If every community in the United States embraced the No Kill philosophy, we would save 4.1 million dogs and cats who are scheduled to die in shelters this year, and the year after that. It is not an impossible dream. [more]

Happy New Year, it's gonna be a strange one...

Everyone has been on my ass about Global Orgasm Day, this December 22nd.

"Harrumph," I say - and no, that's not the sound of my climactic approach. Before I even clicked on the G.O. link and listened to the new age strums of the global orgasm guitar, I was already turned off.

How could I be such a curmudgeon? After all, I do want to "stop the war," and any moment dedicated to orgiastic pleasure and whirled peas can hardly be criticized.

It comes down to this: If I had a shred of evidence that my orgasm would force an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq, I'd be beating off furiously now.

The thing is, I'm more of a monkey-wrench masturbator. I'm one of those people who believe you have to throw your body on the cogs of the machine:

"There's 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!"

Listening to Mario Savio's speech still gets me more choked up than any arguments from the global-O organizers.

I'm an atheist; that may be the culprit. When the power of prayer, even lustful, is called upon - to "change the energy fields - " I get a little tense. I want to do something that has a chance of working, that goes beyond a media stunt. But rather than be a complete Scrooge about it - because I do appreciate the intent, after all— I always hope the prayer/orgasm marathon will at least be public, and defiant.

I could so get into the Global Jill-Off if it was combined with a work stoppage. I'd like it, if on December 22nd, everyone called into the office and said, "I'm not coming in today - I'm wanking for peace instead." Booyah!

I seek something that disturbs, something a little rude. Even if you didn't want to go to jail, get fired - or, in the most common scenario, have everyone stare at you - there are still other risks one could take that chip away at the cement block of the military industrial complex. Like...

Among other predictions for the U.S. in 2007: One in four, 25 percent, anticipates the second coming of Jesus Christ. The telephone poll of 1,000 adults was conducted Dec. 12-14 by Ipsos, an international polling firm. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.

[One in four of the people I will see today believe that the Paul Bunyon of ancient Israel will drop out of the sky next year and use magic spells and monsters to set up a super-Disneyland for all the C-ticket holders. Gloom, doom in 2007 indeed.]

Saddam's execution will boost opposition to capital punishment worldwide, including the United States and the Middle East, "because it will be viewed as following a flawed, rushed trial that resulted in a penalty that is cruel and inhumane," said Zahir Janmohamed of Amnesty International, winner of the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

More than half the world's countries -- 129 -- have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, according to Amnesty.

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States accounted for 94 percent of the executions recorded by Amnesty International in 2005. Of the known total, China had the lion's share with at least 1,770 while 60 were executed in the United States, Amnesty said.

Seventy-two percent of the 50 U.S. states had no executions in 2006, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Most executions in 10 states are on hold as aspects of their capital-punishment laws are examined. Two states -- Illinois and New Jersey -- have a formal moratorium on all executions while their legislatures weigh the issues. [more]

Maybe we see so many pictures of the people Bush has killed for a simple reason: he's proud of it; it's the only thing he knows how to do.

Number one most popular video on CNN right now is "Hussein in hangman's noose": "Watch masked executioners place noose around the neck of Saddam Hussein."

I never tune in to the news on tv, but once in a while I do and it couldn't be more hideous, more obvious, more ugly: snuff porn and celebrations. No context such as this:

Man Hung for Killing 148 in Operation Which Killed 650,000+

Or, Iraq Torture 'Worse After Saddam', or "More than 90 per cent of Iraqis believe the country is worse off now than before the war in 2003" or Iraq: More Hellish Now Than Under Saddam. (This paragraph could go on forever - then follow the money.)

Instead the corporate machine has been propelled into motion to utter this line: Snuff Porn, and Celebrations.

This is the word. From the top two percent which own the world to you, the sorry proletariat.

Snuff Porn, and Celebrations

Eat it like the rest of the dog food they let you have. Eat it and like it.

Not mean-spirited, just "Texas-spirited."

Over the past 10 years, more than 50 people aged 30 and under were violently murdered by assailants who targeted them because they did not fit stereotypes for masculinity or femininity. The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (GenderPAC) released the groundbreaking human rights report “50 Under 30: Masculinity and the War on America’s Youth” documenting this tide of murderous violence and the key demographics of its victims and their assailants. The report reveals a unique vulnerability at the intersection of age, race, and gender non-conformity that makes a fatal assault exponentially more likely.

“While many youth who don’t fit gender stereotypes for masculinity or femininity face harassment or bullying, when it comes to gender-based murder the victims are specific and consistent,” said Riki Wilchins, GenderPAC executive director. “These victims tended to share the same characteristics: they were mostly Black or Latina, were biologically male and presenting with some degree of femininity, and were killed by other young males in attacks of extraordinary and often multiple acts of violence.”

[Article continues at link. This has absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with Leviticus 20:13 so don't even say that God commands Christians to kill gay and femmy men. And don't say that Jesus agreed that is the law, because Matthew 5:18-19 and Luke 16:17 don't exist.]

Today President Bush signed the H.R. 6407, the "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. In doing so he added a few signing statements. One of them is particularly alarming, as it says that they can search our mail without a warrant.

Wikipedia Page for Saddam Hussein's Execution

Confirmation of Saddam's hanging went out about ____ minutes ago and this Wikipedia page is growing as the information is made public. Nice living case study on the growth of a Wikipedia page.


Looks like it made Al-Jazeera, too: Saddam hanged

Also see, Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America

Oh, and Thanks for the memories...

When George Bush banned funding [for research on human embryonic stem cell lines] he effectively put researchers into quarantine.

Who would have guessed the author of Jurassic Park would turn into such a rightwing nutter?

. . . via Spitting Image.

Interview with Professor Francis Boyle

WASHINGTON -- The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks -- including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer -- according to Pentagon officials.

Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans' willingness to serve in uniform.

The idea of signing up foreigners who are seeking US citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.

The proposal to induct more noncitizens, which is still largely on the drawing board, has to clear a number of hurdles. So far, the Pentagon has been quiet about specifics -- including who would be eligible to join, where the recruiting stations would be, and what the minimum standards might involve, including English proficiency. In the meantime, the Pentagon and immigration authorities have expanded a program that accelerates citizenship for legal residents who volunteer for the military. (emp mine)

The Boston Globe

Steal this Disc

Covert Actions Against American Citizens Living in America

COINTELPRO never went away...

Watergate Scandal Escalates......Gerald Ford is named V.P.

Fuck Gerald R. Ford, never-elected president, Ford is the guy who pardoned the evil bastard Nixon he was on the Warren Commission, and his administration put Rumsfeld, Cheney and furthered Henry Kissinger into the top echelons of power. Please take a moment to fall down a flight of stairs in his memory.

As US troops battle Islamic extremists abroad, the Pentagon and the armed forces are reaching out to Muslims at home.

[Always stress the difference. Why, some of my best friends are non-Islamic extremist Muslims.]

An underlying goal is to interest more Muslims in the military, which needs officers and troops who can speak Arabic and other relevant languages and understand the culture of places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Maybe the military shouldn't have kicked out those six Arabic translators because they were gay.]

The effort is also part of a larger outreach. Pentagon officials say they are striving for mutual understanding with Muslims at home and abroad and to win their support for US war aims.

[And where I say 'mutual understanding,' I mean 'lip service to superstitious morons so we can make use of them.' We conned the Christians to get their votes, now let's work on the Muslims. Allah forbid that any understanding of Islam be based on reading the Quran.]

Among the efforts to attract and retain Muslim cadets:

• West Point and the other service academies have opened Muslim prayer rooms, as have military installations.

[You know, they didn't really mean it when whoever those guys were wrote the United States government would not establish a state religion, using tax dollars to fund someone else's superstition. Fucking First Ammendment of the fucking United States Constitution.]

• Imams serve full- and part-time as chaplains at the academies and some bases.

[Now now, why stop there? We need representatives of every major and minor and current and historic religion at the academies and bases. Just in case.]

• Top non-Muslim officers and Pentagon officials have taken to celebrating religious events with Muslims overseas and here in the US.

[Isn't that kind of like saying DURKA DURKA DURKA JIHAD except instead of being wooden puppets in a satirical movie, you're putting on supernatural blackface to trick Muslims into... fighting Muslims?]

"There is a message here, and that is that Muslims and the Islamic religion are totally compatible with Western values," says Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in an interview.

[Secretary England went on to announce the end of banking, democracy, and several other entirely trivial and optional Western values.]

[Article continues at link. Accomodating superstition in tax-funded venues is always and forever a mistake.]

More on BearingPoint Inc. from my below post: Old Iraq Strategy Lives On In Weekly Progress Reports

Antonia Juhasz* has been all over this, showing that BearingPoint Inc is nothing more than another Enron/Arthur Andersen like accounting firm.

And its running not only the State Department in the USA but the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan.

BearingPoint has worked extensively on homeland security matters over the last two years, including with the Transportation Security Administration on airport security and the Defense Department on identification card technology. BearingPoint also worked with then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, now director of Homeland Security, to develop the Justice Network, a Web-based crime fighting system that links Pennsylvania's criminal justice agencies and offices with federal agencies.

In October 2002, KPMG Consulting Inc. changed its name to BearingPoint Inc. KPMG Consulting was formed in 1997 as the consulting division of accounting firm KPMG LLP. An initial public offering on Feb. 8, 2001, marked the official separation of KPMG Consulting from KPMG LLP. BearingPoint was the first of the Big Five consulting firms to separate from its audit and tax parent and become an independent, publicly traded company. The crisis that engulfed the accounting profession in the wake of the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal later that year hastened the company's decision to change its name in 2002. Under the leadership of current Chairman and CEO Randolph Blazer, BearingPoint underwent a dramatic expansion by acquiring most of Arthur Andersen's worldwide consulting operations.

Clients include nine of the top 10 global wireless carriers, all software, electronics and pharmaceutical companies in the Fortune 100, six of the world's top 10 manufacturing companies, and all 14 Cabinet-level departments of the U.S. government. BearingPoint reported $2.4 billion in net revenue for FY 2003 and has a workforce of approximately 16,000 people in 39 countries.

In March 2002, Richard Roberts (Johnson's successor), testified before the House Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy in support of another bill sponsored by Rep. Davis, the Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2002, a bill designed to streamline the process by which the government purchases information technology services. Roberts was testifying on behalf of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group of which BearingPoint is a member. BearingPoint Senior Vice President Dave Sanders sits on the ITAA's board of directors. The ITAA helped the House subcommittee draft the legislation.

In 2001, BearingPoint spent $60,000 to lobby on homeland security issues and matters pertaining to the accounting industry. In 2002, BearingPoint spent $420,000 to lobby on information technology procurement and homeland security, among other issues.

In July 2003, USAID awarded BearingPoint a $9 million initial award to facilitate Iraq's economic recovery. According to USAID, the contract, which can be renewed annually for a maximum of two more years, is worth $79,583,885. According to the contract, the estimated value, including the two option years, is $240,162,668. The contract was bid on by 10 companies with existing indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts, according to USAID. Under the contract, BearingPoint will support the provisional government's efforts to facilitate Iraq's regional and international economic integration, stimulate trade, increase employment, and create a competitive private sector, according to USAID. BearingPoint will examine Iraq's current laws and policies regulating trade, commerce and investment and provide support to the central bank and the ministries of finance, trade, commerce and industry. BearingPoint might also undertake specific initiatives relating to "credit, micro-finance and small business loans."

In March 2003, USAID awarded BearingPoint a three-year, $39.9 million contract to help rebuild the country's economic infrastructure. That agreement includes an option to extend the contract for another two years, bringing the total amount of the award to $64.1 million. Under the contract, BearingPoint will work with the government in developing and repairing most of the key areas of Afghanistan's economy: tax policy, budget planning, banking, trade policy, commercial law and private sector development. After winning the contract, BearingPoint announced it was sending 30 employees to Afghanistan and hiring 30 more Kabul residents, adding to the 50 residents already employed.

Takes War Profiteering to a whole 'nother level. Build trap doors to governments from the inside when you build the government itself!

I wonder if they wrote the legal underpinning for all the "help" that the ISG envisioned for the oil sector in Iraq? D'ya think?

Further, Prior to the invasion, as we have seen Bearing Point received a $250 million contract from US AID to develop a blueprint for the remaking of Iraq's economy into a 'free-market' economy friendly to U.S. corporate interests. Bremer's job was to implement the Bearing Point plan. Juhasz points out that while there may have been an inadequate military plan, there was in fact a plan for the takeover and remaking of the economy of Iraq. Bremer had the power to create laws by issuing "binding instructions or directives." Bremer issued 100 Orders, Juhasz in 2005 interview describes some of the key orders:

"Order No. 39 allows for: (1) privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) "national treatment" — which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses.

"Thus, it forbids Iraqis from receiving preference in the reconstruction while allowing foreign corporations — Halliburton and Bechtel, for example — to buy up Iraqi businesses, do all of the work and send all of their money home. They cannot be required to hire Iraqis or to reinvest their money in the Iraqi economy. They can take out their investments at any time and in any amount.

"Orders No. 57 and No. 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations.

"Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq's laws. Even if they, say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured party cannot turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must be brought to U.S. courts.

"Order No. 40 allows foreign banks to purchase up to 50% of Iraqi banks.

"Order No. 49 drops the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40% to a flat 15%. The income tax rate is also capped at 15%.

"Order No. 12 (renewed on Feb. 24) suspends "all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq." This led to an immediate and dramatic inflow of cheap foreign consumer products — devastating local producers and sellers who were thoroughly unprepared to meet the challenge of their mammoth global competitors."

The Democracy Rising Interview: Antonia Juhasz

Finally, from above, BearingPoint Clients include nine of the top 10 global wireless carriers, all software, electronics and pharmaceutical companies in the Fortune 100, six of the world's top 10 manufacturing companies, and all 14 Cabinet-level departments of the U.S. government.

Can we say embedded?

There is simply no way to spin this other than the complete rape of a country, plain and simple. Rape is in fact far too benign a word. Dismemberment is more like it; What these laws describe is the dismemberment and dismantling of a country.

Oh, one last thing... take a wild guess who got many no bid contracts for undisclosed amounts to clean up New Orleans from the Katrina disaster (e.g. relief operation)... did you guess BearingPoint Inc.?

McLean, Va.-based BearingPoint Inc (formerly KPMG Consulting )is also involved in Homeland Security contracts, Border Security contracts, EzGov software sevice contracts, Physical Infrastructure Protection, and Immigration Law; of course most of this imformation is behind subscription and pay walls websites and the average person would never know.

"Everything in this room is eatable. In fact even I am eatable, but that is called canabalism my dear children and is frowned upon in most civilizations."~Willy Wonka, from the movie 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'

*Interestingly enough, I have posted about Antonia Juhasz and her work maybe three or four times here on Amsam.org, however, plug that name into the search eng to the right and you get nothing.

Schoolgirls as young as 12 are to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease linked to cervical cancer, under controversial plans being drawn up by the Department of Health. [...] This summer Hollie Anderson, 13, became the first British girl to get the vaccine privately. Hollie's grandmother died of cervical cancer and her mother, Lisa Anderson, said she believed every mother and daughter should have the jab. She said: 'I've seen how awful the disease can be. I saw it as my role to protect Hollie.' The main obstacle for the government could be financial - three doses cost the NHS £241.50, although there would be a discount for a universal programme and savings on treating the 2,800 women annually diagnosed with cervical cancer could be significant.

[Ooops, that should have gone in British Samizdat. Here in the American Samizdat, it's virginity or death.]

The State Department continues every Wednesday to issue a 30-page public report that details exactly how the U.S. government is meeting the goals set forth in the president's now-abandoned plan. The report frames the data around Bush's storied eight pillars, which include such goals as "Defeat the Terrorists and Neutralize the Insurgents" (Pillar 1) and "Increase International Support for Iraq" (Pillar 7).
...
The report is prepared not by State Department officials but by a team of about 10 people hired by a management consulting firm. The firm, BearingPoint, has a $2 million contract to produce the report and to manage the process of running Iraq policy in the administration, the State Department official said.

Below the level of the top policymakers, working groups from across the government implement Iraq policy day by day. The BearingPoint employees, who work out of offices in the State Department, arrange the meetings, set the agendas, take notes and provide summaries of the discussions, the official said. They also maintain the Web site of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
...
The report seemed uncertain how to treat the release of a report by the Iraq Study Group, the independent bipartisan panel that criticized the administration's policy and spurred the White House to come up with a new plan. The earliest mention of the study group's report, in the Dec. 13 edition, came under Pillar 3, "Help Iraqis to Forge a National Compact for Democratic Government."

The headline said it all: "Iraqi Leaders Blast Iraq Study Group's Report." The State Department, perhaps in an effort to demonstrate the unity of Iraqi leaders, then devoted a whole page to negative quotes about the panel's recommendations.

The Dec. 20 report featured one curious item. Under the rubric of increasing international support, the report highlighted a visit to Damascus, Syria, by Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.). The senators "arrived in Syria December 19 to discuss how Damascus could help bring stability and security in Iraq," the report said, noting that another senator, Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in early December.

The State Department had strongly discouraged the trips, saying Syria is a key source of problems in Iraq.

Also see, It looks like the oil men are going to carry the day in Iraq

While President Bush offered a variety of reasons for invading Iraq, to find weapons of mass destruction or to spread democracy, he has been quite steadfast regarding the role of Iraqi oil. As late as this summer President Bush declared, “The oil belongs to the Iraqi people. It’s their asset.” A wonderful sentiment, though the Iraqi people view this a bit differently.

In a poll sponsored by the University of Michigan this summer, Iraqis gave as the reason behind the United States’ invasion as 1) To control Iraqi oil (76 percent), 2) To build military bases (41 percent) 3) To help Israel (32 percent). Only 2 percent of Iraqis thought we were coming to spread democracy. Politicians might offer benign statements, but the reality is on, or in, the ground. Very shortly we shall see who shall define the reality, and it sure looks like the oil men shall carry the day, at the expense of democracy and economic fairness.

While President Bush proclaims the oil belongs to the Iraqis, it turns out the U.S. State Department proposed the use of Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) for Iraq even before we invaded Iraq in 2003. Since then, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the various interim Iraqi governments, all heavily influenced by the U.S., have sought to implement this type of agreement. In late summer it was reported “the administration and major oil companies reviewed and commented on a new law governing Iraq’s crucial oil sector, before it has even been seen by the Iraqi parliament.” Corporate lawyers and the oil industry are writing laws for the Iraqi government. The process is skewed to favor the oil industry and unfair to the Iraqi people. snip

Back in 1953 the United States and Great Britain sent Kermit Roosevelt to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran.

Why?

Because Iran’s Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, had the audacity to nationalize Iranian oil supplies, potentially threatening our energy security. Operation Ajax, as this illegal and covert CIA operation was known, cost less than $500,000, while setting the tone for a generation of subsequent covert operations. This time, a manipulative president deceived a pliant Congress and a gullible American public. In an illusionary grasp at energy security Iraq suffered a ‘shock and awe’ treatment.

This letter demonstrates that Vatican City, by way of the Roman Catholic Church, has systematically sheltered child abusers for decades. Were these actions carried out by a secular government, I have no doubt that Amnesty International would not hesitate to speak out against such a government. Were these actions carried out by an Islamic government, I have no doubt that Amnesty International would not hesitate to speak out against such a government (as has been the case in 'honor killings'). I suggest it is appropriate for Amnesty International to issue a statement condemning the actions of Vatican City. Is Vatican City an appropriate subject for criticism by Amnesty International? Because Vatican City is a country, and because Amnesty International addresses criminal and immoral behavior in countries, the answer is yes. This open letter to Amnesty International will demonstrate that Vatican City is a country, that Vatican City is responsible for systematic child abuse around the world, and that it is appropriate for Amnesty International to hold Vatican City accountable for this abuse.

[Letter continues at link. This letter has gone unanswered for one year.]

The US is insolvent. There is simply no way for our national bills to be paid under current levels of taxation and promised benefits. Our combined federal deficits now total more than 400% of GDP. That is the conclusion of a recent Treasury/OMB report entitled Financial Report of the United States Government [PDF] that was quietly slipped out on a Friday (12/15/06), deep in the holiday season, with little fanfare. Sometimes I wonder why the Treasury Department doesn’t just pay somebody to come in at 4:30 am Christmas morning to release the report. Additionally, I’ve yet to read a single account of this report in any of the major news media outlets but that is another matter. But, hey, I understand. A report is this bad requires all the muffling it can get.

Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation’s total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000. As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the “baby boom” generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008. Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation’s large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

From $20 trillion in fiscal exposures in 2000 to over $50 trillion in only six years? What shall we do for an encore… shoot for $100 trillion? And how about the fact that boomers begin retiring in 2008… that always seemed to be waaaay out in the future. However, beginning January 1st we can start referring to 2008 as ‘next year’ instead of ‘some point in the future too distant to get concerned about now’. Our economic problems need to be classified as growing, imminent, and unsustainable. And let me clarify something. The $53 trillion shortfall is expressed as a ‘net present value’. That means that in order to make the shortfall disappear we’d have to have that amount of cash in the bank – today - earning interest (the GAO uses 5.7% & 5.8% as the assumed long-term rate of return). I’ll say it again - $53 trillion, in the bank, today.

[Article continues at link. See also this list of countries by current account balance. The CIA World Book states the USA is number one in debt to other countries to the tune of $8.837 trillion. When the world is ready to reign in a superpower gone wild, just present the bill.]

A militant animal rights group claims to have poisoned bottles of POM Wonderful juices in several retail chains on the East Coast to protest animal testing.

A communique from the Animal Rights Militia (ARM), which was posted on the North American Animal Liberation Press Office Web site, reads: "Those who drink the contaminated juice won’t die like the animals in pom labs, but the diarrhea, vomiting and headaches will hopefully send a strong message that people will no longer allow innocent defenseless animals to be tormented and killed for a health juice." The validity of the claim has not been verified.

The communique goes on to say, "more and more activists like us will choose to retreat into the shadows and fight for the animals underground since the government is making it impossible to do the kinds of things that those who came before us did to oppose injustice, oppression and exploitation."

[Article continues at link. Portland Oregon's own animal rights superstar, Craig Rosebraugh, wrote extensively about the abolition of capitalism. Then he opened an upscale (vegan) restaurant, and when the IWW came to set up a union there he threatened them with the police.]

The United States of America, indeed the whole world, is in deep doo-doo.

There is, in America, a potentially powerful, but presently only nascent (if even that), force for positive change. I submit that if that force is not unleashed in the coming months, there is no hope for reversing a catastrophic path toward what will be the final world war. The political terrain is now littered with explosive devices and our government, all of it, carries around the ignition engines, just looking for an opportunity to push the little buttons.

That force is the American political Left. At present, though, it's just a sleeping giant. What will it take to wake it up, feed it, and unleash its power to drive positive change?

For new readers here, let me clarify that by "American Left" I do not mean the so-called "progressive" or "liberal" wing of the Democratic Party. There are indeed several members of Congress, such as Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, and John Conyers, who take a decidedly leftist position. For the most part, however, those who now call themselves "progressive" are really classical, middle-of-the-road politicians who have consistently supported the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policies.

Keeping abreast of the new Congress's plans for the upcoming session, it is clear that the Democrats will not take up the issues that the "Hard Left" sees as critical priorities: an immediate exit from Iraq, demilitarization of our society, rescinding the PATRIOT Act, reversing the attack on civil rights, rescinding tax breaks for the richest citizens and corporations, and impeaching Bush and Cheney.

In my opinion, it should be clear to those on the Left that spending the past two years hoping to reform the Democratic Party from within was a waste of time. To hope that it will just take more time (two more years? four? ten?) is a mistake, because we don't have more time. I submit that if we do not form a vital and vibrant third-party alternative, with a known and attractive presidential/vice-presidential ticket and strong candidates for Congress, in the next two years, we will be beyond the brink.

Rather than moving an inch or so leftward as the result of a slim Democratic Party majority, the Bush administration will spend the next two years escalating their efforts to forward their agenda. How can we think otherwise? Bush/Cheney have shown just in the past two weeks that they are prepared to ignore any resistance, even from the military leadership. The commander of the war in Iraq, General Abizaid, who has supported Bush unequivocally until recently, has just resigned because he can not influence the President to take a more prudent course. Insiders in Washington report that a thorough shake-up in the military command structure is imminent. And rather than withdrawing troops, the government, with Democratic Party collusion is about to send thousands more troops into harm's way, as well as growing the arms services with the possible reinstitution of a military draft.

At the same time, there is much evidence that the government may soon take even more disastrous military measures in the Middle East, possibly including nuclear strikes.

In order to pull all of this off, I predict that the administration is prepared to pull out all the stops for a domestic counteroffensive against what will surely be a growing protest and resistance. The technology to do this is pervasively in place and we cannot ignore the fact that "detention camps" are being built as you read this. This administration has already proven that they will not countenance any effective opposition to achieving their goals.

So I ask, "What will it take?" What will it take for the Left to abandon the Democratic Party as an agent of real change? What will it take for the dozens of leftist parties, independents, and the unaffiliated and disenfranchised to organize and unify, negotiating common principles and values? And what will it take for this movement to educate the people about what is really happening?

I'm asking because I don't know. In the past, I was a community organizer affiliated actively with Mobilization for Survival, as well as the Democratic Socialists, led by the late Michael Harrington. Although the Left was as much fragmented as it is now, we consistently were able to find common ground in a sustained effort to have our voices heard against the Vietnam war and later against the US military and CIA interventions in Central and South America. We didn't just show up at the semi-annual marches; we worked hard all the time, bringing unrelenting pressure against the reactionary forces of the Right.

Somehow, over two decades, that movement has been discredited. In my recent essay "Just Because It's An Old Idea Doesn't Mean It's A Bad Idea" I wrote that we seem to have left behind many old ideas simply because they're old. We have succumbed to fashion, assuming that these old ideas, principles, and actions won't/don't work anymore.

The Reagan onslaught of the 80s decimated the liberal presence in our government. I remember several liberal members of congress, notably Bill Bradley and Pat Schroeder, simply retire. There is, by the way, a significant body of scholarly work on this issue. Unfortunately it is in Political Science journals for which you need a membership to read on-line. When Bill Clinton, a neoliberal centrist, was finally elected, after twelve years of Reagan and Bush I, the true left was at best moribund, at worst dead.

In "Name That 'Toon: Why There's No Still No Vital Third Party" (here), which I wrote in late October, I explored briefly (and somewhat satirically, I might add) the present state of third parties in the US. Wikipedia lists over sixty third parties, admitting they probably don't have all of them.

Clearly not all of these parties are lefties. Of those that are, many are localized, single issue, small, and/or probably so radical that, as parties, they would be difficult to mobilize. However, if a third party could actually be generated, it might be able to attract many members of these parties.

There have, of course, been third-party and independent candidates in recent elections, Ralph Nader for example. But they have not really been anything except vehicles for celebrity candidates. And some of these candidates rely mainly on endorsements by existing third-parties. In effect, the candidate runs the party, rather than the other way around, so the party disappears and its allies become once again invisible as soon as the election is over.

The Left and its many parties does not have a good track record in organizing. The history of forming a "circular firing squad" is well known. The effort would have to be very principle, value, and goal driven. They main obstacle to overcome is the extreme resistance of many of these parties, mostly on the fringes, to concede some of their ideology in negotiations for common ground. Frankly, this behavior is intransigent and, under the present circumstances, very destructive. Some of these parties have openly and steadfastly held to the line of, "We'll just wait until all else fails and people see that we're right. Then people will flock to us." That just ain't gonna happen.

Although I'm convinced that this path is the only one which might save us, I have neither the expectation nor the influence to lead such a movement. I do, however, have some suggestions:

• people must contact the leaderships of the various parties and groups and encourage them to reach out to other parties


• after some initial negotiations, these parties must at a "summit" at which consensus must be reached as to principles, tactics, and strategies


• those parties who currently espouse violence must by all means reject that. Parties and groups who continue to embrace violence must be excluded


• there absolutely must be a spirit of cooperation, flexibility, and some degree of selflessness. Focus on what can be done, rather than what can't


• the movement must be multi-racial and cultural. It must not be exclusive


• the urgency of the situation must be recognized and turned into a powerful force for mobilization


• principles must drive candidates, not the other way around. To simply endorse Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader is defeatist, although fielding candidates with some name recognition is important. Once principles are negotiated, appropriate candidates will appear

As I said, I can't make this happen. I'm not sure where to start, other than the suggestions I've just made. Maybe the Meetup system can be a tool. All I know is that this kind of thing has happened successfully in the past, and must happen now.

Saul Alinsky said, "We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it." I say, "Git 'er done"!

A UN gift to our new boy King!

Following two months of debate, the UN Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.

Julian Glover and Alexandra Topping: Religion does more harm than good. "More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good. The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. It paints a picture of a sceptical nation with massive doubts about the effect religion has on society: 82% of those questioned say they see religion as a cause of division and tension between people. Only 16% disagree. The findings are at odds with attempts by some religious leaders to define the country as one made up of many faith communities."

Eva-Marie Ayala: "Women said peer was 'demonically oppressed.' "Two women fired from UT-Arlington told supervisors that they prayed and rubbed religious oils on a co-worker's cubicle because they believed she was 'demonically oppressed,' according to personnel records the university released Friday. In an e-mail to supervisors, [a] male co-worker said he was invited to witness the praying and cleansing but became uncomfortable when Shatkin began to chant loudly and rub perfumed oil on the absent co-worker's cubicle wall. The man quoted Shatkin as praying, 'You vicious evil dogs. Get the hell out of here in the name of Jesus. ... I command you to leave.'"

Looking for a DVD for a Christmas Gift perhaps??

A former US policeman and undercover drug agent has appalled narcotics officials by introducing a Christmas video for drug users on how to avoid arrest and fool the police.

Barry Cooper, who is described by former colleagues as perhaps the best drug- enforcement officer in America, will next week begin marketing Never Get Busted Again, which will show viewers how to “conceal their stash, avoid narcotics profiling and fool canines every time”.

retired Colonel Sam Gardiner said in an interview this week that he sees several signs that the United States is in fact moving on a warpath to Iran. He suggested that the talk of sending additional troops to Iraq could actually be about Iran, and said he is also seeing signs that the administration “is beginning to develop the strategic communications message. It is about Iran more and more that you hear people talking …The evidence suggests the White House put an embargo on talking about Iran beginning the second week in October…” That embargo now appears to have been lifted, Gardiner says. “A story” -- an Iran narrative -- “is being put together.”

Six years ago, the Boy Scouts convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that their deep-seated principles gave them a constitutional right to exclude gays and atheists. Now the California Supreme Court has been asked to look at the other side of that coin - whether the Scouts are a religious organization ineligible for certain types of government aid, including dollar-a-year leases of public land.

[Article continues at link. I support the Boy Scouts of America being able to exclude anyone they want, as long as they remain a private organization. When they get tax funding, they have to play by the same rules everyone else does.]

North Carolina 8th Distric Congressman Robin Hayes claims stability in Iraq depends on "spreading the message of Jesus Christ [...] everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the savior."

[Rather than more of one superstition and less of another, I suggest less superstition across the board is the way to have more peace and stability in the world.]

This is why it seems to me that organization is the most important thing. Education and organization.

(pic goes to different link)

More college students seem to be practicing traditional forms of religion today than at any time in my 30 years of teaching.

At first glance, the flourishing of religion on campuses seems to reverse trends long criticized by conservatives under the rubric of “political correctness.” But, in truth, something else is occurring. Once again, right and left have become mirror images of each other; religious correctness is simply the latest version of political correctness. Indeed, it seems the more religious students become, the less willing they are to engage in critical reflection about faith.

The chilling effect of these attitudes was brought home to me two years ago when an administrator at a university where I was then teaching called me into his office. A student had claimed that I had attacked his faith because I had urged him to consider whether Nietzsche’s analysis of religion undermines belief in absolutes. The administrator insisted that I apologize to the student. (I refused.) [...] Distinguished scholars at several major universities in the United States have been condemned, even subjected to death threats, for proposing psychological, sociological or anthropological interpretations of religious texts in their classes and published writings. In the most egregious cases, defenders of the faith insist that only true believers are qualified to teach their religious tradition.

[Article continues at link. Tell you what: you don't pray in my schools and I won't think in your church.]

a first in MSM history?

Why do we hate the puny bands we see on MTV (when they bother to play music)? Because some of us remember when Gods walked the Earth (see below)..

"Failure" by the Kings of Convenience

Via BlueLatinos.org: Greeley Colorado.

Via HispanicTips: Video from Cactus, Texas.

Both will feature the occasional clueless person (in the interest of being "fair and balanced"), but will at least give you some idea of what went down.

The Mississippi-based American Family Association says it has sold more than 500,000 buttons and 125,000 bumper stickers bearing the slogan "Merry Christmas: It's Worth Saying."

The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal aid group that boasts a network of some 900 lawyers standing ready to "defend Christmas," says it has moved about 20,000 "Christmas packs." The packs, available for a suggested $29 donation, include a three-page legal memo and two lapel pins.

And Liberty Counsel, a conservative law firm affiliated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, says it has sold 12,500 legal memos on celebrating Christmas and 8,000 of its own buttons and bumper stickers.

[Article continues at link. Are secular people equally tricked by marketing programs like this, or does it take superstition to make people gullible enough to pay protection money for nontroversies like the 'war on Christmas?']

Merry X-mass! to nice Mr. nsa guy and the contract paid wanna be g-men...Something for YOU sadist's to masterbate to...


Warning!

This video contains graphic images and audio of torture and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

Brian Eno, Arundhati Roy, Ahdaf Soueif, and John Berger are among the 94 artists from Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East who have joined a cultural boycott against Israel.

The Berger letter, signed by artists from across Europe, North and South America, as well as Palestinians and Israelis, reads:

"There is a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon, albeit daily violated by Israeli overflights. Meanwhile the day to day brutality of the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank continues. Ten Palestinians are killed for every Israeli death; more than 200, many of them children, have been killed since the summer. UN resolutions are flouted, human rights violated as Palestinian land is stolen, houses demolished and crops destroyed. For archbishop Desmond Tutu, as for the Jewish (former ANC military commander presently South African minister of security), Ronnie Kasrils, the situation of the Palestinians is worse than that of black South Africans under apartheid. Meantime Western governments refer to Israel's 'legitimate right' of self-defence, and continue to supply weaponry.

The challenge of apartheid was fought better. The non-violent international response to apartheid was a campaign of boycott, divestment, and, finally UN imposed sanctions which enabled the regime to change without terrible bloodshed. Today Palestinians teachers, writers, film-makers and non-governmental organisations have called for a comparable academic and cultural boycott of Israel as offering another path to a just peace. This call has been endorsed internationally by university teachers in many European countries, by film-makers and architects, and by some brave Israeli dissidents. It is now time for others to join the campaign ¡ as Primo Levi asked: If not now, when?

We call on creative writers and artists to support our Palestinian and Israeli colleagues by endorsing the boycott call. Read the Palestinian call (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).

Don't visit, exhibit or perform in Israel!"

US interrogators have devised a new form of torture. It debases the democracy they claim to be defending.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 12th December 2006.

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

US/Nazi torturers "have found a new way of destroying a human being," (a "new form of torture") - thanks to George Monbiot for remembering Jose Padilla, a US citizen. We should too. And that requires hard work, courage - nothing less than delegitimizing the entire system and bringing these fucking bastards to justice.

The United States and Britain will begin moving additional warships and strike aircraft into the Persian Gulf region in a display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country, Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday.

The officials said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was expected this week to approve a request by commanders for a second aircraft carrier and its supporting ships to be stationed within quick sailing distance of Iran by early next year.

Senior American officers said the increase in naval power should not be viewed as preparations for any offensive strike against Iran. But they acknowledged that the ability to hit Iran would be increased and that Iranian leaders might well call the growing presence provocative.
...
Steps are already being taken to increase the number of minesweeping vessels and magnetic “sleds” carried by helicopters to improve the ability to counter Iranian mines that could block oil-shipping lanes, Pentagon and military officials said.

As part of future deployments after the first of the year, the British Navy plans to add two mine-hunting vessels to its ships that already are part of the international coalition patrolling waters in the Persian Gulf.

A Royal Navy news release said the ship movements were aimed at “maintaining familiarity with the challenges of warm water mine-hunting conditions.” But a senior British official said: “We are increasing our presence. That is only prudent.” Military officers said doubling the aircraft carrier presence in the region could be accomplished quickly by a shift in sailing schedules.
...
at present there are about 45 warships deployed in the Persian Gulf and waters across the region from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, with a third of those supplied by allies, which this month include Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Pakistan and Britain.

Tick tock, tick tock...

Happy Solstice 2006

One of the characteristics of the illness I call "americanism" is the tendency to pay attention to style and hype rather than truth. We want so much to embrace the latest popular trend, as dictated by Madison Avenue and mass media, that we forget that fashion passes, but truth does not. Fashion can be made up, but truth cannot; it can only be discovered or revealed.

We are destructively ready to abandon the truth of basic principles and believe the latest fashion. Fashion is the great distracter; exceptionally seductive. So, for Americans, there is no real truth, there is no lasting truth. There is only a deep desire to embrace the Mississippi River of new jargon, new hype, new dress, new products, new "trends", new values, and, demonically, new wars, new exploitations, new lies. In America, there is a universal conviction that if something is new, it must be better. New ideas are good, old ideas are bad garbage.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm no neo-Luddite. The new idea that emotional and mental difficulties are often the result of a brain disease, a biochemical imbalance, rather than some failure of will and character, has saved my life. The latter (old) idea nearly killed me. The new idea allowed me to explore new solutions. Interestingly enough, however, this particular old idea is dying hard, thanks to the economic necessity of marginalizing the mentally ill into the lumpen proletariat, the insanity of Tom Cruisian Scientology, and the unrelenting popular history of absolute fear and hatred of crazy people. We're still ready to kill the insane, rather than compassionately help and nurture them (sorry . . . us, because I am one by society's definition). I have found in general that those old ideas which allow one man to claim superiority over another tend to be the most enduring.

In this post-capitalist era, a decidedly deadly and destructive period of humanity, most new ideas are driven by the need to sell something, and folks only buy antiques because they're cool. We've sacrificed our brains, our hearts, our will, and our souls for the current sexy image. Our common religion is not Christianity, but "progress".

It is safe, I think, to assume that an idea is held as "good" or "bad" by listening to what people say and watching what they do. With this in mind, let's examine several contrasts between what appear to be "bad" (old) and "good" (new) ideas.

One that most exemplifies my above notion that many new ideas are driven by the needs and functions of capitalism: "Money is the root of all evil." Benjamin Franklin on this subject: "He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money." And Xun Zi (310-237 BC): "Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die." So the corrupting power of money is a pretty old idea.

Contrast this with, "Greed is good." That's a pretty popular new idea. "He who dies with the most toys wins." After 911, President Bush encouraged the American people to remain steadfast in the protection of our way of life by "getting out and shopping." The implications of this are many, including "the new is always better than the old", therefore it must be more valuable. The concept that "more is better than less" is a corollary of this new philosophy.

We can explain this rejection of the old (bad) idea by writing it off as "human nature." Even if that is so, the need of capitalistic progress to maintain "growth" and "progress" certainly exploits this (possible) aspect of the essential human character. And now we admire and value the rich more than we do the poor, often regardless of the spiritual values and principles which the poor person may carry.

I recently came across a quote from Henry George's Progress and Poverty:

The evils arising from the unequal and unjust distribution of wealth become more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on. They are not signs of progress, but tendencies that will bring progress to a halt. They will not cure themselves. Unless their cause is removed, they will expand until they sweep us back into barbarism -- the path every previous civilization has taken.

But this truth also shows that these evils are not imposed by natural laws. They arise solely from social maladjustments that ignore natural laws. Poverty, with all the evils that flow from it, springs from a denial of justice. By allowing a few to monopolize opportunities nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental law of justice.

Next, we seem to have abandoned the old idea that "war is bad; peace is good" and embraced its opposite. Never mind that the majority of Americans think this war is bad. I am not convinced that we will practice restraint if we are given a good excuse for the next one. We only abhor wars we cannot win.

From antiquity to the very present, wisdom has shown us that war is a bad idea. Ben Franklin again: "There was never a good war, or a bad peace." Cicero "An unjust peace is better than a just war." Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder." Voltaire: "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." The Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not kill."

None of these statements sounds equivocal to me, but it seems that it is not so hard to abandon the old idea because "this time it is justified." It looks like peace might be considered a bad idea for a long time, since warmongers claim that "the war against terror" will last for decades. So now we have a bulwark justification for a nearly endless war.

The initial justification for waging our current wars was revenge. "We can't let the attacks of 911 go unanswered." Considering the fact that Christ in the New Testament urged us to "turn the other cheek", we have embraced the even older, Old Testament idea of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Retaliatory war causes retaliatory war causes . . .

[more at P! . . .]

Core Strategic Premises

* Our obedience is the goal of rulers.
* Enclosure is their process to gain obedience… when murder quits working.
* Commodification is their method to accomplish enclosure.
* Ideology is the disguise that conceals and reproduces their power inside our minds.
* Epistemology is the constructed "knowledge" of which the disguise is assembled.
* Independence is the precondition of effective and active resistance.
* Independence of action facilitates independence of mind, and independence of mind facilitates independence of action.

In life, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was among the most famous Jews of the 20th century. In death, he wound up on a list of people eligible to be posthumously baptised as Mormons so they could enter heaven.

Bowing to protests from Jewish groups, The Church of Latter Day Saints said on Tuesday that it had removed Wiesenthal's name from its International Genealogical Index, a database of names of people who be could be baptised after death.

A church spokesman said the Nazi hunter's name was taken off the list after receiving a complaint from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group named in his honour.

[Article continues at link. The Mormons baptised Hitler after death, so Hitler is going to heaven while Wiesenthal is going to hell. Religion softens minds and hardens hearts.]

The post-hurricane gambling boom in Louisiana more or less came to a stop in November as gamblers lost $199.7 million in state-licensed casinos.

The figure was up from $184.4 million in November 2005, but that included a time when Harrah's New Orleans Casino was shuttered because of Hurricane Katrina. Harrah's provided $32.6 million of the overall take last month, state police reported today.

[Article continues at link. Critical thinking skills might have prevented those people from giving $199.7 million in tax dollars designated for disaster relief to casinos instead. It might have even prevented them from living in a flood-prone area, or caused them to make their own provisions for surviving a flood. Critical thinking skills also might influence people to not vote for politicians who will clearly betray their best interests, or to tolerate superstition enfranchised into law. What can I do today to increase my and other people's critical thinking skills?]

See also: BlueVoice.org, Defenders of Wildlife, Save Taiji Dolphins, Dolphins Save Swimmer from Shark, Dolphins Save Lifeguards from Shark, Sea Shepherd, Earth Island Institute, Discover Dolphins with Dolphina the Belly-Dancer and Detox Your Home, Help Marine Life!

Former CIA Official Exposes Bush Administration Fraud

Flynt Leverett worked as a senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, the NSC, and he was a CIA analyst. He was recently threatened with criminal prosecution for trying to publish an op-ed in the NYT's.

Also see, Also see, Censored former official: White House blocked op-ed with no classified data

"We retain the rhetoric of liberal democracy, but in concrete terms this supposed democracy gets enacted as the commodity culture, in which freedom of choice really means [Coke versus Pepsi]." It looks like the 'tapeworm' is on the move:

Cheney’s Revenge

"This is the largest massing of military power in the region, and it is gathering for a reason."

The cabal will find a way to attack Iran...they have to. Notice that link I posted above about how Haliburton is being cut out of the action even via one of it's proxy companies?

For that and for many other reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the 9/11 truthers are catching up with all the lies...there has to be another catastrophic event, and soon.

This one will be 'the enchilada' as the Nixonion White House staffers used to say. This one will be the one where the cabal stares down the pathetic leftist opposition and merely says... We have star wars, we have HAARP, we have The Bomb we have numerous other biowarfare weapons...we have the entire world surrounded and we're taking over.

We're setting up a NWO and the first thing that goes is the Internet. At least as it is now known and loved....the new Internet will be just a high speed version of the boring and dried up Zionist MSM that nobody pays any attention to anymore. Like it or lump it.

Oh, and by the way, the banks have taken all your money and locked it up and will be doling it out to you in nickles and dimes.....so don't make any expensive plans.

Yes, it will be a Brave New World...and it will be starting shortly in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Democratic majority in Congress almost guarantees that the Cabal must launch a "DOS" (Denial-of-Service) attack on Democrats by melting-down the economy, launching a new war, and creating as many crises as possible to keep (nosey, investigating) Dems busy.

It's all part of The Long Coup which began you-know-when. By the time U.S. military are on U.S. streets, the "military" part of The Long Coup will be merely a technical formality.

Hell, it's already begun...

US Army Might Break Goodyear Strike
By Bernard Simon
The Financial Times

The US Army is considering measures to force striking workers back to their jobs at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Kansas in the face of a looming shortage of tires for Humvee trucks and other military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan. A strike involving 17,000 members of the United Steelworkers union has crippled 16 Goodyear plants in the US and Canada since October 5.

I can't help but think of Amira Hass's article of this past summer. Her words reverberate over and over again in my mind.

The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called "what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.

The average person don't know what to think anymore. They are confused and and exhausted and mostly very, very afraid.

As a friend of my mother put it today, "We don’t know anymore who's right and who’s wrong, and who’s at fault and who isn’t. And we just want it to end."

Given that last quote, I would say the "policy" (heavy sarcasm) is working just exactly the way it was intended to.

The other day, a natural healing practitioner explained the strategy used by a tapeworm to prosper. A tapeworm, she said, injected a chemical into its host that triggered a craving by the host for what the tapeworm wished for its dinner. By managing its host’s desire, a tapeworm manipulated its host to set aside self-interest and please its parasite. And so the tapeworm proceeded to consume its host’s energy and health, with the host doing most of the work.


The story of how a tapeworm parasitically eats away at its ecosystem came at a moment when the math lover in me was having an adverse reaction to the description of America as the new Roman Empire that seems to be inspired by the recent occupation of Iraq. The investment economics of American imperial conquest work more along the lines of the tapeworm than of the Romans.


If my rudimentary understanding of the rise and fall of ancient empires is useful, the Roman Empire brought an advancement of science, infrastructure, technology and material progress to many of the poorer lands that it conquered. In essence, Rome’s territory grew in part from its ability to increase the ‘return on investment” of many of the places it conquered.

...

The tapeworm -- a parasite that over time eats its host ---can more accurately describe the demonic patterns of stripping places of intellectual capital that come with American imperial conquest. The “dumbing down” so often complained about within America’s borders is a phenomenon that our military appears to be implementing globally. We seem intent on removing spiritual power and intellectual IQ as we depopulate globally, moving out the honest and competent and putting the corrupt and bureaucratic in charge.


One of the things that is most disturbing about the American tapeworm is that it has organized its leadership around private banks and defense contractors and its governance and intellectual air cover around think tanks and private universities and their tax-exempt endowments.

...

The Tapeworm Ransacking of Iraq

The economic desperation that lead up to the invasion of Iraq has been eloquently described by Chris Sanders of Sanders Research Associates and fits the patterns that SRA colleague John Laughland and his colleagues at the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, have documented in Eastern Europe. Assuming the patterns that we have seen throughout the world apply, that tapeworm’s economic desperation will feed on Iraq as follows:


- The first meal to be harvested on Iraq is the profits of invasion --- from government contracts and arms trafficking to media coverage.


- The second meal to be harvested on Iraq is the resulting control of assets, including gold, oil, bank accounts and antiquities. Iraq will be stripped, shipped, or otherwise switched to new ownership. Occupiers will use Iraqi assets to leverage more debt that generates more contracts and business for the inside companies. The antiquities in Iraq and this area of the world have a special meaning and attraction for the American and British leadership networks, so don't underestimate the value of these. The gold bugs at LeMetropole Café reported that the Americans have captured $1 billion of gold which was quite relevant as the NY Fed Banks (particularly JP Morgan, Goldman, Citibank) are running significant short positions to suppress the gold price. Such a replenishment of their stocks (or the US Treasury whom they may be trading on the account of -- they usually simply move the shorts over to the taxpayers on all these types of situations) will be quite refreshing.


- The third meal on Iraq to be harvested will be “occupation management.” If Eastern Europe is representative, America will partner with local and global organized crime and other intelligence agencies to significantly increase organized crime profits from the place. Attractive children will be culled from the population for shipment to Europe and other areas for sex slavery and pedophilia. Narcotics trafficking will increase as it has in Afghanistan. The award to CSC DynCorp of a $500 million sole source contract to run police, courts and judiciary in Iraq is an important signal. After years of research, my question is whether CSC DynCorp’s core competencies relates to enforcement infrastructure designed for places with growing financial fraud, narcotics trafficking, sex slavery and control of leadership through "control files.” These are the talents that the U.S.-based economic elites need to stripmine the assets to feed its economic desperation.


- The fourth meal to be harvested on Iraq will be “fixing” it and declaring “victory.” This will involve significant government contracts to bring “Western Civilization” as defined by building those things that ensure the assets that the private corporations and investors have now acquired have the largest increase in value at no expense to themselves. A careful analysis will show expenditure rations in the “soviet” style—that is, the U.S. government will spend much more than necessary to get anything done. The banks will acquire an entirely new market. Critical to the fixing it phase is the financing of the occupation with the requirement that Iraq use the US dollar. We will print dollars and the Iraqis will use them. This is free financing for us. Next will come the payback for the not-for -profit groups. Because Christianity is an essential political support base for legitimizing the de-population of the Muslim territories, a flow of resources to the right church groups to support an expansion of their missionary ministries is likely. Progressive groups will bid for contracts to bring the rule of law and economic development and things like “the rights of women.” There will be a flow of money from foundations and universities to study how to help Iraq and to justify what we are doing.The Tapeworm's Triumph? Confronting the Parasitic Corporate Underpinnings of U.S. Empire

Re: Tapeworm Talk

Some scientists recently proposed that parasites were, in fact, the "top of the food chain" and that we other organisms evolved specifically to be vehicles for them.

Interesting. We do seem to have the predisposition for it. I used to have regular fights with a day-trader friend of mine who insisted that welfare recipients were "social parasites", whereas I insisted that that distinction belonged to the leisure class (whether you define the leisure class as merely bourgeois, or if you expand that, as I do, to include highly overpaid, but useless, CEOs). By my reckoning, the Bush Dynasty represents the penultimate achievement of human parasites.

The analogy of how a tapeworm influences behaviour chemically is illustrative, but there are better examples. Take the humble Sacculina carcini , which does not have a common name because few people want to get to know it any better. It's an amorphous crab parasite that injects itself into its host where it grows "roots" into every part of the crab's body. It then steers its host in the same way that we would steer a car... it takes over the motor functions of the crab who then becomes a zombie slave. If the host crab is male (which is unsuitable for the parasite to reproduce), it changes the host into a female. The crab will no longer moult or be able to regrow appendages as healthy crabs do... it's short, unhappy life is dedicated exclusively to foraging for food for its parasite with no nutrients going towards its own survival any longer. Kind of like what Halliburton does to congress.

Also see, August 2000 Discover Magazine article Do Parasites Rule the World? , by Carl Zimmer.

Today's young adults are feeling the full, deep impact of a massive shift in the US economy, and are no longer able to start and sustain a family, build a career and grow assets in the same manner as the previous generation, according to a new report series published today by Demos, a national, nonpartisan public policy center.

The new five-part "Young Adult Economics Series" shows that America's young people are feeling the full effect of a 30-year shift from an industrial to technology- and service-based U.S. economy. The series shows that the combination of stagnant wage growth, growing debt, and high costs of education, homeownership and healthcare are new realities. These are now common factors that challenge the ability of America's 20-and 30-somethings to start, and sustain, an economically stable adult life.

whether you "buy into" the "American dream" or not, this situation is like Saturn devouring his children. I do think the US needs to downsize its consumption, but not at the expense of the young.

People who seek and hold power over others aren’t influenced for the good by public discourse. They mine it for leverage, seek ways to direct it towards things supportive of their programs and mine it for trendy, effective rationales. Public discourse is a vehicle for their psychological warfare. The first step is always getting people to consider something patently ridiculous as worthy of serious attention. Social Security, for example, is now under attack by Charles Rangel [D-NY] and Robert Rubin , the Clinton administration Secretary of the Treasury. They know their arguments are bogus. They want them to be taken seriously, and discussed seriously, so that elements of them appear in the received wisdom columns in the newspapers. Eventually, enough people will accept that there must be something wrong. Why would people be talking about it so much if there weren’t?

One might well ask how anyone could know that such things are psychological warfare, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s because the designers of the campaign explicitly say so. They’re proud of it, they think it’s good and a good thing to be doing. When someone says he’s going to do something and then verifiably takes steps to do it, you’re not going to get much better proof. People like that aren’t going to be swayed by debunking. At best, they’ll be forced to change their perception management tactics. They’ll be swayed when 20 or 30 percent of the labor force refuses to show up for work. They’ll be swayed when they lose privileged access to crony networks. The “lesser evilism” votes harvested by cretins like Rangel aren’t persuasive. Every counter-argument, no matter how well explicated, becomes a waste of effort if the last step of it is affirming the shreds of legitimacy he’s gained through formalized, circumscribed democracy.

The programs offered by Spartacus and Lohmann offer much more scope for achieving something positive. They’re fairly modest, goodness knows.

BOULDER, Colo. - A Montana man who gave a woman $170,000 as he tried to rid himself of "bad karma" that the psychic said was ruining his love life filed a lawsuit to get his money back.

[Article continues at link. Maybe teaching people critical thinking skills from childhood onward is a good idea. Or maybe teaching people superstition from childhood onward is a good idea. Which do you think?]

(Worcester, Massachusetts) A same-sex marriage advocate is nursing cuts and bruises after being attacked by a leading advocate of a constitutional amendment to end gay marriage in the only state where it is legal.

Sarah Loy, 27, went to a rally organized by VoteOnMarriage in front of Worcester City Hall, west of Boston, on the weekend. The demonstration was one of several behind held on weekends throughout Massachusetts aimed at pressuring the Legislature to vote on the proposed amendment.

At a lectern Larry Cirignano, leader of the Boston-based Catholic Citizenship group had just finished leading the Pledge of Allegiance when he spotted Loy near the front of the crowd with other supporters of gay marriage staging a counter protest.

Loy was carrying a sign reading "No discrimination in the Constitution". Other members of her group were yelling "You lost, go home, get over it," at the crowd.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports that Cirignano rushed from behind the lectern and tackled Loy to the ground. "You need to get out. You need to get out of here right now," he allegedly told her as her head was pushed into the concrete sidewalk.

As Loy lay bruised and bloodied on the sidewalk Cirignano reportedly returned to lectern, joining other leaders of the protest in condemning same-sex marriage and demanding the proposed amendment be put on the ballot.

[Article continues at link.]

Bush on a fishing expedition
December 18, 2006

The Bush administration has come up with a new weapon in its arsenal of secrecy: the use of a grand jury subpoena to demand not just one copy but all copies of a leaked document, in this case 3 1/2 pages e-mailed this fall to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ordinarily, subpoenas are issued to force an unwilling person or organization to provide evidence needed in an investigation or trial. By requiring the ACLU to provide all copies, the administration clearly hopes to stop the ACLU from publishing the contents of the e-mail. The ACLU even believes the administration already knows who the leaker is -- suggesting the subpoena is intended for another purpose. Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the federal district court in Manhattan should quash the government's action.

No one is supposed to say what the document, which was unsolicited, is about, but the ACLU says that it "has nothing to do with national defense" and would be only "mildly embarrassing" to the administration. Clearly, the administration has lit on this one instance of many leaked documents to see if it can use a subpoena for "any and all" copies of a revealing memo or report to keep the media and organizations like the ACLU from divulging its contents.

In the Pentagon Papers case during the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration tried to suppress publication, but the US Supreme Court said that would be prior restraint of the press. The justices set a very high standard for the harm that publication would have to cause to justify prior restraint: it would have to be "direct, immediate, and irreparable to our Nation or its people." There is no evidence yet that publication of the contested document would have such a dire effect. The ACLU argues that the document has no information about troop movements, intelligence sources, or communication methods.

Neoconservatives lobbied for an unnecessary war and are getting blamed. But they have made comebacks before.

Despite the obituaries now being written, neoconservatism will not soon be over with and certainly won’t disappear in the way that American communism or segregation have. The group has always been resilient and tactically flexible.
...
But if Bush has failed them, what options remain? Joe Lieberman has less national appeal than Henry Jackson did, and once you have been embedded in the Pentagon and the vice president’s office, forays from the Senate will seem a weak brew. John McCain is another matter, and if Americans can be persuaded that the solution to their Middle East, terrorism, and other diplomatic dilemmas lies in more troops and invasions, neoconservatism will have springtime all over again.

In the short run at least, neoconservatism is wounded and is likely to present a different public face. The soaring language about how it is America’s destiny to spread democracy throughout the globe, the efforts to define an American global empire as something greatly to be desired—this will dropped, a casualty of the Iraq fiasco. But it’s not clear that the neocons will miss the democracy baggage.
...
What won’t be dropped is the neoconservatives’ attachment to Israel and the tendency to conflate the Jewish state’s interests (as defined in right-wing Israeli terms) with America’s. So one can look forward to neoconservative agitation on two fronts: a powerful campaign to draw the United States into a war to eliminate Iran’s nuclear potential and an equally loud effort in support of maintaining Israeli dominance over the West Bank and denying the Palestinians meaningful statehood. Those who argue effectively for a more even-handed American policy towards Israel and Palestine will risk the full measure of smears linking them to historical anti-Semitism.
...
This election season ends with neoconservatism widely mocked and openly contemptuous of the president who took its counsels. The key policy it has lobbied for since the mid-1990s—the invasion of Iraq—is an almost universally acknowledged disaster. So one can see why the movement’s obituaries are being written. But the group was powerful and influential well before its alliance with George W. Bush. In its wake it leaves behind crises—Iraq first among them—that will not be easy to resolve, and neocons will not be shy about criticizing whatever imperfect solutions are found to the mess they have created. Perhaps most importantly, neoconservatism still commands more salaries—able people who can pursue ideological politics as fulltime work in think tanks and periodicals—than any of its rivals. The millionaires who fund AEI and the New York Sun will not abandon neoconservatism because Iraq didn’t work out. The reports of the movement’s demise are thus very much exaggerated.

Donald Rumsfeld's final speech as defense secretary

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a human society on mounds of corpses.
~Louis Lecoin

Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Pastor, a professor at American University, says that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP – launched in 2005 by the heads of the three countries at a summit in Waco, Texas – could be developed into a continental union, complete with a new currency, the amero, that would replace the U.S. dollar just as the euro has replaced the national currencies of Europe.

US residents and those with relatives in the States, pay heed to the Armed Forces' most recent manual on Urban Operations. Article should be read in its entirety so I will not excerpt.

Rolling right along...

The real problem is the Israeli Lobby's powerful influence - about which the Lobby brags - over U.S. policy in the Middle East and Israel's inflexibility toward the Palestinians, whose land Israel has stolen. As long as Israel exercises a veto over U.S. policy in the Middle East, the powder keg will remain alight.

The members of the ISG are elder statesmen. They have held high positions and accumulated the honors. Their careers are behind them. They have nothing to lose. They can afford to tell the truth and to address the real problem.

If news reports are correct (see, for example, this), former Secretary of State James Baker has proposed a Middle East peace conference without Israeli participation. According to an official quoted by Insight magazine, "As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the United States to strike a deal without Jewish pressure. This has become the hottest proposal examined by the foreign policy people over the last month."

According to Insight, "officials said the Baker proposal to exclude Israel garnered support in the wake of Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 25. They said Mr. Cheney spent most of his meetings listening to Saudi warnings that Israel, rather than Iran, is the leading cause of instability in the Middle East." The official told Insight that the administration "has fallen in line," but that "Bush is not in the daily loop. He is shocked by the elections and he's hoping for a miracle on Iraq."

President Bush lacks the knowledge, judgment, and experience to be in the Oval Office. He has been deceived and manipulated by neoconservatives who live in the fantasy world of their own ideology and who have been aligned with Israel's right-wing Likud Party for most of their careers.

The neoconservatives put Bush and the U.S., along with Iraqis, Afghans, and Lebanese, in harm's way. Their fantasy enterprise failed, and now they damn Bush for a lost war that they said would be a cakewalk. Neoconservatives told Bush that U.S. troops would have flowers thrown at them, not bombs.

Also via Steve Clemons (on Huffpo, sorry...)



Saudi Royal Family Split on Iraq

The split played a key role in this week's abrupt resignation of the Saudi ambassador to Washington. It also could hurt U.S. efforts to forge a new overall strategy to calm Iraq.

More broadly, the internal dispute shows how Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, long key partners in U.S. efforts to stabilize the Middle East, are struggling to decide how to proceed as Iraq boils over and Iran gains influence.

...The split played a key role in this week's abrupt resignation of the Saudi ambassador to Washington. It also could hurt U.S. efforts to forge a new overall strategy to calm Iraq.

More broadly, the internal dispute shows how Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, long key partners in U.S. efforts to stabilize the Middle East, are struggling to decide how to proceed as Iraq boils over and Iran gains influence.

Clemons responds to this report by saying:

The escalating tension between Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the current Saudi National Security Advisor and former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, who only this this week resigned his position as Saudi Ambassador in Washington, is taking some new and disturbing turns.

Clemons claims this is a power play b/t Bandar and Turki...not quite the same thing as "jealousy."

Sources also confirm that Ambassador Turki's decision to resign not only had to do with his refusal to tolerate the unprofessionalism of Bandar and Massoud [more at the link above] -- but with the signals that Bandar and Massoud have sent to Cheney, David Addington and others on Cheney's national security staff that Saudi Arabia would "acquiesce to, accept, and not interfere with" American military action against Iran.

Some 10,000 US researchers have signed a statement protesting about political interference in the scientific process. The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy. [...] The Union has released an "A to Z" guide that it says documents dozens of recent allegations involving censorship and political interference in federal science, covering issues ranging from global warming to sex education.

Campaigners say that in recent years the White House has been able to censor the work of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration because a Republican congress has been loath to stand up for scientific integrity. "It's very difficult to make good public policy without good science, and it's even harder to make good public policy with bad science," said Dr Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security.

[Article continues at link.]

Government attorneys reached deep into their legal bag of tricks to devise a subpoena against the American Civil Liberties Union demanding "any and all copies" of a classified document that was leaked to the ACLU in October.

Questioned by an ACLU attorney as to the authority for this demand, a government attorney cited the espionage statutes in 18 USC 793 and 798.

Such an action is unprecedented, the ACLU said in a motion to quash the subpoena, and it is also an improper use of subpoena authority.

If successful, this tactic could be used to confiscate classified documents from news organizations, effectively imposing prior restraint on publication and curtailing freedom of the press.

"This is the first time in the history of this country that a court has held that a man may be held by our government in a place where no law applies."

And it doesn't look likely to be the last.


Senator-Elect Sherrod Brown On... Why He Voted For the Military Commissions Act

AMY GOODMAN: Right before the election, you voted for the Military Commissions Act, which stripped habeas corpus. Why?

REP. SHERROD BROWN: I think that if we had done nothing, the prisoners would continue in Guantanamo Bay with no resolution. That will at least move the process forward. They’re either tried, or they’re freed. I didn’t think they should be given more rights than American troops who are court-martialed. I think we can fix that. I think we can make the bill better. I think we ought to go back and do that, come this year.

AMY GOODMAN: Restore habeas corpus?

REP. SHERROD BROWN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You would support that?

REP. SHERROD BROWN: I would support that.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you introduce that?

REP. SHERROD BROWN: Probably not.

AMY GOODMAN: Why not?

REP. SHERROD BROWN: Because I have other priorities.

Yes... other priorities... where have I heard that before? He voted for it and won't lift a finger against it now. Sherrod Brown is a supporter of the the MCA. He's a "progressive" Demoplican.

Christian Embassy=Pentagon?

This Xtian Embassy video is revolting. To read about it is bad. To watch it is to realize that it's a done deal. The United States Armed Forces have been converted into a teleban. And they like it.

Also see,
The Growing Threat of Right-Wing Christians among other posts at the yurica report.

“To my fellow Americans, as I leave this Congress, it is in your hands – to hold your representatives accountable, and to show those with the courage to stand for what is right, that they do not stand alone.”
– Rep. Cynthia McKinney on U.S. House floor,
December 8, 2006

BAR: What was your reaction when Congresswoman Pelosi said in no uncertain terms that impeachment was “off the table,” and did you feel that that was a kind of marching order for the Democratic Caucus as a whole?

McK: It clearly was a marching order, just as “stay away from the Select Panel on Katrina” [another Pelosi directive to Democrats] was a marching order. And so you had members of the Democratic Caucus, including members of the Black Caucus, staying away from the Katrina panel, even though there was an opportunity to do good work by participating on the panel.

BAR: Now that you’re about to become a “civilian” for the second time, do you think that Pelosi’s “marching order” on impeachment will stand for the next two years?

McK: That depends on the American people. This administration obviously has not been checked, and will not be checked, by the Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. It may be tempered, but it won’t be checked. And that’s a shame. As one elected official told me, when you get elected you get the keys to the file cabinet – but you’re not supposed to tell what’s in the file cabinet. Well, I told what was in the file cabinet, but for some people it’s more important to have the keys than it is to clean out the files.

So, where do the “McKinney Democrats” – Black, white and brown – go, now that McKinney is leaving the House? Where, and Who, is their beacon, the lawmaker whose very presence tends to say, “There is hope yet, for this corrupt and racist electoral system?”

If no ready answer comes to mind, then you should understand why Cynthia McKinney is irreplaceable.

HR 1106

The more I learn about Cynthia McKinney the brighter her star shines in my firmament, and the lower the Main Stream Demoplicans sink in comparison.

A federal judge on Tuesday denied Skilling's request to remain free on bond pending his appeal.

Skilling, accompanied by his brother, Mark, and wife, Rebecca Carter, arrived at the prison in a silver Jeep Liberty. The group drove past a crowd of media without stopping, and walked into the prison. Skilling's family members emerged a few minutes later and left.

The low-security prison, which sits on the city limits of this town of 8,400 people 75 miles south of Minneapolis, has a low profile in the federal penal system.

Inmates at the prison have access to exercise facilities including a basketball court, running track and a pingpong table. Like most inmates, Skilling is likely to be required to work in prison labor jobs such as food service, plumbing and painting, where he would earn 12 to 40 cents an hour.

Is it funny to anyone else, how the only two guys whom could have stopped the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the only ones to get the Anthrax Letters were Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.

Anthrax attack on US Congress made by scientists and covered up by FBI, expert says

WASHINGTON -- The terrorists who perpetrated the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress likely were US government scientists at the army's Ft. Detrick, MD., bioterrorism lab having access to "moonsuits" that enabled them to safely process and manufacture super-weapons-grade anthrax, an eminent authority on the subject says.

Although only a "handful" of scientists had the ability to perpetrate the crime, the culprit among them may never be identified as the FBI ordered the destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, IA., from which the Ft. Detrick lab got its pathogens, the authority said.


The anthrax attacks were sent to daschele and leahey just ONE WEEK before the SENATE PATRIOT ACT VOTE. They were the two senators who had been speaking out against the patriot act leading up to its vote, suddenly they both recieve anthrax letters at their offices just before the vote takes place.


Lets review the dates, shall we?


ANTHRAX LETTER OPENED by Daschele and Leahey Oct 15th 2001

A WEEK LATER with everyone scared we have:

CONTROVERSIAL PATRIOT ACT VOTE:

Passed the House on October 24, 2001 (Yeas: 357; Nays: 66)
Passed the Senate on October 25, 2001 (Yeas: 98; Nays: 1)
Signed into law by President Bush on October 26, 2001

Hell yeah. The 9/11 attacks told Congress even they had no air cover from NORAD.
Then the anthrax threats againt them.
Then the beltway sniper was aimed in their direction.
Then Sen. Wellstone's plane went down for no discernible reason and burned.
Then they had to pass doomsday legislation stipulating that anyone left alive in DC was the government if mass death 'attrited' Congress.

All this was terrorism against our (s)elected representatives.

As the dust begins to settle from the mid-term elections, popular thinking is that, over the next two years, the Democrats will force the Bush administration to edge away from the unilateral militarism that has entrapped the nation in two open-ended wars. Don't bet the rent on it.

Indeed, if you are putting down a wager, the odds are better than even that the United States will attack Iran in the next two years, and the assault will have a great deal of support from both sides of the aisle.

via WRH blog

However, I suspect it will be much sooner than that... Like before the dims take control. Possibly, during the Holidays via a simultaneously coordinated 911 replay.

You can make a difference.

In 2004 a Florida jury convicted Richard Paey of drug trafficking involving at least 28 grams of the narcotic painkiller oxycodone, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years. But there was no evidence that Paey, who has suffered from severe chronic pain for two decades, planned to do anything with the pain reliever except relieve his pain. And since he was taking Percocet, a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen, the over-the-counter analgesic accounted for 98 percent of the weight used to calculate his sentence.

This penalty is both cruel and unusual; first-time offenders charged with unauthorized possession of prescription drugs typically get probation. But last week Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that Paey's punishment is not "grossly disproportionate" enough to be considered "cruel and unusual" under the Eighth Amendment or even "cruel or unusual" under the state constitution. The court nevertheless made the rare gesture of urging Paey to seek clemency from the governor, who can commute his sentence to time served (three years) and should do so as a matter of basic decency.

Today Paey, a father of three who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, receives morphine from a pump prescribed by a prison doctor. The drugs that led to his arrest in 1997 were the same ones his New Jersey doctor, Stephen Nurkiewicz, prescribed for the severe back pain that resulted from a 1985 car crash and the unsuccessful surgeries that followed: Percocet, the painkiller Lortab, and the muscle relaxant Valium.

[Article continues at link.]

Smells like something's in the air...

Do the Saudi's think they got screwed?

Note: For those whom don't know, Bernhard over at Moon is not American, thus sometimes he has problems with english grammar, however I find his analysis and commentary to be one of the finest online with regards world events and geopolitical critical thinking.

Before anyone gets suckered into the latest and ongoing propagenda regarding Israel, Olmert, and the rest of the maniacs regarding Iran.

"Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map."

Ask yourself, did he really say that? or is this another "drive them into the sea statement". It is my understanding he actually said the regime should be wiped off the map. Does anyone know what the actual translation is? How is this any different than saying the Bush regime should be annihilated? not all of america.

Of course, this is part of the racheting up of hostilities, because Israel wants, nay, demands that Bush attack Iran. And if he doesn't see fit to do it the IDF will.

Either way, it will happen and soon.

Prisons are more important than schools because, in the USA, it represents a much larger market share. With 1 out of every 32 Americans tied up (heh) in the US criminal justice system, there's heaps big money to be made. Finally, as someone else recently stated, "...prisoners are needed for the next stage of the USA's economic development." Who's going to take the manufacturing jobs from the Chinese? Prisoners.

The USA is clearly headed for a two-tier society: one in which there are prisoner-slaves, and free-wealthy." Which one are you?

Also see, Nazi-like brutality of U.S. criminal justice system and prisons.

Of course, what we are seeing is here at home merely a microcosm of what we do abroad:

The Bush Administration as Global Jailor

11/03/06 "TomDispatch" -- -- Today, the United States presides over a burgeoning empire -- not only the "empire of bases" first described by Chalmers Johnson, but a far-flung new network of maximum security penitentiaries, detention centers, jail cells, cages, and razor wire-topped pens. From supermax-type isolation prisons in 40 of the 50 states to shadowy ghost jails at remote sites across the globe, this new network of detention facilities is quite unlike the gulags, concentration-camps, or prison nations of the past.

Even with a couple million prisoners under its control, the U.S. prison network lacks the infrastructure or manpower of the Soviet gulag or the orderly planning of the Nazi concentration-camp system. However, where it bests both, and breaks new incarceration ground, is in its planet-ranging scope, with sites scattered the world over -- from Europe to Asia, the Middle East to the Caribbean. Unlike colonial prison systems of the past, the new U.S. prison network seems to have floated almost free of surrounding colonies. Right now, it has only four major centers -- the "homeland," Afghanistan, Iraq, and a postage-stamp-sized parcel of Cuba. As such, it already hovers at the edge of its own imperial existence, bringing to mind the unprecedented possibility of a prison planet. In a remarkably few years, the Bush administration has been able to construct a global detention system, already of near epic proportions, both on the fly and on the cheap.

Sizing Up a Prison Planet

Soon after the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the U.S. began the process of creating what has been termed "an offshore archipelago of injustice." In addition to using "the Charleston Navy Brig" and locking up "one prisoner of war in Miami, Florida," according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Bush administration detained people from around the world in sweeps, imprisoned them without charges and kept them incommunicado at U.S. detention facilities at a CIA prison outside Kabul, Afghanistan (code-named the "Salt Pit"), at Bagram military airbase in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, among other sites.

Since it was set up in 2002, the detainment complex at Guantanamo Bay has been the public face of the Bush administration's semi-secret foreign prison network -- a collection of camps, cells, and cages that today holds 437 prisoners. But "Gitmo" has always been the tiny showpiece, the jewel in a very dark crown, for a much larger, less visible foreign network of military detention facilities, CIA "black" sites, and outsourced foreign prisons. It is a prison camp that rightly attracts opprobrium, but it also serves to focus attention away from shadowy ghost jails, borrowed third-nation facilities, much larger prisons holding thousands in Iraq, and a full-scale network of detention centers and prisons in Afghanistan.

James Baker's Double Life: A Special Investigation
Naomi Klein



When President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq's debt on December 5, 2003, he called Baker's job "a noble mission." At the time, there was widespread concern about whether Baker's extensive business dealings in the Middle East would compromise that mission, which is to meet with heads of state and persuade them to forgive the debts owed to them by Iraq. Of particular concern was his relationship with merchant bank and defense contractor the Carlyle Group, where Baker is senior counselor and an equity partner with an estimated $180 million stake.

Until now, there has been no concrete evidence that Baker's loyalties are split, or that his power as Special Presidential Envoy--an unpaid position--has been used to benefit any of his corporate clients or employers. But according to documents obtained by The Nation, that is precisely what has happened. Carlyle has sought to secure an extraordinary $1 billion investment from the Kuwaiti government, with Baker's influence as debt envoy being used as a crucial lever.

The secret deal involves a complex transaction to transfer ownership of as much as $57 billion in unpaid Iraqi debts. The debts, now owed to the government of Kuwait, would be assigned to a foundation created and controlled by a consortium in which the key players are the Carlyle Group, the Albright Group (headed by another former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright) and several other well-connected firms. Under the deal, the government of Kuwait would also give the consortium $2 billion up front to invest in a private equity fund devised by the consortium, with half of it going to Carlyle.

Snip:

The goal of maximizing Iraq's debt payments directly contradicts the US foreign policy aim of drastically reducing Iraq's debt burden. According to Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and a leading expert on government ethics and regulations, this means that Baker is in a "classic conflict of interest. Baker is on two sides of this transaction: He is supposed to be representing the interests of the United States, but he is also a senior counselor at Carlyle, and Carlyle wants to get paid to help Kuwait recover its debts from Iraq." After examining the documents, Clark called them "extraordinary." She said, "Carlyle and the other companies are exploiting Baker's current position to try to land a deal with Kuwait that would undermine the interests of the US government."

The Nation also showed the documents to Jerome Levinson, an international lawyer and expert on political and corporate corruption at American University. He called it "one of the greatest cons of all time. The consortium is saying to the Kuwaiti government, 'Through us, you have the only chance to realize a substantial part of the debt. Why? Because of who we are and who we know.' It's influence peddling of the crassest kind."

In 2005, I remarked that none of the indicted Enron execs would ever see the inside of a prison. At least Jeff Skilling won't have to resort to faking his own death.

Fred Barnes hopes the "lame Duck" Bush bombs Iran on the way out the door

Barnes:..."and the day before he leavers office-carry out the military option in Iran. Wipe out their nuclear facilities"....

One Flew East. It must have seemed so simple to them.

Scare them to death with "shock and awe", take Baghdad, capture Saddam, seize the oil fields, disband the army, and turn the economy into a capitalist entrepreneurial free-fire zone. Set up an "interim" administration to assure that Parsons, KBR, SAIC, and the others make millions "rebuilding" the infrastructure and creating a military launching pad. No problem. Just sit back and absorb the adulation from the emancipated Iraqi people and the good people of America. Next?

Well yeah. I guess there'll be a few folks killed along the way. But this is in the service of freedom and democracy. Those broken eggs will make a great omelet - a decidedly western omelet. And we might tell a few fibs in the process, too. The American people wouldn't understand and might be skeptical if we told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The victorious outcome is all they want, anyway. Isn't that what they "elected" us for?

So please don't bother us with irrelevant details. Shi'ites and Sunnis and Kurds? A Muslim's a Muslim, right? Insurgency? You mean a few rabid al-Kayduh types rolling around in battered Toyota pick-ups? No match for American fire power. Not to worry. Anyway, we got God on our side (and a lot of frustrated right-wing Christians, too).

One flew west. Remember duct tape? Didn't you just love the pretty terrorist alert thingy? The President reminded us that, "when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping". Just keep watching "24" and we'll get you a new X Box.

Now look, folks . . . we're gonna have to make a few adjustments here at home to git it done. In support of our common security, we'll have to follow the "if you're not for us, you're against us" line. The Constitution just ain't helpful in situations like these. Everyone's the enemy, guilty until they're proven innocent (yeah, like that's gonna happen).

So don't complain, 'cuz complainers are terrorists (or liberals - same difference). Somebody gets "disappeared", just don't worry, OK? We got some real handy ways of convincin' 'em to 'fess up and rat out their fellow travelers. We got a war to win. Just keep knowing that Saddam masterminded 911, and we're gonna take good care of him.

Oh, yeah. And this is gonna cost a few buck, too. So we're gonna keep taxes on the rich and on the corporations real low so they can pay for this. Goes without saying that we're goona have to sacrifice some trees and rivers and po' folks, but good 'Mericans always are willing to sacrifice for their country in times of war. Just don't listen to those gutless ninnies who say that the good ole USA is going bankrupt behind this. After all, the bill won't come due 'til after we're all dead.

One flew over the cuckoo's nest. A couple of weeks ago, watching news clips of Americans trampling and beating other Americans in stores trying to buy the latest popular trinkets and toys, I was hit (again) with a deep, disillusioned depression. Why didn't we see this kind of thing happen at polling places two weeks earlier, with Americans fighting each other to vote? I guess it's because we value the latest video game more than the activity of democracy and self-government.

I could see little difference between these store rioters and fourth-worlders bum-rushing the UN truck when it pulls up with water and powdered milk. Except that the Americans tend to be obese and white, the fourth-worlders skinny and black.

It seems like, to Americans, this government stuff is just a bother, an inconvenience that some (but not all) of us tolerate every couple of years. The only reason most of us show up to vote is that election campaigns have become beauty pageants or survival games just like on "reality TV".

Only a month after the mid-term elections, Americans who did vote have congratulated themselves, washed their hands, and turned on "Who Wants to be a Trillionaire". Democrats are satisfied that they've repudiated the Republican policies. The war will be over soon.

Who notices that the Democrats have already lined up against "a precipitous withdrawal" from a lost war against a ravaged people. Who cares that they have also rejected executive impeachment out of hand? Who understands that Speaker of the House (maybe) Nancy Pelosi is fighting tooth and nail to put conservative party loyalists in leadership positions? Who realizes the implications of this excerpt of "CONGRESS IN TRANSITION: Pelosi hews to middle ground. With eye on 2008, new speaker works to keep Democrats united", from the SF Chronicle . . .

Pelosi may be among Congress' most vocal war critics, yet many Democrats worry that starving the Pentagon is a crude and ineffective way to end the war, with potentially disastrous political consequences. Pelosi has no interest in beginning her speakership with a divisive fight.

Similarly, while Pelosi voted against a GOP measure last week to permit oil drilling off the Gulf Coast, and another requiring that women seeking abortions be told that their fetuses feel pain, she chose not to use her leadership position to defeat the bills, which enjoyed a certain amount of Democratic support (the drilling measure passed; the abortion measure failed).

As the Republicans' 12-year-control of Capitol Hill came to a close, the Pelosi-led Democrats are steadfastly avoiding issues upon which they disagree and presenting a united front on matters from Iraq to congressional ethics.

Pelosi remains focused on a series of bread-and-butter items with broad support among Democrats that she will push when the party takes control of the House on Jan. 4.

"Ms. Pelosi has said many times that she will govern from the middle -- and that's what she is doing,'' said her spokesman, Brendan Daly.

Pelosi's agenda for the first 100 legislative hours of the new Congress includes House ethics, the minimum wage, college tuition costs, stem cell research, subsidies to oil companies and the security recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission. She has pledged to take up each of the issues before Bush delivers his State of the Union address in late January . . .

Er, uh, well what about The USA PATRIOT Act, tax breaks for the rich, critical environmental issues, investigations into the incredible corruption among US contractors in Iraq?

Speaking of the latter, here's a clip from this morning's NYT piece, "Iraq Is Failing to Spend Billions in Oil Revenues":

BAGHDAD, Dec. 10 — Iraq is failing to spend billions of dollars of oil revenues that have been set aside to rebuild its damaged roads, schools and power stations and to repair refineries and pipelines.

Iraqi ministries are spending as little as 15 percent of the 2006 capital budgets they received for the rebuilding — with some of the weakest spending taking place at the Oil Ministry, which relies on damaged and frequently sabotaged pipelines and pumping stations to move the oil that provides nearly all of the country’s revenues. In essence, the money is available — despite extensive sabotage, the oil money is flowing — but the Iraqi system has not been able to put it to work.

The country is facing this national failure to spend even as American financial support dwindles. Among reasons for the problems — like a large turnover in government personnel — is a strange new one: bureaucrats are so fearful and confused by anticorruption measures put in place by the American and Iraqi governments that they are afraid to sign off on contracts . . .

OK, Nurse Ratchett, I'll have that lobotomy now . . . and make it a double-lobe, if you don't mind.

We speak with Antonia Juhasz about her new book, "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time." The book tracks the radical neo-liberal economic program the Bush administration has tried to impose on Iraq, which threatens to leave Iraq's economy and oil reserves largely in the hands of multinational corporations.

Pick your week or month, the evidence keeps rolling in to show this country's vaunted "war on drugs" is as destructively misguided as our cataclysmic error in invading Iraq.

There are 2.2 million Americans behind bars, another 5 million on probation or parole, the Justice Department reported on Nov. 30. We exceed Russia and Cuba in incarcerations per 100,000 people; in fact, no other nation comes close. The biggest single reason for the expanding numbers? Our war on drugs — a quarter of all sentences are for drug offenses, mostly nonviolent.

[Article continues at link.]

[Compares media coverage of superstition-based violence in the mass media when the superstition is Christianity versus the superstition of Islam.]

Palestinian PM says Iran has pledged $250 million in aid to PA

DUBAI - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Iran had pledged about $250 million in financial aid to Palestinians for 2007 to help ease the economic crisis caused by a Western aid boycott.

Bomb them!!!

And this from The Financial Times:

Attacking Iran would compound Iraq fiasco

No one who has read the Baker report's devastating if delicately worded indictment of US policy in Iraq could fail to understand that it spells failure. And that without wholesale changes of policy the US is staring at a humiliating defeat in the Middle East. No one, that is, except George W. Bush.

The president seems incapable of acknowledging the scale of the disaster in Iraq. He and his coterie blame the Iraqis, and Iran, for US failures. They persist in identifying the US national interest and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East as the same thing. For good measure, Mr Bush rejects a key finding of the Baker report: that, in pursuing policies to stabilise the region and get a grip on Iraq, the US should talk to Syria and, above all, to Iran.

But it is not just that Mr Bush is petulantly spurning the lifeline thrown to him by his father's former secretary of state - more of interest to students of psychodrama than geopolitics.

There is a terrifying possibility this administration will raise the stakes and compound the Iraq misadventure into a regional and international catastrophe by attacking Iran - or by acquiescing in an attack by Israel.

Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

Of course, this is to stop any and all dissent and or nonconformists. You know, such things as the post's below among others . They fear the blog!

Leave it to McCain to protect us from the enemy. Quick! There is a child molester at every corner! Unfortunately GOP (Group of Perverts)and McCain are the enemy.

But hey, it's ok to kill them, says McCain.

Truth, Torture and the American Way

Same game, different country...

The economic and political forces that drew the United States into Iraq -- quite different from the reasons the Bush administration gave for the invasion -- remain powerful, exerting a pull that will be hard to resist. Oil, of course, is foremost among them. But also important are the threats and tensions linked to oil: Washington's decades-old rivalry with Iran, the growing dangers posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the fear that the Middle East's simmering conflicts will erupt into a broader, bloodier and far more costly war.

Hard to resist by a politician that's paid to service them! Yeah, oil was foremost among them. Washington's "rivalry" with Iran is about two years, not two decades, old. The "rivalry" began when the Neocons decide to have the US whack Iran. The growing dangers of weapons of mass destruction have just been officially sanctioned by the new Secretary of War and they needn't have been at all! Israel need never have started a nuclear arms race in the region. And the Middle East's simmering conflicts will erupt when the US/Israel Axis decides to "erupt" them.

There is no getting out of the Middle East. Even if we leave now, we'll be back.

As long as we're fools enough to elect these made men and women into our government this absurd statement is probably true.

In fact, given the political shifts that this increasingly unpopular conflict has triggered, it seems quite possible that a Democratic president may be the one compelled to wage the Third Gulf War.

Who is doing the compelling? Israel. Why are we compelled? Because we are allowing ourselves to be ruled by the employees of people who not only do not share our interests but despise us for being such fools that we allow ourselves to be duped, again and again.

The United States's interests in the Middle East date to the post-World War I years, around the time when the British redrew the Middle East map and created nation-states, such as Iraq, cobbled together from disparate Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish pieces. A rising industrial power, the United States could not ignore the promise of oil identified in the Persian Gulf in the 1920s. With the drilling contracts awarded to Standard Oil of California and Texaco in 1933 and 1936, respectively, the United States in effect committed itself to an ever growing involvement in (and dependence on) this region.

Standard Oil and Texaco are not the United States and the interests of the United States are not the interests of Standard Oil, aka Exxon-Mobil, and Texaco. As long as we sit back and let these fools write things like this, continue to create "facts in our minds", yes we'll be stupid enought to buy the rest of this ridiculous argument as well.

Immediately after the war, the Russians refused to leave Iran as they had promised at the Yalta Conference in 1945; it took action by the U.N. Security Council to force their withdrawal. This ultimately led the United States to seek a reliable ally in Tehran, in turn leading presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter to embrace the shah.

There is zero reason for me to accept that the arrogance and greed of Dulles in overthrowing the elected President of Iran and installing the "Shah" in power was due to anything other than the arrogance and greed of John Foster Dulles and that of his cronies.

At the same time, the situation in the region was immeasurably complicated by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and President Harry S. Truman's support for the new entity. This new U.S.-Israeli bond created an instant tension with the countries upon which the United States depended for oil, thus defining a balancing act that to this day remains the trickiest in U.S. foreign policy.

And just as long as our policy toward the Middle East is based upon defending Israeli injustice we will have "tension" that is "trickiest" there. This policy has nothing to do with the interests of the people of the United States and everything to do with the interests of the people whose outsourced employees pose as our political class.

Over time, this picture grew even more complex, as much the result of the United States' victories as its fumbles and defeats... Sadly, the invasion of Iraq in this most recent Gulf war has only exacerbated these situations.

Yes. Basing your foreign policy on an injustice means that you get everything wrong from there on out.

What plausible scenarios could draw even a war-weary United States back into the Middle East, into a Gulf War III?

Clearly Israel's desire to have its stooges in our government bomb Iran is among those at the top of the list. But Israel's requirement that the United States continue to fund and support its elimination of the Palestinian nation is right up there too.

Or the reactions to the US/Israeli actions might bring it about.

Or if none of that does it, another terrorist attack on the United States itself may have to be allowed to go forward.

After the U.S. election of 1968 confirmed the public's desire to withdraw from Vietnam, the war dragged on for seven more years and claimed as many lives as it had during the period of escalation. The distinction, however, is that even leaving Vietnam probably will prove much simpler than leaving Iraq or the surrounding region.

The South Vietnamese government did not have anything approaching the machine that Israel has at its disposal to frustrate the will of the American people.

While a long-term U.S. military presence in the region may further stoke anti-American passions, it may also make good and prudent strategic sense.

American troops will be right there to die for Israel itself when they do precipitate the next war.

The United States must also restore its own hollowed-out military and determine how a war such as the one in Iraq could ever have stretched U.S. forces so thin.

Israel is furious that the US Wehrmacht has failed so badly in Iraq, and demands that we pull up our socks and put the Wehrmacht back together... and Mach Schnell!

The United States must contain the complex threats it faces in the region, and at the same time try to limit our vital interests there. On the first score, Hezbollah and Hamas must know that the United States is present and stands ready to take action. Iran must know that it will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, period. Moderates in the region must know that we will stand by them, with economic aid and political support, helping to restore U.S. moral authority in the Middle East. And everyone must know that an attack against Israel will always be considered an attack against America.

If it comes to a choice between using the American Wehrmacht for Israels aims...

On the second score, we must embark on the long-term but critical task of reducing our energy dependence on the Middle East. No strategy in any Gulf war could produce more lasting change in the region than a prolonged fall in oil prices. The only dependable formula for ultimate victory in the Gulf wars will come through innovation and conservation right here at home.

or big Oil's.... well-l-l.

Israel must come first.

No.

The United States must come first. We must turn these monstrous Neocons out now.


Finally, this was never 'just about Oil', tho that was a major part, as a commenter over at huffy post wrote, "It was about one man's ambition to take down a dictator and become the hero his father never was.

It was about a group of men who want America to make war on the middle east and dominate it in the name of Israel.

It was about turning around the legacy of Vietnam by celebrating a successful "liberation" of a middle eastern country which would then turn around and provide us a massive supply of oil.

Iraq was and is the perfect storm of avarice, ambition, corruption, greed and naked power lust.

One man wanted to do what his father couldn't, hundreds and then thousands of others piled on with their own ambitions of conquest and a new American Empire. It was never about one single thing." If you want to throw up, check out those "laws" that Bremer uni-laterally implemented on behalf of the American corporations. It wasn't just oil, it was agribusiness, financials, and water rights and a host of others, too. Totally screwing the Iraqis. Much like they have screwed the American people here at home.

These elite fucks are a death cult!

"The great value of the Baker-Hamilton report is that it reasserts the necessity of pursuing American interests, as opposed to purely Israeli interests." Justin Raimondo

Get ready, this will be war within, and it will be brutal. While this gang war between these two criminal, criminal syndicates plays out, I believe it will be very brutal and there will be much fall out (pun intended). If you get my drift.

Ever been in a cross fire between two street gangs? Because that is what this all seems to be leading to.

And perhaps, this:

Rahm to oil industry: The honeymoon is over

This is what you get when no-more-nonsense, tough-as-nails Democrats take over the congress: real accountability (and hopefully lower gas prices). From the NYT:

House Democratic leaders vowed Friday to pursue a broad overhaul of tax breaks and other subsidies to oil companies in January, saying that their first target would be an investigation of how the government collects billions of dollars in royalties on oil and gas produced on federal property....

“This is a warning to oil and gas companies,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “When you get a Democratic Congress, you are going to get a cop on the beat.”

is this opening shot in the Baker vs the "Lobby" coming war? Being as Rahm Emanuel has dual citizenship whom do you think he and the new Democrat elite will back?

Robert Parry uses Gary Webb's suicide to illustrate the sorry state of the US media.

Fucking yes!

When Americans ask me what happened to the vaunted U.S. press corps over the past three decades - in the decline from its heyday of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers to its failure to challenge the Iraq WMD lies or to hold George W. Bush accountable - I often recall for them the story of Gary Webb.

Gary Webb's Death: American Tragedy

More on Webb (for those whom don't know) see:
Dark Alliance

McKinney Introduces Bill to Impeach Bush

In what was likely her final legislative act in Congress, outgoing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney introduced a bill Friday to impeach President Bush.
The legislation has no chance of passing and serves as a symbolic parting shot not only at Bush but also at Democratic leaders. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made clear that she will not entertain proposals to sanction Bush and has warned the liberal wing of her party against making political hay of impeachment.


McKinney, a Democrat who drew national headlines in March when she struck a Capitol police officer, has long insisted that Bush was never legitimately elected. In introducing her legislation in the final hours of the current Congress, she said Bush had violated his oath of office to defend the Constitution and the nation's laws.


In the bill, she accused Bush of misleading Congress on the war in Iraq and violating privacy laws with his domestic spying program.


McKinney has made no secret of her frustration with Democratic leaders since voters ousted her from office in the Democratic primary this summer. In a speech Monday at George Washington University, she accused party leaders of kowtowing to Republicans on the war in Iraq and on military mistreatment of prisoners.


McKinney, who has not discussed her future plans, has increasingly embraced her image as a controversial figure.


She has hosted numerous panels on Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and suggested that Bush had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks but kept quiet about it to allow friends to profit from the aftermath. She introduced legislation calling for disclosure of any government records concerning the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.


But it was her scuffle with a Capitol police officer that drew the most attention. McKinney struck the officer when he tried to stop her from entering a congressional office building. The officer did not recognize McKinney, who was not wearing her member lapel pin.


A grand jury in Washington declined to indict McKinney over the clash, but she eventually apologized before the House.

BTW, her so-called "loss" was just another instance of the power of the Israeli lobby and diebold cheat.

Oh, dear reader, if you think you know, you don't. Read on...

The human genome: target or innocent bystander?

Since early July, Israeli forces have been using a new weapon in the Gaza Strip that inflicts strange and deadly wounds. Doctors and medics say the unidentified device has significantly increased fatalities from Israel’s attacks. [1] [2]

In the first two parts of this article, we reviewed evidence that Israel’s new weapon may be Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), a “low collateral damage” weapon developed by the US Air Force. The DIME bomb’s “micro-shrapnel” is reportedly made of HMTA, a tungsten alloy that disrupts body biochemistry, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic). [3-9]

Also see,Gaza doctors say patients suffering mystery injuries after Israeli attacks

Not to mention, Depleted Uranium issues, the Vietnam Agent Orange $cam, i.e. epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll taking a fee of $1,500 a day to write nice things for the military (see below).

So, dear reader, when or where is the line drawn to this continuing insanity?

Can you imagine, what things could be accomplished if we/they were to put the time, energy, research, creativity and money into peace as they do war and destruction?

I can't either...

And why is that?

Cynthia McKinney takes on Donald Rumsfeld

This is Why Cynthia McKinney had to lose her seat...
I e-mailed her, she never got the information on the contracts...

9/11 Truth: Cynthia McKinney Smeared for Questioning 9/11

Call me crazy, but I believe her...

American political leaders watched with alarm during the past week as the Hezbollah militia laid siege to the U.S.-backed Lebanese government, but few would acknowledge publicly what most analysts and politicians here say is obvious: American policy may bear much of the blame.

Many in Beirut say that U.S. failure to stop Israel's onslaught against Hezbollah last summer crippled the Lebanese government - a U.S. ally - while strengthening Hezbollah - a U.S. enemy. That created an environment in which the Shiite Muslim militia could call for overthrowing Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and his Cabinet.
...
Fatfat and other Lebanese officials said that while there was a complex set of reasons for the crisis - Syria is trying to derail a tribunal from investigating Syrian participation in political assassinations, Shiites long have felt underrepresented by their government, Iran is pushing against U.S. interests across the region - the conditions largely were set by U.S. actions during the conflict last summer.
...
Saniora pleaded with American officials to intervene, but for weeks Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others said there first must be a "durable solution," meaning primarily that Hezbollah had to be contained and then disarmed.

As the fighting stretched on for more than a month and the Bush administration didn't intervene, Saniora looked ineffectual, a nearly unforgivable sin in a region in which military force and political strength are often synonymous.
...
The push against Saniora was an easy sell to Hezbollah's rank and file.

"Saniora's government did not help us during the war," said Hussein Ali, who was sitting with a group of friends across from his shoe store in a southern suburb of Beirut.

Ahmed Musalmani, who sells ceramic tiles, added: "And Fuad Saniora was kissing Condoleezza Rice."

More real reporting like this, please...

for a growing number of the truckers who are plying routes across the Canada-U.S. border, packing a lunch has become risky business.

Drivers say they've been fined, detained for hours and threatened with confiscation of their U.S.-issued identity cards for trying to enter the United States with seemingly innocuous, but undeclared food items.

The brown-bag crackdown is the latest in a growing list of complaints from truckers and travellers about a border that has become thick with intense screening, hefty fees, body searches, long waits and unexpected hassles.

"It doesn't make sense that someone can't take their lunch across the border," complained Mark Seymour, president of trucking company Kriska Transportation of Prescott, Ont.

"It's not like packing a weapon. It's not contraband. It's food, and if it wasn't safe, they wouldn't be eating it."

In the past couple of weeks, Mr. Seymour said two of his drivers have been searched and fined $300 (U.S). They were also detained for hours.

One of the truckers, he said, was carrying a soy burger and a can of Campbell's Chunky soup in a lunch packed by his wife.

Hey, I've heard that Turrists have perfected the multipart Nukular Sandwich Bomb, which masquerades as an innocuous han sarnie or soyburger until mixed with the contents of a can innocently labelled Campbells...

There's a SSIF aspect to this that boggles the mind:

[talking head] estimated that all border delays are adding as much as $600-million (Canadian) a year to the cost of transborder shipping.

However, truck and car traffic has dropped substantially this year, mitigating the full impact of tighter security, because of the slowing U.S. economy, the higher value of the Canadian dollar and the perception that the border is more restrictive, according to Mr. Bradley.

In the first nine months of this year, 100,000 fewer trucks than last year crossed the border -- a drop of 1.3 per cent.

Many truckers, he lamented, are getting out of the business because they've decided making trips to the United States just "isn't worth the hassle."

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that Canadian exporters are increasingly shifting operations to the United States to avoid problems at the border.

and this they call NAFTA? so what's the real agenda here? any guesses?

1) to ensure business for the US fast food chain outlets and motels just over the border, by making sure truckers and motorists arrive hungry and exhausted

2) to force Canadian operations to shift onto US territory thus creating a market for the glut of sprawlified real estate and big box construction.

3) there isn't any agenda, it's just the characteristic metastasis of the Security State.

Sir Richard Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist who established that smoking causes lung cancer, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known for its GM crops business.

While he was being paid by Monsanto, Sir Richard wrote to a royal Australian commission investigating the potential cancer-causing properties of Agent Orange, made by Monsanto and used by the US in the Vietnam war. Sir Richard said there was no evidence that the chemical caused cancer.

The priests are pederasts, the accountants are frauds a la Anderson Little, the journalists are mouthpieces for their corporate masters, the military are hired muscle for big oil, the cream of Bell Labs is at google doing the NSA's work "right", medical school drug trials are done in the pay of the "ethical" pharmaceuticals, who have hired the first string at the NIH while they remain at their government positions, and sundry scientists are all in the pay of whomever.

Looks like it's bound to get much worse before it gets better.

Also see, U.S. Silence Impeding Swiss in Nuclear Case
Expert Says Calls Have Been Ignored

A group of Pagans in Albemarle County, Va., was recently given permission to advertise their multi-cultural holiday program to public school children - and they have the Rev. Jerry Falwell to thank for it.

The dispute started last summer when Gabriel and Joshua Rakoski, twins who attend Hollymead Elementary School, sought permission to distribute fliers about their church's Vacation Bible School to their peers via "backpack mail." Many public schools use special folders placed in student backpacks to distribute notices about schools events and sometimes extra-curricular activities to parents.

School officials originally denied the request from the twins' father, Ray Rakoski, citing a school policy barring "distribution of literature that is for partisan, sectarian, religious or political purposes."

A Charlottesville weekly newspaper, The Hook, reports that Rakoski "sicced the Liberty Counsel on the county," and the policy was soon revised to allow religious groups to use the backpack mail system. Liberty Counsel is a Religious Right legal group founded by Mathew Staver and now affiliated with Falwell.

[What a great idea! I think it's a brilliant use of the limited time and funding and resources of tax-funded schools to make sure that all religious groups get equal time in public schools. Now that we've got Christianity and Paganism down, that just leaves Babism, Bahai, Gnosticism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Ayyavazhi, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Atenism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Manichaeism, Yazdanism, African Traditional Religion, European Religions, Near Eastern religions, Native American religions, Pacific religions, African diasporic, religions, Non-revealed religions, Syncretic religions, Entheogen religions, Western magical / esoteric groups, White-supremacist religions, Black-supremacist religions, Alien-based religions, Parody or mock religions, Esotericism, Mysticism, Magic, Organizations promoting Ecumenism, and did I forget any? Make sure that every one of them gets a backpack mail, because that's what public schools are for. Because there isn't enough optional religion already from our places of worship, or enough non-optional religion from our parents, currency, mass media, holidays or employers. Got to make sure that there is not a single moment of the day or night when religion is not present. And if we use tax-payer money to feed it to trusting young minds, all the better. Forget all that science or secular humanism stuff - what has that ever done for anybody?]

One of the things U.S. troops are learning in Iraq is how people with little training and few resources can fight a state. Most American troops will see this within the framework of counterinsurgency. But a minority will apply their new-found knowledge in a very different way. After they return to the U.S. and leave the military, they will take what they learned in Iraq back to the inner cities, to the ethnic groups, gangs, and other alternate loyalties they left when they joined the service. There, they will put their new knowledge to work, in wars with each other and wars against the American state. It will not be long before we see police squad cars getting hit with IEDs and other techniques employed by Iraqi insurgents, right here in the streets of American cities.
...
We saw this phenomenon in the effect the defeat in Afghanistan had on the Soviet Union. Just as that defeat led to the disintegration of the USSR, so defeat in the current Afghan war will bring the disintegration of NATO. We are seeing 4GW pull Israel apart today, to the point where a leaden blanket of Kulturpessimismus now oppresses that country.

We will see the same thing here, powerfully I think, as a result of our defeat in Iraq. It will manifest itself in many ways, and one of those ways will be the progression of inner-city and gang crime into something close to warfare, including war against the state.
...
The boomerang effect is a central element of Fourth Generation war. When a state involves itself in 4GW over there, it lays a basis for 4GW at home. That is true even if it wins over there, and all the more true if it loses, as states usually do. The toxic fallout from America's 4GW defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan will be far greater than most people expect, and it will fall most heavily on America's police.

Also see, Soldiers of Fortune
An elite Army Ranger, back from Iraq, led his cohorts in a precision hold-up, cops say. If money wasn't the motive, what was?

To customers and employees in the Bank of America branch that Monday, the invaders rushing through the door had the appearance of commandos on a raid. Ski-masked men in heavy clothing, armed with automatic rifles and sporting soft body armor under their jackets, stormed the one-story South Tacoma BOA branch near closing time, shouting orders and forcing everyone to the floor.

The four-man robbery team brandished handguns, pointed AK-47s, and seemed ready for a firefight, bringing along extra banana-style ammunition clips. "That's a tremendous amount of weaponry and ammunition for a bank robbery," says assistant U.S. attorney Michael Dion in Tacoma.

The Coolest 8 Year Old In The World Talks About O'Reilly

lmao!!!

Wall Street sees wave of U.S. public asset sales

Wall Street sees wave of U.S. public asset sales
Thu Dec 7, 2006 11:10am ET
By Joseph A. Giannone

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Public works in the United States increasingly are going private, and Wall Street investment bankers are ready to deal.

From New Jersey to California, cash-strapped cities and states are considering sales or leases of highways, airports and other public infrastructure to generate cash and plug budget gaps. At the same time, more than $100 billion in equity capital is looking to invest in for public assets boasting steady returns.

In all, bankers expect assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars to be put into play over the next few years.

"There's been a lot of focus from players around the world on the infrastructure space in the United States," said Mark Florian, head of Goldman Sachs Group's (GS.N: Quote, Profile , Research) municipal finance and infrastructure group. "In terms of the supply of deals, the potential is absolutely immense."

Note: What Antonia Juhasz, empirically lays out for us of the methodical, systematic, fleesing and rape of Iraq, the so called, privitization has a mirror, a sub component, right here in the land of the free. It is what Anthropologist Laura Nader calls "corporate secular fundamentalism" at home and ,"corporate colonialism" abroad. She describes an agenda with totallising tendencies through advertising, television, the Internet, billboards, the polluting of public spaces." etc, ; Those whom push a post abundance paradigm. A partnership of the political, aka politicians, the military industrial complex, and Wallstreet through perception management. Especially to our children: PENTAGON SUED FOR RECORDS ON PROPAGANDA, PSY-OPS AND “PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT” TARGETTING U.S. CIVILIANS.

A study by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Irvine, has found that people's gender and ethnicity predicted their immediate response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their general state of health over the next two years. [...] This research may prevent researchers and policy makers from mistakenly assuming that everyone responds the same way to these disasters, say the study's authors. It can justify the design of intervention efforts that target those most vulnerable to terrorist actions over time.

A White House board empaneled to protect Americans' civil liberties has its first public meeting. Reporters are barred from asking questions, and the panel won't tell the public what it's learned about warrantless domestic spying. With friends like these.... Ryan Singel reports from Washington.

In its heavily anticipated report released on Wednesday, the Iraq Study Group made at least four truly radical proposals.

The report calls for the United States to assist in privatizing Iraq's national oil industry, opening Iraq to private foreign oil and energy companies, providing direct technical assistance for the "drafting" of a new national oil law for Iraq, and assuring that all of Iraq's oil revenues accrue to the central government. President Bush hired an employee from the U.S. consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc. over a year ago to advise the Iraq Oil Ministry on the drafting and passage of a new national oil law. . As previously drafted, the law opens Iraq's nationalized oil sector to private foreign corporate investment, but stops short of full privatization. The ISG report, however, goes further, stating that "the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise." In addition, the current Constitution of Iraq is ambiguous as to whether control over Iraq's oil should be shared among its regional provinces or held under the central government. The report specifically recommends the latter: "Oil revenues should accrue to the central government and be shared on the basis of population."If these proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be privatized and opened to foreign firms, and in control of all of Iraq's oil wealth.

The proposals should come as little surprise given that two authors of the report, James A. Baker III and Lawrence Eagleburger, have each spent much of their political and corporate careers in pursuit of greater access to Iraq's oil and wealth.

Also see,
Baker's predictable plan is what Bush is already doing ?

The third purpose in appointing Baker's panel is the most extraordinary. The country's political elite wants to ignore the American people's doubts and build a new consensus behind a strategy of staying in Iraq on an open-ended basis, with no exit in sight. "Success depends on unity of the American people at a time of political polarisation ... Foreign policy is doomed to failure - as is any action in Iraq - if not supported by broad, sustained consensus," say Baker and his Democratic co-chair, Lee Hamilton, in their introduction. In other words, if things go wrong, it will be the American people's fault for not trusting in the wisdom of their leaders.

This sounds like a declaration of war on Americans - doesn't that imply & otherwise justify massive persecution of dissenters from "bipartisan" elite consensus?

The Democrats, by virtue of appearing to be an opposition party, managed to win an election somehow, but now needed a cover for a concept of how to manage Iraq. Not the war itself, of course they have no idea how to run an empire, but how to manage perception. Naturally, they piggy-backed onto this idea of a "bipartisan" commission as something to wait for before they made their plan, because "bipartisan", as opposed to "independent" or even "useful," is the key to managing the media...which they still think manages the American people (and it does, to a certain point, at least prevent outright rebellion.)

Thus the report represents little more than the coming together of the Americanist (war) party after a brief split apparent in election results. It is a proclamation, to each other, that they're still on the same side and nothing drastic can, or should, be done. It's a mask put on to assuage the American people.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the Nov. 20 New York Times reports, is returning to Iraq in December "to take charge of the day-to-day fight as commander of the Multinational Corps-Iraq." The article says that the lieutant general spent "several months preparing for his new command (in Iraq), assigning his staff several histories of counter-insurgency efforts in Malaya, Algeria and Viet Nam."

Lt. Gen. Odierno appears to be taking an interest in three extremely brutal colonial campaigns against popular movements for self-determination.

As noted in a recent article on this website (see archive "Iraq Troop Withdrawal Looks Far Off"), " Lt. Gen. Odierno has a sad history in Iraq in which troops under his command in the Fourth Infantry Division in 2003 and 2004 were involved in apparent war crimes. This point is, remarkably, overlooked by the Times article which says that after he left Iraq in early 2004, he spent 18 months as an assistant to the Joint Chiefs, “most of that as an advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

Lt. Gen. Odierno will be taking command at the same time that the Iraq Study Group, headed by James Baker III and Lee Hamilton will be making their recommendations on Iraq. A Pentagon group is also working on recommendations as is the staff of the National Security Council. The competition is on for the "winning" formula for Iraq, and it is highly likely that increased counter-insurgency action will be part of this formula.

From the archival link above :

Evidence of the possibility of a bloody time ahead can also be found in the appointment of Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno to be second in command of U.S. forces in Iraq, as reported recently in the Wall Street Journal.

The history of Lt. Gen. Odierno's 4th Infantry Division in Iraq is characterized in the book "Fiasco" as one involving massive detentions of Iraqi civilians and widespread abuses of civilians, including killing. One reported result of the wholesale rounding up of civilians conducted by his division was the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

"What wasn't widely understood at the time," writes Thomas Ricks in "Fiasco", "or now outside the military, is that the overcrowding at the prison, and some of the resulting lapses in supervision, resulted directly from tactical decisions by (Lt. Gen. Ricardo) Sanchez and his division commanders, most notably the 4th ID's Gen. Odierno. In the fall of 2003 they were stuffing Abu Ghraib with thousands of detainees, the majority of them bystanders caught up in sweeps."

Mr. Ricks documents abuses of the 4th ID under Odierno's command that appear to constitute war crimes. He reports that one fellow officer thought Odierno showed "very sound" leadership, but that a senior intelligence officer "thought Odierno intentionally turned a blind eye to certain brutalities: 'He's a good guy. But he would say to his colonels, 'I don't want to hear the bad shit.'"

So Bush is saying fuck you to Uncle Baker and Poppy and doing his own thing?

You know you are way past 1984 when a democratically elected Prime Minister of a nation, whose population is starving, on a visit to another extremely wealthy country, gets a pledge of significant "no strings attached" aid -- and the US firmly opposes it. And will probably succeed to block it.

Right-wing talk show host Dennis Prager has raised a firestorm charging that Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, must swear in using a Bible. He said that if Ellison swears in with a Quran, it would "undermin[e] American civilization" and be akin to swearing in with a copy of Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Prager is not a typical talk radio host. In September, he was appointed by President Bush to a five-year term on the taxpayer-funded United States Holocaust Memorial Council. A statement announcing Prager's appointment praised his "unique moral voice."

[Article continues at link. Religion: it brings people together and makes government work more betterer.]

Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who is barred from entering the United States, delivered his acceptance speech for the Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award in a pre-recorded videotape. This is a transcript of his speech, which was viewed at the award ceremony hosted by the Institute for Policy Studies on October 18, 2006 in Washington, DC.

Luis Padilla, 29, father of three, had been kidnapped, driven across the Mexican border from El Paso, Texas, to a house in Ciudad Juarez, the lawless city ruled by drug lords that lies across the Rio Grande. As his wife tried frantically to locate him, he was being stripped, tortured and buried in a mass grave in the garden - what the people of Juarez call a narco-fossa, a narco-smugglers' tomb.

Just another casualty of Mexico's drug wars? Perhaps. But Padilla had no connection with the drugs trade; he seems to have been the victim of a case of mistaken identity. Now, as a result of documents disclosed in three separate court cases, it is becoming clear that his murder, along with at least 11 further brutal killings, at the Juarez 'House of Death', is part of a gruesome scandal, a web of connivance and cover-up stretching from the wild Texas borderland to top Washington officials close to President Bush.

These documents, which form a dossier several inches thick, are the main source for the facts in this article. They suggest that while the eyes of the world have been largely averted, America's 'war on drugs' has moved to a new phase of cynicism and amorality, in which the loss of human life has lost all importance - especially if the victims are Hispanic. The US agencies and officials in this saga - all of which refused to comment, citing pending lawsuits - appear to have thought it more important to get information about drugs trafficking than to stop its perpetrators killing people.

The US media have virtually ignored this story. The [UK] Observer is the first newspaper to have spoken to Janet Padilla, and this is the first narrative account to appear in print. The story turns on one extraordinary fact: playing a central role in the House of Death was a US government informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, known as Lalo, who was paid more than $220,000 (UK Pounds 110,000) by US law enforcement bodies to work as a spy inside the Juarez cartel.

[Article continues at link. More here. Via. I drink coffee and a few times a year I will have a single glass of beer. Like everyone else in North America, I have plenty of access to drugs - not interested. If all drugs were decriminalized I still wouldn't be interested. I don't want the 'war on drugs' to end so I can get toasted. I want it to end because it's killing people.]

How realistic can leftist activists be about the normal man and woman in America who need to make a living to get by? How long have wages stayed the same while all the costs of living have gone up? Does anyone here have a factual counterargument to Thom Hartmann's book-backed assertion that there has been a war on the middle class going on for a while now and the middle class has indeed suffered - hugely - as a result of it? How many people with families have to take on more than one job to get by?

Thom sez the middle class was the strongest in the seventies - when social activism was also at a peak. Leisure time leads to citizen time. This is why the powerful want to destroy all leisure time. Makes sense, doesn't it? The average American suffers, slides deeper into debt. Worries less about everything other than how is he or she going to make it, pay the bills, feed the family, etc. Much less time to listen to Amy Goodman. Much less time to do anything about the anger you feel after you've listened to the latest atrocity or social injustice that you just learned about from the always excellent Amy Goodman.

And yet - the average American - known around the world for their idleness at election-time - came out in droves not only for an election, but for a midterm election. Victory for the democrats, my ass. If horses had ran against the Republicans in the last election, the horses might just have won. So why is everyone beating on the Democrats?

First of all, let's hear it for the voters. The youth came out in record numbers - isn't that good news? Look, the YOUTH ARE LISTENING! Do you know how hard that was previously thought to be? Before this last election I bet any Madison Avenue den would charge you 5k minimum to tell you the only way to get to the youth would be with a free fucking ipod. These kids are OK. If that's not a reason to feel a little hope, I don't know what is.

The latinos, too - came out and came out against the Republicans. No longer maybe, as John Leguizamo once put it, will you have "roaches for Raid." (Same goes for loghouse Republicans, etc, etc.) Not for the Democrats, but against the Republicans. Don't just take my word for it - Nancy Pelosi put out the strategy to not say anything - the repubs were just screwing themselves, let 'em fall. You say something, they attack you, so say nothing. Give them nothing to attack while they fall all over themselves . . . and their naked boy teens, gay escorts, dirty money, whathaveyou.

Gore Vidal said the last election was the last chance for this country to save itself before sliding into fascism. Gore Vidal said that. And against all odds - even stacked against the plethora of dirty tricks they pulled it out - the people overwhelmed them. That, and they overestimated themselves. Their hubris brought them down. They totally had no idea how many people in this country fucking hated them. Fuck the Democrats, the last election was about hating the Republicans.

[Hate, however, is too strong a word. I doubt anyone has had more complete and utter contempt for this Cheney crew than me, but if ever I 'hated' - I had to let it go. Full realization of what mass murdering sons a bitches these people really are 24/7 can do nothing but kill the host.]

I haven't been political all my life - I had a pretty comfortable upbringing. It wasn't until driving all across the country after dropping out of college (and the biggest disappointment of my life - not getting hired onto the Late Show after an audition) and experiencing brief homelessness for the first time plus working in Alaska on a fishing factory seven days a week 16 hours a day with all labor laws ignored, did I began to have a social consciousness. Listening to Alternative Radio on NPR - specifically, a one hour show by Michael Parenti which clued me to the uncomfortable truths about America many people never realize - was what triggered my epiphany. Or maybe, it was the first time I had really listened. It really is a matrix. All that shit they taught you in elementary school about being proud of your democracy was a total fucking sham. And not only did your country not spread democracy around the world, but it spread death - death which paved the way for money.

Like a lot of Americans who manage to find a way out of the most incredible media entertainment bubble ever created in history, you go through the stages of death - denial, depression, acceptance. And, eventually, you think that instead of giving up on the dream of democracy, you can actually work to make it happen.

But it was the original WTO protests in Seattle that gave me a passion I don't think will ever die - it will certainly get weaker over the years, depending, but it will never die. Witnessing a full-blown police riot - seeing the police start teargassing protestors with no provocation - against the people, and then seeing the police lie about it, and then coming home to see every TV station repeat the official lie over and over again . . . there is no better red pill.

But then, in the end, the talks fall apart. And now everyone knows what the WTO is. The people hit them when and where they were least expecting it. It was a victory. Walking through the streets with those people from all over the world on the fifth day especially, when the people knew that they had won, and there would no more teargassing and no more WTO meetings? It was the best social activist 'church' any enlightened citizen could hope for. Without that experience, I probably wouldn't have started a single website.

Which was 2000, when Bush hits. And then six years of proving every paranoic right and moving this country right into debt, right into war, and right into fascism. And then one election, finally, where the people proved they weren't so stupid. They weren't all a bunch of idiotic sheep after all. Their stupidity had a six-year lease - or, five years of stupidity and one good year of rage building.

They didn't come out for the fucking Dems - they came out against the fascism. Even moderates and righties were spooked by having their phone tapped, and all that shit. Especially darkest before the election - plans to OK everyone leaving and entering the country, extended martial law powers for the retard in the puppet seat, and the ability to take any US citizen in the middle of the nite and not tell anyone about it, and later torture and kill that person, Pinochet-style.

Everybody who knew the rackets even a little believed they were going to steal it again.

And then something unbelievable happened - the people showed up in numbers. Their own former base turned against them. They had no idea this was going to happen. They still thought they had the masses under their FOX-asshole thumbs. But the people came out and said, "Fuck you."

Fuck the Democrats. The American people, even though they have been struggling - finally "got it" and got off their couch-ridden asses and went to the polling place and put their fuck yous to Bush in.

I applaud those Americans. All of them. The people hit them when and where they were least expecting it.

Activism isn't easy. Anyone who has even attempted to try the door to door route for their local grassroots house knows how godamn grueling and time-consuming it can be. Even if you're not a full time activist but you still want to keep up on what's going on and care about it - this isn't always easy, either. It's a long haul. You need to take a lot of breaks. And you certainly need to take the brief glimmers of hope where you can get it. And for me, the American people gave it to me this last election. The buzz has since died. And by no means is our work done. But yea, it was something, after six long years of nothing.

I've got no gloom because I try to be realistic: the rich minority have been fucking over the poor masses since time immemorial. I do as much as I can in my life to try and change things, even a little. And I will never give up on this, for as long as I live.

I could give a rat's ass about Democrats. But after the last election, I have hope in the people of this country. If anything good came out of the last six years, it was that millions of Americans were force-fed the red pill. Americans are ingenious people, naysayers, when all is said and done. And I won't make the mistake of underestimating them again.

And, really, if the American people will never be anything but perpetual dumbasses to you, then I ask you: what's the point?

If you have'nt seen the series of Abu- Ghraib paintings by S.American artist Fernando Botero, heres the best selection I've seen. Botero is probably the most un-likely famous artist (in the world) to take this on, normally fat and happy (literally) type art, for which he is famous. Which I suppose also gives these an even greater edge of tragedy.

pinter nobel lecture

Well, one pf my worse fears has now come true, aside from the fact that our new kind of Nazism has now gone underground, out of sight out of mind, the heat has been taken off the elite ptb. No, I wanted the horror show out in the open. I wanted these jackels where we could see them. Now the continued inertia has merely been hidden from view. There will be no chance to change now, against a completely indoctrinated people and a military prepared to carry out orders of locking up or even firing on it's own citizens. Many were upset and frustarted with my stance on wanting the rethugs to win the midterms. Now possibly you know why. The Leviathan has sprayed it's black ink, and gone into the shadows. Everyday this week I have talked to people whom have gone back to, and about their business, as if it is all over. The pressure cap has been turned. The cap is actually a pressure release valve, and has done it's work, of letting off the steam. The Dems in charge will be allowed to make reasonable rollbacks of the Bush extravaganza, to placate the public somewhat, for a while, for a Friedman or a few. But the powers that be will see that Leviathan continues on course, continue seeking full spectrum dominance of the planet, and of the lesser people on it.

I'm reminded of the movie/book Awakenings by Oliver Sacks, or Harold Pinter's play, "A Kind of Alaska". Welcome back to American Encephalitis lethargica. Now back to our regularly scheduled program uninterrupted...

Western Agnosia.

It seems that almost everything I've read over the past week or two extols the "triumph" of the Democratic party's victory in the mid-term elections. Even the hard-left blogs and sites are at best rather silent and/or conciliatory.

Not so fast! Although even I feel a certain relief that the American electorate (or at least two-thirds of it) has backed off a bit from the current administration, I think a certain cautionary note is totally in order.

First, and most obviously, the Democrats in the Senate and the House have done little, if anything, to effectively challenge the Bush administration. There has been some rhetoric, but all too often speeches on the floor excoriating the Republican policies have been followed by votes in favor of Republican policies and actions. Although the Democrats have regained a majority in both chambers, none of the incumbent Democratic Members or Senators who have consistently voted with Bush were unseated by more left-leaning challengers.

The Democrats gained power almost entirely by simply saying they were "anti-Bush". We still don't know what they are "for". Even worse, recent statements by Howard Dean and several newly-elected Democrats, to the effect that they will let Bush have his war for the next two years is both saddening and enraging. Does this mean that the Democrats will not move against any other Bush policies? What about tax cuts for the wealthy, the USA PATRIOT Act, habeas corpus, constitutional matters like free speech, political prisoners and other critical issues?

It is my conviction that the Democrats will speak more forcefully against many Bush policies, but the rubber meets the road only when they bring these issues to the floor in the form of specific legislation and then vote on them.

Moreover, there is a built-in weakness in the new Democratic majority. That is that it is just barely over fifty percent. President Bush will very likely veto everything that comes his way. That will require a two-thirds majority in Congress to make the legislation law. It will matter more what the Republicans do than the Democrats say. Although it is accurate to think that many sitting Republicans may distance themselves from the President (he is no longer an asset to either side of the aisles), to think that there will be enough votes to end and roll back the neoconservative gains of the past six years is unrealistic.

It is entirely possible that the Democrats will not repeal crucial anti-democratic laws because in many ways those same laws benefit them. The Democrats have a very good chance of winning the White House in 2008. That Democratic president, however, is likely to be a conservative. If that President is Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, or any other Dem front runner, he or she would enjoy the enormous power transferred to the Executive by Bush. Democrats have little history of opposing a president of their own party, regardless of his/her fundamental political stance. And in truth, the Democrats have themselves rarely met a war they didn't like, lest they be accused of being "soft on defense".

For at least four years, we have heard cries for "a return to the old America". But which "old" America to we seek? The Clinton years, when the poor's social support system was emasculated and we relentlessly bombed Yugoslavia? The Carter years, which witnessed the rise of the Trilateral Commission, a doomed Middle East policy, an aggressive US arms buildup, and the unraveling of the Democratic Party? All hope is lost, at any rate, of a rollback to LBJ's or FDR's social programs.

One positive outcome of the Bush years has been the re-emergence of the "true" left, which has been moribund, voiceless, and wandering for decades. We are a potential force for fundamental change in our politics and culture. But history shows that this segment of the Left tends to become more marginalized when the Democratic Party has been in control. Whereas anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-war, pro-socialist voices have been actively considered during this "neoconservative revolution", it is doubtful that the Democratic Party elite will have much patience for it. The Democratic leadership's calls for bi-partisanship, a slow, "reasoned" withdrawal of our beleaguered forces in Iraq, and continued support of neoliberal "free-trade" globilization are dominant.

The American Left, rather than being vindicated in the just-passed election, has once again failed itself. We (for I am one of us) have squandered the best opportunity to gain power we've had in many years. Instead of finding common cause and unity among the fractionalized parties, institutions, and "sects" on the Left, we chose to put much useless effort into things like "reforming" the Democratic Party under Howard Dean, simplistically focusing on whether Bush is crazy or not, demanding the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, and trying to get at the truth about who outed Valerie Plame (it was, in essence, Robert Novak).

Without a Leftist movement unified by values and principles driving positive change toward a a truly democratic society, our voices shouting for ending US imperialism, redefining our foreign "national interests", achieving economic equity for all, challenging corporate fascism, and non-aggressively supporting peace will all go unheard, except by us in our own echo chamber.

This "Left" of which I speak must answer some hard questions. Are we truly antiwar, or just anti-this-war? Are we really willing to sacrifice the comfort that the capitalist system has given us? Do we any longer have the skills and heart it will take to bring the Left together and form a true and effective Third Party alternative? Can we build a tolerant spiritual movement to absorb and/or replace the intolerant religious fanaticism that still grips much of the country? Do we have a clear strategy to return our military home from hundreds of bases to be a truly defensive force? How will we disband the military-industrial-academic oligarchy; return stolen land to the people; create a really representative, accountable government; prioritize our objectives and actions intelligently, refusing to be held hostage by issues subordinate to the long-term goals of the movement?

So many questions. So much work. So little time.

[also posted at P! and the PBA]

Stephanie Berger reports: Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to a report by John Santelli, MD, MPH, department chair and prhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifofessor of Clinical Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The scientific findings indicate that abstinence promotion, in itself, is insufficient to help adolescents prevent unintended pregnancies.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center reports: Marijuana is not a "gateway" drug that predicts or eventually leads to substance abuse, suggests a 12-year University of Pittsburgh study. Moreover, the study's findings call into question the long-held belief that has shaped prevention efforts and governmental policy for six decades and caused many a parent to panic upon discovering a bag of pot in their child's bedroom.

[Disclaimer: the author of this blog post has never fathered a child or used marijuana.]

If you haven't yet, do catch the DoD photos of shackling Padilla at cryptome. It looks like someone is doing a mindfuck on everyone involved, including those responsible for transporting him as well as those whom see this, e.g., you. I mean, who they guarding? a broken human being, right? In my humble opinion, the goggles are so the guards don't have to see his eyes... which would make him all too human.

The photos of Padilla shackled, blinded, and deafened reveals the unfathomable depths of cowering fear and cruelty in the minds and souls of his captors. The humiliation and psychic destruction of Padilla highlighted by the MEDIA seems more a warning or a threat, much like the entire US prison-industrial complex. Many of these stories of late are saying the broken man is unable to assist in his own defence, and he is uncertain if his lawyer isn't part of the plot, cowering when asked questions similar to those of his interrogation under duress. Like "a piece of furniture."

After this, I feel another bout of intractable vomiting coming on. What fucking, unfeeling, unconscionable animals the majority of human beings have become. Screw questions of "What America stands for"... liberty, justice, democracy... these have become so many empty bullshit buzzwords to rationalise their contemptible barbarism. If you can actually APPROVE of treating other human beings in this way, it is clear that you never stood for a damned thing in the first place except making sure that you could get your filthy snout in the consumer trough at any expense. Only pigs walking upright, jockeying to make sure that they are the ones who are "more equal than others", could not only sit idly by while others suffer, but actually APPROVE of it. Bastards. Contemptible bastards.

"Mr. Padilla's situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system."

An American-born citizen held without charges by his own government.

Have we fully and wholly absorbed and faced the enormously profound implications of that one little phrase in that one sentence?

An Episcopalian diocese in California on Saturday moved toward breaking with the U.S. church because of its position on issues including homosexuality.

(Soul Train Line) The O'Jays-For The Love Of Money

Dedicated to the whores of Dkos and other "progressive" blogs. (See post below)

This chart shows some politician's contribution to bloggers.

No 1. is - surprise! - a diarist on DKos, who received 115 000 dollars from Brown and 65 000 dollars from Warner. Warner has been a terrific Governor for Virginia... and so on.

Not bad, heh, for writing rubbish? I think I'll give up my first novel and find a ghostwriter in the US, anyone? Some in the blogsphere have no problem with it, with the one exception that there should be full disclosure. And they are certainly entitled to that opinion; I respect that, even as I disagree. However, I can't help but wonder if this doesn't fuel the naysayers and would be censors of the internet and further, give them ample amunition to scream and turn this into a blackeye for the blogsphere as a whole.

p.s. watch this blow up big time in the next few days...

See also: Stop the Drug War, Drug Policy Alliance, Drug Action Network and The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics.

But for all the neoconservatives' bluster about the need for a religious orthodoxy to hold society together, Strauss was an atheist and taught that "philosopher-kings" had to maintain their special standing by keeping silent about their personal atheism, playing along with the illusion of there being a God and an afterlife. Believing that reason and revelation cannot be reconciled. Strauss believed that religion can only have currency if it stifles dissent, imposes clannishness and gives citizens a reason to die for one's homeland. As Professor Holmes observes, Strauss also believed that only philosophers can handle the truth that there is no Creator and that we are only left with nature which is indifferent to human values and needs. In other words, organized religion is nothing more than exoteric myths for the rubes, designed to sedate them by fear of eternal damnation.

(Can anyone recommend to me a good book on Leo Strauss?)

A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification.

Full Story: Reuters.

(Thanks Danny Chaoflux).

See also: Is It Fascism Yet?

The people behind the great yet very depressing documentary "The Corporation" have released a shareware version of their film with tipjar in hand. If you're one of the readers out there with a few cents to share this holiday season (based on delusion of course) then consider giving. This is part one.

Corporation part one
Uploaded by sfjocko

Seven More U.S. Troops Killed In Iraq

Rumsfeld and Bush charged with War Crimes


'European Human Rights want to charge Rumsfeld with War Crimes. BBC Newsnight'

Idea of Rapid Withdrawal From Iraq Seems to Fade

...[D]espite the Democrats' victory this month in an election viewed as a referendum on the war, the idea of a rapid American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are signaling that too rapid an American pullout would open the way to all-out civil war. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has shied away from recommending explicit timelines in favor of a vaguely timed pullback. The report that the panel will deliver to President Bush next week would, at a minimum, leave a force of 70,000 or more troops in the country for a long time to come.... Even the < watch them sell out their most devoted, and perennially betrayed, supporters.

I foresee that dedicated Kosniks et sim., who have spent the last few years making anti-war noises and selling the Democrats as the only hope for peace, will emerge as actual apologists for continued war, now that "their" party, with its legislative majorities, has undeniable buy-in and responsibility. This is another subtle effect of the two-party machine and the lesser evil mentality -- they pull the internal Left back into line. People just can't stand the cognitive dissonance, and if they can't give up the institution, they have to give up their convictions instead.

Democrats Reject Key 9/11 Panel Suggestion
Can't find anything on Ko$ about it. They're just figuring out that Feinstein shivved 'em. I guess it takes awhile for a dinosaur to know it's been shot.

Doh'

It's going to be a New Day with the New Democratic Majority


Please stop bashing the Democrats ;-(

There has been considerable controversy regarding the role of psychologists in coercive national security interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere. The American Psychological Association (APA) has steadfastly resisted pressure to come out against psychologist participation in these interrogations. (See my "Psychologists, Guantanamo and Torture" and "Protecting the Torturers: Bad Faith and Distortions From The American Psychological Association.") As a result, a movement of APA members has started to withhold dues from the organization as an additional leverage to change the Association's policy...

via the ever wonderful wood's lot blog

How the fuck do you overcome the institutionalization of the national security farce with the dims playing on the same side? The Bush whorehouse and the pentagon is asking for a record $100 billion (at least) for Iraq and who knows what else in the latest grab-bag. more supplemental appropriations and a still-compliant Congress.

Please stop bashing the democrats ;-(

When many Americans think of farm animals, they picture cattle munching grass on rolling pastures, chickens pecking on the ground outside of picturesque red barns, and pigs gobbling down food at the trough.

Over the last 50 years, the way food animals are raised and fed has changed dramatically - to the detriment of both animals and humans. Many people are surprised to find that most of the food animals in the United States are no longer raised on farms at all. Instead they come from crowded animal factories, also known as large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Just like other factories, animal factories are constantly searching for ways to shave their costs. To save money, they've redefined what constitutes animal feed, with little consideration of what is best for the animals or for human health. As a result, many of the ingredients used in feed these days are not the kind of food the animals are designed by nature to eat.

Just take a look at what's being fed to the animals you eat.

* Same Species Meat
* Diseased Animals
* Feathers, Hair, Skin, Hooves, and Blood
* Manure and Other Animal Waste
* Plastics
* Drugs and Chemicals
* Unhealthy Amounts of Grains

[more . . . from the Union of Concerned Scientists]

Take this quiz . . .

Is Preznut Doubleduh:

___ Crazy?

___ Drinking?

___ Receiving messages from God?

___ Dumb as a truckload of cinder blocks?

___ Smoking crack?

___ Just following orders?

___ All of the above?


The answer is at P!. Well, maybe.

(P! has moved. Please change your link URL to this address. Thank you.)

Countdown - Keith Olbermann Discusses Newt Gingrich

How it is leading us away from representative government to an illusion of citizen participation

March 2005 - Signs of an "Arab Spring" or "Cedar Revolution," possibly the early seeds to the flowering of democracy:


December 2006 - A dangerous threat, potentially the bellweather for the onset of yet more civil war:


That damn, fickle "Arab Street."

Oh, and c'mon, Glenn. Don't let us down. There's gotta be some "protest babes" in there, somewhere.

This is ripe for abuse. Ahh, back in 73 you were a democrat. No job for you. Uh, Mr. Joe public I see you have been with us for 12 years, however, we can not approve your application for advancement because we see that in 1981 you voted against the ol' gipper. Your medical records report you had a emergency room visit once for...

Anthropologist Laura Nader calls such things as this, the authoritarian and coercive character of law under "coercive harmony."* Where everyone has a place and a label.

Thomas Jefferson once called "legerdemain tricks upon paper. Today we have tricks upon data.

If the proposal goes into effect, many employers using the FBI’s system could discover a job applicant had been convicted for drinking in public, or had been arrested for vagrancy as a teenager, among other offenses.

Well, son you didn't vote the company way, I'm afraid I can't give you a raise this quarter.

But I work hard Mr. Hegimon.

Sure, maybe next quarter, if you donate to Mr. Senator's campaine and...

So Miss Jane Doe, I see you were arrested in college for nude dancing around december of 2003.

But sir, I'm a single mother and have a young son to feed.

Well, Miss Jane Doe maybe we can work something out, I like thongs and fishnets, get the hint?

When the admirable Tiberius upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. "Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?" He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: "How eager you are to be slaves." ~Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

* "coercive harmony": "basically a movement against the contentious in anything, and it has very strange bedfellows, from people with various psychiatric therapy movements, Christian fundamentalists, corporations sick of paying lawyers, activists who believe we should love each other We are talking about coercive harmony an ideology that says if you disagree, you should really keep your mouth shut."

21 Nazi Chiefs Guilty, Nuremberg Trials. 1946/10/08 (1946)

It's time...

Instant dictatorship at home? The laws are already in place to incarcerate opposition for indefinite time. How the system is pathologizing political disagreement.Where America has beome a Total institution.

I recently sent a friend a link on the Total institution from answers.com, in it it discribes Total institutions as social microcosmos dictated by hegemony and clear hierarchy. Total institutions include some boarding schools, concentration camps, prisons, mental institutions and boot camps. But wait, that is only the begining, the ones you can see.

I suggest we look at this transmogrification as if it were a continuum, if we take it a logical step further, you can see the continuing Panopticon like institutions and systems you can't normally see through this lense. Answers.com points out that, "..sociologists [anthropologist's and other scientists have also recently pointed out that] tourist venues such as cruise ships and theme parks are acquiring many of the characteristics of total institutions. Tourists may not be aware that they are being controlled, even constrained, but the environment has been designed to subtly manipulate the behavior of patrons."

What about shopping malls , college campuses, gated communities, retirement communities, city/State government e.g. the DMV etc, the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA).

I have stated before, it seems as if we are covertly and methodically being herded into a mental plantation, by a system that has gladly inherited the worst of both the Soviet and Nazi germany type authoritarian means of control and governship.

A "quasi-Soviet/facist/totalitarian system." A "Kafkaesque" bureaucratic i.e. State induced non- static labyrinth. Whose rules change only for the elite and not the governed.

I cannot recommend more highly George Kenney's podcast interview with Dr. Kate Brown at ElectricPolitics, simply the best podcast around -- it should be part of the weekly diet for all thinking Americans.

Given all the terrible things that the US government is doing at home and abroad, it's easy to lose perspective — particularly for Americans. To despair or, perhaps more accurately, to despair for the wrong reasons. Dr. Kate Brown, a stunningly brilliant historian (her book A Biography Of No Place won the 2004 George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association) helps us regain perspective by making comparisons to the former USSR, of which there turn out to be many. It's well worth being reminded that such a system inevitably collapses, though how it collapses may be an open question. And specifically, though we can't (yet) get into the secret US prison system, NKVD and KGB documents regarding the Soviet Gulag tell us a lot about what we could expect to find. I'm very grateful to Kate for talking with me. I enjoyed this conversation immensely and I love her Chicago accent. Runtime here of about an hour and eleven minutes.

Also see, Six Questions on the American "Gulag" for Historian Kate Brown

And

1 In 32 American Adults In Jail, On Probation Or Parole At The End Of Last Year...

A record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday.

More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.

Note: America has the highest percentage of its population in jail of any industrialized nation on the planet. As a percentage of population we make more people criminals than China, Vietnam, Russia, or Cuba..however, that is not my point, my point is the unseen structural device parameters of the panopticon like intracacies of the system which is beyond the scope of the offically incarcerated.

The chemical compound for the abortion pill has been found to prevent the growth of mammary tumors caused by the mutant gene responsible for a majority of breast and ovarian cancers, according to UC Irvine scientists.

[Meanwhile...]