D R A N T

Q U I T P A Y P A L AND A M A Z O N ! ! ! ! !

2010-12-06T03:49:00.000-08:00

People are always asking- but what can I do ?
Well......
Amazon and Paypal have both succumbed to severe US Government pressure, and severed relations with WIKILEAKS. (see below)
We have a very simple choice.
We can all do something. Now.
We all can and must- cancel our Paypal accounts. No matter what the bother or extra work it may entail.
We all can and must cancel any connection to Amazon-- No matter what the bother or extra work that may entail.
Or we can do nothing, and whine about how we can't do anything.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are many alternatives to PAYPAL.
Please click HERE to check them out.

There are many alternatives to AMAZON.
Please click these for book purchases:
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository

Please click HERE for Ebooks.

And please- be sure and tell AMAZON and PAYPAL exactly why you are firing them.
AMAZON: You can resign by email, on the Amazon site, or better- do it on the phone.
They will call you free wherever you are..... Just access
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html

For Paypal:
Log In to your account.
Go to Contact Us.
The phone contact protocol is there.
As are email and chat.
or click HERE.

Please- do this NOW, and tell them WHY.
Thanks,
DR
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Open Letter to Amazon.com
By Daniel Ellsberg
December 5, 2010 - To Customer Service and Jeff Bezos, I'm disgusted by Amazon's cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China's control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing. For the last several years, I've been sp ending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That's over. I have contacted Customer Service to ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices....
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=72536

Thursday, Dec 2, 2010 02:02 ET
Joe Lieberman emulates Chinese dictators

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/lieberman/index.html

PayPal Freezes WikiLeaks Account

By Kevin Poulsen
December 4, 2010 |
3:31 am |
Categories: Censorship, WikiLeaks
In potentially the most significant attack on WikiLeaks to date, PayPal on Friday froze the account of the German foundation accepting donations for the secret spilling website, claiming that WikiLeaks was in violation of PayPal's terms of service.

"PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity," reads a statement on PayPal's website. "We've notified the account holder of this action."

Most of the over $1 million in contributions WikiLeaks has drawn in the last year have come through its PayPal account, which belongs to the Wau Holland Foundation, a German non-profit group that manages the bulk of WikiLeaks' money.

Attempting to donate to Wau Holland though PayPal on Friday night produced the message "This recipient is currently unable to receive money."

PayPal's move comes amid mounting U.S. pressure against WikiLeaks over its cache of over 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables. Struggling with denial-of-service attacks on its servers earlier this week, WikiLeaks moved to Amazon's EC2 cloud-based data-storage service, only to be summarily booted off on Wednesday. Then on Thursday its domain-name service provider, EveryDNS, stopped resolving WikiLeaks.org, after the DNS provider was battered by the DoS attacks.

There was an element of theater to WikiLeaks' supposed struggles against electronic censorship this week. WikiLeaks kept its domain hosting at EveryDNS even after the company gave WikiLeaks notice that it was pulling the plug. And though WikiLeaks has no shortage of hosting options outside of U.S. influence, founder Julian Assange selected Amazon instead, in what he described Friday as a test of the company's commitment to free speech.

The attack on WikiLeaks' money flow, in contrast, is the real deal, and has the potential to genuinely impact the organization.

PayPal's public statement doesn't detail the "illegal activity" WikiLeaks promotes, but presumably it's the leaking of classified information. Sometimes such leaks are indeed illegal. And sometimes classified leaks - legal or not - reveal warrantless wiretapping of Americans, secret CIA prison networks,and massive government waste hidden in black budgets. The reasoning PayPal offers for its newfound intolerance for WikiLeaks would seem to apply equally well to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Flotilla Survivor says Israeli marines boarded unarmed American ship thr...

2010-06-03T03:41:00.000-07:00

A passenger ship is sailing in international waters. Hundreds of kilometers from land.
On board are unarmed civilians.
At 2am, a military helicopter attacks, dropping heavily armed commandos firing their weapons.
Some of the passengers grab sticks and marbles, some try to push the attackers away, vainly to try to stave off the overwhelming attack.
Many of them are slaughtered, many are wounded.
On other much smaller boats, bullets are fired into the wooden hulls, crew and passengers offer no resistance whatever, and are beaten and bruised and in some cases, wounded by rubber bullets.
The official story is that the commandos acted in self-defense.
The world's pimp media repeats this endlessly.
But- the whole world is watching.
We are the WITNESSES, and it is our job to make the world watch, so not one human can say "I didn't know" or hide in ignorance, or deny individual responsibility, or evade profound personal complicity.
More boats are on the way.
The Rachel Corrie is at sea as this is written, and will not turn back.
And after her, will be tens and hundreds and thousands more, until the genocidal inhuman blockade is broken.
This is just the beginning, and at last, the world is watching.

PLEASE- SEND THIS EVERYWHERE. THE WORLD MUST BEAR WITNESS
PLEASE URGENTLY IMMEDIATELY ACCESS WITNESSGAZA.COM

LIVE VIDEO UPDATES
CLICK HERE
GET ALLLLLL THE INFO AT:
www.freegaza.org

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ISRAELI FORCES KILLING UNARMED BOAT PASSENGERS

2010-05-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

ISRAELI NAVAL FORCES HAVE INVADED THE BOATS AND HAVE OPENED FIRE KILLING AND WOUNDING UNARMED CIVILIANS ON BOARD.
THE BOATS ARE INDISPUTABLY IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS. THESE ARE WAR CRIMES, INDEFENSIBLE ACTS OF MURDER.

PLEASE- SEND THIS EVERYWHERE. THE WORLD MUST BEAR WITNESS
PLEASE URGENTLY IMMEDIATELY ACCESS WITNESSGAZA.COM

LIVE VIDEO UPDATES
CLICK HERE
GET ALLLLLL THE INFO AT:
www.freegaza.org

############################

2010-05-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

BE ON THE BOATS WITH US when we
BREAK THE ISRAELI BLOCKADE OF GAZA !
LIVE VIDEO UPDATES
CLICK HERE

GET ALLLLLL THE INFO AT:

www.freegaza.org

############################

2010-05-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Please help us break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
We need donations and we need to tell the world what we are doing.
Click HERE to access the website and to DONATE.

First Ship Sets Sail For Gaza

By Huwaida Arraf

15 May, 2010
http://www.freegaza.org/

London - 14 May 2010 - At 22:45 local time tonight, the MV Rachel Corrie, a 1200-ton cargo ship, part of the eight-vessel Freedom Flotilla, set sail from Ireland on its way to the Mediterranean Sea. Three ships from Turkey and Greece will join her, then sail to Gaza.

This past week reports from Israel have indicated that the Israeli authorities will not allow the Freedom Flotilla to reach Gaza with its cargo of much-needed reconstruction material, medical equipment, and school supplies. According to Israeli news sources, clear orders have been issued to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza, even if this necessitates military violence.

The Free Gaza Movement, which has launched eight other sea missions to Gaza, confirms that Israel has tried these kinds of threats and intimidation tactics before in order to try to stop the missions before they start. "They have not deterred us before and will not deter us now," said one of the organizers.

Ship to Gaza - Sweden, a Freedom Flotilla coalition partner, together with parliamentarian Mehmet Kaplan (Green Party) yesterday asked for an audience with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, Carl Bildt, to discuss what measures the Swedish government and the European Union will take to protect the Freedom Flotilla's peaceful, humanitarian voyage. Earlier this week during a meeting with the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza - another coalition partner, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyib Erdogan expressed his support for "breaking the oppressive siege on the Gaza Strip...which is at the top of Turkey's list of priorities."

Coalition partners, Ship to Gaza - Greece and the Turkish relief organization IHH, stressed that the ships, passengers, and cargo will be checked at each port of departure, making it clear that we constitute no security threat to Israel.

Israel's threats to attack unarmed civilians aboard vessels carrying reconstruction aid are outrageous and indicative of the cruel and violent nature of Israel's policies towards Gaza. The Freedom Flotilla is acting in line with universal principals of human rights and justice in defying a blockade identified as illegal by the UN and other humanitarian organizations. Palestinians in Gaza have a right to the thousands of basic supplies that Israel bans from entering, including cement and schoolbooks, as well as a right to access the outside world. The Freedom Flotilla coalition calls on all signatories to the Fourth Geneva Conventions to pressure Israel to adhere to its obligations under international humanitarian law, to end the lethal blockade on Gaza, and to refrain from attacking this peaceful convoy.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is comprised of: Free Gaza Movement (FG), European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG), Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), Ship to Gaza Greece, Ship to Gaza Sweden, and the International Committee to Lift the Siege on Gaza, with hundreds of groups and organizations around the world supporting the effort.

Huwaida Arraf is co-founder and director of Free Gaza Movement.

www.freegaza.org www.savegaza.eu www.ihh.org.tr
www.shiptogaza.gr www.shiptogaza.se

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DRANT #333: DEATH BY HAMBURGICIDE

2009-09-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

One need do nothing but wait, take a few steps back, and watch as self-administered Hamburgicide rids the world of the scourge of obesitus obsessivus overeatus americanus.
All Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez needs to do is take a siesta under a tree, and the species will be extinct in no time at all.
As Michael Pollan points out- there's billions being made on stuffing us with crap, and then treating the diseases that result.
Hopefully, the world will be rid of Americans before their insatiable unsustainable indiscriminate profito-carnivoracity can finish destroying the rest of the planet.

It had better.
__________________________________________________________
TWO items.
#1- Michael Pollan in today's NY Times.
While I can't agree with Pollan's prescription (thus his access to the NYT) for treatment or cure, (i.e. wait for the corporations and congress to wake up and change things-- as IF)-- but his analysis of the situation is perspicacious and DEADLY accurate.
#2- A report published by The Commonwealth Fund showing the continued rapid descent of health and life expectancy in the USA, especially as compared to other "civilized" nations.
Of course, what's missing is the
racial computation. Obvious to me- that as horrific as these numbers
are, they don't illustrate the racial divide- and that as with infant mortality, blacks, racial minorities and native americans are profoundly
over-represented in the worst categories, and white are more likely to
be well cared for and live longer.
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"...We're spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care. The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care...

...Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There's lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry..."

Big Food vs. Big Insurance
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: September 9, 2009
Berkeley, Calif.

TO listen to President Obama's speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself - perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

That's why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat "preventable chronic diseases." Not all of these diseases are linked to diet - there's smoking, for instance - but many, if not most, of them are.

We're spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.

The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care. The president has made a few notable allusions to it, and, by planting her vegetable garden on the South Lawn, Michelle Obama has tried to focus our attention on it. Just last month, Mr. Obama talked about putting a farmers' market in front of the White House, and building new distribution networks to connect local farmers to public schools so that student lunches might offer more fresh produce and fewer Tater Tots. He's even floated the idea of taxing soda.

But so far, food system reform has not figured in the national conversation about health care reform. And so the government is poised to go on encouraging America's fast-food diet with its farm policies even as it takes on added responsibilities for covering the medical costs of that diet. To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.

Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system. At least in the health care battle, the administration can count some powerful corporate interests on its side - like the large segment of the Fortune 500 that has concluded the current system is unsustainable.

That is hardly the case when it comes to challenging agribusiness. Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There's lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

The market for prescription drugs and medical devices to manage Type 2 diabetes, which the Centers for Disease Control estimates will afflict one in three Americans born after 2000, is one of the brighter spots in the American economy. As things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. There's more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

As for the insurers, you would think preventing chronic diseases would be good business, but, at least under the current rules, it's much better business simply to keep patients at risk for chronic disease out of your pool of customers, whether through lifetime caps on coverage or rules against pre-existing conditions or by figuring out ways to toss patients overboard when they become ill.

But these rules may well be about to change - and, when it comes to reforming the American diet and food system, that step alone could be a game changer. Even under the weaker versions of health care reform now on offer, health insurers would be required to take everyone at the same rates, provide a standard level of coverage and keep people on their rolls regardless of their health. Terms like "pre-existing conditions" and "underwriting" would vanish from the health insurance rulebook - and, when they do, the relationship between the health insurance industry and the food industry will undergo a sea change.

The moment these new rules take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.

When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system - everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches - will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn't really ever had before.

AGRIBUSINESS dominates the agriculture committees of Congress, and has swatted away most efforts at reform. But what happens when the health insurance industry realizes that our system of farm subsidies makes junk food cheap, and fresh produce dear, and thus contributes to obesity and Type 2 diabetes? It will promptly get involved in the fight over the farm bill - which is to say, the industry will begin buying seats on those agriculture committees and demanding that the next bill be written with the interests of the public health more firmly in mind.

In the same way much of the health insurance industry threw its weight behind the campaign against smoking, we can expect it to support, and perhaps even help pay for, public education efforts like New York City's bold new ad campaign against drinking soda. At the moment, a federal campaign to discourage the consumption of sweetened soft drinks is a political nonstarter, but few things could do more to slow the rise of Type 2 diabetes among adolescents than to reduce their soda consumption, which represents 15 percent of their caloric intake.

That's why it's easy to imagine the industry throwing its weight behind a soda tax. School lunch reform would become its cause, too, and in time the industry would come to see that the development of regional food systems, which make fresh produce more available and reduce dependence on heavily processed food from far away, could help prevent chronic disease and reduce their costs.

Recently a team of designers from M.I.T. and Columbia was asked by the foundation of the insurer UnitedHealthcare to develop an innovative systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in America. Their conclusion surprised the designers as much as their sponsor: they determined that promoting the concept of a "foodshed" - a diversified, regional food economy - could be the key to improving the American diet.

All of which suggests that passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health - which means going to work on the American way of eating.

But even if we get a health care bill that does little more than require insurers to cover everyone on the same basis, it could put us on that course.

For it will force the industry, and the government, to take a good hard look at the elephant in the room and galvanize a movement to slim it down.

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer for The Times Magazine and a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto."

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France best, US worst in preventable death ranking

Tue Jan 8, 2008 12:15am EST
By Will Dunham

"It is startling to see the U.S. falling even farther behind on this crucial indicator of health system performance," Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen said.
"The fact that other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less, indicates that policy, goals and efforts to improve health systems make a difference," Schoen added in a statement.

WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.
If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.
Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.
They called such deaths an important way to gauge the performance of a country's health care system.

Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health insurance -- about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million, according to U.S. government estimates -- probably was a key factor in the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized nations in the study.

"I wouldn't say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don't, I think that's the main problem, isn't it?" Nolte said in a telephone interview.
In establishing their rankings, the researchers considered deaths before age 75 from numerous causes, including heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, certain bacterial infections and complications of common surgical procedures.
Such deaths accounted for 23 percent of overall deaths in men and 32 percent of deaths in women, the researchers said.

France did best -- with 64.8 deaths deemed preventable by timely and effective health care per 100,000 people, in the study period of 2002 and 2003. Japan had 71.2 and Australia had 71.3 such deaths per 100,000 people. The United States had 109.7 such deaths per 100,000 people, the researchers said.
After the top three, Spain was fourth best, followed in order by Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Austria, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Britain, Ireland and Portugal, with the United States last.
Here is the ranking by health researchers of 19 industrialized nations by how well their health systems intervene to stop preventable deaths.
The US is now dead last at number 19, below not only France and Japan but also Denmark and New Zealand.
The US has fallen four places in the past decade, so things are getting worse in this regard.

1. France (64.8 preventable death per 100,000 persons)
2. Japan (71.2)
3. Australia (71.3)
4. Spain
5. Italy
6. Canada
7. Norway
8. Netherlands
9. Sweden
10. Greece
11. Austria
12. Germany
13. Finland
14. New Zealand
15. Denmark
16. Britain
17. Ireland
18. Portugal
19. United States (109.7 preventable deaths per 100,000 persons)

The researchers concluded that the lack of access to health insurance on the part of 47 million Americans contributed to this dismal showing.

PREVIOUS RANKINGS
The researchers compared these rankings with rankings for the same 19 countries covering the period of 1997 and 1998. France and Japan also were first and second in those rankings, while the United States was 15th, meaning it fell four places in the latest rankings.
All the countries made progress in reducing preventable deaths from these earlier rankings, the researchers said. These types of deaths dropped by an average of 16 percent for the nations in the study, but the U.S. decline was only 4 percent.
The research was backed by the Commonwealth Fund, a private New York-based health policy foundation.

"It is startling to see the U.S. falling even farther behind on this crucial indicator of health system performance," Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen said.
"The fact that other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less, indicates that policy, goals and efforts to improve health systems make a difference," Schoen added in a statement.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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DRANT # 332: CHAOS 'R US

2009-06-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on May 23rd, 2007 that "The
CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert black
operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former
officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News".

The London Telegraph, also, had reported on May 27th, 2007 that "Mr.
Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for propaganda
and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually
topple the theocratic rule of the mullah".

In the New Yorker, June 29th, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported that "Late
last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a
major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to
current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.
These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred
million Dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by
Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership".

Demonizing Iranian Democracy
Op_ed
By Elias Akleh
Monday, 29 June 2009
For the last three weeks the Western media had bombarded us with what they called the Iranian stolen election. They allege that the election was fraudulent and that the masses went into the streets of Tehran protesting the results and demanding new election. The Iranian government is described as fascist and oppressive and is responsible for the chaos in the streets. The opposition is described as reformists and democratic, who are peacefully demonstrating in the streets demanding justice and freedom.

Color Revolutions, Old and New
Special Features
By Stephen Lendman
Monday, 29 June 2009
In his new book, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order," F. William Engdahl explained a new form of US covert warfare - first played out in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000. What appeared to be "a spontaneous and genuine political 'movement,' (in fact) was the product of techniques" developed in America over decades.

AND HERE'S A VIDEO:
SCOWCROFT LETS THE CIAT OUTTA THE BAG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr2SALuISyk

DRANT # 331: IRAN//CIA- THE TRUTH KEEPS ON COMING

2009-06-21T01:30:00.000-07:00

It ain't just me howling in the wind.
Others around what used to be called The World are sniffing and howling as well. The Iran "uprising" stinks to Jannah-- the most obvious C.I.A. op since 1953 with our old pals Kermit Roosevelt, Mossadegh and Da Shah.
Don't take my woid- I am just an old hippie with an overactive Bullshit Detector I've been tweaking since the Dodgers abandoned me in Brooklyn. Take it from Paul Craig Roberts - he's been one of Them (big-time) , and now he's acting like one of Us a lot of the time.
Take it from him -- This is a C.I.A. op- in green.
_____________

Are the Iranian Election Protests Another US Orchestrated 'Color Revolution'?

By Paul Craig Roberts

June 20, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -A
number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the
purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernized youth of Terhan. The
CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has
somehow not contaminated unfolding events.

The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the
outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes
to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several
hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization
designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early
declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the
preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote
tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the
authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that
people don't see through this trick.

As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri's charge that the election was
stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to
the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to
settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to
challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the
CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled
politicians.

There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned
against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing
to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs'
lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money. In my opinion,
Ahmadinejad's attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it
does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a
conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.

Commentators are "explaining" the Iran elections based on their own
illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not
the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so
far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However,
there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years
to destabilize the Iranian government.

On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News:
"The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert
"black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and
former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News."

On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: "Mr. Bush
has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda
and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually
topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs."

A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that
Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph
that a US military attack on Iran would "be a 'last option' after
economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had
failed."

On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: "Late last
year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major
escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and
former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These
operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million
dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and
are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership."

The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The
protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in
Georgia and Ukraine.

It requires total blindness not to see this.

Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/027782.html

For example, neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the
election that "there's talk of a 'green revolution' in Tehran." How
would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would
there be a 'green revolution' prepared prior to the vote, especially if
Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim?
This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the
election protests.

Timmerman goes on
to write that "the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions
of dollars promoting 'color' revolutions . . . Some of that money
appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have
ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National
Endowment for Democracy funds." Timmerman's own neocon Foundation for
Democracy is "a private, non-profit organization established in 1995
with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote
democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in
Iran."

DRANT # 330: IRAN= C.I.A. OP

2009-06-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

In my last DRANT, I wrote about how IRAN is a total C.I.A. OP, how the pimp media is once again conspiring with the CIA and US government to create destructive lies, and how this is IRAN 1953 all over again, not to mention Georgia, Ukraine, Gaza, etc etc. This time the CIA picked green for its cute headbands, but all the rest is the same.
Many are jumping on the bandwagon now- but NOBODY I have seen has made the obvious C.I.A. and historical link.

More on this below-

Iranian Elections: The 'Stolen Elections' Hoax
(from ZIOPEDIA)

Friday, 19 June 2009 06:30
by James Petras

Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation...Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion. Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009
There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an 'electoral success' in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.

The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (3.2 million votes). Iran's presidential election drew a record turnout of more than 80% of the electorate, including an unprecedented overseas vote of 234,812, in which HM won 111,792 to MA's 78,300. The opposition led by HM did not accept their defeat and organized a series of mass demonstrations that turned violent, resulting in the burning and destruction of automobiles, banks, public building and armed confrontations with the police and other authorities. Almost the entire spectrum of Western opinion makers, including all the major electronic and print media, the major liberal, radical, libertarian and conservative web-sites, echoed the opposition's claim of rampant election fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian conservatives and Trotskyites joined the Zionists in hailing the opposition protestors as the advance guard of a democratic revolution. Democrats and Republicans condemned the incumbent regime, refused to recognize the result of the vote and praised the demonstrators' efforts to overturn the electoral outcome. The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, the Israeli Foreign Office and the entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations called for harsher sanctions against Iran and announced Obama's proposed dialogue with Iran as 'dead in the water'.

The Electoral Fraud Hoax

Western leaders rejected the results because they 'knew' that their reformist candidate could not lose...For months they published daily interviews, editorials and reports from the field 'detailing' the failures of Ahmadinejad's administration; they cited the support from clerics, former officials, merchants in the bazaar and above all women and young urbanites fluent in English, to prove that Mousavi was headed for a landslide victory. A victory for Mousavi was described as a victory for the 'voices of moderation', at least the White House's version of that vacuous cliché. Prominent liberal academics deduced the vote count was fraudulent because the opposition candidate, Mousavi, lost in his own ethnic enclave among the Azeris. Other academics claimed that the 'youth vote' - based on their interviews with upper and middle-class university students from the neighborhoods of Northern Tehran were overwhelmingly for the 'reformist' candidate.

What is astonishing about the West's universal condemnation of the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised. As long as the Western media believed their own propaganda of an immanent victory for their candidate, the electoral process was described as highly competitive, with heated public debates and unprecedented levels of public activity and unhindered by public proselytizing. The belief in a free and open election was so strong that the Western leaders and mass media believed that their favored candidate would win.

The Western media relied on its reporters covering the mass demonstrations of opposition supporters, ignoring and downplaying the huge turnout for Ahmadinejad. Worse still, the Western media ignored the class composition of the competing demonstrations - the fact that the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle class students, business and professional class.

Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital - few venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition's supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while Ahmadinejad's support drew on the majority of working youth and household women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics.

A number of newspaper pundits, including Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, claim as evidence of electoral fraud the fact that Ahmadinejad won 63% of the vote in an Azeri-speaking province against his opponent, Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri. The simplistic assumption is that ethnic identity or belonging to a linguistic group is the only possible explanation of voting behavior rather than other social or class interests. A closer look at the voting pattern in the East-Azerbaijan region of Iran reveals that Mousavi won only in the city of Shabestar among the upper and the middle classes (and only by a small margin), whereas he was soundly defeated in the larger rural areas, where the re-distributive policies of the Ahmadinejad government had helped the ethnic Azeris write off debt, obtain cheap credits and easy loans for the farmers. Mousavi did win in the West-Azerbaijan region, using his ethnic ties to win over the urban voters. In the highly populated Tehran province, Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad in the urban centers of Tehran and Shemiranat by gaining the vote of the middle and upper class districts, whereas he lost badly in the adjoining working class suburbs, small towns and rural areas.

The careless and distorted emphasis on 'ethnic voting' cited by writers from the Financial Times and New York Times to justify calling Ahmadinejad 's victory a 'stolen vote' is matched by the media's willful and deliberate refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll conducted by two US experts just three weeks before the vote, which showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin - even larger than his electoral victory on June 12. This poll revealed that among ethnic Azeris, Ahmadinejad was favored by a 2 to 1 margin over Mousavi, demonstrating how class interests represented by one candidate can overcome the ethnic identity of the other candidate (Washington Post June 15, 2009). The poll also demonstrated how class issues, within age groups, were more influential in shaping political preferences than 'generational life style'. According to this poll, over two-thirds of Iranian youth were too poor to have access to a computer and the 18-24 year olds "comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all groups" (Washington Porst June 15, 2009). The only group, which consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, business owners and the upper middle class. The 'youth vote', which the Western media praised as 'pro-reformist', was a clear minority of less than 30% but came from a highly privileged, vocal and largely English speaking group with a monopoly on the Western media. Their overwhelming presence in the Western news reports created what has been referred to as the 'North Tehran Syndrome', for the comfortable upper class enclave from which many of these students come. While they may be articulate, well dressed and fluent in English, they were soundly out-voted in the secrecy of the ballot box.

In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers' opposition to the 'reformist' program, which included proposals to 'privatize' public enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections.

What Western commentators and their Iranian protégés have ignored is the powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad's strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition.

The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity.

The demography of voting reveals a real class polarization pitting high income, free market oriented, capitalist individualists against working class, low income, community based supporters of a 'moral economy' in which usury and profiteering are limited by religious precepts. The open attacks by opposition economists of the government welfare spending, easy credit and heavy subsidies of basic food staples did little to ingratiate them with the majority of Iranians benefiting from those programs. The state was seen as the protector and benefactor of the poor workers against the 'market', which represented wealth, power, privilege and corruption. The Opposition's attack on the regime's 'intransigent' foreign policy and positions 'alienating' the West only resonated with the liberal university students and import-export business groups. To many Iranians, the regime's military buildup was seen as having prevented a US or Israeli attack.

The scale of the opposition's electoral deficit should tell us is how out of touch it is with its own people's vital concerns. It should remind them that by moving closer to Western opinion, they removed themselves from the everyday interests of security, housing, jobs and subsidized food prices that make life tolerable for those living below the middle class and outside the privileged gates of Tehran University.

Amhadinejad's electoral success, seen in historical comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and even Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have demonstrated an ability to secure close to or even greater than 60% of the vote in free elections. The voting majorities in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires.

The consequences of the electoral victory of Ahmadinejad are open to debate. The US may conclude that continuing to back a vocal, but badly defeated, minority has few prospects for securing concessions on nuclear enrichment and an abandonment of Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. A realistic approach would be to open a wide-ranging discussion with Iran, and acknowledging, as Senator Kerry recently pointed out, that enriching uranium is not an existential threat to anyone. This approach would sharply differ from the approach of American Zionists, embedded in the Obama regime, who follow Israel's lead of pushing for a preemptive war with Iran and use the specious argument that no negotiations are possible with an 'illegitimate' government in Tehran which 'stole an election'.

Recent events suggest that political leaders in Europe, and even some in Washington, do not accept the Zionist-mass media line of 'stolen elections'. The White House has not suspended its offer of negotiations with the newly re-elected government but has focused rather on the repression of the opposition protesters (and not the vote count). Likewise, the 27 nation European Union expressed 'serious concern about violence' and called for the "aspirations of the Iranian people to be achieved through peaceful means and that freedom of expression be respected" (Financial Times June 16, 2009 p.4). Except for Sarkozy of France, no EU leader has questioned the outcome of the voting.

The wild card in the aftermath of the elections is the Israeli response: Netanyahu has signaled to his American Zionist followers that they should use the hoax of 'electoral fraud' to exert maximum pressure on the Obama regime to end all plans to meet with the newly re-elected Ahmadinejad regime.

Paradoxically, US commentators (left, right and center) who bought into the electoral fraud hoax are inadvertently providing Netanyahu and his American followers with the arguments and fabrications: Where they see religious wars, we see class wars; where they see electoral fraud, we see imperial destabilization.

Prof. James Petras is a regular contributor to Ziopedia.
_____________________________________________________________
DRANT #329- IRAN HOAX

U been duped bro.
This is a CIA op.
You can tell easy- nice new green headbands, and pre printed three foot high banners.
Can you say 1953 ?
Please take a step back, and look at this scenario--
The Orange was nice in Ukraine, and the Rose in Georgia was really cool too, but I think its so groovy that the CIA picked green this time.
Please turn your bullshit detector up a few notches.
Why would some pro Ahmadinjad agent kill a protestor, if they, as obviously they do- know full well that it would cause a funeral and another demo ?
Kermit Roosevelt would fit right in here.....
Its obvious that the CIA, as in 1953, as in Ukraine and Georgia, are fomenting and aiding and abetting this, with their Tontoesque pimp media. The media is not "getting it wrong", they are - once again, the puppet partners of the CIA and US interests.
Shucks, I guess we'll just have to go there and restore democracy, goshdarnit.
Maybe Israel will help ?
Ubetcha they will.
===

The CIA's Iranian Plan?
Video
Is the CIA involved in Iran's recent election unrest.
===

In case you missed it Effects of ill-advised CIA plot in Iran still haunts U.S.

By John M. Crisp
I suspect that the average American has never heard of Mohammad Mossadegh and Operation Ajax.
===

Wishful thinking from Tehran

Since the revolution, academics and pundits have predicted the collapse
of the Iranian regime. This week, they did no better

Abbas Barzegar

guardian.co.uk,
Saturday 13 June 2009 11.40 BST

DRANT # 329: IRAN HOAX

2009-06-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

U been duped bro.
This is a CIA op.
You can tell easy- nice new green headbands, and pre printed three foot high banners.
Can you say 1953 ?
Please take a step back, and look at this scenario--
The Orange was nice in Ukraine, and the Rose in Georgia was really cool too, but I think its so groovy that the CIA picked green this time.
Please turn your bullshit detector up a few notches.
Why would some pro Ahmadinjad agent kill a protestor, if they, as obviously they do- know full well that it would cause a funeral and another demo ?
Kermit Roosevelt would fit right in here.....
Its obvious that the CIA, as in 1953, as in Ukraine and Georgia, are fomenting and aiding and abetting this, with their Tontoesque pimp media. The media is not "getting it wrong", they are - once again, the puppet partners of the CIA and US interests.
Shucks, I guess we'll just have to go there and restore democracy, goshdarnit.
Maybe Israel will help ?
Ubetcha they will.
===

The CIA's Iranian Plan?
Video
Is the CIA involved in Iran's recent election unrest.
===

In case you missed it Effects of ill-advised CIA plot in Iran still haunts U.S.

By John M. Crisp
I suspect that the average American has never heard of Mohammad Mossadegh and Operation Ajax.
===

Wishful thinking from Tehran

Since the revolution, academics and pundits have predicted the collapse
of the Iranian regime. This week, they did no better

Abbas Barzegar

guardian.co.uk,
Saturday 13 June 2009 11.40 BST

===
Charting Western Omniscience
In Post-Elections Iran
By Ali Jawad

Come the Iranian elections and the unexpected landslide victory in favour of Ahmedinejad, and once again rushing to enlighten the world are the normatively 'All-Knowing' Western capitals and media pundits. Swarming the airwaves, one and all cried out 'fraud', 'stolen elections' and a 'nation's will silenced'
===
Iran: Election Clashes Mount As West Escalates Pressure
By Bill Van Auken

Mousavi's so-called reforms were pitched largely to a relatively privileged and narrow social base. The reforms themselves consisted essentially of a toning down of the rhetoric employed by Ahmadinejad in order to smooth the way to improved relations with Washington, an easing of US-backed sanctions and the opening up of the country to foreign capital
===
Are You Ready For War With Demonized Iran?

By Paul Craig Roberts
How much attention do elections in Japan, India, Argentina, or any other country, get from the US media? How many Americans and American journalists even know who is in political office in other countries besides England, France, and Germany? Who can name the political leaders of Switzerland, Holland, Brazil, Japan, or even China? Yet, many know of Iran's President Ahmadinejad. The reason is obvious. He is daily demonized in the US media.
===

The "Bomb Iran" Contingent's Newfound Concern for The Iranian People

By Glenn Greenwald

Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country -- actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People.
===
Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It

By FLYNT LEVERETT AND HILLARY MANN LEVERETT

The shock of the "Iran experts" over Friday's results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.
===
Rafsanjani's Gambit Backfires

By M K Bhadrakumar

Who is Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmedinejad's main opponent in the election? He is an enigma wrapped in mystery. He impressed the Iranian youth and the urban middle class as a reformer and a modernist. Yet, as Iran's prime minister during 1981-89, Mousavi was an unvarnished hardliner.
===

The Larger Context of the 2009 Iranian Elections

By Reza Fiyouzat

The presidential elections of June 12 were held within a theocratic system. In this system, in order to run for a political office, candidates must swear allegiance to the theocratic setup. From its inception, therefore, the theocracy has divided the entire population into two major political groups.

===

DRANT #328: EMMES

2008-12-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

Just one small detail. Much much more to come.
But- here is the truth - the Emmes-
The "truce" was broken by Israel.
This in indisputable.
Leaving all else aside, for now -
There was a "truce" in place, and it was broken unilaterally by Israel on November 4, 2008.
Then, on November 5, 2008, Israel sealed all the borders with Gaza.
So- when the endless abominable lies pour from the TV speakers, and major media, and especially when some Israel apologist starts spewing the party line about Hamas ending the truce, and causing all of this-
Just know- the Emmes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 November 2008 14.32 GMT

A man sifts throught rubble after Israel's overnight operation Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP

A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory.

Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured. The violence represented the most serious break in a ceasefire agreed in mid-June, yet both sides suggested they wanted to return to atmosphere of calm.

Israeli troops crossed into the Gaza Strip late last night near the town of Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military said the target of the raid was a tunnel that they said Hamas was planning to use to capture Israeli soldiers positioned on the border fence 250m away. Four Israeli soldiers were injured in the operation, two moderately and two lightly, the military said.

One Hamas gunman was killed and Palestinians launched a volley of mortars at the Israeli military. An Israeli air strike then killed five more Hamas fighters. In response, Hamas launched 35 rockets into southern Israel, one reaching the city of Ashkelon.

"This was a pinpoint operation intended to prevent an immediate threat," the Israeli military said in a statement. "There is no intention to disrupt the ceasefire, rather the purpose of the operation was to remove an immediate and dangerous threat posted by the Hamas terror organisation."

In Gaza, a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, said the group had fired rockets out of Gaza as a "response to Israel's massive breach of the truce".

"The Israelis began this tension and they must pay an expensive price. They cannot leave us drowning in blood while they sleep soundly in their beds," he said.

The attack comes shortly before a key meeting this Sunday in Cairo when Hamas and its political rival Fatah will hold talks on reconciling their differences and creating a single, unified government. It will be the first time the two sides have met at this level since fighting a near civil war more than a year ago.

Until now it had appeared both Israel and Hamas, which seized full control of Gaza last summer, had an interest in maintaining the ceasefire. For Israel it has meant an end to the daily barrage of rockets landing in southern towns, particularly Sderot. For Gazans it has meant an end to the regular Israeli military raids that have caused hundreds of casualties, many of them civilian, in the past year. Israel, however, has maintained its economic blockade on the strip, severely limiting imports and preventing all exports from Gaza.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, had personally approved the Gaza raid, the Associated Press said. The Israeli military concluded that Hamas was likely to want to continue the ceasefire despite the raid, it said. The ceasefire was due to run for six months and it is still unclear whether it will stretch beyond that limit.

DRANT #327: POSSE COMITATUS, CORPUS DELICTUS

2008-12-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

The invasion has started, and the surge is growing.
The US Army has invaded another country.
US.
Please read below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The NEWS:

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 1, 2008

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he
said.
The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002217_pf.html

Posse Comitatus, RIP

By John R Moffett

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 in response to the Union Army's occupation of the Confederate states following the Civil War, and prohibited the deployment of US troops within the borders of the United States. Having never met a law or constitutional stipulation that he liked, George Bush is working hard to deploy up to 20,000 US troops within the United States borders.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Posse-Comitatus-RIP-by-John-R-Moffett-081201-369.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DETAILED HISTORY:

The erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act through Congressional legislation and executive policy has left a hollow shell in place of a law that formerly was a real limitation on the military's role in civilian law enforcement and security issues. The plethora of constitutional and statutory exceptions to the act provides the executive branch with a menu of options under which it can justify the use of military forces to combat domestic terrorism. Whether an act of terrorism is classified as a civil disturbance under 10 U.S.C., 331-334, or whether the president relies upon constitutional power to preserve federal functions, it is difficult to think of a domestic terrorism scenario of sizable scale under which the use of the military could not be lawfully justified in view of the act's erosion. The act is no longer a realistic bar to direct military involvement in counter terrorism planning and operations. It is a low legal hurdle that can be easily cleared through invocation of the appropriate legal justification, either before or after the fact.
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CURRENT HISTORY:

For more than 100 years -- since the end of the Civil War -- deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies in the "War on Drugs"), the bright line ban on using the U.S. military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more or less honored -- until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, "expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DRANT #326: TALKIN TURKEY: THANK YOU WHITE PEOPLE

2008-11-27T17:46:00.000-08:00

From DRANT# 202: TALKIN' TURKEY
November 26, 2006
A great deal of the inspiration and information for this DRANT came from:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
By Charles Mann
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140004006X/103-9077762-6675023?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance
______________________________________________________

"No Halloween of the imagination can
rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains
the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome,
humanity-insulting day of the year - a pure glorification of racist
barbarity..." (Black Commentator, Nov. 2008)

To honor our National Holiday of THANKSGIVING, let's GIVE THANKS: Let us pause for a short moment of appropriate reverence to GIVE THANKS for the Wondrous Gifts we White People have -- in our bottomless generosity - bestowed and continue to bestow on uncountable Godless Savages throughout history.

First among these surely is
Wondrous Gift #1- the gift of immeasurable Human Arrogance.
The notion that Humans are the last, ultimate, and unimprovable final step in Evolution.
That Humans have been granted Dominion over The Earth and all of its beings and creations and inhabitants.
That every Thing on earth is Human property, and belongs to Humans to do with as they wish.

In 1491, there were many millions of Americans living right here in America, and few of them could imagine this concept.
In 1491, Americans largely shared the notion that all of Earth's beings co-existed, each with a place in the Universe, each infused with the timeless Spirit of our Creation.
In 1491, Americans had no idea that anything on Earth could actually be owned, or that any parcel of Earth could be claimed as exclusive personal property.
Well what can one expect from half naked Heathens ?
But-- By Divinely Inspired good fortune, White People were able to shuffle off to America, first in small numbers and then in droves, to enlighten and elevate the ignorant masses.
In 1491, Copernicus was a College Freshman, and as far as White People were concerned, the Sun still revolved around the Earth.
In 1491 Tenochtitlan, a city then bigger than Paris, had been an immense thriving modern city for centuries, and the Mayans had built Chichen Itza before Jesus was a glimmer in his daddy's eye.
In 1491 the Reformation was just beginning to take hold, and people were still buying Indulgences from their friendly neighborhood Priest.
In 1491 there were millions of Indigenous People in the Americas, who had developed writing, reading, astronomy, medicine, advanced mathematics, and bio chemistry.
By 1491, Muhammad II had taken Constantinople for Islam (1453), and the Ottoman Empire had taken most of Europe.
Except in Spain, where the Moors were finally defeated, and where The Spanish Inquisition became a booming business, and the auto da fe the much preferred means of transportation, which also allowed Devout White People to get in some excellent practice on Jews and Moors before they left for America.
Which brings us to
Wondrous Gift #2-
WE are The Chosen. With it's concomitant corollary-
You are either with Us or against Us. (hello hello ?)
You're against Us ? Well, since God chose Us and not You, You dead bro.
Not my fault. Its God's will, uhhh sorry.
Yes yes, we Chosens brought this Wondrous Gift #2 with us to America too.
God gave us the Earth, and everything on it. God also helps us to show how very very chosen we are by how much stuff we are able to accumulate. Best of all GOLD.
And where da Gold ?
Over there- in India. (Wellll, close enough, just make a sharp right at the end of Chile.)
Since We are the Chosen, and You ain't, You work for Us.
Oh, we also have a few guns, God's everlasting gift to Chosen People everywhere, so shut up and get to work.
Now we White Folks had a hell of a plan here.
Make the locals show us where the gold is. Then make them dig it up for us, then help us drag it back home, and We make the big bucks.
It woulda all worked fine, except for
Wondrous Gift #3-
Disease.
Now imagine a few hundred men on tiny ships for three months or so.
Filthy beyond imagining, starving, unwashed and totally unaware of any glimmer of hygiene. The ships actually reflected much of what life was like at home.
Whew. Disgusting. (Just in passing, The Aztecs shocked The Conquistadores because they bathed so much.)
Well, when We struggled ashore, We brought some lovely germs with Us.
Germs, of course, to which the Indigenous People had never been exposed.
Lovely things like Smallpox, Typhus, Influenza, Diptheria, Measles.
Mmmmmmmmmm.
"Whether one million or 10 million or 100 million died, ... the pall of sorrow that engulfed the hemisphere was immeasurable. Languages, prayers, hopes, habits, and dreams entire ways of life hissed away like steam. The Spanish and the Portuguese lacked the germ theory of disease and could not explain what was happening (let alone stop it). Nor can we explain it; the ruin was too long ago and too all-encompassing. In the long run, ... the consequential finding is not that many people died but that many people once lived. The Americas were filled with a stunningly diverse assortment of peoples who had knocked about the continents for millennia..."
Elizabeth Fenn, cited in 1491- An article by CHARLES MANN in The Atlantic of March 2002 http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Chumash/Population.html

We WP knew a little about epidemiology- since We had been through a plague or three, but in 1491, when a Native American got sick, his family and friends and Shaman gathered to his bedside.
If just one arriving guest clambering through the surf brought the flu, it was death by the hundreds of thousands for the Americans.
And don't forget- we White Folks sure do looooove our bacon and eggs.
So sure enough, when some of us arrived, we brought Pigs.
Yes, Pigs. The Incas had never seen a pig much less eaten one.
We couldn't do without that pork.
Pigs are if anything, durable.
When disease had destroyed most Americans, (estimates vary from 60 - 95%) and a hell of a lot of the Invaders, the pigs did just fine, and multiplied like, umm, pigs-- continuing to spread pox and other disease everywhere they wandered. Vengeance was theirs, for sure.
The estimates of how many Indigenous People lived in all of America in 1491 vary widely, but let's take a low-middle view. 25 million.
When Columbus landed first in what he humbly called Hispaniola, historians have uncovered data that indicates there were minimally 10 million in the neighborhood.
We have here what I call The Palestine Principle, closely connected to what in scholarly circles is called The Pristine Myth.
When White People come to a place and see only Brown people, they don't count them as Humans. So, the BP don't really exist, and they are damn sure not too Chosen, and so, they kinda disappear.
Like they weren't there.
And when racist Archaeologists go back later to count - they can't see the Brown folks too well in the dark.
That's where the myths come from that in 1948 Palestine was empty desert, until the Jews arrived with water and fertilizer.
Or similarly - that Hispaniola or New Jersey or Arizona or Marajo in the Amazon, were empty sparsely populated wastelands.
We count. They don't.
So, White Peoples' diseases decimated millions of Americans.
Florida, Massachusetts, Peru, Mexico. Everywhere.
In our pursuit of El Dorado, enormous evolved brilliant civilizations - just gone.
And what, after all did We take - what at last in the end did we gain ?
Some gold to finance the Spanish Empire ? or The British ? Well, ya know how long those lasted.
Just think of what we could have taken-
The profound wisdom of those we murdered, the accumulated knowledge of the vast civilizations we destroyed.
Idiots that We are, We took the gold, and destroyed the wisdom.
Wisdom about how to measure and predict the heavens, how to grow totally sustainable crops and manage forests and plains in harmony with Nature, mathematics still unimagined, and evolved concepts of communal life and governance by consensus still unequaled by any of us.
The wisdom we destroyed, and We grabbed the gold---
Which leads us to Iraq, AIDS, Katrina, Global Environmental Disasters, GMOs, DU, Intelligent Design.
For We have never stopped waging and continue to wage, the same ruinous venal destructive deadly war -- against present day Americans and against the world-- as we did 500 years ago.
So, let's give THANKS. For all the gifts we have given to the world. Amen.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FROM BLACK COMMENTATOR
NOVEMBER 25, 2008
(excerpts. For complete article, please access the websote below:)
http://www.blackcommentator.com/301/301_cover_end_of_american_thanksgivings.html

William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre of 1637:

"Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy."

The rest of the white folks thought so, too. "This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots," read Governor John Winthrop's proclamation. The authentic Thanksgiving Day was born.

Nobody celebrates Thanksgiving quite like Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history and the intent of "the founders" as the supremely white American holiday, the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis, and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year - a pure glorification of racist barbarity.
We at BC are thankful that the day grows nearer when the almost four centuries-old abomination will be deprived of its reason for being: white supremacy. Then we may all eat and drink in peace and gratitude for the blessings of humanity's deliverance from the rule of evil men.
Thanksgiving is much more than a lie - if it were that simple, an historical correction of the record of events in 1600s Massachusetts would suffice to purge the "flaw" in the national mythology. But Thanksgiving is not just a twisted fable, and the mythology it nurtures is itself inherently evil. The real-life events - subsequently revised - were perfectly understood at the time as the first, definitive triumphs of the genocidal European project in New England. The near-erasure of Native Americans in Massachusetts and, soon thereafter, from most of the remainder of the northern English colonial seaboard was the true mission of the Pilgrim enterprise - Act One of the American Dream. African Slavery commenced contemporaneously - an overlapping and ultimately inseparable Act Two.
The last Act in the American drama must be the "root and branch" eradication of all vestiges of Act One and Two - America's seminal crimes and formative projects. Thanksgiving as presently celebrated - that is, as a national political event - is an affront to civilization.

Celebrating the unspeakable
White America embraced Thanksgiving because a majority of that population glories in the fruits, if not the unpleasant details, of genocide and slavery and feels, on the whole, good about their heritage: a cornucopia of privilege and national power. Children are taught to identify with the good fortune of the Pilgrims. It does not much matter that the Native American and African holocausts that flowed from the feast at Plymouth are hidden from the children's version of the story - kids learn soon enough that Indians were made scarce and Africans became enslaved. But they will also never forget the core message of the holiday: that the Pilgrims were good people, who could not have purposely set such evil in motion. Just as the first Thanksgivings marked the consolidation of the English toehold in what became the United States, the core ideological content of the holiday serves to validate all that has since occurred on these shores - a national consecration of the unspeakable, a balm and benediction for the victors, a blessing of the fruits of murder and kidnapping, and an implicit obligation to continue the seamless historical project in the present day.
The Thanksgiving story is an absolution of the Pilgrims, whose brutal quest for absolute power in the New World is made to seem both religiously motivated and eminently human. Most importantly, the Pilgrims are depicted as victims - of harsh weather and their own naïve yet wholesome visions of a new beginning. In light of this carefully nurtured fable, whatever happened to the Indians, from Plymouth to California and beyond, in the aftermath of the 1621 dinner must be considered a mistake, the result of misunderstandings - at worst, a series of lamentable tragedies. The story provides the essential first frame of the American saga. It is unalloyed racist propaganda, a tale that endures because it served the purposes of a succession of the Pilgrims' political heirs, in much the same way that Nazi-enhanced mythology of a glorious Aryan/German past advanced another murderous, expansionist mission.
Thanksgiving is quite dangerous - as were the Pilgrims.

Rejoicing in a cemetery
The English settlers, their ostensibly religious venture backed by a trading company, were glad to discover that they had landed in a virtual cemetery in 1620. Corn still sprouted in the abandoned fields of the Wampanoags, but only a remnant of the local population remained around the fabled Rock. In a letter to England, Massachusetts Bay colony founder John Winthrop wrote, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."
Ever diligent to claim their own advantages as God's will, the Pilgrims thanked their deity for having "pursued" the Indians to mass death. However, it was not divine intervention that wiped out most of the natives around the village of Patuxet but, most likely, smallpox-embedded blankets planted during an English visit or slave raid. Six years before the Pilgrim landing, a ship sailed into Patuxet's harbor, captained by none other than the famous seaman and mercenary soldier John Smith, former leader of the first successful English colony in the New World, at Jamestown, Virginia. Epidemic and slavery followed in his wake, as Debra Glidden described in IMDiversity.com:
In 1614 the Plymouth Company of England, a joint stock company, hired Captain John Smith to explore land in its behalf. Along what is now the coast of Massachusetts in the territory of the Wampanoag, Smith visited the town of Patuxet according to "The Colonial Horizon," a 1969 book edited by William Goetzinan. Smith renamed the town Plymouth in honor of his employers, but the Wampanoag who inhabited the town continued to call it Patuxet.

The following year Captain Hunt, an English slave trader, arrived at Patuxet. It was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them into slavery for 220 shillings apiece. That practice was described in a 1622 account of happenings entitled "A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia," written by Edward Waterhouse. True to the explorer tradition, Hunt kidnapped a number of Wampanoags to sell into slavery.
Another common practice among European explorers was to give "smallpox blankets" to the Indians. Since smallpox was unknown on this continent prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans did not have any natural immunity to the disease so smallpox would effectively wipe out entire villages with very little effort required by the Europeans. William Fenton describes how Europeans decimated Native American villages in his 1957 work "American Indian and White relations to 1830." From 1615 to 1619 smallpox ran rampant among the Wampanoags and their neighbors to the north. The Wampanoag lost 70 percent of their population to the epidemic and the Massachusetts lost 90 percent.
Most of the Wampanoag had died from the smallpox epidemic so when the Pilgrims arrived they found well-cleared fields which they claimed for their own. A Puritan colonist, quoted by Harvard University's Perry Miller, praised the plague that had wiped out the Indians for it was "the wonderful preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ, by his providence for his people's abode in the Western world."
Historians have since speculated endlessly on why the woods in the region resembled a park to the disembarking Pilgrims in 1620. The reason should have been obvious: hundreds, if not thousands, of people had lived there just five years before.
In less than three generations the settlers would turn all of New England into a charnel house for Native Americans, and fire the economic engines of slavery throughout English-speaking America. Plymouth Rock is the place where the nightmare truly began.
The uninvited?

It is not at all clear what happened at the first - and only - "integrated" Thanksgiving feast. Only two written accounts of the three-day event exist, and one of them, by Governor William Bradford, was written 20 years after the fact...

...What is certain is that the first feast was not called a "Thanksgiving" at the time; no further integrated dining occasions were scheduled; and the first, official all-Pilgrim "Thanksgiving" had to wait until 1637, when the whites of New England celebrated the massacre of the Wampanoag's southern neighbors, the Pequots.

The real Thanksgiving Day Massacre
...Sixteen years after the problematical Plymouth feast, the English tried mightily to erase the Pequots from the face of the Earth, and thanked God for the blessing.
Having subdued, intimidated or made mercenaries of most of the tribes of Massachusetts, the English turned their growing force southward, toward the rich Connecticut valley, the Pequot's sphere of influence. At the point where the Mystic River meets the sea, the combined force of English and allied Indians bypassed the Pequot fort to attack and set ablaze a town full of women, children and old people.
William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre of 1637:
"Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy."
The rest of the white folks thought so, too. "This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots," read Governor John Winthrop's proclamation. The authentic Thanksgiving Day was born.

"Like a rock"
The Thanksgiving holiday fable is at once a window on the way that many, if not most, white Americans view the world and their place in it, and a pollutant that leaches barbarism into the modern era. The fable attempts to glorify the indefensible, to enshrine an era and mission that represent the nation's lowest moral denominators. Thanksgiving as framed in the mythology is, consequently, a drag on that which is potentially civilizing in the national character, a crippling, atavistic deformity. Defenders of the holiday will claim that the politically-corrected children's version promotes brotherhood, but that is an impossibility - a bald excuse to prolong the worship of colonial "forefathers" and to erase the crimes they committed. Those bastards burned the Pequot women and children, and ushered in the multinational business of slavery. These are facts. The myth is an insidious diversion - and worse.

Humanity cannot tolerate a 21st Century superpower, much of whose population perceives the world through the eyes of 17th Century land and flesh bandits. Yet that is the trick that fate has played on the globe. We described the roots of the planetary dilemma in our March 13, 2003 commentary, "Racism & War, Perfect Together."
The English arrived with criminal intent - and brought wives and children to form new societies predicated on successful plunder. To justify the murderous enterprise, Indians who had initially cooperated with the squatters were transmogrified into "savages" deserving displacement and death. The relentlessly refreshed lie of Indian savagery became a truth in the minds of white Americans, a fact to be acted upon by every succeeding generation of whites. The settlers became a singular people confronting the great "frontier" - a euphemism for centuries of genocidal campaigns against a darker, "savage" people marked for extinction...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DRANT #325: COLIN POWELL - MSCUMFFYBHN

2008-10-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

This is a DRANT from May 2004 about the cowardly treasonous Uncle Tom Squared Colin Powell.
There was a time when he had the world in his hands, when he could have simply said "NO" and walked- and the world would have changed. But Cheney and Rove knew their man, they knew they had hired a House Slave, who always worked for the Man, and they were right. Powell did what he always had done- and shucked and jived fo' Massuh.
Now comes Remus Powell, to endorse Obama. And comes Obama to rub Powell's head, and promise him a nice warm job in Da Main House.
It makes sense. Obama, one of the iconic go-along-to-get-along Oreos in memory, being endorsed by Powell, who- in his zeal to please his bosses, caused the death, poisoning, immolation and forced expulsion of millions- became one of history's great war criminals.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DRANT
Number 31
May 5, 2004
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
COLIN POWELL – MSCUMFYBHN
BUSINESS AS USUAL

Once a Massuh Sucking Covering Up MF Yassuh Boss Oreo House Nigger,
ALWAYS a MSCUMFYBHN.

Wait a minute don’t tell me. Sounds realllly familiar. Ummmmmmmmmmm.
Colin Powell, Seymour Hersh.
War crimes, atrocities ummm
Hold it, Hold it, it’ll come to me.
Sorry, but maybe I have Abuseimers Disease, like Rumsfeld.
YES !
Now I remember !
MY LAI ! (That’s in Viet Nam).
Aha.
1968. The first REPORT comes to Powell.
He smothers it, covers it up, and gets his promotion.
Yassuh Boss rides again.
All the way to Iraq '91, and those ohsoMANly fatigues on CNN.
And you know who OUTED him ?
Why Seymour Hersh.
And here it is all over again.
Horrendous atrocities, lies, covering for The Man.
Just like at the UN Security Council, one of the MSCUMFYBHN award winning performances of all time.
And then- can you believe this – in JENIN- where Sec of State Colin Magoo testified that he never saw any atrocities or graves.
Just like in King George’s office, when he coulda woulda shoulda said NO WAY, and this massacre would never have happened.
Just like yesterday sitting on Kofi’s lap and purring to order that Sharon was a cool guy.
Let’s take a walk down Memory Lane, and try not to throw up.
And one more time-
Let’s HEAR IT for HARRY BELAFONTE !
Harry knows a Tom when he sees one, and man did he smell the Tom in Powell.

“There's an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.”
“- - - we have high expectations. Necessarily for those who come from color, who come from a history of oppression, or at least an understanding of it. And what we would hope is that people who come from that experience would use it effectively to change the way in which others do business in the world of oppression.”
H Belafonte on CNN Larry King show October 15, 2002

And speaking of Larry King, which I never do
General MSCUMFYBHN his seff was on last night.
In the best tradition of Steppen Fetchit he said:
"In war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again, but they're still to be deplored," he said. "It's a fairly small number of soldiers. Let's not let that take away from the magnificent contributions being made by most of our soldiers."
"We will deal with this by telling the people of the world that this is an isolated incident."

Business as usual for Colin Powell.

Here is what General OREO, then just a Major, said in defense of My Lai:

"There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs," Powell wrote in 1968. But "this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division."

Business as usual for Colin Powell.

Here is a direct quote from Powell’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY:

“- - -We burned the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters ... Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said people were like the sea in which his guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?"

Behind Colin Powell's Legend -- My Lai

THE CONSORTIUM (c) Copyright 1996

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html

By Robert Parry & Norman Solomon

On May 16, 1968, a bloodied unit of the Americal division stormed into a hamlet known as My Lai 4. With military helicopters circling overhead, revenge-seeking American soldiers rousted Vietnamese civilians -- mostly old men, women and children -- from their thatched huts and herded them into the village's irrigation ditches.

As the round-up continued, some Americans raped the girls. Then, under orders from junior officers on the ground, soldiers began emptying their M-16s into the terrified peasants. Some parents desperately used their bodies to try to shield their children from the bullets. Soldiers stepped among the corpses to finish off the wounded.

The slaughter raged for four hours. A total of 347 Vietnamese, including babies, died in the carnage that would stain the reputation of the U.S. Army. But there also were American heroes that day in My Lai. Some soldiers refused to obey the direct orders to kill.

A pilot named Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. from Stone Mountain, Ga., was furious at the killings he saw happening on the ground. He landed his helicopter between one group of fleeing civilians and American soldiers in pursuit. Thompson ordered his helicopter door gunner to shoot the Americans if they tried to harm the Vietnamese. After a tense confrontation, the soldiers backed off. Later, two of Thompson's men climbed into one ditch filled with corpses and pulled out a three-year-old boy whom they flew to safety.

A Pattern of Brutality

While a horrific example of a Vietnam war crime, the My Lai massacre was not unique. It fit a long pattern of indiscriminate violence against civilians that had marred U.S. participation in the Vietnam War from its earliest days when Americans acted primarily as advisers.

In 1963, Capt. Colin Powell was one of those advisers, serving a first tour with a South Vietnamese army unit. Powell's detachment sought to discourage support for the Viet Cong by torching villages throughout the A Shau Valley. While other U.S. advisers protested this countrywide strategy as brutal and counter-productive, Powell defended the "drain-the-sea" approach then -- and continued that defense in his 1995 memoirs, My American Journey. (See The Consortium, July 8)

After his first one-year tour and a series of successful training assignments in the United States, Maj. Powell returned for his second Vietnam tour on July 27, 1968. This time, he was no longer a junior officer slogging through the jungle, but an up-and-coming staff officer assigned to the Americal division.

By late 1968, Powell had jumped over more senior officers into the important post of G-3, chief of operations for division commander, Maj. Gen. Charles Gettys, at Chu Lai. Powell had been "picked by Gen. Gettys over several lieutenant colonels for the G-3 job itself, making me the only major filling that role in Vietnam," Powell wrote in his memoirs.

But a test soon confronted Maj. Powell. A letter had been written by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen, who had served in an Americal mortar platoon and was nearing the end of his Army tour. In a letter to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, Glen accused the Americal division of routine brutality against civilians. Glen's letter was forwarded to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai where it landed on Maj. Powell's desk.

"The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations," Glen wrote. "Far beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy."

Glen's letter contended that many Vietnamese were fleeing from Americans who "for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." Gratuitous cruelty was also being inflicted on Viet Cong suspects, Glen reported.

"Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with a vocabulary consisting of 'You VC,' soldiers commonly 'interrogate' by means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit of the enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual means of questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he is, indeed, a Viet Cong...

"It would indeed be terrible to find it necessary to believe that an American soldier that harbors such racial intolerance and disregard for justice and human feeling is a prototype of all American national character; yet the frequency of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs. ... What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated."

Glen's letter echoed some of the complaints voiced by early advisers, such as Col. John Paul Vann, who protested the self-defeating strategy of treating Vietnamese civilians as the enemy. In 1995, when we questioned Glen about his letter, he said he had heard second-hand about the My Lai massacre, though he did not mention it specifically. The massacre was just one part of the abusive pattern that had become routine in the division, he said.

Maj. Powell's Response

The letter's troubling allegations were not well received at American headquarters. Maj. Powell undertook the assignment to review Glen's letter, but did so without questioning Glen or assigning anyone else to talk with him. Powell simply accepted a claim from Glen's superior officer that Glen was not close enough to the front lines to know what he was writing about, an assertion Glen denies.

After that cursory investigation, Powell drafted a response on Dec. 13, 1968. He admitted to no pattern of wrongdoing. Powell claimed that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were taught to treat Vietnamese courteously and respectfully. The Americal troops also had gone through an hour-long course on how to treat prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, Powell noted.

"There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs," Powell wrote in 1968. But "this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division." Indeed, Powell's memo faulted Glen for not complaining earlier and for failing to be more specific in his letter.

Powell reported back exactly what his superiors wanted to hear. "In direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal," Powell concluded, "is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."

Powell's findings, of course, were false. But it would take another Americal hero, an infantryman named Ron Ridenhour, to piece together the truth about the atrocity at My Lai. After returning to the United States, Ridenhour interviewed Americal comrades who had participated in the massacre.

On his own, Ridenhour compiled this shocking information into a report and forwarded it to the Army inspector general. The IG's office conducted an aggressive official investigation and the Army finally faced the horrible truth. Courts martial were held against officers and enlisted men implicated in the murder of the My Lai civilians.

But Powell's peripheral role in the My Lai cover-up did not slow his climb up the Army's ladder. Powell pleaded ignorance about the actual My Lai massacre, which pre-dated his arrival at the Americal. Glen's letter disappeared into the National Archives -- to be unearthed only years later by British journalists Michael Bilton and Kevin Sims for their book Four Hours in My Lai. In his best-selling memoirs, Powell did not mention his brush-off of Tom Glen's complaint.

MAM Hunts

Powell did include, however, a troubling recollection that belied his 1968 official denial of Glen's allegation that American soldiers "without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." After mentioning the My Lai massacre in My American Journey, Powell penned a partial justification of the Americal's brutality. In a chilling passage, Powell explained the routine practice of murdering unarmed male Vietnamese.

"I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male," Powell wrote. "If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen (West Germany), Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong."

While it's certainly true that combat is brutal, mowing down unarmed civilians is not combat. It is, in fact, a war crime. Neither can the combat death of a fellow soldier be cited as an excuse to murder civilians. Disturbingly, that was precisely the rationalization that the My Lai killers cited in their own defense.

But returning home from Vietnam a second time in 1969, Powell had proved himself the consummate team player.

My Lai Massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

The My Lai massacre (pronounced "Me Lie") was a massacre of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. It prompted widespread outrage around the world and may have helped end public support for the war in the United States.

Initial investigations of My Lai were undertaken by the 11th Brigade's CO, Col Oran Henderson, under orders from Americal's Ass't CO, BG Young.

Six months later a young soldier of the 11th Light Infantry (The Butcher's Brigade) named Tom Glen, wrote a letter accusing the Americal division (and other entire units of the US military, not just individuals) of routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians; the letter was detailed, its allegations horrifying, and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers. Colin Powell, then a young US Army Major, was charged with investigating the massacre. Powell wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Later, Powell's refutation would be called an act of "white-washing" the news of the Massacre, and questions would continue to remain undisclosed to the public.

Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai story on November 12, 1969 and on November 20 The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) published explicit photographs of dead villagers killed at My Lai. The carnage at My Lai would have gone unknown in history if not for another soldier who, independent of Glen, sent a letter to his Congressman.

Courts martial

Ron Ridenhour learned about the events at My Lai second-hand, by talking to members of Charlie Company. He then appealed to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon and eventually got Calley charged with murder in September 1969. It was another two months before the American public learned about the massacre.

On March 17, 1970 the United States Army charged 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.

American Army Lt. William Calley was convicted in 1971 of premeditated murder in ordering the shootings and initially sentenced to life in prison; two days later, however, President Richard Nixon ordered him released from prison. Calley served 3½ years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia and was then ordered freed by a federal judge. Calley claimed that he was following orders from his captain, Ernest Medina: Medina denied giving the orders and was acquitted. There were no other convictions.

Seymour Hersh published a story after discussions with Ron Ridenhour.

The Powell Doctrine:
Baghdad/Jenin/My Lai
by Heather Wokusch
August 17, 2002

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/wokusch4.html

“- - - Back home, flag-waving hysteria followed Operation Desert Storm to its climax, and returning conquerors, including then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, were feted as national heroes.

Minor glitch. A few months later it was revealed that actually 100,000 to 200,000 Iraqis, many of them unarmed civilians, had died during the six-week attack, including tens of thousands mowed down in aerial assaults as they were trying to flee along what became nicknamed "The Highway of Death."

Equating civilians and combatants is integral to "The Powell Doctrine" which recommends using overwhelming force on the enemy, regardless of civilian casualties. In his autobiography, Colin Powell discusses the Vietnam War and explains the benefits of destroying the food and homes of villagers who might sympathize with the Viet Cong: "We burned the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters ... Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said people were like the sea in which his guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?"

- - - Fast forward to April 2002, and having risen to Secretary of State, Colin Powell reported to a US congressional panel about his visit to the Jenin refugee camp, site of a recent Israeli attack. Powell testified, "I've seen no evidence of mass graves ... no evidence that would suggest a massacre took place ... Clearly people died in Jenin - people who were terrorists died in Jenin - and in the prosecution of that battle innocent lives may well have been lost." In the same vein, Amnesty International issued a short release stating that while it appeared "serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed ... only an independent international commission of inquiry can establish the full facts and the scale of these violations." For its part, the White House also claimed more facts were needed, and then Bush called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a "man of peace."

So in essence, the whole Jenin attack would need to be swept under the carpet because (since Israel had not allowed a UN investigation and NGOs had come up with very little) there was not enough solid information to support accusations.

Minor glitch. Unmentioned is the fact that the US military, under the auspices of learning about urban warfare, had accompanied the Israeli military on its attack on Jenin (Marine Corps Times, 5-3-2002). Or the fact that dozens of foreign journalists witnessed 30 Palestinian corpses being buried in a mass grave right near the hospital. Or the fact that local hospital personnel describe seeing the Israeli military loading other corpses "into a refrigerated semi-trailer, and taking them out of Jenin" (which would answer the question posed in Amnesty's release, "What was striking is what was absent. There were very few bodies in the hospital. There were also none who were seriously injured, only the 'walking wounded'. Thus we have to ask: where are the bodies and where are the seriously injured?'').

Moral of the story? Truth is often the first casualty of war. Before we hang our hopes on heroes or unquestioningly believe what we hear from even the most reliable sources, we need to dig deeper to find the real story. Second, while the US was appropriate to be outraged at the targeting of its civilians in the September 11 attacks, we should extend that outrage to scenarios in which our government targets, or is complicit in targeting, civilians elsewhere.

CNN LARRY KING LIVE
Interview with Harry Belafonte
Aired October 15, 2002 - 21:00 ET

HARRY BELAFONTE, ACTIVIST: There's an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.

- - -Last year, in South Africa, the United Nations under Kofi Annan gave us an excellent opportunity in convening the International Conference on Racism directed by a woman of remarkable credentials, the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson. There was a place where the United States should have been in attendance, and given us the benefit of thought on a very grievous set of conditions that affect the human family -- the issue of race.

And in that instance, the United States government sought to turn its back on the thousands of people who were gathered there to make a difference. And Colin Powell was the point person on that distancing of our country.
KING: What did you want him to do? What do you want him to do?
BELAFONTE: I would like him to live up to a higher moral standard. - - - Where is Colin Powell's conscience ?

CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=6228

IRAQ
The Unread Report

The news is filled today with the ongoing allegations of abuse in Iraqi prisons. The NYT reports, "In the last 16 months, the Army has conducted more than 30 criminal investigations into misconduct by American captors in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 10 cases of suspicious death, 10 cases of abuse, and two deaths already determined to have been criminal homicides, the Army's vice chief of staff said Tuesday." The U.S.-appointed Human Rights Minister in Baghdad, Abdul-Basat al-Turki, said yesterday "he had resigned to protest abuses by American guards." He claims he is stepping down "not only because I believe that the use of violence is a violation of human rights but also because these methods in the prisons means that the violations are a common act." According to the Financial Times, "It has become commonplace for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to assert that the insurgents are enemies of democracy, but it is the US that most Iraqis see as anti-democratic. This is a disastrous image for a nation that waged a war promising freedom and democracy." This underscores one dramatic fact: the United States has lost credibility and needs to act to restore it immediately.

RESTORING CREDIBILITY: The new strategy put forward by American Progress calls for the U.S.-administered prison system to be opened up to international inspections as one step towards restoring lost credibility. A permanent committee to monitor prison conditions should be established and the new Iraqi Ministry of the Interior should keep a centralized database of all detainees in Iraqi prisons.

THE UNREAD REPORT: The NYT writes, "the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House had difficulty explaining why they had not acted earlier and more aggressively to deal with the abuse." One reason: No one wants to admit to having read the report. According to the LA Times, the White House has known about the investigation since December. The report was completed in February. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers called Dan Rather at CBS three weeks before the story ran and asked the network to hold it; this past Sunday, questioned on Face the Nation, Myers admitted he still hadn't read the report himself. Two days after Myers's admission, President Bush still hadn't read the report and his press secretary attempted to shield him, claiming the president "only become aware of the photographs and the Pentagon's main internal report about the incidents from news reports last week." And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, commenting on the report for the first time yesterday, said while he'd seen a summary and recommendations from the investigation, he hadn't read the full report. The report is 53 pages. It is available online. What are they waiting for?

KEPT IN THE DARK: The NYT reports the State Department is frustrated that the Pentagon knew about the report weeks ago, knew about the abuse allegations, knew that it was about to become public, yet did not tell the State Department. U.S. lawmakers are also incensed at having been kept in the dark about the report. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said, "It's a neglect of the responsibilities that Secretary Rumsfeld and the civilian leaders of the Pentagon to keep the Congress informed." Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) said, "It's been a month since that report has been available. It should have been sent to this committee immediately." And Senator John W. Warner (R-VA) Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, "said the Pentagon should have informed Congress earlier. He said he would summon Mr. Rumsfeld to testify in a public hearing as soon as possible."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DRANT #324: PIGGGGGGGGGZ

2008-10-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout
Pay and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of US government bail-out package

Simon Bowers
The Guardian, Saturday October 18 2008

At one point last week the Morgan Stanley $10.7bn pay pot for the year to date was greater than the entire stock market value of the business. In effect, staff, on receiving their remuneration, could club together and buy the bank.
In the first nine months of the year Citigroup, which employs thousands of staff in the UK, accrued $25.9bn for salaries and bonuses, an increase on the previous year of 4%. Earlier this week the bank accepted a $25bn investment by the US government as part of its bail-out plan.

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

Demonstrators protesting in New York before the $700bn Wall Street bail-out earlier this month. Photograph: Nicholas Roberts/AFP/Getty images

Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements. Pressure on the US firms to review preparations for annual bonuses increased yesterday when Germany's Deutsche Bank said many of its leading traders would join Josef Ackermann, its chief executive, in waiving millions of euros in annual payouts.

The sums that continue to be spent by Wall Street firms on payroll, payoffs and, most controversially, bonuses appear to bear no relation to the losses incurred by investors in the banks. Shares in Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have declined by more than 45% since the start of the year. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have fallen by more than 60%. JP MorganChase fell 6.4% and Lehman Brothers has collapsed.

At one point last week the Morgan Stanley $10.7bn pay pot for the year to date was greater than the entire stock market value of the business. In effect, staff, on receiving their remuneration, could club together and buy the bank.

In the first nine months of the year Citigroup, which employs thousands of staff in the UK, accrued $25.9bn for salaries and bonuses, an increase on the previous year of 4%. Earlier this week the bank accepted a $25bn investment by the US government as part of its bail-out plan.

At Goldman Sachs the figure was $11.4bn, Morgan Stanley $10.73bn, JP Morgan $6.53bn and Merrill Lynch $11.7bn. At Merrill, which was on the point of going bust last month before being taken over by Bank of America, the total accrued in the last quarter grew 76% to $3.49bn. At Morgan Stanley, the amount put aside for staff compensation also grew in the last quarter to the end of August by 3% to $3.7bn.

Days before it collapsed into bankruptcy protection a month ago Lehman Brothers revealed $6.12bn of staff pay plans in its corporate filings. These payouts, the bank insisted, were justified despite net revenue collapsing from $14.9bn to a net outgoing of $64m.

None of the banks the Guardian contacted wished to comment on the record about their pay plans. But behind the scenes, one source said: "For a normal person the salaries are very high and the bonuses seem even higher. But in this world you get a top bonus for top performance, a medium bonus for mediocre performance and a much smaller bonus if you don't do so well."

Many critics of investment banks have questioned why firms continue to siphon off billions of dollars of bank earnings into bonus pools rather than using the funds to shore up the capital position of the crisis-stricken institutions. One source said: "That's a fair question - and it may well be that by the end of the year the banks start review the situation."

Much of the anger about investment banking bonuses has focused on boardroom executives such as former Lehman boss Dick Fuld, who was paid $485m in salary, bonuses and options between 2000 and 2007.

Last year Merrill Lynch's chairman Stan O'Neal retired after announcing losses of $8bn, taking a final pay deal worth $161m. Citigroup boss Chuck Prince left last year with a $38m in bonuses, shares and options after multibillion-dollar write-downs. In Britain, Bob Diamond, Barclays president, is one of the few investment bankers whose pay is public. Last year he received a salary of £250,000, but his total pay, including bonuses, reached £36m.

DRANT #323: RAPE FOR DUMMIES

2008-10-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

Are you bamboozled by the maze of recondite acronyms and obscure and purposefully
opaque nomenclature used to describe what is simple
rapacious Rape ?
Do you really know what "credit default swaps" are ?
A ravenous recipe concocted of equal parts -- unimaginable gluttony, immeasurable
greedy manipulation and voracious victimization and capitalization of the pain suffered
by others: yielding billions of dollars in profits for very very few, and ruination
for most everyone else.
(The worst is definitely yet to come)
Well, here is what I think to be the clearest explanation so far:
Credit Default Swaps: The Insane Problem and the Radical but Sane Solution
(by Chuck Simpson) (15138) From Op Ed News
And just remember- none of this was due to idiocy, stupidity or bumbling.
The same people who invented it, and who carried it out, are now reaping the biggest
benefits, and its only just started.
There are TRILLIONS of dollars of non existent imaginary and worthless dollars teetering
out there, soon to ignite the biggest conflagration yet.

DRANT # 322: NOBODY KNOWS NUTHIN

2008-09-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

"---what we have is --- a
continuation of a transfer of wealth. This whole government has become
nothing more than a big machine that transfers the wealth upwards with
our tax policies, our energy policies, with fiscal policies, with
the war. All the wealth of the country goes from the pockets of the
people into the hands of a few. This is a very dangerous moment. You
know, it's the biggest amount of injection of capital by the government
in a single time since the New Deal. And frankly, there is no trickle
down here. There's just rewarding bad behavior---"
Rep. Dennis Kucinich on Democracy Now

The world-renowned financial expert Larry Berra (aka Yogi) had this to say about the world's (supposed) economic crisis: "In baseball ya don't know nuthin."
Egggzackly.
None of us don't know nuthin'-- but we do know this: They ALL suck. Us included.
They gave away 680 Billion of our dollars yesterday, and we never made a sound.
This included giving Bush another 70 billion for the wars, and stilllll nobody as much as honked a kazoo.
They transfused a slew more vampire banks with our blood money, and not a squawk outta us.
And did you watch the charade of controversy on TV today ?
As if - there was one ?

Do you think that The Pelosi would bring the bailout bill to the floor for a vote without knowing how the vote would go ? To make super sure, she took time off from her botox treatments (her lips were barely able to move) long enough to make a dumdum partisan speech just before the vote. She knew it was going down. They all did. It was planned. This was World Championship Wrestling in jackets and ties and ladies' power suits.

What we saw today was the usual Bullshit Ballet, promoting the fiction that there are two opposing parties, that no they don't all work for The (same) Man, pimping the bombastic bubbemeise that there is a desperate financial crisis which can only be solved by Us sending even more of Our money to Them, and that they had to pass this bill (for our sake) before the sun set or our ATMs and Visa cards would crumble to dust.
Americans watched mesmerized and fearful as the Dow-Jones Industrial Average lost 777 points.
The cablenews double-chinned whities argued and moaned and pontificated endlessly -- as if the Dow was some kind of wildly bleeping vital signs monitor in the emergency room of the economy.
The Dow is irrelevant.
What's relevant is that people have lost their lives and their homes and jobs, and been bankrupted by medical bills, not that a pre-selected list of stocks goes up or down because a skyscraper of Little Eichmanns program their computers to sell the instant some inscrutable digital delta or other is reached.
Millions of people foreclosed and evicted, and Congress sat.
Water poured over the levees and obliterated the lives of hundreds of thousands - and Congress sat.
Pensions gone, incomes decimated, jobs disappeared, lifetimes ruined, families destroyed, and Congress sat.
But- when some banks and brokers started bleeding profusely from SELF-INFLICTED wounds, Congress outraced Michael Phelps himself to the rescue.
Now why do you think that is ?
Hmmmm, I know, it's a toughie.
Well, here's a hint: all the Politicians are roostering loudly about how They are acting for Us, that this is about Main Street not Wall Street (eccccccch that's offensive) that its the average worker, the typical american, mr and mrs frozen dinner- that they really care about. Wangawangawangawangawangawangawangawangawangaaa wangwang wang !
That's the ole BS detector going completely Keith Moon !
As soon as a politician tells ya that its You that counts, RUN for your LIVES.
The reason that Congress, The Government, The Media and The Police all UsainBolt to save the banks and not you is that they work for the banks and not you.
Duh.
And, the reason they made sure that the so-called bailout bill FAILED is- its better for them and the banks (and the government and the media and the police) if it fails.
They WANT it to fail. They NEED it to fail. They do this every buncha years or so.
What they create is a big fat panic-ridden, fear-driven, collapse and deflation. What they started about 15 years ago was a big fat bubble, making loans and credit cheap and available to anyone and everyone who could (or even who couldn't) sign their name, destroying crucial historic regulatory structures and all pretense of oversight, birthing new forms of creating money, value, and wealth from thin air, printing dollars without ink, paper or printer, and evading morality, responsibility and taxes simultaneously.
They are doing just fine with ongoing unregulated de facto bailouts - Freddie or Frankie or Fifi or whatever -- AIG, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, and now the auto companies, and whoknowswhats next. Billions in bailouts, no votes, no scrutiny, no debate, no oversight. So what the hell did they need this current "bailout" bill for ?
They needed it to fail.
Its a public lynching of our trust and confidence and security. Created to induce fear and panic.
They are not only killing the body of the bailout, but they are gonna be sure and let it swing from the tree for a good while so all us folks can see what happens when ya mess with Massuh.
And then, when we predictably raise our voices in pain, and anger and humiliation, or yell about having our votes stolen-- they already have the troops in place- primed and at the ready to quell any "civil unrest" by the disenfranchised or financially disemboweled.

DRANT # 321: LUFTMENSCHEN

2008-09-26T01:25:00.001-07:00

"If money isn't loosened up, this sucker could go down," President Bush
declared Thursday as he watched the $700 billion bailout package fall
apart before his eyes, according to one person in the room.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a story my much-missed Julie Vogel used to tell. I don't tell it nearly as well, but it sums it all up:
(Background:The Nazis imposed numerous draconian laws forbidding Jews from engaging in business with others.)
###########
No matter how bad things got, Yossl and Moishe met every day for coffee. One morning Yossl tells Moishe- "Ya know, I have no need for this beautiful watch I'm wearing. Who needs to know the time ? Its a priceless heirloom, but I just don't need it anymore. How about I sell it to you ?"
Moishe says: "Wellll, it's scratched, but I don't own a watch. OK, I'll give you 3 zlotys."
"3 Zlotys ! Ridiculous, its worth 100 !"
"Take it or leave it," says Yossl.
"I'll take it," says Moishe.
Next morning over coffee, Moishe says- "Ya know, I love this watch, but I just really never look at the time. Maybe you should buy it. 4 Zlotys."
"4 !" yelps Yossl, "it's not worth 2 !"
"Take it or leave it."
"OK," says Yossl, "4 Zlotys."
Next morning, Yossl offers to sell the watch back to Moishe for 5 Zlotys.
"This is ridiculous," says Moishe. "I sell it to you, you sell it to me. For what ?"
"Stop complaining," says Yossl.
"Like this-- we're making a living !"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Luftmenschen means "AIR-MEN." Men who live on air. We live in LuftLand - the AIR COUNTRY.
What lessons we can learn from Moishe and Yossl:
1- A thing is worth only what someone will pay for it.
2- To sell, it takes two, baby.
3- You both have to agree on the terms.
4- A deal is a deal.
5- Everything is fine as long as its fine. AKA the Wiley Coyote Rule: if you run off the cliff, you don't fall 'til you look down.
6- The most important thing is to keep the game going.

For the past few days, the Pigs gathered publicly and unabashed at the trough yet again, recalling nothing less than the Warren Commission or the 9-11 Commission, or worse- Powell and Tenant at The UN.
I mean, take a LOOK at these guys.

The pre-determined DECISION has been made. The rest is a mendacious manipulative show: the usual carefully choreographed Bullshit Ballet, sumptuously staged to convince us that:
1- Democracy is alive and well in the USA
2- The demands, needs and views of We (the group formerly known as) The People are being vigorously represented, and
3- What we are watching is tough but honest disagreement between sincere but differing points of view.
Where are Yossl and Moishe when we need them ?

These Pigs all have the same religion, feed from the same dish of slop, and work for the same masters.
They are ALL ON THE SAME SIDE.
As I have bleated for years-- looking to the Conspirators to end The Conspiracy is self-defeating lunacy.
Did we learn nothing from the WMD disaster ? Are we going to believe again in the Mushroom Cloud Fairy ? That this is an EMERGENCY ? That total chaos awaits if we delay even a few days ?
What's the rush ???
How about making damn sure the $700 Billion check (and muchmuchmuch more) gets written before a new President and Congress take office ? If O-same-a still had one testicle left, he never would have shown up. But of course, if he had balls in the first place, he would have stood up two days ago, and announced that he would not support or accept any deal where every man woman and child in the USA would be asked to pay for crap that everyone knows is worthless, while the perps walk, and the rest of us lose the very things that sustain life.
Proof again that Oshama is a professional invertebrate goalongtogetalong, who has built his life on pleasing everyone and being no one. Massuh, thy name is Goldman Sachs. (see DRANT # 312)

The bottom line: at the same exact time Dungress was publicly daisychaining over "saving the economy," they overwhelmingly passed yet another 400 billion dollar funding bill guaranteeing yet more years of war, genocide, occupation, torture, and destruction of the planet.
We're already in the opening scenes of one possible Act II - the usual-- where both sides feign disagreement and difference of principle, where Pimp Media pushes phony controversy to sell us the big lie, and where America buys it all, and votes for one of two evils.
(breaking news: The government just brokered (!) a deal where JP Morgan/Chase got to buy Washington Mutual's ASSETS, but stuck You and Me and Aunt Minnie with the worthless paper, and about 100 Billion dollars in debt.) No Congress, no debate, no discussion, no vote. Poof.
But-
I see another scenario.
We The People have snoozed through devastation of our habitat, repression and obliteration of our rights, the persecution and incarceration, and the slaughter, torture, poisoning and cultural defenestration of millions of "others." WTP did nothing that made any difference.
But now, at last, we Americans are rising up, on fire with righteous anger, enraged by our leaders' betrayal, marching, writing, yelling, calling, faxing and ferociously emailing, letting our voices be heard far and wide. We have finally been grievously wounded in our one vulnerable spot, America's Achilles Heel-
our profound self-interest --

All along, I and many others have been demanding to know- what will it take ? What will it take to wake people up and get them to DO something ?
What is the threshhold -- the tipping point -- the final incendiary spark ?
Well, now we know. Being told to pay 700 billion dollars for a pile of crap that nobody wants. That may finally have done it.
They planned another 9-11-- a financial 9-11, to scare us into even further compliance and submission -- through fear. Fear of losing everything we've worked for our whole lives-- our pensions, our health, the chance for our grandchildren to live better lives than we, and of course, our very homes.
And frightened we are. Willing to sell off pieces of our freedom to gain slivers of solace and security.
BUT-- 700 billion dollars for crap ?
Uh uh. That's it.
You think this all wasn't part of the plan ?
I think it was.
We are being pushed to the point of irrationality and reactive destructive behavior.
See:
Bush's fear-mongering apocalyptic address to the nation - meant to scare the Mohamed out of us.
What McGoon did today- "suspending" the campaign -- walking away from the first Debate -- was a deeply signifying act. It put the entire election in doubt. As I write, there is no way to know for sure if he will show up in Mississippi or not. That's not the point. The point is- nobody is sure.
Then, the debacle in Bush's office this afternoon, where the Republicans created chaos, basically reneged, dropped a totally new deal on the table, and left.
Do you think this was spontaneous ?
How about if I tell you that ACTIVE DUTY troops from the 3rd Infantry Division 1st Brigade Combat Team have been removed from Iraq, and redeployed in the USA - for Homeland Security efforts, under the Northern Command (NORCOMM) - freshly trained for urban operations, and newly trained and armed with TASERS ? The first time in history.

Do you think there's a small chance that this election will be - umm- "suspended?" That Bush will invoke one of the largish pile of justifying laws and executive orders he and Cheney have accumulated over the last few years-- proclaim a national emergency, and do away with Posse Comitatus, and what remains of the Bill of Rights ?
Watch THIS.
annnd....
NY TIMES:
"...Local police departments in 13 states and security agents from Amtrak and the federal Transportation Security Administration carried
out a show of force at 150 railroad stations from Virginia to Vermont
on Tuesday morning. The drill included random searches of passengers
and their belongings, as well as other, unspecified security measures,
the authorities said."

Officers from the Amtrak Police Department,
Transportation Security Administration, Homeland Security and New York
Police Department during the morning rush hour in the Amtrak area of
New York Penn Station on Tuesday.

FEMA exists not to help people in times of need, but to insure Continuity of Government when there is a national emergency.
Would you like to spend your summer vacation in a nice FEMA Camp ?
Do you think its possible for the walls of the financial levees to break, as a torrent of worthless dollars and I.O.U.s pour over us - and Blackwater rides into town to restore order, and keep us from grabbing some food at the Safeway and HDTVs at Best Buy ?
I do.
And I think that none of this is accident.

DRANT # 320:: COLLAPSE: The Only Chance we Have

2008-09-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

This is all by design. There is no "financial crisis". This is not about The Economy, stupid. There have been no mistakes. The Fed, Bush, Congress and The Banks are not fighting with each other. It's not about the details: money, subprime loans, tight credit, repossessions, Wall Street, bailouts, mortage-backed securities, Hedge Funds, NINAs, CDOs, CEO pay, regulation or de-regulation. It is most definitely not about Obamerde, McGoon, or Greedman Sucks, it is about something MUCH bigger, and - it is absolutely positively 1000% nothing new.
It is about --- COLLAPSE.
And- we need not only to enable it, but facilitate it in any way we can.
If this collapse doesn't happen soon, we're dead.
It's that simple.
To have any chance for us or our planet, the other beings on it, or our grandchildren, to survive much less prosper, we must crank the APOCALYPSE switch to NOW- immediately.
"---Civilization is not redeemable.
This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation
to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt
to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority
of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and
probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation
will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time---"
Derrick Jensen, ENDGAME Premise SIX
The Pimp Media, progblogs, TVTurds, liberallefties, radio screamers, pseudoCramers, Congressmembers, Economists -- an endless parade of white guys with double chins and zero integrity- are selling us the FINANCIAL CRISIS 24/7 at the top of their lungs.
Now Uncle Dave has taught ya to always sniff real hard when that happens.
Uh oh. Is that a global doodie diaper ?
They're all Chickenlittling the same merdacious emergencical hyperbulle.
I've trained ya- to immediately yell "WHY ?"
What does it get Them ? Cui Bono ? CuiBonoCuiBonoCui BonoCuiBonoCuiBono ?
This time, ya better turn your BS detector up to 11.5, annnnnd- ya better be ready to give them a big shove, and help make their propaganda actually happen -- for real. More about that later.
But first-
Why are They doing this ?
Well, who says a "New Pearl Harbor" has to be planes ramming buildings ? Who says that the form "Terrorism" takes must necessarily be armed insurrection or meticulously planned highjacks ?
We have aided and abetted the greatest theft of assets (of all kinds) in all of history. Not since our good pal God gave us humans dominion over The Heavens and The Earth has there been a plunder and re-allocation like this one. Marx would call it a massive "primary appropriation." Whatever we call it, the result has been an incomprehensibly huge UPWARD shift in assets.
I don't mean just money. Money is -- I mean this -- incidental.
Sure, money and material wealth has been purloined from The Many, and concentrated in the hands of The Very Few on a scale that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
But so too have the more crucial requisites for human life: air, water, food, health care, education, true personal security, and- annnnnd- freedom.
They have not just grabbed all the bucks, and left much of the world up to their medullae in debt or in extreme poverty. They have not just bought up all the clean water- to sell it back to us a pint or a bathtubfull at a time, while they grab up for themselves the world's remaining aquifers. They have not just stolen and fouled the food so that only They and their Organic Elite are the only beings on the Planet who can afford clean eats, and tens of millions starve. They have not just fouled the air, so that only Those with special Domes (like the Bush compound in Crawford TX) will be able to both inhale and exhale and the rest of us terminally emphyzemasize.
They have not just made it unaffordable for even half of us to take the most basic care of ourselves and our bodies, insuring their own exclusive access to (what they think are) the best Doctors, Hospitals and Medicine, while even more tens of millions die from curable disease.
But- they have taken most of the real freedoms away from us and left us in an extreme poverty of personal liberty, rights, self-determination, and ultimately self-worth.
Once again, They are trying to scare us into fear and compliance.
This *horseshit* monetary crisis is the new 9-11.
If They didn't DO it, if they didn't PLAN it, if they didn't EXECUTE it, and I think they did all of these- they unquestionably enabled and allowed it. There is no doubt that at very least, they let it happen.
And, exactly as their 9-11 initiated the War of Terror precisely as planned- so too is this new financial 9-11 right on schedule to scare the crap out of us - enough so we will hand over everything we own - pensions, savings, homes, nest eggs-- and cannibalize our children and grandchildren- to feel more secure.
Just as the Clear and Present Emergency of Iraq's imminent Nucular Attack on Pittsburgh led to our blind acceptance of an unlegislated Patriot Act passed unread in the dead of night, so too will they try to use this Financial Crisis to force a shotgun wedding - where our dowry is all the remaining rights we own. They have learned, and well they know, that we will trade our very souls to feel safe.
They are coercing us into signing a new form of sub-prime mortgage of our freedom, where the initial rate seems affordable, but in the blink of an eye- its all repossessed.
And here's the inescapable Cosmic Irony:
We must let them have their way, facilitate the collapse, push their toboggan down their highway to hunger and hell, scarcity and starvation, or all we're doing is postponing the inevitable and making it much harder on our grandchildren. We need to help this whole Hindenbergian horror show to accelerate to its unavoidable denouement: and crash and burn- and clear the forest-- for new growth: a new way of life on this planet.
Nothing less can save us. The sooner the better.
Luckily, our massive unmeasurable greed and arrogance is sooooo huge and overpowering, that we will reflexively revert to a grossly amplified 2.0 version of the very behavior that caused us to apocalypticate in the first place.
We seek salvation by indulging further in greed, consumption, exploitation and destruction of the natural resources and the very life of the planet we live on. We seek our redemption in Growth and more Growth. From Expanding "The Economy". From More.
We employ all extraordinary means to save the rotting corpse of exploitative globalism, "The Economic System", contemplate amputating one stinking limb at a time--- and never let ourselves notice that that its a putrid DEAD BODY- spreading fatal disease everywhere, and requiring urgent cremation, not palliative care or prophylactic amputations or reconstructive surgery.
We seek guidance from those who we know care only about themselves, about salvaging and reinforcing the system that enriches and empowers them at any cost, who have plundered and destroyed anything and anyone that serves not their ends, and now are telling us that we need not only to continue this process, but expand it.
In sum, we will JOIN in their plan for our destruction.
And that's a very good thing.
Our very complicity is the only thing that can save us.
The more we leave everything in the hands of The Bankers, Congress, and The Media, the faster this whole thing will come down, and the sooner we can save ourselves, our children and the planet.

"---The longer we wait for civilization
to crash-or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring
it down-the messier will be the crash, and the worse things
will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and
for those who come after.

The needs of the natural world
are more important than the needs of the economic system.
Any economic
or social system that does not benefit the natural communities
on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability,
morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling
of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing
it from damaging your landbase---"
Derrick Jensen, ENDGAME

Next DRANT - we talk about what happened, who did what to whom, and how.

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DRANT #319: The CRASH- Don't Drink The Lehmanade

2008-09-15T05:06:00.000-07:00

"---there is no way to
avert the payback period that has been building for over two decades.
Over this stretch, America has consumed much more than it has produced.
As a result, both consumer and federal debt have ballooned to record
levels.
And now, the payback period is upon us. The bailout buffet won't end with Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE).
There's a lot more where that came from because the "Fed's food court"
remains open, as does that of the U.S. Treasury. In fact, the autos are
in the process of being bailed out with $50 billion in "loans." I
expect the airlines to also receive some form of a bailout as well."
Mike Stathis, Payback Period is Upon Us

When most of you wake up this morning, you'll rise to the news of a massive Wall Street "crash", with stock prices diving, and US Banks disappearing faster than Cheney on 9-11. Breathless botoxed teleboobs will screech on about the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, about Merril Lynch doing a Jonah into the belly of the B of A, and how the U.S.A. -- meaning us, the schmuckoisie -- must once again reach into what remains of our pockets to "bail out" The Economy.
But, remember DRANT's Law: when the media pimp choir all start singing one song, grab your bullshit detector and turn it to 11.
It's not The Economy, stupid.
Its just another day's work for the bastards who have been running these periodic "crashes" for years; another step in the most massive, flagrant and corrupt transfer of wealth in history; and yet another manufactured "shock"
designed to induce ever more panic and fear in our poor little so far sonambulatory hearts.

"---Around the world, ---there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos;
exploiting bloodshed and catastrophe to brutally remake our world in
their image. They are the shock doctors. Raking in billions out of the tsunami, plundering Russia, exploiting
Iraq --- a few are making a killing
while more are getting killed.
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine

But- its good news !
This "crash" can be, MUST be the threshold - the snapping point where we will jump up, startled - out of our long years of snoozing. Where we finally get so critically wounded in our profound self-interest- we are at long last roused to action.

From ICH:
"---this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone anyway.
It's been developing for quite a long time. Eight years of
stealing your children's futures to pay for killing someone
else's children while you allow your own ability to produce
anything to be shuttled off to the next generation corporate
slave countries, does not make for a healthy economy---They took virtually all of your rights, all
of your future, all of your money, all of your health, all of
your respect, and all of your dignity, and yet some of you would
still rather hear how great this country is than accept the
truth about what is happening and why. It's the impenetrable
American egotism that has led to this abyss and that has led you
to be the least educated, most imprisoned, least healthy, most
destructive, least honest, most hated populous and culture in
the history of the world--and that is no small feat on this
planet."
Bill Noxid

We have all been willing participants in the scam- cannibalizing the future of our children and grandchildren in our paroxysms of instant gratification, gluttony,
and slovenly self-deception, so let's not grab the victim's makeup kit just yet.
And just as we have stood by and allowed murder and torture in our name, so too have we wallowed in the trough of consumption, eating and driving and shopping and spending and consoooming the riches of this world, destroying the planet and all its creatures and inhabitants in our unquenchable lust and greed, and leaving the check to be paid by our kids.
It was a grand collusion- with the Busheviks borrowing a trillion dollars from China, Japan, and various "sovereign" lenders, in league with all of us- borrowing hundreds of thousands against whatever we could- most often the very houses our families slept in at night. We saved nothing, vesting our belief in the self-deluding parlor tricks of speculative real estate deals, mortgage re-finance, credit cards, and unsecured loans.
Annnd -- we were all gleeful players in an even bigger scam to finance the murder and genocide of War, in which we have been complicit, by not stopping the seven years of killing, and by paying for it. Our greed led us to murder.

"---The
central banks of China, Japan and Korea are major holders of these
(Mortgage) securities---When you look at the balance sheet of U.S. assets
available for foreign central banks to buy with the $2.5 to $3.5
trillion of surplus dollars they hold, real estate is the only asset
category large enough to absorb the balance-of-payments outflows that
U.S. military spending, foreign trade and investment-capital flight are
throwing off. When the U.S. military spends money abroad to fight the
New Cold War, these dollars are recycled increasingly into U.S.
mortgage-backed securities, because there is no other market large
enough to absorb the sums involved.---The Treasury therefore has given informal assurances to
foreign governments that they will guarantee at least the dollar value
of the money their central banks are recycling. --- A failure to
provide investment guarantees to foreigners would thwart the
continuation of U.S. overseas military spending!---"
Michael Hudson, Global Research

In the next few weeks:
You will write a check, and the BANK will bounce.
You will go to Safeway, and the shelves will be bare.
You will have to pay cash, and that will be worth less than half of what it is now.
Your IRA wil disappear. Your job will disappear.
All the things you let yourself believe in -- that justified your greed-- will be worthless.
And you will get scared.
Finally.
And you will try to blame Bush.
Don't ya dare blame the Bush or the banks. We all went for it.

We Americans like our redemption in painless easy-swallow gel tab form.

No pain, no scars.

Not this time.

Now its time to fundamentally change the way we live, and the way our government is run.
"The alternative of living a lie
and serving the corporations that purposefully suppress and
poison the true nature of this glorious planet and all of its
inhabitants was just not mentally, physically, or spiritually an
option for me anymore.

Believe me when I tell you---It's not an option for you anymore
either. The Universe is watching and you cannot afford to wait
one more second to face the truth. It is imperative that you
become the stewards and contributors to the Universal
Consciousness that you are designed to be, before you face the
threat of the end of your time on Earth."
Bill Noxid

If we are to survive, if we are to hand our children a world in which they have any hope of surviving, much less live decent lives, then we must assume total responsibility for what has been done. We must sacrifice and abjure our own comfort and ease, deny our self-gratification, and our self-absorption, and live for others.
But this does not mean that we can allow the Bushes and the Bastards at the Banks to put the blame on us either.
They have created this "crash" with an eye toward further destroying the very systems of mutual caring and human generosity that they dismiss as "welfare."
They will use this manufactured financial "crisis" to further crack down on our rights, our ability to express our thoughts, our fundamental individual freedom.
They will further encourage us to blame the "illegals" for the problems in our lives and in our "economy" and further inculcate mutual distrust and racial hatred.
This crash that you will wake up to this morning must be - at long last-- the catalyst for action.
It will not be nearly enough to rant, or complain, or demonstrate, or even to vote the criminals out of office, for
in our complicity we have aided and abetted them, and removing them
cures nothing.
Each of us must take on the full task of making the
change happen.
Each and every one of us- one of us at a time.
And it must start now.
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DRANT #318: SEPTEMBER 11

2008-09-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry. I know I've been away for a while. Did I miss anything ? Yeah, well, I didn't think so.
I'll be back DRANTing this weekend, I promise.
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It's September 11. A day we should all imprint eternally in our hearts and minds.
For on September 11, 1906, Mohandas Gandhi's life changed, and so as well did he change the lives of hundreds, then thousands, and they together changed the lives of millions, and the course of the planet.
Every day, every single one of us is granted the same miraculous gift to act solely from our deepest selves, and so as well can each of us similarly change our own lives, and the lives of millions.
In these days of greed and murder, willful ignorance and self-destruction, and mendacity for profit, the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others is hope, and hope can arise solely from a profound belief that we can effect change.
Hope is contagious, and much more powerful than vengeance or gluttony.
And it is our gift to use. Every single one of us.
There is no magic wand. We need to believe, then we need to decide, then we need to ACT.
And we can't wait for some Obamessiah or any other somebody else to do it for us.
We need to do it for ourselves.
And bro- we better HURRY UP.
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(taken from DRANTs 255/193 September 11, 2006/7 )

"...None of us knew what name to give to our movement. I then used the term 'passive resistance' in describing it. I did not quite understand the implications of 'passive resistance' as I called it. I only knew that some new principle had come into being. As the struggle advanced, the phrase 'passive resistance' gave rise to confusion and it appeared shameful to permit this great struggle to be known only by an English name. Again, that foreign phrase could hardly pass as current coin among the community. A small prize was therefore announced in Indian Opinion t o be awarded to the reader who invented the best designation for our struggle. We thus received a number of suggestions. The meaning of the struggle had been then fully discussed in Indian Opinion and the competitors for the prize had fairly sufficient material to serve as a basis for their exploration. Shri Maganlal Gandhi was one of the competitors and he suggested the word 'Sadagraha,' meaning. 'firmness in a good cause.' I liked the work, but it did not fully represent the whole idea I wished it to connote. I therefore corrected it to 'Satyagraha.' Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence..."
M.K. GANDHI
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TRANSNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR PEACE AND FUTURE RESEARCH
http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/2005/pi226_Chaiwat_Sept11.html

On August 22, 1906, the Transvaal government in South Africa under the British Empire gave notice of a new legislation requiring all Indians, Arabs and Turks to register with the government. Fingerprints and identification marks on the person's body were to be recorded in order to obtain a certificate of registration. Those who failed to register could be fined, sent to prison or deported. Even children had to be brought to the Registrar from their fingerprint impressions. At the time, there were less than 100,000 Indians in South Africa. But in Transvaal, there was an Indian lawyer working with a Muslim company, and his name was Mohandas K. Gandhi.

On September 11, 1906, Gandhi called a mass meeting of some 3,000 Transvaal Indians to find ways to resist the Registration Act. He felt the Act was the embodiment of "hatred of Indians" which if accepted would "spell absolute ruin for the Indians in South Africa", and therefore resisting it is a "question of life and death."

Among these 3,000 people attending the meeting was one Sheth haji Habib, an old Muslim resident of South Africa. Deeply moved after listening to Gandhi's speech, Sheth Habib said to the congregation that the Indians had to pass this resolution with God as witness and could never yield a cowardly submission to such a degrading legislation. Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha in Africa (1928), that " He then went on solemnly to declare in the name of God that he would never submit to that law and advised all present to do likewise." Though Sheth Habib was known to be a man of temper, his action on September 11 was significant because of his decision to act in defiance of an unjust law and willingness to suffer the consequences in a spiritually-endowed fight for justice in the name of God.

Gandhi was taken aback by the Muslim's suggestion. He wrote, " I did not come to the meeting with a view to getting the resolution passed in that manner, which redounds to the credit of Sheth haji Habib as well as it lays a burden of responsibility upon him. I tender my congratulations to him. I deeply appreciate his suggestion, but if you adopt it you too will share his responsibility.

On that day, September 11, 1906, in South Africa, the Indian nonviolent movement was born. Gandhi later called his Indian movement: "Satyagraha" or " the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence." This movement went on to free 300 million people from the power of the British Empire and gave the twentieth century a most remarkable demonstration of the power of nonviolent struggle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 10, 2006

George Houser: Remembering a Sept. 11 that occurred 100 years ago
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/September/10/edit/stories/03edit.htm
The tragic World Trade Center attack is used as an excuse for policies of our government in Iraq that many of us oppose and threaten civil liberties in our own country. It is most appropriate to also recall an event that happened on Sept. 11, 1906 that spawned movements leading to positive changes in the way injustice is confronted worldwide.

This month, South Africa commemorates the event 100 years ago when minority Europeans ruled over the majority of nonwhite Africans, so-called "coloreds," and people of Indian origin. Since the 1860s, thousands of Indians had worked in sugar-cane fields there. A young lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, already 13 years in South Africa, was well acquainted with indignities suffered by the majority of the people. Legislation proposed in 1906 would require permits granted only by the white government for Indians to move around the country or across borders.

Gandhi described a mass protest meeting in Johannesburg on Sept. 11, 1906, where thousands of Indians "solemnly determined not to submit ... in the event of [the permits] becoming law, and to suffer all the penalties attached to such non-submission ... ." This began Gandhi's transformation from lawyer to "Mahatma" or Great Soul. After the laws were adopted, the opposition gathered momentum. "None of us knew what name to give our movement ... Thus the word 'satyagraha' was coined ... the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence." This "9/11" was the conscious beginning of a creative, nonviolent means of struggle against injustice.

In Chicago in 1941, a group of us began a study of nonviolence, including Gandhi's autobiography. We asked how all this applied to our lives and found out through our own experience. In a restaurant one day, our interracial group was refused service. The "sit down" was born, taking a leaf from the notebook of UAW strikes in Detroit. If no satisfactory resolution was reached with management, we would sit in a restaurant until everyone was served. And it worked! But not without difficulty. Sometimes police were called and occasionally arrests occurred.

The national organization, the Congress of Racial Equality CORE, was also born. The idea of nonviolent direct action, an adaptation of satyagraha, spread to other cities. The lesson of 9/11, 1906, became real for us as we challenged segregation in swimming pools, theaters, housing and all kinds of public facilities.

Another major step was initiated in 1946. Eleven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was "an undue burden on interstate commerce." The 1947 interracial Journey of Reconciliation tested bus and train adherence to the court decision for two weeks in Jim Crow states of the Upper South; 26 tests were made and 12 freedom riders arrested. The much more highly publicized Freedom Rides of 1961 extended the challenge into the Deep South, with arrests and brutal violence demanding the attention of the whole country and even the reluctant Kennedy administration. The Freedom Rides led to subsequent mass actions, voting rights legislation, the march on Washington, and the campaign for voting registration in the summer of 1964. This all had a major effect on the pattern of race relations in this country and is part of the legacy of the Gandhi event of 9/11/1906.

The Defiance Campaign, sponsored by the African National Congress of South Africa in 1952, also had a major effect on my life. In the tradition of Gandhi, the ANC carried out its nonviolent defiance of the apartheid laws of South Africa with over 8,500 arrests. CORE raised funds for legal defense and aid to families whose breadwinners were spending time in prison. The American Committee on Africa became part of one of the great movements of the 20th century - the struggle against apartheid and colonialism. I am reminded of Margaret Mead's truth: "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated and committed people can change the world. Indeed, nothing else ever has."

What relevance has this to us in our world today?

Even as protests against the war in Iraq have grown, so also has the American people's fear. The possibility of terrorism is used as a threat to keep people in line.

William Sloane Coffin, former pastor of Riverside Church in New York, outstanding preacher, peace and civil rights activist, wrote, "Hope has nothing to do with optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism, but despair. ... Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts."

We are given hope because there was a Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama.

We can take hope because Cindy Sheehan called attention to the evil of the war in Iraq.

We can take hope because 1st Lt. Ehren Watada faces a court martial because he refused to go to Iraq in what he calls an illegal war.

On Sept. 11, it is well to remember not only a tragic attack in New York, but the inauguration of a positive method of struggle against injustice and for peace with universal application. The struggle continues and we must always be looking for the next step, the next challenge.

Maybe it is with ourselves.

I think of A.J. Muste, long the head of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. One day when picketing the White House in opposition to the Vietnam war, a journalist asked, "Why do you demonstrate in the rain. Do you think you will change the country this way?"

"No," replied Muste, "I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me."

George Houser is a former executive director of the Congress of Racial Equality, a founder and executive director of the American Committee on Africa and a retired United Methodist clergyman. He lives in Pomona, N.Y.

You can find this story online at:
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/September/10/edit/stories/03edit.htm
Copyright © Santa Cruz Sentinel. All rights reserved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Advent of Satyagraha *
Gandhi, M. K.
Satyagraha in South Africa, Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad, India Seventh Reprint, April 2003, pp. 95-102.
http://www.swarajpeeth.org/gandhi/birthofsatyagraha2.php

The meeting was duly held on September 11, 1906. It was attended by delegates from various places in the Transvaal . But I must confess that even I myself had not then understood all the implications of the resolutions I had helped to frame; nor had I gauged all the possible conclusions to which they might lead. The old Empire Theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. I could read in every face the expectation of something strange to be done or to happen. Mr. Abdul Gani, Chairman of the Transvaal British Indian Association, presided. He was one of the oldest Indian residents of the Transvaal , and partner and manager of the Johannesburg branch of the well-known firm of Mamad Kasam Kamrudin. The most important among the resolutions passed by the meeting was the famous Fourth Resolution by which the Indians solemnly determined not to submit to the Ordinance in the event of its becoming law in the teeth of their opposition and to suffer all the penalties attaching to such non-submission.

I fully explained this resolution to the meeting and received a patient hearing. The business of the meeting was conducted in Hindi or Gujarati; it was impossible therefore that any one present should not follow the proceedings. For the Tamils and Telugus who did not know Hindi there were Tamil and Telugu speakers who fully explained everything in their respective languages. The resolution was duly proposed, seconded and supported by several speakers one of whom was Sheth Haji Habib. He too was a very old and experienced resident of South Africa and made an impassioned speech. He was deeply moved and went so far as to say that we must pass this resolution with God as witness and must never yield a cowardly submission to such degrading legislation, He then went on solemnly to declare in the name of God that he would never submit to that law, and advised all present to do likewise. Others also delivered powerful and angry speeches in supporting the resolution. When in the course of his speech Sheth Haji Habib came to the solemn declaration, I was at once startled and put on my guard. Only then did I fully realize my own responsibility and the responsibility of the community. The community had passed many a resolution before and amended such resolutions in the light of further reflection or fresh experience. There were cases in which resolutions passed had not been observed by all concerned. Amendments in resolutions and failure to observe resolutions on the part of persons agreeing thereto are ordinary experiences of public life all the world over. But no one ever imports the name of God into such resolutions. In the abstract there should not be any distinction between a resolution and an oath taken in the name of God. When an intelligent man makes a resolution deliberately he never serves from it by a hair's breadth. With him his resolution carries as much weight as a declaration made with God as witness does. But the world takes on note of abstract principles and imagines an ordinary resolution and an oath in the name of God to be poles asunder. A man who makes an ordinary resolution is not ashamed of himself when he deviates from it, but a man who violates an oath administered to him is not only ashamed of himself, but is also looked upon by society as sinner. This imaginary distinction has struck such a deep root in the human mind that a person making a statement on oath before a judge is held to have committed an offence in law it the statement is proved to be false and receives drastic punishment.

Full of these thoughts as I was, possessing as I did much experience of solemn pledges, having profited by them, I was taken aback by Sheth Haji Habib's suggestion of an oath. I thought out the possible consequences of it in a moment. My perplexity gave place to enthusiasm. And although I had no intention of taking an oath or inviting others to do so when I went to the meeting, I warmly approved of the Sheth's suggestion. But at the same time it seemed to me that the people should be told of all the consequences and should have explained to them clearly the meaning of pledge. And if even then they were prepared to pledge themselves, they should be encouraged to do so; otherwise I must understand that they were not still ready to stand the final test. I therefore asked the President for permission to explain to the meeting the implications of Sheth Haji Habib's suggestion. The President readily granted it and I rose to address the meeting. I give bellow a summary of my remarks just as I can recall them now:

"I wish to explain to this meeting that there is a vast difference between this resolution and every other resolution we have passed up to date and that there is a wide divergence also in the manner of making it. It is a very grave resolution we are making, as our existence in South Africa depends upon our fully observing it. The manner of making the resolution suggested by our friend is as much of a novelty as f a solemnity. I did not come to the meeting with a view to getting the resolution passed in that manner, which redounds to the credit of Sheth Haji Habib as well as it lays a burden of responsibility upon him. I tender my congratulations to him. I deeply appreciate his suggestion, but if you adopt it you too will share his responsibility. You must understand what is this responsibility, and as an adviser and servant of the community, it is my duty fully to explain it to you.

"We all believe in one and the same God, the differences of nomenclature in Hinduism and Islam notwithstanding. To pledge ourselves or to take an oath in the name of that God or with him as witness is not something to be trifled with. If having taken such an oath we violate our pledge we are guilty before God and man. Personally I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breads it, forfeits his manhood. And just as a copper coin treated with mercury not only becomes valueless when detected but also makes its owner liable to punishment, in the same way a man who lightly pledges his word and then breaks it becomes a man of straw and fits himself for punishment here as well as hereafter. Sheth Haji Habib is proposing to administer an oath of very serious character. There is no one in this meeting who can be classed as an infant or as wanting in understanding. You are all well advanced in age and have seen the world; many of you are delegates and have discharged responsibilities in a greater or lesser measure. No one present, therefore, can ever hope to excuse himself by saying that he did not know what he was about when he took the oath.

"I know that pledges and vows are, and should be, taken on rare occasions. A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble. But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges that crisis is surely now. There is wisdom in taking serious steps with great caution and hesitation. But caution and hesitation have their limits, and we have now passed them. The Government has taken leave of all sense of decency. We would only be betraying our unworthiness and cowardice, if we cannot stake our all in the face of the conflagration which envelopes us and sit watching it with folded hands. There is no doubt, therefore, that the present is a proper occasion for taking pledges. But every one of us must think out for himself if he has the will and the ability to pledge himself. Resolutions of this nature cannot passed by a majority vote. Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it. This pledge must not be taken with a view to produce an effect on outsiders. No one should trouble to consider what impression it might have upon the Local Government, the Imperial Government, or the Government of India. Every one must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only will his pledge bear fruit.

"A few words now as to the consequences. Hoping for the best, we may say that if a majority of the Indians pledge themselves to resistance and if all who take the pledge prove true to themselves, the Ordinance may not be passed and, if passed, may be soon repealed. It may be that we may not be called upon to suffer at all. But if on the hand a man who takes a pledge must be a robust optimist, on the other hand he must be prepared for the worst. Therefore I want to give you an idea of the worst that might happen to us in the present struggle. Imagine that of us present here numbering 3,000 at the most pledge ourselves. Imagine again that the remaining 10,000 Indians take no such pledge. We will only provoke ridicule in the beginning. Again, it is quite possible that in spite of the present warning some or many of those who pledge themselves may weaken at the very first trial. We many have to go to jail, where we many be insulted. We many have to go hungry and suffer extreme heat or cold. Hard labour may be imposed upon us. We may be flogged by rude warders. We may be fined heavily and our property may be attached and held up to auction if there are only a few resisters left. Opulent today we may be reduced to abject poverty tomorrow. We may be deported. Suffering from starvation and similar hardships in jail, some of us may fall ill and even die, In short, therefore, it is not at all impossible that we may have to endure every hardship that we can imagine, and wisdom lies in pledging ourselves on the understanding that we shall have to suffer all that and worse. If some one asks me when and how the struggle may end, I may say that if the entire community manfully stands the test, the end will be near. If many of us fall back under storm and stress, the struggle will be prolonged. But I can boldly declare, and with certainty, that so long as there is even a handful of men true to their pledge, there can only be one end to the struggle, and that is victory.

"A word about my personal responsibility. If I am warning you of the risks attendant upon the pledge, I am at the same time inviting you to pledge yourselves, and I am fully conscious of my responsibility in the matter. It is possible that a majority of those present here many take the pledge in a fit of enthusiasm or indignation but may weaken under the ordeal, and only a handful may be left to face the final test. Even then there is only one course open to some one like me, to die but not to submit to the law. It is quite unlikely but even if every one else flinched leaving me alone to face the music, I am confident that I would never violate my pledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying this out of vanity, but I wish to put you, especially the leaders upon the platform, on your guard. I wish respectfully to suggest it to you that if you have not the will or the ability to stand firm even when you are perfectly isolated, you must not only not take the pledge yourselves but you must declare your opposition before the resolution is put to the meeting and before its members begin to take pledges and you must not make yourselves parties to the resolution. Although we are going to take the pledge in a body, no one should imagine that default on the part of one or many can absolve the rest from their obligation. Every one should fully realize his responsibility, then only pledge himself independently of others and understand that he himself must be true to his pledge even unto death, no matter what others do."

I spoke to this effect and resumed me seat. The meeting heard me word by word in perfect quiet. Other leaders too spoke. All dwelt upon their own responsibility and the responsibility of the audience. The President rose. He too made the situation clear, and at last all present, standing with upraised hands, took an oath with God as witness not to submit to the Ordinance if it became law. I can never forget the scene, which is present before my mind's eye as I write. The community's enthusiasm knew no bounds. The very next day there was some accident in the theatre in consequence of which it was wholly destroyed by fire. On the third day friends brought me the news of the fire and congratulated the community upon this good omen, which signified to them that the Ordinance would meet the same fate us the theatre. I have never been influenced by such so-called signs and therefore did not attach any weight to the coincidence. I have taken note of it here only as a demonstration of the community's courage and faith. The reader will find in the subsequent chapters many more proofs of these two high qualities of the people.

The workers did not let the grass grow under their feet after this great meeting. Meetings were held everywhere and pledges of resistance were taken in every place. The principal topic of discussion in Indian Opinion now was the Black Ordinance.

At the other end, steps were taken in order to meet the Local Government. A deputation waited upon Mr. Duncan, the Colonial Secretary, and told him among other things about the pledges. Sheth Haji Habib, who was a member of the deputation, said, 'I cannot possibly restrain myself if any officer comes and proceeds to take my wife's finger prints, I will kill him there and then and die myself.' The Minister stared at the Sheth's face for a while and said, 'Government is reconsidering the advisability of making the Ordinance applicable to women, and I can assure you at once that the clauses relating to women will be deleted. Government have understood your feeling in the matter and desire to respect it. But as for the other provisions, I am sorry to inform you that Government is and will remain adamant. General Botha wants you to agree to this legislation after due deliberation. Government deem it to be essential to the existence of the Europeans. They will certainly consider any suggestions about details which you may make consistently with the objects of the Ordinance, and my advice to the deputation is that your interest lies in agreeing to the legislation and proposing changes only as regards the details.' I am leaving out here the particulars of the discussion with the Minister, as all those arguments have already been dealt with. The arguments were just the same, there was only a difference in phraseology as they were set forth before the Minister. The deputation withdrew, after informing him that his advice notwithstanding, acquiescence in the proposed legislation was out of the question, and after thanking Government for its intention of exempting women form its provisions, it is difficult to say whether the exemption of women was the first fruit of the community's agitation, or whether the Government as an afterthought made a concession to practical considerations which Mr. Curtis had ruled out of his scientific methods. Government claimed that it had decided to exempt women independently of the Indian agitation. Be that as it might, the community established to their own satisfaction a cause and effect relation between the agitation and the exemption and their fighting spirit rose accordingly.

None of us knew what name to give to our movement. I then used the term 'passive resistance' in describing it. I did not quite understand the implications of 'passive resistance' as I called it. I only knew that some new principle had come into being. As the struggle advanced, the phrase 'passive resistance' gave rise to confusion and it appeared shameful to permit this great struggle to be known only by an English name. Again, that foreign phrase could hardly pass as current coin among the community. A small prize was therefore announced in Indian Opinion t o be awarded to the reader who invented the best designation for our struggle. We thus received a number of suggestions. The meaning of the struggle had been then fully discussed in Indian Opinion and the competitors for the prize had fairly sufficient material to serve as a basis for their exploration. Shri Maganlal Gandhi was one of the competitors and he suggested the word 'Sadagraha,' meaning. 'firmness in a good cause.' I liked the work, but it did not fully represent the whole idea I wished it to connote. I therefore corrected it to 'Satyagraha.' Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase 'passive resistance,' in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the work 'Satyagraha' itself or some other equivalent English phrase, This then was the genesis of the movement which came to be known as `Satyagraha, and of the word used as a designation for it. Before we proceed any further with our history we shall do well to grasp the differences between passive resistance and Satyagraha, Which is the subject of our next chapter.

Gandhi, M. K., Satyagraha in South Africa, Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad, India Seventh Reprint, April 2003, pp. 95-102.
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Quote of the day:
"Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck.

The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians."
Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
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DRANT #317: THE REAL SCOOP IN GEORGIA

2008-08-09T01:24:00.001-07:00

WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Russia & the former USSR
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/ruge-a09.shtml
US-Russian tensions in Caucasus erupt into war

"...The eruption of war in the Caucasus is the end product of the
increasingly aggressive policy pursued by US imperialism in the wake of
the dissolution of the USSR nearly 17 years ago. Washington has
systematically manipulated national conflicts in the region to further
its own aim of military and economic hegemony. This began with the
bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia..."

By Bill Van Auken
9 August 2008

Long-escalating tensions between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia erupted into full-scale war Friday, leaving hundreds if not thousands of civilians dead and turning thousands more into refugees, forced to flee for their lives.

The immediate focus of the fighting is the attempt by Georgia to militarily seize control of the enclave of South Ossetia, which has existed as a de facto independent entity for the past 16 years, and Russia's armed intervention to counter this assault.

Underlying this military confrontation, however, are far broader conflicts. Feeding the bloody confrontation in South Ossetia is US imperialism's drive to establish hegemony over the vast energy resources of Central Asia and the Caucasus through the assertion of American military power in the region. The Russian ruling elite, for its part, is seeking to reassert its grip over a region that was ruled by Moscow for two centuries before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

This bitter rivalry between Washington and Moscow-the world's two greatest nuclear powers-lends the fighting in the Caucasus a particularly explosive and dangerous character. The tensions between the two countries have been exacerbated in the recent period by the Bush administration's drive to incorporate Georgia into the NATO alliance, a move that Moscow sees as part of an attempt to establish a military encirclement of Russia.

The US-backed Georgian regime of President Mikheil Saakashvili sent massed military units into South Ossetia on Thursday morning, after claiming that South Ossetian military forces had shelled Georgian villages, supposedly violating a unilateral cease-fire declared by Tbilisi.

While the Georgian regime initially claimed it was carrying out a "proportionate response," it quickly became clear that it had launched an all-out military offensive aimed at conquering the region. Using artillery, tanks, truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers and war planes, the Georgian military laid siege to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

Much of the city was reportedly in flames Friday. The regional parliament building had burned down, the university was on fire, and the town's main hospital had been rendered inoperative by the bombardment. The International Red Cross reported that ambulances were unable to reach the wounded.

"As a result of many hours of shelling from heavy guns, the town is practically destroyed," Marat Kulakhmetov, the commander of Russian peacekeepers in the territory, told the Russian news service Interfax.

Eduard Kokoity, the South Ossetian leader, estimated late Friday that more than 1,400 civilians had been killed in the Georgian military assault.

"I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars," Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, told the Associated Press after fleeing the city with her family to a village near the Russian border. "It's impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged Georgia with utilizing massive violence with the aim of forcing the Ossetian population to flee. "We are receiving reports that a policy of ethnic cleansing was being conducted in villages in South Ossetia, the number of refugees is climbing, the panic is growing, people are trying to save their lives," said Lavrov.

According to Moscow, among the dead were ten Russian peacekeepers, while 30 more were wounded in the shelling of their barracks by the Georgian forces. The peacekeepers were deployed in the area as part of an agreement reached between Moscow, Tbilisi and South Ossetia to end the fighting that erupted following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent bid by the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to separate from Georgia. The inhabitants in both regions feared the newly independent Georgian regime would abolish their autonomous status.

Since then, however, Tbilisi has charged that the Russian troops are backing the South Ossetian forces.

Russia seized upon the deaths of its troops and the civilian casualties as the justification for sending a tank column and infantry into South Ossetia, where they have become engaged in fierce combat with Georgian units for control of Tskhinvali.

"In accordance with the constitution and federal law, I, as president of Russia, am obliged to protect lives and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are located," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a meeting of his security council at the Kremlin. "We won't allow the death of our compatriots to go unpunished."

Meanwhile, Georgian authorities charged that Russian warplanes had struck the country's military bases, airfields and the main Black Sea port of Poti late Friday and early Saturday, killing some civilians. Bombs reportedly fell on the capital of Tbilisi and on the area of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

"All day today, they've been bombing Georgia from numerous warplanes and specifically targeting (the) civilian population, and we have scores of wounded and dead among (the) civilian population all around the country," Saakashvili told the US news network, CNN.

Saakashvili announced that he had called up the country's reserves, while sources in Georgia said he was expected to announce the imposition of martial law.

The timing of the Georgian incursion, on a day when world attention was focused on the opening of the Olympics in Beijing, where both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and US President George Bush are present, hardly seemed fortuitous.

Saakashvili, however, suggested that it was Russia that had chosen the date, calling it a "brilliant moment to attack a small country" and charging that the quick response by the Russian military demonstrated Moscow's preparations for an intervention.

The Georgian president declared that his country was "looking with hope" to the US. The armed confrontation with Russia, he claimed, "is not about Georgia anymore. It's about America, its values... America stands up for those freedom-loving nations and supports them. That's what America is all about."

Under the Bush administration, Washington has attempted to forge close ties with Georgia, particularly since the US-backed "Rose Revolution" that paved the way for Saakashvili's rise to power.

US imperialism's main interest in Georgia is as an American bridgehead into the oil and gas-rich Caspian Basin and as a strategic transit route for funneling energy supplies out of the region, while bypassing Russia.

To cement its ties with the Georgian regime, Washington has provided hundreds millions of dollars in military aid, while sending in large numbers of US military trainers for the country's growing armed forces.

Georgian troops, meanwhile, account for the third largest contingent participating in the US occupation of Iraq, numbering some 2,000. Tbilisi indicated Friday that it would seek US help in bringing at least 1,000 of these soldiers back to participate in the fighting in South Ossetia.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov alluded to the US military support for Georgia, declaring, "Now we see Georgia has found a use for these weapons and for the special forces that were trained with the help of international instructors." He added, "I think our European and American colleagues... should understand what is happening. And I hope very much that they will reach the right conclusions."

Last month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a provocative visit to Tbilisi, denouncing Russia and reiterating US backing for Georgian NATO membership. Washington's NATO allies in Western Europe, however, have greeted the proposal coolly, seeing it as an unnecessary provocation against Russia, upon which they depend for energy supplies.

Whether Rice during her visit gave an explicit green light for the intervention in South Ossetia, or whether the Georgian regime felt the demonstration of US support gave it the assurance of Washington's backing for such a military action, is not known.

In the wake of Friday's assault, Washington has stopped short of providing explicit support for the Georgian action, but has made it clear that it backs the position of its client state in the Caucasus.

The United Nations Security Council failed to support a Russian-backed resolution calling for an end to the fighting because of Washington's opposition to a clause calling on all sides to "renounce the use of force." The clear implication is that the US is backing Georgia's right to take military action.

Secretary of State Rice, meanwhile, issued a statement effectively condemning Russia, while providing tacit justification for Georgia's intervention. "We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia's territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil," she said. "We underscore the international community's support for Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders."

The eruption of war in the Caucasus is the end product of the increasingly aggressive policy pursued by US imperialism in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR nearly 17 years ago. Washington has systematically manipulated national conflicts in the region to further its own aim of military and economic hegemony. This began with the bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia.

All of the arguments used by Washington to justify its support for Bosnia and Kosovo and its military assault on Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s could be employed just as effectively to condemn Georgia's intervention and defend South Ossetia, as well as Russia's military intervention on its behalf.

In this case, however, Washington has elevated Georgia's "territorial integrity" as the paramount principle in the conflict, effectively justifying Georgia's military intervention and an assault on the province's Russian population that Moscow has branded as "ethnic cleansing."

The apparent contradiction between these two policies only underscores the fact that US imperialism's supposed aversion to ethnic cleansing and the suppression of ethnic enclaves is entirely dependent upon who is doing it and whether or not it serves US strategic interests.

There is a direct link between this latest war and those waged by the US in the Balkans. In February, the US and the West recognized Kosovo's "independence" based on its unilateral secession from Serbia, in direct violation of various UN resolutions. The aim in backing this secession-as in its support for the suppression of similar secessionist entities in Georgia-was to further US military plans for the encirclement of Russia and the securing of access routes to the Caspian Basin.

In the run-up to Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence, Moscow had repeatedly warned that it would set a precedent for similar actions by other territories in the former USSR-Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in particular. In its aftermath, the Russian regime stepped up its support for both territories.

Now, the eruption of war in South Ossetia poses the threat of a regional conflagration that can bring the world's two biggest nuclear-armed powers, the US and Russia, into direct military confrontation, with the immense dangers that such a conflict poses to humanity.

Copyright 1998-2008
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DRANT #316: HIROSHIMA AND TEXAS

2008-08-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

Reprint of: DRANT DAILY
Number 131
Aug 6, 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"...In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants
is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what
the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two
hospitals of downtown Nagasaki...A month after the bombs fell...The
atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured because it is untreated and
untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives
here."
George Weller, Nagasaki, 1945
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two anniversaries to note today, August 6.
Much is being said about the first, little is being noted about the other.
1- the 60th anniversary of the unspeakable atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
2- the fourth anniversary of the presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" delivered to Bush August 6, 2001 at his ranch in Texas, warning of continued terrorist attacks on the USA.

Little has changed since either of these events.
The USA committed unpardonable mass murder in 1945, visiting death and disease on 100s of thousands of innocent civilians, justifying the murder with spurious theories of pre-emption. In 1945, the mortally deleterious effects lasted (and continue to last), for generations - children are still being born in Japan with diseases and debilities whose antecedents are traceable to the atomic fallout. In 1945 the American people and the world, were lied to, propagandized, and forcibly restrained from the truth, with actual photos and first person accounts of the real facts on the ground withheld and obstructed in a sinister coalition of government, politicians and the nation's press. And, for 60 years the Americans didn't try to find out too hard at all.
And so it is today. Same as it ever was.

Aug 6, 2001, the FBI, CIA and other Intelligence agencies delivered a strong official case to Bush, vacationing in Crawford, that a continuation of the series of violent attacks on the territory of the USA was a very real, imminent possibility.
Organizations and people--variously created, financed, equipped, organized, trained and activated by the CIA and other government operations, were focusing their sights on American targets.
Bush connived a bit with Tony Blair, got on his tractor and shoveled some manure for the photo ops, and turned on the tube over burgers with his lovely wife and charming family.
But this was no idiot's oversight. No booberie.
We needed a new Pearl Harbor, and by George, we were gonna get one.
The urgent alert had to be buried, not ignored, lest the plans of the PNAC be upset.
Whether they actually did it, or just let it happen, makes no difference for the moment.
They got their Pearl Harbor 2001, and as in 1945, the well paid ostriches and ventriloquists' dummies of the nation's press went along, co-conspiring to sell the official story, their sinister coalition operating in fine tuned harmony.
As in 1945, we are constrained from real photos, real truth, the real facts.
As in 1945, we are murdering 100s of thousands of innocent civilians, and the long term effects of the nuclear fallout from our use of Depleted Uranium is incalculable- the only difference being that this time we are dosing our own soldiers, not just worthless rag heads and their families. America never sees the photos of the newest generation of Iraqi children -- with the clear evidence of radiation sickness and horrendous lesions, and various cancers.

But as in 1945, and as always, our ignorance is our own responsibility.
Not knowing is not an excuse.
If CNN and the NY Times won't tell ya, it's on YOU to go find out the truth, not to turn on the tube over burgers and whine something about the media.
The hell with the media.
They are going to lie to you.
The media is THEM.
The truth is out there and available, and it is our responsibility to find it.
No more I didn't know.
If its more comfortable to hide in your ignorance, if it makes you feel safer to cloak yourself in some flimsy robe of moral invisibility, then go on bro.
But don't tell me ya didn't know.
You know.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the actual front page of the NY Times from Aug 6, 1945,
please click here:

First Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan; Missile Is Equal to 20,000 Tons of TNT; Truman Warns Foe of a 'Rain of Ruin'
NEW AGE USHERED
Day of Atomic Energy Hailed by President, Revealing Weapon
HIROSHIMA IS TARGET
'Impenetrable' Cloud of Dust Hides City After Single Bomb Strikes

By SIDNEY SHALETT
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

Washington, Aug. 6 -- The White House and War Department announced today that an atomic bomb, possessing more power than 20,000 tons of TNT, a destructive force equal to the load of 2,000 B-29's and more than 2,000 times the blast power of what previously was the world's most devastating bomb, had been dropped on Japan.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Hiroshima Cover-Up
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
Published on Friday, August 5, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1548255

A story that the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day finally has been published, 60 years after it was spiked by military censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller's firsthand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was hit. Gen. Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the news media. More than 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the world's media obediently crowded onto the battleship USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.

A month after the bombings, two reporters defied General MacArthur and struck out on their own. Mr. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima.

Both men encountered nightmare worlds. Mr. Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly - people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague."

He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."

Mr. Burchett's article, headlined "The Atomic Plague," was published Sept. 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation and was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as "Japanese propaganda" reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.

So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller's 25,000-word story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to military censors, General MacArthur ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. As Mr. Weller later summarized his experience with General MacArthur's censors, "They won."

Recently, Mr. Weller's son, Anthony, discovered a carbon copy of the suppressed dispatches among his father's papers (George Weller died in 2002). Unable to find an interested American publisher, Anthony Weller sold the account to Mainichi Shimbun, a big Japanese newspaper. Now, on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, Mr. Weller's account can finally be read.

"In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki," wrote Mr. Weller. A month after the bombs fell, he observed, "The atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here."

After killing Mr. Weller's reports, U.S. authorities tried to counter Mr. Burchett's articles by attacking the messenger. General MacArthur ordered Mr. Burchett expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), his camera mysteriously vanished while he was in a Tokyo hospital and U.S. officials accused him of being influenced by Japanese propaganda.

Then the U.S. military unleashed a secret propaganda weapon: It deployed its own Times man. It turns out that William L. Laurence, the science reporter for The New York Times, was also on the payroll of the War Department.

For four months, while still reporting for the Times, Mr. Laurence had been writing press releases for the military explaining the atomic weapons program; he also wrote statements for President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. He was rewarded by being given a seat on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, an experience that he described in the Times with religious awe.

Three days after publication of Mr. Burchett's shocking dispatch, Mr. Laurence had a front-page story in the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people. His news story included this remarkable commentary: "The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms. ... Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described 'symptoms' that did not ring true."

Mr. Laurence won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the atomic bomb, and his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb. It is time for the Pulitzer board to strip Hiroshima's apologist and his newspaper of this undeserved prize.

Sixty years late, Mr. Weller's censored account stands as a searing indictment not only of the inhumanity of the atomic bomb but also of the danger of journalists embedding with the government to deceive the world.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are co-authors of The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.

© 2005 Baltimore Sun
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Hiroshima Cover-up: Stripping the War Department's Timesman of His Pulitzer *

This weekend marks the sixtieth anniversary of the U.S. bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. William Laurence, the New York Times reporter who
covered the bombings was also on the US government payroll. Journalists
Amy Goodman and David Goodman call for the Pulitzer Board to strip
Laurence and his paper, The New York Times, of the undeserved prize.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1548241

* Film Suppressed: The US Government Hides Hiroshima Nagasaki Footage For
Decades *

Footage of the devastation after the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that was commissioned by the US occupying forces was suppressed
for decades. Erik Barnouw reads the words of the Japanese filmmaker Akira
Iwasaki.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1549202

* From Oak Ridge to Lawrence Livermore to Los Alamos: Hiroshima and
Nagasaki Remembered *

Activists around the nation are commemorating the 60th anniversary of the
U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Grass-roots organizers speak
about the ongoing nuclear weapons activity and community resistance.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1549211

* Hiroshima Survivor: No More Hiroshimas, No More Nagasakis, No More War *

Sunao Tsuboi survived the bombing of Hiroshima. Speaking at an anti-
nuclear weapons rally in New York, he said, "Even if you luckily survive
you...suffer from psychological and physical disruption...until your life
ends."

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1549218

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The fourth anniversary of the August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" telling Bush of planned terrorist attacks on the USA.

http://www.themoderntribune.com/august_6th_2001_memo_to_bush_before_9_11.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following is available on the Internet at
http://www.WantToKnow.info/050723robertmcnamaraapocalypse

"What is shocking is that today, more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the basic US nuclear policy is unchanged. Of the 8,000 active or operational US warheads, 2,000 are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched on 15 minutes' warning. On any given day, as we go about our business, the president is prepared to make a decision within 20 minutes that could launch one of the most devastating weapons in the world. To declare war requires an act of congress, but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes' deliberation by the president and his advisors."
-- Former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, May 2005
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2829
Foreign Policy magazine (Page 1 of 5)

July 23, 2005
Dear friends,

Former US Secretary of Defense (under President John Kennedy) Robert McNamara has written a powerful essay exposing an outdated policy that puts our entire nation and world at risk of annihilation at any moment. After 13 years as the president of the World Bank, McNamara risked his career and reputation by going public with his concerns about the policy giving the president the authority to initiate a nuclear holocaust, even when the threat to the US might be based on faulty information. He claims it is long past time to change this dangerous policy in order to avert a future apocalypse.

For another eye-opening article on how the media has been complicit in concealing the dangers of nuclear weapons ever since WWII, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/atomicbombcoverup
And for more powerful information revealing how the military/industrial complex promotes war in order to pad the wallets of the corporate elite, see our War Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/warinformation
By educating ourselves and those around us on the risks that are a result of greed and secrecy, we can more effectively work together to build a brighter future for us all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DRANT #315: FREE GAZA FREEDOM SHIP

2008-08-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

Free Gaza: Can unarmed seaborne civilians break the siege of Gaza?
August 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Press Releases, International Actions

Inaugurating The Free Gaza Movement Sailing to Gaza

DESTINATION: GAZA PORT

In August, unarmed Palestinians, Israelis and internationals will sail directly to Gaza without going through Israeli territory or seeking permission from Israeli authorities. They include an 81-year-old Catholic nun, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, Palestinians from Gaza, 17 nationalities, four major religions and the international press (including Tony Blair's journalist sister-in-law, Lauren Booth).

On Monday, August 4, 2008, the Free Gaza Movement publicly introduces its international team that will take volunteers from Cyprus to Gaza in popular solidarity with Palestinian human rights. From that day, any attempt to damage the project will be considered an act of aggression against a nonviolent international human rights mission.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Media places on the boat are taken. Since there are many journalists on a short list, we suggest journalists work together to find a separate press vessel, and we are prepared to help network those interested.

For more information go to www.freegaza.org where the actual voyage can be watched in real time, by video streaming from the satellite broadcasting on board. Since this [non-violent/entirely peaceful] voyage is being funded by private donation, Free Gaza Movement welcomes donations online at its website.

For more information contact:
Greta Berlin, +357-990 81767 (iristulip@gmail.com)
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein: +357-990 75194 (angela@icahd.org )

Angela Godfrey-Goldstein (Action Advocacy Officer)

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

DRANT #314: FORECLOSURE ACT: PULL DOWN YOUR PANTS

2008-07-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

Portions of this were previously sent as DRANT Number 304, June 21, 2008
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Congress has now passed the "Foreclosure Prevention Act" that they say - ostensibly- helps all us just folks survive the current housing national Repossessacide. That is total BS, of course, and is designed to save the Banks, and the people who did this to us in the first place. They are gonna do what they alwaaaaaays do: print more of our money, and hand the bill to our kids.
But even worse:
"Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision... with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking."

So what does this mean ? It means that every- I say every -- single transaction you make will be reported to the Government.
To repeat for the ones who slipped out for a tofuburger---
every -- single transaction you make will be reported to the Government.

It means that the law will require information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions.

The contents of this agreement are despicable, but the method was far worse: secret drafting, hidden negotiations, no debate. Boom its over.
And, of course, bribes galore for everyone, including a big fat pacifier for the Vets.
So, we are either going to get our whining shoes on again, or do something.
You now know the facts. You know what They are planning.
Even Ron Paul is screaming about it.

What are ya gonna DO about it ?
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http://www.freedomworks.org/newsroom/press_template.php?press_id=2571

June 19, 2008
Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government

Broad, invasive provision touches nearly every aspect of American commerce.

Washington, D.C. - Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America's small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.

FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: "This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking."

"Privacy groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology and small business organizations like the NFIB sharply criticized this idea when it first appeared earlier this year. What is the federal government's purpose with this kind of detailed data? How will this database be secured, and who will have access? Many small proprietors use their Social Security number as their tax ID. How will their privacy be protected? What compliance costs will this impose on businesses? Why is Sen. Chris Dodd putting this provision in a housing bailout bill? The bill also includes the creation of a new national fingerprint registry for mortgage brokers.

"At a time when concerns about both identity theft and government spying are paramount, Congress wants to create a new honey pot of private data that includes Social Security numbers. This bill reduces privacy across America's payment processing systems and treats every American small business or eBay power seller like a criminal on parole by requiring an unprecedented level of reporting to the federal government. This outrageous idea is another reason to delay the housing bailout legislation so that Senators and the public at large have time to examine its full implications."

From the Senate Bill Summary:

Payment Card and Third Party Network Information Reporting. The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions. Use of an account number or other indicia associated with a payment card will be treated in the same manner as a payment card. A de minimis exception for transactions of $10,000 or less and 200 transactions or less applies to payments by third party settlement organizations. The proposal applies to returns for calendar years beginning after December 31, 2010. Back-up withholding provisions apply to amounts paid after December 31, 2011. This proposal is estimated to raise $9.802 billion over ten years.

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DRANT # 313: USA - Third World Country

2008-07-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

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US slips down development index

Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed nation, according to a report from several US charities.

"We get in this report ... an evaluation of what the limitations of human development are in the US but also ... how the relative place of America has been slipping in comparison with other countries over recent years."
The US has a higher percentage of children living in poverty than any of the world's richest countries.
In fact, the report shows that 15% of American children - 10.7 million - live in families with incomes of less than $1,500 per month.
It also reveals 14% of the population - some 40 million Americans - lack the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday tasks such as understanding newspaper articles and instruction manuals.

The US report identifies obesity and the lack of health insurance for some 47 million Americans as the most significant factors in premature death.
It also provides a snapshot of the inequalities between the richest and the poorest Americans and between different ethnic groups.

The report found that the US ranked 42nd in the world for life expectancy despite spending more on health care per person than any other country.
Overall, the American Human Development Report ranked the world's richest country 12th for human development.
The study looked at US government data on health, education and income.
The report was funded by Oxfam America, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Conrad Hilton Foundation.
The report combines measurements of health, education and income into one measurement - the human development index - based on that used by the United Nations.
Health insurance
The report, Measure of America, identifies significant progress in the US in the last 50 years.
Life expectancy - which averages 78 - has risen eight years since 1960.
A district in Manhattan has the highest human development index in the US:

"Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living..."
Sarah Burd-Sharps
Author, Measure of America

"...Just as revealing as the figures provided by the Measure of America report is the response to it on the part of the American media and political establishment. The report was published by Columbia University, one of the most prestigious American colleges, and its co-authors held a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce their findings. But not a single major daily newspaper carried an account, nor was the study mentioned on any of the evening television newscasts.

The regional press in California reported the dismal last-place ranking for the 20th congressional district, but not the wider findings. And Talk Radio News Service, a web site serving the largely ultra-right talk radio industry, posted an item that turned the findings upside down, under the bizarre headline, 'Report: Most Americans doing better than fifty years ago."
Japan has the world's highest life expectancy - 82.1 years - according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)..."

The US report identifies obesity and the lack of health insurance for some 47 million Americans as the most significant factors in premature death.
It also provides a snapshot of the inequalities between the richest and the poorest Americans and between different ethnic groups.

"The Measure of America reveals huge gaps among some groups in our country to access opportunity and reach their potential," said the report's author, Sarah Burd-Sharps."Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living.
"For example, the state human development index shows that people in last-ranked Mississippi are living 30 years behind those in first-ranked Connecticut."
Asian males in the US were found to have the highest human development index score and were expected to live 14 years longer than African-American males, who had the lowest human development index rating.
African-Americans had a shorter lifespan than the average American did in the late 1970s.

More US babies die in their first year than in most other rich countries
The report further breaks down its findings into the US's 436 Congressional districts.
The 20th district, around Fresno, California, was ranked last - with people earning one-third as much as residents of the top-ranked US district,- in Manhattan, New York.
The US north-east has the highest overall ranking because people there earn more, are more highly-educated and have the second highest life expectancy.
West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama are four of the five bottom states on the index. Mississippi is ranked lowest.
Among other findings:
Of the world's richest nations, the US has the most children (15%) living in poverty
Of the OECD nations, the US has the most people in prison - as a percentage and in absolute numbers. 25% of 15-year-old students performed at or below the lowest level in an international maths test - worse than Canada, France, Germany and JapanIf the US infant mortality rate were equal to first-ranked Sweden, more than 20,000 babies would survive beyond their first year of life.

DRANT #312: FAUXBAMA; or The Obaminable Snowman

2008-07-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

OK Evvybody ! Let's play da Name Game.

Obama mama fo fama fanana fana fo fama
Ooooobama !
Let's start with
FAUXBama.
The talk is that bygoshamighty, Barack is shifting to da Right !
Ashama.
He's a designated prop of the Tri-Lateral Commission and the DLC, anointed in 2004 (whocudfuggetit?) as the opening act for the Kerry "Reporting for Duty" tour, Fauxbama can't be shifting away from the Left, 'cause he wasn't never ON the Left.
He's the same kind of PR/pimp media concoction CNN regularly drags out to "balance" discussions on the Lou Dobbs Lynching Hour.
AS IF there is a real Opposition Party living and breathing anywhere within smelling distance of K Street.
AS IF he doesn't lipwalk for AIPAC, and doesn't think we need 80,000 troops and 160,000 Blackwaters picnicking in the Green Zone until the Tigris freezes over, and 10,000 more in Afghanistan.
AS IF the Fourth Amendment is not his personal Charmin Ultra.
AS IF Fauxbama would represent a CHANGE.
He's a corporate chameleonic sheep who rented his wolf's clothing just long enough to get the job. He posed as Superman, then quickly jumped into a handy phone booth, and out came - Dark Kent.
But- the Fauxbamification ain't HIS fault. It's OURS. We're BUYING this bullbleep.
We need so desperately to have HOPE, to be in touch with whatever sliver remains of our self-worth, that we have chosen Him as the object and the instrument of our self-delusion, the pusher who will help us maintain our addiction to our presumed decency, our perception that we are, after all, good people- who have been sadly led astray.
Baah baah baah.
The braying of the interminably flaccid "progressives" whose anguished cries betray yet another tragic disillusionment.
Oh please, for once, blame the disillusionEE not the disillusionOR.
It was US who are creating this Emperor, and WE who have put the clothes of righteousness on his back. We needed some political Prozac, and we chose a basically blank canvas on which to paint an effigy of our profound yearning for absolution and redemption.
All he did was tell us how great we are, what a great country, what great people, all we need to get back on the righteous path we had trod for lo these 250 years, and to show ourselves how very righteous we are, is to elect a Black Man as President.
Instant Karma, as John said.
Instant karmas gonna get you Gonna knock you right on the head You better get yourself together Pretty soon you're gonna be dead What in the world you thinking of Laughing in the face of love What on earth you tryin to do Its up to you, yeah you

As always, we don't haveta do very much atall. Simply remove him from the easy-open package, inflate him, float him, and poof, we're saved.

Of course, as soon as he's elected, we can go back to the couch for another 4 year snooze, and he can messianize our problems away.

Annnnd- how about 'HO-Bama ?
Have you seen the list of his campaign contributors ?
'HoBama cashes checks from some of, no make that MOST of the biggest bastards in America.
The path is deep and wide from footsteps leading to HIS cabin, so Check it out.
What do you see ?
Fatwallet McLawyer, Nicky the Nuke, Clean Coal Willie, Warner Disney Redstone, Armistead Armsales, and enough Banks to keep the Mississippi in mud for generations.

'HoBama's biggest steadiest John ? The company that most epitomizes the deceitful manipulative rapaciousness** of Wall Street- Goldman Sucks. 600 grand so far and counting.
These guys are 'HoBama's biggest of the big spenders.
They have also sent some of their prime Alumni to run Bill and Bush's Treasury and The Fed. Nice job guys. Yeah, you can be sure big changes are coming from that direction.
Plus, of course, smaller fry like JP Morgan, UBS AG, and Lehman Brothers, at a mere 400K, with Morgan Stanley back in the crowd at 275.
Next- the lawyuhs that front for the worst of the worst. The ones who do the marinating and greasing for a long list of people-screwing corporate generational cannibals: Sidley Austin, Skadden Arps, Jones Day, Latham Watkins, Wilmerhale.
Warning: extended exposure to their client lists may cause vomiting or diarrhea.
'HoBama says he's gonna rationalize taxes, create corporate responsibility, fight for the middle class.
Well who you gonna believe ? Him or his lying checkbook ?

and OREObama: the black man who is sometimes but not sometimes and learned early on to "get along." He went to Harvard. Everybody liked him. UH OH.
What exactly did the Reverend Wright say that was untrue ? Any honest man would have stood up and told us - "he said it badly, but he said the truth".
OreoBama couldn't run fast enough to wash the shit off his shoes.
Jesse Jackson ? Its only too bad that he didn't mean to say it.
Of course O speaks down to black people. He speaks down to all of us.
OreoBama is black enough to once again make US feel good about Ourselves, but not toooo Black, to, umm, err, cause Trouble, ya know ?
And once again, many in the Black community are investing THEIR hopes and dreams and desperate needs in a blow-up doll.
Stampeding to congratulate ourselves on running a Black Man for President, we are setting ourselves up for something far worse than disillusionment.

Beware the Progressives' litany of apologia: how Obama is shifting Right, but we have no choice. We have to work within the two-party system. We have to vote for Obama or get McCain. We need to get Obama in there, and then work to move him back to where he said he was, and we thought he was, in the first place. That McCain would be much worse than even a flawed Obama, that we have to get rid of the people who did this to us.
But the truth is that Obama IS the people who did this to us. He works for them. He is paid by them. We just don't want to believe it.

I fear Obama much worse than I fear McCain.
McCain is The Enemy. Right there, out in the open. We KNOW who he works for.
Obama builds a shadow play of promises, hopes and dreams, and strenuously aided and abetted by the pimp corporate media, has created the fiction that he and McCain are different.
The Obaminable Snowman.

Ultimately, he is NObama.
A true straw man, invented, owned and run by the worst of us, chosen and created by them: for his gift for instilling hope in millions, for his charm and patina of integrity, and for his willingness to do or say whatever it takes or whatever he's TOLD, to win.
He scares me deeply because I know who he is, but I don't think HE does.

It is up to us.
It is up to us to look at ourselves and what we've done, and dedicate ourselves to making it right. We can't appoint a surrogate or messiah to do it for us, and we damn well can't participate in further self-delusion.
You want to vote for him, that's your business.
But confront what you're doing, and why.
It sure ain't for CHANGE. Unless what change means to you is what I think it means to you -- a rewind button to get back to the nineties, when we could afford two cars, and a second home, and didn't really need to notice the bombs we were dropping, or the ice caps drizzling down the window, gas was cheap, and our biggest worry was a blowjob.
You don't mean change, you mean comfort.

And one more thing- don't come to me whining about how you were fooled or how disillusioned you are.
You want to stand for real change ?
Vote for Nader or McKinney.
Better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want, and get it.
You want to feel good about yourself ? That you did the right thing ? That you're a kind and caring person ?
Then vote for FAUXbama.
You'll get what you deserve.
-----------------------------------------------
**- GOLDMAN: These are the lovely guys who were deep into the public rape known as the "subprime crisis". 1- They had fabillions of their clients' bucks in all kinds of piñata-like derivatives. 2- The Goldman partners had stenchillions of their own in it too. One day more than TWO YEARS ago, their chief financial brain called a secret clandestine emergency meeting. Uh oh, he says. This subprime crap is going to blow up. They came up with a plan. Quietly, steadily, so as not to let a whiff be detected, they took all of their own money out. Of course, they left all their clients' money in. And not only left their clients' money in, they kept selling the crap to other clients. Right up to the whacking of the Pinata.

DRANT #311: REPUBLICAN SENATORS DEMAND IMPEACHMENT

2008-07-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

FROM: OpEdNews
July 11, 2008

Seven Republican Members of House Judiciary Call for Impeachment out of Duty to the Constitution

By Cheryl Biren-Wright

GOP Reps. Smith, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Gallegly, Goodlatte, Chabot, and Cannon after much deliberation put the Constitution and rule of law before politics. Rep. Lamar Smith stated, “As much as one might wish to avoid this process, we must resist the temptation to close our eyes and pass by. The president's actions must be evaluated for one simple reason: the truth counts.” Read their statements below.

Hon. Lamar Smith (TX) Phone 202-225-4236 . Fax: 202-225-8628
We should not underestimate the gravity of the case against the president. When he put his hand on the Bible and recited his oath of office, he swore to faithfully uphold the laws of the United States - not some laws, all laws.

As to the uniqueness of the office the president holds, he is a person in a position of immense authority and influence. He influences the lives of millions of Americans. When he took the oath of office, he swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

When someone is elected president, they receive the greatest gift possible from the American people, their trust. To violate that trust is to raise questions about fitness for office. My constituents often remind me that if anyone else in a position of authority - for example, a business executive, a military officer or a professional educator - had acted as the evidence indicates the president did, their career would be over. The rules under which President Nixon would have been tried for impeachment had he not resigned contain this statement: "The office of the president is such that it calls for a higher level of conduct than the average citizen in the United States."

This will not be an easy task. In fact, it is a difficult ordeal for all Americans, but we will get through it. We are a great nation and a strong people. Our country will endure because our Constitution works and has worked for over 200 years. As much as one might wish to avoid this process, we must resist the temptation to close our eyes and pass by. The president's actions must be evaluated for one simple reason: the truth counts.

As the process goes forward, some good lessons can be reaffirmed. No one is above the law, actions have consequences, always tell the truth. We the people should insist on these high ideals. That the president has fallen short of the standard doesn't mean we should lower it. If we keep excusing away the president's actions we as a nation will never climb upwards because there will be no firm rungs.

Hon. James Sensenbrenner (WI) Phone (202) 225-5101
…being a poor example isn't grounds for impeachment; undermining the rule of law is.

When Americans come to Washington, they see the words "equal justice under law" carved in the facade of the Supreme Court building. Those words mean that the weak and the poor have an equal right to justice, as do the rich and the powerful.

The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and balances to ensure our liberty by making sure that no person, institution or branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could be established in the United States of America. Impeachment is one of the checks the framers gave the Congress to prevent the executive or judicial branches from becoming corrupt or tyrannical.

I do so with no joy but without apologies, just as those on this committee who voted to impeach President Nixon, 24 years ago, did. Watergate and the Nixon impeachment reversed the results of an overwhelming election and were extremely divisive to our country, but America emerged from that national nightmare a much stronger country and will do so again after this sad part of our history is over. What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law.

Hon. Howard Coble (NC) Phone (202) 225-3065 . Fax: (202) 225-8611
Much has been made about the absence of bipartisanship on this issue, and I want to reiterate my position on that. Do not point accusatory fingers at Republicans or Democrats because there is disagreement. Assuming we vote our consciences and exercise sound judgment, little else can be asked.

...I take umbrage to charges that some are out to get the president...I take umbrage as well to those who claim that some approach this arduous task in a gleeful manner. I take no joy in discharging this duty before us, but it remains our duty nonetheless.

...I can't see that this is going to shut down the government or tie it up, assuming it does advance to the Senate.

Hon. Elton Gallegly (CA) Phone (202) 225-5811 . Fax (202) 225-1100
This has been a very trying time. In a democracy, there are few more serious acts than to consider the possible impeachment of a president. I can tell you in true conscience it has caused me many sleepless nights.

I wanted to hear the evidence that would prove the charges were false. I believed that was the only fair way to proceed, and it was also my solemn constitutional duty and immense responsibility. I waited, I read, and I listened.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not a lawyer -- one of the few on this committee -- however, everyone that knows me knows I believe in the rule of law -- believe the rule of law is fundamental to our society. A society without laws is anarchy. Societies that ignore the laws are condemned to violence and chaos.

That bothers me. My district is considered among the safest communities in the nation. We have fine police officers, which certainly helps, but every officer from the chief to the beat officer will tell you a low crime rate begins with citizens who obey the law. Every citizen must obey the law, every law.

He violated the Constitution. To condone this would be to condemn our society to anarchy. Mr. Chairman, I cannot and will not condone such action.

Hon. Bob Goodlatte (VA) Phone (202) 225-5431 . Fax (202) 225-9681
Mr. Chairman, this is a somber occasion. I am here because it is my constitutional duty, as it is the constitutional duty of every member of this committee, to follow the truth wherever it may lead. Our Founding Fathers established this nation on a fundamental yet at the time untested idea that a nation should be governed not by the whims of any man but by the rule of law. Implicit in that idea is the principle that no one is above the law, including the chief executive

Since it is the rule of law that guides us, we must ask ourselves what happens to our nation if the rule of law is ignored, cheapened or violated, especially at the highest level of government. Consider the words of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who was particularly insightful on this point. "In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself."

Mr. Chairman, we must ask ourselves what our failure to uphold the rule of law will say to the nation, and most especially to our children, who must trust us to leave them a civilized nation where justice is respected.

If we truly respect the presidency, we cannot allow the president to be above the law. Millions of law-abiding Americans from all walks of life, including my constituents, put in an honest day's work, follow the rules and struggle to teach their children respect for the law and the importance of integrity. When a factory worker or a medical doctor or a retiree breaks the law, they do so with the knowledge that they are not above the law.

This same principle must also apply to the most powerful and privileged in our nation, including the president of the United States. To lose this principle devastates a legacy entrusted to us by our founding fathers and protected for us by generations of American families.

I have a constitutional duty to follow the truth wherever it leads. The truth in this case leads me to believe that the president knowingly engaged in a calculated pattern of lies, deceit and delay in order to mislead the American people…

The precious legacy entrusted to us by our founders and our constituents is a nation dedicated to the ideal of freedom and equality for all her people. This committee must decide whether we will maintain our commitment to the rule of law and pass this precious legacy to our children and grandchildren, or whether we will bow to the political pressure for the sake of convenience or expediency.

Hon. Steve Chabot (OH) Phone (202) 225-2216 . (202) 225-3012
Thank you. Mr. Chairman, every member of our committee recognizes that this is likely the most important vote we will ever cast, and all of us would prefer that the president's actions had not led us down this fateful path. However, we have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and we must fully accept that responsibility.

Back in 1974, Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the judiciary committee during Watergate, said that she would vote to impeach President Nixon, in part, because -- and I quote -- "the presidential cover-up is continuing even through today."

The historic record, the law, and the Constitution tell us that the charges against the president do indeed rise to the level of impeachable offenses. They constitute serious violations of criminal law and fall squarely within our Founding Fathers' definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Mr. Chairman, impeaching the president is an extremely serious matter. Throughout these proceedings, I've tried to keep an open mind, giving the president every opportunity to refute the facts that have been laid before our committee, but now all of the evidence is in and a decision is at hand.

It has become apparent to me that impeachment is the only remedy that adequately addresses this president's illegal and unethical acts. Allowing the president's actions to go unpunished would gravely damage the Office of the President, our judicial system and our country.

I have not reached this decision lightly. I have done my share of soul searching, I have listened carefully to the views of my constituents, and I've reviewed the evidence in excruciating detail. And much of it wasn't particularly pleasant, I can assure you. And I've been guided by our Constitution.

When we cast our votes, we are not voting as Republicans or Democrats, we are voting as Americans. Our allegiance does not lie with any one president but with our country. Our charge is not handed down from any one political party but from the Constitution. Every member of this body is duty-bound to put politics aside, follow our conscience, and uphold our oath of office.

Hon. Chris Cannon (UT) Phone (202) 225-7751 . Fax (202) 225-5629
We are at a defining moment in our history. What we do here will set the standard for what is acceptable for this and future presidents.

I believe profoundly that the behavior of this president is unacceptable because I agree with John Jay, one of our Founding Fathers, who said, "When oaths cease to be sacred, our dearest and most valuable rights become insecure."

[Quoting President John F. Kennedy], "I think you gentlemen should recognize the responsibility of the president of the United States. His responsibility is different from what your responsibility may be. In this country, I carry out and execute the laws of the United States. I also have the obligation of implementing the orders of the courts of the United States. And I can assure you that who's ever president of the United States, he will do the same, because if he did not, he would begin to unwind this most extraordinary constitutional system of ours. So I believe strongly in fulfilling my oath in that regard." And that regard means if he didn't fulfill his oath, the system would begin to unwind. It's inexorable.

I submit that in the spirit of our Founding Fathers and John F. Kennedy, that our first duty is to provide for the security of the fundamental rights of Americans.

To properly perform that duty, we must vote to impeach the president. Thank you.

The statements above are excerpts from transcripts of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearings. December 10-11, 1998. Each congressman is a current member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Authors Bio: Writer/Photographer/Activist. An advocate for clean government, media integrity and civil liberties. Chair of the Progressive Democrats of America S. Jersey Chapter Impeachment Team and co-leader of the New Jersey Impeach Groups. Founder of the Strike08 campaign. Working to end the war in Iraq and prevent one with Iran. Writer and editor for OpEdNews.com. cherylbirenwright.wordpress.com

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DRANT #310: ACTA-- BEND WAAAAAY OVER !

2008-07-09T20:15:00.000-07:00

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In DRANT # 304, I wrote about ACTA-
please check it out here.

Yesterday, the G-8 countries put it officially on the table.

The right to peer inside your iPod
An agreement on intellectual property rights to be ratified by the G8 heads of government highlights conflicts between ownership and privacy

Photograph: Nick Veasey/Getty Images

The heads of the G8 governments, meeting this week, are about to ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta), which - it's claimed - could let customs agents search your laptop or music player for illegally obtained content. The European Parliament is considering a law that would lead to people who illicitly download copyrighted music or video content being thrown off the internet. Virgin Media is writing to hundreds of its customers at the request of the UK record industry to warn them that their connections seem to have been used for illegal downloading. Viacom gets access to all of the usernames and IP addresses of anyone who has ever used YouTube as part of its billion-dollar lawsuit in which it claims the site has been party to "massive intentional copyright infringement".

It seems that 20th-century ideas of ownership and control - especially of intellectual property such as copyright and trademarks - are being reasserted, with added legal muscle, after a 10-year period when the internet sparked an explosion of business models and (if we're honest) casual disregard, especially of copyright, when it came to music and video.

But do those separate events mark a swing of the pendulum back against the inroads that the internet has made on intellectual property?

'A finger in the dyke'

Saul Klein, a venture capitalist with Index Ventures who has invested in the free database company MySQL, Zend (the basis of the free web-scripting language PHP) and OpenX, an open-source advertising system, is unconvinced. "In a world of abundance - which the internet is quintessentially - that drives the price of everything towards 'free'," he says. "People don't pay for any content online. Not for music, not for video. They get it, either legally or illegally."

Is that sustainable? "The model of suing your best customers and subpoenaing private information is doomed to failure," Klein observes. "It's putting a finger in the dyke. It won't change the macro trend, which is that there's an abundance of information. Copyright owners need to find new ways to generate income from their product. The fact is, the music industry is in rude health - more people than ever before are going to concerts, making it, listening to it. It's the labels that are screwed. The artists and managers are making money. The labels aren't.

"What is broken is the paid-for model for content, though it won't go away entirely. We look to invest in scarcity, where people will pay a premium for something not in abundance." He gives the example of Viagogo - a ticket-selling site that Index Ventures has invested in: "Selling tickets for Madonna or Prince capitalises on the public's interest in paying for scarcity." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
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G-8 Declarations on Economy, Environment
Read the Group of Eight's declarations on the world economy and the environment and climate change.
"Protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
17. Effective promotion and protection of IPR are critical to the development of creative products, technologies and economies. We will advance existing anti-counterfeiting and piracy initiatives through, inter alia, promoting information exchange systems amongst our authorities, as well as developing non-binding Standards to be Employed by Customs for Uniform Rights Enforcement (SECURE) at the World Customs Organization. We encourage the acceleration of negotiations to establish a new international legal framework, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and seek to complete the negotiation by the end of this year. We will promote practical cooperation between our countries to develop tools to combat new techniques in counterfeiting and piracy and spread best practices. We reaffirm our commitment on government use of software in full compliance with the relevant international agreements and call on other countries to follow our commitment."
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Public Knowledge - Blogging, Events, and Action Alerts
G8 Endorses ACTA: Great, so what’s in it?
Sherwin Siy
Today, 05:39 PM
In its “Declaration on the World Economy”, the G-8 included an endorsement of ACTA and ongoing efforts to “standardize” IP enforcement through customs organizations. “We encourage the acceleration of negotiations to establish a new international legal framework, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and seek to complete the negotiation by the end of this year,” the statement says.

So we have a major endorsement of ACTA from the leadership of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And pressure to have this international legal agreement ready to roll at the end of the year. So what’s going to be in this critically important, possibly binding international agreement, to be completed in less than six months?

We have no idea.
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ACTA PUBLIC COMMENTS--One-Stop Shop
Ari Abramowitz
Today, 04:11 PM
We recently scanned all of the documents filed in response to the USTR’s request for public comments regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). They are presented below, if sometimes angularly, as well as on our issue summary page here. The USTR’s initial “fact sheet,” request for public comment, and the leaked “discussion paper” are also included.

• USTR’s Fact Sheet (October, 2007)

• USTR’s Notice for Public Comments (February, 2008)

• The Leaked “Discussion Paper” (leaked May, 2008)
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Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Webmaster
Thursday, 11:40 AM

ACTA is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated by the US, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. The stated goal of the agreement is the international enforcement of strong intellectual property rights through increased cooperation and coordination among international governmental agencies. ACTA does not yet exist, though its ongoing discussions are confirmed by all of the participating governments.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What Does NebuAd Know About You? What Doesn't It?
Art Brodsky
Yesterday, 10:00 PM
While the full United States Senate on Wednesday (July 9) takes up the subject of wiretapping by the government, the Senate Commerce Committee will take up the subject of wiretapping by private industry. It’s a tossup which one is more scary.

The Senate votes July 9 on the bill to grant the Executive Branch almost unlimited authority to wiretap private citizens without any judicial oversight. The Commerce Committee will hear testimony from Robert Dykes, the chairman of NebuAd, a controversial company recently in the news because his group came up with a novel way of getting detailed information about Internet users. NebuAd wasn’t satisfied to get information only from a customer’s use of one Web site. Instead, they want to see everything that a Web surfer does online.
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DRANT #309: STOMACH TURNING

2008-07-08T01:58:00.000-07:00

Over caviar and sea urchin, G8 leaders mull food crisis

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor in Hokkaido
Tuesday, 8 July 2008

World leaders are not renowned for their modest wine selections or reticence at the G8 summit's cheese board. True to form, discussing the global food crisis – spiralling grocery prices in the developed world and starvation in Africa – was clearly hungry work that left their stomachs rumbling.

Shortly after calling for us all to waste less food, and for an end to three-for-two deals in British supermarkets, Gordon Brown joined his fellow G8 premiers and their wives for an eight-course Marie Antoinette-style "Blessings of the Earth and the Sea Social Dinner", courtesy of the Japanese government.

The global food shortage was not evident. As the champagne flowed, the couples enjoyed 18 "higher-quality ingredients", beginning with amuse-bouche of corn stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon and sea urchin pain-surprise-style, hot onion tart and winter lily bulbs.

With translations helpfully provided by the hosts, the starter menu (second course) read like a meal in itself. A folding fan-modelled tray decorated with bamboo grasses carried eight delicacies: kelp-flavoured cold Kyoto beef shabu-shabu, with asparagus dressed with sesame cream; diced fatty flesh of tuna fish, with avocado and jellied soy sauce and the Japanese herb shiso; boiled clam, tomato and shiso in jellied clear soup of clam; water shield and pink conger dressed with a vinegary soy sauce; boiled prawn with jellied tosazu-vinegar; grilled eel rolled around burdock strip; sweet potato; and fried and seasoned goby with soy sauce and sugar.

That was followed by a hairy crab kegani bisque-style soup and salt-grilled bighand thornyhead with a vinegary water pepper sauce. The main course brought the "meat sweats" – poele of milk-fed lamb flavoured with aromatic herbs and mustard, as well as roasted lamb with black truffle and pine seed oil sauce. For the cheese course, the Japanese offered a special selection with lavender honey and caramelised nuts. It was followed by a "G8 fantasy dessert" and coffee served with candied fruits and vegetables.

This was washed down with Le Reve grand cru/La Seule Gloire champagne; a sake wine, Isojiman Junmai Daiginjo Nakadori; Corton-Charlemagne 2005 (France); Ridge California Monte Bello 1997 and Tokaji Esszencia 1999 (Hungary).

The G8 leaders had earlier made do with a "working lunch" of white asparagus and truffle soup; kegani crab; supreme of chicken; and cheese and coffee with petit fours. The lubrication of choice, for those drinking, was Chateau Grillet 2005.

The TV cameras were sadly not allowed to loiter long enough to discover whether Mr Brown practised what he preaches by not wasting any of his food. The Prime Minister has been shocked by the finding that an average British household could save about £420 a year by not throwing away edible food.

It is a fair bet that much more than that was wasted last night at the opulent Windsor Hotel in Toya, 30 miles from the general public and with 20,000 special police officers for security. Sixty chefs were flown in for the occasion, foremost among them the Michelin-starred Katsuhiro Nakamura.

The total cost of staging the event on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido is estimated at £285m, enough to buy 100 million mosquito nets, and dwarfing the £85m Britain spent on the Gleneagles summit three years ago.

"If it costs this much for them to meet, they had better make some serious decisions to increase aid to poor countries," said Max Lawson, senior policy officer at Oxfam. "If they are just going to sit around and eat, while millions of people face starvation, that is not good enough. They must act– not eat."

While the dinner went on, officials from the G8 nations haggled late into the night over the summit declaration on aid to the poorest nations. Pressure groups fear the G8 is trying to water down the commitment it made at Gleneagles to double aid to poor countries to $50bn by 2010. They want the figure included in this week's statement, rather than a restatement that Africa will receive $25bn by then, and single out France and Italy for criticism. "It's 50-50," one aid campaigner said.

Andrew Mitchell, the Conservatives' international development spokesman, said: "Surely it is not unreasonable for each leader to give a guarantee that they will stand by their solemn pledges of three years ago at Gleneagles to help the world's poor. All of us are watching, waiting and listening."

Bush's prayer for end to tyranny

"I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease and free from tyrannical governments," was George Bush's wish, handwritten on a piece of parchment and tied to a bamboo tree as part of the Japanese Tanabata festival.

The annual ceremony, which this year coincided with Japan's hosting of the G8 summit, is based on the myth of two star-crossed lovers condemned to meet only once a year in the Milky Way on 7 July. Every summer Japanese people write prayers on thin strips of paper and hang them in bamboo branches in the hope their wishes will be granted.

"I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realised. I wish for the advance of new technologies that will improve the human condition and protect our environment. I wish God's blessings on all," Mr Bush concluded.

Gordon Brown, mindful of the third anniversary of the London bombings, sought an end to terrorism as well as to poverty.

©independent.co.uk

DRANT #308: VETERANS : DON'T TAKE THE MONEY, START THE HEALING

2008-07-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a vast tragic irony, proudly exposing the bleeding sores that evidence our murderous national cancer, Bush spoke for all of Us today when he signed the latest bill funding the war
and said: "Our nation has no greater responsibility than to support our men and women in uniform..."

How terribly terribly painfully murderously true this is, and what a searing if totally unconscious commentary.
Its true: We don't have any greater responsibility. We can't even imagine a greater responsibility.
It's all about Us.
Once again, "our nation" -- which means me and you and your Aunt Betty too- has acted from pure self-interest.
Once again We all have acted as if We have "no greater responsibility" than to----- ourselves.
The War Funding Bill was brilliantly and purposefully packaged by a bipartisan coalition to democratically provide bribes for everyone. And we all took the bribes, and couldn't opt in fast enough.
Little we care, less we even notice, that we have made a pact to commit another year and a half of unspeakable murder and torture on others.
Why should we ? This is all about US, and we got OURS.
Bush definitely got his. He gets to go out in style, unopposed, and heave the dungpile on the next guy's lap.
The Congrassholes got theirs, cause now they can fly home in their private jets, and crow about how they supported the troops, and helped the poor, and the farmers, and created forceful anti-drug programs, and of course, sent money to rebuild the Katrina levees. Right on time, that one.

And We get Ours- cause we're going to get longer unemployment benefits, and we get to feel good about supporting our men and women in uniform, and we get paid for crops we couldn't grow, and dontcha forget the shameful "stimulus" hush money payments.
And the Veterans- they got theirs: a new complement of benefits and programs worth billions.
As the IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) said in an email blast today : "WE DID IT ! " Well, they sure did. We all did.

We have ALL of us made a helluva deal, and all we have to do is commit unspeakable acts on some unpronounceable Arabs for another year or so ? Hey, where do I sign up ?

Well, now that we got ours, and the Veterans got theirs - I wanna know- what are we going to do for the VICTIMS ?
If we think that our Troops suffer - from Post-Traumatic Stress, wounds, disease, destruction of family - what the hell do we think our victims suffer from ? Many of them are victims themselves, but ALL of them are perpetrators.
I am now asking all the Winter Soldiers to step up and put the same all-out effort into forcing Congress to put up billions in reparations -- and begin to make amends for all we have done. I am asking them, and I am asking you and me and all of us.
How perfect it is that we have rushed to the aid of our fellow perpetrators - and have lifted not an eyebrow for our real victims.
How indescribably vile it is that the Veterans' Benefits were appended to the very same bill that continued to fund the ongoing killing. And so, the Veterans supported the bill because THEY got THEIR money- while simultaneously facilitating the next 18 months of murder. And we all did nothing that stopped it.

We are ALL of us perpetrators: we who carried out their orders and did not refuse; who killed because we were told to, and did not refuse; who followed some genocidal testosterone-poisoned code of honor and protected or defended our fellow perpetrators, and did not refuse; who blamed somebody or something else- and did not stand up for ourselves and refuse; and above all others-
We The Complicit, who have achieved exactly nothing by our feeble efforts to stop six years of war and murder and torture, and have exercised no control over our employees in Congress who have taken OUR money and funded and aided and abetted the war and the murder and the torture.

The healing must begin NOW.
And that healing must itself begin with each of us taking full responsibility for what we have done, and dedicating our lives to making amends.
There can be and there will be no healing unless and until this happens.
Step number one: we must ALL refuse to take any of the money that this new bill bestows on us.
Every veteran must refuse to use the money he/she gets from this new bill - and give it instead to our victims.
The veterans can NOT accept the blood money they are getting for having done the killing, while perpetuating the funding of murder.
We need the veterans to show us the way- show Congress and each and every one of US- what we must do.
This can be their greatest and most redeeming mission of honor. This is their monumental and historic chance truly to change the course of the world. They can and must lead us -- to begin the enormous task of healing.
Taking money for evil deeds well done serves only to perpetuate the symbiosis of killing. Turning that money to healing can change the world.
Imagine- thousands of Vets- lining up in front of Congress, with their new benefit checks, announcing that they are taking the money to Iraq or Afghanistan- to bring aid to the victims. And then we see them board the planes. And then we see them re-building homes and hospitals and schools, and repairing the water and electrical systems, and delivering massive medical aid. And we may even see a few of them with individual victims - the very sons and daughters of people they killed or tortured or "detained."
And then, we must ALL join them. For we have not just failed to stop them in their killing, not merely been complicit- we have paid for it, and we have - all of us- been war profiteers- hoarding and spending the trickle-down pecuniary profits of the war economy on ourselves. We each of us, must take our OWN checks, and stand in front of Congress, and follow the model that the Veterans set-- and get the money to our victims.
It is clear that as things now stand, We The People will not rise up, will not stand up on our own, will not change the murderous and inhuman direction we have taken.
I pray that once that spark is lit, and we are shown the path, we will jump and run to follow it.
Please, let the healing begin.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DRANT #307: KAFKA SAYS: YOU'RE NEXT !

2008-06-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

www.freesaminow.com
"...Dr. Sami Al-Arian's arrest on February 20, 2003, at the behest of the Bush Administration, was the height of injustices committed against Dr. Al-Arian in his three decades as a law-abiding resident who loved his country; a country where he lived twice as long as he had anywhere
else; a country that shared his values and beliefs more than any other; a country where he raised his family to live, learn, work, and contribute to its betterment.

The trial and acquittal of Dr. Al-Arian in 2005 served not only to demonstrate his innocence against the government's unfounded accusations, but also as an affirmation of his decades of public service. ICP and WISE, the institutions that the government attempted
to destroy in its indictment, were ultimately vindicated. Prosecutors could not show any evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, witnesses called by the government, including professors, lawyers, and federal agents, testified to the value of these organizations and their genuine
nature. Jurors who sat in the trial for six months drew only the logical conclusion that ICP and WISE were legitimate, law-abiding organizations that were highly regarded.
The government's decision to continue to punish Dr. Al-Arian even after his acquittal demonstrates the politically-motivated nature of the actions against him. This effort has been led by those who are openly opposed to the empowerment of American Muslims in the public
square, and have professed deep hostility to the cause of justice for Palestinians..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you disagree with the government now and then ?
Do you actively support organizations that oppose government policy ?
Have you demonstrated or sent letters or contributed money or signed a petition that resists the government or its policies ?
How about this- do you fully expect that if you were ever tried and found INNOCENT- you would be freed from prison ?
Not true.
Last DRANT was about the Blacklist. This is about the National Gulag.
Its easy to close this now, or tell yourself that you're not a Palestinian, for Allah's sake, just a regular citizen expressing yourself like Americans are supposed to.
Please read this. You know who can be next. There's a list of possible actions below.
Please- perform just one, for the victim and his family, for yourself and your children and their children.
Thanks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Sami Al-Arian's Arraignment on Monday Morning
VIRGINIA -- Tomorrow (Monday) morning, June 30th, at 10 AM sharp, Dr. Al-Arian will have his arraignment at the U.S. Courthouse in
Alexandria. He will appear before Judge Leonie Brinkema. We encourage supporters and people of conscience to attend.

Email samialarianactioncommittee@gmail.com if interested in
coordinating a car pool.

WHAT: Dr. Sami Al-Arian's Arraignment WHEN: Monday, June 30, 10 A.M.
WHERE:
Albert V. Bryan
U.S. Courthouse
401 Courthouse Square
Alexandria, VA 22314
WHO: We encourage all supporters to attend!

SEE MORE:
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/06/28/dr-sami-al-arian-to-be-arraigned-
at-10-am-on-monday-june-30th/

DIRECTIONS THROUGH GOOGLE MAP:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=&near=520+King+St+% 23+307,+Alexandria,+VA+22314&sll=38.818378,- 77.044973&sspn=0.018323,0.063343&ie=UTF8&ll=38.800621,- 77.048106&spn=0.009164,0.031672&z=15&iwloc=addr
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another Milestone for Dr. Al-Arian Spent in Prison

VIRGINIA-- Last month, Dr. Sami Al-Arian marked the 33rd
anniversary of his arrival to the United States. Dr. Al-Arian, who is
currently being held at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in
Portsmouth, Virginia, awaits deportation by immigration officials
while a Virginia prosecutor attempts to keep Dr. Al-Arian imprisoned
indefinitely.

(this has now turned from possible to actual- the Prosecutor has FILED NEW INDICTMENTS AGAINST Dr. Al-Arian- details below)

Here is Dr/ Al-Arian's story:
On April 11, Dr. Al-Arian completed his sentence, following an
additional year spent in jail for civil contempt for his refusal to testify
before a grand jury. A plea agreement reached with the government in
2006 called for Dr. Al-Arian's immediate release and deportation and
promised to protect him from cooperation. After spending more than
five years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement, Dr. Al-
Arian has spent the last six weeks in legal limbo –not serving a
sentence and not charged, but not allowed to leave the country.

On May 21, 2008, Dr. Al-Arian spent the 33rd anniversary of his
arrival to the United States in a 7 x 10 cell in a rural Virginia
jail. The son of Palestinian refugees, Dr. Al-Arian, 50, arrived to
the U.S. from Egypt in 1975 as a 17 year-old college freshman.

He completed his graduate studies almost a decade later, receiving a
doctorate in computer engineering and beginning a successful academic
career at the University of South Florida in Tampa. While there, he
became an award-winning tenured professor. He authored a number of
articles in his field and chapters in textbooks and won several
prestigious research grants for his university. Dr. Al-Arian's work
in the classroom consistently garnered high praise from students and
colleagues alike.

In 1979, he married Nahla Al-Najjar, another Palestinian refugee, who
became the source of love, guidance, and support for her husband as
they embarked on a mission to build a family and a community. Dr. Al-
Arian credits his wife with sharing his devotion and passion for
community building and activism. She was a pioneer for the inclusion
of women in leadership positions within the American Muslim
community. Along with their five children, they lived in Tampa until
2007 when Mrs. Al-Arian and their two youngest children departed for
Egypt, where they eagerly await Dr. Al-Arian's release and
deportation.

In addition to his professional career, Dr. Al-Arian devoted much
time and energy to the building of civic institutions to enhance the
life of the growing American Muslim community. He has played an
integral role in founding and expanding some of the largest national
organizations, including the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and
the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Locally, he founded the
Islamic Community of Tampa Bay at the Al-Qassam mosque. At its
height, the mosque boasted thousands of congregants and became a
leading participant in some of the most important local charitable
work, including the annual Feed the Hungry event hosted by Tampa's
mayor. Dr. Al-Arian, as the imam, also led the mosque to become the
first to join the Hillsborough Organization for Progress and Equality
(HOPE), a social justice coalition made up of nineteen churches.

Pastor Warren Clark of the First United Church in Tampa recalls one
of his earliest conversations with Dr. Al-Arian, following the Muslim
community's participation in a HOPE event. "(Sami) said, `There are
issues in this town that are more than just Muslim issues. We are
called on by the Quran to work for the poor, the outcast, the hungry,
the widows, and the orphans.' He led his community to engage in this
work in many different ways and through many different organizations.
Within the Muslim community, that legacy has continued on, even in
his absence."

One of Dr. Al-Arian's proudest achievements is establishing the
Islamic Academy of Florida (IAF), a full-time school that offered
students the highest quality education while instilling them with a
sense of moral duty to their community and country. He served as
principal of the school for several years, as it became the lifeblood
of the community. Graduates of IAF have gone on to some of the top
universities in America and most have received scholarships and
acceptance to honors programs.

Dr. Al-Arian was also heavily involved in human rights work,
especially with regard to his homeland of Palestine, in an effort to
relieve the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli
occupation. He was outspoken in opposition to Israeli policies and
eager to inform the American public of the plight of Palestinians in
order to effect positive change. The organization he founded, the
Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), held annual national
conferences and organized charitable activities to help needy orphans
in Palestine.

Among his many activities, Dr. Al-Arian actively worked to bridge the
divide between East and West. He promoted interfaith dialogue
individually and institutionally, in an effort to establish peace,
tolerance, and understanding between faiths. Another one of his
initiatives, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), was a
groundbreaking think tank at USF that brought together scholars,
experts, and leading intellectuals from around the world. Its
publications were highly regarded by experts in the field. Through
this work, Dr. Al-Arian developed many important and lasting
friendships.

Melva Underbakke, an instructor at USF and member of Friends of Human
Rights, recalls her first impressions of Dr. Al-Arian:
"I met Sami in the early 1990s. He was giving a presentation for the
teachers at the English Language Institute (ELI) at USF. Most of them
didn't know anything about Middle Eastern culture. People liked him
in the Foreign Languages Department because he was trying to build
bridges between East and West. He had a real reputation for doing
that there."

He soon became recognized as a national leader of the American Muslim
community, receiving invitations to speak at numerous churches,
synagogues, and other institutions, including the U.S. Central
Command at the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

By the mid-1990s, Dr. Al-Arian's activities were centered on the
latest civil rights struggle in American history: the emerging
national effort to end the unjust detention of Arabs and Muslims for
years without trials through the use of secret evidence. Through
tremendous efforts, including coalition-building, grassroots
mobilization, and congressional lobbying, Dr. Al-Arian would come to
be recognized as "one of the country's leading advocates" of the new
civil rights movement, according to Newsweek magazine.

Having lived in the U.S. for over two decades, he was steeped in the
American civil rights tradition and was a strong believer in fighting
for change through the designated avenues. Furthermore, Dr. Al-Arian
worked hard to empower and enfranchise the American Muslim community
on the local and national levels, encouraging Muslims to vote and run
for office.

Dr. Al-Arian's arrest on February 20, 2003, at the behest of the Bush
Administration, was the height of injustices committed against Dr. Al-
Arian in his three decades as a law-abiding resident who loved his
country; a country where he lived twice as long as he had anywhere
else; a country that shared his values and beliefs more than any
other; a country where he raised his family to live, learn, work, and
contribute to its betterment.

The trial and acquittal of Dr. Al-Arian in 2005 served not only to
demonstrate his innocence against the government's unfounded
accusations, but also as an affirmation of his decades of public
service. ICP and WISE, the institutions that the government attempted
to destroy in its indictment, were ultimately vindicated. Prosecutors
could not show any evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, witnesses called
by the government, including professors, lawyers, and federal agents,
testified to the value of these organizations and their genuine
nature. Jurors who sat in the trial for six months drew only the
logical conclusion that ICP and WISE were legitimate, law-abiding
organizations that were highly regarded.

The government's decision to continue to punish Dr. Al-Arian even
after his acquittal demonstrates the politically-motivated nature of
the actions against him. This effort has been led by those who are
openly opposed to the empowerment of American Muslims in the public
square, and have professed deep hostility to the cause of justice for
Palestinians.

For the past five years, Dr. Al-Arian has witnessed the gravest of
injustices, some that he spent years of his life fighting against,
and others never thought imaginable in a free society. As he
continues to endure imprisonment with no end in sight, abusive
treatment at the hands of prison officials, and isolation from those
who love and depend on him, many Americans and people the world over
wonder if justice is indeed possible in such dark times when the
abuse of government power knows no bounds.

Dr. Al-Arian, however, maintains his unshakeable faith that the
people, on whom the system of justice depends, will ultimately bring
an end to the abuses committed in their name. Each day, more people
add their voice to the thousands who call on America to live up to
its time-tested principles.

As Pastor Clark recalls, it is Dr. Al-Arian's strong faith that has
always guided him through the toughest of times. "I recall attending
an event at the Islamic Community during the height of the media
campaign against Sami, after 9/11, but before he was arrested. I
asked him how he was doing and I expected him to say things were bad,
but he said, `You know Warren, I feel closer to God now than I have
ever felt.' It was another window into the deep wellspring he uses to
overcome the most terrible circumstances. That really spoke to me."

As we approach a crossroads in the contemporary civil rights
struggle, the case of Dr. Al-Arian takes center stage. Agha Saeed,
chair of the American Muslim Taskforce for Civil Rights and Elections
and a colleague of Dr. Al-Arian's for many years, reflects on the
current situation. "Today, Dr. Al-Arian, one of the most prominent
political prisoners in the United States, symbolizes the struggle for
freedom of Palestine. Tomorrow, let me predict, based on his heroic
sacrifices, he will be recognized as a major 21st century civil
rights leader in the Unites States." Such designations do not come
without a heavy price. It is up to all those who stand for justice to
ensure that the sacrifices made by Dr. Al-Arian are not forgotten.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace
June 27, 2008

Bush Justice Department Indicts Dr. Sami Al-Arian: The Injustice
Continues

ALEXANDRIA – The Bush Administration's persecution of Dr. Sami Al
Arian reached new heights on Thursday when prosecutors in the Eastern
District of Virginia brought charges against him, entering a new
phase in the politically-motivated campaign of the past five years.

The indictment charges Dr. Al-Arian with two counts of criminal
contempt, relating to two attempts by Virginia prosecutors to bring
him before a grand jury investigating other Muslim organizations.

Dr. Al-Arian had already been held in civil contempt for more than
one year for his refusal to testify. A plea agreement signed with
Florida prosecutors following his 2005 acquittal protected him from
cooperating in any additional cases. It was intended to bring his
case to a close by allowing him to leave the country. Two federal
courts have refused to allow evidentiary hearings that would allow
the plea agreement to be enforced.

Even with the additional time served, Dr. Al-Arian's sentence ended
on April 7 of this year. He was then taken into the custody of
immigration authorities who were making preparations for his
deportation.

In the midst of that process, the Bush Administration made its last
ditch effort to continue its punishment of Dr. Al-Arian by bringing
new charges against him. He now faces additional prison time if
convicted. Criminal contempt is the only charge in American law that
has no maximum penalty.

"This indictment proves that the government was never interested in
any information that Dr. Al-Arian has on the IIIT matter," his
attorney, Professor Jonathan Turley, wrote on his blog. IIIT or the
International Institute of Islamic Thought is the Muslim think tank
that is the target of a six-year witch-hunt by a prosecutor based in
Virginia. "This was a classic perjury trap used repeatedly by the
government to punish those individuals who could not be convicted
before an American jury."

He continues: "They have indicted him despite the fact that the
prosecutors admitted that he is a minor witness in the IIIT
investigation and he has already given two detailed statements under
oath to the government and offered to take a polygraph examination to
prove that he has given true information about his knowledge of IIIT.

Dr. Al-Arian has addressed every document cited by the government as
the reason for his being called before the grand jury. He has shown
that he has no incriminating information to offer against either IIIT
or its officers."

Here's the link to Turley's entire statement:
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/06/26/dr-sami-al-arian-indicted-on-two-
counts-of-criminal-contempt/

These charges follow a string of abuses by a rogue prosecutor whose
actions appear to be politically motivated. Assistant US Attorney
Gordon Kromberg's bigoted remarks against Arabs and Muslims have been
widely publicized in the media and condemned by leading human rights
organizations. His actions have resulted in the unjust prosecution of
many American Muslim activists, including at least one case of a
perjury trap similar to that faced by Dr. Al-Arian.

This indictment is only the latest in what has become the standard by
which the Bush Justice Department operates. After refusing to honor
the agreement it reached with Dr. Al-Arian in April 2006, it never
approached the grand jury process in good faith either. As Dr. Al
Arian's attorney has revealed, prosecutors were not interested in
obtaining any information, but only used the grand jury subpoenas as
a means by which to bring new charges against him and keep him
imprisoned. These actions signal an erosion of the justice system,
much to the dismay of all Americans who trust their officials will
carry out the law on an impartial and depoliticized basis.

TAKE ACTION:

All concerned Americans are urged to continue their protest of the
abuses committed by the Bush Administration in their name. We ask
that you write to the Attorney General about the injustices suffered
by Dr. Al-Arian. We also ask that you contact your representatives in
Congress and members of the Judiciary Committee, requesting that they
investigate the actions of the rogue prosecutor.
Please check www.freesaminow.com for updates regarding the new
charges against Dr. Al-Arian.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax: (202) 307-6777
E-mails to the Department of Justice, including the Attorney General,
may be sent to AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

US Department of Justice
Office of Professional Responsibility
950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20530
House Judiciary Chair
The Hon. John Conyers, Jr.
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
Fax: (202) 225-0072
E-mail: John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
Senate Judiciary Chair
Sen. Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224- 4242
E-mail: senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

For more information about Dr. Al-Arian's case, please:
See the Washington Post article "Former Professor Indicted In Muslim
Charities Case" by Jerry Markon, Friday, June 27, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/06/26/AR20080
62603664.html

We encourage you to write letters to the editor of the Washington
Post about Dr. Al-Arian's case, expressing your outrage about the new
charges:

The e-mail address is letters@washpost.com.
Do not send attachments; they will not be read.

To contribute to Dr. Al-Arian's legal defense, please send checks to:
National Liberty Fund
P.O. Box 1211
24525 E. Welches Road
Welches, OR 97067

If you have not done so already, please do these 3 SIMPLE BUT POWERFUL ACTS:

1. Call Vincent Archibeque, Assistant Field Office Director of the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE): (703) 285-6221.

Stress that Dr. Al-Arian's prison term ended on April 11th and that his imprisonment since then has been COMPLETELY ILLEGAL. Ask Mr. Archibeque to do everything he can to ensure that Dr. Al-Arian is released and deported as soon as possible in accordance with the terms of his plea agreement.

2. Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (Department of Homeland Security):
(866)-644-8360 (press 1 for English and then press 5 to leave a message)

Stress that Dr. Al-Arian's prison term ended on April 11th and that his imprisonment since then has been COMPLETELY ILLEGAL. Ask that Dr. Al-Arian be released and deported as soon as possible in accordance with the terms of his plea agreement.

Again, always be polite but firm.

If you don't speak to a live person:

- simply leave a message on the answering machine; and
- call back later that day or the next day to try to get through.

3. Email Attorney General Michael Mukasey: ASKDOJ@usdoj.gov

Ask Mr. Mukasey to ensure that Dr. Al-Arian is deported as soon as possible in accordance with the plea agreement.
(For a letter template, please refer to the postings section on this page)

- Before sending the email, make sure to BCC samialarianactioncommittee@gmail.com

NOTE: In any given civil rights campaign, there are always more people willing to make a
phone call than write an email. Your emails are very important. Just use our letter template
and take JUST FIVE MINUTES to write out your message. Precisely because so few people
ever write their own letter, yours will be EXPONENTIALLY more powerful for that.

If you have not signed our petition, please do so by visiting petition.freesaminow.com

To learn how you can help EVEN MORE, please visit:
http://www.freesamialarian.com/help.html

PLEASE FORWARD TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

Join our regular Listserv today! Simply send an email to
tampabaycoalitionforjusticeandpeace-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to receive the latest
updates on Dr. Al-Arian!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DRANT #306: US XIS OF EVIL

2008-06-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

I am continually shocked, but rarely surprised that so many of us have no idea, or claim to have no idea, that everything- I mean everything- we are enduring right now is nothing new. That, like any cranky adolescent, America is just going through a funny new stage, and the mood will pass in time like acne or embarrassing nocturnal emissions. That the world is much scarier than ever, that the threats to our precious American way of life are unprecedented and justify unprecedented methods.
That all of this is a blip, an anomaly sprung from a bizarre confluence of unique and unpredictable but gravely life-threatening events- through no fault of our own.
That we have done nothing to cause any of it, and that pretty soon now, we'll shake it off, and get back to the great, gentle, humanistic, benevolent, peaceful, globally beloved REAL America whose memory we all cherish and adore.
As if we have not been a vicious and rapacious perpetrator of global aggression, murder, genocide, fascism, slavery, and pervasive oppression -- not only of the poor innocent indigenous victims we first found on this land that's our land, or brought here to do the dirty work for free -- but ceaselessly, mercilessly and with consistent national complicity committed on our own citizens.
The author of this review, himself a child victim, sees a lot of the evil, and much of the current expression of that evil. What he cannot bring himself to see is the true nature of America and Americans.
He cannot bring himself to see that THIS is who and what we are, and have always been, that there are concentration camps in the USA: the infamous and widely videotaped FEMA camps, the I.C.E. detention centers spread across the landscape, the thousands of privately-run-for-profit Prisons that enslave 3 million or so of our citizens. Like many such victims, he clings to the belief that Daddy was really a good man, and really truly loved him- but just made some bad mistakes.
Daddy did it to him, and is still doing to millions of us- right here in the USA (see below). You don't need to search in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib for serial abuse, torture, enslavement- and certainly not for oppression, censorship, vilification, nor the willful national complicity that makes it all possible.
Dalton Trumbo loved America too much, and sadly, so does this reviewer of a remarkable new film about Trumbo, his life, and the disgraceful but historically consistent persecution then called "Blacklisting" and now under the department of Homeland Security, but still sponsored by the good folks of the USA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dalton Trumbo and American Evil

By Andrew O'Hehir

June 26, 2008, salon.com

"Convince people that their family's safety
is at stake, and they'll believe all kinds of outrageous lies
and turn against their neighbors who happen to look or act
different. "

"The real target of the Red Scare was not the handful of prominent
lefties like Trumbo who had their livelihoods destroyed and
their reputations ruined but rather the rest of society,
which proved by and large to be craven, suggestible, and
downright eager to hew to a new standard of patriotic
conformity. Whether this was accidental or intentional,
pursuing a highly unpopular minority provided authoritarian
elements in this country with a test case: How far could
constitutional rights and liberties be eroded by government-
sponsored fear-mongering? The answer was pretty far, and
would-be dictators from J. Edgar Hoover to Dick Cheney have
been renovating and repeating the pattern ever since, with a
different half-imaginary enemy in the gunsight."

"... No one, as Trumbo said, who lived through the
blacklist years emerged from them unscathed by evil, and now
that evil has been visited on later generations..."

No one has ever summed up the Hollywood blacklist of the
1950s -- and, by extension, the entire history of that
decade's anti-Communist witch hunt -- any better than this:

"The blacklist was a time of evil. No one on either side who
survived it came through untouched by evil. There was bad
faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and
cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and
stupidity, good and bad on both sides. It will do no good to
search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because
there were none; there were only victims. Some suffered less
than others, some grew or were diminished, but in the final
tally we were all victims because almost without exception
each of us felt compelled to say things he did not want to
say, to do things he did not want to do, to deliver and
receive wounds he truly did not want to exchange. That is why
none of us -- right, left, or center -- emerged from that
long nightmare without sin."

Those words were spoken by Dalton Trumbo in 1971, when he
received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild
of America -- as he noted at the time, an award bestowed by
those who had fought for him, those who had betrayed him and
those who had only the vaguest notion who he was. In
"Trumbo," the new film directed by Peter Askin and adapted
from Christopher Trumbo's off- Broadway play about his
father, the speech is given an electrifying reading by actor
David Strathairn. "Trumbo" is a terrific picture, a blend of
interviews and archival footage and readings of Trumbo's
letters and speeches (by Strathairn, Michael Douglas, Joan
Allen, Paul Giamatti, Brian Dennehy and others) that vividly
illustrates why the blacklist remains an urgent issue 60
years later. One could wish it were a bit more honest about
the sources of Trumbo's obvious mixed feelings about himself
and his fellow leftists. (Perhaps Christopher Trumbo's
forthcoming book will address this.)

Dalton Trumbo was the most famous and probably the most
talented of the Hollywood 10, the group of left-wing film
industry professionals who went to prison after refusing to
cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee in
1947. Along with many other actors, writers, directors and
musicians, they were then banished from the business. Trumbo
himself served 10 months in federal prison after his
conviction for contempt of the 80th Congress; as he remarks
in an archival interview seen in the film, he entirely agreed
with the verdict, as he felt nothing but contempt for that
Congress and several later ones.

He continued to write scripts under assumed names and in
impoverished circumstances after his release from prison, and
spent several years with his wife and three kids in Mexico
working for little or nothing. He wrote at least 30 films and
doctored or rewrote countless others. He won two Academy
Awards decades after the fact, one of them posthumous. (They
were for "Roman Holiday" in 1953 and "The Brave One" in
1956.) His other screenplays included "Kitty Foyle"
(nominated for a 1940 Oscar), "Gun Crazy," "Lonely Are the
Brave," "The Sandpiper" and the antiwar classic "Johnny Got
His Gun," adapted from his own novel and his only directing
effort. Trumbo also became the first of the Hollywood 10 to
break the blacklist, when Otto Preminger hired him to write
"Exodus" and Kirk Douglas hired him to write "Spartacus,"
both made in 1960.

If the Hollywood blacklist and the entire Red Scare has
become a murky, antique-seeming affair in most people's
minds, there are reasons for that. Inevitably, the passage of
time and the death of nearly all the participants has turned
it into a remote artifact of black-and-white newsreel
footage. I think the fact that most of the Hollywood 10 and
other blacklistees continued to work, under various ruses,
and even formed an expatriate Red community of sorts in
Mexico, makes the whole thing seem like a romantic caper. In
fact, it was a cruel and deeply symbolic act of tyranny that
displays all too clearly one of the running themes of
American history: Convince people that their family's safety
is at stake, and they'll believe all kinds of outrageous lies
and turn against their neighbors who happen to look or act
different. I know, that's starting to seem unpleasantly
familiar, but let's not get ahead of the story.

Historians in recent years have legitimately attempted to
wrestle with the era's complexities and shine light into its
darker corners. It has long since become clear, for example,
that many American Communists, Trumbo included, succumbed to
the paranoia and authoritarianism that by Stalin's time were
ingrained doctrines of their faith. Ironically enough, during
World War II Trumbo apparently informed the FBI about his
contacts with people he suspected were Nazi sympathizers. He
later said this was a "foolish" decision, and that he quickly
understood that the agents were more interested in him than
in his letters from possible Hitler-lovers. None of this is
mentioned in the film.

Along with honest historical inquiry, however, has come a
smug, contrarian right-wing campaign to muddy the waters and
make the paranoid derangement of '50s America seem somehow
justified. If American Communists held a misguided faith in
the Stalinist Soviet state, the thinking goes, and if some
tiny percentage of them were Soviet agents or spies (and
let's stipulate that those things are true) then all 80,000
or so were, prima facie, seditious revolutionaries and
threats to democracy -- and the Hollywood 10 really were
trying to pervert healthy Americans with Red propaganda
concealed as entertainment. Not all versions of the neocon
rehabilitation of McCarthyism are quite so baldly ludicrous,
but all must make the imaginative leap that a tiny,
ineffective and consistently persecuted political movement,
which throughout its brief heyday attempted to reassure the
public that "Communism is 20th century Americanism," was in
fact an immensely powerful and sinister force.

All disputes about history are really arguments about the
present, and that goes double in this case. Contemporary
right-wingers don't care about the real story of Dalton
Trumbo, his nine original co-defendants or the dozens of
other blacklistees that followed. (A random assortment: John
Garfield, Dashiell Hammett, Judy Holliday, Langston Hughes,
Gypsy Rose Lee, Arthur Miller, Zero Mostel, Dorothy Parker,
Edward G. Robinson, Artie Shaw, Orson Welles, Josh White.) In
fact, as Askin's film makes clear, Trumbo was a witty,
irascible, mule-stubborn individualist who grew up on
Colorado rangeland and was a poor candidate for Marxist-
Leninist groupthink. He was a Communist Party member for, at
most, four or five years, and like most other American Reds
of the period -- like, say, my mother -- he was more
attracted to the excitement, the sense of action and heady
adventure, than to the core ideology. (No, I'm not a neutral
observer of this issue, if that's even possible.)

What the more intelligent neocons see in the 1950s crackdown
on Communism is both an underlying pattern and an instructive
example, having to do with power and how to wield it. The
real target of the Red Scare was not the handful of prominent
lefties like Trumbo who had their livelihoods destroyed and
their reputations ruined but rather the rest of society,
which proved by and large to be craven, suggestible, and
downright eager to hew to a new standard of patriotic
conformity. Whether this was accidental or intentional,
pursuing a highly unpopular minority provided authoritarian
elements in this country with a test case: How far could
constitutional rights and liberties be eroded by government-
sponsored fear-mongering? The answer was pretty far, and
would-be dictators from J. Edgar Hoover to Dick Cheney have
been renovating and repeating the pattern ever since, with a
different half-imaginary enemy in the gunsight.

In one devastating letter read in the film, Trumbo observes
that the liberal producer who doesn't believe in the
blacklist but apologetically tells him he can't hire a known
Communist because "that's the country these days" is more
oppressive than any congressional blowhard. His eloquent
anger toward the country that he believes betrayed freedom,
principle and basic human decency in its moment of postwar
crisis is matched by his confidence that if he could poll the
entire American population on one question -- "Would you like
a man who informs on his friend?" -- the universal answer
would be no.

But the lesson of "Trumbo" that clearly resonates in 2008 is
that even in an increasingly pluralistic society, public
tolerance can readily be turned against those who hold
troubling ideologies or alien beliefs, and in that situation
terrible things become acceptable. Some of those things are
small, like the cruelty and ostracism Trumbo's daughter
endured in elementary school, and some are larger. One of the
anti-Communist movement's darkest triumphs was the Emergency
Detention Act of 1950, which envisioned the suspension of
constitutional rights in a national emergency, and funded the
creation of six concentration camps for American civilians
who "probably will engage in, or probably will conspire with
others to engage in, acts of espionage or sabotage." It was
passed by Congress over Harry Truman's veto, but without much
public debate.

Not much about this act is easily available online, a
startling fact in this age of information overload. Congress
repealed it in 1971, and the six camps -- some of them
formerly used as Japanese-American internment camps during
World War II -- fell into disrepair. But it obviously struck
some people as a good idea, and so today our secret prisons
are in other countries and governed by no law, and so far
they have not housed any cantankerous Hollywood
screenwriters. No one, as Trumbo said, who lived through the
blacklist years emerged from them unscathed by evil, and now
that evil has been visited on later generations. His wife and
kids loved him, and he finally got his Oscars. Surely that
counts for something.

"Trumbo" opens June 27 in New York and Los Angeles, with
national release to follow.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpts. Please access the following for complete info:
www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2005/05/location_of_con.html

Location of Concentration Camps in America

There are over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational
and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by
full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be
implemented in the United States, and all it would take is a presidential
signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a
warrant to which a list of names is attached.

The Rex 84 Program was established on the reasoning that if a "mass exodus"
of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly
rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA. Rex 84 allowed many
military bases to be closed down and to be turned into prisons. Operation
Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be
implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose.
Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the
program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the
federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and
thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already
listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this
operation.

The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from
the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of
the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest
of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan
facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2
million people. Now let's review the justification for any actions taken...
Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for
nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:...

DRANT #305: SANTA SCREWED

2008-06-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

CLIMATE CHANGE
Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 27 June 2008

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally icefreeNorth Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by hugeswathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.

This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during thesummer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeksshows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when therewas an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.

"The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the NorthPole is covered with extensive first-year ice – ice that formed last autumn and winter. I'd say it's even-odds whether the North Pole melts out," said Dr Serreze.

Each summer the sea ice melts before reforming again during the long Arctic winter but the loss of sea ice last year was so extensive that much of the Arctic Ocean became open water, with the water-ice boundary coming just 700 miles away from the North Pole.

This meant that about 70 per cent of the sea ice present this spring was single-year ice formed over last winter. Scientists predict that at least 70 per cent of this single-year ice – and perhaps all of it – will melt completely this summer, Dr Serreze said.

"Indeed, for the Arctic as a whole, the melt season started with even more thin ice than in 2007, hence concerns that we may even beat last year's sea-ice minimum. We'll see what happens, a great deal depends on the weather patterns in July and August," he said.

Ron Lindsay, a polar scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, agreed that much now depends onwhat happens to the Arctic weather in terms of wind patterns and hours of sunshine. "There's a good chance that it will all melt away at the North Pole, it's certainly feasible, but it's not guaranteed," Dr Lindsay said.

The polar regions are experiencing the most dramatic increase in average temperatures due to global warming and scientists fear that as more sea ice is lost, the darker, open ocean will absorb more heat and raise local temperatures even further. Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, who was one of the first civilian scientists to sail underneath the Arctic sea ice in a Royal Navy submarine,said that the conditions are ripe for an unprecedented melting of the ice at the North Pole.

"Last year we saw huge areas of the ocean open up, which hasnever been experienced before. People are expecting this to continuethis year and it is likely to extend over the North Pole. It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer – it's not happened before," Professor Wadhams said.

There are other indications that the Arctic sea ice is showingsigns of breaking up. Scientists at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre said that the North Water 'polynya' – an expanse of open water surrounded on all sides by ice – that normally forms near Alaska and Banks Island off the Canadian coast, is much larger than normal. Polynyas absorb heat from the sun and eat away at the edge of the sea ice.

Inuit natives living near Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland are also reporting that the sea ice there is starting to break up much earlier than normal and that they have seen wide cracks appearing in the ice where it normally remains stable. Satellite measurements collected over nearly 30 years show a significant decline in the extent of the Arctic sea ice, which has become more rapid in recent years.

©independent.co.uk

DRANT #304: ACTA AND DODD: Out of Orifices

2008-06-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

You remember when they passed the Patriot Act, in the dead of night, and no one even bothered to read it ?
Did you think it was gonna stop there ?
They learned a big lesson that night.
They learned that We were going to whine and do nothing.
Well, They are about to do it -- again, two more times, and We are about to do nothing- again.

1- The USA and its sodomize-the-planet global industrial partners in the G-8 have been working on something called ACTA: The Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. They are planning to sign this on July 8 or 9, at the G-8 meetings in Hokkaido Japan.
The contents of the proposed deal were leaked by Wikileaks. Sue Schwab, the US Trade Representative, her co-perpetrators in Congress and her cohorts in the other "developed" countries -- are planning to just - do it. No debate, no public access, no sunlight to shine on this UberOrwellian Global rape of what remains of our personal privacy. See the Wikipedia entry below for details. Suffice to say, that downloading movies from BitTorrent will be punishable by prison, and that your Ipod will be subject to search, full inspection, and seizure by the TSA at every airport or border crossing, as will your very own hard drive, and the contents of your cell phone.
We are quickly running out of orifices for them to invade.
The contents of this agreement are despicable. But the method is far worse. Secret drafting, hidden negotiations, executive approval. Boom its over.
Now remember what happens with real treaties - they must be ratified (thus presumably scrutinized) by Congress, before they become- THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND. Once ratified, they supersede all national laws. But- in Bushian times, this is being designed as a "Trade Agreement," executable solely by the Chief Executive of the USA, and subject to neither scrutiny nor approval by us, or Congress. And, it will become law overnight. Poof.
If you thought that the 4th amendment to what used to be known as The Constitution was roadkill already, just wait til you're in a TSA detention center because they think you have an unlicensed song or movie on your laptop. Or, most likely and insidious, because you look funny to them, and they need a justification to publicly invade your every pore. And then pray that you are not "illegal."

2- The Senate is about to pass a "Foreclosure Prevention Act" that would - ostensibly- help just us folks survive the current housing repossessacide.
Swell. But:

"Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government."

"This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking."

So what does this mean ? It means that every- I say every -- single transaction you make will be reported to the Government.

It means that the law will require information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions.

And - once again- the contents of this agreement are despicable, and once again the method is far worse. Once again: secret drafting, hidden negotiations, no debate. Boom its over.
So, we are either going to get our whining shoes on again, or do something.
You now know the facts. You know what They are planning.
What are ya gonna DO about it ?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral trade agreement that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. The agreement is being secretly negotiated by the governments of the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico.[1][2] If adopted at the 34th G8 summit in July 2008, the treaty would establish an international coalition against copyright infringement, imposing a strong, top-down enforcement regime of copyright laws in developed nations. The proposed agreement would allow border officials to search laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for copyright-infringing content. It would also impose new cooperation requirements upon internet service providers (ISPs), including perfunctory disclosure of customer information, and restrict the use of online privacy tools. The proposal specifies a plan to encourage developing nations to accept the legal regime.
The European Commission, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and other government agencies have acknowledged participating in ACTA negotiations, but they have refused to release drafts of the treaty or to discuss specific terms under discussion in the negotiations. Public interest advocates in Canada filed an access to information request but received only a document stating the title of the agreement, with everything else blacked out.[2] On May 22, 2008, a discussion paper about the proposed agreement was uploaded to Wikileaks, and newspaper reports about the secret negotiations quickly followed.[3][4][2][5]
ACTA is part of a broader "forum shifting" strategy employed by the trade representatives of the U.S., E.C., Japan, and other supporters of rigid intellectual property enforcement: similar terms and provisions currently appear in the World Customs Organization draft SECURE treaty.[6]
Provisions

Border searches
Newspaper reports indicate that the proposed agreement would empower security officials at airports and other international borders to conduct random ex officio searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or "ripped" music and movies. Travelers with infringing content would be subject to a fine and may have their devices confiscated or destroyed.[2][5]

ISP cooperation
The leaked document includes a provision to force internet service providers to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant, making it easier for the record industry to sue music file sharers and for officials to shut down non-commercial BitTorrent websites such as The Pirate Bay.[7]

Enforcement
ACTA would create its own governing body outside existing international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.[2][8]

Interpretation

It has been argued[9] that the main thrust of ACTA is to provide safe harbor for service providers so that they may not hesitate to provide information about infringers; this may be used, for instance, to quickly identify and stop infringers once their identities are confirmed by their providers.
Similarly, it provides for criminalization of copyright infringement, granting law enforcement the powers to perform criminal investigation, arrests and pursue criminal citations or prosecution of suspects who may have infringed on copyright.
More pressingly, being an international treaty, it allows for these provisions—usually administered through public legislation and subject to judiciary oversight—to be pushed through via closed negotiations among members of the executive bodies of the signatories, and once it is ratified, using trade incentives and the like to persuade other nations to adopt its terms without much scope for negotiation.

Confusion
In Canada, there is some confusion with proposals in ACTA and Bill C-61.

External links

Proposed US ACTA multi-lateral intellectual property trade agreement (2007) posted on Wikileaks
ACTA document posted on Wikileaks
ACTA information from IP Justice
ACTA articles by Michael Geist
An ACTA Call to Arms: No more secret government posted by William Patry, formerly copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Problem With ACTA Knowledge Ecology Studies comment by Aaron Shaw.
References

^ Geiger, Andrea. "A View From Europe: The high price of counterfeiting, and getting real about enforcement", The Hill, 2008-04-30. Retrieved on 2008-05-27.
^ a b c d e Pilieci, Vito. "Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers", Vancouver Sun, 2008-05-26. Retrieved on 2008-05-27.
^ Proposed US ACTA multi-lateral intellectual property trade agreement (2007). Wikileaks (May 22, 2008).
^ Jason Mick (May 23, 2008). Wikileaks Airs U.S. Plans to Kill Pirate Bay, Monitor ISPs With Multinational ACTA Proposal. DailyTech.
^ a b Weeks, Carly. "Anti-piracy strategy will help government to spy, critic says", The Globe and Mail, 2008-05-26. Retrieved on 2008-05-27.
^ SECURE Draft (Feb. 2008). World Customs Organization (WCO) (February 2008).
^ Ingram, Matthew. "Do we need copyright cops?", Ingram 2.0, Globe and Mail, 2008-05-26. Retrieved on 2008-05-27.
^ Fact Sheet: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. European Commission (2007-10-23). Retrieved on 2008-05-27.
^ Anderson, Nate (2008-06-02). The real ACTA threat (it's not iPod-scanning border guards). Ars Technica. Retrieved on 2008-06-14.
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http://www.freedomworks.org/newsroom/press_template.php?press_id=2571

June 19, 2008
Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government

Broad, invasive provision touches nearly every aspect of American commerce.

Washington, D.C. - Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.

Call Congress and Tell Them to Oppose The eBay Reporting Provision in the Housing Bill: 1-866-928-3035

FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: "This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking."

"Privacy groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology and small business organizations like the NFIB sharply criticized this idea when it first appeared earlier this year. What is the federal government's purpose with this kind of detailed data? How will this database be secured, and who will have access? Many small proprietors use their Social Security number as their tax ID. How will their privacy be protected? What compliance costs will this impose on businesses? Why is Sen. Chris Dodd putting this provision in a housing bailout bill? The bill also includes the creation of a new national fingerprint registry for mortgage brokers.

"At a time when concerns about both identity theft and government spying are paramount, Congress wants to create a new honey pot of private data that includes Social Security numbers. This bill reduces privacy across America's payment processing systems and treats every American small business or eBay power seller like a criminal on parole by requiring an unprecedented level of reporting to the federal government. This outrageous idea is another reason to delay the housing bailout legislation so that Senators and the public at large have time to examine its full implications."

From the Senate Bill Summary:

Payment Card and Third Party Network Information Reporting. The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions. Use of an account number or other indicia associated with a payment card will be treated in the same manner as a payment card. A de minimis exception for transactions of $10,000 or less and 200 transactions or less applies to payments by third party settlement organizations. The proposal applies to returns for calendar years beginning after December 31, 2010. Back-up withholding provisions apply to amounts paid after December 31, 2011. This proposal is estimated to raise $9.802 billion over ten years.

FreedomWorks
601 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, North Building, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20004
Phone: (202) 783-3870 Fax: (202) 232-8356 Toll Free: 1-888-564-6273
www.freedomworks.org
© 1996-2004 FreedomWorks. Online Privacy Policy
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DRANT #303: GENERATIONAL CAPITALISM

2008-06-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

We must look our children and grandchildren in the eye.
And beg for forgiveness.
Beg that they will forgive us for robbing them of their future.
That they will forgive us when they have nothing to drink or breathe or eat.
Forgive us for drinking it all, and fouling it all, and wasting it all - and consuming it all, and leaving nothing for them.
We don't need cute t shirts or tear jerky photos of Polar Bear cubs, or "green" movements or "ecological" organizations.
What we need is to stop our insane consumption, now.
We must all of us change our lives-- one of us at a time, each of us - one day at a time, one hour at a time, one gluttonous decision at a time.
One meal and one car ride and one Evian at a time.
One flush and one shower, and one round of golf and one hamburger, and one dog washing at a time.
Or you can look your children in the eye, and explain why you chose the air conditioner and the nice green lawn over their future.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/special_report

Where Has All the Water Gone?
MAUDE BARLOW
"The world's water crisis poses grave threats to our survival. Can we change course?
Imagine a world in 20 years in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic water services in the Third World; or to create laws to protect source water and force industry and industrial agriculture to stop polluting water systems; or to curb the mass movement of water by pipeline, tanker, and other diversions, which will have created huge new swaths of desert.
Desalination plants will ring the world's oceans, many of them run by nuclear power; corporate-controlled nanotechnology will clean up sewage water and sell it to private utilities, which will in turn sell it back to us at a huge profit; the rich will drink only bottled water found in the few remaining uncontaminated parts of the world or sucked from the clouds by corporate-controlled machines, while the poor will die in increasing numbers from a lack of water.
This is not science fiction. This is where the world is headed unless we change course--a moral and ecological imperative. But first we must come to terms with the dimension of the crisis.
...The freshwater crisis is easily as great a threat to the Earth and humans as climate change (to which it is deeply linked) but has had very little attention paid to it in comparison. It is like a comet poised to hit the Earth. If a comet really did threaten the entire world, it is likely that our politicians would suddenly find that religious and ethnic differences had lost much of their meaning. Political leaders would quickly come together to find a solution to this common threat.
However, with rare exceptions, average people do not know that the world is facing a comet called the global water crisis. And they are not being served by their political leaders, who are in some kind of inexplicable denial. The crisis is not reported enough in the mainstream media, and when it is, it is usually reported as a regional or local problem, not an international one..."
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Facing Up to Freshwater Pollution
NANCY STONER AND JON DEVINE
We are at a turning point as momentous as the 1970s, when the Clean Water Act was enacted.

The Backlash Against Bottled Water
KARL FLECKER

Water Wisdom
ROGER D. STONE
A conversation with water expert Peter H. Gleick on today's crisis, and a vision for tomorrow's sustainability

The Perils of Privatization
WENONAH HAUTER
The conflict between multinational corporations' quest for profits and the simple human right to clean, safe water

Changing Water Policies in the Dry Southwest
CHRISTINA ROESSLER
Smart water use and a shift in water culture form a winning strategy.

The Missing Piece: A Water Ethic
SANDRA POSTEL
We must make the protection of freshwater ecosystems a central goal in all that we do.
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DRANT #301: VICTORY FOR US WAR RESISTERS IN CANADA!

2008-06-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

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This is a very good beginning. I urge you to access Courage To Resist (www.couragetoresist.org) and join them, donate, help in any way you can.

Many thanks,
DR
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Today the Canadian Parliament made a historic vote in favor of U.S. war resisters who are seeking a safe haven in Canada rather than fight in the illegal occupation of Iraq. The vote in the House of Commons was 137-110, with all the opposition parties - the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party - voting for the motion, and the ruling Conservative Party voting against.

The Parliament calls on the minority Conservative government to create a program that will allow war resisters to immigrate to Canada, and it also calls for a halt to all deportation proceedings.

This is a VERY BIG victory for war resisters in Canada and everywhere. It will strengthen our hand considerably.

But the struggle for sanctuary in Canada is far from over. The Conservative government, a staunch ally of the Bush administration, may choose to defy the will of the Canadian people by ignoring this advisory motion.

Corey Glass, an Iraq veteran and war resister, was recently ordered to leave Canada by June 12 or face deportation.

So even as we celebrate this victory, we must step up the pressure on Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Diane Finley. [See action alert from War Resisters Support Campaign, below, along with their press release and a news article.]

Yes, it does help for the Canadian government to hear from many people in the U.S. who want them to provide sanctuary for our war resisters. Courage To Resist (www.couragetoresist.org ) has generated thousands of letters from people in the U.S. to Canadian government and political leaders and these have clearly helped, as have the vigils and delegations to the Canadian Embassy in Washington and Canadian Consulates around the U.S.

Project Safe Haven, a network of Vietnam War resisters who are supporting war resisters today, is calling for people to contact Canadian representatives in the U.S. this week.

* THANK the Canadian people and their Parliament for supporting our war resisters.
* CALL on the Conservative government to follow the will of the Canadian people and implement this motion.
* DEMAND an end to deportation proceedings against Corey Glass and other war resisters

You can visit the Canadian Consulate in person. In Seattle, we will have a Celebration outside of the Canadian Consulate, 1501 4th Ave. at Pike St., on Thursday, June 5, at noon. There will also be vigils and delegations in several other cities.

And you can call them, fax them, or email them.

Canadian Consular offices are in over 20 U.S. cities. Here are their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. http://geo.international.gc.ca/can-am/washington/offices/default-en.asp

If you want to participate in visits to the Canadian Embassy or Consulates, please send an email to projectsafehaven@hotmail.com or call Gerry Condon at 206-499-1220.

If you are a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War or Veterans For Peace, you may want to get in touch with your local chapter or national office to let them know you want to participate, and to help organize these events.

U.S. war resisters and their wonderful Canadian supporters have won a historic victory. By acting decisively at this time, we in the U.S. can participate in this victory and help to make it an even bigger one.

Thank you for whatever you may be able to do at this time.

for peace and justice,
Gerry Condon
(206) 499-1220

Soldier Say No / Project Safe Haven
SoldierSayNo@yahoo.com, projectsafehaven@hotmail.com
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
__________________________________________________________________________________

[The following Action Alert is from the War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada, www.resisters.ca]

Canadian Parliament votes to let US war resisters stay
The Canadian Parliament passed an historic motion today, June 3, 2008, that calls on the Canadian government to make a program to allow US war resisters to apply for permanent resident status in Canada and to cease all deportation and removal proceedings against US war resisters.

The next step is to write to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Diane Finley, and prime minister Stephen Harper to ensure that they that the will of Parliament is implemented.

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley
phone 613.996.4974
fax 613.996.9749
email finley.d@parl.gc.ca and finled1@parl.gc.ca

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
phone 613.992.4211
fax 613.941.6900
email pm@pm.gc.ca

War Resister Corey Glass Faces Deportation
U.S. Iraq war resister Corey Glass was told on May 21, 2008, that his application to stay in Canada has been rejected and he now faces deportation. Glass would be the first Iraq war resister to be deported from Canada. Last December the House of Commons' Standing Committee on Citizenship & Immigration passed a motion calling on the Canadian government to "immediately implement a program to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members […] to apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada; and … the government should immediately cease any removal or deportation actions … against such individuals".

[See news articles and War Resisters' press release below]

Canada Lawmakers Ask Harper to Let War Resisters Stay (Update1)
Bloomberg - USA
The Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign estimates there are as many as 200 American Iraq war resisters in Canada. According to a May 22 report in ...
See all stories on this topic

War resister motion passes
Kootenay Western Star - Castlegar,BC,Canada
By Elliot Robins - Kootenay Western Star - June 03, 2008 Members of Canada’s parliament passed a motion on Tuesday that will give foreign war resisters ...
See all stories on this topic

MPs vote to give asylum to US deserters, Tories say No
TheChronicleHerald.ca - Halifax,Nova Scotia,Canada
Two generations ago, as many as 50000 American draft dodgers and war resisters came to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. They were eventually welcomed and ...
See all stories on this topic

House of Commons votes to let U.S. War Resisters stay in Canada

OTTAWA, June 3 /CNW/ - The Opposition parties in the House of Commons joined together today to adopt a recommendation which, if implemented, would make it possible for U.S. Iraq War resisters to obtain Permanent Resident status in Canada.

The recommendation was adopted by a majority of Members of Parliament from the Liberal, Bloc Québécois, and New Democratic Parties. The Conservatives voted against the motion.

The motion, which originated in the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in December 2007, calls on the government to "immediately implement a program to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members...to apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada; and...the government should immediately cease any removal or deportation actions...against such individuals."

Corey Glass, 25, a war resister who came to Canada in 2006 and was recently told to leave Canada by June 12 or face removal to the United States, welcomed the vote. "I'm thankful that the MPs voted to let me and the other war resisters stay in Canada. I'm also thankful to all the Canadians who urged their MPs to support us."

"This is a great victory for the courageous men and women who have come to Canada because they refuse to take part in the illegal, immoral Iraq War, and for the many organizations and individuals who have supported this campaign over the past four years," said Lee Zaslofsky,
Coordinator of the War Resisters Support Campaign and a Vietnam War deserter who came to
Canada in 1970.

The War Resisters Support Campaign is calling on the Conservative government to respect the democratic decision of the Canadian Parliament and immediately implement the motion and cease deportation proceedings against Corey Glass and other war resisters.

For further information: Michelle Robidoux, (416) 856-5008; Lee Zaslofsky, (416) 598-1222 or (416) 369-0864

DRANT #300: GLOBAL SHONDA

2008-06-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

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And the winner is ... the Israel lobby
Asia Times Mon, 02 Jun 2008 3:14 AM PDT
WASHINGTON - They're all here - and they're all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates - John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne.
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Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd

An Agony Foretold: Bitter Roots, Bitter Fruits in the Middle East
Posted: 01 Jun 2008 04:18 PM CDT
Long before the Nabka, long before the Holocaust, the present-day agony in Israel and Palestine had already taken root. The ineradicable core of the conflict is brutally simple: the attempt by one people to take another people's land. In this respect, the turmoil in the Middle East is just another chapter in one of the world's oldest stories, for human beings have always been about the bloody business of conquest, dispossession and domination. The United States, for example, was built on this ancient principle. Its settling was cast largely in the same terms as those used later by the Zionists in Palestine: the claiming and cultivation of a land that was essentially empty -- save for a few savages who could only benefit from the imposition of a superior civilization. (And if they couldn't, so much the worse for them.)

The nascent Americans were fortunate, of course; they land they took was far less populated than it had been not long before. Large swathes of the native populations had been decimated by waves of epidemics, most sparked by contact with the earliest European explorers in the 16th century. By the time that large-scale settlement began in the 17th and 18th centuries, vast regions of North America had been emptied of its population, whole tribes had had been wiped out, and most others left enfeebled, their social, cultural and demographic shattered. Even so, there were still millions of Indians left in the "New World," and it took centuries of war and deceit before they were finally driven off all of the lands that the Europeans wanted.

The Zionist movement was less fortunate in this respect. In relative terms, the Arab population of Palestine was much more numerous and more intact than the Indian tribes of North America....

DRANT #299: VICTIM'S DAY

2008-05-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

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"Memorial" Day 2008:
Almost drowning out of the roar of the NASCAR engines, the screams of the orphaned children watching their parents and brothers and sisters being dragged off by the American SS, the I.C.E., the outraged desperate pleas of parents begging government not to poison spray their homes and backyards, and darn near overriding the cacaphonous pitchmen selling hot newly repossessed houses on the Repochannel (available at auction this weekend for a mere fraction of their worth) -- come all the loud impassioned eulogies for Our Troops

Lies, all of it.
I do not support our troops.
I do not support anyone's troops.
It is emblematic that throughout the USA we dedicate an official holiday to the deification and glorification of "our" warriors.
All across America today people of every kind, hawks and doves, peaceniks and sabre rattlers, pro war and anti war, are stepping up proudly to proclaim that whether they support war or not, they "support our troops".

I do not support our troops.
They are not mine.
They are not admirable brave men and women, nor are they fighting for our country. They are certainly not fighting for me. And you better get it through your head- they ain't fighting for you either.
They are murderers and killers, and some of them torturers and rapists, who have willingly committed inhuman and unconscionable acts on uncountable victims.
Many of them may also themselves be victims but all of them are perpetrators. As are we.
Many of them may be reluctant warriors, but all of them have the moral obligation to refuse to kill, and choose instead to follow orders.
They are not fighting for freedom or democracy. They are not murdering to make us safe.
They may have been sent to do the filthy work of insane power mongers and incomprehensibly greedy pigs, but that filthy work they do, and often, as can be seen on countless video clips, with gusto and guffawing glee.
I support the troops and veterans (and their families) who have renounced the killing and I support their great courage -- to look the truth of their actions in the eye, and take full responsibility for what they have done, and to then dedicate their lives to reparation and amends.
America looks out into the world, and sees not the 100’s of thousands of humans we have killed, wounded, starved to smithereens, or burned beyond recognition, but sees only its own brave soldiers, as if they were the victims.
And this of course is why we go so easily into war. THEY are the victims. WE are not the victims.
For Us, the Others don’t exist. It is all about Us, and Our sons and Our mothers and Our children and husbands and wives.
Supporting our Troops means we support ourselves, and lets us rationalize what we have done.
For each of us has made the same moral choice as each of the soldiers. Each of us has, in one way or another, followed orders, and death and destruction have been the result.
We must find the courage to NOT support the troops, and NOT support what we all have committed. We must blame the troops, and blame ourselves, take full responsibility for what we and our soldiers have done, and dedicate our lives to making amends.

Today should be called Victims’ Day.
A day for the nation to stop everything and contemplate and examine in extreme detail, everything we have brought on humanity. For centuries.
A day when we individually and collectively face the truth.
Today let us mark the beginning of redemption by memorializing and humanizing and glorifying the victims of our crimes. Let us march and sadly display the tragic photos of those we have killed, and not of Us, their killers.
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DRANT #298: JOHN and JOE in 08

2008-05-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

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You saw it here foist.
John and Joe
in 2008.
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