Brown Says China May Hold Talks with Dalai Lama

NPR.org, March 19, 2008

· British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday that the Chinese government is willing to hold discussions about Tibet with exiled spiritual leader Dalai Lama.

Brown said China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao set two conditions for the talks, which have already been met.

"The premier told me that, subject to two things that the Dalai Lama has already said — that he does not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounces violence — that he would be prepared to enter into dialogue with the Dalai Lama," Brown told parliament.

Brown said during a conversation with Wen on Wednesday that he made it clear the violence in Tibet must end.

Protests against Chinese rule reached a peak Friday in a riot in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The Dalai Lama's government-in-exile — based in the Indian town of Dharamsala — said 99 people died when Chinese security forces tried to break up the riot. The Chinese government put the death toll at fewer than 20.

The official China News Service reported that 160 Lhasa rioters had so far given themselves up to authorities. The Tibet government set a deadline of midnight Monday for those involved to surrender or face harsh punishment.

On Tuesday, Wen accused the Dalai Lama's supporters of organizing the violent clashes in hopes of sabotaging the Olympics and bolstering their campaign for independence in the Himalayan territory.

The protests, which are the most serious challenge to China's rule in the region in almost two decades, are forcing human rights campaigners to re-examine their approach to the Aug. 8-24 games.

The Dalai Lama has said he wants only greater autonomy for his homeland, not independence from China.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government insisted that the unrest in Tibet would not deter plans to take the Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest.

Brown plans to meet with the Dalai Lama when the Buddhist leader visits London in May — a move that could undermine Brown's efforts to strengthen relations with China.

Brown visited Beijing in January, stressing that Britain is open to Chinese trade and investment and lobbying for China's new $200 billion sovereign wealth fund to open an office in London.

From NPR staff and wire reports Read more!

Why is No One Talking About This Right Now?...

...because it's not you, your people, your country, your liberty, or your life. But when it comes to that point, what will we say then, that we were silent now; that a distance of a few thousand miles absolves us from responsibility; that if we believe in what we say we believe, spiritually and politically, we have a responsibility to talk about it, educate one another, and at the very least feel empathy and compassion for the suffering of ALL living beings.

Today, the Dalai Lama warned that if the violence didn't end soon, he would resign the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

People have been putting footage of the uprisings in Dharamsala and Lhasa on Youtube. Google owns Youtube, and thanks to Google's recent deal with the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party today has blocked all access to Youtube to Chinese citizens. SAY SOMETHING. 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!

1% of Adult males behind bars

I'm sure you have heard about this but just in case...


NEW YORK (AP) -- For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report.


San Quentin State Prison in California holds more than 5,200 inmates.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 -- one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," the report said.

Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are prompting officials in many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft in crime.

"We're seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets," she said in an interview. "They want to be tough on crime, they want to be a law-and-order state -- but they also want to save money, and they want to be effective."

The report cited Kansas and Texas as states which have acted decisively to slow the growth of their inmate population. Their actions include greater use of community supervision for low-risk offenders and employing sanctions other than reimprisonment for ex-offenders who commit technical violations of parole and probation rules.

"The new approach, born of bipartisan leadership, is allowing the two states to ensure they have enough prison beds for violent offenders while helping less dangerous lawbreakers become productive, taxpaying citizens," the report said.

While many state governments have shown bipartisan interest in curbing prison growth, there also are persistent calls to proceed cautiously.

"We need to be smarter," said David Muhlhausen, a criminal justice expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation. "We're not incarcerating all the people who commit serious crimes -- but we're also probably incarcerating people who don't need to be."

According to the report, the inmate population increased last year in 36 states and the federal prison system.

The largest percentage increase -- 12 percent -- was in Kentucky, where Gov. Steve Beshear highlighted the cost of corrections in his budget speech last month. He noted that the state's crime rate had increased only about 3 percent in the past 30 years, while the state's inmate population has increased by 600 percent.

The Pew report was compiled by the Center on the State's Public Safety Performance Project, which is working directly with 13 states on developing programs to divert offenders from prison without jeopardizing public safety.

"For all the money spent on corrections today, there hasn't been a clear and convincing return for public safety," said the project's director, Adam Gelb. "More and more states are beginning to rethink their reliance on prisons for lower-level offenders and finding strategies that are tough on crime without being so tough on taxpayers."

The report said prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect a parallel increase in crime or in the nation's overall population. Instead, it said, more people are behind bars mainly because of tough sentencing measures, such as "three-strikes" laws, that result in longer prison stays.

"For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling," the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

The nationwide figures, as of January 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails -- a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults.

The report said the United States is the world's incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10. Read more!

Fidel's Resignation

[col. writ. 2/19/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

As news flashed of the formal resignation of Cuba's Fidel Castro from the office of the President, morbid celebrations broke out in 'Little Havana' (Miami), Florida, the U.S. capital of the Cuban exile anti-Castro movement. Just as they rejoiced at his illness in 2006, they reveled at his resignation.

But, Fidel's almost 50-year run as Cuban head-of-state has had a momentous impact, not just in Cuba, but in Latin America, and the vast world beyond.

For as Fidel steps down from power, almost a 1/2 dozen of his ideological sons and daughters have come to power throughout Latin America. While nominally socialist, and deeply nationalist, many of them were inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Some, like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, have embraced a continental and internationalist perspective, one that is overtly opposed to the interventionist policies of the U.S. backed IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank.

Latin America, largely through Cuba's steadfast example, has turned away from the draconian U.S. backed rule of the generals, to the rule of democratic and leftist populists.*

In the realm of education, Cuba's performance has been exemplary. In Central and South America, the average literacy rate is 86.4 percent. Cuba's literacy rate is 98%.

Under its socialist system all education is free. In fact, Cuba is the educator of choice for thousands of people from around the world, especially in higher, and medical education. All of this --for free!

Castro didn't inherit a country with such a high literacy rate. Indeed, in 1981 over a million Cubans (mostly folks in the nations's rural areas) were illiterate. Over 100,000 children over 10 years of age volunteered to participate in the "literacy brigadistas" covering the country to teach the poor and the peasants how to read and to write.

One such man, an alfabetizado (or student) named Juan Martinez wrote, in one of the first sentences of his life, "Nunca me he sentido cubano hasta que aprendi a leer y a escribir..." (In English his words meant, "I never really felt Cuban until I learned to read and write." (Keeble, 54)

In foreign affairs, Cuba put her considerable military power in the front ranks against the racist apartheid system of South Africa. Cuba, supporting the armed forces of Angola, fought South Africa at a place called Cuite Carnivals, inflicting such losses on the apartheid army that it began the long road to negotiation, settlement, and dissolution.

Yes, Castro is laying aside his office, a process which, for U.S. presidents usually means the opportunity to accrue obscene amounts of money. But he leaves a proud tradition of Latin American sovereignty, impressive successes in the field's of education and medicine, and revolutionary resistance to the racist apartheid regime of South Africa.

In large part, his efforts paved the way to peace and democracy in South Africa.

His name, and his example will be remembered for centuries, for the ability of the small to stand up to the mighty.

http://www.prisonradio.org/CastroCubaMumia.htm Read more!

URB Next 100 Cover

Jay Electronica and Erykah Badu cover URB’s Next 100 issue, due out the first week of March.


Here’s a quick quote from the cover story. He’s talking about how he envisions a Jay Electronica concert.

“It’s like a revue from the ’30s or ’40s that comes to town for maybe three days…You sit down and you’re served food and a curtain opens and I come out and talk to the people. A ventriloquist’s dummy might walk out of a wooden cabinet and perform ‘Voodoo Man.’ The curtains may open and you see me performing a song chained in a tank of water. I’ll be performing magic.”

Link in the trunk


A bigger picture
Read more!

Dead Prez. They Schools

Nope, that's y'all flag.



Tending to the embers of passion...
(dead) End Read more!

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac

This documentary is about an hour long.

Read more!

The Yogis of Tibet

"Since the invasion of Tibet over 50 years ago, China has systematically destroyed the Tibetan culture. One of the most profound losses is the tradition of the great master yogis. The entire system which supported these fascinating mind masters has been inexorably eliminated. In order to record these mystical practitioners for posterity, the filmmakers were given permission to film heretofore secret demonstrations and to conduct interviews on subject matter rarely discussed. This profound historical, spiritual and educational film will someday be the last remnant of these amazing practitioners."

Read more!

FISA Bill Bush Bluff Bull

Olbermann for President. Read more!

Extra Extra! A message from the apostle Immortal Technique

The Rumors are true, there will be a new Immortal Technique CD coming out at the end of this Spring. And I am going on a short tour to promote it before I go back and finish the next CD. I have partnered with Green Lantern to bring you the new project entitled

“The 3rd World”

It is an album/mixtape of all original tracks. Political but something very brutal and street orientated like I mentioned in earlier interviews.

I was told that for every page you write in a journal you lose readers, and while I don’t expect you all to sit here for 20 minutes in your busy day to read this entry... It costs less than a stamp to print this up and read in the bathroom or on a break to spread the word.


Now… all of the journal entries that I have made on this page have been toward a specific cause or a subject matter that I have found integral to the survival, advancement, and the education of the Revolutionary spirit of my people. When I say “my people” though, I have already lost some of the more cynical and semantic-driven individuals who would answer, “Are we not all Americans?” Or even deeper and more placating to philosophical means, “Are we not all human beings?” And what of the class structured divisions? Am I to resent another because they were born into wealth, by no fault of their own, as are those who are looked down upon by this society because they are born naked into the world screaming in a refugee camp? Is it not my responsibility to educate those that are kept in a prison of opportunity and blind ignorance to the outside world much like the prince Siddhartha before his divine revelation? Who are “my people?”


It took me most of my young life to begin understanding and learning the extremely long and painful history behind the concept of race. That it was built around the necessity to justify slavery and religious superiority for something beyond the visible goals mentioned. It was created to enforce economic and political domination. When I acknowledged that, it shone a light on a great many things. We must understand that the countries that we immigrate from to America are the bread basket for this empire, and without them there wouldn’t be a fraction of the luxuries, culture and food we have now. The propaganda behind immigration is a necessity for some to drum up because there is a fear of our culture. But if we take away the influence of Latino, African, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures what do the xenophobic racists who hide behind the preservation of “American Culture” really have. I am not threatened by other people’s beliefs and their religious preferences because my convictions are strong, because I have faith in my perspective and I welcome the ideological challenges and historical debate. Were I weak and fearful of confronting those changes perhaps I would fear the addition of more opinions. Such the same are people with allowing others to practice their own culture, because in truth American culture is essentially to many uneducated white Americans supposed to be centered in European culture. Which has never really been true, but has been perceived that way for the past couple of centuries. But now we are calling on America to fulfill it’s promise or wear the crown of hypocrisy it has been ducking and dodging for years.

It was Leo Strauss, one of the surrogate fathers of modern conservatism that suggested that liberalism had failed in the 60’s and 70’s because of the social revolt and apparent movement towards nihilism and hedonistic impulses that tried to devoid the nation of a moral foundation. But there is no greater mischaracterization. The nation was not led astray or conflicted but was in fact schizophrenic during that Revolutionary era. It was torn between the identity it claimed as the Land of the Free and that of the violent oppressor of it’s own people and those with a desire of self-governing over the 3rd World. There are people who have been naïve enough to believe the subtle propaganda thrown out there that attempts to marginalize people who speak about the method in which Communism and Capitalism served the great empires of the world. In such a manner was their service rendered that too many people behind the scenes grew rich at the expense of vassal states that served one or the other side. They were dedicated to the doctrine but unable to look beyond the meaning of their own significance when confronted with the reality that they were pawns in a much larger game. And while the people who lived through such chaos begin to realize the cause and effect in their old age sometimes their children forget. The second generation immigrants that come here from Latin American, Middle Eastern, African and Asian countries sometimes have only have a pedestrian understanding of what past US interventionism has been a part of, in order to protect what it calls “it’s interests.”

With the dollar in the toilet and the subject of the economy FINALLY becoming a national issue the ideas on how to rebuild an economy, and define our foreign policy are still muddled. Some proposed that a low dollar is good for business because others can now buy American products cheaper and it helps us sell goods abroad, until it began to sink like the Lusitania and the average persons savings account lost a significant % on the global market. But since that idiot Brit Hume and the rest of the Right Wing fluff girls on Fox aren’t missing a meal and, none of their friends are struggling to make ends meet, they kept proposing that the economy was doing fine… Unless of course you asked a regular person, and regular people I’m glad to see have finally started making issues like these and healthcare a part of the election instead of nonsense sidelines distractions like missions to Mars and constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage or the big illegal immigrant scare which I’ll discuss shortly…

I recently walked into a store downtown the other day because it was cold as hell outside and I wanted to buy a hat. I found two that looked identical, one was a little thicker than the other and hat a larger brim on it. I picked the heavier hat and looked it over, it had a big sticker that said “Made in America” and named a factory in Michigan where it was made. And right next to it there was another hat with some famous name brand that was thinner and looked kinda flimsy. I looked inside the hat and it said “Made in Vietnam.” Vietnam is a country that this nation once lost a Guerilla war against, (for a variety of reasons) but while the fall of Saigon symbolized the end of Americas forced occupation of the country it was a pyrrhic victory for that nation and its neighbors that had their entire infrastructure obliterated after relentless bombing runs and years of fighting the colonial powers who have historically profited from this political love/hate relationship.

I compared the hats in price and I saw that this item that was made for and handful of pennies in a foreign country with a brand name was selling for about $16 while the sturdier American made $4 hat stood unassumingly right next to it.

I usually buy hats, gloves and mixtapes all from the street vendors on 125th to offset the gentrification perpetuated by the corporate investments in the neighborhoods ruthless gentrification. Harlem is certainly not the same crime ridden area that had left murdered people on our front door when I was a child, but it was made into a nicer place for the specific purpose of moving certain people out and replacing the population of the area. All the while skyrocketing the cost of living. The equivalent of me coming over to your house renovating and cleaning it and you thinking I’m so nice for doing so, until you realize my ulterior motives. That I’m planning on eating in your kitchen, sleeping in your bedroom and living in your living room, but don’t worry I left you a little spot to sleep, next to the shitter. I often explain to my friends in the music business that soon there will be no more “hood” in New York City of which to speak in their rhymes, only to reminisce about. As outsourcing increases and technological revolution sets in workers find their job skills obsolete and their rents quadruples. But, like so many other things this is just a microcosm of a global effort to ethnically cleanse populations.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/gentrification/

US economists have always “conveniently” seen the nationalization of natural resources as bad for the 3rd world because it is said to limit competition and stifle the growth of the global market. Unless of course you are CITGO or have control of your own nation with the sphere of influence and authority to create a national policy around your own market. These are the same people that advocate the exploitation of foreign workers under the premise that those are the best paying jobs in the developing world’s sector and that they are doing the local population a favor by being there. And the 3rd world governments are usually compliant, not because of the economic growth to the nation itself, but rather they look the other way from substandard conditions and outlawed unionizing because of the massive amount of corporate kick-backs they get. The responsibility for unbridled corruption falls on the shoulders of both laissez fair economics practicing companies and installed regimes that are “friendly” to what we call “US interests.” Maybe that’s why we forcefully install and protect so many dictatorships and look away from the abuses of those authoritarian regimes we try to pass of as democracies engage in.

Some will point out that I could have saved you all about 3 or 4 paragraphs by concluding that we go to war for money. Some people have told me that these long dissertations of mine are too complicated to read and that they should be simplified because somehow I’m “less from the streets” if I express myself in these terms. But I’m writing this from Harlem right now. I’m still back and forth from South America where the ghettos are tougher than anything ever seen in the States. And the purpose for this was to express that the economic downturn and outsourcing in this nation does NOT strengthen the local structure but reverses the functionality of labor practices, democracy and human rights law in the developing world.

Global trickle down economics shouldn’t be the mantra of 21st century society.

Needless to say I bought the $4 hat and I left and it left me thinking about the rational behind the debasement of our currency. I also thought about how whenever I did any of the prison programs I do for young Black and Latino people and walked through all the neighborhoods in America I saw people of all so called races, and social walks of life who gained nothing but suffering from our foreign policy.

So naturally the question that always comes to mind when I read about protecting US interests is “Just whose interests in the US are we protecting?” It’s most certainly not the interests of the people at the bottom of the de facto caste system. They are not on the board of directors at the Banks that give developing countries loans to pay off the interest from the loans they were previously given a few decades ago. And they aren’t ones who have been selling you a $5 cup of coffee that costs a fraction of a penny to produce while starving out their workers and blocking their collective bargaining. People who argue that the middle class would enjoy discounts by way of cheaper products because of outsourcing jobs are useless. Their like an asshole who roots for a sports team with the logic that if they win the superbowl, or the world series they will personally inherit the economic boom enjoyed by the city itself. Local businesses have a good day but, sports stores sell Jersey’s, the city pays for a new stadium sometimes. But after that the painfully obvious fact that there is little gain sinks in and someone’s who just lost their 401K ‘s gotta clean up the ticker tape parade. Mind you this coming from a man who put up dough on the Giant’s for 17-1 odds, so it’s not about me hating on sports.

The average American citizen shares probably about a fraction of a percentage, an almost negligible amount of profit for what we achieve abroad. Compared to those sitting on the top of the pyramid that it is. Everything that we touch is imported from the far reaches of the world. Here it provides us with a variety of goods, but what do we trade for that? When did turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s political assassinations while dumping money in the hands of warlords and funding the political “stability” (ie: payoffs to heads of state that allow horribly sub-standards conditions of work) suddenly become in the interest of all the Black and Latino and even middle class white communities???

They aren’t protecting us from terrorism. As a matter of fact it’s become apparent that whether they like to admit it or not the end result of them shielding extremists and militants justifies our presence in the region. We have trouble even deciding what that word and torture means anymore. It isn’t even in the interest of any of the Semitic Diaspora here of either Jewish or Palestinian descent who wish to find a lasting peace when we fund billions of dollars to an IDF war machine. But it’s still actually seen as the “duty” of American according to the corporate media to sponsor that. (Both Hillary and Obama are staunch supporters of Israel by the way)

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1201523779464&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

It’s interesting that the ratio of the population would really have us sending more money to a variety of other countries that have a higher number of representatives among our constituency. This unbalance wouldn’t bother me so much as a taxpayer except that when the inner city communities ask for money from the Federal Government it’s characterized as welfare by the pious GOP and even some Democrats and Libertarians. I think back to the people of El Salvador and those in Nicaragua whose right to elect whatever form of government suited their economy best was blocked. A civil war was funded to a degree that I don’t think modern historian really have the intellectual courage to come to terms with yet. But they have to now. Because the restructuring of 500 yr old class and racial structures perpetrated by European nations during the age of Conquest is the right of every 3rd World nation. It is not our right to be hateful and racist in a reactionary manner but it is our right to be offensive with facts to the oppressor if that means taking back what was stolen from us during the era of Colonialism.

Colonialism. I am one of many who have suggested that this word doesn’t do the period of 1492 to 1994 justice. It doesn’t embody the same awe inspiring terror that words and phrases like “Genocide” or “Systematic Rape” do. But that is exactly what it is. It is decorated with high interest loans that modernize a small % of the country, it is littered with so-called missionaries, it even though it exchanged military presence for a more subtle mercantile monopoly it cannot hide. It coats the concept of ruthless and deceptive control with sweet sugar, but the sugar itself was probably processed through the backbreaking slave labor that our ancestors toiled in during the age of our physical bondage. And now to escape mental slavery we must understand the various dimensions of this foreign policy. We must comprehend the history that mutated a free nation into a slave state after years of violating the land and the people who lived on it.

Around the world there are those who don’t live in the safety of a college dorm or the shelter of even pubic housing and whose Revolutionary ideas, are not sabotaged by the super powers that be. To understand instead of romanticize why people in developing countries Revolt and yet are fearful of Revolution for a good reason we must destroy the mythology of such a struggle. For innocent people always die and innocent women are always raped, even in fighting for the most just causes. I have stated before that this has happened in all Revolutions dating back to the dawn of organized government and tribal society. But when a system has become so corrupt, so blatantly abusive of the people and their capacity to endure the hypocrisy and burden of a nonfunctional or non-believable centralized system, the people chose to risk it all. They risk death, misery torture, and they risk uncertainty. They risk starvation and annihilation for a new life, not just for themselves, but more importantly for their children. But when governments are overthrown by outside sources for the purpose of regime change the economic motivations far outweighs the peoples’ interests.

That is the difference in between a Revolution, and what the ideal that the right wing asks the people of Iraq to pay for. In the end it is someone else’s vision of their country and the control of their oil supply. The concept of Freedom is a propaganda tool rather than a symbiotic partner of Democracy. The Revolution is betrayed and the war exists to prolong war itself and consolidate power, not abroad, but here.

Trying to understand the dynamic of our relationship as a Federal Republic, whose corporations are its image abroad as much as it’s military presence around the world without digesting these facts is nonsensical. In order to understand Christianity for example or even Islam, one must understand the history of their regions of origin. One must learn the history of the Egyptian Dynasty’s, the Roman Empire, the Parthian Empire, Zoroastrianism, The Khazars, The Byzantine Empire, the Caliphate and the Northern African nations who adopted all these religions at one point in time. One must be able to grasp the idea of what the world that these faiths were born into was like. Judaism admiringly has the benefit of the Old Testament, which is intertwined with the historical essence of a people and the geopolitical reality of migration, survival and knowledge of self. Something I wish my people had more of. A Cultural Revolution without the destruction of ancient artifacts and the violation of human rights to bring a people struggling with their identity a new idea of who they were as a point of trajectory to not just see who they are, but who they will become in the future.

End of Part 1.

This political season because of the amount of influence that I guess I have with people who choose to immerse themselves in the culture and roots of Hip Hop, Supporters of Street Organizations, Youth in general and specifically the young Latino, Black & Middle Eastern intellectual base, I have been approached by many representatives for the people who are running for office. Some have asked me for endorsements, and some have just wanted to talk. (Note: Hillary Clinton and the Major Republican factions were not among them.) I have, been approached the most though by Cynthia McKinney, Obama and Ron Paul supporters who are either former Democrats or Republicans, (I have right wing acquaintances believe it or not…) I had a small debate with a select few of the more heavily involved upper tier of them about some serious issues I had with Ron Paul as a political entity. Even though some people throw their support behind him because of his libertarian and fiscal conservatism, we must be clear that he doesn’t pose a threat to the structure of the right wing as much as he poses a threat to the balance of the left wing. Libertarian doesn’t mean liberal after all, and it’s not synonymous with Revolutionary.

If there are young and impressionable people coming from the left and the democratic party to support a man who claimed to be “the most conservative member of the Republican Party” during the presidential debates. There is something wrong with that. That’s not hip, sexy or cool. Stripping down the Dept. of Education and replacing it with some bone marrow devoid femur of a tax credit borders on ludicrous and I don’t mean the rapper muthafucka. He may speak volumes of truth about some domestic issues and the foreign policy that we have concerning Iraq. But it’s not enough.

I won’t vote for someone just because they wish to end the war and talk about bringing the troops home, because so does Obama and even Clinton alludes to downsizing. But think about it, without that message, without his call for the ending of the war in Iraq and talking about the causes for 9/11, he would not be in the limelight or have garnered a tenth of the support that he had. It would be the equivalent, numerically, although not ideologically to George Bush not being an evangelical Christian and seeking the nomination back in 2000. I’m not suggesting that people who support him are all naïve and stupid, not at all. But I have only met a handful of people who knew the extent of his positions besides a “humble foreign policy” and closing the borders. Sure I read the websites and watched the debates, read all his platforms but I also did research. This debate is interesting on all key issues especially for Republicans.

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/special/forums/video.html

I can applaud Dr. Paul’s theorized ideas about US policy abroad and while I will admit that his ideas about tax reform are very interesting especially about deconstructing the IMF (which I’m sure would cost him his life,) some of his domestic policies are an indefensible failure. Sadly some have even become the safe haven for white people who like to hide their bigotry and small-minded uncultured ideas about the principles of democracy and the historical context of immigration behind his message. And I’m not saying he’s a racist, because first of all that terminology itself is so overused it needs to be updated and redefined as much the phrase “Real Hip Hop.” I’m not mad because he got money and refused to give it back to white supremacists. I understood his reasoning. I didn’t, however buy his rationale that claimed a, ‘property rights’, issue as the reason he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. The bill that allows Black, Brown and White people to eat at the same places, go to the same schools and drink at the same fountains, that legislation that hate it or love it, forced integration. That’s something confederate flag waving whites have associated with “big government” and have hated Democrats for, ever since in the South was occupied by General Grants Army.

No, we didn’t need to go to “white schools” to get a better education, (“I’ve heard this attempt at a logical argument by conservative African Americans) we needed the same resources and attention that this fundamentally racist government thought we didn’t need because we were slated to be a permanent underclass in the land of the free. Blacks and Indigenous people were purported by Eugenicists during the early 20th century to become extinct, so therefore no effort was made to preserve their condition. And even without that theory there was no real expectation for us to join the elite that’s why education was seen as a farfetched idea for our populations.

The Civil Rights Bill and the way it was implemented as well as Affirmative Action are as I stated before, are a pathetic excuse for reparations, but without it we would be a modernized version of South Africa during the early 1980’s.

There is little justification for this issue so I refuse to be mischaracterized as someone who “Doesn’t get it” or is “confused” about his position. No son, I know what they are and apparently if your reading this and you are in disagreement then there is a question about your Revolutionary nature...not mine.

I would love to see Cynthia McKinney get some more light in the press considering that if we are talking about standing up for your principles and putting it all on the line, none of them hold a candle to this woman. But I would also love to see Obama get the nomination and win, I liked his reps very much, just like the Ron Paul supporters ( who were very respectful and debated well), very dedicated to changing the direction of this nation. I just think that whoever Republicans are hoping to win they must have an agenda behind it and right now they are attacking Clinton hard because they want her to lose against Obama. I think they still believe she has a better shot of getting independent votes than McCain. Although, pay attention… McCain was smart enough to not feed into the negative media about illegal immigration. After his endorsement meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger who beat native Californian Cruz Bustamante it became obvious that he plans to go after minorities by splitting the Latino vote almost in half the way Schwarzenegger did. McCain hopes to achieve the same result knowing that even if Clinton wins instead of Obama he is still not going to get any significant % of the African American vote. So that’s why banking on the Nation’s largest minority will be a must.

Some people are taken aback by McCain’s ideas about being in Iraq for 100 years, but I think that in some capacity we will remain there for a considerable amount of time regardless of who is president. After all the war in Germany has been over for about 60 years and we still have almost 80,000 troops there and the German government foots a 1 billion $ a year bill for their presence. We have 40,000 troops in South Korea and another 40,000 or so in Japan…We have thousands in Italy, Panama, Afghanistan, the Balkans etc… Essentially everywhere that we have gone to war or “intervened” so I think whether we are ready to accept it or not unless someone who has no strings attached wins this race it will be the same thing over and over again.

That’s why, I can heavily appreciate any message about America not being in Iraq, although having a non interventionist policy in these terms of absolutism leaves questions about what one would do in cases like Rwanda and Darfur. But realize that when you decide to police the world and reap the economic benefits of having a capitalist scaffold built around the world you have to pay maintenance of an empire. If nothing else for the illusion that you really represent freedom and liberty for the people around the world, but when we go to Kuwait and not to Rwanda it makes things to obvious... Anything else gives us the same Clintonesque lateness that brought us to Bosnia a couple of years AFTER the massacres to overthrow an old fraction of a man who had already committed atrocities in the face of the world unchallenged. The question was posed here…

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/special/forums/video.html Check the Darfur q&a

I think this debate is important to keep having, in order to better understand when and how to intervene, when or when not to send US troops or when to work with the UN to give food or supplies to a cause. It is objectionable to anyone with a conscious to NOT think we should have done more or should be doing more all these scenarios. But the question becomes, when do we run in to provide aid for the sake of our moral responsibility and when is it a question of our selfish corporate interests? What litmus test can be run to determine the global consequence and the genuine cause that precedes any other agenda when we enter another nation?

That is the real debate we need to have.

A charismatic leader who is true to his or her ideals, and doesn’t betray them for the sake of money or comfort is admirable. But that doesn’t imply they are Revolutionary. Ron Paul was a breath of fresh air in some domestic respects and when it comes to his position on world issues he was often mischaracterized and slandered as a, “Neville Chamberlain” of the Right Wing when he is just a man who understands the fiscal reality of this mess in Iraq. He was right on when he was talking about repealing federal drug laws that are fundamentally racist, I thought his honest views about abortion brought legal issues into question and he admirably changed his position on the death penalty. But he and other conservatives and libertarians are not at all progressive or Revolutionary as some call them when it comes to the issues of immigration. Unless Revolutionary involves repealing the citizenship of children here in American born to undocumented parents and shipping them back home. He’s definitely not as intellectually backward enough to think we can round people up with the Army so I can applaud that because he was definitely not as one dimensional as say this screaming harpy below.

Who I’m going to present now, not because there is an ounce of validity that can even be considered, but to show how conservatives invent people. This woman had NO political leverage whatsoever. She didn’t even have a reason for being on the air. She’s helped nobody but herself talking about (just like Lou Dobbs) and yet FOX and others have decided to give people like this a platform. Because it is a divisive issue for whites in America and it is becoming so for Blacks especially where there are issues of Black/Brown violence growing in the communities. She reportedly endorsed Ron Paul openly once after Tom Tancredo (long overdue to) threw in his chips but the endorsement was asked to be rescinded, and subsequently was, because to put it quite frankly, they thought the bitch was a liability.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvtuJXajE2M

Smart move.

None of my criticisms of any of the politicians I have mentioned are said out of disrespect, so I don’t think it’s possible to marginalize or attempt to defame me as an individual for having a mind of my own and not wanting to be a part of the “Young Libertarian Republican Revolution.” Because to be quite honest I’d rather shoot heroin...

But, I do have a great amount of esteem for any man who will stand among the people in his own party or political wing and fight vigorously against pure illogicality.

For example I have argued hard with a lot of rebels and historically challenged militants about how white people are not devils. I’ve definitely had the ongoing discussion about Marx’s economic principles being flawed and how socialism itself needs a new definition and new understanding, a new testament if you will. I’ve argued about Che Guevara’s mishandling of the Cuban economy and his marriage to Communism instead of Revolutionary independence even though he was right about the Sino Soviet dispute. I’ve argued about how Islam, although incredibly revolutionary in its context as a spiritual and social mechanism for people who live under oppression still has the capacity as it has proven in the past to be an agent of conquest in Africa just as Christianity once was. And although my mind was opened to another chamber by reading the Qu’ran, you cannot talk to me about it as a religious faith without speaking on the history of Islam, Arabs and The Middle East in general and the entire region in historical perspective. If you are majoring in the subject or would like to learn more I would suggest reading at least couple of volumes of Al-Tabari’s (838-923) “The History of Prophets and Kings”. I highly recommend Volume 36, “The Revolt of the Zanj”, for those who are more advanced in this area of study.

****I will NOT tolerate someone’s misinterpretation of what I just said, because all versions of history are my greatest ally. Virtually all religions after all are brought to people by their conquerors. And any religion can be used by an imperial power’s tool to reinforce it’s sphere of influence over a region much like the Ottoman Empire did in the Balkans, Spain did with Christianity in the Americas. So whether in violent campaigns or through the condescension of missionary agents that come into a country to offset the cruelty of the colonial powers the result is the same... a consolidation of political power through the use of religion.****

But this is not a criticism of any religion in specific terms but rather the idea that anyone who would follow a prophet or a doctrine is flawed from the moment they are born. They are human after all and so when unquestionable divinity is attributed to anyone or anything besides God, it is often the benchmark for where the excuses and indulgences of civic and economic practice begin. A prophet of God is a man of peace but his followers are almost always men who use the divine power of the message to satisfy their thirst for power. And then it is no longer God making man in his own image but rather man who makes and then remakes God in HIS own image to suit whatever military, economic or social agenda he has planned.

We all have our hypocrisies and flaws. But I’m not conceited or easily disillusioned so I don’t shy away from addressing them and trying to fix them when they are pointed out, that’s the process of growing intellectually. I think anyone who would take offense to my honest and fair questions would do themselves, their ideas and their favored candidate a great disservice.

After all I can at least validate the honesty of the opinions given by John McCain, Ron Paul, Colin Powell and others who walked their talk and went to fight in Vietnam. However misguided that war really was, at least they stood by what they preached, it actually makes a debate with their ideas more constructive. Unlike the college Republican chicken hawks who cloud issues to avoid debate and ramble about Islamo-Fascism but would rather get raped with a paddle at a Fraternity initiation than fight in the desert against the, “mortal enemies of America.” I would think they’d be the first in line to raise arms against those who attacked us because they were jealous of our freedom and driven insane by the fact that we have cable TV.

As an apprentice of Revolution I train, and I read a lot. The master teachers I have studied from like John Henrik Clarke and others, opened doors to the past and helped me gain a perspective of my peoples past. But this also left me and other Revolutionaries with the responsibility of our nation’s future. A revolutionary owes his allegiance to the people, and therefore, I cannot be the champion of a privileged class of American citizens before those in our country that suffer the greatest weight of what this Federal Republic requires in order for them to earn their right to live here.

I fight for the working class and the immigrant in America who built and is building our future as we speak. I don’t think that everyone who has issues with immigration is a racist, that’s just not true. After all you can have serious issues with the domestic and foreign policy of Israel and not be Anti-Semetic (no matter what AIPAC says), and you don’t have to hate Blacks to question Affirmative action. But I spit in the face of those who would persecute immigrants under the guise of legality. So don’t think you can fuckin’ toy with me with your sheetrock-thin talking points. After all, how many Native American treaties and international laws has the US violated? I fight for both the documented and undocumented that live in this far reaching empire, those of all colors who have found their calling in a Revolutionary spirit.

Some people think I hate America. But I just see her for what she was, I see her for more than what she is, and I see what she still could be. I see potential for advancement in the way we think as human beings, while others just see the opportunity to keep using her like a whore until there is nothing left. Before of course they discard her and move on through the evolution of globalization that makes corporations gods and nations the lowly servants of false idol. I guess it makes it easier to marginalize my positions by calling me a conspiracy theorist for believing that government lies to it’s people, than it is to talk truth. It’s easier to send me death threats and bullshit emails about immigration, messages about being a nigger and spic instead of discussing the past 2000 years. I guess you forgot that I passed The Point of No Return…

And I think the people of this nation deserve better than what they have. They deserve to pay less taxes, and to have more accountability from their government. To have more efficient service and to stop the political nepotism that exists in Washington and, that has ruled this country incompetently for too long. America can be better than this. And its problems do not stem from people coming here to work. After all most of us immigrated here because our countries were taken over in a post-colonial age with the help of this and other former imperial powers for the express, purpose of exploiting our nations’ resources. Much like the music industry comes to the Underground to try and prostitute our talent. We come here for a new life, for freedom from fake democracy and the repression both political and religious of our people. We come here for the promise. But that promise is sometimes a lie.

The immigration issue is not a simple legal issue, it is a complex human rights question and a global reality that repeats itself every generational cycle. And now it is a tool to dismantle progressive ideas and to dismantle a nation of people who are on the brink of Revolution but choose to go backwards and forget what it was supposed to mean to be an “American”. I am not opposed to having immigrants learn English, after all I did. Spanish was my first language. But the attitude that we must give up all our culture just to assimilate is the testament to the racism sometimes involved with the immigration issue, because white Europeans didn’t have to give up theirs completely.

Our lengthy, often ignored, proud history before enslavement is who we really are spiritually, maybe that’s the problem. Maybe if we had a less important role in defining what it means to actually be a human being they wouldn’t give a fuck about us learning it. Those who worked here for over 10 years to build America should be able to celebrate that just as others here do without being deported. Spare the children who are innocent in all this prison camp like imprisonment and homelessness when you ship their parents back with these ICE traps. Learn, that if there is a God he surely would not smile down on a nation that cast out his poorest and humblest, and those that are stronger in their practice of faith than much of this nation. But even if we take religion out of the equation completely, one day the climate of this Earth will change. Remember that the only thing that protects us from the merciless radiation of the Sun is the magnetic field around Earth, which is theoretically caused by the constant revolutions of molten iron. Interestingly enough due to our slightly elliptical shape, the most protection garnered from this field, is at our equator, the center of the 3rd world. Perhaps one day we will be crossing the border South instead of North for survival, and I’m sure someone will come up with an excuse to take our land again.

I could go on for about 30 more pages of history and rip apart the general consensus on immigration held by those who favor deportation in America. But I won’t I’ll just say that we as so called Latino people are not the first to receive this treatment, all South Eastern Europeans (and Middle Easterners) including Italians, Armenians, Slavs, Greeks, etc were portrayed in the same light when they first came here. Immigrants are the life and blood of America, and yet we must suffer as many others did before us, the torments of the establishments that finds us incapable of assimilating to the American family and championing their selfish angry Eurocentric nationalist ideas. Interestingly enough while these nationalities I mentioned were eventually incorporated into America through the idea of a “melting pot”, we indigenous people were never meant to be a part of the melting pot idea. That was reserved for European immigrants. We were just the brown wood destined to be fuel for the fire. It is a destiny we now have the power to change and that we need to change. After all the real victims of the worst economies in America are those who are at the bottom, not the upper or middle class.

My people are suffering the most in this country, more than anyone. And regardless of your skin color, or religious affiliation, if you are strong willed, mature, progressive, intelligent, compassionate and Revolutionary, if you are someone who believes in truth and freedom, they are YOUR people too. And that in turn answers the initial question about who “my people” are.


Afterthoughts:

I hear the word “change” being thrown around so much, repeated over and over by candidates, but nothing too specific about what exactly they will change. Ending the occupation in Iraq is a good change, but cutting funding for the Dept. of Education (whose teachers are severely underpaid and not given resources for better education as it is) because its BIG government isn’t a good change. Neither is repealing Roe Vs. Wade, and taking a woman’s right to a terminate pregnancy when she is the victim of rape or incest because of some theological doctrine that people who run as the Christian candidates like to use selectively. While I am not personally in favor of abortion that is my personal choice (that I will speak of on a later day) that I cannot apply to others. I think there is something to be said about the legality of life in the womb. But I sometimes wonder though how these individuals who have run on these strict pro-life tickets like Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback, Fred Thompson and Dick Cheney would’ve reacted if their wife or daughter was raped and she became pregnant, or if she was knocked up by some “swarthy non-English speaking sweaty illegal alien.” Someone that makes everything in their home including their dinner but they resent having to treat at the same hospitals or teach at the same schools.

My experience has taught me that people’s self-righteous, sanctimonious nature is usually only applicable in a vacuum, because in real life you have to bleed for it. So it’s easy for some people to think like this. It’s also easy for them to chant “stay the course”, most of them never picked up a rifle or stayed on extended tours in 120 degree weather while their families suffered back in the states, otherwise they might understand what it feels like to want to come home. It’s easy to think that “surge is working” until you realize that your tax dollars you don’t want going to “big government” are in Iraq buying off street gangs, Extremist Militia’s, with monthly stipends to decrease violence against US troops. Then again this war being conceived and then run by people who dipped out when it was their chance to serve still amazes me.

Next thing you know they’ll be putting Arabian Horse racers in charge of FEMA and hooking their girlfriends up with high paying jobs at the World Bank.


The world is a cold place sometime. I’m glad I bought that $4 hat.


Con Amor de Revolucion,


Immortal
Technique

President of Viper Records


PLEEEEEEEEEEASE read the rest. Read more!

New Orlean City Council Shuts Down Public Housing Debate

New Orleans: Locked Outside the Gates
By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 28 December 2007

In a remarkable symbol of the injustices of post-Katrina reconstruction, hundreds of people were locked out of a public New Orleans City Council meeting addressing demolition of 4,500 public housing apartments. Some were tazered, many pepper sprayed and a dozen arrested.

Outside the chambers, iron gates were chained and padlocked even before the scheduled start.

The scene looked like one of those countries on TV that is undergoing a people's revolution - and the similarities were only beginning. (See video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMBWAXfGsc4 )

Dozens of uniformed police secured the gates and other entrances. Only developers and those with special permission from council members were allowed in - the rest were kept locked outside the gates. Despite dozens of open seats in the council chambers, pleas to be allowed in were ignored.

Chants of "Housing is a human right!" and "Let us in!" thundered through the concrete breezeway.

Public housing residents came and spoke out despite an intense campaign of intimidation. Residents were warned by phone that if they publicly opposed the demolitions they would lose all housing assistance. Residents opposed to the demolition had simple demands. If the authorities insisted on spending hundreds of millions to tear down hundreds of structurally sound buildings containing 4,500 public housing subsidized apartments, there should be a guarantee that every resident could return to a similarly subsidized apartment. Alternatively, the government should use the hundreds of millions to repair the apartments so people could come home. Neither alternative was acceptable to HUD. A plan of residents to partner with the AFL-CIO Housing Trust to save their homes was also ignored.

Outside, SWAT team members and police in riot gear and on horses began to arrive as rain started falling. Those locked out included public housing residents, a professor from Southern University, graduate students, the Episcopal bishop of Louisiana, ministers, lawyers, law students, homeless people who lived in tents across the street from City Hall, affordable housing allies from across the country and dozens of others.

Inside the chambers, the Rev. Torin Sanders and others insisted that the locked out persons be allowed to come and stand inside along the walls - a common practice for over 30 years. No one could recall any city council locking people out of a public meeting. The request to allow people to stand was denied. The council then demanded silence from those inside. Those who continued to demand that the others be let in were pointed out by police, physically taken down and arrested. Ironically, some young men were tasered right in front of the speaker's podium.

This was a meeting the council had repeatedly tried to avoid. It was only held after residents (100 percent African-American and nearly all mothers and grandmothers) got an emergency court order stopping demolitions until the council acted. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced long ago it was going to demolish 4,500 public housing apartments despite the Katrina crisis of affordable housing, no matter what anyone said. HUD had no plans to ask the council or anyone else for approval. The judge said otherwise, so the meeting was scheduled.

Leaders of the US Congress - Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - asked that the decision be delayed 60 days so they could try to move forward on Senate Bill 1668, which would resolve many of the demolition problems. This request was backed by New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama.

Opponents cited the affordable housing crisis in New Orleans. Homeless people camped across from City Hall and for blocks under the interstate. The number of homeless people has doubled since Katrina. Thousands of residents in FEMA trailers across the Gulf Coast were being evicted. (More on the reasons to oppose demolition can be found here).

Solidarity demonstrations opposing demolition were held in Washington, DC; New York; Oakland; Minneapolis; Houston; North Carolina; Maine; Philadelphia; Cleveland, New Jersey and Boston. Thousands of people across the country contacted city council members. Dozens of community, housing and human rights groups petitioned the council not to demolish until there was an enforceable requirement of one-for-one replacement of housing.

But hours before the meeting began, a majority of the council publicly announced on the front page of the local paper that they were going to approve demolition no matter what people said at the meeting. The paper, the developers and others were delighted. Residents and affordable housing allies were not.

Inside, the council started the meeting surrounded by armed police, National Guard and undercover authorities from many law enforcement agencies.

Outside, the locked-out could see the people who had been arrested on the inside being dragged away to police wagons. A few of the protesters then pulled open one of the gates. The police started shooting arcs of pepper spray into the crowd. A woman's scream pierced the chaos as police fired tasers into the crowd. Medics wiped pepper spray from fallen people's eyes. A young woman who was tasered in the back went into a seizure and was taken to the hospital.

Inside and out, a dozen people were arrested - most for disturbing the peace. They joined another dozen who had been arrested over the past week in protest actions against the demolitions.

The City Council meeting continued. Supporters of demolition were given careful, courteous attention and softball questions by council members. Opponents less so.

Despite pleas from displaced residents, dozens of community organizations and federal elected officials, the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to allow demolition to proceed. In its approval, the council did promise to urge HUD to listen to residents and to work for one-for-one replacement of affordable housing. Several city council members read from typed statements about their reasons to support demolition: the deplorable state of public housing; the lack of available money for repair; the oral promises of all, the federal government and developers, to do something better for the community.

After the meeting, residents vowed to continue their struggle for affordable housing for everyone and to resist demolitions - putting their bodies before bulldozers if necessary.

The struggle for affordable housing continues, as does the campaign to stop demolition until there is a real right to return and one-for-one replacement of housing. Residents and local advocates applaud and appreciate the support of allies from across the nation. Critics label national supporters as "outside agitators" - exactly the same charge leveled at civil rights activists historically. But people understand that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Public housing residents and local affordable housing advocates welcome the humble participation of social justice advocates of whatever age, of whatever race, from whatever place, who join and act in true solidarity.

Residents vow to make sure that the promises made by the council and the mayor are enforced. For example, the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, announced that he would not allow HUD to demolish two of the four housing developments until HUD gave documentation of funded plans including one-for-one replacement of the housing demolished and details of the developments and their plans.

The Senate will continue to be lobbied to pass SB 1668 - which would really guarantee one-for-one replacement of housing. It is currently stalled in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee because of opposition by Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter.

Litigation is still pending in state and federal courts to enforce Louisiana and US laws that should protect residents from illegal demolitions. Investigations into the legality of locking people out of a public meeting, the legality of a law passed at such a meeting and the indiscriminate use of tasers and pepper spray are all ongoing.

Padlocked and chained gates will only amplify the voices of the locked-out calling for justice. Pepper spray and tasers illustrate the problems, but will not deter people from protesting for just causes. Bulldozers may start up, but just people will resist and create a reality where housing is a real human right.

Stephanie Mingo, a working grandmother who is one of the leaders of the residents, promised to continue the resistance and the fight for affordable housing: "We did not come this far to turn back now. This fight is far from over. We are not resting until everyone has the right to return home."

Those wanting additional information should look to: http://www.justiceforneworleans.org or http://www.defendneworleanspublichousing.org.
Read more!

Microchip future not sci-fi

Technology already exists that could lead to the tracking of purchases and people. Critics fear a loss of privacy.
By Todd Lewan
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 01/27/2008 01:22:46 AM MST

Here's a vision of the not-so-distant future:

• Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items — and, by extension, consumers — wherever they go, from a distance.

• A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads, "live spam," may be beamed at them.

• In "Smart Homes," sensors built into walls, floors and appliances will inventory possessions, record eating habits, monitor medicine cabinets — all the while reporting data to marketers eager for a peek into the occupants' private lives.

Science fiction? In truth, much of the radio frequency identification technology that enables objects and people to be tagged and tracked wirelessly already exists — and new and potentially intrusive uses of it are being patented, perfected and deployed.

Some of the world's largest corporations are vested in the success of RFID technology, which couples highly miniaturized computers with radio antennas to broadcast information about sales and buyers to company databases.

Already, microchips are turning up in some computer printers, car keys and tires, on shampoo bottles and department store clothing tags. They are also in library books and "contactless" payment cards (such as American Express' "Blue" and ExxonMobil's "Speedpass").

Companies say the RFID tags improve supply-chain efficiency, reduce theft and guarantee that brand-name products are authentic, not counterfeit. At a store, RFID doorways could scan your purchases automatically as you leave, eliminating tedious checkouts.

At home, convenience is a selling point: RFID-enabled refrigerators could warn about expired milk, generate weekly shopping lists, even send signals to your interactive TV so that you see "personalized" commercials for foods you have a history of buying.

Potential for abuse

"We've seen so many different uses of the technology," said Dan Mullen, president of AIM Global, a national association of data-collection businesses, including RFID, "and we're probably still just scratching the surface in terms of places RFID can be used."

The problem, critics say, is that products with microchips might do a whole lot more.

With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from prying eyes, says Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice Department. He imagines a time when anyone from police to identity thieves might scan locked car trunks or home offices from a distance.

"Think of it as a high-tech form of Dumpster-diving," Rasch said.

Passive vs. active tags

Presently, the radio tag most commercialized in America is the so-called "passive" emitter, meaning it has no internal power supply. Only when a reader powers these tags with a squirt of electrons do they broadcast their signal, indiscriminately, within a range of a few inches to 20 feet.

Not as common, but increasing in use, are "active" tags, which have internal batteries and can transmit signals, continuously, as far as low-orbiting satellites. Active tags pay tolls as motorists zip through tollgates; they also track wildlife.

Retailers and manufacturers want passive tags to replace the bar code for tracking inventory. These radio tags transmit Electronic Product Codes, number strings that allow trillions of objects to be uniquely identified. Some transmit specifics about the item, such as price, though not the name of the buyer.

The recent growth of the RFID industry has been staggering: From 1955 to 2005, cumulative sales of radio tags totaled 2.4 billion. Last year alone, 2.24 billion tags were sold worldwide, and analysts project that by 2017 cumulative sales will top 1 trillion — generating more than $25 billion in annual revenues for the industry.

Privacy concerns, some RFID supporters say, are overblown. But industry documents suggest a different line of thinking, privacy experts say.

A 2005 patent application by American Express itself describes how RFID-embedded objects carried by shoppers could emit "identification signals" when queried by electronic "consumer trackers."

In 2006, IBM received patent approval for an invention it called "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items."

The documents "raise the hair on the back of your neck," said Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips," a book that is critical of the industry. "The industry has long promised it would never use this technology to track people. But these patent records clearly suggest otherwise."

Corporations say patent filings shouldn't be used to predict a company's actions.

Source
End. Read more!

Help Wexler Impeach

Do you want impeachment hearings on Cheney and Bush? Of course you do!!! So take action and make your voice heard.
http://www.wexlerwantshearings.com

PAZ...and pass it on.

Place the rest of it here.

Read more!

Air war is on its way

Place the rest of it here.
posted January 29, 2008 3:34 pm

Tomgram: Bombs Away Over Iraq

Looking Up
Normalizing Air War from Guernica to Arab Jabour
By Tom Engelhardt

A January 21st Los Angeles Times Iraq piece by Ned Parker and Saif Rasheed led with an inter-tribal suicide bombing at a gathering in Fallujah in which members of the pro-American Anbar Awakening Council were killed. ("Asked why one member of his Albu Issa tribe would kill another, Aftan compared it to school shootings that happen in the United States.") Twenty-six paragraphs later, the story ended this way:

"The U.S. military also said in a statement that it had dropped 19,000 pounds of explosives on the farmland of Arab Jabour south of Baghdad. The strikes targeted buried bombs and weapons caches.

"In the last 10 days, the military has dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of explosives on the area, which has been a gateway for Sunni militants into Baghdad."

And here's paragraph 22 of a 34-paragraph January 22nd story by Stephen Farrell of the New York Times:

"The threat from buried bombs was well known before the [Arab Jabour] operation. To help clear the ground, the military had dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of bombs to destroy weapons caches and I.E.D.'s."


Farrell led his piece with news that an American soldier had died in Arab Jabour from an IED that blew up "an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq."

Note that both pieces started with bombing news -- in one case a suicide bombing that killed several Iraqis; in another a roadside bombing that killed an American soldier and wounded others. But the major bombing story of these last days -- those 100,000 pounds of explosives that U.S. planes dropped in a small area south of Baghdad -- simply dangled unexplained off the far end of the Los Angeles Times piece; while, in the New York Times, it was buried inside a single sentence.

Neither paper has (as far as I know) returned to the subject, though this is undoubtedly the most extensive use of air power in Iraq since the Bush administration's invasion of 2003 and probably represents a genuine shifting of American military strategy in that country. Despite a few humdrum wire service pieces, no place else in the mainstream has bothered to cover the story adequately either.

For those who know something about the history of air power, which, since World War II, has been lodged at the heart of the American Way of War, that 100,000 figure might have rung a small bell.

On April 27, 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (a prelude to World War II), the planes of the German Condor Legion attacked the ancient Basque town of Guernica. They came in waves, first carpet bombing, then dropping thermite incendiaries. It was a market day and there may have been as many as 7,000-10,000 people, including refugees, in the town which was largely destroyed in the ensuing fire storm. More than 1,600 people may have died there (though some estimates are lower). The Germans reputedly dropped about 50 tons or 100,000 pounds of explosives on the town. In the seven decades between those two 100,000 figures lies a sad history of our age.

Arab Jabour, the Sunni farming community about 10 miles south of the Iraqi capital that was the target of the latest 100,000-pound barrage has recently been largely off-limits to American troops and their Iraqi allies. The American military now refers generically to all Sunni insurgents who resist them as "al Qaeda," so in situations like this it's hard to tell exactly who has held this territory.

At Guernica, as in Arab Jabour 71 years later, no reporters were present when the explosives rained down. In the Spanish situation, however, four reporters in the nearby city of Bilbao, including George Steer of the Times of London, promptly rushed to the scene of destruction. Steer's first piece for the Times (also printed in the New York Times) was headlined "The Tragedy of Guernica" and called the assault "unparalleled in military history." (Obviously, no such claims could be made for Arab Jabour today.) Steer made clear in his report that this had been an attack on a civilian population, essentially a terror bombing.

The self-evident barbarism of the event -- the first massively publicized bombing of a civilian population -- caused international horror. It was news across the planet. From it came perhaps the most famous painting of the last century, Picasso's Guernica, as well as innumerable novels, plays, poems, and other works of art.

As Ian Patterson writes in his book, Guernica and Total War:

"Many attacks since then, including the ones we have grown used to seeing in Iraq and the Middle East in recent years, have been on such a scale that Guernica's fate seems almost insignificant by comparison. But it's almost impossible to overestimate the outrage it caused in 1937… Accounts of the bombing were widely printed in the American press, and provoked a great deal of anger and indignation in most quarters…"

Those last two tag-on paragraphs in the Parker and Rasheed Los Angeles Times piece tell us much about the intervening 71 years, which included the German bombing of Rotterdam and the blitz of London as well as other English cities; the Japanese bombings of Shanghai and other Chinese cities; the Allied fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities; the U.S. atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Cold War era of mutually assured destruction (MAD) in which two superpowers threatened to use the ultimate in airborne explosives to incinerate the planet; the massive, years-long U.S. bombing campaigns against North Korea and later North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; the American air power "victories" of Gulf War I and Afghanistan (2001); and the Bush administration's shock-and-awe, air-and-cruise-missile assault on Baghdad in March 2003, which, though meant to "decapitate" the regime of Saddam Hussein, killed not a single Iraqi governmental or Baath Party figure, only Iraqi civilians. In those seven decades, the death toll and damage caused by war -- on the ground and from the air -- has increasingly been delivered to civilian populations, while the United States has come to rely on its Air Force to impose its will in war.

One hundred thousand pounds of explosives delivered from the air is now, historically speaking, a relatively modest figure. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a single air wing from the USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier stationed in the Persian Gulf, did that sort of damage in less than a day and it was a figure that, as again last week, the military was proud to publicize without fear of international outrage or the possibility that "barbarism" might come to mind:

"From Tuesday afternoon through early Wednesday the air wing flew 69 dedicated strike missions in Basra and in and around Baghdad, involving 27 F/A-18 Hornets and 12 Tomcats. They dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of ordnance, said Lt. Brook DeWalt, Kitty Hawk public affairs officer."

As far as we know, there were no reporters, Iraqi or Western, in Arab Jabour when the bombs fell and, Iraq being Iraq, no American reporters rushed there -- in person or by satellite phone -- to check out the damage. In Iraq and Afghanistan, when it comes to the mainstream media, bombing is generally only significant if it's of the roadside or suicide variety; if, that is, the "bombs" can be produced at approximately "the cost of a pizza" (as IEDs sometimes are), or if the vehicles delivering them are cars or simply fiendishly well-rigged human bodies. From the air, even 100,000 pounds of bombs just doesn't have the ring of something that matters.

Some of this, of course, comes from the Pentagon's success in creating a dismissive, sanitizing language in which to frame war from the air. "Collateral damage" stands in for the civilian dead -- even though in much of modern war, the collateral damage could be considered the dead soldiers, not the ever rising percentage of civilian casualties. And death is, of course, delivered "precisely" by "precision-guided" weaponry. All this makes air war seem sterile, even virginal. Army Col. Terry Ferrell, for instance, described the air assaults in Arab Jabour in this disembodied way at a Baghdad news conference:

"The purpose of these particular strikes was to shape the battlefield and take out known threats before our ground troops move in. Our aim was to neutralize any advantage the enemy could claim with the use of IEDs and other weapons."

Reports -- often hard to assess for credibility -- have nonetheless seeped out of the region indicating that there were civilian casualties, possibly significant numbers of them; that bridges and roads were "cut off" and undoubtedly damaged; that farms and farmlands were damaged or destroyed. According to Hamza Hendawi of the Associated Press, for instance, Iraqi and American troops were said to have advanced into Arab Jabour, already much damaged from years of fighting, through "smoldering citrus groves."

But how could there not be civilian casualties and property damage? After all, the official explanation for this small-scale version of a "shock-and-awe" campaign in a tiny rural region was that American troops and allied Iraqi forces had been strangers to the area for a while, and that the air-delivered explosives were meant to damage local infrastructure -- by exploding roadside bombs and destroying weapons caches or booby traps inside existing structures. As that phrase "take out known threats before our ground troops move in" made clear, this was an attempt to minimize casualties among American (and allied Iraqi) troops by bringing massive amounts of firepower to bear in a situation in which local information was guaranteed to be sketchy at best. Given such a scenario, civilians will always suffer. And this, increasingly, is likely to be the American way of war in Iraq.

The ABCs of Air War in Iraq

So let's focus, for a moment, on American air power in Iraq and gather together a little basic information you're otherwise not likely to find in one place. In these last years, the Pentagon has invested billions of dollars in building up an air-power infrastructure in and around Iraq. As a start, it constructed one of its largest foreign bases anywhere on the planet about 80 kilometers north of Baghdad. Balad Air Base has been described by Newsweek as a "15-square-mile mini-city of thousands of trailers and vehicle depots," whose air fields handle 27,500 takeoffs and landings every month.

Reputedly "second only to London's Heathrow Airport in traffic worldwide," it is said to handle congestion similar to that of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. With about 140,000 tons a year of cargo moving through it, the base is "the busiest aerial port" in the global domains of the Department of Defense.

It is also simply massive, housing about 40,000 military personnel, private contractors of various sorts, and Pentagon civilian employees. It has its own bus routes, fast-food restaurants, sidewalks, and two PXs that are the size of K-Marts. It also has its own neighborhoods including, reported the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks, "KBR-land" for civilian contractors and "CJSOTF" (Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force), "home to a special operations unit [that] is hidden by especially high walls."

Radar traffic controllers at the base now commonly see "more than 550 aircraft operations in just one day." To the tune of billions of dollars, Balad's runways and other facilities have been, and continue to be, upgraded for years of further wear and tear. According to the military press, construction is to begin this month on a $30 million "state-of-the-art battlefield command and control system [at Balad] that will integrate air traffic management throughout Iraq."

National Public Radio's Defense Correspondent Guy Raz paid a visit to the base last year and termed it "a giant construction site… [T]he sounds of construction and the hum of generators seem to follow visitors everywhere. Seen from the sky at night, the base resembles Las Vegas: While the surrounding Iraqi villages get about 10 hours of electricity a day, the lights never go out at Balad Air Base."

This gargantuan feat of construction is designed for the military long haul. As Josh White of the Washington Post reported recently in a relatively rare (and bland) summary piece on the use of air power in Iraq, there were five times as many U.S. air strikes in 2007 as in 2006; and 2008 has, of course, started off with a literal bang from those 100,000 pounds of explosives dropped southeast of Baghdad. That poundage assumedly includes the 40,000 pounds of explosives that got modest headlines for being delivered in a mere 10 minutes in the Arab Jabour area the previous week, but not the 16,500 pounds of explosives that White reports being used north of Baghdad in approximately the same period; nor, evidently, another 15,000 pounds of explosives dropped on Arab Jabour more recently. (And none of these numbers seem to include Marine Corps figures for Iraq, which have evidently not been released.)

Who could forget all the attention that went into the President's surge strategy on the ground in the first half of last year? But which media outlet even noticed, until recently, what Bob Deans of Cox News Service has termed the "air surge" that accompanied those 30,000 surging troops into the Iraqi capital and environs? In that same period, air units were increasingly concentrated in and around Iraq. By mid-2007, for instance, the Associated Press was already reporting:

"[S]quadrons of attack planes have been added to the in-country fleet. The air reconnaissance arm has almost doubled since last year. The powerful B1-B bomber has been recalled to action over Iraq… Early this year, with little fanfare, the Air Force sent a squadron of A-10 ‘Warthog' attack planes -- a dozen or more aircraft -- to be based at Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq. At the same time it added a squadron of F-16C Fighting Falcons… at Balad."

Meanwhile, in the last year, aircraft-carrier battle groups have been stationed in greater numbers in the Persian Gulf and facilities at sites near Iraq like the huge al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar continue to be upgraded.

Even these increases do not tell the whole story of the expanding air war. Lolita Baldor of the Associated Press reported recently that "the military's reliance on unmanned aircraft that can watch, hunt and sometimes kill insurgents has soared to more than 500,000 hours in the air, largely in Iraq." The use of such unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including Hellfire-missile armed Predators, doubled in the first ten months of 2007 -- with Predator air hours increasing from 2,000 to 4,300 in that period. The Army alone, according to Baldor, now has 361 drones in action in Iraq. The future promises much more of the same.

American military spokespeople and administration officials have, over the years, decried Iraqi and Afghan insurgents for "hiding" behind civilian populations -- in essence, accusing them of both immorality and cowardice. When such spokespeople do admit to inflicting "collateral damage" on civilian populations, they regularly blame the guerrillas for turning civilians into "shields." And all of this is regularly, dutifully reported in our press. On the other hand, no one in our world considers drone warfare in a similar context, though armed UAVs like the Predators and the newer, even more heavily armed Reapers are generally "flown" by pilots stationed at computer consoles in places like Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas. It is from there that they release their missiles against "anti-Iraqi forces" or the Taliban, causing civilian deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

As one American pilot, who has fired Predator missiles from Nellis, put it:

"I go from the gym and step inside Afghanistan, or Iraq… It takes some getting used to it. At Nellis you have to remind yourself, 'I'm not at the Nellis Air Force Base. Whatever issues I had 30 minutes ago, like talking to my bank, aren't important anymore.'"

To American reporters, this seems neither cowardly, nor in any way barbaric, just plain old normal. Those pilots are not said to be "hiding" in distant deserts or among the civilian gamblers of Caesar's Palace.

Anyway, here's the simple calculus that goes with all this: Militarily, overstretched American forces simply cannot sustain the ground part of the surge for much longer. Most, if not all, of those 30,000 troops who surged into Iraq in the first half of 2007 will soon be coming home. But air power won't be. Air Force personnel are already on short, rotating tours of duty in the region. In Vietnam back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as ground troops were withdrawn, air power ramped up. This seems once again to be the pattern. There is every reason to believe that it represents the American future in Iraq.

From Barbarism to the Norm

The air war is simply not visible to most Americans who depend on the mainstream media. In part, this is because American reporters, who have covered every other sort of warfare in Iraq, simply refuse to look up.

It should be no surprise then that news of a future possible escalation of the air war was first raised by a journalist who had never set foot in Iraq and so couldn't look up. In a December 2005 piece entitled "Up in the Air," New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh suggested that "a key element of [any] drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President's public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower… The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what."

After Hersh broke his story, the silence was deafening. Only one reporter, as far as I know, has even gone up in a plane -- David S. Cloud of the New York Times, who flew in a B-1 from an unnamed "Middle Eastern airfield" on a mission over Afghanistan. Thomas Ricks traveled to Balad Air Base and did a superb report on it in 2006, but no reporter seems to have bothered to hang out with American pilots, nor have the results of bombing, missile-firing, or strafing been much recorded in our press. The air war is still largely relegated to passing mentions of air raids, based on Pentagon press releases or announcements, in summary pieces on the day's news from Iraq.

Given American military history since 1941, this is all something of a mystery. A Marine patrol rampaging through an Iraqi village can, indeed, be news; but American bombs or missiles turning part of a city into rubble or helicopter gunships riddling part of a neighborhood is, at best, tag-on, inside-the-fold material -- a paragraph or two, as in this AP report on the latest fighting in an undoubtedly well-populated part of the city of Mosul:

"An officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said three civilians were wounded and helicopters had bombarded buildings in the southeastern Sumar neighborhood, which has seen frequent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces that have led to a series of raids."

The predictably devastating results of helicopters "bombarding" an urban neighborhood in a major Iraqi city, if reported at all, will be treated as just the normal "collateral damage" of war as we know it. In our world, what was once the barbarism of air war, its genuine horror, has been transformed into humdrum ordinariness (if, of course, you don't happen to be an Iraqi or an Afghan on the receiving end), the stuff of largely ignored Air Force news releases. It is as unremarkable (and as American) as apple pie, and nothing worth writing home to mom and the kids about.

Maybe then, it's time for Seymour Hersh to take another look. Or for the online world to take up the subject. Maybe, sooner or later, American mainstream journalists in Iraq (and editors back in the U.S.) will actually look up, notice those contrails in the skies, register those "precision" bombs and missiles landing, and consider whether it really is a ho-hum, no-news period when the U.S. Air Force looses 100,000 pounds of explosives on a farming district on the edge of Baghdad. Maybe artists will once again begin pouring their outrage over the very nature of air war into works of art, at least one of which will become iconic, and travel the world reminding us just what, almost five years later, the "liberation" of Iraq has really meant for Iraqis.

In the meantime, brace yourself. Air war is on the way. Read more!

Vote Neither

It is of course greatly disappointing that it has come down to Obama and Clinton with no Kucinich in sight. There is no use mourning what I feel is the inner deterioration of America no matter which rotten road we take. I was listening to NPR yesterday and the Peace and Freedom party wants the troops to come home immediately but how are we to leave the Afghan and Iraqi people without cleaning up the mess? They want us gone but fear us gone because the civil war will aggravate. I heard a woman say "With the Americans we have a sense of security." People say to cameras that they want Sadaam back. "Sadaam was bad but this is worse! Bring him back!". To be honest though, I don't know of any alternatives either way. The civil war must end but I'm not sure it can or will. Things have become too extreme for peace to be a thought in the minds of those who chant violence as the answer.

I wanted to share this because I think it's important to know where Ann Coulter stands on issues to guide where I DON'T stand on them. For the record, I'm not voting for McCain and definitely not for Clinton. My hope left with Kucinich's exit.

Read more!

Papal Visit Scuppered by Scholars

Pope Benedict XVI has cancelled a visit to a prestigious university in Rome where lecturers and students have protested against his views on Galileo.

The Pope had been set to make a speech at La Sapienza University on Thursday.

Sixty-seven academics had said the Pope condoned the 1633 trial and conviction of the astronomer Galileo for heresy.

The Vatican insists the Pope is not "anti-science" - but in light of the protests they have decided it would be better for him not to attend.

Galileo had argued that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

The Vatican says the Pope will now send his speech to La Sapienza, instead of delivering it in person.

Landmark controversy

Pope Benedict was in charge of Roman Catholic doctrine in 1990 when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he commented on the 17th-Century Galileo trial.

In the speech, he quoted Austrian-born philosopher Paul Feyerabend as saying the Church's verdict against Galileo had been "rational and just".

Galileo's inquisitors maintained the scriptures indicated the Earth was stationary.
Galileo, a devout Catholic, was forced to renounce his findings publicly.

Fifteen years ago Pope John Paul II officially conceded that in fact the Earth was not stationary.

The academics at La Sapienza signed a letter saying the Pope's views on Galileo "offend and humiliate us".

They said it would be inappropriate for the Pope to open their academic year on Thursday.

"In the name of the secular nature of science we hope this incongruous event can be cancelled," said the letter addressed to the university's rector, Renato Guarini.

In a separate initiative, students at La Sapienza organised four days of protest this week. The first revolved around an anti-clerical meal of bread, pork and wine, the BBC's Christian Fraser reports from Rome.

The banner at their lunch read: "Knowledge needs neither fathers nor priests".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7188860.stm
Published: 2008/01/15 18:42:11 GMT
© BBC MMVIII Read more!