CU lawyer thinks it was Ward Churchill who may have violated 1st Amendment

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- CHURCHILL TRIAL, DAY TWO. University of Colorado defense attorney Patrick O’Rourke wanted the jury to understand that Freedom of Speech was a complicated matter. He asked Dean of CU’s law school, David Getches, to confirm “Is First Amendment Law hard?” “Yes it is.” “Are you an expert on First Amendment law?” “No, I am not.” O’Rourke also got former Governor Bill Owens to admit the First Amendment concept was “tricky.” But no one could have conveyed it better than O’Rourke himself. He described how CU scoured Professor Ward Churchill’s work “to look for First Amendment violations.” Pretending to detail the school’s concern for protecting Churchill’s academic freedom, O’Rourke explained that when it was concluded that Churchill’s 9/11 Little Eichmann essay was protected speech, CU set about to find other instances where “what he said might violate the First Amendment.”

Even More Trollish “Logic”… Edited to remove Name..

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Brother Jonah

So he-she-it doesn’t have a big steaming bowl of Purina Victim Chow to gnaw on.
Our newest Troll, who says he doesn’t consider our point of view worth anything but strangely spends more time here than one would spend on a Paying Job (and of course, he’s not getting paid for it, that would be ridiculous, Right?)
Says that because IDF hasn’t been Convicted of the Murders they’ve committed, the murders must not have happened or must not have been committed by the IDF Baby-Killers.

In much the same way, it’s within my lifetime that the Ku Klux Klan, a group allied now with AIPAC through their shaired connections in the Republican Party… murdered people frequently and often.

According to Unnamed troll, and his or her or IT’s much vaunted Logical Superiority, the Blacks, Hispanics, Indians, Hippies (that’s Us, Folks!) who were murdered and the hundreds of thousands of those who were merely Assaulted by the Klan were not, in fact, murdered or assaulted by the Klan.

Because the Klan wasn’t convicted of those crimes.

And very few individual Klansmen were ever convicted.

By the same logic, the Nazis at the beginning of 1945 hadn’t killed millions of people, because they hadn’t been CONVICTED OF KILLING ANYBODY

Of course the vast number of Dead wouldn’t be any indication that the murders had taken place, nor would the idea that the only heavily armed, well organized groups capable of Murdering all those people in all three instances cited, were, in order of appearance, The Nazis, The Ku Klux Klan … and now, the Rising Mogen–David on the Right Wing Murder Fringe, the IDF.

All you effectively anonymous trolls, hiding behind fake names and using the same IP address, you’re enabling Baby-killers. That makes you every bit as much responsible for the Murders they commit as the Coward Thugs who pulled the trigger on the kids.

I hope you really really don’t like it.

My sincerest prayer would be that one, at least, of you ChickenHawk Trolls would actually repent of your crimes and just, you know, Stop Doing Them.

Meanwhile, you haven’t answered the question…

Since the Victim Mentality IDF have called any criticism of their current Murder Spree to be “attacks” does that mean that you “volunteer” Trolls are in your own estimation ATTACKING Americans who oppose your Cowardly Murder Spree?

That would be, in your own estimation, your own words, a deliberate act of War against America.

One of the most outspoken Supporters of Murder, Karl Rove, says that Anybody, even an American, who opposes your murderous rampages both in Israel-Gaza-Lebanon AND in Iraq-Afghanistan-and-coming-soon-Iran is, in the view of Bush and Cheney and Rove and all their ChickenHawk Coward Supporters, A Terrorist.

That would leave us open to Non-Prosecution secret imprisonment, torture and even Death for talking back to Cowards like YOU.

What do YOU Trolls think?

Above and beyond what your Troll-Masters tell you to think or at least write, I mean.

We already know what they think, you’ve told us over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ….

You endorsed the whole package of the Pentagon/White House/Knesset State Sponsored Terrorism, saying many times over that Terrorism committed by YOUR thugs is actually legal and legitimate.

The 19 young MEN who blew themselves up on 9/11 exhibited not merely more Courage than you or your “leaders” ever will, they had more honor and integrity.

Judged by your own “logic”…

Hysterical Revisionism Parte Veint..

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Ok, so one of the first posts I made was on the subject of what I call amongst other things Jingoistic Bullshit.
Like Ward Churchill getting fired and the suggestion being made by local Right Wing Freaks that he be prosecuted and even EXECUTED for teaching that the U.S. Army committed deliberate Extermination campaigns against Americans and used Biological Warfare in doing so.

The reason I bring it back up is because our Latest IDF Apologist/Propagandist keeps using the same notion the Others did, that we’re somehow “ignorant” of Middle East History merely because we don’t cite the History Textbooks they use in the Tel Aviv Public Schools.

To bring it on down, lest I be accused of being “unhinged”, if I were to enter into a discussion on Recent European History and, let’s say, just for giggles, pointed out that the British Public School textbooks say that the IRA are a bunch of terrorists (U.S. textbooks say the same stupid shit) and the insinuation that the Potato Famine was caused not by the British Overlords shipping out ALL the grain produced in Ireland, (even though it’s documented in shipping records, number (daily)of hundreds of tons of wheat shipped to England on one page and number of Irish Children dead in a sidebar on the same page)

But if I were to cite EXCLUSIVELY British History Texts as approved by Her Majesty Bess2 as an accurate portrayal of Irish History I would not be Taken Seriously.
Especially if I were to Arrogantly demand that the English version be the ONLY version accepted as valid for the discussion.

At that point not only would I be a Jingoistic Nutter I would also be an “Arse”.

To make a further point, there’s a Texas History Society who did a special that gets repeated on the Hysteric Channel and National Geographic Channel about the Alamo.

Which is what I wrote thereof c. 2 years ago.

Seems that even though the only written accounts of what happened to David Crockett and the other “defenders” after the walls were breached, Were Written By Mexican Soldiers…

And that even though the one most in question with the Freaks is one that asserted that General Antonio Jose y Maria Lopez (de Santa Ana) ordered a War Crime to be committed… Declaring the Texians to be “Unlawful combatants” (sound familiar, Trolls? Right Wingers? anybody? … Bueller? … anybody?) and Killing the Prisoners.

Including but not limited to one Colonel David Crockett.

In spite of this being evidence of War Crimes committed by the person who wrote it, it’s called into question Because We Are Supposed To Believe The John Wayne Version Wherein Davy Crockett Died In Battle…

And if we don’t, we’re, And I can not possibly make shit like this up, it takes a truly demented soul to think of it “undermining the Global War On Terror” because Our Troops are engaged in a war with the Brown-skinned Hordes and if they were taught to question the History as Told By The U.S. Government, why, they might question the “Historical Fact” that Iraq was ~~Invaded, Conquered and Occupied~~ Errrrr… I mean “Liberated” yeah, that’s the ticket, Liberated because Saddam Hussein refused to give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction.

A story told by the same IDF and Likud people who tell us that they were and are perfectly justified in Invading, occupying and murdering the citizens of Gaza.

Now, Seventh Grade Tel Aviv Public School History, you know, you only are obligated to mark on the Examinations that the dates and names and locations you just learned to recite (like a whole class full of 13 year old humanoid Parrots) said this, that or the other thing about The Glorious History of The State of Israel.

Bringing it into serious discussions with Grown-Ups and demanding that it be the only source of information that YOU will allow into the discussion comes off as being very Arrogant and Pigheaded.

Especially if the discussion is based on a website that doesn’t actually belong to you.

The Ward Churchill Haters and the New Defenders of The Legend Of The Alamo, they’re fairly easy to spot as being Arrogant Ignorant Rednecks who, in the words of a pastor I once knew “Need Less beer and more Bible”

IDF Trolls, apparently paid Trolls, making similar assertions come off as being, well, of the Same Caste.

Denise was Mitch was Mary was Ronald

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Etc, etc. Lest comment responses be perceived to address a fresh GIYUS, hasbara, cyber-friend of Israel. “They” parrot the same Internet Megaphone IDF propaganda talking points: Gaza is not occupied, there was no genocide, Israel’s birthright to exist is a moot point, Zionism is neither racism nor Apartheid, anti-Arab Professor Bernard Lewis, the greenhouses gifted by Israel, CAMERA articles, etc.

UPDATE: The original title of this post was:
Denise was Mitch was Mary was Ronald
Now: Alex is Walid is Peter is Allan is Ali is Sean is Denise…

Our Newark NJ gender switching Bob & Carol & Tom & Alice just jumped [back] from IP 96.242 to 71.187. Posters, notice the comment IP when you reply to “Denise” or his next impersonation. Part of the Megaphone strategy is to project a multitude of voices indignant about accusations leveled at Israel.

“Denise Cohen” 71.187.138.56 + 96.242.105.155
“Mitch Horace” 96.242.105.155
“Ronald Goff” 71.187.135.202 + 71.187.139.75 + 96.234.113.207
“Ellie Bloch” 71.187.135.202
“Kevin Greenough” 71.187.135.202
“Andrew Schiffman” 71.187.139.75
“Morton Perelman” 71.187.139.75 + 96.234.104.119
“Tom Ely” 96.234.104.119
“Alicia Kirsch” 96.234.101.120
“Grace Cohen” 96.234.101.120
“Claire Short” 96.234.101.120
“Mary Walters” 71.187.141.32 + 96.234.107.159

UPDATE:
“Ali Duran” 193.200.150.45 + 71.187.138.56
“Sean Dobson” 193.200.150.45 + 71.187.138.56
“Peter Krieger” 193.200.150.26
“Walid Ashwari” 193.200.150.29
“Allan Faver” 193.200.150.167
“Alex Shamir” 193.200.150.167
“Melissa Cook” 71.187.138.56
“David Stengler” 71.187.128.24

In this case, ONE voice UNITED in the guise of too many. It may be only cricket to give “Denise” our ear. Can we hope he/she will develop some intellectual honesty?

Looking forward, here are some of the alerts which GIYUS and partners are circulating for troll support:

2009-02-15
U.S. now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bomb
Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.
Act Now!

2009-02-11
Amnesty: Hamas at a deadly campaign against rivals
Amnesty is exposing Hamas’ deadly campaign against its Palestinian critics and rivals. At least two dozen people were killed and many more tortured during and after Israel’s recent Gaza offensive.
Recommend Article

2009-02-04
UN: Hamas seized Gaza food aid and blankets
The U.N. says Hamas police in Gaza have raided a U.N. warehouse and seized thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
Expose this story

2009-02-01
Cyprus Searches Iranian Arms Ship
Cypriot authorities are searching a cargo ship suspected by the United States of carrying Iranian arms to Hamas militants in Gaza. Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias said the ship had violated U.N. resolutions.
Expose this story

2009-01-26
BBC, Sky News won’t broadcast Gaza charity appeal
To protect their objectivity both BBC and Sky News have refused to broadcast an emergency fund raising appeal for people living in the Gaza Strip.
Support their decision

2009-01-21
Iranian Holocaust Denial Book to be Issued in English
Iranian publisher plans to launch English- and Arabic-language versions of a book of caricatures and satirical writings about the Holocaust
Protest this act

2009-01-19
United in the fight against Hamas’ Terror
Six European leaders visited Jerusalem yesterday to extend their support to Israel and pledge their commitment to ending the arms smuggling into Gaza.
Send them a message

Wikipedia and those romantic Zionists

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Eric Verlo

In researching the evolution of Zionist terrorism, from clandestine militias like Bar-Giora, to Hashomer, Haganah, Etzel, and the pro-Nazi Stern Gang, I came upon this opening paragraph in Wikipedia. Describing Bar-Giora, it began: “On September 28, 1907, a group of activists from Poalei Zion gathered in Yitzhak Ben-Zvi’s tiny Jaffa apartment. There was no furniture, the men sat on the floor in a circle and used a crate for a desk.”
Some helpful Wiki elf was obviously feeling sentimental.

Here’s the full paragraph, one third of the only more nostalgic full article:

On September 28, 1907, a group of activists from Poalei Zion gathered in Yitzhak Ben-Zvi’s tiny Jaffa apartment. There was no furniture, the men sat on the floor in a circle and used a crate for a desk. Inspired by Israel Shochat’s ideas, they agreed that the only way to fulfill the dream of becoming a Jewish nation was to rise up and assert themselves through cultivating and defending their land themselves. The state of things in the early years of the 20th Century in Palestine, was such that Jewish farmers employed Arabs to work their farms and protect them, and in turn were subject to landlords, such as Edmond de Rothschild’s agents. There was much discontent and disillusionment.

Thus I was sparked to delve into the oft-derided accusation that Wikipedia is biased toward Israel. Compare the paragraph above, to the introductions of Wiki articles about militant Muslim or Arab groups. Start with Wiki’s official terrorist list and judge for yourself.

CAMERA
Electronic Intifada documented an interesting story last year, when they interrupted the Zionist site CAMERA from organizing commando edit raids on Wikipedia to ensure Israel was always shown in a favorable light. In its report, EI leaked the email thread which, by the way, serves as a great instruction manual for aspiring Wiki editors. We’ll reprint the conversation below.

The episode is documented in several articles. Beginning with EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group’s plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia, The Electronic Intifada, 21 April 2008. (Reprinted in Global Research 4/24.)

Alex Beam, of The Boston Globe, broke the story in print on May 6, 2008, in War of the virtual Wiki-worlds.

Next came Israel Shamir, Wiki, the Chaos Controlled, who asserted that CAMERA’s interrupted zeal masked Wikipedia’s already Zionist admins. Shamir’s continuing battle with Wikipedia can be followed in wiki/Talk).

IRGUN, ET AL
About the clandestine pre-Israel paramilitary organizations, which eventually became the Israel Defense Force? Their history is very interesting. The Zionist policy of using “retaliation” to justify strikes, started right from the beginning.

When the Jewish settlers, many of whom were immigrating into Palestine illegally, felt that British authorities were not giving them preferred treatment in disputes with local Arabs, they organized private armies to quell Arab unrest over their expanding landholdings.

During WWI, these fighters, formed as Hashomer, worked behind the lines with an intelligence branch named Nili, to help the British drive out the Turks. When the Paris Treaty of 1919 did not yield a Zionist state as promised, the militants reformed as Haganah. Commando units under FOSH attacked Arabs during the revolts of the 1930s, which became HISH to fight on the side of the Allies in WWII, meanwhile the Haganah Bet, better known as the Etzel, or Irgun, unleashed terrorist attacks against the British.

In 1938 Irgun leader David Raziel, defined Israel’s prevailing policy of DEFENSIVE ATTACK:

“The actions of the Haganah alone will never be a true victory. If the goal of the war is to break the will of the enemy – and this cannot be attained without destroying his spirit – clearly we cannot be satisfied with solely defensive operations… Defensiveness by way of offensiveness, in order to deprive the enemy the option of attacking, is called active defense.”

During WWII, Irgun kept up its fight against the British, in collaboration with Nazi Germany. In exchange for FIRST) the promise of Palestine being made an independent Zionist state, and SECOND) that Jews of Occupied Europe be allowed to emigrate to Israel, instead of the Nazi suggested destination of Gibraltar.

After the war, Irgun scored its most dramatic attacks, before and during the formation of Israel. Widely denounced by international critics as a terrorist organization, Irgun became the right-wing predecessor to today’s Likud Party.

Wikipedia describes this episode in a tentative fashion: An offshoot of Irgun, better known as the STERN GANG, (but the Wiki article is named by its official Lihi title), tried to make a pact with the Nazis, but never heard back. Later Lihi was honored for its historic contribution to the establishment of Israel.

Your adventure. Your birthright. Our gift.

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Marie Walden

Tonight at book club, I overheard two of my girlfriends discussing their children’s upcoming “birthright” trips to Israel. I’d never heard of a birthright trip, but trusty Google knew all about it.

From their website:

Taglit-Birthright Israel provides the gift of first time, peer group, educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26. Taglit-Birthright Israel’s founders created this program to send thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people.

The gift of the 10-day trip is being provided by our partners: private philanthropists through the Birthright Israel Foundation; the people of Israel through the Government of Israel; and Jewish communities around the world (North American Jewish Federations through the United Jewish Communities (UJC).

The Birthright Israel Foundation is generously supported by the following Jewish philanthropic partners: S. Daniel Abraham, The Abramson Family Foundation, Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson, The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, Edgar M. Bronfman, Circle of Service Foundation, Susie and Michael Gelman, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation, David and Ruth Gottesman, The Harold Grinspoon Foundation, Hadassah – The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Susan and Roger Hertog, Ronald S. Lauder, The Marcus Foundation- Bernie Marcus, Jane and Daniel Och, The Samberg Family Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Judy and Michael Steinhardt, The Wasserman Foundation, Leslie and Abigail Wexner and The Wexner Foundation, Karen and Gary Winnick in North America; Marc Rich in Europe.

Pretty cool, huh?

US ‘suppressing torture evidence’ says top British government official

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Tony Logan

Binyam Mohamed The Pentagon has been suppressing the press. ‘Mr Davis said a High Court ruling, which pointed to complicity by the UK and US authorities in his torture, was prevented from being published after the US put pressure on the UK.’ Tory MP demands torture statement be made against the British Labor government’s support of US torture, and thus against the US government’s use of torture, also.

This is a welcome development as the Obama government has decided to continue rendition flights to have Pentagon held POWs tortured in other countries for the US government. MP David Davis is throwing a thorn in the side of the cover-up underway to help try to save the Bush Klan from prosecution.

Obama wants to renounce the use of torture and continue to use it more clandestinely. We should not allow him to get away with this maneuvering. That is a photo of Binyam Mohamed, the man who was tortured at Guantanamo by the US.

Israel, Judah, Moab, Edom, Samaria, Palestine…

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Brother Jonah

And why it all counts.

Since the whole Israel Right-Of-Return is a huge part of any Any ANY issue involving the modern state of Israel.

It’s not just Religious Talk, so if you’re offended by Biblical references then toughie-poo.
The Bible just happens to be one of the premier sources for Israeli history.

AND.. Arab History

AND Palestinian history.

This is really oversimplifying things, but to most Americans Judah and Israel are equivalent and Palestinian and Arab are interchangeable terms.

To those no-doubt Highly Paid Lobbyists For the Israeli “DEFENSE” Force who insist on calling us liars or ignorant or hate-mongers or whatever, this will be Kindergarten stuff, …

ASSUMING OF COURSE THAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE JEWISH and/or BIBLICAL SCHOLARS or SERIOUSLY AS EXPERT ON THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE REGION THEY CLAIM THEMSELVES TO BE (and of course, as they claim we cannot possibly be…)

After the reign of Solomon, just to start, in the middle where a beginning properly belongs, Just Ask Steven Spielberg…

After the Reign of Solomon Israel and Judah were two separate Kingdoms.

Israel, and Judah.

Remember that because it is important and there will be a quiz later, which will count for 57.3% of your total grade.

After the kingdom of Israel got their collective head knuckled by Assyria (Remember Jonah?) but not Judah, and then a short while (historically speaking) later Nebuchadnezzar conquered BOTH and carried away into captivity… NOT EVEN MOST of Israel or Judah, Because They Left The Poor People Behind… (Remember Jeremiah? Of course you do…)

At this point the remnants of the Philistines aka Phoenicia aka Lebanon… a Greek culture…
And the remnants of Moab, descendants of one of the sons/slash/Grandsons of Lot (by his two daughters,)

( you know, Moses wasn’t very Kind or Gentle when he described the doings of his relatives, but he cut Lot a “lot” of slack, claiming he was too drunk to recognize his own daughters)

And the remnants of Edom, descended from Esau, the brother of Jacob aka Israel…

and various tribes of actual Arabs, descendants of Abraham’s first son Ishmael

And even the descendants of the recently (relatively) Dismantled Hittite and Assyrian Empires…

And throw in Ethiopians, Egyptians and Nubians who were stranded in the back and forth conquests over several centuries.

THESE were the people who lived in Israel and Judah at the time.

When people babble much about the Lost Tribes of Israel they’re refering to the Kingdom of Israel which consisted of the vast majority of the tribes of Israel save for Judah and Levi.

And They’re Not “lost” in the sense that they up and disappeared either, it’s “lost” like in the RELIGIOUS context.

A little break for the AIPAC ChickenHawks Flooding the Site..

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Something more the War-mongering Freaks can bitch whine and snivel about, Welcome back, David Haddad errr “Mary”

So, since unabashed ChickenHawks like Glenn Beck like to “donate” Tax Deductible stuff like free airtime on their “news” shows, and the USO is begging for money for the families of the troops…
How, then, can the Recruiters claim in other (taxpayer funded) advertisements that the Military is a Good Career?
A few background items, if you will.

Glenn Beck, Chickenhawk, in 2007 participated in a “charity” Auction and one of the articles he donated (For a Tax Break…) a really really butt-ugly painting.

The bidding on it at the point where I tuned in, was 3400 dollars.

That means, for a few minutes of his time, about $10 worth of paint and a $30 canvass, he was getting a Tax Break to the tune of $3400.00

And publicity for his show, which consists almost entirely of licking Government Boot for an hour at a time.

He ~~earns~~ Is GIVEN his pay for Promoting The War and thus the very poverty/slash/hardship conditions the Military Personnel have to endure.

An Establishment Media Whore like that then gets to Pretend that he gives a damn about the Soldiers, their wives and children/slash/widows and orphans…

Gets paid to spew his drivel on the Air and then gets paid again by “donating” something to the USO.

His equally Cowardly Loud-mouthed War-Monger Friend who bought the painting also got to take an equal tax deduction

So far, that was $6800 dollars taken off their taxes,

The Same Taxes Which Form The Basis For The Costs Of The War

So they’re not only getting OTHER People to Fight for their ~~Obscene profit Margins~~ Ooops I was supposed to say “our Freedom”, thus putting the Soldiers and their families in dire financial straits…

They’re Getting Paid To Sell the “necessity” of THEIR War to those of us who DO pay taxes, and thus PAY THEIR BILLS for THEIR War…

On a show that gets Government Subsidies as well,

And make a huge Show of Concern for those poor families of the Soldiers.

The Soldiers who are being aggressively recruited even before they leave high school, whose Parents are being told several times an hour to ~~support the decisions of their sons and daughters~~ Sign The Papers Allowing Their Underage CHILDREN to drop out of school and join the Killing Machine.

Because being an Imperial Storm Trooper is such a Good Economic and Educational Opportunity.

It’s Payday today. because the 1st is on a weekend.

Since the middle of the month Military families have been seeking donations to just feed the kids until the end of the month.

People who get Food Stamps.

That’s not a slur against the families or the soldiers themselves.

The “Welfare Cadillac” Food Stamp Queen (who is invariably depicted as Black, although our Republican “Friend” tells us that the propaganda they put out is not Racist at all in any way, shape or form) Is And Always Was a Mythological Construct.

People don’t get rich off being on welfare.

Although the Right Wing Professional Liars, like for instance Glenn Beck, tell us that they do.

Remember though, in the Information Age, their lies about How Righteous and Noble the War is, how we’re obviously Winning the War, how Everybody in the Army Loves The War, How Great a Career The Army is…

Get shown simultaneously with advertisements begging for relief for their families, ads for the Army recruiting CHILDREN to quit school, give up any chance of a real educational opportunity, and Join The Storm Troopers… because they can’t retain enough of the soldiers who are already in their Glorious Wonderful Marvelous Career to keep fighting a war that was supposedly won 5 years ago.

Excuse me, that last figure is inaccurate… it was 5 1/2 years ago.

I wonder if the AIPAC Anti-Semitic types who post all these long letters that say “blah blah blah Israel is always right blah blah blah you’re ignorant to say otherwise blah blah blah how DARE you criticize people for being Babykillers blah blah blah”

I wonder if they’re getting a tax-break for it, or maybe just making money from the “Defense” Industry which is supplyin’ the (Israeli Puppet) Army with the tools of the Trade?

Or is it

D) All Of The Above.

Pardon, your hypocrisy is showing.

Billy Ayers and the weathergirl

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Eric Verlo

It may have suited the corporate media to paint 60s radical Bill Ayers as an aging, bespectacled hippie, but in his day, student movement leader turned anti-imperialist bomber Billy Ayers had the magnetism of James Dean. And the street cred of John Dillinger.

A less off-base criminal analogy might be Bonny and Clyde, because Bill Ayers had partners in the Weather Underground, and more specifically one he married, and with whom he still lives. She’s the unsung participant in the Barack Obama terrorist connection, and I think it’s a telling omission.

Bernardine Dohrn was the ringleader of the breakaway SDS. It was Dohrn who led the putsch at the divisive 1969 Chicago meeting, and it was she who delivered the press conferences. After the Bring the War Home cataclysm, it was Dorhn’s name on the Weathermen manifestos and publications. And when they went underground, it was Dohrn’s voice on the recorded communiques when a bomb was set to go off.

After ten years underground Dohrn and Ayers gave themselves up. The early eighties movie Running On Empty gave a fictional account of their ordeal. It made an interesting assertion through Christine Lahti’s role, at who might have been the moral center of the revolutionary duo.

Today Ayers and Dohrn are respected professors and political activists. They live in Chicago, have raised two sons, and fostered another, whose parents, also of the Weather Underground, remained incarcerated. Father David Gilbert is still in prison.

When Barack Obama kicked off his congressional campaign with the now infamous fund raiser at the Chicago home of Professor Ayers, it was also the home of Law Professor Dohrn. That’s a bit like saying you were at Guy Richie’s house, without mentioning Madonna.

Not to take any credit away from Bill Ayers, but perhaps Bernardine Dohrn made too attractive a “domestic terrorist.” No doubt an intelligent, decisive woman does not fit the evildoer stereotype.

I think a spotlight on Bernardine Dohrn’s idealogical leadership of the Weathermen might have given the American public pause to consider the arguments behind stopping the Vietnam war “by any means necessary.”

What do you do when the electoral process does not offer a moral recourse? What do you do when your elected representatives refuse to respond the outcry of the people? How do you stop the ongoing indiscriminate murder of millions of southeast Asians, when your government demonstrates an interminable patience for deliberating “staying the course?”

Whether the path they chose was wise or unwise, the students of the 60s were up against a monstrous military industrial complex which looms even larger today. Bernardine Dohrn’s war against our homicidal empire might have humanized the struggle and brought it home.

Apartheid Israel must be abolished

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Thomas Mc

After what Israel has done to the Palestinians for the last 60 years, they have every right to want the destruction of Israel. And so should everyone else. Didn’t the world learn anything from the rise of Nazi Germany?

“I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”
–Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001

Obama’s Inauspicious Beginning by Khalid Amayreh

We in the Middle East realize quite well that Obama is not going to be the paragon of freedom and justice many naïve people had thought he would be.

Unfortunately, the American political environment is too morally barren to produce truly moral politicians who would be willing, let alone able, to call the spade a spade, especially when the Zio-Nazi state is concerned.

Israel Must Stop Fanning the Flames That Will Consume Us
by David Grossman

A month after the war began, in the midst of the wave of nationalist invective now sweeping Israel, it would not hurt to keep in mind that this latest military operation in Gaza was, when all is said and done, just one more way-station on a road paved with fire, violence and hatred. On this road, you sometimes win and you sometimes lose, but in the end it leads to ruin.

But as the magnitude of the killing and the devastation has become apparent to all, perhaps Israeli society will, for a brief moment, put its sophisticated mechanisms of repression and self-righteousness on hold. And then perhaps a lesson of some sort will be etched into the Israeli consciousness. Maybe then we will finally understand something deep and fundamental — that our conduct here in this region has, for a long time, been flawed, immoral and unwise. Time and again, it fans the flames that are consuming us.

AIPAC equals treason!

Posted on January 24, 2009 by Thomas Mc

“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.

The Godless God fearing Americans

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Eric Verlo

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, Sojourners

7 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 America

2 CATHOLICS, 22%
Donald Wuerl, Washington Catholic Archbishop
Rev. Francisco Gonzalez, auxiliary bishop, Washington archdiocese

1 MUSLIM, at 3%
Ingrid Mattson, president, Islamic Society of North America

1 each, HINDU and ORTHODOX, in sum 1.7%
Uma Mysorekar, president, Hindu Temple Society of North America
Archbishop Demetrios, primate, Greek Orthodox Church in America

3 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 Hampshire

Welcome 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.

Wal-mart drives its chariot of predatory commerce over bones of Civil War dead

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Eric Verlo

WAL-MART wants to build a Virginia super-center on the edge of the memorial site of one of the most consequential battles of the Civil War. The Wilderness marked the first engagement between Generals Lee and Grant, ignited a forest fire which the soldiers fought through, and left 24,000 dead and wounded. Now 253 historians have joined in asking Wal-mart to reconsider.

Mr. Lee Scott, President and CEO
Walmart Stores, Inc.
702 SW 8th Street
Bentonville, Arkansas 72716-8611

Dear Mr. Scott:

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to pursue alternate building locations for the Walmart Supercenter proposed in Orange County, Virginia. The site currently under consideration lies within the historic boundary of the Wilderness Battlefield and only one quarter mile from the current boundary of the Wilderness Battlefield unit of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

The Battle of the Wilderness was among the most significant engagements of the Civil War. It marked the first time legendary generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant faced off against one another on the field of battle. During two days of desperate conflict in a harsh, unforgiving landscape tangled with underbrush, 4,000 Americans lost their lives and nearly 20,000 were wounded.

The proposed location will greatly increase traffic through the area and encourage further development to encroach upon and spoil the battlefield. This, in turn, will seriously degrade the experience for the many tens of thousands of heritage tourists who visit this National Park every year. The Wilderness Battlefield is easily the biggest tourist attraction in Orange County, with visitors coming from around the world to experience its serenity and contemplate its history and significance.

As a historian, I feel strongly that the Wilderness Battlefield is a unique historic and cultural treasure deserving careful stewardship. Currently only approximately 20 percent of the battlefield is protected by the National Park Service. If built, this Walmart would seriously undermine ongoing efforts to see more of this historic land preserved and deny future generations the opportunity to wander a landscape that has, until now, remained largely unchanged since 1864.

The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved. Surely Walmart can identify a site that would meet its needs without changing the very character of the battlefield.

There are many places in central Virginia to build a commercial development, but there is only one Wilderness Battlefield. Please respect our great nation’s history and move your store farther away from this historic site and National Park.

Signed,

* Terrie Aamodt, Walla Walla University
* Edward D. Abrahams, Silver Spring, Md.
* Sean P. Adams, University of Florida
* Garry Adelman, History Associates, Inc.
* Nicholas Aieta, the Marlborough School, West Springfield, Mass.
* A.J. Aiseirithe, Washington, D.C.
* James Anderson, Ashburn, Va.
* Adam Arenson, University of Texas
* Jonathan M. Atkins, Berry College
* Arthur H. Auten, University of Hartford
* David Bard, Concord College
* Alwyn Barr, Texas Tech University
* Craig A. Bauer, Metairie, La.
* Erik Bauer, West Hollywood, Calif.
* Dale Baum, Texas A&M University
* Edwin C. Bearss, Historian emeritus, National Park Service
* Caryn Cosse Bell, University of Massachusetts at Lowell
* Jeffrey R. Bennett, Waterford, N.Y.
* Shannon Bennett, Ellettsville, Ind.
* Melvyn S. Berger, Newton, Mass.
* Arthur W. Bergeron, Shippensburg, Pa.
* Edward H. Bergerstrom, Port Richey, Fla.
* Eugene H. Berwanger, Colorado State University
* Fred W. Beuttler, Deputy Historian, U.S. House of Representatives
* Darrel Bigham, University of Southern Indiana
* John Bloom, Las Cruces, N.M.
* Frederick J. Blue, Youngstown State University
* Christopher Bobal, Lees Summit, Mo.
* Thomas Bockhorn, Huntsville, Ala.
* Keith Bohannon, University of West Georgia
* Phillip S. Bolger, San Diego, Calif.
* Patrick Boyd, the Pomfret School, Pomfret, Conn.
* Vernon S. Braswell, Corpus Christi, Tex.
* Roger D. Bridges, Bloomington, Ill.
* Ronald S. Brockway, Regis University
* Col. George M. Brooke, III, USMC (Ret.), Lexington, Va.
* Bruce A. Brown, Cypress, Calif.
* Norman D. Brown, University of Texas, Austen, Tex.
* David Brush, the Pomfret School, Pomfret, Conn.
* Jim Burgess, Manassas National Battlefield, Va.
* Ken Burns, Walpole, N.H.
* Brian Burton, Ferndale, Wash.
* Victoria Bynum, Texas State University-San Marcos
* Peter S. Carmichael, West Virginia University
* Marius M. Carriere, Christian Brothers University
* Katherine Cassioppi, National-Louis University
* Gary Casteel, Lexington, Va.
* Jane Turner Censer, George Mason University
* William Cheek, San Diego State University
* John Cimprich, Thomas More College
* Thomas G. Clemens, Hagerstown Community College
* Leon F. Cohn, Plantation, Fla.
* Thomas B. Colbert, Marshalltown Community College
* James R. Connor, Chancellor emeritus University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
* William J. Cooper, Jr., Louisiana State University
* Janet L. Coryell, Western Michigan University
* Charles E. Coulter, Yankton, S.D.
* Robert E. Curran, Richmond, Ky.
* Thomas F. Curran, Saint Louis, Mo.
* Gordon E. Dammann, National Museum of Civil War Medicine
* Guy Stephen Davis, Atlanta, Ga.
* William C. “Jack” Davis
* Joseph G. Dawson, III, Texas A&M University
* Mary DeCredico, United States Naval Academy
* James Lyle DeMarce, Arlington, Va.
* Charles B. Dew, Williams College
* Steven Deyle, University of Houston
* Richard DiNardo, Marine Corps Command and Staff College
* Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego, Warwick, N.Y.
* Richard R. Duncan, Alexandria, Va.
* Kenneth Durr, History Associates, Inc.
* David Dykstra, Poolesville, Md.
* Mark Elliott, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
* Robert F. Engs, University of Pennsylvania
* C. Wyatt Evans, Drew University
* Daniel Feller, University of Tennessee
* Rex H. Felton, Tiffin, Ohio
* Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School
* Jeff Fioravanti, Lynn, Mass.
* Joseph C. Fitzharris, University of Saint Thomas
* J.K. Folmarm California, Minn.
* George B. Forgie, University of Texas Austin
* Lee W. Formwalt, Organization of American Historians
* Janet B. Frazer, Narberth, Pa.
* Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
* Jonathan Gantt, Columbia College
* Jason Gart, History Associates, Inc.
* Louis S. Gerteis, University of Missouri, St. Louis
* Kate C. Gillin, the Pomfret School, Pomfret, Conn.
* Mary Giunta, Edinburg, Va.
* Martin K. Gordon, Columbia, Md.
* Cathy Gorn, University of Maryland
* Thomas M. Grace, Amherst, N.Y.
* Susan W. Gray, Severna Park, Md.
* A. Wilson Greene, Pamplin Historical Park and National Museum of the Civil War Soldier
* Debra F. Greene, Jefferson City, Mo.
* Jim Griffin, Frisco, Tex.
* Linda J. Guy, Clearville, Pa.
* Edward J. Hagerty, American Military University
* Alfred W. Hahn, Midlothian, Va.
* Judith Lee Hallock, South Setauket, N.Y.
* Jerry Harlow, President, Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation
* D. Scott Hartwig, Gettysburg National Military Park, Pa.
* David S. Heidler, Colorado State University
* Jeannie Heidler, United States Air Force Academy
* John S. Heiser, Gettysburg National Military Park, Pa.
* Earl J. Hess, Lincoln Memorial University
* Libra Hilde, San Jose State University
* T. John Hillmer, Jr., Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Mo.
* David Hochfelder, State University of New York – Albany
* Sylvia Hoffert, Texas A&M University
* Patrick Hotard, Philadelphia, Pa.
* Richard Houston, Harwich, Mass.
* Randal L. Hoyer, Madonna University
* Richard L. Hutchison, Fort Worth, Tex.
* Brian M. Ingrassia, Georgia State University
* Perry D. Jamieson, Crofton, Md.
* Jim Jobe, Fort Donelson National Battlefield, Tenn.
* Willie Ray Johnson, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, Ga.
* Vivian Lee Joyner, New Hill, N.C.
* Whitmel M. Joyner, New Hill, N.C.
* Walter D. Kamphoefner, Texas A&M University
* Amalie M. Kass, Harvard Medical School
* Philip M. Katz, Washington, D.C.
* Brad Keefer, Kent State University
* Brian J. Kenny, Denver, Co.
* Victoria A. Kin, San Antonio, Tex.
* George W. Knepper, University of Akron
* Christopher Kolakowski, National Museum of the U.S. Army Reserve
* Carl E. Kramer, Indiana University Southeast
* Arnold Krammer, Texas A&M University
* Robert K. Krick, Fredericksburg, Va.
* Michael E. Krivdo, Texas A&M University
* Benjamin Labaree, Saint Alban’s School, Washington, D.C.
* Dan Laney, Austin, Tex.
* Connie Langum, Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Mo.
* William P. Leeman, Coventry, R.I.
* Kevin Levin, Charlottesville, Va.
* Richard G. Lowe, University of North Texas
* Robert W. Lowery, Jr., Newport News, Va.
* M. Philip Lucas, Cornell College
* R. Wayne Mahood, Geneseo, N.Y.
* Daniel Martin, Lancaster, Pa.
* William Marvel, South Conway, N.H.
* Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University
* Dinah M. Mayo-Bobee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
* George T. Mazuzan, Springfield, Va.
* Nathan McAlister, Hoyt, Kan.
* David McCullough
* Dennis K. McDaniel, Washington, D.C.
* James M. McPherson, Princeton University
* Kathleen G. McKesson, Eighty Four, Pa.
* James G. Mendez, Chicago, Ill.
* Brian Craig Miller, Emporia State University
* Roger E. Miller, Eagle River, Alaska.
* Wilbur R. Miller, State University of New York – Stony Brook
* Eric J. Mink, Fredericksburg, Va.
* Robert E. Mitchell, Brookline, Mass.
* John Moody, Orange Park, Fla.
* Richard Moore, Woodbridge, Va.
* Richard Morey, Kent Place School, Summit, N.J.
* Geoffrey Morrison, Saint Louis, Mo.
* Brenda Murray, North Pole, Alaska.
* Richard J. Myers, Doylestown, Pa.
* Eric Nedergaard, Mesa, Ariz.
* Robert D. Neuleib, Normal, Ill.
* Kenneth Noe, Auburn University
* Justin Oakley, Martinsville, Ind.
* Kristen Oertel, Millsaps College
* Marvin Olson, La Crescenta, Ca.
* Beverly Palmer, Claremont, Ca.
* John T. Payne, Lone Star College
* Graham Peck, Saint Xavier University
* William D. Pederson, Louisiana State University, Shreveport
* William E. Pellerin, Santa Barbara, Ca.
* Don Pfanz, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, Va.
* Michael Pierson, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
* Kermit J. Pike, Western Reserve Historical Society, Mentor, Ohio
* Ann Poe, Alexandria, Va.
* Kieth Ploakoff, Rossmoor, Ca.
* Lawrence N. Powell, Tulane University
* Adam J. Pratt. Baton Rouge, La.
* Gerald Prokopowicz, East Carolina University
* John Quist, Shippensburg University
* Steven J. Rauch, Evans, Ga.
* S. Waite Rawls, III, Museum of the Confederacy
* Carol Reardon, Pennsylvania State University
* Douglas Reasner, Durant, Iowa
* Michael Reis, History Associates, Inc.
* Robert V. Remini, Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives
* James Renberg, Southern Pines, N.C.
* Gordon Rhea, Mount Pleasant, S.C.
* Jean Richardson, Buffalo State College
* Jeffrey Richman, Brooklyn, N.Y.
* Harris D. Riley, Jr., M.D., Nashville, Tenn.
* James I. Robertson, Jr., Virginia Tech
* Stephen I. Rockenbach, Virginia State University
* Sylvia Rodrigue, Baton Rouge, La.
* Rodney A. Ross, Center for Legislative Archives, Washington, D.C.
* Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Johnson Space Center
* Jeffrey J. Safford, Montana State University
* Frank Scaturro, New Hyde Park, N.Y.
* Mark S. Schantz, Hendrix College
* Laurence D. Schiller, Deerfield, Ill.
* Christopher A. Schnell, Springfield, Ill.
* Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein, Springfield, Ill.
* Frederick Schult, Jr., New York University
* Donald L. Schupp, Warrenton, Va.
* Richard D. Schwartz, Morristown, N.J.
* Cynthia Seacord, Schenectady, N.Y.
* Tomas Seaver, Woonsocket, R.I.
* Diane Shalda, Chicago Military Academy
* Peter D. Sheridan, Torrance, Ca.
* Mark Snyder, Akron, Ohio
* John Sotak, O.S.A., New Lenox, Ill.
* Clay W. Stuckey, DDS, Bedford, Ind.
* Carlyn Swaim, History Associates, Inc.
* Andrew Talkov, Virginia Historical Society
* Robert A. Taylor, Florida Institute of Technology
* Paul H. Tedesco, Northeastern University
* James Thayer, Milford, Mass.
* Emory M. Thomas, University of Georgia
* JoAnne Thomas, Peoria, Ill.
* Joseph Trent, Worcester, Mass.
* Tony R. Trimble, Plainfield, Ind.
* I. Bruce Turner, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
* Edwin C. Ulmer, Jr., Feasterville, Pa.
* Charles W. Van Adder, Forked River, N.J.
* Charles Vincent, Baker, La.
* Joseph F. von Deck, Ashburnham, Ma.
* Brent Vosburg, Elizabethtown, N.J.
* Robert Voss, Lincoln, Neb.
* George N. Vourlojianis, Lorain County Community College
* Christopher R. Waldrep, San Francisco State University
* John Weaver, Tipp City, Ohio
* Robert Welch, Ames, Iowa
* Lowell E. Wenger, Cincinnati, Ohio
* Jeffrey Wert, Centre Hall, Pa.
* Bruce E. Wilburn, Glen Allen, Va.
* Diana I. Williams, Wellesley College
* Mary Williams, Fort Davis National Historic Site, Tex.
* Terry Winschel, Vicksburg National Military Park, Miss.
* Roger Winthrop, Lansing, Mich.
* Eric J. Wittenberg, Columbus, Ohio
* Ralph A. Wooster, Lamar University
* Donald Yacovone, Harvard University
* Shirley J. Yee, University of Washington
* Mitchell Yockelson, National Archives and Records Administration
* William D. Young, Maple Woods Community College
* Mary E. Younger, Dayton, Ohio
* Jack Zevin, Queens College, City University of New York

Money As Debt video

Posted on October 17, 2008 by Tony Logan

There is a short 45 minute video called Money As Debt that gives a great explanation of the current Financial Crisis. It is thoughtful, easy to understand, and a well done video with illustrations and quotes from insiders used as references.

Thanks to David V. for sending it my way! He’s been doing a lot of thinking about the real estate bubble in the South Florida region over the last 2 years. It is a bad situation in that area of the country.

The Scamble for Africa- Darfur, Intervention, and the USA

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Tony Logan

Those interested in Darfur might want to check this book, ‘The Scramble for Africa’, out some when it comes out? Especially with the Biden, Obama gang headed towards the White House soon. Certainly this is a timely release for this book.

*** Book of the Month for** **October 2008*

*THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA*

*Darfur — Intervention and the USA*

*Steven Fake and Kevin Funk*

*As massive human suffering continues to engulf the Darfur region of
Sudan, the crisis has garnered a rhetorical circus of saber-rattling and
hand wringing from Western politicians, media, and activists. Yet such
bluster has not halted the violence.*

*In a careful yet scathing indictment of this constellation of
holier-than-thou government leaders, corporate media outlets, and spoon-fed
NGOs, Steven Fake and Kevin Funk reveal the myriad ways in which the West
has failed Darfur.*

*Praise for Scramble for Africa:*

*”A devastating critique of the ‘humanitarian’ response of the United
States to the Darfur crisis. Well-researched, easy to read, and utterly
convincing, a crucial book for anyone concerned about achieving a morally
and politically acceptable U.S. foreign policy.”
–Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of Law Emeritus, Princeton University*

*”Sudan has been a nightmare for many. It still is. The outside world is
responsible as well. This book shows why. The authors avoid easy answers,
and provide a quality analysis with compelling arguments to revise Western
policies.”
–Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of
Mission for the United Nations Mission in Sudan, 2004-06 *

*”Explosive, masterful, and impeccably fair. Consider it the thinking
person’s guide to Darfur.”
-John Ghazvinian, author of **Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil*

*STEVEN FAKE and KEVIN FUNK are activists and political commentators whose
writings have been published in such media as **Foreign Policy in Focus,
Common Dreams, CounterPunch, ZNet**, and **Black Commentator**.*

*344 pages, bibliography, index
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55164-322-9 $19.99
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-55164-323-6 $39.99*

*For more information on **The Scramble For Africa**, our October Book of
the Month selection, including additional testimonials and Table of
Contents, see **http://www.blackrosebooks.net/darfur.htm*
* *

*The Scramble For Africa will be launched in the Boston area on October
28th. For more information see http://www.blackrosebooks.net/events.htm*

*To Order This Book, Call Toll Free 1-800-565-9523*

*Independent Publishing for Independent Minds*

*What others are saying about Scramble for Africa*

“Kevin Funk and Steven Fake have written a devastating critique of the
‘humanitarian’ response of the United States to the Darfur crisis, while
offering a genuine humane alternative that would lessen the ordeal, if not
bring it to an end. Well-researched, easy to read, and utterly convincing, a
crucial book for anyone concerned about achieving a morally and politically
acceptable U.S. foreign policy.”
*–Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of Law Emeritus, Princeton University, and
since 2002, Visiting Distinguished Professor, Global Studies, UCSB*

“Sudan has been a nightmare for many. It still is. The outside world is
responsible as well. This book shows why. The authors avoid easy answers,
and provide a quality analysis with compelling arguments to revise Western
policies.”
*–Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of
Mission for the United Nations Mission in Sudan, 2004-06*

“At a time when everyone from George Clooney to George Bush is an instant
expert on Darfur, Kevin Funk and Steven Fake have given us what we so
urgently need: a clear, sober assessment of the conflict and how it fits
into the foreign policy of the United States. With neither fear nor favour,
they take us back stage, show us our blind spots, and come up with some
troubling conclusions. Explosive, masterful, and impeccably fair. Consider
it the thinking person’s guide to Darfur.”
*–John Ghazvinian, author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil*

“A commanding exposé of the duplicitous and damaging role played by US
leaders and others in a dark drama. Well-written, well focused, deeply
informed—an excellent corrective for the many who cannot tell the difference
between humanitarian assistance and imperial aggrandizement.”
*–Michael Parenti, author of ‘Contrary Notions’ and ‘Against Empire’*

“Elegantly written, erudite without being academic, and with a forceful yet
sensible political argument, Scramble for Africa is a must read for anyone
concerned with making sense of one of the most haunting crises of our time.”
*–Stephen Eric Bronner, Rutgers University*

“Scramble for Africa: Darfur Intervention and the USA is the book we’ve all
been waiting for. Clearly written, and scholarly without losing its
skeptical edge, this new work takes on the U.S. Government and the Save
Darfur coalition alike, offering a fresh analysis of Darfur in its larger
geopolitical context. Scramble for Africa belongs on every Darfur activist’s
bookshelf.”
*–David Morse, Darfur activist and journalist*

“So much of what has been written on Darfur is either expression of
humanitarian concern without awareness of the imperial context, or
denunciation of Western perfidy without appreciation of the horrible human
tragedy that has been unfolding. In this extremely well-documented study,
Steve Fake and Kevin Funk combine deep compassion with a keen critical
analysis to show how we might best support the suffering people of Darfur.
This is a book for all those interested in working for a more just world.”
*–Stephen R. Shalom, Professor of Political Science at William Paterson
University in New Jersey and author of, among other works, Imperial Alibis:
Rationalizing US Intervention After the Cold War*

“This extremely well-researched analysis reveals the real goals of US
foreign policy in one of the greatest horrors of our generation. The authors
have produced an essential book for analysts and activists everywhere,
together with a call to action which no-one should ignore.”
*–Mark Curtis, author, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World*

“One of the few works to tackle honestly the vexing question of what is to
be done about Darfur. Cheerleaders for intervention and humanitarians who
persist in rosy fantasies about the U.S. role in the world have had no
trouble advocating “solutions,” but for others on the left the question has
been much more difficult. Not content, like so many, to simply wash their
hands of the question, the authors have constructed a deeply informed and
carefully reasoned argument that addresses seriously the possibilities for
constructive humanitarian interventions in an imperfect world vitiated by
great power interests and political posturing. For the cruise-missile left
and the hard-core anti-interventionist left alike, Darfur is not about
Darfur but about their own self-image; Fake and Funk rightly bring the focus
back to what is best for the people on the ground.”
*–Rahul Mahajan, activist and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power
in Iraq and Beyond*

“At last there is a book on Darfur that places the conflict in the context
of the new ‘scramble for Africa,’ the contest between the old imperialism of
England and its successors, the US and China. Fake and Funk’s analysis
unmasks the propagandistic deploying of powerful language alleging
‘genocide’ and the ‘world’s worst humanitarian crisis’ in Sudan for its
political advantages to the US and its neglect of the suffering of Darfur’s
victims. When analyzing the politics of the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ the
journalists-authors work with a scalpel in a refreshing and penetrating
analysis of why the Darfur conflict became the ’cause célèbre,’ when it
should have been the war in Iraq. Activists and astute observers of the
contemporary global political scene will find this scrupulously researched
volume a must read, virtually unique among available works on the subject.”
*–Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Professor of Anthropology, Rhode Island College,
veteran Sudan researcher*

“For those, like myself, who have long felt both revulsion and confusion by
the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and wished to know more, this is the
perfect handbook. …an objective, dispassionate, meticulously researched
account of the conflict… The authors of Scramble for Africa… startle us with
their documentation of the little known but equally sordid role our own
government has played in Sudan for the past thirty years – suggesting that
our present official “humanitarian concerns” are merely crocodile tears
masking another agenda.”
*–Timothy Kendall, Ph. D., Senior Research Scholar, Dept. of
African-American Studies, Northeastern University and Director of
Archaeological Mission, Jebel Barkal (Karima), Sudan, Sudan Dept. of
Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), Khartoum, Sudan*

“The Scramble for Africa stands against the muck of neo-liberal ideology,
taking us through the Darfur conflict, putting it into history and allowing
us to think of a non-imperialist way to bring peace to a tormented region.
Save Darfur, surely; but as much from Washington as Khartoum, as much from
fantasies of humanitarian intervention as the brutalities of
IMFundamentalism and Islamism.”
*–Vijay Prashad, author, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third
World*

“The Darfur conflict has proven to be intractable, at terrible cost to the
people of that region. There is a crying need for on-going international
activism based on a thorough analysis of Sudan and the role of the US, China
and other states. The Scramble for Africa by Kevin Funk and Steven Fake is a
well-researched, important and progressive contribution in this regard. It
should be widely read, from the White House to the grassroots.”
*–Laurie Nathan, research fellow at the London School of Economics and
member of the African Union mediation team for Darfur in 2005/6*

“This excellent book presents the basic information on the political and
military aspects of the conflict, examines the options from a clear and
transparent ethical position, and presents ways forward with a concern for
broad international implications and concern for the hundreds of thousands
of victims. It is is exactly what is needed and I hope it is very widely
read. I will recommend it to everyone.”
*–Justin Podur, writer and activist*

Greg Palast suggests election theft theft

Posted on October 9, 2008 by NMT

Steal back your vote One fifth of all Colorado voters have already been purged from the rolls. The Republican Secretary of State Donetta Davidson who accomplished this now heads the US Elections Assistance Commission where she purged the report which examined voter fraud.

But why be discouraged by GOP election fixing? Greg Palast has accompanied his upcoming Rollingstone expose with a comic book STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE.

1. Don’t mail in your ballot. 2. Vote early. 3. Register and re-register.
4. Do not accept a Provisional Ballot. 5. Assist voters in swing states.
6. Go to the polls with friends. 7. Prepare for: No Vote Left Behind!

Greg Palast explains:

DON’T DON’T DON’T MAIL IN YOUR BALLOT
For those of you who mailed in your ballot, please tell me, what happened to it? You don’t know, do you? I can tell you that officially, three-fourths of a million absentee ballots were never counted last time, on the weakest of technical excuses. And you won’t even know it. Furthermore, tens of thousands of ballots are not mailed out to voters in time to return them—in which case you’re out of luck. In most states, new voters must now include a photocopy of your ID. Which is, like, nuts. Every time I hear of a voter going “absentee” to avoid computer screens, I want to “go postal” myself.

VOTE EARLY … VERY EARLY
Every state now lets voters cast ballots in designated polling stations and at county offices in the weeks before Election Day. Do it. Don’t wait until Election Day to find out you have the wrong ID, your registration’s “inactive,” or you’re on a challenge list. By Election Day, there’s little to do but hold up the line.

REGISTER AND REGISTER AND REGISTER
Think you’re registered to vote? Think again. With all this purg’n going on, you could be x’d out and you won’t know it. Check online at http://www.votersunite.org/info/RegInfo.asp. Then register your girlfriend, your wife, your mailman and your mommy. Contact the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Rock the Vote, and your local party organization, and commit to a couple of days of door-to-door registration, especially in minority neighborhoods or at social service agency offices. And if you’ve served the time, you can sign: in almost every state, ex-cons can vote.

VOTE UNCONDITIONALLY, NOT PROVISIONALLY
In 2008, they’ll be handing out provisional ballots like candy, especially to Hispanic voters. If your right to vote is challenged, don’t accept a provisional ballot that will likely not get counted no matter what the sweet little lady at the table tells you. She won’t decide; partisan sharks will. Demand adjudication from poll judges on the spot; demand a call to the supervisor of elections; or return with acceptable ID if possible. And be a champ: defend the rights of others. If you’ve taken Step 1 above and voted early, you have Election Day free to be a poll watcher. Run into trouble —you’ve been caged or purged or challenged—call Election Protection at 1-(866) OUR-VOTE. Then challenge the challengers, the weird guys with Blackberrys containing lists of “suspect” voters. Be firm, but no biting.

OCCUPY OHIO, INVADE NEVADA
The revolution will not be podcast. Let go of that mouse, get out of your PJs and take the resistance door-to-door—to register the vote, to canvass the voters, to get out the vote. Donate time to your union (if you’re not in a union, why not?) or to the troublemakers I’ve already listed here and on our site. This may seem a stupendously unoriginal suggestion, but I know of no other method more effective for confronting the armed and dangerous junta that has seized the White House.

DATE A VOTER
Voting, like bowling and love, should never be done alone. As our sponsor, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, says, make a date to ‘Arrive with Five.’ And keep this comic book in your holster – with our 800 numbers and your photo ID in your hand. And Bobby, make sure your ID says, “Robert Kennedy JUNIOR” or your vote is toast.

MAKE THE DEMOCRACY DEMAND: NO VOTE LEFT BEHIND!
I have this crazy fantasy in my head. In it, an election is stolen and the guy who’s wrongly declared the loser stands up in front of the White House and says three magic words: “Count the votes.” You can have all the paper ballots in the world, but if you don’t demand to look at them, publicly, in a recount, you might as well mark them with invisible ink. Democracy requires vigilance The Day After. That’s when you check in at www.stealbackyourvote.org one more time.

Kenyan struggles for US political asylum

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO COLLEGE- Tonight in McHugh Commons, 7pm. Political refugee David Ngaruri Kenney will present a slide show about his ordeal, assisted by his lawyer and ASYLUM DENIED co-author Georgetown Law Professor Philip Schrag. Persecuted for organizing agrarian reforms, Kenney escaped Kenya and sought asylum in the USA, opposed by the US gov. Tonight’s event is sponsored by the PIKES PEAK IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE COLLABORATIVE and advocates for immigration law reforms.

ASYLUM DENIED begins:

After the security officers decided not to shoot me during the night in the forest, they blindfolded me again and forced me back into the van. Terrified, I lost track of time. Finally, the van stopped, and they told me to get out. The officers took me to a building and led me through it. They removed the handcuffs from my wrists and the blindfold from my face. As my eyes adjusted slowly to the light from the only bulb, I could see that I was in some kind of prison. Heavy wire links covered the window.

They ordered me to remove all my clothing. When I was naked, they pushed me through a doorway, and I fell into what seemed to be a dark room. Soon I realized that it was a small cement cell below the level of the prison floor: in essence, a pit. This was the beginning of the worst ordeal of my life.

NLG DU chapter hosts Ward Churchill

Posted on October 5, 2008 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- Ward Churchill will speak Tues, Oct 7, 12-1pm at DU’s Sturm College of Law, Room 180, on THE MYTH OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM, sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild. Detractors are already raising a stir. They’re not scholars, what stake do they have in repudiating Churchill’s work?

If they are simply cheerleading the Eichmann-remark backlash which led to Churchill’s dismissal, the charges of plagiarism seem to have already been debunked. Churchill’s colleagues have weighed in with their testimony, and leading academics have likewise spoken against the actions taken against him.

Nevertheless, the National Lawyers Guild got some flak for sponsoring this lecture. Here’s a note circulated to its members:

Dear NLG:
I am dismayed that you are sponsoring a talk by Ward Churchill. I do not regard him as a fit spokesperson for the progressive movement. While his firing was undoubtedly motivated by the opprobrium engendered by his outrageous and ill-considered comparison of the people in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann, the grounds cited by the University of Colorado for his firing are plagiarism, a serious breach of academic ethics. Churchill is a fourth-rate thinker, he should not have been granted a doctoral degree in the first place, and he should not now be able to peddle his mediocre cant on the lecture circuit — why are you enabling him to do so, and why do imagine that he is qualified to address the issue of academic freedom in general? It is clear that his comments were not made pursuant to his work as an academic, so whether his firing was justified or not, his case is hardly exemplary of the infringement of academic freedom. I do not plan to attend.

I’ll withhold the idiot’s name. But let’s look into what the email author did not, before opening his trap to parrot the usual disinfo talking points. From Tom Mayer, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder:

The research misconduct charges against Ward Churchill are of two general kinds: charges of faulty research and charges of plagiarism. The faulty research accusations have been largely discredited through the efforts of professors Eric Cheyfitz, Michael Yellow Bird, David Stannard, Huanani-Kay Trask, James Craven, Ruth Hsu, and others. These independent scholars, all of whom are intimately familiar with Native American history and culture, have shown that the Report of the Investigative Committee (henceforth called Report) finding Churchill guilty of research misconduct contains numerous errors of omission and commission. The Report improperly converts legitimate scholarly controversies into indictments of the positions taken by Professor Churchill.
…
Procedural fairness in modern jurisprudence requires that accusation, formal charging, decisions about evidence, and imposition of penalties should be clearly separated. This has not happened in the case of Ward Churchill. The CU administration, usually in the person of Provost Philip DiStefano, has functioned as Churchill’s accuser, grand jury, tribunal selector, and sentencing judge. This concatenation of roles makes it easy for political motivations to penetrate the process of adjudication. While a charade of academic due process has been maintained, the treatment of Ward Churchill strongly resembles a political lynching. The plagiarism charges against Professor Churchill are superannuated, unproven, substantively inconsequential, and either wrongheaded or misdirected. His reputation as a scholar has suffered egregiously and unjustifiably as a consequence.

A number of academic luminaries published this May 2007 advert in the NYT Review of Books: An Open Letter Calling on the University of Colorado to Reverse its Recommendation to Dismiss Professor Ward Churchill. An excerpt:

The relentless pursuit of and punitive approach of the University of Colorado at Boulder to Professor Ward Churchill is a revealing instance of the ethos that is currently threatening academic freedom. The voice of the university and intellectual community needs to be heard strongly and unequivocally in defense of dissent and critical thinking. And one concrete expression of such a resolve is to oppose the recommended dismiss Ward Churchill from his position as a senior tenured faculty member.
…
Without nurturing critical thought, learning tends toward the sterile and fails to challenge inquiring minds. For this reason alone, it is crucial that we who belong to the academic community join together to protect those who are the targets of repressive tactics, whether or not we agree with the ideas or expressive metaphors relied upon by a particular individual.

Signed by:
Derrick Bell, Visiting Professor of Law, New York Univ. School of Law
Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Juan Cole, University of Michigan
Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
Richard Delgado, University Distinguished Professor of Law, and Derrick Bell Fellow, University of Pittsburgh
Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University; Visiting Distinguished Professor (since 2002), Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Irene Gendzier, Boston University
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies; Director – Middle East Institute, Columbia University
Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Anthropology, Columbia University
Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar, Department of Sociology, Yale University
Howard Zinn, professor emeritus, Boston University

No blank-check bailout for Wall Street

Posted on September 25, 2008 by NMT

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – Organizations in Southern Colorado will participate in a National Day of Action in opposition to the no-strings attached, $700 billion corporate bailout plan advanced by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson. A press conference will take place 2PM on Thursday, Sept. 25 in front of the Department of Human Services Sand Creek Office at 1635 South Murray Blvd., Colorado Springs.

From the LOCAL PRESS RELEASE:

“We believe the bailout is wrong headed – it’s low-wage working families struggling to make ends meet, who will most suffer the consequences of this kind of bad economic policy,” said Dennis Apuan, community leader and Democratic candidate for Statehouse, District 17. “We must press on our elected officials to ensure that families do not have to make impossible choices between feeding their children, heating their homes and filling their prescriptions. We need leaders who know how to respond to the growing need in our communities – lost jobs, threatened homes, and surging food and energy prices,” Apuan added.

The National Day of Action will feature more than 75 press conferences, demonstrations and other public events throughout the United States. Some of the events are being held by local and national organizations; others will be citizen-organized, involving taxpayers angered by the proposed corporate bailout, as introduced in Congress. The local event will include a voter registration drive and sign-up opportunities to volunteer in community civic engagement.

“With so many of the citizens and residents of House District 17 suffering from the downturn in the economy, it is important that they have a voice in these ill-advised corporate bailouts,” said Rosemary Harris, President of the Colorado Springs Branch NAACP. “This is a diverse community, with people from all racial, social and economic backgrounds. Our lives matter. Our voices matter. And our vote is our true voice. Registering voters who will determine the future policies and future leaders of this House District, this state, and this country is perhaps the best way to respond to the actions of those in Washington,” Harris added.

Among the leaders of the national organizing effort are TrueMajority.org, US Action Education Fund, ACORN, Campaign For America’s Future, Coalition on Human Needs, Military Spouses For Change, National Priorities Project and many others.

From the INDYPENDENT’s Arun Gupta, the ORIGINAL EMAIL CALL-OUT:

NO BAILOUT FOR WALL STREET
Protest on Wall Street this Thursday at 4pm!
Call to Self-Organize

This week the White House is going to try to push through the biggest robbery in world history with nary a stitch of debate to bail out the Wall Street bastards who created this economic apocalypse in the first place.

This is the financial equivalent of September 11. They think, just like with the Patriot Act, they can use the shock to force through the “therapy,” and we’ll just roll over!

Think about it: They said providing healthcare for 9 million children, perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs. If this passes, forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national healthcare, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.

This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the debate. Let’s demonstrate this Thursday at 4pm in Wall Street (see below).

We know the congressional Democrats will peep meekly before caving in like they have on everything else, from FISA to the Iraq War.

With Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the money markets and now this omnibus bailout, well in excess of $1 trillion will be distributed from the poor, workers and middle class to the scum floating on top.

This whole mess gives lie to the free market. The Feds are propping up stock prices, directing buyouts, subsidizing crooks and swindlers who already made a killing off the mortgage bubble.

Worst of all, even before any details have been hashed out, The New York Times admits that “Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it,” and its chief financial correspondent writes that the Bush administration wants “Congress to give them a blank check to do whatever they want, whatever the cost, with no one able to watch them closely.”

It’s socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us.

Let’s take it to the heart of the financial district! Gather at 4pm, this Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern end of Bowling Green Park, which is the small triangular park that has the Wall Street bull at the northern tip.

By having it later in the day we can show these thieves, as they leave work, we’re not their suckers. Plus, anyone who can’t get off work can still join us downtown as soon as they are able.

There is no agenda, no leaders, no organizing group, nothing to endorse other than we’re not going to pay! Let the bondholders pay, let the banks pay, let those who brought the “toxic” mortgage-backed securities pay!

On this list are many key organizers and activists. We have a huge amount of connections – we all know many other organizations, activists and community groups. We know P.R. folk who can quickly write up and distribute press releases, those who can contact legal observers, media activists who can spread the word, the videographers who can film the event, etc.

Do whatever you can – make and distribute your own flyers, contact all your groups and friends. This crime is without precedence and we can’t be silent! What’s the point of waiting for someone else to organize a protest two months from now, long after the crime has been perpetrated?

We have everything we need to create a large, peaceful, loud demonstration. Millions of others must feel the same way; they just don’t know what to do. Let’s take the lead and make this the start!

AGAIN:
When: 4pm – ? Thursday, September 25.
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Why: To say we won’t pay for the Wall Street bailout
Who: Everyone!

PETITION LETTER from 200 ECONOMISTS:

To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate:

As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America’s dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

Signed (updated at 9/25/2008 8:30AM CT)

Acemoglu Daron (Massachussets Institute of Technology)
Adler Michael (Columbia University)
Admati Anat R. (Stanford University)
Alexis Marcus (Northwestern University)
Alvarez Fernando (University of Chicago)
Andersen Torben (Northwestern University)
Baliga Sandeep (Northwestern University)
Banerjee Abhijit V. (Massachussets Institute of Technology)
Barankay Iwan (University of Pennsylvania)
Barry Brian (University of Chicago)
Bartkus James R. (Xavier University of Louisiana)
Becker Charles M. (Duke University)
Becker Robert A. (Indiana University)
Beim David (Columbia University)
Berk Jonathan (Stanford University)
Bisin Alberto (New York University)
Bittlingmayer George (University of Kansas)
Boldrin Michele (Washington University)
Brooks Taggert J. (University of Wisconsin)
Brynjolfsson Erik (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Buera Francisco J. (UCLA)
Camp Mary Elizabeth (Indiana University)
Carmel Jonathan (University of Michigan)
Carroll Christopher (Johns Hopkins University)
Cassar Gavin (University of Pennsylvania)
Chaney Thomas (University of Chicago)
Chari Varadarajan V. (University of Minnesota)
Chauvin Keith W. (University of Kansas)
Chintagunta Pradeep K. (University of Chicago)
Christiano Lawrence J. (Northwestern University)
Cochrane John (University of Chicago)
Coleman John (Duke University)
Constantinides George M. (University of Chicago)
Crain Robert (UC Berkeley)
Culp Christopher (University of Chicago)
Da Zhi (University of Notre Dame)
Davis Morris (University of Wisconsin)
De Marzo Peter (Stanford University)
Dubé Jean-Pierre H. (University of Chicago)
Edlin Aaron (UC Berkeley)
Eichenbaum Martin (Northwestern University)
Ely Jeffrey (Northwestern University)
Eraslan Hülya K. K.(Johns Hopkins University)
Faulhaber Gerald (University of Pennsylvania)
Feldmann Sven (University of Melbourne)
Fernandez-Villaverde Jesus (University of Pennsylvania)
Fohlin Caroline (Johns Hopkins University)
Fox Jeremy T. (University of Chicago)
Frank Murray Z.(University of Minnesota)
Frenzen Jonathan (University of Chicago)
Fuchs William (University of Chicago)
Fudenberg Drew (Harvard University)
Gabaix Xavier (New York University)
Gao Paul (Notre Dame University)
Garicano Luis (University of Chicago)
Gerakos Joseph J. (University of Chicago)
Gibbs Michael (University of Chicago)
Glomm Gerhard (Indiana University)
Goettler Ron (University of Chicago)
Goldin Claudia (Harvard University)
Gordon Robert J. (Northwestern University)
Greenstone Michael (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Guadalupe Maria (Columbia University)
Guerrieri Veronica (University of Chicago)
Hagerty Kathleen (Northwestern University)
Hamada Robert S. (University of Chicago)
Hansen Lars (University of Chicago)
Harris Milton (University of Chicago)
Hart Oliver (Harvard University)
Hazlett Thomas W. (George Mason University)
Heaton John (University of Chicago)
Heckman James (University of Chicago – Nobel Laureate)
Henderson David R. (Hoover Institution)
Henisz, Witold (University of Pennsylvania)
Hertzberg Andrew (Columbia University)
Hite Gailen (Columbia University)
Hitsch Günter J. (University of Chicago)
Hodrick Robert J. (Columbia University)
Hopenhayn Hugo (UCLA)
Hurst Erik (University of Chicago)
Imrohoroglu Ayse (University of Southern California)
Isakson Hans (University of Northern Iowa)
Israel Ronen (London Business School)
Jaffee Dwight M. (UC Berkeley)
Jagannathan Ravi (Northwestern University)
Jenter Dirk (Stanford University)
Jones Charles M. (Columbia Business School)
Kaboski Joseph P. (Ohio State University)
Kahn Matthew (UCLA)
Kaplan Ethan (Stockholm University)
Karolyi, Andrew (Ohio State University)
Kashyap Anil (University of Chicago)
Keim Donald B (University of Pennsylvania)
Ketkar Suhas L (Vanderbilt University)
Kiesling Lynne (Northwestern University)
Klenow Pete (Stanford University)
Koch Paul (University of Kansas)
Kocherlakota Narayana (University of Minnesota)
Koijen Ralph S.J. (University of Chicago)
Kondo Jiro (Northwestern University)
Korteweg Arthur (Stanford University)
Kortum Samuel (University of Chicago)
Krueger Dirk (University of Pennsylvania)
Ledesma Patricia (Northwestern University)
Lee Lung-fei (Ohio State University)
Leeper Eric M. (Indiana University)
Leuz Christian (University of Chicago)
Levine David I.(UC Berkeley)
Levine David K.(Washington University)
Levy David M. (George Mason University)
Linnainmaa Juhani (University of Chicago)
Lott John R. Jr. (University of Maryland)
Lucas Robert (University of Chicago – Nobel Laureate)
Luttmer Erzo G.J. (University of Minnesota)
Manski Charles F. (Northwestern University)
Martin Ian (Stanford University)
Mayer Christopher (Columbia University)
Mazzeo Michael (Northwestern University)
McDonald Robert (Northwestern University)
Meadow Scott F. (University of Chicago)
Mehra Rajnish (UC Santa Barbara)
Mian Atif (University of Chicago)
Middlebrook Art (University of Chicago)
Miguel Edward (UC Berkeley)
Miravete Eugenio J. (University of Texas at Austin)
Miron Jeffrey (Harvard University)
Moretti Enrico (UC Berkeley)
Moriguchi Chiaki (Northwestern University)
Moro Andrea (Vanderbilt University)
Morse Adair (University of Chicago)
Mortensen Dale T. (Northwestern University)
Mortimer Julie Holland (Harvard University)
Muralidharan Karthik (UC San Diego)
Nanda Dhananjay (University of Miami)
Nevo Aviv (Northwestern University)
Ohanian Lee (UCLA)
Pagliari Joseph (University of Chicago)
Papanikolaou Dimitris (Northwestern University)
Parker Jonathan (Northwestern University)
Paul Evans (Ohio State University)
Pejovich Svetozar (Steve) (Texas A&M University)
Peltzman Sam (University of Chicago)
Perri Fabrizio (University of Minnesota)
Phelan Christopher (University of Minnesota)
Piazzesi Monika (Stanford University)
Piskorski Tomasz (Columbia University)
Rampini Adriano (Duke University)
Reagan Patricia (Ohio State University)
Reich Michael (UC Berkeley)
Reuben Ernesto (Northwestern University)
Roberts Michael (University of Pennsylvania)
Robinson David (Duke University)
Rogers Michele (Northwestern University)
Rotella Elyce (Indiana University)
Ruud Paul (Vassar College)
Safford Sean (University of Chicago)
Sandbu Martin E. (University of Pennsylvania)
Sapienza Paola (Northwestern University)
Savor Pavel (University of Pennsylvania)
Scharfstein David (Harvard University)
Seim Katja (University of Pennsylvania)
Seru Amit (University of Chicago)
Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University)
Shimer Robert (University of Chicago)
Shore Stephen H. (Johns Hopkins University)
Siegel Ron (Northwestern University)
Smith David C. (University of Virginia)
Smith Vernon L.(Chapman University- Nobel Laureate)
Sorensen Morten (Columbia University)
Spiegel Matthew (Yale University)
Stevenson Betsey (University of Pennsylvania)
Stokey Nancy (University of Chicago)
Strahan Philip (Boston College)
Strebulaev Ilya (Stanford University)
Sufi Amir (University of Chicago)
Tabarrok Alex (George Mason University)
Taylor Alan M. (UC Davis)
Thompson Tim (Northwestern University)
Tschoegl Adrian E. (University of Pennsylvania)
Uhlig Harald (University of Chicago)
Ulrich, Maxim (Columbia University)
Van Buskirk Andrew (University of Chicago)
Veronesi Pietro (University of Chicago)
Vissing-Jorgensen Annette (Northwestern University)
Wacziarg Romain (UCLA)
Weill Pierre-Olivier (UCLA)
Williamson Samuel H. (Miami University)
Witte Mark (Northwestern University)
Wolfers Justin (University of Pennsylvania)
Woutersen Tiemen (Johns Hopkins University)
Zingales Luigi (University of Chicago)
Zitzewitz Eric (Dartmouth College)

DHS and AIPAC implant fear cancer CELL, a house of horrors in Denver museum circuit (Photos) (Spoiler)

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO- Just in time for this year’s 9/11 commemoration, and in the spirit of deepening America’s public commitment to the self- described endless Global War On Terror, comes THE CELL, a permanent museum exhibit to keep US citizens vigilant to the treat of terrorism. The DHS has provided funds to AIPAC and erstwhile Jewish lobbyists to build this display at the Mizel Museum next to the Denver Art Museum. You might well ask, WHAT are Israeli/Jewish interests doing fanning the flames of the so-called GWOT?

From ML:

collaborators are Rand, MIPT, Lawson Terrorism Information Center, AIC, Melanie Pearlman, regional director of AIPAC, Toby Dershowitz, Courtney Green (Mizel’s daughter) Mark Dubowitz, David Grey, Michael Inlander, Jonathan Schanzer, David Heyman, Brian Michael Jenkins, spook, mercenary, and false flag agent with Kroll Associates, who was in charge of WTC security and hired John O’Neill, who fingered the US ambassador to Yemen in the USS Cole bombing, and who was killed on 9/11, and Clifford May, of the RMN, NY Times, Committee on the Present Danger, and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, ngo CIA fronts.

The CELL is an acronym for Center for Empowered Living and Learning, but in a political world where a reference to “lipstick” is automatically taken to refer to the Ugly American fundamentalist/ bigot/ corrupt/ simpleton/ sow running for GOP VP, the word “cell” is incredibly unsubtle. It’s the dreaded “sleeper cell” of dormant terrorists, meant to allude to the malignant cancer cell poised to spread until its host is dead. Fighting cancer of course means excising every single trace of an inclination of a tumor. While “cell” also describes a small organization, it has another definition certainly inconvenient to our would-be DHS fear-mongering jailers.

It’s a prison cell to which we confine ourselves for the sake of “security.” This hysterical fear spreads like a cancer throughout our nation, seeded by 9/11 and apparently folks who think we need regular inoculations of fear cells.

The display at the CELL is called ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE: UNDERSTANDING THE THREAT OF TERRORISM. It teaches people to join Neighborhood Watch programs, etc, and to keep in touch with the Department of Homeland Security.

When FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was encouraging Americans to overcome their fear. Like a parent’s bedside advice: there’s no bogeyman in the closet, it’s all in your head. How far have we fallen when our own leaders pervert FDR’s axiom to mean the only thing you have to fear is terror (fear itself). Never mind what you have to fear, just fear.

What then do AIPAC and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have to do with scaring Americans into serving the GWOT? Does Israel think that unless Americans are reminded to fear Islam, they might begin to question white man’s incursion into the Middle East? Are Israel’s atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon likely to come into question unless the American public is kept mesmerized by Muslim Terror?

To refer to terrorism as an ideology is already an adolescent fallacy. The term is even inappropriate to isolate a particular means of warfare. Terrorism may be a tactic, but you cannot differentiate between suicide bombers and aerial bombing, between beheadings and extra-judicial preemptive assassination, between kidnappings and extraordinary rendition and torture.

We’re making a visit to THE CELL today, by coincidence on 9/11.
I can’t wait to see how an entire exhibit is going to riff on the never forget always remember TO FEAR illogic. A little knowledge can plant the seed of fear, sufficient knowledge can weed it out.

UPDATE:
The good news is that THE CELL looks like a low-rent Sharper Image meets espionage store. What is the graphic on the front door, a sniper’s crosshairs? All the windows are mirrored except where neon text is scrolling cautionary warnings. In other windows silhouettes of crowds huddle together beneath illuminated shards of falling structures. Another window glamorizes rack after rack of data processing electronics.

The main logo (photo at top of article) features a map of the world overlaid on a fingerprint. I had to laugh at the forced acronym. Center for Empowered Living and Learning. Isn’t to “Live and Learn” an expression for wisdom gained by experience, basically at the expense of mistakes made?

Most distressing however was to see this sign, an indication that the C.E.L.L. is not a temporary exhibit but an integral component of the Denver museum-scape. Does fear-mongering propaganda belong in the CULTURAL COMPLEX? Between Art, History and Library, a House of Horrors?

WE GO INSIDE!
The visitor brochure explains that THE C.E.L.L. exhibit SHATTERED LIVES is “designed to encourage critical thinking.” But a step through its doors proves it intends everything but. With a patronizing audacity beyond Orwell, these A.G.E.N.T.S. lurk with sensory trauma to infect your personal American idyll with fear.

To my mind, they’re Alarmist Goons Elevating a Nonsensical Terrorism Scare.

Picture-taking is forbidden beyond the lobby doors, but after the collage assemblage in the atrium, there’s nothing to photograph. The ticketed portion of the ride consists of crooked halls filled simply with video screens, projections, and blurbs of text on the walls; self-described “sophisticated multimedia techniques.” Monitors and kiosks are peppered throughout in multiples, as if the installation were anticipating subway-strength traffic making a beeline through; or large school groups with no freedom to move laterally.

Of course, the omniscient repetition also indoctrinates us subliminally. The TV news clips sample a half dozen terrorism incidents, Munich, Lockerbie, Nairobi, et EL AL. Remote voices accompany still photos of bloodied carnage. Amidst the intonations of observers and analysts ring two repeated motifs: JFK’s mocking condemnation of terrorists, and Edmund Burke’s admonition “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Someone can’t resist that adage. I wonder if it’s true.

PUTS YOU AT THE SCENE
Before I relate the plenty creepy details, I’ll jump straight to the orchestration’s third movement. Perhaps someone else can compare the programming of THE CELL according to known indoctrination stratagems. I’ll call the third chamber the climax. Automatically-timed doors enforce a six-minute collective “immersion.” Signs warn away anyone with a weak heart, etc, although I didn’t see an alternate passage around. Neither do the doors allow anyone to pass quickly through. They release the previous group before locking to entrap the next.

( S P O I L E R – A L E R T )
Inside, a video-surround chamber simulates a camera obscura viewpoint, first we’re at a summer fair in Denver’s Civic Center Park, then outside the DAM, then a sunny morning on the 16th Street Mall. The movement of bystanders and passersby around us sometimes slows or accelerates. Until SUDDENLY –OF COURSE– we’re at the epicenter of a FURIOUS EXPLOSION and our mid-west urban tranquility is engulfed in fire. Soon enough, floating in the flames come images of urban battlefields, destruction and carnage. Eventually we can recognize the iconic photographs of Pan Am Flight 103, and the rescue of embassy employees in Kenya, about which we were just reminded in the previous chamber. Then we’re treated to a large text message which reminds us that a terrorist attack can strike “anyone, anytime, anywhere,” and we’re released into an antechamber of analysis.

Actually, claustrophobes might want to know that every segment of THE CELL is time-released. But there will be intrusive control elements to offend everyone.

PERSONALIZED ID
For starters, the entrance fee is $8, or $6 to Coloradans. Can you think of why the cost of admission would be more expensive for out-of-state visitors? I can’t. But the discount means patrons must show their ID to buy a ticket. The clerk issues a computer receipt.

Along with your ticket you get a magnetic passcard which you’re instructed to use at progressive kiosks along your route. You swipe your card to gain access to biographical information about a particular victim of terror. The first row of kiosks will reveal a first page of info, a later pod will reveal a second page, etc. No matter which kiosk, your card will only access a single bio, meaning passcards are keyed to the visitor. Mine brought up a middle aged professor whose life was shattered by terrorism. Perhaps a younger visitor would be given a passcard corresponding to a like-aged victim of “Shattered Lives.” Learning, as their own immersion into THE CELL progressed, how their adopted personage fared in THEIR brush with terrorism.

INDOCTRINATION
Let’s see. First chamber: Kennedy, Burke and multimedia barrage. Second chamber: news clips, kiosks with bio part one. Third chamber: BOOM. Fourth chamber: Rand Corporation analysts, so-called experts sitting beneath bookshelves of law books. Dershowitz and the usual talking heads that you see as FOX advisers. One important meme is the accusation that the internet is increasingly being used as a propaganda tool of the Islamists. Websites, blogs, chat rooms are suspect. Trust only the credentialed media apparently…

Two of videos in the last chamber are timed so that you have to watch one, then the other. They include snippets of the videos available at the interactive displays, in case you had chosen not to watch them. There are numerous clips from Islamic television which purport to demonstrate how Muslim children are being indoctrinated against the west.

PHOTOGRAPHS:
Here is what greets us at the entrance of THE CELL, before we even get to the exhibit. First, flashing images of violence and victims. Next, a collage of the FACES OF TERROR. Already we are able to recognize faces from the video sequences on the first wall. (Are there so few victims of terrorism? Or are the show’s makers deliberately limiting the selection of iconic fear-triggers?)

Faces of fear. Isn’t that what “terror” means? We can project ourselves in those images. Faces forever fearful.

Next a map with cross-hairs roaming at seemingly random locations “anywhere.” The text explains that acts of terrorism began in the latter 20th century, and apparently EL AL airline was its principle early target.

What young scholar’s essay does not begin with a “definition?” In this case the word, even more typically, is “for various political, social and cultural reasons” defies definition. How extraordinary! (It reminds me of the www.thecell.org website, which by any standard is written for under-sophisticated readers.)

Here’s the exhibit’s theme, SHATTERED LIVES, adjacent the reception desk ticket counter. The wall is papered with names, resembling the black marble of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, probably these are names from the WTC.

I was directed to take no pictures of the main installation, but I pulled my camera out again right before the exit door.

There I found Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper thanking everyone for visiting the C.E.L.L. and urging us to become active eyes and ears against the terrorist threat.

Of course, could there be any official statement about 9/11 without ex New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighing in? Etc, etc, and so it goes.

But I loved one of the parting shots, TV footage of Giuliani at Ground Zero in 2001 showed him wearing a mask. There’s the brave mayor making a quick round of handshakes, with workers notably not wearing any protection. Every one of those workers is now most famously dead, or suffering respiratory ailments in NYC hospices. While Giuliani still tramps around as 911 hero.

Are you Middle Class?

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Tony Logan

Everybody’s Middle Class these days in America! Go to the Dollar Stores and everybody will tell you that they are mainly Middle Class. Go to Walmart and hear more of the same, whether you are in Sam’s Club or at the Walmart slums.

All the military people will also probably claim themselves to be the Great Middle Class, whether lowest grunt or if they be all the way on up. Right, Colin? Right, Ricardo? Right, David? (Petraeus) Yeah, it’s all one and the same, we are all Middle Class in America! Or so THEY say… Welcome to the USA, Where All the Classes are Middle

Democratic Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, is one sorry ass mother

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Tony Logan

Ray Nagin and Dubya Bush Ray Nagin is a typical sorry ass Democratic Party hack. Like all of these mothers, Ray likes to help out the Republicans both rhetorically and concretely. When the Republicans wanted to ethnically clean the City of New Orleans by tearing down and not rebuilding public housing, they had a a friend in Ray. And what will stand out about the Hurricane Gustav that never really fully materialized, will be Ray’s waving the rhetorical shotgun against supposed future ‘looters’. Commentator David Zirin at Znet summed up Nagin’s threats against ‘looters’ below…

‘New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said over the weekend, “Anybody who’s caught looting in the city of New Orleans will go directly to Angola [Louisiana State Penitentiary]. You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You go directly to the big house, in general population.”

Considering that many of the so called looters after Katrina, were fighting for their lives, and considering that the media had color-coded looters, with white residents classified as heroes, the implications of Nagin’s dictate is chilling. It’s horrifying to think that they could be laying their head in the former slave plantation known as Angola.’

His full commentary, Gustav & the Dome, give a good view of how the Republican US federal government is playing with the people of New Orleans, with Democratic Party Mayor Ray Nagin fully on board assisting with their crimes of neglect, corruption, and overt racism.

Might we ask ourselves, too, isn’t Ray Nagin exactly how an elected Barack Obama most likely would become? Ray Nagin seems like the perfect Democratic Party model for such a politician like Obama. None of Obama’s foreign policy plans seem to be a threat in the least to the now current Republican Party agenda. And Ray Nagin has not been a threat to their New Orleans agenda either.

When Nagin made his threats against his imaginary ‘looters’, he had just rushed back into the city from the Democratic Party Convention in Denver. It’s all photo op for these guys any way, and he was needed to show ‘unity’ with the Republicans in New Orleans more than grandstanding with Biden and Obama at the convention.

One wonders, what will it take for our country to get fed up with the likes of these guys? They come as a team, and as a team they must finally be thrown out for anything to ever change.

Denver DNC photographs by others

Posted on September 1, 2008 by Eric Verlo

SUNDAY R68 RALLY (Michael G. Seamans on Flickr.)

SUNDAY R68 PARADE (Imiglio, Flickr)

SUNDAY R68 PARADE

SUNDAY R68 PARADE- Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign

SUNDAY R68 PARADE

SUNDAY UNCONVENTIONAL ACTION CIVIC CENTER PARK

MONDAY MARCH TO COURTHOUSE

MONDAY MINT LEVITATION- (David Bjorkman, Zone 913 Photo Agency)

TUESDAY PARADE- (Al Crespo)

WEDNESDAY IVAW BUST (Jadydangel)

Human Rights Watch is a US State Department vehicle, not a genuine human rights organization

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Tony Logan

The broadening conflict between the US and Russia has brought to the fore the role of the Human Rights Watch in promoting US State Department and Pentagon propaganda. They do this by hiding themselves behind their name, which leads the public to think that they are an independent group of concerned world citizens merely working for human rights observance.

However, a brief visit to their web site alone should set off some alarm bells. Human Rights Watch That’s right! There is no interest shown by this organization about human rights abuses by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan! Somalia, too, is off their radar! These three countries are not mentioned on their web site! At least not on the front page, and I couldn’t locate anything at all on other pages either.

When one sees such a thing and thinks about it a tad, then one begins to wonder about where the funding comes from for a group called Human Rights Watch? Here is Source Watch about the funding…

‘On January 1, 2005 they obtained a five-year, $15 million challenge grant from the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. “The Sandlers and their children will donate $3 million a year for five years through the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation as long as Human Rights Watch raises $6 million annually in matching funds from first-time donors or existing donors who increase their contributions.” [2]’

So who are the Sandler Family and their Sandler Foundation? We have to go to wikipedia to find out this about Herb Sandler. Yes, he is a billionaire Democratic Party promoter of the group, banker and businessman.

We need to inform the public more about these billionaire promoters of US State Department human rights propaganda who push the Pentagon program for US world dominance. It is not only Human Rights Watch that is a US State Department vehicle for propaganda dissemination, but also the Carter Foundation, where one can quickly find out (if you think to look?) that it too is head up by another billionaire. I am not talking about Jimmy Carter either, but rather John Jay Moore, who is director of the Board of Trustees of the Carter Center, another human rights constantly blathering group respected so much by so many Democratic Party voting liberal types.

So when you hear Human Rights Watch running on about such and such, or so and so, ask yourself, do you really want American billionaires to be defining ‘human rights’ for the world? Is it up to us to just blindly follow the billionaires like Bill Gates, George Soros, et al when they tell us who are supposedly being bad guys, and who are supposedly respecting human rights throughout the world? These American billionaires run US foreign policy even as they might be temporarily a little bit at odds with one president or the other. They are not grand defenders of human rights at all.

So back to Human Rights Watch for one more look at them and what they are really doing in the world about us. Who is behind Human Rights Watch? (2004)

Here below is the part about who is funding the HRW… You will see that there are lots of other American billionaires doing it beside Big Wig Businessman Sandler and his ‘foundation’. Do you think that these are the folks who really back human rights world wide? I don’t, and neither should you.

DONORS OF $100,000 OR MORE
Dorothy and Lewis Cullman
The Aaron Diamond Foundation
Irene Diamond
The Ford Foundation
The Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Fund
Estate of Anne Johnson
The J. M. Kaplan Fund
The Fanny and Leo Koerner Charitable Trust
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The John Merck Fund
The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation
Novib, The Dutch Organization for Development Corporation,
The Overbrook Foundation
Oxfam
Donald Pels
The Ruben and Elisabeth Rausing Trust
The Rockefeller Foundation
Marion and Herbert Sandler, The Sandler Family Supporting Foundation
Susan and George Soros
Shelby White and Leon Levy

DONORS OF $25,000 – $99,999

The Arca Foundation
Helen and Robert Bernstein
Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
Nikki and David Brown
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Compton Foundation, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Davis
The Dr. Seuss Foundation
Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller
Jack Edelman
Epstein Philanthropies
Federation Internationalbacktheyin thee des Ligues des Droits de L’Homme
Barbara Finberg
General Service Foundation
Abby Gilmore and Arthur Freierman
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
Katherine Graham, The Washington Post Company
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
Hudson News
Independence Foundation
The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust
The Henry M. Jackson Foundation
Robert and Ardis James
Jesuit Refugee Service
Nancy and Jerome Kohlberg
Lyn and Norman Lear
Joshua Mailman
Medico International
Moriah Fund, Inc.
Ruth Mott Fund
Kathleen Peratis and Richard Frank
Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation
Ploughshares Fund
Public Welfare Foundation, Inc.
Anita and Gordon Roddick
Edna and Richard Salomon
Lorraine and Sid Sheinberg
Margaret R. Spanel
Time Warner Inc.
U.S. Jesuit Conference
Warner Brothers, Inc.
Edie and Lew Wasserman
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
Malcolm Wiener and Carolyn Seely Wiener
The Winston Foundation for World Peace

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