"discretion is the better part of valour"

Read more!

"In My World..."

....In my world, the bank entrusted with holding my money was seized and sold by the federal government to JP Morgan Chase. Read more!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States of America

From Jack Cafferty's CNN blog:

"In case you’re wondering why our economy is in the toilet, President Bush had the explanation at a closed Republican fund-raiser in Houston last week:

”Wall Street got drunk – it’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off your TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is: how long will it sober up.”

The depth of the intellect at the very top of our nation’s government is staggering, isn’t it? Quite an assessment coming from a reformed alcoholic. The president had apparently requested that those attending the event turn off their cameras, but the comments were recorded and started popping up on Texas news outlets.

The White House grabbed their brooms and immediately began sweeping up after him. They say Mr. Bush was referring to the fact that, “the markets were using very complex financial instruments that had grown up over the years, and when confronted with the shock of this housing downturn, they did not fully understand what the consequences were going to be.”

Problem is, that doesn’t sound at all like the president saying “Wall Street got drunk.” It’s that kind of shallowness that has created an appetite in the American public and overseas for someone like Barack Obama.

King Abdullah of Jordan actually cut short his vacation this week so he could meet with Obama. It must be like someone who works in a nursery all week finally getting a chance to have a conversation with an adult." Read more!

Excerpt of Obama's Speech Today on Race, Class, and what Matters in the United States

Apologies for the bad quality of the video.

Read more!

FISA Bill Bush Bluff Bull

Olbermann for President. Read more!

Picture of the Day

`Bloodied' anti-war protester gets in face of `criminal' Rice

Oct 25, 2007 04:30 AM

WASHINGTON–An anti-war protester waved blood-coloured hands in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's face at a congressional hearing yesterday and shouted "war criminal!" before being pushed away and detained by police.

"The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!" yelled protester Desiree Anita Ali-Fairooz of the Code Pink organization.

Rice, an architect of U.S. President George W. Bush's Iraq policy, appeared unfazed by the incident, which occurred when she entered a House of Representatives meeting room to testify at a hearing on U.S. Middle East policy.

"Out!" shouted the chairman of the foreign relations committee, Representative Tom Lantos, as security men and police hustled the woman away. The California Democrat also ordered the removal of several other Code Pink activists.

Capitol police said later five people were arrested, including Ali-Fairooz, who was charged with disorderly conduct and assault on a police officer.

Meanwhile, two Code Pink activists who were denied entry into Canada because their arrests for protesting the Iraq war landed them on an FBI-run database say they will try again to enter the country today.

The activists and their supporters presented petitions Tuesday at Canadian consulates in several U.S. cities, demanding Canada reverse what they say is a policy that keeps foes of the Iraq war from visiting.

Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and diplomat, was turned back at the border along with fellow Code Pink member Medea Benjamin on Oct. 3. She said they plan to fly to Ottawa today in the hopes of attending a public forum organized by NDP MP Alexa McDonough. Read more!

Taking Out the Pawns

The House Passes The War Profiteering Prevention Act !!!!!!!

This bill makes war profiteering a federal felony. This bill strengthens the tools available to federal law enforcement to combat contracting fraud during wartime. Specifically, the bill makes war profiteering - overcharging in order to defraud or profit excessively from war, military action, or reconstruction efforts - a felony, subject to up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million or twice the illegal profits of the crime. The bill also confers jurisdiction to U.S. federal courts to hear such cases.

War profiteering and reconstruction fraud by U.S. companies has become a significant problem in the Iraq War - with billions unaccounted for. The United States has devoted more than $50 billion to U.S . contractors for relief and reconstruction activities in Iraq alone, with billions of these dollars unaccounted for. For example, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction outlined in a report that the former Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq could not account for nearly $8.8 billion.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has more than 70 investigations open. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction currently has more than 70 open and active investigations regarding contracting fraud and abuse related to the Iraq war. These investigations include, among other things, investigations of illegal kickbacks, bid-rigging, embezzlement, and fraudulent over-billing. However, given the large number of investigations, there have been relatively few prosecutions for reconstruction fraud. This highlights the need for this legislation - giving federal law enforcement additional tools for prosecuting wartime contracting fraud.

Despite the number of investigations, there have been few prosecutions - highlighting the need for this bill. The lack of prosecutions underscores the inadequacies of current law. There is currently no federal statute specifically targeted at prohibiting contracting fraud during times of war, military action, or relief or reconstruction activities. Moreover, no federal law provides enhanced criminal punishment for fraudulent acts during times of war, or relief or reconstruction activities. In addition, none of the current fraud statutes explicitly extend extraterritorial jurisdiction.

According to the Defense Contract Audit Agency, there have been more than $10 billion in suspect billings in Iraqi contracts. In February, the head of the Defense Contract Audit Agency testified before Congress that the agency estimated that there have been more than $10 billion in questioned and unsupported costs relating to Iraq reconstruction and troop support contracts since the war began in 2003.

Of the $10 billion in suspect billings, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified $2.7 billion from one contractor alone - Halliburton. The largest private contractor operating in Iraq is Halliburton. Through its KBR subsidiary, Halliburton has held three large contracts in Iraq. The Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified $2.7 billion in suspect billings in these three contracts. Specifically, under Halliburton's largest Iraq contract, providing support services for the troops, Pentagon auditors have found $2.4 billion in questioned and unsupported costs - including $1.9 billion in questioned costs and $450 million in unsupported costs. Former Halliburton employees testified that the company charged $45 for cases of soda, billed $100 to clean 15-pound bags of laundry, and insisted on housing its staff at a five-star hotel in Kuwait. Halliburton procurement officials described the company's informal motto in Iraq as "Don't worry about price. It's cost-plus." Furthermore, a Halliburton manager was indicted for "major fraud against the United States" for allegedly billing more than $5.5 million for work that should have cost only $685,000 in exchange for a $1 million kickback from a Kuwaiti subcontractor.

The Custer Battles case in 2006, in which a verdict against a U.S. contractor for contract fraud in Iraq was overturned, also highlights the need for this bill. In the famous Custer Battles case, one contractor in Iraq was found guilty of 37 counts of fraud, including false billing, and was ordered to pay more than $10 million in damages. A federal judge subsequently overturned the decision on a technicality that the contracts were let through the Coalition Provisional Authority, which the court held not to be part of the United States government. This legislation addresses such gaps in existing law - including clarifying that the Coalition Provisional Authority is part of the U.S. government.

So we should all be happy with what has been accomplished. But this is no time to rest on our laurels. The fight to take our government back from the toe-tappers, Abramoff's tee-time partners and various "Dukesters" is ongoing.

Hmm.. I wonder how Dick Cheney's buddies at KBR must feel now that their greedy gods have decided to pull back one of the teets they've been so advertently nursing on..

This is really great news. Hallelujah for hope!

PLEASE DO READ MORE! Ah Said-- Read more!

Voting Usurpations

Somebody needs to be punished for violating the rules! Although, this doesn't come as too big of a surprise, since we've been finding that rules don't exactly apply to the political puppeteers and partisan ventriloquists. I'm assuming that this is widely known about and overlooked purposely. Pinche monkeys. Read more!

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

The Shock Doctrine
By Naomi Klein
The Guardian UK

Saturday 08 September 2007

Her explosive new book exposes the lie that free markets thrive on freedom. In our first exclusive extract, the No Logo author reveals the business of exploiting disaster.

I met Jamar Perry in September 2005, at the big Red Cross shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Dinner was being doled out by grinning young Scientologists, and he was standing in line. I had just been busted for talking to evacuees without a media escort and was now doing my best to blend in, a white Canadian in a sea of African- American southerners. I dodged into the food line behind Perry and asked him to talk to me as if we were old friends, which he kindly did.

Born and raised in New Orleans, he'd been out of the flooded city for a week. He and his family had waited forever for the evacuation buses; when they didn't arrive, they had walked out in the baking sun. Finally they ended up here, a sprawling convention centre now jammed with 2,000 cots and a mess of angry, exhausted people being patrolled by edgy National Guard soldiers just back from Iraq.


Please!
The news racing around the shelter that day was that the Republican Congressman Richard Baker had told a group of lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans' wealthiest developers, had just expressed a similar sentiment: "I think we have a clean sheet to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities." All that week Baton Rouge had been crawling with corporate lobbyists helping to lock in those big opportunities: lower taxes, fewer regulations, cheaper workers and a "smaller, safer city" - which in practice meant plans to level the public housing projects. Hearing all the talk of "fresh starts" and "clean sheets", you could almost forget the toxic stew of rubble, chemical outflows and human remains just a few miles down the highway.

Over at the shelter, Jamar could think of nothing else. "I really don't see it as cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed uptown. People who shouldn't have died."

He was speaking quietly, but an older man in line in front of us overheard and whipped around. "What is wrong with these people in Baton Rouge? This isn't an opportunity. It's a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind?" A mother with two kids chimed in. "No, they're not blind, they're evil. They see just fine."

One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was the late Milton Friedman, grand guru of unfettered capitalism and credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hyper-mobile global economy. Ninety-three years old and in failing health, "Uncle Miltie", as he was known to his followers, found the strength to write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal three months after the levees broke. "Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed, "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity."

Friedman's radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans' existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions.

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

The Friedmanite American Enterprise Institute enthused that "Katrina accomplished in a day ... what Louisiana school reformers couldn't do after years of trying". Public school teachers, meanwhile, were calling Friedman's plan "an educational land grab". I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, "disaster capitalism".

Privatising the school system of a mid-size American city may seem a modest preoccupation for the man hailed as the most influential economist of the past half century. Yet his determination to exploit the crisis in New Orleans to advance a fundamentalist version of capitalism was also an oddly fitting farewell. For more than three decades, Friedman and his powerful followers had been perfecting this very strategy: waiting for a major crisis, then selling off pieces of the state to private players while citizens were still reeling from the shock.

In one of his most influential essays, Friedman articulated contemporary capitalism's core tactical nostrum, what I have come to understand as "the shock doctrine". He observed that "only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change". When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, the University of Chicago professor was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo". A variation on Machiavelli's advice that "injuries" should be inflicted "all at once", this is one of Friedman's most lasting legacies.

Friedman first learned how to exploit a shock or crisis in the mid-70s, when he advised the dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Not only were Chileans in a state of shock after Pinochet's violent coup, but the country was also traumatised by hyperinflation. Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy - tax cuts, free trade, privatised services, cuts to social spending and deregulation.

It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School" revolution, as so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Friedman there. Friedman coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment". In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy", has been the method of choice.

I started researching the free market's dependence on the power of shock four years ago, during the early days of the occupation of Iraq. I reported from Baghdad on Washington's failed attempts to follow "shock and awe" with shock therapy - mass privatisation, complete free trade, a 15% flat tax, a dramatically downsized government. Afterwards I travelled to Sri Lanka, several months after the devastating 2004 tsunami, and witnessed another version of the same manoeuvre: foreign investors and international lenders had teamed up to use the atmosphere of panic to hand the entire beautiful coastline over to entrepreneurs who quickly built large resorts, blocking hundreds of thousands of fishing people from rebuilding their villages. By the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was clear that this was now the preferred method of advancing corporate goals: using moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering. Most people who survive a disaster want the opposite of a clean slate: they want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing what was not destroyed. "When I rebuild the city I feel like I'm rebuilding myself," said Cassandra Andrews, a resident of New Orleans' heavily damaged Lower Ninth Ward, as she cleared away debris after the storm. But disaster capitalists have no interest in repairing what once was. In Iraq, Sri Lanka and New Orleans, the process deceptively called "reconstruction" began with finishing the job of the original disaster by erasing what was left of the public sphere.

When I began this research into the intersection between super-profits and mega-disasters, I thought I was witnessing a fundamental change in the way the drive to "liberate" markets was advancing around the world. Having been part of the movement against ballooning corporate power that made its global debut in Seattle in 1999, I was accustomed to seeing business-friendly policies imposed through arm-twisting at WTO summits, or as the conditions attached to loans from the IMF.

As I dug deeper into the history of how this market model had swept the globe, I discovered that the idea of exploiting crisis and disaster has been the modus operandi of Friedman's movement from the very beginning - this fundamentalist form of capitalism has always needed disasters to advance. What was happening in Iraq and New Orleans was not a post-September 11 invention. Rather, these bold experiments in crisis exploitation were the culmination of three decades of strict adherence to the shock doctrine.

Seen through the lens of this doctrine, the past 35 years look very different. Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by anti-democratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the intent of terrorising the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for radical free-market "reforms". In China in 1989, it was the shock of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the arrests of tens of thousands that freed the Communist party to convert much of the country into a sprawling export zone, staffed with workers too terrified to demand their rights. The Falklands war in 1982 served a similar purpose for Margaret Thatcher: the disorder resulting from the war allowed her to crush the striking miners and to launch the first privatisation frenzy in a western democracy.

The bottom line is that, for economic shock therapy to be applied without restraint, some sort of additional collective trauma has always been required. Friedman's economic model is capable of being partially imposed under democracy - the US under Reagan being the best example - but for the vision to be implemented in its complete form, authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian conditions are required.

Until recently, these conditions did not exist in the US. What happened on September 11 2001 is that an ideology hatched in American universities and fortified in Washington institutions finally had its chance to come home. The Bush administration, packed with Friedman's disciples, including his close friend Donald Rumsfeld, seized upon the fear generated to launch the "war on terror" and to ensure that it is an almost completely for-profit venture, a booming new industry that has breathed new life into the faltering US economy. Best understood as a "disaster capitalism complex", it is a global war fought on every level by private companies whose involvement is paid for with public money, with the unending mandate of protecting the US homeland in perpetuity while eliminating all "evil" abroad.

In a few short years, the complex has already expanded its market reach from fighting terrorism to international peacekeeping, to municipal policing, to responding to increasingly frequent natural disasters. The ultimate goal for the corporations at the centre of the complex is to bring the model of for-profit government, which advances so rapidly in extraordinary circumstances, into the ordinary functioning of the state - in effect, to privatise the government.

In scale, the disaster capitalism complex is on a par with the "emerging market" and IT booms of the 90s. It is dominated by US firms, but is global, with British companies bringing their experience in security cameras, Israeli firms their expertise in building hi-tech fences and walls. Combined with soaring insurance industry profits as well as super profits for the oil industry, the disaster economy may well have saved the world market from the full-blown recession it was facing on the eve of 9/11.

In the torrent of words written in eulogy to Milton Friedman, the role of shocks and crises to advance his world view received barely a mention. Instead, the economist's passing, in November 2006, provided an occasion for a retelling of the official story of how his brand of radical capitalism became government orthodoxy in almost every corner of the globe. It is a fairytale history, scrubbed clean of the violence so intimately entwined with this crusade.

It is time for this to change. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a powerful reckoning with the crimes committed in the name of communism. But what of the crusade to liberate world markets?

I am not arguing that all forms of market systems require large-scale violence. It is eminently possible to have a market-based economy that demands no such brutality or ideological purity. A free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public schools, with a large segment of the economy - such as a national oil company - held in state hands. It's equally possible to require corporations to pay decent wages, to respect the right of workers to form unions, and for governments to tax and redistribute wealth so that the sharp inequalities that mark the corporatist state are reduced. Markets need not be fundamentalist.

John Maynard Keynes proposed just that kind of mixed, regulated economy after the Great Depression. It was that system of compromises, checks and balances that Friedman's counter-revolution was launched to dismantle in country after country. Seen in that light, Chicago School capitalism has something in common with other fundamentalist ideologies: the signature desire for unattainable purity.

This desire for godlike powers of creation is precisely why free-market ideologues are so drawn to crises and disasters. Non-apocalyptic reality is simply not hospitable to their ambitions. For 35 years, what has animated Friedman's counter-revolution is an attraction to a kind of freedom available only in times of cataclysmic change - when people, with their stubborn habits and insistent demands, are blasted out of the way - moments when democracy seems a practical impossibility. Believers in the shock doctrine are convinced that only a great rupture - a flood, a war, a terrorist attack - can generate the kind of vast, clean canvases they crave. It is in these malleable moments, when we are psychologically unmoored and physically uprooted, that these artists of the real plunge in their hands and begin their work of remaking the world.

Torture: The Other Shock Treatment

From Chile to China to Iraq, torture has been a silent partner in the global free-market crusade. Chile's coup featured three distinct forms of shock, a recipe that would re-emerge three decades later in Iraq. The shock of the coup prepared the ground for economic shock therapy; the shock of the torture chamber terrorized anyone thinking of standing in the way of the economic shocks.

But torture is more than a tool used to enforce unwanted policies on rebellious peoples; it is also a metaphor of the shock doctrine's underlying logic. Torture, or in CIA parlance, "coercive interrogation", is a set of techniques developed by scientists and designed to put prisoners into a state of deep disorientation.

Declassified CIA manuals explain how to break "resistant sources": create violent ruptures between prisoners and their ability to make sense of the world around them. First, the senses are starved (with hoods, earplugs, shackles), then the body is bombarded with overwhelming stimulation (strobe lights, blaring music, beatings). The goal of this "softening-up" stage is to provoke a kind of hurricane in the mind, and it is in that state of shock that most prisoners give their interrogators whatever they want.

The shock doctrine mimics this process precisely. The original disaster - the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown - puts the entire population into a state of collective shock. The falling bombs, the bursts of terror, the pounding winds serve to soften up whole societies. Like the terrorised prisoner who gives up the names of comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.

Read more!

Politics in Black and White

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Monday 24 September 2007

Last Thursday there was a huge march in Jena, La., to protest the harsh and unequal treatment of six black students arrested in the beating of a white classmate. Students who hung nooses to warn blacks not to sit under a "white" tree were suspended for three days; on the other hand, the students accused in the beating were initially charged with second-degree attempted murder.

And one of the Jena Six remains in jail, even though appeals courts have voided his conviction on the grounds that he was improperly tried as an adult.

Many press accounts of the march have a tone of amazement. Scenes like those in Jena, the stories seemed to imply, belonged in the 1960s, not the 21st century. The headline on the New York Times report, "Protest in Louisiana Case Echoes the Civil Rights Era," was fairly typical.

But the reality is that things haven't changed nearly as much as people think. Racial tension, especially in the South, has never gone away, and has never stopped being important. And race remains one of the defining factors in modern American politics.


Consider voting in last year's Congressional elections. Republicans, as President Bush conceded, received a "thumping," with almost every major demographic group turning against them. The one big exception was Southern whites, 62 percent of whom voted Republican in House races.

And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered. There's a large statistical literature on the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist Thomas F. Schaller in his book "Whistling Past Dixie": "Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past."

Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the G.O.P.'s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.

Thus Ronald Reagan, who began his political career by campaigning against California's Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states' rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered. In 2000, Mr. Bush made a pilgrimage to Bob Jones University, famed at the time for its ban on interracial dating.

And all four leading Republican candidates for the 2008 nomination have turned down an invitation to a debate on minority issues scheduled to air on PBS this week.

Yet if the marchers at Jena reminded us that America still hasn't fully purged itself of the poisonous legacy of slavery, it would be wrong to suggest that the nation has made no progress. Racism, though not gone, is greatly diminished: both opinion polls and daily experience suggest that we are truly becoming a more tolerant, open society.

And the cynicism of the "Southern strategy" introduced by Richard Nixon, which delivered decades of political victories to Republicans, is now starting to look like a trap for the G.O.P.

One of the truly remarkable things about the contest for the Republican nomination is the way the contenders have snubbed not just blacks - who, given the G.O.P.'s modern history, probably won't vote for a Republican in significant numbers no matter what - but Hispanics. In July, all the major contenders refused invitations to address the National Council of La Raza, which Mr. Bush addressed in 2000. Univision, the Spanish-language TV network, had to cancel a debate scheduled for Sept. 16 because only John McCain was willing to come.

If this sounds like a good way to ensure defeat in future elections, that's because it is: Hispanics are a rapidly growing force in the electorate.

But to get the Republican nomination, a candidate must appeal to the base - and the base consists, in large part, of Southern whites who carry over to immigrants the same racial attitudes that brought them into the Republican fold to begin with. As a result, you have the spectacle of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, pragmatists on immigration issues when they actually had to govern in diverse states, trying to reinvent themselves as defenders of Fortress America.

And both Hispanics and Asians, another growing force in the electorate, are getting the message. Last year they voted overwhelmingly Democratic, by 69 percent and 62 percent respectively.

In other words, it looks as if the Republican Party is about to start paying a price for its history of exploiting racial antagonism. If that happens, it will be deeply ironic. But it will also be poetic justice.
Read more!

...With Liberty and WHAT for WHO?

I pledge allegiance to Keith Olbermann.



You cannot have peace without justice! You simply cannot! But they don't want justice! And they sure as hell don't want peace! The resignations of Rummy, Rove, Wolfowitz, and thereafter are not enough, never enough. The best these acts can do is get people to start asking Why? and not settling for the partisan answer. It requires the understanding that things can never be parrallel in a world of lies. I am again eternally grateful to Mr. Olbermann for pointing this out daily on the tube, and making the acquirement of that understanding smoother for we common class folk.

We've been seeing a lot of injustice lately, it's been making my soul and my eyes sore. I'm sure it's always been there but I've personally started to feel drowned in the unfair reality of it all. So, I wonder, what are we going to do NOW? Now that we've been reminded that the chair of the world our children will grow up in is being devoured by gluttonous merciless termites? That we are being slid down and deceived into the paper shredder? Now that this has constantly been affirmed by your information seeking and sharing and by mine? Get angry and then what? and then WHAT?

I wouldn't even know how to answer that, though. Sometimes I wish the rapture would happen sooner. I hear the powers-that-be have humanity roasts on Sundays in the oval office. Maybe the rumor will get to a wrathful God. Fingers crossed.

And because it came on my shuffle this morning:
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Ooh, they only answer more! more! more! yoh
-CCR

End of Post. Read more!

History Lesson for the Day

Brought to you (once again) by Immortal Technique



Now here's the truth about the system that'll fuck up your mind
They gave Al Queda 6 billion dollars in 1989 to 1992
And now the last chapters of Revelations are coming true
And I know a lot of people find it hard to swallow this
Because subliminal bigotry makes you hate my politics
But you act like America wouldn't destroy two buildings
In a country that was sponsoring bombs dropped on our children
I was watching the Towers, and though I wasn't the closest
I saw them crumble to the Earth like they was full of explosives
And they thought nobody noticed the news report that they did
About the bombs planted on the George Washington bridge
Four Non-Arabs arrested during the emergency
And then it disappeared from the news permanently
They dubbed a tape of Osama, and they said it was proof
"Jealous of our freedom," I can't believe you bought that excuse
Rockin a motherfucking flag don't make you a hero
Word to Ground Zero
The Devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th
The New World Order was born on September 11

Immortal Technique is so good at nutshells in prose.
This post is done yo. Read more!

Weekly Review

By Claire Gutierrez
Harper's Magazine
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/WeeklyReview2007-08-28


Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned.1 The CIA's inspector general released a report recommending that former CIA director George Tenet and other senior officials be held accountable for failing to prepare for the threat of Al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks,2 and the Pentagon announced it would close Talon, the database created after September 11 to monitor and store information about security threats and peace activists. 3 Grace Paley died.4 In a motion filed by the Justice Department, the Bush Administration argued that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, even though the office is listed as one of six presidential entities subject to FOIA on the White House website.5 The American Psychological Association ruled that many of the interrogation techniques used against detainees at U.S. facilities—including mock execution, simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, hooding, forced nakedness, exposure to extreme heat or cold, physical assault, and the use of mind-altering drugs—are immoral.6 At the court-martial of Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the only officer to be charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal, witnesses for the prosecution said that Jordan did not “sign off on anything,” and that he had “nothing to do with the interrogations,” and “nothing to do with those detainees being abused.” The prosecution later rested its case.

Two humanitarian groups in Iraq announced that the “surge” in the number of American troops has led to a large increase in the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes, furthering the country's division into sectarian enclaves, and a new National Intelligence Estimate predicted that Iraqi politicians would be unable to fix sectarian rifts any time soon. 1 2 Returning from a three-day trip to Iraq and Jordan, Senate Chairman of the Armed Services Carl Levin (D., Mich.) declared the Iraqi government “non-functional” and recommended that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his cabinet be replaced. “We care for our people and our constitution,” said Maliki, who was visiting Syria, “and can find friends elsewhere.”3 4 The U.S. Justice Department released documents showing that Dr. Ayad Allawi, Maliki's chief opponent and the man most likely to replace him as prime minister, is paying the G.O.P. firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers $300,000 to lobby on his behalf.5 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards dubbed himself the “candidate for change,”6 and the hip-hop magazine Vibe dubbed Barack Obama “B-Rock.”7 As part of President Bush's $15 billion anti-AIDS program, the United States will begin paying for African men to be circumcised,8 and researchers in Uganda said that washing the penis after sex increases the risk of HIV infection. “Don't just finish and jump out of bed,” advised Dr. Ronald Gray, co-author of the study. “There ought to be a little time left for postcoital cuddling.”9 Bob Allen, the Florida state representative who was arrested in July after offering to fellate an undercover police officer, was stripped of his legislative-committee appointments but remained unfazed. “I'm waiting,” he said, “for the politics to say it's okay to hug Bob Allen again—and they will.”10 Patrick Leahy, the 67-year old Democratic senator from Vermont who as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pressing the Bush Administration to turn over documents relating to its warrantless wiretapping program, revealed that he has a small part in the upcoming Batman movie, and that he had to let his remaining hair grow out for the role.11 Researchers found that cornrows can cause permanent bald patches.12

Two bears at the Belgrade Zoo, Masha and Misha, spent the annual beer-festival weekend feasting on a 23-year-old Serb, who was discovered naked, dead, and half-eaten in their cage. “Only an idiot,” said zoo director Vuk Bojovic, “would jump into the bear cage.”1 Melting ice in the Arctic revealed previously unknown islands that have yet to be claimed.2 Studies in the U.S. showed that one in four adults read no books last year, that white youths are happier than the youths of other races, and that senior citizens are enjoying an active and varied sex life that includes masturbation, vaginal intercourse, and oral sex.3 4 5 After waiting 55 years for a Purple Heart, Nyles Reed, a 75-year-old Korean War veteran and former Marine, received a form letter from Navy Personnel Command saying the medal was out of stock and suggesting that he buy his own.6 Vacationers aboard a Taiwanese airliner in Okinawa slid down escape chutes and sprinted to safety moments before the plane exploded. “I ran so hard,” one passenger said, “my sock tore.”7 Scientists in England determined that Tyrannosaurus rex would have been able to outrun a professional soccer player.8 Thirty years after murdering six people, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, sent a letter to amNew York in which he apologized for his misdeeds,9 and previously unpublished letters by Mother Teresa revealed that beginning in 1948 and continuing until the end of her life in 1997 she was unable to sense the presence of God. “Repulsed—empty—no faith—no love—no zeal,” she wrote. “Heaven means nothing.” 10 Scientists found a very big hole in the universe.11 Read more!

Bye Bye Berty

Embattled Attorney General Resigns
By Steven Lee Myer
The New York Times
Monday 27 August 2007

Waco, Tex. - Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington.
Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not immediately announced, the official added, until after the president invited him and his wife to lunch at his ranch near here.
Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the resignation had not yet been made public.
Mr. Bush had repeatedly stood by Mr. Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as Mr. Gonzales faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department, over issues including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.
Earlier this month, at a news conference, Mr. Bush dismissed accusations that Mr. Gonzales had stonewalled or misled a congressional inquiry. "We're watching a political exercise," Mr. Bush said. "I mean, this is a man who has testified, he's sent thousands of papers up there. There's no proof of wrong."
Mr. Gonzales's resignation is the latest in a series of high-level departures that has reshaped the end of Mr. Bush's second term. Karl Rove, another of Mr. Bush's close circle of aides from Texas, stepped down two weeks ago.
The official who disclosed the resignation today said that the decision was Mr. Gonzales's and that the president accepted it grudgingly. At the same time, the official acknowledged that the turmoil over Mr. Gonzales had made his continuing as attorney general difficult.
"The unfair treatment that he's been on the receiving end of has been a distraction for the department," the official said.
As recently as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales was denying through his press spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, that he intended to leave
Mr. Roehrkasse said Sunday afternoon that he had telephoned Mr. Gonzales about the reports circulating in Washington that a resignation was imminent, "and he said it wasn't true, so I don't know what more I can say."
White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Mr. Gonzales was planning to resign. Aides to senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that they had received no suggestion from the administration that Mr. Gonzales intended to resign.
Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who sits on the committee and has been calling for Mr. Gonzales's resignation for months, said this morning: "It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new readership."
Senator Schumer said that "Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations."

Ahh.. "The wheels are coming off" I read somewhere. Here's to finding news this good and hopeful on a Monday. Read more!

North American Union and NAFTA

President Bush to Attend North American Leaders' Summit in Canada

President Bush will travel to Montebello, Quebec, Canada to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico at the North American Leaders' Summit on August 20-21, 2007. The leaders will review progress and continued cooperation under the Security and Prosperity Partnership, as well as discuss hemispheric and global issues.

Keep that in mind as you watch this..

Stan Jones on the NAU and the NAFTA Superhighway


I first heard about this on the movie Zeitgeist. A post with my commentary and notes on this movie to come very soon... Read more!

Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday

Part I


Part II


Part III
Read more!

Diversity Shmiversity

This post is a yin & yang post meaning you'll go from feeling sympathetically helpless to hopeful that at least the Daily Show is around to make you laugh at their satire, or maybe just more helpless. Fair and balanced like Fox, right? Gian, that last post was great and extremely powerful. Thank you so much. Below I'm going to take something you showed me once that really affected me the first time I saw it and post it here. Many of you have probably already seen it. Underneath that video I'm going to post another Daily Show clip I've been looking for and have finally found that made me laugh a lot the first time. It's about an amendment proposed that would make English the official American language with bitter consequences. I can almost feel the slap in the face it would be for the families who are not native English speakers. I suppose it makes sense though because we all know English is in tough competition for the ever-so-important title of "Official Language" with... Oh wait, everyone already knows English is the primary language. The amendment would be pointless, obviously, and damaging as John Oliver humorously points out. Watch.


Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon



"Language Burier"


"Okay, give me: 'I'm allergic to Penicillin'" Read more!

Executive Cherry Picking

Surprise, surprise..

White House runs conference call on executive privilege for right-wing bloggers

This is in response to the Fox blogger bashing post by Syl. To be honest I didn't know there were any large enough right-wing blog communities that weren't already run by the Fox network or Ann Coulter. I suppose asking for common sense, some thought and truth-seeking from people who take the time out of their day to voice their opinions and speak out on the world wide web might still be a little too much to ask. And speaking of Ann Coulter, I found this a few months back and deemed it funny enough to post here.

Read more!

Reich-publican Party

Old-line Republican warns 'something's in the works' to trigger a police state
Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday July 19, 2007


Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.

He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11."

Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn't about to happen. "If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it," Roberts replied. However, he added, "I don't think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective," pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.

"Americans think their danger is terrorists," said Roberts. "They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. ... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren't able to perceive that."

Roberts pointed out that it's old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger. "It's so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power," he said. "There's no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. ... Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. ... A person like that would do anything."

Roberts final suggestion was that, in the absence of a massive popular outcry, "the only constraints on what's going to happen will come from the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military. They may have had enough. They may not go along with it."

The full audio of Thom Hartmann's interview with Paul Craig Roberts can be found here.

Source for this article here Read more!

A Message From Your Friend at the White House

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:

(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and

(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.

Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.

Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

July 17, 2007.



Did I say friend? I meant Dictator.
Patriot Act/Executive Order=McCarthyism.
I'll probably be blacklisted for this blog post alone. Read more!