more prestige.

LAST WEEK a black cat came between Israel and its second best friend: Germany.

High-ranking German officials confided to their Israeli colleagues that their Kanzlerin, Angela Merkel, was "furious" when she heard that the Israeli government had approved the building of 1100 housing units in Gilo, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem. Just a few days earlier, the Quartet had invited Israel and the Palestinian Authority to restart negotiations and abstain from "provocations". If this is not a provocation, what is?

Merkel, generally a woman of placid equanimity, did not keep her rage to herself. She called Binyamin Netanyahu and gave him a severe dressing-down, something that had never happened before.

Until now, Germany has kept to a strict code of behavior towards Israel: after the unspeakable crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews, there could be no criticism of any Israeli act, Germany would pay for a crucial component of Israel's armaments, Germany would suspend all moral criteria as far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was concerned.

Not any more, it seems. We may be losing our only second-best friend.

THE CLASSIC example of "How to lose Friends and Alienate People" is, of course, our affair with Turkey.

David Ben-Gurion, the arch-architect of Israel, believed that peace with the Arabs was neither possible nor desirable. He devised an alternative: a ring to encircle the Arab world - an alliance of non-Arab allies. These included Iran (under the Shah), Ethiopia (under Haile Selassie), several other African states and, of course, Turkey (under the legacy of Kemal Ataturk).

Our relations with Turkey developed over the years into a very close marriage, especially cozy between the armed forces. Joint exercises, sales of lots of arms, intelligence sharing. While Israel was helping the Iraqi Kurds against Saddam Hussein, it helped Ankara to oppress the Turkish Kurds. Jerusalem seriously considered laying a pipeline under the sea from Turkey to bring in water, which Turkey has in abundance and Israel sorely needs.

Suddenly everything changed. Turkish-Israeli relations foundered like a ship hit squarely by a torpedo.

It started when the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, abruptly got up and left a public dialogue with Shimon Peres in Davos. Israelis could understand that: not everybody can stand Peres.

But Avigdor Lieberman's Foreign Office decided to retaliate. His deputy, a genius by the name of Danny Ayalon, summoned the Turkish ambassador to his office for a rebuke and had him sit on a low sofa while towering above him on a high chair. The ambassador did not notice, but little Danny proudly explained his ploy to the assembled Israeli journalists. The Ambassador took his leave and went home.

Turkey reacted unofficially by sending the Mave Marmara to break the Gaza blockade. Nine Turks were killed. Turkey was in uproar. Erdogan demanded an apology. That's where the prestige came in.

One can argue, of course, that the whole business was a premeditated tactic of Erdogan's to change course and dump Israel for other allies. If so, it was even more stupid of our government to play into his hand.

WHEN THE Arab Spring broke out, Turkey jumped on the bandwagon and proposed a Turkish-Egyptian axis, reminiscent of the good old days of the Ottoman empire. Israel, on the other hand, stuck to its customary line.

Instead of realizing what was happening, our government clung to the shattered dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. If it had come out immediately and wholeheartedly in favor of the revolution, it could, perhaps, have gained a foothold in Egyptian public opinion, which had come to detest Mubarak as a well paid American lackey who helped Israel in starving a million and a half Arab brothers in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli intelligence did not realize that we were facing a historic earthquake that would change the region. Actually, it never foresees or understands events in the Arab world, being blinded by its contempt for Arabs.

The result was that Egyptian crowds attacked the Israeli embassy, forcing the ambassador and his staff to flee the country, and that saboteurs repeatedly blew up the pipeline that transports Egyptian gas to Israel at very low prices (probably negotiated after due bribes were paid to the right people.)

People here are now saying that the Egyptian public has always been against the peace with Israel, through no fault of ours. That is quite untrue. I was in Cairo a few days after Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem and found the Egyptian capital delirious with joy. Countless Israelis have visited Egypt since then and have been received always and everywhere with utmost friendliness. It was only when Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories became more and more oppressive that Egyptians started to feel betrayed.

Lieberman and Co. have lost Turkey and are losing Egypt, our two stalwart allies in the region, and have insulted, humiliated and trodden on the toes of a dozen other nations. But they have undoubtedly gained much prestige.

PEOPLE WHO look for logic in politics often arrive at conspiracy theories.

When the present government coalition was set up, Lieberman asked for the ministries of immigrants' absorption, justice, interior security (police) and foreign affairs.

Immigrants - that was natural. His voters are mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Justice and police - also natural. The police are conducting an endless investigation against him concerning mysterious funds that he and his very young daughter have received from Eastern European sources.

But the foreign office? What for? Why not the far more prestigious Ministry of Defense or the immensely powerful finance ministry?

One of my acquaintances has come up with a theory: what if the Russians...

Lieberman spends a lot of his time in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and his native Moldova. Who else but Russia has an interest in destroying the international standing of Israel, one of the closest allies of the United States? Wouldn't it have been rational for Vladimir Putin to...

But that is, of course, a joke. Not only is Lieberman known as an upright Israeli patriot, so patriotic that no one can stand next to him, but no handler in Moscow would accept as his agent a man with shifty eyes, who speaks with a thick Russian accent.

No, there must be another reason. But which?

A FOREIGN journalist asked me the other day: "but what do they think?"

"They" - Netanyahu, Lieberman et al - are losing all our remaining friends, humiliating Barack Obama on the way. They sabotage the resumption of peace negotiations. They sprinkle settlements everywhere.

If the Two-State solution is finally made impossible, what remains? A unified state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan? What kind of state would that be? They are dead set against a bi-national state, which would be the total negation of Zionism. An apartheid state? How long could that last?

The only "rational" alternative would be total ethnic cleansing, the driving out of 5.5 million Palestinians from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel proper. Is that possible? Would the world tolerate it, unless it is distracted by an invasion from Mars?

The answer is: "they" just don't think very much at all. Israelis have been conditioned by their experience to think in the very short term. As the Americans say: "A statesman thinks about the next generation, a politician thinks about the next election." Or as the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann used to say: "The future will come and care for the future."

There is no national debate, only a vague desire to keep everything. Rightist Zionists want to hold on to all of historical Palestine, leftist Zionists want to hold on to as much of it as possible. That's as far as the thinking goes.

The ancient Hebrew sages said: "Who is the bravest hero? He who turns his enemy into a friend." The modern sages who govern us have turned this around: "Who has the most prestige? He who turns his friend into an enemy."
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







Occupational Therapy
Americans Finally Join the Wave of Healthy Global Protest
By Randall Amster

"Hello, you've reached the people of the United States of America. We're away from our desks right now, and perhaps for good -- so instead of leaving a message for us, we encourage you to take your messages directly to the halls of power for their consideration. If you require immediate assistance, do not ask the agents of governments or corporations, but organize in your own communities instead. For directory assistance, get out in the streets and talk to others concerned about the direction of the nation and world. To be connected to an operator, follow the protest signs and/or the smell of teargas in the financial districts across the country. And if you should become disconnected ... we are very happy to welcome you home to the movement!"

Our "interesting times" just got much more interesting. Is it actually possible that the "sleeping giant" that is the American people is finally beginning to join the rest of the world and show a genuine pulse? To be sure, we've been pretty well shell-shocked on these shores in the new millennium, and overall we've been less directly impacted by the ongoing effects of "The Age of Austerity, Degradation, and Warfare" than many others. Our lives of relative privilege in the U.S. also mean that we have farther to fall, and indeed many are finally feeling the fuller brunt of the crisis. Is it too late? Definitely not. Do we need to act immediately? Unquestionably, yes.

Enter the "Occupy Everything" movement. Fanning out from Wall Street, the symbolic epicenter of speculative greed and financial brinksmanship, the concept of occupying space en masse to protest social inequality and environmental devastation has proliferated across the nation. This is, indeed, becoming a full-fledged "occupation" -- which is a doubly poignant notion, considering that one of the trigger issues in the movement is unemployment and a rampant sense of job insecurity. People without work are literally finding a true occupation.

None of this has happened in a vacuum, and undoubtedly there have been many precursors and warning signs of the coming struggle, from the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 to the more recent mobilizations in Arizona against austerity and racism. Most notable perhaps is the Wisconsin example, which demonstrated the utility of broad-based "people power" actions in pushing back against the ravages of an economic system gone haywire. Critical observers might be able to plausibly say that they could even see this coming...

Yet this is clearly new and different. People aren't just rattling their cages, but are demanding that the penitentiary be dismantled altogether. This doesn't appear to be some parochial, NIMBY, single-issue protest that will melt away once a few minor concessions (or outright bribes) are granted to the affected class. It likely won't be beaten back by pepper spray and billy clubs, since you can't kill an idea. No, this moment of escalating occupation seemingly calls into question the entire imperialist operation, following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s insight that merely "flinging a coin to a beggar" is insufficient since "an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Wall Street, You're Fired!

We've been waiting a long time for this, wondering: how much pain do Americans have to feel before they join the majority of the planet's inhabitants in recognizing the inherent injustice of a global system of production and consumption that pits the elites against everyone else and all of us against the earth itself? Our privilege, comfort, and cultural distractions have largely insulated us from the worst effects, including those that we are responsible for creating and visiting upon hapless, countless, nameless others. But there comes a point when even the bird in the gilded cage sees beyond the bars and recognizes its essential confinement.

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations seem to be eliciting precisely that response. Indeed, even my local (and generally conservative) paper gets it, as evidenced by this recent editorial:

"The one mistake is for pundits to focus attention on the protesters themselves. That's exactly what Wall Street and oil speculators want -- to keep themselves off the hot seat. About 700 protesters were arrested this past Saturday but, to date, not a single arrest has been made from anywhere in the Wall Street districts regarding the Russian roulette they played with the lives of distant, faceless Americans spread out all over the country who are reeling in the wake of outright investor thievery and negligence."

A few years ago, such a statement would not have been forthcoming, or even possible. But in this climate -- which is rapidly changing in real time, both politically and ecologically -- it's becoming safer for the mainstream to openly oppose the power elite. Such is the virtue of a popular uprising, and when it catches hold widely across all demographics in a given society (as evidenced in Egypt and other locales), major restructuring becomes possible. The challenge will be to sustain it in the face of repression and/or concessions; the test of this will be precisely what makes today's uprising intriguing: its demands are potentially systemic and structural.

Thus, the aim is not to reform Wall Street (and its sponsors/allies within government, corporate America, and the military-industrial complex) but to tear down its misbegotten and historically tainted edifice altogether. No more profligate fatcats, unethical speculators, misery profiteers, or robber barons. Their sort of business is no longer welcome here; the exponential growth and expanding wealth gap model will cease operations immediately or be dismantled by the people who are suffering its indignities and depredations. Shades of one Mario Savio, circa 1964:

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

In Case of Emergency, Break Glass?

Militant rhetoric notwithstanding, social movements have been schooled repeatedly on the double-edged nature of tactics perceived as confrontational or "violent" in any manner whatsoever. Smashing symbols of oppression has its appeal in a visceral sense, and can be used to galvanize energy around certain issues or targets -- the archetypal example being the shattering of a few corporate windows in Seattle as a means of drawing attention to the previously clandestine workings of the World Trade Organization. But there's a diminishing return involved, in which the direct act garners attention but mainly for the act itself without the larger context and specific grievances being equally reported. And this pattern clearly is more pronounced in the post 9/11 era, where even garden-variety acts of civil disobedience can raise the specter of being branded with the dreaded and media-enticing t-word.

On the other hand, dutifully marching in permitted rows and then going home to watch it on television doesn't exactly "get the goods" either. Orchestrated acts of disobedience possess a choreographed quality that can likewise strip away any deeper communication of the salient issues. So how exactly does a movement in the modern era demonstrate its forcefulness and resolve without alienating others or courting official demonization in the process? How do we convey the gravity of the issues and our rightful frustrations without becoming the very things we're struggling against -- namely intolerance, militarism, domination, and coercion? Unquestionably, the use of "force" from below raises different ethical questions than when it's deployed from above, yet in the minds of many undecided observers the distinction is murky.

After all, if my optimistic reading of the potential of the Occupation Movement is correct, the aim is to shift the paradigm rather than accomplish small reforms or win minor concessions. To accomplish this, it will take more than the energies of dedicated activists around the nation (although that in itself would be an excellent start). There will need to be a critical mass of people and communities resisting business-as-usual and forging new sets of relationships to supplant the old ones that have taken us to the brink of cultural and ecological survivability. The proliferation of #occupy hashtags in nearly every city and town is inspiring and potent -- yet the movement still needs to reach beyond its current adherents to those wedded to the blind privilege of their manufactured, manipulated, medicated lives in the cradle of a dying empire.

A Bridge to Somewhere

This is the moment where a movement either peters out or finds its voice. The ruling elite can endure outbreaks of mass cage-rattling through a combination of repression, provocation, disinformation, and/or censorship. In the end, "the system" can always argue that it might not be perfect, but it's the only game in town capable of meeting life's needs for multitudes of people, and in any event the protestors are just spoiled kids blowing off steam with no real alternative at the ready. "700 arrested shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge" makes a great one-day headline, but if it isn't soon followed by "700 new ways to feed your family and have productive, meaningful lives" it's hard to sustain the public interest in this age of the 24-hour news cycle. Occupation is a strong tactic with definite therapeutic benefits, but it still requires that next (and perhaps harder) step of articulating a better world and not merely end empire.

The seeds are clearly in evidence: an ethical redistribution of wealth and power, sustainable and socially just lifeways, production for utility rather than profit, balancing human needs within the capacity of the biosphere, maximizing societal potential through opportunity and diversity, converting the waste of the war machine into the abundance of a peace economy, dismantling the architecture of oppression in favor of human and political rights, liberating the creativity of humankind from the shackles of eternal indebtedness, making education a universal blessing rather than an individual burden, halting the ravages of climate change, and restoring the planet's life-giving properties by reintegrating self, society, and nature.

Occupying the spaces and places of power and privilege is an outstanding first step that crucially links the U.S. with the myriad popular struggles that have been underway for some time now around the world. It has the look and feel of a "thousand flowers blooming" and represents the combined best virtues of decentralization and solidarity alike. If there are folks reading this still undecided about the efficacy of Occupation, it's at least worth wading out into the streets, since (as the saying goes) the only thing you have to lose is your chains. Let's face it: the window of time in which to act is rapidly closing. Even if we got shafted by those before us, it's still every generation's responsibility to leave the world in better shape than we found it. Indeed, you might even say that this is our highest calling and most worthwhile occupation.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).






Occupy Wall Street
The Most Important Thing in the World Now
By Naomi Klein

I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a.k.a. "the human microphone"), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

I love you.

And I didn't just say that so that hundreds of you would shout "I love you" back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: "We found each other." That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can't be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it's a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say "No. We will not pay for your crisis."

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.

"Why are they protesting?" ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: "What took you so long?" "We've been wondering when you were going to show up." And most of all: "Welcome."

Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called "the movement of movements."

But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That made us transient too. We'd appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It's because they don't have roots. And they don't have long term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.

Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen.

Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.

But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shutdowns.

We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren't any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite-fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful-the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society-while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.

What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I'm not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that's important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it's also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.

That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says, "I care about you." In a culture that trains people to avoid each other's gaze, to say, "Let them die," that is a deeply radical statement.

A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don't matter.

* What we wear.

* Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.

* Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.

And here are a few things that do matter.

* Our courage.

* Our moral compass.

* How we treat each other.

We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That's frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets-like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that's easier to win.

Don't give in to the temptation. I'm not saying don't call each other on shit. But this time, let's treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.

Let's treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.
(c) 2011 Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."







Occupy Wall Street

To paraphrase a Bob Dylan song, "Something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?"

A New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante is but one of many establishment reporters and pundits who've been covering the fledgling "Occupy Wall Street" movement - but completely missing the story. Instead of really digging into what's "happening here," they've resorted to fuddy-duddy mockery of an important populist protest that has sprouted right in Wall Street's front yard.

In her article, Bellafante dismissed the young people's effort as "fractured and airy," calling it a "carnival" in an "intellectual vacuum." Their cause is so "diffuse and leaderless," she wrote, that its purpose is "virtually impossible to decipher." Participation, she announced, is "dwindling."

Whew - so snide! Yet, so wrong.

While the establishment is befuddled by the plethora of issues and slogans within the protest and put off by its festive spirit, that's their problem. The 20-and-30-somethings who are driving this movement know what they're doing and are far more organized than those accustomed to conventional hierarchical protests seem able to comprehend.

It's silly to say that the protestors' purpose is indecipherable. Hello - they're encamped next door to Wall Street, isn't that a clue? They want what America's workaday majority wants: stop the gross greed of financial and corporate elites, and expel a political class that's so corrupted by the money of those wealthy elites that it has turned its back on the middle class and the poor.

Such movements don't begin with a neat set of solutions, but with roiling outrage focused on the plutocratic perpetrators of injustice. These young people are on target... and on the move. Don't ridicule them, join them! Go to www.OccupyWallSt.org.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Kennedy On Kennedy
By Helen Thomas

Reading Jacqueline Kennedy's interviews with historian Arthur Schlesinger reminded me of what we lack in the current presidential candidates - inspiration and hope.

We could also use some new ideas for attacking the 9.1 percent unemployment rate, and the slumping economy. But the silence is deafening and depressing. The GOP candidates are too busy undercutting one another to inspire or bring hope to struggling Americans. But that is another story.

I covered the Kennedy Administration at the White House from Jan. 20, 1961, until John F. Kennedy's tragic assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, and all proceeding Presidents in the White House, through part of the Obama Administration. I too have memories, but as an outside observer.

The gossip around town was that Jackie hated politics. She did skip some of the Democratic ladies' teas at the White House, and she did prefer to spend her weekends fox hunting in Middleburg, Virginia.

To hear her tell it, Jackie was allured by her husband's political ambitions, and the conversation at the White House dinner table was politics. She also pitched in during the 1960 presidential campaign, calling conservative Senator Pat McCarran (with a Kennedy aide) and won McCarran's support and his whole Nevada delegation.

The new book with historic photos of the former first family is titled Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, and includes a foreword by daughter Caroline Kennedy.

The book is well worth reading, reflecting on a private White House and the insights into the goals and personal ambitions of those surrounding the Kennedys.

Jackie was known as an elegant first lady and a style setter. Although she shunned feminism and the movement for equality in the White House, she caught up when she went to work as an editor at Doubleday after JFK's death.

The former first lady made her mark in history by restoring the White House to its Colonial-era elegance, and helped to preserve the great historic buildings in Washington, which were going to be torn down for the new look of glass and steel.

Jackie also brought great artists to the White House, including a dinner featuring cellist Pablo Casals, an exhibit of the Mona Lisa brought by French Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux, and performances by Shakespearean actors like John Gielgud.

Jackie was not above snide remarks about aides and cabinet members in her husband's administration. Ted Sorensen, Kennedy's eloquent speechwriter, became a bete noire when he seemed to promote his authorship of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage. Kennedy put the question to rest by pulling out the yellow legal pad which included his notes for the book.

Jackie made it clear there was no love between Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, who was twice defeated as the Democratic presidential nominee. She also disdained Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Kennedy saw he had some hurdles to win the presidency: His Catholicism, and his youth - he was only 43 years old. Former President Harry Truman attacked his age and inexperience.

To deflect the opposition to his Catholicism, Kennedy went to Houston to address a Presbyterian Convention and won the praises of the ministers by promising not to take orders from the Pope. To this day, his speech remains memorable - something Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and current candidate for the Republican Party presidential nomination, should be using during his campaign.

Jackie had some reservations about the Kennedy Palace Guard. She said Kennedy "didn't particularly like Lyndon B. Johnson," whom he later picked to be his Vice Presidential candidate, hoping Johnson would bring with him the reluctant South. Jackie thought Johnson was "rude" to her husband, but Kennedy was always sending the jibes back.

Jackie became disenchanted with Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. when Bobby, then attorney general, told her of FBI tapes documenting King's illicit relations with women.

When asked what Kennedy had left as a legacy, she said, "He gave youth and intellect, and taste, a world voice ... and he had extraordinary contribution of idealism and realism." Kennedy told us to reach for the stars during his lifetime. Where are such candidates today?
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







What Secret Does The CIA Know About Climate Change?
By James Donahue

Of all the strange reports coming out of Washington this year, the decision by the Central Intelligence Agency to keep its own analysis of the effects of global warming "classified" in the interest of national security is among the more peculiar.

While we are still listening to politicians declare that they remain in total denial of climate change and a warming earth, most world scientists have been sounding the alarm for years and some government agencies have warned that weather-related issues like melting ice caps, rising sea levels, depletion of natural resources, severe storms and desertification are already having an impact on our overpopulated world.

If anything, it is perhaps refreshing to know that at least one government agency has concluded that global warming/climate change is a national threat. What is disconcerting is that the agency feels that some of the information obtained in a study, apparently made nearly a decade ago, is too dangerous to be made public.

Thus the question is . . . what do they know that we don't already know? Is the world perhaps caught up under some kind of doomsday clock that the CIA is keeping under wraps?

It was as early as February, 2004 that a Pentagon report about the potentially imminent and colossal national security threat posed by climate change made its way around the Internet. Even then, some publications accused the military of "suppressing" the report even though an entire copy could easily be downloaded from a circulating PDF file on line. Even then, the findings by the military chiefs were grim and the report not only should have been making headlines, but kicking politicians into action to do something about it.

Remember that we still had the village idiot, George W. Bush, in power in 2004. And Mr. Bush and his team were busy that year manipulating the American public into re-electing him to a second term in office. Mr. Bush was a robotic "yes man" for the corporate interests controlling the nation, so his public position was that global warming was a hoax. The Republican position was then, and may still be that the whole story has been perpetuated by "the Chicken Little crowd" that claims the sky is falling.

The Pentagon report didn't fall completely on deaf ears in Washington. It stimulated a bill by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman to introduce the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act as a first real step toward dealing with the dangers of climate change. But the bill was defeated in the Senate.

The CIA apparently got involved with the Pentagon in 2009, and by early 2010 a story under the by-line Tom Gjelten broke on the Internet announcing that the two military agencies were officially considering global warming a threat to U. S. national security.

The story said the issue was identified for the first time in the Quadrennial Defense Review, a Congress-mandated report that updates Pentagon priorities every four years. Gjelten wrote that "the reference to climate change follows the establishment in October of a new Center for the Study of Climate Change at the Central Intelligence Agency.

"The projections lead us to believe that severe weather events will increase in intensity in the future, perhaps in frequency as well," Gjelten wrote.

The story suggested that military planners were looking at worst case scenarios like pandemics, wars over oil, food, water and other dwindling natural resources and the displacement of millions of people by flooding, drought and pestilence.

In short, the military is busy drawing up detailed plans for handling a wide variety of contingencies caused by extreme heating and weather changes that are already occurring.

Strangely, after announcing that it was creating a center to analyze the geopolitical ramifications of the effects of climate change, the CIA has now "classified" the results of all of the information it now has collected.

American author and academic researcher Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow with the National Security Archive, writes on an Internet blog that the CIA denied his recent Freedom of Information Act request for the agencies' findings.

Richelson said a CIA spokesperson told him that after a

"thorough search for records responsive to your request and located material that we determined is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety."

So what more is there to know about future earth changes? The very fact that a government agency like the CIA is holding back information like this suggests some kind of conspiracy may be in the works. Stories have been circulating for years about secret underground bunkers that have been under construction not only in the United States but under Russia, Europe and other nations of the world. There recently has been a strange shortage not only of food but medical supplies. Do the wealthy kings of the earth plan to burrow underground like the ant people foretold in Hopi prophecy? Are they about to leave the rest of us to perish because of a natural disaster that is about to befall us all?
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.




The organic strength of Occupy Wall Street defies the standard
dismissals from the corporate media's predictably stale stable of pundits.



A New Bush Era or a Push Era?
By Amy Goodman

Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, "Make me do it." He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph's demand for civil rights for African-Americans.

While President Obama has made concession after concession to both the corporate-funded tea party and his Wall Street donors, now that he is again in campaign mode, his progressive critics are being warned not to attack him, as that might aid and abet the Republican bid for the White House.

Enter the 99 percenters. The Occupy Wall Street ranks continue to grow, inspiring more than 1,000 solidarity protests around the country and the globe. After weeks, and one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, Obama finally commented: "I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works." But neither he nor his advisers-or the Republicans-know what to do with this burgeoning mass movement.

Following the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which allows unlimited corporate donations to support election advertising, the hunger for campaign cash is insatiable. The Obama re-election campaign aims to raise $1 billion. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the financial industry was Obama's second-largest source of 2008 campaign contributions, surpassed only by the lawyers/lobbyists industry sector.

The suggestion that a loss for Obama would signal a return to the Bush era has some merit: The Associated Press reported recently that "almost all of [Mitt] Romney's 22 special advisers held senior Bush administration positions in diplomacy, defense or intelligence. Two former Republican senators are included as well as Bush-era CIA chief Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff." But so is the Obama presidency an expansion of the Bush era, unless there is a new "Push era."

The organic strength of Occupy Wall Street defies the standard dismissals from the corporate media's predictably stale stable of pundits. For them, it is all about the divide between the Republicans and the Democrats, a divide the protesters have a hard time seeing. They see both parties captured by Wall Street. Richard Haass, head of the establishment Council on Foreign Relations, said of the protesters, "They're not serious." He asked why they are not talking about entitlements. Perhaps it is because, to the 99 percent, Social Security and Medicare are not the problem, but rather growing inequality, with the 400 richest Americans having more wealth than half of all Americans combined. And then there is the overwhelming cost and toll of war, first and foremost the lives lost, but also the lives destroyed, on all sides.

It's why, for example, Jose Vasquez, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, was down at Occupy Wall Street on Monday night. He told me: "It's no secret that a lot of veterans are facing unemployment, homelessness and a lot of other issues that are dealing with the economy. A lot of people get deployed multiple times and are still struggling. ... I've met a lot of veterans who have come here. I just met a guy who is active duty, took leave just to come to Occupy Wall Street."

The historic election of Barack Obama was achieved by millions of people across the political spectrum. For years during the Bush administration, people felt they were hitting their heads against a brick wall. With the election, the wall had become a door, but it was only open a crack. The question was, would it be kicked open or slammed shut? It is not up to one person. Obama had moved from community organizer in chief to commander in chief. When forces used to having the ear of the most powerful person on earth whisper their demands in the Oval Office, the president must see a force more powerful outside his window, whether he likes it or not, and say, "If I do that, they will storm the Bastille." If there's no one out there, we are all in big trouble.
(c) 2011 Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!" a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback








Dancing On Our Occupation Permit
By David Swanson

Sunday night, our permit expired for occupying Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. So, we threw a dance party, and when we could dance no more, we went to sleep in Freedom Plaza.

We have until 2 p.m. today to remove our possessions. We do not intend to do so. We suspect that if the police want to remove us by force they will wait until evening. So we're throwing a dinner party, and 99% of the country is invited.

Our permit is now the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

There is no way for the vast majority of people in this enormous country to petition our government for a redress of grievances other than what we are doing. We've phoned, emailed, faxed, and mailed letters. And yet rich people are taxed less than poor people, wars rage on, 65% of discretionary spending goes into the war machine, our social safety net is being shredded, and our environment is being destroyed. So, we're here in person, but most of us cannot afford hotel rooms. We are exercising our First Amendment rights in the only possible way: by camping in Washington, D.C., and protesting our government in a manner it cannot avoid.

Whether or not you are sleeping in Freedom Plaza, you can join us there, whether or not the square has been cleared overnight, whether or not we've been arrested, whether or not you've been arrested, whether or not the weather is fine, meet in Freedom Plaza at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, and we will take our grievances to Capitol Hill.

If we are arrested in Freedom Plaza we will return to it. If we are arrested in Freedom Plaza, we want you to replace us in larger numbers. You will not regret the experience.

A friend caught a cab to Freedom Plaza the other day. The cabbie said "If you're one of the protesters, the ride is free."

Stores are saying the same.

Random people are joining in marches when we march through downtown.

We are the 99%, we say, and so are … You are the 99%, and so are … We are the 99%, and so are …

This is an open and welcoming movement. Some of our brothers and sisters are occupying McPherson Square as well, and they can have 500 there with no permit. Join them too.

We need to hold these two squares, not because the marble or the grass is running our government into the ground, but because people from out of town cannot bring public pressure to bear on Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, K Street, or the Chamber of Commerce if we cannot live here.

We cannot learn democracy at home, and let me tell you it is not an easy thing to learn. It takes us longer to talk about a protest action than to engage in it. But we talk about it together. One person, one voice. No corporate persons. No financial voices. Democracy is indeed the worst form of government except for all the other ones.

If the police had come last night, the crowd of dancing demonstrators would have cheered and asked them to join the party.

And I think it's just possible they would have done so.

What do you say we try that again tonight?
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Rumble From The People
By Ralph Nader

Inside the barricading bubbles surrounding the Wall Street plutocrats and the Washington oligarchs who service them, there must be worry. After three years of disclosed "lying, cheating and stealing" as one prosecutor put it, with nary a visible stir from the masses, suddenly the barricades are beginning to quiver.

Could this "Occupy Wall Street" challenge in New York City that is spreading to hundreds of communities from Prescott, Arizona to Hartford, Connecticut, be the real thing they have dreaded? Could this be the revolt of the multitudes, the "reserve army of the unemployed?"

It is remarkable what a little more than 100,000 Americans, showing up and staying awhile have done in three weeks.

They're rattling the corporate supremacists. They have become a mass media story with columnists, editorials and cartoonists grinding out the ever increasing commentary.

There is fascination and curiosity about people who call themselves "The 99 percent!" People are organizing their little societies and 24/7 necessities - food, first aid, shelter, legal advice, music, posters - all without leaders.

The demonstrators are deliberately nonviolent but are angry over deep inequities and entrenched greed and power that are impoverishing and harming millions in need, including hungry children and those without health care. The protesters are keeping the pundits and pontificators guessing about their "real agenda."

Perfect, so far! Keep expanding the numbers of Americans who show up all over, who stay, who discover each other's talents and the emerging power of the powerless. Go to 300,000, then 800,000, then 2 million and onward. There are 25 million Americans who want work but cannot get it to pay their rent, their debts, their mortgages and their multiplying student loans. While big corporate profits, bosses' bonuses and tax loopholes for the wealthy proliferate.

Sparked by an urging from the culture-jamming ADBUSTERS magazine from Vancouver, Canada in July, the Occupy Wall Street effort gets more remarkable by the day. It carries the moral outrage and the moral authority of the vast majority of Americans who are excluded, disrespected, defrauded, unrepresented, underpaid and unemployed. The American dream has turned into a nightmare. They are taught to trust as school children the very public and business institutions that have betrayed them, looted or drained their pensions, their tax dollars and their common properties.

Those protesters at the renamed Liberty Park in New York are going into the nearby stores, with other consumers, and paying nearly 9 percent sales tax on their purchases. While the Wall Streeters are buying trillions of derivatives and stocks without paying a penny in sales tax. Taxing Wall Street speculators could produce hundreds of billions of overdue dollars a year from just a ½ percent sales tax on financial speculation.

The Wall Street "occupiers" and their offspring have good picks for their demonstrations. In Washington, D.C. they chose the insidious corporatists at the Chamber of Commerce building opposite the White House. They went before the building that houses part of the military-industrial complex devouring our public budget that President Eisenhower warned us about in his remarkable farewell address in January 1961. (Read it here.)

It will be only a short time before these resisters point to these multinational corporations' abandonment of America by shipping jobs and industries to dictatorial regimes abroad that repress their 80 cents an hour workers.

Reporters write with some surprise about this new human energy. Look at all the bystanders in suits or uniforms nodding in support at the posters, the signs and the chants. Washington Post columnist, Patula Dvorak was astonished and observed:

"Every Washingtonian I talked to who stepped out to watch the action in Freedom Plaza - from the security guards to the suits - felt a solidarity with the message.

"The banks. The banks are taking all of us for a ride," one security guard told me. "And they're in the right place now, because Congress is behind that."

Though the Occupy surge is going in the right direction - flipping our corporate government from our masters to our servants - no one knows how far it will go, whether it will retain its burgeoning energy and what the backlash will be from the ruling power structures.

Back in October 2008, when Wall Street was crashing on American investors, workers and taxpayers -- in that order -- our independent presidential campaign held a major rally at Wall Street.

Addressing the New York Stock Exchange, with our participators and their signs, I proposed specific recommendations for law enforcement, a financial transaction tax and accountability for those handling "other peoples' money." Few listened.

Now the powers-that-be are starting to listen, because instead of a one day event, they see day-after-day aroused citizens rallying back home and before the perpetrators of the predatory abuses.

When the corporate and political bosses hear the rising roar from the people, they start sweating. Now is time to turn up the heat without pausing.

Visit Occupy Wall Street for more information on how to join the movement.
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.








Panic Of The Plutocrats
By Paul Krugman

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important - namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called "economic royalists," not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police - confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction - but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced "mobs" and "the pitting of Americans against Americans." The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging "class warfare," while Herman Cain calls them "anti-American." My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don't deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to "take the jobs away from people working in this city," a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement's actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters "let their freak flags fly," and are "aligned with Lenin."

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it's part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes - well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler's invasion of Poland.

And then there's the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical - it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous dictum that "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you'd think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a "collectivist agenda," that she believes that "individualism is a chimera." And Rush Limbaugh called her "a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it."

What's going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street's Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They're not John Galt; they're not even Steve Jobs. They're people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees - basically, they're still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can't bear close scrutiny - and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who's really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America's oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
~~~ Mark Twain ~~~









The Real Danger From Classified Leaks
By Glenn Greenwald

It's worthwhile to expand on one point I made at the end of yesterday's discussion of the leaking by anonymous DOJ officials of selected portions of the Awlaki memo to The New York Times' Charlie Savage. As Marcy Wheeler noted, "What was leaked to Savage is MORE classified than anything Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked." But as I added last night, given that these anonymous DOJ officials appear to have been on a mission to justify the President's assassination order as legal and just, it's probably inadvisable to hold your breath waiting for the criminal leak investigation to begin.

This highlights a vital point: the Obama administration's chronic, self-serving and dangerous game-playing with classified information. The New York Times' Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane, had a good column yesterday on the administration's obsessive secrecy when it comes to assassinations, drones and the killing of U.S. citizens. With regard to the administration's refusal even to account for the legal principles it has embraced governing whom the President can order killed, the Public Editor writes: "it should be intolerable that the question goes unanswered." But far worse, Brisbane notes that the administration manipulates and exploits its secrecy powers by leaking snippets to the media which glorify President Obama while concealing everything else:

After the drone strike, The Times and others lit up with accounts of the event, and unnamed government officials poured forth with comments. There was no mistaking the administration's eagerness to put its antiterrorism success on display. . . . The administration invokes secrecy to shield the details while simultaneously deploying a campaign of leaks to build public support. For The Times, and its peers, this dynamic is beyond awkward: it gives the appearance that the government is manipulating them.

The reason that behavior "gives the appearance that the government is manipulating" the media is because that is the reality. If a government employee leaks classified information that exposes wrongdoing on the part of the President or his aides or otherwise embarrasses them, he is prosecuted without mercy; at the same time, the President and his aides constantly leak bits of classified information (which remain classified) in order to benefit the President politically. Thus, when it suits them, they dole out snippets of information about how the Tough, Strong President killed the Bad Guy with brutal efficiency and bravery - and how his lawyers said it was permissible - but all the details necessary to assess the accuracy of those claims and any information which contradicts them remain suppressed, and if anyone exposes them, they face lengthy prison terms. Brisbane added:

"How can the U.S. government have rules that spell out when it can use lethal force, even against a U.S. citizen, and not let the rest of the citizens know what those rules are?" Jane Mayer, who has written about the drone program for The New Yorker, said in an e-mail to me. "The press ought to be able to get access to and describe the legal opinions that govern this program. As we saw with the torture memos, which eventually leaked, legal reasoning can be extraordinarily revealing, and important" . . . .

The public has a right to know, and assess, the legal rationale for these extraordinary and highly visible state killings. The public should have documented details concerning civilian casualties of the drone strikes.

But while The Most Transparent Adminstration Ever refuses to provide even this basic information about the Awlaki killing, it manipulates its secrecy powers to ensure that the only information that is known is information that can be used to venerate the Leader. The same thing happened with the bin Laden killing: the Obama administration has resisted efforts to declassify and disclose videos, documents and photographs regarding the raid that killed him - requests motivated by the administration's multiple inconsistent and ultimately false statements about what took place and lingering questions about what happened - but then oh-so-mysteriously showed little interest (i.e., none) in discovering and punishing those who orally fed The New Yorker supposed details of the raid that produced an uncritical hagiography of those, including the President, responsible for the bin Laden killing.

This game-playing with secrecy powers has been going on for quite some time. In the wake of the 2005 disclosure that the Bush adminstration was spying on Americans without warrants, we suddenly learned from an anonymous government leaker that the Bush administration had a super-top-secret program in place to detect unusual radioactivity in the nation's mosques and the monitoring was even conducted without warrants - a leak which helpfully suggested, at the height of the NSA controversy, that Muslims in this country may be trying to radiate your children but that the administration is using super-sophisticated and stealth means even if they are a little bit illegal (just like warrantless eavesdropping) to protect and save us all. While the Bush administration was obsessed with punishing those responsible for the NSA leak - to the point of publicly threatening The New York Times with criminal prosecution - they, needless to say, displayed no interest in learning the identity of those who leaked their heroic efforts to detect radiation at mosques.

The problem of "overclassification" receives some attention (though not nearly the level of media condemnation as what is heaped on those who engage in unauthorized leaks (at least the leaks the Government dislikes)). But the problem is much worse than mere execssive secrecy. Anyone who purports concern over the harmful leaking of classified information should look first to the Obama administration, which uses secrecy powers as a manipulative tool to propagandize the citizenry: trumpeting information that makes the leader and his government look good while suppressing anything with the force of criminal law that does the opposite. Using secrecy powers to propagandize the citizenry this way is infinitely more harmful than any of the leaks the Obama administration has so aggressively prosecuted.

* * * * *

Speaking of secrecy obssession: U.S. citizen Jacob Appelbaum was identified as a WikiLeaks spokesman last year. Since then, despite being charged with (let alone convicted of) no crime whatsoever, he has - all without any search warrants - had his laptop, cellphone and camera seized at the airport; been repeatedly subjected to detention every time he re-enters the country; had people whose only crime was to appear in his telephone subjected to similar harrassment; had orders issued for information showing his Twitter activities and communications; and now, as The Wall Street Journal reports today, has had a secret Order served by the DOJ on Google and another internet provider for an array of information relating to his email activity (including the list of those with whom he has corresponded by email over the last two years: I'm happy to say I'm one of those correspondents).

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" and that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause." In light of everything the U.S. Government has been able to seize regarding Appelbaum without a single search warrant - laptops, cellphones, cameras, memory sticks, Twitter activity, electronic goods of his friends, interrogation via forcible detention, and now lists of his email correspondents and other information showing his email activity - is there any rational conclusion other than to view that Amendment as an absurd joke?
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.




A group of children from Central Park East One and Two schools join
demonstrators at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park,
New York, October 10, 2011.




A Delicate Moment for the Occupy Wall Street Movement
By William Rivers Pitt

Anyone who still thinks the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests are some kind of fluke, an exercise in ego inflation by spoiled college kids and aging hippies, needs to go back to bed. This thing is very much for real, is very large, and is growing exponentially. Similar protests have sprung up in dozens of cities all across the country, and with an 'Occupy the London Stock Exchange' action set to take place on Saturday, the movement is poised to become an international affair.

The New York police have already laid into the Wall Street protesters with unnecessary violence on more than one occasion, and the Boston police have likewise gotten into the action:

In one of the largest mass arrests in recent Boston history, the Boston Police Department cleared a park of activists with the 99 Percent Movement in the early hours of Tuesday morning, dismantling and destroying tents that had been set up on Monday. Startling footage shot by an onlooker shows members of Veterans for Peace, an organization of U.S. military veterans who oppose war, being arrested by members of the Boston Police Department, their flags - including the American flag - being thrown to the ground.

Before the arrests and clearing of the park, the police surrounded it, lining up over a dozen paddy wagons along one side. They told members of the media to leave and not to film proceedings. After a five-minute warning to disperse, police moved in, first arresting the peacefully protesting veterans - who included a female veteran of the Iraq War, according to the Boston Phoenix - and then other Occupy Boston activists. According to Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, about 100 arrests were made.

The police then tore down the protesters' encampment. Live feeds from onlookers showed Boston Police dumping dismantled tents, signs, and chairs into waiting garbage trucks, destroying the protesters' property.

Frontal assaults have not been the only tactic deployed by those who would like to see the OWS movement dry up and blow away. Patrick Howley, an assistant editor for the right-bent publication The American Spectator, bragged on the Spectator's website about deliberately disrupting a peaceful protest at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, for no other reason than to give the protesters a bad name. James O'Keefe, the wannabe gotcha-journalist famous for his manipulative hit pieces on ACORN and NPR, has been spotted skulking around Wall Street...which sets up an amusing potential endgame for him, as he is on probation in New Jersey and requires a judge's permission to leave the state. As best as anyone can determine, that permission was never obtained. Hopefully Mr. O'Keefe can find refuge in an OWS protester's tent to avoid the judge's wrath.

So the cops are getting heavier, the agent provocateurs are out in force, and the protests continue to grow. Now is a most delicate time for the movement. If the protesters react with violence to police, the "mainstream" media will have the opportunity they've been waiting for to disparage and discredit the entire thing. If the fakers and disruptors in the crowd are not exposed immediately, as was the care with Howley and O'Keefe, they will paint a fraudulent picture of the movement that will likewise allow the "mainstream" news to create an inaccurate and unflattering picture. So far so good on these scores, but the protesters absolutely must continue to do what they have been so excellently doing, no matter what provocations they are presented with. The whole world is indeed watching.

Another delicate moment looms for the movement, one you can file under "With Friends Like These..." Yes, everyone can relax, because the Democratic Party is coming to the hoedown. The very politicians whose inactivity and collusion regarding Wall Street excesses made this movement necessary in the first place have licked their finger, put it to the wind, and decided it is safe to come out and play:

Prominent House Democrats are embracing the Occupy Wall Street protests as demonstrations are spreading across the country and gaining support from traditional progressive institutions. Democratic leaders in Congress say that there's a lot to like about movement's central message that corporate greed is fueling a growing income gap. And the enthusiasm from Democrats in Washington suggests that they think this sentiment will resonant across the country.

Other progressive Democrats are even more enthusiastic. "I'm so proud to see the Occupy Wall Street movement standing up to this rampant corporate greed and peacefully participating in our democracy," said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY). The co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, Reps. Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva, issued a joint statement to express "solidarity" with the movement, describing themselves as inspired by the mass movement. "We join the calls for corporate accountability and expanded middle-class opportunity," they wrote. "The silent masses aren't so silent anymore. They are fighting to give voice to the struggles that everyday Americans are going through," added Rep. John Larson in his own statement supporting Occupy Wall Street.

Even Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat, agreed that there were similarities between the protesters' message and Democratic priorities. "Certainly, there is an overlap in terms of jobs and economic opportunity, which they want and we want," Hoyer told me. Though he didn't go so far as his Democratic colleagues in embracing the movement wholeheartedly, he said that one "positive aspect" of the protests is that they're "raising issues and raising concerns and asking policymakers to focus on it."

Howls of outrage and disgust from OWS activists and supporters could be heard all up and down the Eastern seaboard when word reached them of their new prospective allies. No, no, and hell no, went the refrain. These are the same politicians who line the pockets of the very people being protested, and now all of a sudden they want to join the struggle? The OWS movement is protesting the Democrats as much as it protesting against the rest of the crooked institutional theft machine that shattered the economy in the first place.

There is a decision to be made here. Does the OWS movement issue a "Thanks But No Thanks" response to the Democrats' sudden interest, or do they open their arms and welcome the Party to the party under the auspices of "The More The Merrier"?

Personally, I incline to the latter choice, distasteful as it may be. Including the Democratic Party will raise the profile of the movement, and make it more difficult for it to be undermined. Time will tell if they are too undermined by their own participation in the economic collapse to be of any assistance, and it is certain that their inclusion will leave a bad taste in many mouths. It is yet another delicate question at a very delicate moment, but if it were up to me, I would say "Better late than never," open up the tent, and let them see for themselves what it looks like when history is being made.
(c) 2011 William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is available from PoliPointPress.





The Dead Letter Office...





Eric gives the corpo-rat salute

Heil Obama,

Dear Deputy Fuhrer Holder,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your using your powers to persecute the sick and the elderly instead of Wall Street criminals, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute you herr Holder, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Wisconsin Drive To Recall Walker Starts November 15
By John Nichols

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is going to face a recall election next year.

More than 200,000 Wisconsinites have pledged to join the effort to remove the radically-anti-labor governor and pro-recall groups have announced plans to begin circulating the petitions November 15. Even the governor's aides admit that it is all but certain that the groups will collect far more than the 540,000 signatures that are required to force the governor to face a new election next spring.

And the numbers don't look good for Walker.

Polling shows that a solid majority of Wisconsin voters disaprove of the governor's performance, with overwhelming majorities of Democrats and independents favoring his removal. Among self-identified independent voters, a group that favored Walker by a 56-42 margin last November, the split in now 52 percent for recalling the governor to 36 percent for keeping him. Internal polling, which pits the governor against a variety of potential challengers, has him running poorly even against contenders who have never before run statewide races.

Those are nightmarishly bad numbers for a politician who got a taste of the trouble he was in last winter, when his effort to undermine collective bargaining rights for public employees, fill civil service positions with political cronies and undermine local democracy were greeted with some of the largest pro-labor demonstrations in modern American history.

So how does Walker intend to prevail?

By gaming the election process.

Specifically, Walker and his legislative allies have in recent weeks placed enormous pressure on the state Government Accountability Board -- which oversees elecrions -- to refrain from writing rules that might make the recall process easier.

The pressure tactics included consideration by the state's Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules of a proposal to shift final authority over whether GAB rules are implemented to the governor.

That change would create an autocrat's dream scenario. Strongmen and political bosses have always mused that what matters is not who casts the votes but who counts them. What has the potential to matter even more, however, is who decides how everything about an election -- the pettioning, the voter registration, the voter-identification rules, the vote counting, the recounting, everything -- goes down. That's what Walker would have if were to gain control of the rule-making process regarding recalls.

"Allowing Gov. Walker to veto any recall rule from the GAB that he doesn't like, for an election that affects him personally, is the definition of an abuse of power. Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans know that they are in trouble with Wisconsin's working, middle-class families because of their extreme agenda. But rather than let the voice of the people be heard, Republicans are trying to control the recall election rules in favor of Gov. Walker," argued Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha.

Barca's was aghast at the takeover proposal, and rightly so.

With the mere threat of a gubernatorial takeover looming, the GAB backed off on a rule change that Republicans said would have made it easier to gather recall petition signatures. The board is also reconsidering a rule change that would have made it possible for students to avoid some of the most cumbersome challenges created by the state's new Voter ID law.

After the GAB backed down last week, the governor's legislative allies refrained from using their control of the Joint Committee for Review of Adminstrative Rules to implement the scheme that would have given the governor the final say over rules regarding the recall.

For now.

But the ugly wrangling over who gets to set election rules has put the GAB on notice. If the supposedly independent board and its staff step out of line -- by acting in a nonpartisan manner to maintain clean elections, assure that it is easy to vote and generally support and sustain the democratic process -- they will face legislative sanctions and a gubernatorial takeover.

The GAB was established after Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature reached a remarkable bipartisan deal that protected the GAB from meddling by politicians. That 2007 agreement was reached by Democrats such as state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, the former co-chair of the legislative Joint Finance Committee, and former Assembly leader Mike Huebsch.

Pocan now worries that the Walker administration - in which Huebsch serves as Department of Administration secretary - and its legislative allies are not just ripping up the deal. They are undermining the promise of nonpartisan oversight of ethics and elections.

"With so many clouds hanging over the Walker administration, now is absolutely not the time to cede more authority to Gov. Walker. Instead of attempting to change the rules for their own benefit, legislative Republicans should be working with Democrats to ensure that our election rules continue to be governed by nonpartisan officials and that those who break the rules are held accountable for their actions," Pocan says. "The Government Accountability Board was set up as a nonpartisan agency to regulate elections and ethics. It was never envisioned that any single politician would have the power to control its decisions."

In February, the senior member of the Wisconsin Legislature sounded the alarm. State Sen. Fred Risser warned that, with the extreme power grabs contained in a "budget repair bill" that attacked labor union rights, undermined local democracy and shifted dozens of civil service positions to political jobs he could fill with cronies, Walker was "acting as a dictator."

With legislative Republicans threatening to turn the GAB into the governor's political plaything -- and with supposedly independent officials suddenly deciding to back away from rule changes that those Republicans did not like -- Risser's assessment seems all the more prescient. And unsettling.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








Punching A Hole In Bubbles Of Denial And Addiction
Late capitalism and its discontents of the American Autumn
By Phil Rockstroh

The global designs of the neo-liberal agenda have met the living architecture of a larger order -- a portion of which has taken the form of a still coalescing, yet potent, countervailing consciousness, a global-wide Liberty Plaza of the mind -- an order that is not informed by corporate era public relations legerdemain, hyper-adrenaline media sound bites, rightwing emotional displacements, or "sensible" centrist platitudes -- but the type of order that begins to jell when the structures of an existing system lose touch with the realities of daily life.

A ground-level, global-wide movement is afoot and has announced to the economic, media and political elite that they are on to their schemes. Accordingly, the plundering class and their protectors will no longer be afforded the luxury of insulating themselves (almost absent confrontation) within bubbles of privilege, bubbles of denial, bubbles of insularity.

Late capitalism has proven to be wholly reliant upon, in fact, addicted to, the creation of bubbles: market and media bubbles, respectively, serving to create inflated wealth and the manufacturing of closed narratives that shield the privileged players within from being held accountable for the consequences of their schemes.

The system is analogous to a rigged game in a tawdry, traveling carnival. The carnival barker's success hinges on whether or not his audience is seduced by his unctuous pitch, in this case being the dubious claim that, under late capitalism, illusionary economic success is attainable by pluck and perseverance. ("Step right up, folks, all can play"-- but the house will win.) Of course, the game has been rigged from the get-go, has been designed to fleece credulous rubes who have never glimpsed the larger world, and, when any prize at all is won, it is a piece of cheap, disposable consumer junk.

As Autumn stands before us, it will be helpful to allow illusions to fall away like dying leaves. Summer is kind to fools, but winter insists on clarity. Let the old delusions blaze out in Autumnal splendor, and then be mindful of winter's stark perfection...its demarcations...rendering bare branches against a bleak sky.

Know this: The illusions of the corporate empire can no longer provide shelter; the elite and operatives of economic imperium can no longer raid and plunder the easy pickings of summer...hoard and squander its bounty. Therefore, to quote the poet, at present, "One must have a mind of winter" to navigate the white-out winds of new realities.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind [...]
~~~ Wallace Stevens ~ excerpt from The Snow Man ~~~

Yet, with the rise of that wing of the privileged class known as the corporate media, we receive the opposite; instead, we are enveloped within a hothouse bloom of hype, surface-level, adrenaline-activating content bearing misleadingly narrowed context.

On January 17 1991, at the start of the U.S.'s formal military hostilities against Iraq in the first Gulf War, the "folk rapper"/performance poet Chris Chandler and I were in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. Chris pounded and thrashed at his battered guitar and recited talking blues protest ditties that we composed on the spot.

We were among a crowd of well over a couple of thousand demonstrators, plus scores of homeless people shared the surroundings as well. Shortly after the bombing of Iraq began, many in the park joined in an impromptu march around the metro D.C. area where thousands more protesters joined our ranks.

As we wended our way back to Pennsylvania Avenue, we were met, a block from the White House, by a phalanx of police i.e., full riot gear-clad storm troopers and mounted sons-of-bitches on horseback who charged the crowd.

The following is a close approximation of the account of the events as reported in the next day's Washington Post:

"A few dozen ragged protesters hobbled up Pennsylvania Ave. throwing rocks and taunting the police..."

Bearing that in mind, here is the opening graph of the account of the events on the Brooklyn Bridge, where on Sunday, Oct 2, 2011, demonstrators were herded, kettled and arrested by police:

"NEW YORK (AP) — More than 700 protesters demonstrating against corporate greed, global warming and social inequality, among other grievances, were arrested Saturday after they swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge and shut down a lane of traffic for several hours in a tense confrontation with police."

Buyer beware: If the corporate press reports a breaking story with any degree of accuracy, the act is to be viewed as a fluke and certainly not as an act of honest intention by the reporters, producers and editors involved. On a personal basis, I have yet to be part of an unfolding news story in which the version of events created by these courtesans to power do not seem simply cut out of whole cloth, as they truckled to create an inoffensive narrative for the ruling elite.

"Now, from America, empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life.... A house, in the American sense, an American apple or a grapevine over there, has nothing in common with the house, the fruit, the grape into which went the hopes and reflections of our forefathers ... Live things, things that are alive — that are conscious of us — are running out and can no longer be replaced. We are perhaps the last to have known such things." ~~~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Living in New York City, as I do, brings into stark relief the fact that the city operates as a defacto banana republic/police state. In the same manner that the mission of the police force is to protect the power and privilege of the moneyed classes, mainstream journalists work within the boundaries of its acceptable narratives for the purpose of job security and a bit of privilege.

The general population, buffeted by economic insecurity, at least, up to this point, has remained docile, and, to mitigate the anxiety and depression caused by feelings of powerlessness, many have become addicted to the small perks and bribes and endless distractions of the corporate/consumer state.

Furthermore, these bubble-enclosed states of being constitute addiction in a literal sense: Ergo, the compulsive mechanisms of addictive behavior are an attempt to ease an individual's abiding sense of powerlessness and the attendant feelings of anxiety and despair experienced in the midst of uncontrollable circumstances and to quell troubling, obsessive thoughts and feelings of acute emotional discomfort by an habitual reliance on mood altering substances such as alcohol, food, gambling, work, hoarding, lust for power, wealth and privilege.

Addictive actions arise from the drive of libido, but its energy is usurped and exploited by the relentless will of a rigid, turned in on itself ego..."Self will run riot," as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous poetically puts it.

Addiction is a pathology of the mechanistic mind; an addict’s disregard for his own body and his exploitative attitude towards the world at large is a microcosmic version of the economic designs of the global economic elite. Apropos, the world is mine to abuse, not to engage...to exploit from within a protective bubble of privilege and entitlement, not to be enjoined with in common communion.

The demands of the addicted mind are analogous to that of a bratty child, a high chair tyrant, "his majesty the baby," who is convinced that his wants are the end all be all of all things. Therefore, a childish addict must grow up and ask himself this question: How do I transform my obsessive wants into the rage of my dharma, my un-reflective compulsions into the steady work of my soul.

In our time, when nearly all the apparatus of the corporate/consumer state exist and are maintained by the demeaning, soul-defying dynamics of addiction, as an act of defiance, one should attempt to get drunk on clarity--which is a different matter than a priggish, "dry drunk's" hyper-moralistic refusal of excess, for the primary option does not constitute a puritanical refusal of the world--but, instead, is an embrace of the sacred quality of life, a respect for the finite quality of our fleeting passage through this life.

The voice of addiction (both internal and extant in the consumer state) will say anything and will go to craven lengths to continue on. Withal, its narrative will insist its path is the only passage possible...that its doomed trajectory must be maintained. And when its flimsy, desperate arrangements do collapse, it will insist that it must be propped back up so it can topple once again (or as this destructive act of enabling was called, a few years back, "The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008").

Let the stock market hit bottom and allow "consumer confidence" to plummet...allow the psyches' of consumers, addicted to distraction, to spiral into the abyss. Because, in so doing, one may be compelled to find and grasp onto one's essential self, as the persona of one's false self, addicted to the present order, disappears into the void.

To truly embrace the possibility of change, it is essential to allow putrefied habits to compost into the rich loam that will nourish reborn understandings. Apropos:

I felt a Funeral in my Brain
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading--treading-till it
seemed That Sense was breaking through"
~~~ Emily Dickinson ~ opening stanza from ~ I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

Yes, this is a grievous event...a time of tears, confusion and lamination. Yet:

Let the young tears come
Let the calm hand of grief come
It is not as evil as you think.
~~~ Rolf Jacobsen ~ excerpt from Sunflower ~~~

Within the present societal structure of the corporate state, "learned helplessness" is encouraged (as opposed to embracing reflective sorrow and deploying focused rage). Because it sustains itself by exploiting an individual's instinctual drives and human longings, the present order of late capitalism is depended upon allowing an individual to possess just enough libido to vampirize--but not to retain enough élan vital to be roused to rebellion against the corporate state's relentless practices of economic coercion.

"In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy" ~~~ Ivan Illich

I have noticed that often what is (unconsciously) beneath paranoia is envy. Envy...that others are taking up one's space in the world and are plotting to maintain the arrangement. Solution: Punch a hole in bubbles of denial and addiction and take a look for yourself. Insist on your portion of life -- your portion of fate.

Many situations in this life are rigged e.g., the gamed system of the corporate state. But life itself is too vast, too intricate to be rigged; it is truly too big to fail. Now: To the streets, glistening with renewing rain...to the flaming barricades...its flames caress the future. Come out of self-exile; you are the change you can believe in!
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Chip Bok ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Potential Race Between Black Guy and Mormon Poses Dilemma for Bigots
Doomsday Scenario, Haters Say
By Andy Borowitz

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) - A looming presidential race between a black guy and a Mormon is creating a major quandary for America's bigots, a new poll reveals.

According to the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota's Opinion Research Institute, a broad majority of likely bigot voters "strongly agreed" with the statement, "If it winds up being between a black guy and a Mormon I don't know what I'll do because I don't know which I hate more."

Tea Party activist Eldin Brazelton of Oak Park, Illinois, expressed a frustration typical of the bigots surveyed: "We've spent the last three years stirring up anger towards a black guy, and that's all going to go to waste if we just up and nominate a Mormon."

According to Mr. Brazleton, a presidential choice between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney would be no choice at all: "For the life of me I don't know why we can't just have a regular President."

Mr. Brazleton, who considers himself a sexist as well as a bigot, said that the doomsday scenario unfolding for 2012 offered one small silver lining: "At least we know it's not going to be a woman this time."

Elsewhere, in response to the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests in lower Manhattan, banking giant Goldman Sachs announced today that it was investing in pepper-spray futures.
(c) 2011 Andy Borowitz




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In This Edition

Ray McGovern examines why, "Petraeus's CIA Provides Grist for Iran Murder Plot."

Uri Avnery looks forward to, "The Second Herzl."

David Michael Green with yet, another, absolute must read, "We Are Not Your Human Resources."

Randall Amster goes from, "From Occupation To Liberation."

Jim Hightower reports, "Knee Jerks Defend Wall Street."

Helen Thomas says it's, "Time For U.S. Women To Keep The Peace."

James Donahue wants to, "Reduce Federal Budget - Cut Space Program."

Robert Reich observes, "The Rise Of The Regressive Right And The Reawakening Of America."

David Swanson weighs, "Obama vs. Jobs; Hope vs. Reality."

Ralph Nader sings, "Let Our Farmers Grow."

Paul Krugman sees Wall Street, "Losing Their Immunity."

Chris Floyd returns with, "Changing Of The Guards."

Joel S. Hirschhorn takes a trip, "Occupy Wall Street Visited."

Herman Cain wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols explains, "Why Cornel West Was Arrested In Memory Of Martin Luther King Jr., In Support Of Occupy Movement."

Sam Harris explores, "The Mystery Of Consciousness."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Landover Baptist Church returns with, "Mitt Romney's Crazy Religious Beliefs!" but first Uncle Ernie asks, "Got A Revolution?"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Matt Bors, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, Jeff Danziger, Lalo Alcaraz, Clay Bennett, Jen Sorensen, Motifake.Com, Richard Uzzell, Alice Popkorn, The Landover Baptist Church, Parker Brothers, Paramont Pictures, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

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The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."












Got A Revolution?
By Ernest Stewart

Look what's happening out in the streets!
Got a revolution?
Got to revolution!

Hey I'm dancing down the streets
Got a revolution?
Got to revolution!

Ain't it amazing all the people I meet.
Got a revolution?
Got to revolution!

One generation got old!
One generation got sold!
This generation got no destination to hold!
Volunteers ~~~ Jefferson Airplane

We can change the world
Re-arrange the world
It's dying ... to get better
Chicago ~~~ Crosy, Stills, Nash & Young

"A large amount of protesters entered our branch at 555 La Guardia Place around 2:00 PM today. They were very disruptive and refused to leave after being repeatedly asked, causing our staff to call 911. The Police asked the branch staff to close the branch until the protesters could be removed. Only one person asked to close an account and was accommodated."
~~~ A Citibank spokes-weasel ~~~

So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road.
The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest ~~~ Bob Dylan

Every time I look at the news lately I have a flashback. No, it's not the "free trip" we were all promised back in the day that we never got, BUMMER! No, it's beginning to look like the 1960s all over again. The pundits are saying it sorta resembles the 60s, but not really; actually, it looks a whole lot like the 60s in many ways. For example, there's a criminal Demoncrat in the White House, with an even worse Rethuglican on deck!

The OWS crowd is demonstrating like the blacks and war protesters did. That is to say, they want something for themselves, and if everyone benefits by it, so much the better; but basically, like all things American, it's really just about them! They can't find a job, they owe a lot of money, they're wasting their lives away! Welcome to my world, Ya'll!

The blacks wanted their freedom, I can dig that; but what about freedom for gays; for everybody? Nope, in fact, given the opportunity to hold gays down, just like they were held down, they did! Fuck' em, we got what we wanted; besides, it's the American way! Very true; it is the American way! But isn't it time we changed?

The war protestors for the most part weren't really against the war so much as they were against getting drafted for the war. When the draft ended, so did their protests. Not only that, but they soon cut their hair off, put on the Armani suit and became their father and never again ventured into a protest for other peoples' rights! Of course, not all people were like that; some really cared about helping everybody; some gave their lives for that principle! As Alexandre Dumas put it in his, "Les Trois Mousquetaires:" "All for one, one for all!" And that's exactly how it should be!

Ergo, I hope the kids currently fighting the good fight keep on keeping on, even after they get a good-paying job. The trouble with having no OWS leadership for the elite is that they have no one to bribe and make it all stop and go away. I hope these folks are better people than we were; I hope they've learned a lesson that we didn't. I hope that they are truly the "greatest generation." We desperately need nothing less!

In Other News



I was talking to Issues & Alibis friend and author David Green the other day comparing his latest effort to what Arsenio and I felt after watching "Living Colour" do "The Cult Of Personality" on Arsenio's show. If you recall, Arsenio rushed up on the stage at the song's end, bowing to the band shouting, "YES, YES, YES!" I know exactly how he felt--both then and now! David has written yet another absolute must-read article, and see if you don't feel the same way about it that I do.

I finished my note to David with this postscript:
"I don't suppose you'd be up for a "Green for President" run in 2012?"

David wrote back:

Meanwhile, I’ll run for president if you run my campaign. Deal? Keep fighting the good fight!

I, of course, took it one step further and wrote David back:

Done and done. Could you get behind being the "Green Party" candidate? I know a few people including their last candidate Cynthia. I know that they have drawbacks, but they are on our side, and have an evolved structure. All we need now is a billion for TV and such. Hmmm, who owes me favors? I have no doubt that the OWS crowd would go for you in a big way! A brilliant, articulate truth-sayer and soothsayer who's photogenic as a bitch and not a politician -- a real man of the people -- sounds like a winning scenario to me! The key is to introduce you to the OWS folks and watch you go viral!

Dave added a postscript:

Does this mean I have to cut off my pony tail?

To which I replied:

No leave the hair alone, we'll get you a complete selection of Colonial Tri-corner hats in various colors with feathers to match!

And hence, the point of this evening's symposium is that:, i.e., "The power and the glory (as it were) of the rebellion of we the people, currently going down in lower Manhattan could be used to do great things, good things for all of us!" Could David Green be our political savior? That's up to you and David! The potential of this rebellion by the 99% is really breathtaking in its worldwide scope. As a true democracy, we the people will finally have the chance to make America what it should've been from the beginning. What they promised us, but never delivered on. If you want that America, get up off your couches and get out into the streets and scream at them "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!" Join the rebellion, join the third American revolution, and make the world a better place for you and your kids and for everybody's kids too!

And Finally

I see that a more blatant attempt to rob us is now underway with America's Banksters. Not content with adding a dizzying array of new charges to keep their billion dollar salaries intact, they're starting to lock out; and with the help of the local Gestapo, lock up their customers for wanting to take their business elsewhere. As Bob Seger once sang in "Lookin' Back," "When the war comes the cops will be on their side!"

One of the leading groups of criminals over at Bank of America are beginning to lock out their customers when they come to end their accounts and then calling in the local SQUAT team er, SWAT team (sorry I get those two confused) when their customers insist on getting their money. When caught on film or on all those Smart Phones they continue to deny their actions, saying that it was all a big mistake; it never happened!

That was back in August; last Saturday in New York, the Citibank not only refused to give the people their money but kidnapped the people, holding them against their will as if what they did was robbing the bank. Not only that outrage, but they sent their rent-a-goons outside the bank and pulled in people who had nothing to do with anything until the white-shirted goons and their troopers from New York's finest group of criminals arrived and had them all placed under arrest and placed in paddy wagons. Am I the only one that sees a several billion dollar lawsuit springing from this? No, I'm pretty sure that shysters across the country are licking their chops and having orgasms in anticipation about the chance to fill their bank accounts with the Banksters loot!

I'm just surprised they didn't hang the lot of the people who were demanding their money as bank robbers, or have Barry put the fix in for them by labeling all the folks as terrorist bank robbers and do a drone strike on lower Manhattan! While Citibank made a fool of itself, down the road at Chase Bank, a similar group at the very same time had no problem closing their accounts with Chase! No cops, no kidnapping, no muss, no fuss!

Keepin' On

Life's a bitch, no doubt about it, as lately I am reminded almost everywhere I go on the Net. For example, Common Dreams is having another fundraiser. This time, they need to raise $50g's; they're about halfway there. CounterPunch needs to raise $75g's by month's end; good luck with that, guys! Truthout has raised about 14% of the $50g's they need. BartCop seems about to go under, too, for lack of funds! Go to any leftist site; it's all the same, we're all starving. Now go to any fascist site, and they have money to burn, thanks to the Koch brothers and the like. Now compare and contrast! Funny thing that, huh?

I have to raise $250 dollars or stop eating so much. As I've often said, you get a whole lot more bang for your buck with us, and I need to raise $11,000 every year to keep going. Fortunately, half of that is picked up by our sponsors, blessed be their names. We've raised all but $250 of that $11,000 which was overdue, so I took a loan to pay the creditors off so we could keep publishing without losing anything.

Therefore, a little help Ya'll! Hey, "big John," you got $250, don't ya? Wouldn't that be cheap at twice the price, just to get me to shut up about money for a couple of months? Wouldn't it? Go ahead and make my year, John, I dare ya! I double dare ya!

*****


05-25-1946 ~ 10-16-2011
Thanks for the justice!


06-07-1942 ~ 10-20-2011
Burn Baby Burn!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












Petraeus's CIA Provides Grist for Iran Murder Plot
By Ray McGovern

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, in his accustomed role as unofficial surrogate CIA spokesman, has thrown light on how the CIA under its new director, David Petraeus, helped craft the screenplay for this week's White House spy feature: the Iranian-American-used-car-salesman-Mexican-drug-cartel plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

In Thursday's column, Ignatius notes that, initially, White House and Justice Department officials found the story "implausible." It was.

But the Petraeus team soon leapt to the rescue, reflecting the four-star-general-turned-intelligence-chief's record of pandering to those determined to blacken Iran, no matter how flimsy the "evidence." Not that much better was to be expected from Petraeus - given his disingenuous record in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, given his new perch (not to mention his sainted status in Official Washington and in the Fawning Corporate Media), this is very bad news indeed.

Before Ignatius's article, I had seen no one allude to the fact that much suggesting that important evidence about this crime-stopper tale had come from the CIA. In public, the FBI had taken the lead role, presumably because the key informant inside a Mexican drug cartel worked for U.S. law enforcement via the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Petraeus ex Machina

However, according to Ignatius, "One big reason [top U.S. officials became convinced the plot was real] is that CIA and other intelligence agencies gathered information corroborating the informant's juicy allegations and showing that the plot had support from the top leadership of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the covert action arm of the Iranian government."

Ignatius adds that, "It was this intelligence collected in Iran" that turned the "implausible" into plausible, but he offers no example of what that intelligence was. He only mentions a recorded telephone call on Oct. 4 between Iranian-American cars salesman Mansour Arbabsiar and his supposed contact in Iran, Gholam Shakuri, allegedly an official in Iran's Quds spy agency.

The call is recounted in the FBI affidavit submitted in support of the criminal charges against Arbabsiar, who is now in U.S. custody, and Shakuri, who is not. But the snippets of that conversation are unclear, discussing what on the surface appears to be a "Chevrolet" car purchase, but which the FBI asserts is code for killing the Saudi ambassador.

Without explaining what other evidence the CIA might have, Ignatius tries to further strengthen the case by knocking down some of the obvious problems with the allegations, such as "why the Iranians would undertake such a risky operation, and with such embarrassingly poor tradecraft."

"But why the use of Mexican drug cartels?" asks Ignatius rhetorically, before adding dutifully: "U.S. officials say that isn't as implausible as it sounds."

But it IS as implausible as it sounds, says every professional intelligence officer I have talked with since the "plot" was somberly announced on Tuesday.

The Old CIA Pros There used to be real professionals in the CIA's operations directorate. One - Ray Close, a longtime CIA Arab specialist and former Chief of Station in Saudi Arabia - told me on Wednesday that we ought to ask ourselves a very simple question:

"If you were an Iranian undercover operative who was under instructions to hire a killer to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C., why in HELL would you consider it necessary to explain to a presumed Mexican [expletive deleted] that this murder was planned and would be paid for by a secret organization in Iran?

"Whoever concocted this tale wanted the 'plot' exposed ... to precipitate a major crisis in relations between Iran and the United States. Which other government in the Middle East would like nothing better than to see those relations take a big step toward military confrontation?"

If you hesitate in answering, you have not been paying attention. Many have addressed this issue. My last stab at throwing light on the Israel/Iran/U.S. nexus appeared on October 3 in "Israel's Window to Bomb Iran."

Another point on the implausibility meter is: What are the odds that Iran's Quds force would plan an unprecedented attack in the United States, that this crack intelligence agency would trust the operation to a used-car salesman with little or no training in spy craft, that he would turn to his one contact in a Mexican drug cartel who happens to be a DEA informant, and that upon capture the car salesman would immediately confess and implicate senior Iranian officials?

Wouldn't it make more sense to suspect that Arbabsiar might be a double-agent, recruited by some third-party intelligence agency to arrange some shady business deal regarding black-market automobiles, get some ambiguous comments over the phone from an Iranian operative, and then hand the plot to the U.S. government on a silver platter -as a way to heighten tensions between Washington and Teheran?

That said, there are times when even professional spy agencies behave like amateurs. And there's no doubt that the Iranians -like the Israelis, the Saudis and the Americans -can and do carry out assassinations and kidnappings in this brave new world of ours.

Remember, for instance, the case of Islamic cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, who was abducted off the streets of Milan, Italy, on Feb. 17, 2003, and then flown from a U.S. air base to Egypt where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year.

In 2009, Italian prosecutors convicted 23 Americans, mostly CIA operatives, in absentia for the kidnapping after reconstructing the disappearance through their unencrypted cell phone records and their credit card bills at luxury hotels in Milan.

Then, there was the suspected Mossad assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a hotel in Dubai on Jan. 19, 2010, with the hit men seen on hotel video cameras strolling around in tennis outfits and creating an international furor over their use of forged Irish, British, German and French passports.

So one cannot completely rule out that there may be some substance to the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador.

And beyond the regional animosities between Saudi Arabia and Iran, there could be a motive -although it has been generally absent from American press accounts -i.e. retaliation for the assassinations of senior Iranian nuclear scientists and generals over the last couple of years within Iran itself.

But there has been close to zero persuasive evidence coming from the main source of information - officials of the Justice Department, which like the rest of the U.S. government has long since forfeited much claim to credibility. The experience of the last decade has done irreparable harm to the reputation of U.S. officials regarding telling the truth.

Even the New York Times, always eager to support Israel and blacken Iran, has taken a skeptical stance in reporting and commenting on this latest caper. It will be interesting to watch, in the days ahead, whether that well warranted skepticism erodes or disappears, as the always-anonymous U.S. officials peddle what evidence they have. Am I being maudlin, or hopelessly nostalgic, to recall the days when Americans could assume that Washington was telling the truth and only the "bad guys" lie?

Petraeus's 'Intelligence' on Iran

The public record also shows that former Gen. Petraeus has long been eager to please the neoconservatives in Washington and their friends in Israel by creating "intelligence" to portray Iran and other target countries in the worst light.

One strange but instructive example comes to mind, a studied, if disingenuous, effort to blame all the troubles in southern Iraq on the "malignant" influence of Iran.

On April 25, 2008, Joint Chiefs Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, told reporters that Gen. Petraeus in Baghdad would give a briefing "in the next couple of weeks" providing detailed evidence of "just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability." Petraeus's staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event in which captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed.

Oops. Small problem. When American munitions experts went to Karbala to inspect the alleged cache of Iranian weapons, they found nothing that could be credibly linked to Iran.

At that point, adding insult to injury, the Iraqis announced that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had formed his own Cabinet committee to investigate the U.S. claims and attempt to "find tangible information and not information based on speculation." Ouch!

The Teflon-clad Petraeus escaped embarrassment, as the David Ignatiuses of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) conveniently forgot all about the promised-then-canceled briefing. U.S. media suppression of this telling episode is just one example of how difficult it is to get unbiased, accurate information on touchy subjects like Iraq - or Iran - into the FCM.

Obama, Holder, Clinton: Giving Hypocrisy a Bad Name

As for Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, some adult adviser should tell them to quit giving hypocrisy a bad name with their self-righteous indignation over the thought that no civilized nation would conduct cross-border assassinations.

The Obama administration, like its predecessor, has been dispatching armed drones to distant corners of the globe to kill Islamic militants, including recently the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki for the alleged crime of encouraging violence against Americans.

Holder and Obama have refused to release the Justice Department's legal justification for the targeted murder of al-Awlaki whose "due process" amounted to the President it was okay to put al-Awlaki's name on a secret "kill-or-capture" list. (The "capture" part seems to have become "quaint" and "obsolete." Some will remember that those were the adjectives used by Alberto Gonzales, one of Holder's predecessors, to describe provisions of the Geneva Conventions.)

Holder and Obama have also refused to take meaningful action to hold officials of the Bush administration accountable for war crimes even though President George W. Bush has publicly acknowledged authorizing waterboarding and other brutal techniques long regarded as acts of torture.

Who can take at face value the sanctimonious words of an attorney general like Holder who has acquiesced in condoning egregious violations of the Bill of Rights, the U.S. criminal code, and international law - like the International Convention Against Torture? Were shame not in such short supply in Official Washington these days, one would be amazed that Holder could keep a straight face, accusing these alleged Iranian perpetrators of "violating an international convention."

America's Founders would hold in contempt the Holders of this world and the faux-legal types doing his bidding. The behavior of the past two administrations has been more reminiscent of George III and his sycophants than of James Madison, George Mason, John Jay and George Washington, who gave us the rich legacy of a Constitution, which created a system based on laws not men.

That Constitution and its Bill of Rights have become endangered species at the hands of the craven poachers at "Justice." No less craven are the functionaries leading today's CIA.

What to Watch For

If Petraeus finds it useful politically to conjure up more "evidence" of nefarious Iranian behavior in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, Lebanon or Syria, he will. And if he claims to see signs of ominous Iranian intentions regarding nuclear weapons, watch out.

Honest CIA analysts, like the ones who concluded in late 2007 that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and had not resumed that work, are in short supply. And most have families to support and mortgages to pay.

Petraeus is quite capable of marginalizing them, or even forcing them to quit. I have watched this happen to a number of intelligence officials under a few of Petraeus's politics-prone predecessors. As a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, I worked under nine CIA directors, most of whom - with the notable exceptions of Bill Casey and his protege Bobby Gates - resisted pressure to conjure up "evidence" to support White House policy. Sadly, more recent CIA directors have made that exception the rule.

Malleable careerists can be found in any organization, and promoted, so long as they are willing to tell more ominous - if disingenuous - stories like the latest tale one about the Iranian-American-used-car-salesman-Mexican-drug-cartel-Saudi-ambassador plot. One is initially inclined to laugh all this off. But the situation with respect to Iran can get very dangerous in a hurry.

Israel's leaders would require but the flimsiest nihil obstat to encourage them to provoke hostilities with Iran. Netanyahu and his colleagues would expect the Obamas, Holders, Petraeuses (and the Hillary "obliterate-Iran" Clintons) of this world to "fix the intelligence and facts" (a la Iraq) in order to "justify" swift "retaliation" against Iran, should it rise to the bait of some Israeli-inspired provocation.

There is little sign that these Ivy-League geniuses have the remotest idea of what war with Iran would look like. There is ample evidence - and a long trail of past precedent - to suggest that nothing would suit Israel's increasingly isolated and beleaguered leaders better than getting the U.S. embroiled in hostilities with Iran.

The strategic trend, particularly since the Arab spring, has been decidedly negative of Israel. And Netanyahu and his hard-Right colleagues might well have an inflated idea regarding the U.S. capability, after more Iranian "provocation," to move swiftly enough to stem inevitably damaging retaliation.

Many observers have come to see Israel's leaders as increasingly desperate. They may well adopt an attitude of What's to Lose? - so long as America is on their side. If this is the case, the Israeli government may not hesitate for much longer to risk sucking the United States into the kind of conflict that, short of a massive commitment of resources and/or a few tactical nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Israel could almost surely not win.

It would be the kind of war that would make Iraq and Afghanistan look like minor skirmishes.
(c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.





The Second Herzl
By Uri Avnery

ON YOM KIPPUR eve last week, when real Jews were praying for their lives, I sat on the seashore of Tel Aviv, thinking.

It was my first Yom Kippur without Rachel, and the dark water reflected my mood.

I was thinking about our state, the State of Israel, in which I have, so to speak, a founder's share.

Will it endure? Will it be here in another 100 years? Or is it a passing episode, a historic fluke?

When asked for his assessment of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai famously replied: "It's too early to tell."

The Zionist Revolution - and that's what it was - started more than a hundred years after the French one. It is certainly much too early to tell.

ONCE, IN a more cheerful mood, I told my friends: "Perhaps we are all wrong. Perhaps Israel is not really the final shape of the Zionist enterprise. Like the planners of every great project, the Zionists decided first to build a 'pilot', a prototype, in order to test their scheme. Actually, we Israelis are only guinea pigs. Sooner or later another Theodor Herzl will come by and, after analyzing the faults and mistakes of this experiment, will draw up the blueprint of the real state, which will be far superior."

Herzl 2 will start by asking: where did Herzl 1 go wrong?

Herzl 1 visited Palestine only once, and that only for the express purpose of meeting the German emperor, whom he wanted to enlist for his enterprise. The Kaiser insisted on seeing him at the gate of Jerusalem, listened patiently to what he had to say and then purportedly commented to his aides: "It's a grand idea, but you can't do it with Jews!"

He meant the Jews he knew - the members of a world-wide religious-ethnic community. Herzl intended to turn these into a modern-style nation, like the other modern nations of Europe.

Herzl was not a profound thinker, he was a journalist and dramatist. He - and his successors - saw the necessary transformation as basically a question of logistics. Get the Jews to Palestine, and everything will fall into place automatically. The Jews will become a normal people, a people ("Volk") like other peoples. A nation among nations.

BUT THE Jews of his day were neither a people nor a nation. They were something rather different.

Whilst anomalous in 19th century Europe, the Jewish Diaspora was quite normal 2000 years earlier. The large-scale social structure of that time was a network of Diasporas - autonomous religious-ethnic entities dispersed throughout the "civilized" (Mediterranean) world. The ruling empires - Persian, Alexandrine, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman - recognized them as the natural fabric of society.

Nations in the modern territorial sense were then inconceivable. A Jew in Jerusalem did not belong to the same society as a Hellenist in Caesarea, only a hundred miles away. A Christian man in Alexandria could not marry the Jewish girl next door, but she could marry a Jewish man in far-away Antiochia.

Since then, Europe has changed many times, until the emergence of the modern nations. The Jews did not change. When Herzl looked for a solution to the "Jewish problem", they were still the same ethnic-religious Diaspora.

No problem, he thought, once I get them to Palestine, they will change.

BUT AN ethnic-religious community, living for millennia as a persecuted minority in a hostile environment, acquires a mentality of its own. It fears the "Goyish" government, the source of unending evil edicts. It sees everyone outside the community as a potential enemy, unless proven otherwise (and even then). It develops an intense sense of solidarity with members of its own community, even a thousand miles away, supporting them through thick and thin, whatever they do. In their helpless situation, the persecuted dream of a day of revenge, when they can do unto others as others have done unto them.

All this pervades their world-view, their religion and their traditions, transmitted from generation to generation. Jews have prayed to God for centuries, year after year, on Pesach eve: "Pour your wrath upon the Goyim..."

When the Zionists started to arrive and founded the new community, called the "Yishuv" (settlement), it seemed that Herzl had been right. They started to behave like the embryo of a real nation. They discarded religion and despised the Diaspora. To be called "exile Jew" was the worst possible insult. They saw themselves as "Hebrew", rather then Jewish. They started to build a new society and a new culture.

And then the awful thing happened: the Holocaust.

It brought all the old Jewish convictions back with a vengeance. Not only the Germans were the guilty, but all the nations who looked on and did not lift a finger to save the victims. So all the old beliefs were true after all: the whole world is against the Jews, we must defend ourselves whatever it takes, we can only rely on ourselves. The attitude of the Yishuv towards Jewishness and the Diaspora was a terrible mistake, we must repent and embrace everything we despised only yesterday: Jewish religion, Jewish traditions, the Jewish Shtetl.

The late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an observant Jew, maintained that the Jewish religion had died 200 years ago, and that the one thing that linked the Jews all over the world was the Holocaust.

Right from its founding, the State of Israel became the Holocaust-state. But we are not a helpless ghetto anymore - we have powerful armed forces, we can indeed do unto others as others have done unto us.

The old existential fears, mistrusts, suspicions, hatreds, prejudices, stereotypes, sense of victimhood, dreams of revenge, that were born in the Diaspora, have superimposed themselves on the state, creating a very dangerous mixture of power and victimhood, brutality and masochism, militarism and the conviction that the whole world is against us. A ghetto with nuclear weapons.

CAN SUCH a state survive and flourish in the modern world?

European nation-states have fought many wars. But they never forgot that after a war comes peace, that today's enemy may well be tomorrow's ally. Nation-states remain, but they are becoming more and more interdependent, joining regional structures, giving up huge chunks of their sovereignty.

Israel cannot do that. Public opinion polls show that the vast majority of Israelis believe that there will never be peace. Not tomorrow, not in a hundred years. They are convinced that "the Arabs" are out to throw us into the sea. They see mighty Israel as the victim surrounded by enemies, while our "friends" are liable to stick a knife in our back any time. They see the eternal occupation of Palestinian territories and the setting up of belligerent settlements all over Palestine as a result of Arab intransigence, not as its cause. They are supported in blind solidarity by most of the Jews around the world.

Almost all Israeli parties, including the main opposition, insist that Israel be recognized as the "nation-state of the Jewish people". This means that Israel does not belong to the Israelis (the very concept of an "Israeli nation" is officially rejected by our government) but to the worldwide ethnic-religious Jewish Diaspora, who have never been asked whether they agree to Israel representing them. It is the very negation of a real nation-state that can live in peace with its neighbors and join a regional union.

I HAVE never labored under any illusions about the magnitude of the task my friends and I set ourselves decades ago. It is not to change this or that aspect of Israel, but to change the fundamental nature of the state Itself.

It is far more than a matter of politics, to substitute one party for another. It is even far more than making peace with the Palestinian people, ending the occupation, evacuating the settlements. It is to effect a basic change of [or "in"] the national consciousness, the consciousness of every Israeli man and woman.

It has been said that "you can get the Jews out of the ghetto, but you can't get the ghetto out of the Jews." But that is exactly what needs to be done.

Can it be done? I think so. I certainly hope so.

Perhaps we need a shock - either a positive or a negative one. The appearance here of Anwar Sadat in 1977 can serve as an example of a positive shock: by coming to Jerusalem while a state of war was still in effect, he produced an overnight change in the consciousness of Israelis. So did the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993. So did, in a negative way, the Yom Kippur war, exactly 38 years ago, which shook Israel to the core. But these were minor, brief shocks compared to what is needed.

A Second Herzl could, perhaps, effect such a miracle, against the odds. In the words of the first Herzl: "If you want it, It is not a fairy tale."


(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







We Are Not Your Human Resources
By David Michael Green

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about Occupy Wall Street. She said to me "This is what I've been waiting for my whole life." I told her I feel exactly the same way.

The only difference is that she's in her early twenties, and I'm in my early fifties.

I'm not sure which is better. She's had an entire lifetime full of nothing but the downsizing of her country, and the theft of her future. The only two presidents a person her age could have had any mature appreciation of were George W. Bush, the thief and liar, and Barack Obama, another thief and liar. She has never known an America that wasn't reeling under the assault of Wall Street plutocrats and the kleptocrats they hire to do their bidding in Washington.

On the other hand, people her age could at most have suffered with the pain of being under this siege for a mere five years or so, unless they happen to have been astonishingly attentive and precocious preteens. My generation, on the other hand, has been living this nightmare for three solid decades now, through Republican abominations and - in many ways, worse - Democratic as well. We have known indisputably throughout this era that a better country is not just a pretty aspiration or a theoretical proposition. We know that because we once lived there. I'm glad I had that experience. But, that said, carrying around the heartache of observing our national suicide by greed for more than thirty years' time has also been a painful, soul-numbing burden I wouldn't wish on anyone.

I don't know what will come of Occupy Wall Street, and its brother an sister movements in cities across the world. On the one hand, this is the most hopeful development I've seen since the dark finale to the year 1980 gave us Ronald Reagan and took away John Lennon. On the other, I've learned through ugly experience and hard-won (and, the more cynical amongst us might say, belated) wisdom not to expect too very much from purported agents of sweeping change. Consider the last two of note. Egyptians rose up and threw off their own violent kleptocracy through mass action. Less than a year later, the military rules the country and is repressing dissent using the same bloody tactics of the prior regime. Closer to home, we've got a Wall Street occupation of a rather different sort than the one in Zuccotti Park. The guy who - when he wanted something from us 99 percenters - spoke passionately of change and hope and the fierce urgency of now, has instead allowed Wall Street to occupy our White House, and has delivered to millions of hurting Americans a substitute program of no change, crushed hope, and the tepid lethargy of whenever.

So hope is not always a good bet. Who therefore knows what will happen on the streets of Manhattan in the coming weeks and months? At some point, The Man may decide he's had just about enough of this truth-telling shit, thank you very much, and sweep the place clean. Don't want to be giving the ordinary folks watching at home too many ideas, y'know? If that happens, other possibilities immediately arise. Maybe the folks on the street resist. Maybe if they do, lots and lots of people come running to their side to stand up both for what they're protesting and for their very right to protest. Maybe a police sweep could be the best thing that could happen, causing the movement to metastasize in a swelling of national support. It could all get very interesting, very quickly. Or not.

I dunno. Here's what I do know, however, and why I allow myself to once again risk being hopeful: This is the first time in a very long time that we've had any honest content to our national political discourse. All else follows from there, and thus this is the crucial first step, the sine qua non for any chance whatsoever of righting the badly listing ship of state. If we cannot identify our true maladies, we cannot possibly hope to treat them.

And we have been doing neither for a very long time. The most astonishing and depressing aspect of our era is (or, perhaps, has been) the fact that, at the very time when conditions are such that one could almost not possibly write a script more favorable to the rise of a robust politics of the left in America, precisely the opposite has been happening. What left there is left in the country has been moribund, its heartbeat barely detectable. Meanwhile, what is described as the left, operating under the banner of the Democratic Party, has shown itself every bit as capable of whoring for capital as the other party, though it swims even deeper in the cesspool of treason by pretending it is still the party of the people. And then there's right, which has absolutely gone insane by increments over these last three decades. I don't know if my young friend quite believes me when I tell her that the rhetoric and policies of a Cheney or a Bachmann or even a Romney would have been inconceivable (except, by definition, as fringe lunacy) in Gerry Ford's 1970s. But they would indeed have been just that. We have traveled very far from that world.

In any case, think about it. Suppose you were asked to play 'Sim America' and create from whole cloth the conditions you thought most likely to produce a vibrant political left, rising up to reform the country, as it did during the 1930s and 1960s. What factors might you include in your blueprint? How about a nation riddled with economic insecurity at best and widespread real suffering at worst? Check. Rampant and unremitting unemployment? Check. A rapacious class of financial predators and wealthy plutocrats who have taken every penny of economic growth for themselves over the last three decades, leaving only stagnation for the rest of us? Check. A distribution of wealth so skewed toward the rich that it would embarrass Zimbabwe? Check. A political class completely unresponsive to the needs of the people and devoted instead to serving the gluttonous pigs whose money puts them in office? Check. A massively broken health care system devoted to profits instead of health? Check. Endless government spending of taxpayer money to bail out the disastrous bets of sociopathic Wall Street nihilists and their destruction machines, combined with zero support for ordinary citizens struggling with ballooning debt and underwater mortgages? Check. A generation of downsized middle-aged workers who know they will never again be able to restore the basic economic stability they once enjoyed? Check. A generation of young people looking ahead to lives of lousy jobs (when any at all can be found), lousy pay, massive debt, massive taxes to pay for previous borrowing, epic environmental destruction, endless wars, and living at home with their parents rather than starting families of their own? Check. A discredited far-right previous government whose crony capitalist policies made profound and direct contributions to all of the above? Check.

And, if none of those items seem alone sufficient to generate a vibrant progressive response, how about all of them (and lots more), all at once? Check, check, double-check, and checkmate. Here is the check for a lovely meal of greed, theft, war and planetary destruction held in your honor. Or at least at your expense. What, you don't want the bill?

I can hardly think of better conditions for the rise of a New New Left. But what do we get, instead? The freaking Tea Party!! Like I said, this is the single most depressing characteristic of our time (and because of the deep and broad array of repugnant choices for that loathsome title, that's saying a lot). It's like, even when you win you still lose.

But maybe, at long last, things are finally turning around with the advent of the Occupy movement, and people will at last get it. And maybe they'll figure out who the real enemy is, and act accordingly. Unfortunately, however, even that prospect involves a longer term solution. Consider that the best case scenario for January 2013 is that the hopelessly hapless Barack Inc. Obama will once again be inaugurated as president. And that even if he can't get Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner and Robert Gates to be in his administration because they're all too busy making money, he will most assuredly be getting people like that. Don't expect to see a Paul Krugman or a Joseph Stiglitz or a Paul Volcker on Obama's team any more than he appointed Elizabeth Warren to run the Consumer Protection Bureau or went for the public option in his health care obombination. And that's the 'best' case scenario. Far more likely will be a Scary Perry or a Ken-Doll Romney taking the oath that day.

There actually is one better scenario, and this is again why the Occupy movement represents a breath of genuine hope (as opposed to the merchandised, fast-expiring kind Obama peddled in 15-second TV spots in 2008). Our solutions no longer reside, if they ever did, in the ballot box. The Republicans are a sheer criminal enterprise, whose entire function is to redistribute wealth from the rest of us to already wealthy elites. But the Democrats are actually worse, because they do exactly the same thing, while trading on the party's past reputation for representing the public interest. For my money (which, along with yours, is precisely what is at stake), Obama and Clinton and their ilk in Congress have betrayed me and the country more than, say, any of the Dicks - Cheney, Armey or Nixon. You expect the asshole kid on the playground to live up to his reputation. It hurts a lot more when your best friend is the one sticking in the knife.

No, while there will still be elections and presidents and a new Congress, no matter who those people are in 2013, they will all be cut from the same cloth, and I guarantee you that you can't afford that frock. This country is going to have pretty much go all Egypt on the ruling class to have any hope of changing what fundamentally ails us. That doesn't mean the Constitution has to be shredded and new institutions of government created. It just means that, at the end of the day, the people in government must be responsive to the public interest, not the oligarchy's.

That's a hugely tall order in many ways. But, on the other hand, context is everything. People are fed-up now, and growing increasingly sick of being subjected to a steady diet of bogus wars, gay-bashing or empty platitudes in the place of real solutions to real problems. There is a giant vacuum today in American politics, which will only grow dramatically in scale about two years or so into a Republican administration's term. But political nature abhors a vacuum, and the opportunity today for a genuine set of people-first politics to attract votes (whether as a third party or through a hijacking of the Democratic Party) has not been greater in decades. More and more, Americans are coming to the realization that the choice between Democrats and Republicans is the political equivalent to the choice between Goldman Sachs and Citibank. That is to say, none at all. And more and more they will demand a real alternative, if only from sheer desperation.

I don't think the American political class will see such a development coming, any more than they did in Egypt, and any more than they are able to grapple with Occupy Wall Street. It's been alternately amazing, amusing, sickening and predictable to observe the reaction that these demonstrations have engendered among our ruling class and their stable of media bots, including the obligatory condescending tropes about dirty hippies and clueless youth occupying the park. That's fine with me. I hope the powers-that-be continue to stand by, establishing a record for themselves of befuddlement and contempt, so that there's no ambiguity whatsoever about which side they were on when the chips were down, and so that they can all the more rapidly and definitively be transformed into the powers-that-were.

Their critiques have been fast and furious, so much so that, golly, it almost seems like the establishment needed to find something for which to criticize the movement, even if they had to invent it. I'm sure the Eric Cantors and New York Timeses of this world would never be so nefarious and disingenuous as to do something like that, of course. But it sure seemed that way, especially as you hear the ubiquitous critique that the folks in Zuccotti Park "don't have a message."

Gee, you think? I mean, if ten thousand people march around the Pentagon, what do you think that could mean? That they want an increase in Social Security benefits? A longer baseball season, perhaps? If thousands of blacks march on Selma, what do you suppose is their demand? Deregulation of derivative trading? A ban on cloning? And if thousands decide to occupy Wall Street, what ever might one imagine is the reason they are there in particular? Because lower Manhattan has the best falafel stands?

Still can't figure it out, Masters of the Universe and talking head plastic media arbiters of American culture? How about this for a hint: The protesters keep chanting, "We are the 99 percent! We are the 99 percent!" What could that possibly mean? Yes, it's true that there are no leaders for you to coopt, jail or ridicule, and we know that makes you, er, uneasy. Yes, there is a manifest absence of manifestoes with forty-seven point plans full of tax reform schemes and new educational testing initiatives. But even you pompous blow-dried blow-hards in your gated communities should be able to get the general gist of what we're saying, that we in the 99 percent are sick and tired of being exploited and thrashed for the sake of satiating the pathological greed of the one percent.

Even if you have no brains inside your immaculately coifed heads, you should still be able to decipher that no-brainer. Unless, of course, the problem is that you just don't want to. Take for example the fine specimen of a regressive columnist Mark Steyn, who writes for the Orange County Register (of course), and just recently scribbled this dribble: "My colleague Rich Lowry correctly notes that many of the beleaguered families testifying on the "We are the 99%" websites have real problems. However, the "Occupy" movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable lethargic pseudo-university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole. Indeed, for all their youthful mien, the protesters are as mired in America's post-war moment as their grandparents: One of their demands is for a trillion dollars in "environmental restoration." Hey, why not? It's only a trillion."

What Mr. Steyn doesn't want you to notice (among many other things), and what most of his readers won't in fact notice, is the basic lie at the heart of his dismissive assertion. What got us "into this hole" is precisely the opposite of what he suggests. It wasn't some liberal Frankenstein experiment gone shatteringly awry that wrecked the country, but, quite to the contrary, it was in fact the dismantlement of the liberal experiment of the mid-twentieth century, a program that had been so successful that it created a massive and wealthy middle class in America far beyond anything that had ever existed anywhere in the world prior to that time. But regressives decided to take it apart, and over the last thirty years they've won every policy battle on every question of political economy, from taxes to trade to labor relations to regulation to privatization to deficits and beyond.

Thus, what Mr. Steyn and his ill ilk are desperate for you not to know is that what wrecked the country and the planet is their conservatism (or so-called conservatism - it's really regressivism). That's why they want you to forget who was in the White House when the shit hit the fan. And that the last two Democratic presidents have created White House economic teams comprised of Wall Street executives. And that taxes are far lower than they used to be, and regulation of bankers nearly nonexistent, and social programs dismantled, and job-exporting trade deals signed, and unions crushed, and on and on and on. These people appear to "not get" Occupy Wall Street because they're desperate for it to disappear. In truth, they get it thoroughly and entirely (and, deep down, they can't believe it's taken this long for it to arrive), and they know it for precisely the existential threat to their sickeningly indulgent lives of infantile greed that it absolutely is.

But just in case I'm being unduly harsh to a class of boardroom rapists and murderers and the media and political marionettes who enable their predatory agenda, let me see if I can be helpful to them and simplify the message. It's just this: "We are not your human resources." We. Are. Not. Your. Human. Resources.

The truth is, the one percent in this country sees the rest of us - not as equals, or even as human beings - but as commodities put on this earth to serve them, no different from machines or infrastructure, computers or chemicals. We are their resources, who just happen to have bodies and minds somewhat similar to their own (though of an entirely different class, of course!). Which means we're a pain in the ass because, unlike machines, we have an annoying tendency to want a moderately decent salary and time off to spend with our families, not to mention bathroom breaks on the job. What a drag, eh Thurston?! To them, we're not human beings entitled to human rights and empathetic respect. We are, instead, the frustratingly-expensive remaining elements of a wealth-production machine that cannot (yet) be replaced by computers, robots or Asian peasants.

This is - in the minds of the one percent - a pure relationship of sheer exploitation. In truth, it fundamentally differs little from slavery or patriarchy or environmental destruction. What all these systems have in common is the age-old notion of one class of people living large at the expense of other creatures' misery.

And rarely in the last century have the oligarchs and plutocrats been as successful at doing just that as they are today. Moreover, under the generous leadership of an entire political class ranging from Barack Obama to Scott Walker, they are at this moment still relentlessly attempting to destroy what little is left of American middle class prosperity in the name of unquenchable elite greed. And why not? Since when were three yachts ever enough?

What frightens these people about Occupy Wall Street - and, make no mistake, their attempts at ridicule are the purest possible expressions of their fear - is the idea that the public might actually be on to their game at last.

That a critical mass might have reached critical mass.

That we might no longer be susceptible to diversion by means of ethnic or lifestyle divisions pitting us against one another, or by foreign bogeymen and the endless national security 'crises' they are said to represent.

That we might remember that things were once better here, before we abandoned our humanity and wisdom in the name of greed and expediency and oligarchy.

That we might realize how weak the one percent actually are - just as our Egyptian brothers and sisters found out about their own kleptocracy - and that we might discover how easily toppled corrupt regimes are once exposed for what they are.

That we might demand a modest but fair share of the national wealth, and a political system in which people, not just special interest campaign contributors, actually have a voice in policy decisions.

That we might insist on a decent quality of life for ourselves, and a real future for our children.

And that we understand ourselves to be real people, with real rights, real needs and real aspirations, rather than as tools placed here for the realization of their pathologically bloated obsessive greed.

Because - Mr. Steyn, Mr. Walker, Mr. Cantor, Mr. Murdoch and, yes, Mr. Obama - however much you might stamp your feet, hold your breath, and insist otherwise:

We are not your human resources.
(c) 2011 David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles, but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.






From Occupation To Liberation
By Randall Amster

Words matter, especially in our mediated world where the resonance of language is greatly amplified. In this spirit, among some sectors that are otherwise sympathetic with and supportive of the overall aims of the Occupy Movement, there has been an important critique advanced about the nature of "occupation" as an operative premise, oftentimes seeking to deconstruct the racialized character of the concept as it applies to the legacy of occupiers and the makeup of the movement in its present form.

This critical perspective highlights the fact that Wall Street has always been "occupied territory," tracing to its earliest days when an actual wall was erected, and even further back when the entire continent itself was taken by an occupying force that failed to recognize the humanity and validity of the original inhabitants. Most of us comprehend this reality -- namely that we largely exist on thoroughly occupied land -- even as we sometimes forget that for many of us working to "Occupy" the centers of power, we ourselves are the beneficiaries of an ongoing and unremediated occupation.

We ought not dismiss the movement because of these problematic linguistics. Still, we should inquire whether some allies -- especially people of color, who have suffered disproportionately from colonialism and occupation -- are being perceptually discouraged from participating fully in this emerging mobilization. I won't attempt to speak for them, but would instead suggest that we consider whether there are other ways of expressing the visceral sense of "taking back space" that is driving the effort. In fact, doing so can help foster the development of a deeper critique that subsumes not only obvious targets such as corporations and politicians, but also mores and values in themselves -- including those internal to the movement.

As the colonialist history plainly indicates, one can occupy without liberating. Occupied places can become loci of control, authoritarianism, and hierarchical power. As such, they are susceptible to being regulated and policed by those seeking to reestablish their control, as we've seen in Zuccotti Park and other Occupied sites. On the other hand, liberated spaces -- ones which have been wrested from external authorities and likewise freed from the baggage of patriarchy, racialization, classism, and other forms of creeping normativity -- cannot be so easily circumscribed, since they are only partially dependent on their address. The liberated space of a decolonized mind moves with us wherever we go, and is the most powerful form of resistance.

Challenges into Opportunities

Considering that a big part of the movement is to set up public encampments for their symbolic impact, we can already glimpse the seeds of the liberation of space rather than merely the occupation of place. While the physical location of these occupations matters, the impetus is rapidly becoming more about the desire to reframe the sociopolitical dialogue and create nodes for effective (and interlinked) organizing in communities across the nation and world. These are struggles over space, in that they address the material and cultural realms alike, and bear a resemblance to precursors such as the Hoovervilles that arose during the Great Depression -- even as we comprehend that most Occupiers do have other alternatives for actual habitation.

The movement is often branded as lacking a coherent message, but on some level the liberation of space is the message. Mass mobilizations of people defying law and authority to create autonomous zones for local assemblies, participatory democracy, consensus processes, and expressions of political solidarity are all embedded in the practice of liberated space. Likewise, a powerful statement is being made against the forces of privatization and authoritarianism, which have sought to exercise control intended to eviscerate the capacity of people to address the issues that fundamentally define their lives. A liberated space can be either public or private in its underlying legal fabric, celebrating and expanding the former while defying the latter.

The challenges posed by critiques from the left (occupation is colonialist) and the right (occupation is incoherent) are actually profound opportunities for the movement to sharpen its articulations. "Occupy Wall Street" is a fabulous catchphrase that has captured peoples' imaginations around the world. Yet now it is equally crucial to speak with more clarity about what's implicit in the slogan: decolonization, liberation, democratization, autonomy, community, dignity, and more. The effort is about reclaiming the commons, rejecting the culture of commodification of peoples and places, linking issues into a paradigmatic engagement with entrenched power, reactivating the vox populi, and creating buoyancy within the shell of a rapidly sinking ship. All of this is bound up with the inherent spatiality of the movement and its unique capacity to exist simultaneously in discontinuous yet interwoven locales.

Why This Movement Will Succeed

The combined effect of solidarity and decentralization bodes well for the success of the Occupy Movement. Of course, myriad provocateurs and party operatives are already sniffing around opportunistically to either control or decimate its potential. Pay them little mind -- their laughable attempts are the last gasps of a dying ideology that has threatened to take us all down with it. The cell-like quality of the movement mitigates against widespread infiltration and cooptation, and the staunchly leaderless posture in evidence empowers people to think and act for themselves, in concert with others, rather than being lulled into obedience or manipulated into malleability.

This movement will succeed because it has learned the lessons of history and isn't consumed with asking for concessions or fitting within the four corners of the "vast wasteland" that is the domain of demagogues and talking (corporate) heads. This movement will succeed because it is global in scope, essentially coming to encapsulate an Occupy Earth mobilization, and it taps into the conjoined interests of everyone who is not part of the international elite class that has rigged the game on every continent. This movement will succeed because people are tired of being told that they are little more than commodities to be bought and sold, molded and discarded, and stripped of rights without recourse.

Ultimately, this movement will succeed because we have no other choice but to make it so. Time is not on our side, but history might be -- every empire eventually crumbles, and exploitation is a self-defeating enterprise in the end. The urgency of the moment is palpable, and there is a strong sense that this may well be our last, best opportunity before the window of inevitability is slammed shut in our faces. The course we've been on as a culture is inherently (and intentionally) unsustainable, both socially and ecologically. Science and intuition alike tell us that the critical juncture is imminent, and that the task cannot be passed down to our descendants if we have hopes of there actually being any.

The Powers-That-Become

Thus we arrive to meet the moment, fully aware of the implications. We've cut our teeth on anti-globalization actions, anti-war demonstrations, and anti-austerity efforts. Now, it all comes together under the amorphous but palpable rubric of Occupation, and its innate sense of liberating the material and ideological spaces of our lives. Indeed, the process of liberation in itself may well be the goal, in the sense of supplanting the stagnant, deadening nature of entrenched authority. The self-anointed powers-that-be will yield to a new sense of becoming, as people elect to exercise power in their own communities rather than ceding it to remote officials with only chambers of commerce in their hearts.

We are the people, and now is the time. Words matter, and deeds even more so. We are the occupied and occupiers alike; we have been mostly preoccupied but are now reoccupying the places and spaces of our lives. We have been striving to be somebody but are steadily recognizing that this only works if we create a world in which everybody can become the person of their full potential. The power to make this happen is coming into focus, and seeing is truly believing. Our collective liberation -- and with it our capacity to help liberate one another and the balance of life around us -- eagerly awaits.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).




Herman wants to chop up Wall Street protestors and place them on Pizzas




Knee Jerks Defend Wall Street

If you had any doubt about the seriousness of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement that is springing up from America's grassroots like hardy wildflowers, just note the frantic fulminations against it by assorted Wall Street toadies.

The corporate cheerleaders on CNBC, for example, reached back to the nasty days of McCarthyism to smear the youthful protesters as "aligned with Lenin." Little Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader who loyally serves the banksters as their Washington lapdog, yapped in alarm about "the growing mobs occupying Wall Street." Then came Mitt Romney, himself a former Wall Streeter, to warn darkly against the protesting rabble: "I think it's dangerous – this class warfare."

Even more clueless is Herman Cain. Previously the CEO of Godfather's Pizza chain who's now running for president, he can't stop foaming at the mouth about the Wall Street occupation. "Anti-American," he labeled the protesters, later blasting them as losers who're "jealous" of successful people: "Don't blame Wall Street," he lectured. "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."

To put the icing on his half-baked cupcake of ignorance, Cain then expressed his deep understanding of economics: "To protest Wall Street and the bankers is basically saying you're anti-capitalism," he expounded – a plutocratic theory that America's millions of conservative, small-business capitalists would consider perverse. But, wait, there were more Cainisms: "These demonstrations," he complained, "I honestly don't understand, what are they looking for?

Gosh, godfather, if you have to ask a question like that, you're way too out of touch to be president. What we're looking for are such old-fashioned American fundamentals as economic fairness, social justice, and equal opportunities for all.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Time For U.S. Women To Keep The Peace
By Helen Thomas

Three women from Africa and the Middle East have won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. We are still in two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and additionally have military involvement in Pakistan and Yemen. So where are the American female peacemakers? Shouldn't we be leading in the struggle for peace, especially considering our losses in the violence of war?

There is one woman who stands out - Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink: Women for Peace. Code Pink describes itself as "a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming activities."

Medea herself is a strong peace advocate. After being pepper sprayed during a recent protest against the War in Afghanistan, Medea reminded us that pepper spray is nothing compared to what innocent civilians face when drones rain bombs down on their communities. Currently she is with the Wall Street protesters - leading her pals in the fight for our piece of the pie to pay for schools, housing and healthcare instead of funding wars.

The three women who shared the Nobel Peace Prize - braving the all-male tradition in their country in order to break the chains of centuries-old customs of second class citizenship that relegated women to their kitchens - are Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, and Yemeni opposition leader Tawakkol Karman, who protested for freedom long before the Arab Awakening.

One might say the American suffragists broke away from male dominance in 1920 after they won the right to vote after a 70-year struggle. As much as they achieved, we still have a way to go with regard to women's equality in the workplace and in politics.

Unfortunately at this time, two of the most prominent women in American politics are Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota - who is still in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination, and Sarah Palin who is not running. Both Republican women are reactionary conservatives. These women don't seem to understand that they would never have been in competition for the highest office in our land, had it not been for liberal women who defied the rules to demand equality and their rights.

It took too long, but the manifestation of female progress in regressive societies is the doling of the great honor of the Nobel Peace Prize to three women in underdeveloped countries.

President Sirleaf is best known as the first woman to be elected president of an African country. Harvard educated, she served as finance minister, and worked at the World Bank and the U.N. Development Program. Although Sirleaf has made progress for Liberia's economy, she is criticized for not doing enough for the crippling poverty and 50 percent unemployment rate.

Gbowee organized Muslim and Christian women to demonstrate for peace. The Washington Post quoted her as saying, "I'm shocked, I'm numb, I'm still really feeling like it's all a dream to me." She continued, "There is no way we can negotiate peace and security if we leave out the women of the world." Gbowee called the peace prize an acknowledgement now, and said "we can only succeed."

Karman called the award "a victory for our revolution, for our methods, for our struggle, for all Yemeni youth, and all the youth in the Arab world - in Tunisia, in Egypt, everywhere." She added, "This will give the people more strength, and to recognize that peace is the only way, that making a new Yemen must come without violence."

Women in these so-called backward countries are still behind the fights for jobs and other social needs, including health and education. They are pointing the way, and they have been ignored for too long. The spirit of freedom is contagious and these Nobel women laureates have shown us the way. While American women know there is still work to be done to achieve a more just society, why have we retreated?

Where are the Eleanor Roosevelts, the Betty Friedans, the Bella Abzugs, and so many other women leaders who stood their ground to advance the causes that created a better and more peaceful country? Of course we have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but she has turned out to be one of the boys.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Reduce Federal Budget - Cut Space Program
By James Donahue

I have been a strong advocate of the U. S. space program ever since the Russian launch of Sputnik prompted President John F. Kennedy to challenge Americans to send men to the moon. Those were the best of times in America, when the cost of such a mission was something that fit within the national budget, when people had good jobs and were willing to pay the cost of such an adventure.

And let's face it, we were convinced in those days that Russia and the Communist world was our enemy and we could not allow them to get any kind of jump on us. And conquering space was an important military objective for both Russia and the United States.

We accomplished our goal. We successfully sent men to and from the Moon, launched some amazing satellite technology including a super telescope that peers far out into the galaxies, and sent missions to do close-up studies of every planet in our solar system. And we can say without question that the space program technology has changed our everyday life in ways a lot of people now take for granted. Everything from the invention of a powdered drink called Tang to the modern cell phone and trans-communication systems and the GPS devices that guide aircraft, ships and our personal cars, all stem from this technology. Indeed, we can present a lot of strong arguments for maintaining our space program. But in these hard economic times, with the bandits running off with all of the cash from the federal vault, is it practical to carry on any longer? Is this not something we can sacrifice in the interest of feeding, housing and clothing the nation's poor? Which do we count as more important . . . a new and faster operating computer on that office desk or giving aid and comfort to our neighbors in desperate need?

Times have really changed in America since those wonderful years when President Kennedy promoted so much pride in everybody. His murder was the beginning of a slide down a slippery slope that has brought us to the place we are today. We cannot pretend that we have the resources to continue thinking about sending men into space.

The very sheen behind our space adventures got dull after we committed ourselves to a cooperative construction of a multi-billion dollars manned international space station in 1998. We have been committed to this program ever since. We have literally worn out our shuttles servicing it. While various scientific experiments have been conducted on the station, and we have succeeded in keeping it manned even as construction continues, the payback is largely an unknown.

Much of the research on the space platform has been to prepare NASA for future ventures back to the Moon, on to Mars and possibly beyond. But under the changing circumstances, is that something we really want to invest our tax dollars in?

NASA moved long ago from a public agency to a military-controlled government operation. Everything planned, constructed and used by NASA and the military space program is handled by private contractors and have multi-billion dollar price tags. And everything ends up "over budget." Thus we can be sure that the cost of just returning to the Moon will be something we no longer can afford.

Why would we want to go to the Moon or Mars? True, there is a military advantage to getting back to the Moon before China or some other country does. We have the technology now to literally destroy portions of Earth with advanced new weaponry fired from the Moon. We also have the technology to destroy the world by planting enough explosives on the Moon to blow it up. The next team to get there with that technology could hold the world hostage by mere threat.

That kind of thinking involves world military conquest. It is sick. It offers a black doomsday scenario that should not be our future. There is nothing to be gained by it for anybody.

The only other reason we are interested in sending humans off to other planets is to determine if we have a place to escape to if and when our planet no longer can sustain life. And that, coupled with science fiction shows like Star Trek, is giving us a false sense of security. We already know that we will not find a habitable planet to live on in this solar system unless it is artificially constructed. Such a venture, however, does not seem feasible. Imagine the cost of building such a space colony at today's prices!

It seems much more reasonable to consider shutting down the entire space program and focusing the money, instead, on green technology that will be Earth friendly. Why not spend the $11.1 billion earmarked for the current space program to save our planet? It makes more sense than trying to find new ways to blow up our planet or escape from it.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.







The Rise Of The Regressive Right And The Reawakening Of America
By Robert Reich

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.

We are going to battle once again.

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we're all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today's Republican right aren't really conservatives. Their goal isn't to conserve what we have. It's to take us backwards.

They'd like to return to the 1920s -before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s - the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the "rot" is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

In truth, if they had their way we'd be back in the late nineteenth century -before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons -railroad, financial, and oil titans -ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Listen carefully to today's Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don't help the poor or unemployed or anyone who's fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation's wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America's wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker's wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers' wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they're conservative jurists. But they're judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states' rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.

Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.

In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.

Perhaps this is what's beginning to happen again across America.
© 2011 Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.








Obama vs. Jobs; Hope vs. Reality
By David Swanson

Last week, President Obama racked up several more broken campaign promises as he pushed through Congress three new job-killing corporate trade agreements. The Senate Finance Committee was quite open about the fact that these agreements will kill off more jobs and eager to mitigate the damage with band aids attached to the treaties. Some of us who were in the hearing room felt an obligation to speak up and ask why in the world the senators -- with perfect bipartisan harmony -- insisted on causing the damage in the first place. And for that we were thrown in jail.

Imagine the denunciations of human rights abuses in Colombia if the plan for that country this week were war rather than corporate exploitation to produce impoverishment to produce drug crops to produce war. Imagine the denunciations of human rights abuses in Iran having continued as usual if U.S. cops weren't cracking skulls in New York, Boston, Denver, and San Diego. Maybe we wouldn't have needed the Tale of the Moronic Mexican Iranian Assassins at all.

Also last week, President Obama pretended to try to pass a weak gesture in the way of lessening the damage of his policies with separate legislation known as a "jobs bill." But he made no serious effort to get it passed and according to many observers wanted it to fail. It was blocked by Democrats as well as Republicans in a Democratic Senate. Nonetheless, the purpose was apparently to create a campaign ad for what the same president will supposedly try to do in 2013 if reelected, and if tens of millions of us are still obediently filling out job applications.

Dutiful union members and party activists last week rallied for a bill the President did not whip for. In other words, they took part in a theatrical advertisement for a reelection campaign.

"The president has learned that a loss can be a win," said an unnamed source whom Politico calls a "senior Democratic strategist who supports Obama." And I can confirm that this is not only real but typical. "We've done everything to win legislatively, to scrape through," this loyal partisan said. "Now we're determined to keep the high ground on a set of issues where we have the overwhelming support of the American people." If you doubt the intention to shift all energy into a presidential reelection campaign, watch Tom Hayden's interview about Occupy Wall Street on Keith Olbermann's show.

Here are the problems with this picture:

First, the same president is killing off jobs on a large scale with corporate trade pacts and military spending. Military spending produces fewer jobs than tax cuts for non-billionaires, much less useful spending on infrastructure, green energy, or education.

Second, the same president's jobs bill, had it passed, would have barely touched the problem of wealth inequality, joblessness, and imbalance of power.

Third, Obama made no serious effort to pass the bill, despite having demonstrated in the past the ability to compel any Democrat to vote for any bill, including war-funding supplementals and godawful corporate health-insurance schemes.

Fourth, the bill was blocked by Democrats who have a majority in the Senate.

Fifth, the Majority Leader Harry Reid recently lowered the bar for moving bills forward from 60 to 51 votes, despite years of feigned helplessness in the face of the unreachability of the 60-vote mark. Reid is no more serious in his efforts than Obama.

Sixth, campaign promises from people who have broken hundreds of campaign promises would be useless even if the pretenses of attempting decent governance were not so transparent.

If Obama or Reid or the Democratic Party or MoveOn.org or anybody else thinks the people occupying the streets of our cities in protest are going to fall for this, they've got a very rude awakening coming. The Occupation movement is one that brings policy demands to the government, not partisan pretense to a pseudo-combat with the goal of bipartisanship or the election of either flavor of crypto-fascist corporate servants.

The question is not whether we want to risk electing a racist buffoon to the imperial throne. The question is whether we want to join those who are making major sacrifices to occupy our city squares and move our entire culture and our entire government toward peace and justice instead of plutocracy and planetary collapse. Do we want to avoid a war on Iran before it happens or turn against it once we have a Republican president? Do we want to halt global warming or lament its advances later? Do we want to overthrow our financial oligarchy or hope it changes the appearance of the curtains behind which it works?

The genius of the 99% movement is that it brings people's demands to the government. Nobody is asking a political party what to demand, whom to confront, and whose crimes to grant immunity. We're uniting as a people to insist on representation in our government. The notion that we already have it from either half of our government is so ludicrous as to reveal those who make that claim to be engaging in fraud.

We now have a majority supporting the nonviolent occupations. And we have 99% of that majority sitting on its rear ends.

If you object to being played for a bunch of fools, get in the streets!

If you resent people stripping away jobs while pretending to create them, get in the streets!

If you'd rather have a decent place to live in which your children and grandchildren will be able to live as well, instead of bailouts for bankers and new wars started every few months, get in the streets!

If you'd rather see majority opinion obeyed just once on any issue than have a congressional caucus dutifully represent the interests of unmanned drones, get in the streets!

The conversation is changing.

The mortgage fraud non-settlement is in trouble.

Wall Street is scared.

There are bills in Congress to eliminate the Super Committee and to end the Federal Reserve.

There is music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air.

Don't just sit there nodding.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Let Our Farmers Grow
By Ralph Nader

Congressman Ron Paul introduced H.R. 1831, the "Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011" on May 11th of this year. It is a simple bill at just two pages in length, and it would legalize the growing of industrial hemp in the United States.

Currently farmers can grow industrial hemp only if they have received a permit from the DEA - a prospect that the agency has made all but impossible for decades. Otherwise, it is illegal to grow.

Although Rep. Paul has introduced several bills like this one in the past, there are several reasons that this bill should be passed now. Hemp has an amazing number of uses. Its fiber can be used in carpeting, home furnishings, construction materials, auto parts, textiles, and paper. Its seeds can be used in food, industrial oils, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. There are assertions, reported by The Guardian and in Biodiesel Magazine that using industrial hemp in biofuels instead of crops like corn and other feedstock provide greater environmental benefits. The expansion of industrial hemp as a feedstock for biofuels could also help to reduce oil imports.

Not only does hemp have a wide range of uses, but its cultivation in the United States could help to spur our lagging economy. Since the cultivation of hemp is outlawed in the United States, the U.S. market for hemp and hemp-based products is entirely dependent upon imports. A 2010 Congressional Research Service report cited an estimate that the U.S. market for hemp-based products may exceed $350 million annually.

A ban on the agricultural production of hemp simply doesn't make sense. Farmers in places like Iowa could benefit greatly from the production of industrial hemp. In a crippling recession, unemployed Americans could receive a boost from such an emerging industry, from farm to value-added businesses. And many firms here in the United States that sell hem--based products would reap the benefits.

Currently they import their hemp from places like Canada, China, or France, which can increase their costs from 10 to 15 percent or more. As the only remaining developed nation in which the production of industrial hemp is not permitted, the United States is not only missing out on a large - and growing - global market, but limiting the livelihoods of farmers, processors and fabricators.

Industrial hemp could benefit our environment greatly. A range of studies have shown the benefits: hemp can thrive with minimal - or even without - herbicides, it reinvigorates the soil, and it requires less water than crops like cotton. Furthermore, it could prevent the deforestation of large portions of the U.S. landscape and presents significant benefits compared with wood in the production of paper. Industrial hemp matures in three to four months. It takes years for trees to grow. It can also yield four times as much paper per acre as trees.

Critics of industrial hemp may point to its relation to marijuana in order to claim that if one smokes industrial hemp, they can become high. Although industrial hemp and marijuana share the same species, cannabis sativa, industrial hemp is genetically and chemically different. Industrial hemp, at most, contains one third of 1 percent THC, the drug that produces a psychoactive effect in marijuana. However, marijuana is often between 10 and 30 percent THC. Smoking industrial hemp will not make an individual high.

The DEA will claim that growing industrial hemp next to marijuana may serve to impede law enforcement against the latter. However, countries that have legal cultivation of industrial hemp do not have similar problems. Furthermore, since industrial hemp has such little THC, growing it next to marijuana would only serve to dilute by cross pollinations the illegal marijuana plants - something no marijuana grower wants.

Industrial hemp has a distinguished history in this country dating before the revolution and its founding. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew industrial hemp on their farms. During World War II, hemp was used to make very strong rope and the Department of Agriculture made a film, "Hemp for Victory" to encourage its cultivation.

Despite the importance of this issue, we rarely see it discussed in the headlines or by political candidates. Farmers in Iowa could benefit greatly from the cultivation of industrial hemp. Citizens in Iowa, who have the ear of presidential hopefuls, have an opportunity to move this issue back into the spotlight during the December 10th Republican Presidential Primary debate.

Let's hope Congressman Paul and his fellow candidates agree that it is time to allow farmers in Iowa and other states to once again start growing industrial hemp.

Jeff Musto of CSRL contributed to this article.
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.








Losing Their Immunity
By Paul Krugman

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement's targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the "kvetchocracy.") The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don't they understand what we've done for the U.S. economy?

The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation's economic elite have done for us. And that's why they're protesting.

On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, "Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let's embrace it."

This is deeply unfair to American workers, who are good at lots of things, and could be even better if we made adequate investments in education and infrastructure. But to the extent that America has lagged in everything except financial services, shouldn't the question be why, and whether it's a trend we want to continue?

For the financialization of America wasn't dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis. Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. Wall Street made a large direct contribution to economic polarization, because soaring incomes in finance accounted for a significant fraction of the rising share of the top 1 percent (and the top 0.1 percent, which accounts for most of the top 1 percent's gains) in the nation's income. More broadly, the same political forces that promoted financial deregulation fostered overall inequality in a variety of ways, undermining organized labor, doing away with the "outrage constraint" that used to limit executive paychecks, and more.

Oh, and taxes on the wealthy were, of course, sharply reduced.

All of this was supposed to be justified by results: the paychecks of the wizards of Wall Street were appropriate, we were told, because of the wonderful things they did. Somehow, however, that wonderfulness failed to trickle down to the rest of the nation - and that was true even before the crisis. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, grew only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following World War II, even though the postwar economy was marked both by strict financial regulation and by much higher tax rates on the wealthy than anything currently under political discussion.

Then came the crisis, which proved that all those claims about how modern finance had reduced risk and made the system more stable were utter nonsense. Government bailouts were all that saved us from a financial meltdown as bad as or worse than the one that caused the Great Depression.

And what about the current situation? Wall Street pay has rebounded even as ordinary workers continue to suffer from high unemployment and falling real wages. Yet it's harder than ever to see what, if anything, financiers are doing to earn that money.

Why, then, does Wall Street expect anyone to take its whining seriously? That money manager claiming that finance is the only thing America does well also complained that New York's two Democratic senators aren't on his side, declaring that "They need to understand who their constituency is." Actually, they surely know very well who their constituency is - and even in New York, 16 out of 17 workers are employed by nonfinancial industries.

But he wasn't really talking about voters, of course. He was talking about the one thing Wall Street still has plenty of thanks to those bailouts, despite its total loss of credibility: money.

Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry's money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry's behavior, no matter how gently - as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry's shock over recent events.

You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.

And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"...it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare'em."
Easy Rider ~~~ Jack Nicholson









Changing Of The Guards
The New Road of the Occupation Movement
By Chris Floyd

Bob Dylan, when a young man, knew the enemy: the "masters of war," the profiteers and bureaucrats of death and domination, who wring money and power from bloodshed, torment and fear. He knew too that these wretches of lamed humanity were not confined to a single country or culture or political structure or time.

Beyond this, though, he also knew that conventional politics was not the answer to the evils that beset -- and tempt -- us. Instead, he saw that the answer was "blowing in the wind" -- which is to say that there is no answer, there are only the questions: how many roads, how many times, how many years, how many deaths will it take to shatter the hardened heart, to break down the walls that seal us up in lies, in hate, in fear, in greed, in ignorance, in pain?

These chiming questions are really calls to the endless task of enlightenment: to keep asking them over and over and over -- in every age, in every situation, in every confrontation with reality -- is a way to form your understanding of the world, and your individual morality. It's not an answer but a discipline, a way of being, and becoming. (For as the young man also said: He not busy being born is busy dying.)

It is an ancient quest, taking on a multiplicity of forms through the ages, young Dylan's lightning flash of insight being but one expression. And while it is laid upon each individual in every age, it can, at times, erupt on a wider plane, unlooked for, in a sudden upsurge, like a subterranean stream breaking into the sunlight and flooding the land. "Kairotic moments," Tillich called them. Not magical, miraculous transformations of human nature or the entirety of human culture, but outbursts of heightened consciousness, of creative engagement and exploration, experimentation. And no matter how much these moments are later diluted, dimmed, beaten back, twisted or lost, they leave behind new soil to build upon, new insights to draw upon, new fragments to shore against our ruins.

There's nothing mystical about it. These eruptions are brought into being by a coalescence of unimaginably vast and varied elements, on every level of human life in the natural world. And they aren't clearly defined, like cut glass, but amorphous, shifting, mixed, volatile, like a chemical reaction -- a process, an elan vital, not a fixed property or party platform.

They are, invariably, a movement of the young, although naturally they can spread to touch the lives of all those in the bright penumbra of the moment. But they grow out of and belong to the young, to generations suffocating beneath the silt of the past, the betrayals and failures and deep-rutted inertia of those who came before them. They belong to the young, who can see the world fresh, who haven't "learned" the false lessons of cynicism and conformity and fear, who have nothing to lose and the wide, beguiling expanse of the future to gain. The young, alive with possibility, charged with sexual energy, with the churning, forging fires of chaos and discovery, who have not yet the breath of mortality shiver through their bones. Generations who, for a myriad of reasons, wake up and realize that the world is theirs, to grapple with and shape and push in new directions.

The Occupation movement, which has erupted across the world this year -- and is now spreading through the United States from the epicenter of Wall Street -- is not the Sixties come again. It might, in small part, build upon some of the fragments left by that now long-dimmed eruption -- and others that came before it in history. After all, as the Preacher says, there is nothing new under the sun. But of course to the young, everything is authentically, genuinely, thrillingly new: a leap into the unknown, exhilarating, bewildering, vivid.

Yet whatever it antecedents, the Occupation movement is in essence, and in practice, very much its own thing, its own moment, its own upsurging through the silt into the open air. It will make its own breakthroughs, its own spectacular mistakes, its own many permutations, all formed by the younger generation's unique experiencing of the world -- which older generations can never fully know, having been formed in a different time, under different conditions.

Today, due to the intolerable pressures from the heaped-up follies and failures of the past, the times have been torn open in a special way, and there is now a chance for new energies, new approaches and understandings to pour in. It's time for us, the older generations, to give way to this new energy -- supporting and helping it as far as we are able, but with the realization that it is not ours to direct or shape or scold or instruct. (Young Dylan understood this as well: "Your old road is rapidly fading; please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand.")

We have had our future, but it's over; we have used it up, and, in so many ways, botched and wasted it; the future now belongs to the young. The kairotic moment of the Occupation movement is theirs, to make of it what they can. It won't be easy -- it may be more difficult, even more horrific than anyone can envision, as the powers that be strike back with growing force against this unexpected, leaderless, shape-shifting challenge to the dead hand of their corrupt dominion. The dangers are great; but this moment -- this opening, this rip in time -- is alive with rare promise. A slightly older Dylan presciently limned today's situation well:

"Gentlemen," he said,
"I don't need your organization. I've shined your shoes,
I've moved your mountains and marked your cards.
But Eden is burning: either get ready for elimination,
Or else your hearts must have the courage
For the changing of the guards."

Let's have the courage. Let's lend a hand, stand with the young, and not let them face the dangers alone. Let's go with them down their new road.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd




.




Occupy Wall Street Visited
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Last Saturday while in New York City I went downtown to visit the Occupy Wall Street group and also ended up walking in their protest march around big bank buildings. A terrific experience with a huge group chanting things like "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!"

My first impression was absolute amazement at how many police surrounded Zuccotti Park, as massive a police presence as any I had ever seen in countless news accounts of protests in other countries, including those trying to overturn awful regimes. No wonder that New York City has spent over $3 million so far on policing the Occupy events.

As I slowly walked through all the groups at the park seeing how things were organized, how people were living and having occasional conversations I became increasingly impressed. The park is really very small. So there is very little space to walk around and some people are sleeping under various kinds of coverings. Most exceptional of the high quality of place is that it is like a small village with a medical center, food serving area, library, makeshift clothing store, including someone with a sewing machine tailoring clothes, and even two people offering haircuts.

Overwhelmingly, the whole park area was exceptionally clean, and there was a large set of cleaning utensils and I saw one person going around sweeping a small amount of litter. None of the flower beds were destroyed.

The choice of foods and their quality were exceptional, especially considering that the city outlaws any open flame cooking or heating equipment.

From my conversations and what I listened to demonstrated that the protestors were highly informed and totally committed to their Occupy goals. Something that does not get enough attention is that a good fraction of the protestors are not very young people, many are in the sixties or seventies. A large number of people in the park were busy working on their laptops. I saw no evidence of alcohol or drug use. And protestors were well dressed, always courteous and very friendly.

Many of the group's serious discussions and votes are held in offsite locations.

There were a very large number of media people around and inside the park; they also followed the marchers.

Much of the information about the Occupy movement in downtown Manhattan is seriously misleading. Most ludicrous are criticisms by many politicians and media pundits that specific policy proposals are missing. The clear success of the Occupy movement as evidenced by an explosion of similar groups in countless US and foreign cities is a testament to its success, not to mention endless media coverage.

The central and correct focus of the Occupy movement is on the failures of the banking and finance sector that has provided insane money rewards to those that have raped the US and global economy and caused great harm to the 99%. Economic inequality and injustice that come from both a corrupt political and economic system owned by the rich and powerful corporate elites are what I and many others have been writing about for years. To get bogged down in very specific policy actions would not serve a useful purpose, especially because the Occupy movement sees nothing positive about the two-party plutocracy running and ruining the US political system. I sensed no faith whatsoever in Democrats, including President Obama, and Republicans and their Tea Party supporters.

If the Democrats or Obama try to convert the Occupy movement into something that serves their political ambitions it would be a shame, especially if it succeeded to any extent.

Even without conventional "leaders" the Occupy movement is succeeding at being a direct democracy and its organizational capabilities are outstanding. They have been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and also huge quantities of boxes of donated materials stored somewhere, much of which have not even been opened yet. I think mainly because of too little space in the park. Clearly, as some polls have shown, there is massive public support for the Occupy movement. It has what it takes to last for a long time.

The big question is how true and deep reforms in our political and economic system needed to fight economic inequality and injustice harming most Americans will be achieved. In this regard, one of my hopes is that the Occupy movement in the US will get behind the effort by Dylan Ratigan at getmoneyout.com to get a constitutional amendment that would get money out of politics. This is the only way to directly fight the corruption of government by rich and powerful interests. The path to getting such an amendment, however, is through the use of the Article V convention option in the Constitution, not by relying on Congress for proposing something to reform it. Supporting use of the convention option is something I hope the Occupy movement will also support. I now have more hope that the much needed Second American Revolution may happen.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.





The Dead Letter Office...





Herman gives the Corpo-rat Salute!

Heil Obama,

Dear Pizzen kochen Cain,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your telling the Wall Street protestors, "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself," Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross, first class, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute you herr Cain, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama




Dr. Cornel West, at a rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court
organized by October 2011/Stop the Machine Sunday, Oct. 16, 2011.
West and 18 others were arrested.


Why Cornel West Was Arrested In Memory Of Martin Luther King Jr., In Support Of Occupy Movement
By John Nichols

On the day that President Obama and others celebrated the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the dedication of Washington's King memorial, Dr. Cornel West was a few blocks away—celebrating King with activism on behalf of economic justice and the "Occupy" movement.

After attending the dedication of the King memorial, West joined a "Stop the Machine! Create a New World!" protest march.

On the steps of the US Supreme Court, with fellow activists, he called out the High Court for making decisions that allow corporations to dominate the economic life and the politics of the nation.

"We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions," West declared. "We want to send a lesson to ourselves, to our loved ones, our families, our communities, our nation and the world, that out of deep love for working and poor people that we are willing to put whatever it takes (on the line)—even if we get arrested today—and say we will not allow this day of Martin Luther King Jr.'s memorial to go by without somebody going to jail. Because Martin King would be here right with us, willing to throw down out of deep love."

Then, the author of Race Matters, Democracy Matters and other groundbreaking books written in the King tradition sat down on the steps of the court with at least eighteen protesters.

"We are here to bear witness, in solidarity with the Occupy movement all around the world because we love poor people, we love working people, and we want Martin Luther King Jr. to smile from the grave that we haven't forgotten," said West.

Moments later, West was cuffed by the police and led into the court building as a crowd chanted: "We're with you, Dr. West!" and "We won't forget!"


(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








The Mystery Of Consciousness
By Sam Harris

You are not aware of the electrochemical events occurring at each of the trillion synapses in your brain at this moment. But you are aware, however dimly, of sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, and moods. At the level of your experience, you are not a body of cells, organelles, and atoms; you are consciousness and its ever-changing contents, passing through various stages of wakefulness and sleep, and from cradle to grave.

The term "consciousness" is notoriously difficult to define. Consequently, many a debate about its character has been waged without the participants' finding even a common topic as common ground. By "consciousness," I mean simply "sentience," in the most unadorned sense. To use the philosopher Thomas Nagel's construction: A creature is conscious if there is "something that it is like" to be this creature; an event is consciously perceived if there is "something that it is like" to perceive it. ⁠Whatever else consciousness may or may not be in physical terms, the difference between it and unconsciousness is first and foremost a matter of subjective experience. Either the lights are on, or they are not.[1]

To say that a creature is conscious, therefore, is not to say anything about its behavior; no screams need be heard, or wincing seen, for a person to be in pain. Behavior and verbal report are fully separable from the fact of consciousness: We can find examples of both without consciousness (a primitive robot) and consciousness without either (a person suffering "locked-in syndrome").⁠[2]

It is surely a sign of our intellectual progress that a discussion of consciousness no longer has to begin with a debate about its existence. To say that consciousness may only seem to exist is to admit its existence in full-for if things seem any way at all, that is consciousness. Even if I happen to be a brain in a vat at this moment-all my memories are false; all my perceptions are of a world that does not exist-the fact that I am having an experience is indisputable (to me, at least). This is all that is required for me (or any other conscious being) to fully establish the reality of consciousness. Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.⁠[3]

As our understanding of the physical world has evolved, our notion of what counts as "physical" has broadened considerably. A world teeming with fields and forces, vacuum fluctuations, and the other gossamer spawn of modern physics is not the physical world of common sense. In fact, our common sense seems to be stuck somewhere in the 16th century. We have also generally forgotten that many of the patriarchs of physics in the first half of the 20th century regularly impugned the "physicality" of the universe. Nonreductive views like those of Eddington, Jeans, Pauli, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger seem to have had no lasting impact.[4] In some ways we can be thankful for this, for a fair amount of mumbo jumbo was in the air. Wolfgang Pauli, for instance, though one of the titans of modern physics, was also a devotee of Carl Jung, who apparently analyzed no fewer than 1,300 of the great man's dreams.[5] Pauli's thoughts about the irreducibility of mind seem to have had as much to do with Jung's least credible ideas as with quantum mechanics.

Such numinous influences eventually subsided. And once physicists got down to the serious business of building bombs, we were apparently returned to a universe of objects-and to a style of discourse, across all branches of science and philosophy, that made the mind seem ripe for reduction to the "physical" world.

The problem, however, is that no evidence for consciousness exists in the physical world.⁠[6] Physical events are simply mute as to whether it is "like something" to be what they are. The only thing in this universe that attests to the existence of consciousness is consciousness itself; the only clue to subjectivity, as such, is subjectivity. Absolutely nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, suggests that it is a locus of experience. Were we not already brimming with consciousness ourselves, we would find no evidence of it in the physical universe-nor would we have any notion of the many experiential states that it gives rise to. The painfulness of pain, for instance, puts in an appearance only in consciousness. And no description of C-fibers or pain-avoiding behavior will bring the subjective reality into view.

If we look for consciousness in the physical world, all we find are increasingly complex systems giving rise to increasingly complex behavior-which may or may not be attended by consciousness. The fact that the behavior of our fellow human beings persuades us that they are (more or less) conscious does not get us any closer to linking consciousness to physical events. Is a starfish conscious? A scientific account of the emergence of consciousness would answer this question. And it seems clear that we will not make any progress by drawing analogies between starfish behavior and our own. It is only in the presence of animals sufficiently like ourselves that our intuitions about (and attributions of) consciousness begin to crystallize. Is there "something that it is like" to be a cocker spaniel? Does it feel its pains and pleasures? Surely it must. How do we know? Behavior, analogy, parsimony.⁠[7]

Most scientists are confident that consciousness emerges from unconscious complexity. We have compelling reasons for believing this, because the only signs of consciousness we see in the universe are found in evolved organisms like ourselves. Nevertheless, this notion of emergence strikes me as nothing more than a restatement of a miracle. To say that consciousness emerged at some point in the evolution of life doesn't give us an inkling of how it could emerge from unconscious processes, even in principle.

I believe that this notion of emergence is incomprehensible-rather like a naive conception of the big bang. The idea that everything (matter, space-time, their antecedent causes, and the very laws that govern their emergence) simply sprang into being out of nothing seems worse than a paradox. "Nothing," after all, is precisely that which cannot give rise to "anything," let alone "everything." Many physicists realize this, of course. Fred Hoyle, who coined "big bang" as a term of derogation, is famous for opposing this creation myth on philosophical grounds, because such an event seems to require a "preexisting space and time." In a similar vein, Stephen Hawking has said that the notion that the universe had a beginning is incoherent, because something can begin only with reference to time, and here we are talking about the beginning of space-time itself. He pictures space-time as a four-dimensional closed manifold, without beginning or end-much like the surface of a sphere.

Naturally, it all depends on how one defines "nothing." The physicist Lawrence Krauss has written a wonderful book arguing that the universe does indeed emerge from nothing. But in the present context, I am imagining a nothing that is emptier still-a condition without antecedent laws of physics or anything else. It might still be true that the laws of physics themselves sprang out of nothing in this sense, and the universe along with them-and Krauss says as much. Perhaps that is precisely what happened. I am simply claiming that this is not an explanation of how the universe came into being. To say "Everything came out of nothing" is to assert a brute fact that defies our most basic intuitions of cause and effect-a miracle, in other words.

Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive-which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course-"consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing." We can also say "Some squares are as round as circles" and "2 plus 2 equals 7." But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don't think so.

Consciousness-the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience-is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as "something" and "nothing," however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness. However, this is not to say that some other thesis about consciousness must be true. Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don't know what that sentence means-and I don't think anyone else does either.

It's true that some philosophers and neuroscientists will want to pull the brakes right here. Daniel Dennett, with whom I agree about so many things, tells me that if I can't imagine the falsehood of the above statement, I'm not trying hard enough. However, on a question as rudimentary as the ontology of consciousness, the debate often comes down to irreconcilable intuitions. At a certain point one has to admit that one cannot understand what one's opponents are talking about.↩

It is possible that some robots are conscious. If consciousness is the sort of thing that comes into being purely by virtue of information processing, then even our cellphones and coffeemakers may be conscious. But few of us imagine that there is "something that it is like" to be even the most advanced computer. Whatever its relationship to information processing, consciousness is an internal reality that cannot necessarily be appreciated from the outside and need not be associated with behavior or responsiveness to stimuli. If you doubt this, you must read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean Dominique-Bauby's astonishing and heartbreaking account of his own "locked-in syndrome"-which he dictated by signing to a nurse with his left eyelid-and then try to imagine what his predicament would have been if even this degree of motor control had been denied him.↩

While Descartes is probably the first Western philosopher to make this point, others have continued to emphasize it-notably the philosophers John Searle and David Chalmers. I do not agree with Descartes's dualism, or with some of what Searle and Chalmers have said about the nature of consciousness, but I agree that its subjective reality is both primary and indisputable. Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that consciousness is, in fact, identical to certain brain processes.

And, again, I should say that philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland just don't buy this. But I do not understand why. My not seeing how consciousness can possibly be an illusion entails my not understanding how they (or anyone else) can think that it might be one. I agree, of course, that we may be profoundly mistaken about consciousness-about how it arises, about its connection to matter, about precisely what we are conscious of and when, etc. But this is not the same as saying that consciousness itself may be entirely illusory. The state of being utterly confused about the nature of consciousness is itself a demonstration of consciousness.↩

The stuff of the world is mind-stuff. (Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World)

The old dualism of mind and matter...seems likely to disappear ...through substantial matter resolving itself into a creation and manifestation of mind. (Jeans, The Mysterious Universe)

The only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality-the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical-as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously. (Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy)

The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept, but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of the particle but rather our knowledge of this behavior. (Heisenberg, The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics)

[W]e simply cannot see how material events can be transformed into sensation and thought, however many textbooks...go on talking nonsense on the subject. (Schrödinger, My View of the World)

↩ Dyson, F. (2002). The Conscience of Physics. Nature, 420(12 December), 607-608.↩

Leibniz was perhaps the first to make this point explicit, in his analogy of the mill:

Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in a simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that perception must be sought for. Further, nothing but this (namely, perceptions and their changes) can be found in a simple substance. It is also in this alone that all the internal activities of simple substances can consist. (The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings, para. 17)

↩ Some scientists and philosophers have formed the mistaken impression that it is always more parsimonious to deny consciousness in animals than to attribute it to them. I have argued elsewhere that this is not the case (The End of Faith, pp. 276-277). To deny consciousness in chimpanzees, for instance, is to assume the burden of explaining why their genetic, neuroanatomical, and behavioral similarity to us is an insufficient basis for consciousness (good luck).↩
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Matt Bors ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



Mitt Romney's Crazy Religious Beliefs!

A WORD FROM OUR PASTOR, A LIST OF MR. ROMNEY'S MORMON BELIEFS, FOLLOWED BY A BANNED VIDEO AND PUBLIC COMMENTARY ABOUT THE MORMON CULT

Freehold, Iowa - Friends, I never thought I'd live to see the day when a Mormon cult member would be running for President of this Christian country. Then again, I said the same thing about that Mary Worshipping jackass, John F. Kennedy, and by golly - every uneducated colored fellow and unchurched low class liberal who thought Catholics were Christians voted that hell bound nin-com-poop into office! Cleaning up that mess was a little more complicated than loading up a plane full of deacons to Florida to take out some trash! I believe we can avoid anything like the Kennedy fiasco this time around by making sure we put a stop to letting kooky religious nuts run for any public office!

Like everyone in the other 49 states we've had our share of busting a gut over how silly the Mormons are. We even take to calling them the "Morons," in our Religious Cult Studies courses at Landover Baptist University. My message about Mormons today is actually more for the folks out there using the internets. I want to assure this congregation that I am doing everything in my power to prevent even the stupidest Mexican who can vote from being fooled by this fruit-cake, Mitt Romney.

You see, the Mormon religion is absolutely, hands down, one of the most hilarious made-up religions Satan ever boiled up in the Lake of Fire! But all tomfoolery aside, Mormonism should always be reckoned with as a dangerous cult -- because whenever you design a cult to appeal to stupid people, you are going to wind up with a lot of members!

I want to start by stating the obvious. I will list it out here for you:

What Does Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Really Believe?

He believes that Jesus Christ is Satan's brother.
He believes that God lives near a planet called "Kolob."
He believes in baptizing dead people.
He believes that Jesus is married to a goddess wife.
He believes that The Garden of Eden was in Missouri.
He believes that it was impossible for Negroes to go to Heaven before 1978.
He believes that Jesus has children from his wife or wives.
He believes that he is going to become a god.
He believes he will own his own personal planet after he dies.
He believes the real Christian God is not eternal but rather that He was once a man on some other planet besides Earth!
He believes he needs to wear magical underwear created by Mormons and he is never to take it off unless he is bathing.
He believes it is a sin to drink anything containing caffeine. And that even includes True American™ drinks like Coca-Cola!
He believes children between the ages of 18-21 should wear name badges, ride bicycles and always smile.

I'll let you take a breath for a minute, because I know you are laughing harder than the time I was up here trying to explain how the Scientologists arrived on Earth in a space ship piloted by talking, lava-dwelling sea clams.

Friends, Mitt Romney follows the Book of Mormon to the letter! He believes it has more authority than the Bible. If you don't know what's in the book of Mormon, we've included the Sunday School training video below:

Folks, I'll wait a minute for you to calm down. I know if Joseph Smith were alive today he wouldn't even be able to sell this story as a mini-series to the Sci-Fi Channel, and those folks buy anything!

I know in my heart of hearts that I speak for all True Christians™ when I say that the idea of Mitt Romney sitting in the Oval Office sends a shiver down my spine, and a cold trickle of perspiration down the small of my back! Let's take a stand and send this lunatic and all his pairs of magic underwear back to Utah where they belong. We need to act now, lest the Republican party goes down in history as the party for stupid American idiots who elect crazy morons to the office of President!


Mitt Romney With Mormon Flag

For More Information About The Crazy Mormons:

(YouTube) - Watch a T-Bagger Go Nuts When She Finds Out Mitt is a Mormon!

(You Tube) Watch Pastor Deacon Fred's Video About the Mormon Cult.

(c) 2011The Landover Babtist Church




Email:issues@issuesandalibis.org



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In This Edition

Ray McGovern concludes, Plus ca change: Iraq Done; On to Iran!

Uri Avnery follows, "Everybody's Son."

Phil Rockstroh chants, "We Shall Not Be Moved."

Randall Amster takes a, "Mic Check."

Jim Hightower with, "'We The People,' Not We The Corporations."

Helen Thomas explains, "King's Lesson For Obama."

James Donahue exclaims, "Halloween Horror - Seventh Billionth Human Arriving!"

Tom Engelhardt asks, "Who Is Demonizing The Rich?"

David Swanson from the trenches, "U.S. Army Assaults Its Biggest Fan."

Joel S. Hirschhorn examines why, "Numbers Justify Occupy Movement."

Paul Krugman sings, "The Hole In Europe's Bucket."

Chris Floyd says Obama is having, "Withdrawal Symptoms."

William Rivers Pitt has, "A Moment Of Pure Astonishment, Again."

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols wonders, "Why is George Bush Wading Into Denver's Education Debate On The Eve Of Critical School Board Elections?"

Sam Harris considers, "The Mystery Of Consciousness II."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Onion reports, "Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "Phase One Begins."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Ken Catalino, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Married To The Sea.Com, Ted Rall, R.S. Janes, I Can Has Cheeze Burger.Com, H.Koppdelaney, Occupy Amsterdam, The Onion, The San Francisco Gate.Com, The Washington Post, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."












Phase One Begins
By Ernest Stewart

"We have ways of making you cooperate!"
Hogan's Heroes ~~~ Major Wolfgang Hochstetter

"We recently learned of World of Opera host Lisa Simeone's participation in an Occupy DC group. World of Opera is produced by WDAV, a music and arts station based in Davidson, North Carolina. The program is distributed by NPR. Lisa is not an employee of NPR or of WDAV; she is a freelancer with the station. We're in conversations with WDAV about how they intend to handle this. We of course take this issue very seriously." ~~~ Anna Christopher ~ NPR spokes-weasel

"I commend Chief Jordan for a generally peaceful resolution to a situation that deteriorated and concerned our community. His leadership was critical in the successful execution of this operation. City Administrator Deanna Santana developed the plan and secured mutual aid from other departments and the State of California. She will direct departmental teams, including safety, public works, communications, to restore conditions at the Plaza so that it is available for public use." ~~~ Oakland Mayor Jean Quan

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live." ~~~ George Bernard Shaw

I see that their puppet masters have pulled their puppet strings and Mayors from coast to coast are now doing their little puppet dance. From Boston to New York to Chicago to Atlanta to Oakland, they are all beginning to commit treason by arresting protestors who are legally, peacefully protesting, as is their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to do so. Funny how they all happen to be Demoncrats, you know the peoples' party? Peoples' party my ass! From Thomas Menino to Jean Quan, you'll hear speeches how they all adore the Constitution and free speech and would never do anything against it, but it is for the protestors own good that we'll send out our Jack Booted Thugs to gas you, club you, and beat some sense into you. Believe us; it's for your own good and the public's safety, after all.

I'm guessing that they're really doing all this for their 30 pieces of silver and to keep America under their thumb now that it's becoming obvious to even the dumbest sheeple that something is very wrong and it keeps on getting worse, no matter which party is in charge. As Janis sang, "When you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose!" And that's what it's coming down to. Ask the kids in the park how the American Dream is working out for them!

This is just "Phase One" of their plans. (To see what's in store under Phase Two, please visit the magazine's "Happy Camps" section for an in-depth explanation.) They have a lot of systems to test before they go any further in suppressing us. Sound and heat weapons that have only been used overseas on brown-skinned people will be turned on frantic, jobless college graduates and white trailer trash alike. What's going on under Chicago's mayor and Israeli 5th columnist Rahm Emanuel against the Occupy Chicago movement will soon be backed up with some tried-and-true techniques from Gaza and the West Bank! In NYC, J.P. Morgan gave the boys in blue a $4.6 million dollar bribe, er, gift, for the pad, oops, no, it was for the pad, and nothing was done or even said about this in-your-face bribe. Oh, that's right, corporations are people, too, and I'd be free to give a similar bribe to the NYCPD -- except I don't exactly have $4.6 million dollars in my bank account; hell, I don't even have a bank account anymore!

Of course, as a vet during the Vietnam War and an SDS member who took on Chicago's finest at the 1968 Democratic Convention, I have some experience with Mayor Daley's Wehrmacht, so I know of what I speak. But, hey, keeping the people from their rights on the end of a bayonet and sometimes with the bayonet thrust deep inside their bodies is a centuries-old tradition in this country. On many occasions has some great captain of industry used his private army, and as likely as not the US Army, to shoot and stab the legal peaceful protesters until they saw the light, often at the end of a very long, dark tunnel!

So, as in my youth, the America of this age hasn't changed that much; we use our military to keep the people in line, while we rob them whether here at home or overseas. With all those NG troops heading back home, not to mention the regular army, they're sure to swell the ranks of the Northern Command when it's time to go to Phase Two. My guess would be right after the election in 2012, perhaps, late December?

In Other News

You have by now no doubt heard of Lisa Simeone and NPR's fascist maneuverings once they found out that Lisa had dared to use her 1st amendment rights to protest the 1% domination. Although Lisa didn't work for NPR, nor was she in any way connected to the news; NPR went way out of their way to get her fired from her job hosting Operas. Lisa had the gall to serve eggs to Occupy Washington protesters and make a few comments about the movement. Indeed, how dare she! Soundprint after being put in its place by NPR fired her from the show, but not really, as the show was owned by TV station WDAV that wouldn't fire Lisa. When questioned about this, Soundprint said:

"Soundprint and Lisa Simeone have ended their work together after fifteen years. Soundprint is a journalistic program and Lisa's leadership role as a member of the steering committee and a spokesperson for the October 2011 protest activities, associated with the Occupy DC movement, conflicts with her role as the host of a documentary series. Soundprint adheres to the highest standards of journalism, which include maintaining appropriate distance from marches, demonstrations and other political activity. These are standards held by many other journalism organizations, including National Public Radio.

Lisa has been a dynamic and engaging host for Soundprint, and we wish her well for the future."

I, of course, replied:

So using one's constitution rights is against your ethic rules, huh? What kind of Neo-Nazi group of fascist traitors is soundprint? I bet if we scratch the surface, we find a Koch brother pulling puppet strings!

Here's a NPR private memo:

From:NPR Communications
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 6:12 PM
Subject: From Dana Rehm: Communications Alert

To: All Staff
Fr: Dana Davis Rehm
Re: Communications Alert

We recently learned of World of Opera host Lisa Simeone's participation in an Occupy DC group. World of Opera is produced by WDAV, a music and arts station based in Davidson, North Carolina. The program is distributed by NPR. Lisa is not an employee of WDAV or NPR; she is a freelancer with the station.

We're in conversations with WDAV about how they intend to handle this. We, of course, take this issue very seriously.

As a reminder, all public comment (including social media) on this matter is being managed by NPR Communications.

All media requests should be routed through NPR Communications at 202.513.2300 or mediarelations@npr.org. We will keep you updated as needed. Thanks.

Well, of course, I did!

I see one can get fired for daring to use one's basic constitution rights; for example, the first amendment by NPR. The once-great NPR, who years ago turn its back on the people for corpo-rat bribe money, put on the Jack Boots and armband and goose-stepped along to become a dancing puppet for the Wall Street Banksters; so I'm not really surprised that you came down on the side of the elite traitors, not surprised at all! Funny how Lisa has no rights, but NPR reporters like Mara Liaason who reports for you, but also reports for Fox spews, or Scott Simon or Cokie Roberts. Is it because they're corpo-rat goons but Lisa isn't?

However, I did particularly like Anna Christopher Bross's little song and dance; in fact, I'm still laughing over her pathetic spin job. You really need to hire a better spinner than Anna! I see your Rethuglican pals are trying to defund you, good for them! We need a new public radio that is for the Constitution and the people, and not just a corpo-rat mouth piece like you've become! All things considered, NPR Sucks! I'd join the new viral boycott NPR movement, but I quit listening when you turned the logo around and started facing your masters on the far right! By a strange coincidence, that was when I stopped sending those $500 checks to All Things Considered; funny thing that, huh? LONG LIVE THE OCCUPY PROTESTS! And hooray for Lisa Simeone, a great patriot and our hero! And Boo to the dastardly villain NPR! Oh, and thanks for giving me something to write about in next week's editorial!

Issues & Alibis friend and author David Swanson said this:

Clearly, Soundprint deserves its full share of condemnation in all of this, and WDAV merits strong support. WDAV will be distributing "World of Opera" on its own and should have our backing. But NPR has lowered itself to the bottom rung of our communications system. Mara Liaason can opinionate on Fox News, while providing an objective god's-eye view on NPR. Scott Simon can publish opinion columns in corporate newspapers while reporting the facts. Cokie Roberts can take corporate speaking fees that could cover most people's mortgages without being perceived as in any way tarnished. But Lisa Simeone cannot introduce operas while having taken the unforgivable step of supporting a nonviolent movement on behalf of the lower 99% of us. Despicable.

Now, unable to get Simeone fired, a decision which NPR would have carefully blamed entirely on WDAV, our public radio thugs have taken the only approach left to them if people who condescend to supporting the political efforts of the poor are to be kept out of public sight: NPR has dropped the program.

Here's what Lisa wrote wrote to the Baltimore Sun, saying that she didn't understand what the fuss was all about:

I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen -- the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly -- on my own time in my own life.

I'm not an NPR employee. I'm a freelancer. NPR doesn't pay me. I'm also not a news reporter. I don't cover politics. I've never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I've done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I'll do -- insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?

This sudden concern with my political activities is also surprising in light of the fact that Mara Liaason reports on politics for NPR, yet appears as a commentator on Fox TV; Scott Simon hosts an NPR news show, yet writes political op-eds for national newspapers; Cokie Roberts reports on politics for NPR, yet accepts large speaking fees from businesses. Does NPR also send out "Communications Alerts" about their activities?

So defunding NPR with taxpayer dollars would be a bad thing because?

And Finally

I see where the elite have shut down, at least temporarily, the Occupy Oakland protest. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan unleashed the Oakland Gestapo in the dead of night with shotguns at the ready to rid the peoples' square of the people at the bequest of her corpo-rat handlers, and the camp at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza was attacked, secured, and trashed by a large formation of Jack Booted thugs.

I don't know why I bother to mention that I sent Jean a letter; but I did! You knew that, didn't you?:

"..."the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Does that ring any bells, Jean? I guess not, or you wouldn't have released the Oakland Gestapo on the US citizens doing their patriotic civic duty. Yes, I know you were only following ze orders Jean! Your corpo-rat puppet master pulled your strings, and so you violated human rights. I wonder how that will work out come election day? I'm guessing that the fix is already in, eh, Jean? Just a couple questions for my readers, Jean: why haven't you fallen on your sword yet as an honorable person would have done by now? And how do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning without cutting your throat?

While I think your politics are a crime, I must admit those shiny new Jack Boots and that armband you're wearing are something to behold! Can I get an Victory Hail, Jean? Oh, and thanks for helping to write this week's editorial!

Sincerely,
Ernest Stewart
Managing editor
Issues & Alibis Magazine

In the unlikelihood that I get a reply from Jean or one of her spokes-weasels, I'll print it right here!

Keepin' On

We'd like to thank Mr. Mike from Detroit, (No, not that Mr. Mike, he's dead!) for sending in a "nice check." Thanks Mike, we'll put it to good use! Unfortunately, it still leaves us short of paying off this year's bills, so I'm bound to go on pleading for alms, instead of giving Ya'll a break until the first of the year; C'est la guerre! I warned ya, didn't I?

We're at the 98% level of breaking even, and with your help, we might end the year with a slight surplus to pay for those unknown factors to come. There is never a charge for what we do; our readership and three sponsors pay all our bills which, thankfully, are pitifully small!

So, to see me talk about something interesting for the months of November and December, step on up and put some ducats in the bucket, and together we'll rock on through the nightmare that has become America.

*****


08-07-1929 ~ 10-20-2011
Thanks for the film.


05-16-1925 ~ 10-22-2011
Thanks for the news.


11-03-1939 ~ 10-25-2011
Thanks for trying!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












Plus ca change: Iraq Done; On To Iran!
By Ray McGovern

One not-so-funny fact about Washington is that nearly all the news media stars who fell for neoconservative falsehoods about Iraq are still around to fall for new ones on Iran, even some like Richard Cohen who briefly regretted his earlier gullibility.

Paul R. Pillar, my former colleague in the CIA's analytical division, has raised a warning flag, cautioning that the same imaginative neocon composers who came up with the various refrains on why we needed to attack Iraq are now providing similar background music for a strike on Iran.

He is right. And as one of my Russian professors used to say, "This is nothing to laugh!"

Pillar's piece - dissecting an op-ed by the Washington Post's Richard Cohen about the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington - first appeared on The National Interest Web site. On Oct. 21, it was posted at Consortiumnews.com under the title "Sloppy Iran Think by WPost's Cohen."

The Cohen column that Pillar critiques is entitled "The alarm bells behind Iran's alleged assassination plot." Yet Cohen's "alarm bells" ringing now about Iran brought a painful reminder of all the alarms he and his colleagues sounded in cheerleading for the attack on Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

[NEO-CONNED -- Richard Cohen of the Washington Post] NEO-CONNED -- Richard Cohen of the Washington PostCohen was one of the many big-name opinion leaders to put on the pompoms after Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his deceptive Iraq War speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003. Joining a cheerleading pyramid of pro-war consensus, Cohen mocked anyone who still doubted that Saddam Hussein possessed hidden WMD stockpiles.

"The evidence he [Powell] presented to the United Nations - some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail - had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them," Cohen wrote. "Only a fool - or possibly a Frenchman - could conclude otherwise."

However, six weeks after the Iraq invasion, with not one WMD stockpile discovered, Cohen's conscience may have begun to trouble him a bit. To his credit, I suppose, Cohen seems to have been embarrassed enough to fess up, sort of, using the device of an apocryphal conversation with his long-dead grandfather.

In an April 29, 2003, column entitled "Baghdad Bait and Switch," Cohen recounted a middle-of-the-night visit by Grandpa, who is not at all pleased with his grandson's credulity about President George W. Bush's case for war.

"You think maybe you got snookered?" Grandpa asks. "For this your mother sent you to college? ... For this you fight a war?

"I read the column where you said that ['Saddam Hussein was like another Hitler']. All my friends said, 'This is your grandson, the hotshot columnist? This is the guy people read so they should know what to think?'

"Hitler? Hitler was a threat to the world. Saddam threatened only his own people. He fought for only 26 days. I had longer fights with your grandmother. ...

"First you wanted a war because of terrorism, then because Iraq had a nuclear program. Then you wanted a war because he has poison gas and little crawling things you can't see. Now you want to bring democracy to the Middle East.

"You know what we used to call this when I was in retail? Bait and switch. ... I hope everything turns out hunky-dory, like you've been writing. ... Otherwise, you should have been an accountant."

Cohen's column about the imaginary upbraiding he got from his grandfather ran two days before President Bush jetted onto a U.S. aircraft carrier off the coast of California and gave his memorable "Mission Accomplished" address.

Accountability, Anyone?

One might think that a columnist who got something as wrong as Cohen did would have the decency to admit that Grandpa was right and switch professions.

After all, endorsing the falsehoods that led to an aggressive war in violation of international law - an invasion that led to hundreds of thousands of dead and the squandering of $1 trillion or so - isn't exactly a minor mistake.

But Cohen apparently found safety in numbers. The fact that he was surrounded by scores of other big-name media stars who had fallen for the same "bait-and-switch" scam meant that he kept his place as a major national columnist - and soon returned to his comfortable role defending the war policies of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

For instance, in a June 19, 2007, op-ed, Cohen rallied to the defense of Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis Libby who had been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about his role in unmasking covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

The destruction of Plame's career was collateral damage resulting from the Bush administration trying to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing Bush's use of a misleading claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa.

But Cohen showed no sympathy for Wilson or Plame, two patriotic citizens who had been personally targeted by Cheney and the White House. Cohen worried only about Libby.

In the column, Cohen denounced the trial as "a mountain out of a molehill." Following the neocon propaganda themes on the Plame case, Cohen concluded there was no "underlying crime" and poked fun at Americans who thought the invasion of Iraq might have been a bad idea.

"They thought - if 'thought' can be used in this context - that if the thread was pulled on who had leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert D. Novak, the effort to snooker an entire nation into war would unravel and this would show . . . who knows? Something," Cohen wrote.

Smirking at Torture

Cohen also sympathized with Cheney over his enthusiasm for torturing Muslim detainees. In a May 11, 2009, column - entitled "What If Cheney's Right?" - Cohen justified "enhanced interrogation techniques," including the near-drowning tactic of waterboarding, as worthwhile in eliciting important intelligence information and thus saving American lives.

Starting the column, Cohen made light of the whole issue of torture with the quip, "Blogger Alert: I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney."

While conceding that torture is morally wrong, Cohen wrote, "where I reserve a soupçon of doubt is over the question of whether 'enhanced interrogation techniques' actually work. That they do not is a matter of absolute conviction among those on the political left, who seem to think that the CIA tortured suspected terrorists just for the hell of it."

Cohen noted that Cheney - through his declaration that critical intelligence was extracted by these means - "poses a hard, hard question: Is it more immoral to torture than it is to fail to prevent the deaths of thousands?"

With unintended irony, the columnist regretted that Cheney's credibility on torture had been dinged by the fact that his pre-Iraq War claims had proved false, like his insisting "that 'the evidence is overwhelming' that al-Qaeda had been in high-level contact with Saddam Hussein's regime when the 'evidence' was virtually non-existent."

What Cohen left out was the very relevant point that precisely those claims of a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection resulted from a coerced confession from one of the CIA's "high-value detainees," Ibu al-Sheikh al-Libi.

A June 2002 CIA report cited claims by al-Libi that Iraq had "provided" unspecified chemical and biological weapons training for two al-Qaeda operatives. Al-Libi's information was then inserted into a November 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

Al-Libi's false claim - which he later said he offered to escape torture - also found its way into Cheney's public presentations and into Powell's UN speech. But Cohen did not deign to mention this inconvenient fact in his column defending these harsh tactics.

On Oct. 6, 2009, Cohen was back serving the neocon cause, baiting President Barack Obama into a major military escalation in Afghanistan, through an opinion piece entitled "Does Obama Have the Backbone?" - questioning Obama's mettle as a war president.

"The war in Afghanistan is eminently more winnable than was Vietnam," Cohen wrote. "Still, the war will require more than a significant commitment of troops and, of course, money. It will take presidential leadership, a consistent staying of the course - an implacable confidence that the right choice has been made despite what can be steep costs."

So, perhaps it should come as no surprise that Richard Cohen is now helping to set the stage for another war - with Iran.

Quick! Someone conjure up Cohen's grandfather again. We need him to pin back Richard's ears once more before the gullible grandson falls for a new round of neocon propaganda and enables another catastrophic war.
(c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.





Everybody's Son
By Uri Avnery

THE MOST sensible - I almost wrote "the only sensible"- sentence uttered this week sprang from the lips of a 5-year old boy. After the prisoner swap, one of those smart-aleck TV reporters asked him: "Why did we release 1027 Arabs for one Israeli soldier?" He expected, of course, the usual answer: because one Israeli is worth a thousand Arabs.

The little boy replied: "Because we caught many of them and they caught only one."

FOR MORE than a week, the whole of Israel was in a state of intoxication. Gilad Shalit indeed ruled the country (Shalit means "ruler"). His pictures were plastered all over the place like those of Comrade Kim in North Korea.

It was one of those rare moments, when Israelis could be proud of themselves. Few countries, if any, would have been prepared to exchange 1027 prisoners for one. In most places, including the USA, it would have been politically impossible for a leader to make such a decision.

In a way it is a continuation of the Jewish ghetto tradition. The "Redemption of Prisoners" is a sacred religious duty, born of the circumstances of a persecuted and scattered community. If a Jew from Marseilles was captured by Muslim corsairs to be sold on the market of Alexandria, it was the duty of Jews in Cairo to pay the ransom and "redeem" him.

As the ancient saying goes: "All Israel are guarantors for each other."

Israelis could (and did) look in the mirror and say "aren't we wonderful?"

IMMEDIATELY AFTER the Oslo agreement, Gush Shalom, the peace movement to which I belong, proposed releasing all Palestinian prisoners at once. They are prisoners-of-war, we said, and when the fighting ends, PoWs are sent home. This would transmit a powerful human message of peace to every Palestinian town and village. We organized a joint demonstration with the late Jerusalemite Arab leader, Feisal Husseini, in front of Jeneid prison near Nablus. More than ten thousand Palestinians and Israelis took part.

But Israel has never recognized these Palestinians as prisoners-of-war. They are considered common criminals, only worse.

This week, the released prisoners were never referred to as "Palestinian fighters", or "militants"' or just "Palestinians". Every single newspaper and TV program, from the elitist Haaretz to the most primitive tabloid, referred to them exclusively as "murderers", or, for good measure, "vile murderers".

One of the worst tyrannies on earth is the tyranny of words. Once a word becomes entrenched, it directs thought and action. As the Bible has it: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21). Releasing a thousand enemy fighters is one thing, releasing a thousand vile murderers is something else.

Some of these prisoners have assisted suicide bombers in killing a lot of people. Some have committed really atrocious acts - like the pretty young Palestinian woman who used the internet to lure a love-sick Israeli boy of 15 into a trap, where he was riddled with bullets. But others were sentenced to life for belonging to an "illegal organization"and possessing arms, or for throwing an ineffectual home made bomb at a bus hurting nobody.

Almost all of them were convicted by military courts. As has been said, military courts have the same relation to real courts as military music does to real music.

All of these prisoners, in Israeli parlance, have "blood on their hands." But which of us Israelis has no blood on his hands? Sure, a young woman soldier remotely controlling a drone that kills a Palestinian suspect and his entire family has no sticky blood on her hands. Neither has a pilot who drops a bomb on a residential neighborhood and feels only "a slight bump on the wing", as a former Chief of Staff put it. (A Palestinian once told me: "Give me a tank or a fighter plane, and I shall give up terrorism immediately.")

The main argument against the swap was that, according to Security Service statistics, 15% of prisoners thus released become active "terrorists"again. Perhaps. But the majority of them become active supporters of peace. Practically all of my Palestinian friends are former prisoners, some of whom were behind bars for 12 years and more. They learned Hebrew in prison, became acquainted with Israeli life by watching television and even began to admire some aspects of Israel, such as our parliamentary democracy. Most prisoners just want to go home, settle down and found a family.

But during the endless hours of waiting for Gilad's return, all our TV stations showed scenes of the killings in which the prisoners-to-be-released had been involved, such as the young woman who drove a bomber to his destination. It was a continuous tirade of hatred. Our warm admiration for our own virtue was mingled with the chilling feeling that we are again the victims, compelled to release vile murderers who are going to try and kill us again.

Yet all these prisoners fervently believed that they had served their people in its struggle for liberation. Like the famous song: "Shoot me as an Irish soldier / Do not hang me like a dog / For I fought for Ireland's freedom...." Nelson Mandela, it should be remembered, was an active terrorist who languished in prison for 28 years because he refused to sign a statement condemning terrorism.

Israelis (probably like most peoples) are quite unable to put themselves into the shoes of their adversaries. This makes it practically impossible to pursue an intelligent policy, particularly on this issue.

HOW WAS Binyamin Netanyahu brought to bend?

The hero of the campaign is Noam Shalit, the father. An introverted person, withdrawn and shy of publicity, he came out and fought for his son every single day during these five years and four months. So did the mother. They literally saved his life. They succeeded in raising a mass movement without precedent in the annals of the state.

It helped that Gilad looks like everybody's son. He is a shy young man with an engaging smile that could be seen on each of the stills and videos from before the capture. He was youngish looking, thin and unassuming. Five years later, this week, he still looked the same, only very pale.

If our intelligence services had been able to locate him, they would have undoubtedly tried to liberate him by force. This could well have been his death sentence, as happened so often in the past. The fact that they could not find him, despite their hundreds of agents in the Gaza Strip, is a remarkable achievement for Hamas. It explains why he was kept in strict isolation and was not allowed to meet anyone.

Israelis were relieved to discover, on his release, that he seemed to be in good condition, healthy and alert. From the few sentences he voiced on his way in Egypt, he had been provided with radio and TV and knew about his parents' efforts.

From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, almost nothing about the way he was treated was allowed to come out. Where was he kept? How was the food? Did his captors talk with him? What did he think about them? Did he learn Arabic? Up to now, not a word about that, probably because it might throw some positive light on Hamas. He will certainly be thoroughly briefed before being allowed to speak.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS repeatedly asked me this week whether the deal had opened the way to a new peace process. As far as the public mood is concerned, the very opposite is true. The same journalists asked me if Binyamin Netanyahu had not been disturbed by the fact that the swap was bound to strengthen Hamas and deal a grievous blow to Mahmoud Abbas. They were flabbergasted by my answer: that this was one of its main purposes, if not the main one.

The master stroke was a stroke against Abbas.

Abbas' moves in the UN have profoundly disturbed our right-wing government. Even if the only practical outcome is a resolution of the General Assembly to recognize the State of Palestine as an observer state, it will be a major step towards a real Palestinian state.

This government, like all our governments since the foundation of Israel - only more so - is dead set against Palestinian statehood. It would put an end to the dream of a Greater Israel up to the Jordan River, compel us to give back a great chunk of the Land-God-Promised-Us and evacuate scores of settlements.

For Netanyahu and Co. this is the real danger. Hamas poses no danger at all. What can they do? Launch a few rockets, kill a few people - so what? In no year has "terrorism" killed as many as half the people dying on our roads. Israel can deal with that. The Hamas regime would probably not be running the Gaza Strip in the first place if Israel had not cut the Strip off from the West Bank, contrary to its solemn undertaking in Oslo to create four safe passages. None was ever opened.

That, by the way, also explains the timing. Why did Netanyahu agree now to something he has violently opposed all his life? Because Abbas, the featherless chicken, has suddenly turned into an eagle.

On the day of the swap, Abbas made a speech. It sounded rather flat. For the average Palestinian, the case was quite simple: Abbas, with all his Israeli and American friends, has got no one released for years. Hamas, using force, has released more than a thousand, including Fatah members. Ergo: "Israel understands only the language of force."

THE VAST majority of Israelis supported the deal, though convinced that the vile murderers will try again to kill us.

Never were the lines of division as clear as this time: some 25% opposed it. These included all the extreme right-wing, all the settlers and almost all the national-religious. All the others - the huge camp of the center and left, the secular, liberal and moderate religious - supported it.

This is the Israeli mainstream on which the hopes for the future are resting. If Netanyahu had proposed a peace agreement with the Palestinians this week, and if he had been supported by the chiefs of the army, the Mossad and the Security Service (as he was this week), the same majority would have supported him.

As for the prisoners - another 4000 are still held in Israeli prisons, and this number is liable to grow again. The opponents of the deal are quite right in saying that it will provide Palestinian organizations with a strong incentive to renew their efforts to capture Israeli soldiers in order to get more prisoners released.

If all of Israel is drunk with emotion because one boy has been returned to his family - what about 4000 families on the other side? Unfortunately, ordinary Israelis don't put the question this way. They have got used to seeing the Palestinian prisoners only as bargaining chips.

How to thwart the efforts to capture more soldiers? There is only one alternative: to open a credible way to have them released by agreement.

Such as by peace, if you can excuse the expression.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







We Shall Not Be Moved
Police repression, official mendacity and why OWS has already overcome
By Phil Rockstroh

Until recent events proved otherwise, the hyper-commercialized surface of the corporate state gave the appearance of being too diffuse--too devoid of a center to pose a threat of totalitarian excess. Accordingly, as of late, due to the violent response to OWS protesters by local police departments in Oakland, Atlanta, Chicago, and in other U.S. cities, the repressive nature of the faux republic is beginning to be revealed.

Behind the bland face of the political establishment (purchased by the bloated profits of the plundering class) are riot cops, outfitted and armed with the accoutrements of oppression, who are ready and willing to enforce the dictates of the elitist beneficiaries of the degraded status quo. In deed and action, as of late, the police state embedded within neo-liberal economic oligarchy is showing its hyper-authoritarian proclivities to the world.

In general, existence within the present societal structure inflicts on the individual a sense of atomization and its concomitant feelings of alienation, vague unease, free floating anxiety and anomie. The coercion is implicit and internalized.

Because of its mundane, ubiquitous nature, the system is reliant on an individual's sense of isolation (even ignorance of the existence of the structure itself) to remain in place. In short, the exploitive system continues to exist because its denizens are bereft of other models of comparison.

The public commons inherent in the OWS movement provides a model of comparison. Apropos, that is why we are beginning to receive reports such as the following:

On Tuesday Oct. 25, 2011, the Oakland Tribune reported that police raided and demolished the local OWS encampment after declaring the area a “crime scene”. This is revelatory regarding the character of the enforcers of the present order: Those in positions of power within a police state view freedom of assembly and freedom of expression as a punishable offense.

It is a given that: Authoritarian personality types take particular umbrage when citizens are expressing their displeasure with official abuses of power and begin to do so in an effective manner.

Too many in the U.S. have bought the fiction that the nation was, is and will remain a democratic republic. Therefore, by drawing its brutal operatives and mendacious apologist into the open, the state will reveal itself in all its ugliness. As a result, all concerned will be able to observe the true nature of the police/national security/oligarchic state in place in the U.S.

Ideally, few illusions will remain intact regarding the ruthless, brutal forces against which we struggle.

Moreover, the actions of the police in regard to public protest are premeditated tactics aimed at the suppression of the right to public assembly. The goal of the power brokers, their political operatives and police enforcers is to render one's (allegedly) constitutionally guaranteed right to dissent too prohibitive to be practiced. 



The economically dispossessed and members of minority communities have known for many years what OWSers are suffering, presently, at the hands of official power and its enforcers. 



In turn, individual police officers are well aware of whom they are sworn to protect (and it isn't those who desire to exercise their rights to free assembly and free speech). In most cases, if an individual police officer ever refused an order to make an unconstitutional arrest, he/she would be committing an act of careercide; their chance of advancement within the department would have to be scraped off the sidewalk on the spot and transported to the city morgue.

Are you willing to leave the confines of your comfort zone and go to jail for justice?

Rarely, does reform arrive without the arrest of frontline agitators. Power does not yield without a fight, without attempting to silence dissent by brutality and forced detention. The powerful demand that those of us who notice their excesses and crimes be placed out of sight and out of mind.

Hence, in Oakland, the local corporate news affiliates, to their shame, turned off their cameras when the violent attacks and mass arrest of protesters began.

Are you willing to risk injury to body and reputation to bear witness? The survival of the OWS movement depends on having bodies on the ground and eyes (as well as cameras) on the thugs in uniform.

True to form, a servile corporate media will proclaim how unsightly dissenters are, inferring that sensible folk, simply as a matter of good taste and public propriety should disregard the protesters’ entreaties and that these malcontents and cranks should be denied entrance into the realm of legitimate discourse, that these disheveled interlopers be barred by walls of silence.

To be in the world is to be confronted with walls. How we respond to these barriers is called character and art.

Many brave souls have confronted walls such as these.

Often, as I gaze upon the blue wall of mindless repression surrounding Zuccotti Park and reflect on other OWS sites nationwide, I am induced to feel the sadness and longing of the repressed souls of the earth, of those throughout time who have met walls of blind hatred, of economic exploitation, of institutional repression....

I empathize with all of those who faced walls of smug indifference, walls of internalized shame and walls of official lies--those who stood powerless before the stark reality of seemingly implacable circumstances. I reflect upon the lives and work of itinerate blues musicians of the U.S. Deep South and the manner they met walls of both official repression and collective blind, ignorant fear and hatred, and how they transformed those prison walls into the numinous architecture of The Blues...How they alchemicalized the barriers into guitar technique.

Musical instruments, like word meeting meter to a poet, serve as both barrier and salvation; the limits of the self are tested, explored, and by effort, failure and moments of elation are transformed by confrontation and union with the instrument, personal circumstance and audience.

As is the case with those on the front lines of OWS encampments, millions of people throughout history have met seemingly implacable barriers in the form of walls of human brutality e.g., Jim Crow laws, union busting management goon squads, the Zionist apartheid wall, various secret police and public bullies--but they weren't going to let the bastards "turn them 'round..."

If you choose to resist entrenched power, when confronted by mindless authority, your heart will know the drill; it will guide you--its natural trajectory is towards freedom. Hence, you will know what to do when the moment arrives--and will gain the knowledge that your predecessors discovered in their struggle for justice...that the cry arose forth from deep in their souls, "We shall not be moved."

The practitioners of the Delta Blues came upon walls of oppression...walls of raging hatred, and responded by passing through those walls...to inhabit a landscape more alive, more resonant, more ensouled than their oppressors will ever know possible. They occupied their own hearts and draw us still into the immediacy of the world by their victory over their degraded circumstances by their appropriating the very barriers that were placed in their path by their oppressors and transforming the criteria of their oppression into the living architecture of the soul.

Those who know this--have already won...have already overcome.

Lorca limned the situation (one extant as well in the enfolding OWS movement) in his theory of "the duende". His concept of the duende reveals why people, when faced by the ossified order of an inhuman system, either become caught up--even compelled--by the challenge to begin to make the world anew--while others are seized with mortification, indifference, resignation and hostility.

In which direction does your soul wend?

"The arrival of the duende always presupposes a transformation on every plane. It produces a feeling of totally unedited freshness. It bears the quality of a newly created rose, of a miracle that produces an almost religious enthusiasm." -- from The Havana Lectures, Federico Garcia Lorca.

When I witness police harassing, arresting and brutalizing those exercising their rights to free assembly, I find myself gripped by a surge of rage...The rage rises in me in an animalistic fury--an urge to fight tooth and nail, to tear at the throats of these vicious intruders into the territory of authentic social discourse. 



As of late, instead of pushing down the fury rising from within me or acting upon it, I let it inundate my being. As a result, the coursing rage transforms into a penetrating, powerful force--enveloping and demarcating the geography of my convictions...arriving to bring acceptance and to define and defend the contours of my true self.

Rage can appear as an angel of self-definition, the protector of one's authentic nature and a source of personal power..."ain't gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me 'round ..."

One's anger is vital to one's existence; it is a valuable gift; therefore, it should not be squandered...no need to waste it on fools and idiots.



When rage arrives, invite him in; his presence will fill the room with alacrity, and his surging vitality will allow you to push farther and deeper into the unexplored regions of your soul.

In contrast, the world of the neoliberal oligarchs, the duopolistic political class and of the cops has been called into question. They have grown accustomed to having their way, of having a compliant and complicit peasantry. In this they are not unique; what they are experiencing is universal: The world we know (or at least believe we do) and struggle to maintain, from time to time, is apt to reveal an aspect of itself that seems alien and unmanageable e.g., the growing dissent across the nation, perhaps too vast and potent to be kettled, penned, tear gassed, cuffed and detained. The otherness of the world seems too large...has become an army of aggrieved angels.

I once saw a Great Dane on Second Avenue attempt to engage in canine communion with his fellows. In order to display his intentions were benign, friendly, he crouched down on the sidewalk, making his massive frame as small as possible, even placing his large head on the concrete...doing all he could to produce the artifice of submission, to even the smallest dog that approached him. 

In other words, to enlarge his world he created the illusion of smallness. He did not reduce his essence; he created the artifice of smallness so he could grow larger than himself by his union with the otherness of the world.

We are not requesting that cops crouch before us. They just need not bristle so. 

To grow in each other's presence, we are required to meet the other at eye level, even if one has to descend a bit from a habitual position of power and authority.

Officers, your guns, rubber bullets, nightsticks, pepper spray--the looming wall of blue intimidation that you brandish merely creates the illusion of strength. If you truly want to grow strong, meet us on these sidewalks, sans the display of empty power.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.






Mic Check
Can You Hear Us, America?
By Randall Amster

We find these views to be mutually relevant...

That all people, by virtue of their basic humanity, deserve the opportunity to live, work, and associate according to the dictates of their own consciences and capacities;

that the exercise of such freedoms is only tenable in conjunction with the ability of all people to do so, in the recognition that no one is free unless everyone is free;

that people situated in place know best how to manage the conditions of their lives, and that the political autonomy and economic self-sufficiency of local communities are the primary means of ensuring the freedom of the individuals in their midst;

that individuals and communities do not exist in isolation, but are interlinked through a global network of communications and cultural exchange that enables the realization of a shared future and a common interest in effectively preserving the continued existence of humankind;

that the integrity of the whole is based on the vitality of its parts, and that the stability and productivity of social relationships is contingent upon and reflective of our collective human interactions with the balance of life around us, upon which we depend for survival;

that the fruits of the earth belong to humankind collectively, and especially to the future generations from whom we merely borrow their blessings;

that no one ought to be bound into the indentured servitude of indebtedness, which coerces people to become complicit with an alienating economy and structures of their own oppression;

that education must be free, open to all, and not merely confined to classrooms and institutions;

that intergenerational justice works in both directions, with young and old alike being equivalent teachers and learners, bringing together the lessons of the past, the challenges of the present, and opportunities for the future into an evolving tapestry of mutual engagement;

that none should be compelled to labor for another except by the inherent desires of conscience and the reciprocal benefits of being served by others through the experience of community;

that collective decisions shall only be taken with the direct participation and informed consent of all those potentially affected by them;

that people, left to their own devices, are capable of self-organizing, self-regulating, and developing mutually beneficial structures of governance and the distribution of resources;

that we live in a world of abundance rather than scarcity, with the problems of inequality being ones of maldistribution and disenfranchisement rather than of quantitative lack;

that the shared spaces of society, including the material bases of existence, cannot be owned or controlled by private interests but must remain the collective responsibility of humankind entire;

that we already possess all of the tools and technologies necessary to create a just world, and that we require only the will to reorient the purposes to which we deploy them in order to realize it;

that what we do matters, that there is meaning to our existence, that we honor ourselves and each other through service and compassion, and that our lives are bound together in a seamless web of destiny;

that our rights and freedoms are equally balanced by our responsibilities and mutual obligations;

that we seek both independence and interdependence as the necessary conditions of social existence;

that there can be no peace without justice, no future without the past, no individuality without community, no opportunity without education, no liberty without equality, and no politics without participation;

that we strive to always create more than we destroy, to produce more than we consume, to give more than we take, to laugh more than we cry, to uplift more than we denigrate, to construct more than we critique, to share more than we acquire, and to love more than we hate;

that we seek a better world not merely for ourselves, our communities, and our allies, but for all of humankind, including those who have exercised their power unjustly and unwisely;

that we acknowledge the urgency of the moment while affirming our willingness and desire to remain engaged in long-term, perhaps even unending, struggles for human dignity and environmental sustainability;

that this task cannot be passed on to others, that we are the ones it has fallen upon, that it is our generational calling, that we have the power to alter the arc of society, and that we are the ones we have been waiting for to bring peace and prosperity to the world;

that the pursuit of material wealth represents a moral and spiritual void, and that the use of manipulation and force to maintain wealth disparity is a self-defeating enterprise based on the failure to recognize the binding principle of interconnectedness in every aspect of existence;

that we can, must, and will succeed in working collaboratively to turn crises into opportunities and to move from the brink of annihilation toward a world of appreciation;

that life is meant to be lived, that we are the creators of culture and not merely its consumers, that our actions and processes are ends in themselves, and that what we do at every moment is the revolution;

that the future depends upon us to occupy place and liberate space on its behalf, and our own;

that we have nothing to lose but our chains, and literally everything to gain;

that the person standing next to you is part of you, an extension of you, a reflection of you, an ally, a colleague, a relative, and a friend;

that the earth beneath our feet creates and sustains us, and that we must do the same for it in return;

that there is one unified race, the human race, and that our inherent diversity provides the strength that will see us through the changes and challenges at hand;

that there are no nations or borders, only peoples and places;

that we need everyone's open hearts, willing hands, strong backs, and keen minds to avert calamity and ensure posterity;

that the sound of a child's laugh casts out the monotonous drone of commercialism, that the wonder in a child's eyes invokes beauty against blight, and that the hope in a child's heart is more powerful than the downward spiral of despair;

that you are important, that your dreams are real, that your needs will be met, that your burdens are shared, that your wellbeing is paramount, and that you are loved.

Affirmed by deeds, to be enacted voluntarily by the people individually and in concert as a living declaration.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).







'We The People,' Not We The Corporations

In response to the Supreme Court's freakish decision in 2010 to bestow political "personhood" on corporations, I got an email from a guy named Larry, screaming that "Big money has plucked our eagle."

Yes it has – and the Powers that Be tell us that we shouldn't even try to undo this theft of our people's democratic authority, but should just try regulating corporate money, like maybe requiring then to disclose how much they're spending on campaigns. Now there's a bold stand for democracy: "Give us campaign finance reporting regulations or give us death!"

Come on, we're bigger than that. Here are just a few actions for real change that you can take, teaming up with others right where you live:

AMEND. Two major coalitions are organizing to overturn the court's corporate money edict by amending the Constitutioin. One is FreeSpeechForPeople.org and the other is MoveToAmend.org – and both have action kits for raising the issue locally, petitions to be circulated, video and other good graphics to educate people in your community, and a wealth of other organizing ideas.

LOCALIZE.

Pass your own local and state laws to stop the wholesale corporate purchase of our government. These include outlawing any corporate claim of personhood in your area, providing the alternative of public financing for your local and state elections, and banning campaign donations by corporations that try to get government contracts and subsidies. For information and help, check our PublicCampaign.org and ReclaimDemocracy.org.

CONFRONT. Yes, get in the face of power. Ask all candidates where they stand on corporate personhood and demand that top executives of big corporations located in your area publicly agree not to spend corporate cash on your elections.

Remember, the Constitution plainly says "We the People," not We the Corporations.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








King's Lesson For Obama
By Helen Thomas

The dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall was uplifting and inspiring. It wasn't because he was black, but because of what he did for all of mankind. He was a leader for justice in all things - not just for civil rights.

I watched the loving tribute and heard the call for a better society, pointing to the current problems that are being ignored by both political parties, but especially by the Republican contenders for the presidency.

President Barack Obama has compromised and caved too much, which has clouded his integrity. He is a good man who bows when he should stand firm for what is right.

Even after King won the Nobel Peace Prize, he did not rest on his laurels. King knew there was so much more to be done for the cause of justice. As much as his associates felt they had one cause, King looked at U.S. foreign policy and joined the multitudes, especially those struggling against the Vietnam War, a struggle initiated by young men and women who took up the violent struggle against the "no-win" war.

The war led to the electrifying announcement by President Lyndon B. Johnson, at the end of a speech about the Vietnam War, that he would not seek reelection. Johnson was followed by President Richard Nixon, who during his 1968 political campaign, promised to end the War. By the end of Nixon's presidency, we were still bombing the hell out of Hanoi. In the end we left Vietnam, clinging to helicopters from rooftops, fleeing the inevitable victory of the Hanoi forces. Now we are friends. This is something to contemplate, considering the great financial and human cost of war.

Many of King's followers were true believers in the civil rights movement's nonviolent wars, but felt he should have stuck to his one direct impeccable cause. King felt he lead a bigger cause.

I remember the day of the Martin Luther King march on Washington. President John F. Kennedy invited King to the White House for a reception, and Kennedy greeted him with the now-famous line, "I have a dream." King never sought, nor was elected to, high office. But his greatness is now an ideal for eternal vigilance to the ills of today.

We need a widespread revolt against the lack of jobs, the foreclosure of homes, and the prominence of greed. The Wall Street Occupiers have already started a good fight.

Obama is in a fix. He has not used his well-known oratorical skills - skills that his big moment called for - to inspire, nor has he been much of a man of action. He has disappointed many in the vast amount of his previous fans.

The Washington Post quoted Pat Harris, who danced on the grass at the Mall in a purple sweat suit to Stevie Wonder music, during the festivities for the monument. She grew up in a small town, among poverty and segregation. Speaking of Obama, Harris said, "We like him, we just wish he would fight harder."

I recall when Johnson signed the Medicare Bill in 1965, in Independence, Missouri, at former President Harry S. Truman's desk, with a smiling Truman standing by. Truman had first proposed universal health care for all. Max Frankel, the New York Times correspondent, told Johnson, "My mother thanks you."

Johnson turned to Frankel and said, "You should thank me. Many of the burdens of the elderly ill would fall on the next generation."

Andrew Young, a big contributor to the civil rights movement and former Mayor of Atlanta noted, "They changed the game on us ... we won the battle of the civil rights ... now it's economics that control the politics."

People power cannot be denied. Obama has much to live up to, especially the great expectations of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely, and has not lived up to the hopes of the world for peace and democracy.

Time is running out, Obama, for your promise of true peace that should end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Try to show you are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, as was King and so many before you.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Halloween Horror - Seventh Billionth Human Arriving!
By James Donahue

It was just eleven years ago that the world marked a somewhat jaded celebration of the calculated birth of the six billionth person. That occasion, according to world census counters, occurred at two minutes past midnight on October 12, 2000.

Some newspapers published cute stories proclaiming the event a "happy" accomplishment. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan gave a speech at Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, to mark the occasion. What were they thinking?

Now, according to the United Nations Population Fund, the world population is expected to hit the Seven Billion mark on October 31, 2011, which ironically is the very day we celebrate the ancient Celtic holiday once known as All Hallows Eve. It is a day when pagans honored the dead.

The arrival of the seventh billion person at a time when the world is in the throes of chaos caused by overpopulation, the deletion of natural resources, lack of adequate food, water and shelter, economic collapse, mass pollution of air, land and water, and the mass extinctions of more and more species of plants and wildlife, is not good news.

Our world is already so overpopulated that we are plunging headlong into mass extinction. Yet few people seem to notice or even care. When we hit the six billion mark, Timothy Weiskel, director of Harvard University's Environmental Values and Public Policy Program, warned that the human race is rushing toward extinction at a rate faster than happened to the dinosaurs. Those creatures were around for about 150 million years.

In a story that appeared in Environmental News, Weiskel warned that the world's dwindling resources can no longer support the people who live on it. "It is the height of arrogance for humans to put themselves at the center of all creation. In the past, we've been able to move on to new land and untapped resources. But now we have run out of time and places to go."

In nature, when a species of animal overpopulates, there is always a mass die-off that keeps everything in balance. But humans, who have experienced plagues and mass deaths at certain dark moments in the past, have used science and medicine to beat the odds. Not only have we succeeded in diverting potential pandemics, but we have learned to extend our lives so that people now live longer than ever before. Consequently, our numbers continue to grow.

Statistics show that the third world poverty-stricken countries are breeding like flies. Ironically, one of the few countries in the world showing a decline in population is Italy, the heart of Catholicism, where people are ignoring the demands of the church and practicing birth control.

More and more people, especially in the developed nations, understand that having children is a costly thing to do. Large families reduce the quality of life for everyone in the circle.

The communist government of China understood the dangers of overpopulation early. In an effort to get it under control the Chinese government, where the Catholic Church has little or no influence, ruled in 1970 that families were limited to only one child. If a second child was born the family was fined and the child was prohibited from attending the better schools.

Here are the awful statistics: It took most of human history, until 1804, for the population to reach a billion. By 1960 the population hit three billion. In the last 40 years the population doubled. We produced the last billion people in just 11 years.

The world is now poised for a fierce battle over claims for those last resources. We are running out of lumber, oil, food, and room for everyone to live. The seas are so polluted that life even there is going extinct. The air, land and water is so polluted the planet no longer can support all that live on it.

The myth of the end of the world, the Christian belief in a final world war and the Mayan Calendar that comes to an abrupt end in 2012 are all causing people to believe that something terrible is about to occur.

Indeed, world leaders appear to be acting irrationally as thousands of people riot in the streets all around the world. We appear to be on the brink of committing mass suicide.

Thinks to think about when the ghosts and goblins call at your door this Halloween.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.







Who Is Demonizing The Rich?
Obama and Occupy Wall Street
By Tom Engelhardt

Last weekend, at the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the Washington Mall, two of King's children gave shout-outs to Occupy Wall Street, now spreading around the country and the world. His daughter Bernice spoke of it as "a freedom explosion" and his son Martin eloquently hailed "the young people of the Occupy movement all over this country and throughout the world [who] are seeking justice... for working class people barely making it, justice for middle class folk unable to pay their mortgages... justice for the young people who graduate from college and are unemployed and burdened by student loans they cannot repay, justice for everyone who is simply asking the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share."

[ OccupyAmsterdam] photo: OccupyAmsterdam When President Obama gave his speech on King, he referred to the Occupy movement only once and obliquely. "If [King] were alive today," he said, "I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there..." Amid the list of King's accomplishments, he conspicuously did not mention that his last act before being assassinated was to organize the Poor People's Campaign, including "Resurrection City," a shantytown of "plywood, teepee-looking A-frames, houses," all built on that same Mall to reveal the look, and so the existence, of the poor to the eyes of the rich -- and to the nation.

Daniel Levine, a 20-year-old college student manning the Occupy Wall Street information table at Zuccotti Park, responded to President Obama's "demonizing" remark this way: "He's trying to make excuses for the rich people who donate to his campaign. The rich demonized themselves the second they decided they were going to make fraudulent derivative swaps, the minute they decided to evict people from homes they didn't even own." It was a sentiment that might be widely seconded throughout the Occupy movement (from which, in word or image, the president remains missing in action).

Give Obama credit, though. He practices what he preaches. While he did once refer to the denizens of Wall Street as "fat cats," the Washington Post recently reported that his 2012 election campaign has done anything but demonize them. In fact, so far early in this election season, according to new fundraising data, the campaign has "managed to raise far more money... from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate." (Not that Romney has been suffering when it comes to Wall Street, where he's raising money hand over fist from all the firms you love to hate.)

Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg is making no less subtle distinctions than the president. Having tried and failed to demonize and evict the occupiers of Zuccotti Park on the grounds of uncleanliness, he is now coming out in favor of the rights of human beings -- but not of tents. At a recent news conference, he announced that "the Constitution doesn't protect tents, it protects speech and assembly." Except for medical tents, few Zuccotti Park occupiers have them, but in his urge to oust the protesters the mayor is obviously confusing the tent cities of the homeless with the encampment in his jurisdiction. As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," makes clear in a new piece, "Throw Them Out With the Trash, Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue," for the 1%, the fate of the homeless and of the demonstrators in lower Manhattan is merging.
(c) 2011 Tom Engelhardt is co-founder of the American Empire Project. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His most recent book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).








U.S. Army Assaults Its Biggest Fan
By David Swanson

One of the most valuable benefits of putting political action into the form of nonviolent encampments is that we learn each other's stories as we occupy our public parks and squares. Here's a story from the October2011 occupation in Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C. There are many more, and we'd like to hear yours when you join us.

Aristine Maharry is 29 years old and now lives in Freedom Plaza. She grew up in a very military family, with members of her family having participated in every major U.S. war going back to the war for independence, and with members of every generation having joined the military.

Maharry's family did not encourage her to aspire to a military career, but -- as in many such stories I've heard -- actions spoke more loudly than words. Maharry was proud of her father's military experience. She hoped from a very young age to join the U.S. Army. She grew up playing at army with her half-brothers. They would flip the couch on its side and toss pretend grenades. She loved the board game Risk. The biggest holiday in Aristine's family was the Fourth of July. She doesn't say she bled red white and blue. She says she bled green, Army green. She wanted to serve her country and other people. She was willing to die for her country. She was proud of her country.

Aristine was a good student and a good athlete. At age 7 she tested with an IQ of 185. She was placed in gifted and talented classes in all of the many public schools she attended. She got good grades, ran track, and was president of the Future Business Leaders of America at West Potomac High School in Northern Virginia, where at 16 she dual enrolled at George Mason University. She graduated from high school at 18 in the year 2000, was married the next January and pregnant in February.

Aristine knew that the military would be reluctant to enlist a mother of a child under 1 year of age. She hoped to take part in the Green to Gold program, enlisting and eventually becoming an officer. Her own father had dropped out of college to enlist and fight in Vietnam. She admired that history. However, when her first son was nine months old, Aristine became pregnant again. She headed to the recruiter's office when her second son turned one in May 2004. She had a family and a good job in management training new personnel in the pharmacy department of Liberty Medical Supply in Florida. But recruiters' job is to recruit, and Maharry didn't require any persuading.

She arranged to train at the same camp her father had trained at, Fort Leonardwood in Missouri. She headed there in December 2004, leaving behind a husband and two little boys for the holidays. Aristine says it was a very sad time for her, very difficult, and also very cold in Missouri. But, she thought to herself: "All the other soldiers have families too. They do it. I'm not different. I can serve too. I want to do my part as an American." She signed up to become a combat medic, hoping to care for injured soldiers.

The first few weeks of training in January were extremely hard, she says: lots of pushups, not a lot of sleep, but a great deal of hostility from drill sergeants conditioning recruits to face hostility in battle, struggling with their own post-traumatic stress, or simply acting out their sadism. Aristine characterized it as "ten times worse than in the movies." She was in Charlie Company, Third Battalion, 10th Unit, 4th Platoon. Her platoon had four drill sergeants, three of them male named Davis, Harris, and something like Fontana (she doesn't remember this name clearly), and one female drill sergeant named Gilliard.

The woman sergeant was not what you would call gentle and loving. Aristine witnessed Gilliard yank a male soldier across a desk and injure him. His offense had been to request a pen. Fontana (or whatever his exact name was) made Gilliard look sweet and delicate by comparison. He was shorter and meaner than the others, according to Maharry. She saw him slam a female private named Barr up against a wall.

Aristine is amazingly understanding of this abuse. The sergeants, she says, had just done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The training was their rest period between tours of combat. They were all, she believes, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Aristine's understanding this is even more amazing considering what happened next.

Aristine was doing pushups along with the other privates. It was dark. Fontana came up behind her and kicked her hard repeatedly in the pelvis. The next morning, with her 50-pound rucksack, Aristine was not able to keep up on the run in her usual way. One of the drill sergeants, Harris, told her she would have to report to "sick call."

That night, Private Barr came and got Maharry. The two of them went to the military police (MP) and told their stories of abuse. The MPs sent them right back without indicating that they would do anything at all. The reports that the MPs took down may or may not still exist among their records.

The next morning Aristine reported to sick call. Before she did, Gilliard whispered in her ear that she needed to say she had slipped on ice, which was a complete fabrication. An X-ray showed a fractured pelvis. Aristine was put in the Army hospital on the base from January 8, 2005 to February 1st or 2nd, immobilized in bed with a morphine drug for pain. She was then sent on 30-day convalescent leave with heavy pain killers. If she did not return after the 30 days, she was told, the Army would come and find her. Through the course of her initial processing and training, she had already been advised repeatedly that going AWOL (absent without official leave) was punishable by anything up to death.

Aristine says she was "terrified" and "scared to death."

She didn't tell her husband what had happened, as she was afraid that if he raised the issue she would be punished when she returned to the Army. When she did return, she pleaded with a physical therapist not to send her back to the same unit. It turned out that it was standard practice not to do that. Aristine worked hard, she says, to recover fast in the Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Program (PTRP) because those who did not, the "hold-overs," would be kept in separate rooms in barracks with their units' drill sergeants and would often be raped. Aristine did not use the word "rape" but indicated sex that was unwanted. "Rape" or "command rape" is an accurate term.

Unfortunately, the First Sergeant for the same Company she had been in before came and requested that Aristine return to the same unit. She passed a test and was returned. Once back, she was kept in a separate room, but resisted the drill sergeants' attempts at sex, she says. A couple of female holdovers, she says, were also kept in private rooms. They would be taken out at night, and would cry endlessly when they were returned.

Aristine was now in the fourth week of training, with the same company, platoon, and drill sergeants (except for Fontana who was no longer there), but all new privates, her original group having long since graduated. Aristine was miserable, terrified, and "crying, crying, crying." "How," she asked herself, "could they send me back here?" The First Sergeant told her: "You'd better not open your mouth about what happened last time." Maharry was still on lots of pain medicine and suffering mental pain as well.

Privates are all assigned "battle buddies," and Aristine's was a man named Principe. Privates objected that she couldn't have a male battle buddy. The sergeants said that she could and that it happens in war. Luckily, Principe was a decent person, or -- perhaps more to the point -- a person who had not been in combat and was not placed in a command position. But Principe left early, during the eighth week. There was one more week to go.

During these later weeks of training, the drill sergeants were not as hard on the privates, and focused more on building camaraderie within the unit. They also brought the privates into the way the Army thinks. Drill Sergeant Davis said to whole platoon, as Aristine recalls: "It does not matter what happens in a room as long as two or more of you have the same story. That's the party line."

Aristine, like every private, slept with her weapon, knew its parts and how to assemble it, and gave it a name. Her gun was called "Blue." Among the chants used in training were "We are Charlie Company and we like to party: drink blood drink blood all night long," and another that began "Sharpen our machetes!"

Aristine was treated to particular abuse through these weeks. She was frequently awakened during the night and deprived of sleep. For weeks, she resisted the advances of the First Sergeant, Drill Sergeant Davis, and Drill Sergeant Kitchen. Aristine learned to sleep sitting straight up in the daytime.

During the final week, the First Sergeant called for her at night and said "We know what you did with your battle buddy" and "We know you're selling pain killers." He claimed that Principe had accused her of selling her pain killers. She knew that Principe would not have said that. She had no use for money in basic training, she desperately needed the pain killers, and the accusation named no party she'd sold to or any other details. There were no witnesses, and the accusation was false. There was never any trial or finding, just an accusation. The Army threatened to bring Aristine up on charges under Article 15 of the Universal Code of Military Justice. She refused to sign their forms, and they dropped the matter.

Aristine says that frequently she would cry as her Army superiors threatened her, repeatedly, for weeks. They would point out that she never received any letters in the mail. They claimed that nobody would know if they "took care of her." Remarks included "We know how to make people shut up" and "We can make you be quiet forever." Aristine says she took these as clear threats to kill her or imprison her, and that these threats were offered on multiple occasions.

Aristine injured her arm, and a doctor agreed not to treat her so that she could ship out, which was what she wanted: to escape Missouri.

Aristine's birth mother showed up out of the blue. She had been an Army Captain. She had also been a model for ROTC posters and "Babes of the Military" calendars. Aristine was reluctant to tell her mother the true story, terrified that the Army would find out she'd talked and kill her or lock her away in prison. So Aristine told her mother the things she'd seen done to other female privates. She told her mother the Army was trumping up charges to keep her quiet. Aristine's mother said she knew how it worked, and she kept quiet.

When I spoke with Aristine this week she said that she was still scared to be speaking about it. This is even more understandable considering the rest of the story.

After graduating, and being denied permission to walk in the graduation ceremony as punishment for the baseless accusation of selling drugs, Aristine shipped out to Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, Texas. She was treated for her arm injury. She could not be sent on convalescent leave again so soon. Instead, she was sent to wait for a review by a medical board. Many she spoke with had been waiting two or more years for the medical board to review them. They could not leave for holidays or visit families. Aristine sank into depression. She felt unable to sit and do nothing, not to mention being constantly made fun of for not going to war.

She tried to switch from combat medic to a paperwork job that she could handle. She was told she was not fit for any duty until the medical board reviewed her case.

She tried to quit the Army with no benefits. They told her, she recounts: "Because we broke you, we have to fix you."

I asked "Like Iraq?"

Aristine: "Yeah, like Iraq."

A chaplain declined to help.

A physical therapist declined to help.

A woman, possibly named Rodriguez, told Aristine that if she "pulled the same s--- here as in basic" she would "personally hunt you down and take care of you."

Aristine went to a psychiatric clinic and said she was considering suicide. She really was. The clinic made her sign a statement that she would not kill herself. Then they sent her right back to hurry up and wait for the medical board.

Aristine left most of her possessions behind and went AWOL.

She was afraid to return to her family. She still does not want to face her father. She is deeply ashamed of having failed to succeed in the military. People had warned her she would fail. And she failed, or at least viewed it that way, even knowing that what was done to her was not her fault. She wished she'd listened to her colleagues at work who had told her "You're too pretty," and "Girls like you shouldn't join the military." She had taken those comments as insults to her pride. She now says they were right but didn't go far enough. "It's no place for anybody," she now concludes.

Before joining up, Aristine had contacted both of her parents. Her father had never spoken about Vietnam. He now said "I saw things in the Army that no one should ever be exposed to." He told her not to do it. She took that as fatherly protection and thought to herself "I'm stronger than he thinks." He had received medals in Vietnam, she points out, but he'd also returned with "shell shock" or PTSD. Loud sounds would cause him to throw something or hit someone. He suffered tunnel vision in crowded places, and Aristine says she had the same symptom for a while.

Aristine went AWOL on July 5th ("my independence day"). She went to Florida and picked up three jobs, and then a job in New York. But in New York in November 2006, she had a checkbook stolen and reported it to the police. She did not face prosecution for going AWOL. But she was required to report to Fort Knox in Kentucky and sign out, along with many others in her same position -- many women and men too, all suffering injuries, many from training and some from combat. They were made to put on Army uniforms and ordered about. She had to write out her story for a judge. She was told she could not speak with a judge. She was not told she could hire a lawyer. The Army may still have the report she wrote out. She was given a less than honorable discharge.

Aristine tried to reconcile with her husband. They tried counseling. She did not believe she could become pregnant anymore. But she did, and the pregnancy was very hard on her, her third son being born a month early. Doctors told her insurance would not cover problems related to military injuries. So Aristine went to the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) and asked to change her discharge to honorable and to obtain health coverage. She again had to write down her whole story, and this time she left a copy with her birth mother. She was now advised that she could have had a lawyer at Fort Knox.

Aristine is now on her own, but has joined together with a growing crowd of activists opposing the entire direction in which our war economy is dragging our nation and the world. Many people are finding the strength to tell their stories, and finding power in joining them together with others'.

Aristine Maharry thinks the military should release injured people to their families and treat them through the VA. She's seen a woman forced to stay in a hotel, forbidden to see her family, while her family lived an hour and a half away. For what purpose?

Aristine thinks the Army should allow stretching during training to avoid countless shin injuries in women and men.

She thinks her story is similar to a great many others. She's found the strength to talk after six years and in the midst of a nonviolent occupation. "The Army is keeping people quiet," she says, "many, many people. Victims are sent to their attackers to ask for help."

In school, Aristine says, she learned that America is always the hero, there to fix things and to help the rest of the world. "If it weren't for us, the world would be lost!" But, she adds, you don't learn the effects that wars have on people.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Numbers Justify Occupy Movement
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Feeling angry about being betrayed by a corrupt government owned by rich and corporate elites has driven the Occupy Wall Street movement. Emphasizing how the top one percent has prospered incredibly while the bottom 99 percent have been screwed royally is supported by countless data. New data show this is a global phenomenon and that even in the worst of economic times the wealthiest make out like the bandits they are, and there are a lot more of them than one percent.

Globally, millionaires and billionaires now control 38.5 percent of the world’s wealth, according to the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse. Never have so few owned so much. There are 29.7 million people in the world with household net worth of $1 million or more; they represent less than 1 percent of the world’s population, actually just .4 percent of 7 billion people.

Their wealth share rose from 35.6 percent in 2010, because even during the global economic recession their wealth increased by about $20 trillion. In fact, their wealth grew 29 percent — about twice as fast as the wealth in the world as a whole. How many ordinary people saw their wealth increase from 2010 to 2011 by anything close to 29 percent?

For the Occupy Wall Street movement it is even more significant that the US has been the largest wealth generator over the past 18 months, a time when about 100 million Americans have suffered with unemployment, underemployment, home foreclosures, hunger, high living costs, no health insurance, loss of savings, and historic financial insecurity.

According to the new report, the US added $4.6 trillion to global wealth, with China ranked second with $4 trillion, followed by Japan ($3.8 trillion), Brazil ($1.87 trillion) and Australia ($1.85 trillion). Which Americans shared in that $4.6 trillion increase in wealth? Only those at the very top.

There are now 84,700 people in the world worth $50 million or more. And 42 percent of them, 35,400, live in the US. At the top of that global group are 29,000 people world-wide worth $100 million or more, and just 2,700 worth $500 million or more.

According to the latest Forbes list there are 1,210 billionaires in the world. And the total net worth of America's wealthiest people was up $1.37 trillion in 2010, according to the latest Forbes 400 list, where it took a net worth of $1.05 billion to make the list of the richest Americans.

Here are some more data on current high net worth Americans: those with more than $100 million, 29,000 (about .1 percent of US population); $10 to $100 million, 987,300; $5 to $10 million, 1.96 million; $1 to $5 million, 26.7 million. You can see that the top one percent of Americans (about 3 million) have net worth above about $5 million and they get about 20 percent of annual national income and have about one third of national wealth.

The top 10 percent (about 30 million) have net worth above about $1 million and account for about 50 percent of all national consumer spending (which is amazing, think about it). They have enormous consumer power, adding to their political power. Those 30 million are a big chunk of the 99 percent, so don’t expect them to be thrilled with the Occupy movement. Rhetorically, pitting 99 against 1 percent works, but understanding that the blood suckers are really 10 percent is important but still not the whole story.

There are still more economic winners than either the top one or ten percent. When you take into account households with net worth of several hundred thousands of dollars, there are at least 60 million Americans or about 20 percent that should be considered wealthy (probably including most Tea Party activists and the Republican base) and unlikely to see the legitimacy of the Occupy movement. Those people account for an amazing $9 trillion sitting in cash in the nation’s banks. Message: The political battle is much harder than it first appears.

But, of course, there are some rich Americans that strongly support the Occupy movement, including a number from the entertainment world who clearly are part of the wealthy upper class. Like others, they understand that opposition to a grossly unfair capitalistic system designed primarily to benefit a few is not the same as rejection of capitalism that serves the interests of the many and the nation, allowing wealth to be shared (like it was from 1950 to 1980). Note that corporate profit as a share of the economy is at a 50-year high.

Also note that often people with moderate incomes, and not just retirees, still are very high net worth individuals, with most of their income being passive such as interest and dividends, rather than wages of any kind. Being wealthy, in other words, is best seen in terms of net worth rather than income data.

Last point, 50 percent of Americans make less than $26,000 a year. We have become a two-class society with very little upward mobility, especially when even those with a college education or decades of work experience cannot find a job. Rebellion is needed. Fighting economic injustice and greed is long overdue. Now you know: Delusional democracy breeds delusional prosperity. This is what the Occupy movement is all about. Help make it a success by supporting the petition at getmoneyout.com.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.








The Hole In Europe's Bucket
By Paul Krugman

If it weren't so tragic, the current European crisis would be funny, in a gallows-humor sort of way. For as one rescue plan after another falls flat, Europe's Very Serious People - who are, if such a thing is possible, even more pompous and self-regarding than their American counterparts - just keep looking more and more ridiculous.

I'll get to the tragedy in a minute. First, let's talk about the pratfalls, which have lately had me humming the old children's song "There's a Hole in My Bucket."

For those not familiar with the song, it concerns a lazy farmer who complains about said hole and is told by his wife to fix it. Each action she suggests, however, turns out to require a prior action, and, eventually, she tells him to draw some water from the well. "But there's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza."

What does this have to do with Europe? Well, at this point, Greece, where the crisis began, is no more than a grim sideshow. The clear and present danger comes instead from a sort of bank run on Italy, the euro area's third-largest economy. Investors, fearing a possible default, are demanding high interest rates on Italian debt. And these high interest rates, by raising the burden of debt service, make default more likely.

It's a vicious circle, with fears of default threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To save the euro, this threat must be contained. But how? The answer has to involve creating a fund that can, if necessary, lend Italy (and Spain, which is also under threat) enough money that it doesn't need to borrow at those high rates. Such a fund probably wouldn't have to be used, since its mere existence should put an end to the cycle of fear. But the potential for really large-scale lending, certainly more than a trillion euros' worth, has to be there.

And here's the problem: All the various proposals for creating such a fund ultimately require backing from major European governments, whose promises to investors must be credible for the plan to work. Yet Italy is one of those major governments; it can't achieve a rescue by lending money to itself. And France, the euro area's second-biggest economy, has been looking shaky lately, raising fears that creation of a large rescue fund, by in effect adding to French debt, could simply have the effect of adding France to the list of crisis countries. There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.

You see what I mean about the situation being funny in a gallows-humor fashion? What makes the story really painful is the fact that none of this had to happen.

Think about countries like Britain, Japan and the United States, which have large debts and deficits yet remain able to borrow at low interest rates. What's their secret? The answer, in large part, is that they retain their own currencies, and investors know that in a pinch they could finance their deficits by printing more of those currencies. If the European Central Bank were to similarly stand behind European debts, the crisis would ease dramatically.

Wouldn't that cause inflation? Probably not: whatever the likes of Ron Paul may believe, money creation isn't inflationary in a depressed economy. Furthermore, Europe actually needs modestly higher overall inflation: too low an overall inflation rate would condemn southern Europe to years of grinding deflation, virtually guaranteeing both continued high unemployment and a string of defaults.

But such action, we keep being told, is off the table. The statutes under which the central bank was established supposedly prohibit this kind of thing, although one suspects that clever lawyers could find a way to make it happen. The broader problem, however, is that the whole euro system was designed to fight the last economic war. It's a Maginot Line built to prevent a replay of the 1970s, which is worse than useless when the real danger is a replay of the 1930s.

And this turn of events is, as I said, tragic.

The story of postwar Europe is deeply inspiring. Out of the ruins of war, Europeans built a system of peace and democracy, constructing along the way societies that, while imperfect - what society isn't? - are arguably the most decent in human history.

Yet that achievement is under threat because the European elite, in its arrogance, locked the Continent into a monetary system that recreated the rigidities of the gold standard, and - like the gold standard in the 1930s - has turned into a deadly trap.

Now maybe European leaders will come up with a truly credible rescue plan. I hope so, but I don't expect it.

The bitter truth is that it's looking more and more as if the euro system is doomed. And the even more bitter truth is that given the way that system has been performing, Europe might be better off if it collapses sooner rather than later.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side."
~~~ James Russell Lowell









Withdrawal Symptoms
Curtain Rises on Second Act of an Endless War Crime
By Chris Floyd

Barack Obama has announced that all American troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year. This was presented as America honorably adhering to the agreement signed years ago by the Bush Administration. At the same time, White House and Pentagon spinners were planting stories to make clear that the United States had fully intended to continue its military presence in Iraq past the deadline, but was thwarted by the Iraqis' unconscionable refusal to allow American forces to commit crimes with impunity -- and immunity -- on Iraqi soil.

These backroom "process" stories -- filled, as always, with unnamed insiders providing savvy "nuance" -- were detailed, laying out a long series of negotiations, ending in what was clearly the Americans' chief goal: a military presence of 3,000-5,000 troops, placed strategically around the country, with a main focus in Baghdad. These negotiations failed; hence Obama's announcement that he was being forced to honor the existing agreement on withdrawal.

At the same time, however, we are also told that the State Department will maintain "at least" 5,000 armed "security personnel" -- mercenaries of various stripes. These 5,000 militarized (if not officially military) troops will be stationed in strategic locations around the country, where the United States will establish mini-fortress "consulates" in Iraqi cities, with a main focus in Baghdad.

So the Americans had a baseline goal of 3,000 armed personnel remaining in Iraq; they will now have a minimum of 5,000 armed personnel remaining in Iraq.

It could be argued that the original intent was to have the 3,000-5,000 uniformed troops in addition to the 5,000 mercenaries, and thus the Americans have taken a bit of a haircut in the occupation department: 5,000 instead of combined total of 8,000 (or a top end of 10,000.) Maybe so. But the fact remains that whatever else happens, the American government will have a minimum of 5,000 men under arms, stationed all across the conquered land. What's more, there is apparently no limit on the number of such mercenaries the Americans can employ to provide "security" for the thousands of other American government operatives who will remain. Any number of pretexts could provide excuses for a "surge" in "security contractors": 8,000, 10,000, 20,000 -- who's to say how many will ultimately be "needed" to combat "terrorists"?

So we have a baseline of 5,000 militarized forces remaining indefinitely in Iraq, with no immediate limit on an expansion in their numbers. And of course, all the stories make it abundantly clear that the Americans will quickly negotiate a new "security agreement" with Iraq, which will include -- or even be in addition to -- thousands of military "advisers" to help "train" the Iraqi forces, especially with the multitude of new weapons that Washington's war profiteers are lining up to sell to the "sovereign" government in Baghdad. How many troops will be involved in these "agreements"? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Again, we don't know.

And as Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out, none of these numbers include the "Special Forces" and CIA paramilitaries that will inevitably be ranging across Iraq, no doubt in large numbers. Iraq is hardly going to receive less attention from the American black ops and death squads than Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and the dozens of other countries where Washington is waging secret war.

Thus it is almost a certainty that by the end of 2012, there will be, at the barest minimum, at least 8,000 to 10,000 heavily armed personnel under the direct control of the United States government stationed at strategic points throughout Iraq; the actual figure will doubtless be higher, perhaps much higher. But this is a bare minimum -- numbers which tally almost exactly with the final goals of the American war machine in the "failed" negotiations on extending the present form of the occupation.

Obama's announcement was yet another bitter sham. We are not ringing down the curtain on the Iraq War; we are simply beginning the second act, with new scenery in the backdrop, some new plotlines and characters -- but the same old dirty, bloody business of aggression.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd




.




A Moment Of Pure Astonishment, Again
By William Rivers Pitt

Tea Party Nation activists calls for small business to "stop hiring," to protest Obama, Democrats.

It is no easy thing to astonish me. The deep, dark mineshaft of the 21st century has produced some of the most gruesome, appalling, horrifying acts and behaviors ever seen on the skin of the Earth, and it has been my job to report on them, to chronicle them, and to try and make sense of them. The dangerous thing about this job, if you do it long enough, is the callus that builds up over your heart and head. It's a necessary thing; you can endure only so much for so long before the urge to run screaming through the streets tries to take hold, and if that happens, you're no good to anyone except your bail bondsman.

I reported on October 4, 2001 about George W. Bush looking into a brace of news cameras to shill for tax cuts - he smiled as he did it - not even a month after the Towers collapsed, even as we were shaking the ashes of friends and co-workers out of our hair. I reported on Karl Rove telling GOP congressional hopefuls to "run on the war," meaning Iraq, months before the war had actually been unleashed.

Later, after the war was unmistakably underway, I filed dozens of reports, taking special notice of the names of the dead. As time and battle drew out, certain truths came to plague the living: try as they might to stand by the justifications for the war, there were no weapons of mass destruction for Bush administration officials to point to...a fact that did not stop press secretary Ari Fleischer from saying, "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."

I reported on George W. Bush strutting across the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln beneath a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," seven full years and tens of thousands of casualties before his splendid little war actually came to an end. I reported on the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a crime committed by the Bush administration to punish her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for speaking against the war in the public prints. I reported on Dick Cheney's claim that the Vice President's office is not part of the Executive Branch, because he did not want to turn his official papers over to the National Archives.

I reported on John McCain suspending his presidential campaign because, somehow, he thought that would save the crumbling economy. I reported on Barack Obama's crabwise approach to health care reform, on his failure to close the prison at Guantanamo, and on the deranged three-ring circus of the debt limit crisis, when the president was backed into a corner by congressional Republicans, who threatened to crash the economy because they wanted to rip the guts out of the social safety net.

After all that and so much more besides, my capacity for shock has been severely diminished...or so I thought.

Because there is this, written by Tea Party activist Melissa Brookstone and published last week on the Tea Party Nation website:<>

Call For A Strike of American Small Businesses Against The Movement for Global Socialism

"I'm on strike!" - Ellis Wyatt, from the end of the movie "Atlas Shrugged, Part 1", based on the novel by Ayn Rand

Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.

Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.

Resolved that: By their agenda and actions, those in our government who swore oaths to protect and defend our Constitution have committed treason against the United States.

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media (Indeed, most of the news media.) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda.

Resolved that: These same factions expect that, by carrying out a radical anti-business agenda, which includes the passage and inflicting of Obama"Care" on our nation, class warfare and redistribution of wealth, and expanding the government, while killing businesses in this country with an environment hostile to business, including excessive regulations (the average business must now spend about $11,700 per year per employee to comply with government regulations!), and by borrowing and wasting more money than has been spent in the entire previous existence of our republic, that they will "create jobs", when in fact all they have "created" have been government jobs that consume wealth, and don't "create" it.

Resolved that: Our President, the Democrats-Socialists, most of the media, and most of those from Hollywood, have now encouraged and supported "Occupy" demonstrations in our streets, which are now being perpetrated across the globe, and which are being populated by various marxists, socialists and even communists, and are protesting against business, private property ownership and capitalism, something I thought I'd never see in my country, in my lifetime.

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.

I hereby declare that my job creation potential is now ceased.

"I'm on strike!"

"Despicable" is not a muscular enough word to describe this sad catastrophe of a document. Leaving aside all the gibberish about global socialist conspiracies and Obama's dictatorial tyranny - truly, all that is simply too stupid to reckon with - what we have here is a far-right activist group demanding that millions of unemployed people be denied gainful employment for no other reason than the Tea Party does not like the president.

No jobs for anyone until Obama is gone. Got it? The suffering being endured by so many Americans in the aftermath of the very economic policies championed in this declaration have no bearing on the present. Screw you, screw me, screw everyone, until these people have their way. If even one person in America heeds this call and refuses to hire anyone in need of a job, that will be a disaster of enormous proportions, for it will stand as the clearest indication yet that we are not our brother's keeper, that we are a cruel and selfish people, that we are hopeless possibly beyond all redemption.

This declaration is fishwrap, and I devoutly hope it is treated as such by anyone unfortunate enough to be confronted with it. It is the strongest signal yet that people like this Melissa Brookstone and her Tea Party friends - indeed, anyone who thinks the above declaration is a good idea - must be kept as far out of political power as can be managed within the boundaries of the law.

Astonishing indeed.
(c) 2011 William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is available from PoliPointPress.





The Dead Letter Office...






Heil Obama,

Dear Burgermeister Quan,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your having your PD attack legal protesters and over ruling the Bill of Rights in the City of Oakland, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Demoncratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross, first class, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 10-31-2011. We salute you frau Quan, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama






Why is George Bush Wading Into Denver's Education Debate On The Eve Of Critical School Board Elections?
By John Nichols

Former President George W. Bush, whose administration once made a big deal about its diplomatic engagement with Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, won't talk about the recent unfortunate turn of events for the strongman. And don't try to get Bush started on any of those pesky questions about jobs and the economy that his administration ran into the ground. He's not talking.

But if you want to talk about how the schools in Denver, Colorado, should be run, Bush's has got plenty to say.

"I'm out of politics...but I still have a great passion about educational excellence," Bush announced when he showed up in Denver last Thursday.

But the scheduling of Bush's visit to the city's "Get Smart Schools" program couldn't have been more political. Indeed, advocates for public education in what has become the most intense school board election in the country are bluntly suggesting that Bush's visit was "politically timed."

Appearing in Colorado's largest city barely ten days before the most hotly contested school board elections in the the community's history, Bush talked up an education agenda being advanced by so-called school "reformers," who have been backed by wealthy oil barons and national conservative groups that want to see Denver experiment with school charter, school choice and privatization schemes. And he did so with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock at his side.

Hancock, a Democrat, has waded into the Denver School Board competition, endorsing candidates favored by the out-of-town special interests and suggesting that if things didn't go they way he may reverse his previous position and press for mayoral control of Denver schools.

Emily Sirota, a Denver school board candidate who has campaigned on behalf of maintaining strong public schools—and assuring that those schools are run by elected representatives of the people, rather than outside interests or powerful politicians—has been countering Hancock. "I agree with Mayor Hancock that the current school board is overly divisive and dysfunctional. In fact, that's exactly why I'm running for school board—to finally put an end to the bickering and refocus our schools on the needs of our kids," says Sirota. "However, the mayor only added to the current divisiveness and dysfunction when he needlessly inserted himself into the school board election. Additionally, he's now making matters even worse with his suggestion that he may be open to trying to disband the elected school board unless his handpicked slate of candidates is successful in buying the upcoming election. Voters aren't interested in that kind of extortion. That's not a way to forge consensus and refocus DPS on the needs of our kids, which should be our top priority."

When Bush showed up and appeared with the mayor, Sirota pushed back even harder, suggesting that the mayor was wrong for "praising the No Child Left Behind Act during President George W. Bush's politically timed visit to Denver today."

"Mayor Hancock has rightly decried divisiveness and dysfunction in our education system—but standing with George W. Bush during an election-timed visit is not the way to start fixing that problem, nor are his comments today promoting the failed No Child Left Behind policy that has so harmed our schools," said Sirota. "No Child Left Behind is one of the most destructive education policies enacted in the last 10 years. Our mayor's behavior today only draws unnecessary lines in the sand, while needlessly undermining the important work of Senator Bennet, who is working to finally reform No Child Left Behind. If there's any good news out of President Bush's visit to Denver, it is that Superintendent [Tom] Boasberg, unlike our Mayor, had the guts to speak out against No Child Left Behind. His statements suggest that he recognizes that we need to couple accountability with a reinvestment in our schools."

The November 1 Denver School Board election has already attracted more than $600,000 in campaign donations, with much of the money coming in the form of $10,000 and $25,000 checks to candidates backed by groups that favor the school choice, charter school and privatization schemes. Sirota is running one of three races in the city. She's being massively outspent, yet is generally seen as running a competitive race.

If Sirota wins, the likelihood is that control of the School Board will flip from the so-called "reformers" to a pro–public education majority.

Why all the attention to the Denver race? In fact, special-interest groups are pouring money into school board an state board of education races across the country this year. But the Denver race is critical, as it could shift the direction of one of the nation's largest urban school districts and send powerful signals regarding the direction of public education nationally.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








The Mystery of Consciousness II
By Sam Harris

The universe is filled with physical phenomena that appear devoid of consciousness. From the birth of stars and planets, to the early stages of cell division in a human embryo, the structures and processes we find in Nature seem to lack an inner life. At some point in the development of certain complex organisms, however, consciousness emerges. This miracle does not depend on a change of materials—for you and I are built of the same atoms as a fern or a ham sandwich. Rather, it must be a matter of organization. Arranging atoms in a certain way appears to bring consciousness into being. And this fact is among the deepest mysteries given to us to contemplate.

Many readers of my previous essay did not understand why the emergence of consciousness should pose a special problem to science. Every feature of the human mind and body emerges over the course development: Why is consciousness more perplexing than language or digestion? The problem, however, is that the distance between unconsciousness and consciousness must be traversed in a single stride, if traversed at all. Just as the appearance of something out of nothing cannot be explained by our saying that the first something was "very small," the birth of consciousness is rendered no less mysterious by saying that the simplest minds have only a glimmer of it.

This situation has been characterized as an "explanatory gap"⁠ and the "hard problem of consciousness,"⁠ and it is surely both. I am sympathetic with those who, like the philosopher Colin McGinn and the psychologist Steven Pinker, have judged the impasse to be total: Perhaps the emergence of consciousness is simply incomprehensible in human terms.⁠ Every chain of explanation must end somewhere—generally with a brute fact that neglects to explain itself. Consciousness might represent a terminus of this sort. Defying analysis, the mystery of inner life may one day cease to trouble us.

However, many people imagine that consciousness will yield to scientific inquiry in precisely the way that other difficult problems have in the past. What, for instance, is the difference between a living system and a dead one? Insofar as the question of consciousness itself can be kept off the table, it seems that the difference is now reasonably clear to us. And yet, as late as 1932, the Scottish physiologist J.S. Haldane (father of J.B.S. Haldane) wrote:

What intelligible account can the mechanistic theory of life give of the....recovery from disease and injuries? Simply none at all, except that these phenomena are so complex and strange that as yet we cannot understand them. It is exactly the same with the closely related phenomena of reproduction. We cannot by any stretch of the imagination conceive a delicate and complex mechanism which is capable, like a living organism, of reproducing itself indefinitely often.⁠

Scarcely twenty years passed before our imaginations were duly stretched. Much work in biology remains to be done, of course, but anyone who entertains vitalism at this point stands convicted of basic ignorance about the nature of living systems. The jury is no longer out on questions of this sort, and more than half a century has passed since the earth's creatures required an élan vital to propagate themselves or to recover from injury. Are doubts that we will arrive at a physical explanation of consciousness analogous to doubts about the feasibility of explaining life in terms of processes that are not alive?

The analogy is a bad one: Life is defined according to external criteria; Consciousness is not (and, I think, cannot be). We would never have occasion to say of something that does not eat, excrete, grow, or reproduce that it might nevertheless be "alive." It might, however, be conscious⁠.

But other analogies seem to offer hope. Consider our sense of sight: Doesn't vision emerge from processes that are themselves blind? And doesn't such a miracle of emergence make consciousness seem less mysterious?

Unfortunately, no. In the case of vision, we are speaking merely about the transduction of one form of energy into another (electromagnetic into electrochemical). Photons cause light-sensitive proteins to alter the spontaneous firing rates of our rods and cones, beginning an electrochemical cascade that affects neurons in many areas of the brain—achieving, among other things, a topographical mapping of the visual scene onto the visual cortex. While this chain of events is complicated, the fact of its occurrence is not in principle mysterious. The emergence of vision from a blind apparatus strikes us as a difficult problem simply because when we think of vision, we think of the conscious experience of seeing. That eyes and visual cortices emerged over the course of evolution presents no special obstacles to us; that there should be "something that it is like" to be the union of an eye and a visual cortex is itself the problem of consciousness—and it is as intractable in this form as in any other.

But couldn't a mature neuroscience nevertheless offer a proper explanation of human consciousness in terms of its underlying brain processes? We have reasons to believe that reductions of this sort are neither possible nor conceptually coherent. Nothing about a brain, studied at any scale (spatial or temporal), even suggests that it might harbor consciousness. Nothing about human behavior, or language, or culture, demonstrates that these products are mediated by subjectivity. We simply know that they are—a fact that we appreciate in ourselves directly and in others by analogy⁠.

Here is where the distinction between studying consciousness and studying its contents becomes paramount. It is easy to see how the contents of consciousness might be understood at the level of the brain. Consider, for instance, our experience of seeing an object—its color, contours, apparent motion, location in space, etc. arise in consciousness as a seamless unity, even though this information is processed by many separate systems in the brain. Thus when a golfer prepares to hit a shot, he does not first see the ball's roundness, then its whiteness, and only then its position on the tee. Rather, he enjoys a unified perception of a ball. Many neuroscientists believe that this phenomenon of "binding" can be explained by disparate groups of neurons firing in synchrony. Whether or not this theory is true, it is perfectly intelligible—and it suggests, as many other findings in neuroscience do, that the character of our experience can often be explained in terms of its underlying neurophysiology. However, when we ask why it should be "like something" to see in the first place, we are returned to the mystery of consciousness in full.

For these reasons, it is difficult to imagine what experimental findings could render the emergence of consciousness comprehensible. This is not to say, however, that our understanding of ourselves won't change in surprising ways through our study of the brain. There seems to be no limit to how a maturing neuroscience might reshape our beliefs about the nature of conscious experience. Are we fully conscious during sleep and merely failing to form memories? Can human minds be duplicated or merged? Is it possible to love your neighbor as yourself? A precise, functional neuroanatomy of our mental states would help to answer such questions—and the answers might well surprise us. And yet, whatever insights arise from correlating mental and physical events, it seems unlikely that one side of the world will be fully reduced to the other.

While we know many things about ourselves in anatomical, physiological, and evolutionary terms, we do not know why it is "like something" to be what we are. The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand—that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character—is a mystery, exceeded only by the mystery that there should be something rather than nothing in this universe. How is it that unconscious events can give rise to consciousness? Not only do we have no idea, but it seems impossible to imagine what sort of idea could fit in the space provided. Therefore, although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximize human well-being, it may still fail to dispel the fundamental mystery of our mental life. That doesn't leave much scope for conventional religious doctrines, but it does offer a deep foundation (and motivation) for introspection. Many truths about ourselves will be discovered in consciousness directly, or not discovered at all.
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Ken Catalino ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage
'We Need $12 Trillion Or All These Kids Die'

WASHINGTON: Brandishing shotguns and semiautomatic pistols, members of the 112th U.S. Congress took a class of visiting schoolchildren hostage today, barricading themselves inside the Capitol rotunda and demanding $12 trillion dollars in cash.

If the money is not delivered by this evening, members of Congress say they will shoot a new child every hour on the hour.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who has emerged as spokesman for the bipartisan group, informed FBI negotiators this morning that the ransom was to be placed in stainless-steel suitcases and left on the Capitol steps by 4 p.m. sharp. If their demands are not met in full, the 11-term representative announced, "all the kids will die."

"Bring us the money and we let the children go, simple as that," said Boehner, appearing in the East Portico with a serrated switchblade held to one of the fourth-grader's throats. "If you want to play games and stall for extra time, we're going to shoot one kid an hour, starting with little Dillon here."

"Tick tock," he added, vanishing back into the building with the terrified child in tow.

Shaken witnesses reported that the ordeal broke out around 10 a.m. this morning, when in the midst of a Capitol building tour, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) suddenly burst into the National Statuary Hall with a pair of black panty hose over his head and began firing a Beretta 9 mm handgun into the air, shouting, "Everybody down! Everybody get the fuck down!"

The schoolchildren were then led at gunpoint into the nearby Great Rotunda, where an agitated, profusely sweating Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) bound their hands and feet and duct-taped them to various sculptures, including a monument to women's suffrage and a marble figure of former president James Garfield. Although cell phones were confiscated immediately, one student managed to tweet a short video showing what appeared to be Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pistol-whipping a chaperone who attempted to yell for help.

"It's a very tense situation at the moment, and these things take time—more time than we've got," Special Agent Douglas Burkett of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit said. "We have snipers on the Supreme Court building, the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, and the National Museum of the American Indian, but so far none of them has been able to get a clear shot at any senators or representatives."

"While there's an assault team on the way, they won't be able to breach the door if members of Congress have rigged the place with explosives," Burkett added. "And that's quite possible. From the looks of things, I'd say they've been planning this for a while."

As the dramatic standoff continues to unfold, the bipartisan gang of lawmakers has laid out additional terms for releasing the children. Among the demands are guaranteed re-election in 2012, reduction of the veto-override threshold from two-thirds to one half of the Senate, new desks, and safe transport to Reagan National Airport with a fueled-up private jet waiting on the runway.

According to sources close to the 535-member legislative branch, Congress has recently fallen on hard times. Neighbors reported overhearing heated arguments going on late into the night about dangerously stretched budgets, a failing health care system, and the potential for an all-out government shutdown.

With the ransom deadline nearing and no apparent resolution in sight, President Barack Obama was summoned in a last-ditch effort to diffuse the situation. Despite an emotional bullhorn appeal to return to "honest talks aimed at reducing the national debt and getting millions of unemployed Americans back to work," the chief executive was met with silence.

"There's just no way of getting through to these people," said Obama, holding his head in his hands. "I know Speaker Boehner personally, and I know that he and his colleagues will not hesitate for a second to kill these poor children if they don't get their way."

"Trust me, this Congress will do it," the president added.
(c) 2011 The Onion




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In This Edition

Greg Palast studies the, "Sachs Fiend."

Uri Avnery has a, "A View From The Villa."

Matt Taibbi returns with, "Pull Your Money Out Of BOA."

Ralph Nader takes us on, "The Road To Twenty One Presidential Debates."

Jim Hightower asks, "What's In A Name?"

Helen Thomas sees the, "Dictator Day Of Reckoning."

James Donahue finds that, "The Heart Of The Nation Is Out On The Street."

Glenn Greenwald examines, "Middle East Propaganda 101."

David Swanson explains, "Occupy The Winter Of Our Discontent."

Ann Jones joins us with, "One US Citizen's Misadventure In Securityland."

Paul Krugman considers, "Bombs, Bridges And Jobs."

Chris Floyd covers the, "Oakland Police Riot."

William Rivers Pitt warns, "Then They Fight You."

Oakland Interim Chief Howard A. Jordan wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols looks into, "Herman Cain's Next Scandal."

Noam Chomsky demands we, "Occupy The Future."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst is, "Wearing My Debate Fatigues" but first Uncle Ernie sees that, "A Sleeping Giant's Awake."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of John Cole, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Married To The Sea.Com, Jess Danziger, Micah Wright, Bill Day, Steve Breen, Dan Bellini, Fish Ink.US, Clementine, Democracy Now, Weekly Dig, Charles Dharapak, Haraz N. Ghanbari, 20th Century Fox, The ACLU, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










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A Sleeping Giant Awakens
And it's pissed off
By Ernest Stewart

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." ~~~ Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Here come da judge
Here come da judge
Here come da judge
Here come da judge
Laugh-In ~~~ Sammy Davis Jr.

"The Israeli step is another stick in the wheels of international efforts to resume the peace process; it will further poison the atmosphere. The Palestinians are seeking recognition and it is completely unacceptable for Israel to respond to a peaceful and legal move with a completely illegal response, which is the expansion of settlements."
~~~ Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian government ~~~

Well this could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I don't know. Oh no. Oh no!
The Last Time ~~~ The Rolling Stones

Like Noam, I, too, wish our old friend Howard Zinn was still alive to see this new revolution which is in its infancy, a revolution that Howard predicted and did all in his power to achieve, especially in the last two decades of his life. Because revolution is exactly what the Occupy Movement is all about -- whether they know it or not!

Unlike our first two revolutions, this one is for real, a revolution of the proletariat, and not one of the elite. This is not about a bunch of the richest men in the country rebelling against foreign competition and electing the richest man amongst them as president, or like our second one, pitting the southern elites against the northern bankers. The first revolution was won for our elites; the second one was won for the banks. The first two were violent revolutions, the third -- so far at least -- is a peaceful one. Perhaps Mahatma's and Martin's ideals about peaceful resistance is sinking in.

I don't want to throw a monkey wrench in the works, but generally, these peaceful revolutions only work against the elites when the elites want them to, and then only after the blood of patriots is spilled upon the tree of liberty as is being done by local groups of storm troopers and gestapo from sea to oily sea!

The fix that they thought was in is beginning to unravel. As I've said on many occasions, what's been so scary in the last few decades is that things that were done behind closed and locked doors began more and more to be done in the open. The Sheeple had their little Matrixes and as long as they had a job, a car, and a roof was over their heads, they could ignore all the horrible things that were going on all around them, but the last few years has began to awaken that sleeping giant that Isoroku tried to warn his staff about -- the American people. I wonder how many CEOs understand just what Admiral Yamamoto was talking about? I bet all of them do! Finally, the people are beginning to awaken and realize that they been enslaved by our corpo-rat masters, and abandoned to their fate after they were used up by both parties and are finally madder than hell! It's about time, America, get up off the couch and into the streets before you no longer have a couch or a street to call home. Do it for the children, for our future, for your peace of mind. OCCUPY, OCCUPY, OCCUPY!

In Other News

Could there be some good news coming out of Oakland California? Could be, could be?

Long before they rioted on the Occupy protestors The Oakland PD had a terrible record of unnecessary violence, extortion, and framing innocent people -- not to mention killing a few innocent folks, too! Yes, I know, that could describe any modern police department; so how is Oakland different? Well, for one thing, most police departments are not being overseen by a US federal judge!

Since 2003, the Oakland PD has, because of past abuses, been operating under the monitoring of a federal judge overseeing a consent decree. The Bay Citizen said of it about a month before the this last police riot occurred:

In a hearing that exposed the breadth of the problems facing Oakland, a federal judge blasted the Oakland Police Department Thursday for failing to make court-ordered changes designed to reduce police misconduct and abuse.

Before a courtroom full of city leaders and police department brass, U.S. District Court Judge Shelton Henderson highlighted a series of issues that "indicate to me the city and the department still don't get it."

After that report came out, the the chief of the Oakland PD resigned and the San Francisco Chronicle said of his replacement in a getting-to-know article of the new interim chief Howard A. Jordan:

Jordan has been the Police Department's top authority on bringing the force into compliance with a consent decree ordered after four officers were accused more than a decade ago of systematically beating and framing suspects.

The consent decree is the most critical issue facing the department, as a federal judge warned last week that the city faces the possibility of having its police department placed in federal receivership due to its failure to fully comply with the court order. Such a move could result in the city losing control over its police budget, its biggest general fund expense.

Jordan, as interim chief, planned and directed the police action against Occupy Oakland supporters and because of that action he is this week's "Vidkun Quisling Award" winner. Congratulations, Chief Jordan; you deserve it!

This federal consent decree is separate from the accord that the OPD was compelled to reach in 2004, which prohibited the use of potentially lethal and harmful suppression techniques against peaceful crowds, so apparently they're in violation of both! What happens next is up to US District Court Judge Henderson. By all means do kick ass and take names, dude!

And Finally

I see where the Israeli PACs scored another worldwide embarrassment for the United States. You may remember back in 1990's, when they passed legislation that banned the financing of any UN organization that accepts Palestine as a full member? This week's vote, backed by 107 countries in UNESCO, was a symbolic victory for the Palestinian drive towards statehood.

Ergo, we won't be making our $80 million payment to UNESCO that is due in November. In case you're not hip, UNESCO's stated purpose is to "contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and the human rights along with fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the UN Charter." No, we can't have that!

I can see why we wouldn't want to support an agency that's all about peace and security, when our job is to make war and murder millions on a pull of the puppet strings by Israel. We don't need no stinkin' peace and security. We're all about insecurity and war. Nor do we need to support education, science and culture; we want our robots to be willing and dumb!

Besides, we've kept the Palestinians slaves to Israel for the last 63 years with our veto power in the UN and have murdered millions over the years to keep the status quo, so those big bribery checks keep coming to the media, military and our politicians.

The United States also acknowledged that it would lose its right to vote in UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization if it makes no payments over the next two years, saying the Obama administration will need to consult Congress about the impact on US interests.

"We were to have made a 60 million dollar payment to UNESCO in November and we will not be making that payment," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

Nuland said the Palestinian admission "triggers longstanding (US) legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO."

Nuland echoed earlier remarks by the White House which said UNESCO's admission of the Palestinians as a full member was "premature" and undermined international peace efforts and hopes of direct talks on a Palestinian state.

"The vote is regrettable, premature and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East," Nuland said.

What a crock, Victoria; you know it; I know it; and the world knows it; so who you jivin' with that "cosmic debris?" We've had since 1947 to do something, and we didn't, so our chance of doing anything positive now is all but nil! Victoria went on:

"Under UNESCO's constitution, a member state will have no vote in the general conference if it gets more than two years in arrears in its contribution. So our actual arrearage status will begin in January.

We now need to have consultations with Congress.

Not paying our dues into these organizations could severely restrict and reduce our ability to influence them, our ability to act within them, and we think this affects US interests. So we need to have conversations with Congress about what options might be available to protect our interests."

This is bad enough, but it only gets worse from here. We can veto any resolution granting statehood in the Security Council, but our veto will be quickly overridden in the General Assembly, making us look like the dirty weasel bastards that we are to the world!

Keepin' On

I don't know for sure, but this maybe the last time I beg for money until 2012? I'd like to thank Ken from Asheville for his nice donation and with what Ernie from Ontario has sent, but hasn't arrived yet, we may have finally got enough to pay the bills!

Not only that, but from what I can tell, we may have gone another $30 over what we needed. If so, I've finally made a profit off this! If so, that will pay me around one US penny per hour for this year's work! Yippie; however, if you factor in the other ten years, it comes to about one mill per hour! In case you're wondering, a mill is a unit of measurement equal to 1/20 of a cent. Ergo, notify the folks down in Indiana to run another Subaru Outback down the line for me! If it were only so!

Still, it looks like, even in this Zeus-awful economy, it's getting better. As John and Paul once sang:

"I've got to admit it's getting better
A little better all the time (It can't get no worse)"
Onward and Upward, Ya'll!

*****


12-21-1925 ~ 10-30-2011
Thanks for the film.


06-04-1919 ~ 11-01-2011
Burn Baby Burn.



*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
Donations

*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












Sachs Fiend
Goldman Attacks Occupy Wall Street's Non-Profit Bank
By Greg Palast

Mega-bank Goldman Sachs (assets $933bn), has declared war on one of the smallest banks in New York (assets $30m), the customer-owned community bank that happens to also be the banker for Friends of Liberty Plaza, Inc, also known as Occupy Wall Street. And you thought Goldman didn't care.

The trouble began three weeks ago when the occupiers suddenly found their donation buckets filling with thousands of dollars, way more than needed for their pizza dinners. Suddenly, the anti-bank protesters needed a bank. Citibank and Chase certainly wouldn't fit. So OWS opened an account at the not-for-profit Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union. Peoples has a unique federal charter - designated to open accounts for low-income folk from all over NewYork, available to those families earning less than $38,000 per year. (Disclosure: the CEO of the Peoples bank is my dearly beloved ex. But that's another story.)

Goldman Sachs had also joined up with the Peoples bank. Goldman partners reportedly earn a bit more than $38k per annum, yet Goldman's association so far was limited to giving the credit union $5,000 toward the little bank's 25th anniversary celebration dinner. Goldman's largesse was acknowledged on the dinner invites - along with the night's honoree: Occupy Wall Street.

When a Goldman exec saw its gilded name next to Occupy Wall Street, the financial giant expressed much displeasure. In fact, my sources say, Goldman threatened legal action unless the credit union gave up the $5,000 and reprinted the invite sans the Sachs moniker. Goldman Sachs did not respond to our requests for comment on the affair.

So far, it's a cute story: tiny bank uses Goldman's money to fete some tent-dwellers who are denouncing Sachs as the Giant Vampire Squid.

But there's a lot more at stake in this battle than a $5,000 donation gone wrong. Underneath, it's a battle royal for control of tens of billions of dollars in government mandated "community reinvestment" funds.

In 2008, the US Treasury handed Goldman Sachs a check for $10bn from the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (Tarp), the bailout funds given to desperate commercial banks. A few eyebrows were raised: Goldman was not desperate, and it certainly was not a commercial bank. Yet - abracadabra! - Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson transformed investment bank Goldman into a commercial bank overnight. (Paulson's prior post was chairman of Goldman Sachs. Just saying.)

But there was a catch: Goldman would have to return a chunk of the public's billions in the form of loans for low-income customers and members of its "community", as required by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. Problem: Goldman has, it seems, no low-income customers, nor a "community". Goldman was directed to find poor people and a community and hand over some cash.

So Goldman looked down from its riverfront tower in lower Manhattan and discovered Peoples. Over 80% of Peoples member-owners have low incomes. At least 65% are Latino.

For the big money-center banks, the CRA is good deal. They pay some blood money into community banks and offload their low-income customers. Indeed, bank branches catering to the carriage trade often hustle would-be customers from housing projects out the door with an admonition to take their undesirable business to Lower East Side Peoples.

Goldman's circuits blew when the credit union's management appeared in Zuccotti Park to endorse Occupy Wall Street's call to "Move Your Money" from commercial banks to community credit unions. Heeding Peoples' and Occupy's call, 23 protesters marched to their local Citibank branches to close their accounts - and were promptly arrested.

Peoples' Chairwoman Deyarina Del Rio tells me that Peoples sees itself in agreement and alliance with the protesters' demands to radically shift the American finance system away from profit-first to people-first banking. But not with our money, seems to be Goldman's attitude. But of course, it's not Goldman's money but our money - effectively, the tax payer dollars that were supposed to come back in the form of loans in return for the Tarp bailout.

The billions of dollars in CRA funds (Citibank alone committed $115bn over ten years) have given community banks tremendous political authority at the local level. Notably, Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez will be honored alongside Occupy Wall Street at the credit union's 3 November dinner. "We didn't mean to draw a line in the sand with Goldman," Peoples Chairman Del Rio told me, standing inside the bank's vault, the only place in the cramped back office with room to meet.

But Goldman did draw the line. And other bankers are stepping back across it, too. Capital One also pulled its name off the dinner invites.

Goldman has so far only passed out its legally-required CRA funds with an eye-dropper: the $5,000 for Peoples (now withdrawn), and a few other dabs here and there. The big cash investments from the Goldman fund are dangling, hoping to lure only those community banks and low-income funds that will dance to Goldman's tune. My sources told me that Goldman's "Urban Investment Group" representative had stated in a phone conversation that Occupy's credit union will never get another dime from any big bank, but, again, Goldman refused to speak with me to confirm or deny this.

Peoples' Del Rio dismisses such threats, but I don't. These Community Reinvestment funds ultimately come from public pockets, so why should the titans of Wall Street be allowed to bully community credit unions, which are answerable to their members, not Goldman's partners?
(c) 2011 Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigations for BBC TV and Democracy Now! can be seen by subscribing to Palast's reports at.





A View From The Villa
By Uri Avnery

THE KILLING of Muammar Gaddafi and his son Muatasim was not a pretty sight. After seeing it once, I looked away when it was shown again and again on TV -literally ad nauseam.

Commercial TV exists, of course, to make money for the tycoons by appealing to the basest instincts and tastes of the masses. There seems to be an insatiable appetite for gruesome sights.

But in Israel there was another motive for showing these lynch scenes repeatedly, as the commentators made abundantly clear. These scenes proved, to their mind, the primitive, barbaric, murderous nature of the Arab peoples, and, indeed, of Islam as such.

Ehud Barak likes to describe Israel as a "villa in the middle of a jungle." By now this is accepted by the great majority of our media people. They never miss an opportunity to point out that we live in a "dangerous neighborhood" -making it clear that Israel does not really belong to this neighborhood. We are a civilized Western people, sadly surrounded by these primitive savages.

(As I have mentioned many times, this goes right back to the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who wrote that the future Zionist state would be a part of "the wall of civilization against Asiatic barbarism.")

Since this attitude has far-reaching mental and political implications, let's have a closer look.

I AM against the death penalty, in all its forms. Executions, whether in Texas or in China, disgust me. I would have much preferred Gaddafi to be tried in a proper court.

But my first reaction to the sight was: My God, how much a people must hate its ruler if they treat him like that! Obviously, the decades of abominable terror inflicted on the Libyan people by this half-crazy despot have destroyed any remnants of mercy they may have felt. (His fanatical defenders to the last, members of his tribe, seem to be a tiny minority.)

His clownish appearance and foreign adventures diverted the attention of world opinion from the murderous aspects of his rule. From time to time, on a whim, he let loose waves of horror, torturing and killing anyone who had so much as voiced a hint of criticism, trying them in football stadiums, where the roar of the maddened crowds drowned out the pitiful pleading for mercy of the condemned. On one occasion, his thugs shot all the 1200 inmates of Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.

True, he spent some money on building schools and hospitals, but that was a tiny part of the huge amounts of oil revenue squandered on his bizarre adventures or stolen by his family. This immensely rich country has a poor population, a singe narrow road from Egypt through to Tunisia and a standard of living that is a third of ours.

You did not have to be an Arab barbarian or Muslim arch-terrorist to do what was done to him. Actually, the highly civilized Italians (Libya's former colonial masters) did exactly the same in 1945. When the partisans caught the fleeing Benito Mussolini, he pleaded piteously for his life, but they killed him on the spot together with his mistress. Their bodies were thrown into the street, kicked and spat upon by the crowd, and then hanged by their feet from meat hooks from the roof of a gas station, where the public threw stones at them for days on end. I don't remember anybody in civilized Europe protesting.

Contrary to Mussolini and Gaddafi, Adolf Hitler was not caught while ignominiously trying to escape. He chose a much more dignified exit. But during his last weeks Gaddafi rather resembled Hitler, living in a world of crazy delusion, moving nonexistent troops around on the map, sure to the end of the boundless love of his people.

Nicolae Ceausescu, another bloody tyrant, had his day -or hour -in court. It was a charade, as such trials are bound to be. The kangaroo court condemned him to death and he was shot forthwith, together with his wife.

GADDAFI'S DEMISE puts an end to the debate that started months ago.

There can be no doubt any more that the vast majority of the Libyan people detested Gaddafi and welcomed the NATO campaign that helped to remove him. It was an important contribution, but the actual heavy fighting was done by the ragtag people's army. Libya liberated itself. Even in Tripoli, it was the people who put an end to the tyranny.

I was sharply attacked by some well-meaning European leftists for blessing the awful monster called NATO. Now, in retrospect, it is quite obvious that the overwhelming -if not unanimous -opinion of the Libyans themselves welcomed the intervention.

Where did I differ from these leftists? I think that they have sewn themselves into a kind of ideological straightjacket. During the Vietnam war they arrived at a world view that was appropriate for that particular situation: there were good guys and bad guys. The good guys were the Vietnamese Communists and their allies. The bad guys were the US and its puppets. Since then, they have applied this schema to every situation around the world: South Africa, Yugoslavia, Palestine.

But every situation is different. Vietnam is not Libya, the South African problem was much more simple than ours. Great power politics may remain constant, and very unattractive at that, but there are huge differences between the various situations. I was very much against the US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and very much in favor of the NATO campaigns in Kosovo and Libya.

For me, the starting point of every analysis is what the people concerned want and need, and only after that do I wonder how the international schema applies to them. Working from the inside out, so to speak, not from the outside in.

Also, I have never quite understood the dogma which seems to answer all questions: "it's all about oil". Gaddafi sold his oil on the world market, and so will his successors, on the same terms. International oil corporations are all the same to me. Is there much of a difference between the Russian Gazprom and the American Esso?

Some former Communists seem to have a kind of inherited attachment to Russia, almost automatically supporting its international positions, from Afghanistan to Serbia to Syria. Why? What is the similarity between Vladimir Putin and the Soviets? Putin does not subscribe to the dictatorship of the proletariat, he is quite satisfied with a dictatorship of himself.

IF GADDAFI'S savage end has reinforced all the Islamophobic obsessions in the West, the elections in Tunisia have made matters worse.

Help! The Islamists have won the elections! The Muslim Brotherhood will win the elections in Egypt! The Arab Spring will turn the whole region into one vast hotbed of Jihad! Israel and The West are in mortal danger!

This is all nonsense. And dangerous nonsense at that, because it may derail any sensible American and European policy towards the Arab world.

Sure, Islam is on the rise. Islamic parties have resisted the Arab dictatorships and were persecuted by them, and therefore are popular in the aftermath of their downfall -much as European Communists were very popular in France and Italy after the defeat of Fascism. From there on, support for these parties declined.

Islam is an important part of Arab civilization. Many Arabs are sincere believers. Islamic parties will certainly play an important role in any democratic Arab order, much as Jewish religious parties play -alas -an important role in Israeli politics. Most of these Arab parties are moderate, like the governing Islamic party in Turkey.

It is certainly desirable that these parties become a part of the democratic order, rather than turning into its enemy. They must be inside the tent, otherwise the tent may collapse. I believe that this is in the best interest of Israel, too. That's why my friends and I favor Fatah-Hamas reconciliation and advocate direct negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and not only for prisoner exchanges.

Our media are outraged: the interim Prime Minister of Libya has announced that Islamic law -the sharia -will guide the enactment of new laws in his country. It seems our journalists are ignorant of the existence of an Israeli law that says that if there are legal questions for which there are no ready answers, the religious Jewish law -the Halakha - will fill the void. Moreover, there is a new bill before the Knesset that states unequivocally that the Halakha will decide legal disputes.

The outcome of the Tunisian elections was, to my mind, very positive. As expected, the moderate Islamic party won a plurality, but not a majority. It must form a coalition with secular parties and is willing to do so. These parties, totally new and practically unknown, need time to establish their identity and structure.

To add a personal note, Rachel and I went to Tunisia many times to meet Yasser Arafat, and rather liked the people. We were especially taken by the many men we saw in the streets wearing a jasmine flower behind the ear. No wonder that such people could make an almost bloodless "jasmine revolution."

If elections in other Arab countries follow this pattern, as seems probable, it will be all for the best.

THE OBAMA administration was clever enough to jump on the bandwagon of the Arab revolutions, though at the very last moment. We Israelis did not have this sense. Our Islamophobia has caused us to miss a golden opportunity for a new image among the young Arab revolutionaries.

Instead, we contrast our goodness with the barbarism of the Libyans, who have once again shown the true nature of the jungle surrounding our villa.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







Pull Your Money Out Of BOA
By Matt Taibbi

My good friend Nomi Prins has a great new piece out that I just caught on Zero Hedge, chronicling 10 reasons why depositors should pull out of Bank of America.

Obviously Goldman, Sachs has become the great symbol of investment banking corruption, and other companies like AIG and Countrywide have become poster children for problems with businesses like insurance and mortgage-lending. But when it comes to commercial banking, Bank of America is as bad as it gets.

The markets, of course, have lately come to agree, as B of A has lately been downgraded again to just above junk status. The only reason the bank is not rated even lower than that is that it is Too Big To Fail. The whole world knows that if Bank of America implodes - whether because of the vast number of fraud suits it faces for mortgage securitization practices, or because of the time bomb of toxic assets on its balance sheets - the US government will probably step in to one degree or another and save it.

The government's patronage of the bank was never clearer than in recent weeks, when B of A quietly decided to move trillions of dollars (trillions, not billions) in risky Merrill Lynch derivatives contracts off Merrill's books and onto the books of the parent/retail arm, Bank of America.

This decision was done at the behest of counterparties to those transactions, who wanted those contracts placed under the aegis of Bank of America, whose deposits are insured by the FDIC. The move was made, according to reports, so that Bank of America could avoid posting $3.3 billion in collateral to satisfy the company's creditors. In other words, Bank of America just got You the Taxpayer to co-sign as much as $53 trillion worth of dicey derivative contracts.

The FDIC wasn't pleased by the move, but the Fed apparently encouraged it. Bloomberg, citing people with "direct knowledge" of the deals, reported that,

The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn't believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.
So the primary regulator of the banking industry is encouraging a functionally insolvent megabank to respond to a credit downgrade by pushing its most explosively risky holdings onto the laps of the taxpayer. This is lunacy.... Remember that story about the Chinese man who had a world-record 33-pound tumor removed from his face? This would be like treating that patient by removing the tumor and surgically attaching it to the face of a new patient, in this case the US taxpayer.

A series of lawmakers on the Hill, including most notably Sherrod Brown, Carl Levin, and Bernie Sanders, are trying to figure out if there's any way to stop this transaction, but of course there is not. Upstate NY congressman Maurice Hinchey put it best. "What Bank of America is doing is perfectly legal - and that's the problem," he said. This is exactly why the Glass-Steagall Act needs to be reinstated: without a separation of Investment Banks and Commercial Banks, what we end up getting is taxpayer-guaranteed gambling. Instead of encouraging prudence and savings by insuring deposits in commercial banks, the FDIC is now being turned into a vehicle for socializing speculative losses.

So our government is not only no longer encouraging fiscal conservatism, it is doing exactly the opposite, i.e. encouraging speculation and risk-taking. That this is happening in the fever of the OWS movement, and at a time when top politicians from Barack Obama on down are paying lip service to public complaints against Wall Street, should tell you everything you need to know about whether or not we can expect this government to voluntarily enact real changes, and stop making the taxpayer eat Wall Street's pain.

Anyway, Nomi's list goes a long way toward explaining why Bank of America is the last company on earth whose $53 trillion derivatives portfolio we should be insuring. A sample of her top ten:

7. Bank of America got the most AIG money of the big depositor banks. By virtue of having acquired Merrill Lynch's AIG-related portfolio, B of A got to keep approximately $12 billion worth of federal AIG backing, too. It also received more government subsidies than any other mega-bank except Citigroup ...

In terms of overall federal subsidies (including TARP), Bank of America was second only to Citigroup ($230 billion compared to $415 billion). None of that got in the way of former B of A CEO Ken Lewis' personal take, a $63 million retirement plan, in addition to the $63 million he scored during the three years before his departure.

If you're a Bank of America customer, Nomi is right: find another bank. Try a local credit union. Keeping your money in this TBTF behemoth is very unsafe sex.

Incidentally, this kind of suggestion might prove a real help to OWS. One definite tactic that Occupy Wall Street can adopt, going forward, is educating people about the perfidy of certain financial institutions and convincing people to do what they did back in the days of apartheid, which is disinvest. If everyone were to start pulling their money out of the worst-offending banks, that would have a profound effect on the markets and may function as a great short-cut to political change.

Bank of America is a great place to start. All the TBTF banks suck equally, but as George Orwell would say, some banks are more equal than others. Withdrawals would be a great way for people to answer the Fed's decision to put depositors on the hook for Merrill Lynch's bad bets.
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi




John McCain, left, and Barack Obama, center, shake hands with moderator
Jim Lehrer at the finish of a presidential debate at the University
of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., Friday, Sept. 26, 2008.



The Road To Twenty One Presidential Debates
No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties secretly Control the Presidential Debates
By Ralph Nader

What people would not want Presidential Debates in multiple cities all over America in September and October 2012? Why, the people at the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). CPD is a private corporation created in 1987. It is controlled by the Republican and Democratic Parties and acts as the iron gatekeeper regarding the number of debates, who is chosen to ask the questions and who is excluded from most important forums for reaching millions of people interested in the presidential elections.

Powered by the television networks that transmit the debates to the public, the CPD is set in concrete when it comes to entrenching the status quo for the two party dictatorship's orchestrated bubble of exclusion and manipulation.

Citizen groups such as Open Debates have exposed the CPD's inner workings, picketed its Washington, D.C. headquarters and used federal courts to try to pry open the presidential debate process. Aside from a modest settlement and apology for one of its nasty transgressions, the Commission has emerged unchanged. After all it is a corporation that has mocked the Bill of Rights and side-stepped the Federal Election Commission and IRS rules.

Presidential campaigns are repetitious, tedious, often sterile and trivial. They narrow down to half a dozen issues many months before Election Day, ignore very important domestic and foreign subjects and public necessities by common implied consent. And they deliberately ignore local and regional matters.

Campaigns are so boring that the media jumps on silly comments and gaffes and focuses on the almost daily polling to add some spice to their monotonous campaign coverage of the "horse race."

True debates, rather than parallel interviews of the CPD model, would offer depth, variety, and unpredictability to counter the scripted nature of the candidates' political consultants.

So, why ration debates? We need twenty-one debate sites all over the country, ending this blue state-red state divide where over half of the voters never see a major Presidential campaign in their states. Republicans have not campaigned, for example, in Massachusetts, New York and California and Democrats don't bother with Texas, Alabama and Georgia.

From Maine to California and Alaska to Florida, citizens in cities and rural areas such as Appalachia and along the Rio Grande should band together to demand that the candidates crisscross the country participating in debate after debate.

In each community, mayors, labor unions, chambers of commerce, farm organizations, religious groups, non-profits, charities and advocacy organizations, neighborhood groups, good government associations and others should band together and sign letters saying: "We want you to come to Portland, Oregon or Dallas, Texas, or Los Angeles, California, Pittsburgh, Pa. Miami, Florida or Chicago, Illinois or Cleveland, Ohio or Salt Lake City, Utah or Minneapolis, Minnesota or Clairton, Pennsylvania, Worcester, Massachusetts or Mingo County, West Virginia, or New Orleans, Louisiana."

The Congressionally disenfranchised colony of the District of Columbia deserves a presidential debate for its being denied simple democracy.

Each community would select its debate format, subjects to be discussed, mode of interaction with the audience and other debate criteria to generate excitement and engagement by Americans of all ages.

Suddenly the people--where they live and work--will shift the dynamic of shaping the Presidential races and agenda to them where it belongs.

The celluloid slogans and sound bytes will be replaced by candidate preparedness for each region or else risk losing political ground.

The community brainpower behind these debates will raise the quality of these debate challenges to new heights.

Instead of the present, stifling, programmed three debates by the CPD, these twenty one debates would throw aside many of the taboos, bring the people into the process, address regional needs, excite larger voter turnout and compel the candidates to be better, more forthright candidates. Reporters will have real news to report instead of having to strain to make stories out of mind-numbing redundancies.

Fresh agendas and personas will be allowed in these debates including third-party candidates who meet reasonable criteria of ballot presence and public support. (See OpenDebates.org for the 2007 Appleseed Citizens' Task Force on Fair Debates.)

Imagine three real debates a week for seven weeks between Labor Day and mid-October. Determined coalitions in one community after another that stick together can make these candidates treat voters not as powerless spectators but in one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite words "participators."

Representing tens of millions of Americans from everywhere, these grand and historic invitations would be very hard to turn down. (For more information, see No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties secretly Control the Presidential Debates by George Farah, Seven Stories Press 2004)

To get this grand series of nationwide debates realized, all we have to realize is that it is all in our hands. Here, the people have the power. Your comments are welcome at info@nader.org.
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.







What's In A Name?

The resilient Occupy Wall Street group in New York City certainly occupies the minds of the banksters who're the target of this protest against economic injustice - but the group doesn't actually "occupy" Wall Street. Instead, they're in nearby Zuccotti Park. And therein lies a story.

Ironically, this people's movement against corporate power finds itself based in a corporate-owned park. It's named for John Zuccotti, who is not some noted civic leader or public official, but the chairman of Brookfield Office Properties, a big corporate developer.

In 2006, this outfit erected a 54-story office tower across the street from what was then an open space for the public, called Liberty Plaza. In an insider deal between corporate and government officials, Brookfield was given a zoning variance by the city to build a taller structure than the building code allowed - plus, it was given possession of Liberty Plaza.

To mark its corporate property, Brookfield promptly plastered its chairman's name on the space. While Zuccotti Park technically must be kept open to the public, it is maintained by the corporation, and (most importantly) governed by rules the corporation unilaterally sets. No surprise, then, that after only three weeks of the occupation, Brookfield abruptly announced a new set of rules to prohibit camping, tents, sleeping bags, laying on the ground... and otherwise sustaining an assembly of citizens exercising their Constitutional rights.

Thanks to a loud public outcry, however, this crude corporate attempt to oust Occupy failed - at least for the time being. But Zuccotti is still a corporate park, meaning an ugly crackdown on people peacefully protesting for democracy in America remains a threat. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street has put its own, non-corporate brand on the space: "Liberty Square."
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Dictator Day Of Reckoning
By Helen Thomas

The world has watched historic events unfold recently in the Middle East, with dramatic effects on the future of the world. Muammar Gaddafi was hunted down and killed by his surging opponents.

Surely his fellow dictators, who are still hanging on in Syria and Yemen, are reading the writing on the wall. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is contemplating his inevitable fate.

The other immense development is the vow of President Barack Obama to pull all American troops from Iraq by the end of the year. Of course, former President George W. Bush should never have sent troops there to begin with. Too many Americans and Iraqis have been killed. Can we say in vain? Now let's hear from the highest in that White House hierarchy to finally tell us truthfully why we invaded Iraq.

Too many lies were told and sold to the American people. There were no weapons of mass destruction - no ties between killed Iraqui dictator Saddam Hussein and the Al-Qaeda network. When will Americans get mad?

The allegations against Iraq came from the devious U.S. neo-conservatives who gave Bush a flimsy excuse to invade Iraq. The aim was to attack Israel's designated enemy at the time. Israel's target now has moved to Iran. Some of Iran's nuclear scientists have been assassinated in the past couple of years.

In the meantime, no nuclear weapons have been found in Iraq, but hundreds of thousands are dead, and the wars continue to drain the American economy.

Now is the time for White House officials to tell us why we targeted Iraq. We already know the answer: It is because of falsehoods peddled shamelessly to the American people.

Have the neo-cons no decency? To quote Joseph Welch, the Boston attorney who famously delivered these words to the Wisconsin Republican Senator Joe McCarthy, "Have you no shame?!"

The neo-cons led Bush down the garden path to what was going to be a cake walk. Make no mistake, Bush wanted to be remembered as a "War President" - and apparently did not mind using fear to rally the American people in favor of war.

Most of the neo-cons are long gone, living off of monies earned from memoirs, nesting in universities as scholars at large and in our think tanks. A few remain as advisers to Obama. None, however, have paid a price as high as the victims of the "no-win" war.

Both historic events, the death of Gaddafi and the liberation of Iraq, bode well for the world.

The Arab awakening really began around 1920 when Great Britain and France instituted colonial rule in the Middle East. After World War II, fears emerged among the Arab states, that Israel would begin their land grab with the help of the Zionist movement in Britain and America. The Arab awakening was quelled by the Israeli military, who massacred one village after another as the British army packed up, and put up little resistance. Their government had already caved to the Zionists.

The horrible atrocities of Hitler toward innocent Jewish victims won the world's sympathy. Arabs had no way to contend with the Pro-Israeli movement already beginning to form. Arab rulers were called fascists - many Americans and British funded the Pro-Israel campaign, seeking what first Israeli President Golda Meir falsely called Palestine, "A land without people, a people for a land."

The Pro-Israeli lobby, using the horrors of Hitler in Europe to justify their treatment of Palestinians, has had a major impact on American sentiment. The Palestinians had no voice to explain their side - no American sympathy - that two wrongs do not make a right.

The U.S. had publicly urged Gaddafi, al-Assad, and Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. Why do these dictators believe they can survive? The Arab Awakening brought home the idea that the dictators' day is done in the Middle East, they are ready for democracy to rule.

The Syrian and Yemeni rulers can run, but they cannot hide.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







The Heart Of The Nation Is Out On The Street
By James Donahue

A recent story by J. A. Myerson for Truthout described a system of social cooperation among the participants of the Occupy Wall Street movement occurring in downtown New York.

With thousands of people gathered for weeks and perhaps months of public demonstrations in protest of the greed and corruption shown by big banks, home lending and insurance institutions, and elected government officials that has left so many Americans jobless, homeless and lacking access to food, clothing and medical care, we might think there would be chaos in that crowd.

Not so, reports Myerson.

Liberty Plaza Park, a one-block-long strip Myerson describes as "sandwiched between Wall Street proper and the World Trade Center, has become a place of free services "where no one pays for anything."

Because of generous donations from all over, a free kitchen in the heart of the park is feeding thousands daily. There also is a medical tent which, in spite of efforts by police to shut it down, is providing free services to those in need. What has evolved in the midst of Occupy Wall Street is a robust welfare state that is providing equal access to free social services, Myerson wrote.

Volunteers are working around the clock to provide free services and hand out truckloads of donated goods that have been rolling in from all over.

As one voice in the crowd put it: "Free cigarettes? Free warm clothes? Free legal services? It should be like this everywhere."

What a contrast we find between the protesters gathered in the New York Occupy Wall Street crowd (and perhaps many others across the nation) and the power and money hungry manipulators of the nation's money who have created conditions leading to this public form of revolt.

Some politicians and even the talking heads on radio and television have pegged the protesters as "hippies," a reference to the free spirited movement that swept the nation in the 1960s. In their eyes, and perhaps in the memories of the general public, the very word "hippie" strikes a general note of non-acceptance by a society that remembers a rebellious group of young people practicing free love, drugs and communal living.

While the young people gathering in cities across the nation are not anything like the hippies of that earlier era, the fact is that they are quickly learning a form of communal living is remarkably similar. There is another underground group of American rebels known as the Rainbow People that lives in tents in the forest, raids dumpsters, sells trinkets for food, and travels with the seasons This group also has learned that communal living as a form of survival and freedom from the social pressures of the nation's harsh religious/capitalist system.

What the power figures on Wall Street and in the upper echelons of our banks, insurance companies, medical providers, oil and gas companies and other big business interests are doing is building a wall between themselves and the struggling "middle class" and poverty stricken. These are the people now referring to themselves as the 99 percent. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans are among the 99 percent.

I was a working reporter in Kalamazoo, Michigan, during the height of the hippie movement and when the great Woodstock music festival occurred. At the time my wife and I were attending church and I was employed as a music and religion writer for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Because of my position I was invited to serve on a Christian-oriented committee that operated a coffee shop designed to "witness" the Christian faith to the "wayward" hippies that might be tempted to wander in.

I met a lot of practicing hippies. Instead of judging them as "sinners" and undesirable members of society, I discovered I liked their rebellious spirit and their deep concern for the Mother Earth. Instead of winning them to Jesus, they helped win me away from the binds of the society in which I was then locked. I was a working reporter at Springerville, Arizona, in 1998 when the Rainbow organization held its summer gathering in the forested hills nearby. I was there to report the police and community concerns about "controlling" such a gathering of thousands of young "hippie-type" rebels, and going among the Rainbow people and getting their story. I discovered that I loved the spirit of the Rainbow people as much as I did the free spirit of the hippie movement.

I am retired now and lacking the resources to physically join the Occupy Wall Street movement going on in the nation, although readers of my daily stories must know that I am with them in spirit. And I am sure, from what Myerson and other writers are writing, that I would really like the spirit of the protesters on those streets.

I liked them all because there was a shared spirit of love and unity among these groups. The participants referred to one another as "brothers and sisters" and they seemed willing to share everything they had with one another. There was a spirit of common ownership. Among the hippies, even the task of caring for the children was shared. That seemed natural since the group practiced free love and it may have been difficult to determine just who fathered which child in the group. That practice, of course, met with extreme condemnation by the Christian church.

From where I have stood over the years, it appears that there has been a carefully designed propaganda campaign that has depicted the hippies, the Rainbow and now the Occupy Wall Street protesters as undesirable rebels. It appears to be a concerted effort by the power figures to paint them all in the same bad light.

It is obvious why they would want to do this with the Occupy Wall Street crowd. But why would there have been such severe attacks against the hippies and Rainbow? We believe the answer lies in the fact that all three groups are discovering and demonstrating to the nation that there is a desperate need to switch from the old capitalistic system, that currently serves only the few in control, to a socialist system designed to give everyone a more even share of the world's dwindling resources.

Notice all of the propaganda we have heard against efforts by the Democratic Party to introduce a government financed medical system that assures fair treatment for everybody. The argument by Republicans is that the Democrats are promoting socialism. They treat socialism as something evil that has no place in the American system. Yet this is not true. The Social Security and Medicare systems for the elderly are socialist programs that work very well.

Socialism is not Communism. Communism is a more radical form of socialism where the state owns everything and everybody. If handled correctly, the wealth is supposedly doled evenly among workers. Most other advanced nations of the world are employing either socialism or communism to provide for the people.

Now that the population of the world has hit seven billion and there is a growing struggle among nations for an equal share of the dwindling natural resources, there is an understanding among many that the era of capitalism must end. A socialist system, perhaps in a world-wide scale, appears to be a better way of dealing with this growing crisis.

To make it all work, however, people must learn to become like the hippies, Rainbow and Occupy crowds and agree to share all that they have. The secret to making this work well is simple. It is the four-letter word: LOVE.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.




Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton shakes hands with Bahrain's Foreign
Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa after delivering a statement,
Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011, at the State Department in Washington.



Middle East Propaganda 101
By Glenn Greenwald

When it comes to American propaganda about the Middle East, this New York Times article - detailing U.S. plans to bolster its influence in the region after it "withdraws" from Iraq - is a masterpiece. Here's the crux of the new American strategy and its ostensible rationale:

With an eye on the threat of a belligerent Iran, the administration is also seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the United States has close bilateral military relationships with each, the administration and the military are trying to foster a new "security architecture" for the Persian Gulf that would integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense.
The U.S. has Iran completely encircled. It has over 100,000 troops in the nation on Iran's eastern border (Afghanistan, where, just incidentally, the U.S. continued through this year to turn over detainees to a prison notorious for torture) and has occupied the nation on Iran's western border (Iraq) for eight years, and will continue to maintain a "small army" of private contractors and CIA officials after it "withdraws." The U.S. continuously flies drone aircraft over and drops bombs on the nation on Iran's southeastern border (Pakistan). Its NATO ally (Turkey) is situated on Iran's northwestern border. The U.S. has troops stationed in multiple countries just a few hundred miles across the Persian Gulf from Iran, virtually all of which are client states. The U.S. has its Fifth Fleet stationed in a country less than 500 miles from Iran (Bahrain) containing "US warships and contingents of U.S. Marines." And the U.S. routinely arms Iran's two most virulent rivals (Israel and Saudi Arabia) with sophisticated weaponry.

But, New York Times readers were told today, the U.S. must increase its military presence still further in that region because . . . it is Iran (which has no military bases in countries bordering the U.S. or fleets stationed off its coast) that is "belligerent" and poses a "threat" (after all, they just dispatched a failed Texan used car salesman who constantly loses his own keys and can't pay his bills to hire teams of Mexican drug cartel gunmen to attack a Saudi ambassador on American soil!).

But the best proclamation in this article comes from the Secretary of State in explaining why this increased American presence is so very needed and so very noble:

"We will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region, which is proof of our ongoing commitment to Iraq and to the future of that region, which holds such promise and should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Tajikistan after the president's announcement.
The U.S. will remain in that region to protect and defend the region's "pathway to democracy" - something it will achieve by further strengthening its "cooperative military relationships" with the tyrannical regimes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman (White House, October 12: "the President and the King reaffirmed the strong partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia"). But, explained Secretary Clinton, the ultimate U.S. goal in increasing its military presence in the region is to prevent "outside interference" in the region - just as U.S. officials spent the last decade decrying "outside interference" in Iraq and Afghanistan while simultaneously invading and occupying those nations. The only conceivable assumption which can produce this sort of pronouncement is that this region is the property of the U.S., and when it increases its military presence there, that is akin to an owner fencing in his yard to prevent trespassing.

That belief - and only it - is why American officials can announce with a straight face: we're interfering further in this region in order to prevent "outside interference" in this region (from nations that are actually in that region). I don't expect Hillary Clinton to point any of that out, but perhaps the New York Times might, rather than just publishing these laughable official decrees without comment.
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.








Occupy The Winter Of Our Discontent
By David Swanson

Can occupations survive a winter of global weirding, escalated police brutality, and the corporate media's venom? Should they?

In some parts of the country there will be no cold weather. In others, police abuses will result in larger occupations, not smaller. And it's certainly possible that for the first time in recent years an independent progressive populist campaign will survive the enmity of the corporate media.

In other cases, the cold, the communications assaults, fatigue, and the difficulties encountered by activist camps that also become homes for the homeless and the mentally ill may begin to erode the usefulness of encampments.

What to do?

Here's one activist's recommendations:

Above all: stay! Continue to hold public space! Grow, and rotate people. No single person need stay forever. But the 99% of the 99% that cheers from the sidelines needs to get into the squares and parks. We don't need emails or phone calls or checks or pizzas so much as we need live bodies!

In particular, return wherever police have sought to deprive us of our First Amendment rights. Those abuses cannot be tolerated or our rights will come under greater assault everywhere else. We must occupy precisely where we are told we cannot. The way to do this while keeping the conversation focused on what motivated us in the first place (the need to obey majority demands, to tax the rich, to prosecute the biggest criminals, to end the wars, to move the spending from the military to human needs) is this. We demand the right to petition our governments for a redress of grievances.

That is the First Amendment right that is under assault.

The strength of the Declaration of Independence was the great number of grievances against King George. We have a great number of grievances as well, and if CNN doesn't have time for them, well, it can lengthen its sound bytes. Our demands are not going to shrink except by being satisfied.

Encampments can, with some difficulty, serve as bases for nonviolent action and as community gathering places and providers of community services. If done right, aiding the homeless, the hungry, and those in need of medical care can strengthen occupations that may very well turn out to be permanent.

But the dominant focus should be on nonviolent resistance. Let's not just do theater or spectacle. Let's not just get in the way of commuters and others in the 99%. Let's get out of the streets and into the suites. Let's shut down offices.

And, while the focus on the government's funders, handlers, and lobbyists is very useful, I'd like to see more focus on government. I do not mean working with or through government. I mean resisting it, interfering with it, preventing its operations, shutting it down. The 1% is represented, and the rest of us are not. Let's put a halt to those operations and insist on representative ones.

If occupations end anywhere, they should not be ended by police or the media but by a transition to other tactics that appear more useful in that time and place, and those other tools should be up and running first before any occupation is phased out.

Here are some ideas that are being tried or could be:

Start a weekly event, ideally on a weekday, that includes a march or demonstration, a nonviolent resistance action, and a community gathering in a public space. Make this weekly action huge before considering whether to end the permanent occupation. Consider targeting warm buildings for nonviolent resistance.

Occupy empty buildings as bases for the winter. Find a building owner who wants construction work done in exchange for occupation. Or just squat in buildings that are empty. Or find one of those many people who support us but will not join us who can donate the use of a building or a house, or who can cover the rent. We need to continue building community. Our strength comes from it.

Plan bus tours from city to city, rolling occupations with big events at every stop.

Plan people's conventions, regionally and nationally and internationally. This will involve something else that's critical at the level of the local Occupy event: choosing representatives. We must figure out, as many are figuring out, how to delegate responsibilities without losing democratic control.

Plan huge events for the spring, including the start of an International Spring of Occupations.

Make plans for OccupyTampa and OccupyCharlotte for the times of the two national conventions of the two political parties of the 1%.

Do not go electoral. Do not go lobbyist. Do not divert money or time into campaigns. Do not spend your days drafting legislation or emailing congress members. Plenty of other people will do that stuff no matter what, and they will do it better if you're doing the more fundamental work of cultural change. Instead, put your skills into communications, education, outreach, inspiration, and organizing.

The best way to improve the elections is to improve the society. The best way to destroy the society is to focus too heavily on elections. The rational choice between two bums who are both worse than the two who were offered up in the previous election cannot possibly be rational.

We have larger work to do. It may take a long time. That should not affect our level of dedication. But when there is a moment of growing momentum, we must seize that moment to press forward with everything we've got.


(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







One US Citizen's Misadventure In Securityland
Me and OFAC and Ahmed the Egyptian
by Ann Jones

Where did I go wrong? Was it playing percussion with an Occupy Wall Street band in Times Square when I was in New York recently? Or was it when I returned to my peaceful new home in Oslo and deleted an email invitation to hear Newt Gingrich lecture Norwegians on the American election? (Yes, even here.)

I don't know how it happened. Or even, really, what happened. Or what it means. So I've got no point -- only a lot of anxiety. I usually write about the problems of the world, but now I've got one of my own. They evidently think I'm a terrorist.

That is, someone in the U.S. government who specializes in finding terrorists seems to have found me and laid a heavy hand on my bank account. I think this is wrong, of course, but try to tell that to a faceless, acronymic government agency.

It all started with a series of messages from my bank: Citibank. Yeah, I know, I should have moved my money long ago, but in the distant past before Citibank became Citigroup, it was my friendly little neighborhood bank, and I guess I'm in a rut. Besides, I learned when I made plans to move to Norway that if your money is in a small bank, it has to be sent to a big bank like Citibank or Chase to wire it to you when you need it, which meant I was trapped anyway.

So the first thing I noticed was that one of those wires with money I needed never arrived. When I politely inquired, Citibank told me that the transaction hadn't gone through. Why not? All my fault, they insisted, for not having provided complete information. Long story short: we went round and round for a couple of weeks, as I coughed up ever more morsels of previously unsolicited personal information. Only then did a bit of truth emerge.

The bank wasn't actually holding up the delivery of the money. The funds had, in fact, left my account weeks before, along with a wire transfer fee. The responsible party was OFAC.

Oh what? I wondered. OFAC. It rhymes with Oh-Tack, but you've got to watch how you pronounce it. Speak carelessly and the name sounds like just what you might say upon learning that you've been sucked into the ultimate top-secret bureaucratic sinkhole. It turns out, the bank informs me, that OFAC is a division of the U.S. Treasury Department that "reviews" transactions.

"Why me?" I ask. As a long-time reporter I find it a strange question, as strange as finding myself working on a story about me.

By way of an answer, the bank refers me to an Internet link that calls up a 521-page report so densely typed it looks like wallpaper. Entitled "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons," it turns out to be a list of what seems to be every Muslim business and social organization on the planet. That's when I Google OFAC, go to its site, and find out that the acronym stands for the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Its mission description reads chillingly. It "administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States." And it turns out to be a subsidiary of something much bigger that goes by the unnerving name of "Terrorism and Financial Intelligence."

Off With Her Head

Whoa! Perhaps it doesn't help, at this moment, that I've just been reading Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, the scary new book by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin about our multiple, overfed, overzealous, highly-classified intelligence agencies, staffed in significant part not by civil servants but by profit-making private contractors. Suddenly, I feel myself in the grip of the national post-9/11 paranoia that hatched all that new "security." (And you, too, could find yourself in my shoes fast.)

I check OFAC's list more carefully. It's in a kind of alphabetical order, but with significant incomprehensible diversions -- and if my name is there, I sure can't find it. Since I've spent most of the last decade working with international aid organizations as well as reporting from some of the more strife-ridden lands on the planet, including Afghanistan, the only thing I can imagine is that maybe all those odd visas in my fat passport raised a red flag somewhere in Washington.

Next, I search for the name of my Norwegian landlady. Did I say that the wired funds that never arrived were meant to pay her my rent? She's in India, a volunteer health-care worker with Tibetan refugees, currently helping refurbish an orphanage for 144 kids. (What could be more suspicious than that?) I can't find her name either. No Anns or Heidis at all, in fact, among the raft of Mohammads and Abduls.

Heidi is a Buddhist. I'm an atheist. Almost everybody on the list seems to be Muslim, including really dangerous-sounding guys like "Ahmed the Egyptian." But I guess that to a truly committed and well-paid terrorist hunter, we must all look alike.

I'm desperate to get the rent to Heidi so she can cover her own expenses as a volunteer; an international organization pays for the children's needs, but Heidi does the work. So I call the American Embassy in Oslo and speak to a nice young woman in the section devoted to "American Citizen Services." I tell her about me and OFAC and Ahmed the Egyptian. She says, "I've never heard of such a thing. But there are so many of these intelligence offices now, I guess I'll be hearing these stories more often." (Maybe she's been reading Top Secret America, too.)

She takes it up with her superiors and calls me back. The Embassy can't help me, citizen or not, she says, because they don't handle money matters and have nothing to do with the Treasury Department.

"What? The State Department doesn't deal with the Treasury?"

"No," she says, "I guess not."

Perhaps since I last paid attention the Treasury stopped being considered part of the government. Maybe it now belongs to Lockheed Martin.

At least the State Department has some compassion left in it. If I'm really destitute, she assures me, the Embassy might be able to give me a loan to pay for a plane ticket that would get my two cats and me back to the States. I guess it doesn't occur to her that under the circumstances I might feel more secure in Norway.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Still, all I want to do is clear up this mess, so I put my head in the lion's mouth and send an email directly to OFAC. I tell them that I'm in Norway for the year on a Fulbright grant as a researcher -- that is, as part of an international exchange program founded by a U.S. Senator and sponsored by the U.S. Government, or at least one part of the State Department part of it. Among my informal responsibilities, I add, is to be a goodwill ambassador for the United States, but I'm finding it really hard to explain to Norwegians that I can't pay my rent because a bunch of terrorist-trackers in the pay of my government have made off with the money and left nothing behind but a list of Muslim names.

Remarkably quickly OFAC itself writes back, giving me the creepy feeling that it was lurking behind the door the whole time. It is sorry that I am "frustrated." It will help me, but only if I supply a whole long list of information, mostly the same stuff I have already provided three times to the bank, the same information the bank later said wasn't the issue after all. (Still later, the bank would say that I had given not too little information, but too much.) I send the requested tidbits back to "Dear OFAC Functionary or Machine as the case may be."

Two days later comes another message from OFAC, this time signed by "Michael Z." Like Afghans, or spies, he evidently has only one name, but my hopes that he might be an actual person inexplicably rise anyway -- only to sink again when he claims OFAC needs yet more information. All this so that Michael Z., presumed person, may help me "more effectively." (More than what, I wonder?) He is, he insists, trying to locate my money with the help of my bank, which by the way is now blocking me from seeing information about my own account online.

It seems odd to me that this top-secret office of Financial Intelligence somehow can't manage to lay hands on the money it snatched from me, but what do I know? I'm just a citizen.

Then -- are you ready for this? -- comes what should be a happy ending. A message from the bank tells me that the money has slipped through after all, and sure enough there it is at last in a Norwegian bank, only a month late. I won't be evicted after all, and Heidi will make sure those Tibetan kids get some fresh fruit and brand new bright green curtains.

Still, this is not a cheery story. So I have to send my apologies to the long-dead Senator J. William Fulbright: I'm sorry indeed that certain changes in the spirit and operations of the United States have occurred since that day in 1948 when you launched your farsighted program of grants to encourage open international educational and cultural exchange. And I apologize that some of those changes may have temporarily cramped my style as a goodwill ambassador; I'll try to get back on the job if I can just figure out what hit me.

Was this all simply a mistake? A technical glitch? An error at the bank? I'd like to think so, but what about that list of "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons"? Why was I directed to that? And what about Michael Z., who presumably is some kind of intelligence analyst at OFAC and who, when last heard from, was still seeking information and trying to find the money?

Frankly, this month-long struggle has left me mighty tired and uneasy. Right now, Senator Fulbright, I'm lying low, down here at the bottom of the rabbit hole, trying to make sense of things. (I took a last look at the "Blocked Persons" list, and just this week it's grown by another page.) So I want to tell you the truth, Senator, and I think that with your great interest in peaceable international relations, you just may understand. Strange as it may seem, since I've been hunkered down here in the rabbit hole, I've worked up some sympathy for Ahmed the Egyptian who, I have a sneaking feeling, could be down here, too. It's hard to tell when you're kept in the dark, but maybe he's just another poor sap like me, snarled in the super-secret security machine.
(c) 2011 Ann Jones is in Norway under the auspices of the Fulbright Scholar Program, researching the Norwegian economic, social, and cultural arrangements that cause it to be named consistently by the United Nations as the best place to live on earth. Visit her web site.








Bombs, Bridges And Jobs
By Paul Krugman

A few years back Representative Barney Frank coined an apt phrase for many of his colleagues: weaponized Keynesians, defined as those who believe "that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation."

Right now the weaponized Keynesians are out in full force - which makes this a good time to see what's really going on in debates over economic policy.

What's bringing out the military big spenders is the approaching deadline for the so-called supercommittee to agree on a plan for deficit reduction. If no agreement is reached, this failure is supposed to trigger cuts in the defense budget.

Faced with this prospect, Republicans - who normally insist that the government can't create jobs, and who have argued that lower, not higher, federal spending is the key to recovery - have rushed to oppose any cuts in military spending. Why? Because, they say, such cuts would destroy jobs.

Thus Representative Buck McKeon, Republican of California, once attacked the Obama stimulus plan because "more spending is not what California or this country needs." But two weeks ago, writing in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. McKeon - now the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee - warned that the defense cuts that are scheduled to take place if the supercommittee fails to agree would eliminate jobs and raise the unemployment rate.

Oh, the hypocrisy! But what makes this particular form of hypocrisy so enduring?

First things first: Military spending does create jobs when the economy is depressed. Indeed, much of the evidence that Keynesian economics works comes from tracking the effects of past military buildups. Some liberals dislike this conclusion, but economics isn't a morality play: spending on things you don't like is still spending, and more spending would create more jobs.

But why would anyone prefer spending on destruction to spending on construction, prefer building weapons to building bridges?

John Maynard Keynes himself offered a partial answer 75 years ago, when he noted a curious "preference for wholly 'wasteful' forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict 'business' principles." Indeed. Spend money on some useful goal, like the promotion of new energy sources, and people start screaming, "Solyndra! Waste!" Spend money on a weapons system we don't need, and those voices are silent, because nobody expects F-22s to be a good business proposition.

To deal with this preference, Keynes whimsically suggested burying bottles full of cash in disused mines and letting the private sector dig them back up. In the same vein, I recently suggested that a fake threat of alien invasion, requiring vast anti-alien spending, might be just the thing to get the economy moving again.

But there are also darker motives behind weaponized Keynesianism.

For one thing, to admit that public spending on useful projects can create jobs is to admit that such spending can in fact do good, that sometimes government is the solution, not the problem. Fear that voters might reach the same conclusion is, I'd argue, the main reason the right has always seen Keynesian economics as a leftist doctrine, when it's actually nothing of the sort. However, spending on useless or, even better, destructive projects doesn't present conservatives with the same problem.

Beyond that, there's a point made long ago by the Polish economist Michael Kalecki: to admit that the government can create jobs is to reduce the perceived importance of business confidence.

Appeals to confidence have always been a key debating point for opponents of taxes and regulation; Wall Street's whining about President Obama is part of a long tradition in which wealthy businessmen and their flacks argue that any hint of populism on the part of politicians will upset people like them, and that this is bad for the economy. Once you concede that the government can act directly to create jobs, however, that whining loses much of its persuasive power - so Keynesian economics must be rejected, except in those cases where it's being used to defend lucrative contracts.

So I welcome the sudden upsurge in weaponized Keynesianism, which is revealing the reality behind our political debates. At a fundamental level, the opponents of any serious job-creation program know perfectly well that such a program would probably work, for the same reason that defense cuts would raise unemployment. But they don't want voters to know what they know, because that would hurt their larger agenda - keeping regulation and taxes on the wealthy at bay.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



". . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them."
~~~ Gerry Spence









Oakland Police Riot
The Imperial Boardroom Strikes Back
By Chris Floyd

I had the honor of talking with Cindy Sheehan tonight, recording an interview for her radio show, which I believe will air on Sunday. She made mention of the "police riot" -- as she aptly phrased it -- in Oakland Tuesday night, as a Democratic administration moved in with gas and other weapons of war to clear the streets of American citizens taking part in the Occupy movement.

Ms. Sheehan also noted the fact that the Occupy movement's terminology about "the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent elite" is not entirely accurate; far too many of the 99 percent are serving as willing tools of the 1 percent -- in the police forces, in the media, even in the general public, where you can always find plenty of people eagerly genuflecting to the high and mighty, even as they and their own families and communities sink deeper into the mire.

The Oakland debacle is a prime example of this, as cops -- putative public servants whose pay scales put them deep into the 99 percent -- waded into the Occupy citizens, breaking heads and driving away the very people trying to stand up for their interests.

The New York Times reports on one victim of these first strike-backs by our panicky overlords. And he is a most telling victim indeed: a military veteran, who had served two tours in the imperial war of aggression in Iraq, then turned against the War Machine and joined that stalwart band of humanity's patriots, the Iraq Veterans Against the War: (See original for links and video.)

Two veterans groups say that a protester who was badly wounded in Oakland on Tuesday night is a former marine who is now hospitalized with a fractured skull.

According to Iraq Veterans Against the War, the protester, Scott Olsen, is a member of their group who left the Marines in 2010, after serving two tours in Iraq. In a statement, the group's executive director Jose Vasquez, claimed that Mr. Olsen "sustained a skull fracture after being shot in the head with a police projectile while peacefully participating in an Occupy Oakland march," on Tuesday night. Mr. Vasquez added that Mr. Olsen, a systems network administrator in Daly, Calif. "is currently sedated at a local hospital awaiting examination by a neurosurgeon."

A series of bloody photographs that appear to show Mr. Olsen after he was wounded were posted on the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center's site, Indybay.org. Those images show that Mr. Olsen was wearing a brown military shirt with his last name on the front. Jay Finneburgh, the photographer who shot the images of Mr. Olsen, wrote on Indybay: "This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up. The bright light in the second shot is from a flash-bang grenade that went off a few feet from us. He looks like he might be a veteran. he was eventually taken to highland hospital." ....

We will see more, much more of this. You can smell the fear in the boardrooms (and in their bought-and-paid-for extensions, the government offices) around the world, as our mighty statesfolk flail at the global economic meltdown their own policies have unleashed -- with no other answer than to keep imposing "austerity" measures, one after another, destroying the societies they've feasted upon for so long. And has there even been such a gaggle of fourth-rate poltroons, of shallow, witless, gormless goobers as the leaders of the "developed" world these days? Sarkozy, Cameron, Merkel, Berlusconi, Obama ....? It's like the last tribal council on Easter Island. All they have left are lies, delusions -- and brutality.
(c) 2011 Chris Floyd




.




Then They Fight You
By William Rivers Pitt

Occupy Oakland protesters after their camp was destroyed by Oakland police along with ten neighboring police departments. Several hundred protesters regrouped at the intersection of 14th and Broadway where police tried dispersing the crowd with tear gas, flash bang rounds, rubber bullets and bean bag shots.

The national standoff between authorities and protesters in the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement has reached a new and dangerous level of tension and violence.

At first glance, it looked like something out of Pink Floyd's film 'The Wall': menacing images of creatures in gas masks swarming toward the camera under a dark and forbidding sky. This was no dystopian fantasy, however; these were members of the Oakland police department charging into a group of protesters behind a wall of tear gas, flash-bang bombs, rubber bullets and bean-bag projectiles. The police bull-rushed these unarmed protesters with the intention to do violence, and violence is exactly what they did.

As of this writing, one woman is known to have been seriously injured when a flash-bang grenade went off right by her head. She was seen being carried away unconscious from the scene of the police riot by other protesters. Anther known injured protester has a name, and a face, and a record of service to his country. Scott Olsen, a Marine veteran of two Iraq tours, was participating in the Occupy Oakland protest when he was shot in the head by a 'less-than-lethal' police projectile, suffered a fractured skull, and was taken to the hospital in critical condition. His condition has since been upgraded to fair.

Welcome home, Marine. Thank you for your service to your country, but since you dared to exercise your First Amendment right to peaceable assembly, here's a cracked head for your trouble. And you thought Iraq was dangerous.

According to Oakland officials, the justification for this eight-hour-long explosion of force was that the area being occupied by protesters had become unsanitary, and that people were being raped within the camp zone. This was news to those who had been peacefully occupying the space in front of Oakland's city hall. It sounded suspiciously familiar to some last-decade claims about weapons of mass destruction being justification for a different burst of violence, and smells just as bad. The extreme nature of this police action might have had more to do with the fact that the protester's camp was unofficially named Oscar Grant Plaza, after the unarmed citizen who was murdered in 2009 by BART transit police, an incident that was caught on camera and broadcast to the world. Maybe the Oakland police did not like the reminder, and so swung their truncheons with an excess of vigor.

This is not the first example of excessive violence being directed at protesters in the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement. A number of incidents directed at unarmed, non-resisting protesters in New York City have been documented in detail, and in one case, an official inquiry into one NYPD officer's use of pepper spray is ongoing. The scene that played out in Oakland could very well have taken place several days ago in New York, had Mayor Bloomberg not made the wise, last-minute decision to back down from his demand that Liberty Park be cleared of protesters so it could be "cleaned." A number of protesters were injured by police in San Francisco and Denver, as well.

What happened in Oakland in the hours between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, however, is a definite escalation of tensions between protesters and authorities, and seems to indicate those authorities are edging closer and closer towards unleashing the dogs of war on people who offer no violence and pose no threat to anyone other than the financial power-brokers who have so thoroughly ravaged this country's future.

It goes without saying that not every person participating in these national actions are docile lambs; every movement, no matter its political denomination, is going to have its share of idiots and adrenaline-junkies. Within the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, however, these types of people make up so small a fraction of the main as to be negligible...but they do offer authorities a nice excuse to bulldoze the whole movement, and it makes you wonder how many of these so-called agitators are running around causing trouble with a badge in their back pocket. Beyond agitators, there is the simple fact that not everyone is going to react like Gandhi when they get gassed, pepper-sprayed, flash-bombed, clubbed and shot with projectiles for peacefully assembling to point out a grievous wrong.

'Occupy Wall Street' is about saying "No."

"No" to institutionalized greed of such vast width and breadth that it plunders our country even as it smiles around a mouthful of filet mignon.

"No" to the ocean of corporate cash that drowns our democracy.

"No" to rewarding the failure of frauds who proudly carry the banner of capitalism even as they enjoy the galloping socialism of the government bailout.

"No" to those who refuse to hire new employees because they want to screw over the economy and remove a president they don't like. But it is also about so much else.

The 'Occupy' movement is as diverse and multifaceted as the cities and towns where it has been happening. More often than not, local issues are at the forefront of the protester's concerns; Wall Street is local for New York City, but in Oakland, the protest has been geared more toward halting austerity measures and the closures of schools and libraries…and, yes, police violence. Yet even as every 'Occupy' community has its own set of priorities, it is all part of a single continuum, as the issues being protested all stem from the same core concerns that crashed the economy, and created the movement, in the first place.

'Occupy Wall Street' is not about getting into a public crunch with cops over whether or not tents should be allowed in a public park. Rather than react with violence to people who are sacrificing themselves to point out what has gone so terribly wrong with the America we all love, these authorities should take a step back and encompass the awesome fact that such a movement has become so very necessary in the first place.

They should remember that violence is the last refuge of the desperate, that violence directed towards these protests will only make them stronger, and will put a big, bloody underscore beneath their efforts. Every punch thrown by a police officer, every protester clubbed or gassed or bombed or shot down with a riot-control projectile, only proves the point of that protester, and invigorates the entire movement.

They should remember that this is the year 2011, and every single person gathered at these protests has a phone with a camera that will make any unnecessary or egregious act of official violence an instant media sensation. These authorities are not working in the dark, not by a long chalk. One protester with a steady hand will make an over-the-top cop famous in all the wrong ways in exactly as much time it takes to read this sentence. Enough footage like that, and matters will escalate quickly indeed. The whole world is, in fact, watching.

Every police officer dealing with these 'Occupy' protests is not a frothing mad dog, any more than every 'Occupy' protester is a brick-throwing terrorist. Police in Albany recently refused an order to clear out a group of 'Occupy' protesters, a decision that was roundly praised. But if the Battle of Oakland shows us anything, it is how quickly this can get out of hand. The protesters are not going anywhere, and if they are met with violence on the order of what took place Tuesday night, there is no telling where we will find ourselves in the end.
(c) 2011 William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is available from PoliPointPress.





The Dead Letter Office...





Chief Jordan in happier days.

Heil Obama,

Dear vorubergehend Polizei Chief Jordan,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your having your storm troopers attack legal protesters and over ruling the Bill of Rights in the City of Oakland, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Police Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross, first class, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 11-24-2011. We salute you Herr Jordan, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama






Herman Cain's Next Scandal
His Smoking Campaign Manager
By John Nichols

Herman Cain's opponents may think that Mark Block, the tough guy in the weird ad that has gone viral, is just some cigarette-smoking nut. Wisconsinites who have followed the degeneration of their state's progressive political tradition know better.

Block has been all over the media in recent days, defending his current boss against allegations of sexual harassment-and claiming that Cain is a victim of an ugly political attack.

Well, it there is anyone who knows about ugly politics, it's Block.

Indeed, he was a central player in an epic 1997 campaign where Wisconsin politics turned ugly.

That was the year when Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox was seeking his first full term on the high court. A former legislator and longtime crony of then-Governor Tommy Thompson, Wilcox had been appointed to the court by Thompson five years earlier. Now, he was running for a full term.

Wilcox had been an uninspired justice, who voted in lockstep with the Thompson administration on major issues-much as Justice David Prosser now serves as a proxy for Governor Scott Walker's administration on the Supreme Court. And he was an uninspired campaigner.

When Walt Kelly, one of the most respected and dynamic lawyers in the state, announced that he would challenge Wilcox, the Thompson administration and the governor's legislative allies, led by former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, got scared.

Republican operatives took charge of the supoosedly nonpartisan Wilcox campaign and inserted a veteran political fixer as Wilcox's campaign manager. What was supposed to be a nonpartisan judicial race took on all the characteristics of a high-stakes partisan contest. Kelly was attacked relentlessly by a smear campaign that featured negative ads and mailings. The crudest attacks were mounted by a supposedly "independent" campaign that was funded with an estimated $200,000 from out-of-state interests that supported so-called "school choice" schemes.

That didn't surprise anyone, as Thompson and Jensen were big backers of "school choice" initiatives that sought to steer public money to private education projects. And they knew the high court would be ruling on their constitutionality.

What was surprising was the extent to which the Wilcox campaign and the supposedly "independent" campaign funded by the out-of-state interested seemed to be coordinated.

After Wilcox won, Kelly pressed for an investigation, as did the Madison Capital Times.

That investigation eventually led the Wisconsin Elections Board to allege that Wilcox and his campaign had violated state election law by coordinating a campaign with what was supposed to be an independent group.

Wilcox denied that he knew of the coordination, but agreed to personally pay a $10,000 fine-one of the largest forfeitures ever by a candidate for public office. The co-founder of the "independent" group also paid a fine.

But the roughest justice was dealt to Wilcox's campaign manager, who was alleged to have been at the center of the scandal. He paid a $15,000 fine and agreed to refrain from working as a political consultant in Wisconsin-or even as a volunteer on campaigns-for three years.

The campaign manager only re-entered the Wisconsin political scene years later, when the billionaire Koch brothers began pouring money into the political front group Americans for Prosperity (AFP).

The former Wilcox manager became the Wisconsin point man for AFP. In that capacity, he was accused of running one of the most ambitious voter-suppression campaigns in the country-a "vote-caging" scheme that sought to intimidate minority voters and college students by demanding information about their residency and registration status that went far beyond what was required by the state. This project, which was allegedly coordinated with the Republican Party of Wisconsin, came just in time to help Scott Walker secure the state's governorship.

AFP's man in Wisconsin also invited Herman Cain to the state to address AFP-managed "Tea pParty" rallies, forging a close relationship with the former pizza company executive.

The rest was history. Wilcox's manager and AFP's man in Wisconsin was, of course, Mark Block.

Block's now a cigarette-smoking Internet sensation. But Wisconsinites who remember when the state's politics turned ugly will tell Mitt Romney and Rick Perry: beware! This guy is trouble!

How much trouble? Even as he was trying to explain away charges of wrongdoing by Cain, Block's name surfaced in connection with another scandal.

Prosperity USA-a tax-exempt charitable group Block helped run that promoted Cain as a national figure-claims the group is owed almost $40,000 by "FOH."

Prosperity USA is a spin-off of the supposedly "independent" Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brothers–funded group Block ran. Block spun Prosperity USA off from the Americans for Prosperity operation in Wisconsin, although the national group is now suggesting that the various organizations are legally separate.

"FOH" is short for "Friends of Herman Cain," the presidential contender's campaign organization.

According to revelations published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Block's Prosperity USA "helped the GOP presidential candidate (Cain) get his fledgling campaign off the ground by originally footing the bill for tens of thousands of dollars in expenses for such items as iPads, chartered flights and travel to Iowa and Las Vegas-something that might breach federal tax and campaign law, according to sources and documents."

Using a non-for-profit group to organize a political campaign and coordinating payments between the charitable organization and the campaign raises every kind of red flag for experts on campaign law. Tax-exempt charities aren't supposed to be forming the infrastructure for political campaigns.

"The number of questionable and possibly illegal transactions conducted on behalf of Herman Cain is staggering," says Michael Maistelman, one of Wisconsin's most prominent and broadly regarded experts on election law.

Block has been dodging questions about Prosperity USA. But that's going to get tougher.

Revelations regarding the group demand an inquiry. They also bring to mind the old scandal in which Block ran the Wilcox campaign while allegedly coordinating election activities with groups that were supposed to be "independent."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.




American flag hoisted during StudentsOccupy
march at Occupy Boston on October 10, 2011.




Occupy The Future
By Noam Chomsky

(This article is adapted from Noam Chomsky's talk at the Occupy Boston encampment on Dewey Square on Oct. 22. He spoke as part of the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series held by Occupy Boston's on-site Free University. Zinn was a historian, activist and author of "A People's History of the United States.")
Delivering a Howard Zinn lecture is a bittersweet experience for me. I regret that he's not here to take part in and invigorate a movement that would have been the dream of his life. Indeed, he laid a lot of the groundwork for it.

If the bonds and associations being established in these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead, victories don't come quickly, the Occupy protests could mark a significant moment in American history.

I've never seen anything quite like the Occupy movement in scale and character, here and worldwide. The Occupy outposts are trying to create cooperative communities that just might be the basis for the kinds of lasting organizations necessary to overcome the barriers ahead and the backlash that's already coming.

That the Occupy movement is unprecedented seems appropriate because this is an unprecedented era, not just at this moment but since the 1970s.

The 1970s marked a turning point for the United States. Since the country began, it had been a developing society, not always in very pretty ways, but with general progress toward industrialization and wealth.

Even in dark times, the expectation was that the progress would continue. I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. By the mid-1930s, even though the situation was objectively much harsher than today, the spirit was quite different.

A militant labor movement was organizing, the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and others, and workers were staging sit-down strikes, just one step from taking over the factories and running them themselves.

Under popular pressure, New Deal legislation was passed. The prevailing sense was that we would get out of the hard times.

Now there's a sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. This is quite new in our history. During the 1930s, working people could anticipate that the jobs would come back. Today, if you're a worker in manufacturing, with unemployment practically at Depression levels, you know that those jobs may be gone forever if current policies persist.

That change in the American outlook has evolved since the 1970s. In a reversal, several centuries of industrialization turned to de-industrialization. Of course manufacturing continued, but overseas, very profitable, though harmful to the workforce.

The economy shifted to financialization. Financial institutions expanded enormously. A vicious cycle between finance and politics accelerated. Increasingly, wealth concentrated in the financial sector. Politicians, faced with the rising cost of campaigns, were driven ever deeper into the pockets of wealthy backers.

And the politicians rewarded them with policies favorable to Wall Street: deregulation, tax changes, relaxation of rules of corporate governance, which intensified the vicious cycle. Collapse was inevitable. In 2008, the government once again came to the rescue of Wall Street firms presumably too big to fail, with leaders too big to jail.

Today, for the one-tenth of 1 percent of the population who benefited most from these decades of greed and deceit, everything is fine.

In 2005, Citigroup, which, by the way, has repeatedly been saved by government bailouts, saw the wealthy as a growth opportunity. The bank released a brochure for investors that urged them to put their money into something called the Plutonomy Index, which identified stocks in companies that cater to the luxury market.

"The world is dividing into two blocs, the plutonomy and the rest," Citigroup summarized. "The U.S., U.K. and Canada are the key plutonomies, economies powered by the wealthy."

As for the non-rich, they're sometimes called the precariat, people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. The "periphery" however, has become a substantial proportion of the population in the U.S. and elsewhere.

So we have the plutonomy and the precariat: the 1 percent and the 99 percent, as Occupy sees it, not literal numbers, but the right picture.

The historic reversal in people's confidence about the future is a reflection of tendencies that could become irreversible. The Occupy protests are the first major popular reaction that could change the dynamic.

I've kept to domestic issues. But two dangerous developments in the international arena overshadow everything else.

For the first time in human history, there are real threats to the survival of the human species. Since 1945 we have had nuclear weapons, and it seems a miracle we have survived them. But policies of the Obama administration and its allies are encouraging escalation.

The other threat, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps to do something about it. The United States is taking steps backward. A propaganda system, openly acknowledged by the business community, declares that climate change is all a liberal hoax: Why pay attention to these scientists?

If this intransigence continues in the richest, most powerful country in the world, the catastrophe won't be averted.

Something must be done in a disciplined, sustained way, and soon. It won't be easy to proceed. There will be hardships and failures, it's inevitable. But unless the process that's taking place here and elsewhere in the country and around the world continues to grow and becomes a major force in society and politics, the chances for a decent future are bleak.

You can't achieve significant initiatives without a large, active, popular base. It's necessary to get out into the country and help people understand what the Occupy movement is about, what they themselves can do, and what the consequences are of not doing anything.

Organizing such a base involves education and activism. Education doesn't mean telling people what to believe, it means learning from them and with them.

Karl Marx said, "The task is not just to understand the world but to change it. A variant to keep in mind is that if you want to change the world you'd better try to understand it. That doesn't mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that's helpful sometimes. You learn from participating. You learn from others. You learn from the people you're trying to organize. We all have to gain the understanding and the experience to formulate and implement ideas.

The most exciting aspect of the Occupy movement is the construction of the linkages that are taking place all over. If they can be sustained and expanded, Occupy can lead to dedicated efforts to set society on a more humane course.
(c) 2011 Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East & U.S. Foreign Policy: Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice. His most recent book is Gaza In Crisis.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Johm Cole ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Wearing My Debate Fatigues
By Will Durst

Time to sound the alarm on an ominous political epidemic sweeping the nation today. A feverish America finds itself larynx deep in the throes of a severe case of debate fatigue. As evidenced by the most recent gathering of GOP candidates in Nevada, which by any unofficial tally should count as the 367th debate in the past four months with about 519 to go before an actual nominee is grudgingly settled upon.

Nowhere are the symptoms of this malaise more apparent than amongst the participants themselves, who have slowly shifted from irritable to ornery to downright cantankerous. And it's going to take more than a short regimen of low-grade antibiotics to kick this virulent bug.

You could say the last debate got a bit testy. You could also say that girl scouts make ineffective NFL middle linebackers. In nickel coverage. Against Aaron Rodgers. Mirroring the emotions of their constituents, the candidates are starting to get on each other's nerves like somebody else's disco music pinning the red in a bathroom with stainless steel walls.

After Rick Perry accused Mitt Romney of hiring illegal aliens to work on his lawn, the former Governor of Massachusetts put a condescending hand on the Texas Governor's shoulder and received a look that would liquefy granite. Fortunately, Mitt is made of stiffer stuff. But only the presence of TV cameras kept the two from making a date to meet under the bleachers right after school.

Perry's frustration is evident. The shine on his campaign has faded to root cellar dim partly due to an inability to form a complete sentence in public. Himself admitting, "debates aren't my strong suit." No. Not your strong suit. Weak suit. Leisure suit. Bathing suit. Or birthday suit. Face it, debates aren't your Bermuda shorts. And neither is foreign policy Herman Cain's black socks with sandals.

Michele Bachmann was confused by Libya being part of Africa, and Newt Gingrich may have scuttled his entire campaign by vowing, as nominee, to engage President Obama in a series of seven three-hour long debates. Smooth move. Like telling a man with heartburn you plan on serving nothing but jalapeno burritos for dinner the next two weeks. And the sour cream has curdled. Plenty of Tabasco, though.

The seven nominees in attendance spent the evening snapping at one another like hyenas over the last piece of zebra calf muscle. When the subject of immigration arose, they climbed across their podiums playing king of the hill on who would implement the strictest enforcement. Variously promising to utilize the National Guard, electric fences, predator drones and I think somebody mentioned alligator pits. Domestic alligators, of course.

The experts claim these things are designed to build better candidates. "His new found confidence is a direct result of being hardened in the primary debates." But where does "battle tested" end and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome begin? Could John McCain's punch drunk staggering be attributed to the head blows he sustained over six months of these internecine conflicts four years ago?

Luckily for everybody, the next debate is more than three weeks hence. Plenty of time to grab some air and arrange a few photo-ops in stately poses such as handing out Halloween candy and voting. Not forgetting the most important presidential business of all, begging for more money. Power ties off. Knee pads on.
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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In This Edition

Phil Rockstroh is, "Transforming Easy Cynicism (And Other Forms Of Conformity) Into Deep Resistance."

Uri Avnery exclaims, "Hold Me Back!"

Matt Taibbi shows, "Why Mitt Romney's Entitlement-Privatization Plan Is Crazy."

Sam Harris tells, "The Truth About Violence."

Jim Hightower shines a light on, "Another Bailout Scam From Bank Of America."

Helen Thomas reminds Barry that, "Leaving Iraq Is Not Enough."

James Donahue says, "Shame On US."

Glenn Greenwald sees, "The Drone Mentality."

David Swanson finds, "Public Pressure Is Slowly Ending Afghanistan War."

Joel S. Hirschhorn explains the, "Jobless And Clueless."

Paul Krugman sings, "Here Comes The Sun."

Greg Palast reviews, "Lazy Ouzo-Swilling, Olive-Pit Spitting Greeks Or, How Goldman Sacked Greece."

Amy Goodman returns with the, "Keystone XL."

Illinois Con-gressman Joe Walsh wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols sees Republicans trying to, "Block The Vote."

Tom Engelhardt takes us on, "A Patrol In Enemy Territory - Wall Street."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Andy Borowitz is, "Poll: Majority of Likely Voters Say They Were Sexually Harassed by Cain" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "Happy Armistice Day, Ya'll!"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of John Darkow, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Married To The Sea.Com, Clay Bennett, Bill Day, R.S. Janes, We Are The 99, Julie Mcinnes, The Washington Post, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










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Happy Armistice Day, Ya'll!
By Ernest Stewart


"On November 11, 1918, there ended the most unnecessary, the most financially exhausting, and the most terribly fatal of all the wars that the world has ever known. Twenty millions of men and women, in that war, were killed outright, or died later from wounds. The Spanish influenza, admittedly caused by the War and nothing else, killed, in various lands, one hundred million persons more." ~~~ Thomas Hall Shastid, 1927.

"Mississippi voters rejected the so-called 'personhood' amendment because they understood it is government gone too far, and would have allowed government to have control over personal decisions that should be left up to a woman, her family, her doctor and her faith, including keeping a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy from getting the care she needs, and criminalizing everything from abortion to common forms of birth control such as the pill and the IUD." ~~~ Planned Parenthood

"It was a mistake by the organization for the G-20 summit. Journalists agreed among themselves to consider the remarks off the record because they didn't want to get a summit staffer into a "rough patch" after he disclosed that the audio could be heard. Some of them did give me the quotes, and others just confirmed the quotes." ~~~ Dan Israel, an Arret Sur Images reporter

"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~~~ John Peel

Happy Armistice Day! Yes, I know the politicians call it Veterans Day, but I don't! I, instead, celebrate the day of peace that it was meant to be, as did the entire world until we changed it in 1954 to cover our asses for the various war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by our children for the benefit of the 1%!

November 11th was made a holiday in order to celebrate an armistice that ended WWI, or, as it was known "the War To End All Wars," but thanks to England, France, and old Woody Wilson, it became just a brief period of peace, while everyone rearmed for WWII, as it screwed the Germans royally and directly paved the way for the worst war yet.

Now, some say all we got out of WWI was the flu and Prohibition, and we all know how well that worked out; but few folks know that we also got a law against making further war -- a law that is still on the books, and a law that could be used against our current Junta -- the Crime Family Bush -- not to mention most every politician and President since the end of WWII, although the same charges we filed under it against the Japanese and Germans could have been filed against Churchill, Lebrun, Roosevelt, and Truman, too!

In 1928, we signed onto the Kellogg-Briand Pact, legally banning all wars. It was signed by almost all Republicans and Democrats in this country and by all the other countries that were involved in the "Great War!" That treaty is still on the books, which is why our war making of the last 60 years or so is a criminal act and what we used to charge the Germans, Italians and Japanese. Armistice Day was highjacked by Congress to get rid of an official day of peace and made into a day to celebrate wars because we like wars as George Carlin said "we are a war-like people." So, even though I'm a vet, I don't celebrate Veterans Day; I don't celebrate the men and women who murder men, women and children by the millions. I celebrate peace; how about you?

In Other News

Well, my, my, my, do I hear the end of the tea-bagger revolution? Could be, could be, if Tuesday's election results are any indication....

Down in Ohio, voters rejected the Rethuglican's attempt to destroy the unions. Voters delivered a blow to Governor John R. Kasich, and his Rethuglican-controlled legislature, and rejected his attempt to weaken collective bargaining for public employees -- on the road to getting rid of all unions. No unions, no middle class, no middle class, just the Kings and the serfs are left! Which one do you think you'd be?

Up in Maine, voters had more bad news for Rethuglicans, as they overwhelmingly rejected a crackdown on voting rights! Maine Rethuglicans had recently ended same-day registration at polling places, voters decided to restore the practice, which the Demoncrats supported.

Those two were pretty much expected but there were quite a few that were major surprises!

In Mississippi, one of our states that is still living in the Middle Ages, came a surprise as voters rejected the Rethuglican-controlled legislature measure that would have outlawed all abortions and many forms of contraception, as well. Mississippians rejection of a far-reaching and stringent anti-abortion initiative known as the "personhood" amendment. Initiative 26 would have amended the State Constitution to define life "to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." I wasn't aware that you could legally clone in Mississippi, but it does explain where all those rednecks come from! Still, they did make it harder for black folks to vote: so don't get too excited by the rejection of Initiative 26!

More good news, from of all places Arizona! Arizona voters have turned out of office the chief architect of that state's controversial anti-immigration laws. State Senator Russell Pearce, a Rethuglican power broker and a former sheriff's deputy known for his "My way or the Highway" style, has all but conceded the race Tuesday. With the look of a deer caught in your headlights on his face, Pearce said...

"If being recalled is the price for keeping one's promises, then so be it." His opponent has already declared victory. Pearce, the president of the Arizona Senate, was a hero to the Tea Party movement, and apart from his anti-Mexican efforts, he had introduced numerous bills to overrule federal laws.

There were a lot of Demoncrats that were supposed to lose their jobs, but kept them. Like the Governor of Kentucky, Steve Beshear, and in Virginia and Iowa, Rethuglicans lost a chance to control their Senates, which would have given them carte blanche to rule like they're doing in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana.

All this gives a boost to the chances of Obamahood for another four years. So yippie, I guess?

And Finally

To be perfectly honest, I've never cared much for French President Nicolas Sarkozy. While I'll admit that I admired his taste in Bimbos, he left a lot to be desired as a leader and as a human being. His fascist, corporate, (but I repeat myself) anti-union leanings have caused more trouble for the French than what he is worth.

However, after last week's failed G-20 summit came a message of hope from Cannes, a private conversation was "inadvertently" overheard by open microphones before an Obama-Sarkozy news conference. I put quotation marks around "inadvertently" because who knows whether Nic and Barry knew the mikes were on or not. Either way, it's about time someone had the guts to say it! While everyone heard it, most "journalists" kept it quiet, but the French website Arret Sur Images, blew the whistle and reported that many reporters heard Sarkozy's comments in French and Obama's reply through a translator: Nic said to Barry: "I can't stand him. He's a liar!" According to the website Nic was speaking of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Barry replied, "You're tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day!" Seems to me that Messers Sarozy and Obama have had about enough of their Zionazi puppet master, especially, like I said before, if they knew the mikes were turned on and wanted to send Netanyahu a message. Perhaps a message about attacking Iran. Something, that would no doubt, send the world economy into a tail-spin as the world is cut off from Gulf oil. Time will tell, America; so stay tuned! Same Bat time, same Bat channel!

Keepin' On

Ooops, we bad, well, at least a certain young intern/cub-reporter who will remain nameless is! Not once, but twice, did she put up the wrong photos for our Vidkun Quisling Award winner, Oakland's Interim Police Chief Howard A. Jordan, as well as Howard Cain's right-hand-man Mark Block.

She misidentified Chief Jordan with a photo of Heinrich Himmler, yes, an easy enough mistake to make, no doubt, but still... And then she identified Mark Block with a picture of the cigarette smoking man from the X-Files! Again, an easy mistake to make!

Therefore, we would like to make a most sincere, and heartfelt apology, to the friends and families of Heinrich Himmler and C.G.B. Spender! We feel your pain!

I decided to take my $30 profit bounty for the year and spend it on a box of Edward Gorey Christmas Cards and stamps and send them out to our top twenty contributors as is often our wont. One year, we sent everybody in the top 20 a copy of my film, "W The Movie" a couple of months before it came out on DVD just after its theatrical run. It is currently available from Amazon as a rental download, a purchase download and as a DVD for those of you who would like a copy -- makes the perfect gift, and if you do, please access it through the magazine. The link is at the bottom of this page and Amazon will throw a couple of pennies my way if you do!

*****


01-14-1919 ~ 11-04-2011
Thanks for the thoughts.


03-24-1967 ~ 11-08-2011
Thanks for the film and music!


10-05-1922 ~ 11-08-2011
Thanks for the laughs!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












Transforming Easy Cynicism (And Other Forms Of Conformity) Into Deep Resistance
By Phil Rockstroh

In my opinion, when people opine that the OWS movement is about--or should be about--the airing of this particular grievance or that it must bandy this or that particular demand--they have missed the point. Of course, collectively, OWS evinces a force of resistance against corporate greed and a critique of the failings of the present political system...Yet, as is the case with any living thing, to reduce its essential nature to facile descriptions diminishes it.

As with human perception of life itself, experiencing freedom carries an ineffable quality, a wordless grandeur.

"Human language is like a cracked kettle drum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity." ~~~ Gustave Flaubert
Through it all, the immanent quality of and inchoate longing for freedom remains within us: Although present, it is not always in plain view. Its presence in our lives is, perhaps, best summed up by this Irish aphorism:

"Mrs. O'Kelly, do you believe in fairies?" "No, I don't -- but they're there."
Over and over again, too many well-intentioned sorts continue to insist that it is imperative that we inform the nice people of the middle class (nice people who, given the nature of imperium, willingly feed off the blood of empire like the charges of a vampire) that there are well mannered working people on site at OWS encampments -- not only spittle-launching, leftist radicals.

Excuse me, but, for many years now, so-called "crazy" leftist radicals have been damn near the only ones who have had the clarity of mind to give a cogent critique of empire...have been willing to point out the exploitive, soul-demeaning mode of existence inherent to the militarist/national security/corporate/consumer/ duopolistic state--and, as a result, we have been marginalized, entirely excluded from mainstream debate and discussion.

Let us have a little rendezvous with reality; otherwise, the operatives of the status quo will frame the narrative, once again, and will claim victory by co-option. This is the method by which the capitalist status quo has maintained its inverted totalitarian set-up since the popular uprisings of the 1960's, by means of generous economic rewards (the perks and privileges of the corporate state) for its defacto propagandists and exclusion from the official narrative for dissenters. Don't buy into the false narrative.

Personally, I refuse to eschew the designation of anti-capitalist radical. You cannot shame me for knowing where the bodies of empire are buried and who laid them in their graves. To the landfill of history with capitalism--the wasteful, cracked-brained economic system that created said landfill.

The preening liars at Fox News and other well-rewarded propagandists of state capitalism will disseminate lies, big and small, regardless of our actions...that is what they do. Be cautioned: Never tap dance for the approval of a lying, manipulative, power mad fascist. Once, you begin to do so you co-sign his narrative--thus he owns your hapless ass.

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - 
and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." ~~~ Georgia O'Keefe
Accordingly, the lessons of the 1960s e.g., COINTELPRO operations...reveal that when street and riot police are ordered to pull back, as in Oakland, agent provocateurs will infiltrate mass political gatherings. Withal: You can bet those masked bastards shouting hate-speak and breaking windows are cops...He is there to draw the cameras of the corporate media towards the scenes of chaos and strife that he seeds in order to turn bourgeois sentiment against reform movements that might change their lives for the better...to create the false narrative that the police are the only bulwark the middle class has against destruction-sowing crazies, who, if given free reign, will leave in rubble and ashes everything they hold dear.

To avoid being falsely labeled: First, endeavor, by inward searching and outward (even failed) endeavor, to know who you are. Then lay claim to your own identity. Otherwise, garnering the clarity required to apprehend what you're up against becomes difficult.

The Greek word for one of the three figures representing The Fates is Moira--which translates into portion. And that is key to grasping what is happening from Cairo to Athens to New York City to Oakland. Ergo, people are rising up and fighting for the rightful and just portion of their lives and fates that have been increasingly commandeered and controlled by a corrupt elite whose rule has, heretofore, been sustained by a disproportionate distribution of wealth, privilege and power.

Across Greece, people have awaken to the knowledge that passivity is slavery--that capitalism is economic cannibalism...State capitalism, also, devours the dignity of its victims. Yet, after a time, a number of people will rise up against exploitation and will demand their portion of fate.

At this point in time, the term "general strike" holds a deep and resonate appeal. The word "general" suggests that the isolation of daily life experienced under the atomizing circumstances of globalized corporate capitalism can be upended--that there can be a sense of unity--that a movement en mass is possible (yet not a mass movement to war, but a movement en mass towards equity and fairness) by beginning, at long last, to "strike" back--to counterpunch with focused blows those who have kept the harsh, inequitable order of the present era in place by means of intimidation and bribery.

Capitalism--you are a rotting, flesh-eating zombie--there are sacred spark stippling the air around you; these sparks are borne of flames of sacred vehemence. For too long, people have been bled dry by the heart-desiccating aspirations and dehumanizing modes of economic coercion that maintain the neoliberal paradigm. Moreover, the flames of resistance are only fanned when your apologists claim that the system in place provides the best, in fact, the only way to exist in the world and attempt to smother its growing fury with police state tactics.

The stakes are great. Much has been stolen from us: essential qualities, more valuable than money. As the populace of the corporate/consumer state, we have been induced, by means of small bribes and hyper-authoritarian coercion, to sign a social contract that sells our essential nature on the cheap i.e., to be defined (hence diminished) as a consumer, a commuter, an employee, a Republican, a Democrat, a member of a demographic group, a cipher, a sucker, a bystander in one's own fate.

Don't let any system define you, narrow, then appropriate, your innate and essential self towards exploitive agendas, as does the present societal set-up, for the incommensurate profits of a self-serving few--who, in turn, insist that your objections to the situation are unreasonable, outrageous, untoward--too crazy to be uttered in decent company. In short, a system in which its operatives demand that you stay in your place and not question the motives and actions of your betters.

In contrast, a radical sensibility insists you must inhabit an inner landscape wherein no state, corporation--nor any type of extant system holds dominion over your essential self--that you inhabit a landscape that is best navigated by your own interior lode star. Therefore, you have no obligation to justify your existence to any man or system. To even attempt to do so would deliver an injustice to your heart, for this is a state of being as impossible to quantify as a flight of imagination--yet it exist within as immanent as the architecture of desire.

"The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what would you say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it?" ~~~ Foucault
Who will you meet, where will you travel, what battles will be enjoined and what loves surrendered to as you write the Book of Your Being? What thoughts and feelings will be discovered therein?

Will the words you etch upon the finite moments of your time on this earth evoke deep yearning, like Wordsworth's limning of his longing to see beyond the prison walls of quotidian experience?

[...]I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
excerpt, The World Is Too Much with Us ~~~ William Wordsworth
Or will you refuse to rise, when commanded to do so, as did Rosa Parks on her fateful bus commute through the Jim Crow-demeaned streets of 1950s Montgomery, Alabama; or will you be seized by holy lamentation, like Allen Ginsberg, as he howled anguished prosody into the pity-devoid face of the devouring Moloch of the commodified empire; or will your genius be revealed like the impertinent flutter of Groucho Marx's eyebrows on the screen of Depression era movie houses; or will you reclaim your own heart by the act of telling off some son-of-a-bitch of a boss, as you quit a dead end, heart-deadening job and then resolve to join the defiant multitudes at an OWS encampment?

Mainly, are you prepared to surrender to the everyday miracle that transpires when one, fleetingly, finds the resolve to open one's being to the uncertainties of freedom--when one chooses to break the hold of those fear-bestowing, resentment-besotted demons of banality known as Easy Cynicism, Displaced Resentment, and Habitual Passivity--those disingenuous, corporate/consumer state bards of the Bardo--whose (extant and internalized) narratives have sustained late capitalism.

"Cynicism is just another mode of conformity". ~~~ Theodor W. Adorno
Don't delay: Act as if your life--if not the survival of the planet--depends on it, because, at this point, it does.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.





"Hold Me Back!"
By Uri Avnery

EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. "Hold me back!" he shouts to his comrades, "Before I break his bones!"

Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of Iran.

Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb. We cannot allow this. So we shall bomb them to smithereens.

Binyamin Netanyahu says so in every one of his countless speeches, including his opening speech at the winter session of the Knesset. Ditto Ehud Barak. Every self-respecting commentator (has anyone ever seen a non-self-respecting one?) writes about it. The media amplify the sound and the fury.

"Haaretz" splashed its front page with pictures of the seven most important ministers (the "security septet") showing three in favor of the attack, four against.

A GERMAN proverb says: "Revolutions that are announced in advance do not take place." Same goes for wars.

Nuclear affairs are subject to very strict military censorship. Very very strict indeed.

Yet the censor seems to be smiling benignly. Let the boys, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense (the censor's ultimate boss) play their games.

The respected former long-serving chief of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, has publicly warned against the attack, describing it as "the most stupid idea" he has ever heard. He explained that he considers it his duty to warn against it, in view of the plans of Netanyahu and Barak.

On Wednesday, there was a veritable deluge of leaks. Israel tested a missile that can deliver a nuclear bomb more then 5000 km away, beyond you-know-where. And our Air Force has just completed exercises in Sardinia, at a distance larger than you-know-where. And on Thursday, the Home Front Command held training exercises all over Greater Tel Aviv, with sirens screaming away.

All this seems to indicate that the whole hullabaloo is a ploy. Perhaps to frighten and deter the Iranians. Perhaps to push the Americans into more extreme actions. Perhaps coordinated with the Americans in advance. (British sources, too, leaked that the Royal Navy is training to support an American attack on Iran.)

It is an old Israeli tactic to act as if we are going crazy ("The boss has gone mad" is a routine cry in our markets, to suggest that the fruit vendor is selling at a loss.) We shall not listen to the US any more. We shall just bomb and bomb and bomb.

Well, let's be serious for a moment.

ISRAEL WILL not attack Iran. Period.

Some may think that I am going out on a limb. Shouldn't I add at least "probably" or "almost certainly"?

No, I won't. I shall repeat categorically: Israel Will NOT Attack Iran.

Since the 1956 Suez adventure, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an ultimatum that stopped the action, Israel has never undertaken any significant military operation without obtaining American consent in advance.

The US is Israel's only dependable supporter in the world (besides, perhaps, Fiji, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.) To destroy this relationship means cutting our lifeline. To do that, you have to be more than just a little crazy. You have to be raving mad.

Furthermore, Israel cannot fight a war without unlimited American support, because our planes and our bombs come from the US. During a war, we need supplies, spare parts, many sorts of equipment. During the Yom Kippur war, Henry Kissinger had an "air train" supplying us around the clock. And that war would probably look like a picnic compared to a war with Iran.

LET'S LOOK at the map. That, by the way, is always recommended before starting any war.

The first feature that strikes the eye is the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which every third barrel of the worlds seaborne oil supplies flow. Almost the entire output of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iraq and Iran has to run the gauntlet through this narrow sea lane.

"Narrow" is an understatement. The entire width of this waterway is some 35 km (or 20 miles). That's about the distance from Gaza to Beer Sheva, which was crossed last week by the primitive rockets of the Islamic Jihad.

When the first Israeli plane enters Iranian airspace, the strait will be closed. The Iranian navy has plenty of missile boats, but they will not be needed. Land-based missiles are enough. The world is already teetering on the verge of an abyss. Little Greece is threatening to fall and take major chunks of the world economy with her. The elimination of almost a fifth of the industrial nations' supply of oil would lead to a catastrophe hard even to imagine.

To open the strait by force would require a major military operation (including "putting boots on the ground") that would overshadow all the US misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can the US afford that? Can NATO? Israel itself is not in the same league.

BUT ISRAEL would be very much involved in the action, if only on the receiving end.

In a rare show of unity, all of Israel's service chiefs, including the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, are publicly opposing the whole idea. We can only guess why.

I don't know whether the operation is possible at all. Iran is a very large country, about the size of Alaska, the nuclear installations are widely dispersed and largely underground. Even with the special deep penetration bombs provided by the US, the operation may stall the Iranian efforts - such as they are - only for a few months. The price may be too high for such meager results.

Moreover, it is quite certain that with the beginning of a war, missiles will rain down on Israel - not only from Iran, but also from Hizbollah, and perhaps also from Hamas. We have no adequate defense for our towns. The amount of death and destruction would be prohibitive.

Suddenly, the media are full of stories about our three submarines, soon to grow to five, or even six, if the Germans are understanding and generous. It is openly said that these give us the capabilities of a nuclear "second strike", if Iran uses its (still non-existent) nuclear warheads against us. But the Iranians may also use chemical and other weapons of mass destruction.

Then there is the political price. There are a lot of tensions in the Islamic world. Iran is far from popular in many parts of it. But an Israeli assault on a major Muslim country would instantly unite Sunnis and Shiites, from Egypt and Turkey to Pakistan and beyond. Israel could become a villa in a burning jungle.

BUT THE talk about the war serves many purposes, including domestic, political ones.

Last Saturday, the social protest movement sprang to life again. After a pause of two months, a mass of people assembled in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square. This was quite remarkable, because on that very day rockets were falling on the towns near the Gaza Strip. Until now, in such a situation demonstrations have always been canceled. Security problems trump everything else. Not this time.

Also, many people believed that the euphoria of the Gilad Shalit festival had wiped the protest from the public mind. It didn't.

By the way, something remarkable has happened: the media, after siding with the protest movement for months, have had a change of heart. Suddenly all of them, including Haaretz, are sticking knives in its back. As if by order, all newspapers wrote the next day that "more than 20,000" took part. Well I was there, and I do have some idea of these things. There were at least 100,000 people there, most of them young. I could hardly move.

The protest has not spent itself, as the media assert. Far from it. But what better means for taking people's minds off social justice than talk of the "existential danger"?

Moreover, the reforms demanded by the protesters would need money. In view of the worldwide financial crisis, the government strenuously objects to increasing the state budget, for fear of damaging our credit rating.

So where could the money come from? There are only three plausible sources: the settlements (who would dare?), the Orthodox (ditto!) and the huge military budget.

But on the eve of the most crucial war in our history, who would touch the armed forces? We need every shekel to buy more planes, more bombs, more submarines. Schools and hospitals must, alas, wait.

So God bless Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Where would we be without him?
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







Why Mitt Romney's Entitlement-Privatization Plan Is Crazy
By Matt Taibbi

David Brooks, the [gratuitous insult deleted], wrote this this morning entitled "Mitt Romney, the Serious One." In it, he explained how Romney's recent decision to unveil a plan for reforming the entitlement system "demonstrates his awareness of the issues that need to define the 2012 presidential election."

Romney grasped the toughest issue - how to reform entitlements to avoid a fiscal catastrophe - and he sketched out a sophisticated way to address it.
So we had a giant financial crash in 2008 that necessitated a bailout costing a minimum of nearly $5 trillion and perhaps ultimately costing $10 trillion more, we have foreclosure crisis with more than million people a year losing their homes, and we have a burgeoning European debt disaster that threatens to devastate the global financial system - and the chief issue facing the country, according to Brooks and the Times, is reforming the entitlement system?

The column goes on to throw bouquets on Romney's plan to semi-privatize Medicare and Social Security. Romney's ideas are not as draconian as Paul Ryan's, but they do pave the way for Wall Street's ultimate goal - full privatization of Social Security and Medicare.

Think about what such reforms might mean. Your typical Medicare/Social Security recipient might already have been ripped off three different ways in this era.

He might have been sold a crappy mortgage or a refi by a Countrywide-type firm (which often targeted the elderly). He might then also have unwittingly become an investor in such mortgages and seen the value of his retirement holdings devastated (many of the banks sold their crappy mortgage-backed securities to state pension funds).

Lastly, if he paid taxes, he saw part of his tax money go to pay off the bets the banks made against these same mortgages.

So now that Wall Street has ripped off this segment of society three times, it makes all the sense in the world that Mitt Romney - a former Wall Street superstar who was a chief architect of the modern executive-compensation-driven corporation - is coming back and telling us that we need to cut their Medicare and Social Security benefits in order to defray the cost of the previous three scams.

(Actually, it makes sense. If we don't cut health care and retirement benefits for old people, how can we pay for the carried-interest tax break that allows private equity guys like, well, Mitt Romney to keep paying 15 percent tax rates?).

There's another aspect to all of this that boggles the mind.

We've just witnessed an episode of industry-wide financial mismanagement that surely has no parallel in history. From Lehman Brothers to AIG to Goldman and Morgan Stanley (which in 2008 needed the unprecedented emergency granting of a commercial bank charter to avoid bankruptcy) to Citigroup (which needed a $25 billion bailout and $300 billion in federal guarantees to survive) to Bear Stearns (dead) and Merrill Lynch (dead) and so on, virtually every single one of America's leading financial institutions from the last decade is either already out of business or functionally insolvent and living off government life support and cheap cash from the Fed.

Even leaving aside the fact that most of them are facing mass litigation for fraud, dishonest accounting, and/or systematic perjury (for robosigning financial documentation), they've all proven their complete and utter incompetence to do their ostensible jobs, i.e. the care and stewardship of money.

For instance, the top five investment banks in the country sought to remove capital requirements in the middle of the last decade, and all of them instantly jacked their debt-to-equity ratios above 20-1, some of them going as high as 33-1 or 35-1. Of those five investment banks, three (Bear, Lehman, and Merrill) went out of business during the crash, and the other two (Goldman and Morgan Stanley) required massive government aid to survive.

The commercial banks have not been much better, with two of the biggest (Wachovia and Washington Mutual) imploding thanks to bad investment decisions and three of the biggest survivors (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup) recently facing downgrades.

The recent downgrades, incidentally, were widely seen as Wall Street's way of making two interlocking judgments about these big banks. One is that their accounting is so fucked up and dishonest that it simply cannot be believed, leading to widespread expectation that one or more of them will ultimately collapse. The other is that when they collapse, the government may no longer be able or willing to completely bail these companies out. The downgrades were spurred by vague fears that implementation of new reforms via Dodd-Frank will make it harder to get bailouts.

So the mere hint that these banks might be denied future bailouts caused a company as massive as Bank of America to be downgraded to just above junk status. That means, in other words, that without the implicit promise of government aid, Wall Street considers these banks to be junk or below-junk businesses. Evaluated purely on their own merits, without the implicit attachment to the taxpayer, these companies actually have negative trustworthiness.

And these are the people we want managing the nation's Social Security accounts?

If there wasn't such a very real chance that this could happen, it would be worth laughing about, but unfortunately it's no joke. It's a testament to the tenacious idiocy of our national media that an idea like Social Security privatization could continue to be publicly contemplated, in the wake of a disaster on the scale we've just gone through.

Advocating the turning over of Social Security management to Wall Street after the 2008 crash is a little like asking Paris Hilton to pilot Air Force One, or tabbing Charlie Sheen to manage the inventory of a hospital pharmacy - completely nuts, but to David Brooks, that makes Mitt Romney the "serious" candidate.
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







The Truth About Violence
3 Principles of Self-Defense
By Sam Harris

As a teenager, I once had an opportunity to fly in a police helicopter over a major American city. Naively, I thought the experience might be uneventful. Perhaps there would be no crime between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. However, from the moment we were airborne, there was a fresh emergency every fifteen seconds: Shots fired... rape in progress... victim stabbed...It was a deluge. Of course, the impression this left on me was, in part, the result of a sampling bias: I was hearing nothing but incident reports from a city of 4 million people, most of whom would never encounter violence directly. (No one calls the police to say "Everything is still okay!") Yet it was uncanny to discover the chaos that lurked at the margins of my daily routine. A few minutes from where I might otherwise have been eating dinner, rapes, robberies, and murders were in progress.

Just as it is prudent to wear your seat belt while driving, it makes sense to know how best to respond to violence. In fact, it is overwhelmingly likely that some of you will become the targets of violence in the future. The purpose of this essay is to help you prepare for it. While I do not consider myself an expert on personal security, I know enough to have strong opinions. In my youth, I practiced martial arts for many years and eventually taught self-defense classes in college. My education included work with firearms and a variety of other weapons.⁠ I eventually stopped training and moved on to other things, but my interest in self-defense has resurfaced. It's hard to say why. No doubt receiving occasional death threats and other strange communications has been a factor. But I think that having a family has played a much larger role. I now feel acutely responsible for the safety of those closest to me.

In my experience, most people do not want to think about the reality of human violence. I have friends who sleep with their front doors unlocked and who would never consider receiving instruction in self-defense. For them, gun ownership seems like an ugly and uncivilized flirtation with paranoia. Happily, most of these people will never encounter violence in any form. And good luck will make their unconcern seem perfectly justified.

But here are the numbers: In 2010, there were 403.6 violent crimes per 100,000 persons in the United States. (The good news: This is an overall decrease of 13.4 percent from the level in 2001.) Thus, the average American has a 1 in 250 chance of being robbed, assaulted, raped, or murdered each year. Actually, the chance is probably greater than this, because we know that certain crimes, such as assault and rape, are underreported.

Of course, your risks vary depending on who you are and where you live. In Compton, one of the more dangerous parts of Los Angeles, your chances of experiencing violent crime in 2010 were 1 in 71; if you lived in Beverly Hills they were 1 in 458. Still, even in good neighborhoods, the likelihood of being attacked is hardly remote. In the comparative safety of Beverly Hills, assuming the crime rate stays constant, the probability that you will be robbed, assaulted, raped or murdered at some point over the next 30 years is 1 in 16. (The average risk in the U.S. is 1 in 9; in Compton it's better than 1 in 3.) Again, these statistics surely paint too rosy a picture, because many crimes go unreported.

It may seem onerous to prepare yourself and your family to respond to violence, but not doing so is also a form of preparation. Failing to prepare is, generally speaking, preparing very well to do the wrong thing. Although most of us are good at recognizing danger, our instincts often lead us to behave in ways that increase our chances of being injured or killed once a threat emerges.

Why can't civilized people like ourselves simply rely on the police? Well, look around you: Do you see a cop? Unless you happen to be a police officer yourself, or are married to one, you are very unlikely to be attacked in the presence of law enforcement. The role of the police is to respond in the aftermath of a crime and, with a little luck, to catch the person who committed it. If you are ever targeted by a violent predator, whether you and your family are injured or killed will depend on what you do in the first moments of the encounter.⁠ When it comes to survival, therefore, you are entirely on your own. Once you escape and are in a safe place, by all means call the police. But dialing 911 when an intruder has broken into your home is not a strategy for self-defense.

However, instruction in self-defense need not consume your life. The most important preparations are mental. While I certainly recommend that you receive some physical training, merely understanding the dynamics of violence can make you much safer than you might otherwise be.

Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places.

The primary goal of self-defense is to avoid becoming the victim of violence. The best way to do this is to not be where violence is likely to occur. Of course, that's not always possible-but without question, it is your first and best line of defense. If you visit dangerous neighborhoods at night, or hike alone and unarmed on trails near a big city, or frequent places where drunken young men gather, you are running some obvious risks.

I once knew an experienced martial artist who decided to walk across Central Park late at night. He was aware of the danger, but he thought "I have a black belt in karate. Why shouldn't I be able to walk wherever I want?" As it happened, this rhetorical question was answered almost immediately: My friend hadn't ventured more than a hundred yards into the darkness of the park before he was confronted by three men, one of whom plunged a hypodermic needle into his thigh without a word. Our hero bolted and escaped, otherwise unharmed, but he spent the next three months wondering whether he had been infected with HIV, hepatitis, or some other blood-borne disease. (He was fine.) The lesson: Whatever your training, you needn't be foolish.

Similarly, all men should learn to recognize and shun status-seeking displays of aggression. This is one problem that women generally don't have to worry about. It is, for instance, very rare for a woman to find herself party to an exchange like this:

"What are you looking at, asshole?"

"Who are you calling an asshole?"

"You, bitch. What are you going to do about it?"

Nevertheless, young men are easily lured into social dominance games from which neither party can find a face-saving exit. The violence that erupts at such moments is as unnecessary as it is predictable. If you want to preserve your health and stay out of prison, you must learn to avoid or defuse conflict of this kind.

When a conflict turns physical, there is always a risk that someone will be severely injured or killed. Imagine spending a year or more in prison because you couldn't resist punching some bully who dearly deserved it, but who then hit his head on a fire hydrant and died from a brain injury. As a matter of law, the moment you engage in avoidable violence of this kind-rising to a challenge and escalating the conflict-you lose any legal claim to self-defense. Rather, you were fighting-which is illegal-and in this case you accidentally killed your opponent. You are now likely to get more practice fighting in prison. (Meanwhile, the costs of your criminal defense, and perhaps a subsequent civil lawsuit, could easily bankrupt you.) Take this maxim to heart: Self-defense is not about winning fights with aggressive men who probably have less to lose than you do.⁠

Another principle is lurking here that should be made explicit: Never threaten your opponent. The purpose of his verbal challenge was to get you to respond in such a way as to make him feel justified in attacking you. You shouldn't collaborate in this process or advertise your readiness to defend yourself. Even if violence seems unavoidable, and you decide to strike preemptively, you should do so from a seemingly unaggressive posture, retaining the element of surprise. (This requires training.) Putting up your dukes and agreeing to fight has no place in a self-defense repertoire.⁠

Thus, whatever ego problems or impulse-control issues you have should be worked out ahead of time. You should forget about saving face while recognizing that if you ever find yourself in a social-dominance contest you will probably feel a deep urge to say or do the wrong thing.⁠ Deciding on an appropriate course of action in advance is your best protection against being dangerously stupid in the heat of the moment. The challenge for every man is to decline to play an ancient game whose rules and imperatives have been inscribed in his very cells. If you want to avoid unnecessary violence, you must keep your inner ape on a very short leash. "What are you looking at, asshole?"

"Sorry, man. I was just spacing out. It's been a long day."

De-escalate and move on.

You should also learn to trust your feelings of apprehension about other people-revising them only slowly and with good reason. This may seem like a very depressing piece of advice. It is. Most of us don't want to see the world this way, and we take great pains to avoid being rude or appearing racist, suspicious, etc. But violent predators invariably play upon this commitment to civility. The truth is that most of us are very good at detecting ulterior motives and malevolence in others. We must learn to trust these intuitions. To read the reports of rapes, murders, kidnappings and other violent crimes is to continually discover how easily good people can be manipulated by bad ones. You are under no obligation, for instance, to give a stranger who has rung your doorbell, or decided to stand unusually close to you on the street, the benefit of the doubt. If a man who makes you uncomfortable steps onto an elevator with you, step off. If a man approaches you while you are sitting in your car and something about him doesn't seem right, you don't need to roll down your window and have a conversation. Victims of crime often sense that something is wrong in the first moments of encountering their attackers but feel too socially inhibited to create the necessary distance and escape.

Principle #2: Do not defend your property.

Whatever your training, you should view any invitation to violence as an opportunity to die-or to be sent to prison for killing another human being. Violence must truly be the last resort. Thus, if someone sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, you should hand it over without hesitation-and run.

If you look out your kitchen window and see a group of youths destroying your car, you should remain inside and call the police. It doesn't matter if you happen to be a Navy Seal who keeps a loaded shotgun by the front door. You don't want to kill a teenager for vandalism, and you don't want to get shot by one for hesitating to pull the trigger. Unless you or another person is being physically harmed, or an attack seems imminent, avoiding violence should be your only concern.

Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.

If you have principles 1 and 2 firmly installed in your brain, any violence that finds you is, by definition, unavoidable. There is a tremendous power in knowing this: When you find yourself without other options, you are free to respond with full commitment.

This is the core principle of self-defense: Do whatever you can to avoid a physical confrontation, but the moment avoidance fails, attack explosively for the purposes of escape-not to mete out justice, or to teach a bully a lesson, or to apprehend a criminal. Your goal is to get away with minimum trauma (to you), while harming your attacker in any way that seems necessary to ensure your escape.⁠

If you find yourself in such a situation, you should assume that your opponent is a career criminal who has victimized many others before you.⁠ Do not waste an instant imagining that you can reason with him. Most victims of violence are so terrified of being injured or killed that they will believe any promise a predator makes. It is not difficult to see why.

Imagine: You are loading groceries into your car and man appears at your side with a gun.

"Get in the car, and you won't get hurt."

Your instincts are probably bad here: Getting in the car is the last thing you should do.

"Get in the car, or I'll blow your head off."

However bad your options may appear in the moment, complying with the demands of a person who is seeking to control your movements is a terrible idea. Yes, there are criminals whose only goal is to steal your property. But anyone who attempts to control you-by moving you to another room, putting you in a car, tying you up-probably intends to kill you (or worse). And you must understand in advance that your natural reaction to this situation-to freeze, to comply with instructions-will be the wrong one.

If someone puts a gun to your head and demands your purse or wallet, hand it over immediately and run. Don't worry about being shot in the back: If your attacker is going to shoot you for running, he was going to shoot you if you stayed in place, and at point-blank range. By running, you make yourself harder to kill. Any attempt to move you, even by a few feet-backing you off a sidewalk and into an alley, forcing you behind a row of bushes-is unacceptable and should mobilize all your physical and emotional resources.⁠

If you find yourself in a situation where a predator is trying to control you, the time for listening to instructions and attempting to remain calm has passed. It will get no easier to resist and escape after these first moments. The presence of weapons, the size or number of your attackers-these details are irrelevant. However bad the situation looks, it will only get worse. To hesitate is to put yourself at the mercy of a sociopath. You have no alternative but to explode into action, whatever the risk. Recognizing when this line has been crossed, and committing to escape at any cost, is more important than mastering physical techniques.

Herein lies a crucial distinction between traditional martial arts and realistic self-defense: Most martial artists train for a "fight." Opponents assume ready stances, just out of each other's range, and then practice various techniques or spar (engage in controlled fighting). This does not simulate real violence. It doesn't prepare you to respond effectively to a sudden attack, in which you have been hit before you even knew you were threatened, and it doesn't teach you to strike preemptively, without telegraphing your moves, once you have determined that an attack is imminent.

Whatever your physical skills, when you commit to using force against another person, your overriding goal is still to escape. Even if you are at home, in possession of a firearm, and well trained to use it, when confronted by an intruder your best defense is to get out of the house as quickly as possible. In such a circumstance, a gun is a means of ensuring that no one can block your exit.

Nothing good ever comes to people who allow themselves to be moved to a remote location at the mercy of a violent predator. The police call such places "secondary crime scenes." They are always better for the attacker and worse for his victim because they are more isolated than the first point of contact. And although your home may be the most familiar place on earth to you, the moment an intruder enters, it becomes the equivalent of a secondary crime scene. You should also expect that any criminal who breaks into your home when you're inside it has come prepared to murder you and your family. To naive readers, this may sound like an extraordinarily paranoid assumption. It isn't. Mere burglars generally make sure a house is empty before breaking in.⁠

If a window shatters in the middle of the night and someone comes through it, your life is on the line. There is nothing to talk about, no offer of cash or jewelry to muster, no demands worth listening to. You must do whatever it takes to escape.

One of the most common and disturbing features of home invasions is how the victims' concern for one another and desire to stay together is inevitably used against them. By exploiting these bonds, even a single attacker can immobilize an entire family. By merely holding a knife to the wife's throat, he can get the husband to submit to being tied up. Again, it is perfectly natural for victims in these circumstances to hope that if they just cooperate, their attacker will show them mercy. If you get nothing else from this article, engrave this iron law on your mind: The moment it is clear that an assailant wants more than your property (which must be assumed in any home invasion), you must escape.

What if your attacker has a knife to your child's throat and tells you that everything is going to be okay as long as you cooperate by lying face down on the floor? Don't do it. It would be better to flee the house-because as soon as you leave, he will know that the clock is ticking: Within moments, you will be at a neighbor's home summoning help. If this intruder is going to murder your child before fleeing himself, he was going to murder your child anyway-either before or after he killed you. And he was going to take his time doing it. Granted, it is almost impossible to imagine leaving one's child in such a circumstance-but if you can't leave, you must grab a weapon and press your own attack. Complying in the hope that a sociopath will keep his promise to you is always the wrong move.

Here is how the police look at it:

From a cop's point of view, citizens seem to keep making the same mistakes over and over, until all cases begin to sound alike.... The objective of a violent criminal is to control you, emotionally and physically. Everything he does-his threats and promises-is intended to terrify and control you. The more control you give to the violent criminal, even if you see it as temporary, the less likely you are to escape. For most crime victims, their temporary cooperation backfired into full control over them. Time works against the victim and for the criminal. The longer you stall, the more you talk, the deeper you sink.

(S. Strong. Strong on Defense. pp. 49-50).

True self-defense is based not on techniques but on principles. Yes, it is good to know how to deliver a palm strike or elbow to a person's head with real power (technique), but it is far more important to know when to unleash with whatever tools you have for the purpose of immediate escape (principle). You must install a trigger in your mind-to act explosively once a certain line has been crossed-and you must understand that your inclination will most likely be to freeze and acquiesce, in the hope of avoiding injury or death. Mental preparation is a matter of resolving, in advance, to burst past these inhibitions and escape immediately, or fight with everything you've got until escape is possible.

Certain scenarios are intrinsically confusing and should be discussed with your family in advance: What if a person dressed as a police officer comes to your door and asks to be let in? Unless you are absolutely certain that he is a cop-e.g. you can see that he arrived in a marked police car-you should explain that you have no way of knowing who he is and then call the police yourself. Thousands of crimes are committed each year by people impersonating cops. (Anyone can buy a uniform and a badge over the Internet.) Similarly, many home invasions begin with a criminal's acting like a person in distress: A woman or a teenager might come to your door reporting an accident or some other emergency. Again, the safe move is to keep your door locked and call the police.

Finally, you do not need to learn hundreds of techniques to become proficient in the physical aspects of self-defense. Rather, you should train a small number of skills nearly to the point of reflex. Although you cannot do this by simply reading books or watching videos. It is unpleasant to study the details of crime and violence-and for this reason many of us never do. I am convinced, however, that some planning and preparation can greatly reduce a person's risk. And though there are exceptions to every rule, I don't believe that there are important exceptions to the advice I have given here. May you never have occasion to find it useful.
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.







Another Bailout Scam From Bank Of America

One way you can tell that a bank is in trouble is that it suddenly starts buying full-page ads in newspapers across the country to tell us what great shape its in and what a fine job it's doing for our communities.

Such a PR push is now being made by Bank of America, which - despite its happy-face ads - is in a heap of hurt. How big of a heap? So big that it's trying to share the hurt with you and me.

In the recent Wall Street collapse, B of A took advantage of the crisis to bulk up its empire. Using $45 billion in bailout money from us taxpayers, the giant gobbled up two troubled financial powers, investment house Merrill Lynch and mortgage hustler Countrywide Financial. It is now choking on these mergers, as well as its own executive incompetence. Its credit rating has been downgraded, its stock price has plummeted, its CEO is desperately trying to raise cash (and save his job) by firing 36,000 employees, and it has infuriated its own customers by trying to impose a $5 monthly fee on debit card users.

Now, though, CEO Brian Moynihan has a dandy plan to lighten his load by dumping a big chunk of it on us taxpayers. He's trying to transfer a mess of bad investments now held by the Merrill Lynch subsidiary into B of A's consumer banking unit. Why? Because that unit has about a trillion dollars in customer deposits that are insured by Uncle Sam. So, if Merrill's sorry investments cause the banking unit to fail, the feds would be there to rescue it.

A banking expert has commented that, "There is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution. We should have fairly tight restrictions on that."

"Fairly tight?" Uh-uh! We should have totally tight restrictions - as in, "No, you can't do that." Why should we let these failed capitalists turn into corporate socialists every time they get in trouble?
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Leaving Iraq Is Not Enough
By Helen Thomas

The good news is President Barack Obama promised to bring the American troops home from Iraq by the end of the year. But he does not go far enough. What about Afghanistan? Thousands of American troops are serving in that primitive territory, where they are constantly targeted in that mountainous, impossible land.

Let's get out of both countries.

It is a most serious, unacceptable tragedy, the U.S. involvement in Iraq since 2003 and Afghanistan since 2001 - years of senseless killing and dying.

As Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote in his famous poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "Their's not to make reply/Their's not to reason why/Their's but to do and die."

Obama followed former President George W. Bush's "stay the course" approach after Bush initiated an invasion into Iraq, with no honest explanation of the reason for storming Baghdad. Why should Americans have to continue to die for lies?

Where are the American protesters against "no-win" wars? The death of one soldier in these forsaken wars is a deep tragedy. Obama had a chance to get out of both conflicts when he first took the presidential oath of office. Granted, it would have taken courage, but it also would have given the country a great sense of relief to move on. Instead, Obama failed to act at the moment.

No one rejected President Dwight D. Eisenhower's determination to pull out of Korea as soon as he took over the Oval Office. No one called President Ronald Reagan a coward when he pulled fleets out of Lebanon after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. It was the better part of valor.

The lives lost are everything. But the wars have also caused a daily drain of billions from the U.S. Treasury. Can we really afford to continue spending millions of dollars per day on wars when so many Americans are losing their homes and struggling to put food on the table and pay medical bills?

In another development, the U.S. has acted shamefully again against the Palestinians.

Obama opposed granting full membership of Palestine into UNESCO. Palestine won full membership in the organization, and Obama plans to call off all funding to the global educational, social and cultural agency.

How long does the President of the United States plan to march to the Tel Aviv drummer? Does the U.S. always have to take Israel's orders, especially during an election year? Does pro-Israeli money and political support trump the American sense of humanity and values? How can America be against freedom for the Palestinians, and turn a blind eye as Israel continues to blatantly build illegal settlements?

The U.S. representative in Paris, at the time of the UNESCO vote to allow Palestine full membership, told the gathering the move was "not helpful." For whom? Has the U.S. lost its goal to help countries join the community of nations?

Now The Washington Post reports that in Kabul there is a detention facility to hold terrorist suspects, called Department 124, which is known for torturing prisoners. According to the Post, one of the detainees called the notorious prison "hell." The United Nations has disclosed what it calls systematic torture at the prison.

Other countries have halted the policy of handing over the terrorist suspects to Afghan custody because of the practice of torture on prisoners, but not the U.S.

Haven't we learned anything from the revelations of water boarding and other horrors at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the infamous prison near Baghdad - the place where torture of so called terrorists was routine practice, with the approval of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Vice President Dick Cheney?

Is it possible for us to get out of these wars with our honor intact?

How long can we continue this "man's inhumanity to man" without adhering to our dedication to the judicial process? How long is Obama going to shame us with his self-serving political moves?

Gaza is an open prison. The U.S. has threatened to block every step for the liberation of the Palestinian people. And now, it appears we are standing by as prisoners are being tortured in Kabul. What has the U.S. become?
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Shame On US
Over 140,500 In Prison For Life
By James Donahue

Those ugly "made-up" wars on drugs and against terror and the mandatory minimum sentencing laws are taking an appalling toll on American citizens. The most recent count in 2009 shows 140,610 people were sentenced to live the rest of their natural lives behind bars.

This means that more prisoners are serving life terms in the United States than ever before in the nation’s history. This is according to a report by the Sentencing Project, a group calling for the elimination of life sentences without parole.

This group has tracked an increase in life sentences since 1984, when the number of inmates serving life terms was just 34,000.

Americans like to say they live in the "land of the free," but in reality, the United States now has the highest incarceration record, per capita, in the world. By the end of 2009 there were 743 adults under some form of imprisonment or parole per 100,000 people.

According to the U. S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 2,292,133 adults being incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons and county jails as of the end of 2009. The statistics for 2010 are not yet made available.

Another 4,933,667 adults were on probation or parole. This added up to 7,225,800 adults that were under some form of correctional supervision. In addition another 86,927 juveniles were under detention.

The horrible statistics show that the United States now houses a quarter of all prisoners in the world, and more inmates than the top 35 European countries combined.

Of course, the minorities are among those most frequently sentenced to time behind bars. The statistics show one of every three black men under some form of incarceration during their lives.

The execution of prisoners for so-called capitol offenses also falls among the highest number in the world. Since 1978 there have been 1,273 executions, with another 3,251 prisoners still waiting for execution. Texas has led the nation in executions, with 476 prisoners having been put to death in that state alone during that period, statistics show.

These statistics do not include the multitudes of traffic offenses, shop lifting cases and other misdemeanor charges brought against citizens. We suspect that if we throw these numbers into the mill, most people in the country are touched in some way by police, the courts and the law sometime during their lifetime.

Anyone who has ever gone through the agony of standing before a judge on even a speeding ticket or misdemeanor charge has a keen understanding of the severity of the American court system. Since 911 and the introduction of the Patriot Acts I and II, the old concepts of innocence until proven guilty and due process have been all but lost in our court systems.

It has been my observation as a working court reporter that those with the means of hiring high-priced, smooth-talking, theatrical performers for lawyers have the best chance of convincing a jury of their innocence. The poor must ride the system which usually means accepting a plea bargain between court-appointed lawyers and prosecutors, and then bearing the wrath of a corrupt court.

The courts, the lawyers and the police have all been corrupted by greed. They are a collective system of capture, hold and punish in a way that pays handsomely for their existence. Thus small-town judges that are drawing salaries of $100,000 to $200,000 a year, work with prosecutors receiving up to $80,000 to $100,000, and police officers receiving from $30,000 to $40,000 a year to feather their own nests.

There is an attitude among members of the law enforcement community that the arrested person is guilty until proven innocent. They are treated like criminals, manacled at the time of the arrest, confined to crude jail cells, and paraded before judges, lawyers and onlookers during court appearances wearing gaudy orange colored prison garb. It is all designed to humiliate and embarrass the accused to a point where he/she will do anything to escape torment; even going to the point of accepting a plea agreement. It does not matter if they may be innocent of any wrongdoing. Everybody gets treated the same; like dogs.

Knowing how the system works, I believe many innocent people are locked behind bars, many of them facing a lifetime of confinement and some looking at capital punishment for crimes not committed. I recently watched a judge sentence a man with a good job, a wife and children to prison because he went hunting with friends. It seems that ten years earlier this man was convicted on a plea agreement on a felony charge and his sentence included a lifetime without owning and/or using firearms. He was caught when the car he was riding in had a flat tire and a police officer stopped to run a check on the vehicle's occupants. A shotgun he owned was in the car.

The harsh new laws, many of them stemming from "get tough on crime" campaigns, have had their effect on the prison system. The number of prisoners facing life sentences has doubled since 1992, and reached four times the level a decade prior to that, statistics show.

Ironically, the statistics also show that levels of violent crimes have dropped by a third in the last decade. But supporters of tough sentencing laws claim this is proof that prison works.

Sentencing Project notes that the politicians are ignoring real crime trends and have stripped important discretionary powers from the judges. The report notes California’s "three strikes and you're out" law is among the reasons for the jump in life sentences. Other states also have adopted similar sentencing guidelines.

Under the three-strikes law, a third felony conviction, no matter how minor, can mean a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

In six states, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania and South Dakota, a life sentence means just what it says. Felons go to prison and stay there until they die. There is no hope of parole.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.







The Drone Mentality
By Glenn Greenwald

In a New York Times Op-Ed yesterday, international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith describes a meeting he had in Pakistan with residents from the Afghan-Pakistani border region that has been relentlessly bombed by American drones; if I had one political wish this week, it would be that everyone who supports (or acquiesces to) President Obama's wildly accelerated drone attacks would read this:

The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region. Twenty men came to air their views; some brought their young sons along to experience this rare interaction with Americans. In all, 60 villagers made the journey. . . .

On the night before the meeting, we had a dinner, to break the ice. During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.

The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man's speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them. . . .

On Monday, [Tariq] was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile.

My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory - as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan's sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon's bombing of Cambodia in 1970.

But now, the issue has suddenly become very real and personal. Tariq was a good kid, and courageous. My warm hand recently touched his in friendship; yet, within three days, his would be cold in death, the rigor mortis inflicted by my government.

And Tariq's extended family, so recently hoping to be our allies for peace, has now been ripped apart by an American missile - most likely making any effort we make at reconciliation futile.

This tragedy repeats itself over and over. After I linked to this Op-Ed yesterday on Twitter - by writing that "every American who cheers for drone strikes should confront the victims of their aggression" - I was predictably deluged with responses justifying Obama's drone attacks on the ground that they are necessary to kill The Terrorists. Reading the responses, I could clearly discern the mentality driving them: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, nor have I ever seen any evidence about them, but I am sure they are Terrorists. That is the drone mentality in both senses of the word; it's that combination of pure ignorance and blind faith in government authorities that you will inevitably hear from anyone defending President Obama's militarism. As Jonathan Schwarz observed after the U.S. unveiled the dastardly Iranian plot to hire a failed used car salesman to kill America's close friend, the Saudi Ambassador: "I'd bet the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. has closer 'ties' to Al Qaeda than 90% of the people we've killed with drones."

As it turns out, it isn't only the President's drone-cheering supporters who have no idea who is being killed by the program they support; neither does the CIA itself. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday described internal dissension in the administration to Obama's broad standards for when drone strikes are permitted, and noted that the "bulk" of the drone attacks - the bulk of them - "target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known." As Spencer Ackerman put it: "The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups"; moreover, the administration refuses to describe what it even means by being "associated" with a Terrorist group (indeed, it steadfastly refuses to tell citizens anything about the legal principles governing its covert drone wars).

Of course, nobody inside the U.S. Government is objecting on the ground that it is wrong to blow people up without having any knowledge of who they are and without any evidence they have done anything wrong. Rather, the internal dissent is grounded in the concern that these drone attacks undermine U.S. objectives by increasing anti-American sentiment in the region (there's that primitive, inscrutable Muslim culture rearing its head again: they strangely seem to get very angry when foreign governments send sky robots over their countries and blow up their neighbors, teenagers and children). But whatever else is true, huge numbers of Americans - Democrats and Republicans alike - defend Obama's massive escalation of drone attacks on the ground that he's killing Terrorists even though they - and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Obama himself - usually don't even know whose lives they're snuffing out. Remember, though: we have to kill The Muslim Terrorists because they have no regard for human life.

This is why it's so imperative to do everything possible to shine a light on the victims of President Obama's aggression in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere: ignoring the victims, rendering them invisible, is a crucial prerequisite to sustaining propaganda and maintaining support for this militarism (that's the same reason John Brennan lied - yet again - by assuring Americans that there are no innocent victims of drone attacks). Many people want to hear nothing about these victims - like Tariq - because they don't want to accept that the leader for whom they cheer and the drone attacks they support are regularly ending the lives of large numbers of innocent people, including children. They believe the fairy tale that the U.S. is only killing Terrorists and "militants" because they want to believe it (at this point, the word "militant" has no real definition other than: he or she who dies when a missile shot by a U.S. drone detonates). It's a self-serving, self-protective form of self-delusion, and the more we hear about the dead teeangers left in the wake of this violence, the more difficult it is to maintain that delusion. That's precisely why we hear so little about it.

Over the last week, I had the genuine privilege of spending substantial amounts of time with participants in the truly inspiring Occupy movement around the country, including visiting Occupy Oakland on Thursday. This same dynamic is at play there. Many sneer at the protest encampments because they include the homeless, the unstable, the "dirty," the jobless, and those who are otherwise downtrodden, dispossessed and unable to live decent lives. Much of that sneering is due to the desire that these people remain hidden from sight, invisible, so that we can avoid facing the reality of what our society has produced on a large scale (having Dirty, Disobedient People be part of a movement vaguely associated with liberalism also harms the ability of progressive media stars to maintain their access to the Halls of Seriousness). But they are and should be part of that movement precisely because the disappearance of the middle class and booming wealth and income inequality produces exactly this type of human suffering. There are those who love to parade around as supporters of the marginalized and poor who prefer that they remain silent and invisible - distant abstractions - because being viscerally confronted with their human realness is unpleasant and uncomfortable. That's exactly why victims of President Obama's relentless drone attacks remain invisible and many prefer to keep it that way - it's best not to confront the reality of the misery that one's policies wreak - and it's exactly why everything should be done to prevent that disappearing from happening.

*****

Pratap Chatterjee of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism attended the meeting in Islamabad which Smith describes in that Op-Ed and wrote in detail about it. Chatterjee posted video of Tariq at that meeting - who is seen on the video, posted below, in the dark shirt and yellow hat just days before his death-by-American-drone - and wrote the following:

Among the group was Tariq Aziz, a quiet 16-year-old, who had come after he received a phone call from a lawyer in Islamabad offering him an opportunity to learn basic photography to help document these strikes. . . .

Tariq was proud to be part of this meeting. About 18 months earlier, in April 2010, his cousin Aswar Ullah was killed by a missile fired from a drone as he rode a motorcycle near Norak. . . .

What none of us could have imagined was that 72 hours later, this football-loving teenager would himself be killed by a CIA drone, along with his 12-year-old cousin Waheed Khan. . . .

Tariq and Waheed's death brought the total number of children killed in drone strikes to 175, according to the Bureau's own findings. As part of an ongoing investigation, the Bureau has documented 306 strikes from remotely piloted drones that have killed between 2,359 and 2,959 people. Over 85% of them have been launched by the administration of President Barack Obama. Tariq came from a poor community on the border with Afghanistan. He was the youngest of seven children. His father, Mumtaz Khan, was away working in the United Arab Emirates as a driver to support his family. Waheed's family was equally poor - the 12-year-old worked in a local shop for a salary of just Rs 2000 a month (roughly £15 or $23)

As I've noted before, the statistical methodology used by the Bureau to count innocent victims is the most conservative possible, meaning the numbers are almost certainly much higher. The only thing unusual about Tariq is that his death is receiving substantial attention because of the coincidence that he met with Westerners 72 hours before his life was ended. Most Tariqs simply die without anyone in the country responsible being bothered with hearing about it.
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.








Public Pressure Is Slowly Ending Afghanistan War
By David Swanson

Feints and baby steps in the direction of eventually ending a massive crime are not enough. Hoping to meet a distant deadline for ending a war that cannot be justified for a single day is not enough. A new misunderstanding should not be piled on top of other fictional accomplishments (the closing of Guantanamo, the complete withdrawal from Iraq, universal health coverage, etc.). But if we don't understand that we are beginning to move things in the right direction many among us will lose heart and others will miscalculate.

This is what the Associated Press had to say on Thursday morning as we prepared to march on the White House and the Treasury to demand a serious effort from Obama in France to bring the G20 (and the Congress) to back a financial transaction tax, and as planning continued to protest the ever-less-popular Obama's expected authorization of a disastrous tar sands pipeline:

"A senior U.S. official says the Obama administration is considering shifting the U.S. military role in Afghanistan from primarily combat to mainly advisory and training duties as early as next year. If this approach is adopted it would mean a reduction in American combat duties in Afghanistan sooner than the administration had planned. But it would not mean an early end to the war. The U.S. and its NATO partners agreed a year ago that coalition forces would complete their combat mission by the end of 2014. Advising and training Afghan forces would gradually become a more dominant part of the mission, particularly after the U.S. completes the withdrawal of 33,000 'surge' troops by September 2012. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made."
The Wall Street Journal ran into some similar criminal but respectable leakers of "national security" information, who will no doubt be joining Bradley Manning this afternoon:

"The Obama administration is exploring a shift in the military's mission in Afghanistan to an advisory role as soon as next year, senior officials told The Wall Street Journal, a move that would scale back U.S. combat duties well ahead of their scheduled conclusion at the end of 2014. Such a move would have broad implications for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. It could begin a phase-out of the current troop-intensive approach, which focuses on protecting the Afghan population, in favor of a greater focus on targeted counterterrorism operations, as well as training the Afghan military. A transition to a training mission could also allow for a faster drawdown of U.S. forces in the country, though officials said discussions about troop levels have yet to move forward. The revised approach has been discussed in recent high-level meetings involving top defense and administration officials, according to people involved in the deliberations. No decisions have been made, officials said, and policy makers could consider other options that would adjust the mission in other ways, officials said. Officials said agreement on a formal shift to an advisory role could come as early as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in May-in the heat of the U.S. presidential election campaign. Some officials have drawn comparisons to President Barack Obama's 2009 decision to switch to an 'advise and assist' role in Iraq and to declare a formal end to U.S. combat operations there. In Iraq, after mid-2009, troops were largely confined to their bases. Security conditions in Afghanistan are different, however, and will likely require U.S. troops, particularly Special Operations forces, to continue to accompany their Afghan counterparts into battle after the U.S. takes an advisory role. Defense officials said the U.S. still would be directly involved in many combat operations, though increasingly with Afghan forces in the lead."
On the radio Thursday morning I heard another (or one of the same) "officials" explain that in "places like Kabul and Helmand Province" the U.S. military had been unable to identify anyone who should be a "target."

That's never stopped them from kicking in doors before.

The first point to understand here is that, however real this change turns out to be, the explanations for it are sheer hogwash. This war has been a disaster on its own terms for over a decade now. There's been talk of shifting to a "training" role for most of the past decade. It was possible to discover last month or last year or several years ago that some provinces were more violent than others, that the occupation was fueling the violence and proving counter-productive, and that pay-offs to the Taliban meant U.S. dollars were funding both sides of a continuing catastrophe. U.S. troops could have all been locked up in their bases until flown home at any point in the past decade. Why leak this proposal now?

It's not because Afghans are fighting back. That's not new. It's not because the financial cost is stratospheric. That's not new, and it funds important presidential campaign "contributors." It's not because the Pentagon and NATO no longer want a permanent presence and weapons bases in Afghanistan, not to mention a pipeline. All of that, as far as we know, hasn't changed or been abandoned. What has changed is that people in the United States, and in Europe as well, are in the streets, the squares, and the parks. On a daily basis marches through DC streets are shouting "How do you fix the deficit? End the wars, tax the rich!" The media coverage has changed. If the polling on support for the Afghanistan war continues its current downward trend, before long this war will be as unpopular as Congress. But it is the passion and the action that has changed in this moment, not the polling.

Congress is also coming face-to-face with the possibility of being forced into some minor cuts to the world's largest military budget. Weapons makers are extremely serious about imposing any such cuts on troops rather than on our brave weapons. This brings us to the danger of de-escalations. If large U.S. troop deployments to hot occupations are scaled back, but U.S. bases continue to be built around the world, mercenaries continue to be hired, missile "defense" stations continue to be deployed, drones continue to slaughter without "risk to [U.S.] human life," our success will be far from complete. Transforming war is not the same as ending it. Robotic warfare will not reduce the risk of long-term blowback, will not eliminate punishing economic costs and environmental damage, will not lessen the pressure on our civil liberties at home, and will not mean an end to the direct immoral and illegal killing of members of the non-U.S. 95% of humanity.

The proper course at this moment is not to declare an end to our activism, and certainly not to utterly destroy our activism by pledging our allegiance to a politician or a political party. What we must do now is renew our public pressure, organizing, educating, and occupying, invigorated by the fact that the White House itself is unable to hide the fact that we are becoming a force able to push back against the war machine. This is a time, just as November 2008 should have been, to redouble our investment in mobilizing nonviolent pressure for peace and justice.

The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City has just been amended to include a powerful denunciation of wars and military spending. We must continue to connect foreign and domestic issues, continue to build awareness that there is only one pot of money being misspent on militarism instead of on human needs, and continue to put our bodies in the way.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Jobless And Clueless
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

When Americans who are the most victimized by our cruel economy still believe in something that is demonstrably no longer true, they are deeply delusional. They desperately want to believe in something once great about American society. The reality is that upward economic mobility has been destroyed, replaced by widely observable downward mobility. Some of the mostly younger jobless that have embraced the Occupy Wall Street and related Occupy efforts know the truth.

Consider the results of a new survey of unemployed adults this month:

"More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs."

"More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless."

"Threats of foreclosure or eviction were reported by a fifth of the unemployed, and one in eight said that they had moved in with relatives or friends."

"More than half said that they lacked health insurance."

"A fifth said that they had received food from a nonprofit organization."

"Nearly two-thirds said they would probably not have enough money to live comfortably during retirement. More than half said that they had taken money out of savings or retirement accounts."

"7 in 10 of those receiving unemployment benefits said that they feared their benefits would run out before they could find new jobs."

So far, all those results paint an unsurprising profile of unemployed, suffering Americans.

Now, consider the result that blew my mind, the reason I am writing this, because more people need to understand something critical about delusional thinking that ultimately makes getting deep, sorely needed reforms of our government and political system extremely difficult. Without that our economy will stay awful, unfair, promoting even more economic inequality.

"Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they still believed it was possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich - only a little lower than the three-quarters of all Americans" not in the unemployed category who held the same view and were surveyed at the same time. In fact, considerable research in recent years has consistently found that upward mobility in the US is no longer a hallmark of the society. Indeed, there is more upward mobility in Canada and a number of European countries than in the US. Moreover, the jobless more than most should be able to comprehend the ugly reality that downward economic mobility is now a large part of American society.

No surprise that the cover story on the new Time magazine is What Ever Happened To Upward Mobility? The basic theme of the article is that the US is no longer an "opportunity society." In other words, our country is no longer a place where everyone, if he or she works hard enough, can get ahead. But despite this reality, conservatives and Republicans love to publicly proclaim that the US still offers everyone upward economic mobility.

Those two-thirds of the unemployed will probably pay a steep price for their false optimism about their country. They are likely to fall prey to the political propaganda of either Democrats or Republicans. If they are delusional about the American Dream, are they also delusional about other things that may stand in the way of them getting a job? Rather than feel ashamed or embarrassed about being jobless they should get some feedback from others so they can fix their thinking.

As Ezra Klein noted: "Americans are in the odd position of fervently believing in upward mobility while not actually having very much of it. Europeans, conversely, don't really believe in economic mobility but have plenty of it."

Those jobless with this delusional thinking, refusing to think critically, judge the facts and come to a hurtful conclusion, are not the ones I expect to be participating in or supporting the Occupy Wall Street protesters, about three-quarters of whom now disapprove of Mr. Obama's performance as president. Though the Occupy protesters speak of the rich 1 percent, that is a big underestimate. As Anne Applebaum correctly noted "Despite all the loud talk of the '1 per cent' of Americans who, according to a recent study, receive about 17 per cent of the income, a percentage which has more than doubled since 1979, the existence of a very small group of very rich people has never bothered Americans. But the fact that some 20 per cent of Americans now receive some 53 per cent of the income is devastating." Becoming part of even that larger group of rich Americans is now more difficult than ever.

Do unemployed have the right kind of jobs to aspire to the top one percent of income earners? Consider the jobs that account for the top one percent; the top four categories account for nearly 70 percent: corporate and business management not in the financial sector, medical, financial industry executives, and lawyers. This also shows how difficult it is to somehow negatively impact the one percent by protests by the Occupy movement.

In our delusional democracy with its delusional prosperity thinking that hard work, great ideas and superior performance will get you into the top one percent is self-delusion, even getting into the top 20 percent is a long shot. The economic system is too rigged against economic justice. Sure, every once in awhile someone starting out poor or average becomes superrich, but that is like winning a super lottery. Best to stop believing in the rags-to-riches myth, unless the system is reformed.

A new report by a German foundation examined the nation members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, essentially the world's democracies. The US ranked terribly low for poverty and poverty prevention as well as income inequality. Only Chile, Mexico and Turkey were ranked lower than the US. What a story.

The US two-party plutocracy has allowed the rich and powerful to buy the political system. Except for the rich, the results are dreadful. This is why 89 percent do not trust that government will do the right thing. The best solution is what you find at the getmoneyout.com website, a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.








Here Comes The Sun
By Paul Krugman

For decades the story of technology has been dominated, in the popular mind and to a large extent in reality, by computing and the things you can do with it. Moore's Law - in which the price of computing power falls roughly 50 percent every 18 months - has powered an ever-expanding range of applications, from faxes to Facebook.

Our mastery of the material world, on the other hand, has advanced much more slowly. The sources of energy, the way we move stuff around, are much the same as they were a generation ago.

But that may be about to change. We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That's right, solar power.

If that surprises you, if you still think of solar power as some kind of hippie fantasy, blame our fossilized political system, in which fossil fuel producers have both powerful political allies and a powerful propaganda machine that denigrates alternatives.

Speaking of propaganda: Before I get to solar, let's talk briefly about hydraulic fracturing, a k a fracking.

Fracking - injecting high-pressure fluid into rocks deep underground, inducing the release of fossil fuels - is an impressive technology. But it's also a technology that imposes large costs on the public. We know that it produces toxic (and radioactive) wastewater that contaminates drinking water; there is reason to suspect, despite industry denials, that it also contaminates groundwater; and the heavy trucking required for fracking inflicts major damage on roads.

Economics 101 tells us that an industry imposing large costs on third parties should be required to "internalize" those costs - that is, to pay for the damage it inflicts, treating that damage as a cost of production. Fracking might still be worth doing given those costs. But no industry should be held harmless from its impacts on the environment and the nation's infrastructure.

Yet what the industry and its defenders demand is, of course, precisely that it be let off the hook for the damage it causes. Why? Because we need that energy! For example, the industry-backed organization energyfromshale.org declares that "there are only two sides in the debate: those who want our oil and natural resources developed in a safe and responsible way; and those who don't want our oil and natural gas resources developed at all."

So it's worth pointing out that special treatment for fracking makes a mockery of free-market principles. Pro-fracking politicians claim to be against subsidies, yet letting an industry impose costs without paying compensation is in effect a huge subsidy. They say they oppose having the government "pick winners," yet they demand special treatment for this industry precisely because they claim it will be a winner.

And now for something completely different: the success story you haven't heard about.

These days, mention solar power and you'll probably hear cries of "Solyndra!" Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste - although claims of a major scandal are nonsense - and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.

But Solyndra's failure was actually caused by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn't keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, "there's now frequent talk of a ‘Moore's law' in solar energy," with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues - and if anything it seems to be accelerating - we're just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it's likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?

Let's face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers' money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar.

So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true. Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we're willing to let it in.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country . . . we're dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . . it is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world."
~~~ Edward Bernays









Lazy Ouzo-Swilling, Olive-Pit Spitting Greeks Or, How Goldman Sacked Greece
By Greg Palast

Here's what we're told: Greece

Greece's economy blew apart because a bunch of olive-spitting, ouzo-guzzling, lazy-ass Greeks refuse to put in a full day's work, retire while they're still teenagers, pocket pensions fit for a pasha; and they've gone on a social-services spending spree using borrowed money. Now that the bill has come due and the Greeks have to pay with higher taxes and cuts in their big fat welfare state, they run riot, screaming in the streets, busting windows and burning banks.

I don't buy it. I don't buy it because of the document in my hand marked, "RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION."

I'll cut to the indictment: Greece is a crime scene. The people are victims of a fraud, a scam, a hustle and a flim-flam. And--cover the children's ears when I say this--a bank named Goldman Sachs is holding the smoking gun.

In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up 2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece.

Goldman took a huge loss on the trade.

Is Goldman that stupid?

Goldman is stupid-like a fox. The deal was a con, with Goldman making up a phony-baloney exchange rate for the transaction. Why?

Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then. Their game: to conceal a massive budget deficit. Goldman's fake loss was the Greek government's fake gain.

Goldman would get repayment of its "loss" from the government at loan-shark rates.

The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece's right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP.

Cool. Fraudulent but cool.

But flim-flam isn't cheap these days: On top of murderous interest payments, Goldman charged the Greeks over a quarter billion dollars in fees.

When the new Socialist government of George Papandreou came into office, they opened up the books and Goldman's bats flew out. Investors' went berserk, demanding monster interest rates to lend more money to roll over this debt.

Greece's panicked bondholders rushed to buy insurance against the nation going bankrupt. The price of the bond-bust insurance, called a credit default swap (or CDS), also shot through the roof. Who made a big pile selling the CDS insurance? Goldman.

And those rotting bags of CDS's sold by Goldman and others? Didn't they know they were handing their customers gold-painted turds?

That's Goldman's specialty. In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS's and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a "net short" position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial "products" would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their "net short" scam.

But, instead of cuffing Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed. Blamed and soaked for the cost of it. The "spread" on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece's corrupted debt) has now risen to - get ready for this--$14,000 per family per year.

Euro-nation, the secret Geithner memo, and the Ecuador connection

Why did the Greek government throw its nation's fate into Goldman's greasy hands? What the heck was in the "RESTRICTED" document? And why did I have to take it to Geneva, to throw it down in front of the Director-General of the WTO for authentication, a creepy French banker I otherwise wouldn't bother to spit on, and then tear off to Quito to share it with the grateful President of Ecuador?

To give you all the answers would require me to write a book. I have: Vultures' Picnic--in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters. It's really quite important to me that you read it, that you get it now. That's a funny statement, I suppose, from an author. But if you've been reading my stories in The Guardian or watching my reports on BBC Newsnight, you've gotten the facts; but I really want to let you inside the investigations, to cross the continents with me and follow down the leads so that you can get a full picture of The Beasts. The Beasts and their trophy wives, intelligence agency go-fers, political concubines and bone-breakers. And besides, it's enormous fun when it's not scary as sh*t.
(c) 2011 Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigations for BBC TV and Democracy Now! can be seen by subscribing to Palast's reports at.




.




Keystone XL
Ring Around the Rose Garden
By Amy Goodman

More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House. They succeeded, just weeks after 1,253 people were arrested in a series of protests at the same spot. These thousands, as well as those arrested, were unified in their opposition to the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. A broad, international coalition against the pipeline has formed since President Barack Obama took office, and now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.

Bill McKibben, founder of the global movement against climate change 350.org, told me: "This has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he's been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008."

The president, until recently, simply hid behind the legal argument that, as the pipeline was coming from Canada, the proper forum for the decision fell with the U.S. Department of State and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That was until a key Clinton insider was exposed as a lobbyist for the company trying to build Keystone XL, TransCanada. The environmental group Friends of the Earth has exposed a series of connections between the Clinton political machine and Keystone XL. Paul Elliott is TransCanada's top lobbyist in Washington on the pipeline. He was a high-level campaign staffer on Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House in 2008, and worked as well on Bill Clinton's campaign in 1996 and Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000.

Friends of the Earth (FOE) received emails following a Freedom of Information Act request, documenting exchanges in 2010 between Elliott and Marja Verloop, whom FOE describes as a "member of the senior diplomatic staff at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa." Verloop in one email cheers Elliott for obtaining the buy-in on Keystone XL from conservative Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, writing: "Go Paul! Baucus support holds clout."

Another person arrested at the White House during the August-September protests was Canadian author Naomi Klein. Of the cozy email exchange, she said, "The response of the State Department was, 'Well, we meet with environmentalists, too.' But just imagine them writing an email to Bill McKibben: when he says, 'We got more than 1,200 people arrested,' and they would write back, 'Go Bill!'? The day that happens, I'll stop worrying." Klein went on to explain the environmental impact of the project: "Tar sands oil emits three times as much greenhouse gases as a regular barrel of Canadian crude, because, of course, it is in solid form. So, you have to use all of this energy to get it out and to liquefy it."

Adding to the controversy, The New York Times revealed that the State Department chose as an outside group to run the environmental impact study of Keystone XL, a company called Cardno Entrix. It turns out Cardno Entrix listed as one of its major clients none other than TransCanada. The environmental impacts are potentially extreme, with, first, the potential for a catastrophic leak of the toxic tar sands extract, and, secondly but no less significant, the potential long-term impacts on the global climate. The Obama campaign also drew fire for hiring Broderick Johnson, a lobbyist who formerly represented TransCanada.

Nebraska's Republican governor, Dave Heineman, called a special session of the state legislature, beginning Nov. 1, to discuss the pipeline. After a week of deliberation, several bills are being reviewed, including LB1, the Major Oil Pipeline Siting Act, which would require stringent review of any pipeline passing through Nebraska, seriously slowing the Keystone XL approval process. The movement in Nebraska is broad-based, from environmentalists to ranchers to Native Americans.

The State Department inspector general is investigating whether all federal laws and regulations were followed in the permitting process, and President Obama now says he will make the final decision. He has powerful corporations pushing for the pipeline, but a ring of people he needs for re-election outside his window. As Bill McKibben said of the human chain at the White House: "Every banner that people carried yesterday had quotes from that wonderful rhetoric of that election: 'Time to end the tyranny of oil,' 'In my administration, the rise of the oceans will begin to slow.' We're looking for some kind of glimmer, some kind of echo, of that Barack Obama to re-emerge."
(c) 2011 Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback.





The Dead Letter Office...





Joe gives the corpo-rat salute

Heil Obama,

Dear Unterfuhrer Walsh,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your total defense of our banking pals against the people, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Police Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross, first class, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 11-24-2011. We salute you Herr Walsh, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama






Block The Vote
Ohio GOP Bars Early Voting to Suppress Pro-Labor Turnout
By John Nichols

TOLEDO - When Mitt Romney's dad was a candidate for president back in the 1960s, Republicans competed on the strength of their personalities and ideas.

It was the same when Newt Gingrich was an up-and-coming Republican leader in the 1980s and the early 1990s.

But no more?

Republicans have a new strategy for competing in tight elections.

They cheat.

In Ohio this fall, the party faces a serious challenge. Republican Governor John Kasich, a GOP "star" for the better part of three decades, has staked his political fortunes on an attempt to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees while undermining the ability of their unions to function.

The move has proven to be massively unpopular. More than 1.3 million Ohioans signed petitions that forced a referendum on whether to implement the anti-labor law. Polls show that Ohioans are ready to do just that when they weigh in on referendum Issue 2.

But Ohio's Republican secretary of state is trying to make it a whole lot harder for Ohioans to cast those votes.

On Friday, across Ohio, county boards of elections shut down early voting for next Tuesday's election. They did so on orders from Secretary of State Jon Husted. A Republican stalwart.

Husted served as the party's legislative point man (rising to the rank of Ohio House Speaker), co-chaired GOP campaigns (including that of 2008 presidential candidate John McCain) and has been closely tied to national conservative groups working on issues such as school choice and privatization. While serving in the legislature, Husted was allied with the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which has been promoting Voter ID laws and other rule changes designed to suppress turnout.

Husted claimed a hastily passed and deliberately vague new state law, which took effect just last week, prohibits early voting in the three days before the election. That's a dramatic change from traditional practice in Ohio, where early voting on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before high-profile elections has been allowed for years-and has permitted tens of thousands of citizens to participate in the process.

The law in question, Ohio House Bill 224, was written primarily to deal with military ballots. Yet, Husted is interpreting it as a bar on early voting. State Representative Kathleen Clyde, a Democrat who represents Kent, says Hustad is essentially creating his own rules.

"When you take out major chunks" of the legislation, as Husted has, explains Clyde, "the bill is now unreadable and incomprehensible."

But the confusion has worked for Husted and the GOP. County election officials have, at his behest, shut down early voting across Ohio.

That's caused protests across Ohio. In Toledo, crowds showed up outside the offices of the Lucas County Board of Elections, which had scheduled business hours for Saturday and Sunday but canceled them to comply with Husted's order.

"It's un-American and undemocratic to close the polls the weekend before the vote," said the Rev. Willie Perryman, pastor of Toledo's Jerusalem Baptist Church. "The real reason is they want to suppress the vote."

"For me, the voting booth is the one place where the rich man and the poor man stand as equals," Larry Friedman, the president of a Toledo cleaning firm who showed up to protest the closing down of early voting.company, explained to reporters.

There was no question that qualified voters wanted to cast their ballots early-either because they would be away on election day or because they wanted to avoid lines. Newspapers, radio and television stations across the state reported on voters who came to local elections offices Saturday and Sunday, only to find doors that have historically been open on the eve of a major election to be locked.

In the last off-year election, 2009, the Toledo area saw 1,814 early votes, Lucas County Elections Board executive director Ben Roberts told the Toledo Blade.

In 2010, the number rose to 5,551.

This year, before Husted shut down the early voting, 5,602 ballots had been cast. Perryman and others who were protesting believe that thousands more would have been cast Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

So why erect a barrier to thousands of voters in one county, and to tens of thousands or more statewide?

As with moves made by Republican governors and legislators not just in Ohio but across the country to develop overly strict Voter ID laws, to limit same-day registration and to cut back on early voting, the point is to depress turnout, especially in working-class communities such as Toledo.

The barriers don't just make it harder to vote; they reduce enthusiasm in communities that are trying to increase turnout.

"As you get closer to [election day] the excitement grows and therefore we're going to miss the moment with the early vote," explained the Rev. Cedric Brock of the Mount Nebo Church in Toledo, who told local reporters that the shuttering of the polls over the weekend was "un-American" and "un-democratic." "Ohio being the battleground state for the country for the 2012 Presidential race, we feel this is a tag to slow that momentum down," said Rev. Block.

The pastor's point is well taken.

Opposition to Governor Kasich's anti-labor law appears to be so intense that turnout will be strong Tuesday-and if polls are correct, the governor will be dealt a setback by the people.

But allowing assaults on democracy in an off-year election is a dangerous game. It sets a precedent for the presidential election year, when the gaming of the system could well tip the balance in battleground states.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








A Patrol In Enemy Territory - Wall Street
By Tom Engelhardt

It was a beautiful, sunlit fall morning when the patrol, many in camouflage jackets, no more than 40 of them in all, headed directly into enemy territory. Their ranks included one sailor in uniform, three women, and a small child named Viva in a stroller. Except for Viva, all of them were vets, a few from the Vietnam era but most from our more recent wars.

As they headed for Wall Street, several carried signs that said, "I am still serving my country," and one read, "How is the war economy working for you?" Many wore Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirts under their camo jackets, and there was one other thing that made this demonstration unlike any seen in these last Occupy Wall Street weeks: there wasn't a police officer, police car, or barricade in sight. As they headed out across a well-trafficked street, not a cop was there to yell at them to get back on the curb.

In the wake of the wounding of Scott Olsen in the police assault on Occupy Oakland last week, that's what it means to be a veteran marching on Zuccotti Park. Scott Kimbell (Iraq, 2005-2006), who led the patrol, later told me: "Cops are in a difficult position with vets. Some of them were in the military and are sympathetic and they know that the community will not support what happened to Scott Olsen." Just before Broad Street, a line of waiting police on scooters picked up the marchers, for once feeling more like an escort than a gang of armed avengers, while media types and photographers swarmed in the street without police reprimand.

Suddenly, the patrol swiveled right and marched directly into the financial heart of the planet through a set of barricades. ("Who opened up the barrier there?" shouted a policeman.) It was aiming directly at a line of mounted police blocking the way. In front of them, the march halted. With a smart "Left face!" the platoon turned to the Stock Exchange and began to call out in unison, "We are veterans! We are the 99%! We swore to protect the Constitution of the United States of America! We are here to support the Occupy Movement!"

Then, the horses parted like the Red Sea, like a wave of emotion sweeping ahead of us, and the vets marched on triumphantly toward Zuccotti Park as a military cadence rang out ("...corporate profits on the rise, but soldiers have to bleed and die! Sound off, one, two...")

The platoon came to attention in front of Trinity Church for a moment of silence for "our friend Scott Olsen," after which it circled the encampment at Zuccotti Park to cheers and cries of "Welcome Home!" from the protesters there. (One of the occupiers shouted to the skies: "Hey, police, the military's here and they're on our side!") And if you don't think all of it was stirring, then you have the heart of a banker.

Soon after, veterans began offering testimony, people's mic-style, at the top of the park. Eli Wright, 30, a former Army medic in Ramadi, Iraq (2003-2004), now on military disability and Viva's dad, parked her stroller when I asked him why he was here. "I came out today to march for economic justice," he responded. "I want a future for my daughter. I want her to have an education and a job. I served seven years for our country to defend our constitution only to see it being dismantled before my eyes. I think it's time for vets and others to stand up and fight back." As for two-year-old Viva, "This," he said, "is the introduction to democracy that she needs to see." As a matter of fact, amid the tumult, Viva was soundly and peaceably asleep.

Joshua Shepherd, in the Navy from 2002 to 2008, told me that, during those years, he came to realize "it wasn't about protecting anyone, it was about making money." Now a student, he was holding up a large poster of his friend Scott Olsen. He had been with Olsen when he was hit, possibly by a beanbag round fired by the police, and had flown in from San Francisco for this march. "It's important that the people at Wall Street know that we support them. For the life of me I'm not sure why the police escalated the way they did [in Oakland], but the powers that be are threatened. Income disparities have never been higher and they want to keep it that way. It's my intention to raise my voice and say that's not right."

T.J. Buonomo, 27 and unemployed, a personable former Army military intelligence officer, told me that he had come up from Washington specifically for the march. "Seeing what happened to Scott Olsen made me feel like we had to stand up for Americans getting their democracy back. If this country keeps going like this, we're going to look like Latin America in the 1970s."

Of course, as with so much else about Zuccotti Park, there's no way of knowing whether these vets were a recon outfit preparing the way for a far larger "army," possibly (as in the Vietnam era) including active-duty service people, or whether they were just a lost American patrol. Still, if you were there, you, too, might have felt that something was changing in this country, that a larger movement of some kind was beginning to form.

And speaking of such movements, if you've read the final essays in the remarkable new book Who's Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?, an essential guide to the writings of the activist and professor "Glenn Beck loves to hate," then you know that no one came closer than her to predicting the rise of OWS. Having covered the fate of the poor memorably for almost half a century, Piven in her latest piece, "The War Against the Poor," has a bead on just what kind of a "war" these vets are now facing on the American home front.
(c) 2011 Tom Engelhardt is co-founder of the American Empire Project. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His most recent book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ John Darkow ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Poll: Majority of Likely Voters Say They Were Sexually Harassed by Cain
Accusers March on Washington
By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - There was a new complication in the race for the White House today as a just-released poll revealed that a majority of likely voters say they were sexually harassed by candidate Herman Cain.

According to the poll conducted by the University of Minnesota's Opinion Research Institute, 51% of voters "strongly agreed" with the statement "I have been sexually harassed by Herman Cain" while an additional 24% agreed that "Herman Cain is sexually harassing me right now."

News of the poll hit just as Herman Cain accusers gathered for a march on Washington in numbers estimated at 999,999.

Asked about the size of the Washington gathering, Mr. Cain said he did not remember harassing so many women, but added, "I've never been very good with numbers."

Even as the controversy swirled about Mr. Cain, he received a stirring vote of confidence from a prominent world leader.

"A man's sex life should not affect his right to hold power," said Italy's Silvio Berlusconi
(c) 2011 Andy Borowitz




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 44 (c) 11/11/2011


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In This Edition

Phil Rockstroh reports, "The Police State Makes Its Move."

Uri Avnery asks, "You Are Fed Up?"

Matt Taibbi says, "Finally, A Judge Stands Up To Wall Street."

Randall Amster proposes a, "Pax Occupata."

Jim Hightower suggests we, "Don't Just Salute Veterans, Rally With Them."

Helen Thomas wonders, "Nukes & Iran -- Who Will Step In?"

James Donahue considers, "The Strange Evolution Of The Human Species."

David Sirota tells, "Why Income Inequality Suddenly Matters."

David Swanson finds the, "Occupy Movement Demands Home Mortgages Correction."

Robert Scheer calls, "Michael Bloomberg -- The Villain Occupy Wall Street Has Been Waiting For."

Paul Krugman foresees, "Vouchers For Veterans."

Greg Palast explains, "Fukushima -- They Knew."

Amy Goodman with, "An Interview With An Occupy Oakland Man Before Police Raid Peaceful Camp."

Justice Michael D. Stallman of the New York State Supreme Court wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols gives us, "The New GOP Front-Runner -- Dick Cheney."

Ted Rall reveals, "Our F*ck You System Of Government."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Onion finds, "Mitt Romney's Goal To Connect With One Voter By The Time This Is All Over" but first Uncle Ernie wants to know, "When Did The Republican Presidential Candidates Become The 'Insane Clown Posse?'"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Bill Day, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Ruben Bolling, Derf City, W M X Design, John Sherffius, Khalil Bendib, Mariopiperni.Com, Shirley Shepard, Green For Nature.Com, The Onion.Com, Democracy Now.Org, The New York Times, Getty Images, Paramount.Com, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

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Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."











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When Did The Republican Presidential Candidates Become 'The Insane Clown Posse?'
By Ernest Stewart


"If magic is all we've ever known, then it's easy to miss what really goes on." ~~~ Insane Clown Posse

So join in the Folk Song Army,
Guitars are the weapons we bring
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice.
Ready! Aim! Sing!
The Folk Song Army ~~~ Tom Lehrer

"...Now it's a rat writ, writ for a rat, and this is lawful service of the same."
True Grit ~~~ Rooster Cogburn

"The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy." ~~~ Final Report, House Select Committee of Assassinations (HSCA), 1979

After watching the Rethuglican debates, don't you yearn for the likes of William F. Buckley Jr.? Buckley was astute, clever, funny; but, of course, he was always full of sh*t, but you forgave him that, as he kept you entertained -- much like (for you oldies) Chatsworth Osborne Jr. did on "The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis!" No, today's crop of Rat-Wingers are no William F. Buckley Jrs., and that's for sure!

Which brings us to another crop of quotes from our would-be fearless leaders. For example, here's what Willard said to the troops on Armistice Day:

"If you're the government, they know there's nowhere else you guys can go; you're stuck. Sometimes you wonder if there would be some way to introduce private sector competition, somebody else who could come in and say each solder has 'X' thousand dollars attributed to them and then they can choose where they want to go in the government system or the private system with the money that follows them. Like what happens with schools in Florida where people have a voucher that goes with him."
Much like RomneyCare, most of the veterans according to various vet groups, including the VFW are all against it. After escaping from a war zone with your life, you really don't want to go in front of a corpo-rat insurance death panel to get help when you need it!

Then there came the wisdom of Michelle Bachmann, who said:

"President Harry Truman -- who had to make the horrific decision about dropping an atomic bomb on Japan to end World War II -- he said if he had to kill Japanese in order to save one American life, he would. And if, as President of the United States, I believed that we would be able to save 3,000 American lives, and stop aircraft from flying into the Twin Towers, I would utilize waterboarding, if it would save those American lives."
I know, that was tortuous to follow, but I'd ask her about the over 95% of all detainees that were brought to places like Gitmo, after being kidnapped and then tortured for years, but then were let go (without so much as an oops, we bad, much less any compensation) because it turned out they were innocent. Perhaps we could use waterboarding on US Sin-ators and Con-gressmen to find out who owns and operates them; but don't you worry because NONE of them are innocent!

Then you'll all recall the "Good-Hair" Perry blunder the other night. Perry must have been channeling Jerry Ford. Ford, you may recall, lost his second debate against Jimmy Carter by saying:

"There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration."
Jerry immediately realized his error and started backpedaling and explaining, but Perry hadn't a clue for daze after saying:

"I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education, and the -- what's the third one there? Let's see... duh... ... (wait for it) ... er, ...EPA."
Back when I was going to school, that's what they called a pregnant pause! Let's hope for the governor's sake it was just the early onset of Alzheimer's, and not that he really is as dumb as he appears to be!

Then there was Ron Paul, who some pundits assure us is only insane part of the time, Ron says that he's all for Medicare except:

"The government should get out of health care. Probably the worst thing we ever did was make medical care the responsibility of the government. Other important resources, such as food, are successfully provided through the free market. The truth is that the market is the only compassionate system."
I see Dr. Mengele, I see, so what you're saying is we should turn the sick, elderly, poor and hungry over to the tender talons of free market Capitalism? Sorry but that makes Ron the craziest of them all, as Ron is a doctor and knows better! Still Ron goes on:

"I'd be willing to work toward sanity, even though I want to work our way out of this, we should not concede the moral and philosophical principle."
How about you get sane first Ron, and then we'll talk!

While as a comedian, the Republicans have me licking my chops, as an American, I'm scared to death! How about you, America?

In Other News

Ah, "The Empire Strikes Back!" I see where Mayor Hitler, er, Bloomberg; that billion dollar baby that Alice Cooper warned us about, unleashed the dogs of war against the Occupy camp -- even though it was in direct violation of a court order not to do so. So what, after being in direct violation of the 1st Amendment -- an act of treason, what's a little hanky-panky with some local judge's order when your gutting the Constitution?

Meanwhile, out in Oakland, Mayor Hitler, (have you noticed how many Hitlers are in the office of Mayor in this country?) sent her Jack-Booted thugs out to destroy the camp in Oscar Grant Plaza for a second time. The Plaza was named in honor of another victim of the Gestapo who was handcuffed, and sat on by a big pig while his partner stuck a gun to Oscar's chest and murdered him in cold blood. He got a slap on the wrist of 2 to 4 years for this murder in the first degree, and may never spend a day behind bars; he may be given probation. Did I mention that Oscar was black and the cops were white? I know, I really didn't need to, did I, which is why there was all the fuss about the Marine that got shot at point-blank range in the face with a tear gas canister because he was white. I guess it was hard to tell the difference in the dark?

Fortunately, for the rest of us, these patriots are being put off by the corpo-rat goons that are pulling the puppet strings, causing their political puppets to dance and pretend their violations of The Constitution are for our own good and we should all roll over and go back to sleep like the good old Sheeple that we are, and stop causing all this brouhaha, and just let the 1% get about their business of milking their slaves. The bible says that's righteous, doesn't it? It does! Of course, all these Mayor Hitler's aren't working on their own; they are being led by the federal government, i.e., the FBI and Fatherland Security to deprive us of our Constitutional rights; thanks, Obamahood!

You may recall what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration Of Independence about this, and what we can all do about it, if we get up off our knees? It says:

"That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Combined with the 1st Amendment which says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

So to all the fascist, traitorous mayors of America I say, "Camping permit, we don't need no stinking camping permit, we have the law of the land on our side!" Pity is the government is against us.

Of course, in the scheme of things, the Occupy Movements won't free us from the 1% tyranny, as my old mentor Tom Lehrer once sang in the "The Folk Song Army:"

Remember the war against Franco?
That's the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs.
But the Occupy movement, is, at least, and, at last, a good starting point for the Third American Revolution!

And Finally

I see that where our current revolution began, in Wisconsin, that the good folks there are beginning to gather signatures for the recall of Emperor, er, Governor Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. At the same time, four members of the Wisconsin Senate, including Walker's right hand man Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald are facing recall, too. The other Senators are Pam Galloway of Wausau, Terry Moulton of Chippewa Falls, and Van Wanggaard of Racine.

Walker's puppet masters the brothers Koch will no doubt pump tens of millions into Walker's coffers but like the bundle they just dropped in Indiana trying to keep the people from throwing out the anti-union law that their puppet Mitch ("The Bitch") Daniels rammed through the legislature, just like Walker did in Wisconsin, they'll be throwing good money after bad, and I have no problem with that, do you?

Even if Walker survives a recall, all of his Senators must do the same, because if the Democrats pick up one seat, they'll have the power to block Walker for the rest of his term. I say recall the bastards and put them on trial!

Speaking of which, I hear the rank and file fascists have a plan to go out and collect recall signatures, pretending to be real signature gatherers, and then burn them. I'm pretty sure to do so would be considered an act of sedition, which is a few light years beyond treason and is frowned upon by the federal judiciary. That's what they got Brave Heart on, and it isn't a pleasant way to die, I would imagine!

Keepin' On

It's that time of the year again when folks my age might stop and recall where they were when the Crime Family Bush murdered JFK in Dallas. I was in 9th grade and walking to the next class when our metal shop teacher, the very macho Mr. Marx came running down the hall crying like a baby shouting they killed the President! Two daze later, I was watching live TV of the transfer of Oswald with my grandmother when Ruby shot him. You just don't get live murder on TV anymore!

You may recall when Papa Smirk ran the two four man CIA hit teams that murdered Kennedy in Dealey Plaza back in 1963 and then set up CIA stooge Lee Harvey Oswald to take the fall, and then be murdered by Mafia hit man Jack Ruby. You recall just before the sanction went down, the Secret Service pulled all of their men from the Lincoln just before the hit and later planted the "magic bullet" on the stretcher in the hospital and then later stole the x-rays that showed Kennedy was killed by a shot from in front of the limo, proving conspiracy.

All this you'll remember was further covered up by the Warren Commission by the traitor, Gerald Ford, who was rewarded for his bit in the coverup by being made President, so he could pardon "The Trick," Allen Welsh Dulles former CIA head and good friend of the Crime Family Bush, and John J. McCloy, former President of the World Bank. These three kept the commission on track and any hint of a conspiracy off the table with Ford insisting again and again that it was a lone gunman.

You may also recall that the members of the conspiracy included Roger Blough of US Steel, Air Force General Curtis Lemay, and Lyndon Baines Johnson! Since then every President, including Obamahood, has gone along with whatever the ruling elite wants. Isn't it great to be an, American?

*****


08-12-1936 ~ 11-12-2011
Thanks for the help!


02-17-1949 ~ 11-12-2011
Thanks for rockin' the blues!


09-21-1918 ~ 11-15-2011
Thanks for the laughs!


09-07-1950 ~ 11-15-2011
Thanks for jammin'!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












The Police State Makes Its Move
Retaining one's humanity in the face of tyranny
By Phil Rockstroh

For days now, we have endured demonstrably false propaganda that the fallen soldiers of U.S. wars sacrificed their lives for "our freedoms." Yet, as that noxious nonsense still lingers in the air, militarized police have invaded OWS sites in numerous cities, including Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, and, in the boilerplate description of the witless courtesans of the corporate media, with the mission to "evict the occupiers."

U.S soldiers died protecting what and who again? These actions should make this much clear: The U.S. military and the police exist to protect the 1%. At this point, the ideal of freedom will be carried by those willing to resist cops and soldiers. There have been many who have struggled and often died for freedom--but scant few were clad in uniforms issued by governments.

Freedom rises despite cops and soldiers not because of them. And that is exactly why those who despise freedom propagate military hagiography and fetishize those wearing uniforms--so they can give the idea of liberty lip service as all the while they order it crushed.

When anyone tells you that dead soldiers and veterans died for your freedom, it is your duty to occupy reality and inform them of just how mistaken they are. And if you truly cherish the concepts of freedom and liberty, you just might be called on to face mindless arrays of fascist cops and lose your freedom, for a time, going to jail, so others might, at some point, gain their freedom.

I was born in Birmingham Alabama, at slightly past the mid-point of the decade of the 1950s. Many of my earliest memories involve the struggle for civil rights that was transpiring on the streets of my hometown.

My father was employed at a scrap metal yard but also worked as a freelance photojournalist who hawked his work to media photo syndicates such as Black Star who then sold his wares to the major newsmagazines of the day. A number of the iconic photographs of the era were captured by his Nikon camera e.g., of vicious police dogs unleashed on peaceful demonstrators; of demonstrators cartwheeled down city streets by the force of fire hoses; of Dr. King and other civil rights marchers kneeled in prayer before arrays of Police Chief Bull Connor's thuggish ranks of racist cops.

In Birmingham, racist laws and racial and economic inequality were the progenitors of acts of official viciousness. The social structure in place was indefensible. Reason and common decency held no dominion in the justifications for the established order that was posited by the system's apologists and enforcers; therefore, brutality filled the void created by the absence of their humanity.

And the same situation is extant in the growing suppression of the OWS movement in various cities, nationwide, including Liberty Park in Lower Manhattan. The 1% and their paid operatives--local city officials--are striving to protect an unjust, inherently dishonest status quo. Lacking a moral mandate, they are prone to the use of police state forms of repression.

Dr. King et al faced their oppressors on the streets of my hometown. Civil Rights activists knew that they had to hold their ground to retain their dignity...that it was imperative to sit down in those Jim Crow-tyrannized streets when necessary in order to stand up against the forces of oppression.

At present, we have arrived at a similar moment. If justice is to prevail, it seems, the air of U.S. cities will hold the acrid sting of tear gas, the jails will again be filled, the brave will endure brutality--yet the corrupt system will crumble. Because the system's protectors themselves will bring it down by revealing its empty nature, and the corrupt structure will collapse from within.

Yet, when riot police attack unarmed, peacefully resisting protesters, the mainstream media often describes the events with standard boilerplate such as "police clash with demonstrators."

This is inaccurate (at best) reportage. It suggest that both parties are equal aggressors in the situation, and the motive of the police is to restore order and maintain the peace, as opposed to, inflicting pain and creating an aura of intimidation.

This is analogous to describing a mugging as simply: two parties engaging in a financial transaction.

Although mainstream media demurred from limning the upwelling of mob violence at Penn. State as involving any criteria deeper than the mindless rage of a few football-besotted students unloosed by the dismissal of beloved sport figure.

Yet there exists an element that the Penn. State belligerents and OWS activists have in common: a sense of alienation.

Penn. State students rioted because life in the corporate state is so devoid of meaning...that identification with a sports team gives an empty existence said meaning...These are young people, coming of age in a time of debt-slavery and diminished job prospects, who were born and raised in, and know of no existence other than, life as lived in U.S. nothingvilles i.e., a public realm devoid of just that--a public realm--an atomizing center-bereft culture of strip malls, office parks, fast food eateries and the electronic ghosts wafting the air of social media.

Contrived sport spectacles provisionally give an empty life meaning...Take that away, and a mindless rampage might ensue...Anything but face the emptiness and acknowledge one's complicity therein, and then direct one's fury at the creators of the stultified conditions of this culture.

It is a given, the cameras of corporate media swivel towards reckless actions not mindful commitment...are attuned to verbal contretemps not thoughtful conviction--and then move on. And we will click our TV remotes and scan the Internet...restless, hollowed out...eating empty memes...skimming the surface of the electronic sheen...

These are the areas we are induced to direct our attention--as the oceans of the earth are dying...these massive life-sustaining bodies of water have less then 50 years before they will be dead. This fact alone should knock us to our knees in lamentation...should sent us reeling into the streets in displays of public grief...

Accordingly, we should not only occupy--but inhabit our rage. No more tittering at celebrity/political class contretemps--it is time for focused fury. The machinery of the corporate/police state must be dismantled.

If the corporate boardrooms have to be emptied--for the oceans to be replenished with abundant life--then so be it. If one must go to jail for committing acts of civil disobedience to free one's heart--then it must be done.

Yet why does the act of challenging the degraded status quo provoke such a high decree of misapprehension, anxiety, and outright hostility from many, both in positions of authority and among so many of the exploited and dispossessed of the corporate/consumer state.

For example, why did the fatal shooting incident in Oakland, California, Nov. 1, that occurred near the Occupy Oakland Encampment--but, apparently, was wholly unrelated to OWS activity cause a firestorm of reckless speculation and false associations.

Because any exercise in freedom makes people in our habitually authoritarian nation damn uneasy...a sense of uncertainty brings on dread--the feeling that something terrible is to come from challenging a prevailing order, even as degraded as it is.

Tyrants always promise safety; their apologist warn of chaos if and when the soul-numbing order is challenged.

Granted, it is a given that there exists a sense of certainty in a prison routine: high walls and guards and gun mounts ensure continuity; an uncertainty-banishing schedule is enforced. Moreover, solitary confinement offers an even more orderly situation...uncertainty is circumscribed as freedom is banished.

The corporate/national security state, by its very nature is anti-liberty and anti-freedom. Of course, its defenders give lip service to the concept of freedom...much in the manner a pick-pocket working a subway train is very much in favor of the virtues of public transportation.

A heavy police presence has ringed Zuccotti Park from the get-go, and whose ranks have now staged a military style raid upon it, a defacto search and destroy mission--because the ruling elite want to suppress the very impulse of freedom. These authoritarian bullies don't want the concept to escape the collective prison of the mind erected and maintained by the corrupt jailers comprising the 1% who claim they offer us protection as, all the while, they hold our chains...all for our own good, they insist...for our safety and the safety of others.

Although, from studying on these prison walls, the thought occurs to me...that what we might need is protection from all this safety.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.





"You Are Fed Up?"
By Uri Avnery

"YOU CAN lie to all of the people some of the time, and to some of the people all of the time, but you cannot lie to all of the people all of the time."

This slightly altered quotation from Abraham Lincoln has yet to be absorbed by Binyamin Netanyahu. He thinks it doesn't apply to him. Actually, that is the core of his entire political career.

This week, he was given a very instructive lesson. After being treated to dozens of cordial encounters between Netanyahu and Nicholas Sarkozy, Israeli TV viewers got a glimpse of reality. It came in the form of an exchange of views between the presidents of the US and of France.

Sarkozy: "I cannot stand him (Netanyahu). He is a liar!"

Obama: "YOU are fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day!"

That came after it was leaked that Angela Merkel, the German prime minister, told her cabinet that "every word that leaves Netanyahu's mouth is a lie."

Which makes it more or less unanimous.

BEFORE PROCEEDING, I must say something about the media angle of this affair.

The dialogue was broadcast live to a group of senior French media people, because somebody forgot to turn the microphone off. A piece of luck of the kind that journalists dream about.

Yet not one of the journalists in the hall published a word about it. They kept it to themselves and only told it to their colleagues, who told it to their friends, one of whom told it to a blogger, who published it.

Why? Because the senior journalists who were present are friends and confidants of the people in power. That's how they get their scoops. The price is suppressing any news that might hurt or embarrass their sponsors. This means in practice that they become lackeys of the people in power - betraying their elementary democratic duty as servants of the public.

I know this from experience. As an editor of a news magazine, I saw it as my duty (and pleasure) to break these conspiracies of silence. Actually, many of our best scoops were given to us by colleagues from other publications who could not use them themselves for the same reason.

Luckily, with the internet now everywhere, it has become almost impossible to suppress news. Blessed be the online Gods.

A FEW weeks after Yitzhak Rabin was elected Prime Minister (for the second time) in 1992, I met Yasser Arafat in Tunis.

He was, of course, curious about the personality of the newly elected Israeli leader. Knowing that I was meeting him from time to time, he asked what I thought of him.

"He is an honest man," I replied, and then added: "as much as a politician can be." Arafat burst out laughing, and so did everybody in the room, including Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Ever since Sir Henry Wotton said, some four centuries ago, that "an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country," it is generally assumed that diplomats and politicians may be lying, and not only abroad. Some do so only when necessary, some do it often, some, like Netanyahu, do it as a rule.

In spite of the general assumption of mendacity, it is not good for a leader to be branded as a habitual liar. When leaders meet personally, in private and face to face, they are supposed to tell each other the truth, even if not necessarily the whole truth. Some personal trust is of great advantage. If a leader loses it, he loses a precious asset.

Winston Churchill said of one of his predecessors, Stanley Baldwin, that (quoting from memory) "the Right Honorable Gentleman sometimes stumbles upon the truth, but he always hurries on as if nothing has happened." One of our ministers said about Ariel Sharon that he sometimes tells the truth by mistake. People asked how you could tell when Richard Nixon was lying: "Easy: his lips are moving."

Rabin was basically an honest man. He hated lying and avoided it as much as he could. Basically he remained a military man and never became a real politician.

LAST WEDNESDAY was the 16th anniversary of his assassination, according to the Hebrew calendar.

The event was marked in Israeli schools by speeches and special lessons. What these citizens of tomorrow learned was that it is very bad to murder a prime minister. And that, more or less, was that.

Not a word about why he was killed. Certainly nothing about the community the assassin belonged to, or what campaign of hatred and incitement led to the murder.

The Ministry of Education is now firmly in the hands of a Likud minister, and one of the most extreme. But the trend is not confined to the education system.

In Israel it is practically impossible to obtain a picture of Rabin shaking the hand of Arafat. Rabin and King Hussein? As many post cards as you might wish. But Rabin's peace with Jordan was an unimportant matter, like the US peace with Canada. The Oslo agreement, however, was a historic watershed.

Only people branded as "extreme leftists" - one of the worst insults these days - dare to raise the obvious questions about the assassination: Who? Why?

There is tacit agreement that the only person responsible was the actual assassin: Yigal Amir, the son of Yemenite Jews, a former settler and a student of a religious university.

Would he have acted without the blessing of one or more rabbis? Most certainly not.

Amir was led to do what he did by months of intense incitement. An unprecedented campaign of hatred dominated the public sphere. Posters showed Rabin in the uniform of an SS officer. Religious groups publicly condemned him to death in medieval ceremonies. Demonstrators in front of his private home shouted: "With blood and fire / we shall remove Rabin!"

In the most (in)famous demonstration, in the center of Jerusalem, a coffin marked "Rabin" was paraded around, while Netanyahu looked on from a balcony, in the company of other rightist leaders.

And most tellingly: not a single important right-wing or religious voice was raised against this murderous campaign.

By general tacit agreement, nothing of all this was mentioned this week. Why? Because it would not be nice. It would "split the nation". Honorable citizens do not do this kind of thing.

Rabin himself cannot be acquitted of all blame. After the incredibly courageous act of recognizing the PLO (and thereby the Palestinian people) and shaking hands with Arafat, he did not rush forward to create an irreversible historic fact of peace, but hesitated, dithered, held back and allowed the forces of war and racism to regroup and counter-attack.

When the Kiryat Arba settler Baruch Goldstein carried out his massacre in the "Cave of Machpela", Rabin had a golden opportunity to clear out the nest of fascist settlers in Hebron. He shrank back from taking on the settlers. The settlers did not shrink back from killing him.

WHAT HAPPENED next? This week a very revealing document was leaked.

It appears that on the day of the assassination, Netanyahu spoke with the American ambassador (and Zionist Jew) Martin Indyk. Netanyahu, remembering his part in the incitement, was obviously in panic. He confided to the ambassador that if elections were to take place immediately, the entire Israeli right-wing would be wiped out.

But Shimon Peres, the new Prime Minister, did not call immediate elections, though several people (including myself) publicly urged him to do so. Netanyahu's assessment was quite correct - the country was outraged, the right-wing was generally blamed for the assassination, and if elections had taken place, the Right would have been marginalized for many many years. The entire history of Israel would have taken a different turn.

Why did Peres refuse to do so? Because he hated Rabin. He did not want to be elected as the "executor of Rabin's testament," but on his own merits. Unfortunately, the public did not have the same high opinion of these "merits."

During the next few months, Peres committed every conceivable (and inconceivable) mistake: he approved the killing of a major Hamas militant which led to a flood of deadly suicide bombings all over the country. He attacked Lebanon, which led to the Kafr Kana massacre, and had to withdraw ignominiously. And then he called premature elections after all. In his election campaign, Rabin was not even mentioned. Thus Peres managed to be (narrowly) defeated by Netanyahu.

I once wrote that Peres suffered his most grievous insult just a few minutes before the assassination. Amir was waiting at the foot of the stairs from the tribune, his pistol ready. Peres came down the steps, and the assassin let him pass, like a fisherman contemptuously throwing a small specimen back into the sea. He was waiting for Rabin.

The rest is history.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom




A courtroom sketch of Judge Jed Rakoff.



Finally, A Judge Stands Up To Wall Street
By Matt Taibbi

Federal judge Jed Rakoff, a former prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's office here in New York, is fast becoming a sort of legal hero of our time. He showed that again yesterday when he shat all over the SEC's latest dirty settlement with serial fraud offender Citigroup, refusing to let the captured regulatory agency sweep yet another case of high-level criminal malfeasance under the rug.

The SEC had brought an action against Citigroup for misleading investors about the way a certain package of mortgage-backed assets had been chosen. The case is very similar to the notorious Abacus case involving Goldman Sachs, in which Goldman allowed short-selling billionaire John Paulson (who was betting against the package) to pick the assets, then told a pair of European banks that the "designed to fail" package they were buying had been put together independently.

This case was similar, but worse. Here, Citi similarly told investors a package of mortgages had been chosen independently, when in fact Citi itself had chosen the stuff and was betting against the whole pile.

This whole transaction actually combined a number of Goldman-style misdeeds, since the bank both lied to investors and also bet against its own product and its own customers. In the deal, Citi made a $160 million profit, while its customers lost $700 million.

Goldman, in the Abacus case, got fined $550 million. In this worse case, the SEC was trying to settle with Citi for just $285 million. Judge Rakoff balked at the settlement and particularly balked at the SEC's decision to allow Citi off without any admission of wrongdoing. He also mocked the SEC's decision to describe the crime as "negligence" instead of intentional fraud, taking the entirely rational position that there's no way a bank making $160 million ripping off its customers can conceivably be described as an accident.

"Why should the court impose a judgment in a case in which the SEC alleges a serious securities fraud but the defendant neither admits nor denies wrongdoing?" And this: "How can a securities fraud of this nature and magnitude be the result simply of negligence?"
Rakoff of course is right - the settlement is nuts. If you take Citi's $160 million profit on the deal into consideration, what we're talking about then is a $125 million fine for causing $700 million in damages. That, and no admission of wrongdoing.

Just imagine a mugger who steals $70 from some lady's wallet being sentenced to walk free after paying back twelve bucks. Magritte himself could not devise a more surreal take on criminal justice.

It gets worse. Over the last decade, Citi has repeatedly been caught committing a variety of offenses, and time after time the bank has been dragged into court and slapped with injunctions demanding that they refrain from ever engaging the same practices ever again. Over and over again, they've completely blown off the injunctions, with no consequences from the state - which does nothing except issue new (soon-to-be-ignored-again) injunctions.

In this current case, this particular unit at Citi had already been slapped with two different SEC cease-and-desist orders barring it from violating certain securities laws. Here's a summary from Bloomberg:

The commission already had two cease-and-desist orders in place against the same Citigroup unit, barring future violations of the same section of the securities laws that the company now stands accused of breaking again. One of those orders came in a 2005 settlement, the other in a 2006 case. The SEC's complaint last month didn't mention either order, as if the entire agency suffered from amnesia.

The SEC's latest allegations also could have triggered a violation of a court injunction that Citigroup agreed to in 2003, as part of a $400 million settlement over allegedly fraudulent analyst-research reports. Injunctions are more serious than SEC orders, because violations can lead to contempt-of-court charges.

But the SEC avoided the issue of the 2003 injunction by charging Citi with a different type of fraud. But, as Bloomberg points out, it probably wouldn't have mattered much if they had accused Citi of violating the 2003 injunction, since the bank had already done that once and not been punished for it:

In December 2008, the SEC for the second time accused Citigroup of breaking the same section of the law covered by the 2003 injunction, over its sales of so-called auction-rate securities. Instead of trying to enforce the existing court order, the SEC got yet another one barring the same kinds of fraud violations in the future.

So to recap: a unit of Citigroup, having repeatedly violated the same laws and having repeatedly violated the SEC's own cease-and-desist orders and injunctions, is dragged into court one more time for committing a massive fraud.

And what does the SEC do? It doesn't even bring up Citi's history of ignoring the SEC's own order, slaps the bank with a fractional fine, refuses to target any individuals, allows the bank to walk away without an admission of wrongdoing, and puts a cherry on the top by describing the $160 million heist not as a crime, but as unintentional negligence.


BRING OUT THE SOFT CUSHIONS! The SEC gets rough with Citigroup.

Imagine a car thief who, when caught driving a stolen Lexus, tells the police he simply stepped into the wrong car and drove off by mistake. Now imagine he tells the same story when, two years later, he's caught screaming over the GW bridge in a stolen Mercedes.

Then, two years after that, he's caught on the Cross-Bronx Expressway blasting the stereo in a boosted 7-series BMW. Cops ask him for an explanation. "I must have gotten in the wrong car by mistake," he says, shrugging. And the cops buy the story and send him home without a charge.

That's roughly what we're dealing with with this SEC action. To extend the metaphor just a little further - let's say that BMW wasn't even the only car he accidentally drove away that day, but the cops didn't bother with the others. In the latest Citi case, the $700 million fraud was just one of many dicey CDOs marketed by that unit of Citi. But the SEC chose to address just that one case in its settlement.

Rakoff quite correctly took issue with all of this. From Jonathan Weil's Bloomberg piece:

"What does the SEC do to maintain compliance?" Additionally, [Rakoff] asked: "How many contempt proceedings against large financial entities has the SEC brought in the past decade as a result of violations of prior consent judgments?" We'll see if the SEC finds any.
Rakoff gained some notoriety a few years ago when he rejected as inadequate an SEC settlement with Bank of America, which was accused of misleading shareholders about the size of the bonuses paid out by Merrill Lynch, the investment bank BofA was in the process of acquiring. Rakoff dismissed the original $33 million fine as "half-baked justice," although he eventually approved a $150 million fine.

The amazing thing about the wave of corruption that has overtaken the financial services industry is that most of it couldn't happen without virtually every player at every level signing off on these deals. From the ratings agencies to the law firms to the accounting firms to the regulators to the bank executives themselves, everybody had to be on board in order for a lot of these fraud schemes to work.

Judges are a part of that picture, and too often, members of the bench sign off on dirty deals made between banks and regulators when the law says that such settlements must be "fair, reasonable, adequate and in the public interest."

It's great that Rakoff is behaving as any decent human being would and rejecting these disgusting settlements. But equally disturbing is the fact that more judges haven't done the same thing. Are people with backbones really that rare?
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







Pax Occupata
By Randall Amster

Decades ago, on the eve of a period of widespread societal upheaval, Bob Dylan famously intoned that "the order is rapidly fading." For a time, this appeared to be so: around the world people were in the streets, revolution was in the air, and structures of oppression were being openly contested. The headiness of those days brought many advances and opened up significant space for later movements to operate, yet in the final analysis somehow it all delivered us into even higher degrees of wealth stratification and greater consolidation of power. The order had flickered, but not quite faded, and in the end reasserted itself stronger than before.

Today we stand poised at a not-dissimilar crossroads. While perhaps no one has yet penned a Dylan-esque anthem of the movement -- although stalwarts such as David Rovics and Emma's Revolution have dropped some poignant opening stanzas-- a mass chorus of voices is drawing lines in the sand literally everywhere: public spaces, workplaces, shipping ports, shopping malls, community centers, corporate banks, schoolrooms, boardrooms, and more. The Occupy Movement has transcended the narrow confines of Zuccotti Park, and in doing so has seemingly asserted itself wherever the forces of elitism and subjugation rear their heads. As Frederick Douglass said, "power concedes nothing without demand," and whatever else transpires in the days ahead it can at least be said that the movement has reminded us all of this basic tenet.

Still, critics continue to ask, "where is your list of demands?" as if such can be reduced to movement letterhead in bullet-point fashion. To be sure, some concrete demands have been advanced, largely in the economic and political spheres and triggered by the exigencies of the Great Recession. But on some level, most everyone understands that this bill of particulars is just the surface of the movement, and that its essence really draws down to the core workings of the system itself. Adjusting debit card rates or mollifying student loan debts may bring some minor relief, but it has the feel of rearranging a couple of deck chairs, whereas many Occupiers are more urgently clamoring en masse for the dismantling of the Titanic itself.

At root, multitudes are demanding no less than a re-visioning of our political and economic relationships, and likewise of our collective human relationship with the larger environment. The time for single-issue tinkering is winding down, as the ecological and social fabric of our lives similarly degrades. After generations of living mainly as cogs in a mechanistic Moloch -- at times being reasonably well-compensated for the sacrifice of our mere freedoms and human dignity -- many people are experiencing new bonds of exchange, camaraderie, and community. There is a growing sense of engaged optimism in this moment of healthy rebellion.

And it is healthy, in contrast with the dead-end dispiritedness of corporate capitalism, in which everything and everyone are little more than raw materials for the robber barons' assembly lines. This archaic and apocalyptic system of production and reproduction is sick at its very core, revealing a form of mass insanity masking as progress, and leaving illness and misery in its wake just beneath the shiny veneer of development. At the height of colonialism, blankets with smallpox were presented as "gifts" to unwitting natives, and in many ways this has become the central operating premise of the entire enterprise, a living metaphor for environmental despoliation and the ensuing political economy of toxification.

No more. The pox must be cast out, by necessity, if any part of the organism is to survive at this point. What began as a movement to occupy a symbolic place -- the plexus of financial machinations -- quickly became a call to occupy everything, and has further expanded to include the earth itself as a living participant in the calculus.

Now, as the teeth of abject repression are bared in Oakland and elsewhere, a critical juncture is being reached in which the politics of practicality are slowly being supplanted by the poetics of possibility. People who have tasted freedom can no longer be kept conveniently in prisons, even if their cages are designed to appear like comfortable condominiums.

The technicians of empire thus stand stripped of their authoritarian mystique, increasingly so as they resort to heavy-handed tactics against peaceful people, including even those who have served in their infantries. A crisis of legitimacy is in the offing, as counter-institutions steadily replace those that run counter to even the pretense of democracy and equity. Hegemony yields to autonomy, corporatism to communitarianism, and warfare to welfare. There will be no placating the people by piecemeal legislation or token redistribution at this juncture; it is the reins of power themselves that are being demanded, and not merely the spoils.

But are the power elite quaking in their jack-boots? Are the walls of Babylon actually crumbling? This time, is the order really fading? Others have tried mightily before and come up short of changing the underlying paradigm, but there is a qualitative difference in evidence today: horizontal integration. Vertical structures, such as capitalism's pervasive pyramid schemes, are inherently vulnerable to vicissitudes in the base -- whereas horizontal systems, such as those being forged in occupations everywhere, are inherently unbreakable since there is no a prior of power apart from every single piece of the whole. This is, in fact, how healthy organisms function, and further reflects how nature itself is organized at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels.

To a system of death and destruction, we interpose one of life and liberation. Consumption is remediated by creation; plutocracy by democracy; exploitation by participation. This is not merely a movement, but is in practice more akin to a global health care plan -- and this time, we will get universal (or at least earthly) coverage, with the only mandate being the basic imperative that is embedded in the undeniable interconnectedness of our existence. No legislation is needed, only the laws of nature; no medication, just dedication; no co-payments, merely co-creators. We are going to get well, all of us together and the habitat itself, and in the process we will work to wipe aside the sickly stain of the colonizer's history.

Power may not abdicate, but it does change its garb at times. The Empire's cloak of imperial majesty is threadbare, and a new wind is chilling its inner workings to the marrow. We neocolonial beneficiaries have infected others, and ourselves as well, with everything from acne and austerity to zoster and zero-sum thinking, and now it has come to pass that the global organism itself is essentially on life support. This is the reality that must eventually be confronted, both in terms of ecology and political economy: the externalities of disease and despair cannot be indefinitely outsourced. The only genuine form of wellbeing is one that injects itself everywhere, coursing through the veins of society at all levels and in every locale within the system.

Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax Americana -- all made claims to establishing a "relative peace" within their ambit. But these forms of peace were imposed at the point of a bayonet or the nosecone of a warhead. They were all poisonous peaces, ultimately self-defeating enterprises of subjugation in which the masters could not escape their own systems of enslavement. Today, we are aiming for something more like Pax Populi, a form of peace made by and for people, not nations or corporations. In order to accomplish this, the ailing empire du jour must be supplanted by a constellation of healthy communities, interlinked by virtue of desire rather than dictate. This is the ambitious horizon of the burgeoning movement in all of its manifestations: Pax Occupata.

Instead of a singular Dylan for the movement, there are poets cropping up everywhere and providing the soundtrack of this era in real time. Indeed, this is as it should be: everyone's a bard, and all the world's a stage. The curtain is finally closing on the old order, and a new paradigm of peace is being hewn from the colossus.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).







Don't Just Salute Veterans, Rally With Them

Here's a surprise that the power elites really hate: many members of the one-percent are joining the "We are the 99%" protest movement.

I don't mean that hedge fund billionaires are suddenly in the streets to show solidarity with millions of Americans who're fed up with the systemic inequality and corruption infesting our economic and political systems. No, no – those swells aren't about to dirty their Guccis with any street action. Rather, I'm talking about another, extra-special one-percent of our society – the soldiers who've been the "boots on the ground" in Washington's misguided and bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rather than marching in Veterans Day parades this year, thousands of vets from America's abused "war class" have been rallying with the Occupy movement. They're expressing their anger at being used in two senseless wars that enriched corporate contractors while the troops who're lucky enough to make it home alive can't find decent jobs and are shorted on the health and education programs they desperately need.

In New York, more than 100 of our nation's soldiers proceeded in uniform from the Vietnam Vets Plaza to Wall Street, where they stood in formation in front of the Stock Exchange. "Corporate profits on the rise," they chanted, "soldiers have to bleed and die." The Powers That Be, far from offering the salutes that vets deserve (much less offering the help they've earned), deployed a line of New York police to block these peaceful protesters from the financial manipulators inside and another line of police on horseback wielding nightsticks to threaten them.

This was a disgraceful show of force against those who’ve fought our wars. The police should be looking inside the financial empires, not threatening protesters. But their action exposes just how perverted and corrupt the power elites have become – and why all of us should support this burgeoning democracy movement.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Nukes & Iran -- Who Will Step In?
By Helen Thomas

U.S. leaders haven't spoken of disarmament lately. Why not?

Iran is on the verge of creating a nuclear weapon. This is bad news for the U.S. and Israel, who have warned Tehran against holding nuclear power.

The U.S. needs to step in and mollify at the crucial moment. Israel has been able to sabotage any Iranian progress in developing nuclear prowess, but no one has produced a key to a more peaceful route to reconciliation.

So where are the peacemakers? Israel wants the U.S. to step in or even lead the way to block Iran's new nuclear ambitions. Iran, which has seen several of its nuclear scientists assassinated in the last year, is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. However, Israel is determined to protect its nuclear dominance in the Middle East - it is the only country in the region that has a nuclear arsenal.

The current crisis is on a fast track because Iran is continuing to build a nuclear bomb, even though they say their intentions are peaceful. The crisis build up, the world waiting for the other shoe to fall, is the talk of the town.

In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear facility, sending several U.S.-made F-16 bombers to wipe it out. In later years, Israel blocked Syria's attempt to create a nuclear product.

There is little doubt the U.S. is totally complicit in the attempts to bolster Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East.

After World War II, it seemed the world was ready for disarmament; there was much work done on plans to reduce nuclear stock piles. The former Soviet Union had developed its own nuclear arsenal. Many hopes were pinned on lessons learned after the U.S. had dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki, in Japan. Those historic horrors led the Western world to begin serious negotiations on disarmament.

Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union recognized the need for arms reduction, and at the same time many scientists debated the morality of using nuclear weapons in war. Some scientists who had worked on the bomb had urged the U.S., before the Hiroshima attack, to bomb a lonely atoll in the Pacific Ocean, so Japan and the rest of the world might observe the power of nuclear warfare.

At that time, the U.S. military was convinced that the U.S. would suffer tremendous human losses in the Pacific theater, and President Harry S. Truman agreed and went along. There is no question that the bombing, devastating as it was, brought World War II to an end in the Pacific.

Russia then became a super power rival, matching the U.S. nuclear capacity. Many rounds of disarmament talks began. Afterwards, several countries developed their own nuclear weapons, including India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Israel began stockpiling weapons at a desert complex in Dimona. It was the world's biggest non-secret. The U.S. had made a pact with the late Prime Minister Golda Meir, never to say that Israel had produced nuclear weapons. To this day, American officials have refused to acknowledge that Israel is the sole nuclear power in the Middle East.

I asked President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton if there were any nations in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons. Responding to a question at a White House news conference, Obama said, "I don't want to speculate." Clinton and others also dodged the question, and not too deftly, but they preserved the official lie.

Israel has become the self-appointed nuclear watchdog in the Middle East.

The world is watching to see if the U.S. or Israel decides to attack Iran. But there seems to be more caution that did not exist in previous critical times.

Obama is preoccupied in the time-consuming run for re-election. It seems it is time for him to step in and calm the waters. Surely no nation wants to see a global war. There may be a way to work out a peaceful resolution with Iran. It's worth a try.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







The Strange Evolution Of The Human Species
By James Donahue

With all of the tinkering going on with the human DNA, the cloning of animals, manufacture of advanced robotic machines and experiments with mind transfer, we have to wonder what humans of the future may become. That is if we don't blow themselves to bits fighting over what remains of the planet's natural resources. The concept of creating duplicates of ourselves is not new. Powerful but controversial figures throughout history; men like Hitler, Saddam Hussein, various kings and possibly some American presidents, have been known to use doppelgangers, or especially prepared "stand-ins" to make public appearances on their behalf. This probably served to give them time to tend to more important business elsewhere, protect them in the event of an assassination threat, or possibly replace them and keep the power structure intact in the event of sickness or an unexpected and secret death.

Knowledge among a few that doppelgangers were being used . . . even by celebrities . . . may have help spark many of the strange myths that figures like Hitler and Elvis Presley were still seen among the living long after they were declared dead.

The remarkable development by the Japanese and Chinese of robots that look, feel and even react somewhat like humans appears to be leading to a whole new industry of future robotoids, or androids. These are manufactured humanoid machines that may someday look and act so much like humans they may blend in with society. Science fiction writers and Hollywood film producers have been dealing with the complexities of something like this happening for years.

Some believe that advanced robotoid technology has already been achieved. One writer who covered public appearances by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s said the second time he got within a few feet of Carter he realized that this man was not the same Jimmy Carter he saw when Carter was running for office in 1979. He wrote that he believes the President Carter he saw may have been even been a robotoid model of the original.

Neuroscientists from around the world are involved in the Blue Brain Project at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), France. This is a collective effort among many world researchers to reverse engineer the mammalian brain within a computer. The ultimate goal is to develop a replica of the human brain in a machine.

Will it be possible that some day we will mingle with manufactured machines, or androids that not only look human but possess computerized brains that out-think and out-perform us?

Should we exist on this planet long enough to accomplish this remarkable feat . . . which is a direction in which we surely appear to be headed . . . we can perceive a scenario very much like the social problems presented in the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica. In that story the androids became smarter than the humans, began self-replicating, and eventually went to war against the human race.

There was an interesting twist to the Galactica story. The androids became so much like the humans they began mingling, having love relationships with humans, and eventually discovered that one of the android women successfully gave birth to a child of a human father.

While the Galactica story is a bit far reaching in fictional technology, it is no secret that some humans are already thinking of ways in which to move the human spirit, or soul, with all of our personality and memories of who we are, from these disposable human bodies into superior, self-replicating machines of the future. The thought is that living in android bodies would give humans a chance to continue on and survive on what is obviously a dying planet.

While an android might need a little oil on occasion to keep the joints greased and operating smoothly, it can exist without food, water or oxygen. As to its energy source, that might not be a problem as long as the sun continues to shine.

Another significant development in recent years has been the successful mapping of the human genome and all of the genetic information stored within the bodies of not only humans, but all living creatures on the planet. Researchers have been quickly learning to manipulate "damaged" or missing DNA to find amazing cures for disease, design more healthy humans for the future, and even create specialized humans to perform unique tasks. For example some children might be designed to become fighting soldiers, while others can have the capability of becoming great musicians and engineers. It all lies in the genetic makeup.

The research also is aiming at the greatest and perhaps most sacred goal of them all . . . building the perfect human body that does not suffer from disease, can have damaged or worn parts medically replaced, and live for a very long time, if not forever.

Of course all of this new knowledge is very scary to a society still caught up in its archaic reality of the past, and bound by religious and social moralities carved into the laws of the land. Thus most of the research is obviously going on secretly behind closed doors, and when scientific papers are published, we can be sure that we are only getting a part of the real story.

If that reporter was correct in his observation that a robotoid was advanced enough in the 1980s to successfully pass for President Jimmy Carter in a crowd, and that it was not a doppelganger, imagine what is already existing among us today?

This begs the question . . . did they really kill Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Muammar Gaddafi or has it all been a big show? It also has become obvious, as the wealth, power and control of the world has fallen into the hands of a special few that even if all of this wonderful technology already exists and is in use, only the very wealthy will ever get a chance to use it.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.







Why Income Inequality Suddenly Matters
A ballooning wealth gap coupled with decreased class mobility has brought America to its senses
By David Sirota

A few weeks ago, as the Occupy Wall Street protests were first spreading, something amazing happened: For 10 whole seconds, the local reporter on my TV screen actually talked about the realities of the recession. He even uttered the phrase "economic inequality."

My guess is that you've seen something similar on your local affiliate - and that's no minor event. When even the most local of television journalists are compelled to acknowledge this crushing emergency in a country whose media aggressively promotes American dream agitprop, it means the Occupy protesters have scored a monumental victory. You can almost imagine a Wall Street CEO turning to an aide and muttering a slightly altered riff off LBJ: "If we've lost Ron Burgundy, we've lost Middle America."

In response to this stunning turn of events, conservative politicians are retreating to non sequiturs. They seem to think that if they shout the phrase "class warfare" enough, the nation will go back to not caring about the divide between the rich and poor.

But something has changed.

For most of the post-World War II era, we tolerated relatively high inequality because we envisioned it as a necessary side effect of an exceptional economy that (supposedly) guaranteed opportunities for advancement. As the Wall Street Journal put it, we believed that "it is OK to have ever-greater differences between rich and poor … as long as (our) children have a good chance of grasping the brass ring."

However, the last three decades have invalidated our standing hypothesis. After the conservatives' successful assault on the New Deal, America has lived a different reality - one perfectly summarized by a new Federal Reserve study revealing that today's increasing inequality accompanies comparatively low social mobility.

"U.S. family income mobility has decreased over the 1969-2006 time span, and especially since the 1980s," notes the Fed paper, adding that "a family's position at (the) end of (the) 2000s was … more correlated with its start position than was the case 20 years earlier."

Of course, some class mobility still exists. The trouble is that it's primarily of the downward kind. As the Pew Charitable Trusts reports, roughly a third of those who grew up in the middle class have now fallen below that station in adulthood.

This is why, for all the right-wing mythology about "Eurosocialism" snuffing out upward mobility, data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that social mobility in uber-capitalist America is actually lower than in most industrialized countries.

This is why almost three-quarters of respondents just told the Hill newspaper's pollsters that income inequality is a problem.

This is why my local TV news is suddenly airing pieces on economic inequality between sports, weather and all the "you stay classy" small talk.

And this is why, among all the fights over economic policy, the debate about taxes is the most crucial of all.

As the Fed noted in a separate report, the federal tax code - which remains vaguely progressive - has been the one proven way to "mitigate income inequality." But with congressional Republicans gradually flattening federal income tax rates and with already-regressive state tax rates in GOP bastions like Texas, Wyoming, Tennessee, South Dakota and Mississippi, the tax system has lately been preserving or exacerbating existing inequality.

The good news is that if we return to the slightly higher tax rates of the Reagan or Clinton eras - i.e., the rates that existed when the economy was doing better - we can begin fixing things. If, though, we keep tax rates the same or make them even more regressive, we'll be seeing a whole lot more about economic inequality on our local news as the current crisis inevitably reaches an ugly boiling point.
(c) 2011 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.




Demonstrators from the Freedom Plaza Occupation & Backbone Campaign; Economic
Justice Allies, protest November 10, 2011 to Demand Mortgage Correction in
front of the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) in Washington, DC.




Occupy Movement Demands Home Mortgages Correction
By David Swanson

On Thursday, OccupyWashingtonDC.org teamed up with the Backbone Campaign, National People's Action, and the New Economy Working Group in a march from Freedom Plaza to the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA).

The demand they brought, along with giant props including a foreclosed house under water, was for a correction. The 1%, they said, inflated house values and made off with ill-gotten gains, but those left with underwater mortgages when the house values were brought back down have suffered. The demand is for mortgage values to be adjusted to match the current market values of houses.

"People in power know that the real solution to the continuing collapse of the housing market is universal principal reduction of American mortgages to real market value," said Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign. "It's time those with the power find the backbone to stand up to the banks and Institutions that hold these mortgages and insist they stop drowning America with false solutions, inaction and greed."

Some 25% of U.S. mortgages are now under water, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hold over 50% of U.S. mortgages. The FHFA has the power to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce principal to the actual value of houses. Underwater mortgage debt is one of the primary drags on economic recovery. It continues to devour tens of billions of dollars annually, money that would otherwise go into our economy in the form of consumer spending.

Noel Ortega with the Freedom Plaza Occupation, Backbone Campaign & Economic Justice Allies protests from a makeshift 'underwater home' November 10, 2011 to Demand Mortgage Correction in front of the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) in Washington, DC. Demonstrators are demanding that the FHFA force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce principal to the actual value of houses. Underwater mortgage debt is one of the primary drags on economic recovery. It continues to devour tens of billions of dollars annually, money that would otherwise go into our economy in the form of consumer spending.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Michael Bloomberg -- The Villain Occupy Wall Street Has Been Waiting For
By Robert Scheer

In the pantheon of billionaires without shame, Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street banker-turned-business-press-lord-turned-mayor, is now secure at the top. What is so offensive is that someone who abetted Wall Street greed, and benefited as much as anyone from it, has no compunction about ruthlessly repressing those who dare exercise their constitutional "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" that he helped to create.

You would think that a former partner at the investment bank Solomon Brothers, which originated mortgage-backed securities, a man who then partnered with Merrill Lynch in the high-speed computerized trading that has led to so much financial manipulation, would have some sense of his own culpability. Or at least that someone whose Wall Street career left him with a net worth of $19.5 billion would grasp the deep irony of his being the instrument for smashing Occupy Wall Street, the internationally acknowledged symbol of opposition to corporate avarice.

But only in America is the arrogance of the superrich so perfectly concealed by the pretense of democracy that the 12th richest man in the nation can suppress dissent against corporate rapacity and expect his brutal actions to be viewed not as a means of preserving his own class privilege but as bureaucratically necessary to providing sanitary streets.

Even before he ordered the smashing of dissent by citizens peacefully assembled, Bloomberg denigrated their heartfelt message: "It's fun and it's cathartic," he said of those huddled against the cold in a makeshift encampment, "... it's entertaining to go and blame people. ... It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."

It is mind-boggling that Bloomberg still hypes the canard that the banks were forced to reap enormous profits from toxic securities. It is an embarrassing, dishonest position when the record of banker fraud in creating the housing bubble is so well documented in Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuits. Is Bloomberg unaware that the major banks have agreed to pay hefty fines in a meager compensation for their schemes? That he blames the victims of the securitization swindles and then orders the arrest of those who dare speak the truth is a tribute to his belief in the enduring power of the big lie.

If the Bloomberg news service, the stock market idolizer owned by the mayor, had been anything more than an enabler this past decade of Wall Street excess, nay criminality, it's possible we would not be experiencing the current crisis. If this leading financial news outlet had performed the minimum of journalistic due diligence on unregulated credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and the other swindles marketed with an abandon informed by deep deceit and the financial industry's pervasive corruption, the world economy may not now be in such terrible shape.

Yet the man whose personal wealth increased by $4.5 billion the first year of this meltdown when many Americans were losing their life savings now dares shift blame away from himself and others at the center of economic power to the most vulnerable among us. Instead of blaming the Wall Street lobbyists who got the laws changed so that they could securitize people's home mortgages, no matter how unsound those mortgages were by design, he blames the folks suckered into accepting the banks' phony offerings. "Blame the opium addict and not the pusher" is the excuse for the bankers who turned the lure of easy credit into a housing bubble that, when it inevitably exploded, impoverished the world but left the bailed-out Wall Street hustlers richer than ever.

"There's something wrong with a kid who steals a bike going to jail and someone who steals millions paying a fine," as former New York City Mayor Ed Koch put it in challenging Bloomberg's blame-the-victims copout. The fines to which Koch referred represent a small percentage of the bankers' ill-gotten gains, and, of course, as opposed to the kid who steals a bike, none of the bankers fined by the SEC has even been threatened with jail time. "What do you think they got fined for-schmutz on the sidewalk?" Koch asked. "They got fined because they abused their relationship with their clientele. And I want to see somebody-I want to see one of them, of a major corporation, punished criminally."

Instead, the people led away in handcuffs are not the bankers who perpetuated the fraud of turning homes into the junk of toxic mortgages, which should be judged as criminal, but decent people who have committed only the "crime" of speaking truth to power.
(c) 2011 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. A journalist with over 30 years experience, Scheer has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.








Vouchers For Veterans
By Paul Krugman

American health care is remarkably diverse. In terms of how care is paid for and delivered, many of us effectively live in Canada, some live in Switzerland, some live in Britain, and some live in the unregulated market of conservative dreams. One result of this diversity is that we have plenty of home-grown evidence about what works and what doesn't.

Naturally, then, politicians - Republicans in particular - are determined to scrap what works and promote what doesn't. And that brings me to Mitt Romney's latest really bad idea, unveiled on Veterans Day: to partially privatize the Veterans Health Administration (V.H.A.).

What Mr. Romney and everyone else should know is that the V.H.A. is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform.

Many people still have an image of veterans' health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago. Under the Clinton administration, however, the V.H.A. was overhauled, and achieved a remarkable combination of rising quality and successful cost control. Multiple surveys have found the V.H.A. providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers. Furthermore, the V.H.A. has led the way in cost-saving innovation, especially the use of electronic medical records.

What's behind this success? Crucially, the V.H.A. is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it's free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense. And because V.H.A. patients are in it for the long term, the agency has a stronger incentive to invest in prevention than private insurers, many of whose customers move on after a few years.

And yes, this is "socialized medicine" - although some private systems, like Kaiser Permanente, share many of the V.H.A.'s virtues. But it works - and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of U.S. health care more broadly.

Yet Mr. Romney believes that giving veterans vouchers to spend on private insurance would somehow yield better results. Why?

Well, Republicans have a thing about vouchers. Earlier this year Representative Paul Ryan famously introduced a plan to convert Medicare into a voucher system; Mr. Romney's Medicare proposal follows similar lines. The claim, always, is the one Mr. Romney made last week, that "private sector competition" would lower costs.

But we have a lot of evidence about how private-sector competition in health insurance works, and it's not favorable. The individual insurance market, which comes closest to the conservative ideal of free competition, has huge administrative costs and has no demonstrated ability to reduce other costs. Medicare Advantage, which allows Medicare beneficiaries to buy private insurance instead of having Medicare pay bills directly, has consistently had higher costs than the traditional program.

And the international evidence accords with U.S. experience. The most efficient health care systems are integrated systems like the V.H.A.; next best are single-payer systems like Medicare; the more privatized the system, the worse it performs.

To be fair to Mr. Romney, he takes a somewhat softer line than others in his party, suggesting that the existing V.H.A. system would remain available and that traditional Medicare would remain an option. In practice, however, partial privatization would almost surely undermine the public side of these programs. For example, one problem with the V.H.A. is that its hospitals are spread too thinly across the nation; this problem would become worse if a substantial number of veterans were encouraged to opt out of the system.

So what lies behind the Republican obsession with privatization and voucherization? Ideology, of course. It's literally a fundamental article of faith in the G.O.P. that the private sector is always better than the government, and no amount of evidence can shake that credo.

In fact, it's hard to avoid the sense that Republicans are especially eager to dismantle government programs that act as living demonstrations that their ideology is wrong. Bloated military budgets don't bother them much - Mr. Romney has pledged to reverse President Obama's defense cuts, despite the fact that no such cuts have actually taken place. But successful programs like veterans' health, Social Security and Medicare are in the crosshairs.

Which brings me to a final thought: maybe all this amounts to a case for Rick Perry. Any Republican would, if elected president, set out to undermine precisely those government programs that work best. But Mr. Perry might not remember which programs he was supposed to destroy.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times



The Quotable Quote...



"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony."
~~~ Noam Chomsky









Fukushima -- They Knew
"Completely and Utterly Fail in an Earthquake." The Fukushima story you didn't hear on CNN
By Greg Palast

I've seen a lot of sick stuff in my career, but this was sick on a new level.

Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake.
"Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure.

The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have. Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building ....

WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR NEW YORK, 1986

[This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters, to be released this Monday. Click here to get the videos and the book.]

Two senior nuclear plant engineers were spilling out their souls and files on our huge conference table, blowing away my government investigations team with the inside stuff about the construction of the Shoreham, New York, power station.

The meeting was secret. Very secret. Their courage could destroy their careers: No engineering firm wants to hire a snitch, even one who has saved thousands of lives. They could lose their jobs; they could lose everything. They did. That's what happens. Have a nice day.

On March 12 this year, as I watched Fukushima melt, I knew: the "SQ" had been faked. Anderson Cooper said it would all be OK. He'd flown to Japan, to suck up the radiation and official company bullshit. The horror show was not the fault of Tokyo Electric, he said, because the plant was built to withstand only an 8.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, and this was 9.0. Anderson must have been in the gym when they handed out the facts. The 9.0 shake was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 90 miles away. It was barely a tenth of that power at Fukushima.

I was ready to vomit. Because I knew who had designed the plant, who had built it and whom Tokyo Electric Power was having rebuild it: Shaw Construction. The latest alias of Stone & Webster, the designated builder for every one of the four new nuclear plants that the Obama Administration has approved for billions in federal studies.

But I had The Notebook, the diaries of the earthquake inspector for the company. I'd squirreled it out sometime before the Trade Center went down. I shouldn't have done that. Too bad.

All field engineers keep a diary. Gordon Dick, a supervisor, wasn't sup- posed to show his to us. I asked him to show it to us and, reluctantly, he directed me to these notes about the "SQ" tests.

SQ is nuclear-speak for "Seismic Qualification." A seismically qualified nuclear plant won't melt down if you shake it. A "seismic event" can be an earthquake or a Christmas present from Al Qaeda. You can't run a nuclear reactor in the USA or Europe or Japan without certified SQ.

This much is clear from his notebook: This nuclear plant will melt down in an earthquake. The plant dismally failed to meet the Seismic I (shaking) standards required by U.S. and international rules.

Here's what we learned: Dick's subordinate at the nuclear plant, Robert Wiesel, conducted the standard seismic review. Wiesel flunked his company. No good. Dick then ordered Wiesel to change his report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, change it from failed to passed. Dick didn't want to make Wiesel do it, but Dick was under the gun himself, acting on direct command from corporate chiefs. From The Notebook:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. [He said,] "I believe these are bad results and I believe it's reportable," and then he took the volume of federal regulations from the shelf and went to section 50.55(e), which describes reportable deficiencies at a nuclear plant and [they] read the section together, with Wiesel pointing to the appropriate paragraphs that federal law clearly required [them and the company] to report the Category II, Seismic I deficiencies.

Wiesel then expressed his concern that he was afraid that if he [Wiesel] reported the deficiencies, he would be fired, but that if he didn't report the deficiencies, he would be breaking a federal law. . . .

The law is clear. It is a crime not to report a safety failure. I could imagine Wiesel standing there with that big, thick rule book in his hands, The Law. It must have been heavy. So was his paycheck. He weighed the choices: Break the law, possibly a jail-time crime, or keep his job.

What did Wiesel do? What would you do?

Why the hell would his company make this man walk the line? Why did they put the gun to his head, to make him conceal mortal danger? It was the money. It's always the money. Fixing the seismic problem would have cost the plant's owner half a billion dollars easy. A guy from corporate told Dick, "Bob is a good man. He'll do what's right. Don't worry about Bob."

That is, they thought Bob would save his job and career rather than rat out the company to the feds.

But I think we should all worry about Bob. The company he worked for, Stone & Webster Engineering, built or designed about a third of the nuclear plants in the United States.

From the fifty-second floor we could look at the Statue of Liberty. She didn't look back.
(c) 2011 Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigations for BBC TV and Democracy Now! can be seen by subscribing to Palast's reports at.




.




An Interview With An Occupy Oakland Man Before Police Raid Peaceful Camp
'We are a Role Model'
By Amy Goodman

Before dawn on Monday morning, hundreds of police in riot gear raided the Occupy Oakland encampment in order to evict peaceful protesters. They arrested more than 30 people who chose to remain as an act of civil disobedience. Later in the day, Mayor Jean Quan's chief legal adviser resigned over what he called the "tragically unnecessary" police raid. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman visited the camp on Sunday, prior to the raid. One participant, Ali, told her he was there to protest the closure of libraries and schools, and the massive layoffs of teachers and other public workers.
ALI: My name is Ali. How are you all doing?

AMY GOODMAN: Hi. Have you been here from the beginning?

ALI: Pretty much. Pretty much, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you want to see happen here?

ALI: Well, there's a lot of things. You know, I'm from Oakland, you know what I'm saying? So that, for me, to see changes, it's not a Wall Street thing, it's not a bank thing, but it's a social thing. You know what I'm saying? Everything that's been going on in Oakland-the homicides, schools being closed down, libraries being shut down, teachers being cut off, public workers getting laid off, work furloughs-everything that the city is supposed to be taking care of its own is not being done. You know, that's what I'm here, is trying to get them to start taking care of us as a people in Oakland, California. I mean, this is minute. You know, this is a small thing right now, if you look at it from Oakland's perspective, OK? But this is not small: we are a role model for the whole world. And that's what's going on.

AMY GOODMAN: And how are the police dealing with this at this point?

ALI: Can I-can I be frank? I don't care. I want to say it in different words, you know, but I just-I don't care, you know, what the police think. I don't care what Mayor Quan think. I don't think what any politician think about what we're doing here, because what we're doing here is starting something new, you know what I'm saying? I don't deal with any type of politic situations or none of that. What I'm dealing with is this encampment of Oscar Grant Plaza, OK? That's the only thing. That's the only my concern.

AMY GOODMAN: And why is it called Oscar Grant Plaza?

ALI: I mean, you know, it's a representation of what's been going on in Oakland, California, for a long time, with the oppression of poverty here, of the people of the community of Oakland, OK? Oscar Grant was a young male who was pretty much handcuffed on a BART train with a 250-pound officer on his back, six-four, OK? While he had another officer on his neck. And the officer pretty much pulled a gun and shot him in the back, while he was still in handcuffs, laying down on the platform on his stomach. So how-I don't understand the threat in that, OK? And that's the threat of these corporations on our society and our community. It represents that. We are all in handcuffs. We are all on our back. We have no way of getting out of it. And they pretty much have got these guns on our back, and they're shooting us. It's a representation of a whole.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think this encampment has accomplished? How long has it been out here?

ALI: I mean, you know, this encampment has accomplished a lot, OK, for myself and-you know, we have discussions all the time, you know what I'm saying? And it comes to what society labels us as, you know? And this right here, this encampment, has given the people a chance to change what those labels are, you know what I'm saying? Whether you've been called a black man who's a criminal or a Hispanic who's a car thief or an individual who's a racist, this is a place where none of that exists, OK? Because if you come with those, you're going to have some type of change. OK?

And pretty much what I've seen happen here, because this is our own world, our own community, our own society, that's by the people, we feed people, OK? We house people, OK? Not just people, but families, as well, you know what I'm saying? These people, if you go around West Oakland, the homeless encampments all across West Oakland are pretty much here. They are a part of the society, and they have to be recognized that they are here. You know what I'm saying? But everybody here is not a homeless individual. Some of us are hard-working class. You got these homeless people, crack addicts, heroine addicts, disabled people, right along with the same people that are doctors, lawyers, practitioners, chiropractors, teachers. We're all here together, OK? We are parents. We are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. Everything here is together, no matter what label you put on us. You know?

I'm a criminal. I'm a thug. I'm a convict. I'm a gangster. I'm a womanizer. But you know what? That's what society labeled me as. This society-I'm not none of those. I just met these people right here, you know? I just met you guys. Do you guys consider me as a thug or a criminal or anything?

UNIDENTIFIED: No.

ALI: There we go. You know what I'm saying? And that's what's been going on in society is that we have these labels upon ourself, living in these low-income areas. And pretty much like I was saying is that we need to start showing the people.
(c) 2011 Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback.





The Dead Letter Office...





Judge Stallman in happier days

Heil Obama,

Dear der Volksgerichtshof Richter Stallman,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your ruling (in violation of the 1st amendment) that free speech can not be used against the 1%, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "corpo-rat Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 11-24-2011. We salute you Herr Stallman, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama






The New GOP Front-Runner -- Dick Cheney

John Nichols

There is not a lot of fresh polling data on Dick Cheney. While it is fair to say that the numbers are probably a bit better than they were when the CBS News/New York Times team found in the final poll of the Bush-Cheney era that the outgoing vice president had a 13 percent favorable rating, there's no evidence to suggest that Americans have warmed to the country's chief advocate for war, torture, surveillance and secrecy.

Except, this is, among the Americans who are considered front-runners in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

With the exception of Ron Paul (who is actually right about a lot of issues) and John Huntsman (who is actually rational), the crowd on stage at Saturday night's "Republican Commander-in-Chief Debate" in South Carolina oozed Cheneyism.

Mitt Romney, the frontrunner Republicans love to hate, and Newt Gingrich, the next alternative to Romneyevitability, sparred over who was more prepared to go nuclear with Iran. Gingrich advocated assassination ("taking out their scientists") and massive disruption ("breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable") as first steps. Then war. Romney went with rank partisanship: "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

While Gingrich had the Cheney style down, Romney went full Cheney with the groundless suggestion that Obama would do nothing to prevent nuclear proliferation. Cheney points to Mitt. Gingrich upped the ante by fretting that the "Arab Spring is becoming an anti-Christian Spring."

Then Michele Bachmann-after comically debating with Rick Perry about whether to "start foreign aid at zero"-went full Cheney with her line: "President Obama stands with Occupy Wall Street, but he doesn't stand with Israel."

Bachmann got more Cheney points with her advocacy for waterboarding, as did Herman Cain-who was very glad to be discussing foreign affairs. Perry said he was against torture before he was for it, declaring that while he did not approve of certain forms of cruel and unusual punishment, "this is war. That's what happens in war."

That was actually a very good Cheney impression: an inaccurate statement delivered with a combination of seriousness and bombast designed to excuse any abuse of the truth or the law. And Perry got some applause for it.

Congressman Paul, in contrast, upset a portion of the partisan crowd by declaring that "water boarding is torture" and reminding the crowd that "torture is illegal" under both US and international laws. "Why would you accept the position of torturing a hundred people because you know one person might have information?" Paul asked, adding that: "It's really un-American to accept, on principle, that we will torture people that we capture."



Huntsman, the former US ambassador to China and arguably the ablest analyst of foreign affairs on the stage, agreed, saying, "We diminish our standing in the world and the values that we project, which include liberty, democracy, human rights and open markets, when we torture."

Huntsman did not sound like Cheney when he added. "We lose that ability to project values that a lot of people in corners of this world are still relying on the United States to stand up for."

But Bachmann dialed up the Cheney with her applause line of the night. While advocating for torture, she griped that Barack Obama "has allowed the ACLU to run the CIA."

For the record this is what the ACLU says: "Contrary to Congresswoman Bachmann's claims, only the Constitution guides our nation's fight against terrorism. While the ACLU does not run the CIA, General David Petraeus does run it, and he has made clear that waterboarding and other torture have no place at the CIA or in the military."

No word yet from Cheney regarding the debate. But, surely, he must be satisfied.

He may not be very popular with the American people. But he is winning the battle of ideas-such as it is-within his Republican Party.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








Our F*ck You System Of Government
Anti-Occupy Crackdowns Highlight Lack of Services
By Ted Rall

Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn't pretend to try.

Sick? Too bad.

Can't find a job? Tough.

Broke? Can't afford rent? We don't give a crap.

Forget "e pluribus unum." We need a more accurate motto.

We live under a f*ck you system.

Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: f*ck you.

During the '80s I drove a yellow taxi in New York. Then, as now, there were no public restrooms in the city. At 4 in the morning, with few restaurants or bars open, the coffee I drank to stay awake posed a significant challenge.

It was—it is—insane. People pee. People poop. As basic needs go, toilets are as basic as it gets. Yet the City of New York, with the biggest tax base of any municipality in the United States, didn't provide any.

So I did what all taxi drivers did. What they still do. I found a side street and a spot between two parked cars. It went OK until a cop caught me peeing under the old elevated West Side Highway, which later collapsed due to lack of maintenance. Perhaps decades of taxi driver urine corroded the support beams.

"You can't do that here," said the policeman.

"Where am I supposed to go?" I asked him. "There's aren't any restrooms anywhere in town."

"I know," he replied before going to get his summons book from his cruiser.

The old "f*ck you." We create the problem, then blame you for the results.

I ran away.

In recent days American mayors have been ordering heavily armed riot police to attack and rob peaceful members of encampments allied with Occupy Wall Street.

Like NYC, which won't provide public restrooms but arrests public urinators, government officials and their media allies use their own refusal to provide basic public services to justify raids against Occupations.

In the middle of the night on November 15th NYPD goons stormed into Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. They beat and pepper-sprayed members of Occupy Wall Street and destroyed the books in their library. Citing "unsanitary conditions," New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, then told reporters:

"I have become increasingly concerned...that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community."

Four days before the police attack The New York Times had quoted a city health department statement worrying about the possible spread of norovirus, vomiting, diarrhea and tuberculosis: "It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone's health."

So why don't they give the homeless some of the thousands of abandoned apartment units in New York?

Anyway, according to the Times: "Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at [the few] public restrooms."

Of course, there's an obvious solution: provide adequate bathroom facilities—not just for Occupy but for all New Yorkers. But that's off the table under New York's f*ck you system of government.

Doctors noted a new phenomenon called "Zuccotti cough." Symptoms are similar to those of "Ground Zero cough" suffered by 9/11 first responders.

Zuccotti is 450 feet away from Ground Zero.

Which brings to mind the fact that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released 400 tons of asbestos into the air. It was never cleaned up properly. Could Occupiers be suffering the results of sleeping in a should-have-been-Superfund site for two months?

We'll never know. As under Bush, Obama's EPA still won't conduct a 9/11 environmental impact study.

Sick? Wanna know why? f*ck you.

One of the authorities' most ironic complaints about the Occupations is that they attract the mentally ill, drug users and habitually homeless.

To listen to the mayors of Portland, Denver and New York, you'd think the Occupiers beamed in bums and nutcases from outer space.

When mentally disabled people seek help from their government, they get the usual answer: f*ck you.

When people addicted to drugs—drugs imported into the U.S. under the watchful eyes of corrupt border enforcement officers—ask their government for help, they are turned away. f*ck you again.

When people who lost their homes because their government said "f*ck you" to them rather than help turn to the same government to look for safe shelter, again they are told: "f*ck you."

And then, after days and years and decades of shirking their responsibility to provide us with such staples of human survival as places to urinate and defecate and sleep, and food, and medical care, our "f*ck you" government has the amazing audacity to blame us, victims of their negligence and corruption and violence, for messing things up.

Which is why we are finally, at long last, starting to say "f*ck you" to them.
(c) 2011 Ted Rall is the author of the new books "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?" and "The Anti-American Manifesto."



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Bill Day ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



Romney says he wants just one person out there to appear the slightest bit excited about him.


Mitt Romney's Goal To Connect With One Voter By The Time This Is All Over

BELMONT, MA-While he is widely favored to win the Republican nomination for president next year, Mitt Romney told reporters Monday that deep down, what he truly wants is to actually establish a real, authentic connection with at least one voter before his campaign ends.

The anguished former Massachusetts governor, who conceded many in his party will recognize him as their most electable candidate and vote for him only by default, said victory in the primaries will mean nothing to him if he remains incapable of energizing a single member of the American electorate.

"I'm getting a lot of support just by virtue of being the Republican in the race most likely to beat Obama, and that's good, I guess," Romney said. "But I suppose I was hoping for a stronger, more emotional reaction from people. When this whole thing is over, all I really want is for one person to truly, earnestly believe in me-to look me in the eye as if to say, 'I'm with you, Mitt. You are great, and I am excited about you as a person and as a leader.'"

"There's got to be at least one, single individual out there who really, really wants me to be president, right?" he added. "Right?"

Romney, an unsuccessful candidate for the 2008 Republican nomination, said that in recent months his town hall appearances and campaign rallies have served as constant distressing reminders of his inability to spark genuine enthusiasm among voters or form any kind of meaningful bond whatsoever.

"Sure, some people cheer and wave signs, but it all seems so mechanical, like they're just going through the motions," Romney said. "Have you ever seen anyone at a Mitt Romney rally with tears streaming down their face? No, of course not. Has anyone ever spontaneously started a spirited 'Mitt, Mitt, Mitt' chant that I could spend a solid minute basking in before finally beginning my speech? No way. In fact, it's hard to even imagine it. Why is that? What am I doing wrong? I mean, I say inspirational stuff, don't I?"

"I'm not asking for people to faint or go into hysterics or anything, but would it be too much for just one person to respond intensely and personally to who I am and what I stand for?" continued Romney, adding that he would even be thrilled to have a voter shout at him in anger, because then he would at least be able to say he had actually moved someone. "Frankly, I don't even care who it is-an elderly woman, a child, a mentally-ill person who just happens to be wandering through the rally. I am wide-open here."

Sources confirmed Romney has directed his staff to conduct a nationwide door-to-door search to find at least one individual excited by his bid for the presidency, a massive undertaking he initiated upon realizing his own aides and volunteer workers had only joined his campaign after failing to find a more inspiring candidate to rally around.

For his part, the presidential hopeful said he was making a concerted effort to maximize the potential for a meaningful moment in all public appearances.

"Now, when I give a speech, I make eye- contact with just one person the whole time, trying to convince them I understand and share their hopes and their fears," said Romney, who has reportedly asked that his speechwriters redouble their efforts to craft soaring turns of phrase and convincing words of empathy. "I hold all my handshakes a little longer, squeeze them a little tighter. I'm even saluting little kids. If one of them ever salutes me back, I'm counting it as a deep, heartfelt connection."

"Still, I can't say I blame anyone," Romney added with a sigh. "I look in the mirror every day, and I don't feel all that inspired, either."
(c) 2011 The Onion




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 45 (c) 11/18/2011


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In This Edition

Arundhati Roy orates, "We Are All Occupiers."

Uri Avnery explains, "Weimar Revisited."

Matt Taibbi reports, "Woman Gets Jail For Food-Stamp Fraud; Wall Street Fraudsters Get Bailouts."

Randall Amster we are, "Holding Space As OWS Camps Come Under Assault."

Jim Hightower chants, "Rooty-Toot-Toot, Here Comes The Newt!"

Helen Thomas sees, "Gaffes, Not Gains, For GOP."

James Donahue with a bizarre idea about, "Fixing Washington Corruption - Lets Have Fair Elections."

David Sirota considers, "The New Age Of Consumer Activism."

David Swanson reveals, "Painted Torture."

Vincent L. Guarisco exclaims, "Occupy With A Vengeance!"

Paul Krugman confronts, "Boring Cruel Romantics."

William Rivers Pitt reviews, "The People's Surveillance State."

Joel S. Hirschhorn examines, "Occupy Revolution."

Federal District Judge Henry T. Wingate wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols watches as, "40,000 Rally, More Than 100,000 Sign Petitions, To Say 'Recall Walker'."

Ted Rall gives an, "Occupy The Hamptons Update."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst explores, "Grope And Change" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "Anarchy, It's About Time!"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of John Deering, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, Ruben Bolling, Clay Bennett, Propaganda Remix.Com, Ted Rall, W M X Design, Jeff Danziger, Carlos Avila Gonzalez, Daniel Heyman, Dan Pararo, Paul Sakuma, The New York Times, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










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Anarchy, It's About Time!
By Ernest Stewart


"Any time someone carries a picket sign in front of the White House, that is the First Amendment in action." ~~~ Julian Bond

"Children in the poorest neighborhoods are trapped in child laws that prevent them from earning money.

"Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they'd have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising. Get any job that teaches you to show up on Monday. Get any job that teaches you to stay all day, even if you're having a fight with your girlfriend." ~~~ Newt Gingrich

"As commodity prices continue to rally and the cost of imported materials impacts earnings, we expect to see increasing use of surrogate products within food items. Cellulose is certainly in higher demand and we expect this to continue." ~~~ Michael A. Yoshikami, chief investment strategist at YCM Net Advisors

"I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are." ~~~ White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer

I was thinking just the other day; yes I know, a very dangerous thing for me to do, about how we can put a stop to our various Mayor Hitlers, Fatherland Security and the Fumbling Bumbling Idiots attempt to shut the Occupiers down.

Since what they do is to quash free speech and peaceful assembly, why haven't we started billion dollar lawsuits against the cities, police departments and mayors for violation of federal laws and Constitutional rights? As the 1st amendment in the Bill of Rights so clearly states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
What this says is that only Congress can make such laws, and they can't. Ergo, no state or city laws can override this law. You may also notice there's no asterisk beside it saying "except it cases of health or sanitation concerns." Since the occupiers are legally following the law by being peaceful, even while the pigs are attempting to murder them to keep them from using their rights, you have an open and shut case, except for the amount of money they must be paid for violation of their rights and what penalties the cops, mayors, and cities shall have to suffer for being traitorous bastards!

An acquaintance of mine declared that what the Occupy movement equates to is Anarchy! Uh huh, and it's about time too! Capitalism, like every other failed system, is on the way out, as are the 1% capitalists that benefit from it. Now they can leave easy, or they can leave hard, but leave they will. Personally I'm hoping for the hard, because if anyone on Earth deserves a righteous payback, it's the 1%; which is why I say: "Nail'em up! Nail some sense into them!" This also applies to any 5th column groups like AIPAC and their followers! We're going to need a couple of big barrels of # 16 nails and about 25,000 crosses, or a couple dozen guillotines! Hey, it worked for the French! Do you see Kings or Queens or Dukes or Duchesses in France? You do not!

In Other News

The Newt crawled out from under his rock to open up his cake hole the other day. Newt's latest bright idea is to do away with all those nasty child labor laws so grade schoolers can become janitors. Yes, that might make sense (he joked), because it'll give them a head start qualifying for the kind of jobs that will be available as the Tea Baggers bust the unions and what's left of the middle class, and take us back to those thrilling daze of yesteryear.

You'd think for someone universally hated by both the left and most of the right, Gingrich would have stayed under his rock and continued to eat the worms and grubs that came along, but not for the Newtster. Newt is, after all, only doing this because he cares about America's youth not being able to get a job. That same compassion and caring that he showed to his starter wife as she lay suffering and dying in her hospital bed of cancer, when Newt walked in and served her with divorce papers as he was hot to trot and marry the bimbo de jour, who surprisingly he divorced a few years later. Yep, Mr. Compassion -- that's Newt alright!

Newt is quick to tell you, like he did at Harvard the other day, that he has a PhD (Pin headed dope) in History. Maybe ya'll are impressed by that, but you may also recall that the Smirkster had an MBA from Harvard, and you know how well that worked out for the economy. Much like our current JD in Constitutional Law that currently adorns der Fuhrer Bunker in DC. Yep, Barry knows the law, so every time he breaks the law, commits treason or a war crime, he knows exactly what he's doing! Hey, perhaps he could ditch Joe and get Newt to run as his VP? Think of the possibilities!

Still, I doubt that Newt will be anything more than the Rethuglican flavor of the month as too many Americans remember all of Newt's criminal aspects and why he got censored and fined $300,000 when he was Speaker of the House on a vote of the House of Representatives. The House voted for the first time in its (then, 1999) 208-year history to discipline a House Speaker, by a 395-28 vote, for ethical wrongdoing. It's just the RNC's way of telling the Tea Baggers that Romney and his magic underwear are our only hope. Yep, America; you better get used to the idea of either Willard or Barry for Fuhrer come 2012!

And Finally

You long time readers may recall all the various articles in the magazine we posted concerning how to do things once it hits the fan. Things like how to make clean water, how to manufacture electricity, how to hunt and fish, how to garden, and where to get non-hybrid, non-GMO, Heirloom seeds -- all done on the cheap. Things that we all used to know before we left the land and left others to do the things we used to know. How to survive when the grid goes down and the supermarkets are bare.

We also told you what staple foods to buy and which foods to avoid, it's the later that we will be looking at today. The following foods should be avoided because one of their ingredients is wood chips! Sounds yummy, huh?

The recent class-action lawsuit brought against Taco Bell raised questions about the quality of food many Americans eat each day.

Chief among those concerns is the use of cellulose (wood pulp), an extender whose use in a roster of food products, from crackers and ice creams to puddings and baked goods, is now being exposed.

Cellulose is virgin wood pulp that has been processed and manufactured to different lengths for functionality, though use of it and its variant forms (cellulose gum, powdered cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, etc.) is deemed safe for human consumption, according to the FDA, which regulates most food industry products. The government agency sets no limit on the amount of cellulose that can be used in food products meant for human consumption, which is interesting because humans are unable to digest cellulose -- we lack the appropriate enzymes to break it down. This is a food adulterant and another example of the wholly-corrupt nature of the FDA, which was bought and paid for by the corpo-rats over 150 years ago.

Here's a partial list of foods containing wood fibers instead of food:

"Dole Food

Peaches & Crème Parfait
Apples & Crème Parfait

Fiber One Ready-To-Eat Muffins - Used in:
Grilled Chicken Salad, Chicken Club Salad with Crispy Chicken, Meaty Breakfast Burrito, Hearty Breakfast Bowl

Cheese, Pepper Jack, Shredded - Used in:
Chicken Fajita Pita, Southwest Chicken Salad with Grilled Chicken, Meaty Breakfast Burrito

Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce
Ice Cream Shake Mix
Log Cabin Syrup
Mini Funnel Cake
Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (also in Sampler Trio)
Smoothie Base: (Mango, Strawberry, Strawberry Banana)

Tortilla, Flour - Used in:
Chorizo Sausage Burrito, Steak & Egg Burrito, Meaty Breakfast Burrito

White Cheese Sauce - Used in Breakfast Bowl

Kellogg

MorningStar Farms Chik'n Nuggets
MorningStar Farms Chik Patties Original
MorningStar Farms Buffalo Wings Veggie Wings
Eggo Nutri-Grain Blueberry waffles
Eggo Strawberry Waffles
Eggo Blueberry Waffles
Cinnabon Pancakes Original
Cinnabon Pancakes Caramel
Cinnabon Snack Bars Original
Cinnabon Snack Bars Baked Cinnamon Apple

KFC (Yum! Brands)

KFC Cornbread Muffin
Apple Turnover
Honey Mustard BBQ Sauce
Lil' Bucket Strawberry Short Cake Parfait
Lil' Bucket Lemon Crème Parfait
Lil' Bucket Chocolate Crème Parfait
Oreo Cookies and Crème Pie Slice
Reese's Peanut Butter Pie Slice
Popcorn Chicken
Strawberry Cream Cheese Pie Slice

Kraft Foods

Wheat Thins Fiber Selects
Frozen Bagel-Fuls
Macaroni & Cheese Thick 'n Creamy
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Three Cheese W/mini-shell Pasta

McDonald's

Fish Filet Patty
McRib
Premium Caesar Salad
Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap
Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken
Southern Style Chicken Biscuit
Strawberry Sundae

Natural Swiss Cheese - Used in:

McRib, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Angus Mushroom & Swiss, Premium Grilled Chicken Club Sandwich, Premium Crispy Chicken Club Sandwich, Angus Mushroom & Swiss Snack Wrap

Shredded Cheddar/Jack Cheese - Used in:

Ranch Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Honey Mustard Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken, Premium Southwest Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken, Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken, McSkillet Burrito with Sausage

Barbeque Sauce
Sweet 'N Sour Sauce
Shredded Parmesan Cheese - Used in:

Premium Caesar Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken

Biscuit - Used to make:

Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, Sausage Biscuit with Egg, Sausage Biscuit, Southern Style Chicken Biscuit, Big Breakfast with/without Hotcakes

Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream - Used in:

Strawberry Sundae, Hot Caramel Sundae, Hot Fudge Sundae, McFlurry with M&M'S Candies, McFlurry with OREO Cookies, Chocolate Triple Thick Shake, Strawberry Triple Thick Shake, Vanilla Triple Thick Shake

Sugar Free Vanilla Syrup, used in: Premium Roast Coffee, Espresso Nestle

Hot Cocoa Mixes: Mini Marshmallows, Rich Milk Chocolate, Chocolate Mint, Chocolate Caramel

Pepsi

Aunt Jemima Frozen Blueberry Pancakes
Aunt Jemima Original Syrup
Aunt Jemima Lite Syrup

Pizza Hut (Yum! Brands)

Parmesan Romano Cheese
Taco Bean Sauce
Shredded Cheddar (for Taco Pizza)
Breadstick Seasoning - Used to make Cheese Breadsticks)
WingStreet Bone-In (in the batter)
Meatballs (for pasta products, sandwiches)
White Pasta Sauce - Used for:

PastaBakes Marinara, PastaBakes Meatball Marinara, PastaBakes Primavera, PastaBakes Chicken Primavera

Alfredo Sauce - Used for:

PastaBakes Marinara, PastaBakes Meatball Marinara, PastaBakes Primavera, PastaBakes Chicken Primavera

Fat Free Ranch Dressing

Sara Lee

Jimmy Dean Frozen Breakfast Bowl (Sausage & Gravy)
Jimmy Dean D-lights Turkey Sausage Breakfast Bowl
Jimmy Dean D-lights Turkey Sausage Croissant
Jimmy Dean Breakfast Entrée - Used in:

(Scrambled Eggs with Bacon/Sausage and Cheese Diced Apples & Seasoned Hash)

Sonic

Ice Cream
Sonic Blast
Banana Split
Ice Cream Cone

Taco Bell (Yum! Brands)

Southwest Chicken
Caramel Apple Empanada
Corn Tortilla
Enchilada Rice
Nacho Chips
Red Strips
Strawberry Topping
Zesty Dressing

Weight Watchers International

Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich
English Toffee Crunch Ice Cream Bar
Giant Cookies & Cream Ice Cream Bar

Wendy's ~ Arby's

Asiago Cheese - Used in:

Spicy Chicken Caesar Salad, Asiago Ranch Chicken Club, Caesar Side Salad

Fat Free French Dressing - Used for:

Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, Baja Salad, Spicy Chicken Caesar Salad, BLT Cobb Salad

Blue Cheese Crumbles - Used in:

Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, BLT Cobb Salad
Cheddar Pepper Jack Cheese Blend, Shredded Chocolate Sauce
Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty (Chocolate, Vanilla)
Frosty (Chocolate and Vanilla)
Frosty Shake (Frosty-cino, Chocolate Fudge, Strawberry, Vanilla Bean) Milk, 1% Low Fat Chocolate Milk"

If wood chips were the only poison being placed in your food, that would be bad enough; but it's just the tip of the iceberg -- corn poison being another example -- but when combined with GMO food and animals, etc., one might come to the conclusion that these manufacturers and the FDA are trying to kill us all -- and one wouldn't be far off the truth if one did! So dig in, America, and please pass me the syrup of ipecac!

Keepin' On

I thought I'd end this week's column on some happy news for a change! Have you heard what they did recently in Malaysia? They did what Obamahood promised to do until he was elected. They did what America demanded that Barry do. They did what the world wanted done, especially those innocent murdered and wounded millions of Middle Easterners. Can you guess?

What happened was a War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia has found former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes for their roles in the Iraq war! Can you dig it? (I knew that you could!)

The five-panel Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against humanity by leading the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I kind of figured that out in 2003, I wonder what took them so long?

In 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction, allegedly stockpiled by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Malaysian tribunal judges ruled that the decision to wage war against Iraq by the two former heads of government was "a flagrant abuse of law and an act of aggression that led to large-scale massacres of the Iraqi people."

In their ruling, the tribunal judges also stated that the US, under the leadership of Bush, "fabricated documents to make it appear that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction."

However, the world later learned that the former Iraqi regime did not possess WMDs and that the US and British leaders knew this all along.

Over one million Iraqis were killed during the invasion, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored. Another four million had to flee for their lives, and another one million were wounded, all in order to steal all that lovely oil and build permanent bases to control the rest of the oil and other minerals in the area!

The judges also said the court findings should be provided to signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, and added that the names of Bush and Blair should be listed on a war crimes register.

These are the same laws that brought the Germans and Japanese to trial after WWII; these laws are still on US books, and almost every other country in the world. Signatories are require to arrest Bush and Blair and hold them for an international criminal court should they enter their country. Of course, we and England won't arrest these traitors, even though we made beautiful speeches about how it should be done to anyone, including Americans and Englishmen if they break the law too. Yeah, don't do as we do, but do as we say. Please do save me a front row seat for the executions. I want to be up front when the trap doors spring open and they drop a few inches and then slowly strangle to death like we did to the Germans and Japanese; oh, and a large popcorn, please!

*****


01-20-1924 ~ 11-18-2011
Thanks for the songs!


04-01-1926 ~ 11-21-2011
Thanks for the books!


*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












We Are All Occupiers
People the world over salute the Occupy movement for standing up to injustice and fighting for equality at the heart of empire
By Arundhati Roy

This is the text of a speech given by Arundhati Roy at the People's University in Washington Square, NYC on November 16th, 2011.
Tuesday morning, the police cleared Zuccotti Park, but today the people are back. The police should know that this protest is not a battle for territory. We're not fighting for the right to occupy a park here or there. We are fighting for justice. Justice, not just for the people of the United States, but for everybody.

What you have achieved since September 17th, when the Occupy movement began in the United States, is to introduce a new imagination, a new political language into the heart of empire. You have reintroduced the right to dream into a system that tried to turn everybody into zombies mesmerized into equating mindless consumerism with happiness and fulfillment.

As a writer, let me tell you, this is an immense achievement. And I cannot thank you enough.

We were talking about justice. Today, as we speak, the army of the United States is waging a war of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. US drones are killing civilians in Pakistan and beyond. Tens of thousands of US troops and death squads are moving into Africa. If spending trillions of dollars of your money to administer occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not enough, a war against Iran is being talked up.

Ever since the Great Depression, the manufacture of weapons and the export of war have been key ways in which the United States has stimulated its economy. Just recently, under President Obama, the United States made a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia - moderate Muslims, right? It hopes to sell thousands of bunker busters to the UAE. It has sold $5 billion-worth of military aircraft to my country, India, which has more poor people than all the poorest countries of Africa put together. All these wars, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, have claimed millions of lives - all of them fought to secure the "American way of life."

Today, we know that the "American way of life" - the model that the rest of the world is meant to aspire towards - has resulted in 400 people owning the wealth of half of the population of the United States. It has meant thousands of people being turned out of their homes and their jobs while the US government bailed out banks and corporations - American International Group (AIG) alone was given $182 billion.

The Indian government worships US economic policy. As a result of 20 years of the free market economy, today, 100 of India's richest people own assets worth one-quarter of the country's GDP while more than 80% of the people live on less than 50 cents a day; 250,000 farmers, driven into a spiral of death, have committed suicide. We call this progress, and now think of ourselves as a superpower. Like you, we are well-qualified: we have nuclear bombs and obscene inequality.

The good news is that people have had enough and are not going to take it any more. The Occupy movement has joined thousands of other resistance movements all over the world in which the poorest of people are standing up and stopping the richest corporations in their tracks. Few of us dreamed that we would see you, the people of the United States on our side, trying to do this in the heart of Empire. I don't know how to communicate the enormity of what this means.

They (the 1%) say that we don't have demands... perhaps they don't know, that our anger alone would be enough to destroy them. But here are some things - a few "pre-revolutionary" thoughts I had - for us to think about together:

We want to put a lid on this system that manufactures inequality. We want to put a cap on the unfettered accumulation of wealth and property by individuals as well as corporations. As "cap-ists" and "lid-ites", we demand:

* An end to cross-ownership in businesses. For example, weapons manufacturers cannot own TV stations; mining corporations cannot run newspapers; business houses cannot fund universities; drug companies cannot control public health funds.

* Two, natural resources and essential infrastructure - water supply, electricity, health, and education - cannot be privatized.

* Three, everybody must have the right to shelter, education and healthcare.

* Four, the children of the rich cannot inherit their parents' wealth.

This struggle has re-awakened our imagination. Somewhere along the way, capitalism reduced the idea of justice to mean just "human rights", and the idea of dreaming of equality became blasphemous. We are not fighting to just tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced.

As a cap-ist and a lid-ite, I salute your struggle.

Salaam and Zindabad.
(c) 2011 Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Her latest book, Listening to Grasshoppers: Fields Notes on Democracy, is a collection of recent essays. A tenth anniversary edition of her novel, The God of Small Things (Random House), for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, was recently released. She is also the author of numerous nonfiction titles, including An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire.





Weimar Revisited
By Uri Avnery

"YOU AND your Weimar!" a friend of mine once exclaimed in exasperation, "just because you experienced the collapse of the Weimar Republic as a child, you see Weimar behind every corner."

The accusation was not unjustified. In 1960, during the Eichmann trial, I wrote a book about the fall of the German Republic. Its last chapter was called: "It can happen here" Since then I have come back to this warning time and again.

But now I am not alone anymore. During the last few weeks, the word Weimar has popped up in the articles of many commentators.

It should be sprayed in huge letters on the walls.

ISRAELI[] DEMOCRACY is under siege. No one can ignore this anymore. It is the main topic in the Knesset, which is leading the attack, and the media, who are among the victims.

This does not happen in the occupied territories. There, democracy never existed. Occupation is the very opposite of democracy: a denial of all human rights, the right to life, liberty, movement, fair trial and free expression, not to mention national rights.

No, I mean Israel proper, the Israel inside the Green Line, The Only Democracy In The Middle East.

The attackers are members of Binyamin Netanyahu's government coalition, which includes semi-fascist and openly fascist elements. Netanyahu himself tries to remain discreetly in the background, but there can be no doubt that every single detail has been orchestrated by him.

In the first two years of this coalition, attacks were sporadic. But now they are determined, systematic and coordinated.

At this moment, the anti-democratic forces are attacking on a wide front, The three main pillars of democracy - the courts, the media and the human rights organizations - are under simultaneous, deadly assault. (Remember Weimar?)

THE SUPREME COURT is the bastion of democracy. Israel has no constitution, the Knesset majority is totally unbridled, only the court can (if reluctantly) check the adoption of anti-democratic laws.

I am not a blind admirer of the court. In the occupied territories, it is an arm of the occupation, devoted to "national security", approving of some of the worst incidents. Only in rare cases has it come out against the worst practices. But in Israel proper, it is a stout defender of civil rights.

The extreme rightists in the Knesset are resolved to put an end to this. Their front man is the Minister of Justice, who was appointed by Avigdor Lieberman. He is pushing a series of scandalous ad hominem bills. One of them is designed to change the composition of the public committee that appoints the judges, with the undisguised intention of bringing about the appointment of a particular right-wing judge to the Supreme Court.

Another bill has the undisguised purpose of changing the existing court rules in order to put a certain "conservative" judge in the chair of Chief Justice. The declared purpose is to abolish the rule of an independent court which dares, though only in rare cases, to block "anti-constitutional" laws enacted by the Knesset majority. They want the court to "represent the will of the people". (Remember Weimar?)

Until now, since the first day of the state, the justices have been, in practice, chosen by cooptation. This has functioned perfectly for 63 years. Israel's Supreme Court is the envy of many countries. Now this system is in mortal danger.

Another bill, which would have compelled candidates for the Supreme Court to undergo grilling by a Knesset Committee chaired by another Lieberman appointee, and obtain their approval, was withheld at the last moment by Netanyahu himself, He had already given his approval, but shrank back after the almost universal condemnation - and is now posing as the defender of democracy from his own underlings.

The chairman of the Judicial Committee of the Knesset, another Lieberman appointee, is rushing these laws through his committee, contrary to established procedures. In a stormy session this week, a female member called him "a coarse thug." He replied: "You are not even a beast."

A minimal purpose of these bills is to terrorize any judges considering vetoing the other anti-democratic bills that are being enacted. Some say that the effects are already being felt.

In several famous cases, the government openly flouts the Supreme Court's orders, especially concerning the evacuation of "settlements outposts" built on lands belonging to Palestinian farmers.

Who will defend the court? The former Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, who was hated by the rightists because of his pioneering "judicial activism", once told me: "The Court has no army divisions. Its power rests solely on the support of the public."

THE ASSAULT on the media started some time ago when the American casino baron, Sheldon Adelson, a close friend of Netanyahu, started a daily tabloid paper with the express purpose of helping Netanyahu. It is being distributed for free and now has the biggest circulation in the country, threatening the existence of all the others (but also bribing them by giving them huge printing orders.) Money is no object. Huge sums are being spent.

That was only the beginning.

In 1965 the Labor party government enacted a new libel law (called literally "the Law of the Evil Tongue") which was then clearly designed to muzzle "Haolam Hazeh", the mass-circulation news magazine I was editing, which had introduced investigative reporting to Israel. I appealed to the public to send me to the Knesset in protest, and 1.5% of the voters were incensed enough to do so.

Now the right-wing gang in the Knesset wants to sharpen this anti-media law even more. The new amendment grants up to $135,000 damages to anyone claiming to be hurt by the media, without their having to prove any damage at all. For newspapers and TV channels, which are already in a precarious financial position, this means that they better give up all investigative reporting and any criticism of influential politicians and tycoons.

The new winds are already being felt. Journalists and TV editors are cowed. This week, a program on Channel 10, considered the most liberal, gave five minutes to a song glorifying the late "Rabbi" Meir Kahane, who was branded by the Supreme Court as a fascist, and whose organization was outlawed for advocating what the court called "Nuremberg laws". An avowed member of this organization, which is alive and kicking under another name, is now a vocal member of the Knesset. (Remember Weimar?)

A major purge of TV journalists is already underway. One by one, directors of all TV channels are being replaced by confirmed rightists. It was openly admitted that the government would force the closure of Channel 10 by calling in outstanding debts if a certain journalist were not fired. Though generally an establishment type, this reporter had irked Netanyahu by exposing his and his wife's luxurious traveling style at government expense.

AT THE same time, human rights and peace NGOs are under heavy attack. The Knesset gang is producing bill after bill to silence them.

One bill already under way forbids human rights associations to receive donations from foreign governments and "state-like organizations", such as the UN and the EU. Right-wing organization receive, of course, huge sums of money from Jewish American billionaires, who fund the settlements (which are also indirectly financed by the US treasury, which gives tax-exempt status to the so-called "charitable organizations" that fund the settlements.)

The law which levies huge indemnities on organizations and individuals who advocate a boycott on the products of the settlements is already in force. The hearing of an application submitted by Gush Shalom to the Supreme Court against this suppression of political protest has been postponed by the court again and again and again.

This parliamentary terrorism is accompanied by the accelerating violence of fascist gangs from the settlements. These SA-like gangs call their actions "Price Tag". Usually, they react to the isolated cases of the army demolishing a few "illegal" buildings in a settlement by attacking a neighboring Palestinian village, setting fire to a mosque or carrying out what can only be described as a pogrom. (Remember Weimar?)

MARTIN NIEMOLLER, a German U-boat captain and later pacifist pastor, who was thrown into a concentration camp by the Nazis , coined the famous lament: "When the Nazis came to take the Communists, I was silent. After all, I was no Communist. When they took the Jews, I was silent. I am no Jew. When they arrested the Social Democrats, I was silent. I was no Social Democrat. When they came to take me, there was no one left to protest."

What we are witnessing now are not isolated attacks on one or another human right - what we are seeing is a general attack on democracy as such. Perhaps only people who have experienced life under a fascist dictatorship can fully realize what that means.

Of course, the similarity between the collapse of the German republic and the processes in today's Israel does not mean that the same events must follow. Nazism was unique in many ways. The end of real democracy may be followed by different systems. There are many models to choose from: Ceausescu, Franco, Putin.

Certainly, there is no similarity between the small German town called Weimar and Tel Aviv. Except perhaps the fact that many houses in Tel Aviv were designed according to the Bauhaus architectural school - which originated in Weimar.

Weimar was once a cultural center, where geniuses like Goethe and Schiller produced their masterpieces. The German republic which was founded in 1919, after World War I, was called by this name after the national assembly which framed its very progressive constitution there.

On these lines, the endangered democratic State of Israel, whose Declaration of Independence was signed in 1948 in Tel Aviv, could rightly be called the Tel Aviv Republic.

We are not yet in 1932. The Storm Troopers are not yet roaming our streets. We still have time to mobilize the public against the looming danger. The demonstration taking place today in Tel Aviv against the de-democratization of Israel may mark a turning point.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







Woman Gets Jail For Food-Stamp Fraud; Wall Street Fraudsters Get Bailouts
By Matt Taibi

Had a quick piece of news I wanted to call attention to, in light of the recent developments at Zuccotti Park. For all of those who say the protesters have it wrong, and don't really have a cause worth causing public unrest over, consider this story, sent to me by a friend on the Hill.

Last week, a federal judge in Mississippi sentenced a mother of two named Anita McLemore to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application in order to obtain food stamps.

Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.

The total "cost" of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.

Wingate had the option of sentencing McLemore according to federal guidelines, which would have left her with a term of two months to eight months, followed by probation. Not good enough! Wingate was so outraged by McLemore's fraud that he decided to serve her up the deluxe vacation, using another federal statute that permitted him to give her up to five years.

He ultimately gave her three years, saying, "The defendant's criminal record is simply abominable .... She has been the beneficiary of government generosity in state court."

Compare this court decision to the fraud settlements on Wall Street. Like McLemore, fraud defendants like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank have "been the beneficiary of government generosity." Goldman got $12.9 billion just through the AIG bailout. Citigroup got $45 billion, plus hundreds of billions in government guarantees.

All of these companies have been repeatedly dragged into court for fraud, and not one individual defendant has ever been forced to give back anything like a significant portion of his ill-gotten gains. The closest we've come is in a fraud case involving Citi, in which a pair of executives, Gary Crittenden and Arthur Tildesley, were fined the token amounts of $100,000 and $80,000, respectively, for lying to shareholders about the extent of Citi's debt.

Neither man was forced to admit to intentional fraud. Both got to keep their jobs.

Anita McLemore, meanwhile, lied to feed her children, gave back every penny of her "fraud" when she got caught, and is now going to do three years in prison. Explain that, Eric Holder!

Here's another thing that boggles my mind: You get busted for drugs in this country, and it turns out you can make yourself ineligible to receive food stamps.

But you can be a serial fraud offender like Citigroup, which has repeatedly been dragged into court for the same offenses and has repeatedly ignored court injunctions to abstain from fraud, and this does not make you ineligible to receive $45 billion in bailouts and other forms of federal assistance.

This is the reason why all of these settlements allowing banks to walk away without "admissions of wrongdoing" are particularly insidious. A normal person, once he gets a felony conviction, immediately begins to lose his rights as a citizen.

But white-collar criminals of the type we've seen in recent years on Wall Street - both the individuals and the corporate "citizens" - do not suffer these ramifications. They commit crimes without real consequence, allowing them to retain access to the full smorgasbord of subsidies and financial welfare programs that, let's face it, are the source of most of their profits.

Why, I wonder, does a bank that has committed fraud multiple times get to retain access to the Federal Reserve discount window? Why should Citigroup and Goldman Sachs get to keep their status as Primary Dealers of U.S. government debt? Are there not enough banks without extensive histories of fraud and malfeasance that can be awarded these de facto subsidies?

Editords Note: If you'd like to share your thoughts with Judge Wingate: wingate_chambers@mssd.uscourts.gov
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







Holding Space As OWS Camps Come Under Assault
By Randall Amster

As the Occupy Movement gains strength and garners worldwide support, the predominant anti-OWS tactic of authority is becoming clear: decimate as many Occupy camps as possible, in the hope that this delivers a fatal blow to the movement's momentum. It is an outmoded, heavy-handed tack, one that starkly illuminates the gap between the casual brutality of the 1% and the core aspirations of the 99%.

And it will ultimately fail.

At each turn, the sweeping of the encampments - many of which have become little "utopian experiments" in themselves and working models for an alternative society - has only served to galvanize the resolve of Occupiers and drive even greater numbers out into the streets and parks. Mass arrests aim to make activists pay a personal price for their open defiance, but they also yield greater degrees of movement solidarity and radicalize demonstrators across generational and cultural lines.

People who struggle together, win. Not overnight, and not without travail. But in the end they do prevail.

The clichés and well-worn slogans abound, yet each one rings with the time-tested truth of human dignity: "You can't kill an idea." "People have nothing to lose but their chains." "This is what democracy looks like." "We shall not be moved." "All we are saying is give peace a chance…"

We've heard the refrains before. Still, this is different: a global peace movement that is about more than merely warfare, speaking broadly to the pervasive "structural violence" of injustice and inequality that comprises the foundation of our archaic system. As the social and ecological fabric of our lives reaches a critical point of no return at every level of engagement, so too are people acting from the realization that the power to alter course is vested in each and every one of us, and in our communities as well.

No amount of force can deter people seeking survival, meaning, and the natural longings of hope for the future. "Holding one's ground" becomes the operative premise - not in an aggressive way that replicates state power but with a presence of body and mind that demonstrates the unshakable force of "people power." There is no single way to manifest this spirit; for some it is standing firm on the front lines, for others it is rebuilding after a sweep, and for still others it is remaining peaceful and compassionate even and especially in the face of extreme provocation. All are equally powerful tacks.

Holding space, inner and outer, is the fulcrum. In the wake of systemic assault, seemingly coordinated at the highest levels and indicative of the elites' concern about the widening impact of the movement, the spirit of resistance is demonstrated with small acts of bravery and large mobilizations of open defiance. Individually and collectively, the movement bends but refuses to break, absorbing the system's blows and transforming them into stimuli for evolutionary growth, popular support, and bonds of solidarity.

Successful movements throughout history have understood this. It is the essence of nonviolence, to "win over" undecided observers and even antagonists by virtue of courage and compassion. It does not mean that everyone in the movement agrees on tactics or that a pledge of nonviolence ought to be imposed, but rather that the movement as a whole is in fact nonviolent in seeking to overcome the structural violence of a dehumanizing and despoiling system based on avarice and aggression.

The pictures tell a thousand words. At Occupy Oakland, as a massive throng of police descends on the plaza where an encampment has braved numerous assaults, a handful of peaceful spirits sit in silent meditation and meet the arresting officers with knowing smiles and engaged compassion. The images are reminiscent of Tiananmen Square circa 1989, or Tahrir Square circa 2011. Perhaps the scale is smaller, but it is in those little moments of exchange that the entire story of a struggle is being told.

One of the Oakland Meditators is a gentle soul named Francisco "Pancho" Ramos Stierle. He's a community organizer, nonviolence practitioner, free-economy proponent, inspiring speaker, urban permaculturist, tireless activist, unwavering friend, and in many ways the living embodiment of all that a genuine liberation movement filled with "peaceful warriors" aspires to be and become. Pancho is now facing deportation charges in addition to those in connection with his nonviolent demonstration - a doubly ironic result, in that someone whose life's work is actually about building secure communities could be deported under a program that is perversely termed by officials as "Secure Communities."

Even more to the point is that Pancho's story provides a bridge between the Occupy Movement and immigration issues. At root are basic questions of human dignity and mutual respect, of fashioning a world in which people matter more than profits and where everyone has a voice in determining the conditions of our collective lives. The symbolic Occupy camps are also models of this vision in practice, just as Pancho's symbolic dramatization of peace in the face of force is a guidepost for our own actions.

Tents can be dismantled and people can be imprisoned, but ideals and values are indelible. Holding on, holding fast, holding space - all transcend mere physical location and the impetus of control. It is, in the end, the power of peace that sustains a movement over time and that renders its foundations unbreakable.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).







Rooty-Toot-Toot, Here Comes The Newt!

O joy - the generous gods of political commentary love me!

The poli-gods have delivered a magnificent gift for me: Newt. yes, Newt Gingrich is back! Just three months ago, the presidential campaign of this corrupt, super-bloated ego-on-legs had imploded, and commentators like me lost a sure-fire source of goofy material. Lo and behold, though, as Rick Perry stumbled over his own brain and as Herman Cain fumbled with Libya and several women - the Newt has been ascendant, now topping some polls in the GOP contest.

Explaining this exalted status, the former House Speaker was typically modest: "I don't think there's anybody in the race with [my] background," he bloated. "I have a PhD in American history, I've written 24 books, seven documentary films." Yes, and he's also been fined $300,000 by his own House ethics committee for official corruption.

Speaking of which, after an inglorious exit from Congress, Gingrich parlayed his legislative connections into the lucrative life of a Washington influence peddler, carrying water for such corporate favor-seekers as IBM and Microsoft. Now we learn that he also quietly did chores for mortgage giant Freddie Mac - a firm he had blasted publicly. He even condemned Barack Obama in 2008 for taking campaign donations from the corporation's executives.

He recently tried to dismiss his own involvement with Freddie Mac, saying his role there was short and minor. Really? No. It turns out he worked with them for six years and was paid at least $1.6 million. Nonetheless, filled with his own wondrousness, Newt insists that voters will actually appreciate his work as a hired huckster for corporate interests - "It reminds people that I know a great deal about Washington," he said, cluelessly. Thank you, political gods - this is going to be fun!
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Gaffes, Not Gains, For GOP
By Helen Thomas

The Republican candidates who are challenging President Barack Obama for the highest office in the land all leave something to be desired - even for party loyals.

Among those considered front runners for the presidential nomination are former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney and Texas Governor Rick Perry, but neither seems to captivate the dwindling Republican support.

Whether charisma or character is at fault, the needed party following is still lacking.

Most of the GOP candidates seem to fall into the category of Hawks regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two exceptions, who are considered moderate and more of the kind that would give peace a chance, are Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and veteran diplomat Jon Huntsman. Unfortunately, neither one seems to have a prayer of a chance for the presidency.

The problem with the Republican hopefuls is that none has tackled the country's leading problem - unemployment. At least Obama has boiled the issue down to the need for jobs. What do the Republican candidates have to offer in terms of putting 14 million Americans back to work?

It's hard to believe businessman Herman Cain's rise in the polls. Is he a stalking horse for another candidate or is he for real?

Cain is in the embarrassing position of being accused of sexual harassment, by multiple women, when he headed the Restaurant Association.

He is evidently proud of his conservative credentials, but not appealing to most Republicans because he lacks passion and likability. Bottom line - Herman Cain is no real challenge for Obama.

Regarding Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Cain, it is hard to believe either one is still in the race.

The flubs by some of the Republicans are being highlighted in the campaign, and maybe unfairly, but that's the way it is in the high stakes game for the White House.

Perry suffered a senior moment in a recent debate, which may be from now on a "Perry moment," when he said he wanted to eliminate three federal departments and could only name two. He was able to recall Education and Commerce, but couldn't seem to remember the Department of Energy, which oddly would significantly affect his oil-producing state of Texas.

Perry was put on the defensive for helping undocumented immigrant children to pursue their education - and why not?

Perry, who came on strong at first, seems to be all hat and no cattle. He is hanging in there - Perry is not the type to run from a fight.

Romney is the GOP's best qualified candidate and currently leads the polls, but the party is reluctant to anoint him with the nomination. Romney is being questioned because of his flip flops as he tries to move toward the Tea Party.

The question is, are these candidates ready for primetime?

Of course, the GOP candidates could blame the media who are focused on the flubs or lack of substance in the debates, but they are in the spotlight and are being judged mostly by their peers and fans, who want them to measure up.

Nancy Reagan once complained that husband and former President Ronald Reagan's campaign handlers had over prepared him for the campaign debates, thus confusing the President. Reagan usually deflected tough moments with humor. Reagan got away with a quip or two instead of digging into the debate. Politico noted Reagan once hit a lighter moment in a debate, when he said, "I paid for this microphone."

The question of over exposure of the candidates has not come up, although it usually does in long-running campaigns.

It seems lightning will have to strike before the Republicans get their act together. At this point, the election is Obama's to lose. His opponents are not galvanized. Clearly they are not satisfied with the Republican roster of presidential candidates. So far, it's the best they have to offer, and Obama has a heads up.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Fixing Washington Corruption - Lets Have Fair Elections
By James Donahue

I remember when John F. Kennedy was being considered as a serious Democratic Party candidate for the Presidential nomination. It was a controversial time because Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to be a serious contender for that high office and a lot of folks worried that if he was elected, the Vatican would have its hands on the political pulse of the United States.

In the days preceding the Democratic Convention, I recall listening to a Chicago radio broadcast and hearing a strange call-in by a woman who identified herself only as "Madam X." It seems she was a psychic, well known around Chicago and the radio station, who made amazingly accurate predictions. What Madam X said that day made my hair crawl. She said John Kennedy would be nominated and would become the next President of the United States. But she said he would be the last president we would ever elect. After Kennedy, she warned, we would have "something else."

Of course we all know the tragic events that followed . . . Kennedy's untimely assassination under such mysterious circumstances most Americans still believe it was a conspiracy that remains unresolved to this day. The reign of presidents that followed Kennedy, from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have been slowly leading the nation down a slippery slope of unprecedented and senseless warfare, extreme graft and corruption, deficit spending and an obvious allegiance to big money and big business interests that have become international in scope.

The problems brought on by international trade agreements, subsequent union busting activities and unprecedented "gambling" of public money by banks and lending institutions has led to a flood of home foreclosures and the layoffs of millions of American workers. The rash of new homeless and jobless people, and families now living without food, housing, good schools and health insurance has taken to the streets in public protest in a disorganized movement that has swept the breadth of the nation.

The trouble didn't occur overnight. If we look back through time we see that it has been a combination of events, bad decisions and careful manipulation of events that seem to have started at about the time of Kennedy's assassination.

We must ask the obvious question. Was Madam X the mystery Chicago psychic correct? Have we been ruled by "something else" since the death of Kennedy? Have we even had a fair election since 1960? Have all the "leaders" that followed been puppets of a shadow government that has secretly taken over the United States if not the world?

Think of how we have slowly shifted from the old faithful paper ballots to machine voting and more recently to computerized voting machines. We thought we were doing this to speed up our election process and make elections more efficient for everybody concerned. But in the process, the election results have become more and more suspiciously twisted.

The horse race finish of the Bush-Gore election of 2000, with final vote tallies relying on a few final vote counts in the State of Florida, where George W. Bush's brother's election machine was carefully manipulating the election rules was incredibly suspicious. But then to have the U. S. Supreme Court intervene and declare Mr. Bush the winner before a contested recount was completed, made us all convinced that something was amiss.

There was all the confusion about the rules of the Electoral College, of course, which sometimes overrules the popular vote and gives the presidency to "the other guy." This appeared to be what happened in the Bush-Gore campaign.

Various big newspaper publishers were so suspicious of events in Florida following that court decision they financed a completion of the Florida election recount, just to find out who really won that election. The work of recounting those challenged ballots was still going on when the attack of 9-11 happened. In the blink of an eye, everybody forgot that the nation questioned if Bush really won the election. We became a nation at war and people rallied behind the only leader we had. Unfortunately he was George W. Bush.

Talk about mass manipulation. What happened in September, 2001 was a classic example of the kind of public control that can be accomplished. Americans succumbed to fear of further terrorist attack and then our young men marched off to the nearest recruiting office and signed up to go to war. But it would be a war against what specific enemy? What nation were we about to attack? They told us the attack was carried out by a rogue and extremist Islamic terrorist group hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan. So Mr. Bush sent our forces into Afghanistan and declared war against the whole country. What was he thinking? And a year later he sent troops into Iraq and launched an unprovoked war there that had nothing to do with the 9-11 attack. And blindly, we let him do it. Neither war was necessary. Our military involvement in the Middle East cost the nation over a trillion dollars and we accomplished absolutely nothing, except to provoke a people who did not deserve what we did to them.

Bush won a second term in 2004, again under questionable circumstances. Most people in the country did not think he would get another term, but it happened. Then in 2008 we shifted parties and gave the job to Mr. Obama, who promised hope and change. But a Republican contingent in the Senate managed to stonewall nearly everything Mr. Obama tried to do. And during Mr. Bush's last days in office the country's financial markets crumbled, Congress panicked, and the big multi-billion dollar bailout happened. The government has remained deadlocked ever since. Events have continued to grow worse.

Now, with another presidential election looming in 2012, Americans are obviously thinking it is time to clean house. But how are we going to accomplish this if (a.) there are no viable candidates from which to choose, and (b.) our elections appear to be so rigged that it won't matter how we vote.

Let's face it. If the Republicans would stop acting like fools, show some empathy for the pain the people of America are suffering, and put a viable candidate up to run against Mr. Obama, they could probably take back the White House in 2012. But other than Mr. Romney, the line-up of questionable and illiterate clowns being offered by the G. O. P. is so ridiculous, we doubt if many people are taking them seriously. It is obvious that Romney and Obama will be the candidates from which to choose. And right now, neither man is getting anybody very excited.

In order to even be considered for the presidency these days, a candidate has to be very wealthy, or have a powerful backer with the multi-millions of dollars it takes to successfully win a two-year-long nation-wide campaign. Because of television and other advanced media technology, the candidate also has to have charisma that appeals to the general public, and look presidential. That means he must appear attractive and make no blunders while appearing in front of the television cameras.

Abraham Lincoln would never have been considered if he was in the lineup of Republicans this year. In spite of his great mind and wit, Mr. Lincoln would probably have been too ugly to appeal to television viewers.

The Occupy Wall Street and Occupy America crowds now in the street are demanding real change in 2012. But this cannot be accomplished unless some drastic changes are made in the way we conduct our elections.

We suggest the following:

--Create a new third Independent party and raise a complete slate of candidates for political offices from county and state to national levels that represent the people in their districts and reject the big cash donations of big corporations and lobbyists. Then elect them all, thus cleaning out the corruption from the grass roots to Washington.

--Create a fair and equitable system of financing campaigns and make it illegal for any candidate to take money from outside sources for promotion. Shorten the campaign season to a few months and make it mandatory for all media to devote equal time reviewing and interviewing all candidates for every office. Publishers may only support the candidates of their choice on their editorial pages and aired time slots. Promotional and especially mud-slinging style advertising should be prohibited by law.

--Impeach the Supreme Court members who ruled that corporations have the same right as individuals to finance campaigns by candidates of their choice. While at it, change the rules that give Supreme Court members their jobs for life.

--Revise portions of the Constitution so that we have eliminated the Electoral College. Candidates should all be elected by popular vote.

--Return to the use of paper ballots In all elections. Make all ballots clear and easy to understand, and relax the rules concerning the marks placed in the squares for the named candidates. An X that goes over the line should not be excluded.

I would like to think we could save our great nation, take it away from the organized criminals, and return it to the people once again. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could be assured that we are really electing our leaders and that they are really representing the interests of the people in their home districts? Only then can we again call ourselves a Republic, as it was supposed to be from the start.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.




Occupy Oakland protesters stand outside of a Wells Fargo bank in Oakland, Calif.



The New Age Of Consumer Activism
Our understandable rage at corporations is behind customer-driven like Bank Transfer Day
By David Sirota

As we all know, America is angry. Really angry. To put it in pop culture terms, we've moved from the vaguely inspiring agita of Peter Finch in "Network" to the wild-eyed, primal-scream rage of Sam Kinison in "Back to School."

When we pay attention to politics, we get peeved at Congress and the presidential candidates. When we tune into sports, we're annoyed with squabbling players and owners. When we turn on the news, we fume at the smug pundits. And when it comes to the economy, we're in a tizzy at big corporations.

Most of this indignation is nothing new; it is atavistic fury expressed in the modern vernacular. Yet, one strand of our anger - the kind directed at big business - may be truly novel, as our chagrin is no longer just that ancient animosity toward excessive corporate power. Instead, it has also become a personal disdain toward firms we deal with on a daily basis.

This is the key finding of the latest report from the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. Its findings show that after years of rising anger, consumer rage has reached an all-time high.

Back in 2004, ASU's researchers theorized that such apoplexy was an outgrowth of affluence. "Households simply have more products and services today, and thus more points of contact, increasing our chances that we will have a problem," they wrote.

But, of course, 2004 was a comparatively prosperous time. Today, by contrast, recession-battered consumers have access to fewer products and services and yet are angrier at companies, meaning the sentiment likely reflects a response to deeper trends.

One of those is a decline in craftsmanship in the era of free trade and offshore production. With America now awash in foreign wares, we've imported the developing world's lax regulatory standards and, thus, its lower product quality. That means poorly constructed furniture, malfunctioning electronics and all the other shoddiness that drives customers nuts.

Another maddening trend is the corporate sector's shift from long-term customer care to short-term predation. Though firms have always tried to make quick money off clients, the intensity of this recession, coupled with investors' insatiable demand for quarterly profit growth, has prompted unprecedented bill-padding, corner-cutting and inflexibility. Today's typical air travel experience epitomizes the dynamic: You get hit with a baggage charge, shoved into an ever-smaller seat and then stranded in airport purgatory because you missed your connection. With this kind of experience being replicated in everything from debit card fees to interminable customer-service wait times, it's no wonder we're ticked off.

Finally, there's what Mother Jones magazine calls "The Great Speedup," whereby downsized companies are forcing their remaining employees to do more work at a faster pace than ever. While this means our workforce is generating more output, it also means that output often becomes less satisfying to the end user. So, sure, your energy company's electrician may be servicing more homes, but he's also more error-prone and no longer maintains a customer-friendly demeanor - because he's being run ragged.

All of this is no doubt responsible for a spike in self-destructive temper tantrums. However, there is an upside: The angst is resurrecting the notion of consumer activism. And that's a big deal.

Recent headlines tell this story. From moving deposits out of big banks to a mass abandonment of Netflix, customers are suddenly channeling the old Ralph Nader zeitgeist. We're remembering that being a patron comes with power - and we're finally getting mad enough to use it.

If that ends up bringing back a lasting consumer movement in America, then all the heartburn and stress of being a mistreated customer will have been worth it.
(c) 2011 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.








Painted Torture
By David Swanson

You walk into a large, bright gallery full of large colorful portraits, portraits of men. They are fairly ordinary looking men. They could be from Western Asia or the "Middle East."

You approach one and look at him for an instant. He looks normal, relaxed, almost expressionless, certainly expressing no very strong emotion.

Before you can look long, your eyes are drawn to the curving lines of words swirling around the canvas like leaves in water. You read words like these, twisting your head almost upside down to follow them:

"FROM THE TIME OF MORNING PRAYERS THEY WOULD DRAW A CIRCLE ON THE WALL, AND I HAD TO STAND ON MY TOES TWO HOURS WITH MY NOSE TOUCHING THE CIRCLE."
You read on as more words flow around this one canvas. You read about dogs and cattle prods and death threats and harm to loved ones, sleep deprivation and confinement in a box and living human beings piled up like suitcases in a truck.

Then you look at all the other men and all the other words all around the gallery.

Then you look at their faces again.

And now you see the sadness, the resignation, the exhaustion, and the misery.

The scars on these torture victims are no more visible than the scars on those who tortured them. But they are made visible by this combination of portraits and painted words.

While former Vice President Dick Cheney canceled his threatened visit to Charlottesville this week, his handiwork came instead. An exhibition of Daniel Heyman's paintings of Iraqis can be seen in the Ruffin Hall Gallery at the University of Virginia.

Outside the gallery, people go on with their lives, some of them worried about their mortgage, some about their lack of one, some about the celebrity divorce du jour, and others especially concerned about Dick Cheney's right to speak in public but free of any unpleasant questioning from those who have not yet internalized a culture of obedience and demonization of designated objects of fear.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Occupy With A Vengeance!
Change is a Messy Affair, But it Has to be Done
By Vincent L. Guarisco

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." ~~~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Is it just me?...Or is it getting crazy out there? I guess if you want honest press, you have to own one? If it weren't so painful to see our nation gutted in all sectors, it would almost be laughable to hear our lap-dog media say the Occupy movement has not made any clear demands. Or how disorganized we are. But this is how today's media gas-bags operate. Pure and simple, they blatantly twist, distort and outright lie. It's the same old propaganda tactic used time and again by corporate media that, woefully, is owned and operated by the same financial gluttons we are fighting.

Yes indeed, the international banking cartel, the Wall Street pharaohs and the FED (foriegn investwhores) truly is a filthy unholy orgy. Folks, It's not rocket science: These rogues of power must be rounded-up, arrested, extradited and prosecuted in a court of law. And after the gavel falls, "imprisoned." When you look at all the wealth that has been stolen, lives destroyed, the killings -- it staggers the imagination that we have allowed this arrogant mafia to continue doing business for so long. Get real, this ridiculous three-card monte can make even the most pathetic used car salesman blush.

And nothing drives the nail deeper into freedom's proverbial coffin than watching the police pepper spray peaceful UC Davis students. I have a fuzzy feeling; if this continues, it's going to get real ugly soon for cops with swelled heads.

Plus, the latest fiasco is the heist at MF Global, a company that deals in "futures." Check out this riveting video featuring "Gearld Celente." Sadly, He became one of the latest financial casualties to lose a bundle as a result of those he calls, the white shoe boys!

God knows we need it, so here's a bit of good news: Cheers to us! November 17th marked the two-month anniversary of the Occupy movement. The importance of our involvement has never been more relevant than now. We are legion! As our nation continues to recoil in anger and disbelief, we know there are no bailouts or golden parachutes for us. We are on our own. In fact, just the opposite -- we get to feel the burden of skyrocketing food prices, on-demand inflation, record breaking home foreclosures and homelessness ... during these cold winter months.

But regardless, the resistence is strong and spreading its wings in the face of adversity. From New York City to Oakland, California and all points in-between, our numbers are growing. The jackboots may have thrown away our tarps, tents and sleeping bags, but we will not falter. They may continue to pepper spray, beat and arrest peaceful protesters; try to shut us down, but we will not stop. We will not leave. Our time has come! They can't stop the 99% movement. We are the dreamers who dare to believe better days will come and... "Ideas are bullet proof!" Indeed, our thirst for peace, truth and justice shall be quenched.

Even with all the hardship at hand, these are exciting times. It's refreshing to witness my fellow patrons from all walks of life going after the gluttons of greed. It's exhilarating to see we still have some grit left in us! For several decades, I watched my sleepy nation blame everyone else (except themselves) for their mass sensory deprivation. And although many of us have fought the good battle for what seems like an eternity, we gladly now join hands in solidarity to create the change we so desperately desire. And if our numbers continue to grow, I'm confident we can create positive solutions for the many challenges we face.

During this great awakening, I suspect many of you are feeling a bit like Alice going down the 21st Century rabbit hole? Well, while doing so, don't forget to revisit the protest arc of the 60's. I hate to say I told you so, but the dirty f*cking hippies, we're right. Excellent video!

Spread the word, our numbers are our strength. Tell others to join us! Stand proud. Have no fear. Stay the course. Because if we keep pounding them hard like we did at Oakland's port, and if we keep dissolving our bank accounts -- we can level the playing field for our salvation. Failure is not an option for those who cherish freedom. The billionaire fat-cats will not skip a beat at stealing everything from everybody, everywhere. In fact, the stakes couldn't be higher. Our survival literally hangs in the balance.

Sadly, this has gotten so out of hand that other nations now consider America one of the biggest global threats the world has ever seen. This is serious. It's now openly discussed that our country either needs to be stopped or destroyed. Nothing good will come of this if we fail to act. This is our final wake-up-call. A most dishonorable label could be bestowed upon us that no other nation has seen since the days of Adolf Hitler. Just as Germany's Nazi flag was rightfully thrown in the dirt, the same thing can happen to us. Indeed, the rest of the free world will not give a second thought to spit, urinate and defecate on our American cloth. Why? It's simple -- we will be condemned because we did not stop our own pathological war-mongers who shrewdly dance on the blood of innocents for profit. Thus, if other nations have to clean-up our mess for us, it won't be subtle, nor kind. After more than five decades of handing our leaders a blank check to rob, kill and pillage with impunity -- can you blame them? Enough is enough.

If you need more incentive to march in the streets, check this out. I pulled-up this bailout timeline (2008 to 2011) from Pro Publica. The numbers are staggering! When you see this massive government welfare giveaway all laid out in chronological order, it takes your breath away. I guess we little peons now know for sure -- the socialism is for them, and the capitalism is for us. Take note, these figures are only the ones we know about. We strongly suspect that much more was secretly given. Ironically, I'm sure we'll all rest a little easier knowing that the privileged ones (at our expense) will be able to hire those hot little escorts, jump on their yachts, and speed-off to Cancun for that spectacular well-deserved vacation.

A world revolution is currently underway. And as powerful as they may think they are, the masters of the universe cannot escape a repetitious pattern that always seems to make full circle -- all empires eventually crumble into the dustbin of history. The crafty devils thought they would forever keep us constrained in a hapless trance of languishing servitude, but they were sadly mistaken. They underestimated our strength, our resiliency for breaking the chains of bondage. Thus, we have united in solidarity to take back the sanctity of life, freedom and honor.

Cheers to us! The days of blindly believing gas-bag monologues for the continuance of war is over. The spell is broken. Their deceiving platitudes of false patriotism no longer has the desired effect. We will not let our sons and daughters enlist in the military to die in their killing fields for American "interests" in distant lands. Even in this fast moving technological era filled with never-ending calamity, we will not give our oppressors their third war -- Iran.

Change is a messy affair, but it has be done regardless of the opposition we face. Amen. Take pride in knowing the silver-spoon devils will soon reap the full effect of our public discourse. The great American Occupation has only started and Revolution is now eminent.
(c) 2011 Vincent L. Guarisco is a freelance writer from Arizona, a contributing writer for many web sites, and a lifetime founding member of the Alliance of Atomic Veterans. The 21st century, once so full of shining promise, now threatens to force countless millions of us at home and abroad into a dark abyss of languishing poverty and silent servitude; a lowly prodigy of painful struggle and suffering that could stream for generations to come. I'm wishing for a miracle, before it is too late, the masses will figure it out and will stand as one and roar. So, pass the word - its past time to take back what is ours -- the American Dream where the pursuit of happiness, the ability to live in a free and peaceful nation is a reality. We bought it, and we paid for it. It's time to take it back. For replies, contact: vincespainting1@hotmail.com








Boring Cruel Romantics
By Paul Krugman

There's a word I keep hearing lately: "technocrat." Sometimes it's used as a term of scorn -the creators of the euro, we're told, were technocrats who failed to take human and cultural factors into account. Sometimes it's a term of praise: the newly installed prime ministers of Greece and Italy are described as technocrats who will rise above politics and do what needs to be done.

I call foul. I know from technocrats; sometimes I even play one myself. And these people -the people who bullied Europe into adopting a common currency, the people who are bullying both Europe and the United States into austerity -aren't technocrats. They are, instead, deeply impractical romantics.

They are, to be sure, a peculiarly boring breed of romantic, speaking in turgid prose rather than poetry. And the things they demand on behalf of their romantic visions are often cruel, involving huge sacrifices from ordinary workers and families. But the fact remains that those visions are driven by dreams about the way things should be rather than by a cool assessment of the way things really are.

And to save the world economy we must topple these dangerous romantics from their pedestals.

Let's start with the creation of the euro. If you think that this was a project driven by careful calculation of costs and benefits, you have been misinformed.

The truth is that Europe's march toward a common currency was, from the beginning, a dubious project on any objective economic analysis. The continent's economies were too disparate to function smoothly with one-size-fits-all monetary policy, too likely to experience "asymmetric shocks" in which some countries slumped while others boomed. And unlike U.S. states, European countries weren't part of a single nation with a unified budget and a labor market tied together by a common language.

So why did those "technocrats" push so hard for the euro, disregarding many warnings from economists? Partly it was the dream of European unification, which the Continent's elite found so alluring that its members waved away practical objections. And partly it was a leap of economic faith, the hope -driven by the will to believe, despite vast evidence to the contrary -that everything would work out as long as nations practiced the Victorian virtues of price stability and fiscal prudence.

Sad to say, things did not work out as promised. But rather than adjusting to reality, those supposed technocrats just doubled down -insisting, for example, that Greece could avoid default through savage austerity, when anyone who actually did the math knew better.

Let me single out in particular the European Central Bank (E.C.B.), which is supposed to be the ultimate technocratic institution, and which has been especially notable for taking refuge in fantasy as things go wrong. Last year, for example, the bank affirmed its belief in the confidence fairy -that is, the claim that budget cuts in a depressed economy will actually promote expansion, by raising business and consumer confidence. Strange to say, that hasn't happened anywhere.

And now, with Europe in crisis -a crisis that can't be contained unless the E.C.B. steps in to stop the vicious circle of financial collapse -its leaders still cling to the notion that price stability cures all ills. Last week Mario Draghi, the E.C.B.'s new president, declared that "anchoring inflation expectations" is "the major contribution we can make in support of sustainable growth, employment creation and financial stability."

This is an utterly fantastic claim to make at a time when expected European inflation is, if anything, too low, and what's roiling the markets is fear of more or less immediate financial collapse. And it's more like a religious proclamation than a technocratic assessment.

Just to be clear, this is not an anti-European rant, since we have our own pseudo-technocrats warping the policy debate. In particular, allegedly nonpartisan groups of "experts" -the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Concord Coalition, and so on -have been all too successful at hijacking the economic policy debate, shifting its focus from jobs to deficits.

Real technocrats would have asked why this makes sense at a time when the unemployment rate is 9 percent and the interest rate on U.S. debt is only 2 percent. But like the E.C.B., our fiscal scolds have their story about what's important, and they're sticking to it no matter what the data say.

So am I against technocrats? Not at all. I like technocrats -technocrats are friends of mine. And we need technical expertise to deal with our economic woes.

But our discourse is being badly distorted by ideologues and wishful thinkers -boring, cruel romantics -pretending to be technocrats. And it's time to puncture their pretensions.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times







The Quotable Quote...



"What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected ... before a drop of blood was shed."
~~~ John Adams









The People's Surveillance State
By William Rivers Pitt

"All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force." ~~~ George Orwell

In the aftermath of September 11, there was a big push to create a national surveillance system in the name of national security. Cameras were installed at traffic lights, ostensibly to catch people running red lights and stop signs, but those cameras came with a nifty side benefit: they recorded everyone within reach of the lens in their comings and goings. Cameras were installed at street corners, ostensibly to provide security against crime, but again, you were recorded wherever you went. Bank machines all come with security cameras, and those added to the ever-broadening web of national surveillance. Finally, almost every cell phone now comes with software that, so long as the thing is turned on, can track your every step by triangulating your position via GPS and the cell towers your phone signal bounces off of.

Those with a fealty to the quaint ideals of American civil liberties had, to no great surprise, a big problem with putting this system in place. Combine the concern over having millions of innocent people on camera with the fact that the Bush administration decided to spy on pretty much everyone by way of the NSA because no one had the guts to stop them, and what you had - and have to this day - is a pretty damned paranoid situation where everyone is being watched by The Man. Today, it is almost impossible to be anywhere in America without something tracking you. After this technology had been in place for a few years, it even became fodder for cop shows; half the episodes of "Law & Order: SVU" after 2008 involve catching criminals using this web of eyes and ears. As you can imagine, the bad guys almost never got away.

The basic idea behind setting up this incredibly invasive system, if you listen to its advocates, is that security is paramount in the aftermath of 9/11. There were plenty of people, after the Towers came down, who were very happy to surrender their liberties in the name of security, despite Benjamin Franklin's warning about deserving neither and losing both. Nowadays, the existence of such a system is established fact, leading to yet another bout of cognitive dissonance: those in favor of such a system a few years ago, because it meant the state was looking out for their safety, are now in all likelihood the same people railing against the state with guns on their hips at Tea Party rallies...but that's a brain cramp to be dealt with another day.

The advent of the Occupy movement, the length of time that movement has been able to hang fire, and the vast number of cities in which it is taking place, has led to an astonishingly violent reaction from the very state we are supposedly trusting to watch over our every move. There have been a dozen incidents of gruesome official violence against peaceful, non-violent protesters, including the near-murder of an Iraq war veteran by police in Oakland...violence the likes of which has not been seen in America since the dogs and firehoses days of Birmingham, Alabama.

Last Friday, students at UC Davis in California were subjected to an attack by police that beggars likeness. Here's the thing, though: this time, it's all on film.

If you haven't seen it yet, what you're looking at is a dozen or so protesters seated with their heads down, arms linked, in peaceful non-violent resistance. An armored UC Davis police officer calmly pulls out a can of pepper spray the size of a fire extinguisher, shakes it up, and hoses these seated students down from one side to the other and then back again. Several of the students subjected to this attack required hospitalization, and there is an unconfirmed report that one of the protesters had a UC Davis cop shove the nozzle of his pepper spray canister into her mouth and then pulled the trigger.

It is all on film.

It is all on film.

It is all on film.

The chancellor of UC Davis is under intense pressure to resign her post. The officers involved in this unprovoked attack have been suspended, and an official investigation is underway.

None of which would be true if the incident was not all on film. The video of the attack on YouTube, at the time of this writing, has almost 1,400,000 views, and similar attacks by police have been captured on film from one side of the country to the other.

Memo to the police and the surveillance state you represent: you are not working in the dark anymore. You may have your own system of surveillance, but We The People are watching you just as closely, and we have our own system of surveillance. It's called exposing your vicious, anti-American and thoroughly unnecessary strong-arm tactics for all to see. It is really very easy, takes no time, and we will make you famous in all the wrong ways before you take your shoes off at bedtime. The name, telephone number and email address of the cop who attacked those UC Davis protesters is now common knowledge on the internet, and while I will not publish it here, that cop should know down to his cowardly little bones that he is right out there under the bright lights, thanks to the People's Surveillance State.

You may be watching us, but by God and sonny Jesus, we are watching you.
(c) 2011 William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is available from PoliPointPress.




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Occupy Revolution
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

History tells us that it is nearly impossible to know in real time whether some kind of national, grassroots public protest ends up being the beginning of a true revolution against a ruling government system. This is true for the earliest beginnings of the revolt against the British that produced the successful American Revolution and the creation of the US. The British at the time surely thought that they could retain power and control. More recently, the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya certainly could not be accurately perceived in their earliest stages as likely to topple well established dictatorships wielding incredible and cruel power. Even now, the rebellious actions in Syria are not widely seen as surely resulting in successful revolution.

My central point is that the Occupy movement in the US offers the possibility of being seen, eventually, as the seed of a successful Second American Revolution, which I and many others believe is desperately needed to fix our corrupt, dysfunctional and unfair government, political and economic system.

What are the main similarities among successful revolutions?

At the beginning of ultimately successful revolutions the focus is almost entirely on what the rebels oppose and only in the most general terms what they want instead. What rebels are always against is some form of tyranny that takes the form of repressed freedoms and economic pain for most ordinary people. In other words, it is clear at the beginning what causes citizen anger and passion; what is intolerable and far less on the exact changes in the nation's political and government system most desired. Mostly what is being fought for is either a true democracy or a better one, a system where elections are open and free and really matter, where status quo powers can be replaced. The more you think about it, the more sense it makes for nascent rebels taking great risks to have a single minded focus on what is wrong, unjust, corrupt or just plain evil in order to build wide public support for fighting a powerful, oppressive government.

Second, despite various forms of peaceful protests at the beginning, history tells us that violence usually becomes crucial for successful overthrow of a hated political system. More pointedly, violence is usually precipitated by violent actions of the existing regime against early peaceful protestors which then causes rebels to also become increasingly violent, even though they may have few weapons to match what the reigning government has. Relying on civil disobedience alone has rarely been sufficient, with a few notable exceptions. But even though India and South Africa may come to mind it is easy to forget that violence was practiced by the then reigning governments against protestors and their leaders, especially imprisonment. That the protestors seeking fundamental reforms do not become citizen armies but nevertheless ultimately become successful in overthrowing oppressive regimes should be seen more as the exception than the rule. In other words, violence is sometimes one-sided, but still is an essential part of the revolution process, in large part because it motivates not only more widespread public support, but often international support, including economic sanctions, for achieving the central goal of the rebellious protest movement.

Third, what follows successful revolution is usually messy, chaotic and painful, in great measure because entirely new, effective democratic systems must be created to replace what previously was used to implement political and economic injustice. Even in the case of the American Revolution, it took quite some time to actually create a new government system (including an early constitution that was ultimately deemed a failure and replaced). Presently, the renewed violence in Egypt by both the military controlled government and the same rebels that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship testifies to the considerable difficulty in establishing a true functioning and stable democracy. Ditto for what we see in Libya. And many would say that Russia has not achieved a first class democracy despite the downfall of the Soviet Union. The point is that it is best to think of two-stage revolutions, beginning with attacking the status quo, oppressive government and second creating a better system to replace it. Nevertheless, we can conclude at some point that a revolution has been successful, merely on the basis of a successful first stage, letting time tell whether it becomes fully successful.

Apply this thinking to the current Occupy movement in the US. What can we assess? First, the Occupy movement has been focused on what is wrong with the US, principally economic injustice, and unfair wealth of the top one percent to the detriment of the 99 percent. The focus on the terrible actions of the Wall Street, banking and whole financial sector that has wrecked the economy and the failure of government to punish the guilty and truly fix the economic system makes perfect sense. Economic inequality is the target. The Occupy movement clearly is against the status quo establishment, political parties that are both controlled by financial interests that manipulate the government and economy to benefit the few. The Occupy protestors want to replace what they see as a system that no longer serves the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Second, it has become increasingly clear that mostly one-sided violence has emerged, with local police forces using violence and even anti-constitutional means in attempts to kill the Occupy movement. Civil disobedience has been attacked with violence; free speech has been attacked; media access has often been prevented. What is most interesting is that, unlike other revolutions around the world, it is not the national government using violence against this protest movement, but rather local police such as that widely seen in New York City. Mayors seem to have taken the lead in protecting the status quo against the public distrust, dissatisfaction and disgust with the prevailing political and economic system. Occupy means disrupting, and local governments are fighting back.

Third, even though it certainly is unclear whether the Occupy movement will turn out to be the beginning of a successful two-stage revolution, we cannot rule it out. It is important to understand that about one-third of the US population has been experiencing great personal pain produced by many failures of the system, including those losing their homes and jobs, those experiencing hunger and poor health care, and those unable to find any financial security despite hard work or incurring debt for college educations. However, the top 20 percent of Americans, not merely the top one percent, or some 60 million Americans are not suffering; they benefit from the corrupt, unfair system. What is uncertain is whether the Occupy movement can expand its public participation and support to reach a large majority of Americans.

Here is some basis for optimism about the ultimate success of the Occupy movement.

A new report by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project asked Americans if they agreed with the statement "our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others." Only 49 percent agreed, compared to 60 percent in 2002, the first time that Pew asked the question. That shows the malarkey about American exceptionalism, especially from conservatives, is being recognized. Notably, among young people (those ages 18 to 29), the percentage who believed that their culture was superior was lower than young citizens of Germany, Spain and Britain.

Besides all the findings that Congress only has 9 percent public support, it is even more important to recognize that Americans do not feel very positive about their country. A Time Magazine/Abt SRBI poll conducted last month found that 71 percent of Americans believed that our position in the world has declined in the past few years.

Add to this that an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey conducted earlier this month found that beyond current hardships most Americans see their nation at "the start of a longer-term decline where the U.S. is no longer the leading country in the world." There is no rational basis for being optimistic about what the president or Congress will accomplish.

There is, in fact, enormous public support for addressing both political dysfunction of the two-party plutocracy, economic inequality, money in politics and a host of other public grievances.

James B. Stewart wrote a timely article "An Uprising With Plenty of Potential" that offers an optimistic view of the Occupy movement. And David Carr has also offered an xcellent analysis of the future of the movement. Two leaders of the Occupy movement have also presented an important analysis worth your time, including this view "Occupy was born because we the people feel that our country and our economy are moving precipitously in the wrong direction; that America has evolved into a kind of corporate oligarchic state, a 'corporatocracy'; and yes, that what is needed is a regime change." For a great history of the Occupy movement read this. The role of the media in the Occupy movement has also been assessed and because I spent time at the Occupy Wall Street activity I know how inaccurate many media reports have been. The mighty effort at takemoneyout.com is worth supporting as well as numerous efforts to get the first Article V convention.

Every American should use critical thinking to not only follow the Occupy movement but explicitly decide whether it is the seed capable of producing a Second American Revolution that truly reforms what is now a delusional democracy with delusional prosperity. For sure, voting for or against Democrats or Republicans will not suffice.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.





The Dead Letter Office...





Judge Wingate in happier days

Heil Obama,

Dear der Volksgerichtshof Richter Wingate,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your ruling putting a woman in federal prison for trying to feed her hungry children, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Federal Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 12-31-2011. We salute you Herr Wingate, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama






40,000 Rally, More Than 100,000 Sign Petitions, To Say 'Recall Walker'
By John Nichols

As tens of thousands of Wisconsinites rallied in Madison for a mass signing of petitions to recall anti-labor Governor Scott Walker Saturday, it was announced that the drive had collected 105,000 signatures in its first four days.

By the end of the weekend, that number will go substantially higher, say organizers of Saturday's rally, which marshalls estimated drew 40,000. (Early in the day, as the crowd was building, Capitol Police confirmed that roughly 30,000 were present and the numbers grew as units of firefighters, teachers and state, county and municipal employees poured into the Capitol Square from the edges of Madison's downtown.)

When the rally was done, activists with United Wisconsin, the group that is coordinating the recall drive, displayed tall piles of newly signed petitions. "After they've counted all the new petitions that have been gathered in Madison and across the state," said former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, "they'll be well on their way to 200,000."

The labor, farm and community activists who organized the effort have sixty days to collect 540,000 signatures-25 percent of the electorate in the last gubernatorial election-to force the governor and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch to face the voters in a recall election. Organizers hope to turn in more than 700,000 signatures, in order to thwart challenges that will be posed by a multimillion-dollar effort paid for by the billionaire Koch brothers and other anti-labor zealots from across the country who have financed Walker's campaigns.

The governor and his allies have not missed any openings to try to block the recall. The Koch brothers are already paying for pro-Walker television ads put together by their Americans for Prosperity group, and the governor's campaign is spending heavily on its own ads-$300,000 since last Monday. (There are estimates that spending on Walker's behalf will exceed $50 million.) Republican legislators have moved to give the governor veto power over election rules. And the Republican Party of Wisconsin has organized a campaign to intimidate recall petitioners with a website that urges party minions to "monitor" and challenge nurses, teachers and small-business owners who seek signatures. In some cases, Walker backers have grabbed petitions and ripped them up.

But there was no evidence Saturday or Sunday that any of the governor's attempt's to protect his political career were working.

It was not just that thousands were signing recall petitions on the Capitol Square in Madison.

They were doing it in all seventy-two Wisconsin counties.

The movement to recall Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch is just that: a movement. It extends across the state, to every county, to every city, village and town.

As the November 15 starting date when the movement would begin gathering petitions to recall Walker and Kleefisch approached, training sessions for petition circulators were being held in the most Republican counties of the state. More than thirty offices opened and were staffed by volunteers in communities such as Elkhorn in traditionally conservative Walworth County, where a "midnight madness" party was held last Tuesday so that petitions could be signed the minute it was possible to do so.

In the rural Lafayette County community of Darlington, local recall coordinator Kate Bausch said folks had been gearing up to recall Walker since last February, when Walker proposed to strip state, county and municipal employees and teachers of their collective bargaining rights.

The political process is sick with spin and deception. But the biggest lie of the past year has been the suggestion, peddled primarily by Walker but also by the most disingenuous of his supporters, that anger with the governor has been confined to the liberal precincts of Madison or the Democratic neighborhoods of Milwaukee.

The truth is that with his assault on collective bargaining rights, the civil service system, local democracy, school funding and public services, Walker battered every town, village, city and county in Wisconsin. And with ethical scandals that are now swirling around him-following the September FBI raid on the home of his top political appointee and the revelation that his press secretary and one of his top fund raisers had requested immunity in a "John Doe" probe of political corruption-Walker has earned the scorn even of those Wisconsinites who will never think of themselves as liberals or Democrats.

The movement to displace Walker and Kleefisch, who had served as a willing rubber-stamp for the governor, is big. The grassroots energy across the state, the size of the crowd at Saturday's rally, the number of signatures already collected: all of these confirm the historic scope and reach of the recall drive.

The movement to displace Walker and Kleefisch is broad-based. Trainings have taken place in every corner of the state. There are local committees, groups and activist circles in all of Wisconsin's seventy-two counties. The recall movement takes in Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, independents and, yes, Republicans. That's because Wisconsin's instinct for fairness is stronger than the penchant for partisanship, as state Senator Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, confirmed when he refused to go along with efforts by Walker's legislative stooges to rig the recall process.

The response of Walker and Kleefisch partisans to Schultz's show of independence was bitter and destructive. Schultz's office in the Capitol was egged in an act of vandalism that-had it been directed at a Walker ally-would have brought cries of complaint from conservative talk-radio hosts and the Koch brothers–funded Tea Party project. But the recall movement in not prone toward that sort of whining.

Rooted as it is in the values and ideals of Wisconsin, the recall movement is genuine and determined. It has put pettiness aside and focused on the work at hand: removing a governor who has harmed the state economically, ethically and morally-and a lieutenant governor who has rejected her oath to defend the constitution and the best interests of Wisconsin.

From Kenosha in the southeast to Superior in the northwest, from the inner-city wards of Milwaukee to the crossroads towns of Marathon County, Wisconsinites are rising to the call of democracy and honest governance. They are signing petitions, circulating petitions, filing petitions and defending petitions against bogus challenges from lawyers who are paid for by the out-of-state billionaires who are funding the Walker-Kleefisch campaign. And when the petitioning is done, when the recall election is scheduled, they will mount the greatest grassroots campaign Wisconsin has seen in a century-not just to remove Walker and Kleefisch but to renew the democratic ideals of a great state that has been temporarily misled.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








Occupy The Hamptons Update
By Ted Rall

When I was at Stop the Machine/Occupy DC in October, I began asking myself: what am I doing here? (Call it my Admiral Stockdale moment.) The Occupy movement is local. I rushed back to New York to start something closer to home.

Turns out others had already had the same idea. Occupy the Hamptons began the week I got back. It has a nascent website (though it does not yet officially speak for the movement since it is not consensus based). It has a regular meeting: Sundays at 3 by the windmill in Sag Harbor. Indoor space is in the works so we can transition out of the wind, rain (and soon snow).

The last few weeks have been productive. Working groups have been tasked with coming up with Direct Actions in the Hamptons—a resort area that, despite its reputation as a playground for the 1%, has one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

I'm on the Working Group tasked with developing a draft proposal for a Declaration of the Occupation of the Hamptons. It was a process but we're ready to present it to the General Assembly this Sunday.

The discussion over the Declaration brought out some divisions about tactics and ideology among Occupiers that the movement as a whole is going to need to address in the coming weeks and months before 2012.

2012 will likely be the Year of Revolution.

Or, as my friend Cole Smithey likes to say, it'll be on like donkey-kong.

It's 1968 all over again. Now, as then, the absurdity and uselessness of the electoral system will be in sharp relief as the Democrats and Republicans debate every issue except those that matter.

Divisions in the movement reflect those in society:

Between reformists and revolutionaries
Between nationalists and revolutionaries
Between those who worry about alienating the right and liberals, vs. revolutionaries
Between those drawn to the national struggle and those who understand that this time, the revolution has been radically localized

It's going to be a bumpy ride.

This will be the most important year of your life. Make the most of it.

Clear your schedule.

Learn how to escape a tear gas attack.

It's on.
(c) 2011 Ted Rall is the author of the new books "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?" and "The Anti-American Manifesto."



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ John Deering ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...





Grope And Change
By Will Durst

And now, another installment in the continuing saga that is The Herman Cain Sexual Harassment Soap Opera. When last we left him, the candidate was praising his main backers: "The Koch Brothers are my brothers from another mother." Guess we should be grateful he hasn't dismissed his accusers with an offhand: "Bros before hoes."

You could say the situation is fluid, or more precisely glutinous. It's hard to tell who or what to believe. Conservative talk shows pound home the theory this is all a put-up job while the liberal media remains incredulous the Cain Train hasn't derailed into a fiery pileup. Right now it all boils down to a classic case of He Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said.

The good news for the first-ever, serious black Republican Presidential candidate is a new CBS poll reveals 61% of potential GOP primary participants don't consider the charges serious. Apparently there's a large contingent of voters who either believe girls lie or boys will be boys. In three short years this country has gone from Hope and Change to Grope and Change. Ain't life odd?

In his defense, Cain maintains he's never engaged in any inappropriate behavior. Ever. Really? Ever? Hell, if this Presidency thing doesn't work out, the guy should run for Pope. Or maybe he's better equipped to replace Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Of course, the term "inappropriate" is subjective. Fashionistas might call his cowboy hat highly inappropriate.

Cain's staff went so far as to say the sexual harassment allegations have actually helped the campaign. Helped! Wow. All he needs is a false imprisonment charge, he could sew this thing right up.

Cain has changed his story almost as often as Mitt Romney changes positions. And his memory problems draw right up to Rick Perry's Energy Department. Again, almost. First he couldn't remember anything, then admitted a charge may have been investigated, but there was no settlement, then maybe there was An Agreement, but now he refuses to comment on any of the cases, relentlessly retreating to his stuttering German "nein, nein, nein."

The oddly self- proclaimed anti- Washington corporate lobbyist declines any responsibility for keeping this narrative alive, first blaming the Perry campaign, then the Democratic Machine (?); and that old standby, the media, not yet getting around to the evil dominion that is Pizza Hut, but soon. Makes you wonder who's in charge of his damage control team? Lindsay Lohan? Anthony Weiner? Charley Sheen? Erica Kane?

He might be better off remembering the very advice he gave the Occupy Movement, "don't blame Wall Street, blame yourself." Yourself, Herman. Yourself. Besides, in most Democratic quarters, the prospect of a Barack Obama/ Herman Cain matchup in the general election has elicited so much salivation, drool bibs and phlegm gutters are standard issue.

Another problem is the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza has demonstrated the sensitivity of a drunken bear. In a recent Detroit debate, he called House Minority Leader Pelosi, "Princess Nancy," which for a guy ensnared in sexual harassment assertions is like trying to light a cigar by sticking your face in a Tiki torch on a windy beach.

We're entering Daytime Emmy Award territory here, featuring a plot with more twists than a 300 foot telephone cord stuffed into a cardboard box and a cast of characters changing faster than a chameleon on a plaid tablecloth. Surprised neither Procter & Gamble or the makers of Slinky have jumped on the bandwagon offering to sponsor this candidacy, but stay tuned.
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 46 (c) 11/25/2011


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In This Edition

Naomi Wolf tells, "The Shocking Truth About The Crackdown On Occupy."

Uri Avnery takes us back to, "A Day In November."

Matt Taibbi finds, "Federal Judge Pimp-Slaps The SEC Over Citigroup Settlement ."

Ralph Nader looks into "free trade" in, "Not Made In America."

Jim Hightower hears, "Paulson's Plaintive Plea."

Helen Thomas sees, "'Spring' Reawakening."

James Donahue reports, "Telling The Truth Can Now Be Treason."

Robert Scheer reminds us that, "You Can Arrest On Idea."

David Swanson says, "Occupation Evicted? Occupy The Place Responsible: DC."

Ray McGovern demands we, "Ask the Candidates Real Questions - Like These."

Paul Krugman discovers, "Things To Tax."

Phil Rockstroh quotes, "The Degree To Which You Resist Is The Degree To Which You Are Free."

Joel S. Hirschhorn examines the, "Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence."

Michigan Sin-ator Carl Levin wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols announces, "Wisconsin Recall Drive Surpasses 300,000 Signatures."

Eric Alterman calls out, "Next Stop On The GOP Crazy Train: 'Newtsville.'"

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Andy Borowitz finds the, "FDA Declares Rick Perry A Vegetable" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "Welcome To America: The Battlefield."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Tim Eagan, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Tom Tomorrow, Mr. Fish, Jamie Wiseman, Micah Wright, W. Mears, We Are The 99%, ACLU, L.A. Times, Scott Galindez, Countdown With Keith Olbermann, LL Bean, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

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The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










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Welcome To America: The Battlefield
By Ernest Stewart


"Sens. McCain and Levin have teamed up to promote one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime, S 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act. This bill would permit the federal government to indefinitely detain American citizens on American soil, without charge or trial, at the discretion of the President. It is destructive of our Constitution." ~~~ U.S. Congressman Ron Paul

"We're fighting a war, not a crime." Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse! ~ Regular
Good -- good ~ Ethyl
Well, what's for breakfast? ~ Regular
Horse pie and a short stack or would you rather have horse and eggs? It's up to you, it's always been... ~ Ethyl
The Regular and Ethyl Show ~~~ The Firesign Theatre

"Oops, my bad, that's my scenario." ~~~ UGK

I'm so old that I remember when Carl Levin was considered to be a liberal; yes, that was a long, long, long time ago. Today, he proudly wears Jack Boots and a corpo-rat armband -- when he isn't acting as a Israeli fifth columnist.

Carl, it seems, isn't satisfied by kidnapping and murdering tens of thousand of innocent foreigners from around the world and torturing them for years in an endless war against reality. He and the great traitor John McCain have come up with a couple of acts of treason slipped into the National Defense Authorization Act. These were created in secret and passed in a closed-door committee meeting -- without even a single hearing -- and by the time this is published, will have been voted on. You might think why would they do this in secret; what do they have to hide? I'll tell you what and why!

A couple sections of this turkey S. 1867 declare that the whole world is a battlefield -- these United Snakes included -- and it gives the military authority to arrest anyone -- American citizens included -- and hold them without trial or even charges, indefinitely, in any black-ops prison, incommunicado, without any chance to prove yourself innocent. So much for the Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment. As Sin-ator Lindsey Graham said about this: "In 1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland."

There is, however, a way to stop this madness! Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values. It doesn't take a genius to see how this will be used; in fact, the half-crazy Ron Paul spoke out against the bill and in favor of the Udall amendment. (It failed by 60-38-2)

However, the creatures of the night, have come out in favor of it; creatures like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will "basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield" and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial "American citizen or not." Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because "America is part of the battlefield."

For those of you who were wondering how we were going to fill up all the new "Happy Camps" look no further for the trigger than S. 1867. Even if doesn't pass or Barry vetos it, have no doubt it will be back in another form, in another bill. Vigilance, America, is our only defense!

In Other News

Well, I see that the Senate passed S. 1867 with 61 votes and officially, with Obamahood's signature the 5th Amendment is no more! Both of my Sin-ators voted to make America a battlefield and demand that the military be put in charge of rounding us all up and sending us off to a Happy Camp!

I wrote my Sin-ators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow similar letters:

Dear Sin-ator Hitler er Levin, sorry, but I get you two confused.

So much for the 5th amendment, huh? We don't need no stinkin' Bill of Rights. Now America is a battlefield and we're all potential terrorists, who can at any fascist government toady's whim disappear into a death camp to never be heard of again, without trial or even charges. Yep, that's the American way!

While I totally disagree with your act of treason, I must admit, I do admire your shiny-new Jack Boots and that Corpo-rat armband is to die for, quite literally, Carl. We won't forget your betrayal of America, Carl! I see that old dead eye Cheney was in favor of the bill -- interesting company that you keep!

Oh, and thanks for writing part of this week's editorial for me, Carl; and congratulations, you've just won this week's Vidkun Quisling Award for your act of treason! I bet your mama would be proud, huh?

Can I get a "Heil, Hitler," Carl?

As always, if I get a reply, I'll share it with you!

Here is a list of the traitors who voted for S. 1867. If your Sin-ator is on the list, you might want to send him or her your note of displeasure? Also, if your Sin-ators voted against this outrage, you should also let them know of your appreciation!

Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Barrasso (R-WY), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (R-MA), Burr (R-NC), Casey (D-PA), Chambliss (R-GA), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Conrad (D-ND), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hagan (D-NC), Hatch (R-UT), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Hutchison (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), Inouye (D-HI), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (R-WI), Kohl (D-WI), Kyl (R-AZ), Landrieu (D-LA), Lee (R-UT), Levin (D-MI), Lieberman (ID-CT), Lugar (R-IN), Manchin (D-WV), McCain (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Moran (R-KS), Nelson (D-NE), Portman (R-OH), Pryor (D-AR), Reed (D-RI), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Sessions (R-AL), Shaheen (D-NH), Shelby (R-AL), Snowe (R-ME), Stabenow (D-MI), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Vitter (R-LA), Whitehouse (D-RI), Wicker (R-MS).

You may have noticed that in this Democratically-controlled Senate, most of those that voted for this act of treason were Rethuglicans; funny thing that, huh? As you can see, both parties can come together and vote as one, if their actions will screw the American people royally! Hopefully, a lesson for those who think more cooperation between the Rethuglicans and Demoncrats would be a good thing!

And Finally

Well, there's good news, America; good news if you're into this sort of thing; if not, well, it's too bad -- because Obamahood signed it into law! For those of you who like horse and eggs with your short stack, happy daze are here again! No more having to import that Canadian Horse back-bacon; you'll soon be able to buy it from the Kroger or Piggly Wiggly!

That's right, the US Congress has lifted the five-year old ban on slaughtering horses for human consumption in these here United Snakes, and we could have have a plant up and running in as little as 30 days! No more shipping Trigger or Silver off to Canada or Mexico. The 1% is lining up to finance a new horse slaughterhouse -- so dust off your horse-bibs and stand by!

"The USDA issued a statement Tuesday saying there are no slaughterhouses in the U.S. that butcher horses for human consumption now; but if one were to open, it would conduct inspections to make sure federal laws were being followed. USDA spokesman Neil Gaffney declined to answer questions beyond what was in the statement." So, for all of you illegal aliens out there who have been thrown out of various meat packing plants, here's another opportunity for you!

So please pass me a slice of Mr. Ed and some horseradish, yummy! NOT!

Keepin' On

Oops, we bad. Last week, we misidentified Federal District Judge Henry T. Wingate in our Dead Letter Office department; as Henry was our Vidkun Quisling Award winner. Instead of Henry's photo we apparently ran a photo of Hitler's favorite Nazi judge Roland (Raging Roland) Freisler!

While it was, one has to admit, an easy enough mistake to make; still, it is not one -- as a trusted news source -- that we can tolerate, even from my favorite intern; so, Gladys, report to associate editor Wrathell's office after work for a trip across his lap! I promise you that he'll soon get to the bottom of the problem!

Ergo, we would therefore like to make a deep, sincere, heartfelt apology, to the friends and family of Roland Freisler for our mistake. Sorry Ya'll!

*****


12-07-1919 ~ 11-25-2011
Thanks for the gardens and the horse!


07-03-1927 ~ 11-27-2011
Thanks for the films!


12-07-1969 ~ 11-28-2011
Thanks for the laughs!


*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
Donations

*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












The Shocking Truth About The Crackdown On Occupy
The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality
By Naomi Wolf

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women - targeted seemingly for their gender - screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture - was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? - the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. he New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being - falsely - informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalized police force, and forbids federal or militarized involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that right-wing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilization against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks - under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop - awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act - the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list - and especially the last agenda item - the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies." Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorize mayors to order their police forces - pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS - to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarized reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) - but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known - and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating - a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally - and immensely - from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organized Occupy movement ... well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.
(c) 2011 Naomi Wolf author, social critic, and political activist is the author of The New York Times bestseller "The End of America" (Chelsea Green) and, more recently, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. Wolf's landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, challenged the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty, launching a new wave of feminism in the early 1990s.





A Day In November
By Uri Avnery

THIS TUESDAY will be the 64th anniversary of a fateful day for our lives.

A day in November. A day to remember.

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted, by 33 votes against 13 (with 10 abstentions), the Palestine Partition Plan.

This event has become a subject of endless debates, misinterpretations and outright falsifications. It may be worthwhile to peel away the myths and see it as it was.

BY THE end of 1947, there were in the country - then officially named Palestine - about 1.2 million Arabs and 635 thousand Jews. The gap between the two population groups had turned into an abyss. Though geographically intertwined, they lived on two different planets. With very few exceptions, they considered each other as mortal enemies.

This was the reality that the UN commission, charged with proposing a solution, found on the ground when it visited the country.

One of the great moments of my life is connected with this UNSCOP ("United Nations Special Committee on Palestine"). On the Carmel mountain chain, near kibbutz Daliah, I was attending the annual folk dance festival. Folk dances played a major role in the new Hebrew culture we were consciously striving to create. Most of these dances were somewhat contrived, even artificial, like many of our efforts, but they reflected the will to create something new, fresh, rooted in the country, entirely different from the Jewish culture of our parents. Some of us spoke about a new "Hebrew nation".

In a huge natural amphitheater, under a canopy of twinkling summer stars, tens of thousands of young people, boys and girls, had gathered to cheer on the many amateur groups performing on the stage. It was a joyous affair, imbued with camaraderie, radiating feelings of strength and self-confidence.

No one of us could have guessed that within a few months we would meet again in the fields of a deadly war.

In the middle of the performance, an excited voice announced on the loudspeaker that several members of UNSCOP had come to visit. As one, the huge crowd stood up and started to sing the national anthem, Hatikvah ("the Hope"). I never liked this song very much, but at that moment it sounded like a fervent prayer, filling the space, rebounding from the hills of the Carmel. I suppose that almost all of the 6000 Jewish youngsters who gave their lives in the war were assembled for the last time on that evening, singing with profound emotion.

IT WAS in this atmosphere that the members of UNSCOP, representing many different nations, had to find a solution.

As everybody knows, the commission adopted a plan to partition Palestine between an independent "Arab" and an independent "Jewish" state. But that is not the whole story.

Looking at the map of the 1947 partition resolution, one must wonder at the borders. They resemble a puzzle, with Arab pieces and Jewish pieces put together in an impossible patchwork, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem as a separate unit. The borders look crazy. Both states would have been totally indefensible.

The explanation is that the committee did not really envision two totally independent and separate states. The plan explicitly included an economic union. That would have necessitated a very close relationship between the two political entities, something akin to a federation, with open borders and free movement of people and goods. Without it, the borders would have been impossible.

That was a very optimistic scenario. Immediately after the committee's plan was adopted by the General Assembly, after much cajoling by the Zionist leadership, war broke out with sporadic Arab attacks on Jewish traffic on the vital roads.

When the first shot was fired, the partition plan was dead. The foundation, on which the whole edifice rested, broke apart. No open borders, no economic union, no chance for a union of any kind. Only abyssal, deadly, enmity.

THE PARTITION plan would never have been adopted in the first place if it had not been preceded by a historical event that seemed at the time beyond belief.

The Soviet delegate to the UN, Andrei Gromyko, suddenly made what can only be described as a fiery Zionist speech. He contended that after the terrible suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, they deserved a state of their own.

To appreciate the utter amazement with which this speech was received, one must remember that until that very moment, Communists and Zionists had been irreconcilable foes. It was not only a clash of ideologies, but also a family affair. In Tzarist Russia, Jews were persecuted by an anti-Semitic government, and young Jews, both male and female, were in the vanguard of all the revolutionary movements.

An idealistic young Jew had the choice between joining the Bolsheviks, the social-democratic Jewish Bund or the Zionists. The competition was fierce and engendered intense mutual hatred. Later, in the Soviet Union, Zionists were mercilessly persecuted. In Palestine, local Communists, Jewish and Arab, were accused of collaborating with the Arab militants who attacked Jewish neighborhoods.

What had brought about this sudden change in Soviet policy? Stalin did not turn from an anti-Semite into a philo-Semite. Far from it. But he was a pragmatist. It was the era of medium-range missiles, which threatened Soviet territory from all sides. Palestine was in practice a British colony and could easily have become a Western missile base, threatening Odessa and beyond. Better a Jewish and an Arab state, than that.

In the following war, almost all my weapons came from the Soviet bloc, mainly from Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union recognized Israel de jure long before the United States.

The end of this unnatural honeymoon came in the early fifties, when David Ben-Gurion decided to turn Israel into an inseparable part of the Western bloc. At the same time, Stalin recognized the importance of the new pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser and decided to ride on that wave. His paranoid anti-Semitism came again to the fore. All over Eastern Europe Communist veterans were executed as Zionist-imperialist-Trotskyite spies, and his Jewish doctors were accused of attempting to poison him. (Luckily for them, Stalin died just in time and they were saved.)

TODAY, THE partition resolution is remembered in Israel mainly because of two words: "Jewish state".

No one in Israel wants to be reminded of the borders of 1947, which gave the Jewish minority in Palestine "only" 55% of the country. (Though half of this consisted of the Negev desert, most of which is almost empty even now.) Nor do Jewish Israelis like to be reminded that almost half the population of the territory allotted to them was Arab.

At the time, the UN resolution was accepted by the Jewish population with overflowing enthusiasm. The photos of the people dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv belong to this day, and not - as is often falsely claimed, to the day the State of Israel was officially founded. (At that time we were in middle of a bloody war and nobody was in the mood for dancing.)

We know now that Ben-Gurion did not dream of accepting the partition plan borders, and even less the Arab population within them. The famous army "Plan Dalet" early in the war was a strategic necessity, but it was also a solution to the two problems: it added to Israel another 22% of the country and it drove the Arab population out. Only a small remnant of the Arab population remained - and by now it has grown to 1.5 million.

But all that is history. What concerned the future are the words "Jewish state". Israeli rightists, who abhor the partition resolution in any other context, insist that it provides the legal basis to Israel's right to be recognized as a "Jewish state" - meaning in practice, that the state belongs to all the Jews around the world, but not to its Arab citizens, whose families have been living here for at least 13 centuries, if not far longer (depends who does the counting).

But the UN used the word "Jewish" only for lack of any other definition. During the British Mandate, the two peoples in the country were called in English "Jews" and "Arabs". But we ourselves spoke about a "Hebrew" State (medina Ivrit). In newspaper clippings of the time, only this term can be seen. People of my age-group remember dozens of demonstrations in which we invariably chanted "Free Immigration - Hebrew State". The sound of it still rings in our ears.

The UN did not deal with the ideological makeup of the future states. It certainly assumed that they would be democratic, belonging to all their inhabitants. Otherwise they would hardly have drawn borders that left a substantial Arab population in the "Jewish" state.

Israel's declaration of independence bases itself on the UN resolution. The relevant sentence reads: ...AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, (WE) HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL."

The ultra-rightists who now dominate the Knesset want to use these words as a pretext for replacing democracy with a doctrine of Jewish nationalist-religious supremacy. A former Shin-Bet chief and present Kadima party MK has submitted a bill that would abolish the equality of the two terms "Jewish" and "democratic" in the official legal doctrine, and state clearly that the "Jewishness" of the state has precedence over its "democratic" character. This would deprive the Arab citizens of any remnant of equality. (At the last moment, in face of the public reaction, the Kadima party compelled him to withdraw the bill.)

THE 1947 partition plan was an exceptionally intelligent document. Its details are obsolete now, but its basic idea is as relevant today as it was 64 years ago: two nations are living in this country, they cannot live together in one state without a continuous civil war, they can live together in two states, the two states must establish close ties between each other.

Ben-Gurion was determined to prevent the founding of the Arab Palestinian state, and with the help of King Abdallah of Transjordan he succeeded in this. All his successors, with the possible exception of Yitzhak Rabin, have followed this line, now more than ever. We have paid - and are still paying - a heavy price for this folly.

On the 64th anniversary of this historic event, we must go back to its basic principle: Israel and Palestine, Two States for Two Peoples.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom




Here's a clip of me talking about the ruling last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.



Federal Judge Pimp-Slaps The SEC Over Citigroup Settlement
By Matt Taibbi

Greetings, folks. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving...

Just a quick update on a big piece of news that came through yesterday. In one of the more severe judicial ass-whippings you'll ever see, federal Judge Jed Rakoff rejected a slap-on-the-wrist fraud settlement the SEC had cooked up for Citigroup.

I wrote about this story a few weeks back when Rakoff sent signals that he was unhappy with the SEC's dirty deal with Citi, but yesterday he took this story several steps further.

Rakoff's 15-page final ruling read like a political document, serving not just as a rejection of this one deal but as a broad and unequivocal indictment of the regulatory system as a whole. He particularly targeted the SEC's longstanding practice of greenlighting relatively minor fines and financial settlements alongside de facto waivers of civil liability for the guilty - banks commit fraud and pay small fines, but in the end the SEC allows them to walk away without admitting to criminal wrongdoing.

This practice is a legal absurdity for several reasons. By accepting hundred-million-dollar fines without a full public venting of the facts, the SEC is leveling seemingly significant punishments without telling the public what the defendant is being punished for. This has essentially created a parallel or secret criminal justice system, in which both crime and punishment are adjudicated behind closed doors.

This system allows for ugly consequences in both directions. Imagine if normal criminal defendants were treated this way. Say a prosecutor and street criminal comb into a judge's chamber and explain they've cooked up a deal, that the criminal doesn't have to admit to anything or plead to any crime, but has to spend 18 months in house arrest nonetheless.

What sane judge would sign off on a deal like that without knowing exactly what the facts are? Did the criminal shoot up a nightclub and paralyze someone, or did he just sell a dimebag on the street? Is 18 months a tough sentence or a slap on the wrist? And how is it legally possible for someone to deserve an 18-month sentence without being guilty of anything?

Such deals are logical and legal absurdities, but judges have been signing off on settlements like this with Wall Street defendants for years.

Judge Rakoff blew a big hole in that practice yesterday. His ruling says secret justice is not justice, and that the government cannot hand out punishments without telling the public what the punishments are for. He wrote:

Finally, in any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth. In much of the world, propaganda reigns, and truth is confined to secretive, fearful whispers. Even in our nation, apologists for suppressing or obscuring the truth may always be found. But the S.E.C., of all agencies, has a duty, inherent in its statutory mission, to see that the truth emerges; and if it fails to do so, this Court must not, in the name of deference or convenience, grant judicial enforcement to the agency's contrivances.
Notice the reference to how things are "in much of the world," a subtle hint that the idea behind this ruling is to prevent a slide into third-world-style justice. There are many such loaded passages in Rakoff's ruling. Another one comes up around the issue of the "public interest."

This issue of whether or not the SEC must consider the public interest in granting these cozy settlements gets to the heart of the Occupy Movement's central complaint, that there are two different sets of rules for two different Americas. The SEC in this case incredibly argued - out loud, on paper - that it could make regulatory decisions without considering the public interest. In particular, it argued that it didn't need to consider the public interest when granting "injunctive relief," i.e. an injunction barring future behaviors, as opposed to the stiffer and more immediate punishment of fines or criminal charges.

The SEC argued to Judge Rakoff that "the public interest ... is not part of [the] applicable standard of judicial review."

Translating: "When we decide to let thieving megabank off with just a promise to never do it again, we don't have to consider whether or not this is in the public interest."

If you stand back and really think about what this argument means, it'll make your head spin. What the SEC is saying here is that according to the incestuous values of the small community of high-priced revolving-door lawyers who both head the SEC enforcement office and run the defense teams of banks like Citi, a $95 million fine with no admission of wrongdoing for a $700 million fraud is, in fact, "fair" and "reasonable."

The settlement only becomes problematic, the SEC implies, if you ask them to square their judgment with "the public interest."

The SEC, in other words, is admitting that they have a standard for "reasonableness" and "fairness" that somehow does not coincide with the public interest. This surreal formulation translates as, "We're doing the right thing - we're just not doing it for the public."

Rakoff's response to this lunacy:

A large part of what the S.E.C. requests, in this and most other such consent judgments, is injunctive relief... The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear, however, that a court cannot grant the extraordinary remedy of injunctive relief without considering the public interest.
The Rakoff ruling shines a light on the way these crappy settlements have evolved into a kind of cheap payoff system, in which crimes may be committed over and over again, and the SEC's only role is to take a bribe each time the offenders slip up and get caught.

If you never have to worry about serious punishments, or court findings of criminal guilt (which would leave you exposed to crippling lawsuits), then there's simply no incentive to stop committing fraud. These SEC settlements simply become part of the cost of doing business, as Rakoff notes:

As for common experience, a consent judgment that does not involve any admissions and that results in only very modest penalties is just as frequently viewed, particularly in the business community, as a cost of doing business imposed by having to maintain a working relationship with a regulatory agency, rather than as any indication of where the real truth lies. This, indeed, is Citigroup's position in this very case.
That line, "a cost of doing business imposed by having to maintain a working relationship with a regulatory agency," is one of the more brutally damning things you'll ever see a judge write. Rakoff is saying that these fines are payoffs to keep the SEC off the banks' backs. They're like the pad that numbers-runners or drug dealers pay to urban precinct-houses every month to keep cops from making real arrests. That's what he means when he refers to "maintaning a working relationship." It's heavy stuff.

On the other hand, both the SEC and Citigroup insist that this secretive payoff system is defensible and must continue. They clearly believe, sincerely, that none of this stuff is really the public's business.

This is an extraordinarily condescending attitude and shows exactly how little they think of the public at large. One wonders if decisions like Rakoff's will at least help to wake the government up.
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







Not Made In America
By Ralph Nader

"Here, look at this handsome L.L. Bean catalog and tell me what you want for Christmas," said a relative over Thanksgiving weekend. I started leafing through the 88 page cornucopia with hundreds of clothing and household products, garnished by free gift cards and guaranteed free shipping. I wasn't perusing it for any suggested gifts; instead, I was going through every offering to see whether they were made in the U.S.A. or in other countries.

This is what I found: over 97 percent of all the items pictured and priced were noted "imported" by L.L. Bean. The only ones manufactured in the U.S. were fireplace gloves, an L.L. Bean jean belt, a dress chino belt, quilted faux-shearling-lined L.L. Bean boots (made in Maine), a personalized web collar and leash (for your pet), and symbolically enough, the "made in Maine using American-made cotton canvas are the Original Boat and Tote Bags" to carry all those goodies coming in from China and elsewhere.

That was it for the products that were "Made in America." The former fountainhead of global manufacturing has been largely deflated by the flight of U.S. companies to fascist or communist regimes noted for holding down their repressed workers.

But there is much more to this story and the plight of millions of American workers and hundreds of their hollowed out communities that are the visible results of corporate free trade propaganda.

How many times have the politicians and their corporate paymasters told us that "free trade" with other nations is a "win-win" proposition? They win and we win. After all, isn't that what happened two hundred years ago when Portugal sold its wine to England in return for British textiles? Economists have won many prizes elaborating this theory of comparative advantage.

That is what Nobel laureate super-economist Paul Samuelson believed in the many years he wrote and updated his standard "Economics 101" textbook studied by millions of college students for nearly 50 years. For many of his colleagues, the theory of "free trade" had become an ideology bordering on a secular religion. Don't bother them with the facts.

Some of their students became reporters, such as Thomas Friedman of "The New York Times," taking this prejudgment of reality into their uncritical coverage of the very flawed NAFTA and World Trade Organization agreements under President Clinton in the 1990s.

But Samuelson increasingly became an empiricist, along with his academic contributions in mathematical economics. Before one of his book revisions in the '70s, he wrote me asking for whatever materials I thought would be useful regarding consumer protection and consumer fraud. He presaged the relatively new field of behavioral economics and their obvious findings that consumers do not always maximize their best interests, and can act "irrationally" in a fast-paced marketplace of clever or unscrupulous sellers.

Gradually, Professor Sameulson saw trade between nations move from "comparative advantage" to more and more "absolute advantage." That is, companies were using the swift mobility of capital, modern factory machinery and transport to locate all elements of production - labor, capital, raw materials, and advanced know-how in one place - now most notably in China.

Absolute advantages have been aided by the corporate-managed trade agreements of WTO and NAFTA. These treaties are also conveniently violated to facilitate large subsidies that are not supposed to be used to lure companies to move. This trade in giveaways has China winning over the U.S., most recently in pulling American solar factories to China.

If corporate "free trade" is a win-win proposition, adhered to by one president after another, including Barack Obama, how come our country has piled up bigger trade deficits every year since 1976? Big is really big. Over the past decade our country has bought from abroad more than it has sold an average of well over half a trillion dollars each year.

In 1980 the U.S. was the world leading creditor - they owed us - while now, the U.S. is by far the world's leading debtor - we owe them!

At what point do the "free traders" cry "uncle" and rethink their commercial catechism? So long as multinational corporations control our politicians, it will not happen. For these companies are looking for the most worker-controlled, environmentally-pollutable and bribable countries to locate their manufacturing bases. Global companies are just that, bereft of any allegiance or grateful patriotism to their country of birth, profit and bailout salvation.

Here are three questions you may wish to ask any self-styled "free traders":

What amount of evidence do you require to get rid of your dogma and, as a minimum, start thinking like Paul Samuelson?

How much of the savings from lower costs abroad are going for large profits and not being passed on to the consumer who also has to endure the reported hazards of unregulated imports?

And, at what point do you look at L.L. Bean-type catalogs and ask whether you are getting a price break that is worth the debilitating dependency on other nations that use exploitation, repression, violations and outright counterfeiting as unfair methods of competition against our stateside companies and workers?

(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.







Paulson's Plaintive Plea

Who's the most befuddled Wall Streeter of all? The richest guy on the Street.

In assessing the spreading public protest against the rampaging greed of today's financial elite, John Paulson turns out to be as confused as a goat on Astroturf. Oh, he gets it that the people's anger is directed at hedge fund profiteers like him, but he claims they are simply confused on the virtue of accumulated wealth. While he raked in nearly $5 billion in personal pay last year (the largest single haul in Wall Street history), gaining his bonanza from rigged Wall Street casino games - he asserts that the amassing of wealth itself serves the public good.

It's unfair, Paulson scolds, that protesters demonstrated in front of his 28,000-square-foot, $15 million mansion on New York's Upper East Side, targeting him as an exemplar of plutocratic excess. Taxes from Billionaires like him, he says, are "providing huge benefits to everyone in our city." Besides, he points out that he's not merely a billionaire "job creator," as Republican leaders prefer to call corporate chieftains these days. Paulson brags that his hedge fund "has created over 100 high-paying jobs in New York City since its formation." Wow - 100 jobs in a city of over 8 million people. Thanks, John, our economy wouldn't be the same without you!

When it comes down to it, all that Paulson clique really wants is a little love, a small show of gratitude for all that the richest 1-percent is doing for us 99-percent of Americans by making themselves ever-richer. In a plaintive press release, he recently wrote that, "Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them."

Isn't it sad to hear John cry? But, then, he does have $15 billion in net worth to dry those tears.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








'Spring' Reawakening
By Helen Thomas

The world is witnessing a revival of the Egyptian revolution and listening to the demands of a disappointed people. The protesters who are part of this Arab Spring have told the world they have power. The Occupy Wall Street protesters heard the message, too: People have power.

They declare on their website, "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants. ... The only solution is World Revolution."

The world is not only watching the fight for democracy in the Middle East and Africa, but this spirit of people power is contagious.

The Syrian people are seeking democracy, revolting against the government of Bashar al-Assad after some 30 years of one-man rule by al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, who killed some 10,000 people in Hama alone, and put his son on the throne.

For the brutal Syrian leader to try to hold back the dawn is incredible. He was another anointed by his father alone. He has seen the fate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, but he is still using the fire power of his military regime to kill and destroy.

He is truly a disgrace to Syria, which had great and early roots in fighting against French occupation in the 1920s, and an outstanding legacy in fighting for freedom and independence.

Now Egypt, whose Tahrir Square was the site of a once peaceful revolution that began nine months ago, is again in upheaval.

The revolt in Egypt has turned bloody - more so than the first revolution which ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak - because the interim government has tear gassed the protesters and killed many, although in many attacks rubber bullets were used.

Egyptians who threw out the Mubarak regime are up in arms over the new military rulers. The complaints in Egypt have been that there have been no changes and no reforms. The rebels are saying "nothing has changed."

The struggle spans Egypt, not just in Tahrir Square's home city of Cairo, but in Alexandria as well.

As one Egyptian put it, the revolt leaders are against the interim ruling government, which has disappointed them. As a result of the second revolt, the Egyptian cabinet has resigned.

The biggest problem is that the Egyptian military have tried to hijack the revolution and sieze power. The wary people are not about to be subjected by Mubarak holdovers again.

In the Egyptian street, protestors are demanding "freedom, justice and human dignity." They are seeking the principles of democracy.

As usual, the White House is urging "restraint" on both sides. Otherwise, the U.S. is not helpful.

The protesters are manifested by anger and frustration. They now realize their power to challenge the powers that be - whoever they are. The people are no longer afraid.

The Egyptians have learned the lessons of the past. History shows that revolutions are often lost to one-man dictators who grab power. Fortunately, America has remained true to its constitutional concepts of the rule of law and the rights of man, dating back to the Magna Carta.

Egyptians are expected to elect a parliament next week and a president in August 2012, if the army doesn't intervene - the military has ruled Egypt for the last 60 years.

Hopefully, the Arab world will fulfill its dreams of freedom - a dream that has taken too many sacrifices. The world should be rejoicing that people who have known oppression for so long are throwing off their chains.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Telling The Truth Can Now Be Treason
By James Donahue

It seems that the bill that President Barack Obama just signed, extending the Patriot Act for another four years, contained a few pages designed to block whistleblowers and journalists from spilling the beans about the misdeeds of high government and military officials.

This is being revealed on the Internet in a well circulated report by Susan Lindaner, a former news reporter, researcher for U. S. News and World Report, and press secretary and speech writer for Senator Carol Braun of Illinois.

Lindaner also is the author of "Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover-Ups of 9-11 and Iraq." In the book tells how she was personally jailed on charges of acting as an agent for the Iraqi Intelligence Service after she attempted to warn President George W. Bush and his staff that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Lindaner also claims to have had foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks but was unable to get officials in high government office to act on it. In her Internet article, Lindaner says the Patriot Act is "a law that equates free speech with sedition. It's got a big agenda with 7,000 pages of Machiavellian code designed to interrupt individual questioning of government policy.

"In this brave new world, free speech under the Bill of Rights, effectively has been declared a threat to government controls for maintaining stability." She charges that the act "has become the premiere weapon to attack whistle blowers and dissidents who challenge the comfort of political leaders hiding inconvenient truths from the public. It's all a rage on Capitol Hill, as leaders strive to score TV ratings, while demagogging their 'outstanding leadership performance' on everything from national security to environmental policy." In a nutshell, Lindaner warns that because of the Patriot Act, the act of telling the truth may now be declared treason. The artificial War on Terror, a declaration of war against a vague enemy lacking both nationality and face, now has produced a government policy that allows presidents, cabinet members, elected legislators, military generals and all other high ranking officials to hide whatever they choose behind the cloak of national security.

This may explain why investigative journalism has all but disappeared in the United States. Our nightly televised news broadcasts are limited to disasters, spectacular events, feature fluff and political handouts received by the Washington Press Corps. Even the once strong-hitting television news magazines like CBS's 60-Minutes and ABC's 20-20 have lost the punch they once had.

In the place of truth has risen the new phenomenon of conspiracy theories. A suspicious band of Internet writers, collectively piecing together tid-bits of information that doesn't fit the "official" story handed out by our government, has been generating theories as to what may have really happened.

We fear the Internet theorists may be getting closer to the truth than historians will ever tell. As long as it stands, the Patriot Act will see to that.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.




Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, right, and Police Chief
Charlie Beck survey the park after members of Occupy Lose Angeles
were successfully cleared out their camp by more than 1,400 police
officers in riot gear at City Hall early Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011.



You Can Arrest On Idea
By Robert Scheer

The bankers slept well. Their homes in Beverly Hills were not spotlighted by a noisy swarm of police helicopters, searchlights burning through the sanctity of the night, harassing the forlorn City Hall encampment of those who dared protest the banks' seizure of our government. I live within sight of the iconic Los Angeles City Hall, and at first I thought it was being used once again as a movie location, given the massive police presence, as if an alien invasion was being thwarted.

Not eager to test the resilience of my new heart valve, I hesitated until the first crack of dawn to visit the place where former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and I had spoken weeks before at a teach-in on the origins of the economic crisis. I described the scene back then as a Jeffersonian moment, exactly the kind of peaceful assembly to redress grievances that the Founders of our nation enshrined in the Bill of Rights. But at 5 a.m. Wednesday there was only a graveyard of democratic hope. The protesters were gone, 200 arrested for exercising their constitutional rights, and only the television crews stayed to pick over the carcass of tents, books and posters, including one I pulled from the debris that read "99% you can't arrest an idea." Actually, you can, and the bankers have, as a result, been able to reoccupy Los Angeles' City Hall and every other contested outpost of power throughout the nation.

The liberal Democratic mayor, a past president of the Southern California ACLU, was pleased with the efficiency of the "community policing" approach of his police department. "I said that here in L.A. we'd chart a different path, and we did," Antonio Villaraigosa boasted. However, the result was the same as elsewhere; the bankers were protected from the scorn they so richly deserve and there will no longer be a visible monument to the pain that they have caused. To ensure a pristine, amoral town square, huge concrete-anchored fences were quickly installed to prevent further access to the public space surrounding City Hall.

Of course the traditional cardboard encampments of the homeless three blocks away, a sprawling and constant feature of life in downtown Los Angeles, remained undisturbed. Sanitation and safety issues are of no concern as long as such manifestations of deep societal inequality are so far from the corridors of power as to be, in effect, invisible.

Such profound contradictions in the application of state power seemed not at all to bother the first wave of government workers arriving at the various local, state and federal office buildings. I lined up with some of the early birds at the employee entrance to City Hall-the closed public entrance had a forbidding police presence-and told the guard that I was there with a literary offering for the mayor, whom I have long known.

My gesture was quite pathetic. I brought him a copy of my book "The Great American Stickup," which he had once claimed to have read and admired, to remind him that he should be arresting the real criminals rather than the victims of their financial swindles. For a confirmation of that point, I also intended to present the mayor with the transcript of U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff's ruling this week rejecting the sweetheart deal between the SEC and Citigroup. The settlement, one of dozens like it offered to the banks, would have let Citigroup off the hook for a pittance in fines in return for closing cases involving immense corruption on the part of the bankers, who would not have to admit guilt for their crimes.

And crimes they clearly are, far beyond the scope of pitching a tent in a public park. As Judge Rakoff stated, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Citigroup with "a substantial securities fraud" in the sale of a billion dollars' worth of toxic securities that were designed to fail and which the bank had bet against. Rakoff, who has handled a number of these cases, complained that Citigroup, like the other major banks, is a recidivist. Citigroup had already paid fines for four similar scams. The judge observed that "although this would appear tantamount to an allegation of knowing and fraudulent intent, the SEC, for reasons of its own, chose to charge Citigroup only with negligence" despite the far more serious charges called for in securities law.

The failure of the SEC or any other government agency to hold the banks accountable provides the essential justification for citizen action of the sort the Occupy movement has offered. In his concluding summary, Rakoff stated: "Finally, in any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth. In much of the world, propaganda reigns, and truth is confined to secretive, fearful whispers. Even in our nation, apologists for suppressing or obscuring the truth may always be found."

Count the liberal mayor of Los Angeles, a man I have respected and voted for, as one of those apologists for suppressing truth in the name of civic order. As I meekly allowed myself to be ordered about by the police clearing the area so that the concrete barriers could be installed, I wondered whether I had not been reduced to the status of a fearful whisperer.
(c) 2011 Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. A journalist with over 30 years experience, Scheer has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He is the author, most recently, of "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," published by Twelve Books.








Occupation Evicted? Occupy The Place Responsible: DC
By David Swanson

Has the First Amendment expired in your public square? Has your local park prioritized empty vistas over the right to petition your government for a redress of grievances, thereby adding one more grievance to the list?

Here's a proposal. Pack up all of your grievances in a bag and bring them to where the government responsible is located. Move your protest and yourself and as much of your Occupy community as you can bring with you to Freedom Plaza - http://occupywashingtondc.org - or McPherson Square - http://occupydc.org - in Washington, D.C. You need not bring anything else. Together we can keep the DC occupations sheltered and fed and supplied with resources.

A national movement with local encampments has begun to change the culture. That should not end. Local encampments have begun to build community, to model democratic decision making, to aid the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless, and to develop a culture of resistance in quiescent corners of the land. All of that should continue.

But while we're helping a handful of homeless people, while we're offering assistance to a dozen veterans, while we're antagonizing city councils that didn't create this mess, our senators and misrepresentatives in Washington, D.C., are dumping another $682.5 billion into wars and weapons, with presidential power to imprison anyone without charge or trial forever and ever thrown on top of the Defense Authorization Act like a cherry on a sunday.

While we're educating our neighbors on the need for affordable housing, the Federal Reserve is pulling seven trillion - with a t - dollars out of its posterior and giving it to the banks responsible for the housing crisis. While we're making sacrifices to advance a national movement to place people ahead of profits, the United States Congress is preparing massive cuts to Medicare, children's nutrition, crumbling bridges, and national parks, plus "security" cuts that will largely avoid even scratching a military budget five times larger than that of the next most militarized nation on earth, even as the U.S. military works overtime to antagonize Pakistan, China, Iran, and much of the world.

I know Washington, D.C., is far away. But I saw New Yorkers arrive there last week by foot. And there are trains, planes, and automobiles available for the less ambitious. And I guarantee you that your local activists will raise a fund to send you to the heart of our darkness. Here's why.

Violating our First Amendment rights, beating us with sticks, pepper spraying us, tear-gassing us, and arresting us, and thereby intimidating many more of us in other cities that have only had to resort to mild suggestions and threats: these are criminal acts. These would be the outrage constantly on the lips of every president, senator, and cabinet secretary if they were taking place in Iran. These crimes are taking place in our own country, and this trend will increase if it is not effectively resisted and challenged. The place to bring that challenge - or one key place, anyway - is the U.S. Justice Department and the government it serves in Washington.

Don't talk to me about the "question" of whether there has "really" been federal coordination of these assaults. There has been federal U.S. provision of the weaponry to our cities as to the enemies of our brothers and sisters in Egypt. There has been federal training in the militarization of the police in our towns and on our university campuses. There has been federal toleration of outrages that shame our nation in the eyes of the world.

There is another threat to the Occupy movement, however. Beyond the cold weather, beyond the police assaults, beyond the challenges of caring for people in need who are attracted to encampments of those who care, there is the threat of co-option, of normalization, of de-radicalizing something radical. The power of the Occupy movement lies in the fact that it is not speaking for half of a corrupt plutocracy against the other half. Bringing people's demands to the government must continue to be just that, an effort of independent people to challenge the government as a whole, along with the society as a whole, to change. The two political parties move together, and far more important than squinting hard enough to detect differences between them is the fundamental work of pushing both of them in a better direction. You can still cherish your hopes that one of them will move a bit more in the direction of decency than the other, but none of us can sit out this drive to put basic fairness and equality on the agenda in a way that has already been shown to be more effective than partisanship.

By taking our demands to Washington, we must not neglect our local work, much less the efforts targeted at Wall Street in New York. But when you protest the empowerment of corporations, the concentration of wealth, and the advancement of the war economy at the expense of our environment and security, it is important to ask whether the chief levers for changing our public policy are in your town or on the shores of the Potomac in the Pentagon, in the K Street lobby firms, in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in the White House, and on Capitol Hill. Every type of work in this movement is appreciated, from your local street corner, from your house, or from wherever you can contribute it. But you should know that there is an open invitation and a camp site awaiting you in the imperial capital.

I leave you with a parable:

And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers." And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they appeared on every network lamenting his lack of clear demands or legislation and his failure to join forces with the Democratic Party.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







Ask the Candidates Real Questions - Like These
By Ray McGovern

Pity the pundits. It must be hard to pretend to be a journalist and live in constant fear of being one question or comment away from joining the jobless.

This Thanksgiving holiday weekend we can be thankful for the obscene transparency of the "mainstream" pundits' efforts to avoid at all cost offending the corporations that own and use them.

Rather, media personalities who wish to be around for a while must do what they can to promote the notion of American exceptionalism and the need to sacrifice at home in order to defend and expand the Empire - "so that we don't have to fight them here."

From a global perspective looking back a few decades, it is hard to believe that major powers like China and Russia were fiercely competing with each other for improved relations with the U.S., and that we were able to play one off against the other to advance America's interests.

They are now laughing at us - smiling at how far we have outreached ourselves in our attempts to project power and corner the world market.

It is, actually, hard to believe: Marines now stationed in Australia, which our national security experts apparently believe is near China (well, kind of near); U.S. troops now in Africa where there's still a lot of untapped oil; U.S threats to use a "military option" against Iran.

And the coup de grace: the feckless effort to build anti-ballistic missile defense systems that can defeat all countermeasures - the U.S. defense-industrial project that has long been one of the most expensive and lucrative corporate welfare programs.

Check out the breaking story, which brings still more good news for the military-industrial complex: Russia is threatening to defeat American missile defense systems in Europe, absent a bilateral agreement regulating them. And so, it's back to the drawing board and then the production line in the quixotic search for technical systems that cannot be countered. Is this a great country for weapons researchers and manufacturers, or what?

The pundits will explain, and our diplomats will try to convince others, particularly incredulous Europeans, that such defense systems are needed to defend against an eventual missile threat from Iran, which our national security gurus believe to be near Europe (well, kind of near).

All this at a time when one out of three children in America live in poverty. Our Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), substantially owned and operated by the arms makers, war profiteers and their friends, does what it can to disguise this, as well as other grim statistics.

Be thankful, say the One Percent. Relax already. After all, even poor children - or most of them, anyhow - can watch football on TV and be enticed by heroic advertisements to join the military or some other part of the national security apparatus. Thus, maybe they can qualify for a credit card that enables them to shop like crazy on Black Friday and on future Black Fridays.

To further buck up national morale, our TV networks can be counted on to carry the usual orgy of flag-waving "God-bless-America" renditions - accompanied by those explicit and implicit tutorials on American exceptionalism, expressed with jet-fighter flyovers and cutaways to U.S. troops "defending our freedoms" in Afghanistan and other faraway places.

The message from the One Percent - the ultra-wealthy whom Republican lawmakers are fond of lauding as the "job creators" - was that ALL of you must be grateful this Thanksgiving holiday, including the ungrateful Ninety-Nine Percent, some of whom are grumbling about inequities at "Occupy" protests around the country.

Ask Real Questions

Is there a medicine for this infection of militarism, consumerism and mindless politics? I think there is, but only if we all do our part. We need to find ways to raise the kinds of questions that FCM pundits and journalists avoid like the plague. Go to the rallies, the press conferences, the campaign speeches; press for cogent answers to the real questions.

That's what I'm going to try to do in the coming weeks and months. Here are three lines of questioning I think we might try to pursue with the candidates themselves. You may wish to try them out yourselves and/or devise your own. I include below the three questions, supplemented by background and potential lead-ins:

*****

Question 1

Background: The aims of U.S. foreign policy in the post-World War II period were essentially to enforce a global system in which the Western powers under American leadership would maintain global dominance. This essentially meant being in control of the world's resources at the expense of non-Western nations.

This fundamental objective of U.S. foreign policy in the post-war period shines through with bare-knuckled candor in a TOP SECRET policy document written by George Kennan in February 1948. He was head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, and this was its first memorandum. Here is an excerpt:

"We have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 per cent of its population. ... Our real task in the coming period is to maintain this position of disparity. ... To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming. ... We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism. ... We should cease to talk about vague, unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we will have to deal in straight power concepts."
Lead-in: Five years after approval of the basic policy aim of controlling more than our share of "the world's wealth," the policy was implemented by throwing millions of dollars at the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Iran. You see, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh had the revolutionary, unacceptable notion that more of the profits from Iranian oil should stay in Iran for the Iranian people and not simply go to oil giants like the predecessor of British Petroleum (BP).

The Question: Do you think we had a right to overthrow the leader of Iran in 1953? And would you again give millions of dollars to the CIA to overthrow the Iranian government under your presidency?

*****

Question 2

Background: Further on Iran: During the Dec. 5, 2006, Senate hearing on the nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense, he was questioned by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., about the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and the threat to Israel if it did. Gates said that he believed Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons and was lying when it said it wasn't.

However, amazingly, Gates added that Iran's motivation was largely self-defense. Sen. Graham asked:

"Do you believe the Iranians would consider using that nuclear weapons capability against the nation of Israel?"

Gates replied:

"I don't know that they would do that, Senator. ... And I think that, while they are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for nuclear capability, I think that they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf."

This remarkably candid reply explains Iran's possible motive in seeking nuclear weapons as deterrence against aggression by nuclear powers in the region, including Israel and the United States. In other words, according to Gates, Iran is seeking nuclear weapons in the first instance" to prevent others from attacking it, rather than to attack other states - like Israel.

This comes close to saying that the U.S. should be able to live with a nuclear-armed Iran (and Israel should be able to as well). And, remember, all this talk is properly put in the subjunctive mood. It remains a very big IF; namely, on whether or not the Iranian leaders opt to go for a nuclear weapon.

We were formally reminded last March that the jury is still out on this key question. James R. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, testified to Congress that the intelligence community judges that Iran has not yet made that decision. So, despite all the current media hype regarding Iran's nuclear program, there remains some reason to hope against hype, so to speak.

In the above reply, Gates also acknowledged what U.S. officials officially seek to obfuscate: that Israel has nuclear weapons. Remember, at the time of his confirmation hearing, Gates had already served as CIA director and held other senior national security position in several administrations.

He had been around long enough both to know the details of Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal and the longstanding U.S. policy NOT to acknowledge that Israel has nukes. That policy was designed to have the double benefit of not undermining Israel's policy of studied ambiguity on the issue and of not requiring the U.S. to take a position for or against Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and its refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed.

America's supposedly "objective" FCM also readily puts on the blinders when focusing on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program and simultaneously ignoring Israel's real one. The truth is that there are no U.N. weapons inspectors crawling into crevices in Israel, as they regularly do in Iran.

Lead-in to question: A portion of intelligence funding goes to support intelligence analysis. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates worked in the analysis part of the CIA. [Actually, as an apprentice analyst 40 years ago, he worked in the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch that I led. His portfolio was Soviet policy toward the Middle East.]

Fast-forward 35 years to Dec. 5, 2006, when the Senate held a one-day hearing on Gates's nomination to become Secretary of Defense. When Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Gates whether he thought the Iranians would consider a nuclear attack on Israel, Gates answered [as already mentioned above]:

"I think that they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf."

This is tell-it-like-it-is intelligence analysis [which exceeded my hopes as his erstwhile mentor]. It even included matter-of-fact mention of Israel's nuclear capability, which President Barack Obama himself has refused to acknowledge. When Helen Thomas pressed the issue at Obama's inaugural press conference (Feb. 9, 2009), the President awkwardly ducked the question, explaining he did not want to "speculate."

The Question: Do you agree with Mr. Gates that Iran would see a nuclear capability "in the first instance as a deterrent?" And how many nuclear weapons do Western experts believe Israel has? President Carter has said 150, but that was some time ago.

A Follow-up: Let's assume Iran does get a nuclear weapon: Do you think it would commit suicide by firing it off in the direction of Israel?

*****

Question 3

Background and Lead-In: This question deals with torture, an issue that has been given new life recently, with more and more Republican presidential candidates speaking in favor of it. We have surely come a long way since Virginia patriot Patrick Henry insisted passionately that "the rack and the screw," as he put it, were barbaric practices that had to be left behind in the Old World, or we are "lost and undone."

The Question: On Sept. 6, 2006, Gen. John Kimmons, then head of Army intelligence told reporters at the Pentagon, in unmistakable language: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that." Gen. Kimmons knew that President George W. Bush had decided to claim publicly, just two hours later on the same day, that the "alternative set of procedures" for interrogation - methods that Bush had approved, like water-boarding - were effective. Whom do you think we should believe: President Bush? Or Gen. Kimmons?
(c) 2011 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.








Things To Tax
By Paul Krugman

The supercommittee was a superdud - and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we'll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here's a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

And I don't just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?

Let me suggest two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions.

About those high incomes: In my last column I suggested that the very rich, who have had huge income gains over the last 30 years, should pay more in taxes. I got many responses from readers, with a common theme being that this was silly, that even confiscatory taxes on the wealthy couldn't possibly raise enough money to matter.

Folks, you're living in the past. Once upon a time America was a middle-class nation, in which the super-elite's income was no big deal. But that was another country.

The I.R.S. reports that in 2007, that is, before the economic crisis, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers - roughly speaking, people with annual incomes over $2 million - had a combined income of more than a trillion dollars. That's a lot of money, and it wouldn't be hard to devise taxes that would raise a significant amount of revenue from those super-high-income individuals.

For example, a recent report by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out that before 1980 very-high-income individuals fell into tax brackets well above the 35 percent top rate that applies today. According to the center's analysis, restoring those high-income brackets would have raised $78 billion in 2007, or more than half a percent of G.D.P. I've extrapolated that number using Congressional Budget Office projections, and what I get for the next decade is that high-income taxation could shave more than $1 trillion off the deficit.

It's instructive to compare that estimate with the savings from the kinds of proposals that are actually circulating in Washington these days. Consider, for example, proposals to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67, dealing a major blow to millions of Americans. How much money would that save?

Well, none from the point of view of the nation as a whole, since we would be pushing seniors out of Medicare and into private insurance, which has substantially higher costs. True, it would reduce federal spending - but not by much. The budget office estimates that outlays would fall by only $125 billion over the next decade, as the age increase phased in. And even when fully phased in, this partial dismantling of Medicare would reduce the deficit only about a third as much as could be achieved with higher taxes on the very rich.

So raising taxes on the very rich could make a serious contribution to deficit reduction. Don't believe anyone who claims otherwise.

And then there's the idea of taxing financial transactions, which have exploded in recent decades. The economic value of all this trading is dubious at best. In fact, there's considerable evidence suggesting that too much trading is going on. Still, nobody is proposing a punitive tax. On the table, instead, are proposals like the one recently made by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter DeFazio for a tiny fee on financial transactions.

And here's the thing: Because there are so many transactions, such a fee could yield several hundred billion dollars in revenue over the next decade. Again, this compares favorably with the savings from many of the harsh spending cuts being proposed in the name of fiscal responsibility.

But wouldn't such a tax hurt economic growth? As I said, the evidence suggests not - if anything, it suggests that to the extent that taxing financial transactions reduces the volume of wheeling and dealing, that would be a good thing.

And it's instructive, too, to note that some countries already have financial transactions taxes - and that among those who do are Hong Kong and Singapore. If some conservative starts claiming that such taxes are an unwarranted government intrusion, you might want to ask him why such taxes are imposed by the two countries that score highest on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom.

Now, the tax ideas I've just mentioned wouldn't be enough, by themselves, to fix our deficit. But the same is true of proposals for spending cuts. The point I'm making here isn't that taxes are all we need; it is that they could and should be a significant part of the solution.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times






The Quotable Quote...



"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
~~~ Mark Twain









"The Degree To Which You Resist Is The Degree To Which You Are Free."
By Phil Rockstroh

I've noticed a meme beginning to fester among liberal insiders who are positing that the Occupy Wall Street movement is starting to "distract" the citizenry from the wicked machinations of Republicans of the legislative class.

Nonsense.

The OWS movement is not a distraction from—but serves as an alternative to—the disingenuous theatrics staged by the political hacks of this faux republic. Conversely, movement members have grasped that it is the hollow grandstanding--the modus operandi of the present U.S. political system itself--that serves as distraction from the realities of the day.

Those drawn to the OWS movement realize this: Vast sums of money are required to get the attention of and gain influence over the entrenched class of self-serving political insiders who hustle their wares in Washington, D.C.

Year after year, election cycle after election cycle, Washington's political class has revealed whose interests it serves. Accordingly, let the 1% and their political operatives continue on their present myopic, self-serving, society-decimating course: By doing so, they will just bring more outraged people into the streets and hasten their own undoing. <> Yet, because arrogant power, girded by duplicity and ruthlessly maintained, does not yield without a fight, we should expect more of the following:

Stories are circulating that Clark, Lytle, Geduldig & Cranford, a well-connected Washington lobbying firm, with ties to the financial industry, have floated a $850,000 plan to pillory Occupy Wall Street. This should not come as a surprise. Living in a society dominated by the power of massive corporations, and the inequitable wealth these self-perpetuating organizations have at their disposal, we will be relentlessly subjected to the narratives they generate.

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." ~~~ Steve Biko

Since birth, most of us have been enveloped by the consumer state's commercial hologram. Almost every daily act we perform and attitude we evince is in some measure determined by the dictates, demands and the incessant, commercial come-ons (the defacto propaganda) of the corporate state e.g. from what time you rise in the morning, to the food you eat, to what you clothe yourself in, to how you spend your days, to what time you go to sleep at night, to what stories you are audience to--the cultural myths you have internalized--by means of mass media saturation, to the manner you celebrate festivals and holidays, to how your illnesses and of those around you will play-out, even the circumstances of how you will approach and succumb to your death.

Because these are the waters in which we swim, most will accept societal and cultural circumstances as a given...believing, for example, that when they posit a political utterance that the opinion expressed has been formed exclusively of their own mind, by the exercise of free will.

Accordingly, a large percent of the populace of the U.S. believes consumerism is a form of freedom...that the exercise thereof mainly involves being at liberty to trundle to a mall and be in possession of the right to choose between a big-ass cookie or a giant Cinnabon...that freedom of choice is expressed by over-priced running shoes--or security can be found in a massive SUV.

In this manner, the propaganda campaigns of the corporate/national security state have proven effective at promoting and perpetuating the inequitable status quo in place at the present time. Do not underestimate the well-rewarded, professional con men employed in the criminal enterprise known as "public relations." Remember, these masters of deceit sell wars, fought by the poor, in which, the underclass kill and die for the profits of a ruthless few. War is a money train for the rich and connected but a death wagon for the rest of humankind.

Ready yourself to be buffeted by a barrage of virtual reality blunderbuss--volley after volley of mainstream media launched Big Lies--and the ground fire of social media small distortions. Don't walk unarmed into the line of fire.

Remember this: Most likely, the corporate state has, to some degree, colonized your mind, as it is well on its way to destroying the ecosystem of the entire planet.

Conversely, let your soul occupy you. While there might be an ongoing effort to scour Liberty Park of liberty, they cannot do likewise to your heart without your consent. Turn the tables on them: Evict the corporate occupiers from the public realm within--as all the while, you challenge propaganda whenever it crosses your path...on the streets, at your workplace, at family gatherings, and on social media-- because a lie left unchallenged begins to be accepted as truth. And worse, invades, colonizes and exploits (and often kills) a portion of the soul of the world.

Importantly, do not underestimate the ruthless nature of calcified power.

Regarding the subject: On Thursday, Nov. 17, near Foley Square, there was blood on Broadway. At the scene, I witnessed thuggish, NYPD motorcycle cops driving directly into groups of peaceful demonstrators, with the intent of antagonizing those gathered, and when people stood their ground and refused to be bullied--then phalanxes of blue shirt bastards, swinging nightsticks, waded into the crowd.

Even with my wife, tugging at the back of my jacket, attempting to tow, as we say down south, my narrow ass away from the direction of injury or jail, I could not contain my outrage; I growled at a smirking cop, gloating over the carnage, "just keep it up, you mindless thug, when you get folks angry enough, the boot just might be on the other neck...namely yours."

In hindsight, in my own defense: Being on scene and witnessing peaceful people attacked and brutalized, one is apt to become seized by rage.

But what is the mayor of New York City and his Police Commissioner's excuse?

Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Kelley and the ranks of NYPD have proven themselves willing to barricade and checkpoint the city into chaos...as opposed to enduring ongoing moments of freedom of assembly and free expression.

And this is why we must not retreat. Their tactics of repression are very expensive to the city budget, and money is the only thing they love.

Hence, they have, in turn, provided us with a tactic we can use; we can hit them where they feel it. (Conversely, they can take blow after blow to their dignity--because they are devoid of that character trait.)

The ground is shifting below our feet and this phenomenon involves more than the echoing footfalls of marchers and the trudging of militarized formations of riot cops on city streets worldwide.

The first vibrations, closer to tremors, transpired because the ground below us has been fracked of dreams...the void engendered seismological activity. Now, from Cairo, Egypt's Tahrir Square to Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece to Liberty Park, in New York, New York to Oscar Grant Park, in Oakland, California, we have become like tuning forks, in sympatico with the resonances of the tormented earth.

Subsequently, the walls of the neoliberal prison are cracking...We are no longer isolated, enclosed in our alienation, imprisoned by a concretized sense of powerlessness; daylight is beginning to pierce the darkness of our desolate cells.

"The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free." ~~~ Utah Phillips
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.




.




Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

There is a growing convergence of thinking about where the US Occupy movement should go as a next step to turning its values, concerns and commitments into changing what most Americans see as broken government under control of corporate interests. When it comes to political and social movements, history shows us that they usually fail not because they disappear, but rather because they become marginalized, unimportant despite a core group of committed people and groups.

They lose popular appeal and support or never expand beyond a small early group of supporters. The nation and many supporters move on. Other movements grab the interest of the most informed, dissident-type people seeking truth, justice or change. A good example of such a failed contemporary movement is the 911 truth effort. The groups, websites and true believers keep on pushing their objectives a decade after the historic event. But the goal of revealing what really happened that the official government story does not divulge is like a moldy piece of forgotten food in the refrigerator.

Movement death by inattention happens despite good resources, charismatic leaders and even great organization and communication skills. Critical mass of public support simply never materializes, in large measure because diverse segments of the population never buy into the central arguments of the movement. The Internet is littered with websites of activist groups that persist despite clear evidence of decay and wide disinterest. True believers have a mission in life tied to their egos that prevent them from admitting defeat. They do not move on.

The biggest mistake that passionate advocates for a cause make is overestimating their ability to reach critical mass and underestimating the competition of other movements with greater appeal which rob them of both attention and supporters.

Make no mistake; I totally and enthusiastically support the Occupy movement because it offers the prospect of producing reforms to fix our broken government and attracting very wide public support for a nonviolent Second American Revolution. What worries me, however, is that many of its participants seem over confident, as if they cannot fail. On the other hand, I have become impressed by a convergence of thinking about what the next big step for the Occupy movement can and should be. I will briefly identify examples of this convergent thinking.

Canadian author Erich Koch has written a compelling article: An Objective for the U.S. Occupy Movement: A Constitutional Convention. He buys into the view that the Occupy movement could embrace the thinking of Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig who has presented the case for amendments to fix Congress. Like others Koch is correct in saying that "No one in the movement would disagree with its main point: the fundamental problem is the corruption of Congress." Unlike others, Koch recognizes the path for obtaining reform constitutional amendments is using the provision in Article V for a convention of state delegates, having the same power as Congress in proposing amendments that still must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. It has never been used despite many hundreds of state requests for a convention because, clearly, Congress and most status quo forces fear such a convention.

Koch cited a great article by Alesh Houdek: Has a Harvard Professor Mapped Out the Next Step for Occupy Wall Street? Most is a review of Lessig's book. Correctly noted about using the convention option is "it bypasses the usual means of reform (Congress, presidential elections, etc.) which the lobbyists and other interested parties have learned so well to manipulate. And lastly, such a convention would be free to propose solutions that would otherwise be subject to be stricken as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court." This is critical to understand. Houdek concludes: "Properly presented, the strategies and aims of Lessig's book could make it the handbook the protesters have been looking for -- and provide a pathway for them to ride out the winter ahead."

Dan Froomkin also has presented the same case in: Lawrence Lessig's New Book On Political Corruption Offers Protesters A Possible Manifesto. He quoted what Lessig himself had said in an article about the Occupy movement and the concern that I share, namely that the Occupy movement "will become too diffuse and not focused" on the root issue of corruption of government. And that the movement will only grow "if a wide range of people can be part of it." This requires coalescing around an issue "as fundamental as the corruption of the system." Only a constitutional amendment can fix the corrupting impact of money in politics. This is also the focus of Dylan Ratigan's fine effort, except that the use of the convention path has not been emphasized.

A specific call for an Article V convention was made by the pro-Occupy US Day of Rage group: "We are organizing a coordinated national campaign at local and state levels, including where necessary the occupation of state capitols, in order to demand an article V constitutional convention be called to restore representative democracy to our nation." A set of specific reforms to be fix the corruption-money problem are presented.

The 99 Percent Declaration group has also presented an important statement centered on the call for a National General Assembly, where delegates would formulate a petition of a list of grievances that would be delivered to the main parts of the federal government on behalf of 99 percent of Americans. A suggested list of grievances includes the need for constitutional amendments to achieve solutions, but only for a few of the issues. Not explicitly acknowledged, however, is that constitutional amendments, not ordinary laws, would be necessary for other solutions, such as term limits for Congress and abandoning the Electoral College. Moreover, there is no specific recognition that serious amendment reforms will not be proposed by Congress, and that an Article V convention is needed. Inattention to method was also the shortcoming of a similar list of solutions by Ralph Lopez.

Author Scott Turow has presented: How Occupy Wall Street Can Restore Clout of the 99%. His recommendation to the Occupy movement is "work across the nation for a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to regulate the expenditure of private money on elections. ... The best antidote to this imbalance of income and influence would be to greatly reduce the role of private funding in our elections. ...As for the Occupy Wall Street movement, it has been criticized by some for not having a realistic agenda, even though polling shows that millions of Americans, including me, are sympathetic to the basic message of the protests." His prescription: "rally around a single goal and reinvigorate their movement." Fine, but missing from his analysis is the recognition that Congress will never propose reform amendments, only an Article V convention will do the job.

This sampling of recent writings clearly shows convergent thinking that the Occupy movement can and should focus on key reform constitutional amendments and, second, that some better informed critical thinkers recognize, this requires advocacy for using the Article V convention option that Congress has refused to honor.

As to Occupy movement success, I want again to emphasize that there is always competition for the attention and support of concerned Americans who recognize how broken our system is. In particular, the well financed Americans Elect effort is impressive. Because it is offering an alternative path to nominating a presidential candidate in 2012, over 2 million Americans have already signed up to be delegates for a web convention, with millions more very likely as the mainstream media keeps giving this effort attention. The Get Money Out campaign has over 250,000 signatories.

Disgust with the two-party plutocracy is surely shared by Occupy participants and supporters. But for movement success based on enticing many millions of Americans, the Occupy movement cannot ignore competition such as Americans Elect. This means that the Occupy movement must explicitly start making the case to the broad public why their effort can achieve more of what is needed. This is easily done.

Here are some key concepts that the Occupy movement could use. No matter who is nominated by Americans Elect, the odds are that either the better financed Democrat or Republican candidate will win the presidency. This may just require spending even more millions of dollars on campaigns. And whoever is nominated by the group will likely be strongly linked to one of the two major parties, rather than some courageous reformer and enemy of the status quo. Moreover, this group does not offer a realistic path to getting the key reforms of the system that most of us see critically needed, such as constitutional amendments, already recognized by many Occupy supporters.

A sign of trouble for the Occupy movement is a recent national poll that found: "In the latest survey, 33 percent voiced support for Occupy Wall Street, down from 35 percent in a previous poll, while opposition to the movement climbed from 36 percent to 45 percent. Twenty-two percent were unsure." These results are worse than earlier polls. From the left, Chris Bowers commented: "the decline in Occupy Wall Street's image is probably more connected to the increasingly negative coverage of the clashes between protesters and police than it is to declining support for movement's message." Now is the time to move the message from what is wrong to solutions, using an Occupy Congress approach. Otherwise, this view from the conservative right might prevail: "OWS will linger ... but I'd argue we've seen the movement's high tide. It will now recede into a mere annoying shadow of itself as support is withdrawn by political figures and organizations."

True, Occupy movement success is not inevitable. The movement must better define what success means and how it can be achieved if it is to attract and keep the support of many millions of Americans. It needs specificity for its solutions that ordinary Americans can relate to. Never underestimate the power and commitment of status quo forces to maintain control over the political, government and economic system that has so harmed most Americans. The fight against the Occupy movement mostly seen as local police violence against peaceful demonstrators and protesters as well disinformation from some news outlets and pundits are nothing compared to what could be mounted if the movement is viewed as more threatening to the status quo delusional democracy with its delusional prosperity.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.





The Dead Letter Office...





Carl gives the Corpo-rat salute.

Heil Obama,

Dear Uberfuhrer Levin,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your new law destroying the 5th amendment to the US Constitution, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Demoncratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 12-31-2011. We salute you Herr Levin, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama






Wisconsin Recall Drive Surpasses 300,000 Signatures
By John Nichols

The petition drive to recall and remove Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has surpassed all expectations in its first two weeks, collecting more than 300,000 signatures.

The truly remarkably thing about the total so far is not, however, that it is so large.

What is truly remarkable is where the signatures are coming from: rural and small-town Wisconsin communities are contributing disproportionally high numbers of signatures to the total.

No one, not even the most concerned critic of Governor Walker's assault on collective bargaining rights, expected the recall campaign would move as quickly as it has.

No one expected United Wisconsin's recall drive to gather more than half the required signatures in less than two weeks of petitioning. No one expected whole counties to reach their signature goals in the first week. No one expected conservative communities in Republican regions of the state to take the lead in collecting recall signatures against a Republican governor.

But it is happening.

Wisconsin has one of the highest thresholds in the nation for recalling statewide officials. Citizens must gather signatures equaling 25 percent of the turnout in the previous gubernatorial election. That's a baseline requirement of 540,000 signatures. And they must be collected in just 60 days. (Of course, to avoid challenges, a "cushion" of additional signatures is needed.)

In California -- the last state where a governor was successfully recalled -- citizens only had to gather signatures equaling 12 percent of the turnout in the last election, and they had 160 days to do it.

How could Wisconsin reach a threshold that was twice as high in less than half the time? Not by building a movement rooted only in liberal precincts of the state capitol city of Madison, as the governor and his amen corner keep claiming. And not by relying merely on Democrats.

To be successful, the recall drive against Governor Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch had to attract support from independents and Republicans. And that is precisely what is happening.

As Steve Smith, a boiler operator at Wisconsin's Southern Center for the Developmentally Disabled, explained while he gathered petition signatures on Thanksgiving morning in Burlington, "A lot of the people who are working the hardest on this recall aren't big Democrats. I voted Democrat and Republican. And a lot of the people who are signing the petitions say they voted for Walker. So this goes way beyond Democrats."

Smith's point is a critical one.

Burlington, a Racine County city that voted for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and John McCain, Barack Obama, has a booming recall movement. Indeed, while Barack Obama received 2,424 votes in Burlington in 2008 (compared with McCain's 2,567), local recall activists had already collected 2,500 signatures from the Burlington area in the first two weeks of the eight-week drive.

Thus, even in Republican-leaning areas, the recall is exceeding goals -- and exceeding the 2008 performance of the most popular Democratic presidential nominee in decades. That earned a front-page headline last week in the Burlington Standard-Press newspaper: "Recall Effort Has a Visible Presence in Conservative Burlington."

In fact, the recall effort has a visible presence in conservative and Republican-leaning areas across Wisconsin.

The first counties to approach their goals for the entire recall drive have been rural ones -- all of which send at least some Republicans to the legislature.

Indeed, a number of counties that backed Walker in 2010 are leading the pack when it comes to producing recall signatures.

In Columbia County, where Walker won 52 percent of the vote last year, more than 10,033 voters have signed recall petitions -- well over 45 percent of the total gubernatorial turnout of 2010.

In Pierce County, where Walker got 53 percent of the vote last year, more than 4,700 voters have signed recall petitions -- well over 25 percent of the total gubernatorial turnout of 2010.

In Oneida County, where Walker took 55 percent of the vote last year, almost 3,700 voters have signed recall petitions -- well over 20 percent of the total gubernatorial turnout of 2010.

Governor Walker has done great harm to Milwaukee, to Madison, to Racine, Kenosha, Janesville, Beloit and other urban communities. But his combination of job-killing economic schemes and cuts to basic services and public education are doing the most damage far beyond Wisconsin's big cities.

Walker missteps and misdeeds are pushing small cities, villages and rural communities to the brink.

Under his "leadership," Wisconsin now leads the nation in job losses. And some of the hardest hit counties are far from Wisconsin's big cities.

The battering the state's rural and small-town economy has taken under Walker is coupled with divisive policies and extreme cuts.

The governor's assault on collective-bargaining rights has strained relations at the county, city, village, township and school district levels.

And his determination to cut state funding for public services and public education in order to fund tax cuts for out-of-state corporations has been especially devastating for rural communities, small towns and small cities.

Surveys of school administrators across the state show that the vast majority of the state's school districts have had to make cuts, and are anticipating even deeper cuts, as a result of the governor's policies. Communities in every corner of Wisconsin have been forced to open discussions about closing schools. Just last week, an advisory committee that has been meeting regularly since the summer to identify potential budgets cuts for the Sauk Prairie School District (north of Madison) voted to recommend that the school board close an elementary school.

Walker has not just cut aid to schools and communities. He has promoted policies that, while popular with his out-of-state donors, threaten to make it dramatically harder for local officials to do their jobs.

Walker's seeks to undermine the ability of school boards and town boards to address budget challenges in smart and creative ways. By taking away the flexibility that has been essential to budgeting in Wisconsin's smaller cities, villages and towns, Walker proposes to make hard times worse in communities where there is little margin for error.

Wisconsinites recognize this. So it should come as no surprise that rural regions and small cities and towns, including traditionally Republican communities, are leading the charge to remove the governor and his rubber-stamp lieutenant governor from office
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








Next Stop On The GOP Crazy Train: 'Newtsville'
By Eric Alterman

It is a symbol of our current political predicament that anytime anyone tells the truth about anything in the contest for the Republican nomination, a new scandal erupts. Newt Gingrich was briefly drummed out of the Republican Party for accurately terming Paul Ryan's destructive Medicare plan a "radical" step toward "right-wing social engineering." Jon Huntsman caused virtually the only stir of his all-but-invisible campaign when he admitted to what the Salt Lake Tribune straight-facedly called the "politically dicey belief that climate change is human-caused and needs to be addressed." And most recently, CBS's John Dickerson caused a contretemps when a stray e-mail revealed that Michele Bachmann was "not going to get many questions" in the debate the network was sponsoring because "she's nearly off the charts." Being a member of the MSM in good standing, Dickerson was in all likelihood referring to Bachmann's poll position rather than her approach to reality, and uncharacteristically for this race, they happen to be pretty much perfectly proportional. Bachmann has long been loony, but it has been her poll standing that has determined the treatment she has received from the press.

The respectful response of the media to the batshit-crazy statements one hears from the second-tier Republican candidates-candidates who occasionally rise to the first tier and then just as quickly sink down again, having never been serious contenders in the first place-is doing definite damage to this country. How many credulous Americans may have decided to shun the HPV vaccine for their daughters after hearing Bachmann's nutty suggestion that it causes mental retardation? What of the insistence of that ignorant idiot Herman Cain that the "objective" purpose of Planned Parenthood's founding was to "kill black babies before they came into the world. It's planned genocide." Now we've got a new front-runner, Gingrich, who holds, among other crazy notions, that the Obama administration's "secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did," when his diseased brain is not focusing on his moronic (and racist) contention that "only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together" the inspiration for Obama's foreign policies.

Gingrich is the man of the hour, as amazing and ridiculous as that may be. Like Cain and Bachmann, he is a better bet for a rubber room somewhere than the Oval Office. But this fact-obvious to anyone who's paying attention-does not stop various media machers from pretending long enough to fly his ideological freak flag for him for millions of Americans. When, writing in the Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize-winning pundit Kathleen Parker describes "the sudden surge of Gingrich, who, whatever his flaws and despite the weight of his considerable baggage, is no intellectual slouch," and says he "may be just the ticket"-well, one is left speechless. Pretending that these people might be president, and hence deserve to be treated as if what they say is true, is not merely unjustified-given that the nominee is almost certain to be Romney-but akin to playing accessory to a kind of ongoing intellectually criminal activity.

In their new book, The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson explain the nature of intellectual insularity of so many in this world, in which "the teachings of dubiously credentialed leaders are favored over the word of secular experts in the arts and sciences." Considering the example of evolution, they write, "Anointed leaders convince their followers to reject evolution by undermining the credibility of the scientific community. The resulting widespread distrust of the scientific community-often portrayed as atheistic, anti-religious, ideological-undermines the credibility of everything the scientific community says, including its conclusions about climate change, the dangers of fracking, the importance of ecosystems, the need for vaccinating children, and so on."

The authors describe "what amounts to a 'parallel culture,'" where people like alleged "historian" David Barton (whose formal education consists of a degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University) and psychologist James Dobson (tennis team captain at what is now Point Loma Nazarene University) proffer phony-baloney history lessons that distort almost everything professional historians know to be true about America's founders.

Reporters representing reliable media outlets are supposed to defend the discourse from the virus of this ignorance. But for a variety of reasons they no longer do so. Part of the explanation can be found in the foolish willingness of so many reporters to treat Fox News, Drudge and various talk-radio hosts as respectable voices in the debate without regard to their motives or qualifications. A second, no less significant problem is the tendency of even the most sophisticated political reporters to treat the entire process as a contest between rival teams and ignore the substance of their arguments and policies, as if politics were simply a spectator sport with fewer (and perhaps crazier) fans than the Mets or the Red Sox.

Speaking of these Tea Party-inspired "candidates," reformed right-winger David Frum writes that a "political movement that never took governing seriously was exploited by a succession of political entrepreneurs uninterested in governing-but all too interested in merchandising. Much as viewers tune in to American Idol to laugh at the inept, borderline dysfunctional early auditions, these tea-party champions provide a ghoulish type of news entertainment each time they reveal that they know nothing about public affairs and have never attempted to learn." Somebody better tell the MSM...
(c) 2011 Eric Alterman is a Distinguished Professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and Professor of Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also "The Liberal Media" columnist for The Nation and a fellow of The Nation Institute, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, where he writes and edits the "Think Again" column, a senior fellow (since 1985) at the World Policy Institute. Alterman is also a regular columnist for Moment magazine and a regular contributor to The Daily Beast. He is the author of seven books.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Tim Eagan ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...





FDA Declares Rick Perry A Vegetable
Texas Governor Approved for School Lunches
By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - In a decision that raised some eyebrows in the nutrition community, the Food and Drug Administration announced today that it had declared Texas Governor Rick Perry a vegetable.

The decision, effective immediately, means that a serving of Mr. Perry would be approved for school lunches across the nation.

In an official statement, Mr. Perry said he was "surprised and honored" by the FDA's decision.

"As a vegetable, I am honored to join the other three food groups," said Gov. Perry. "Meat, dairy, and... nope, can't do it. Oops."
(c) 2011 Andy Borowitz




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In This Edition

Robert M. Bowman exclaims, "Occupy This!"

Uri Avnery hears, "The King's Speech."

Matt Taibbi examines, "Jon Corzine's Relationship With CFTC Chair Gary Gensler Probed."

Randall Amster wants us to, "Occupy Ourselves."

Jim Hightower says, "Some People Have All The Luck."

Helen Thomas wonders, "Why Iraq?"

James Donahue reports, "Bush Blatantly Challenges World Criminal Court."

David Sirota finds, "Kids, Stop Dreaming Of Wall Street."

David Swanson with a suggestion, "What To Replace The Imprison-Americans Bill With."

Bill McKibben tells, "The Most Important News Story Of The Day/Millennium."

Paul Krugman explains, "Send In The Clueless."

Phil Rockstroh wanders, "Amid The Architecture Of Declining Capitalism."

Michael Moore explores, "The Winter Of Our Occupation."

Michigan Sin-ator Debbie Stabenow wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols watches as, "The Postal Service Plots Its Own Demise."

Noam Chomsky sees America, "Marching Off The Cliff."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Onion with a new, "Report: Global Warming May Be Irreversible By 2006" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "As Pro Is The Opposite Of Con, Then Congress Is The Opposite Of Progress!"

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Bob Engelhardt, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Ruben Bolling, Micah Wright, Jeff Danziger, Khalil Bendib, W M X Design, Rob Rogers, Karl Mondon, Seth Perlman, Mikael Miettinen, Bob Jagendorf, Getty Images, Associated Press, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










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As Con Is The Opposite Of Pro, Then Congress Is The Opposite Of Progress!
By Ernest Stewart



Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.

"In 1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland." ~~~ Senator Lindsey Graham R/SC

"Today, the LAPD stands as a shining example of constitutional policing."
~~~ Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ~~~

"She was ranting about Wall Street, and now she's working on Wall Street. Banks are not so bad. I hope we have opened her eyes."
~~~ CEO Thomas Belesis ~~~

It must be getting close to Election Day as Obamahood is staring to sound like Candidate Obama -- the Man of the People, again. A lot of pundits say this is because he's finally beginning to see the light and truth about his bankster buddies -- thanks to OWS -- and stand and fight the Rethuglicans, like he promised to back on the campaign trail of 2007/2008.

More like Barry finally got around to reading the polls, and saw that all but most blacks and a few right-wing Demoncrats have long since left his sinking ship. Apparently, the American people aren't as dumb as he thought they were! No, it's not his coming to see the light about what's right and what's wrong, but facing reality that without a new song and dance, we'll have President Gingrich or Romney or Perry come January 2013.

Whether or not Barry earned his JD, or it was a gift from Harvard much like Smirky's MBA was, he's bright enough to see the third American revolution beginning to take shape. And since his 1% chums are beginning to get scared and are jerking his puppet strings to take control of the mob and quiet them with a new song and dance -- some bread and circuses -- until the new military rules take effect and we can all be rounded up and put into a new Happy Camp for disposal. Ergo, he's got to calm things down before they get out of hand and we drop the peaceful demonstrations and begin building guillotines to take care of the 1% once and for all!

So Barry's beginning to sound like us, and call the Rethuglicans out for their many acts of treason against the Constitution, while leaving out the Rethuglicans partners in crime, the Demoncrats, who passed the 1867 bill, a.k.a. act of treason by 93 - 7 which is a direct violation of the 4th and 5th Amendments; a bill he will no doubt sign even though it doesn't give him all the power he wants to choose who lives and who dies on a grand scale. Have no doubt that he will cave at the last minute just as he has done so many times before, assuring us it doesn't apply to American citizens, even though it does, and suggest we all roll over and go back to sleep, because he's on our side, again. I'm sure there won't be any roundups of Occupiers or professional leftists like myself until after the election. Perhaps they'll begin just before Christmas, say on 12-21-2012? Stay tuned America, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!

In Other News

Ausnahmesituation is the word the Germans used for allowing them to murder millions of communists, trade unionists, gypsies, and Jews; it translates to "extraordinary measures." I'm surprised that Levin or McCain hasn't used those words to describe their latest act of treason!

As I mentioned last week in "Welcome To America: The Battlefield" the National Defense Authorization Act, which is in itself as David Swanson points out a crime all by itself for many reasons on many levels, but as I've mentioned before sections 1031 and 1032 are especially grievous! Messers Levin and McCain swear that this would and could never be used against an American citizen, but all the members of the Rethuglicans that voted for it assure us that it can be used and will be used against all terrorists. Sure, that doesn't sound bad, until you remember a terrorist is anyone that various members of the Junta say they are. Again, with no evidence, at least no evidence that we'll ever see, or even any judge may see for that matter. No, there are apparently many things in the new laws that not a single, solitary judge can be trusted to see -- not even judges on the Extreme Court can safely view. No, only certain politicians are trustworthy enough. That sentiment should make your blood run cold and send shivers down your spine! However, that's really the way things have been since at least the "Civil War." Lincoln's first inductees into the "Happy Camps" weren't southern rebels, but Yankees who dared to question Abe about his Declaration of War against half the country! When draft riots broke out in NYC, Abe's battleships sent broadsides into the city, killing hundreds and wounding thousands and burning a large part of old New York to the ground! You may recall that the Germans based their "Happy Camps" on US civil war camps! The problems with these acts of treason is not only those stated but the US Military will be handling the arrests, torture and confinements without any judicial oversight whatsoever! The same groups of our children that burst into homes in the middle of the night in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and murder everyone in sight, including women and children, will be assigned to do the same thing here to you and yours and with Barry's signature; there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. No appeal ever, no charges, no proof of any crime being committed, no trial by a jury of your peers, not even a Bush military tribunal. This is the America in which we are living; this is the America that our corpo-rat masters have created through their puppets in Con-gress. This is your America, your children's America, and their children's America and their children's America. And it will be that way because you won't do anything about it, will you, Mr. & Mrs. America?!

And Finally

I wrote Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a note the other day after he sent his Jack-Booted corpo-rat Thugs into City Hall Park to break up those dangerous citizens who were foolishly demanding their Constitutional rights to peacefully assemble and protest not having any Constitutional rights anymore. Silly rabbits!

Dear Mayor Iscariot,

Well, so much for the tattered 1st amendment in Los Angeles, huh? So much for the people's right to peacefully assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances. So city ordinance trumps the Constitution of the United States? Very interesting. One would have thought that the former head of the Southern California ACLU would have come out on the side of the people and not the crime lords. Not only do your actions speak volumes about you, but about the ACLU, as well! So when did you join the dark side, Tony?

Was it Citibank or another group of banksters that paid you the 30 pieces of silver to pull your puppet strings and watch you dance? While taking bribes is one thing, helping to destroy the 1st amendment is quite another thing. We can forgive you the front row seats, but not this treason!

Just have one question for you, Judas, answer Mark's question if you can?

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

An honorable man would have fallen on his sword by now, why haven't you? How can you look yourself in the mirror, and not cut your throat? Perhaps it might be better if you run as a Rethuglican next time?

Fortunately, you and your fascist friends from Oakland to New York haven't stopped the 99% with your corpo-rat Gestapo, just energized us. Can I get an "Heil, Obamahood," Tony? And while I call your policy treason, I must admit I do admire your shiny new Jack Books and that corpo-rat armband is to die for, quite literally!

Sincerely yours,

Ernest Stewart
Managing editor
Issues & Alibis Magazine
P.S. Thanks for helping to write next week's editorial!

Editors Note: If you have any thoughts that you'd care to share with the mayor, here is his address: mayor@lacity.org. If Mayor Iscariot writes me back, I'll share it with you!

Keepin' On


The hypocrite Postert

Have you heard the strange tale of out of work Ph.D. Tracy Postert who spent 15 days at Zuccotti Park calling for revolution, against the corruption of Wall Street and Foggy Bottom. Decrying at the top of her lungs the moral bankruptcy of the capitalist system?

For several weeks, Tracy held up signs saying, "Reagan sucks" and "I'll vote after the revolution." Then one day, she decided to hold up a sign advertising her degree and specialty while she was protesting the evil ways of the financial district. Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst for John Thomas Financial Brokerage, saw her on the street, was intrigued by her background in biomedical science, and took her resume. Then he asked her if she'd like to come in for an interview.

Kaufman offered her a job as a "junior analyst evaluating medical companies" as potential investments, and she accepted. Postert has now just completed her third week as paid employee of the system she was railing against on the street. Did they offer her a 6 or 7 figure salary for becoming what Tweety Bird called a hypo-twit? No, Pastert sold her soul and joined the dark-side for slightly more than minimum wage! For their 30 pieces of silver, Wall Street got a million dollar shill that they will trot out and show off and she gets to become a patsy, a stooge, and a traitor that only proves that Ph.D. often stands for Pin Headed Dope! It's a centuries old trick that has broken many a revolution; I wonder how many occupiers will fall for it this time around?

*****


03-07-1926 ~ 12-01-2011
Thanks for the laughs!


09-12-1931 ~ 12-01-2011
Thanks for the films!


07-26-1940 ~ 12-06-2011
Thanks for the R&B!


04-10-1915 ~ 12-07-2011
Thanks for the films!


*****

We get by with a little help from our friends!
So please help us if you can...?
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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












Occupy This!
By Robert M. Bowman

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is a recent grass-roots movement which has caught the attention of millions of people across the country (and indeed around the world). It has garnered the support of people of all ages, all walks of life, and all parts of the political spectrum. It is one of the most promising phenomena of recent times. It represents a true populist uprising of the 99% who have been locked out of the political process, ignored, marginalized, and impoverished against the 1% who have used their immense wealth to manipulate the political system so as to further expand their already obscene wealth. Indeed, another name for the OWS movement is "The 99%."

If we (the 99%) are to continue to be successful, there are several things we must do: (1) We must remain nonviolent. (2) We must avoid being co-opted. (3) We must be clear who we are and who it is we are against. We must be inclusive, rejecting divisiveness.

Nonviolence

Many of us believe that nonviolence is the morally superior path. Others may not. But we must ALL understand that in a grass-roots movement like this, nonviolence is absolutely essential because it WORKS and because it is the only way that can. (All those guns did not help the Branch-Davidians.) The forces we are up against have not only great wealth, but also access to enormous firepower ... but only so long as the police and armed forces will obey their orders. Once our nonviolent resistance and our reaching out in love reminds the young folks in the police and armed forces that they too are part of the 99%, they will not take action against us. Once our nonviolence wins the hearts and minds of the mayors and generals, they will use their power to PROTECT US! Most importantly, once our nonviolence wins the support of the people of this country, we cannot lose!

If we are infiltrated by rock-throwers or car-burners, we must physically restrain them and turn them over to the authorities. (Usually, they are police officers ordered to infiltrate us.) Most importantly, we must never carry weapons. The 1% are scared silly by nonviolent resistance. That's why they will try to infiltrate us with violent "anarchists." We must not let that happen!

Co-Option

We must vigilantly avoid being co-opted by agents of the very forces we are protesting against. We must not go the way of the Tea Party. I was keynote speaker at four Tea Party conferences, beginning in 2000. The first three were in Boston. By the time I spoke in Tampa, most of the Tea Party had already been infiltrated by Glenn Beck, the Republican National Committee, the Koch Brothers, and Sarah Palin. Instead of a grass-roots movement protesting the evils of a government controlled by big money, it became the protector of big money. Instead of protesting the phony "war on terror" and calling for an end to corporate wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, it turned to promoting tax cuts for the wealthy and an end to any government program benefitting the poor and middle class. In other words, it became a tool of the 1%. The Koch brothers were able to buy up the Tea Party because it had never stated who they were and what they were against. We can't make that mistake.

Identity

We who engage in protests must be clear who we are and who it is we are against.

First, who is it we are against? Are we against everyone in the 1% wealthiest people in the country? Of course not. There are some very fine rich people who have not used their wealth to manipulate government to the detriment of the rest of us. There are also some greedy folks not in the 1% who have done nasty things in an attempt to get there. We must also remember that among those we are against are Wall Street banks, financial companies, and insurance giants who have devastated the economy, taken government bailouts, and used the money to buy up other banks and give their executives obscene bonuses. Whatever the Supreme Court says, these institutions are not "persons" and are technically not part of the 1%. Yet we are against them, just as we are against the Enrons and Exxons who write energy policy and the giants of big pharma who write laws like Medicare Part D to enrich themselves at our expense. We also oppose the corporate media giants who control what we see, hear, and read, and who ignore or marginalize any candidate (like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) whom they do not control. In sum, we are against the persons and companies whose greed causes them to use their power and wealth to buy up politicians and elections, and to write laws enriching themselves and impoverishing the rest of us.

And who are we? We are the 99%. That means we are Democrats, Republicans, Independents. Libertarians, and Greens. We are conservatives and liberals. Supporters of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich should feel equally welcome. We are also police and military officers and their troops. Most of us oppose the corporate wars of aggression. We understand that they are major ways of transferring trillions of dollars from us to the 1%. But there are others who haven't come to that conclusion yet. They believe the wars are necessary. They too are part of the 99%. As important as the wars are, they should not be a litmus test. Neither should health care, nor abortion, nor gay rights, nor school prayer, nor gun control, nor tax reform, nor monetary policy. People on both sides of such issues make up the 99%. Once we succeed in taking back our government, we can argue these issues and resolve them. But right now, all of us in the 99% must stick together and be united in pursuing only ONE objective - to separate big money and political power. We must have a president beholden only to the people, not to Wall Street money. We must have members of Congress who are responsible and responsive to us, not to giant corporations and their K Street lobbyists. Unless there's a big change in the Supreme Court, the only way we'll get money out of politics is through a series of measures. The first is a Constitutional amendment declaring that corporations and other fictitious entities are not "persons" under the Constitution, and shall have none of the rights and privileges thereof. Once that is done, we can pass legislation prohibiting corporate money (or any private money) from being used for electoral purposes. At the same time, we must re-regulate the media, going back to pre-Reagan rules prohibiting ownership of multiple media outlets. The present big-money control of the electoral process would not be possible without the corporate monopoly media, in which almost all newspapers and radio and TV stations are owned by one of five multinational corporations (the same corporations who profit from war, poverty, and pollution, and the government policies which impose them).

In sum, we are the 99%, all Americans who want a government that meets our needs, not the greeds of the 1%. Because we are diverse, our core demands must be few. We all agree that it is necessary to no longer allow the 1% to manipulate government policy to enrich themselves at our expense. We recognize that to sever the connection between big money and political power it will be necessary (probably through a Constitutional amendment) to reverse the horrible "Citizens United" decision which gives unlimited political power to corporations and billionaires. It will also be necessary to restrict the power of the 1% to brainwash and deceive us through their corporate monopoly media. Once we have successfully disempowered the 1%, everything else becomes possible. The wishes of the people about wars, health care, taxes, jobs - you name it - can be carried out. Till then, we must set such issues aside in the name of the unity of the 99%. The Occupy Movement is the greatest opportunity we have had in decades. We dare not waste it. With nonviolence and inclusiveness on our side, we the 99% will succeed.

YOU are the 99%. Support Occupy Wall Street. Can't get to New York City? Then occupy your town. Occupy a Federal Reserve office. Occupy a big bank. Occupy something. You are the one. This is the time! This is the place! OCCUPY THIS!
(c) 2011 Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is the National Commander, "The Patriots."





The King's Speech
By Uri Avnery

IN THE middle of the '80s, a German diplomat conveyed to me a surprising message. A member of the Jordanian Royal family would like to speak with me in Amman. At the time, Jordan was still officially at war with us.

Somehow I obtained official permission from the Israeli government. The Germans generously provided me with a passport that was not strictly accurate, and so, with much turning of blind eyes, I arrived in Amman and was lodged in the best hotel.

The news of my presence spread quickly, and after some days it became an embarrassment to the Jordanian government. So I was politely asked to leave, and very quickly, please.

But before that, a high-ranking official invited me to dinner in a very elegant restaurant. He was a well educated, very cultured person, who spoke beautiful English. To my utter amazement, he told me that he was a Bedouin, a member of an important tribe. All my ideas about Bedouins were shattered in that moment.

This dinner stuck in my memory because, in (literally) ten minutes, I learned more about Jordan than in decades of reading. My host took a paper napkin and drew a rough map of Jordan. "Look at our neighbors," he explained. "Here is Syria, a radical secular Ba'athist dictatorship. Then there is Iraq, with another Ba'athist regime that hates Syria. Next there is Saudi Arabia, a very conservative, orthodox country. Next is Egypt, with a pro-Western military dictator. Then there is Zionist Israel. In the occupied Palestinian territories, radical, revolutionary elements are in the ascent. And almost touching us, there is fragmented, unpredictable Lebanon."

"From all these countries," he continued, "refugees, agents and ideological influences stream into Jordan. We have to absorb all of them. We have to perform a very delicate balancing act. If we come too close to Israel, the next day we must appease Syria. If one day we embrace Saudi Arabia, we must kiss Iraq the next. We must not ally ourselves with any one."

Another impression I took with me - the Palestinians in Jordan (excluding the refugees, whom I did not meet) are perfectly content with the status quo, dominating the economy, getting rich and praying for the stability of the regime.

I WISH that all influential Israelis had received such an eye-opening lesson, because in Israel, the most grotesque ideas about Jordan were - and still are - in vogue.

The general picture is that of a ridiculous little country, ruled by fierce and primitive Bedouin tribes, while the majority consists of Palestinians who are continually plotting to overthrow the monarchy and assume power.

(Which reminds me of another conversation - this time in Cairo with the - then - acting Foreign Minister, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a Copt and one of the most intelligent persons I've ever met. "Israeli experts in Arab affairs are among the best in the world," he told me, "they have read everything, they know everything, and they understand nothing. That's because they have never lived in an Arab country.")

Until the Oslo agreement, the entire Israeli elite subscribed to the "Jordanian Option". The idea was that only King Hussein was able and ready to make peace with us and that he would give us East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank as a present. Hiding behind this misconception was the traditional Zionist resolve to ignore the existence of the Palestinian people and to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state at all costs.

Another version of this idea rests on the slogan "Jordan is Palestine". It was explained to me by Ariel Sharon, nine months before Lebanon War I. "We shall throw the Palestinians out of Lebanon into Syria. The Syrians will push them South into Jordan. There they shall overthrow the king and turn Jordan into Palestine. The Palestinian problem will disappear, and the remaining conflict will become a normal disagreement between two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine."

"But what about the West Bank?" I queried.

"We shall achieve a compromise with Jordan," he answered, "perhaps joint rule, perhaps some kind of functional division."

This idea pops up time and again. This week one of the hyperactive and mentally handicapped right wing parliamentary thugs submitted another of those bills. It is called "Jordan - the Nation-State of the Palestinian People."

Apart from the curiosity of one country enacting a law to define the character of another country, it was politically embarrassing. Yet instead of just throwing it out, it was transferred to a sub-committee where the deliberations, such as they are, are secret.

HIS MAJESTY, king Abdullah II, is worried. He has good reasons to be.

There is the democratic Arab Spring, which may spill over into his autocratic kingdom. There is the uprising in neighboring Syria, which may push refugees southwards. There is the growing influence of Shiite Iran, which does not look good for his stoutly Sunni monarchy.

But all this is nothing compared to the growing threat from radical, rightist Israel.

The most immediate danger, from his point of view, is the growing Israeli oppression and colonization of the West Bank. One of these days, it may push masses of Palestinian refugees to cross the Jordan into his kingdom, upsetting the strained demographic balance between locals and Palestinians in his country.

It was this fear that caused his father, King Hussein, during the first intifada, to cut all connections with the West Bank, which had been annexed by his grandfather after the 1948 war. (The very term "West Bank" is Jordanian, to distinguish it from the East Bank, the original Transjordanian territory of the kingdom.)

If "Jordan is Palestine", then there is no reason for Israel not to annex the West Bank, expropriate Palestinian lands, enlarge the existing settlements and create new ones, and in general "convince" Palestinians to find a better life east of the river.

With this in mind, the king voiced his anxiety in a much-publicized interview this week. In it, he raised the possibility of a federation between Jordan and the (still occupied) State of Palestine in the West Bank, obviously to forestall Israeli designs. Perhaps he also wants to convince the Palestinians that such a move would help them to terminate the occupation, facilitate their application for UN membership and prevent a US veto. (I don't believe this offer will find many Palestinian takers.)

THE INITIATORS of the Israeli bill make it clear that their main purpose is Hasbarah ("explaining"), the Hebrew euphemism for propaganda. Their idea, they believe, will put an end to the isolation and delegitimization of Israel. The world will accept that the State of Palestine already exists, beyond the Jordan, so that there is no need for a second one in the West Bank.

If His Majesty suspects that there is a much more sinister dimension to the propaganda ploy, he is quite right. Obviously he is thinking about much more profound long-term possibilities.

This goes back to the basic dilemma of the Israeli right, a dilemma that seems well-nigh insoluble.

The Israeli Right has never really given up the idea of a Greater Israel (which in Hebrew is called "the whole of Eretz-Israel"). This means the total rejection of the Two-State solution in all its forms and the creation of a Jewish state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

However, in such a state there would be living, as of today, some 6 million Israeli Jews and about 5.5 million Arab Palestinians (2.5 in the West Bank, 1.5 in the Gaza Strip, 1.5 in Israel proper.) Some demographers believe that the number is even larger.

According to all demographic forecasts, the Palestinians will quite soon constitute the majority in this geographic entity. What then?

Some idealists believe (or delude themselves) that, faced with stern international disapproval, Israel will have to grant citizenship to all the inhabitants, turning the entity into a bi-national or multi-national or non-national state. Without taking a survey one can say with certainty that 99.999% of Jewish Israelis would oppose this idea with all their strength. It is the total negation of everything Zionism stands for.

The other possibility would be that this entity would become an apartheid state, not only partly, not only in practice, but entirely and officially. The great majority of Jewish Israelis would not like that at all. This, too, is a negation of basic Zionist values.

There is no solution to this dilemma. Or is there?

THE KING seems to think that there is. It is, actually, implicit in the dream of a Greater Israel.

That solution is a repeat of 1948: a naqba of vastly larger dimensions, which Israelis euphemistically call "transfer".

This means that at some time, when international conditions are opportune - some huge international disaster that rivets attention to some other part of the world, a big war, or such - the government will drive out the non-Jewish population. Where to? Geography dictates the answer: to Jordan. Or, rather, to the future State of Palestine in what was once Jordan.

I would suggest that almost every Israeli who supports the Greater Israel idea has this - at least unconsciously - in mind. Perhaps not as a plan for action in the near future, but certainly as the only solution in the long term.

MORE THAN 80 years ago , Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the spiritual forefather of Binjamin Netanyahu, wrote some verses that were sung by the Irgun (to which I belonged when I was very young.)

It is a nice song with a nice melody. The refrain goes like this: "The Jordan has two banks / The one belongs to us, the other one, too."

Jabotinsky, an ardent admirer of the Italian 19th century risorgimento, was an ultra-nationalist and a sincere liberal. One verse of the poem says: "The son of Arabia, the son of Nazareth and my own son / Will find there happiness and plenty / Because my flag, a flag of purity and honesty / Will cleanse both sides of the Jordan."

The official emblem of the Irgun consisted of a map that included Transjordan, with a rifle superimposed. This emblem was inherited by Menachem Begin's Herut ("Freedom") Party, the mother of the Likud.

This party has long since given up the ideal of the three sons, purity and honesty. The slogan "Jordan is Palestine" means that it has also given up the claim to the East bank of the Jordan.

Or has it?
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom




Jon Corzine and Gary Gensler



Jon Corzine's Relationship With CFTC Chair Gary Gensler Probed
By Matt Taibbi

On the road this week, so apologies for the brief post. Getting a lot of calls about Jon Corzine and his relationship with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Gary Gensler.

Both Corzine and Gensler worked at Goldman back in the day, and the word is that Corzine personally lobbied Gensler to delay the implementation of new rules that would have helped prevent Corzine from raiding his own clients' funds.

This whole issue smacks of the improper communications between other former Wall Street co-workers like Hank Paulson and Lloyd Blankfein. More and more, it appears that, as a matter of routine, federal regulators like Paulson (in 2008) and, later, Gensler reach out to old friends on Wall Street to negotiate/discuss the timing and the form of various policy changes, bailouts, and other regulatory matters. Inside information seemingly is traded with remarkable casualness.

This is one of those issues where there's no point in calling for more regulations. No matter what laws we have, we can't have regulatory heads breezily chatting about their enforcement plans with former co-workers who have huge financial interests resting upon their decisions. The Paulson case, in which information about the rescue of Fannie and Freddie was casually disclosed to a group of hedge fund chiefs before the public knew about it, was a far worse thing than what Gensler is accused of. Gensler, despite his Goldman pedigree, has generally gotten good reviews from Wall Street reform types, and has demonstrated a willingness to help tighten up abuses in the derivatives and commodities markets (including walking back deregulatory actions in the derivatives world that he himself had a role in creating back in the Clinton days). But this business with Corzine will likely be a black eye for him, and rightly so.

But the overall problem, of regulators keeping up their chummy, chatty relationships with Wall Street guys as they make market-altering regulatory decisions, appears to be epidemic. Again, this is an issue where new regulations won't help – we just need different people in charge, people with at least some grasp of the whole propriety thing, who understand that financial friendships have to take a pause when you go to work behind the police tape.

Anyway, more on that coming soon. In the meantime, check out this clip, which made me proud to be Irish:


(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







Occupy Ourselves
With Peace in Our Hearts and Power in Our Hands
By Randall Amster

In just a few short months we have reached a point of near saturation in which the modifier "Occupy" has been applied to almost every sphere of our beleaguered political economy. Not every such application has been equally useful, but for the most part the intended meaning of the word has come through in the sense of prying open the inner sanctum of the dominant order, contesting its authoritarian workings, and agitating for new processes based on the burgeoning tenets of egalitarianism and sustainability. The incisive cultural gaze spawned by #occupy has been cast toward every sacred shibboleth of modern society, and the ripples are palpable.

Yet in the process there has been more external consternation than internal reflection. The machinations of the 1 percent are what have largely brought us to the brink of social and ecological demise, so the primary thinking goes. The ruling class has consolidated their power, skewed the benefits toward themselves, passed the burdens onto the rest of us, and continually demonstrated the illegitimacy and inherent tyranny of their reign every time force has been used on peaceful demonstrators. They have done this and are still doing it, and we must confront their wanton ways with diligence and imagination.

There are key truths and critical insights to be found in this narrative, and its teachings have served to galvanize interest and mobilize people around the world. Still, there is a piece of the puzzle missing, one that is harder to own up to and that blurs the lines of culpability in a manner that is inconvenient for the impetus to organize against entrenched power. When we begin to peel back the layers, however, it becomes apparent that they did not take power so much as we gave it to them -- and it has largely been our complicity with the forces of our own oppression that has led us here.

This in no way absolves those who would pervert that power for personal gain, nor does it excuse the outright blackmail-type pressures that have been brought to bear upon many of us to accede. But we cannot and must not pass the buck altogether, since to do so both flies in the face of reality and further delivers our power back over to those who would manipulate and abuse it. In fact, the realization that we are equally to blame possesses the corollary virtue of suggesting that we can also put things right and fix the mess we have made of our social structures and the habitat itself.

So here we are: we have occupied the symbolic spaces, the tangible ones, and the subtle ones. Now it is time to Occupy Ourselves, to decolonize our minds and restore our capacity to act from a place of autonomy and collective willpower. We can refuse to comply with oppressive forces, forswear allegiance to their mandates, forgo reliance on their wares, unplug our lifelines to their conveyances, reject their medicalizations and distractions, discontinue our support for their adventurist campaigns, fail to contribute to their bailouts and schemes, ignore their technocratic designs on mind control, cease making demands on their apparatchiks, and avert our gaze from their spectacles. Yes, we can.

Instead of protesting against abominable wars, let us also stop paying for them. Rather than complaining about corporations, usurious banks, and the indentured servitude of the student loan system, we can desist from paying into their coffers. Beyond pointing the finger at bought-off politicos, there is the option of refraining from participation in their sham elections. If we do not like business as usual, let us skip the charade of fighting city hall and occupy it as shelter instead. This is the essential core of the embedded symbolism in the protest encampments, and it follows in a long line of nonviolent civil disobedience from Jesus Christ and Henry David Thoreau to Dorothy Day and Mohandas Gandhi. It is an active principle, and the locus of its engagement is everywhere.

The key is not to bear this weight of noncompliance alone, but to do so in concert and in numbers sufficient to undermine the system's capacity to continue in its present form. We recognize that the boundaries of the law do not map directly to the dictates of morality, and that much of the legal architecture in our midst is specifically designed to protect wealth and preserve inequality. Still, we also see that laws and norms in some instances can reflect the societal wisdom of the ages, and thus we do not transgress them out of self-indulgence but rather as our solemn duty as agents of promoting a just, equitable, and sustainable world.

Indeed, as Gandhi urged, noncooperation is merely a first step. The ensuing (and more challenging) phase of sustained resistance is the cultivation of constructive alternatives with which we can wholeheartedly cooperate and lend support. For too long we have had our survival pitted against our values, being coerced to participate in oppression and degradation as a condition of mere existence. We have been carefully cultivated to embrace the consensus reality plied by plutocrats, at best maintaining a schizophrenic false consciousness and at worst being consumed by the beast's ravages. Lacking genuine meaning in our lives, we opt for artificial replacements on sale literally everywhere. We have looked into the void, recoiled in horror, and drowned our sorrows in commercial palliatives.

Now is the time to commit ourselves to finding other methods of coping, ones that challenge authority and reclaim autonomy. This does not mean that we become absolutists or Luddites, but instead that we get to choose which accoutrements of modernity are compatible with the good society and which are little more than artifacts of control despite their market-tested packaging. We can trade technologies for tools, fast food for slower sustenance, corporatocracy for consensus. The next paradigm is already here, having been incubated for decades within the shell of old, carefully obscured by the vicissitudes of popular culture and crass commercialism; notice how when people begin to approach its realization, they are often met with sheer force to push them back into blithe torpor.

But the veil is now lifting -- and consciousness once raised has a way of finding daylight. Occupy camps can be destroyed from coast to coast, but the essential illumination of protest and its eternal promise remains. This is the time to come back twice as strong, working harder and smarter, demonstrating our resiliency as a crucial factor of social and ecological survival. We will hang together, so that we do not have to hang alone. In the end, we come to realize that there is only us as we confront the true oppressor that lies within ourselves and our own complicity. In this, we find that all oppressions are interlinked, internalized, interposed, and interdependent. The struggle to surmount them lies just as much within us as it does with the robber barons in their lairs.

We can do this, and we must. I do not believe that the power has ever actually left us, but more so that we have had our attention pulled toward false idols and their machinations as the source of influence and authority. Today, we see the seeds of the better society growing up through the cracks in the hegemonic facade everywhere, sprouting forth with renewed vigor after an imposed dormancy. We will not be the consumers of this world, but its co-creators; we will not be witnesses to its destruction, but participants in its resurrection. Now, with peace in our hearts and power in our hands, the time to reclaim both ourselves and our world is upon us. This is our generational task, our shared responsibility, and our best hope for salvation. Let us meet it willingly, together.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).







Some People Have All The Luck

Ah, tis the season for heart tugging stories - such as underdogs winning one for a change, or some have-nots finally getting a lucky break.

So get out your hankies friends, for I'm going to tell you a true-life weeper about little Timothy, Brandon, and Gregory. These three lads recently pooled their pennies to buy a $1 Powerball lottery ticket at a gas station near their homes in Connecticut. And - bingo! - despite almost impossible odds of one-in-195,000,000 that their numbers would pop out, Timothy, Brandon, and Gregory won the biggest lottery jackpot in state history. "The lottery is all about dreaming," says the director of the Connecticut gaming agency, adding that "everyday people win the lottery every day."

So, prepare to sob once you learn the touching backgrounds of these everyday boys. Timothy Davidson, Brandon Lacoff, and Gregory Skidmore are top executives of Belpointe Asset Management, a mulitimillion-dollar hedge fund headquartered in toney Greenwich, Connecticut. Far from underdogs, these are over-the-top dogs, three have-everythings who now have much, much more. It's a happy holidays story for the 1 percent - and isn't that touching? Like a kick in the head.

The threesome is getting a lump-sum Powerball payment of nearly $152 million. Of course, they'll have to pay taxes on their good luck, which will subtract $48 million from their haul. That's a tax rate of about 31 percent, which is ironic, since hedge fund guys are used to paying a privileged, special tax rate of only 15 percent on the big incomes they draw from their everyday speculative gambles in the magical world of hedging.

To their credit, the three fortunate ones say they intend to give a "significant amount" of their bonanza to charity. Really? Half of it? A third? A tenth? A dollar? They decline to specify.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Why Iraq?
By Helen Thomas

The U.S. is pulling its troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. Well, not quite. There will still be a large group of soldiers left behind to train Iraqis and to repair the war-damaged sites.

Now, will someone from the White House hierarchy, past or present, please tell the American people why we invaded Iraq in March 2003?

The truth and nothing but the truth - that will be the day. Why are we still speculating on the reasons we went to war in the first place, other than to hunt down and kill Saddam Hussein, the brutal Iraqi dictator, who was at one time a friend of the U.S.?

Former President George W. Bush and his neo-conservative cohorts justified to the American people that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (read that as nuclear), and Iraq had to be targeted.

Since the start of the war against Iraq, thousands of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and wounded, and the killing continues to this day.

The pain and suffering to those fighting in the war, and their loved ones at home, is unfathomable. Yet the neo-cons, who evaded the Vietnam War by getting higher degrees at the universities or by getting married, were advising and pushing Bush to go to war with Iraq.

Bush once said he wanted to be a "War President" because only "War Presidents" are remembered in history. He will be remembered, all right.

I will never forget when the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Hans Blix, urged Bush to let U.N. inspectors go into Iraq to see if Hussein had harbored lethal weapons. Bush refused to allow the inspections in Iraq.

Instead he promptly invaded Iraq, despite the fact that none of the terrorists that attacked on 9/11 were Iraqis. Bush later mentioned in his memoir the only regret he had was not finding any weapons of mass destruction.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. Clearly Bush did not want his reason for invading Iraq to prove to be a hoax. His decision has left the country continuing to speculate, "Why Iraq?"

Why did Bush sacrifice human lives and hard-earned tax dollars to fund a war which we don't know why we entered in the first place?

The White House sold Americans a bill of goods that the war in Iraq would last two to three weeks at the most, and the troops would be showered with candy and flowers. At first this appeared to be the truth until the reality of war set in - the hanging of Hussein became an item on the American agenda.

Too many people have died for the lies that were told. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and Bush would have known this if he had simply allowed Blix to check in the first place.

Where is their conscience?

Other reasons speculated for the invasion of Iraq included Bush's desire to upstage his dad, former President George H. W. Bush, who won the Kuwait war but did not finish the job of knocking off Israel's nemesis, Saddam Hussein.

Now the war is winding down, the question remains: Who is responsible for this debacle? Who will pay the price of this costly decision? Apparently there is no accountability among the U.S. Presidents for past wrong decisions.

Furthermore, have we learned anything from this colossal fiasco?

When will Americans wake up? What did we gain from these wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan, except a bankrupt economy and the tragic loss of so many human lives? Why shouldn't President Barack Obama welcome soldiers home for Christmas from Iraq - and Afghanistan?
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







Bush Blatantly Challenges World Criminal Court
By James Donahue

Because former President George W. Bush and his cronies murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in unjust wars he ordered in Afghanistan and Iraq, and because they openly tortured captives in their so-called war on terror, Mr. Bush has been considered a war criminal by many world nations. Yet he blatantly dared to travel last week into Africa where Amnesty International was calling for his arrest.

Mr. Bush toured Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia to promote a campaign against cervical and breast cancer. It was one of the first times Bush dared to step out of the protective boundaries of the United States since he left office in 2009.

Amnesty International is not missing the opportunity to remind the world of the crimes committed by Mr. Bush by calling on the nations hosting his visit to formally arrest and charge him while he is vulnerable.

Amnesty's senior legal adviser Matt Pollard said he believes all three African nations had an obligation to arrest Mr. Bush under international law. He said the law "requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture. Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfill their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed," Pollard said.

Brad Blakeman, a former Bush advisor, called Amnesty's action harassment and a threat against the former president. "They've been trying to get any country where President Bush and Vice President Cheney visit to harass them wherever they go," Blakeman said. "It could be taken as a call for violence against the president." Amnesty, the world's largest human rights organization, made a similar appeal to Canada in October when Bush attended an economic summit in British Columbia.

The organization claims that Bush authorized the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "waterboarding" on detainees held in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency from 2002 to 2009. These techniques have been declared torture which is strictly prohibited both by U. S. and international law.

During the eight years that Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney occupied the high offices of the United States government, they established an administration that set an unprecedented record of destroying many of the moral covenants used to set an example to the rest of the world. They declared unprovoked war, practiced torture, used bombs laced with radioactive material that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, contracted with corrupt private corporate agencies and poured billions of American tax dollars into their pockets for alleged "services" that ranged from feeding soldiers to rebuilding bombed infrastructure. They declared a "War on Terrorism" that was used to create laws like the Patriot Act that violate the Bill of Rights.

After all of this, Mr. Blakeman defends Mr. Bush when he dares to step out of the bounds of the United States where he appears to be protected against prosecution.

Indeed, the Obama Administration has chosen to ignore those past criminal acts and even agreed to renew and revise the Patriot Act which gives the government the freedom to spy on American citizens without a court order.

Both Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are ignoring the War Crimes Act of 1996, which passed both houses by a unanimous vote. The act makes it a federal crime to commit a "grave breach" of the Geneva Convention. This includes the deliberate killing, torture or inhuman treatment of detainees during a time of war.

Several nations of the world, most recently Switzerland and Spain, have formally filed criminal charges against Bush, Cheney and members of the Bush staff for acts committed in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The United Nations, however, has not picked up on the movement.

Consequently the accusations by foreign nations carry no weight in national or American courts.

Mr. Bush canceled a planned trip to Switzerland in February because of threats by human rights lawyers there that if he showed up he would be charged with crimes of torture.

In Malaysia only last month a War Crimes Tribunal declared Mr. Bush and former UK President Tony Blair guilty of war crimes at the end of a four-day hearing. The five panel tribunal unanimously agreed that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003. They found that the invasion, based on forged documents, was a flagrant act of aggression and mass murder of the Iraqi people.

It is clear that Mr. Bush is not a welcome guest in many nations of the world because of what was done during his years of power. Yet he is daring to travel to other world nations, knowing that there may be a price on his head.

So why hasn't the International Criminal Court gotten involved? This court, established in July 1998 and opened July 1, 2002, has been ratified by 60 nations. A total of 120 states were involved in its creation. For obvious reasons the Bush Administration chose not to participate so the United States is not among them. Consequently the court has no jurisdiction over United States leaders who commit international criminal acts.

Because U. S. authorities are refusing to budge and the international court appears to lack jurisdiction in the matter, there is a haunting question of the possible international ramifications linked with a decision by any world nation to actually arrest Mr. Bush and charge him.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






Kids, Stop Dreaming Of Wall Street
Fewer young people are going to work in finance. That's really good news
By David Sirota

Amid fears of high youth unemployment creating a "lost generation," there is suddenly a bright spot: Apparently, fewer young people are going to work in the industry that destroyed our economy.

That's the word from the New York Times, which reports that since 2008, "the number of investment bank and brokerage firm employees between the ages 20 and 34 fell by 25 percent," as banks have laid off young people and slowed college recruiting.

For young Wall Streeters, this is a bummer. But for society as a whole, it's cause for celebration because it may finally allow America to counter the destructive Gordon Gekko-ization of youth culture.

Recall that in recent years, up to a third of kids at elite universities have entered finance-related jobs. Such a mass shift in career preferences is, to put it mildly, alarming. A country whose best and brightest begin avoiding occupations that add value to society (doctors, engineers, etc.) in favor of vapid get-rich-quick gigs is a country that has stopped investing in itself and started mortgaging its future.

In light of that, Wall Street's youth layoffs raise a bigger question: Why have so many more kids been pursuing careers in finance?

Part of it is greed, as a 2010 Higher Education Research Institute report found a record-high three-quarters of freshmen said being "very well-off financially" was their top objective. Not surprisingly, many graduate with speculation and usury in their plans.

Such a mind-set, though, hasn't emerged in a vacuum - it tracks two larger greed-driven trends.

The first is a change in the American Dream from a middle-class aspiration to an "MTV Cribs"-style fantasy. In that shift, we began portraying Wall Street fat cats as idols - the Great Men to be worshiped in our media and consulted by presidents. Taking cues from the larger culture, kids have naturally tried to follow in the idols' footsteps.

Simultaneously, the American economy changed from producing tangible assets to now more often generating paper profits for bankers. The numbers, as recounted from economist Simon Johnson, tell that tale: "From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits … last decade, it reached 41 percent."

This metamorphosis was no force of nature - it was the result of bank-owned politicians deregulating and subsidizing the finance industry, turning it into a monster swallowing an outsize share of national wealth. That, in turn, prompted an employment shift, which included young people.

"When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing," author Thomas Geoghegan wrote in Harper's magazine. "We set up the incentives to keep our best and brightest out of Detroit ... (They) went off to work at AIG."

Those incentives highlight the final part of the youth story: need.

Today, the average undergraduate matriculates with $25,000 in student debt. That burden compels kids to base career moves on where they can get the richest the quickest so as to pay off their loans. In an economy that has privileged finance, that often means heading to Wall Street.

Now, though, that career path may be closed - and even if it's only temporarily closed, the reprieve is significant.

A few semesters' worth of kids driven into occupations that build and sustain rather than cannibalize and leech could begin moving a nation back to economic fundamentals. It could mean kids finally appreciating that greed isn't so good and that policy debates - whether they're about regulation or student loans - aren't meaningless.

Ultimately, young people might see that those debates actually matter - and that they better get involved in them or their future will remain in jeopardy.
(c) 2011 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.








What To Replace The Imprison-Americans Bill With
By David Swanson

The funny thing about the bill that the Senate just passed that lets presidents and the military lock you up without a charge or a trial - well, not funny ha ha but funny unusual - is that the basic bill to which that little monstrosity was attached is even worse. It's a bill to dump over $650 billion into wars and aggressive weaponry, continue the slaughter in Afghanistan, ramp up the creation and use of drones, and expand U.S. military bases around the globe.

When these bills move through the Congress, they are so enormous and yet so routine that almost all attention is drawn to one or more peculiarly putrid or pretentiously benevolent little attachments. Either the bill simply must be passed because it contains hurricane relief or veterans aid or unemployment insurance or because it finally allows GLBT Americans to join in our crusades of mass murder. Or, alternatively, the bill desperately needs amending because it sanctions torture or lawless imprisonment or expands an especially hated war or an especially transparent investment in unwanted weaponry manufactured by some campaign donor. But the underlying insanity of the bill itself never makes it into the corporate conversation.

In the case of this latest National Defense Authorization Act, there has been a toothless rhetorical amendment passed asking the president to end his warmaking in Afghanistan in something less than three years if it's not too much trouble. But that positive measure has been absolutely overwhelmed in what little discussion of the bill exists by a section of the bill giving presidents and the military the power to lock you away without any of the process guaranteed you by the U.S. Constitution. Now, President Obama may veto the bill because he would prefer that section to be even worse than it is. He has expressed concern that it limits, rather than expands, his options. He should veto it because it rips out the heart of our Bill of Rights and grinds it into the dirt.

But a bill like this should not be passed simply because the latest erosion of our civil liberties is removed and the even worse un-codified understanding and practice is left to continue. A bill like this one should be rejected in its entirety. This bill kills human beings in large numbers, endangers us all through encouragement of foreign hostility, contributes to the development and proliferation of genocidal weaponry, creates massive environmental destruction, advances a foreign policy built around an unsurvivable energy policy, funds both sides of an unending Afghan occupation, funds prisons where we already hold many hundreds of men behind bars without charge or trial, and gives presidents de facto power to ignore our rights for the duration of a global war that has no end. And this bill destroys our economy through unfathomable wasteful spending in the midst of a manufactured deficit crisis and an actual humanitarian crisis at home and abroad.

Military spending is worse for job creation and retention than any other kind of spending or even tax cuts. Jobs is not the silver lining in militarism. There is a choice that confronts us between militarism or jobs, militarism or human services, militarism or a safety net for the ill and the elderly and the impoverished. We're dumping over a trillion dollars a year into "security" spending in "defense" and other bills combined, well over half of discretionary spending. The deficit "crisis" is not the creation of sick people getting old and multiplying without having had the decency to bribe their way into major government contracts or bailouts from the Federal Reserve. Single-payer health coverage, not cuts to Medicare, is the solution there. The deficit is not purely the result of the Obama tax cuts (sorry, Bush is gone now) or of the bad economy. There is a way to improve the actual economy by spending existing public dollars in different ways.

In 1963, Senator George McGovern and House members F. Bradford Morse and William Fitts Ryan introduced a bill that gained significant support and hearings and would have begun a process of economic conversion from a war economy to a peace economy, retraining and re-employing anyone thrown out of work in the process. Meanwhile, the military was secretly beginning a war in Vietnam, and certain elements were plotting to blow President Kennedy's brains out of the back of his head. We took a turn for the worse, and economic conversion has never seriously begun. Yet, for decades members of Congress had the decency to at least propose it.

Here's a bill introduced 20 years ago, in 1991. Do some of the names on the bill look familiar? Waters, Pelosi, Schumer, Slaughter, McDermott, Markey, Panetta (yes, Panetta), Lewis, Pallone, Towns, Berman, Payne, Waxman, Boxer, Wyden, etc. Here's a solution backed by these people 20 years ago, more desperately needed now, and not under consideration. That's not their fault. They are cogs in a money-marinated machine. It's our fault.

In the absence of an overall conversion-to-sanity-and-sustainability bill, there is a related bill that has been introduced in the current Congress: "The Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act of 2011" introduced by Eleanor Holmes Norton. This bill is a concise thing of beauty which says:

"(a) In General- The United States Government shall--

(1) by the date that is three years after the date of the enactment of this Act, provide leadership to negotiate a multilateral treaty or other international agreement that provides for--

(A) the dismantlement and elimination of all nuclear weapons in every country by not later than 2020; and

(B) strict and effective international control of such dismantlement and elimination;

(2) redirect resources that are being used for nuclear weapons programs to use--

(A) in converting all nuclear weapons industry employees, processes, plants, and programs smoothly to constructive, ecologically beneficial peacetime activities, including strict control of all fissile material and radioactive waste, during the period in which nuclear weapons must be dismantled and eliminated pursuant to the treaty or other international agreement described in paragraph (1); and

(B) in addressing human and infrastructure needs, including development and deployment of sustainable carbon-free and nuclear-free energy sources, health care, housing, education, agriculture, and environmental restoration, including long-term radioactive waste monitoring;

(3) undertake vigorous, good-faith efforts to eliminate war, armed conflict, and all military operations; and

(4) actively promote policies to induce all other countries to join in the commitments described in this subsection to create a more peaceful and secure world.

(b) Effective Date- Subsection (a)(2) shall take effect on the date on which the President certifies to Congress that all countries possessing nuclear weapons have--

(1) eliminated such weapons; or

(2) begun such elimination under established legal requirements comparable to those described in subsection (a)."

If you're going to begin conversion with one sector, why not start with the worst? The answer does not ultimately lie in backing a particular bill so much as in educating, mobilizing, changing the public discourse, and applying nonviolent pressure. But there are bills that exist or could easily be made to exist that merit our unqualified support.

Either we will move the money from where it destroys to where is sustains life, or our civilization will meet the fate Kennedy met in Dallas.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







The Most Important News Story Of The Day/Millennium
By Bill McKibben

The most important piece of news yesterday, this week, this month, and this year was a new set of statistics released yesterday by the Global Carbon Project. It showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010. In fact, it was arguably among the most important pieces of data in the last, oh, three centuries, since according to the New York Times it represented "almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution."

What it means, in climate terms, is that we've all but lost the battle to reduce the damage from global warming. The planet has already warmed about a degree Celsius; it's clearly going to go well past two degrees. It means, in political terms, that the fossil fuel industry has delayed effective action for the 12 years since the Kyoto treaty was signed. It means, in diplomatic terms, that the endless talks underway in Durban should be more important than ever--they should be the focus of a planetary population desperate to figure out how it's going to survive the century.

But instead, almost no one is paying attention to the proceedings, at least on this continent. One of our political parties has decided that global warming is a hoax--it's two leading candidates are busily apologizing for anything they said in the past that might possibly have been construed as backing, you know, science. President Obama hasn't yet spoken on the Durban talks, and informed international observers like Joss Garman are beginning to despair that he ever will.

Who are the 99%? In this country, they're those of us who aren't making any of these deadly decisions. In this world, they're the vast majority of people who didn't contribute to those soaring emissions. In this biosphere they're every other species now living on a disorienting earth.

You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in DC in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We're not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history. And he and his ilk spend heavily on campaigns to make sure no one stops them--the US Chamber of Commerce gave more money than the DNC and the RNC last cycle, and 94% of it went to climate deniers.

Corporate power has occupied the atmosphere. 2011 showed we could fight back. 2012 would be a good year to step up the pressure. Because this time next year the Global Carbon Project will release another number. And I'm betting it will be grim.
(c) 2011 Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, co-founder of 350.org. His most recent book is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.








Send In The Clueless
By Paul Krugman

There are two crucial things you need to understand about the current state of American politics. First, given the still dire economic situation, 2012 should be a year of Republican triumph. Second, the G.O.P. may nonetheless snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - because Herman Cain was not an accident.

Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year - and who, even as they declare their hatred of government, will balk at any hint of cuts to Social Security and Medicare (death panels!).

And you also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security.

So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or to be totally clueless.

Mitt Romney embodies the first option. He's not a stupid man; he knows perfectly well, to take a not incidental example, that the Obama health reform is identical in all important respects to the reform he himself introduced in Massachusetts - but that doesn't stop him from denouncing the Obama plan as a vast government takeover that is nothing like what he did. He presumably knows how to read a budget, which means that he must know that defense spending has continued to rise under the current administration, but this doesn't stop him from pledging to reverse Mr. Obama's "massive defense cuts."

Mr. Romney's strategy, in short, is to pretend that he shares the ignorance and misconceptions of the Republican base. He isn't a stupid man - but he seems to play one on TV.

Unfortunately from his point of view, however, his acting skills leave something to be desired, and his insincerity shines through. So the base still hungers for someone who really, truly believes what every candidate for the party's nomination must pretend to believe. Yet as I said, the only way to actually believe the modern G.O.P. catechism is to be completely clueless.

And that's why the Republican primary has taken the form it has, in which a candidate nobody likes and nobody trusts has faced a series of clueless challengers, each of whom has briefly soared before imploding under the pressure of his or her own cluelessness. Think in particular of Rick Perry, a conservative true believer who seemingly had everything it took to clinch the nomination - until he opened his mouth.

So will Newt Gingrich suffer the same fate? Not necessarily.

Many observers seem surprised that Mr. Gingrich's, well, colorful personal history isn't causing him more problems, but they shouldn't be. If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, conservatives often seem inclined to accept that tribute, voting for candidates who publicly espouse conservative moral principles whatever their personal behavior. Did I mention that David Vitter is still in the Senate?

And Mr. Gingrich has some advantages none of the previous challengers had. He is by no means the deep thinker he imagines himself to be, but he's a glib speaker, even when he has no idea what he's talking about. And my sense is that he's also very good at doublethink - that even when he knows what he's saying isn't true, he manages to believe it while he's saying it. So he may not implode like his predecessors.

The larger point, however, is that whoever finally gets the Republican nomination will be a deeply flawed candidate. And these flaws won't be an accident, the result of bad luck regarding who chose to make a run this time around; the fact that the party is committed to demonstrably false beliefs means that only fakers or the befuddled can get through the selection process.

Of course, given the terrible economic picture and the tendency of voters to blame whoever holds the White House for bad times, even a deeply flawed G.O.P. nominee might very well win the presidency. But then what?

The Washington Post quotes an unnamed Republican adviser who compared what happened to Mr. Cain, when he suddenly found himself leading in the polls, to the proverbial tale of the dog who had better not catch that car he's chasing. "Something great and awful happened, the dog caught the car. And of course, dogs don't know how to drive cars. So he had no idea what to do with it."

The same metaphor, it seems to me, might apply to the G.O.P. pursuit of the White House next year. If the dog actually catches the car - the actual job of running the U.S. government - it will have no idea what to do, because the realities of government in the 21st century bear no resemblance to the mythology all ambitious Republican politicians must pretend to believe. And what will happen then?
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times






The Quotable Quote...



"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
~~~ Greek Proverb









Amid The Architecture Of Declining Capitalism
Memes, Death Genes And Real Estate Schemes
By Phil Rockstroh

The recent pepper spraying "incident" at the University of California at Davis represents more than an opportunity to create a cleverly photoshopped, viral meme. The act is part and parcel of a larger collective mindset--a proclivity towards authoritarian overreaction now deeply internalized in daily life in the U.S.

To cite only a few examples, by means such as, "zero tolerance" policies in public school systems, to "no knock" warrants, to snooping on and control over employees private lives by corporate employers, to the war on the Bill of Rights that is the so-called war on drugs, to the brutal suppression of constitutionally granted rights to free assembly and free expression by militarized police forces, to the unconstitutional killing of both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals abroad by predator drone attacks--daily existence within the nation has become more repressive, less inclined to the acceptance of the moments of creativity and uncertainty inherent to freedom. In fits and starts, by law and deed, the U.S. has moved closer in the direction of a panopticon-prone, brutality-leveling, waking authoritarian nightmare than a democratic republic devoted to erring in the direction of the ideals of justice and liberty.

Granted, such ideals will never exist in pure form. Still, by the same token, the sane neither shill for utopia nor become adapted to tyranny.

The act of pepper spraying peaceful protesters by the enforcers of official power should not be viewed as an incidental occurrence. Conversely, the act is emblematic of a mode of mind gripping the nation and one that must be challenged in the streets.

Memes are ever-replicating, exponentially reproducing, collectively evolving bits of human thoughtware--while our bodies are the hardware. If their resonances remain strictly in the realm of pixels and soundbites, a meme will translate into little more than pop culture ephemera. Memes must be carried by flesh into the non-virtual world; their human carriers might even be peppered sprayed themselves and carted off to jail, if it comes to that.

Otherwise, as is the case at present, memes dissipate...dissolving amid the ever-proliferating mirages of the commercial hologram. Thus the tragedy of the consumer state: The manner the present age of media-borne illusion usurps our instinctual drives and individual longings--the appetites and imaginings--that compel our life force to its zenith--but instead will induce us to spend our lives in the pursuit of careerist vanity and consumer dreck, and, in so doing, serves to deliver our passions to a wasteland of electronic dust.

When the inhuman demands of a seemingly implacable system control the lives of a people, an aura of nebulous fear, nettling resentment and habitual passivity, alternating with impulsive aggression, will seize the spirit of a culture. This is what Walker Percy wrote of a similar internalized landscape:

"Death in the form of death genes shall not prevail over me, for death genes are one thing but it is something else to name the death genes and know them and stand against them and dare them. I am different from my death genes and therefore not subject to them. My father had the same death genes but he feared them and did not name them and thought he could roar out old Route 66 and stay ahead of them or grab me and be pals or play Brahms and keep them, the death genes, happy, so he fell prey to them." ~~~ excerpted from Percy's novel, The Second Coming
In a declining culture, the vitality available within daily experience withers and falls away, and is soon supplanted by the dismal scions of the death genes. As reflected by the architecture (e.g., bland, prefab retail strips; shoddily built subdivision housing; sterile office parks) of late capitalism, beauty and common communion holds no dominion. As a consequence, fecund dreams dry to dust and rise from the arid land as blinding squalls of displaced fear and anger.

Antithetically, as an antidote, on Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I trundled by subway train down to Zuccotti Park for a taste of liberty. Of course, this particular national holiday is the marking and celebration of an age of genocide in regard to native folk.

My father is half Comanche; he was born on a reservation in the U.S. midwest. In general, on Thanksgiving Day, at least one-fourth of my blood (and the rest of the three-fourths of my humanity, and all of my soul) finds the task of remaining a polite dinner guest a bit difficult when people insist on being toxically (at times, belligerently) ignorant on the subject.

Significantly, by their ongoing acts of aggression perpetrated against the OWS denizens in Liberty Park in lower Manhattan (which, in itself, is an indigenous name, Manna-hata, meaning, "island of many hills") the mayor of New York City and the NYPD have revealed that they regard the area as Injun' Country. From the start of the OWS occupation, the protectors of the present order surrounded the "dirty, dangerous savages" within Liberty Park by blue uniform-clad troops and by force attempted to drive them off the land--land that is as much ours to appropriate as it is their own or anyone else's.

And don't talk to me about private property...The land in question was stolen from the get-go in a shady real estate swindle. Moreover, the OWS movement is a challenge to those types of societal notions that have bestowed legitimacy on larceny.

Regarding the almost exclusive exploitation of land for commercial exploitation e.g., the practice of claiming as private property, inflating the price of, and ceaselessly turning over for profit parcels of real estate has proven an enterprise that has degraded both landscape and soulscape, and has proven to be a less than propitious practice in regard to the health of the community at large and the planet itself. Withal, this mode of mind has engendered a culture in which the brutal and ruthless thrive...has enabled the rise of psychopathic personality types to positions of unapproachable power whose creed is, all the things of the earth are 'mine' to exploit and it is my right to bring to submission, lest I'm entitled to destroy, those things I cannot possess and control."

Conversely, my hours spent in Liberty Park have done my partial native blood good. Why? Because we are a veritable Injun' uprising. And that is why they fear us and have tried to silence our drums and our mic-check, tribal gatherings and they have torn down our Tepee-like tents. Caucasian swindlers scammed the native people of this island in the first place; hence, the scam artists of Wall Street are only the latest incarnation of that European cultural trait--and that is the true tradition of Thanksgiving. But, they are discovering that another, lost tradition is coalescing across the land--the tradition of resistance.

The actions of and reactions to the OWS movement serve to reveal the hypocritical core of the present duopolistic political system. For example, if the recent brutal, police "crackdowns" (in truth, outright abuses of constitutionally granted rights) on the OWS movement had been coordinated and perpetrated under the Bush administration, Democratic Party partisans would have been calling for hearings of impeachment to be convened against George W. Bush. The lack of outrage among liberal insiders regarding recent events is an object lesson into the invidious nature of duopolistic rule. What Democratic Party partisans warn against--the big business beholden, freedom phobic, Republican agenda--is advanced in a more efficient manner when a Democrat is installed by the 1% in the U.S. presidency. Apropos, Democratic Party apologists are as guilty of carrying the agenda of the national security/corporate state as are oligarch-duped teabagger sorts.

More and more, nationally, as well as globally, people are catching on to the machinations of the 1%, to the scams of crime syndicates such as Wall Street and the IMF, to the means by which we have been coerced, by debt enslavement to neoliberalism's global company store, into spending the fleeting days of this finite life working for the inequitable power, wealth and privilege of these ruthless few.

At present, growing numbers have taken heed of the situation and are fighting back. Within the span of a few short months, the narrative of the corporate media has, to a limited extent, been altered. Yet, at this point, the development is merely background noise: The neoliberal order is collapsing; capitalism itself is nearly at the end of its five hundred year run.

OWS is part of a global movement of resistance that is laying the groundwork for a new paradigm. Although, change will not come without struggle and suffering, without defeats, betrayals and moments of despair. But, given the unsustainable nature of the present order, a shift in both perception and practice is inevitable. Yet when there are this many variables (known and unknown) in play, gazing darkly or through rose-tinted eyewear will prove neither adequate nor helpful.

Finally, engaging in acts of resistance are often not about winning or losing a particular battle; rather, it is the propitious manner the act transforms one's character by drawing one out of isolation and into the heart of life.

By such acts, we are strengthened. Our resistance to the present order has deepened our character and strengthened our resolve, and has bestowed upon us the courage to care deeply about the lives and fates of others as well as the imperiled state of our planet's environment. We can--and we will--meet one another in reclaimed public space, and, finally, and, at long last, take up residence in a life-vivifying landscape where the death genes grip is loosened and where the wit of the world remains.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.




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The Winter Of Our Occupation
By Michael Moore

And now it is winter. Wall Street rejoices, hoping that the change of seasons will mean a change in our spirit, our commitment to stop them.

They couldn't be more wrong. Have they not heard of Washington and the troops at Valley Forge? The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike in the winter of 1936-37? The Michigan Wolverines crushing Ohio State in the 1950 Blizzard Bowl? When it comes to winter, it is the time historically when the people persevere and the forces of evil make their retreat!

We are not even 12 weeks old, yet Occupy Wall Street has grown so fast, so big, none of us can keep up with the hundreds of towns who have joined the movement, or the thousands of actions -- some of them just simple ones in neighborhoods, schools and organizations -- that have happened. The national conversation has been irreversibly changed. Now everyone is talking about how the 1% are getting away with all the money while the 99% struggle to make ends meet. People are no longer paralyzed by despair or apathy. Most know that now is the time to reclaim our country from the bankers, the lobbyists -- and their gofers: the members of the United States Congress and the 50 state legislatures.

And they're crazy if they think that a little climate chaos (otherwise known as winter in the 21st century) that they've helped to bring about is going to stop us.

I would like to propose to my Occupying sisters and brothers that there are many ways to keep Occupy Wall Street going through the winter months. There is perhaps no better time to move the movement indoors for a few months -- and watch it grow even bigger! (For those who have the stamina to maintain the outdoor occupations, by all means, keep it up -- and the rest of us will do our best to help you and keep you warm!)

The winter gives us an amazing opportunity to expand our actions against the captains of capitalism who have occupied our homes with their fraudulent mortgage system which has tossed millions of families out onto the curb; a cruel health care system that has told 50 million Americans "if you can't afford a doctor, go F yourself"; a student loan system that sends 22-year-olds into an immediate "debtors' prison" of working lousy jobs for which they didn't go to school but now have to take because they're in hock for tens of thousands of dollars for the next two decades; and a jobs market that keeps 25 million Americans un- or under-employed -- and much of the rest of the workers forced to accept wage cuts, health care reductions and zero job security.

But we in the Occupy Movement reject this version of the "American Dream." Instead, I suggest we shift our focus for this winter to the following actions:

OCCUPY THE WINTER

A proposal to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street from Michael Moore

1. Occupy Our Homes. Sorry, banks, a roof over one's head is a human right, and you will no longer occupy our homes through foreclosure and eviction because well, you see, they are our homes, not yours. You may hold the mortgage; you don't hold the right to throw us or our neighbors out into the cold. With almost one in three home mortgages currently in foreclosure, nearing foreclosure or "underwater," the Occupy Movement must form local "Occupy Strike Forces" to create human shields when the banks come to throw people out of their homes. If the foreclosure has already happened, then we must help families move back into their foreclosed homes -- literally (see this clip from my last film to watch how a home re-occupation is accomplished). Beginning today, Take Back the Land, plus many other citizens' organizations nationwide, are kicking off Occupy Our Homes. Numerous actions throughout the day today have already resulted in many families physically taking back their homes. This will continue every day until the banks are forced to stop their fraudulent practices, until homeowners are allowed to change their mortgage so that it reflects the true value of their homes, and until those who can no longer afford a mortgage are allowed to stay in their homes and pay rent. I beseech the news media to cover these actions -- they are happening everywhere. Evictions, though rarely covered (you need a Kardashian in your home as you're being evicted to qualify for news coverage) are not a new story (see this scene I filmed in 1988). Also, please remember the words of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Toledo (in 'Capitalism: A Love Story'): Do not leave your homes if the bank forecloses on you! Let them take you to court and then YOU ask the judge to make them produce a copy of your mortgage. They can't. It was chopped up a hundred different ways, bundled with a hundred other mortgages, and sold off to the Chinese. If they can't produce the mortgage, they can't evict you.

2. Occupy Your College. In nearly every other democracy on the planet, students go to college for free or almost free. Why do those countries do that? Because they know that for their society to advance, they must have an educated population. Without that, productivity, innovation and an informed electorate is stunted and everyone suffers as a result. Here's how we do it in the U.S.A.: make education one of our lowest priorities, graduate students who know little about the world or their own government or the economy, and then force them into crushing debt before they even have their first job. That way has really worked well for us, hasn't it? It's made us the world leader in … in … well, ok, we're like 27th or 34th in everything now (except war). This has to end. Students should spend this winter doing what they are already doing on dozens of campuses -- holding sit-ins, occupying the student loan office, nonviolently disrupting the university regents meetings, and pitching their tents on the administration's lawn. Young people -- we, the '60s generation, promised to create a better world for you. We got halfway there -- now you have to complete the job. Do not stop until these wars are ended, the Pentagon budget is cut in half, and the rich are forced to pay their taxes. And demand that that money go to your education. We'll be there with you on all of this! And when we get this fixed and you graduate, instead of being $40,000 in debt, go see the friggin' world, or tinker around in your garage a la the two Steves, or start a band. Enjoy life, discover, explore, experiment, find your way. Anything but the assistant manager at Taco Bell.

3. Occupy Your Job. Let's spend the winter organizing workplaces into unions. OR, if you already have a union, demand that your leaders get off their ass and get aggressive like our grandparents did. For chrissakes, surely you know we would not have a middle class if it weren't for the strikes of the 1930s-1950s?! In three weeks we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the workers in my hometown of Flint, Michigan taking over and occupying the General Motors factories for 44 days in the dead of winter. Their actions ignited a labor movement that lifted tens of millions out of poverty and into the middle class. It's time to do it again. (According to the Census Bureau and the New York Times, 100 million Americans either live in or near poverty. Disgraceful. Greed has destroyed the core fabric of our communities. Enough!) Here are two good unions to get your fellow workers to sign up and join: UE and SEIU. The CWA are also good. Here's how to get a quick primer in organizing your place of employment (don't forget to be careful while you do this!). If your company is threatening to close down and move the jobs elsewhere, then it's time to occupy the workplace (again, you can get a lesson in how to successfully occupy your factory from my movie).

4. Occupy Your Bank. This is an easy one. Just leave them. Move your checking and your credit card to a nonprofit credit union. It's safe and the decisions made there aren't based on greed. And if a bank tries to evict your neighbor, Occupy the local branch with 20 other people and call the press. Post it on the internet.

5. Occupy the Insurance Man. It's time to not only stand up for the 50 million without health insurance but to also issue a single, simple demand: The elimination of for-profit, privately-controlled health insurance companies. It is nothing short of barbaric to allow businesses to make a profit off people when they get sick. We don't allow anyone to make a profit when we need the fire department or the police. Until recently we would never allow a company to make a profit by operating in a public school. The same should be true for when you need to see a doctor or stay in the hospital. So I say it's long overdue for us to go and Occupy Humana, United Health, Cigna and even the supposed "nonprofit" Blue Crosses. An action on their lawns, in their lobbies, or at the for-profit hospitals -- this is what is needed.

So -- there are my ideas for the five places we can Occupy this winter. Help the foreclosed-upon to Occupy their homes. Occupy your college campus, especially the student loan office and the regents meetings. Occupy your job by getting everyone to sign a union card -- or by refusing to let the CEO ship your job overseas. Occupy your Chase or Citi or Bank of America branch by closing your account and moving it to a credit union. And Occupy the insurance company offices, the pharmaceutical companies' headquarters and the for-profit hospitals until the White House and Congress pass the true single-payer universal health care bill they failed to pass in 2010.

My friends, the rich are running scared right now. You need no further proof of this than to read this story from last week. The Republicans' top strategist met privately with them and told them that they had better change their tune or they were going to be crushed by the Occupy Wall Street movement. They didn't have to change their greedy actions, he assured them -- just the way they talk and PR the situation. He told them never to use the word "capitalism" -- it has now been made a dirty word by the Occupy movement, he said. Only say "economic freedom" from now on, he cautioned. And don't criticize the movement -- because the majority of Americans either agree with it or are feeling the same way. Just tell the Occupiers and the distressed Americans: "I get it." Seriously.

Yes, in just 12 short weeks we have killed their most sacred word -- Capitalism -- and we have them on the run, on the defensive. They should be. Millions are coming after them and our only goal is to remove them from power and replace them with a fair system that is controlled by the 99%. The 1% have been able to get both political parties to do their bidding. Why should only 1% of the population get to have two parties -- and the rest of us have none? That, too, is going to change. In my next letter, I will suggest what we can do to Occupy the Electoral Process. But first we must start with those who pull the strings of the puppets in the Congress. That's why it's called Occupy Wall Street. Always better to deal with man in charge, don't you think?

Let's Occupy the Winter! An #OWS Winter will certainly lead to a very hopeful American Spring.
(c) 2010 Michael Moore is an activist, author, and filmmaker. See more of his work at his website MichaelMoore.com





The Dead Letter Office...





Heil Obama,

Dear Uberfuhrer Stabenow,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your new law destroying the 5th amendment to the US Constitution, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Demoncratic Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 12-31-2011. We salute you Frau Stabenow, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama




Express mail forms and priority mailboxes sit on display at the
Capitol Station, Monday, December 5, 2011, in Springfield, Illinois.


The Postal Service Plots Its Own Demise
By John Nichols

There are many appropriate targets for Occupy Wall Street protests. But the OWS protesters hit a bull's-eye when they invaded a National Press Club briefing where Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe-who likes to make like a corporate executive and refer to himself as "Chief Operating Officer of the US Postal Service" - was giving a speech about the need to close local post offices, layoff workers and, though this was unspoken, take the steps that will lead to the privatization of the one of the country's greatest public assets.

"Stop closing post offices," chanted the activists who occupied the press club. "Don't privatize the post office. It's a public service. It's not a profit center for FedEx and UPS to rip off the people."

Postmasters general do not usually become the targets of passionate opposition. But the protesters were chanting: "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donahoe has got to go."

And rightly so.

On Monday, Donahue laid out a plan that, if implemented, would destroy the postal service as most Americans know it.

And the destruction would come not out of necessity but to perpetuate an austerity lie.

The supposed financial crisis facing the US Postal Service is actually a fiscal fantasy, The USPS, which continues to provide vital services to 150 million households and business each day, which sustains rural communities and urban neighborhoods across he country as a Main Street mainstay, which employs hundreds of thousands of Americans and which has a history of being in the forefront of technological and societal progress, is not in trouble because of competition from the Internet or changing letter-writing patterns. It is in crisis because Congress forced the the postal service to pay roughly $5.5 billion a year into a trust fund for future retiree pensions. The USPS inspector general says the postal service has overfunded pension obligations by $75 billion-something no other federal agency is required to do. In addition, the postal service has been slapped with other charges and obligations that make it appear to be headed for bankruptcy. Simply treating the USPS fairly when it comes to the prepayment of pensions would ease most of the burden facing the postal service.

But Congress is dithering, the for-profit mail services that want to carve up the USPS are salivating, and the postmaster general is surrendering-proposing to end next-day delivery of letters, postcards and other First Class mail.

That postmaster general surrender was signaled Monday by a brutal proposal for deep cost cutting that could:

1. So diminish and slow down first-class mail delivery that the changes will create an opening for private carriers; indeed, Americans are almost being pushed into the arms of UPS and FedEx.

2. Ultimately cause as many as 100,000 job losses is the biggest single blow to employment by any employer in the country, Postal service job cuts hit people of color, women and veterans hardest, as the USPS has a long history of hiring staffs that "look like America." The proposed closing of more than 250 of 561 postal sorting centers is the equivalent of a wave of factory closings like nothing the country saw even in the depths of the recent recession. 



3. Have a devastating impact on thousands of rural communities, where post offices are slated for closure. This is really a case of Washington abandoning rural areas and hard-hit urban neighborhoods at precisely the time they need the support of an engaged federal government. 



4. So delay delivery that it would create a nine-day lag time for periodical. This would be devastating for the print press and for the public discourse. Weekly newspapers and magazines might not even arrive until after their next editions were published.

5. Wreck havoc with absentee voting and military voting processes that are already a mess in many states. Hardest hit will be states that have gone to vote-by-mail systems, such as Oregon. At a time when Voter ID laws are making it harder to cast ballots at the polls, this makes absentee voting.

By every reasonable measure, the postal service is proposing suicide in the form of not-so-slow cuts. "The Postal Service plan will hasten the demise of the USPS," American Postal Workers Union president Cliff Guffey said with regard to the agency's announcement that it would seek an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission on plans to eliminate next-day delivery of first-class mail and periodicals. "The USPS should be modernizing and striving to remain relevant in the digital age, not reducing service to the American people."

Under what the postmaster general's "cost-cutting plan," the postal service would shutter almost half the nation's mail-processing centers and shed tens of thousands of jobs-at a time when even the most optimistic observers say the country faces a steep climb to address widespread unemployment. The changes would make it impossible for the postal service to reconstitute itself in better times. As such, they an open invitation to private carriers to take over lucrative routes and services-while leaving the great mass of Americans with diminished and substandard services.

The cuts proposed by the postmaster general go way beyond cost-cutting. This is the sounding of the death knell for a postal service that traces its roots to the nation's first days and that remains an essential service for isolated rural communities and neglected urban neighborhoods.

"The so-called Postmaster General is going to announce details that will lead to the end of the United States Postal Service and universal postal delivery in this country," said Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, who highlighted the damage the postal service will do to the broader economy.

"This would be an incredible blow to our economy. With real unemployment at 16 percent we cannot afford another 100,000 people laid off," explained DeFazio. "I've already heard from small business owners that rely on USPS and are concerned that the plan would kill their businesses. Some rural Oregonians would have to drive 15 to 20 miles to access their mail. Subscribers of small rural weekly newspapers would have to wait 7-9 days for their papers to be delivered. This is a short-sighted proposal that fails to address the serious long-term issues facing USPS." 

(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.








Marching Off The Cliff
By Noam Chomsky

A task of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, now under way in Durban, South Africa, is to extend earlier policy decisions that were limited in scope and only partially implemented.

These decisions trace back to the U.N. Convention of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which the U.S. refused to join. The Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period ends in 2012. A fairly general pre-conference mood was captured by a New York Times headline: "Urgent Issues but Low Expectations."

As the delegates meet in Durban, a report on newly updated digests of polls by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals that "publics around the world and in the United States say their government should give global warming a higher priority and strongly support multilateral action to address it."

Most U.S. citizens agree, though PIPA clarifies that the percentage "has been declining over the last few years, so that American concern is significantly lower than the global average - 70 percent as compared to 84 percent."

"Americans do not perceive that there is a scientific consensus on the need for urgent action on climate change â(euro) [ A large majority think that they will be personally affected by climate change eventually, but only a minority thinks that they are being affected now, contrary to views in most other countries. Americans tend to underestimate the level of concern among other Americans."

These attitudes aren't accidental. In 2009 the energy industries, backed by business lobbies, launched major campaigns that cast doubt on the near-unanimous consensus of scientists on the severity of the threat of human-induced global warming.

The consensus is only "near-unanimous" because it doesn't include the many experts who feel that climate-change warnings don't go far enough, and the marginal group that deny the threat's validity altogether.

The standard "he says/she says" coverage of the issue keeps to what is called "balance": the overwhelming majority of scientists on one side, the denialists on the other. The scientists who issue the more dire warnings are largely ignored.

One effect is that scarcely one-third of the U.S. population believes that there is a scientific consensus on the threat of global warming - far less than the global average, and radically inconsistent with the facts.

It's no secret that the U.S. government is lagging on climate issues. "Publics around the world in recent years have largely disapproved of how the United States is handling the problem of climate change," according to PIPA. "In general, the United States has been most widely seen as the country having the most negative effect on the world's environment, followed by China. Germany has received the best ratings."

To gain perspective on what's happening in the world, it's sometimes useful to adopt the stance of intelligent extraterrestrial observers viewing the strange doings on Earth. They would be watching in wonder as the richest and most powerful country in world history now leads the lemmings cheerfully off the cliff.

Last month, the International Energy Agency, which was formed on the initiative of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1974, issued its latest report on rapidly increasing carbon emissions from fossil fuel use.

The IEA estimated that if the world continues on its present course, the "carbon budget" will be exhausted by 2017. The budget is the quantity of emissions that can keep global warming at the 2 degrees Celsius level considered the limit of safety.

IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said, "The door is closing â(euro) [ if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum (for safety). The door will be closed forever."

Also last month, the U.S. Department of Energy reported the emissions figures for 2010. Emissions "jumped by the biggest amount on record," The Associated Press reported, meaning that "levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario" anticipated by the International Panel on Climate Change in 2007.

John Reilly, co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's program on climate change, told the AP that scientists have generally found the IPCC predictions to be too conservative - unlike the fringe of denialists who gain public attention. Reilly reported that the IPCC's worst-case scenario was about in the middle of the MIT scientists' estimates of likely outcomes.

As these ominous reports were released, the Financial Times devoted a full page to the optimistic expectations that the U.S. might become energy-independent for a century with new technology for extracting North American fossil fuels.

Though projections are uncertain, the Financial Times reports, the U.S. might "leapfrog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's largest producer of liquid hydrocarbons, counting both crude oil and lighter natural gas liquids."

In this happy event, the U.S. could expect to retain its global hegemony. Beyond some remarks about local ecological impact, the Financial Times said nothing about what kind of a world would emerge from these exciting prospects. Energy is to burn; the global environment be damned.

Just about every government is taking at least halting steps to do something about the likely impending catastrophe. The U.S. is leading the way - backward. The Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives is now dismantling environmental measures introduced by Richard Nixon, in many respects the last liberal president.

This reactionary behavior is one of many indications of the crisis of U.S. democracy in the past generation. The gap between public opinion and public policy has grown to a chasm on central issues of current policy debate such as the deficit and jobs. However, thanks to the propaganda offensive, the gap is less than what it should be on the most serious issue on the international agenda today - arguably in history.

The hypothetical extraterrestrial observers can be pardoned if they conclude that we seem to be infected by some kind of lethal insanity.
(c) 2011 Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East & U.S. Foreign Policy: Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice. His most recent book is Gaza In Crisis.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Bob Engelhardt ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



If global warming isn't under control by 2006, scientists say it
will achieve unstoppable momentum, destroying the only planet we have.


Report: Global Warming May Be Irreversible By 2006

GENEVA-A new report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned Monday that global warming is likely to become completely irreversible if no successful effort is made to slow down the trend before 2006.

Unless greenhouse-gas emissions are drastically reduced by then, the report concludes, it will be too late to avoid inflicting a grave environmental catastrophe upon future generations.

"We have absolutely no time to waste," said Dr. William Tumminelli, lead author of the report, which stresses it is utterly crucial the world cut its carbon footprint in half by the year 2000. "If we wait until 1998 or even 1995 to really start doing something about climate change, our planet's rising temperature will already have set in motion a series of devastating and irreparable long-term consequences. We need to have strict international rules in place well ahead of 2006 or, to be blunt, many of the earth's inhabitants will be doomed."

"The situation could not possibly be more urgent," Tumminelli added.

The IPCC report-the most comprehensive study of its kind ever undertaken-estimates the failure to address global warming immediately could result in sea levels rising 6 inches by the end of the 20th century, 2000-2009 being the hottest decade ever recorded, and roughly half the Arctic ice cap melting by 2011.

Even before 2006, when the report indicates the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach "entirely unmanageable levels," scientists confirm the likelihood of an alarming increase in the frequency and sever­ity of hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and droughts, which could lead to death tolls in the hundreds of thousands.

"Climate change is the deadliest crisis currently facing humanity, so needless to say, we can expect it to be the dominant issue of the 2000 presidential election," Brookings Institution political analyst Gloria Leting said. "It stands to reason that, as the world's foremost producer of greenhouse gases, the United States will want to take the lead in preventing this disaster while we still have time."

"We can also count on hearing U.S. Senate candidates make firm campaign promises to ratify the Kyoto Protocol as soon as they take office," continued Leting, referring to the U.N. accord that aims to enforce emission standards starting in 2005. "Our elected officials realize Americans don't want to suffer the embarrassment of not being among the first nations to approve such an vitally important agreement."

The report also outlines a set of year-by-year goals aimed at curbing emissions prior to 2006, such as weatherizing all homes by 1979, replacing household light bulbs with compact fluorescent models by 1985, phasing out fossil fuels by 1992, and taking steps to ensure the world population never reaches the "exceedingly dangerous" 7 billion mark.

If the 2006 deadline isn't met, climatologists warn the world will eventually experience planet-wide cataclysms, including massive shortages of potable water, insufficient crop productivity, the extinction of numerous species, and unprecedented outbreaks of famine and pandemic disease.

"The picture by the end of the 21st century becomes quite bleak, frankly," Dr. Tumminelli said. "I, for one, would not want to live in the world this report describes: entire Asian cities underwater from monsoon flooding, mass human diasporas, wars fought over the scraps of habitable land still remaining-hell on earth, basically. Our only hope is for the nations of the world to put aside their individual interests and take decisive action by 2006."

Although the report represents the collaborative efforts of several thousand scientists, some observers expressed doubt about the objectivity of the study.

"I think the report is a bit reactionary, and perhaps even politically motivated." said Arthur Bainbridge, a climate policy specialist based in Washington. "Plenty of alternative models have estimated 2008 or even 2010 as the absolute point of no return."
(c) 2011The Onion




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In This Edition

Chris Floyd returns with, "The Grand Delusion."

Uri Avnery exposes, "The Fearmongers."

Matt Taibbi warns of, "Indefinite Detention Of American Citizens: Coming Soon to Battlefield U.S.A."

Amy Goodman explains, "Climate Apartheid."

Jim Hightower explores, "The Deep Shallowness of Prof. Gingrich."

Helen Thomas sings, "Is That All There Is?"

James Donahue recalls, "The Golden Age When Women Ruled."

David Sirota shows, "What Real Education Reform Looks Like."

David Swanson says, "Try Not To Think Of A Newt."

Sheila Samples examines, "A Hopeless Legion Of Loons."

Paul Krugman considers, "Depression And Democracy."

Phil Rockstroh quotes Mark Twain, "By Imbeciles Who Really Mean It."

William Rivers Pitt tells, "Short Tales From Bizarro World: The GOP Primaries Edition."

Florida hate monger David Caton wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols wonders, " Can Paul Ryan-and His Agenda-Be Beat? It's Possible."

Terry Jones asks, "War Drums Are Beating For Iran. But Who's Playing Them?"

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Will Durst plays, "Whack-A-Pol" but first Uncle Ernie foresees, "Desolation Row."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Randall Enos, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Tom Tomorrow, Micah Wright, Paul Jamiol, Jeff Stahler, Evil GOP Bastards.Com, Dorthea Lange, Getty Images, TriStar Pictures, Time Magazine, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










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Desolation Row
By Ernest Stewart

And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
Desolation Row ~~~ Bob Dylan

"President Obama should not forget that the Iranian airspace was clearly violated by the U.S. drone and therefore the U.S. should first apologize for that. We ask Mr. Obama how he and the U.S. would have reacted if U.S. airspace had been violated by a spy drone." ~~~ Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast

"SIXTY FIVE (65) companies that Florida Family Association targeted with emails did NOT advertise again during the only two episodes of All-American Muslim that aired this past week. The following companies did not advertise again during the December 4th and December 5th, 2011 episodes of All-American Muslim: 3M (Command, Scotchbrand tape), Airborne Vitamin, Amway, Anheuser Busch Inbev (Select55), Art Instruction Schools, Bamboozles, Bank of America (Cash Rewards), Bare Escentuals, Brother International (Ptouch), Campbell's Soup, Capital One, Church & Dwight (Oxi Clean, Arm & Hammer), City Furniture, Conagra (Hunt's Diced Tomatoes), Corinthian Colleges (Everst411), Cotton, Inc., Cumberland Packing (Sweet'N Low), Dell computers, Diamond Foods (Kettlebrand Chips), Estee Lauder (Clinique), ET Browe (Palmer's Cocoa butter), Gap, General Motors (Chevy Runs Deep), Good Year, Green Mountain Coffee, Guthy Renker (Proactiv), Hershey kisses, Home Depot, Honda North America, HTC Phones, Ikea, JC Penney, JP Morgan Chase (Chase Sapphire), Kayak.com, Kellogg (Special K), Koa Brands (John Frieda), Leapfrog Enterprise (Leapster Explorer), Mars (Dove Chocolate), McDonald's, Nationwide Insurance, News Corp (We bought a zoo movie), Nintendo (Mariokartz.com), Novartis (Theraflu), Old Navy, Pernod Ricard (Kahlua), Petsmart, Pier One, Pfizer (Centrum vitamins), Procter & Gamble (Align Probiotic, Crest, Febreze, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, Pur, Tide), Progressive Insurance, Prudential Financial, Radio Shack, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, SC Johnson (Drano, Glade, Scrubbing Bubbles), Sears , Signet (Kay Jewelers), Sonic Drive-ins, Subaru, THQ (uDraw), T-Mobil, Toyota (Camry), Volkswagen, Vtech (Mobi Go, V Reader), Wal-Mart and Whirlpool (Maytag)." ~~~ David Canton Executive Director Florida Family Association

"I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties."
~~~ Ron Paul ~~~

The trouble with publishing a magazine on Friday is that Friday is most often the day our political masters like to sneak various acts of treason under the radar, and a lot of really bad bills get signed into law on Fridays!

The House and Senate are currently ironing out a few details in the current National Defense Authorization Act before sending it off for Barry's signature, which will likely be signed on (you guessed it!) Friday. Those treasonous parts of the bill will no doubt remain intact. The military will be charged with apprehending terrorists and whisking them away to a "Happy Camp" for disposal.

The trouble is that this isn't the real intent behind this new ability given to the government and military, in spite of those damn pieces of paper, viz., The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. What none of the Sin-ators or Con-gress people or talking media heads are mentioning is the real reason for these new illegal powers, has little to do with terrorism and everything to do with the coming economic collapse!

What the rest of the world knows, including our adversaries like Russia and China, is that they really don't have to attack us and risk retaliation, but just wait until our money becomes worthless, like the current crisis of the Euro, or what happened to the German Mark during the 1920's. You may recall that in the latter case people who did have a job got paid twice a day because the cost of anything rose rapidly to the point that if you waited to get your money on Friday, or even after work, your money would be worthless, and people were running around pushing wheel barrows full of money just to buy a loaf of bread, if you were lucky; if not, you could throw your money into the fire place to heat your home!

So, when this comes to America in the next year, month, or week or so, the politicians and their 1% masters are going to need a way to keep all of America from killing the worthless lot of them. Unlike the 1930's depression, when a lot of folks were used to being dirt poor and starving was a common occurrence, today's families aren't, and will certainly revolt! Ergo, our corpo-rat masters have made plans to send us off behind the barbed wire to be worked to death in labor camps. Fortunately, we're so used to eating poisonous foods full of wood fiber and such that most will be able to digest those loafs of sawdust bread like the Germans used to feed the Jews!

The folks in the cities will pretty much take care of themselves once the food is gone from the shelves and various gangs go house to house stealing and murdering what's left in a nightmare world of Mad Max, while the real Mad Max and his 1% pals sit comfortably behind gated, guarded walls as all hell breaks out around them. The military is currently recruiting our children to specialize in internment camp guards once the military rounds you and your family up for shipment to a processing center, and then into that right column or the left column. Those in the military who won't do the 1%'s bidding whether in the Army or the National Guard are right now being carefully weeded out to join us in the camps!

I know, to most Americans, all of this must sound like crazy talk, but just you wait and see!

In Other News

Sometimes you really have to wonder about Obamahood? I mean, how dumb must you be to ask Iran for our spy plane back. As you may have heard Iran took control of one of our super secret RQ-170 spy drones the other day and landed it safely and then showed it off to the world. "The U.S. spy drone is in the Islamic Republic of Iran's possession, and our country will decide what to do in this regard," said Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi.

We, of course, denied they did it, saying it malfunctioned and crashed. Not likely, as falling from 50,000 ft, it's cruising altitude, will generally leave a mark, causing a dent on the aircraft, and as Iran showed the world, there isn't a scratch on it. They jammed it's control with electronic counter measures and took over its flight inside Iran some 140 miles from the Afghan border and landed it at one of their air bases.

Instead of apologizing for intruding over their air space and promising never to spy again, much less murdering their scientist and trying to starve them into submission, we just demanded they return our property, so we could use it again to spy on them. Needless to say, the Iranians laughed in our faces, and began to reverse engineer the plane. Of course, Washington stuck to its story, no matter how obvious it was that we were lying, and added they didn't have the knowledge or know-how to reverse engineer it. Perhaps, perhaps not, but the Iranians friends, the Chinese and the Russians, certainly have that knowledge, and I'm sure would be happy to make a trade with the Iranians for it. Perhaps a fleet of those drones or perhaps a few atomic bombs might be traded, if they haven't given them some already?

The chicken-hawks in Con-gress won't be happy until they can start WWIII, which is a lot closer to happening then even they realize. Perhaps then the American public will have a change of heart when others start doing to us what we've been doing to the world, and bomb us back to the Stone Age, perhaps not? We've never learned, it seems, that what goes around, will come around, and when you live by the sword, you WILL die by the sword!

And Finally

You have no doubt heard about Lowe's Home Improvement pulling their ads from TLC's "All-American Muslim" TV show? The retail giant has found itself facing a growing backlash after they pulled ads from the reality show.

Lowes stopped advertising on TLC's "All-American Muslim" after a fascist hate group known as the Florida Family Association complained, saying the program was "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values." Traditional values like hate-mongering, bigotry, and racism. So, I guess they have a point?

The show premiered last month and chronicles the lives of five families from Dearborn, Michigan -- my home town.

A state senator from Southern California said Sunday he was considering calling for a boycott. I'm not considering it; I'm calling for a boycott, like many others are.

Calling the Lowe's decision "un-American" and "naked religious bigotry," Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, said he would also consider legislative action if Lowe's doesn't apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads. The senator sent a letter outlining his complaints to Lowe's Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock. I sent one, too, see below...

"The show is about what it's like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of discrimination is exactly what's happening here with Lowe's," Lieu said.

The Florida group sent three emails to its members, asking them to petition Lowe's to pull its advertising. Its website was updated to say that "supporters' emails to advertisers make a difference."

The North Carolina-based Lowe's issued a statement apologizing for having "managed to make some people very unhappy," but not for subscribing to hate-mongering and bigotry!

"Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lightning rod for many of those views," the statement said. "As a result, we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance."
So, naturally, I wrote their CEO Robert A. Niblock a letter:

Hey, Robert,

Boy, did you f*ck up, huh? So, bending over to please some tiny group of fascist, hate mongering assholes may cost your company everything. Smooth move. Still, it's good to see you come out of the closet and put on your white robes and show yourself and your company for being the 1% traitors to the American way that you are. I hope your bigotry will be worth the billions in lost revenue that your un-American actions will bring. Sure, you certainly have the right to pull your ads from that TV show, just as I have the right not to ever shop at Lowe's again and the additional right to ask my many readers to do the same! While I think your bigotry is incredibly stupid, I must admit I do admire your shiny new Jack Boots and your armband, Robert, is to die for, quite literally. Oh, and thanks for writing part of Friday's editorial!

But being the fair man that I am, by all means, let's hear your side of it and any defense of your actions that you might have!

Sincerely,

Ernest Stewart
Managing editor
Issues & Alibis Magazine

As always, if I get a reply I'll share it with you. You might want to give Robert a piece of your mind at: robert.a.niblock@lowes.com Also you might want to write David Caton who started all this at: Florida Family Association? I'm sure he'd love to hear from you! In addition, you might want to write and boycott the 65 companies that David says pulled their ads because of his hatemongering! See the list in the quotes section.

Keepin' On

I see where the GOP's flavor of the month is starting to fall apart in Iowa. The man with a whole train load of baggage's lead is starting to crack, and the polls are beginning to pick up on Newt's final slide to oblivion.

Newt, who before the last debate was in the lead over "anyone but Willard," polling about 33%, and who was polling 37% after the debate, has now fallen to slightly below 25%, just a few digits above America's favorite Moron, er, Mormon. This is going to really bum out Obamahood handlers, who were hoping against hope that somehow Newt would win the nomination, as I would have a much better chance of beating Barry than the Newtster would, and I'd have no chance at all!

Although rumor has it the Obamahood team has been placing all their eggs into one Mormon basket, and preparing for a face-off against against Willard, there may well be a dark horse on the horizon that could easily take Iowa and perhaps the White House next November. I refer, of course, to that half-crazy doctor from way down yonder in Taxus, Ron Paul.

The key to this is, as compared to the other current candidates, Ron is only half-crazy while the rest are certifiable looney toons! Half of Ron's agenda actually makes sense, and could attract a lot of Demoncratic voters like old Ray-Guns did in 1980. In a choice of Obamahood and any other Rethuglican, it's perhaps better the devil that we know, to the ones that we don't. However, Ron has a huge youth following from both sides of the aisle, and ideas like ending all of our many wars, legalizing pot, and ending the Feds control of the purse strings, and when compared to Barry's stand, looks very attractive.

Ron, who placed a very close second in the Iowa straw poll, could win the Iowa caucuses, walking away and building from there. As America's beloved poet/philosopher Yogi once said, "It ain't over, till it's over!" So stay tuned, America; the strangest things, are no doubt, yet to come!

*****


07-27-1949 ~ 12-11-2011
Thanks for the films!


05-05-1933 ~ 12-12-2011
Thanks for the films!


12-12-1913 ~ 12-14-2011
Thanks for the books!


*****

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So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
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Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












The Grand Delusion
Resisting the Siren Song of Specialness
By Chris Floyd

The U.S. presidential campaign is now in full swing. (In truth, it never actually ends; the savage grasping and grappling among damaged souls seeking their brief season of domination and death-dealing goes on daily without respite.) In the months to come, we will be subjected to an ever-growing, ever-roaring flood of rhetoric about the unique, unquestionable, divinely ordained goodness of America. (And how the "other side" would destroy or demean this precious moral specialness.)

This rhetoric will come both from the radical, society-shaking extremists laughingly called "conservatives" in our fun-house political system, and from the reactionary defenders of elite wealth and murderous militarism laughingly known as "progressives." (And, of course, from the well-fed, milky mannered, comfortably numb burghers known as "centrists.")

All Americans are marinated in this mindset from birth, and it is reinforced in them, every day, by the most powerful and pervasive media machinery in history, by enormous societal pressure, and by the dead heavy weight of tradition. Even the most hardened cynics might feel the stirrings of atavistic response to these siren songs woven into the fabric of the American psyche.

In such cases, I recommend a reading of the following two articles. They will help remind you of the reality being cloaked by the psyche-stirring, button-pushing bullshit of the grasping wretches seeking power.

First, a remarkable piece in the London Review of Books, detailing the personal testimony of a child -- a child -- sold into years of captivity and torture at the hands of the proud, always-to-be-honored defenders of American values. It's the story of Mohammed el Gorani, a Saudi-born teenager from Chad, whose black skin made him a special target for his captors in the gulag hellholes of Kandahar and Guantanamo.

Blocked from acquiring professional training or higher education by the virulent prejudice in America's stalwart ally, at age 14 el Gorani to Pakistan to learn computer skills and English. Two months into his course, he was grabbed by Pakistani security goons and bundled off to their American masters, eager for warm bodies to fill the new gulag:

They took me to a prison, and they started questioning me about al-Qaida and the Talibans. I had never heard those words. 'What are you talking about?' I said. 'Listen, Americans are going to interrogate you. Just say you're from al-Qaida, you went with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and they'll send you home with some money.' ... One Pakistani officer was a good guy. He said: 'The Pakistani government just want to sell you to the Americans.' ... The Pakistanis took away our chains and gave us handcuffs 'made in the USA'. I told the other detainees: 'Look, we're going to the US!' I thought the Americans would understand that the Pakistanis had cheated them, and send me back to Saudi.

... When they took off our masks, we were at an airport, with big helicopters. Americans shouted: 'You're under arrest, UNDER CUSTODY OF THE US ARMY! DON'T TALK, DON'T MOVE OR WE'LL SHOOT YOU!' An interpreter was translating into Arabic. Then they started beating us - I couldn't see with what but something hard. People were bleeding and crying. We had almost passed out when they put us in a helicopter.

We landed at another airstrip. It was night. Americans shouted: 'Terrorists, criminals, we're going to kill you!' Two soldiers took me by my arms and started running. My legs were dragging on the ground. They were laughing, telling me: 'Fucking nigger!' I didn't know what that meant, I learned it later. ... There was an Egyptian (I recognised his Arabic) wearing a US uniform. He started by asking me: 'When was the last time you saw Osama bin Laden?' 'Who?' He took me by my shirt collar and they beat me again. ...

One day they started moving prisoners again. 'You guys are going to a place where there is no sun, no moon, no freedom, and you're going to live there for ever,' the guards told us, and laughed. ... In the beginning there were interrogations every night. They tortured me with electricity, mostly on the toes. The nails of my big toes fell off. Sometimes they hung you up like a chicken and hit your back. Sometimes they chained you, with your head on the ground. You couldn't move for 16 or 17 hours. You peed on yourself.'

... Sometimes they showed you the ugly face: torturing, torturing without asking questions. Sometimes I said, 'Yes, whatever you ask, I'll say yes,' because I just wanted torture to stop. But the next day, I said: 'No, I said yes yesterday because of torture.' My first or second interrogator said to me: 'Mohammed, I know you're innocent but I'm doing my job. I have children to feed. I don't want to lose my job.'

'This is no job,' I said, 'this is criminal. Sooner or later you're going to pay for this. Even in afterlife.'

'I'm a machine - I ask you the questions they told me to ask, I bring them your answers. Whatever they are, I don't care.'

Mohammed el Gorani spent almost eight years in Guantanamo. His captors knew very early on that he was an innocent child, not a terrorist. The one piece of "evidence" they showed him was a paper "proving" he had been involved with al Qaeda in London -- in 1993, when he had been a six-year-old boy cleaning car windshields in Saudi Arabia. But what did that matter? His captors were "machines": they were just following orders, just doing their jobs -- just like every factotum of every brutal system in history.

Oh, but those are the bad old days, some might say. (Despite the fact that the Guantanamo gulag is still operating, alongside other similar facilities -- known and unknown -- around the world.) Today, we're told, we are lucky to be ruled by a kinder, wiser, more humane leader. Sure, he's not perfect -- who is? And OK, maybe, in the end, he's the lesser of two evils. But certainly any serious, savvy person knows there is a profound, qualitative difference between Barack Obama and his predecessor -- and those who would supplant him. Right?

For those whose partisan atavism -- or nostalgia -- might be stirred by such arguments, I urge you to read this piercing and powerful essay by Arthur Silber. It is one of the best summations of the moral horror that permeates our political system -- and the wretched grasper now in charge of it -- that I've ever seen. Here are a few excerpts, but don't cheat yourself: go read the entire piece:

The killer said:
"Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who've been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement," the president fired back at an impromptu news conference at the White House.

"Or whoever's left out there," he added. "Ask them about that."

Watch the video at the link provided above. It's instructive, particularly Obama's expression when he adds, "Or whoever's left out there." He speaks of murder, yet the words are breezy and casual: this is a murderer so used to killing that he talks of his past and future victims interchangeably, and in terms of approximation. Just "whoever's left out there." He wants to be sure you know he'll order all of them killed in time. His face is expressionless, the eyes dead. This is a man without a soul in any healthy, positive sense. He murders -- and he's proud of it.

More than a million innocent Iraqis were murdered as the result of the United States' criminal war of aggression on that country. Obama has heralded America's "success" in Iraq as "an extraordinary achievement."

The continuing murders in Pakistan and Afghanistan are so numerous and so regular that they barely merit notice for more than a few days, at least as far as the United States government and most Americans are concerned. Over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, the United States government murdered at least 25 Pakistanis .... On the same weekend: "Six children were among seven civilians killed in a NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Thursday." The story has already fallen into the well of forgetfulness. It must be the case that incidents like this occur at least once a day given the number of military operations ordered by the Murderer-in-Chief and carried out by those who follow his orders. ...

These are only a few of the stories we know about, and only from a very brief period of time. Countless other murders take place all over the world, and we can only gather the dim outlines of what is occurring. This is not to mention numerous lesser acts of cruelty and violence, many of which will alter lives in searing ways, for all the desolate years to follow.

Consider [this passage from Nick Turse]:

... Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM] spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

...In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

No minimally decent human being would choose to have anything whatsoever to do with a government which systematically engages in acts of this kind. This is true of anyone who is part of the national governing apparatus, or wishes to be. It is most especially true of anyone who wishes to become president.

... [A] reverence for life demands that we see the Death State exactly for what it is -- and walk away to the fullest extent we can. That is not the course Barack Obama chose. He wanted to be, he now is the Murderer-in-Chief. He is proud of his achievement.

Silber concludes with a look back to a post he wrote five years ago -- a piece even more true today, and one which shows the horrific continuity between the "bad old days" and our enlightened, peace-laureled progressive era:

If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer.

The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means -- and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a "success."

...We can appeal all we want to "American exceptionalism," but any "exceptionalism" that remains ours is that of a mass murderer without a soul, and without a conscience. ... It is useless to appeal to any "American" sense of morality: we have none. It does not matter how immense the pile of corpses grows: we will not surrender or even question our delusion that we are right, and that nothing we do can be profoundly, unforgivably wrong.

(c) 2011 Chris Floyd





The Fearmongers
By Uri Avnery

ON THE anniversary of David Ben-Gurion's death, the usual memorial meeting was held at his graveside in Sdeh Boker, the Negev desert village where he lived in his retirement. There is no cemetery, just his grave and that of his wife Paula.

The newspapers published a picture of Binyamin Netanyahu making a speech under a big photo of the late leader gazing thoughtfully into the distance.

One little detail in the picture caught my eye: Netanyahu was wearing a kippah.

Why? Ben-Gurion was a convinced atheist. He refused to wear a kippah even at funerals. (Though a complete atheist myself, I do sometimes wear a kippah at funerals, out of consideration for the feelings of others.)

The place was not a synagogue, nor even a cemetery. So why for God's sake (sorry) did the man put this black kippah on his head?

For me that is a sign of what I call the re-Judaization of Israel.

ZIONISM WAS, among other things, a revolt against the Orthodox Jewish religion, that was associated with the Diaspora which Zionists contemptuously call Galut ("exile"). All the founding fathers of Zionism - Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Chaim Weizmann, Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the rest - were convinced atheists.

So why did Ben-Gurion give the religious parties two autonomous education systems, financed by the state?

Why did he release pupils of religious seminars ("yeshivot") from military service?

People of my age can remember the situation. Ben-Gurion, like all of us, believed that the Jewish religion was about to die out. Some old people, who spoke Yiddish, were still praying in the synagogues, but with time they would disappear. We, the young new Israelis, were secular, modern, free from these old superstitions.

Not in his darkest nightmares (or daymares) could Ben-Gurion have imagined a time when religious pupils, some of whom are not taught in their schools even the most basic modern skills, would amount to nearly half the Israeli Jewish school population. Or that the number of religious shirkers now deprives the army of several divisions.

Step by step, the religious community is taking over the state. The religious settlers, the religious anti-Arab pogromists, their allies and ultra-right collaborators are gaining new footholds by the day. Just now the army has announced that 40% of candidates for junior officers' courses are wearing kippahs. In 1948, when our army came into being, I did not see a single kippah-wearing soldier, not to mention an officer.)

But the danger of re-Judaization goes far beyond the political sphere.

LET ME take a metaphor from nature.

The premier necessity in nature is survival. There are many different strategies for survival, and nature embraces all of them - as long as they are successful.

The gazelle survives by running away. When in danger, it escapes. It is very successful in this. Fact: the gazelles have survived.

The lion survives by fighting. When in danger, it attacks. It relies on its teeth and claws. It is very successful in this. Fact: the lions have survived.

Jews have survived by fleeing. They were immensely successful in this. After thousands of years of the most atrocious persecutions, pogroms and holocausts, they are still there. Their dispersal over the world furthers this technique. At the slightest danger, they can escape from one country to another.

Jews have not built Taj Mahals or majestic cathedrals. Their treasures are holy texts, literature and music - things you can store in your head and take with you when you are on the run.

Like some animals in nature, Jews sense the slightest danger from far away. It's like a red light in their head - it goes on when nobody else yet perceives the menace. (Indeed, I would not be alive today if my father had not perceived the danger of the Nazi regime from the first day and organized our escape, while almost everybody around was scoffing at him.)

Zionism wanted to turn the gazelle into a lion. It said: no more running away. When in danger, we stand and we fight.

No more the cowardly Jew of the anti-Semitic caricature. From now on, the heroic Israeli, upright and proud.

And, as seems to be human nature, we overcompensate for the past. We have become aggressive, militaristic, even brutal. The oppressed have become oppressors. Jews used to say: "If force does not work, try using your brain." Israelis say "if force does not work, try using more force." (I confess that I coined this phrase many years ago as a joke. Alas, a joke no more.)

HOWEVER, LATELY it seems to me that the old Jew has not disappeared. He has only been hiding. Hiding inside the Israeli. He and his little red light are right there.

How did I find out? Just by listening to Binyamin Netanyahu, with or without his kippah.

Netanyahu has invented (or adopted) a peculiar style of ruling: governing by playing on people's fears.

Since coming back to power, he has been treating us to an endless series of fears. Fearmongering is the order of the day - every day.

At the beginning there was Barack Hussein Obama, who threatened to punish us for not giving up our sacred right to build settlements all over the country God himself promised us. Unfortunately, Obama capitulated right away, so another menace was needed.

No problem. Mahmoud Abbas, yesterday's "plucked chicken", turned into a roaring tiger and applied to the United Nations to accept the State of Palestine as a member. As everybody knows, that was a mortal threat to Israel. It was only averted by Obama's (yes, the same Hussein Obama) promise to use his veto on behalf of Israel. But the Palestinians have nevertheless been accepted by UNESCO, so the terrible danger has not been banished.

Than came the Arab Spring. As Netanyahu realized from the first moment, even before our great and glorious friend Mubarak was sent to the glass cage, that presented a mortal threat. Now it has been eerily confirmed: Islam, deadly Islam, is taking over Egypt.

Islam, as Netanyahu tells us at every opportunity, is a murderous anti-Jewish creed. There are no moderate Islamists - they are all out to throw us into the sea. Even in our former ally Turkey.

And they are winning not only in Egypt. These terrible Islamists have already won in Morocco and Tunisia, and are going to win in Libya, Jordan, Yemen, Syria. Our "villa" will be surrounded not just by a jungle, but by a jungle full of deadly Islamist predators. How absolutely terrifying.

Then another frightful danger was exposed just in time: human rights associations are threatening the very existence of Israel. They are part of a world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy. Fact: they are financed by foreign governments. A new law had to enacted against them in a hurry. Fortunately, such laws were recently enacted in some former Soviet countries. So our Moldavian foreign Minister (or, rather, our foreign minister from Moldavia), Avigdor Lieberman, obtained the text from his great friend, Alexander Lukashenko, that model democrat from Belarus, and the other renowned democrat, Vladimir Putin.

All these mortal dangers were enough to wipe out the sudden surge of social protest, but they were nothing compared to that awful, overwhelming danger: the Iranian Bomb.

The Iranian Nuclear Bomb means a Second Holocaust, no less. Only the strong leadership of Binyamin Netanyahu can save us in the nick of time.

Faced with such petrifying danger, nobody asks the relevant question: why would any Iranian leader attack a country that has plenty of nuclear bombs of its own and the ability to devastate all of Iran in a "second strike"? The German government is providing us with the sixth of the submarines we have just for this purpose.

Yes, the Iranian leaders may be religious fanatics. But we have plenty of those, too, and some are members of our government coalition. At the moment the country is in an uproar because the rabbis demand that religious soldiers may leave any military ceremony where female soldiers are allowed to sing. "A woman's voice is her sexual part," a holy text asserts. And a prominent rabbi has just announced that a religious soldier should rather face a firing squad than listen to a woman singing. (I am not making this up.)

But Iran is dominating our public discourse. All the red lights are blinking like mad. The Jew inside us is mortally afraid. The gazelle says: Run. The lion says: Attack.

THE BIBLE tells us: "Happy is the man that feareth alway!" (Proverbs 28:14). But constant fear is a bad adviser when conducting your affairs, the more so when directing the policies of a state. But it may be good politics when you want to keep your own people in check while chipping away at democracy, equality and human rights.

So let's release the ghetto Jew inside us and send him on his way. Let's overcome our fear of fear itself. And, while we are at it, let's kick the fearmongers out.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom






Indefinite Detention Of American Citizens: Coming Soon to Battlefield U.S.A.
By Matt Taibbi

There's some disturbing rhetoric flying around in the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things contains passages that a) officially codify the already-accepted practice of indefinite detention of "terrorist" suspects, and b) transfer the responsibility for such detentions exclusively to the military.

The fact that there's been only some muted public uproar about this provision (which, disturbingly enough, is the creature of Wall Street anti-corruption good guy Carl Levin, along with John McCain) is mildly surprising, given what's been going on with the Occupy movement. Protesters in fact should be keenly interested in the potential applications of this provision, which essentially gives the executive branch unlimited powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects without trial.

The really galling thing is that this act specifically envisions American citizens falling under the authority of the bill. One of its supporters, the dependably-unlikeable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, bragged that the law "basically says … for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield" and that people can be jailed without trial, be they "American citizen or not." New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte reiterated that "America is part of the battlefield."

Officially speaking, of course, the bill only pertains to:

"... 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."
As Glenn Greenwald notes, the key passages here are "substantially supported" and "associated forces." The Obama administration and various courts have already expanded their definition of terrorism to include groups with no connection to 9/11 (i.e. certain belligerents in Yemen and Somalia) and to individuals who are not members of the target terror groups, but merely provided "substantial support."

The definitions, then, are, for the authorities, conveniently fungible. They may use indefinite detention against anyone who "substantially supports" terror against the United States, and it looks an awful lot like they have leeway in defining not only what constitutes "substantial" and "support," but even what "terror" is. Is a terrorist under this law necessarily a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban? Or is it merely someone who is "engaged in hostilities against the United States"?

Here's where I think we're in very dangerous territory. We have two very different but similarly large protest movements going on right now in the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement. What if one of them is linked to a violent act? What if a bomb goes off in a police station in Oakland, or an IRS office in Texas? What if the FBI then linked those acts to Occupy or the Tea Party?

You can see where this is going. When protesters on the left first started flipping out about George Bush's indefinite detention and rendition policies, most people thought the idea that these practices might someday be used against ordinary Americans was merely an academic concern, something theoretical.

But it's real now. If these laws are passed, we would be forced to rely upon the discretion of a demonstrably corrupt and consistently idiotic government to not use these awful powers to strike back at legitimate domestic unrest.

Right now, the Senate is openly taking aim at the rights of American citizens under the guise of an argument that anyone who supports al-Qaeda has no rights. But if you pay close attention, you'll notice the law's supporters here and there conveniently leaving out those caveats about "anyone who supports al-Qaeda." For instance, here's Lindsey Graham again:

"If you're an American citizen and you betray your country, you're not going to be given a lawyer ... I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home or abroad."
As Greenwald points out, this idea - that an American who commits treason can be detained without due process - is in direct defiance of Article III, Section III of the Constitution, which reads:

"No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
This effort to eat away at the rights of the accused was originally gradual, but to me it looks like that process is accelerating. It began in the Bush years with a nebulous description of terrorist sedition that may or may not have included links to Sunni extremist groups in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But words like "associated" and "substantial" and "betray" have crept into the discussion, and now it feels like the definition of a terrorist is anyone who crosses some sort of steadily-advancing invisible line in their opposition to the current government.

This confusion about the definition of terrorism comes at a time when the economy is terrible, the domestic government is more unpopular than ever, and there is quite a lot of radical and even revolutionary political agitation going on right here at home. There are people out there - I've met some of them, in both the Occupy and Tea Party movements - who think that the entire American political system needs to be overthrown, or at least reconfigured, in order for progress to be made.

It sounds paranoid and nuts to think that those people might be arrested and whisked away to indefinite, lawyerless detention by the military, but remember: This isn't about what's logical, it's about what's going on in the brains of people like Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

At what point do those luminaries start equating al-Qaeda supporters with, say, radical anti-capitalists in the Occupy movement? What exactly is the difference between such groups in the minds (excuse me, in what passes for the minds) of the people who run this country?

That difference seems to be getting smaller and smaller all the time, and such niceties as American citizenship and the legal tradition of due process seem to be less and less meaningful to the people who run things in America.

What does seem real to them is this “battlefield earth” vision of the world, in which they are behind one set of lines and an increasingly enormous group of other people is on the other side.

Here's another way to ask the question: On which side of the societal fence do you think the McCains and Grahams would put, say, an unemployed American plumber who refused an eviction order from Bank of America and holed up with his family in his Florida house, refusing to move? Would Graham/McCain consider that person to have the same rights as Lloyd Blankfein, or is that plumber closer, in their eyes, to being like the young Muslim who throws a rock at a U.S. embassy in Yemen?

A few years ago, that would have sounded like a hysterical question. But it just doesn't seem that crazy anymore. We're turning into a kind of sci-fi society in which making it and being a success not only means getting rich, but also means winning the full rights of citizenship. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see this ending well.
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







Climate Apartheid
By Amy Goodman

"You've been negotiating all my life," Anjali Appadurai told the plenary session of the U.N.'s 17th "Conference of Parties," or COP 17, the official title of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa. Appadurai, a student at the ecologically focused College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, addressed the plenary as part of the youth delegation. She continued: "In that time, you've failed to meet pledges, you've missed targets, and you've broken promises. But you've heard this all before."

After she finished her address, she moved to the side of the podium, off microphone, and in a manner familiar to anyone who has attended an Occupy protest, shouted into the vast hall of staid diplomats, "Mic check!" A crowd of young people stood up, and the call-and-response began:

Global Day of Climate Action - March through Durban

Appadurai: "Equity now!"

Crowd: "Equity now!"

Appadurai: "You've run out of excuses!"

Crowd: "You've run out of excuses!"

Appadurai: "We're running out of time!"

Crowd: "We're running out of time!"

Appadurai: "Get it done!"

Crowd: "Get it done!"

That was Friday, at the official closing plenary session of COP 17. The negotiations were extended, virtually nonstop, through Sunday, in hopes of avoiding complete failure. At issue were arguments over words and phrases—for instance, the replacement of "legal agreement" with "an agreed outcome with legal force," which is said to have won over India to the Durban Platform.

The countries in attendance agreed to a schedule that would lead to an agreement by 2015, which would commit all countries to reduce emissions starting no sooner than 2020, eight years into the future.

"Eight years from now is a death sentence on Africa," Nigerian environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey, chairperson of Friends of the Earth International, told me. "For every one-degree Celsius change in temperature, Africa is impacted at a heightened level." He lays out the extent of the immediate threats in his new book about Africa, "To Cook a Continent."

Bassey is one among many concerned with the profound lack of ambition embodied in the Durban Platform, which delays actual, legally binding reductions in emissions until 2020 at the earliest, whereas scientists globally are in overwhelming agreement: The stated goal of limiting average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) will soon be impossible to achieve. The International Energy Agency, in its annual World Energy Outlook released in November, predicted "cumulative CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions over the next 25 years amount to three-quarters of the total from the past 110 years, leading to a long-term average temperature rise of 3.5 [degrees] C."

Despite optimistic pronouncements to the contrary, many believe the Kyoto Protocol died in Durban. Pablo Solon, the former Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations and former chief climate negotiator for that poor country, now calls Kyoto a "zombie agreement," staggering forward for another five or seven years, but without force or impact. On the day after the talks concluded, Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent announced that Canada was formally withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. Expected to follow are Russia and Japan, the very nation where the 1997 meeting was held that gives the Kyoto Protocol its name.

The largest polluter in world history, the United States, never ratified the Kyoto Protocol and remains defiant. Both Bassey and Solon refer to the outcome of Durban as a form of "climate apartheid."

Despite the pledges by President Barack Obama to restore the United States to a position of leadership on the issue of climate change, the trajectory from Copenhagen in 2009, to Cancun in 2010, and, now, to Durban reinforces the statement made by then-President George H.W. Bush prior to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the forerunner to the Kyoto Protocol, when he said, "The American way of life is not up for negotiation."

The "American way of life" can be measured in per capita emissions of carbon. In the U.S., on average, about 20 metric tons of CO2 is released into the atmosphere annually, one of the top 10 on the planet. Hence, a popular sticker in Durban read "Stop CO2lonialism."

By comparison, China, the country that is the largest emitter currently, has per capita emissions closer to 5 metric tons, ranking it about 80th. India's population emits a meager 1.5 tons per capita, a fraction of the U.S. level.

So it seems U.S. intransigence, its unwillingness to get off its fossil-fuel addiction, effectively killed Kyoto in Durban, a key city in South Africa's fight against apartheid. That is why Anjali Appadurai's closing words were imbued with a sense of hope brought by this new generation of climate activists:

"[Nelson] Mandela said, 'It always seems impossible, until it's done.' So, distinguished delegates and governments around the world, governments of the developed world, deep cuts now. Get it done."
(c) 2011 Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!" a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes.







The Deep Shallowness of Prof. Gingrich

Just in the nick of time for Christmas, Newt Gingrich has burst onto the national stage in a leading role.

The latest front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination has adopted a theatrical pose for the season - not as the jolly ol' St. Nick bringing joy to children everywhere, but as Scrooge. Only scroogier.

Channeling his inner Ebenezer, the Newt called America's child labor laws "truly stupid," adding with Dickensian glee that he would fire school janitors and have low-income children do that work. Really? The top GOP contender for president of the USA actually advocates turning poor school kids into janitors?

Why, yes, explained the former House speaker, who never tires of telling us that he is not merely very, smart but visionary. "Start with the following two facts," he lectured at an Iowa campaign stop. "Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday." Thus, sayeth the visionary, chain 'em to mop and teach the little ragamuffins about life.

Did I mention that this guy is a candidate for president? Of the United States? In 2012, not in 1812?

Newt is a cluster bomb of ignorance. First, three out of four poor adults work, and most poor children are in households with at least one of their parents showing up every Monday for a job. And Gingrich's condescending implication that poverty equals bad morals is not only wrong, but frightening shallow, elitist, clueless... and, well, scroogy. If he wants to see bad morals in action, he shouldn't be looking down on poor people, but pointing up at Wall Streeters and CEOs who're profiting by creating more poor people.

The question for Republicans is: do you really want to nominate Scrooge for president?
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Is That All There Is?
By Helen Thomas

When I see the Republican roster of presidential candidates, I keep thinking of Peggy Lee's famous song, "Is That All There Is?" And, I'm not talking about the numbers left, dwindling down. It seems when you reach the top of the GOP polls, you have no where to go except down. Thus, any candidate that high in the polls has been dubbed the "flavor of the month."

Newt Gingrich is now riding high and enjoying it. It's hard to believe, yet not so hard since the Republicans are so divided and can't seem to coalesce behind one candidate.

He is apparently confident. Gingrich has begun a round of major fundraisers - mainly in Manhattan, the haven for political rain makers. He has been featured at several New York events now that he has moved to the top of the GOP presidential nominee list.

Gingrich did not endear himself to the Wall Street Occupiers when he coldly told them to "take a bath" and "get a job." For a man shopping at Tiffany & Co. for his third wife, that remark was a cheap shot, and especially for a presidential candidate.

Gingrich has so much baggage in his personal life. Maybe the moral code is over for the GOP. I remember when divorce was a big deal for Republicans. Former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller's divorce from his first wife, Mary, and second marriage to Happy was considered a political catastrophe.

That harsh judgment evaporated when former President Ronald Reagan, a divorced movie star, remarried Nancy Davis, a movie starlet who knew her way around with the famed Hollywood "Rat Pack." The public accepted a divorced Reagan in his 1980 presidential campaign.

But, back at the ranch, there is a lot going on in the Republican Party, and no lack of ambition for the presidential nomination.

Two candidates have dropped out of the race - Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term governor of Minnesota who saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and Herman Cain. The businessman and former president of the National Restaurant Association had too much to overcome after being swamped with allegations of extramarital affairs.

Credibility used to be a big deal for aspiring politicians, now it's sex or the ways of the flesh.

Still holding ground among the Republican candidates is former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney. He has sadly tried to move even further to the right. Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts was a blueprint for President Barack Obama's national health care plan, but Romney moved away from his own universal medical care law to appease the Tea Partiers.

Surprisingly, the fact that Romney is a Mormon has not been as big of an issue as Kennedy's Catholicism was in 1960.

Romney is a straight arrow. As much as he tries to be a regular guy - or one of the boys - he still has trouble with the likability factor. Still, he seems to have the best chance. Romney is rational and has been a leader in business and sports affairs.

The Republicans have candidates galore, but not any with a winning presidential sales pitch - no new ideas, and no real game plan to dig us out of the recession. Where is the inspiration for a country mired in joblessness, homelessness and poverty?

The Republicans are unchanged and opposed to any tax increases - who do they think will pay for two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 900 military bases around the world, and aid to Pakistan to the tune of millions per day?

Obama, who has no opposition to speak of, has been watching the Republican rivals fight for a shot at his job in the White House. They are giving Obama a lot of ammunition as they duke it out for the presidential nomination.

It's going to be a long year until the political conventions this next summer, when the Republicans finally pick their standard bearer, after many disappointments and lots of money spent. But as I wonder, is that all there is?
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







The Golden Age When Women Ruled
By James Donahue

The written human history that exists has been proven through archaeology and mere deduction to be so distorted and religiously and politically twisted that we lack a true understanding of our past. This is true about even relatively recent history. And the farther back into the past we search, the more perverted the information becomes.

Fortunately there is a memory, deeply implanted in our DNA, that makes it possible for us to all have a way of separating the lies from fact; truth from fiction. Also our distant ancestors passed down stories . . . now declared to be mythology . . . that give us insight as to the way things once were on this planet.

There is strong evidence, for example, that there was an earlier eon that existed even before the great Mesopotamian Empire when women ruled the earth. It was a long period of peace and tranquility, remembered genetically as Eden in the Christian and Hebrew Old Testament, and the Golden Age among other world cultures.

William Bond, in an article Did Women Once Rule The World, writes about the ancient ruins of Catal Huyuk, a 9,000-year-old city that once existed in Anatolia, Turkey. The ruins were excavated by James Mellaart between 1961 and 1965. What Mellaart discovered proved to conflict with contemporary beliefs about the ancient past and his work was literally swept under the rug in archaeological circles.

The researchers at Catal Huyuk could not find evidence that the people of that city were warriors. The city was not fortified. There were no weapons of war discovered. And examination of bones in the graves turned up no evidence that anybody died in battle. The artwork was so filled with feminine images that Mellaart concluded that the people worshipped the Ancient Great Mother.

Bond wrote that the findings at Catal Huyuk were so unsettling "the site was closed down for 30 years and the academic world ignored the implications."

The late Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, in her book The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, drawing from personal findings in digs in Achilleion, Thessaly, Greece, and other archaeological finds in Northern Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia, the Ukraine, Crete, Cyprus, Thera, Sardinia, Sicliy and Malta, declared that a European society existed between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago that lived in peace and harmony.

Gimbutas wrote that "women ran the temples and in doing so held predominant positions, while men performed such physical chores as hunting, building and navigating. The deities these people worshipped were overwhelmingly female, and their values, emphasizing nonviolence and reverence for nature, came from the female realm. It was marauding Indo-Europeans, the forerunners of Western civilization, who destroyed these societies."

As early as 1861, Swiss writer J. J. Bachofen wrote the controversial Das Mutterrecht which means "Mother-Right." Based on his study of mythology Bachofen hypothesized that a peaceful, female-led agrarian culture once prevailed throughout Europe and the Near East until the rise of militarism resulted in a male takeover.

Author Richard Rudgley, in his book Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age, laments that human civilization has existed on this planet for a much longer time than the Christian Bible teaches. He believes that 95 percent of human existence occurred in "pre-historic times." That is, except for ancient art and ruins of ancient cities, there has been no surviving written record of what happened during that early period of human existence.

But Rudgley supports Gimbutas in noting that all carved and painted images of human beings found in those ancient ruins are "overwhelmingly images of women."

Bond wrote that: "What Gimbutas shows is that most of these images celebrate the whole process of birth from the sex act to breast feeding. It seems in prehistoric times menstruation, the vagina, the sexual act, giving birth and breast feeding was seen as something divine, holy and sacred. This is in contrast to historic times when menstruation became taboo and unclean in many societies. The sex act also became sinful and dirty."

The Christian teachings are that children are born into sin. The implication here is that this is because they are born of women. In today's society in many parts of the "civilized world" the act of breast feeding is something shameful, especially if done in public.

Since that Golden Era came to a violent end, with conquering tribes taking over these peaceful communities, the world shifted to a male dominated culture. And the results of been war, violence, the rule of kings and a general enslavement of the people. This has continued even to the present day.

Bond wrote that "the new rulers behaved like Mafia bosses in imposing a reign of terror on the people to control them, and started a protection racket that was in effect the first taxation, making the rulers extremely wealthy and forcing poverty onto the people.

"Now the population had to not only work to feed and shelter themselves, but they had to work to feed the new rulers and their armies, as well as build them palaces and fortifications and make arms and luxury goods. This is a clear case where men like Adam had to work by the sweat of their brow while the new rulers encouraged men to disrespect women and turn them into slaves."

It should be interesting to note that the male dominated culture seems to exist only in the so-called "civilized" societies. Aboriginal tribes throughout the world still maintain the high regard for the women and even worship feminine gods. The Hopi and Navajo tribes in Arizona, for example, perceive Spider Woman as an important deity.

Also interesting to sociologists is that a shift from the male dominated social order has been slowly occurring. It began with the Women's Suffrage movement and the world wars in the Twentieth Century, that called women into the work places while the men went off to battle. Since the end of World War II, women have remained in competition with men for every kind of skilled job, and they are yet battling for equality in pay.

Women living under extreme Islamic suppression in the Middle Eastern countries are fighting for the right to simply drive cars, appear in public without having their entire bodies covered in cloth and justice in the courts against abuse by men.

The world is in chaos today as crowds of angry protesters take to the streets in rebellion against the men who control the wealth and power. Governments are beginning to topple. There is so much unrest that the leaders are building armies and digging into bunkers to go into hiding. The imbalance is growing. It is obvious to nearly everyone that something significant is about to happen.

There is a theory among the occultists that humanity is moving into a new era. There is a belief that the women ruled the world in peace and harmony during the first known era that lasted about 7,000 years. Then the male era began about 4,000 or 5,000 years before Christ and has continued unchecked until the current day. This means the second era under male dominance has lasted at least 7,000 years. Is it now coming to an end as well?

The question then would be: what is the new era about to bring? Will it be a time of equality and shared leadership? Will the women rise to power once again? Or will it be something totally unexpected?

The English occultist Aleister Crowley, who founded the theology of Thelema based on The Book of the Law, a text he claimed was dictated to him by an angelic or alien entity identified as Aiwass in 1904, wrote of a division of three "aeons" of the human experience.

Crowley called the first the Aeon of Isis. This was a time during pre-history when mankind worshipped a Great Goddess symbolized by the Egyptian deity Isis. The second and current period was called the Aeon of Osiris, when humanity worships a singular male god symbolized by the Egyptian god Osiris.

The third period described by Crowley is the Aeon of Horus, the hawk headed son of Osiris and Isis. Crowley believed that this child god would bring humanity into a time of self-realization and self-actualization. He described this as a time when there will be a growing interest in all things spiritual, when humans will seek their true will and practice unconditional love for one another.

All we can say is that change is clearly in the wind. The people of this war ravaged world would truly welcome a new period of peace and tranquility. We could all use a lot more love and compassion for one another.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






What Real Education Reform Looks Like
Teachers unions aren't the problem. Poverty and punitive funding formulas for poor schools are
By David Sirota

As 2011 draws to a close, we can confidently declare that one of the biggest debates over education is - mercifully - resolved. We may not have addressed all the huge challenges facing our schools, but we finally have empirical data ruling out apocryphal theories and exposing the fundamental problems.

We've learned, for instance, that our entire education system is not "in crisis," as so many executives in the for-profit education industry insist when pushing to privatize public schools. On the contrary, results from Program for International Student Assessment exams show that American students in low-poverty schools are among the highest achieving students in the world.

We've also learned that no matter how much self-styled education "reformers" claim otherwise, the always-demonized teachers unions are not holding our education system back. As the New York Times recently noted: "If unions are the primary cause of bad schools, why isn't labor's pernicious effect" felt in the very unionized schools that so consistently graduate top students?

Now, at year's end, we've learned from two studies just how powerful economics are in education outcomes - and how disadvantaged kids are being unduly punished by government policy.

The first report, from Stanford University, showed that with a rising "income achievement gap," a family's economic situation is a bigger determinative force in a child's academic performance than any other major demographic factor. For poor kids, that means the intensifying hardships of poverty are now creating massive obstacles to academic progress.

Because of this reality, schools in destitute areas naturally require more resources than those in rich ones so as to help impoverished kids overcome comparatively steep odds. Yet, according to the second report from the U.S. Department of Education, >O?"many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding." As if purposely embodying the old adage about adding insult to injury, the financing scheme "leav(es) students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers." In practice, that equals less funding to recruit teachers, upgrade classrooms, reduce class sizes and sustain all the other basics of a good education.

Put all this together and behold the crux of America's education problems in bumper-sticker terms: It's poverty and punitive funding formulas, stupid.

Thus, we arrive at the factor that decides so many things in American society: money.

As the revelations of 2011 prove, students aren't helped by billionaire-executives-turned-education-dilettantes who leverage their riches to force their faith-based theories into schools. Likewise, they aren't aided by millionaire pundits sententiously claiming that we just "need better parents." And kids most certainly don't benefit from politicians pretending that incessant union-busting, teacher-bashing and standardized testing represent successful school "reforms."

Instead, America's youth need the painfully obvious: a national commitment to combating poverty and more funds spent on schools in the poorest areas than on schools in the richest areas - not the other way around.

Within education, achieving those objectives requires efforts to stop financing schools via property tax systems (i.e., systems that by design direct more resources to wealthy areas). It also requires initiatives that better target public education appropriations at schools in low-income neighborhoods - and changing those existing funding formulas that actively exacerbate inequality.

Policy-wise, it's a straightforward proposition. The only thing complex is making it happen. Doing that asks us to change resource-hoarding attitudes that encourage us to care only about our own schools, everyone else's be damned.

In America's greed-is-good culture, achieving such a shift in mass psychology is about the toughest task imaginable - but it's the real education reform that's most needed.
(c) 2011 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.








Try Not To Think Of A Newt
By David Swanson

The current President and Congress are destroying our Constitutional rights, our planet's climate, and the vestiges of a social safety net, and you are obsessing over a freak show of self-hating homosexuals and anti-intellectual intellectuals jumping through hoops in a corporate media circus with Ringmaster Donald Trump. Is this a good use of your time?

The "Bush tax cuts" are still called that, while Bush has been gone for years. The corporate trade agreements are rolling through at a pace Bush couldn't have managed. While Social Security was protected by anti-Bush agitation, it now has its neck on a chopping block and the progressive position is that the taxes that pay for it should be cut - rather than expanded to apply equally to large incomes. President Obama has repeatedly blocked serious global efforts to address climate change. And you're concerned about which Republican buffoon doesn't know the difference between Iraq and Iran, or which other one thinks the United States has an embassy in Iran. Are you kidding me?

President Obama, the United States Congress, and the Federal Reserve are united in their generosity toward Wall Street and the war machine - both financial generosity and the equally generous provision of immunity from legal prosecution. In the Bush era we were locked in free-speech cages, and we raised hell about it. Now we're locked in jails, beaten, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, and otherwise brutally assaulted, and . . . wait! Look over there! Is that a presidential candidate who wants to publicly declare his desire to secretly murder Iranians? How outrageous!

For the love of everything decent, the current president is right now murdering Iranians, and it's not very secret. What in the hell is the matter with you people?

Illegality is over, says Harold Koh ("the good John Yoo"). This is the same guy who claims massive slaughter by bombing of foreign nations is neither war nor an act of hostility as long as no significant number of U.S. citizens die immediately in the process.

How can illegality be over, when the crimes have not been prosecuted and have in fact been legalized? The current Department of Justice, at the direction of President Obama, has radically expanded claims of state secrets and made greater use of the Espionage Act to punish whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. The current president has formalized, legalized, systematized, and normalized warrantless spying, lawless imprisonment (Bagram is booming!), prisoner abuse, assassination (including of members of the 5% of humanity we're supposed to care about), war making in direct violation of the will of Congress (Cf. Libya), and the radically expanded use of drones to do much of this dirty work. And you want me to care that some house-broken elephant who's been trained to parrot platitudes is in favor of child labor? Really?

It is not pleasant to face, but our children are done for if we proceed down either of the paths you are obsessing over the choice between. Behind curtain A is increased plutocratic militarization. Behind curtain B is the same damn thing. It's an evil choice. Choose which of your children should be shot. This one. No, wait. This one. It is not a choice we have time to dignify with our attention. It is not something we should waste 10 months of inaction and misdirected resources on.

We must do what has finally, finally, finally been begun. We must occupy public space. We must move the entire culture. We must reshape this society. We must drag both political parties and everybody in them and the majority of the population which has long since grown sick up to the eye balls of both of them, we must drag everyone kicking and screaming to a better place, to a place where we do not choose between putting 65% or 62% of discretionary federal spending into war preparation without an enemy in sight. What kind of a range of options is that?

This government will halt the foreclosures only after we have halted the forclosures. This government will forgive student debt only after we have blocked its payment. This government will regulate Wall Street only after we have divested from it. And this government will stop dumping our hard-earned pay into wars we don't want and cannot survive only when we have made that path (that running of the gauntlet of K Street's opposition) easier for every type of misrepresentative than continuing on the current trajectory.

Self-government is not a spectator sport. Elections are not reality shows. There is much more at stake than a soap opera. The first step, and it is a more difficult step than sleeping in a tent in the ice cold rain, is to cease giving a damn what some individual who is stripping away your rights and the fruits of your labors really feels in his heart of hearts. Stop it. We do not have the time. Politicians who make speeches opposing everything they do must be pushed to match action to words, not treated as if words speak more loudly than actions. That attitude is what leads us to focus on what a gaggle of misfits with no power and less wisdom have to say about each other, just because they're on the teevee screen.

Get serious. Get independent. Get principled. And stay nonviolent toward everything in the world except your television
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







A Hopeless Legion Of Loons
By Sheila Samples

"Oh, big conniver, nothing but a jiver, done got hip to your jive, Slippin' and a slidin', peepin' and a hidin', won't be your fool no more." ~~~ Little Richard

Fear and despair are billowing across the US political landscape, due in no small part to nearly three years of President Barack Obama's soaring jive even as he was breaking promises to millions of jobless, homeless, helpless Americans. Many of us watched, aghast, as Obama repeatedly took careful aim and shot himself in both feet; then, rather than deciding to fight on his knees, began scrambling around on them in a futile search for bipartisanship.

Ain't gonna happen. Those hoary old Republicans with whom he has strenuously attempted to bond have been around the political block more than once. Most are sexist; homophobic to the core, and racist from the core...on in. They're absolutely committed to -- obsessed with -- not only Obama's failure, but his complete destruction.

Obama should have learned by now there is no compromising with these filthy connivers -- that every single one of them is hell-bent on his destruction even if the nation goes down with him. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has brazenly bragged since Obama's election that, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." They spent the first two years of his administration in an obsessive campaign to prove that not only was he (shudder) black -- but he wasn't even an American citizen. They continue to insanely double down on blocking every piece of legislation he suggests, no matter how minute; and delight in blaming him for the resulting chaos.

Indeed, Republicans hold Obama in such contempt (he's black, remember?) that they make no effort to hide their political goal. Four days before Obama's inauguration, radio jiver Rush Limbaugh was spewing hate across the airwaves, blatantly calling for Obama to fail. It was a call to arms. The response was immediate, and continues to pick up steam.

If anyone doubts that Limbaugh is the titular head of the Republican -- or Grand Old Dittohead (GOD) -- Party, they have but to recall his bouncy, drug-addled hour-and-a-half hate screed in 2009 to the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC). Or calling Obama a "jackass" during his debt "compromise" speech ... “He's a jackass." Limbaugh screeched. "He's an economic illiterate. He's an economic ignoramus. And that's being charitable.”

No, you don't have to wonder where their loyalties lie. When elevated to House Speaker, John Boehner (R-Oh) briefed Boss Hog Limbaugh on his debt-ceiling plan before even showing it to his conference, let alone his President.

These creatures claim self-righteously that, ultimately, the horror they are inflicting on the people is for the people. The Stockholmed masses just need to hang on to hope -- to understand that once the corrupt McConnell and his rapacious gang destroy the government prior to the election and blame it on Obama, things will get better. Much better.

Those on the right who fall for that crap are little more than frogs basking in the slowly increasing "warmth" of right-wing water. Sadly, those of us on the left are in as bad -- or worse -- shape, if only because we realize we are in serious political trouble. Many of us have been stumbling around in an Orwellian fog for so long our hope tanks are dangerously close to running on empty.

Like Robert Reich wrote recently...

"President Obama will be supported by progressives and the Democratic base, but without enthusiasm. His notorious caves to Republicans and Wall Street -- failing to put conditions on the Street's bailout (such as demanding the Street help stranded home owners), or to resurrect Glass-Steagall, or include a public option in health care, or assert his constitutional responsibility to raise the debt limit, or protect Medicare and Social Security, or push for cap-and-trade, or close Guantanamo, or, in general, confront the regressive Republican nay-sayers and do-nothings with toughness rather than begin negotiations by giving them much of what they want -- are not the stuff that stirs a passionate following."
However, when Obama comes soaring in once again, slippin' and slidin', grinning from ear to ear, proudly claiming to be a "warrior" for the middle class, many will be unable to keep from hoping for hope -- from ultimately voting for hope. It's not that they've forgotten the recent years of betrayal; of abandonment. It's that, somehow, when considering the alternative -- Obama's campaign jive sounds better and better to them.

French novelist Jean Giraudoux once joked, "The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." Well, if you look at those who are challenging Obama, you can't help but hope he's got it made. And that's no joke.

Even with Sarah Palin, who was leading the pack, locked and loaded and firing away at Obama until she ran out of ammo and slipped and fell into a pool of "blood libel" -- and Herman Cain, with five women accusing him of sexual harassment and a sixth of a 13-year affair -- gone from the race, it's still a shuddering mess. And it ain't "fixable." Like C.S. Lewis once wrote, "No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet."

From Perry poop to Gingrich garbage to Bachmann blather, the stench billowing from the Republican presidential wannabes is overwhelming. The entire gang appears disjointed -- in total disarray -- mired in ideological confusion. It's impossible to come up with a single issue that this tangled mass can agree upon -- other than running that black guy out of town.

If it weren't so ghoulishly frightening, it would be amusing to watch the shallow, dumb-as-dirt little creatures shucking and jiving out there, racing madly from one media outlet to another in a desperate attempt to find a message that will catapult them to the top of the presidential heap. And what a heap it is. Just a gang of thin-skinned, egocentric Charlie Sheenians who are interested in one thing -- D'UH ... Winnnning!

With few exceptions, they have proudly announced they are pro-torture; most are panting for war -- have promised to attack Iran before the sun sets on their inauguration. Think about it. Because, as Robert Parry succinctly points out, the "hard reality" is ...

"Even if the two candidates' policies were identical, temperament would also be important, since the U.S. president controls a nuclear arsenal that can literally end all life on the planet."
It is possible -- even probable -- due to the masturbatory media coverage this bunch is getting, that one of this hopeless legion of loons will kick back from their crack buffet and emerge with the keys to the White House in one hand and a jug of tiger blood in the other.

If we have learned but one thing from these fools, it is that they will not compromise, regardless of the destruction they leave in their wake. Therefore, we need to wake up and realize that the November 2012 election is quite likely a matter of life or death.
(c) 2011 Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is an OEN editor, and a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@wichitaonline.net








Depression And Democracy
By Paul Krugman

It's time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it's not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that's cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege.

On that last point, I am not being alarmist. On the political as on the economic front it's important not to fall into the "not as bad as" trap. High unemployment isn't O.K. just because it hasn't hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn't be dismissed just because there's no Hitler in sight.

Let's talk, in particular, about what's happening in Europe - not because all is well with America, but because the gravity of European political developments isn't widely understood.

First of all, the crisis of the euro is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony.

Specifically, demands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening unemployment without restoring confidence; a Europe-wide recession now looks likely even if the immediate threat of financial crisis is contained. And they have created immense anger, with many Europeans furious at what is perceived, fairly or unfairly (or actually a bit of both), as a heavy-handed exercise of German power.

Nobody familiar with Europe's history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver. Yet there may be worse things happening.

Right-wing populists are on the rise from Austria, where the Freedom Party (whose leader used to have neo-Nazi connections) runs neck-and-neck in the polls with established parties, to Finland, where the anti-immigrant True Finns party had a strong electoral showing last April. And these are rich countries whose economies have held up fairly well. Matters look even more ominous in the poorer nations of Central and Eastern Europe.

Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documented a sharp drop in public support for democracy in the "new E.U." countries, the nations that joined the European Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, the loss of faith in democracy has been greatest in the countries that suffered the deepest economic slumps.

And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.

One of Hungary's major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it's anti-Roma (Gypsy), it's anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party.

Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn't on the euro, but it suffered severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent on establishing a permanent hold on power.

The details are complex. Kim Lane Scheppele, who is the director of Princeton's Law and Public Affairs program - and has been following the Hungarian situation closely - tells me that Fidesz is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and there's a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party.

Taken together, all this amounts to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule, under a paper-thin veneer of democracy, in the heart of Europe. And it's a sample of what may happen much more widely if this depression continues.

It's not clear what can be done about Hungary's authoritarian slide. The U.S. State Department, to its credit, has been very much on the case, but this is essentially a European matter. The European Union missed the chance to head off the power grab at the start - in part because the new Constitution was rammed through while Hungary held the Union's rotating presidency. It will be much harder to reverse the slide now. Yet Europe's leaders had better try, or risk losing everything they stand for.

And they also need to rethink their failing economic policies. If they don't, there will be more backsliding on democracy - and the breakup of the euro may be the least of their worries.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times






The Quotable Quote...



"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity."
~~~ Benjamin Franklin









"By Imbeciles Who Really Mean It"
Lost Verities and Dirty Hippies
By Phil Rockstroh

Regardless of the dissembling of corporate state propagandists, free market capitalism has always been a government subsidized, bubble-inflating, swindlers' game, in which, psychopathic personalities (not “job creators” but con job perpetrators) thrive. By the exploitation of the many, a ruthless few have amassed large amounts of capital by which they dominate mainstream narratives and compromise elected and governmental officials, thereby gaming the system for their benefit.

Historically, the system has proven so demeaning to the majority of the population that the elite, from time to time, have, as a last resort, due to fear of a popular uprising, introduced a bit of socialism into the system, allowing a modicum of swag to funnel downward, and, as a result, the ranks of the middle class have been expanded. For a time, the bourgeoisie are bamboozled by the sales pitch that one day they will be affluent enough to be freed from the taxing obligations of a dismal, debt-beholden existence, when, in fact, they sowed their fate (like those swindled by opening their bank accounts after receiving email from parties claiming to be momentarily cash-strapped Nigerian royalty) by their own greed i.e. by their self-imprisonment within their own narrow, self-serving view of existence.

These stultifying circumstances will level an atmosphere of restiveness and nebulous rage. In general, the middle class can be counted on to detest the poor...blaming those born devoid of societal advantage and political influence for the impoverished circumstances that were in place long before the happenstance of their birth. Moreover, in a bit of noxious casuistry, as despicable as it is delusional, all too many members of the middle class have been induced by grift artists, employed by the ruling elite, to blame their own declining social status and attendant beleaguered existence on the poor.

"Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail." ~~~ John Donne

This has proven to be an effective, time-tested grift: Because as long as the animus of the middle class remains fixated on the poor, the criminal cartels known as the economic elite can continue to ply their trade. Of course, in reality, by their greed and complicity, what the middle class has gained is this: trustee status in the capitalist workhouse.

Although, there is no need to fret: The run of neoliberal capitalism is about over. Don't mourn: This late stage, rapacious, mutant economic strain has leveled destruction on community and the planet itself as well as the hearts and souls of too many of those imprisoned within its paradigm.

At this point, the situation comes down to this: paradigm shift or perish.

The hour is amenable to reevaluate, reorganize and re-occupy. Doing so will prove helpful in withstanding false narratives.

Apropos: As of late, in my hours spent at Liberty Park, I've been witness to increasing numbers of tourists wandering in and repeating derisive, rightwing distortions regarding the OWS movement and its participants. For example, they are a collection of whiny college students who want taxpayers to be responsible for picking up the tab for their student loans because they are too lazy and spoiled to work off their debt. These tales are variations of the old canards involving welfare queens, mouths gleaming with taxpayer financed gold teeth, arriving at grocery stores lounging behind the steering wheels of late model Cadillacs, and proceeding to purchase steaks and fifths of gin with food stamps.

Ronald Reagan spoke of this mythical figure often, affording her near supernatural powers: She, through indolence, guile and a welfare state-bestowed sense of limitless entitlement, was the near singular cause of the nation's economic woes; her very existence, not only depleted the U.S. Treasury of dollars, but drained the U.S. free enterprise system of vitality and the very will to compete. She was a succubus who arrived in the socialist haunted night to feed on and zap the very virility of capitalism.

Because of the wealth inequities inherent to capitalism, in order to prevent social unrest, the system is reliant on creating false narratives that foster misplaced and displaced class resentment. These tales are very potent, because they serve as palliatives for the enervating states of shame inflicted on the population at large by their enslavement to the free market. Accordingly, because the vast majority of the populace are deemed "losers", due to how the system is rigged, techniques must be created and maintained to displace the rage, borne of a sense of powerlessness, that grips the system's exploited underlings.

OWS is beginning to change the narrative...align it with reality--and that is an alarming development for the 1%; hence, the retooled, amped up propaganda campaign we're seeing signs of at present.

This is the reality the 1% endeavor to obscure: Capitalism is a pyramid scheme; by its very structure, only a few will ever receive its bounty...that is wrung out of the exhausted hides of the vast majority. Fact is, capitalism, the neoliberal variety or otherwise, has never worked as promised; its innate structure ensures exploitation and inequity. Therefore, time and time again, adding aspects of socialism (e.g., New Deal era programs and reforms) have saved capitalism from itself. But, after a time, the plutocrats regroup and begin anew to launch a big money-financed, slow motion coup d'état of government (e.g., the Reagan Revolution).

A vast disparity of wealth within a nation will all but ensure this societal trajectory. But that isn't going to happen, this time. The planet cannot endure the assaults wrought by a system that requires exponential growth to be maintained. The run of capitalism is nearly over. A more sustainable economic system, based on horizontal rule, is being developed, globally (e.g., the Icelandic model).

The vertical structure inherent to capitalism brings about the self-perpetuating reign of an insular elite who choose to go the route of empire and, by doing so, overreach and bring themselves down, but only after much unnecessary suffering, exploitation and death--the calling card and ground level criteria of imperium.

Yet, often within a declining empire, even as the quality of life grows increasingly degraded for the majority of the populace, questioning sacrosanct beliefs, such as, the myth that capitalism promotes societal progress and personal advancement, by means of the possibility of upward class migration, proves to be a difficult endeavor for many. The reason: Even given the degraded nature of life as lived under late capitalism, the act of taking stock of one's situation--beginning to question how one arrived at one's present station in life--will engender anxiety, anger and regret.

Apropos to the shame based Calvinism of the capitalist state: If I was duped in a rigged game, what does that say about me? The narrative of capitalism insists that if I work hard, applying savvy and diligence, at fulfilling my aspirations then I would, at some point, arrive in the rarified realm of life's winners.

But if success proves elusive, then my flawed character must be the problem--not the dishonest economic setup--and miasmic shame descends upon me. Yet I can count on rightwing media to provide the type of provisional solace proffered by demagogues i.e., imparting the reason that folks like me can't get ahead is because scheming socialists have hijacked my parcel of the American Dream and delivered it to the undeserving thereby transforming my shame into displaced outrage.

And that must be the case; otherwise, it would behoove me to make the painful admission that I have been conned...have co-signed the crimes committed against me. Worse, I would be compelled to question all my verities and beliefs--all the convictions I clutch, regarding, not only the notions that I possess about myself and the methods I've adopted in approaching life, but also, the social structure that influenced my character.

Imagine: If you had to re-imagine your life. Imagine, how the act would unnerve your loved ones, threaten friendships, even endanger your livelihood.

What an unnerving task that would prove to be...an ordeal certain to deliver heart-shaking anxiety, devastating regret and nettling dread directly into the besieged sanctuary of what is suppose to be the inviolable precincts of my comfort zone.

“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.” ~~~ Albert Camus
Accordingly, I might turn to Fox News and other well-rewarded, professional dissemblers of the political right, imploring them to dissolve my doubts and dread. To escort and ensconce my troubled form back into my comfort zone by telling me the problem is not the iron boot of the corporate state upon my neck; rather, my oppression stems from the barefoot hippie lefties of OWS "who need a bath and a job"; it is their odious presence in our lives that has subdued my happy capitalist destiny by the pernicious act of laying down an effluvia (more demobilizing than pepper spray) of patchouli musk and has caused capitalism itself to weaken into an enervated swoon.

Yes, this has to be the case: The cause of my oppression. Those America-hating Occupy Wall Street hippies are actually the hidden hand that controls the global order and who possess a craven desire to smelt down the gleaming steel of the humming engines of U.S. capitalism into creepy, Burning Man statuary, who want to hold 24/7 Nuremberg-style rallies in the form of annoying drum circles.

In reality, it is those dirty hippies who are actually "The Man." Withal, hippies crashed the global economy and pinned the blame on the selfless souls who ply their benign trade on Wall Street.

Now, you know why conservatives harbor such animus towards hippies. Don't claim that Fox News et al--those selfless souls--who only desire to protect the glories of the present order, and who only have your best interest in mind, didn't try to warn you.

"I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." ~~~ Mark Twain

(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.




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Short Tales From Bizarro World: The GOP Primaries Edition
By William Rivers Pitt

Bahwitabah da bang da bang diggy diggy diggy said the boogie said up jumped the Mitty...

Sorry, couldn't help myself. You see, I was perusing the New York Daily News and came across this little gem about Mitt Romney choosing the Kid Rock song "Born Free" as his 2012 campaign anthem. "The patriotic pick," reported the Daily News, "comes as Romney tries to shake the image that he's a buttoned up elitist who has little in common with the average American."

Mitt Romney and Kid Rock. Throw them together with Fred Phelps and the ghost of Lee Atwater, and you'd have the most phenomenally deranged golf foursome in the history of the universe.

It is moments like this that make life, for me, very much worth living. This is what we have come to expect from the Republican field as they have staggered across the landscape in search of the opportunity to challenge President Obama for the White House some eleven months from now. It has been, at times, truly magical to behold, as when Rick Perry went off on his extended derp-a-thon and single-handedly blew out all the tires on his campaign bus. There was Herman Cain's recent dramatic flameout, the culmination of which was a press conference of such stupendous, weighty idiocy that it bent the very light. Michele Bachmann is still forging ahead, and could very well throw the entire GOP primary season into a state of bedlam by winning in Iowa right out of the gate, which to me is the very definition of awesome.

Speaking of Rock & Roll Mitt, Derpy Rick, Hopeless Herman and Manic Michele, let us all bow our heads in a moment of thanks to the Republican brain trust, who surveyed the field of dimwits, lunatics, ego-trippers and plain fools vying to carry the banner for their party, and said, "You know what'd be great? Let's have these people participate in 43,212 nationally-televised debates! What could possibly go wrong?"

Thank you. From my heart, thank you.

The past is but prologue, however, and the best is yet to come, because a whole lot of polls - nationally and in the key primary states - are speaking what would have seemed impossible only a few short months ago: Newt Gingrich is making a charge, and is in many important places actually leading Mitt Romney. This tells me two things, one about Romney specifically and the other about the GOP in general.

It says, first of all, that Mitt just can't find a way to feel the love from Republican voters. It could be the Mormon thing, it could be the Massachusetts (read: commie) thing, it could be the fact that Mitt has on occasion held positions that were not to the right of Genghis Khan, it could be the fact that he has flopped back and forth between these positions with such metronomic regularity that the GOP base has gotten seasick watching him, or it could be a combination of all four. The fact of the matter is that GOP supporters have been wheeling from hither to fro and back again like a flock of startled birds in a desperate attempt to avoid nominating Romney.

I may be losing my knack for reading the Republican Overmind, but this has been a very strange phenomenon to observe. After all, Romney is a handsome, well-spoken, well-funded candidate who lays claim to most of the policy issues Republicans hold dear. He is just enough outside the mold to be attractive to independent voters, and his business credentials have to be appetizing to the Wall Street crowd...and yet at every opportunity, Republican voters have turned away from him to embrace whatever shaggy dimwit gets up on their hind legs to offer themselves as the "Alternative to Romney."

Which brings us, of course to the rise of Newt, and my second thought on the matter, which is very simple: if the GOP actually nominates Newt Gingrich in 2012, they will have finally and forever earned the mantle, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, of being "a bunch of raving nutters."

Newt Gingrich, in his time on the American political stage, has said so many stupid, obnoxious, harsh, contradictory things that it would require a tome roughly the size of the Oxford English Dictionary to encapsulate them all. He is walking, talking, breathing fodder for the attack ads that will certainly descend upon him soon like crows lighting on the body of a dead raccoon in the road. He has more baggage than a Samsonite factory, and as much personal self-control as a toy poodle on a crystal meth binge. To top it all off, he has all the interpersonal charm of a battering ram, and a cruel streak wider than his awe-inspiring forehead.

The Democrats are positively foaming at the mouth over the potential opportunity to saturation-bomb his campaign in the general election, but before that happens, it will be all-out warfare between these GOP candidates during the primaries, and Newt will, as usual, pull no punches. This was, after all, the man who shut down the federal government and annihilated his reputation in one fell swoop because he didn't like his seat on Air Force One. When his GOP rivals move on him, he will move on them with surpassing force and venom, and the fur is going to fly most gloriously.

If that isn't enough to get your mouth watering about the fun to come over the next several weeks, there's one more item lurking over the horizon that, if it actually happens the right way, promises to be Barnum & Bailey, the Women's Flat-Track Roller Derby Association, a Comedy Central roast of Zippy the Pinhead, and the company picnic for the Never Sweat Copper Mine in Butte MT, all rolled into one delicious ball.

Yes, Donald Trump - the first "Anti-Mitt" to rise and flame out this year - is going to host his own GOP debate...maybe. Most of the invited candidates have declined Trump's invitation, but Gingrich and the always-berzerk Rick Santorum have said they will show up. That alone would be worth the price of admission - Newt, Rick and The Donald trying to out-wierd each other on national TV - and the prospect of it has the establishment GOP practically gibbering with fear:

Republican strategists on Monday bemoaned the prospect of a presidential debate hosted by Donald J. Trump even as Newt Gingrich, surging in recent polls, made a pilgrimage to see Mr. Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star.

Veteran Republican operatives are increasingly agonizing over the image of a party whose contenders have been beset by scandals, factual gaffes and a fickle electorate that seems unimpressed by the choices they have been given.

Now, Mr. Trump promises once again to inject his personality in the Republican race as he hosts a debate days before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. But leading Republican strategists and campaign officials on Monday condemned a Trump-moderated debate as a spectacle that would do more harm to the party than good.

Karl Rove, the former political adviser to President George W. Bush, railed against the idea of a debate hosted by Mr. Trump. In an appearance on Fox News on Monday, Mr. Rove called on Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to put a stop to the debate.

In an interview, Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for Mr. Bush, called Mr. Trump's debate "an invitation to a circus" and urged the candidates to refuse to attend. "Donald Trump risks making a carnival out of a serious presidential campaign," Mr. Fleischer said. "I think this is an opportunity for a candidate to stand up. I don't understand the fear of Donald Trump, politically. He doesn't have a constituency or a following."

Whether or not Trump decides to follow through with his debate is almosgt immaterial; there is still a lot of epic craziness about to happen, and we should all sit back and enjoy it...but without forgetting the craziest part of all.

One of these buffoons stands a pretty damned good chance of being sworn in to the office of the president in January 2013.

May you live in interesting times.
(c) 2011 William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is available from PoliPointPress.





The Dead Letter Office...





Heil Obama,

Dear Aufhetzer Caton,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your ceaseless hatred of Muslims, Jews, Gays and Liberals, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross 2nd class, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 12-31-2011. We salute you Herr Caton, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Can Paul Ryan-and His Agenda-Be Beat? It's Possible
By John Nichols

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, is the poster boy for the assault on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. His budget plan, which laid the groundwork for the undermining of those essential programs and their eventual privatization, speaked a national outcry earlier this year. A historically Republican Congressional seat in western New York fell to the Democrats in a special election that turned largely on the question of Ryan's austerity agenda.

But could Ryan himself be beat in 2012?

It's possible. His southeastern Wisconsin district has elected Democrats in the past. It voted for Barack Obama in 2008. And even after a Republican-friendly redistricting, it is still home to traditionally Democratic towns such as Racine, Kenosha and Janesville.

Ryan faces a determined challenger in Democrat Rob Zerban, a local elected official in Kenosha who has been running hard all year. And a new poll suggests that Zerban, who has made the defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid the core theme of his campaign, poses a genuine threat to the Republican incumbent.

Pollster Paul Maslin writes, on the basis of his survey of 405 voters in Ryan's district, that the fight over Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has "weakened incumbent Paul Ryan, who used to enjoy electoral and image majorities well over 60%. Ryan's favorable rating has declined to 54% positive, his job rating is 55% and his reelect is 54%-all this before the beginning of an active campaign against Ryan. When voters hear positive information about Rob Zerban and Paul Ryan, Ryan's support weakens further to 52%. Rob Zerban's description receives a better than 3 to 1 positive reaction."

Maslin adds that: "after respondents hear one additional paragraph description linking Ryan to the Republican leadership in Congress and describing his authorship of the House budget plan, his support falls below 50% and his favorable rating becomes like Obama's and Walker's-dead even at 46% positive and 46% negative. And… Rob Zerban trails Ryan by only six points after this very brief exposition of Ryan's signature idea, 49-43%, with undecideds holding nearly unanimously negative views of Congress in general and more than 80% saying they have either a negative or neutral feeling toward Ryan at the end of the poll."

Zerban, a Kenosha County supervisor, says: "This poll reflects what I knew in my heart-Paul Ryan will lose this race because he has failed this district and this nation in Congress."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.




Dwight D Eisenhower: in 1961 the retiring president warned fellow
Americans of the danger in allowing too close a relationship
between politicians and the defence industry.




War Drums Are Beating For Iran. But Who's Playing Them?
Just like the taxpayers of medieval Italian cities, we're having our money siphoned off to pay for a a greedy military machine
By Terry Jones

In the 14th century there were two pandemics. One was the Black Death, the other was the commercialisation of warfare. Mercenaries had always existed, but under Edward III they became the mainstay of the English army for the first 20 years of what became the Hundred Years war. Then, when Edward signed the treaty of Brétigny in 1360 and told his soldiers to stop fighting and go home, many of them didn't have any homes to go to. They were used to fighting, and that's how they made their money. So they simply formed themselves into freelance armies, aptly called "free companies", that proceeded around France pillaging, killing and raping.

One of these armies was called the Great Company. It totalled, according to one estimate, 16,000 soldiers, larger than any existing national army. Eventually it descended on the pope, in Avignon, and held him to ransom. The pope made the mistake of paying off the mercenaries with huge amounts of cash, which only encouraged them to carry on marauding. He also suggested that they move on into Italy, where his arch-enemies, the Visconti, ran Milan. This they did, under the banner of the Marquis of Monferrato, again subsidised by the pope.

The nightmare had begun. Huge armies of brigands rampaging through Europe was a disaster second only to the plague. It seemed as if the genie had been let out of the bottle and there was no way of putting him back in. Warfare had suddenly turned into a profitable business; the Italian city states became impoverished as taxpayers' money was used to buy off the free companies. And since those who made money out of the business of war naturally wished to go on making money out of it, warfare had no foreseeable end.

Wind forward 650 years or so. The US, under George W Bush, decided to privatise the invasion of Iraq by employing private "contractors" like the Blackwater company, now renamed Xe Services. In 2003 Blackwater won a $27m no-bid contract for guarding Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. For protecting officials in conflict zones since 2004, the company has received more than $320m. And this year the Obama government contracted to pay Xe Services a quarter of a billion dollars for security work in Afghanistan. This is just one of many companies making its profits out of warfare.

In 2000 the Project for the New American Century published a report, Rebuilding America's Defenses, whose declared aim was to up the spending on defence from 3% to 3.5% or 3.8% of American gross domestic product. In fact it is now running at 4.7% of GDP. In the UK we spend about $57bn a year on defence, or 2.5% of GDP.

Just like the taxpayers of medieval Italian city-states, we are having our money siphoned off into the business of war. Any responsible company needs to make profits for its shareholders. In the 14th century the shareholders in the free companies were the soldiers themselves. If the company wasn't being employed by someone to make war on someone else, the shareholders had to forgo their dividends. So they looked around to create markets for themselves.

Sir John Hawkwood's White Company would offer its services to the pope or to the city of Florence. If either turned his offer down, Hawkwood would simply make an offer to their enemies. As Francis Stonor Saunders writes in her wonderful book, Hawkwood - Diabolical Englishman: "The value of the companies was the purely negative one of maintaining the balance of military power between the cities." Just like the cold war.

Two decades ago I picked up an in-house magazine for the arms industry. Its editorial was headed "Thank God For Saddam." It explained that, since the collapse of communism and end of the cold war, the order books of the arms industry had been empty. But now there was a new enemy, the industry could look forward to a bonanza. The invasion of Iraq was built around a lie: Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, but the defence industry needed an enemy, and the politicians duly supplied one.

And now the same war drums, encouraged by the storming of the British embassy last week, are beating for an attack on Iran. Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker: "All of the low enriched uranium now known to be produced inside Iran is accounted for." The recent IAEA report which provoked such outcry against Iran's nuclear ambitions, he continues, contains nothing that proves that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

In the 14th century it was the church that lived in symbiosis with the military. Nowadays it is the politicians. The US government spent a staggering $687bn on "defence" in 2010. Think what could be done with that money if it were put into hospitals, schools or to pay off foreclosed mortgages.

The retiring US president, Dwight D Eisenhower, famously took the opportunity of his farewell to the nation address in 1961 to warn his fellow countrymen of the danger in allowing too close a relationship between politicians and the defence industry.

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience," he said. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." It exists. The genie is out of the bottle again.
(c) 2010 Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Randall Enos ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Whack-A-Pol
By Will Durst

Let's take a peek behind the scenes of GOP headquarters to listen in on the coaching strategy for the little game Republicans are currently playing called, "Anybody but Romney." Think "Whack-A-Mole" with media mallets.

"Well, here it is, boys, 2011. About time we scour the country and figure out exactly whom we should pick for our 2012 Presidential nominee. It's got to be somebody with a legitimate shot to beat that socialist incumbent. Somebody we can trust to toe the party line. But most importantly, we need someone younger than that last guy. Which won't be hard.

So, who do we got running? Okay, okay, thank you, Mitt Romney. You can put your hand down now. Ran the Olympics? That's great. We'll definitely keep you in mind. Who else we got? Sarah Palin! The Rogue Thing! She just can't help herself. Loves going off reservation. Like she did in 08. And ever since. Unnh, then again, you know what? She's probably busy. Somebody call Roger Ailes at Fox News and tell him to make sure she's real busy.

Hey, how bout Donald Trump? The Donald. He's perfect. Successful businessman. High name recognition. Aerodynamic hair. Well, let's see what he can do. Oh my god, he's really like that. I thought it was all an act. Nobody tells me anything.

Let's see, who else is there? Thank you Mitt. No, no. We haven't forgotten you. Got you right at the top of the list. Yes, we know your first name is Willard. And the Mormon thing. Won't be a problem. Umm, where's that Tea Party favorite, Michele Bachmann? There she is, in Iowa, celebrating the birthplace of John Wayne Gacy. Oh dear. With her husband Marcus. Whoa. Well, no wonder she's so opposed to gay marriage. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Okay. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. I got an idea. Rick Perry. Governor of Texas. Worked out pretty good last time, didn't it? He's just like Bush with actual cattle. Let's watch him debate. Oooh. Not going to work out this time. Umm. Umm. What about Chris Christie? Another governor. We like governors, right? Yes, Mitt. Massachusetts. Got it. Besides, Chris Christie is too big to fail. Hey, Chris! What? Oh yeah? Well, we don't want you either.

Wait a minute. This is going to sound crazy. Crazy like a fox. You know what I'm thinking? Herman Cain. Yes. The Pizza Guy. I know, I know. He's a, he's a, he's a... lobbyist, but boy, can he command a room. Look at him with that group of women over there. Holy cow, that's my wife. Security!

Say, I'm a bit parched; Mitt, could you run get us some Red Bulls? Here's a 20. Oh, right, you're loaded. And an MBA from Harvard. Terrific. Is he gone? Thank god. Hey, who's that hiding under that rock? Why, it's Newt! Newt Gingrich. Of course. An oldie but a goodie. Rescued the party from Clinton's shadow in the early 90s. The good news is, everybody knows him: the bad news is, yeah, everybody knows him.

Geez, he loves to hear himself talk, doesn't he? Well, look at it this way, if the Newtster doesn't pan out, we can always fall back on Mister Stalwart Standby Romney. Yeah. That's what we'll do. Its Newt or Mitt. Or Ron Paul. No. No. No. Definitely Romney or Gingrich. Or Santorum. Say, has anybody seen Mike Huckabee lately?"
(c) 2011 Will Durst, is a San Francisco based political comedian, Will Durst, often writes: this is an example. Don't forget his new CD, "Raging Moderate" from Stand-Up Records now available on both iTunes and Amazon. The New York Times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst "is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today." Check out his website: willdurst.com to find out about upcoming stand-up performances or to buy his book, "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing."




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 49 (c) 12/16/2011


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In This Edition

David Michael Green returns with, "A Better World's In Birth (Maybe)."

Uri Avnery considers, "With Friends Like These...."

Matt Taibbi sees, "A Sign Occupy Wall Street Is Having Political Impact."

Sam Harris remembers, "Hitch."

Jim Hightower feels, "The Coldest Cut Of All."

Helen Thomas wonders, "A Corzine Con?"

James Donahue explores, "BrainGate - Making Damaged Bodies Function."

David Sirota discovers, "Direct elections: A threat to America!"

David Swanson says to, "Set Your Doomsday Clock To 11:51."

Ann Wright oversees, "The Trial Of Bradley Manning."

Paul Krugman asks, "Will China Break?"

Phil Rockstroh is, "Recovering From Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS)."

William Pfaff explains why, "History Tells Us Not To Dismiss A Democratic Challenge To Obama."

The National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. wins the coveted, "Vidkun Quisling Award!"

John Nichols reports on a, "Iowa Challenge For Obama."

Joel S. Hirschhorn warns, "Don't Mute Newt."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department The Landover Baptist Church with their list of "Banned Christmas Toys 2011!" but first Uncle Ernie visits, "The Fruitcake Hole."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of David Fitzsimmons, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, Edward Gorey, Micah Wright, Jonathan Ernst, Tab Toons, Mad Magazine, Henry Payne, No Sheeple Here.Blogspot.Com, Bradley Manning.Org, Cathy Cochrane, Sherry Snowden, Spencer Platt, Getty Images, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

Plus we have all of your favorite Departments...

The Quotable Quote...
The Dead Letter Office...
The Cartoon Corner...
To End On A Happy Note...
Have You Seen This...
Parting Shots...

Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."










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The Fruitcake Hole
By Ernest Stewart

"Reality is like a fruitcake; pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface."
~~~ A. Lee Martinez ~ Gil's All Fright Diner ~~~

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Won't Get Fooled Again ~~~ The Who

"For capturing and highlighting a global sense of restless promise, for upending governments and conventional wisdom, for combining the oldest of techniques with the newest of technologies to shine a light on human dignity and, finally, for steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century, the Protester is Time's 2011 Person of the Year." ~~~ Rick Stengel ~ Time Magazine managing editor

"...Santa came up dressed in his red delivery suit with a very hung over Rumple Tweezer in tow and demanded to know what had happened? When he found out he shook his head and smiled to himself and wondered who he should choose now that Larry the Dwarf was out of the picture. Just then Rumple Tweezer whispered something in Santa's ear and that jolly old Elf laughed out loud and struck Rumple Tweezer on his shoulder knocking him to the ground. As Santa choked on laughter he merrily announced that Winky Tinky would take Larry's place!" ~~~ Winky Tinky's Christmas Adventure

Well, Happy Holidaze, America! How'd you like that gift the Con-gress gave us for Christmas? Thanks to our selected critters in Foggy Bottom, you and the family may soon find yourselves on an all-expenses-paid trip to camp for the summer, if you're lucky, or forever, if you not! Kind of like old Auntie Betty's homemade fruitcakes for a Christmas present; just the thing I need -- how nice! Of course, Aunt Betty's fruitcake never killed anyone; well, not too many, just the ones dumb enough to have a second slice! It was just Betty's way of thinning out the herd a bit -- with that 151 Rum!

You could always get rid of her fruitcakes, without stooping to eat them, just by triple-wrapping them in aluminum foil, like you would atomic waste, and placing them outside in the garbage can until pick up. A single fruitcake at the bottom of a garbage can would keep the raccoons away for a month if frozen, two months if not! Cartoonist Edward Gorey (see cartoon above) drew this picture of what people would do with fruitcake gifts in days of yore -- a fruitcake hole! A hole where folks would come from all over to dispose of their fruitcakes. You may notice at the top of the card that god is disposing of his fruitcake, too!

The National Defense Authorization Act single-handedly pretty much wipes out the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments, The Posse Comitatus Act and habeas corpus. I'm going to repeat that again, for those of you on drugs!

WE ARE SO SCREWED AMERICA!

However, as bad as that is, the reality of it is far more frightening than merely this one bill. In fact, this horrible bill is just one drop in the bucket since we came into being the day after the 12-12-2000 coup d'etat went down. Since then, we've seen literally hundreds of other acts of treason and sedition committed, and they were just the ones done out in the open! Trouble is, there is no fruitcake hole for those many acts of treason and sedition or for the many fruitcake members of Con-gress for that matter, but don't you wish there was?

In Other News

Over here on the left, there's been a lot of speculation as of late of the meaning and effects of a Gingrich Presidency and how that might be a good thing! The theorem goes like this: Newt Gingrich is probably the worst-possible choice for the Oval Office in the history of Mankind. The man is pure evil -- criminal -- the one who started the open war between the parties, and is a legend in this own mind -- so who better to wipe away the stranglehold the banksters and big business have on us peons! A man so bad that surely even the Sheeple would tear their Matrix plugs off and rise up as one and overthrow the system and then replace it with one that works; and they all lived happily ever after, the end!

Don't get me wrong; there's nothing I'd like better than to see all this madness end, and in its place arise a Star Trek-like world with no wants or worries for all of Mankind. A place of peace, love, and goodwill to all! As John said, just "Imagine!" I've long been a believer that if Mankind stopped looking for some imaginary heaven above and just tried a little, he could have a real Heaven on Earth! Trouble is, for the last 8,000 years, we've been in a constant state of war with one another, regardless of any interventions of gods and goddesses, or even our better nature. We are the killer ape, and to live in peace, we'll have to overcome all these inbred tendencies of the last four million years!

As to the Newtster, in the long run, he hasn't a chance for the Rethuglican nomination, way too much baggage because to win, the RNC has to field a candidate that can appeal to fence-sitters, and Newt just ain't that guy. Newt is who the Obama Camp is praying for as he'll assure another 4 years of Barry, which is just like having Newt in office as far as our corpo-rat masters are concerned. For them it's a win-win situation, no matter which of these clowns ends up in the Oval Office. Ergo, it's a lose-lose situation for the rest of us!

Still, Newt could be our boy and sweep the elections next November, which suddenly makes that old Mayan prediction seem a lot more likely than we'd like to believe. It's now less than one year and counting; so chose wisely, America! It may be your last chance to vote your way out of this mess!

And Finally

In case you haven't heard, I just won Time Magazines "'Person' of the Year Award;" you may recall that I've won this before in 2006, 1969 and 1966! Before you start sending me your congratulations and patting me on the back, and saying "Speech, speech," I'm not at all sure that congrats are in order?

Consider, for example, the following group of men, all past winners of Time's Man of the Year, oops "Person" of the Year Award. Let me quote a wise man who didn't win Man of the Year, but knows these men, regardless; he said:

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy!"

I'm guessing he was talking about these past winners:

Adolph Hitler - Joseph Stalin - Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill - Nikita Khrushchev - Pope John XXIII - Lyndon B. Johnson - General William Childs Westmoreland - Richard M. Nixon - Henry Kissenger - Ayatollah Khomeini - Ronald Reagan - George H.W. Bush - George W. Bush - Rudolph Giuliani - Newt Gingrich - Pope John Paul George Ringo II - Bill Gates - Bono - Vladimir Putin - Barack H. Obama - Ben Bernanke and Mark Zuckerberg!

Quite a rouges' gallery, huh? So you can see that I'm not all that enthused about winning this year's award and being associated with that group of infamous men!

What's that, you say? It was for all the protesters, and not just for me, but for all of us. Phew, thanks for telling me that, what a relief! Then never mind!

Keepin' On

I'm betting that ya'll, no matter your faith, or lack thereof, have old family traditions for this time of the year. Traditions that you're happy to see passed on down the line, from generation to generation to generation. Traditions that this time of the year just wouldn't be the same without. Traditions that everyone from old granddad to the newest arrivals, eagerly look forward to every year. I know that my holidaze are certainly filled with them and I bet that your holidaze are, too!

I'd like to share one of mine with you and yours, and perhaps it will be a new family tradition that you can pass on down to the generations a-commin'?!

For well over a decade, it was a Christmas Eve tradition in my house to gather the family together, around the old computer, just before the little ones go to bed, and with them nestled in our laps, read aloud the wonderful Christmas adventures of Santa's littlest elf; Winky Tinky. Of course, today, unlike in the olden days of the late 1990s, with all the wi-fi you can watch and read from any of your 60 inch, LED/LCD, HD, 3D, TV screens, which gives everybody a better view of Winky as he saves Christmas for all the good little boys and girls all over the world in, "Winky Tinky's Christmas Adventure!" It's a very special Christmas love story, too, and will leave you with a happy sigh when it's over! Happy Holidaze, Ya'll, from your dear old Uncle Ernie!

*****


04-13-1949 ~ 12-15-2011
Thanks for the thoughts brother!


05-15-1920 ~ 12-16-2011
Burn Baby Burn!


02-16-1942 ~ 12-17-2011
Burn Baby Burn!


10-05-1936 ~ 12-18-2011
Thanks for the plays, and the reforms!


*****

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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












A Better World's In Birth (Maybe)
By David Michael Green

If it feels to you a bit reminiscent of 1968 these days, that's because it is.

And that's a good thing.

It's starting to look like 2011 was the year of Basta!, when people finally woke up and found the voice with which to say Enough! To say that it comes in the nick of time is like saying that Rick Perry could afford to study a bit harder. In fact, this development is long overdue.

I don't see much evidence to suggest extensive linkage between the various national uprisings we're witnessing, or even much of a contagion effect - except perhaps in the Middle East - but nevertheless a host of countries have produced unprecedented popular dissent movements over the last year. In fairness, it's probably accurate to say that 2011 actually started in 2009 in Iran, but this year alone has seen major uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Bahrain, Greece, the UK, the US, and Israel, among others. Now, even Mother Russia has been added to the club, while China appears to continue along on something of a slow boil.

Such developments often come in generational waves. The events of 1989 might be an example, though they were more regional in nature, and were the product of a singular cause, the collapse of Soviet hegemony in its neighborhood. 1968 provides the better exemplar, when France and Mexico and the US and Czechoslovakia and other countries rather spontaneously and rather separately experienced highly significant near-revolutions. Though the direct relationship between these respective events was rather tenuous, they shared a common ethos of a young generation rejecting the inheritance they were being offered by an older one whose core value system - rooted in materialism, war, prejudice, hypocrisy and multifarious forms of planetary destruction - was, oddly enough, increasingly found wanting.

It strikes me that we're seeing some of the very same sort of behavior today. That's no surprise. Indeed, the only shocker to me is that the response has taken so long, and that it continues to be so tame. The foolishness of our day's ruling class day is epic in its proportions. As if that isn't bad enough, foolishness is actually a far too generous diagnosis. Like, say, a Newt Gingrich or a Barack Obama, these are not stupid people, and therefore the malady which besets us is far worse than some product of world class bumbling. More than anything, ours is time characterized by greed, on a scale which can only be compared to a Hitler or a Genghis Kahn, or other great historical predators. That may seem like a ridiculous stretch, but one look at the political mechanics behind our policy indifference (on a good day) to the threat of global warming alone produces an indictment few figures in history can match. Add in the wars based on lies, the absence or dismantling of social programs in order to feed the greed of untaxed billionaires, the mortgaging of our children's futures to pay for the same, and more, and you've got a pretty grim bar tab the oligarchy has run up there.

Lucky for these agents of destruction that heaven and hell is just a myth to feed the little people they exploit so adroitly. It sure would be funny to watch what would happen if one of them actually started believing in that crap and felt compelled to do some serious truth telling, a la Bullworth. Well, funny, that is, for about five minutes, until that individual inevitably came to experience a rather inexplicable but nevertheless quite sudden and quite enduring absence of consciousness. Must have been something he ate. The Lobster Cyanide, perhaps.

I'd feel a lot better (which is far from saying good) about what they're doing to the rest of us if I thought they were mere idiots. It's just unbearable to me to know that our demise is instead the product of a combined greed and cynicism that is all but unfathomable in its scale. These sociopathic Masters of the Universe have learned just how easy it is to animate and motivate the pathetic army of clones amongst the hoi polloi to do their bidding and hand over all manner of riches to a one-tenth of one-percent who have long ago exceeded even the capacity to spend the additional sums. What mutant DNA or childhood trauma causes a billionaire to rabidly pursue further billions at the cost of millions of people's basic livelihood and dignity? And what missing CPU chips make it so easy for those millions to exchange their modest perch in the middle class for a nice war or two against a brown-skinned dictator who only yesterday was on the CIA payroll, or the warm feelings that come from some tasty racist, sexist or homophobic discrimination closer to home? The mind fairly reels.

Ah, but here we are, nonetheless. It's quite amazing when you think about it. Just at the same moment when particle physicists are on the verge of unlocking the secrets of the Higgs Boson, you can still get tens of millions of slobbering American rednecks to dance in the streets over the prospects of murdering some poor mentally retarded SOB on death-row in Texas whose drunken lawyer slept through the trial, and whose appellate court 'justices' didn't see any harm in any of that. Did I mention that the individual in question was not part of the one percent?

At the same time, however, there is some good news, which is that such idiocy seems to fast be going the way of, say, the novelty of Paris Hilton. It's yesterday's titillation, today's embarrassment. Part of that, at the risk of being crass, is owing to pure generational replacement. Older people in America - as a generation, certainly not always as individuals - are simply more ignorant, malevolent and backward compared to their grandchildren, which would be more problematic than it is except for the fact that they are at least decent enough to be dying off.

Meanwhile, though, what makes 2011 2011 is the growing sense that waiting for Grandpa Bucephelus to do the right thing and help heal the planet a bit by departing from it is no longer enough. Young people are staring down the business end of both barrels of a wholly bleak future right now, and - go figure - they're not happy about it. And, no, thank you very much, Mr. Perry, Ms. Bachmann and friends, they're not very interested in trading their quality of life for a blivet full of prejudices, phony wars, or some laughably contrary but far less laughably pernicious shuckster's moral lessons derived from the tribal skirmishes among certain Jordan river valley nomads thousands of years ago.

Yeah, imagine that. You take a bunch of twenty year-olds, load them up with debt from all the misadventures and crimes that you (adding special circumstances to your original felony) refused to even pay for, show them a future of living at home with mom and dad while fighting amongst themselves for the honor of toiling away in an unpaid internship at some soul-numbing corporate palace of predation, and - surprise, surprise - they get a bit rowdy in response. Like I said, the only questions are why it's taken so long and why is the response so tame?

That latter question may grow moot over time, as it did, for example in Libya. Meanwhile, though, despite the seeming spontaneous and indigenous quality of each of these various national uprisings, it seems to me that they share three things in common.

First, the participants recognize an absence of real democracy in their governing structures. In some cases, such as Egypt's thirty year dictatorship complete with sham elections where HMFIC Mubarak would win over 90 percent of the vote, this is more obvious than in others. Like, say, for example, the American system, where sham elections instead consistently give more than 90 percent of the vote to the two wings of the same Corporate Party. Regardless of whether you have the choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or are merely confined to voting for Tweedle D. Dumb alone, people everywhere seem to be recognizing that they in fact have no choice, and thus no democracy, at all. If Americans, for example, ever had a one-person-one-vote system, they sure don't anymore. Now it's strictly one-dollar-one-vote. Heads, corporate America gets subsidies, deregulation and externalized production costs; tails, you pay their taxes for them. Usually, though, it's heads and tails, at the same time.

Which brings us to the second characteristic that these cases have in common. It's not an accident that real democracy is off for an extended holiday in each of these countries. It must be, in order that the kleptocracies these nations have actually become can continue to function, largely unimpeded and uninterrupted. Turn your nose up in haughty disgust at Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe if you want (and you definitely should), but I've got some bad news for you. Bad Bob's ugly regime is only different in scale and overtness from those of Egypt, Russia or the United States. To choose what is merely the most prominent example, right now the United States spends more on its military than all the other countries of the world combined - that's nearly 200 nations, for those of you keeping score at home - and yet has no serious enemies anywhere on the horizon. Gee, I wonder why that is. Then there's the case of global warming, which appears to merely be the greatest threat to imperil the planet since the last massive meteor hit and wiped out most life on Earth. No biggie, though. I'm sure it's all just a massive coincidence that we're doing nothing about the collective future of ten billion people and the fact that filthy rich, well-connected fossil fuel peddling corporations would lose money if we did.

All of which leads to a third commonality in each of these cases, which is that of young people surveying the landscape of their future and being a whole lot less than excited about the wreckage they see already strewn thereupon. And what's not to like? Corporate loyalty to employees and lifetime tenure in good career jobs went out with the transistor radio. Public commitment to inexpensive quality education got real quaint real fast when investor bots like Mitt Romney figured out there was money to be made there. Thirty years of tax cuts for the wealthy have to be paid for, and those folks sure as hell not going to be doing it, leaving the tab to you and me instead. The one environment on the one planet we have has been knowingly pissed away by corporate Strangeloves who have absolutely set the all-time world record for sociopathy. But, hey, so what if it's hot and stormy outside? These kids will be hunkered down in their parents' basements for the rest of their lives, anyhow, at least when they're not serving up double mocha lattes.

I am amazed at how long people stood by and watched these conditions develop, especially outside of thuggish dictatorships like Russia or Egypt, where dissent came with real and permanent risks to one's health. Shame on Americans, in particular, for being so stupid and lazy as to buy into the transparent lies and distractions of the Age of Reagan, and sacrifice their futures and those of their children in exchange for the occasional infantile satiation of their worst tendencies toward violence and bigotry. Aren't you glad we got Noriega, now, Billy Bob?!?! Isn't that satisfying, even though you don't have a job or a house anymore? And thank god the queers can't get married, eh?! Building a wall to keep Mexicans out sure is satisfying, isn't it? Yeah. Too bad, though, that we had to trade away the middle class for those seedy little thrills, and drive the country so far into the ditch that we actually solved our illegal immigration problem. Mexicans have literally stopped coming to the US because they can get as much jobless poverty as they want just by staying home, without the nasty demonization crap from drunken gringos trying to paper over their insecurities.

A recent piece in the New York Times summarizes our condition well: "In a Bertelsmann Foundation study on social justice released this fall, the United States came in dead last among the rich countries, with only Greece, Chile, Mexico and Turkey faring worse. Whether in poverty prevention, child poverty, income inequality or health ratings, the United States ranked below countries like Spain and South Korea, not to mention Japan, Germany or France. ... No nation has ever lost an existing middle class, and the United States is not in danger of that yet. But the percentage of national income held by the top 1 percent of Americans went from about 10 percent in 1980 to 24 percent in 2007, and that is a worrisome signal."

But America's short-term future looks even more dismal than the present, if that is imaginable. The Republican presidential field this year could have stepped off the set of any B-rate Hollywood horror film. Or maybe "The Sting". True to form, a good half the candidates are straight-ahead shucksters, pure and simple, who have borrowed directly from the pioneering Sarah Palin's playbook. It turns out that you can make a boatload of money in Republican politics without actually having to do anything remotely onerous, like, say, knowing something about the issues (China has nukes?) or actually serving a full term in office. Two of these confidence men have actually been the GOP flavor of the month at some point this year (four, if you count Palin and Trump, who were so skilled at the game that they never even got in before getting out), and one of those two now looks like he's going to win the nomination.

Somebody (I wish it had been me) recently described Newt Gingrich as "a dumb person's idea of what a smart person sounds like," and boy is that ever the truth. He might also be understood as an amoral sociopath's idea of what a good person sounds like. You can get just about everything you need to know about Gingrich from this one exchange between him and Wife Number Two (of three, and counting) in an Esquire feature published last year:

"He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

"He'd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he'd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

"The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, 'How do you give that speech and do what you're doing?'

"'It doesn't matter what I do,' he answered. 'People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live.'"

It's worth noting, by the way, that Gingrich had asked his third wife to marry him before telling his second wife that he was having an affair and wanted a divorce, and that this repeated the pattern of how he left his first wife. But now he's Mr. Faithful, Mr. Pious and Mr. Moral, lecturing the rest of us on proper codes of ethical behavior. This from a guy who proposes scrapping child labor laws. This from a guy who would deny the Palestinian people even the essence of their identity in order to pander yet further to the Likud Lobby and its stranglehold over American politics. This from a guy who - as Barney Frank rightly notes - is more or less singlehandedly responsible for the poisoning of the well of American political discourse these last two decades. This from a guy who ditched his first wife on her hospital bed as she was recovering from cancer surgery, so that he could marry the woman with whom he had been having an affair.

What kills me is that tens of millions of Americans could want to put this obviously tortured soul in the White House, drooling, chanting and hollering in response every invocation of violence and hatred he casually tosses out like so many rhetorical hand grenades. But then this is the nature of our politics. There is this incredibly sick segment of the country - people who look to politics as a chance to vindicate their resentments, justify their hatreds and exonerate their stupidity - and the contest among the GOP candidates is to find the individual who can throw them the most red meat. If you've watched the crowd response at any of the debates these lot have been conducting the last few months, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But it's been there a good long while. Reagan got elected, in part, because he promised to kill more foreigners than Carter would. No joke. Lil' Bush 'won' his first term (as did Clinton, in part) pretty much on his record as a proud and overt serial murderer of Texas death-row inmates. Then, this dress-up-macho Vietnam coward 'won' his second term by out tough-guying a dude who actually did fight in a real war, or at least Bush did so in the minds of these very unwell Republican voters, whose capacity to grapple with the cognitive dissonance driven by avalanches of pesky factual data makes Lindsay Lohan look like a paragon of mental health by comparison.

So there is every chance that Brute Thing-Itch might be the next American president. I thought for sure it would be Tough Guy Rick Perry, instead, but GOP voters surprised me by demonstrating that they actually do have a stupidity threshold of some sorts. It's perfectly fine to tell them the most obscene lies (like where Palin says she reads "all" them journal thingies, or when Mutt emphatically changes his position on everything imaginable). You just can't reveal that you're as dumb as a Texas governor (even if you are one) on national TV by doing that deer in the headlights thing. If you're gonna list three things, well godammit, you need to come up with more than two. (Christ, Fool, just make them up if you need to! Like that would be so out of character for a GOP politician or voter.) Anyhow, call it tough love if you want, but Republican voters appear to have their standards, and Oh-Shit-I-Left-My-Brain-Back-At-The-Ranch-(Again) Perry doesn't seem to meet them. I guess when national politics is part of your personal mechanism for avoiding embarrassment, it's important that your candidate not play the drunken fool in front of millions...

Anyhow, it now looks like Fig Newton could well be standing on the inaugural platform in January of 2013, and I'm not even sure that's a bad thing in the short term or the long term. I'll be delighted to see Obama humiliated and destroyed, for one thing. My antipathy toward him (and Bill Clinton) in many ways surpasses that for the GOP line-up of thugs and bugs. All of the above have the same fundamental commitments to the same cadre of ruling plutocrats, but Obama and Clinton have also managed to destroy the New Deal Democratic Party and the reputation of progressivism in the bargain. And their deceits have been all the more treasonous because of the millions of progressives (including loads of young people, politically mobilized for the first and possibly last time in 2008) whose idealism, compassion and genuine love of country they've so callously trampled upon.

On the other hand, now that Obama is ramping up the Big Lie machine once again, many of those people will get just what they deserve. What was that line Bush mumbled about fooling me twice? I'm astonished to see progressives gearing up to be abused a second time by Obama - who is all of a sudden sounding like a progressive again - like they've walked right out of a Stockholm Syndrome field manual or something. Are we talking about the same guy here? The one who put the actual bandits who wrecked the economy in his cabinet? The one who has not prosecuted a single Wall Street bankster? The one who bailed those thieves out, but has done nothing remotely serious for the unemployed and homeowners? The one who pretends to fold in every negotiation with Republicans? The one whose staff regularly disses progressives?

That guy? Hey, liberal idiots. I have a question for you. Do you really think this bastard is going to become FDR in his second term? Do you really think he's going to seriously slash military funding in order to save Medicare? Do you really think he's going to rescind his deal with the insurance industry in order to provide genuine public health care access? Do you really think he's going to replace Timothy Geithner with Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz? I mean, this is a guy so beholden to Wall Street that he pretended not to have the courage to nominate Elizabeth Warren to the new consumer affairs position she invented. Are you really going to be wooed by him again? If so, if you're so easily abused by your political class, you might as well line up to be Newt's fourth wife for all the street smarts you're displaying.

This country - and likely this global economy - are going to have to go through a shit storm over the next two or three years, and in many ways I'd much rather have some GOP jerk in the White House to make things worse and get the blame than another four years of Half-a-Bama, carrying water for Wall Street while dissipating the anger of stupid liberals who cannot recognize their own enemy just because he puts 'D' after his name, and especially if he does so while being black. We have to get to the point of utter rejection of kleptocratic politics in this country, and the way I see it, a second Obama term drowns that process in molasses, while the sure to be utterly egregious Gingrich could instead be the perfect lightening rod to fully energize the street. The guy is a disaster in every way imaginable, and is a plague I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy (that would probably be Gingrich, anyhow), but right now he might be just the chemotherapy needed for a very, very sick country.

Yes, we'll lose our hair and vomit continuously.

But perhaps we'll finally destroy the cancer of greed which has metastasized in the American body politic.
(c) 2011 David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles, but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.





"With Friends Like These..."
By Uri Avnery

MY GOD, what a bizarre lot these Republican aspirants for the US presidency are!

What a sorry bunch of ignoramuses and downright crazies. Or, at best, what a bunch of cheats and cynics! (With the possible exception of the good doctor Ron Paul).

Is this the best a great and proud nation can produce? How frightening the thought that one of them may actually become the most powerful person in the world, with a finger on the biggest nuclear button!

BUT LET'S concentrate on the present front-runner. (Republicans seem to change front-runners like a fastidious beau changes socks.)

It's Newt Gingrich. Remember him? The Speaker of the House who had an extra-marital affair with an intern while at the same time leading the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern.

But that's not the point. The point is that this intellectual giant - named after Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist ever - has discovered a great historical truth.

The original Newton discovered the Law of Gravity. Newton Leroy Gingrich has discovered something no less earth-shaking: there is an "invented" people around, referring to the Palestinians.

To which a humble Israeli like me might answer, in the best Hebrew slang: "Good morning, Eliyahu!" Thus we honor people who have made a great discovery which, unfortunately, has been discovered by others long before.

FROM ITS very beginning, the Zionist movement has denied the existence of the Palestinian people. It's an article of faith.

The reason is obvious: if there exists a Palestinian people, then the country the Zionists were about to take over was not empty. Zionism would entail an injustice of historic proportions. Being very idealistic persons, the original Zionists found a way out of this moral dilemma: they simply denied its existence. The winning slogan was "A land without a people for a people without a land."

So who were these curious human beings they met when they came to the country? Oh, ah, well, they were just people who happened to be there, but not "a" people. Passers-by, so to speak. Later, the story goes, after we had made the desert bloom and turned an arid and neglected land into a paradise, Arabs from all over the region flocked to the country, and now they have the temerity - indeed the chutzpah - to claim that they constitute a Palestinian nation!

For many years after the founding of the State of Israel, this was the official line. Golda Meir famously exclaimed: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people!"

(To which I replied in the Knesset: "Mrs. Prime Minister, perhaps you are right. Perhaps there really is no Palestinian people. But if millions of people mistakenly believe that they are a people, and behave like a people, then they are a people.")

A huge propaganda machine - both in Israel and abroad - was employed to "prove" that there was no Palestinian people. A lady called Joan Peters wrote a book ("From Time Immemorial") proving that the riffraff calling themselves "Palestinians" had nothing to do with Palestine. They are nothing but interlopers and impostors. The book was immensely successful - until some experts took it apart and proved that the whole edifice of conclusive proofs was utter rubbish.

I myself have spent many hundreds of hours trying to convince Israeli and foreign audiences that there is a Palestinian people and that we have to make peace with them. Until one day the State of Israel recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the "Palestinian people", and the argument was laid to rest.

Until Newt came along and, like a later-day Jesus, raised it from the dead.

OBVIOUSLY, HE is much too busy to read books. True, he was once a teacher of history, but for many years now he has been very busy speakering the Congress, making a fortune as an "adviser" of big corporations and now trying to become president.

Otherwise, he would probably have come across a brilliant historical book by Benedict Anderson, "Imagined Communities", which asserts that all modern nations are invented.

Nationalism is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. When a community decides to become a nation, it has to reinvent itself. That means inventing a national past, reshuffling historical facts (and non-facts) in order to create a coherent picture of a nation existing since antiquity. Hermann the Cherusker, member of a Germanic tribe who betrayed his Roman employers, became a "national" hero. Religious refugees who landed in America and destroyed the native population became a "nation". Members of an ethnic-religious Diaspora formed themselves into a "Jewish nation". Many others did more or less the same.

Indeed, Newt would profit from reading a book by a Tel Aviv University professor, Shlomo Sand, a kosher Jew, whose Hebrew title speaks for itself: "When and How the Jewish People was Invented?"

Who are these Palestinians? About a hundred years ago, two young students in Istanbul, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and President (respectively) of Israel, wrote a treatise about the Palestinians. The population of this country, they said, has never changed. Only small elites were sometimes deported. The towns and villages never moved, as their names prove. Canaanites became Israelites, then Jews and Samaritans, then Christian Byzantines. With the Arab conquest, they slowly adopted the religion of Islam and the Arabic Culture. These are today's Palestinians. I tend to agree with them.

PARROTING THE straight Zionist propaganda line - by now discarded by most Zionists - Gingrich argues that there can be no Palestinian people because there never was a Palestinian state. The people in this country were just "Arabs" under Ottoman rule.

So what? I used to hear from French colonial masters that there is no Algerian people, because there never was an Algerian state, there was never even a united country called Algeria. Any takers for this theory now?

The name "Palestine" was mentioned by a Greek historian some 2500 years ago. A "Duke of Palestine" is mentioned in the Talmud. When the Arabs conquered the country, they called it "Filastin, as they still do." The Arab national movement came into being all over the Arab world, including Palestine - at the same time as the Zionist movement - and strove for independence from the Ottoman Sultan.

For centuries, Palestine was considered a part of Greater Syria (the region known in Arabic as 'Sham'). There was no formal distinction between Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Jordanians. But when, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the European powers divided the Arab world between them, a state called Palestine became a fact under the British Mandate, and the Arab Palestinian people established themselves as a separate nation with a national flag of their own. Many peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America did the same, even without asking Gingrich for confirmation.

It would certainly be ironic if the members of the "invented" Palestinian nation were expected to ask for recognition from the members of the "invented" Jewish/Israeli nation, at the demand of a member of the "invented" American nation, a person who, by the way, is of mixed German, English, Scottish and Irish stock.

Years ago, there was short-lived controversy about Palestinian textbooks. It was argued that they were anti-Semitic and incited to murder. That was laid to rest when it became clear that all Palestinian schoolbooks were cleared by the Israeli occupation authorities, and most were inherited from the previous Jordanian regime. But Gingrich does not shrink from resurrecting this corpse, too.

All Palestinians - men, women and children - are terrorists, he asserts, and Palestinian pupils learn at school how to kill us poor and helpless Israelis. Ah, what would we do without such stout defenders as Newt? What a pity that this week a photo of him, shaking the hand of Yasser Arafat, was published.

And please don't show him the textbooks used in some of our schools, especially the religious ones!

IS IT really a waste of time to write about such nonsense?

It may seem so, but one cannot ignore the fact that the dispenser of these inanities may be tomorrow's President of the United States of America. Given the economic situation, that is not as unlikely as it sounds.

As for now, Gingrich is doing immense damage to the national interests of the US. At this historic juncture, the masses at all the Tahrir Squares across the Arab world are wondering about America's attitude. Newt's answer contributes to a new and more profound anti-Americanism.

Alas, he is not the only extreme rightist seeking to embrace Israel. Israel has lately become the Mecca of all the world's racists. This week we were honored by the visit of the husband of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front. A pilgrimage to the Jewish State is now a must for any aspiring fascist.

One of our ancient sages coined the phrase: >I>"Not for nothing does the starling go to the raven. It's because they are of the same kind."

Thanks. But sorry. They are not of my kind.

To quote another proverb: With friends like these, who needs enemies?
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom




Supporters from Occupy Wall Street participate in a protest before marching to Zuccotti Park.



A Sign Occupy Wall Street Is Having Political Impact
By Matt Taibbi

For those saying that Occupy Wall Street hasn't had a concrete effect, take a look at this. It's not much, but it's a little something. The leaders of the House Financial Services Committee announced yesterday that they will be holding hearings on the SEC's practice of concluding settlements with Wall Street defendants without forcing the accused to admit to wrongdoing.

This whole thing seems to be the creature of ranking Republican Spencer Bachus. From his site:

"The SEC's practice of using 'no-contest settlements' has raised concerns about accountability and transparency, and I'm pleased the Committee will examine these concerns in a bipartisan manner," said Chairman Bachus.

If they actually do something about this, then it'll be time to give them a pat on the back. But in the meantime, we can expect to see a lot of things like this in an election year marked by an absence of a real galvanizing message coming from either party. With OWS and populist anger generally filling that messaging void, there are going to be a lot of politicians who will look to capitalize by doing things like, for instance, beating up on the SEC in a few days of well-publicized but ineffectual hearings.

Spencer Bachus to positioning himself as a champion of Wall Steeet reform is, of course, hilarious. Not only was he one of the leaders of the opposition to even the very mild Dodd-Frank reform, he went out of his way to stall changes to the rules governing derivative trades that would have prevented abuses like JP Morgan Chase's rape of Jefferson County, Alabama. This was particularly egregious because Bachus, who was the House's third-biggest recipient of Wall Street money and a heavy beneficiary of donations from Chase, happened to be Jefferson County's congressman.

So this guy is no enemy of the banks. What yesterday's move does show, however, is that politicians are listening to the specific complaints of OWS. A year ago, we would never have even seen hearings like this coming from the likes of Bachus and Barney Frank, who also supported them move. But now, everybody is trying to find a way to ride the wave. It's too early to celebrate any of this, but it can't be a bad thing.
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







Hitch
By Sam Harris

The moment it was announced that Christopher Hitchens was sick with cancer, eulogies began spilling into print and from the podium. No one wanted to deny the possibility that he would recover, of course, but neither could we let the admiration we felt for him go unexpressed. It is a cliche to say that he was one of a kind and none can fill his shoes-but Hitch was and none can. In his case not even the most effusive tributes ring hollow. There was simply no one like him.

One of the joys of living in a world filled with stupidity and hypocrisy was to see Hitch respond. That pleasure is now denied us. The problems that drew his attention remain-and so does the record of his brilliance, courage, erudition, and good humor in the face of outrage. But his absence will leave an enormous void in the years to come. Hitch lived an extraordinarily large life. (Read his memoir, Hitch-22, and marvel.) It was too short, to be sure-and one can only imagine what another two decades might have brought out of him-but Hitch produced more fine work, read more books, met more interesting people, and won more arguments than most of us could in several centuries.

I first met Hitch at a dinner at the end of April 2007, just before the release of his remarkable book god is not Great. After a long evening, my wife and I left him standing on the sidewalk in front of his hotel. His book tour was just beginning, and he was scheduled to debate on a panel the next morning. It was well after midnight, but it was evident from his demeanor that his clock had a few hours left to run. I had heard the stories about his ability to burn the candle at both ends, but staggering there alongside him in the glare of a street lamp, I made a mental note of what struck me as a fact of nature-tomorrow's panel would be a disaster.

I rolled out of bed the following morning, feeling quite wrecked, to see Hitch holding forth on C-SPAN's Book TV, dressed in the same suit he had been wearing the night before. Needless to say, he was effortlessly lucid and witty-and taking no prisoners. There should be a name for the peculiar cocktail of emotion I then enjoyed: one part astonishment, one part relief, two parts envy; stir. It would not be the last time I drank it in his honor.

Since that first dinner, I have felt immensely lucky to count Hitch as a friend and colleague-and very unlucky indeed not to have met him sooner. Before he became ill, I had expected to have many more years in which to take his company for granted. But our last meeting was in February of this year, in Los Angeles, where we shared the stage with two rabbis. His illness was grave enough at that point to make the subject of our debate-Is there an afterlife?-seem a touch morbid. It also made traveling difficult for him. I was amazed that he had made the trip at all.

The evening before the event, we met for dinner, and I was aware that it might be our last meal together. I was also startled to realize that it was our first meal alone. I remember thinking what a shame it was-for me-that our lives had not better coincided. I had much to learn from him.

I have been privileged to witness the gratitude that so many people feel for Hitch's life and work-for, wherever I speak, I meet his fans. On my last book tour, those who attended my lectures could not contain their delight at the mere mention of his name-and many of them came up to get their books signed primarily to request that I pass along their best wishes to him. It was wonderful to see how much Hitch was loved and admired-and to be able to share this with him before the end.

I will miss you, brother.
(c) 2011 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" and is the co-founder of The Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values. Follow Sam Harris on Twitter.







The Coldest Cut Of All

Scrooge was a nasty old miser, but even he came to see the soul-destroying evil of his ways and found redemption in the end. One wonders though - is there any hope for the Scrooges of Washington?

Congressional Republicans are protecting tax breaks for Wall Street billionaires and Big Oil, while demanding that programs to aid America's growing number of poor people either be slashed or eliminated. The Obama White House is fighting most of this nonsense, but it's trying to appease the GOP by offering to sacrifice programs that ordinary people really need. For example, LIHEAP.

Much of the country doesn't know what that is, but people who go through the long, bitterly cold winters in the Northeast know that LIHEAP literally is a lifeline for the thousands of poor families there. It's the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps the poor afford the steadily-rising price being charged for the heating oil that northeastern states rely on. Home heating oil in Maine is presently running $3.66 a gallon, up from $2.87 a year ago.

Yet, in a concession to the GOP, Obama has proposed whacking LIHEAP's funding so severely that average benefits this winter would fall from about $800 per home to just over $300. That's not just throwing a budget into the Republican shredder, it's throwing people into it! In Bangor, Maine, where the average January low is only seven degrees above zero, the slashed benefits will buy only about 100 gallons of fuel for the typical low-income home. It takes 850 gallons for those homes to stay heated through the winter season.

Rather than literally tossing the poor into the cold, how about cutting off all heat to the White House and Capitol? Let those Scrooges feel the sting of their budgetary miserliness.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.




Jon gives the corpo-rat salute!




A Corzine Con?
By Helen Thomas

Jon Corzine - the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, former governor of and U.S. senator from New Jersey - took over leadership of MF Global and highly leveraged the company to complete bankruptcy. So for him to tell the United States House Committee on Agriculture during three hours of grilling that he didn't know where the missing $1.2 billion in customer funds went seems ludicrous.

Is that the way big corporate executives do business? Would they ignore missing money that belonged to their customers and not ask questions?

Corzine admits he was stunned when he realized the loss.

"I simply don't know where the money is," Corzine told members of the House Agriculture Committee. He claimed to have learned of the shortfall of funds on Oct. 30.

Corzine kept his cool during the grilling, even when one senator said his mother told him "always do the right thing, even when nobody is looking."

Corzine looked the part of an affluent businessman, wearing a black suit and a silk tie. He had been subpoenaed, and passed on using those Fifth Amendment rights that would have gotten him off the hook when he testified.

It is hard to believe that Corzine helped author the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that regulated the actions of corporate boards, and yet his own legislation could not protect the thousands of investors who lost $1.2 billion due to his mismanagement.

Section 302 of the Act requires the CEO and the CFO of companies to approve quarterly financial reports. How can Corzine testify that he doesn't know where the money is? Did he review quarterly financial reports, or is he just lying? Shouldn't he know what is required of a CEO - after all, he not only was the CEO of Goldman Sachs, but he was a member of the Banking and Budget committees as a senator.

Enron filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2, 2001. It was so shocking at the time that "America's Most Innovative Company" - according to Fortune magazine, under the watchful eye of Arthur Andersen, a premier accounting firm - could be so entangled in planned accounting fraud.

The collapse of Enron was the reason for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and yet over the past decade it appears Enron was the first domino to fall. After the Enron scandal, accounting fraud not only continued, but got worse.

The derivatives market took off. With no regulation, we ended 2008 with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Bank of America having to buy Merrill Lynch, the government paying $85 billion to bail AIG out of bankruptcy, and the purchase of Washington Mutual by J.P. Morgan Chase, in the biggest bank failure in history. So what exactly did we accomplish in terms of regulation?

Brooksley Born, during her tenure as chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tried to warn us in 1999 of the dangers of the unregulated derivatives market, and the Greenspan, Rubin and Summers dream team ran her out of town.

We are currently experiencing one of the tightest credit crunches in history. No one has recovered from the crash of 2008, except those who caused the crash in the first place. Wall Street seems to have recovered - they at least have access to money that no one else seems to have.

When are we going to wake up and do something to prevent these Wall Street crooks from taking all of our money? I am tired of bailing unregulated bankers out of bankruptcy with hard-earned tax payer dollars.

As I watch Corzine testify, I can't help but wonder if Wall Street attracts gambling addicts. Corzine helped write the regulations and said all the right things publicly, and yet when he was in the driver's seat he drove off the cliff. It's as if he had no control - he couldn't help himself.

At the end of the day, Corzine should have known better, and we should know better. Obviously we need regulation to control the gambling addicts we have running Wall Street.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







BrainGate - Making Damaged Bodies Function
By James Donahue

I was a fan of Mad Magazine probably from the first day it appeared in print. I may have owned a first edition copy at one time. One of those first issues contained a cartoon story of a futuristic world in which technology had become so advanced that humans were so dependent upon machines their muscles were atrophied. Everybody rode around in mechanized wheelchairs. Machines prepared their meals, fed them, maintained their homes and took care of their every need.

The machines that ran this world, at least in the comic story, were controlled by a master computer, or brain. In the story something went wrong with the computer, it stopped working, and the people suddenly found themselves trapped in bodies that no longer worked.

That was the Mad version of a future world as envisioned in the 1950s. Strangely, a reverse version of that very idea is being developed by a group of world-renowned experts in robotics and computers at such prestigious universities as Brown, Harvard, Emory, MIT, Columbia and the University of Utah. The joint project has been given the odd name BrainGate.

The idea is to develop computer technology that works with the human brain to make such devices as wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and voice machines assist people with pronounced physical disabilities enjoy improved lives. Thus there may be hope for paraplegics, quadriplegics, the many military men and women returning home from the wars with missing arms and legs, people with spinal cord injuries and even stroke victims.

The researchers are so optimistic about the work they are doing they believe the BrainGate project has the potential to revolutionize the way our brains work.

The BrainGate project is described as a brain implant system developed by Cyberkinetics, a bio-tech company working with the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University. It involves implanting a computer chip in the brain that monitors brain activity and uses the information to issue computer commands that move mechanical devices.

It is a simple concept, but it has involved working with a complex part of the human body, the human brain. And this has taken years and years of research by a lot of very skilled people from all around the world.

The chip now being tried uses 96 hair-thin electrodes that sense the electro-magnetic signatures of neurons firing in targeted areas of the brain. For example, if the chip is inserted to control a robotic arm, it is placed in the part of the brain that controls arm movement.

Early experiments with the chip have involved placing chips in a man with a spinal cord injury and another suffering from advanced ALS. Pilot trials also were conducted on four patients suffering from tetaplegia, a reduced ability to use their arms and legs.

The results of the early trials have proven that the BrainGate chip may soon become a workable solution for hundreds of thousands of wheelchair-bound people.

It was reported that the trial involving the paraplegic was so successful, the patient was able to steer his wheelchair by blowing into a tube connected to his mouth. Also by using his thoughts to manipulate a computer cursor, the patient successfully opened and read e-mails, played video games, grasped objects with a robotic arm. He even operated light switches and television controls by mere thought.

As promising as the early trials sound, the researchers warn that they still have a lot of bugs to work out before BrainGate can be made available to the public. They say the technology cries for improved wireless transmissions. Also they have found that once the chip is implanted in the brain, the ability of the electrodes to communicate with brain signals deteriorates. They do not know why this happens. So the chip only works for a few months and then must be replaced. Leaving a permanent hole in the patient's head creates a high risk of infection.

Nevertheless, the researchers are determined to make the BrainGate project work. And there is one thing we all know about human ingenuity. In a strange sense, we are all gods when it comes down to creating things. No goal seems to be impossible if we set our minds to achieving it.

Other researchers are working on yet another device called Functional Electrical Stimulation. They are using small electrical pulses to stimulate muscles in paralyzed limbs to make them function again. The project is also designed to help paraplegics and patients suffering from muscular degeneration enjoy normal activities like grasping objects, standing and walking, and improving bladder and bowel functions.

If successful, the future may look much brighter for the handicapped. All we can hope for is that the mad scientists don't carry the project to the extremes depicted in the 1950s Mad Magazine cartoon.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






Direct elections: A threat to America!
Why are Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP so terrified of a national popular vote?
By David Sirota

When the Senate minority leader of the United States calls something "a genuine threat to our country," everyone - regardless of party - should listen. Even in the post-9/11 era of overheated language and hyper-partisanship, that kind of declaration from such a powerful public official is not to be taken lightly.

So, what horrible menace to our way of life was Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., talking about when he recently uttered those words? Communism? Al-Qaida? Hostile extraterrestrials?

None of the above. He was referring to democracy.

That sounds hard to believe, but it's absolutely true. In a speech last week to the Heritage Foundation, McConnell used that War on Terror-flavored jeremiad about an existential "threat" to describe a grass-roots effort aimed at electing presidents via a national popular vote.

Prompted by frustration with swing states' disproportionate power, the national popular vote idea is elegant in its simplicity. States commit their Electoral College votes to the national popular vote winner, regardless of the outcome of the presidential contest within their boundaries. The plan does not go into effect until a majority of Electoral College votes are signed on, but if and when that happens, America finally gets what should be a fundamental democratic guarantee: that our president is the candidate who received the majority of votes.

To most readers, that seems like a non-ideological no-brainer; it means every vote is equally important, regardless of geography. And why shouldn't it be that way? After all, there's no moral or substantive reason that a vote in liberal Denver should be more valued by a presidential election system than a vote in rural Idaho just because the Denver vote was cast in the swing state of Colorado. Similarly, there's no democratic justification for candidates reaching the Oval Office when they didn't win the most votes.

Yet, despite those nonpartisan truisms, McConnell billed the accelerating national popular vote campaign as a nefarious liberal plot. While such a paranoid theory sounds like a "Saturday Night Live" spoof of a Fox News diatribe, the Senate minority leader was dead serious, which made his statements all the more hilarious - but also painfully revealing. They highlight the fact that Republicans are now openly defining themselves as opponents of the most basic democratic ideals.

In the states, the onslaught against voting has been unself-consciously overt. As civil rights lawyer Judith Browne Dianis told CNN, "Through a spate of restrictive laws passed in Republican-led legislatures, a disproportionate number of African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, the elderly and the young will find voting difficult and in many cases impossible." These statutes, she notes, "require a state photo ID to vote, limit early voting, place strict requirements on voter registration and deny voting rights to Americans with criminal records who have paid their debt to society."

Now, with 132 electoral votes signing on to the national popular vote compact, there's the real possibility of more democratic presidential elections. So the highest-ranking Republican in America is mobilizing the opposition.

Taken together, this coordinated war on democracy leads to a frightening question: Why is it being waged?

Republicans claim they are moved by (totally unproven) fears of rampant voter fraud, but their obvious motivation is authoritarian self-interest. With polls showing the party's policy goals wholly out of line with public attitudes, the GOP is trying to limit the public's democratic rights. In other words, Republicanism is at odds with public opinion. So, rather than bend to that opinion, Republicans are trying to disenfranchise it.

Such fanatical ends-justify-the-means-ism was once the exclusive hallmark of foreign banana republics. Should our own Banana Republicans succeed in their assault on democracy, that's exactly the kind of backward country America will become.
(c) 2011 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.








Set Your Doomsday Clock To 11:51
By David Swanson

The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police state. The doomsday clock of our republic just got noticeably closer to midnight, and the fact that almost nobody knows it, simply moves that fatal minute-hand a bit further still.

I'm not referring to the "doomsday" predicted by Leon Panetta should military spending be scaled back to the obscenely inflated levels of 2007. I'm talking about the complete failure to keep the republic that Benjamin Franklin warned we might not. Practices that were avoided, outsourced, or kept secret when Bill Clinton was president were directly engaged in on such a scale under president George W. Bush that they became common knowledge. Under President Obama they are becoming formal law and acceptable policy.

Obama has claimed the power to imprison people without a trial since his earliest months in office. He spoke in front of the Constitution in the National Archives while gutting our founding document in 2009. So why not pick the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights to further codify its elimination? President Obama has claimed the power to torture "if needed," issued an executive order claiming the power of imprisonment without trial, exercised that power on a massive scale at Bagram, and claimed and exercised the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. Obama routinely kills people with unmanned drones.

As Obama's Justice Department has broken new ground in the construction of state secrecy and immunity, the Bush era advancers of imperial presidential power have gone on book tours bragging about their misdeeds. One can expect the next step to involve serious abuse of those who question and resist the current bipartisan trajectory.

So what does the latest bill do, other than dumping another $660 billion into wars and war preparation? Well, it says this:

"Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

In other words, Congress is giving its stamp of approval to the unconstitutional outrages already claimed by the president. But then, why create a new law at all? Well, because some outrages are more equal than others, and Congress has chosen to specify some of those and in fact to expand some of them. For example:

"Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b) pending disposition under the law of war."

And this:

"The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following: (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

Jon Stewart explained when those detained without trial under the law might be released: "So when the war on terror ends, and terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion, you are free to go."

An exception for U.S. citizens was kept out of the bill at President Obama's request.

So why did Obama threaten to veto the bill initially and again after it passed the Senate? Well, one change made by the conference committee was this:

"The Secretary of Defense President may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary President submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States."

The reference here is to military tribunals. The President - that is, the current one and future ones - need not hand someone over even to a military tribunal if . . . well, if he (or she) chooses not to.

President Obama wanted a bill that limited him in no way, and he is likely to issue a law-altering signing-statement that further removes any offensive limits on absolute tyrannical power. This type of signing statement is another example of something done secretly by Bush, exposed, turned into a temporary scandal, denounced by candidate Obama, then utilized by President Obama, formally established by executive order, and now more or less accepted by everyone as the norm.

That is what will happen with trial-free imprisonment and assassination as well. And the presidents who engage in these practices will be from both major political parties. So readers should weigh the acceptable crimes and abuses of the good tyrants on their team against the risk of presidents from the other team doing the same. Of course, this team loyalty is the main reason the streets of Washington are not filled with protesters. The corporate media believes that outrages agreed to by both parties are not news. Many Democrats believe any power a Democratic president wants he should have, even though all of his successors will have it too. And many Republicans back whatever comes out of a Republican House of Representatives.

A large majority of Republicans in the House voted to eviscerate our Bill of Rights, and the Democrats split 93 to 93. In the Senate both parties overwhelmingly voted "Aye."

If ever there was a time to build an independent, principled movement based in activism rather than elections and to put a few more minutes back on the doomsday clock, this is it. While Obama's decision not to veto this bill has discouraged many, at RootsAction we've continued demanding a veto because we think the Constitution should be upheld and improved, not dismantled. If signed into law, we will demand that this elimination of our rights be repealed by Congress or overturned in court, and we will use that campaign to educate the public about what just happened.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







The Trial Of Bradley Manning
Rule of Law or Rule of Intimidation, Retaliation & Retribution
By Ann Wright

Yesterday, December 16, 2011, 40 supporters of Bradley Manning saw him in person in the military courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland and another 60 saw him on a video feed from the court, the first time Manning has been seen by the public in 19 months. Over 100 other supporters, including 50 from Occupy Wall Street who had bused down from New York City, were at the front gates of Fort Meade in solidarity with Manning.

Hundreds of supporters will gather today, Saturday, December 17, for a large rally and march.

For his first court appearance, Bradley was in what looked to be a new military uniform and typically military, he had a fresh haircut. He was not in shackles in the courtroom, but it appeared in a photo that he was shackled in the van that brought him to the court. Manning talked freely with his civilian defense counsel and his two military legal counsels.

He did not turn around and look at the people in the court, but as he was brought in and taken out during the various recesses of the court, he no doubt noticed supporters in Bradley Manning t-shirts.

Bradley Manning has been imprisoned for 19 months, since May, 2010, without a trial. Yesterday, December 16, 2011, an Article 32 hearing began at Fort Meade, Maryland, in which an investigating officer will determine whether there is sufficient evidence of the crimes with which the military has charged him for the case to be referred to a General court-martial.

In July, 2010, Manning was charged with transferring classified information onto his personal computer and communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source. 22 more crimes were charged in March 2011, including "aiding the enemy," a capital offense. Defense Department prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty. In April, 2011, Manning was found fit to face a court martial.

Defense Challenges Impartiality of Investigating Officer

On Friday, December 16, Manning's civilian lawyer, David Coombs challenged the impartiality of the investigating officer US Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, citing Almanza's civilian employment as a lawyer in the Department of Justice which has conducted investigations on Manning, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks. The defense team had requested that 38 witnesses be allowed to testify in the Article 32 hearing. Coombs also said that the decision of Almanza to allow only two defense witnesses other than the 10 the prosecution wanted demonstrated a bias by Almanza.

Coombs told Almanza, "That simple fact alone, without anything else, would cause a reasonable person to say, ‘I question your impartiality.'" Stating that his office of child exploitation in the Department of Justice had nothing to do with the Wikileaks investigation or with national security issues, Almanza denied Coombs' request for recusal.

Almanza told Coombs and Manning, "I do not believe a reasonable person, knowing all the circumstances, would be led to the conclusion that my impartiality would be reasonably questioned. I thus deny the defense request to recuse myself."

After that, Coombs filed a writ with the Army Court of Criminal Appeals to stay the proceedings until a decision can be made on whether Almanza should continue to preside. According to military law experts, the hearing can proceed while the appeals court makes its determination.

Manning under harsh imprisonment at Quantico reeked of intimidation and retaliation

The military's treatment of Manning has reeked of intimidation and retaliation.

Until citizen activist protests six months ago in March, 2011, brought sufficient attention to the harsh conditions of his pre-trial confinement, the US military was treating him as if he were beyond the scrutiny of the law - as if he were an "enemy combatant" in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Amnesty International and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture expressed great concern about the conditions under which Manning was being held - in a maximum-security, single-occupancy cell, placed on a prevention-of-injury order and allowed to wear only a suicide-proof smock at night.

Independent UN expert on torture calls for unrestricted access to Manning and other US detainees.

On July 12, 2011, Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, stated that it was "vital for him to have unmonitored access to Bradley Manning." Mendez said,

"I am assured by the US Government that Mr. Manning's prison regime and confinement is markedly better than it was when he was in Quantico, however, in addition to obtaining firsthand information on my own about his new conditions of confinement, I need to ascertain whether the conditions he was subjected to for several months in Quantico amounted to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr. Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid."

At the request of Mr. Mendez and after several meetings, the US Department of Defense said it would allow him to visit Mr. Manning, but warned that the conversation would be monitored.

Mendez said such a condition violated long-standing rules that the UN applies for prison visits and for interviews with inmates everywhere in the world. On humanitarian grounds and under protest, Mr. Mendez, through Mr. Manning's counsel, offered to visit him under these restrictive conditions, an offer Manning declined.

Mr. Mendez said, "The question of my unfettered access to a detainee goes beyond my request to meet with Mr. Manning -- it touches on whether I will be able to conduct private and unmonitored interviews with detainees if I were to conduct a country visit to the United States."

Additionally, Mr. Mendez has requested several times since his appointment in November, 2010, that the US Government allow him to visit the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, the US government has not responded to his requests.

Best Military Legal System in the World?

Despite the military's mantra of having the best military legal system in the world, the past treatment of Manning-keeping him in solitary confinement, forcing him to stand naked while in pre-trial confinement and the lack of compliance with the norms of the military legal system of a "speedy" trial have added to the low points of Abu Gharib and Guantanamo in the history of military "justice."

The federal courts have long established mechanism of dealing with classified information in national security cases.

The military's contention that it took 19 months to figure out how to try him while protecting classified materials reeks of intimidation, retribution and retaliation.
(c) 2011 Ann Wright is a 29-year US Army veteran who retired as a Colonel, and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003, in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001, she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of "Dissent: Voices Of Conscience." Her March 19, 2003, letter of resignation can be read here. She traveled to Gaza three times in 2009 after the Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 1,440, wounded 5,000 and left 50,000 homeless. She was an organizer of the Gaza Freedom March in December, 2009, that brought 1350 persons from 44 countries to Cairo, Egypt, and was one of the passengers on the Gaza flotilla.








Will China Break?
By Paul Krugman

Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit - with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated "shadow banking" neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting - and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.

Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I'm talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn't need this right now.

I've been reluctant to weigh in on the Chinese situation, in part because it's so hard to know what's really happening. All economic statistics are best seen as a peculiarly boring form of science fiction, but China's numbers are more fictional than most. I'd turn to real China experts for guidance, but no two experts seem to be telling the same story.

Still, even the official data are troubling - and recent news is sufficiently dramatic to ring alarm bells.

The most striking thing about the Chinese economy over the past decade was the way household consumption, although rising, lagged behind overall growth. At this point consumer spending is only about 35 percent of G.D.P., about half the level in the United States.

So who's buying the goods and services China produces? Part of the answer is, well, we are: as the consumer share of the economy declined, China increasingly relied on trade surpluses to keep manufacturing afloat. But the bigger story from China's point of view is investment spending, which has soared to almost half of G.D.P.

The obvious question is, with consumer demand relatively weak, what motivated all that investment? And the answer, to an important extent, is that it depended on an ever-inflating real estate bubble. Real estate investment has roughly doubled as a share of G.D.P. since 2000, accounting directly for more than half of the overall rise in investment. And surely much of the rest of the increase was from firms expanding to sell to the burgeoning construction industry.

Do we actually know that real estate was a bubble? It exhibited all the signs: not just rising prices, but also the kind of speculative fever all too familiar from our own experiences just a few years back - think coastal Florida.

And there was another parallel with U.S. experience: as credit boomed, much of it came not from banks but from an unsupervised, unprotected shadow banking system. There were huge differences in detail: shadow banking American style tended to involve prestigious Wall Street firms and complex financial instruments, while the Chinese version tends to run through underground banks and even pawnshops. Yet the consequences were similar: in China as in America a few years ago, the financial system may be much more vulnerable than data on conventional banking reveal.

Now the bubble is visibly bursting. How much damage will it do to the Chinese economy - and the world?

Some commentators say not to worry, that China has strong, smart leaders who will do whatever is necessary to cope with a downturn. Implied though not often stated is the thought that China can do what it takes because it doesn't have to worry about democratic niceties.

To me, however, these sound like famous last words. After all, I remember very well getting similar assurances about Japan in the 1980s, where the brilliant bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance supposedly had everything under control. And later, there were assurances that America would never, ever, repeat the mistakes that led to Japan's lost decade - when we are, in reality, doing even worse than Japan did.

For what it's worth, statements about economic policy from Chinese officials don't strike me as being especially clear-headed. In particular, the way China has been lashing out at foreigners - among other things, imposing a punitive tariff on imports of U.S.-made autos that will do nothing to help its economy but will help poison trade relations - does not sound like a mature government that knows what it's doing.

And anecdotal evidence suggests that while China's government may not be constrained by rule of law, it is constrained by pervasive corruption, which means that what actually happens at the local level may bear little resemblance to what is ordered in Beijing.

I hope that I'm being needlessly alarmist here. But it's impossible not to be worried: China's story just sounds too much like the crack-ups we've already seen elsewhere. And a world economy already suffering from the mess in Europe really, really doesn't need a new epicenter of crisis.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times






The Quotable Quote...



"Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!"
~~~ Helen Keller









Recovering From Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS)
"Because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same"
By Phil Rockstroh

Witnessing the acts and utterances of Republican presidential candidates can be regarded as a helpful psychological exercise, a type of "exposure therapy" involving the development of methods used to bear the presence of unbearable people who insist on evincing the history of human ignorance, duplicity and insanity.

"I can't go on; I go on." ~~~ Samuel Beckett

All alive are tasked with the challenge of, not only proceeding through life despite these kinds of insults to common sense and common decency, but to make a stand, in one's own unique way, against prevailing forms of madness and oppression.

As a case in point, within the mainstream narratives of the corporate media and that of both major political parties, one bears constant witness to palaver involving the nebulous tyrannies of "big government"; although, incongruously, one scarcely receives from those sources focused complaints and critiques (much less probing investigative reports or congressional hearings) directed at the excesses of the national security/police state and Military/Big Media/Prison Industrial Complex. The "big government" narrative is a misdirection campaign--a smoke screen serving to obscure corporate/military dominance of political life and its effects on the social criteria of everyday life in the nation. Accordingly, government is only as big as the 1% who own and operate it will allow it to be.

Therefore, due to the fact that elitist interests all but control the U.S. political class, in order to change government policies, a radical rethinking and revamping of the economic order of the nation must occur. Although, at this late date in the life of empire, change will have to come from the streets, from uprisings--by occupations--by a restructuring of the entire system, from its cracked foundation, to rotting support beams, to corroding particle board, to lousy paint job.

Yet, this will be an organic process...unpredictable, fraught with peril, freighted with the expansiveness of the novel, tinged with apprehensions borne of grief. But upheaval is inevitable because the present system is deep into the process of entropic runaway. And because uncertainty will be our constant companion, one is advised to make it an ally.

The neoliberal capitalist order is on a path towards extinction. And it will, most likely, die ugly. But it has lived ugly as well. The system never worked as advertised...was more sales pitch than substance in its promise to increase innovation and deliver prosperity worldwide. Conversely, the set-up leveled enslavement to powerful interests by means of a 21st century version of company town despotism e.g., workhouses, sweat shops, unhealthy mining towns and industrial wastelands where the laboring classes are shackled by debt-slavery to company store-type coercion.

This global company town criteria has inflicted sub-living wages, no benefit, no future jobs, yet the corporate state's 24/7, commercial propaganda apparatus has the consumer multitudes of the U.S. convinced that they are "living the dream". As a result, great numbers still believe their oligarchic oppressors actually believe their own lies about freedom, liberty and equal opportunity for all.

That's right: Scheming princes simply love the peasants of their kingdom...They do, as long as those wretches continue to bow down in the presence of the powerful, do all they are commanded to do, and unthinkingly serve the interests of their vain, arrogant rulers. Absurdly, large numbers in the U.S. still claim the burdensome economic yoke they bear is a glittering accessory of freedom gifted to them by their privileged betters.

Often, one hears the assertion: Although the U.S. is an empire, it is, in fact, a benign sort of empire...as far as empires go.

To the contrary, the nation's post-Second World War, empire-building enterprise, as is the case throughout history with exercises in imperium, has leveled deathscapes abroad, corrupted the society's elite and delivered anomie and alienation to the general population. From the soulless, dehumanizing nothingscapes of the U.S. interstate highway system and its resultant suburban project, to the douchescapes of hyper-commercialized pop culture, empire's legacy is as pervasive as it is dismal.

And all delivered and maintained by trading in the bartered blood of the innocent abroad by mechanisms of imperial plunder while serving to create a gallery of heartless, authoritarian-minded, consumerism-addicted grotesques at home. One suspects this is the reason discussions involving the true nature of empire are not considered a subject fit for nice company.

Often, by attempting to adapt to the burdensome daily obligations and the spirit crushing, hierarchical structure of neoliberal capitalism, individuals will begin to internalize its pathologies. In the age of corporate state dominated media, to ensure the circular, self-reinforcing nature of the noxious narratives of empire remain in place, faux populist, conservative media talk show hosts, talking heads and rightist pundits--elitist bully boys and gals--i.e., the bigot whispers of the right--continually seed the dismal air with false narratives, contrived to misdirect anger and foment displaced resentments.

In turn, little bullies, out in the U.S. spleenland, rendered resentful and mean of spirit by the incessant humiliation leveled by a class-stratified, exploitive economic system take up these self-defeating talking points that serve the 1%. Accordingly, when, for example, participants in the OWS movement question the present social and economic structure, these downscale denizens of oligarchic rule personalize the critique; their identification with the system is so complete that they feel as though they have been attacked on a personal basis.

As a consequence, all too often, their defenses are raised and they return volleys of ad hominem attacks that serve to defend a status quo that demeans them. This psychological phenomenon could be termed Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS)--a pathology suffered by personalities who have been traumatized by authority, but who endeavor to remedy the wounding and humiliation inflicted by a brutal, degrading order by identification with their oppressors.

To wit, the lack of outrage exhibited by the general public regarding the nations trudge toward a police/national security state. For example, the lack of deference displayed by city officials and local police forces regarding the First Amendment rights of OWS participants.

First off, lets clear the pepper spray-fogged air on the matter: The vast majority of rank and file police officers do not now and, most likely, never will view themselves as part of the 99%. Simply stated, police officers identify with their fellow cops. The vocation, by its institutionalized, militaristic, tribal nature, creates a wall of separation between its insider members and outsiders i.e., the civilian population at large.

It is an act of self-deception to insist that rank and file police officers, the so-called blue shirts, might even be tacit supporters of the 99% movement.

Good luck with that. But don't be surprised if your entreaties are answered in the form of concentrated mists of pepper spray. In fact, as of late, that is exactly the reply we have received from the police, many times over.

Most police officers do not much identify with civilians. They harbor fealty to their careers and are indoctrinated to evince unquestioning loyalty to the department. Or as Bob Dylan presents the case in verse:

"Because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same" ~~~ from Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
On a cultural basis, after years of hyper-authoritarian indoctrination by mass media sources and political influences, few, among the general public and in the political realm seem willing to demand openness and accountability from law enforcement organizations. All too often, police (and U.S. soldiers as well) are viewed by a large percent of the general public as selfless heroes, noble souls, protecting life and liberty. And no matter how much evidence accumulates to the contrary, this image holds.

How is it that so many can cling to the illusion that cops and soldiers--grownups, armed with deadly weaponry, and who have shown themselves willing to engage in acts of state sanctioned violence and oppression--are innocent victims of circumstance? Have we, in this nation, lost the concept of free will?

How did the perspective of a people become so upside down that heavily armed, body armor-enswathed men and women wearing uniforms of state power are viewed as blameless innocents while those they perpetrate brutality against are somehow regarded as the aggressors in the situation...deserving of the violence inflicted upon them?

Let's have a reckoning with reality regarding the nature of the forces coalescing against OWS and other global movements aligned against despotism: Authoritarian personality types detest the sight of freedom; its inherent uncertainties make them damn nervous. By reflex, they have a compulsion to lower a jackboot on its neck.

Or, in the words of one officer tasked with the duty of stifling the public's right to free assembly at a recent OWS protest staged at the Winter Garden atrium of Brookfield Properties, within the World Financial Center located in lower Manhattan, "Don't get in my face. I have a gun on me, okay? I don't want any people coming that close to me."

In acts of social and civic resistance, regardless of whether one evinces a Gandhi-like position of nonviolence or adopts a Malcolm X influenced stance of "by any means necessary", the enforcers of a corrupt authoritarian order regard any and all displays of dissent as an invitation to force dissenters face down on the pavement, zip-cuffed and bleeding, then be remanded into custody--or worse.

At this critical point, it is imperative we let die our illusions involving the present order. Yet we must do so without becoming so disillusioned that we lack the resolve to remake the world. Often, we cling to fictions involving the benign nature of power because the act spares us angst. To the contrary, we must bear witness to the collisions of our illusions and the realities of the day, because it is from the debris created by these collisions that the world will be built anew.
(c) 2011 Phil Rockstroh, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. Visit Phil's website, and at FaceBook.




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History Tells Us Not To Dismiss A Democratic Challenge To Obama
By William Pfaff

A week ago, in the Providence Journal newspaper (in Rhode Island), the publisher of Harper's Magazine, John R. MacArthur, wrote that President Barack Obama, through expedient political compromises, has lost the moral authority that an American president must command, and therefore has lost his right to a second presidential term. Mr. MacArthur quotes in support of his argument the veteran journalist Bill Moyers, who was a member of President Lyndon Johnson's staff from 1965 to 1967, and since has become a prominent commentator on public television and in liberal and Democratic Party circles.

American history is not beyond repeating itself. At the end of November 1967, Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, a respected political figure but lacking a national reputation, declared that, under the Lyndon Johnson administration, no end seemed in sight to the futile Vietnam War, and that he was going to challenge what was becoming a tragedy for Americans and for the people of Indochina. He declared his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1968.

Almost exactly two months later, the Tet Offensive occurred in Vietnam, a series of attacks across the country on Americans and on the South Vietnamese government. It took nearly a month for American and South Vietnamese forces to retake the former imperial capital city of Hue, one of the cities overrun by the insurgent offensive. This delivered an enormous psychological and political blow to Americans at home and to U.S. forces in Vietnam, though the Vietnamese Communists suffered heavier casualties than the Americans. The response of Gen. William Westmoreland, U.S. commander in Vietnam, was to request more than 200,000 men in reinforcement. There already were a half million American troops in the country. Washington refused the request, and Westmoreland was replaced and kicked upstairs to a desk command in Washington.

Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy's successor, had already indicated that he would be a candidate to succeed himself. In the New Hampshire primary, Sen. McCarthy, until then taken by the press as a vanity candidate whose main supporters were students and impractical liberals, nearly defeated Johnson. As a result, on March 16, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy announced that he too would run for the presidency. On March 31, President Johnson, who had always hated the war, announced his own withdrawal.

For those who may not know what followed, in June the young Kennedy was assassinated. The Democratic Party convention, which followed amidst disorder and rioting, nominated Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, as the official party candidate. A much-liked but rather ineffectual former senator, Humphrey's misfortune was that he felt compelled to defend the war policies of Johnson and Kennedy. He was defeated in November 1968 by Republican Richard Nixon. Nixon lost the war during the next seven years, despite major bombing offensives against North Vietnam and Cambodia, and the invasion of Cambodia. Halfway into his second term, because of domestic scandals, he was forced to resign from office under threat of impeachment.

I retell this story in order to establish the importance of Sen. McCarthy's role. By refusing to stand aside from what he and many considered a doomed war, and the corruption of civil life and government that accompanied it, he set in motion the events that in the minds of many "saved" the United States.

John MacArthur's and Bill Moyers' call for the replacement of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate next year is very likely to fail, and any Democratic replacement candidate is likely to lose the presidency. As a veteran Democratic Party activist recently commented, this is the sure way to elect "one of those idiots" running for the Republican nomination. Very likely he is right.

However, the two may have started something with interesting consequences. Nobody thought Sen. McCarthy's challenge was anything more than a futile gesture. Nobody foresaw the assassinations and military defeat to come, or the ruin of Richard Nixon. Nobody knows today what disasters may lie ahead in American-supervised Iraq, or in the dual war the Pentagon is waging in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The present foreign policy of the Obama government is fraught with risk.

As for the president himself, the objection to him is that his Democratic Party has become a representative of the same interests as the Republican Party. The nation cannot bear two parties representing plutocratic power.
© 2001 Visit William Pfaff's website for more on his latest book, "The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America's Foreign Policy."





The Dead Letter Office...





Francis gets campy for his boy friend

Heil Obama,

Dear Doktor Collins,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your funding the creation of a bird flu virus that can easily be transmitted from person to person allowing us to kill perhaps billions of the enemy, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Sciencetifical Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 12-31-2011. We salute you Herr Doktor Collins, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Iowa Challenge For Obama
Dem Caucus Votes for 'Uncommitted' Slate
By John Nichols

President Obama faces no serious challenge from an individual on the left in Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses.

But that does not mean that Obama will get all the votes cast by Democrats on January 3.

Peace and economic justice activists, some of them associated with a newly launched "Occupy Iowa Caucus" campaign, are arguing that caucus goers should reject the president and instead vote for "uncommitted" slates.

"Uncommitted" slates have won Iowa caucuses before. In 1972 and 1976, more Democratic caucus votes were cast for the "uncommitted" option than for any of the announced candidates. As recently as 1992, "uncommitted" beat Bill Clinton.

Now, a newly-developed "Occupy Iowa Caucus" initiative is urging voters to attend caucses and back "uncommitted" slates. For Republicans, that would mean rejecting the current crowd of GOP contenders and beginning a process that could lead to sending unaffiliated delegates to the party convention next summer. For Democrats, that would mean rejecting a compromise-prone president and backing a slate that is committed to pressing for more progressive policies than those adopted by Obama and his administration.

There's a lot of "Occupy" activism on the ground in Iowa, and not all of it is oriented toward organizing "uncommitted" slates. Some activists are urging voters to attend Republican caucuses and back Ron Paul, whose anti-war, pro-civil liberties position has appeal. Others are organizing a "People's Caucus" for December 27; the energetic Occupy Des Moines crew is behind this one, and they are dubbingtheir event the "Occupy Iowa Caucus." "People are tired of being ignored by the political establishment in both parties, tired of having the common good placed last when it comes to government's priorities," says Ed Fallon, a former state legislator and one of the organizers of the December 27 event. "Holding the Peoples Caucus before the January 3rd precinct caucuses tells America's corporate and political elite that we demand that our voices be heard, that the public interest must come first."

There's also a project to occupy Democratic and Republican campaigfn headquarters in Des Moines, in order to raise concerns of the 99 Percent.

With so much going on, it is easy to get confused. But that's the nature of Iowa as the caucus season enters its final stages.

Amidst the confusion, unexpected developments can and do take place.

And one of those developments could be the appearance at Democratic caucuses -- especially in liberal Iowa City -- of actvists who seek to send Obama a message by voting for the "uncommitted" slate.

A message to potential caucus goers that appears on the new "Occupy Iowa Caucus" website -- www.occupyiacaucus.org -- argues that voting "uncommitted" will send a powerful signal regarding the extent to which voters are discontented with politics as usual.

"Fellow 99 Percenters," the letter begins, before explaining that:

Every four years, both major parties begin their Presidential nominating season in Iowa. On the evening of January 3rd, Republicans will go to their local precinct locations to caucus. Democrats will also go to precinct locations to caucus that night. It is a chance for Iowans to have their voices heard on the Presidential candidates and to begin the process that will select delegates to both national party conventions.

Every Iowan who identifies with the 99 percent should caucus on the evening of January 3rd. But after years of foreclosure, bailouts, corruption, warfare, corporate welfare and the erosion of our freedoms we cannot support any of the Presidential candidates. We cannot consent to this broken system any longer. We will join with our neighbors and caucus for "uncommitted." Uncommitted means we support no candidates and sends a strong message to the leaders of both parties.

After caucusing for "uncommitted" we will select delegates to the county conventions that also reflect our uncommitted views. In turn, those county delegates will select uncommitted delegates to go to the District conventions and to both state Democratic and Republican conventions. At the state conventions, we will select uncommitted delegates to go to both national party conventions.

Find your caucus location, and on January 3rd caucus for "UNCOMMITTED"

President Obama's campaign has a significant presence on the ground in Iowa and Obama plans to "seal the deal" by talking with caucus goers on January 3, via live video.

But not all Democrats are enthusiastic.

Among the most active advocates for "uncommitted" voting at the Democratic caucuses are activists associated with the Iowa Health Care Not Warfare Caucus Campaign, which "encourages caucus attenders to support delegates at the Democratic caucus who are not yet committed to any presidential candidate, but who support (1) removing all troops from Afghanistan within President Obama's first year in office and (2) the enactment of national health insurance (medicare for all) during President Obama's second term."

The group recently sponsored a training for potential Democratic caucus goers in Iowa City.

"I hope people see the point to go uncommitted," declared Jeff Cox, a University of Iowa history professor and former Johnson County Democrats head. "It allows people to go to caucuses and take a stand for peace and hope that Obama pays some attention to it."

Even Democrats who back Obama have recognized the significance of the uncommitted movement.

John Deeth, a prominent blogger, attended the Iowa City training session to instruct Democrats on caucus procedures and practices. He says he is "for the president." But, Deeth explains, "I have some self interest. I want the Uncommitteds on board with Obama in November. But more than that, I want to be fair in January. These are the Democratic Party caucuses, not the Barack Obama caucuses."
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







Don't Mute Newt
By Joel S. Hirschhorn

The trick to maintaining the US delusional democracy is feeding the illusion for citizens that voting and elections really matter. But when both major parties are owned by rich and corporate elites it matters less than most people think whether Republicans or Democrats win and control Congress or the White House. Their seeming differences are a clever distraction that keeps fooling and manipulating Americans. With the help of the mainstream media, making entertainment out of political races, Americans are deceived into thinking that elections deserve their respect and participation.

As power shifts periodically from one party to the other partner of the two-party plutocracy, the illusion of meaningful change sustains the corrupt, dysfunctional political and government system and the economy rewarding the top one percent. Winning politicians are adept at lying convincingly, especially about change and reforms and, like well advertised products, Americans consume the lies.

The perennial problem is that despite what so many Americans view as failed presidencies and, even more clearly, failed Congresses, no Second American Revolution is produced that would return the government to we the people. The biggest lie of all: Elections can fix the broken system.

The candidacy of Newt Gingrich presents a historic opportunity for a new, bigger form of failure that could clarify to most Americans just how broken the electoral system is. On the one hand, the widespread anti-Obama sentiment coupled with a crippled economy could be sufficient to elect any Republican opponent. On the other hand, despite a long list of Gingrich deficiencies proclaimed by many mute-Newt conservatives and Republicans, he just might grab the Republican nomination and beat Obama. Counter intuitively, President Gingrich could help revive American democracy. He is the failure we have been waiting for, just the right old, fat, loud mouth, hypocritical white guy.

He would be such an utter and complete disaster as President that, finally, a vast majority of Americans, especially those that still vote, would reach a heightened level of despair, anger and disgust that some form of rebellion akin to what created the nation in the first place could occur. Think of Gingrich as the Segway President: all hype and fakery with no possibility of success, being much, much worse that George W. Bush and Barrack Obama.

In other words, the US would finally reach a bottomed-out political state more analogous to the tyrannical regimes that have fallen to grassroots revolutions. The illusion of a functioning democracy would melt away and the nonsense of being the greatest democracy would become crystal clear. History suggests that things must get so bad and painful that no amount of rationalizations, propaganda, lies and distractions can keep sustaining a corrupt and delusional democracy.

In this nightmare-salvation scenario, here are possible concrete actions that would put the US on the path to revolutionary reforms: overwhelming public demands for reform constitutional amendments through the use of an Article V convention bypassing Congress, successful emergence of a competitive third party, massive voting out of incumbent Democrats and Republicans, a stronger Occupy movement leading a populist, nonpartisan rebellion aimed at overturning the status quo political and economic system.

Even if you cannot get yourself to vote for Gingrich you can still help by not voting for any of his Republican opponents in primaries and, later, not voting for Obama. Think of this behavior as courageous patriotic dissent. Desperate action for desperate times. Sure, you might worry about some awful consequences for the nation from a scary Gingrich presidency. Against this, however, how much more can the nation suffer from presidencies that serve rich and corporate interests rather than the 99 percent? With Gingrich we could get a populist backlash to drive rebellion and reform. Any system that produced a President Gingrich would clearly justify tearing it down.

The recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 50 percent of Americans polled would never vote for Gingrich, clearly a sign of how little trust and confidence he engenders. This sentiment must be overcome by seeing Gingrich as the devilish stimulus for national rebellion against the two-party oligarchy. Of note, 37 percent said they were certain to vote against Obama, and 34 percent said the two-party system is seriously broken, and the country needs a third party. But the current system has been rigged to make a third party presidential candidacy extremely difficult, though the Americans Elect effort may be significant in 2012.

Note that a President Romney would probably not help; he just does not have what it takes to talk and behave recklessly, stupidly and crazily enough to embarrass and chagrin most Americans at historic levels. Unlike the genuinely reptilian Gingrich, Romney is no more genuine than our current democracy, which would stay fake. Like Obama, Romney has far too much self-control to be bad enough to wake up Americans to our warped democracy. Replacing Obama with Romney would be like choosing white eggs instead of brown eggs; a difference without distinction.
(c) 2011 Joel S. Hirschhorn observed our corrupt federal government firsthand as a senior official with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. To discuss issues write the author. The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ David Fitzsimmons ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...



Banned Christmas Toys 2011!

The Bible says, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness!" (Isaiah 5:20). Nothing could more accurately describe America's toymakers as they seek to harvest the souls of little children for their dark master, Satan every Christmas! The Devil cackles with delight as he carefully opens his toychest in gleeful mockery of Baby Jesus' Birthday! Read about what Lucifer is trying to peddle to your children and click on each link to purchase and burn every one of these vile Christmas toys!

BANNED: Fisher-Price Little People Noah's Ark

Leave it to Fisher-Price to screw up a Bible toy. This version of Noah's ark is not only missing two of Noah's sons but also suspiciously absent are over 30,000 species of paired animals and 25,000 species of known insects, some of which required their own temperature controlled habitats to survive the 40 day journey on Noah's Ark. Not to mention the missing tons of grain, leaves and food supply crates and storage compartments. Our experts contacted Fisher Price to confirm that these additional products are not available for purchase as single items or 'add ons' to make their Noah's Ark toy more Biblically accurate so it would appeal to Baptist parents.

BANNED: Dream Dazzlers Ooh La La Sassy Salon

As if there aren't enough homosexuals in the world already! Toys R' Us is now beckoning unsuspecting little boys, making them think they are going to play on a football team with a flashy name like, 'Dream Dazzlers.' Only now, masculine little boys with liberal mothers will find themselves turning into limp-wristed little pansies after they squat their hineys down in front of a Sassy Salon, and listen to their mothers whisper, 'Ooh La La' into their innocent ears! "This thing is a queer making machine!" Pastor Deacon Fred told a group of concerned Landover ladies earlier this week. "If it doesn't send you into a blood vessel popping, demon stomping rage, then you need to question whether or not you are even a Christian!" He said. "What you Godly women need to do is march right down to that Jewish toy store and demand that they pull this sissified piece of garbage off the shelf! You need hold that toy store owner accountable to Christ! Tell him to stop trying to turn your son into a homosexual!"

BANNED: My Keepon - Interactive Robot

Our primary concern with My Keepon is that it promotes and in fact, glorifies dancing. "To me, it looks like a piece of yellow poop struggling to get out of a Chinaman's tight little hiney," says Pastor Deacon Fred. "If that's what liberals call dancing, that makes it even worse! Every time the Bible mentions dancing it always leads to sin. To naysayers, I say, 'So what if King David danced before the Lord? He ended up committing adultery! The same thing will happen to your children when they grow up if they sit in front of this squirming little abomination for even a second!"

BANNED: Rory's Story Cubes

The little catchphrase on the side of the box says, 'Let your imagination roll wild!' What do you think the Lord would think if that slogan was written on the first page of the Holy Bible? He wouldn't like it, but Satan would - that's for sure. Lucifer's finger prints are all over Rory's Story Cubes. First of all, they are not even cubes. They are multiple sided dice. The same kind of dice used in another one of Satan's favorite games, Dungeons and Dragons! The second thing that made us catch wind of the Devil's scent is the fact that Rory's Story Cubes are designed to get one to use what non-Christians call, 'thought' or 'imagination.' These notions are defined as, 'the power to create in one's mind' and this power is given up willingly by True Christian™ when we accept Jesus Christ as our Personal Savior. Any attempt to get us to use this power, even by Rory's Story Cubes is an affront to the Living God and will most surely lead to backsliding - and in some rare cases, loss of eternal salvation.

BANNED: You & Me Interactive Triplet Dolls

It is unbelievable that Toys R Us still has these obscene dolls on their shelves. It is clear that someone who hates little children created these potty mouthed babies to corrupt America's youth. None of the dolls are black, so it is even more shocking that one says, "Okay, crazy bitch!" when you pull its string! It says a lot about what is happening to America since Barack Obama was put into power. These toys don't belong in any Christian home, or any conservative home for that matter! Anyone concerned about restoring America and bringing back good old fashioned family values should make it a priority to call Toys R Us and ask them to remove these products from their shelves before Jesus comes and does it forcibly.

BANNED: Kindle Fire

As True Christians we are suspect to anything with the word Fire in it. Amazon likes to use Luciferian terminology in describing their popular products. Much like Apple Inc mocks the story of Adam and Eve by implying it is 'okay' to take a bite out of the Apple because it gives you knowledge. However, knowledge is the very thing that God did not want Adam and Eve to have! And now we are all stuck with it, but we True Christians are able to avoid it through faith in Christ Jesus. The Amazon Kindle Fire implies openly that fire is knowledge and the product itself is used to kindle that knowledge. As True Christians we understand that Fire is from Hell (except when it is convenient to use it next to the words, Holy Ghost) and Lucifer 'kindles' that fire by stoking the brimstone that will burn the flesh off of sinners bodies after they are sodomized by demons in Hell for eternity. So with all of this in mind, when our Landover Baptist secular toy researchers opened up the free package from Amazon containing the Kindle Fire, their first impulse was to smash the blasphemous little novelty to pieces with a sledge hammer and pitch the remains into the furnace in the church basement. But since there were two Wiccans tied up to the furnace that day, they decided to just smash it up, put it into a bag tied to a cinder block and drop it to the bottom of Landover Lake.

A thorough search of each church member's home will be conducted after Christmas and if Baptist Police Officers find any of these items in your possession, your church membership will be revoked and your entire family will be asked to vacate your house within 7-days.
© 2011The Landover Baptist Church




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In This Edition

Medea Benjamin recalls, "Ten Good Things About A (Not So) Bad Year."

Uri Avnery introduces, "The Duke Of Nablus."

Matt Taibbi exposes, "How Banks Cheat Taxpayers."

Randall Amster takes a, "Prism Break."

Jim Hightower says, "Give A Gift That Matters."

Helen Thomas explains why the, "Iraq War Ends, But Questions Remain."

James Donahue wonders, "2012 Is Here - Do We Dare Celebrate?"

David Sirota asks, "Was Iraq 'Worth It?'"

David Swanson examines, "Obama Again Unconstitutionally Claims Unconstitutional War Powers In A Signing Statement."

John LaForge may have found, "The Leading Cause of Breast Cancer?"

Paul Krugman sings, "Springtime For Toxics."

Glenn Greenwald reminds us to, "Vote Obama - If You Want a Centrist Republican For US President."

Amy Goodman returns with, "If You Can't Beat Them, Enjoin Them (From Voting)."

Illinois Republican Sin-ator Mark Kirk wins the coveted Vidkun Quisling Award!

John Nichols exclaims, "Out, Damn Newt!"

Ralph Nader demands we, "Stop the Public University Tuition Spiral."

And finally in the 'Parting Shots' department Andy Borowitz reports, "Gingrich Plummets In Polls As Voters Start Remembering Who He Is" but first Uncle Ernie sez, "That Was The Year That Was: 2011."

This week we spotlight the cartoons of Bob Gorrell, with additional cartoons, photos and videos from Derf City, Steve Greenberg, Clay Bennett, Bill Day, Micah Wright, Very Demotivational.Com, User Meds.Com, MSNBC, You Tube.Com and Issues & Alibis.Org.

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That Was The Year That Was: 2011
By Ernest Stewart

Our assessment is the Egyptian goverment is stable! ~~~ Hillary Clinton ~ 01-25-11

"Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities."
~~~ WMO Deputy Secretary-General Jerry Lengoasa ~~~

"If they impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz." ~~~ Mohammad-Reza Rahimi ~ Iranian first vice president

Fight the good fight every moment
Every minute every day
Fight the good fight every moment
Make it worth the price we pay
Fight The Good Fight ~~~ Triumph

It's that time of the year again when we look back at all that's gone down in the past year. As life is short this won't be all that detailed, so for a full detailed rehash visit the magazines archives section.

January:

We start the year with an attempted assassination of United States Con-gress woman Gabrielle Giffords. Teabagger Jared Lee Loughner shoots 17, murders six including a little girl and United States District Court Judge John Roll. Some of that compassionate conservatism no doubt. Not to be out done, Barry cuts aid to the poor -- including letting many freeze to death -- to assure tax cuts for the wealthy!

February:

Wisconsin's new governor Scott Walker declares war on the unions and middle class. Walker, the first of many Koch Brothers governor puppets, begins the task of destroying what's left of the middle class to return to the good old daze of slaves and masters. Similar ploys happen in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, New York and California!

March:

Japan's massive earthquake and nuclear reactor melt down, i.e., the Brazil Syndrome that may have killed or will kill upwards of 15,000 Americans from fallout radiation was soon poo poo'd by Barry as not worth measuring. The reason for this was that Barry wants to build three reactors in Texas, giving the job to the same company that built the four failed rectors in Japan. The "green" President cut funding to most wind and solar projects, but kept funding a solar company that they knew would fail in order to decredit the industry!

April:

After letting the tea baggers go berserk for a year, Barry finally releases his long form birth certificate, proving that he was born in Hawaii and not created in a CIA lab as some tea baggers claimed. However, the damage was done, and many people to this day believe Barry isn't an American even though the former Republican Hawaiian governor Linda Lingle certainly looked into the controversy and yet said nothing, which should have been a clue to our brain-dead birther friends but apparently it wasn't!

May:

Rumor has it that on the first of May, CIA boogie man and agent Osama bin Laden was killed by a US army hit team in Abbottabad, Pakistan. I say rumored, as not a drop of evidence was ever produced to prove that it happened. Not a single photograph was forthcoming of the man that many say had been dead for seven years. If it is true then it was a very stupid thing to do, not to mention cold blooded murder of someone trying to surrender. Think of all the information we could have gotten out of him which would have brought Al Qaeda to an end. Of course, that may be the very reason that we killed him -- to keep Al Qaeda alive so we can spend trillions more killing all 100 of them. Or it could have been to keep him from telling the world of his work, past and present, for the CIA?

June:

In a rare showing of liberalism New York governor Andrew Cuomo (Mario's boy) pushed through a same sex marriage law, which gave homosexuals the same joys, sorrows and rights of marriage that Heterosexual America already enjoys and detests! New York is now the largest state in America for gay marriages. Apparently, the great wealth of the Mormon Church wasn't enough to stop it, but perhaps they can repeal it, as they did in California? Perhaps they can get some "souless darkies" to do it?

July:

With the takeover of the Republican party by the tea baggers and their several attempts to shut down the federal government came to a head in July when neither side would budge on the budget and time began to run out on an August 2nd shutdown and threats by credit rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's which threaten to lower the US governments credit rating. Funny when the Republicans were running the government, there wasn't any talk of shutting down the government under Bush. Which is curious, is it not, considering that Barry is doing, for the most part, all the same things that Smirky did, and should therefore be a darling of the far right, and yet they've done all in their power to destroy him for doing those very same things. Kind of like replacing the RNC's leader Michael Steele just after he had brought the Republicans the biggest wins in their history? I wonder what these two men share that would cause them to be targets? Oh yeah, I almost forgot, they're both black!

August:

Con-gress makes an 11th-hour deal to prevent a national default. The deal raised the debt ceiling in two steps to $2.4 trillion and cuts an initial $1 trillion in spending over ten years. Also, a bipartisan committee was formed to recommend $1.5 trillion in additional budget cuts with a provision that if Congress failed to act on the committee's recommendations, automatic spending cuts will be enforced. The Pentagoon's budget would get a slap on the wrist while social programs are gutted to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.

For the first time in history, the U.S. has its credit rating lowered. Credit agency Standard & Poor's lowered the nation's credit rating from the top grade of AAA to AA+, removing the U.S. from its list of risk-free borrowers. Moody's and Fitch, the two other credit agencies, decided not to downgrade the nation's credit ratings.

September:

We saw the fruition of Barry's self-given powers to murder US citizens without counsel, charges, or trial by a jury of their peers. Anwar al-Awlaki was the first to be thusly murdered, but not the last as another American was murdered, too, while visiting Awlaki.

Occupy Wall Street and the occupy movement begins a three month run of peacefully assembling and protesting, which is our first amendment rights; the 1% make their plans to stop it once and for all.

October:

Hey Mo, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk! The beast of Lockerbie met his end in a US-led coup d'etat by gang rape and bullets. Our former good friend Muammar el-Qaddafi met the same fate as a lot of other US friends have met with our assistance. Ergo, the world should beware of Americans bearing gifts!

November:

November was when the ruling elite, with the help of Barry and the Feds, attacked, and all but destroyed, the Occupy movement. From coast to coast, we found out that local nuisance ordinances trump 1st amendment rights, which can be denied by groups of Jack Booted thugs, with clubs, tear gas, pepper spray, beanbag bullets, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades. They did it because they were concerned with our safety, which is why they beat peaceful demonstrators senseless, I guess it's better a concussion than peeing in the park!

And lets not forget the Penn State sex abuse scandal. Sure, I could understand it if it happened at Notre Dame or Boston College, but Penn State? What's up with that?

December:

The National Defense Authorization Act single-handedly pretty much wipes out the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments of the Bill of Rights, the Posse Comitatus Act and habeas corpus. Rumor has it in the next Con-gress they'll be going after the 13th Amendment!

That was a brief tour of that was the year that was 2011. Is it just me or are things becoming progressively worse, year after year, decade after decade? Then just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, along comes 2012. Danger, danger, Will Robertson!

In Other News

So how do like that global warming thing, so far? Throughout most of Europe from Scotland to Switzerland 2011 was the hottest year on record, hotter even than 2010, which had been the hottest year on record just like here in the US where most localities experienced record heat, as well. Global Warming deniers, a.k.a. corpo-rat puppets, i.e., politicians, talking heads and Rush Limbaugh idiots are beginning to feel a little like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis! It's a pity that they're not the ones that have to suffer the effects by themselves but because of their stupidity the rest of us are along for the ride to oblivion too! Worldwide, 2011 is set to become the tenth-hottest year on record, and thirteen of the warmest years on record, in terms of average global temperature, have occurred within the past decade and a half. Whether or not this has been cause totally by man (it has), or only partially caused by our greed doesn't really matter as the effects are exactly the same! Floods, heat waves and blizzards are all caused by the same thing, global warming! Here's some highlights from this past year:

Groundhog Day Blizzard - 2 feet of snow fell over Chicago between January 29 and February 3. 36 people died in the storm.

Midwest/Southeast Tornadoes - 46 tornadoes touched down on April 4 and 5. 9 people died

Southeast/Midwest Tornadoes - April 8-11 brought another series of tornadoes with 59 touchdowns but no fatalities.

Midwest/Southwest Tornadoes - 38 people died when 177 tornadoes touched down from April 14 to 16.

Southeast/Ohio Valley/Midwest Tornadoes - 343 tornadoes touched down between April 25 and 28 killing 321 people.

Midwest/Southeast Tornadoes - Between May 22 and 27 180 tornadoes touched down, killing 177 people. This includes the EF-5 that hit Joplin, MO.

Midwest/Southeast Tornadoes and Severe Weather - Hail, damaging winds, and 81 tornadoes occurred between June 18 and 22 with 3 reported deaths.

Southern Plains/Southwest Drought and Heat Wave - Losses of livestock, crops, and timber mounted as head and drought gripped the area during the spring, summer, and fall. Temperatures remain above 100 degress for three months!

Mississippi River Flooding - Continuous rain and melting snowpack in the spring and early summer brought river levels to historic highs for many areas.

Upper Midwest Flooding - Above average snowpack melt along with above-average precipitation flooded the Missouri and Souris Rivers in the early summer months.

Hurricane Irene - It was an active hurricane season in the Atlantic, but only one hurricane hit the coastal United States. Irene soaked the East Coast from the Mid-Atlantic all the way to New England between August 20 to 29.

Texas/Arizona/New Mexico Wildfires - Drought and a heat wave set the stage for a record wildfire season. The Wallow Fire in the White Mountains of Arizona had the largest burn area on record at over 500,000 acres.

Areas that were fine are turning into deserts, deserts are turning into dustbowls, while other areas are getting more rain and snow than they've ever had before. There are a few winners but there are many times more losers. Most of the southwest will soon be out of water, and those tens of millions will have to hit the road, because water is something you can not live without! Nor can you live without food and without water you can not grow food. Isn't it about time we did something to correct this before it's too late?

And Finally

As Scotish poet and philospher Robert Burns once said, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men. Gang aft agley." It's always something! I had planned to use this section of my column to take a look back at all the good folks we lost in the last year, but our criminal class in Foggy Bottom dancing to the tune of an Israeli piper is about to set us on the road to either a Depression that will make the "Great Depression" look like a Swiss Picnic by comparison or the start of WWIII, or most likely, both!

What Con-gress and their AIPAC masters want is to destroy the Iranian central bank and force Iran to lower its prices to the point of a depression for wanting to have nuclear reactors to generate electricity, and if they're not totally stupid run off a few atomic bombs to defend themselves from us and the zionazis in Tel Aviv. We can't have that less we're not able to control them for our own gain as well as Israel's, too. We also have our flunkies in Europe about to sign on to this disaster in the making.

Iran, having had enough of this with no help from the United Nations, has said in defiance if we do, they will close the Straights of Hormuz, which means somewhere around 25% of the world's supply of oil won't be coming to a service station near you!

This would no doubt cause gas prices to double and end any chance of this economy to recover. Are you willing to pay at the very least $6 a gallon for a start? Of course, we'll try and prevent this and sink a few of their ships, and in return, they'll sink of few of ours and launch everything they got at us, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, who will then launch nukes and kill a lot of Iranians and a few Russians and Chinese. The Russians have already said and the Chinese have implied that if Israel does they'll lob of few of their bigger and dirtier H-bombs Israel's way.

Barry, meanwhile, really doesn't want this to start as it would all but wipe out his chances for reelection and our chances of living to a ripe old age. We cannot afford another war; we cannot afford doubling or tripling of the already outrageous fuel prices, which jumped 2% in one day just on the heightening of tensions. All this is a gift from Sin-ator Mark Kirk, a Rethuglican from Illinois, who won Barry's seat with the help of Israeli intelligence and AIPAC! Did I mention that this was attached to that act of treason called "The National Defense Authorization Act" An act of treason that no doubt Barry will sign with a smug look of self assurance on his face. As Bette Davis said as Margo Channing in All About Eve: "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night," America!

Keepin' On

It's that time of the year again where I start begging for resources to keep the magazine going for another year. How'd you like the last couple of months of me not begging every week, but using that space to bring you more things that you need to know? I for one enjoyed it a whole lot more than I do writing this!

We can do this easy or we can do it hard, it's up to you. This year's bills after, what we make for advertising, will be somewhere around $5600, the cost of paying for columns and artwork copyrights. Some of the artwork and columns are free, some of them aren't! We charge no fee of any kind to read anything on the site, our best columns and works of art included! Most on-line ezines cost between $200,000 and $500,000 to produce; so needless to say, we're a bargain. No one here gets a salary of any kind; we are in this because we need to be in this, and I'll put up Issues & Alibis against any political magazine!

Therefore, if one of you would like to step up and pick up our bills for the year this will be the last time I come before you hat-in-hand and what a pleasant experience that will be for all of us, but it seems the folks that have that kind of money while giving lip-service to the cause won't open their big bank-books and kick out a little chump-change to get us through another year, so most likely we're going to have to do this the hard way! That means I'll be begging to you on a weekly basis and the usual suspects will be kicking in what they can afford and it may be the first of November again before we reach the break-even point. Since the 12-12-2000 coup d'etat when we got started, I picked up all the costs for the years 2001 - 2005, at which point I basically ran out of money to spare and had to come to you to keep us fighting the good fight.

As we begin our eleventh year I find that we are needed more now than ever before. If you agree, please send us what you can, when you can and I'll see to it it gets put to good use and we keep fighting for you and yours. Just go to our donations page and follow the instructions! Thanks again for all that you do!

*****


06-02-1931 ~ 12-24-2011
Thanks for the laughs!


09-02-1942 ~ 12-24-2011
Thanks for the thoughts!


05-08-1942 ~ 12-25-2011
Thanks for the music!


10-05-1950 ~ 12-26-2011
Thanks for the visions!


12-22-1928 ~ 12-27-2011
Thanks for the visions!


*****

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So please help us if you can...?
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*****

So how do you like Bush Lite so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!
(c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter.












Ten Good Things About A (Not So) Bad Year
By Medea Benjamin

I had the privilege of starting out the year witnessing, firsthand, the unfolding of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square. I saw people who had been muzzled their entire lives, especially women, suddenly discovering their collective voice. Singing, chanting, demanding, creating. And that became the hallmark of the entire year--people the world over becoming empowered and emboldened simply by watching each other. Courage, we learned in 2011, is contagious!

1. The Arab Spring protests were so astounding that even Time magazine recognized "The Protester" as Person of the Year. Sparked by Tunisian vendor Mohamed Bouazizi'sself-immolation to cry out against police corruption in December 2010, the protests swept across the Middle East and North Africa-including Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, and Jordan. So far, uprisings have toppled Tunesian President Ben Ali, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi--with more shake-ups sure to come. And women have been on the front lines of these protests, highlighted recently by the incredibly brave, unprecedented demo of 10,000 Egyptian women protesting military abuse.

2. Wisconsin caught the Spring Fever, with Madison becoming home to some 100,000 protesters opposing Governor Walker's threat to destroy collective bargaining and blame the state's economic woes on public workers. Irate Wisconsinites took over the Capitol, turning it into a festival of democracy, while protests spread throughout the state. The workers managed to loosen the Republican stranglehold on Wisconsin state government and send a message to right-wing extremists across the country. This includes Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly rejected Governor Kasich's SB 5, a measure designed to restrict collective bargaining rights for more than 360,000 public employees. A humbled Kasich held a press conference shortly after the vote, saying: "The people have spoken clearly. You don't ignore the public."

3. On September 17 Occupy Wall Street was born in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District. Protesters railed against the banksters and corporate thieves responsible for the economic collapse. The movement against the greed of the richest 1% spread to over 1,400 cities in the United States and globally, with newly minted activists embracing--with gusto--people's assemblies, consensus decision-making, the people's mic, and upsparkles. Speaking in the name of the 99%, the occupiers changed the national debate from deficits to inequality and corporate abuse. Even after facing heightened police brutality, tent city evictions, and extreme winter weather, protesters are undeterred and continue to create bold actions--from port shut-downs to moving money out of big banks. As Occupy Wall Street said, "You can't evict an idea whose time has come." Stay tuned for lots more occupation news in 2012.

4. After 8 long years, U.S. troops were finally withdrawn from Iraq. Credit the Iraqis with forcing Obama to stick to an agreement signed under President Bush, and the peace movement here at home for 8 years of opposition to a war our government should never have started. The US invasion and occupation left the country devastated, and Obama's administration is keeping many thousands of State Department staff, spies and military contractors in the world's biggest "embassy" in Baghdad. But the withdrawal marks the end of a long, tragic war and for that we should give thanks. Now let's hold the war criminals accountable!

5. The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was presented to three terrific women: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia; Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian peace activist; and Yemeni pro-democracy campaigner Tawakkol Karman. A total of only 15 women have received the Nobel Peace Prize since it was first awarded in 1901.These three women were recognized for their non-violent struggle for women's safety and for women's rights to participate in peace-building work. Never before in history have three women been awarded the prize simultaneously. How inspiring!

6. The bloated Pentagon budget is no longer immune from budget cuts. The failure of the super-committee means the Pentagon budget could be cut by a total of $1 trillion over the next decade - which would amount to a 23 percent reduction in the defense budget. The hawks are trying to stop the cuts, but most people are more interested in rebuilding America than fattening the Pentagon. That's why the U.S. Conference of Mayors, for the first time since the Vietnam war, passed a resolution calling for the end to the hostilities and instead investing at home to create jobs, rebuild infrastructure and develop sustainable energy. 2011 pried open the Pentagon's lock box. Let's make the cuts in 2012!

7. Elizabeth Warren is running for Senate and Rep. Barbara Lee continues to inspire. After the financial meltdown in 2008, Warren was appointed chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to investigate the bank bailout and oversee TARP--and investigate she did. She dressed down the banks and set up a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect borrowers. Warren became so popular that tens of thousands of people urged her to run for the Senate in Massachusetts, which she is doing. And let's give a shout out to Rep. Barbara Lee, who worked valiantly all year to push other issues with massive grassroots support: a bill to "only fund the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan" and a bill to repeal the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Force bill that continues to justify U.S. interventions anywhere in the world.

8. Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is running for Parliament! Released last year from nearly 15 years of house arrest, this year Suu Kyi held discussions with the Burmese junta. These talks led to a number of government concessions, including the release of many of Burma's political prisoners and the legalization of trade unions. In November 2011, Suu Kyi's party, the NLD, announced its intention to re-register as a political party in order run candidates in 48 by-elections. This puts Suu Kyi in the running and marks a major democratic opening after decades of abuse by the military regime.

9. Opposition to Keystone pipeline inspired thousands of new activists, together with a rockin' coalition of environment groups across the U.S. and Canada. They brought the issue of the climate-killing pipeline right to President Obama's door, with over 1,200 arrested in front of the White House. The administration heard them and ordered a new review of the project, but the Republican global warming deniers are trying to force Obama's hand. Whatever way this struggle ends, it has educated millions about the tar sands threat and trained a new generation of environmentalists in more effective, direct action tactics that will surely result in future "wins" for the planet.

10. Following the tragic meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, the growing appetite for nuclear energy has been reversed. Women in Japan are spearheading protests to shut down Japan's remaining plants and focus on green energy. Braving a cold winter, they have set up tents in front of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and pledged to continue their demonstration for 10 months and 10 days, traditionally considered in Japan as a full term that covers a pregnancy. "Our protests are aimed at achieving a rebirth in Japanese society," said Chieko Shina, a grandmother from Fukushima. Meanwhile Germany, which has been getting almost one quarter of its electricity from nuclear power, has pledged to shut down all 17 nuclear power plants by 2022. Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hopes Germany's transformation to more solar, wind and hydroelectric power will serve as a roadmap for other countries. Power (wind and solar, that is) to the people!

* * * * *

The common thread in the good news this year is the power of ordinary people to counter the abuse of privileged elites, whether corrupt politicians, banksters or greedy CEOs. People all over the globe are insisting that social inequality and environmental devastation are not inevitable features of our global landscape, but policy choices that can be--and must be--reversed. That certainly gives us a full plate for 2012!
(c) 2011 Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK, which has organized seven humanitarian delegations to Gaza. She is author of Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart.





The Duke Of Nablus
By Uri Avnery

THE NAME of Munib al-Masri has recently come up as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of a Palestinian national unity government. Not being a member of either Fatah or Hamas, he is acceptable to both.

Al-Masri himself denies any such ambition. He says that he is too old (77), and that a younger generation of Palestinians should take over.

He also says that he is quite content with his present situation.

And so would you be.

THE WEST BANK city of Nablus nestles in the valley between two tall mountains, Ebal and Gerizim. Mount Gerizim is the more famous one, because it is sacred to the Samaritan people, who believe that God commanded the Israelites to build his temple there. For them, Jerusalem is just an upstart.

Mount Gerizim, 881 meters above sea level, towers 330 meters above the center of Nablus. It is mentioned many times in the Bible. There Jotham, the son of the judge Gideon, made his famous speech comparing politicians to the bramble, a good-for-nothing plant that bears no fruit, has no scent and provides no shade, which agreed to be the king of the trees after all the other trees declined the honor. Perhaps Munib al-Masri agrees with this lesson, which seems strangely relevant in many countries today.

If you walk along the main street of Nablus and raise your eyes to heaven, you see on the top of the mountain an imposing building with a dome. This is the home of al-Masri.

Well, "home" may be slight understatement. Actually, it is the most imposing private residence in Palestine and Israel, if not - as has been claimed - from Morocco to the border of India.

The al-Masri villa is an exact reproduction of Villa Capra, also known as La Rotonda, a unique architectural masterpiece some 60 km from Venice. When you stand in front of the building, you can't believe your eyes. Actually, you don't even know where the front is - because it has four "fronts", all with identical entrances, pillars and steps. When you enter through any one of them, you come to a wide circular foyer, from which all the rooms branch out. In the center stands an ancient Greek statue of Hercules. Over this three-floor-high central space towers the dome.

The marble for the floor and all the other building materials were brought from abroad. An Italian expert has joked that the Palestinian palace looks more like the original, and the Italian palazzo like a convincing copy.

That would have been more than enough. But it isn't.

All the rooms of the palace are crammed with works of art, collected by al-Masri over some 40 years. They are enough to fill an impressive museum. Paintings from renaissance masters to the moderns, fireplaces from Versailles, classic tables and chairs from Spain, Tapestries from Flanders, chandeliers from Italy, and much, much more. Room after room.

Well, that should be more than enough. But it isn't.

When excavation work for the foundation started, three small ancient pottery sherds were discovered. The work was stopped and archeological diggings began. The results were staggering: a complete 4th century Byzantine monastery was uncovered. It stands there now with all its rooms, chapels and stables, surrounded by stout pillars on which the entire modern structure rests. One building on top of another.

Enough? Not nearly. The palace is surrounded by a huge estate, greenhouses, olive plantations, a pool and whatnot. But enough of that.

I MET al-Masri, a slim, tall gentleman, some twenty years ago, on one of my visits to Yasser Arafat in Tunis. Al-Masri belonged to the inner circle of the leader, and returned to Palestine with him.

Before that, he had served as a Jordanian cabinet minister and had been accused of helping Arafat and other Fatah leaders escape from Jordan during the bloody "Black September" of 1970.

Side by side with the masterpieces of art, the walls of the palace are covered with hundreds of photos of the owner with his American wife, his sons and daughters, and in the company of world figures. Among them, Yasser Arafat stands out. Al-Masri admires him.

Since that casual meeting in Tunis, I have followed his rare utterances. Every word he has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have come from me, and vice versa. Our ideas about the solution are very close.

Remarkably, he has remained a man of peace even after tragedy hit his family: on Naqba day, a few months ago, his grandson, who was studying at the American University in Beirut, joined the protesters who came south to the border fence. Israeli troops opened fire, the grandson was hit by a bullet - a prohibited dumdum bullet, he says - which injured his spinal cord, liver and kidneys. The young man is now being treated in the US.

Since finishing the palazzo, al-Masri occupies himself with his many philanthrophies, especially supporting the universities of Nablus, East Jerusalem and Beirut, and his wide-flung businesses. But he remains a passionately political person.

He named the palace "Palestine House" and maintains that his main purpose in building it there was saving the area for the Palestinian people. By building on top of the mountain, he prevented the establishment of an Israeli settlement there. Nablus is already surrounded by a cluster of settlements - some of them belonging to the most extreme neo-fascist tendencies. In one of them resides the rabbi whose book advocates the killing of non-Jewish children in certain circumstances. From these settlements come the Jewish pogromists who regularly set fire to surrounding mosques. Talk about a villa in the jungle!

THE AL-MASRI family is one of the most distinguished in the country. Though the name means "the Egyptian", the family comes originally from the Hejaz, in what is today Saudi Arabia. For centuries, the family has lived in Hebron and Jerusalem and then, for the last two centuries, in Nablus. (Nablus is the Arabic version of Neapolis, the town founded by the Emperor Vespasian some 1940 years ago, after he destroyed the nearby Jewish town of Sichem or Shechem.)

If this were England, Munib al-Masri would be a lord, if not the Duke of Nablus.

My first contact with the family came a few days after the 1967 war. At the time, few people believed that Israel could hold on to the newly occupied territories for more than a few weeks. The general preference was to return the West Bank to the Jordanian king. In the Knesset, I tried to convince the government to enable the Palestinians, instead, to set up a state of their own.

For that purpose, I made the rounds of the local Palestinian leaders, mostly the heads of the great families. One of them was Hikmet al-Masri, Munib's uncle. I put to all of them in confidence the same question: if you had the choice of returning to Jordan or establishing a Palestinian state, which would you prefer? Their unanimous answer: Palestine, of course.

During a Knesset session, I advertised this fact, which was furiously denied by the Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan. In the ensuing debate, this time with the Prime Minister, Levy Eshkol, I said that Dayan was consciously lying. Eshkol defended his minister heatedly, but being the person he was, the next day he sent me one of his chief advisors to ask what evidence I had. The protocol of this conversation, made by the advisor, stated: "There is no difference between deputy Avnery's information and my own. However, he agrees with me that no Palestinian state without East Jerusalem is possible. Since the Government of Israel has decided to annex East Jerusalem, deputy Avnery's proposal is impossible to realize."

When I recounted this to Munib al-Masri last week, he shook his head sadly.

HOW IS it, he asked me, that the Israelis know nothing about the Palestinians, while the Palestinians know so much about the Israelis?

The fact cannot be denied. Israeli schoolchildren learn practically nothing about the people with whom our existence is intertwined. Nothing about Islam, nothing about the Koran, nothing about the glories of Arab history.

Many years ago, in a Knesset debate on education, I put forward the idea that every pupil in Israel learn not only the history of his people - the Jewish or the Arab, respectively - but also the history of the country from ancient days to the present, Canaanites, Israelites, Samaritans, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Turks, Palestinians, British, Israelis, as a way to see what unites us. For some reason, this amused the Minister of Education so much that from then on he called me "the Mameluke".

As it is, when a young Israeli joins the army at 18, he "knows" only that Islam is a barbaric, anti-Semitic religion, and that the Arabs want to kill him for no reason at all.

Perhaps that is natural. An oppressed people has a great incentive to know about the occupier, but the occupier has no incentive to study the occupied beyond the realm of military intelligence. The more so since an occupier tends to regard the occupied as an inferior race, in order to justify the occupation to the world and to himself.

Every conflict engenders mistrust, prejudice, stereotypes, hatred, demonization. When it goes on for generations, like this one, all these are multiplied. To make peace, they have to be overcome. That's why people like Munib al-Masri are so important. I wish that every Israeli could meet Palestinians like him.

I also hope he becomes Palestinian Prime Minister, presiding over a cabinet of national reconciliation between the Palestinian factions, ultimately leading to the reconciliation between our two peoples.
(c) 2011 Uri Avnery ~~~ Gush Shalom







How Banks Cheat Taxpayers
By Matt Taibbi

A good friend of mine sent me a link to a small story last week, something that deserves a little attention, post-factum.

The Bloomberg piece is about J.P. Morgan Chase winning a bid to be the lead underwriter on a $400 million bond issue by the state of Massachusetts. Chase was up against Merrill for the bid and won the race with an offer of a 2.57% interest rate, beating Merrill's bid of 2.79. The difference in the bid saved the state of Massachusetts $880,000.

Afterward, Massachusetts state treasurer Steven Grossman breezily played up the benefits of a competitive bid. "There's always a certain amount of competition going on out there," Grossman said in a telephone interview yesterday. "That's good. We like competition." Well … so what, right? Two banks fight over the right to be the government's underwriter, one submits a more competitive bid, the taxpayer saves money, and everyone wins. That's the way it ought to be, correct?

Correct. Except in four out of five cases, it still doesn't happen that way. From the same piece [emphasis mine]:

Nationwide, about 20 percent of debt issued by states and local governments is sold through competitive bids. Issuers post public notices asking banks to make proposals and award the debt to the bidder offering the lowest interest cost. The other 80 percent are done through negotiated underwriting, where municipalities select a bank to price and sell the bonds.

By "negotiated underwriting," what Bloomberg means is, "local governments just hand the bid over to the bank that tosses enough combined hard and soft money at the right politicians."

There is absolutely no good reason why all debt issues are not put up to competitive bids. This is not like defense contracting, where in some situations it is at least theoretically possible that X or Y company is the world's only competent manufacturer, say, of armor-plated Humvee doors, or some such thing. It's still wrong and perverse when companies like Halliburton or Blackwater get sole-source defense contracts, but at least there's some kind of theoretical justification there.

But this is a bond issue, not rocket science. In most cases, all the top investment banks will offer virtually the same service, with only the price varying. Towns and cities and states lose billions of dollars every year allowing financial services companies to overcharge them for underwriting.

It gets even worse in the derivatives markets, where banks routinely overcharge state and local governments for things like interest rate swaps, for one very obvious reason - swaps are not traded on open exchanges, so only the banks know how to price them.

Imagine what NFL gambling would be like if the casinos didn't publish the point spreads every week, and you'll get a rough idea of how the swap market works. If you couldn't look it up, how many points would you give the Dolphins against the Jets next week? Two? Five? Seven? The big casinos know, because they're taking all that action, that the real number is one point.

In the same vein, exactly how accurately do you think some local county treasurer might be able to guess the cost of an interest rate swap for his local school system? Answer: he'd probably do about as well as you or I would, guessing the odds on a Croatian soccer match.

The big banks know this, which is why there should never, ever be non-competitive bids for those sorts of financial services. In a sole-source contract for a swap deal, you're trusting a (probably corrupt) Too-Big-To-Fail bank to give you a good deal for a product whose price is not publicly listed anywhere.

There have been numerous investigations and lawsuits across the world connected with this sort of systematic overcharging, from Erie, Pennsylvania to the notorious Jefferson County, Alabama case, to Milan, Italy (which sued Chase and four other banks for misleading them about derivative prices).

In the Erie case, Chase recommended to the locals that they hire a financial adviser to review the deal. What they didn't tell the local government was that Chase had paid a fee to this adviser, a firm called Investment Management Advisory Group Inc., or IMAGE. They pulled the same scam with the school district of Butler County, Pennsylvania.

And in the oft-discussed Jefferson County case alone, Chase reportedly overcharged the locals $100 million for the crooked swap deals that, in a completely separate outrage, will probably leave Birmingham bankrupt for the next generation.

All of which is exactly what people like the OWS protesters are complaining about when they talk about greed and excess on Wall Street. Nobody is begrudging a bank's desire to make money, and nobody is saying a bank shouldn't be allowed to make money, even a lot of money, performing legitimate services for the state and the taxpayer.

But when you put a thumb on the scale in a financial services contract, the costs start to get outrageous very quickly. The banks would still do a very crisp, almost effortlessly lucrative business if they just stuck to submitting competitive bids for legitimate work - but instead of that, they for some reason have to game the system, grease politicians, rig bids, and stick the taxpayer with overpriced products. Which sucks, of course. Hopefully politicians will catch on and go the Massachusetts route more often.
(c) 2011 Matt Taibbi







Prism Break
Seeing Beyond the Shadows on the Walls Around Us
By Randall Amster

Social movements, when broadly construed and successfully applied, serve as something akin to elaborate filters. By holding a mirror up to society, a movement causes us to reconsider basic assumptions and structural processes that often exist invisibly yet pervasively in our collective midst. Social movement activities render such practices visible, and subject them to scrutiny in a manner that can become contagious in its breadth and depth alike. Movements make us question those things that we take for granted, assume are unchangeable, or benefit from without repercussions.

In this sense, a movement acts like a lens that sharpens and clarifies the reality we observe and participate in, making the strange familiar and the familiar strange all at once. When this movement consciousness begins to "go viral" and infuse the larger culture itself - as we have seen with Occupy - it has the initial effect of breaking down the facade of "consensus reality" that subsumes a great deal of "normal life" without much investigation or contestation. A viral movement perspective, in short, begins to erode the virtual prism that envelops the larger part of our daily existence. In this context, we can define a prism as "a medium that distorts, slants, or colors whatever is viewed through it." We carry this prism around with us throughout the spaces, places, relationships, and business of our lives, over time coming to embrace its distortions - even the obvious ones - as realities. Plato wrote about something quite like this millennia ago in his "allegory of the cave," in which people conditioned to face only in a particular direction fail to recognize that the images they take to be real are merely backlit projections onto the surface of the walls set in place around them.

A movement asks us to cast our gaze in all directions, to evaluate the source of the images we consume, to critically observe how many are unquestioningly taken to be tangible, and to bring the light of inquiry to bear in order to decide which of them can withstand genuine scrutiny. Despite at times appearing to make "all or nothing" arguments in which every aspect of society is being rejected, movements are more properly understood as intricate sociopolitical filtration mechanisms that are set up to allow people, both individually and collectively, to determine which pieces of the world around them will be kept in some form and which are outmoded and destined to go obsolete.

This selective mechanism is sometimes known simply as process, and it is why the claims articulated by movements are often processual more so than substantive, especially in the early days of a mobilization. People want their voices to be heard, they desire accountability and transparency in governance, and they evolve forms of decision making that model these values in real time. The distance between those deciding and those experiencing a course of action is sought to be narrowed or even eliminated, and perspectives often excluded from the dialogue are brought into the center of it. The central issue often devolves squarely upon who gets to chart the course of societal evolution.

For a long time, we have largely accepted a model in which wealthy, entrenched, powerful, and professional interests control these processes. More broadly, we have failed to exert sufficient popular influence to challenge those interests as they steadily put in place a system that preserves their uncontestable rule seemingly regardless of the particular individuals elected or appointed to manage it. The charade of partisan politics today may not be much different than it was in Plato's time, blending seamlessly in our modern world with sports, celebrity news, and infotainment to further accentuate its illusory nature. We have been functionally distracted and politically disempowered, with our attention diverted from actual reality to an aesthetic of faux real.

Such a system transcends the eloquence or goodness of specific individuals. It constrains popular debate by filtering all issues through a narrow ideological prism that falsely conveys a two-sided discourse despite the narrow margin of actual disagreement across the aisle. The dominant system reinforces itself at every turn, from politics and economics to culture and education. Our freedoms to express and associate remain reasonably unfettered within these structures - as long as we are engaging in a debate whose terms have already been set, and as long as we accept the validity and authority of the images that are perpetually broadcast on the wall.

And then along comes a movement that asks us to look at the source of those constructed images. First, it suggests to us that there is in fact such a source, which many among the masses will recoil at as being either hysterical or heretical. Then, it begins to reveal the source by physically occupying its more obvious locales and drawing societal attention directly toward it. This has the effect of making uncomfortable those seeking to keep the source cloaked, and they will utilize tactics ranging from artifice to force in order to cast the collective cultural gaze back toward the image-bearing cave wall and away from the shadow-making source that is always just out of people's field of vision. At this point, there is a contest between those who would uphold the prism and those who would break it.

Some who have seen the source for the first time will express their dismay, yet hope for it to win this contest because they fear the new and do not like the idea of things being broken. Some will try to broker a compromise that allows the dominant prism to remain in place with a few concessions, perhaps including an expansion of the range of images that will be allowed to appear on the walls in the future. Some will sense a long-awaited opening and agitate strenuously to smash the image-producing source altogether. Some will remain firmly glued to the cave walls, undistracted by the mild fracas happening over their shoulders and hoping it stops before their favorite show comes on. And some will hastily be creating new images for public consumption that include the "anti-images" of the movement as part of the spectacle, thus seeking to absorb it into the prism involuntarily.

And then a decisive crossroads is reached. If the movement cannot demonstrate that it is more than merely agitating against the dominant system and its false images, then many - even those who are sympathetic to it - will generally accept the projection of its claims as simply part of the larger spectacle. On the other hand, if the movement continues to remain dynamic, multifaceted, and constructive in its approach, it can resist easy cooptation and make itself interesting and relevant to those who are growing tired of being spectators at all. The aim is not to turn every single head, but to gather enough momentum in a new direction that begins to expand the range of people's vision.

Ultimately, if successful, the movement will reach a point where a critical mass of the members of a given society is no longer constrained by the prism of false images, values, and ideas. A new prism will be in the process of taking hold, one that works to remain malleable and open to constant correction by the collective power of everyone utilizing it - lest it become but another rigid lens for projecting pictures on the cave walls. Maybe it is actually a multitude of new prisms that gets produced, overlapping and interdependent to an extent yet subject to being determined by the unique individuals and communities that comprise the new society's foundations. Perhaps, in an even longer while, people may come to perceive reality itself without the need to filter it at all.

Until that day, we have a movement urging us to reevaluate the dominant prism, and with it an opportunity to remake the map of our world - or at least the image of it that is placed before us. That might not seem like a lot, but without it we have little hope of breaking free from the shadows.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).






Give A Gift That Matters

It wasn't that long ago that the act of "gift giving" didn't require a maddening trip to Wal-Mart or a desperate online search for this season's must-have toy. Rather, a gift implied something from within, a little piece of yourself, no matter how small, showing you care.

Could that old-fashioned concept possibly become new-fashioned? Yes. With today's working class depression severely restricting the ability of most people to splurge on "stuff," and with the public's rising unwillingness to keep shoveling their money at narcissistic corporate profiteers, a return to a more modest -but also deeper -spirit of gift-giving seems to be spreading. Realizing that buying globalized corporate crap is not really a gift, more and more people are putting their money where their values are. They're buying from local artisans, fair trade merchants, certified sweatshop-free manufacturers, recycling shops, co-ops, farmer's markets, homeless centers, church bazaars, charities, and other sources of the burgeoning non-corporate economy.

And what if you used your gifts as a way to inspire the recipients of your presents to tap into their own generosity? This is surprisingly easy to do. As proposed by a Methodist church group in Austin, Texas, just send a bit of cash to that grandson, niece, mother-in-law, or whomever -on the condition that they must donate the money to a charitable organization of their choosing. Yes, they might very well donate to some group that you don't like, but stimulating the philanthropic impulse in today's self-focused society is itself a radical act. Five dollars, fifty, a hundred, or whatever can make recipients think beyond their own possessions - and that alone is a social advancement.

We can all do our bit to spread the happy notion that the best gifts are not the ones we get, but the thoughtful ones we give.
(c) 2011 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition.








Iraq War Ends, But Questions Remain
By Helen Thomas

While the death of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il last week took the end of the Iraq War and the official farewells off the front pages, President Barack Obama marked the end of the war in a ceremony this week.

We declared victory in Iraq and departed after more than eight years. We left a few thousand troops to pick up the pieces. The combat troops are gone, but a few are holding the fort to train the Iraqi troops to fight against any remaining opposition and to guard against any possible leadership struggle that may occur.

(By the way, we still have troops in Germany, Japan and Korea left over from World War II and the Korean War.)

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the war was not in vain. Tell that to the families who lost their loved ones, the maimed and wounded who have lost limbs, and those mentally traumatized as a result of killing strangers on order, commands which came from those safely on high.

Former President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, dropping bombs on Baghdad. He has yet to give an honest reason for the war, but it is evident he wanted to be known as a war president.

Bush claimed that then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The claim was not true. Bush resisted U.N. appeals to allow a last inspection.

Mission accomplished, Bush said - prematurely, of course. But we should ask, "What was the mission?" Obama said we are leaving behind democracy and transparency.

Bush is home in Texas claiming his only mistake was not finding the weapons. What price glory?

Remember the propaganda in the lead up to the war? The war was to last for two weeks, and Iraqis were to shower the troops with flowers and candy. They did, until they realized the American troops were not liberators, but occupiers.

Obama, who followed Bush in the White House, had one chance to pull out of Iraq the day after he took over the presidency. At that time, he was very popular and he could have moved boldly to end the wars. Instead, he chose a losing policy.

The war toll for American servicemembers includes 4,700 dead and tens of thousands wounded. The American people have been passive to fact that thousands of men and women who have gone half way around the world to fight Iraqis - none of whom were involved in the 9-11 attacks.

Hussein was anathema to the United States and Israel, who targeted him as public enemy number one. Following Israel's footsteps, we have now turned our attention to Iran and its plans to become a nuclear power.

The financial cost of the war is estimated to be somewhere between $800 billion and $1 trillion.

We are leaving Iraq not with a bang but a whimper.

To this day, no authority has told us the truth about why we attacked Iraq to begin with. Take your pick: Could it have been avenging daddy (in this case, the Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush), big oil (which Iraq has in abundance), or U.S. strategic interest in Iraq?

Was it worth the sacrifices made by the American people?

We have a presidential election coming up next November. Shouldn't our next President tell us why, the next time they decide to start a war? The American people have a right to know. Presidential candidates should finally tell us the truth.

We paid too high of a price for our ignorance this time around.
(c) 2011 Helen Thomas is a columnist for the Falls Church News-Press. Among other books she is the author of Front Row At The White House: My Life and Times.







2012 Is Here - Do We Dare Celebrate?
By James Donahue

It has been tradition as long as we can remember to celebrate the arrival of every New Year with singing, dancing and general rivalry. Fireworks, bells, shotguns and shouts of "Happy New Year" ring through the night sky at the mark of midnight.

There is usually a relief that we have just completed the previous year, having made a lot of blunders. Resolutions are made to try to do much better in the New Year. Indeed, every New Year gives us the glowing sense of a new beginning. It will be a year to set things right.

But the year 2012 comes with attached and pre-set adversity unlike anything mankind has ever faced in the past. Not only have world leaders apparently gone insane and protesters taken to the streets, but we are faced with an overcrowded and polluted world, extreme climate changes that threaten our quality of life and an obvious collapse of the world economic system.

Oh yes, and then there is that Mayan Calendar thing. There is a growing belief that because that ancient stone-carved calendar in the Middle American jungle comes to an abrupt stop on December 21, 2012, it was a warning that it may mark the end of the world as we know it.

Nobody has ever explained how the Mayan people might have been able to predict the end of the world with that kind of accuracy. But with more and more people believing that this date holds some kind of prophetic warning, and with world conditions deteriorating as quickly as they appear to be, the concern is that Jung's theory of collective consciousness may snap into play. With so many humans believing the end will arrive this year on that exact date, we might just make it happen.

(It apparently hasn't occurred to anyone that the stone carver that made the calendar ran out of room on the stone.)

There may, however, be a silver lining to all of this doomsday thinking. That we have so many people in the streets rising up in opposition to the oppression that has controlled nations and enslaved so many workers to a form of slave labor for so long, may be a sign of a world revolution now occurring before our eyes.

Astrologers, would-be prophets and self-proclaimed psychics are predicting that they believe change is coming . . . but it will not be the end of the world. It will be the end of the way the world has been operating for thousands of years. They are saying that something new is about to make itself known.

While December 21, 2012 may be the end of the world as we know it, it does not mean we are facing the end of the world and human extinction. If there is any good thing to come out of this change, we might express optimism and believe that perhaps a new world is about to emerge. But if it happens, we are going to have to do the work.

Christians are looking for a return of a messiah that will drop down out of the sky and save the world. Christian sects believe Jesus will rise from the dead and lead them in a great war against the forces of evil before establishing a world kingdom in Jerusalem. Undoubtedly many of them see 2012 as the year of this magical event.

The problem with the Christian story is that it is an extremely exclusive club. Only "born again believers" will be allowed in and everybody else in this world is excluded. This concept is obviously as flawed as the Islamic cult promise that those that blow themselves up for Allah are rewarded by 72 virgins in Heaven, and the Jewish belief that they and only they are God's "chosen" people.

Repairing this cock-eyed world may just take some common sense and a charismatic leader with the ability to bring some sanity back into the way people are thinking.

From our perspective, the best solution is found hidden all along in the heart of all of the world religions. It is that old four-letter word: LOVE. If the people of all creeds can bring themselves to set aside all of the nutty mythology attached to their books and stories, and practice love for our fellow humans, as taught by the prophets of old, the magic could really happen in 2012.

The solution is equality for everybody. That suggests a one-world socialistic government system and a fair and equal distribution of the wealth and resources. It is due time to put an end to unfair dictatorships, corporate controls, kingdoms and outdated religious systems that work together to enslave the people.

Most of all, it is time to do away with the wicket system of materialism and war under false pretenses that have drained the world's resources. We must learn to work together to save this planet and all of the creatures on it from the threat of a premature death and eventual extinction. It is not too late. December 21, 2012 is as good a time as any to start on this new path to a brighter future.
(c) 2011 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. He currently produces daily articles for this web site.






Was Iraq "Worth It"?
The same cost-benefit analyses deployed against social programs should be applied to our military misadventures
By David Sirota

With the American occupation of Iraq officially coming to a close this week (and I stress "officially" because it's not actually ending), so begins the psychological battle for the memory of that military adventure. Just as the post-Vietnam period saw a sustained campaign by militarists to revise the history of that war and manufacture politicized stories about why it went badly -the 1980s told us it was lost because roops supposedly got spit on, politicians supposedly micromanaged the war, not because the war was a bad idea -the same militarists will seek to change our recollection of the Iraq adventure, so as to make sure a future adventure (perhaps against Iran) will be politically possible.

This will all undoubtedly play out in the crucible of the 2012 presidential campaign, where the foreign-policy gotcha question will be whether the candidates believe the war was "worth it." Already, leaders of both parties are breaking out the "in vain" cliche, reassuring America that its soldiers did not die as such. Yes, the crusade to reimagine the Iraq War is on -and with it comes a demand for us to suspend our disbelief. In the real-time myth-making, we are being asked to view the invasion's success through the prism of Saddam Hussein's death and fragile Iraqi self-governance, as if those objectives, rather than phantom WMD and supposed imminent threats, were the stated mission justifying such a huge expenditure of blood and treasure.

Such hagiography and post-facto revision aside, the only empirical way to determine whether Iraq was "worth it" -and thus, have a clue as to whether future adventurist invasions are worth it -is to perform some kind of cost-benefit analysis.

This wouldn't be all that difficult to do since our government is already fond of subjecting complex programs to such review. Indeed, federal agencies' cost-benefit analyses are so meticulous -and merciless -that they actually put prices on American lives (for instance, the EPA uses $9 million per life while the FDA uses $7.9 million). That kind of reductionism is not a partisan issue -it's a matter of transpartisan consensus in Washington, as presidents of both parties regularly install cost-benefit ideologues into top rule-making positions in government (for example, the White House's powerful Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs was headed by cost-benefit acolyte John Graham under President Bush, and is now headed by cost-benefit fetishist Cass Sunstein under President Obama).

Considering this, such retrospective scrutiny looking at past wars, or prospective scrutiny looking at future ones, would be a relatively simple proposition. Thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan, we have a basic sense of how many lives are lost and how much cash is spent in a given invasion. For those who insist those wars could result in big costs from terrorist retaliation, we now have a decade's worth of terrorism statistics during our post-9/11 wars to judge those potential costs, too. Additionally, our intelligence experts can likely estimate how many terrorist attacks we may have thwarted because of such wars. And they can estimate the possible future costs in retaliation and anti-Americanism of drone strikes that, according to the Brookings Institution, kill 10 innocent civilians for every one alleged militant.

But as straightforward as such cost-benefit analyses of war would be, and as much as they might tell us about whether waging war is the right call, there's a catch: While our government is quick to subject domestic and non-military priorities to dollars-and-cents scrutiny, that same government all but refuses to subject militarism to the same scrutiny. Indeed, the idea of actually trying to answer the simple "worth it" question about war through a cost-benefit analysis is now considered so radical -so unthinkable -in Washington, that President Bush's chief economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, set off a major firestorm when he dared to even ponder a reporter's hypothetical question about it.

Why the double standard between domestic programs and military affairs? Because like so many seemingly apolitical policy instruments in Washington today, cost-benefit analyses are primarily used as cudgels exclusively against middle-class programs, rather than employed as a dispassionate means of judging the worth of all initiatives. Put another way, cost-benefit analyses are selectively deployed against -or distorted to kill -programs that threaten powerful corporate interests, but they are often nowhere to be found when they might undermine those interests.

Two examples in 2011 highlight this reality.

One happened earlier this year, when Republicans blocked voluntary Federal Trade Commission guidelines to curb junk-food marketing aimed at kids. As recounted by the New York Times' Mark Bittman, Missouri Republican Rep. Jo Ann Emerson -who has taken big campaign contributions from PepsiCo, the American Beverage Association and the National Restaurant Association - "inserted language into an appropriations bill that would prohibit the F.T.C. from submitting a final draft of the guidelines before completing a full cost-benefit analysis." Emerson and her corporate allies obviously believe the cost-benefit analysis will kill the guidelines, because they know the government's analyses are sufficiently tilted toward overestimating business costs and underestimating societal benefits.

Then came news of the Obama administration politicizing and distorting cost-benefit concerns in killing EPA smog rules. As the New York Times reported, in pushing to enact the rules, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson worked up "a 500-page package with a detailed cost-benefit analysis" showing that "as many as 7,200 deaths, 11,000 emergency room visits and 38,000 acute cases of asthma would be avoided each year." But when she brought that analysis to former JPMorgan executive-turned-White House chief of staff Bill Daley, he "sens(ed) uproar from business" and then engaged in his own ad hoc cost-benefit scrutiny, "sharply question(ing) the costs and burdens" of the rule on industry. Eventually, he sided with the lobbyists at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who convinced him to ignore "the lung thing, the asthma thing and the kids' health thing" and kill the rules because "your boss is up for re-election next year."

In the food guidelines case, a cost-benefit analysis was used as an obstacle. In the smog case, an empirical cost-benefit analysis of pollution controls was first distorted and then supplanted by a political cost-benefit analysis, as White House aides decided that the potential costs to President Obama's corporate fundraising outweighed the benefit of preventing two 9/11′s worth of casualties every year. Either way, the result was the same: The cost-benefit analysis, seemingly an impartial instrument of technocrats, was used as a potent political weapon.

No doubt, pointing such a powerful, program-killing weapon at the bloated Pentagon budget might sound great to those who oppose our military adventurism. And there's no doubt America would benefit from -or at least be better informed by -a sober cost-benefit analysis of our current state of Permanent War. But that's precisely why we don't get such an analysis on military matters -because it might bring an end to the very adventures and wars that continue to generate such largess for the Military-Industrial Complex.
(c) 2011 David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com. David Sirota is a former spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee.








Obama Again Unconstitutionally Claims Unconstitutional War Powers In A Signing Statement
By David Swanson

As you know if you've been awake the past several years, Bush began the unconstitutional practice of rewriting laws with signing statements, there was a little scandal when people found out, candidate Obama promised not to do it, Obama did it, Obama declared it OK in an executive order, and now it's all perfectly fine.

As you know if you give a damn about the future of this country, it isn't really perfectly fine. Here's Obama's latest. This is from a signing statement on a spending bill, not the "Defense" Authorization Act which is yet to come:

"Section 113 of Division H requires the Secretary of Defense to notify the Appropriations Committees of both Houses of Congress 30 days in advance of "any proposed military exercise involving United States personnel" that is anticipated to involve expenditures of more than $100,000 on construction. Language in Division I, title I, under the headings International Organizations, Contributions for International Peacekeeping Activities, disallows the expenditure of funds "for any United Nations peacekeeping mission that will involve United States Armed Forces under the command or operational control of a foreign national," unless my military advisers have advised that such an involvement is in the national interest, and unless I have made the same recommendation to the Congress. In approving this bill, I reiterate the understanding, which I have communicated to the Congress, that I will apply these provisions in a manner consistent with my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief.

"Certain provisions in Division I, including sections 7013, 7025, 7029, 7033, 7043, 7046, 7049, 7059, 7062, and 7071, restrict or require particular diplomatic communications, negotiations, or interactions with foreign governments or international organizations. Others, including sections 7031, 7037, and 7086, hinder my ability to receive diplomatic representatives of foreign governments. Finally, section 7041 requires the disclosure to the Congress of information regarding ongoing diplomatic negotiations. I have advised the Congress that I will not treat these provisions as limiting my constitutional authorities in the area of foreign relations.

"Moreover, several provisions in this bill, including section 627 of Division C and section 512 of Division D, could prevent me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibilities, by denying me the assistance of senior advisers and by obstructing my supervision of executive branch officials in the execution of their statutory responsibilities. I have informed the Congress that I will interpret these provisions consistent with my constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

"Additional provisions in this bill, including section 8013 of Division A and section 218 of Division F, purport to restrict the use of funds to advance certain legislative positions. I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress's consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient.

"Numerous provisions of this bill purport to condition the authority of executive branch officials to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees. These are constitutionally impermissible forms of congressional aggrandizement in the execution of the laws. Although my Administration will notify the relevant committees before taking the specified actions, and will accord the recommendations of such committees appropriate and serious consideration, our spending decisions shall not be treated as dependent on the approval of congressional committees. In particular, section 1302 of Division G conditions the authority of the Librarian of Congress to transfer funds between sections of the Library upon the approval of the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate. I have advised the Congress of my understanding that this provision does not apply to funds for the Copyright Office, which performs an executive function in administering the copyright laws. ~~~ Barack Obama

I have bolded the Bush-speak lines that mean "Here are the parts of this law that I am signing into law rather than vetoing but fully intend not to comply with."

I have both bolded and colored red a bit wherein our Constitutional scholar in chief dictates to the First Branch of our government how spending decisions will be made.

Please don't ask me what a signing statement is or claim that Presidents Ray Gun and Clinton issued the same sort of thing that Bush and Obama have. I can't take it anymore. Instead, please catch up here.
(c) 2011 David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."







The Leading Cause of Breast Cancer?
By John LaForge

Profiteers in the medical CT scan business took a big hit last week from a major new government report on the causes of breast cancer.

Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer.

Almost 230,480 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed this year in the United States, and about 40,000 women will die of the disease, roughly one out of every 3,875 women.

The new Institute of Medicine report probably doesn't sit well with the industry, hospitals and clinics that make so many millions of dollars selling and over-using CT machines. The authors suggest that women avoid "unnecessary" or "inappropriate" medical radiation, a thinly veiled criticism of the industry that will give you a CT scan for a tooth ache if you don't object to it. In 1980, there were 3 million CT scans performed in this country. The number rose to 62 million in 2006, to about 70 million by 2007, and, according to NBC, to 72 million this year. It's a growth industry that doesn't care if it promotes tumor growth.

The IOM committee made several suggestions for preventive actions that women can take, and the very first one is to "avoid inappropriate medical radiation exposure." In the "Question & Answer" section of the IOM analysis online, the authors recommend "Avoiding medical radiation and hormone therapy, unless they are medically necessary, is a good idea."

This suggestion has a vexing corollary since so-called mammography is just a lower dose of X-radiation given directly to breast tissue. Yet the new IOM study's authors say in a footnote, "While recognizing the risks of ionizing radiation exposure, particularly for certain higher-dose methods (such as CT scans), it is not the committee's intent to dissuade women from routine mammography screening." Yet the advisability of mammography has been under attack ever since the British medical journal The Lancet in Oct. 2006 reported on a study by Dr. Peter Gotzsche that found the produced no health benefits. The late Dr. John Gofman argued for his entire career that X-rays caused more breast cancer then they detect, a position defended at length by Dr. Samuel Epstein in his book "The Politics of Cancer."

CT Scans may cause 29,000 cancers and 15,000 cancer deaths every year NBC News said in 2009 that each whole-body CT scan can deliver as much radiation in 10 minutes as 440 chest X-rays.

The IOM's authoritative warning against CT scans has to be considered in view of a 2009 study led by the National Cancer Institute which showed that CT scans administered in the year 2007 alone may have contributed to 29,000 new cancer cases and nearly 15,000 cancer deaths in the United States. NBC News noted the report in its Dec. 14, 2009 broadcast under the headline, "15,000 will die from CT scans done in 1 year."

Dr. Rita Redberg, U. of Calif. San Francisco, told NBC, "We're getting a lot of radiation from CT scans, there's a lot of variability in the radiation that we're getting from different types of CT scans, and there are a lot of excess cancers."

In view of the license to kill that CT scanners seem to have been given, patients considering medical radiation have to ask themselves Dirty Harry's famous question, "Do I feel lucky?"
(c) 2011 John LaForge works on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and edits its Quarterly newsletter.








Springtime For Toxics
By Paul Krugman

Here's what I wanted for Christmas: something that would make us both healthier and richer. And since I was just making a wish, why not ask that Americans get smarter, too?

Surprise: I got my wish, in the form of new Environmental Protection Agency standards on mercury and air toxics for power plants. These rules are long overdue: we were supposed to start regulating mercury more than 20 years ago. But the rules are finally here, and will deliver huge benefits at only modest cost.

So, naturally, Republicans are furious. But before I get to the politics, let's talk about what a good thing the E.P.A. just did.

As far as I can tell, even opponents of environmental regulation admit that mercury is nasty stuff. It's a potent neurotoxicant: the expression "mad as a hatter" emerged in the 19th century because hat makers of the time treated fur with mercury compounds, and often suffered nerve and mental damage as a result.

Hat makers no longer use mercury (and who wears hats these days?), but a lot of mercury gets into the atmosphere from old coal-burning power plants that lack modern pollution controls. From there it gets into the water, where microbes turn it into methylmercury, which builds up in fish. And what happens then? The E.P.A. explains: "Methylmercury exposure is a particular concern for women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, because studies have linked high levels of methylmercury to damage to the developing nervous system, which can impair children's ability to think and learn."

That sort of sounds like something we should regulate, doesn't it?

The new rules would also have the effect of reducing fine particle pollution, which is a known source of many health problems, from asthma to heart attacks. In fact, the benefits of reduced fine particle pollution account for most of the quantifiable gains from the new rules. The key word here is "quantifiable": E.P.A.'s cost-benefit analysis only considers one benefit of mercury regulation, the reduced loss in future wages for children whose I.Q.'s are damaged by eating fish caught by freshwater anglers. There are without doubt many other benefits to cutting mercury emissions, but at this point the agency doesn't know how to put a dollar figure on those benefits.

Even so, the payoff to the new rules is huge: up to $90 billion a year in benefits compared with around $10 billion a year of costs in the form of slightly higher electricity prices. This is, as David Roberts of Grist says, a very big deal.

And it's a deal Republicans very much want to kill.

With everything else that has been going on in U.S. politics recently, the G.O.P.'s radical anti-environmental turn hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. But something remarkable has happened on this front. Only a few years ago, it seemed possible to be both a Republican in good standing and a serious environmentalist; during the 2008 campaign John McCain warned of the dangers of global warming and proposed a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Today, however, the party line is that we must not only avoid any new environmental regulations but roll back the protection we already have.

And I'm not exaggerating: during the fight over the debt ceiling, Republicans tried to attach riders that, as Time magazine put it, would essentially have blocked the E.P.A. and the Interior Department from doing their jobs.

Oh, by the way, you may have heard reports to the effect that Jon Huntsman is different. And he did indeed once say: "Conservation is conservative. I'm not ashamed to be a conservationist." Never mind: he, too, has been assimilated by the anti-environmental Borg, denouncing the E.P.A.'s "regulatory reign of terror," and predicting that the new rules will cause blackouts by next summer, which would be a neat trick considering that the rules won't even have taken effect yet.

More generally, whenever you hear dire predictions about the effects of pollution regulation, you should know that special interests always make such predictions, and are always wrong. For example, power companies claimed that rules on acid rain would disrupt electricity supply and lead to soaring rates; none of that happened, and the acid rain program has become a shining example of how environmentalism and economic growth can go hand in hand.

But again, never mind: mindless opposition to "job killing" regulations is now part of what it means to be a Republican. And I have to admit that this puts something of a damper on my mood: the E.P.A. has just done a very good thing, but if a Republican - any Republican - wins next year's election, he or she will surely try to undo this good work.

Still, for now at least, those who care about the health of their fellow citizens, and especially of the nation's children, have something to celebrate.
(c) 2011 Paul Krugman --- The New York Times






The Quotable Quote...



"Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity. But silence is impossible. Silence screams. Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act. Let who you are ring out & resonate in every word & every deed. Yes, become who you are. There's no sidestepping your own being or your own responsibility. What you do is who you are. You are your own comeuppance. You become your own message. You are the message. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse."
~~~ Leonard Peletier









Vote Obama - If You Want a Centrist Republican For US President
Because Barack Obama has adopted so many core Republican beliefs, the US opposition race is a shambles.
By Glenn Greenwald

American presidential elections are increasingly indistinguishable from the reality TV competitions drowning the nation's airwaves. Both are vapid, personality-driven and painfully protracted affairs, with the winners crowned by virtue of their ability to appear slightly more tolerable than the cast of annoying rejects whom the public eliminates one by one. When, earlier this year, America's tawdriest (and one of its most-watched) reality TV show hosts, Donald Trump, inserted himself into the campaign circus as a threatened contestant, he fitted right in, immediately catapulting to the top of audience polls before announcing he would not join the show.

The Republican presidential primaries - shortly to determine who will be the finalist to face off, and likely lose, against Barack Obama next November - has been a particularly base spectacle. That the contest has devolved into an embarrassing clown show has many causes, beginning with the fact that GOP voters loathe Mitt Romney, their belief-free, anointed-by-Wall-Street frontrunner who clearly has the best chance of defeating the president.

In a desperate attempt to find someone less slithery and soulless (not to mention less Mormon), party members have lurched manically from one ludicrous candidate to the next, only to watch in horror as each wilted the moment they were subjected to scrutiny. Incessant pleas to the party's ostensibly more respectable conservatives to enter the race have been repeatedly rebuffed. Now, only Romney remains viable. Republican voters are thus slowly resigning themselves to marching behind a vacant, supremely malleable technocrat whom they plainly detest.

In fairness to the much-maligned GOP field, they face a formidable hurdle: how to credibly attack Obama when he has adopted so many of their party's defining beliefs. Depicting the other party's president as a radical menace is one of the chief requirements for a candidate seeking to convince his party to crown him as the chosen challenger. Because Obama has governed as a centrist Republican, these GOP candidates are able to attack him as a leftist radical only by moving so far to the right in their rhetoric and policy prescriptions that they fall over the cliff of mainstream acceptability, or even basic sanity.

In July, the nation's most influential progressive domestic policy pundit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, declared that Obama is a "moderate conservative in practical terms". Last October, he wrote that "progressives who had their hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion," because the president - "once you get past the soaring rhetoric" - has "largely accepted the conservative storyline."

Krugman also pointed out that even the policy Democratic loyalists point to as proof of the president's progressive bona fides - his healthcare plan, which mandates the purchase of policies from the private health insurance industry - was designed by the Heritage Foundation, one of the nation's most right-wing thinktanks, and was advocated by conservative ideologues for many years (it also happens to be the same plan Romney implemented when he was governor of Massachusetts and which Newt Gingrich once promoted, underscoring the difficulty for the GOP in drawing real contrasts with Obama).

How do you scorn a president as a far-left socialist when he has stuffed his administration with Wall Street executives, had his last campaign funded by them, governed as a "centrist Republican", and presided over booming corporate profits even while the rest of the nation suffered economically?

But as slim as the pickings are for GOP candidates on the domestic policy front, at least there are some actual differences in that realm. The president's 2009 stimulus spending and Wall Street "reform" package - tepid and inadequate though they were - are genuinely at odds with right-wing dogma, as are Obama's progressive (albeit inconsistent) positions on social issues, such as equality for gay people and protecting a woman's right to choose. And the Supreme Court, perpetually plagued by a 5-4 partisan split, would be significantly affected by the outcome of the 2012 election.

It is in the realm of foreign policy, terrorism and civil liberties where Republicans encounter an insurmountable roadblock. A staple of GOP politics has long been to accuse Democratic presidents of coddling America's enemies (both real and imagined), being afraid to use violence, and subordinating US security to international bodies and leftwing conceptions of civil liberties.

But how can a GOP candidate invoke this time-tested caricature when Obama has embraced the vast bulk of George Bush's terrorism policies; waged a war against government whistleblowers as part of a campaign of obsessive secrecy; led efforts to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs; extinguished the lives not only of accused terrorists but of huge numbers of innocent civilians with cluster bombs and drones in Muslim countries; engineered a covert war against Iran; tried to extend the Iraq war; ignored Congress and the constitution to prosecute an unauthorized war in Libya; adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists; and even claimed and exercised the power to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield and without due process?

Reflecting this difficulty for the GOP field is the fact that former Bush officials, including Dick Cheney, have taken to lavishing Obama with public praise for continuing his predecessor's once-controversial terrorism polices. In the last GOP foreign policy debate, the leading candidates found themselves issuing recommendations on the most contentious foreign policy question (Iran) that perfectly tracked what Obama is already doing, while issuing ringing endorsements of the president when asked about one of his most controversial civil liberties assaults (the due-process-free assassination of the American-Yemeni cleric Anwar Awlaki). Indeed, when it comes to the foreign policy and civil liberties values Democrats spent the Bush years claiming to defend, the only candidate in either party now touting them is the libertarian Ron Paul, who vehemently condemns Obama's policies of drone killings without oversight, covert wars, whistleblower persecutions, and civil liberties assaults in the name of terrorism.

In sum, how do you demonize Obama as a terrorist-loving secret Muslim intent on empowering US enemies when he has adopted, and in some cases extended, what was right-wing orthodoxy for the last decade? The core problem for GOP challengers is that they cannot be respectable Republicans because, as Krugman pointed out, Obama has that position occupied. They are forced to move so far to the right that they render themselves inherently absurd.
(c) 2011 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy.




.




If You Can't Beat Them, Enjoin Them (From Voting)
By Amy Goodman

All eyes are on Iowa this week, as the hodgepodge field of Republican contenders gallivants across that farm state seeking a win, or at least "momentum," in the campaign for the party's presidential nomination. But behind the scenes, a battle is being waged by Republicans-not against each other, but against American voters. Across the country, state legislatures and governors are pushing laws that seek to restrict access to the voting booth, laws that will disproportionately harm people of color, low-income people, and young and elderly voters.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund have just released a comprehensive report on the crisis, "Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America." In it, they write:

"The heart of the modern block the vote campaign is a wave of restrictive government-issued photo identification requirements. In a coordinated effort, legislators in thirty-four states introduced bills imposing such requirements. Many of these bills were modeled on legislation drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-a conservative advocacy group whose founder explained: 'Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.'"

It is interesting that the right wing, long an opponent of any type of national identification card, is very keen to impose photo-identification requirements at the state level. Why? Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, calls the voter ID laws "a solution without a problem. ... It's not going to make the vote more secure. What it is going to do is put the first financial barrier between people and their ballot box since we got rid of the poll tax."

You don't have to look far for people impacted by this new wave of voter-purging laws. Darwin Spinks, an 86-year-old World War II veteran from Murfreesboro, Tenn., went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a photo ID for voting purposes, since drivers over 60 there are issued driver's licenses without photos. After waiting in two lines, he was told he had to pay $8. Requiring a voter to pay a fee to vote has been unconstitutional since the poll tax was outlawed in 1964. Over in Nashville, 93-year-old Thelma Mitchell had a state-issued ID-the one she used as a cleaner at the state Capitol building for more than 30 years. The ID had granted her access to the governor's office for decades, but now, she was told, it wasn't good enough to get her into the voting booth. She and her family are considering a lawsuit, an unfortunate turn of events for a woman who is older than the right of women to vote in this country.

It is not just the elderly being given the disenfranchisement runaround. The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law points to "bills making voter registration drives extremely difficult and risky for volunteer groups, bills requiring voters to provide specific photo ID or citizenship documents ... bills cutting back on early and absentee voting, bills making it hard for students and active-duty members of the military to register to vote locally, and more."

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently spoke on this alarming trend. He said: "Our efforts honor the generations of Americans who have taken extraordinary risks, and willingly confronted hatred, bias and ignorance-as well as billy clubs and fire hoses, bullets and bombs-to ensure that their children, and all American citizens, would have the chance to participate in the work of their government. The right to vote is not only the cornerstone of our system of government-it is the lifeblood of our democracy."

Just this week, the Justice Department blocked South Carolina's new law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls, saying data submitted by South Carolina showed that minority voters were about 20 percent more likely to lack acceptable photo ID required at polling places.

By some estimates, the overall population that may be disenfranchised by this wave of legislation is upward of 5 million voters, most of whom would be expected to vote with the Democratic Party. The efforts to quash voter participation are not genuine, grass-roots movements. Rather, they rely on funding from people like the Koch brothers, David and Charles. That is why thousands of people, led by the NAACP, marched on the New York headquarters of Koch Industries two weeks ago en route to a rally for voting rights at the United Nations.

Despite the media attention showered on the Iowa caucuses, the real election outcomes in 2012 will likely hinge more on the contest between billionaire political funders like the Kochs and the thousands of people in the streets, demanding one person, one vote.
(c) 2011 Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback.





The Dead Letter Office...





Mark gives the white-power salute

Heil Obama,

Dear Uberfuhrer Kirk,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Elena (Butch) Kagan.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your bill to give us a good reason to invade Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 12-31-2011. We salute you Herr Kirk, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Biden

Heil Obama





Out, Damn Newt!
5 Reasons Why Gingrich is Headed for Footnote Status
By John Nichols

For a week or so, Newt Gingrich was riding high in Dubuque, Iowa. His poll numbers were great nationally. In battleground states such as New Hampshire and Florida, he elbowed more credible contenders -- and also Mitt Romney -- aside.

There really was a week there when Gingrich was the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

But that's all over now.

In the 2012 Republican race, everyone gets to be the front-runner for a week, and Gingrich has had his week.

Now, Gingrich is tumbling. Fast. The attacks ads paid for by super PACs associated with Romney and Rick Santorum have surely played a part in the former speaker's steep slide in the polls -- he's now running third, behind Ron Paul and Romney, in the Real Clear Politics survey of surveys from the past week. And in several polls he has fallen to low single digits, just above the man who might just finish ahead of Gingrich on Jan. 3: Santorum.

This is what happens when ideologues and partisans get serious about politics.

Despite the support and sympathy Gingrich has gotten from folks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, his record was always going to disqualify him with grass-roots conservatives and Republican stalwarts who want to win elections.

Gingrich plans a 44-city bus tour of Iowa in order to grab as much free media and grass-roots face time as he can for his underfinanced campaign. But that will not renew his prospects.

When 2012 dawns, with the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, he will be last year's man.

Or, to be more precise, last decade's man.

Here, then, are the top five reasons why Newt Gingrich will not be anything more than a footnote to the 2012 presidential race:

1. GINGRICH REACHED HIS SELL-BY DATE IN 1996:

Born during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third term, Gingrich would if elected next year assume the presidency on the cusp of his 70th birthday. And unlike the conservative movement's favorite septuagenarian president, Ronald Reagan, Gingrich has been a political player for his entire adult life. Barack Obama was 2 years old when Gingrich went to work on his first national campaign.

There are natural trajectories for politicians. Gingrich's had him running for president in 1996, as the dynamic conservative challenger to President Bill Clinton. That would have been a great race between a pair of similar Southerners -- smart, ambitious rascals with plenty of skeletons in their closets but also with real differences regarding the direction of the nation -- but Gingrich deferred to the party bosses (and their corporate overseers), who preferred the predictability of Bob Dole.

Gingrich blinked. He missed his chance.

The same thing happened to Mario Cuomo, who should have run in 1992. But at least Cuomo didn't try to run in 2008.

2. GINGRICH IS A QUITTER:

Stop making fun of Sarah Palin. Sure, she quit in the middle of her term as governor of Alaska, which was kind of pathetic. But Gingrich quit as speaker of the House on the eve of the Clinton impeachment. Talk about "seduced and abandoned." He set his fellow Republicans up for a fool's mission, then he exited stage right.

Why did Gingrich quit not just the speakership he had connived for a decade to obtain but his House seat? A looming scandal involving his own infidelity? Check. An inability to explain away the strategic missteps that led to the dismal finish of House Republicans in the 1998 election cycle? Check. But the real reason was that his fellow Republicans had lost faith in him as a leader.

That was a smart choice, rooted in actual experience and sincere concern about trusting the future of their party to Gingrich. Why would Republicans abandon it now?

3. GINGRICH HAS HISTORY AS A "ROCKEFELLER REPUBLICAN":

In a party that checks conservative credentials more seriously than they would have border guards check immigration papers, Gingrich committed the ultimate sin. In 1968, Gingrich was a young Republican operative looking to get his start in presidential politics. He could have signed on with the "Draft Ronald Reagan" campaign of that year. That's what a visionary conservative would have done. He could have worked for Richard Nixon. That's what a cautious Republican careerist would have done. But no. Gingrich served as the Southern regional coordinator for the campaign of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, the most liberal Republican in the field -- a big-government man who backed abortion rights, opposed the Vietnam War and provided right-wingers with their preferred term of derision ("Rockefeller Republican") for anyone who deviated from the ideologically pure path.

4. GINGRICH KEEPS GOING GREEN ON US:

When he first ran for Congress in 1974, and when he ran again in 1976, at a point when the Republican right was on the march (taking over the Republican platform-writing process and taking Reagan to the verge of the party's presidential nod in the latter year), Gingrich did so as a moderate, maybe even liberal. As Ed Kilgore, who was a young Georgia political player in those years, has noted: "Gingrich returned to Georgia and launched his electoral career, running for Congress in 1974 and again in 1976. His incumbent opponent was John Flynt, an old-fashioned conservative Democrat best known for being on the League of Conservation Voters' ‘Dirty Dozen' list of environmental reactionaries. Unlike many Georgia Republicans, who sought to outflank Dixiecrats by coming across as better-bred right-wing extremists, Gingrich ran to Flynt's left, emphasizing environmentalist and ‘reform' themes, and enlisting significant support from liberal Democrats. Unfortunately for him, these were the two worst election cycles for Georgia Republicans since the 1950s (the Watergate election of 1974 and Jimmy Carter's Georgia landslide of 1976), and he lost narrowly both times."

Environmentalist? Appealing to "liberal Democrats"? That was the old Gingrich. He's a conservative now. Sure, he was kinda green in 1976, but Republican purists can count on Newt now. Right? Well, er, um, he did appear three years ago with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an ad for Al Gore's Repower America Campaign, an ad that saw Gingrich chirping about how, while he and the liberal Democrat did not agree on many issues, "we do agree our country must take action to address climate change." That troubled members of a party that has made denial of global warming one of its basic precepts. So Gingrich claimed appearing with Pelosi was "the biggest mistake" of his four decades in politics. It wasn't the biggest mistake. But it was always going to be a disqualifier.

5. GINGRICH CAME UP WITH THE LAMEST EXCUSE EVER FOR CHEATING ON HIS WIVES:

To win the Republican nomination, a candidate needs to run well in Iowa and a whole bunch of Southern and Western states where evangelical Christians have been picking winners in caucuses and primaries for decades. These folks are supposed to take infidelity as seriously as they do banning abortion and denying rights to gays and lesbians. And some of them actually do.

So what will they make of the fact that Gingrich is on wife No. 3, and that he started dating her when he was still with wife No. 2, and that their affair played out at the same time that he was condemning Bill Clinton for Oval Office hijinks? And what will they think of Gingrich's excuse? Here, from an interview this year with the Christian Broadcasting Network, is the excuse: "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

You see, it was patriotism -- the love of the country, not the love of the ladies -- that led him to stray.

That was always going to be a tough sell with those essential evangelical voters in Iowa.

They are ditching him in droves now. The only question is whether the evangelicals will coalesce around a candidate -- arguably Santorum or Michele Bachmann -- in sufficient numbers to push Gingrich into fourth or fifth place by the time the caucus count is done.

Then he really will be in footnote territory, where, conservatives and liberals ought to be able to agree, this most pompous of political grandstanders has always belonged.
(c) 2011 John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.







Stop the Public University Tuition Spiral
by Ralph Nader

Students of California, arise, you have nothing to lose but a crushing debt!

The corporate state of California, ever ready to seize its ideological and commercial hour during a recession, has a chokehold on California's public universities. With its tax-coddled plutocracy and a nod to further corporatization, the state government has taken the lid off tuition increases big time.

Students of the University of California at Berkeley may pay a proposed $23,000 in tuition by the 2015-2016 school year, up from $11,160 this year (2011) that in turn is up from $2,716 in the academic year 2001-2002. In short, tuition for resident undergraduates has more than quadrupled in ten years.

Before and right after World War II the idea of a public university included a then-called "educational fee" close to zero, from city college of New York to UC Berkeley. Old timers now look back at those days as economic life-savers toward a degree and a productive life for them and the American economy.

No more. Those gates of opportunity are crumbling at an accelerating pace. More street protests by students are focusing on relentless tuition hikes and years of repaying student debt loans while the rich get richer and the tax cuts for the rich are extended. As Mike Konzcal writes, "One of the Occupy movements' major objectives is combating the privatization of public higher education and its replacement with a debt-fueled economy of indenture."

So far the students have gotten nowhere in the Golden State. The Board of Regents rules with an iron hand. Their chancellors are enforcing the state government's unprecedented cutbacks of facilities, faculty, courses and maintenance-repairs.

Berkeley Professor Nancy Scheper-Hughes called the "current crisis" as being "fundamentally about privatization and the dismantling of a national public treasure."

But the students have a very powerful unused tool of direct democracy - thanks to Governor Hiram Johnson's enactment of the voters' initiative process nearly a hundred years ago. They can qualify an initiative on the ballot that would set tuition at affordable levels or even become like some leading European countries where free schooling extends through the university years.

Planning and implementing this people's legislation would be a rigorous course in law, political science and communications.

The effort invites the best minds from the faculty. The language of the initiative must be clear, persuasive and as devoid of ambiguity and openings for circumvention as possible.

Depending on whether the initiative amends the California Constitution or has statutory status, the students will have to collect as many as 810,000 or as few as 505,000 valid signatures on petitions to get on the November 2012 ballot. Ordinarily, without lots of money for paid petitioners, this can be a formidable challenge. But with millions of community college and university students reachable on campus, combined with their families, this should be a fast process and a piece of cake.

According to the eminent University of San Diego Law Professor Robert Fellmeth, there is no legal obstacle to a statutory initiative tied to the funding power of the legislature. It would stipulate, as a condition precedent to state general fund monies, specified tuition limits (perhaps at least a freeze), to provide equitable access to higher education opportunity.

Of course an initiative that is a constitutional amendment can be more supremely declarative.

There are other states where students can establish a legal protection for publically accessible universities by enacting statewide initiatives. All these tools of democracy should be obvious to any high school student were functional civics and democratic practices taught with the same fervor devoted to computer training.

So let's see if California's deteriorating public university systems can be rescued by their undergraduate and graduate students who place the priority of accessible, adequate public higher education where it belongs for the longer run.
(c) 2011 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.



The Cartoon Corner...

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of
~~~ Bob Gorrell ~~~










To End On A Happy Note...





Have You Seen This...




Parting Shots...




Gingrich Plummets In Polls As Voters Start Remembering Who He Is
Dawning Awareness Threatens Campaign
By Andy Borowitz

DES MOINES (The Borowitz Report) - In a development that has imperiled his front-runner status in the Republican presidential race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has plunged in the polls as voters have begun to remember who he is.

Mr. Gingrich had been surging in recent weeks, but according to pollster Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota's Opinion Research institute, "That was before people's memories of who New Gingrich is started gradually kicking in."

According to a new poll released today, Mr. Gingrich fared especially poorly among voters who agreed with the statement, "Wait a minute, that guy? He was an enormous dick."

"Newt Gingrich has got to do something fast to keep people from remembering who he is," pollster Logsdon said. "He might try growing a moustache or wearing an eye patch, but that might be too little, too late."

On the ground in Iowa, Gingrich campaign strategists are working overtime to confront the challenge posed by voters remembering who he is, aides to the former House Speaker said today.

According to one campaign source, the Gingrich campaign has begun seeking the support of people with mental disorders and other memory issues that make it hard for them to retain basic information.

"The problem is, most of those people are currently running for President," the source said.

In other political news, the Romney campaign unveiled a new slogan today: "You're Out of Other Options."
(c) 2011 Andy Borowitz




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The Gross National Debt




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Issues & Alibis Vol 11 # 51 (c) 12/30/2011


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