Corporate Dictatorship over the US gives Big Business a free ride

Corporate vandalsThe US government has released a study done by the government itself, that declares that over 2/3 of both American and foreign corporations pay no taxes here. This is truly a robbing hood society where the working poor are forced to fund the government paid welfare that most corporations in the US feed off, and the corporate dictatorship running America gives its corporate patrons a free ride PLUS with taxes on top of getting its own welfare rip off payments from The State it controls. Most Companies In US Avoid Federal Income Taxes

Of course, you will not hear any complaints about this on the ‘news’ programs and Right Wing blabber mouth programs, as all you will hear is assholes ranting against the poor and racial minorities in poorly disguised manner. Plus, you will hear constant promotion of the incessant government military and Police State apparatuses. More welfare for the rich pigs, all the time, always is the blast of crap that is so constant these days. Just today our local Pig Paper, The Gazette, was complaining once again that so many folk want to fix the mess that is the corporate Health Lack-of-Medical Care Welfare gang the Insurance companies currently run against the American people.

Everywhere one looks, it is the corporations riding rough shod over human rights, democracy, and Social Justice. Everywhere it is the corporations destroying the ecology of Planet Earth. They pay little tax to the Corporate Dictatorship government to carry out their agenda against the American people. Instead they force their own victims to pay for this atrocity.

We need to get it together, People, and stop voting for these con artists that the corporate world gives us to ‘choose’ from. You know who they are… they are the Republican and Democratic Party politicians that foul up our national political life so thoroughly at present. It’s time to finally get fed up with these gangsters and ride them out of power for good!

Ossetia South doesn’t want to be West

Ossetia dividedSOUTH OSSETIA? You might very well ask, where’s NORTH Ossetia? The Republic of North Ossetia-Alania is in the Russian Federation. So the minority enclave of South Ossetia wants to break from Georgia? They’ve watched developments in the increasingly US-controlled Georgian leadership and they don’t want to be pawns of the West. South Vietnam? South Korea anyone?

Bruce Gagnon sent more this morning:

Some old sage once said we learn world geography by tracking American wars – or in this case American proxy wars. I am as certain as I can be that this is a proxy war. The U.S. and Israel have been arming Georgia heavily in recent years. The U.S. and Israel have been sending military advisers to Georgia. There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. has been, at the very least, “encouraging” Georgia to make a grab for the independent territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia knowing that by doing so they would very well provoke Russia to respond. I am convinced the U.S. wants to confront Russia militarily and if they can get someone else to do it then why not. It’s the cold war strategy come back to life.

The corporate media in the U.S. is having a field day promoting Russian aggression against Goergia. One very interesting CNN-TV story detailed Russian destruction of the Georgian city of Gori but then the camera man who took the footage said the film he took was actually of Georgian destruction of Russian peacekeeper forces in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. You can see why the American people are so often confused and misinformed. We are being led with rings in our noses into a new protracted war.

A distant cousin of mine who lives in Massachusetts wrote me saying that when she went to work yesterday the folks there were convinced that Russia had bombed the American state of Georgia. “Why do we bother?” she asked.

Bruce also suggested this article:

Marching through Georgia
By Patrick Schoenfelder

Maybe everyone is already up to speed on this, but if you are depending on the usual drumbeat of warlike bluster from the mainstream media (in the words of Paul Krugman, “real mean don’t think things through”) you are missing most of the news.

Therefore, a brief memo:

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are small areas on the border between Georgia and Russia where the majority of residents belong to ethnic groups other than Georgian. During the Soviet era, both of them were semi-autonomous areas under Soviet control.

In 1990, after Georgia became independent, Georgia claimed both areas as part of Georgia.

Russia opposed this claim as did residents of the areas, and Russia forced Georgia at gunpoint to allow autonomy to both regions in 1992, and both regions have been acting as de facto independent countries since then.

Peacekeepers from Russia commissioned by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been stationed in both countries since then.

After the so-called Rose Revolution and the overthrow of Edward Shevardnadze in 2003 it became a policy of the Georgian government to repudiate the independence of both regions and to work for re-establishment of Georgian control.

In 2006, a referendum was held under OSCE supervision with 34 observers from Poland, Germany, Austria, and Sweden. The referendum drew a 95% turnout and voted 99% in favor of full independence.

Georgia rejected the results, claiming that ethnic Georgians were intimidated out of voting, and arguing that the Russian peacekeepers actually were supporting the Ossetians.

Meanwhile, Georgia developed a close relationship with the Bush administration and cultivated a relationship with the EU, beginning application for membership in both the EU and in NATO. Georgia has the third largest number of troops in Iraq, after the US and Britain. The US has supplied the Georgian army with a large amount of war material.

In mid-July of this year, the US military held a joint war games training exercise in Georgia with the Georgian military.

The US left a number of “military advisers” in Georgia after the exercise.

On August 7, the Georgian army invaded South Ossetia in force, advancing rapidly across the area and killing both Ossetian soldiers and Russian peacekeepers.

On August 8, the Russians moved a large force into South Ossetia, including use of airpower for bombing and support. The Georgian army was rapidly crushed and began to retreat into Georgia. The Russians continued to pursue them into Georgia and used artillery and planes to bombard both military and civilian targets in Georgia as they advanced. They also declared that Georgian troops stationed in Abkhazia must leave or surrender, and sent troops into Abkhazia as well.

The Russians at this point seem to be determined to remove the Georgian leadership and establish independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The extent to which they will occupy or establish control in Georgia proper, and for how long, is not clear.

The Georgians, after starting the war, probably partly at the urging of the US, are now screaming for peace.

The US and the Europeans, while expressing dismay (“I am shocked, shocked I say!”) have exactly zero ability to do anything about the situation, since the area is well within Russian sphere of influence and away from any means of support (think of a US military action in Mexico.) They are hanging the Georgians out to dry (think of the Kurds under Reagan and Bush the elder.)

The Russians have been pointing out the similarity with Kosovo and US activity there. They have also pointed out that the US is in no position to complain about superpower military intervention or occupation of any place, given their record over the last eight years.

The possibility of any meaningful economic or other sanctions against the Russians is slight, since Russia is the number one supplier of oil and natural gas to Europe and an important trading partner, and the Russian bloc has the second largest oil reserve in the world (perhaps even the first, depending on the results of exploration in the Caspian region) and is a huge supplier of mineral resources from metals to diamonds.

IMPORTANT BLOOD FOR OIL FOOTNOTE: The largest pipeline between the Black Sea and Caspian oil fields and Europe and the only one not completely under Russian control is the 1 million barrel a day capacity BP line that passes through Georgia and parts of Abkhazia. Both the Russians and the Georgians would benefit hugely from ability to control this pipeline. Some observers suggest that war efforts on both sides are related partly to the issue of this pipeline.

The Longest Walk is in DC this weekend

THE LONGEST WALK has reached Washington DC after successfully completing its continent-wide demonstration in favor of Native American rights. The press has largely ignored this event even as they wrote about how the Canadian government had issued an official apology to its own Native American peoples for the injustices done to them. We need to take drastic action to stop destroying their lands. We are doing too little too late.
Longest Walk SF-DC 2008

McCain’s Colombian photo op

While Obama was in Colorado Springs conservatively trying to do nothing that would upset anybody, McCain took the Right Wing offensive on tour to Colombia, where the US and Colombian governments set up his press photo op moment for him.

It was hugs all around with the death squad gangsters that run the Colombian government on behalf of the US government. They had on hand for McCain, the choreographed liberation of FARC held prisoners who we all must be very happy for, even as we all must totally ignore the fact that the Colombian government probably is now torturing the FARC POWs they took.

This time with Uribe, Colombia’s head death squad leader, was McCain’s way of stating to the American people that torture and death squads are A-OK with him, as if there were any doubts already on that issue. He wanted, no doubt too, to head off and embrace Uribe’s Peruvian equivalent, Alberto Fujimori, but Fujimori is now undergoing some difficult times. Instead of being the great liberator of the Peruvian people with his counter insurgency war there against the Sendero Luminoso, Peru is now trying Fujimori for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Uribe may well someday follow down the same path. His ties with he Colombia paramilitary death squads are becoming increasingly well documented, and his popularity is falling.

What does it say about McCain and his personal character, that he chose upon this Colombian trip at this particular moment to try to vitalize his sagging campaign? Both Obama and McCain, with the corporate media’s big helping hand, are in a big battle to defame the other’s character. What is so pitiful about Obama, is that he is unwilling and unable to mention the real issues of the other candidate embracing a Colombian government deeply discredited for being a group of murdering gangsters. And the American press is unwilling to cover these scandals so well documented in the press elsewhere. Instead, they are busy putting Ingrid Betancourt’s smiling face everywhere. She is certainly prettier though than the ugly faces of the 3 American ‘military contractors’ faces who were also FARC held prisoners.

What were these Americans doing in FARC jails, John? Barack, can you tell us either? Well I guess NO… What American war of interventionism in Colombia, Doh? It appears as there will be little change nor light ahead. Instead, we will continue to get US press-US government-McCain campaign coordinated photo op moments. And a few from the Obama Show, too.

The AIPAC friendship society at work

AIPAC is an organization of friendship, and its work is legendary. A recent film allows us to see just how this melding of minds works in actual practice. See the film over at the BBC and ask yourself, is Zionism really racism?

Don’t these nice Jewish people have the right to protect themselves from stone throwing kids, ‘suicide bombers’, and the like? Don’t they have a right to the land? AIPAC is certainly a nice group of people, right? Certainly Barack Obama thinks so. See the text of Obama’s AIPAC Speech

Isn’t AIPAC working on behalf of a beleaguered and peaceful people? They just need a little more US assistance per Obama to bludgeon the Muslims into the ground? Vote Obama if that is what you want. Vote for Obama if you want more war in the Middle East.

Bush has lost his credibility, but the Man for ‘Change’ will bring the American people back on board for more of the same. He’s Black, you know? Remember Colin Powell?

Complete 35 Articles of Impeachment Kucinich blacked out by media and net

Rock Star
US Representative Dennis Kucinich:
 
“President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office”
 
x 35

Dennis Kucinich put impeachment on the table last night in defiance of House Speaker Pelosi’s assurance to Bushco. He snuck it in under a Question of Privilege and then spoke for almost five hours. C-Span carried his electrifying performance live, but the mainstream media is so far ignoring the story. As a result, it does not rank on Google News and bloggers themselves have been slow to disseminate the details, hindered by the kucinich.us website being hacked. Here are the 35 ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT via democrats.com via Afterdowningstreet.

Here are the 35 Articles. Visit impeachbush.tv for the arguments Kucinich made for each.

Article 1
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq

Article 2
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of
Aggression

Article 3
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

Article 4
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

Article 5
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression

Article 6
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114

Article 7
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article 8
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter

Article 9
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

Article 10
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes

Article 11
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq

Article 12
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources

Article 13
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries

Article 14
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency

Article 15
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq

Article 16
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors

Article 17
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives

Article 18
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy

Article 19
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture

Article 20
Imprisoning Children

Article 21
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government

Article 22
Creating Secret Laws

Article 23
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

Article 24
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment

Article 25
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens

Article 26
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements

Article 27
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply

Article 28
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice

Article 29
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Article 30
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Article 31
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency

Article 32
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change

Article 33
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Article 34
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001

Article 35
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders

Bush the unimpeachable war criminal

HangmanRemember when Bill Clinton was “rebuked” for misleading Congress about the nature of his conduct with a White House intern? I’m sorry. I meant IMPEACHED.
 
A decade later legislators have concluded that Bush deliberately misled Congress and the American people about Iraq, al-Qaeda, et al, drawing the nation into an illegal war, resulting in untold deaths and a ruined economy. Is Bush impeached? Indicted? No, he’s REBUKED.

FDA rapists on the loose, again

Bachelorette nutrition One of my favorite jump starts to the day is a breakfast of cottage cheese, fresh fruit and almonds. It’s is a simple meal, easy to prepare, and represents a near-perfect combination of protein, carbohydrate and healthy fat. It’s the almonds that provide the magic. In addition to a low glycemic index, which curtails a heavy duty insulin response, almond intake protects proteins from oxidative damage while delivering vitamin E and other antioxidants, magnesium, calcium, folic acid, protein, fiber and living enzymes.

Thank goodness that the USA has a near lock on almond production. 70% of the world’s almonds come from California. I can only thank goodness that raw almonds are readily available in our bountiful land, even at most corporate grocery stores.

Oh, but wait. The FDA recently decided that all California almonds must be either irradiated or chemically pasteurized prior to sale. Not so for almonds exported to other countries. No. This particular punishment is reserved especially for the American people.

What this means is that our pristine, nutritious and beautiful almonds are subjected to gross degradation by FDA rapists. Irradiation exposes food products to extremely high levels of radiation that kill bacteria, parasites and fungi. Never mind that animal studies have shown that irradiation may promote chromosomal damage and cancer. And never mind that toxic radiation demolishes the nutritional value of food.

Chemical pasteurization is even more dangerous. The technique used is called propylene oxide fumigation, which makes use of a chemical compound that the EPA has classified as a probable human carcinogen. Here’s another interesting note: Propylene oxide was once used in racing fuel, but in 1993 the National Hot Rod Association banned its use because of cancer concerns. Yet this poison is used to pasteurize almonds and other foods – EPA and FDA approved. Oh yeah, baaaaby, just gimme the purple stamp!

One comforting tidbit, we needn’t worry our purty heads over this because it’s all being done without our knowledge or approval. Ya’ll know that ignorance is bliss. The FDA — that trusty public servant — has allowed almond growers to pretend that it’s business as usual. California almond growers may still label their almonds “natural” and “raw” even though they’ve been corrupted by irradiation and chemical pasteurization.

The FDA is tired of being held accountable by the vocal few. They are more than willing and able to fly under the radar. And, obviously, California almond growers are happy to fly with them. One of them should stand tall and expose the FDA for the abusive piece of shit that it is. If they’d take that leap of faith, I’d buy their almonds — though they be unfit for consumption — until the poor drugged fallen cows come home!

To Recreate 68 at the Denver DNC is not a call to incite a Rumble in the Jungle

Free the Conspiracy EightContrary to the hype it is encouraging, RECREATE-68 does not want to recreate the violent clashes of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That would have to be up to the police. While we know the Chicago Seven (+1) and their cohorts did not go quietly, it is now also well admitted that the violence in 1968 was perpetrated by the Chicago police without provocation.

I don’t think anyone wants to relive that brutality again, especially as riot police today have much more debilitating and potentially lethal weaponry. Recent demonstrations, as in Seattle against the WTO and in Miami against the FTAA, have seen militarized police force used against a well intended, if obviously outraged, outcry.

Last week at a public debate against Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown, Recreate-68 event coordinator Glen Spagnuolo made clear that they are not interested in receiving a beating or permanent injury at the hands of overzealous police. Of course the catch-phrase “recreate 68” does titillate with accompanying slogans like “Do It in Denver,” but this is done to pique people’s interest, and it has accomplished that.

Recreate-68 is determined to get people engaged with the DNC, in the streets, instead of in front of their televisions as passive spectators to the usurping of their power. The Democrats are party to continued funding of the war, raiding the US treasury for the rich, denying Americans universal health care, taking away our civil liberties with the Patriot Act, and colluding with murder, torture and profiteering. If the American people go along with these crimes, they are accomplices. Too bad they are also the victims. Official channels do not permit people to raise their voices above a silent consent. The DNC in August, in Denver, is opportunity knocking in the streets.

When party organizations admonish you to work through the system, they perpetuate their power to deny progressive reforms. The will of the people has only ever expressed itself through protest. Democracy, Human Rights, Abolition, Suffrage, Child Labor, Civil Rights, Pacifism. We have only made these gains by collective action. A redress of grievances is what it’s called in the constitution. I can just hear Democratic representatives saying, “oh we can’t go that that far, we could never get elected if we advocated for such extremist reforms.” They are undoubtedly right, because real reform is always up to you. But as much as Obama can urge you to feel hopeful, “you” doesn’t mean you voting for a representative who is promising you in actuality nothing.

Recreate 68 is about recreating the sense of connectivity Americans held in 1968, when young and old put their bodies into the line of fire desperate to bring an end to the disastrous Vietnam War. The people’s movement of the sixties had been growing, led by men soon assassinated. Students were rioting in London and Paris, and Cassius Clay was suspended from boxing for having declared himself a conscientious objector. By 1968 people understood that nothing would change unless they did it themselves.

Today we are into the sixth year of the Iraq War and there is no American antiwar momentum to speak of. There are diverse projects on the internet and in sporadic protests, but the US effort is a pitiable movement compared to the public outcry overseas.

Particularly lacking are young people. You may say it is because there is no draft, but enough are still volunteering to fight. I rather think that the youthful opposition is absent because of No Child Left Behind. Our children are being educated to be uncritical thinkers, in particular, narcissists and apolitical bubble babies with no immunity to corporate misinformation. They may be cynical, and clever by half, to the extent that they lack a social conscience. As a result, their forever adolescent thinking that nothing can touch them keeps them civically disengaged until it is too late and they are indebted to the machine.

The youthful cynicism which the slick corporate media celebrates as hip irreverence keeps kids from caring for their fellow people, and certainly holds them from believing that anything they do can make a difference. Look at the average age of the typical social activists. They’re past middle age. Is this a coincidence?

Young Americans, even up to age thirty something, are so jaded to have become tragically ineffectual. Electoral politics might be the extreme of their participation, and look where it will get them, against fraudulent pollsters and rigged voting systems.

I’m curious about what will happen in Denver if Recreate-68 is able to mobilize the youth. Perhaps kids will only be able to express themselves as Grand-Theft-Auto and Half-Life have taught them, as our soldiers are doing, cast adrift in Iraq. In that case, the disembodied violence to which we carelessly expose them will have come home to roost. If Denver becomes a riot, it is a development I think we will need to face.

For my part, I hope we can recreate 68. Let’s break through the media moratorium on the social issues important to us. Let’s remind the TV populace that we want to hold at least our Democratic Party politicians accountable to listen to our needs. If the candidates will not, and we’ve already learned that someone like Dennis Kucinich cannot get the nomination, perhaps the party system is too phony to matter.

What if the Democrats are only shills for the Republicans in charge? I believe the Democratic convention might only be setting up a candidate to lose to John McCain. For example, do you think Americans are ready to elect a woman or a black man to the presidency? I’d like to think so too, but I have a feeling the media is prepared to inform us in November, “oh, so close but no cigar!” Who is suggesting that Americans are past the gender or race card? Is it the corporate media, tool of the rich white man? Since when did the average American TV viewer wise up? George W. Bush’s approval rating was already at a dismal low when Americans reelected him in 2004. This, even after televised debates showed unequivocally that Bush was the dunce everyone remembered from the back of their classroom. Even if Bush didn’t really win in 2004, as in 2000, at least there were enough dumb white voters to make it look legitimate. Are those constituents going to vote for an unexperienced, non-veteran non-white Obama? Those errant voters are still out there, you see them, they still have W-04 stickers on their cars. And the the black box vote counting, voter registration and poll both gate-keeping are still in the hands of Republicans.

If the Democratic Party really hopes to represent the people, it has to do much better. If the Democratic Party is not prepared to offer Americans a real alternative to the corrupt misrepresentation in Washington, we can find better entertainment with the charades of the WWWF. Should the Dems hear this from you? Is your representative listening or still asking you to show patience? Take him or her to the mat, in Denver, in August.

Recreate-68 versus the City of Denver

Preparing for police brutality
DENVER- Glenn Spagnuolo of RECREATE-68 held his own against Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown at a symposium held today at the University of Denver about the upcoming DNC in August. Asked whether providing instruction for the use of shields truly constitutes advocating non-violent protest, Spagnuolo told of the permanent injuries which Police inflicted at previous demonstrations like the FTAA, and he described Denver’s newly requisitioned equipment such as shotguns which fire long distance tasers (XREP) and ear-piercing weapons systems (LRAD). Councilman Brown stressed the importance of protecting the upcoming DNC, its delegates, its protestors, the people of Denver, and the reputation of Denver, from the threat of terrorism.

The City of Denver refuses to release its security plan, to preempt a timely legal challenge. According to Spagnuolo, the city is considering a mile wide perimeter around Pepsi Stadium. Spagnuolo also clarified that Recreate-68 is not calling for repeating the violence of the 1968 Chicago convention, but instead hopes to re-activate the public to the level of engagement it exhibited in 1968, when the same Democratic Party refused to heed the will of the people to stop funding the illegal war in Vietnam. As history repeats itself forty years later, the anti-war movement has yet to summon the courage of the American people.

A couple of Recreate-68 innovations: Doc’s Place, a 24-hour people’s health clinic, to provide free conventional and alternative medical care for all for the duration of the DNC, “to deliver the promise no candidate has: Healthcare for all.” AS WELL, Recreate-68 is planning large FOOD NOT BOMBS events, to feed the homeless of Denver, to counter the efforts of the city to sweep its streets of the homeless in advance of the convention.

There did appear to be a conflict about how best to secure Denver’s image with the eyes of the world upon it.

Glenn Spagnuolo comes to Recreate-68 with experience leading to arrest and acquittal in demonstrations in 2005 and 2007 against the Columbus Day parade. He’s worked with the South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, ACT-UP, and against the FTAA in Florida.

Most recently, Denver held a lottery to allocate the choice protest venues for the duration of the DNC. Recreate-68 received some locations and time slots, but lost the prime spot and prime time to another candidate: the Democratic Party! Oddly, although the Democrats are going to be center-stage at the convention hall, they applied, and won, the right to occupy the main protest stage adjacent the Pepsi Center on the first evening of the convention.

Why is Dale Barlow free?

Why is Dale Barlow free? He is the guy accused of sex with a minor. The total of kids taken into custody in Eldorado, Texas now stands at 417, yet Dale Barlow is free!

Does that make any sense? Apparently to Republican Judge Barbara Walther, Republican Governor Rick Perry, and Republican President George ‘Dummie’ Bush, it does. Remember? These are the people that made torture legal under national law, even if it’s not considered so in international courts. We got some real legal geniuses at work here! Now don’t we though?

Still waiting for the national outcry as I am…. ? Apparently we are into the longest night and people are still sleeping….? One really must be kind of contemptuous of the American people as a whole at this point. Just what does it take to wake them up?

Here is the latest info about Dale Barlow, who apparently is still not under custody living in Arizona.

taken from the Houston Chronicle at 7PM MT 4/8/2008
….Still missing is the 16-year-old whose phone call complaining of having an 8-month-old baby fathered by a 50-year-old man sparked the massive raid.

The alleged father, identified by a search warrant as Dale Barlow, has been interviewed by deputies with the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office at his northwest Arizona home, department spokeswoman Trish Carter confirmed on Monday.

Carter would not elaborate on the encounter, but, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, deputies collected a sample of Barlow’s DNA and a list of people living at his house.

“‘At this time, our contact with Mr. Barlow is complete,” Carter said. “We have not been informed of a warrant or any more information being sought.”………

Well, isn’t that sweet? They have no evidence of anything yet! They cannot even make the arrest of the principle person accused of the only alleged crime! And, it seems, he’s not even living in the state where the judge took actions involving hundreds upon hundreds of people! They have not located the alleged victim either! This is certainly our legal and law enforcement systems at their finest, is it not?

You might want to telephone the Republican Judge who put 417 kids into foster control, and ask her,

‘Where did you study law?’

Honorable Barbara L. Walther (R)
State District Judge (Irion)
Term Ends: 12-31-2008
District: 51
Contact and Phone Numbers
(915) 659-6571

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.

Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:

On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.

I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!

With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.

Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!

In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.

In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.

As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.

And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.

To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:

Hands off Haiti!

Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!

And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.

We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.

I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!

Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.

Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions

Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.

Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.

In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.

Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.

What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?

First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.

All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)

The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.

Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.

I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.

Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.

We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.

In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.

I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.

April 15 tax protest

Many people will be protesting April 15th. Will you? Non-compliance is key.
 
Why are we paying income taxes to a thoroughly corrupt and malfeasant federal government? Why are we timid and compliant in the face of, and with the daily evidence of, a well funded predatory fascist military state, protecting the profits and property of the wealthy corporate class, closing in all around us and robbing us of our children’s futures?

Should you stop paying income tax? You decide.

The income tax “law” was based on a fraud of a kind of taxation called un-apportioned direct tax that supposedly became legal through the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. But………the Supreme court ruled since 1914, 3 times no less, that the 16th Amendment conferred no new tax of personal income on the individual and changed no existing taxing power or category, nor added a new category (called un-apportioned direct tax) that didn’t exist before the 16th Amendment. That’s the truth of it. Though tax lawyers and CPAs wail and moan that the 16th amendment is what makes us pay taxes. They are ignorant. They are complicit. They do not know the Supreme court rulings. The extent of the governments taxing powers do not include the un-incorporated individual earner. Your earnings are fruits of your labor, not taxable profits or capital gains.

Don’t believe me?

Here I’ve attached, a brief from a man who has put 9 years of his life into researching the lie and is calling the DOJ, certain Congress members and the IRS out on the rug for this deception. You can use the exact same information of the Supreme Court cases to fight this. And when enough of us do, the IRS and the income tax will go away. On personal income anyway………not corporate earnings.

But don’t fall for a “Fair Tax” (30% sales tax) proposal to replace the lost IRS revenue that some in the tax protest movement are pushing. Very regressive tax as the wealthy will avoid it and buy goods offshore or through tax trusts, shelters etc… and the working and middle classes will foot the bill. (The poor would be exempt from it.) But……. point is, we wouldn’t need to replace the revenue if the Feds collected the money transferred away to shelters and off shore accounts by the wealthy elites/corporations, and cut the Pentagons budget by 75%. Including closing most of the bases around the world. Or nationalized our coal, gas, oil and mineral reserves to become the property of all Americans. Citizens in Alaska receive a monthly dividend from their oil! All gold mined in this country becomes the property of 2 giant corporations when it should be all of ours.

Think the rich corporations are paying more in income tax? Of the income tax money collected, the corporations pay approx. 270 bil. Individuals pay approx. 700 bil. Sure there are a lot more individuals than corporations. But the mass of the individuals are working and middle class paying an illegal tax on their labor. And with inflation (crashing dollar value due to lower Fed interest rate and mass infusion of more worthless money into the economy) you’re losing the battle to hold on to any gains.

Are you a W4 refund taxpayer? That is, do you get a refund at the end of the year by claiming withholding? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get your entire paycheck without withholding, thereby your full worth? Lets make the Federal govt. figure out another way. Read the W4 withholding fraud below.

Still feel like paying your personal income taxes? If so, is it because you’re afraid of the IRS? Sure it is. They don’t want you to discover the Supreme court rulings that make the 16th amendment irrelevant. But they know the deception is soon coming to an end.

Check these videos. Tom Cryer, a lawyer in Shreveport, found not guilty of tax evasion recently. Hasn’t filed for 10 years.
http://www.truthattack.org/page4.php

Information from lawmens listserve:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/national_lawman/join

“The Michigan legislature is now in the process of repealing the state income tax, as they have been informed that the state income tax relies on the federal income tax being properly applied.”

A recent email:

Dear Lawmen and Others: The government has a headache and still it is trying to fool all the people all the time. Read the following:

The Justice Department, on the heels of a split verdict in its tax evasion prosecution of actor Wesley Snipes, is planning a crackdown on the so-called tax protester movement.

The protesters, or tax deniers, assert a constitutional right to avoid federal taxes, relying in part on century-old Supreme Court decisions. Their ranks are growing to include white-collar professionals, and they are costing the government millions in revenue, officials say.

“Too many people succumb to the fallacy, the illusion, that you don’t have to pay any tax under any set of conditions,” said Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman, the new head of the Justice Department’s tax division. “That is a growing problem.”

Notice how Mr. Hochman words his statement in an attempt to deceive the public. No one claims that we don’t have to pay any tax under any set of conditions! That is simply deception, lies and deceit. What Mr. Hochman is avoiding saying is that the income tax laws and the constitutional federal taxing powers are entwined into a massive scheme to deceive the American people. Mr. Hochman, we don’t pay you to lie to the American people and subvert our Constitution! The Constitutional taxing power of the federal government is limited to 1) Direct Apportioned taxes, 2) Excises, 3) Duties, and 4) Imposts. There are no other authorized taxing powers of the federal government, as has been stated in numerous Supreme Court rulings.

Mr. Hochman, are you trying to say that precedence law no longer applies if it is good case law and has never been overturned? Are you crazy? Mr. Hochman, where did you get your law degree? From Disney World? Are you trying to say that the Supreme Court of the U.S. did not have the authority to rule on these matters? Are you crazy?

Mr. Hochman, do you know that the Constitution is over 200 years old? Does that mean it is out of date in your eyes? Are you crazy? Are you saying that subject matter jurisdiction does not apply to the cases on income tax?

Mr. Hochman, do you know that the corporate income tax is a tax on the privilege of incorporation, and not a direct tax on the income of the corporation? Do you know that the corporate income tax is an excise tax? Do you know that a direct tax is a tax on the person, property or rights of an individual? Do you know that all direct taxes must be apportioned? Do you know that there has been no direct apportioned tax imposed on the general population since 1861? Do you know that Title 26 does not impose any direct apportioned tax on the general population?

Can you rebut any of these propositions, Mr. Hochman?

And if you find all this hard to believe, then why does 26 USC 7608 limit all enforcement authority of all domestic agents to ATF taxes? Why did the IRS have to stoop to out and out lies and claim that all persons, even private employees of private employers, must have deductions taken from their paychecks under the authority of 26 USC 3401-05? You are a lawyer, Mr. Hochman, and you can perfectly well read the regulations that explain who is an employee and who is not an employee, for the purposes of withholding.

Who are YOU, Mr. Hochman, to presume that your government position entitles you to deceive and defraud the American people? Are you crazy?

Have you ever heard of precedence decisions? Have you read the Anastasoff case of 2000, in which the 8th Circuit stated that the American Courts get their power from precedence? Do you know that? Do you believe that? If you don’t, then you should talk to a psychiatric counselor, not a legal counselor!

Let’s put our slogan out in front of the public so the government cannot suppress the information on direct un-apportioned taxes anymore. The government’s fraudulent claim that the prohibition was overturned by the 16th Amendment, is rebutted by the STEWARD case, 24 years after the 16th Amendment was passed. Nothing has changed that since 1937.The last direct apportioned tax was in 1861.

Everyone should put the slogan on direct taxes on their signature lines. That is the issue.
No direct un-apportioned tax confirmed by the US Supreme Court rulings in CHAS. C. STEWARD MACH. CO. v. DAVIS, 301 U.S. 548, 581-582(1937)

A recent email:
To make a provable case, just look at the STEWARD case (1937), 24 years after the passage of the 16th Amendment.
“Steward” ruled that the sovereign has the authority to impose 1) Direct Taxes with “apportionment”, 2) Excises, 3) Duties, and 4) Imposts. Then Stewart goes further to state that there are NO other taxing powers, even though there have been many attempts to claim there was another taxing power given to the sovereign. The Court stated that not in a hundred years has there been such a taxing power discovered. All federal taxes must fall into one of the four classes.

The Appeals Judge in my case made a false statement in his ruling. He said that Conces claims that the government cannot levy a tax on individuals and non-incorporated businesses. He is DEAD wrong! I didn’t say that. The Supreme Court said first, that individuals could always be taxed from the very beginning, but if it was a direct tax, it must be apportioned. The last apportioned tax was in 1861.

America ‘In debt we trust’

Why is this country going down? It’s because ‘in debt we trust’ to give us jobs, of all things! It actually works the other way ’round. Check out In Debt We Trust

The multi-national corporations are putting the American people into hock. Payday loans may very well soon be replaced by lack-of-payday groans.

Do you really know how much in debt you have become? Our lives are now seemingly being played like Russian Roulette with everything. Especially with your health… You are already in debt but do not yet know it.

Eye now on undemocratic nature of the Democratic Party

Super delegates or not, the public eye will still be turned on the totally undemocratic nature of the Democratic Party, since there is nothing about Barrack Obama that will bring about any real change long term. Still, the question of the moment though is whether the Clinton part of the DLC machine can still manipulate the entire DP or not? The Obama part certainly could… short term.

There is no doubt though that the corporations can manipulate the party since they totally own it. This is no people’s party at all. Rather, The Democratic Party is owned by the military industrial complex every bit as much as the Republican Party.

Nothing will be gained election time with a Barrack Obama as the new president. The only long term gain can only come about when the US population gets angry and totally fed up enough with the corporate 2 parties that act as one con. Unfortunately though, the American people still think that their corporate rulers have some God given right to rule everybody on the planet. Stupid, very stupid. No personality change in the front office will bring about change as long as the American people still are enamored of their country’s nationalism….The Empire.

MLK Celebration? Where? When?

We always hear it called the ‘MLK Celebration’, but I’m not sure what there is to celebrate? I went with my daughter last night to the ‘MLK Parade’ and it was a truly sad sack affair.

At the chapel many were already leaving by the time we pulled up trailing at the end of the walk, and one Black man was telling another that he was a Republican. And of course there was the Obama people, who I didn’t have the heart to talk about Ronald Reagan’s legacy with them. And there were the prayers and a video of Martin addressing a big crowd in the past. Why the ‘celebration’ though? Where was the celebration in all this?

How about a Malcolm X Celebration? Make him the center of a national holiday where George W. Bush could talk about he was such a big hero to the American people. I mean, why pick on poor old Martin Luther King like our society does annually? Rosa Parks Day Celebration anybody? Let’s turn them all into Gods, and not just Martin.

Actually I think Martin Luther King was probably a hero. The same nitwitty, praying-all-the-time types that he is now a god to, were people he had to work with all the time back when he was alive. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! He was a miracle man this MLK to get these types of people to do anything.

And he really didn’t. It was rioters and Jewish communists who really helped the cause out the most. And poor folk who got the shit kicked out of them by White thugs calling themselves police. The religious crowd back then didn’t do much more than the religious crowd does today, and today they barely get out of the church doors to do much more than shop. And back then it was mainly the same, I believe.!!!

MLK is like Lenin’s body, it’s time to bury him and let him rest in peace. We need to make a real celebration and not just a fossilized one. Not a celebration of a dream not achieved, since MLK would not be celebrating if he was around today.

MLK was a leader who they wanted to break and brake the crowds back then, but he wouldn’t do so. So today, they use him dead to do what he wouldn’t do for the big shots back then. MLK Celebration? What’s there to celebrate?

Magna Carta one-ply tissue unscented

When I heard the Magna Carta described today as the basis for democratic freedom, in particular, as it set forth that no man is above the law, I worried about the symbolism. Someone will pay $21 million expressly to wipe their ass with it. Can I call it or what?

Magna Carta just so many wordsThe Magna Carta at Sotheby’s is one of only 17 copies drafted in the 13th Century by William Wallace’s oppressor. The other copies reside mostly at universities in the UK. The Smithsonian Institution, or the US National Archives, would like to have it in the name of the freedom loving American People. But I couldn’t help think of the aristocrats lined up in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Freshman, each eager to be the last man on earth to shoot, or eat, the last of whatever endangered species was on the menu.

The Magna Carta may be symbolic of common man’s hard won struggle, it launched the basis for our judicial system and English Common Law. But this document, certainly now, might hold special meaning to the better-than-thou sort. The entire Western world is seeing an eclipse of the commoner’s leverage over his rulers. We’re losing our rights and our rule of law. Having seen Habeas Corpus go the way of the Dodo, what could be next but the Magna Carta? “No man is above the law?” I’ll bet there is someone willing to pay 21 million dollars to use the Magna Carta as toilet tissue suitable for his noble ass. It will probably become a Skull and Bones requirement. Lo and behold, the buyer is David Rubenstein, the founder of the single most powerful, privately held, oligarch-only warlord club, The Carlyle Group.

Co-opting the peace movement

Look for images on Google of crowds amassed to save Darfur and you get a paltry result. But google for posters and you get a flood. Quite the reverse when you google anti-war. The dearth of evidence of popular support for SaveDarfur caught me unexpected, particularly after watching George Clooney’s documentary on HBO. He showed shot after shot of supporters, the same assemblage it now appears, of a DC rally at which he spoke, from diverse angles to make it look like a mass movement. Then his voice-over declared that “the American People had spoken,” and it was now our government’s turn to act.
Clooney addresses a DC wellwishers

Far be it for me to denounce enthusiastic hype, but let me tell you where the fabrication took me. Even now, knowing that Darfur efforts are in fact proliferating on campuses nationwide, I see that it is not a fait accomplit, I see the Save Darfur objective, and why it is supported by establishment advocacy groups: they mean to co-opt the peace movement.

The people who will turn out to demonstrate for peace and against injustice, who will plead emphatically with the media and fellow citizens, who have hope for a better world, who trust in man’s better nature, who believe that one, ten, or several thousand can make a difference against the odds, these people are a limited population segment. Idealists, altruists, with a heavy conscience and usually an education which guides their belief that social progress lies in man’s common destiny.

Peace activists for DarfurHow best to diffuse the efforts of altruists where there emerge too many to incarcerate? Misdirect their focus. Preoccupy them with victims of your choosing. Tie up the media outlets and the limited public attention span with a crisis that will serve you, not a crisis you might be perpetrating.

Clooney defines the Darfur Crisis as “the 21st Century’s first genocide.” Does that strike you as omitting a genocide or two? Americans have killed five times as many Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Israelis have been cleansing the Holy Lands of their original Muslims for sixty years. Both efforts ongoing. Who are the agents decrying “genocide” in Darfur? Israel and the US. Nobody else. But plenty have all along criticized our ethnically motivated attack on Muslims and Arabs. And it bears repeating: from whom, by chance, are we asked to Save Darfur? Islamic Arabs.

The “genocide” distinction matters such that according to a UN resolution, intervention on the part of the international community becomes mandated. It’s a hammer wielded by those on the Security Council and withheld from those who are not. The US and Israel veto any attempt to label their aggressions as “genocide.”

It’s a thankless task to be a nay-sayer cautioning against “action” to “save” Darfur. In the end to what result? We might have tried to halt America’s revenge-driven invasion of Afghanistan. But had we prevented that tragedy, would the common citizen have recognize the danger averted? Even now those who supported the illegal US extra-judicial attack of Afghanistan can be excused as misinformed, those who advocated it accepted for being misguided. All forgiven, not counting the millions of Afghan lives overturned. Those who cried foul at the start, remembered as unpatriotic and recalcitrant, not at all given credit for being right, certainly not as the next opportunistic Neocon aggression presents itself.

Media Hysteria pushes for US military attack on Iranian people

One of Iran’s government leaders visits New York City to attend a United Nations function and the US media uses this as an excuse to rabidly push for a US war against that country.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s right to free speech was so threatening to Bush and Cheney that they had to deny him a visit to the site of the ruins of 9/11 to place a wreath in remembrance of those that died there. Why?

The truth is, the US government feared what he had to say, so they censured him by denying him access to the World Trade Center site. It was a simple as that. He did speak at Columbia University though, and The New York Times printed some of that transcript

What is noticeable about the media reporting is how all the hysteria comes from the US Right Wing, the US government, and their corporate media lackeys. Ahmadinejad toned down and resisted from what would have been correct in labeling the US government as the main source of world terrorism. After all, this is the country that through the last decades has been responsible for killing millions of Iranians and Iraqis through its promotion of war in the Middle East.

That is not even to mention the deaths from US government terrorism that have wracked Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and the Occupied Territories controlled by US backed Israel. Instead, Ahmadinejad spoke out for Peace, something that the US corporate media has a real problem doing.

The US media in contrast, has tried to churn up a surge to more war. We, The American People, have to learn how to read between the lines of our corporate media sources and resist their propaganda and its call for yet more bloodshed.

Enough is enough. We should understand by now that demonization of the leader of another country is usually the prelude to attacking it.

American Cowards, a big herd

An article by Conn Hallihan titled Death at a Distance: The US Air War indirectly highlights the political cowardice of the American people as a whole, the politicians of both the corporate parties that the American people have been glued to for so long, and the Pentagon itself. The article focuses on how the Americans are turning to using pilot less drones to bomb targets located in civilian areas.

This has certainly become the American Way, another cowardly war fought by technocratic cowards, directed by political cowards, and tolerated quiescently by a cowardly American population as a whole, that flat out refuses to up its level of currently minuscule protest against what is being done in its name.

This Wednesday I got a brief glimpse of the cowardly rats gathering together once again to move towards yet another expansion of the US military-industrial complex in something called Fort Carson Piñon Canyon expansion. Only the people directly effected by losing their ranches seem all that motivated to oppose yet more base, more bombs, more soldiers. The rest of the Colorado population appears to hardly give a rat’s ass about the issue, and that’s who was gathered inside the city government building to nod and pose for the cameras…rat’s asses. And the rat’s ass king who was there at this meeting has got to be Senator Ken Salazar.

What is the relationship between pilot less aircraft murdering children in foreign lands from way up high and this planned expansion of one of The Springs’ local bases? My short answer is that you are just another American coward if you don’t get out and try to fight these creeps on both issues. Many of you liberal do-nothing voters put Ken Salazar into office with your votes, and yet most of you haven’t the courage to get out and do anything to stop this King of political cowards from getting off the political hook for his constant double speak.

I’m not advocating that you do this, but Democratic Party liberals really ought to be burning down their local party HQ instead of voting for your creeps once again. Instead, you seem to be just another part of this long herd of American Cowards supporting continual war. Get off your asses and demand that America stop murdering kids in foreign lands with pilot less drones and by starving them and their parents. You don’t need this damn Fort Carson at all. Your vote doesn’t count so don’t use the fact that you vote to excuse your complicity through your constant inaction.

Death comes for the American people

grim-reaper.jpg
Protest the war. Promote economic and social justice. Scream to close Guantanamo. Offer your body to be burned and watch the buzzards feast off your tasty flesh. See them wait for the next sucker who will feed their greedy maws. We can fight every injustice that we see in our country, even in the world, and it won’t make a bit of difference. The true evil is that we have a government that is designed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people” to which the people matter not. We do not live in a representative democracy. Please stop thinking that we do.

The full frontal assaults on our civil liberties just keep coming. Finishing touches are being put on a bill that will give the power of life and death to George W. Bush, through Alberto Gonzales. In the past, federal judges determined whether death row prisoners were receiving “adequate counsel” during the appeals process. A provision in last year’s reauthorization of the Patriot Act gives that power to the Attorney General. What this really means is that Bush can fast track executions. He has the ability to shorten the time period given to death row inmates to appeal their cases to federal courts. Texas has been doing this for years. The Lone Star state loves to barbeque.

But who really cares about death row inmates? I certainly haven’t in the past. Nor prostitutes strangled on the side of the road. Nor drug dealers killed in squalid neighborhoods. That was them. I’m in a different, more deserving, more protected class.

In the past few years my eyes have been opened to the incredible unchecked power and flagrant dishonesty of our governmental institutions. From police brutality, to discrimination in hiring, to outright lying, to doctoring evidence, to unequal application of the law. All of these I have witnessed first hand. I can no longer turn up my nose at death row inmates. I am no longer convinced of their guilt. I no longer trust the “justice” system that put them behind bars.

I have become she. We have become they. If I were to be falsely accused of a crime, they could not find a jury of my peers. Nor yours. We would be at their mercy. And they would lick their chops in eager anticipation of the banquet being prepared for their enjoyment.

Much of what is being done escapes our notice. Collusion between the government, corporations and the media keeps most of us in the dark. But death comes for the American people. The grim reaper is waiting in the dark that is our national conscience. Only the light of revolution can save us now.

How about a 3rd party for THE BOYARS?

Boyars kissing up to the CzarGrassroots Democrats! What have you got to say for your party? Sixteen Democrats crossed over to approve the expanded surveillance act. Why? Republicans stick together, why can’t the Democratic Party leadership? Twas 16 with 6 not voting, giving Bush’s measure the needed votes. Perhaps the 16 drew the short straw and were cast across the aisle to pass the measure, cast by the Democratic leadership who got to stay off the record.
 
The point is, the Dems, just like the GOP, continue to back Bush. They refuse to bring the war to a close, they enforce corporate monied rule. That’s the way it works, while the media has us scratching our heads wondering why those darned Dems do dat?

I have an idea. Let’s create a third party, and let THEM have it. The Monied Party, the Landlord Party, oh let them name it. It will be so them. Let them deal with the dismal prospects the media gives a hypothetic new party. Why shouldn’t the American people get to keep their established parties?

Republican and Democratic caucuses, vote to eject your political representatives. Retake your party. Your reps in Washington are not representing you. Get rid of the traitors. Expel them.

Standing politicians, voting for Bush or Pfizer, or Exxon or Dow, or the AMA or Prudential, or GE or General Dynamics, or Wal-mart or the Waltons, or Disney or Murdoch, give them their own party. The Boyar Party I’d call it. From historical depictions, Boyars look like the kind of folk who wouldn’t give you or me the time of day. I cross my fingers we elect a Czar with the guts to nail their hats to their heads.

Then set about to find candidates who will represent YOU. Don’t stand by for table scraps from candidates who can’t say in public what they pretend to promise you in private. It doesn’t happen, they get to Washington and they betray all of us. Ditch ’em.

Americans and the Iraq War

The impact the Antiwar Movement has made on Americans is skin deep so far. While at least 2/3 of Americans now dislike the Bush Administration, much of that rejection is because many feel that the current government has poorly managed a war they fully supported. See poll data

Despite the US government’s warfare against the Iraqi people that has gone on since 1991 and produced a total tragedy, only 1/3 of Americans feel that it was wrong to have been attacking that country in the first place.

Why has the American antiwar movement been so lackluster? I think that the main reason has been the demobilization of the US working class. In fact, much of the US working class has been largely co opted by the military and finds its employment somehow connected with continued support of the US war machine. You don’t see working class people attending protests much at all.

Another reason though has been the failure of leadership of the Peace Movement. It is dominated by store keepers, ex-monks, pastors, and nuns and ex-nuns, Mennonites and Quakers. There are also 2 other sectors of this movement whose presence is barely discernible by and large. The largest of the 2 are the college educated liberal types who think that voting for liberal Democratic Party politicians is the outer limit of what they will involve themselves in doing.

Last of the 3 main sectors of the essentially inert Peace camp is the anticapitalist Left, made up of Left Libertarians (Noam Chomsky, Znet, and crowd) and Marxists. The Left Libertairans have great analysis but no organizing ability, and are fairmly embedded in academia as professors, but are largely absent in the working population made up of ordinary citizens. And the Marxist Left, outside of the Workers World Party and its split off sister Party of Liberation and Socialism, has been mainly busy comtemplating their navels. But despite organizing many big demonstrations,the WWP is so sectarian that its national membership remains at several dozens.

Until there is a secular Left that resurects itself from the grave, the religious folks and DP addicts of voting only will continue to demobilize the American people. They will pray and they will vote, but they will not construct an activist movement that builds something different than church based organizations and the corporate Frankenstein called the Democratic Party. They will lobby and pray in fields where missile silos are located. They will pray in churches and vote for Democrats come election day along with attending an occasional forum and attending a military gate or other.

There is no easy solution to finding a way to resurrect the dormant American secular Left. Like the dormant Nazi Era German Left, we now largely are dependent on outside help. The problem is the American people themselves, ‘liberals’ and’ conservatives’ both. Both camps are totally immersed in LaLa Land.

War on terror comes full circle

President Bush & Co make much ado about staying the course in Iraq because he’d rather fight them there than fight them at here at home. What remains unclarified is that we are fighting them here already.

Since the advent of the Predator drone, and now the much deadlier Reaper, the US has military personnel, at home, looking into video monitors, controlling the remote robotic killing machines, and pulling the trigger. They are fighting the war from here.

How is that different from NORAD monitoring our missile defenses, or Buckley eavesdropping on everyone? Not much perhaps, except that those are support services and not the front line. It means to me that if Joe Mohammed is under attack by our forces and the soldier looking down the barrel at him is sitting in Indian Springs, Nevada, the only way Mohammed can prevent from being fired upon is to address the machine gun nest in Nevada.

We’ve all seen the movie scene, a squadron is pinned down by a thorny and concealed enemy machine-gunner. A volunteer is sought to sneak up the ridge and lob a grenade into the enemy fortification. The mission is heralded as being sheer suicide, but somebody’s got to do it for our guys to move forward. In reality many posthumous Medals of Honor have been awarded for just that job.

Under international rules of engagement wouldn’t Mohammed’s recourse to target Nevada be justified? Our government certainly justifies doing it all the time from warships. We even justify large civilian casualties as collateral damage to our military imperatives. When they do it, it’ll be in self defense.

The drones fly too high for RPGs, the satellites are of course unreachable, the only link accessible is the control room pillbox, 30 miles outside Las Vegas. How surprising that security reports find that the American homeland is becoming a more likely target for “terrorists.”

George Bush and the US military have placed the American people in the direct line of fire. They have brought the battlefield home, at the same time claiming it’s what they want to prevent.

The destruction of Iraq is not a US government policy aberration

Iraq is no mere aberration by the US government. The Democratic Party would have us think otherwise, but just as top Democratic Party officials set the stage for supporting Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, they have also gone along totally with Republican policy in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Somalia, too.

There the Democrats supported policies of destroying these other countries by illegally fighting wars under false pretenses, and using proxies to do most of the fighting for the Pentagon. Nothing is different from Iraq.

The fighting in Afghanistan threatens to continue to extend itself into Pakistan. The fighting in Lebanon threatens to extend itself into Syria and Iran (especially if Israel has its way). The fighting in Somali, threatens to extend itself into renewed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Everywhere the Democrats follow along behind the leadership of the Republican Party, large areas of the world start to crumble into deepened anarchy, destruction, and despair.

In Afghanistan, the Pentagon is directing its most cowardly war. There, the Pentagon regularly is dropping bombs into civilian areas from thousands of feet up high. They just don’t seem to care about the ‘collateral’ damage done to innocent people, as long as Pentagon allied casualties are kept as low as possible. We cannot ‘support our troops’ in that country at all, as they have been turned by the Bush Administration into nothing more than a bunch of mass murderers.

In Somalia, the Pentagon send in troops from Ethiopia, and then has taken thousands of new prisoners to torture in hidden jails throughout Africa, all done Abu Ghraib-Guantanamo style. Close to half a million refugees have been sent scurrying out of Mogadishu alone, where most now face starvation and death by disease.

In Lebanon, much of the country still is in ruins, with cluster bombs everywhere in unknown locations for civilians to step on. Will the US give the Green Light again for Israel to start the fighting up once again? Will the US and Israel attack Iran and Syria, too? The failures of the Iraq War to do anything other than destroy are not aberrations of one Republican Administration, but is only one face of the entire fiasco of America’s bipartisan foreign policies. We need to stop all these wars now. Shame on us if we fail to act, and if we The American people don’t act, the carnage will be extended and extended and extended, all in our name. Protest is patriotic now, and sitting on our butts is not.