The US Drug War has helped create the Colombian death squads, whose calling card is often the chain saw. Now Meet the US Drug War’s creation in Mexico, a man nicknamed ‘Stew Maker’. Mexico man ‘dissolved 300 bodies’ All America’s wars create monsters, including the US soldiers and their allies themselves.
Ethiopia says it has finished pulling its troops out of Somalia failing at the task of pacifying Somalia that the Pentagon had set for it. Who knows the details of the secret details that led to Ethiopia acting as mercenaries for the US government, but what is known is the total destruction inside Somalia that has ensued because of this US government terrorism against that poorest of countries.
Now, Barack Obama is in the process of trying to get the United Nations gang to once again act as Pentagon troops and to go into Somali and continue to destroy the future of that poor country. The UN has done such a knock out bang up job in keeping Haiti in similar dire conditions, I guess? The US government, like Israel, seems to specialize in picking on the poorest peoples of the planet, and that says something about the American people themselves, does it not?
One thing is absolutely clear by now, and that is that Barack Obama no more respects the national sovereignty of other countries than Bush did. Africa will have bleak prospects ahead under this new US government, which refuses to just leave Africa alone rather than to ‘manage’ it.
Israel admits using white phosphorous in attacks on Gaza (on its attack on a UN sponsored school). This will bother Barack Obama about as much as his own military murdering civilians in Afghanistan does. Karzai Confirms: US Forces Killed 16 Civilians
Latest Civilian Killings by US Forces Spark Outrage Across War-torn Afghanistan
Lest anybody think that this is somehow an aberration and not representative of the face that the Barack regime will present to the world, Richard Holbrooke, a Clintonite/ Carterite Democratic Party retread elaborates on his opinion that the US government he is now the representative of will be fighting in Afghanistan longer than it did in Vietnam, all to be now under Barack Obama’s direction as US Commander in Chief. See Fata toughest challenge for Obama, says Holbrooke where he talks about Obama’s plans to continually be at war fighting against the peoples of Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan!
We still have a state of permanent US war on the books and that is the game plan under the man who claims to represent CHANGE. It’s the same old thing though, and the only change will be the economic depression that the Democratic Party policies have helped create will also be a happening for the US population in the coming years. ‘Change’ you won’t like.
A good part of Barack Obama’s war games will include yet more future use of Israeli war crimes, like the dropping of White Phosphorus on civilians inside the UN run school for children. Despite all the slick talk by Slick Obama, he doesn’t really give one hoot for human life. It really sickens me to hear folk claim to believe that the man is sincere and wants to make change happen, when it is so blatantly obvious that that simply is not the case. Barack and his Israeli war criminal friends plan on continuing the same Pentagon terrorism in pursuit of supremacy over their neo-colonies.
What a dirty image the US government now has after 8 years of the Bush Klan in power alongside their sidekick cohorts, the Democratic Party assisting alongside and to the side. But now the sidekick has the reign in the White House at hand once again, or is it just a broom?
Where to hide all Dubya’s dirt? Perhaps Obama can get the European Union to help him out some? That would be so nice… Take some POWs, they are free to all ‘responsible parties’! Closing out sale on POWs held at Gitmo! Show some kindness now!
Meanwhile the US government campaign of terrorism goes on unchecked as Barack bombs Pakistan, Barack moves troops to Afghanistan, Barack talks tough to Iran…. and so on. We will be tough, tough, tough.
Now to the economy where some major sweeping of America’s public image needs to be done but fast. Barack will sale the growing bankruptcy of Federal Treasury to, to the American people. We”ll give you $300, Old Timers on Social Security! We’re going to look for better ways to give you pennies as we give the top corporations tens and hundreds of billions! Get on board and help us out with the Give Out Express! Don’t worry about the National Debt, you can pay for that later! Everybody qualifies for this credit card! Zero down, Zero percent interest! It’s cleanup time!
Sweep, Sweep, Sweep! It’s time to clean the dirt on the stained American image everywhere! The Sweeper Man is now in D.C. and look how clean he plans to make it all? Sparkle and Shine! Drop a bomb here or there, but do it judiciously, not like say?… Israel in Gaza just did. Need a trillion? …Just come and get it! Bombs away, Guys!
Obama The Sweeper Man. We all wish him well to a certain extent, but we know just what and who he is sweeping for. Not the POWs. Not the American working class. Not the Black Community even. He’s sweeping for Them, the guys who paid him to sweep. This place is a mess they say, and we do agree!
Who’s The Sweeper Man sweeping for though? This I think you probably know already…. since it is not for you and me. But is it just the dirt that needs to do? To me, it looks like the furniture and house itself have gone bad? I don’t see how you can clean this mess up by just sweeping the worst of it under the rug? …. a raggedy rug at that.
but realized this did I suddenly…
That would be how translating ANY non-English language into English word by word and ignoring syntax.
“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
–David Ben Gurion, first Israeli Prime Minister
Nazis executed parents in front of children in Gaza.
UN investigator Richard Falk (a Jew) says Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, compares it to Warsaw Ghetto.
Visualize Nuremberg. Israel already budgeting lawyers for war crime trials. PM Olmert even appointed a Justice Minister who’s only job will be to defend Israel from War Crime charges.
Just one of hundreds of accounts of NAZI war crimes in Gaza.
State Dept. celebrates departure of “Wicked Witch of the West.”
Hey Gazans: Come meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Obama stops pretending, and reveals he’s just Bush in blackface. He agrees that the President can spy on anyone he wants, without a warrant. Allthose silly people, who assumed “change” meant change for the better.
NSA analyst reveals what we all suspected: Dictator Bush wasn’t just spying on suspected terrorists, but on all Americans.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Jan 24 notes, thomasmc.com.
COLORADO SPRINGS- Ted Haggard’s inconvenient sex life surfaces again! And this time the scandal is all New Life’s. Ted Haggard’s PR talk show onslaught to remake his image has prompted an altar boy to go public. But it seems this violates an agreement the young man made with New Life in the aftermath of the Haggard prostitute meth-habit scandal.
According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, New Life Church leader Brady “Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.”
First let’s clarify what New Life has failed to make clear. The young man was in his “early twenties” when he approached the church about the relations between he and Haggard. According to Boyd, the “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” had gone on for “a long period of time.” The church denies that the young man might have been a minor when it began.
Second, according to a letter sent to its congregation members as a result of the new revelations, New Life Church admits now that it has “received reports of a number of incidents of inappropriate behavior.”
In light of Ted Haggard trying to repaint himself as a victim in an HBO documetary, and on Oprah Winfrey, and an upcoming Larry King Live, the New Life ex-volunteer now wants to go public with his story.
While the church told the public, and its congregation, that Haggard’s impropriety did not extend beyond the Denver prostitute, it looks like New Life Church deliberately kept this story under wraps, despite an “overwhelming pool of evidence” to indicate otherwise. In the face of the hush-up coming to light, their official response is even more duplicitous.
“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance – certainly not hush money. I know that’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”
An agreement to keep quiet appears to have been what New Life Church thought “it was.” Asked whether the church will pursue legal procedures against the young man, Boyd replied:
“We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to.”
Yesterday Barack Obama suspended the GWOT military tribunals and announced the closing of Guantanamo Prison Camp, eventually. Care to explain to those still being detained without charges, why it’s going to take a year?
Many progressives are applauding Obama’s bold moves, and today Obama proclaimed that the US does not torture. Are the Gitmo prisoners still maintaining a hunger strike? Are their jailers responding by feeding them against their will, using gastric tubes? That’s torture. If Obama hesitates to roll back the policies which sustained Guantanamo, the responsibility is going to be his own.
Obama reverses Bush abortion-funds policy Now let’s see what he has in hand to help deal with the current catastrophic mess called the US Medical System? As the layoffs build up, there is not much time left to ‘reform’ the misdelivery of public health care.
Today’s Denver Post print edition headline reads U.S. closes door on Guantanamo, torture. Of interest is how their internet version of this headline has changed the verb tense from ‘closes’ to ‘closing’. Yes, well it amounts to about the same thing, kind of? Well but is it a closed book, or not? That question has to be asked because Gerald Ford supposedly closed the book on Watergate, which was where a President acted in a criminal manner but was left entirely free from facing any criminal charges! The President will be stopped (after his criminal acts become just too obvious and exposed) but is simply above the law, was how the message was left later to be read by the likes of Dubya Bush and Dick Cheney.
Yes, Barack Obama wants to clean America’s image up and closing Guantanamo’s detention unit down is key to that. But he also wants to sweep the dirt under the rug and get on with it, so to speak. There is no evidence that he plans to prosecute anybody for the crimes they committed by running this Federal torture camp, and this is what makes us look on these seemingly positive moves with a huge amount of scepticism.
Eisenhower, too, eventually stopped the McCarthyite witch hunt from going further forward, but then continued to wage the Korean War that resulted in millions going to their deaths. He kept the Cold War going full tilt, and much of the world worried that the ‘cold’ would become a hot war with nuclear weapons begin launched. In fact, Eisenhower’s military command thought long and hard about nuking China. So looking at the edicts coming out from Barack Obama on his first day about supposedly moving to end the torture regime of the Bush Administration should not be looked at with rose tinged glasses on.
Suspected U.S. missile attacks kill 18 in Pakistan At the same time as Barack is supposedly ending US government torture of POWs, his Administration is continuing the bombing of targets that hit civilians in Pakistan as often as not. Further, the bombing raids are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, same as the continued now Barack Occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are, too.
While nobody can expect Barack Obama to reverse all that Bush’s Klan instituted with DP loyal assistance in just one or two days, let alone one or two weeks, there still is really no reason to assume that Barack has any plan to do so… EVER. In this sense, Barack Obama resembles Gerald Ford much more than he resembles Abraham Lincoln. Eventually this will become rather obvious but for now the liberal euphoria continues. They are being led around on their leashes by the corporate media and Barack, but what we are actually seeing so far is Barack Obama pardoning Bush and his gang for crimes committed.
“Yet, all the world helps after an earthquake,” said a doctor at the Shifaa hospital in Gaza. “We feel very frustrated,” he continued. “The West, Europe and the U.S., watched this killing go on for 22 days, as though they were watching a movie, watching the killing of women and children without doing anything to stop it. I was expecting to die at any moment. I held my babies and expected to die. There was no safe place in Gaza.”
Another doctor from the hospital…
“They are lying to us about democracy and Western values,” he continued, his voice shaking. “If we were sheep and goats, they would be more willing to help us. You know, the most important thing you can tell people in your country is that U.S. people paid for many of the weapons used to kill people in Gaza,” said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan. “And this, also, is why it’s worse than an earthquake.”
taken from Report From Rafah- Worse Than an Earthquake by Kathy Kelly
In their quest to muddy Barack Obama by his association with Weatherman Bill Ayers, some right wing bloggers dug up a copy of the old SDS/ Weathermen zine OSAWATOMIE which Ayers and company published and distributed while on the lam. What could the title mean, the blimp-necks wondered…
Googling “Osawatomie” revealed it was a town in Missouri associated with the abolitionist terrorist John Brown, who ultimately led the ill-fated armed insurrection against slavery at Harper’s Ferry, which sparked the Civil War and finally decided the matter. The reich-wing bloggers were certain this was the meaningful link, “there is no other Osawatomie listed on the map, anywhere,” one blogger assured readers.
If they had looked inside the first issue, on the inside cover, they’d have found the explanation for why Students for a Democratic Society, frustrated with the false promise of non-violent resistance, had chosen to honor John Brown:
Inset: In 1856, at the Battle of Osawatomie, Kansas, John Brown and 30 other abolitionists, using guerrilla tactics, beat back an armed attack by 250 slavery supporters, who were trying to make Kansas a slave state. This was a turning point in the fight against slavery. For this, John Brown was given the name “Osawatomie” by his comrades.
While some today are excited to paint Barack Obama’s face over the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, I wish it had been John Brown whose example might have inspired Obama. Abraham Lincoln bent to the eventual will of the American people to emancipate the slaves, but it was Brown who led the way.
Jewish leaders object to Nazi imagery at rallies. Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem museum and memorial, called for the Holocaust to be left out of contemporary political discourse.
Is that rich?! There’s not a day goes by that Holocaust Remembrance isn’t in the news, propagated by Israel’s constant PR campaign. Google “Holocaust” for news items. There are remembrance press releases every news day.
“It is legitimate to constructively criticize the policies of any nation, including Israel. However, the baseless use of Holocaust imagery and terminology as a weapon against Israel has incited a tangible surge of anti-Semitism,” he said. “That is the danger inherent when people cynically use the Holocaust to distort a present political conflict.”
Is it really anti-Semitic to condemn the inhumanity of the Zionists? Does Judaism condone ethnic cleansing? If Israel doesn’t want to be compared to the Nazis, it should stop exterminating the Palestinians. What fucking gall.
The Nazis had a word for their anti-Fascist critics. They called them Communists. That’s why they had the support of industrialists, even Jewish industrialists, and the ruling classes. But sympathy for the barbaric Third Reich quickly wore thin.
Recent events only suggest to me that the Nazis lagged behind today’s Zionists. They lacked the technology. Do you think they would have dicked around with train schedules and relocation ruses if they’d had white phosphorous, free access to the entire US arsenal, and an international community indifferent to the fate of their victims?
The whining and hang-wringing about the “credit crunch” is getting on my nerves. It was this supposed crisis that led to the $700 billion bailout and we’re told every day that it must be solved quickly, no matter the cost, or we’re toast. But why? How many of us are actively seeking credit right now? Surely the developers and retailers want us to have lots and lots of it so we can keep hyper-consuming their goods; the bankers want us to have it so they can collect their interest and fees but, seriously, is free-flowing credit what the American public needs right now? Living beyond our means is what caused the credit meltdown in the first place!
Here’s a meaty statistic: the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the demand for global shipping capacity, dropped from 11,793 last May to, get this, an inconceivable zero. The complexity of the BDI is beyond the scope of this post but, suffice it to say, there are lots of cargo ships sitting at anchor today. The collapse of the BDI augurs a rapidly evaporating demand for foreign goods. Combine this with the massive deterioration in domestic consumption during the fourth quarter of 2008, and wager a guess as to the meaning of it all. We’re not buying anything and the world is following suit! So tell me, Wall Street wizards, why the continued hyperbole about a credit crunch?
How could our purchasing habits change so dramatically overnight? Currently, Americans own an estimated 250 million personal computers and 175 million iPods. There are 9 million mobile homes within our borders, approximately 102-130 million single-family homes, and countless million apartments. One could safely assert that there’s a home, an mp3 player and a personal computer for every man, woman and child in the United States. I’ll go on. Everyone has a television, a cell phone. Nearly everyone owns a car. Most have closets full of clothes they never wear, and we all have too many shoes. So when Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke or anyone else talks about freeing up the flow of credit, we should ask ourselves why.
Recently, through the dense economic fog came a thin ray of revelation: I may actually have enough stuff. Perhaps, just maybe, I can stop buying new stuff for awhile. I can keep my slightly dented iPod for yet another year. My Toyota with 90,000 miles is probably good for another road trip or two. I won’t move to a bigger house just yet, or buy the 52″ flatscreen Santa forgot to leave under the tree. I may have to forego the spring sales and make do with last summer’s tank tops, wrong color though they may be.
I don’t mean to minimize the hardship of doing without, but we are a nation of excess inventory. Somewhere in our stuffed dressers and overfull garages, there is room to accommodate a changed perspective.
Wall Street is telling us that all will soon be well. If we just give them hundreds of billions, they’ll take their cut and loan the rest to us so we can get back to “business as usual”. But what if we don’t cooperate with their economic “recovery” plan? What if we collectively turn our backs on Wall Street and Madison Avenue and live simply, buying what we need and paying as we go, stopping to share with others along the way?
Remember, our banks and investment companies built themselves toward inevitable failure during the economic boom. Don’t expect them to act nobly in the coming recession because they won’t. You can bank on that. So stop worrying about their silly market indices and their credit machinations. Let the Federal government give them another trillion pieces of worthless paper. Help them plaster their walls with negotiable instruments. Make them eat derivatives for breakfast, sell them short against the box and leverage them to outerspace. Leave them with their excess shipping capacity and their phantom dollar bills.
It’s time for the rest of us to disembark this sinking stinking ship for good.
Most rank and file Democratic Party voters loathe the Republican Right Wing of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’really? and want to destroy the dominance of this ideology within American politics over the last 3 decades. When they hear the word CHANGE, that’s what they want it to mean.
But what does it mean when Barack Obama verbally hugs people like Pastor Warren, John McCain, and brings into his own Administration the most tepid political types possible? It means that Barack Obama is not one with this desire of the rank and file Democrat voter to destroy the Political Right’s influence in American politics for good.
The Democratic Party makes public policy in alliance with the US Political Republican Right, and that is what they will continue to do since that is what their corporate funders and backers want them to do. The Democratic Party voters do not control the Democratic Party politicians, but rather the Democratic Party politicians control the DP voters. And both are controlled by the Democratic Party funders. That is just how politics works, so get out of the bad habit of being one of those Democratic Party voters.
And most of all, do something other than just only voting. Without your activities outside of the electoral con games being played, no elimination of the Republican Right will ever occur in this country. You do want them gone for good, don’t you?
Gordon Brown came to power in the United Kingdom in June 2007 and became known for announcing that Britain would be pulling its troops out of Iraq. Many think that the British have actually done so, but the troops are still there. (British) Troops ‘in need of longer breaks’ is this weeks news about those British troops in Iraq. The question now is whether Barack Obama’s announcement that the US …will be… closing down Guantanamo is of the same nature as the announcement that British troops were leaving Iraq?
One other thing to note about the British troops in Iraq, is that the British are planning to follow Barack Obama’s planned surge of troops to Afghanistan. When these troops arrive, they will torture more POWs ala Guantanamo style and worse, bomb more civilian areas, and destroy any possible future stability for Afghanistan yet even more. The British and American liberal governments are liberal governments only in corporate media constructed image only, and will continues to terrorize the world, Afghanistan and Iraq included. Guantanamo is seen as a major blemish in maintaining a good image for Britain and the US in the world, but the governments continue to want to take the same foreign policies of their predatory predecessors. We are getting yet more of the con game as both countries continue to push for more world wide war.
Most likely is that Barack Obama will move to make US use of torture more clandestine and retreat from the public embracing of it, all for having a better image for the government more than for any other reason. Most of the world will hardly be that fooled by this ‘change’. Sorry to say, that most liberal voting DP types will be conned though.
Barack will put blatant torture use into the closet so that later on a new Republican Administration may better pull it back out to publicly embrace once again. Is this really ‘change’ that you can want, happily endorse, and celebrate? Do you want troop withdrawals that are not really troop withdrawals? Will you be satisfied with just a new return to the old form of Clintonite political doublespeak like Gordon Brown and Barack Obama now are engaging in? Time will tell?
DC- Look at the old ambulance chasers!
Senator Ted Kennedy was EMT’d out of the inaugural luncheon, seen off by concerned friends Senators Kerry, Dodd and Hatch. Wait a minute — Senator Orrin MoFo Hatch?! Has the DC mutual admiration society no standard?
It may be that having to address your debate opponent as “the right honorable so-and-so from such-and-such” keeps disagreements from devolving into fist fights. On the campaign trail, this convivial artifice translates into referring to your rival as “my good friend.”
What does it mean, all these lawmakers, being best buds? Do they disagree on matters of principle, or is it a tomato – tomahto charade? Maybe the fundamental values of these civic minded gentlemen millionaires aren’t so far off.
If you ascribe to the notion that left battles right for the opportunity to hold the government accountable to its subjects, you already know that the difference between liberals and conservatives is more than academic. It’s not about the Federalist Papers any more. In DC today, you’re either an idealist, or you’re a crook.
We can give the Democrats their unfettered majority chance to show of what political mettle they are made. But eight years of Bush and his compliant Congress have shown the Republicans to be crooks.
Crooks are a scourge of human nature, fair enough. But do you mean to count a one among your best friends?
If Ted Kennedy were the champion he pretends, or likewise were Kerry or Dodd, they’d have kicked Orrin Hatch to the curb like the morally unambiguous cretin he is. If anyone has thwarted a Democrat’s legacy, it’s the earache-inducing reprobate Senator from Utah.
I hate random stream of consciousness when you can tell the author thinks they’re building to something. It’s so, so tedious. Such was my reaction to officially-described poet Elizabeth Alexander, who recited a piece she composed for the inauguration of the First Black American President. I’ll just note Alexander is a professor at Yale, the alma matter of Bush, Kerry, et al the Skull and Bones secret society.
If there’s anything that makes me crankier than war criminals being hugged, saluted, and wished a bon voyage, it’s applause for crappy poetry.
The awful result begins with noise –a cacophony which Alexander captures with brute mimicry. When she describes uniforms as common as tires and hems, of course I’m going to object. Why not add Coca-cola while you’re pandering to product placement?
Repairing done, Alexander moves on to people of disparate means “trying to make music.” Maybe a tenured African-American studies professor wouldn’t know, no one tries to make music. It doesn’t even take a non-musician to make music, without having to try. Obviously you’re confusing music with poetry.
It may be that Alexander’s challenge was corrupted by the insincerity of the “we have overcome” moment, where a half-black man’s ascent to figurehead is taken as penultimate achievement of the underground railroad. It comforts me to see artistes fall flat when they dip their quills in propaganda.
Here’s the whole drippy thing. Hate the ambiguously half phrase.
Praise song for the day.
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”
We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.
ZioNazis still blockading food and medicine from Gaza,
a war crime.
Israel blocking cash from entering Gaza.
Nuremburg tribunals are too good for the Zionist Nazis who did this.
Israeli Nazis are a threat to the whole world.
The black cloud over America begins to lift. Obama drafting executive order to close Guantanamo, and stop all trials of prisoners.
Obama calls Palestinian president and vows to work towards a peaceful settlement. We shall soon see whether he is for real, or just another AIPAC puppet.
LA Times editorial: On the heels of Pastor Rick Warren’s invocation, Obama should drop the semantics and acknowledge that denying same-sex marriage is discriminatory.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Jan 21 notes, thomasmc.com.
Monday night I got asked out of the clear blue sky at a meeting of self described ‘Peace’ advocates if I paid taxes? I was kind of drowsy from shift work I had just finished doing, and didn’t really consider the fact that Jesus was asked just about the same question in his time, but by those he considered to be spies of the Roman Empire. I was being asked the question though from a self righteous and complacent ‘Quaker’ woman who was in the process of giving me her idea of a litmus test, for whether I would be allowed by her and her husband to be in one local antiwar grouplet here in Colorado Springs called the PPJPC?
I failed her test when I answered that I did indeed pay taxes (too much so IMO), and my statement that it was so was soon followed by a self righteous and complacent harangue about her opinion that the woman and her ‘leader’ husband did not pay ‘war’ taxes and that that was that and why did I not do as they do? The implication was that I should just shut up and let them run things in the group and keep my mouth shut up for good. Why? Well because I pay my taxes!
Further I was told at the meeting by the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission that I was not ever going to be considered a member of the group, no matter what. I was told that I gave neither time nor money to the group!, and that I was out of it in their eyes because I had written previously in the local press about how the leader of the group had called the cops on us for trying to hold a meeting to plan antiwar activities outside the locked doors of the group’s offices.
“All those bad things you said about us of the PPJPC!”
Locked out, because as members of the group we wanted some democracy inside an organization that has but one pretend membership meeting per year and is run by salaried office folk who want to be small business adminstrators instead of anything much else!
I have been told too that I must sign onto some sort of ‘adherence’ statement to the ‘non-violence’ aim of the group. Further the religious pacifists running the show have stated to the press that I and others, too, do not adhere to their Christian motivated ‘nonviolence’, implying to the police and press that we are time bombs about to go off! Meanwhile, they continually invite representatives of the police to ‘meetings’ with themselves so that they can supposedly make their events more ‘nonviolent’, I guess? A hug here, a handshake there, and let us know what you want us to do, Peace Officers?
So back to the question of whether it is peaceful nonviolence’ or self righteous complacency when one does pay taxes at this time of the year? Let us go to The War Resisters League and examine their understated list of the Consequences of War Tax Resistance some. What can happen if you just opt out and tell IRS to shove it? Here, these Christians tell you that you can go to jail but not to worry about it because almost nobody does (in the US). Go figure? To the feds it is more trouble to jail these few religious ‘resistoes’ than to just harass them in other ways. Why shoot down a gnat with an elephant gun?
However there are other consequences, including your right to travel freely outside the US terminated (one of local pacifist families has been confronting just such a restriction imposed most recently, as they were barred from visiting relatives in Canada). You can lose your income through a restriction coming about on licensing in the line of work you do. You can lose your property, much more of it than if you had actually paid those taxes to the government. That happens a lot per the War Resisters League, but they assure us that it all looks good on their own balance sheet of pros and cons! Well not on mine. Nor on Jesus’s balance sheet either! He was resurrected but I don’t know really whether that would happen to me if IRS decided to crucify?
But back to the case of the Quaker woman and her ‘leader’ husband who don’t pay taxes as they assured me that was the case. Her husband actually was in the military and supposedly gets some special pension for that, that I guess I am stupidly paying taxes for them to then lecture me about what a supposedly moral cretin I must be? Kind of a weird situation, ay?
But then again, let’s say that I’m wrong about that, and that these 2 Quakers get no income for that military ‘service’ at all? Where do they get their money from then? Stocks and bonds? Social Security? God? Plus, how can you draw a line between taxes for the military and taxes for other things, since Quakers do most often pay taxes for ‘other things’ and actually most just subtract some percent away (43%) from the taxes they in fact do pay to the government? Does that make it all Kosher then???
It really does not do anything at all from an individual angle, since the government just ‘garnishes’ the wages with interest added on directly from the salaries of religious protesters. However, non religious tax ‘protesters’ are often time not even given such benign treatment at all, since the government has codified well the idea that all ‘conscientious objection’ comes mainly about because ‘God forbids Believers to do something or other?’
No belief in God? Then you got no ‘Right’ to state morality coming from God as motivation, and no Right to really object, you damn atheists!
Does erecting this artificial accounting wall between supposedly taxes for good purposes and taxes for bad purposes help grind the War Machine down and then out? The AFSC (Quakers/ Friends) thinks it does, and is pushing to have 2 tax barrels put into Federal Law, where their religion’s membership can deposit funds into a ‘Peace’ Barrel, while the other religious folk can get the War Barrel! Is this really all that ‘peaceful non-violence’ comes down to in the concrete? Like it makes some dimes bit of difference to the government to separate ‘war taxes’ from a ‘Peace tax’?
Let’s say though, that you do not pay a cent to the government and some how keep them from garnishing your income with interest added in on top? That’s nice, and some few actually do just that and get away with it without being jailed. That is about as effective a route to fighting war as doing nothing though. To stop the war mass action is necessary, and not just becoming the one or two individuals here and there who sneak by the IRS.
So where does this Quaker couple now get their income from? Due to a successful career perhaps from stocks, and not a dime from military pensions or social security, they’re living off corporate dividends and previous savings not garnished by the government for ‘nonpayment’ of taxes? I can only speculate, however, I don’t think they have accomplished much at all, other than to make themselves smug in their religious complacency, as they drape themselves in flag and ‘peaceful’ Christian mantle for cops and other agents of the Roman Empire.
There are ways of resisting the War Machine but I do not think that trying to withhold tax monies is one of them? Neither did Jesus from what I gather from rather unreliable documentation, but he did try to evade the question of whether one should pay taxes with tricky ‘sayings.’ Ultimately that cleverness and not paying the tax are maybe the issues that got him the death penalty? I wasn’t there so I cannot really say.
Despite barring entry to journalists, confiscating cameras, and shooting reporters outright, photographs emerge from Gaza of the IDF’s horrific misdeeds. There are pictures of the dead, of the wounded, of the bodies charred by white phosphorous, of schools and hospitals destroyed. And of course the stories emerge of UN workers fired upon, of families forced inside houses which were then shelled.
I think a most effective photograph depicts Israeli soldiers leaving Gaza, all smiles. They are emerging from, what a cooperative media called, fierce fighting, which left 1,100 Palestinians dead at the cost of 13 IDF soldiers, four of them by friendly fire. The “fierce fighting” sounds more likely to have been Israeli soldiers getting in each other’s way in the fierce frenzy to massacre.
I’d like to think the IDF friendly fire casualties resulted when fellow soldiers cut them down, when they refused to rein in their rabid blood lust. Also likely is that fellow soldiers killed those less gung-ho about the mahem, lest they testify about the war crimes they witnessed.
In another favorite photo, Israeli youth picnic on a hill overlooking Gaza, hoping for a glimpse of the IDF ground assault, the incursion to exterminate the Palestinian vermin.
What is all this Goddamn pomp? “Non-believers” got a mention in Barack Obama’s inaugural address, dead last after Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus, even though they rank second, and even though church abstainers actually comprise the majority of Americans. Yet even this second day, mentions of God, Lord, and prayer, continue ad nauseum. Talk about disrespect.
And why are atheists and agnostics named in the negative? Why aren’t they called rationalists? Churchgoers should be called reason disabled. What a farce. Are Americans to believe that Obama and his wife, Harvard grads, are religious? And which of the shysters of DC can be considered spiritual?
I’m watching the service at the National Cathedral, which, taking into account the time zones, is eating well into Obama’s first day in office. Assembled are a bunch of pharisees, a disproportionate sampling for certain, to voice their prayers for our lawmakers. Where were they when Bush and cronies were in attendance?
NOTE:
Was Obama’s multi denominational ceremony representative of American believers? Let’s have a look at the distribution of the 20 religious leaders attending the National Prayer Service, as they relate to their corresponding population segments, in descending order of size:5 PROTESTANT EVANGELICALS, representing 27% of the US population:
Rev. Sharon Watkins, president, Disciples of Christ in North America
Rev. Andy Stanley, North Point Community Church
Rev. Suzan Johnson-Cook, Believers Christian Fellowship Church
Rev. Cynthia Hale, Ray of Hope Christian Church
Rev. Jim Wallis, Sojourners7 MAINLINE PROTESTANTS, 21%
Katharine Jefferts-Schori, presiding bishop, Episcopal Church
Rev. John Bryson Chane, Washington Episcopal Bishop
Rev. Samuel Lloyd, dean of the cathedral, Episcopal Church
Canon Carol Wade, cathedral’s precentor
(Note: Episcopalians represent !.3%, but are third richest group)
Rev. Otis Moss Jr., father of pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ
Kirbyjon Caldwell, Windsor Village United Methodist Church
Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, Reformed Church in America2 CATHOLICS, 22%
Donald Wuerl, Washington Catholic Archbishop
Rev. Francisco Gonzalez, auxiliary bishop, Washington archdiocese1 MUSLIM, at 3%
Ingrid Mattson, president, Islamic Society of North America1 each, HINDU and ORTHODOX, in sum 1.7%
Uma Mysorekar, president, Hindu Temple Society of North America
Archbishop Demetrios, primate, Greek Orthodox Church in America3 JEWS, at 1.5% (but richest)
Rabbi Jerome Epstein, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Haskal Lookstein, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun
Rabbi David Saperstein, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism(Is that AIPAC’s influence extending to America’s Christians?)
How about that corpulent Saddleback creep Rick Warren, reciting a completely forgettable invocation at yesterday’s inauguration?
Unheard by the masses was Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson’s earlier invocation, which was fathoms deeper than any of these high priests. HBO didn’t air it in their coverage of the Sunday inaugural buildup, but it’s available on Youtube. Here’s the transcript:
A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
(Opening Inaugural Event, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC, January 18, 2009)
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson,
Episcopal Bishop of New HampshireWelcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
Compare and contrast to Rick Warren’s pop Sunday School simpleton-centric tripe. Transcripts have been posted online, discreetly correcting Warren’s 44/43 arithmetic error.
Almighty God, Our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of You alone. It all comes from You, it all belongs to You, it all exists for Your glory. History is your story. The Scripture tells us, ‘Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one’ and You are the compassionate and merciful one and You are loving to everyone You have made.
Now today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge-point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the united states. We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a a son of an African Immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.
Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet and every one of our freely elected leaders.
Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans. United not by race or religion or by blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us.
When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us. And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ.
Help us to share, to serve and to seek the common good of all. May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet. And may we never forget that one day, all nations, all people will stand accountable before You. We now commit our new president and his wife Michelle and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.
I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, Esa, Jesus, Jesus—who taught us to pray:
Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
What did Barack Obama say at this morning’s inauguration that Bush hasn’t said in shorter mouthfuls?
Obama brought up the Goddamn War On Terror, without labeling it “so-called,” and aimed at the usual suspect evildoers. And he’s embraced Neoliberal Globalization like it’s cod liver oil.
Not only that, apparently America is unrepentant. Also, bring it on.
“Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. …
“We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”
On the subject of our economy, Obama wants to sidestep the rampant corruption and lay the blame on the American people’s resistance to globalization:
“Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”
Then he wants to pick fights with the Third World which dares criticize the legacy of colonialism and ongoing oppression of globalism. Pitting their meager voices against the resources of world banking:
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
Elaborating on what help the West offers:
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow;
Can that be anything other than a plug for big agra, and the international privatization of water?
But mostly Barack Obama’s theme was Kennedy’s and Bush’s, ask not what your country can do for you, yada yada.
How dare he? Millions of us contribute our efforts, our dollars, which they are still soliciting, to put Obama in office, and he has the nerve, in his inaugural address to call upon the American people for sacrifice. It’s up to them, us, to bring change.
He’s got a paycheck now, his friends and colleagues have jobs, it’s time for them to snap to. They’ve been sent to Washington, not to tell us they’re going to be stymied, that they’ve got to compromise with the corporate right, but to say Yes We Can. And they better Goddamn do it. There is no consensus to reach on health care, or the environment, or war. Compromise with immorality is like cheating a little, or stealing a little.
What I wanted to hear from Obama, is “yes I can, yes I will, thank you America, now I’m going to deliver for you.”
Banks crashed on the day of CHANGE that isn’t change, and the ruling class tried to put new lipstick on its pig. No major bank was spared the carnage as Bank of America’s shares plunged 29 percent; Citigroup’s 20 percent, and State Street Corp., which reported sharply lower earnings, saw its shares plummet 59 percent.
“The financial stocks got murdered,” said Jack A. Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. “They were basically cut in half.” See the AP… Banks sink deeper into crisis on Obama’s first day Obama is now the newest lipstick to this pig, the same old US military-industrial-governmental complex.
Obama doesn’t have either a plan nor a clue. What he does have is the backing of the US ruling class elite and that is why he is in office today, and none of that has to do with a ‘new movement’ yet arising. All his (their) empty rhetoric is now about to come totally stripped off his Hawaiian toned body, and his groupies may now cheer but the final result will be quite grim for all soon to see. All that this Barack Brand Lipstick really has to offer is yet more and more attempted cosmetic sales for a decaying, disintegrating global economic system of war and poverty, racism and genocide.
There is no agenda for change in the making in the US of today. The population remains passively accepting of any sort of new cruelty offered up by its own ruling class to all others in the world, as somehow they still think that that will continue to salvage some sort of world for themselves by doing so? All we can do for the moment is wait and see if some new awakening will begin to come forth, though it appears that first total disintegrating disaster must gain the reign supreme.
Americans still just don’t want to change nor have CHANGE come about. And until they might, we will continue to plummet all into the abyss. Sorry, but one just cannot prettify much this new lipstick on the same old pig. It simply really is the same old stuff as before, and while we expect lots of prettifying of it in the press, some minor efforts to do away with some of the worst, and lots of talk, the reality of capitalist worldwide depression will soon hit. Then the real suffering will actually begin. We are in a complete economic down spin now and Pilot Barack will not be laying us down lightly into the Hudson River on this one.
Israel plans propaganda offensive, to convince the world that they were the victims of the Gaza genocide!
Visualize Nuremberg. Israel warns top military officers not to travel abroad, as they might be subject to arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity over the genocide in Gaza.
NeoNazi Zionist rally in NYC calls for “wiping out” the Palestinian people. The only real difference between Israel and Nazi Germany, is Nazi Germany only lasted 12 years.
Should the US Pull the Plug on Israel? by Chuck Spinney
They hanged Mussolini, didn’t they? If Obama ignores the crimes of the past, the GOP will just repeat them in 8 years. [video]
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”
–Mohandas Gandhi
I was tempted to headline today’s page with WE SURVIVED GEORGE W. BUSH, but sadly there are all too many of us just barely hanging on. How many of us will survive the disastrous course of the Bush administration remains to be seen. I’m cynical about Obama (having once been fooled into believing in Bill Clinton), but secretly I do desperately hope that he can change American politics.
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Jan 20 notes, thomasmc.com.