Tag Archives: Debt

Higher food prices now being driven by higher fuel prices

Posted on by
Reply

We can now see the first effects of the world energy crisis, as local grocery stores are creeping their prices of basic foods upward. The dollar stores also are not exactly dollar stores these days, and never will be again. There are two reasons for these price hikes.

First off, the Pentagon is doing this to us. We are throwing them money (and hence the military suppliers and contractors money, too) like it is going out of style. This is money we simply don’t have, and therefore it is coming from loans to our government, who then passes it off to those that have literally bought the government.

We know who eventually will get stuck with paying off these bad debts, too. It will be the working class and lower middle class of our country. And meanwhile, the rich suck at this gigantic welfare program (teat) with absolutely no shame, as they wave the American flag outside all their offices pretending to be the great patriots. The lower echelons of this fraud get 10% off!

Second cause of the rising prices is simply that we have hit the crisis of declining world oil supplies head on, and nobody has any solution to it beyond trying to corner the world supply (Thank you, Dick Cheney and Dumbo Dubya). But capturing control of world petroleum supply doesn’t exactly increase it, even if such a plot were to be ever successful. All in all, we still have yet to come up with an alternative to the mobility of oil transport, and we are dependent on oil, as we have been for all the later half of the industrial revolution.

Some think that the solution is turning back to coal. Some think it is turning to the deadly nuclear option. Some dream of sun, hydrogen fuel cells, and wind. Meanwhile, in the real world, it is still oil that fuels civilization, uh ‘civilization’ as we know it.

We currently have a rapacious economic system that expands constantly at nature’s expense. Nature is now fed up with it, even if our family and neighbors are not. Nature is run down, and will be run out if we continue this way.

Meanwhile, the prices have begun to inch up and we grow uncomfortable here at home. Elsewhere, things have grown more desperate from the start. Ahead, it is $4/ gallon prices this summer, and the sky will certainly be the limit. Oil barrel prices flown up from below $10 a barrel (not adjusted for inflation) as close back as the mid- ’80s some 22 years ago, to heading towards $120 a barrel right now. It is easy to see how our dollars are now being turned to pennies and we haven’t seen anything yet.

There are some horrible times for the world ahead as the world begins to run into shorter and shorter supply of oil. Meanwhile, let’s shop if we can, shall we not? It’s going to be much harder to do that soon.

Predatory bank strikes again…

Posted on by
1

They might try to sue me, but I don’t owe them any money… mainly because I was a) never dumb enough to fall for their shit and b) didn’t have any property to triple-lien mortgage in order to get one of their loans.

Talking, of course, about Countrywide.

THE major player in the subprime mortgages >selling those mortgages for stock options > getting the Yankee government to bail their thieving asses out (but not the people whose mortgages they’re foreclosing)

They’re all over Cable TeeVee now, pushing their same old Bill Consolidation Loan, (available, of course, only to homeowners)

And where are they getting the bread to buy up more homes at a discount rate?

Could it possibly be that multi-hundred billion dollar bailout “our” president gave them?

Yeppers, true American “Conservative” values in action. Spend your way out of debt.

Sincerest apologies if this seems repetitive… but sometimes the madness they’re pulling is so damned unbelievable you have to write it out or speak it out loud, just to focus on the fact that it is actually REAL.

They’re redefining the classic definition of Chutzpah.

Are we, are we, are we there yet, Dad?

Posted on by
2

‘What a vacation! Yeah, a vacation from reality, Kids! We could take it because we took out those loans though. We’ll pay back the national debt some day, but today let’s just enjoy the road trip, OK? Hey, look out the window! HEY! I thought I saw an al-Qaeda’s member flying by!’

‘Dad, are we there yet? Are we, are we, are we there yet? I’m hungry. I need to go to the bathroom now. Are we there yet?’

‘Now, now. I told you that there would be no clean bathroom in this desert. You’ll just have to wait. Besides, there are no good hamburgers here either. Just falafel, if even that? We’ll be getting into Tehran late this evening though. Just wait!’

‘Oh, Dad!’ You always take us on the most awful vacations. All we wanted to do this summer is go to the mall and shop. Why’d you have to take us here, Dad?’

‘Look! Someday you will appreciate this trip. You will thank me for it, you will. Besides, you will like the fire works display tonight, I am sure. Your mom Hillary and I have wanted to take this vacation for a long time. Now just sit quiet and watch the road. See that body of water way over there? It’s called the Persian Gulf.’

‘Oh. Dad….’ tears come rolling down the kids cheeks. The kids are tired. And then they fell asleep once again, in the back seat of the car. Meanwhile, good ol Dad continues to drive resolutely down the road, headed towards Tehran. This is the trip he had most planned for!

An American Socialism?

Posted on by
Reply

In the current housing bankruptcy “crisis” which was in fact created by the privately owned Fed through interest rates that reached 1% in 2003 combined with lax oversight of the banks, the bail out now being talked about in Congress will help… no surprise… the banks by and large. It is meant to deceive the public again by using words such as “helping” the homeowners, or “saving” peoples homes. NOTE: When you save a mortgage you save the bank’s payments by insuring they keep coming in. Besides the fact that people don’t own their homes, the banks do!

Regardless, in a socialist system this kind of gross manipulation would never have happened in the first place. And the half honest sensible solution by these charlatans in Congress should be to refi these homes to these homebuyers at the new lesser value. Because the value is lost anyway. And these homes were wildly overvalued by an out of control speculatory financial cabal. Besides, the bundled debt obligations and structured investment vehicles are worthless. Adding misery, the value of these homes will keep crashing. The rub? The banks and Investors made millions off these paper schemes and walked away… and probably paid little or no taxes. And now, the home buyers who were preyed upon by these lenders, owe money on a devalued home that was used only as a commodity by the “gentlemen” on Wall St. to manipulate, through the creation of CDO’s and SIVs? Sure! That’s capitalism. Systemic political and corporate corruption. And it’s going to get worse.

Congress desperately needs this property tax, interest payment, revenue stream to keep flowing to the banks and the states. But the reason this is a problem for Congress of “what is the best poison” to cure this, is that to bail out the home buyer who got screwed, is using tax money to keep receiving tax money. It’s double taxation!! And a zero sum game… besides rewarding the crooks. More deficit spending. But the Fed doesn’t care about homeowners and thusly told Congress as much by introducing Paulson’s new scheme to have the Fed take over the duties of the SEC and oversight of the big investment banks and their financial debauchery and chicanery. To keep the graft and secret deals going. The “dark trades” as they’re called. And spineless Congress cannot protest. They are owned by the Fed. In fact they are linked in responsibility by their repealing of the Glass-Steagall act with Greenspan’s urging (which Clinton didn’t veto) and attaching the Commodities Reauthorization Act attached to an appropriations bill in 2000. Ahhh the rewards for the capitalist elite are sweet indeed. No accountability, no worries, no chance of getting the blame. The yellow press at their beckon call.

Socialism would put all properties under the ownership of the people with all rents going to the citizens public fund and distributed to each social association for necessary services, loans, needs. There is no reason for housing or land to have any kind of increased value over the years. NONE. Ask yourself why your car then, doesn’t appreciate in value? Or your furniture? Real estate has been another way to oppress and exploit people by putting them into massive debt and making them pay banks twice the value of the home over the term of the loan. Besides the fleecing by the middlemen realtors and speculators using homes as commodities,(thus the current death spiral in housing). Have you ever looked at your amortization schedule? On a fixed rate 30 year loan? You pay twice or more of purchase price, if you paid off your loan! And you’re paying the bank first. We are insane for agreeing to this but that’s why the banks are the most powerful sector of capitalism. Which include the privately owned Federal Reserve. Oh you say, I made thousands when the market was good! No, you made the banks richer and more powerful by putting the next person into new debt for 30 years at 1 1/2 to 2 times the mortgage payment. Now your house increasing in value, puts upward pricing pressure on all homes and finally drives them out of reach of buyers. Thus the 1% housing bubble. For every person who “wins” in the capitalist system, 8 people lose (and those who depend on them). Otherwise you wouldn’t have a system where 10% of the population own 85% of the household wealth and property. The trick is to keep you thinking you’re winning when you’re really just up to your neck in debt in this American Casino Land.

Capitalism is a constant barrage of fairy tales and propaganda aimed at deluding the masses into believing there is no other way a social/economic system can be run. And that to be rich (or at least have the opportunity-possibility to be) is the ultimate goal because that is the genuine expression of self freedom and self worth! Or the lie that mercantilism and worker owned production could not work alone… without the corporate structure or Wall St. But the facts on the ground show us the truth, that capitalism is a fascist system designed to concentrate wealth at the top, steal our productive gains, and by doing so, makes those at the top the most powerful, privileged members of a society. It’s Monarchical. A plutocracy. Oligarchs rule. Fascism! Congress, the court system and state/city regulatory systems are subservient in every way to maintaining the fascist construct. Question: Ever taken part in an organization by volunteering to help change one of the many injustices in this country? You know what I’m talking about then. Wall after wall after obstacle after pot hole after bought off politician …all lined up to trip you, slip you and flip you upside down. New rules to increase petition signatures required for public ballots. Electronic vote stealing and manipulation. Redistricting. Third parties crushed. City council and board meetings held during weekdays. Hundreds of fees and licenses required to run business. Lobbyists at every turn. Zoning codes that dis-allow creative housing solutions and energy use. State insurance commissions. Mineral rights sold for pennies on the dollar… On and on and on… Unless of course your organization/church is involved in taking up the slack for capitalisms failures… then you’re a Mother Theresa! What’s that saying? “I work to feed the poor, they call me a saint. I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

Many people I talk to, on all fronts, are frustrated. And many realize that it is the corporate structure, their power to manipulate policy, to move jobs overseas, encourage wars, and the massive deregulated profit taking and currency manipulation that is at the center core of this American milieu. Besides the fact that no one I talk to has make a thin dime or dollar on Wall St. But the thing I keep running into are differences on how to solve the problem without changing the system drastically. A hypothesis that can be presented is that there is much delusion and neurosis in this land. The idea that we can somehow keep the system we have and make it work for the masses of productive working people, is the delusion as repeatedly, the corrupt one party system consistently proves otherwise. The neurosis is contained within this same idea that is the crux of the delusion. Knowing that something needs to change drastically and on the other hand knowing (by experience or observation) that it is irrational and impossible within the corrupt fascist matrix that will not allow drastic change that is needed. This creates neurosis. The constant tension of this negative psychic entrapment, is energy that has to be released and is finally. Usually negatively in some way. But it could be positive and productive IF there were a real alternative to work toward. Democratic socialism.

Socialists are realists. They are objective creative intelligent humanitarians who know that this delusion and neurosis is not healthy and requires a clean break from the causation. Often I am scoffed at by others for this view. Where? Where would – could this happen? I think that if it’s possible anywhere it would be in a state that seceded from the nation. Vermont’s trying and testing the water. Though even then, there would be no consensus for a socialist form of citizen led, decentralized government. No, until the public is re-educated as to the true intent and purpose of democratic socialism and its platform, and can be persuaded that exploitation of man by man is unacceptable, they will forever bicker and fight among themselves, as children who fight for a place in the lunch line or over possessions. Seemingly without the skills to reassess, re-strategise, and break away from the malignancy present all around us. Socialism takes a deep commitment and concentration to assess the situation on the ground (objectivism) and rationalize, then actualize the alternatives that will then benefit the real producers of capital (us) and replace the owners of the means of production and pushers of propaganda. It’s time to consider socialism as the correct answer to our dilemma.

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

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

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

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

Hands off Haiti!

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

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

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

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

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

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

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fed makes emergency donation…

Posted on by
Reply

In terms of a rate slash, on a Sunday evening. Because it’s Monday in the asian markets and now the London and Zurich and Paris and Berlin markets…

In six hours the markets on Wall Street are going to open, just from what’s already happened in Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, HongKong, and Shanghai, and is rolling across the continents like a huge tsunami of Economic Doom, and early trades here, the Market is going to take a 200 point hit at opening bell.

In a sick ironic twist, the Bear Market is actually as of today a reaction to the Fed bailing out the Americans, the rate slash made it possible for J.P.Morgan/Chase to buy up … Bear …

The markets are now skittish across the world because “the Housing Bubble” the “we overbuilt for a decade and now the market is adjusting mr Bush was babbling about on Tuesday, is only the tip of a very large pimple.

So they cheated, lied, swindled and outright stole, and then got several Tax breaks on top of that… selling the debt on the Predatory Lending to finance other scams… and still other scams….

Did I mention the Chase group in that? why yes I did… they’re the ones who appointed Wolfowitz to be head of the World Bank just last year.

Now, I’m reasonably certain that Mr Bush had plans for what to do when the airborne fecal mass contacts the rotary atmospheric circulation device…

Plans that no doubt involved a quick resignation and being whisked off on the first available flight out of the country, with suitcases full of cash,…

…then spending the rest of his unnatural life in some Mediterranean villa, sitting around the pool drinking martinis with other exiled dictators…

Hey, there’s a Job Opening for him in Afghanistan, and he’s already expressed interest in filling the position!

Meanwhile the victims of this massive ripoff won’t get reimbursed anything.

The thieves who created the problem will have taken too much of the money for any to be left over, to distribute to their victims…

If all this sounds cynical and bitter, that’s only because I’ve calmed down a bit.

I was enraged, vengeful and hate-filled before.

And they wonder why people throw airplanes at their buildings.

The destruction of the dollar

Posted on by
Reply

The American business community, the Democratic and Republican Parties, and the US government they control have destroyed the dollar. Simply put, they pumped it up with empty air, and now nobody wants to use it as international currency. Look at the 3 alternative currencies: gold, the Euro, and barrels of oil. All these alternatives have real use value based on real evaluation of what they can buy, while the paper dollar has nothing other than the Pentagon to back it up now. Take it or bake, is how they want others to shake.

What the paper dollar actually has to back it up, is only our promise to pay the national debt sometime. However, our government acts more like international gangsters rather than any type of legitimate business men. Gangsters are pretty damn iffy, hence the dollar is plummeting in real value recognized by others.

I include a barrel of oil as true and valued currency in today’s world, along with gold and the Euro. Remember those Mad Max movies? Remember how scarce petroleum was the key to survival in those movies? Thank our American ‘leaders’ for creating the new Mad Max movie we are now part of the cast of.

The dollar is dead, How Long Live the Empire?! Remember The Empire of Mad Max’s world? Good luck, Kids. The Empire is turning you into rats that will scurry around for survival. It’s not the movies any more. It’s what the supposedly responsible American business community has done for y’all. It’s Mad Max’s world!

Paul Roberts’ asks, ‘Who is going to bail us out?’ Good question, so see his answer for yourself.

Horton Hears Your Fetus

Posted on by
Reply

Horton Hears a Who
Do you remember the lesson of Horton Hears a Who? No matter how small, everyone matters. Fox has brought the theme to the animated screen and not-unlikely bedfellows are seizing on the message. Under the revival tents, the anti-abortion preachers want you to glean something further from Horton: that the very life of a tiny embryo could depend on you, if only your inner elephant can be persuaded you hear its call.

Although, they’re are not talking about the embryos deliberately created en vitro by fertility clinics, terminated when too many have taken to the uterine wall. Nor babies miscarried, nor still-born. Do the pro-life Hortons not hear them?

Let’s agree that abortion is tragic, and shouldn’t be bandied about as a lifestyle choice like a Brazilian wax or a boob job. Personally I’d prefer our culture wasn’t so enthralled with promiscuity. Don’t encourage drinking if you can’t live with the car wrecks. Don’t paint sex as the ultimate of fulfillments if your society has set as acceptable norm a procreative age over a dozen years later than we are biological capable.

Fighting Fifth Avenue and mankind’s propensity to hedonism is doubtless harder than bringing the hammer down on a pregnant teen. Shouldn’t the church come down on immorality instead of its victims? Abortion is a hard choice, like any harsh dilemma. We euthanize cats and dogs when there become too many. A “domestic” animal designates those in man’s care, which live to serve us, and die according to our dinner plan. We ride our horses but leave them to the French to eat. To our credit we show a reluctance to face nature’s difficult choices.

Religious beliefs have been the ultimate causes of war, justifying killings in fanatical number, to this present day. Religion is always behind genocide. What is it about pre-infanticide that’s got zealots so indignant?

Is this about an egg and sperm’s right to wed? Or about the church’s prerogative to mandate pregnancy? I think to a large extent, it’s about enforcing puritanism, the better to reserve the sex drive for manipulating people. You can’t have your masses contentedly debauched, they must be repressed and thwarted, being lured by sex to get married and pregnant to breed the next batch of easily motivated worker/consumer drones.

I admire the Right to Life credo that all life is sacred. But is it? Right to Lifers remind me of pedigree animal rescue outfits, only THEIR breed is sacred enough worth saving. What about other forms of life? Owls? Whales, small fish? Are these pious folks practicing vegans, concerned not to exploit any living being? Do they feed themselves like the Buddhists monks who consume liquids through a strainer, careful not to swallow even a flea?

The pro-lifer’s concern is not for the human being small person, it’s only for the unborn baby. And it’s only for the unborn of their likeness, and more than likely from their neighborhood. Other cultures’ offspring are mere driving factors of overpopulation, unless they are our colonial suppliers of cheap labor.

And what about already born babies? Or babies -or tiny children- belonging to foreigners, right now being shot at by our troops? Where is the Right to Life alarm about people we are depriving of life? Horton’s lesson was that others matter, regardless of size. Would that mean not just little people? What of adult people being exploited, tortured or condemned to death, who is concerned for their right to life?

One of the charms of Dr. Seuss is that his myriad creatures represent an incalculable gamut of fantasy beings. Horton does not hear a baby elephant for example, he hears a WHO. The Whos of Whoville are not of his world at all, and might well inhabit a forth dimensional anthill as far as Horton can figure. Would this not be quite the humanitarian message for religious nuts preoccupied only for their own? Miserably too, they are not obsessed with precisely their own, but about YOUR own, whom they claim as theirs to save. Their daughters are having abortions, to the last, I can assure you that.

The your-baby demagogues are motivated by penance, for deed past or to come, but instead of flagellating themselves, they’re beating on your daughter. They are concerned for the right to life of her baby, to be conceived unprepared for and un-afforded. They stand for that baby’s right to the unending cycle of ill-parenting, vocational training, indebtedness, and life of servitude.

Dr. Seuss lived long enough to see the Religious Right’s interest in exploiting the Horton Hears a Sinner theme. Both Theodor Geisel and his widow publicly repudiated the holier-than-thou interpretation being used to agitate against abortion. But now his earthly voice is extinguished, and we can see Pro-Lifers don’t respect the dead either.

America ‘In debt we trust’

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

Living better at the expense of others

Posted on by
1

SURVIVAL OF THE FATTEST by Jens GalschiotPerhaps you thought it couldn’t get worse. Colorado College hosts speakers who deny global warming, or dismiss the “one or two degrees.” They have speakers who champion imperialism by debt. Coming up, on February 26th at Packard Hall, CC has asked Wal-mart VP of public relations Ray Bracy to address economic development. I kid you not, his address is: “Saving People Money So They Can Live Better: A Global Perspective.”
 
Do you almost want to hear this pitch? Materialism to live better. Exploitation the means to an end. A global picture of happiness? Now that’s going to take balls.
 
In the meantime, consider the bronze statue Survival of the Fattest, and this WTO lament, for Art In Defense Of Humanism:
I’m sitting on the back of a man
He is sinking under the burden
I would do anything to help him
Except stepping down from his back.

Say’s Law and undemocratic monetarism

Posted on by
Reply

Richard C. Cook has written an excellent synthesis of C. H. Douglas, Keynes and Galbraith in Global Research repudiating the orthodox economics used to legitimate the Federal Reserve under which the world’s capitalist economies are enslaved.
 
Cook writes: “Overall, banks have served four main purposes—one legitimate, one dubious, one puzzling, and one deeply flawed.

1. Legitimate
“The first purpose—a legitimate one—is to facilitate commerce. It is often cheaper for a business to borrow capital from a bank than to stockpile cash itself. This was the purpose of the state banking system in the U.S. prior to the Civil War. The state-chartered banks existed to provide working capital for commercial transactions, such as stocking inventory, or for business expansion. Use of banking for these purposes was tied to specific commercial activities—the “real bills” doctrine. Of course credit used for this purpose has a cost which is factored into prices. When these loans are repaid, they are canceled at the bank which thus removes purchasing power from the economy. This is another area, besides retained corporate earnings, that contributes to the gap between prices and purchasing power identified by C.H. Douglas. But lending for commerce itself remains a legitimate activity.

2. Dubious
“The second use of banking—the dubious one—is for capital formation in the creation of new businesses, a function which overlaps with capital markets such as the stock exchanges. But this use very easily turns into lending for speculation by permitting investors to borrow money in order to buy stock on margin or to “leverage” investing by borrowing money in order to purchase whole companies. The costs of this borrowing also show up in consumer prices without introducing any new purchasing power into the system.

“This practice has mushroomed in recent decades starting with the buyout/merger/acquisition mania of the 1980s and has reached disastrous proportions through the creation and growth of equity and hedge funds. The use of bank borrowing for such speculative purposes is an obvious abuse that should not even be legal. It is actually a form of theft from the nation’s natural and normal store of credit that should be carefully administered by competent public authorities as a utility as critical to social health as the water supply.

3. Puzzling
“The third use of banking—the puzzling one—is for consumer credit. This includes borrowing for big purchases such as buying houses and automobiles, or small ones such as items bought with credit cards. Increasingly it includes purchasing even the necessities of life such groceries.

“Buying an object with a credit card often means that a person cannot afford to buy it at the present moment. So the person is gambling that he or she will be able to pay off this loan—including interest—at some point in the future. What is puzzling is that in the midst of what is claimed to be the most productive economy in the history of the world, why are most people so poor that they cannot buy what they need to live with the proceeds of their present earnings? This is the ultimate repudiation of Say’s Law and its derivatives—Libertarianism, supply-side economics, and the like.

4. Flawed
“The fourth use of banking—the one that is deeply flawed—is the financing of government inflation through purchase of public debt instruments which allow deficit financing of public activities, most particularly the waging of war. Banking for the purpose of financing war has a long pedigree, going back to the medieval times where kings were perpetually in hock to the money-lenders. Today we have the national debt, which has been used primarily for war, as well as for the Keynesian pump-priming described previously. A classic case of the use of banking for deficit financing of war is the borrowing by the federal government under the Bush/Cheney administration to raise the trillion dollars already spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”

Promoting education and ignorance

Posted on by
14

Have I a verdict on Greg Mortenson now that I’ve had a chance to see him? He’s an incredibly likable guy, doing great good; to my values, doing fantastic work. But I’m a secular westerner, concerned about preserving the ideals of the enlightenment, and worried about the challenge posed by overpopulation. Are these the concerns of Islam? Do fundamentalist Muslims favor personal fulfillment of the individual and smaller families?

Greg Mortenson is advancing my agenda and I’d certainly like to think this will lead to prosperity and peace for everyone, but in the meantime I’m certain these actions are antagonistic to Muslims. I’d prefer we consult with Islamic leaders about prospects for peaceful coexistence, not peace engineered on curbing their numbers.

Perhaps Greg can champion the educating of Americans to tolerate other belief systems, some of which may not value literacy above family and religion.

Westerners subject themselves to schooling because it’s the cultural conditioning with which we equip ourselves for our complex post-agrarian world. Does everyone need it? Do Pakistani girls who are going to marry by age twelve need to be literate? Critical thinking and scientific understanding are values of ours. Getting married at a later age, and having fewer children, are values of ours.

If Islamic fundamentalists are rushing to indoctrinate adherents with the intention of recruiting Jihadists to attack western encroachment, you have to admit Mortenson’s conquest by education would be one of the causes. Mortenson’s methods are infinitely preferable to our military’s, but they are invasive all the same.

Central Institute AsiaThe disservice of Greg Mortenson’s lecture tour may be that he’s selling an over-simplified solution. Mortenson preached a message of hope not fear, hurrah, to an audience that really wants to hope. With Pennies for Peace, we can hope that kids’ pocket change will bring us closer to world peace. With the Central Asia Institute, we can hope to end-run our own government’s incurable ways. Is it true, do you think?

The white elephant in the room was so palpably invisible Dr. Greg may well have trained with David Copperfield. Not even lip service to it: Capitalism.

Mortenson’s idealism does not address globalization, the World Bank, debt, impoverishment by design, intentional destabilization, protracted war-making, etc. We the People may want world peace, we the people of the world could possibly come together through education, but will our industrial mechanisms allow it? Americans can’t even fraternize with Mexico!

The fantastic promise of Mortenson’s efforts would distract Americans from the more difficult challenge at hand, for which many of us perhaps are finding it harder to muster hope: arresting the destructiveness of our market forces, our government and its corporate oligarchy. Putting our hopes in schooling the children of Islam will be of little avail if our military-driven economies increase their plundering and exploitation all the while.

That’s who I think is behind the promotion of Three Cups of Tea. That’s why the Center of Homeland Security sponsored Mortenson’s visit. That’s why a self-defined hapless do-gooder is getting such traction. He’s selling a fix so easy it requires no introspection. Nothing to fix here, it’s the Muslim who needs learnin’.

Parasitical capitalism exposed

Posted on by
Reply

Got Real Player?
 
Two hours of excellent deconstruction of the big financial parasites and how 2008 will see a depression and a transfer of tax burden (bail out) onto the working and what’s left of the middle class. Banks are calling in loans on hedge funds and hedge funds don’t have the money (lost it gambling) so they are selling their assets (any assets) which include stocks. That’s why we see the big drops in the stock market. And the writing off of billions by the banks …large and small. And their stock price declining.

If the Fed keeps lowering interest rates (printing money to save their banking and wall street buddies) we’re screwed and it won’t help. That’s the same as me giving someone more money who is already in deep debt and has no way to repay me. They, the Fed, has screwed things up so bad we’d still be f__ked if they raised interest rates. It’s a liquidity fix one way and a credit tightening the other. But either way credit is cut off due to all the debt.

And all of this due to the subprime and criminal mortgage lending practices of the banks the Fed is supposed to be watching. Greenspan is a crook of magnificent proportion! He should be behind bars!! But it’s a systemic problem of corrupt fascist business model since the Fed took over the management, value and issuing of our currency in 1913. And largely amplified after the 1971 de-coupling of gold from the dollar. Dr Hudson explains how it’s all working to our demise.

This was in August before we see now Kucinich, like Paul, is being kept out of the debates and marginalized by the media. Hudson is Kucinich’s financial adviser. Some of you may not agree with his tax solutions but regardless, this is a scathing indictment of the current globalist capitalist financial/economic system. Deeply corrupt and terminal.

Dr. Michael Hudson on Financial corruption and collapse
Part 1 – Aug 15
Part 2 – Aug 22

Links on this site to the Aug 15 and 22 interviews.

Whose war?! OUR war!

Posted on by
2

United For Peace and Justice Iraq Moratorium November 16 Acacia Park Colorado Springs
At the demonstration last week to mark UFPJ’s Iraq Moratorium we marched from City Hall to the IVAW guard tower installation in Acacia Park. On the way we chanted a call: “WHOSE WAR?!” with the response: “BUSH’S WAR!” It was not the time to quibble between protesters, but should it really not have been “YOUR war?”

It is OUR war now isn’t it? We are engaged in it, the Democrats in congress are funding it, we support the troops who are fighting it. It’s OUR war. We might prefer to say it belongs to the idiots among us, but now they’re pointing the finger back at us. It’s our war, YOUR and MY war unless you have an alibi.

It seems to me the antiwar effort can no longer even be about THE war, nor just about Iraq or Afghanistan. The objective now is to resist empire. Repudiate imperialism.

It’s no longer about extracting our boys to bring them home. We’re over there for keeps, to share the fate of the victims of the destabilized hell we have unleashed. Now the antiwar pacifist message has become defeatist, by imperialist standards. We must ask our soldiers now to take their fingers off their joy sticks, quit playing the conquering occupiers, become a repentant reconstruction force, and serve their time working to pay off our nation’s war debt.

Darfur

Posted on by
1

Darfur AID not sanctionsYesterday’s Colorado College rally (October 29) by the interventionist group, ‘Save Darfur’, was quite an educational event. There, we got to see a train load of comfortable American speakers demand that we begin an economic war against a Fourth World country, Sudan, to be carried out by US corporations and the US government.

How could anybody be against that, their puzzled faces questioned those few of us that were there with signs against the increasing US military presence in Africa? Don’t you want to help the people of Darfur? As a matter of fact, we do, and that is precisely why we oppose groups like ‘Save Darfur’. They do not advocate economic assistance to Africans, but rather they advocate ‘policing’ them and dominating them from Washington D.C.

Not a word was said about opposing AFICICOM, the new Pentagon intervenionist command center designed to terrorize Africa. Not a word was said about the US use of Ethiopian troops to invade Somalia and overthrow the government there. The Eritrean government is predicting an attack on their country backed by the US government since they opposed, and continue to oppose, US actions against the people of Somalia. Not a word was said against US military aggression in Africa at the rally.

The mention of the US genocide against the Iraqi people met a shout from the crowd to ‘stay on focus’ about Darfur. Nobody talked about the need to end the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq by the Pentagon. Nobody talked about the genocide of the Palestinians by the combined US and Israeli governments’ aggression. Not a word was said against the what is being done in Gaza and Lebanon, Pakistan and Iran by current US foreign policy. Not a word was said in opposition to the so called ‘War on Terror’, a made-in-the-US war that breeds terror, and celebrates terror and torture everywhere. Not a word was said against US government torture and rendition of POWs to be tortured by other countries.

Instead, we were exhorted by the speakers to begin a campaign to blame China for African bloodshed! This campaign is to be brought to bear on the Sudanese government and China from the countries that have terrorized Africans for centuries! Nobody in the pro interventionist rally crowd seemed to see anything much wrong with this? Instead they acted as if their actions were some how saintly and divine.

They talked about genocide a lot, though even Jimmy Carter has just declared most recently that the killings in Sudan do not meet the defintion of being a genocide. We agree. See the Christiian Science Monitor report ‘Elders’ criticize West’s response to situation in Darfur…Brahimi says West ‘pampered’ rebels, while Carter calls US’s use of term ‘genocide’ to describe violence ‘unhelpful.’ We too want to see the civil war and bloodshed in Sudan to come to an end, but do not agree with the activities of the group ‘Save Darfur’.

The US has spent at least $2.5 trillion in tearing apart Iraq and Afghanistan. We call on the US to spend that sort of money to end poverty, war, and disease in Africa. Why isn’t ‘Save Darfur’ doing the same? Instead they are calling for troops to be sent in, economic war to be begun against an impoverished country, and blame to be cast on the developing country of China. We find this to be shameful, and say that the Peace Movement should not put its stamp of approval on this campaign by the misnamed ‘Save Darfur’.

Peace Now. Spend the war budget on human needs. End the bloodshed by holding our own government responsible, instead of calling for it to increase its intervention into other countries’ affairs. We demand that the US start an economic aid package, without strings attached, that gives billions of dollars of reparations for the crimes that our government has done to Africans over several centuries. Forgive all of Africa’s foreign debt now. That’s how you help the people of Darfur, not by urging US power plays to control African resources.

Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission must demand no more US intervention into the affairs of other nations.

We need to do this again- together we must win!

Posted on by
Reply

Thirty eight years ago the US had its largest demonstration ever and we need to do this again. Two million marched to demand an end to the Vietnam War on October 15. It was The Vietnam Moratorium of 1969

Like then just like now, Americans demonstrating in the streets will not alone be enough. Ultimately it is the resistance of the Iraqis like it was with the resistance of the Vietnamese that will force the US to desist, and finally to withdraw. Today, we salute the heroes of the Iraqi Resistance. You will win the independence of the Iraqi nation from US government control through your sacrifices.

We as Americans owe a huge debt to the Iraqi people as we do to the Vietnamese people. We have allowed tyranny to once again prevail inside the US, our own country, and you have suffered disproportionately because of it.

Your struggle on your own behalf works for our own behalf, too. Thank you. We owe you, the Iraqi people, more than we can ever repay you. From your Resistance we will build our own Resistance, and we shall eventually together stop our corporations from destroying the entire planet. Together we must win!

Leading question of economic indicators

Posted on by
1

Rupert Fox Murdoch, chief media architect of the New World Order, has acquired the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ had scant editorial integrity to lose, not withstanding the broohaha, but now the WSJ is in the hands of PNAC’s Newscorp and we know where they’re going. Now news of the NYSE will come from the mouth of doublespeak. The choosing of economic indicators can be more preposterous, and the upbeat spin or foreboding pall more egregious. Dow Jones bla bla bla, consume with confidence. Rupert says leverage the shirt off your back!

We each have our economic indicators to ground what we’re being told. Friends unemployed, or working multiple jobs, cast doubt on TV’s rosy outlook. Gas prices, cable bills, credit card debt, the difference between your credit card bill and the payment you can afford to send.

I have an indicator that I’m finding troublesome. I drive through a not affluent part of town everyday and of late I’m seeing more jaywalkers. Not itinerants, not street people, just unkempt poor. On this section of thoroughfare they’re approaching car windows, getting out of vans, dallying with bicycles across incoming traffic. I feel like I’m driving a foreign gantlet where pedestrians outnumber cars. But disturbing is to look beside you and see cars stuffed with people similar to the pedestrians, trying to catch your eye. It’s August, it’s hot, maybe that’s why the scene feels like Tijuana. But the aggressive eye contact is new. What it means I can’t ask.

The obscene IMF and Afghanistan

Posted on by
Reply

How obscene is the IMF? How obscene is international capitalism? Pretty damn obscene and Afghanistan is just one case of why and how. The BBC has an absolutely idiotic report today called Afghanistan to Obtain Debt Relief.

What does this ‘debt relief’ consist of? Afghanistan will now have it’s payments on its $12 billion debt cut to 51% of what it is now! And this is called relief?????

Let’s see now? The US has fomented and funded war for 3 decades in this sad country and continues to do so. The US current specialty is in bombing Afghan villages from way up high and killing huge groups of civilians that might, or might not have, an armed man or two down below. A poppy is safer from NATO forces in Afghanistan than a civilian.

And the per capita income is far below that of $1,000 per person per year. Just how generous can the IMF be? Debt payments cut in half? Oh, whoopee! Bombs Away, IMF!

Russia, China and the Iran standoff.

Posted on by
Reply

You know, the Chimp was anything but subtle when he told the whole world that Nuclear Weapons were on the table in his proposed Bombing Iran Back To The Stone-Age Plan, code named Operation Global Suicide.

Problem being, some of the most populous and most heavily armed, Nuclear armed, nations on earth border Iran itself.
India. Pakistan. China. Russia. Afghanistan where so many NATO forces are congregated, all of them no doubt eager for Bush to nuke them along with the infidels in Iran.

Also, even though the U.S. has continued to have a hissy fit for the past 28 years over dealing with Iran as a real government, a real nation and with real economic benefits to trade,…

Therefore no Iranian oil coming to the United States, the oil fields Mr Bush is threatening with Iran are essential to the economies of the rest of the world, those durned ol’ furriners whut talks funny, the ones what ain’t US. Two of those nations, China and Russia in descending order, hold enough U.S. debt markers that they would have a legal right to foreclose on the Persian Gulf and just evict George and his merry band of pirates.

Now, Mr Bush has been publicly rattling his toy saber.
And of course the single largest stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the world.

But the M.A.D deterrent hasn’t gone away.

So the Russians don’t have enough nukes anymore to destroy every city in America 40 times over… they only have enough to do it 27 times over.

And I imagine that once you’ve been personally nuked about the 10th or 11th time, the rest of it won’t quite matter anymore.

So Georgie-porgie makes another bluff, the Star Wars gambit that was never quite gotten to work. The super expensive star wars scheme. The ones we wouldn’t have enough money or time to develop even if we hadn’t pissed away all our capital and now all our international credit in Operation Quagmire Accomplished.

Say, Georgie, maybe you can hit up the Chinese and Russians for another loan or 500? I’m ever so certain that the Chinese and Russians would just love to throw away their economic booms just so you could put up a shield that allows you to shoot at them and makes sure they can’t shoot back….

The Russians and the Chinese are a little more into diplomacy than George.

I have no doubt that they have sent their ambassadors at the highest levels
to warn Mr Bush in what one of his henchmen called “the nuanced language of diplomacy” to back his shit down, or they will back it down for him.

All this is not a good development for anybody, incidentally.

Bush is throwing away all the Cold War gains in keeping the Russians and Chinese from controlling the trade routes AND the high seas AND MOST ESPECIALLY the oilfields out of the hands of the Russians and Chinese.

Those naughty things Mr Bush and his strident supporters whine so much about, Saddam Hussein killing his own people?

Not only has the U.S. done that repeatedly, the Russians and Chinese have been doing it for a lot longer and could teach either Saddam or Georgie Boy how it’s REALLY DONE.

These aren’t nice people and don’t even PRETEND TO BE NICE.

DR Congo-4,000,000 dead in last decade and counting

Posted on by
1

The real African locale where genocide is occurring is not so much in Sudan, but rather in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So why is there not a ‘Save Congo Coalition’? After all, 4,000,00 dead in just the last decade is nothing trivial at all. Don’t the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ folk give a damn?

No doubt as I write these words, there are speakers at the ‘Peace’ conference in Albuquerque wailing about how action must be taken FOR Darfur. But they won’t say hardly a whisper about the DR Congo. Why not? Well it might just be because there are already 18,000 ‘peacekeeper’ troops in the DR Congo, and yet the fighting keeps on continuing. And the UN Security Council wants out, even as it demands to be let into Sudan! The ‘Save Darfur’ solution of sending in the troops is no more likely to work in Sudan than it really has been working in the DR Congo.

There are real reasons why troops controlled from Washington DC and European capitals do not alleviate much the suffering, but actually add to it long term. That’s because there is no commitment to spend any money on anything other than soldiers and their equipment. The amount of money spent on food for the people of the DR Congo is far less than the money spent on troops. Much less.

It is a disgrace, that while there are those who in our country and Britain demand sending in the Pentagon controlled troops to yet more African countries, they remain largely silent about how in the epicenter of current African genocide (DR Congo), far less than $100 million dollars is spent to help out a huge population of starving people! UNICEF states that currently 1,200 people a day are dying in the DR Congo there, unnecessarily due to the conflicts and poverty/ disease arising from war.

Troops were sent into Somalia, and the US is now begging its proxy invader, Ethiopia, to stay in and further occupy Mogadishu. The US is actually spreading conflict in Africa, and not stopping inter-ethnic conflicts like there are in parts of Sudan. Want to help Africa out? Then try the following approach…

All US controlled troops out of Africa! Send- Food, not Bombs.

All of Africa’s burdensome international debt needs to be written off, and the ‘Save Darfur’ people need to think about saving Africa as a whole instead, by simply demanding that food and medical relief be prioritized instead of their current calls for economic wars (boycotts) and sending in new branches of the military to one locale or another. Help save the people of the DR Congo, and help save the Sudanese and Somalian people, too. And please, please, please…. Close AFRICOM (the US Pentagon African command center) down.

When are ‘the troops’ going to support the rest of America?

Posted on by
Reply

Antiwar protesters repeatedly get told they are not supporting ‘the troops’. Yesterday, in fact, a woman screaming out “You Bastards!’ at our peace vigil from her car, claimed that we were not supporting her husband who was one of ‘the troops’ in Iraq. Our standard refrain has always been, ‘Support The Troops, Bring Them Back Home Now!’ But I have another reply on my mind, and that is simply to ask the pro-war hecklers when are ‘the troops’ going to support us Americans?’ What do I mean by this?

Simple. You ‘troops’ are part of a war machine that is bankrupting the funding of social programs for the elderly, children, and needy in our society. You are fighting a war that most Americans no longer want, and that will put our children into debt for a long time to come. Yet you and your families continue to want you to be considered heroes, when you sign up and join the war machine and go after the preferential benefits that are yours for joining the government imperialist team. And many of you even have the nerve to get angry at us peace activists that want money spent in better ways than in just killing foreigners for corporate profit! That takes a lotta damn gall!

Yes, when are ‘the troops’ going to start to support the American people themselves? We want you back home alive where you won’t be helping bankrupt us civilians through the love of Halliburton and your own pride. Putting on your damn uniforms does not make you heroes, a class above us tax paying commoners. You went into the military thinking that the military pseudo socialism was the way to help yourselves out, but you bargained with the Devil and he may well take your heart and soul and your very life, too, if you are not very, very careful. Reconsider what you are doing.

Troops, help the rest of us Americans out, and support stopping the Iraqi war and occupation. True patriotism supports less militarism, less imperialism, and less money spent on you the troops, to the detriment of America itself. Troops and families of troops, speak out now against this thuggery you have become part of, and we wish you the best back home alive for those in other folk’s lands.

Stop the bloated war spending to help out the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the peoples of Haiti and Colombia, too. And most of all, to help out us, the people of America. America needs less of you ‘troops’ in prison guard, police, and military uniforms, not more. Patriots support more peace in the world, and less war. So do your part as you can. And try not to let the government dehumanize you, through the insane war the government has you fighting in.

Best wishes, from the antiwar community. But there is no way we are going to ‘support’ you by cheerleading the killing the government has you engaged in. Stop the constant wars. Our money for the people, not The Pentagon!

Lebanon in ruins

Posted on by
Reply

Lebanon lies in ruins after the imperialist allies, the US and Israel, destroyed it once again. Israel’s invasion destroyed about $5 billion dollars worth of civilian infrastructure, and much of South Lebanon’s population has had to pass the Winter amongst the rubble of their former houses and cities.

No help has come, and the only possible assist for them in aid is coming through promises to help from those responsible for the destruction in the first place. At a conference in Paris, the US, France, European Union, and US Arab ally supreme, Saudi Arabia are promising 7.6 dollars of aid mirage to the Lebanese, but only if they do as the imperialists want them to do.

What we have is the mirror landscape that the US has forced upon Iraq and Afghanistan, and seems also determined to force on Iran and Syria in the days ahead. First the US and its allies reduce to rubble your country, and then if you obey us we offer to help repair some of the damage we have done! And everywhere the imperialist US Empire goes it foments warfare race against race, language group against language group, religious sect versus religious sect. Always divide and destroy in order to rule.

US ally, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in control of the present Lebanese government in great part cooperated with Israel’s last entry into his own country. He thought to use the invasion against his internal opponents, the Shia. Instead, the resistance of the Shia headed Hezbollah to that invasion and destruction, strengthened them and weakened him. He is also held widely responsible for having allowed Lebanon’s foreign debt of $41 billion to have piled up. In short, he is the epitome of corruption, and this is the man the US is supporting against the majority of Lebanon’s population.

We in the US have watched stupid and ignorant from the sidelines, as our government has spread anarchy and chaos from Afghanistan to Iraq to Lebanon to Somalia to where next?….probably Iran, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, and on beyond. In the last 2 weeks, the Democratic Party voters, that sat passively behind the passivity of their consenting-to-Bush DP leaders, have finally chosen to go out and protest some. The Democrats finally have stirred some. There is a current of optimism and hope in the air for them because of it.

But what of their newly found ability to oppose a little? Is it real, or just a pretense to get the Democratic Party back into office? Are they really opposed to their government’s imperialism? I have my own thoughts to what the true answer actually is. I am less than hopeful that their opposition is anything more than the most shallow and skin deep. I wish that I am proven wrong, but I think that I know my fellow Americans well, and that is what fuels my pessimism. Meanwhile, my heart goes out to the people of Lebanon, who are once again being forced into living in total Hell, all but ignored by those who put them there.

Draft the poor

Posted on by
Reply

The two biggest Democrat- led events in this past century were the New Deal and the War on Poverty, and a lot of liberals say that these were the true glory days of Saint Franklin and Saint Lyndon, heir apparent to Saint Johnnie.

Fact of it was, even though Roosevelt did do a massive restructure of wealth, and the very richest condemned him roundly as a traitor to his class. They did in fact retain the vast majority of their wealth. And the main focus of the New Deal was buying off a pending revolution which would have made Red October seem more like a delicate shade of pink. The Communist party was extremely strong and organized. The anarchists were extremely strong and not so well organized. There had recently been an election where the Socialist / IWW leader Eugene Debs, campaigning from prison, had garnered enough votes in a presidential race to be included in the next election cycle.

The United States Army had recently been involved in a shooting scrape where they fired on a march on Washington of World War One veterans, who were airing their grievance that the US government had fucked them without grease. (This one I learned from that well known liberal hotbed, the VFW and American Legion)

The country was in ruins, financially and spiritually, people were starving in the streets.

People were so very pissed off they were on the verge of storming the mansions of the mighty and dragging them out, and hanging them in their immaculately trimmed trees, by their own intestines, while they were still alive. Saint Franklin saved their sorry asses.

And Saint Lyndon with the Great Society, the so called liberal handout programs the R’s whine about so much today? The ones which collectively wouldn’t amount to the amount of debt accrued just in the afhani/Iraqi conflict, yeah those programs… They were sold to the R’s as an investment in a future draft.

Yeppers. Seems the poor kids the Army depends on to go and secure the money fields for the rich kids, they had some massive health problems that caused a panic amongst the Draft ‘em All crowd. Problems that could be fixed by a comparatively small increase in nutrition and health care and education. Eighteen year old boys who didn’t have enough teeth to pass the physical. Scurvy and rickets, underweight. Poor eyesight from a lifetime of eating trash food. Ok so it wasn’t really trash food, more like just trash.

Now they are babbling about reinstating the draft. stupid stupid stupid.

Don’t they see, can’t they understand, the money the rich have today is phantom cash? Interest paid on the interest from loans made against the interest of IOUs. What are they going to buy the poor off with this time?

Have a Holly Jolly Saturnalia

Posted on by
Reply

Me Christian, which simply means that I admit that I am not perfect and therefore can’t get holier than thou and (especially) I am not allowed to punish and certainly not kill anybody else for not being perfect.

Christmas being on the exact date of the end of Saturnalia, in the Roman/slash/suddenly/slash/Christian calendar is not a coincidence, Constantine wanted to ease the transition from bloodthirsty pagan to bloodthirsty Christian amongst his friends and countrymen.

By all the text in the Bible about it, Jesus was born when the lambs were being born. That’s the only time of the year that the shepherd’s have their sheep out of the folds, in the field and “watch their flocks by night”.
Which is in March, or February.

Santa Claus wasn’t going to be invented, as the Ultimate American Corporate Marketing Tool, for another 1850 years more or less.

Jesus was anti-capitalist. Capitalism was the system of Rome, and as the Romans pointed out in the fall of their empire, depends on pillage just to sustain it. Jesus said not to lend money for interest. THE basis for capitalism.

Now we are down to imaginary money. Credit being based on a buying and selling of IOUs.

We are told that we must buy the latest and greatest toys, coincidentally released for sale in LIMITED quantities just before Saturnal… oops Christmas. We must do this so Junior and Sissie don’t lose their childish innocent faith in … Santa?
So we have ridiculous scenes like the people fighting over XBox toys while in the background a carol is playing “…peace on earth, and mercy mild”

And the modern kicker to it, the percentage of retail profits from Christmas shopping is in the double digits, relative to the rest of the year.

So we have a pseudo-patriotic guilt trip laid on us, to keep the pseudo-religious guilt trip company.

If we don’t go out and spend more of our borrowed non-money debt than we will ever be able to repay, it would cripple the American economy.

I can’t speak for Him, but I think Jesus is a little ticked off at this mess…

The price of chicken

Posted on by
1

Child laborers at the looms making affordable fabric
The American high standard of living is built on economies of scale, predicated on cheap supplies on terms usually detrimental to the suppliers. In materials, this means exploiting the environment, in manufacturing it means cheap labor, in food it means industrialized farming.

It’s an oft repeated mantra, and counter to a consumerist imperative, but this dilemma can be addressed by showing restraint, even in light of growing populations. It’s resource conservation.

If we can’t afford a fairly traded commodity, we should perhaps consider going without it. We could make do with fewer consumer goods for example. or less meat and more beans and rice maybe. We would not need to subject animals to factory farms if we could reduce our demand; not going without, going with less. If range fed beef is indeed a luxury, couldn’t we consider not having a feast of it everyday? Just because a substitute can be had for cheaper doesn’t mean we have to indulge yourselves. Especially, I would think, if the cheap price means inherent harm on the other end.

A free-range. grain-fed chicken costs $2.85 per pound to bring to your table. Not $0.89 per pound, or $1.99 for the whole chicken, but $2.85/lb, or $7.30/lb for the boneless breast fillet. That’s what it costs to raise a chicken in conditions that wouldn’t turn our stomach or haunt us if we were really knew. Priced any lower and the chicken supplier has to cut corners and mistreat the animals in ways you would never willfully approve. Instead of three cheap chickens in every pot, how about buying one humanely raised chicken instead? Permit yourself the luxury of feeling good about the demands you are making on the food supply, about the sacrifice being made by others to sustain you.

A healthy-raised pig costs $8 per pound. Anything less comes from a place you don’t want to get within 20 miles downwind, much less see. Same deal. If you are now eating cheap bacon, pay more for an honorable source but buy less.

Range-fed beef costs upwards of $8 per pound. You’ll be doing yourself a favor avoiding the mad cow disease of factory abused cows and calves. $8/lb. Any less and it’s packing the trauma of its final breaths into the flesh you think you are enjoying. Plus the antibiotics pumped into the cow to enable it to survive the cramped unhygienic conditions of feed lots.

Wild salmon costs $12 per pound. It’s good for you, one of the best sources of nutrition this side of broccoli. But that’s not true about farm grown salmon. Now the domestic stocks are contaminating the natural fisheries. Stop encouraging the aquaculture robber barons. Don’t eat their salmon or their shrimp, they’re killing the environment and the local fishing communities.

The price test works for everything that’s unbelievably cheap. What? Were you thinking it was the miracle of modern capitalism? Goods available for less than the cost you would think they could be made? If it wasn’t affordable to you before, the company has now found out how to steal it from someone to bring it to you.

If you see something you never thought you could afford, and its price is too good to be true, it is for someone. The true cost is being born by someone else, maybe a pre-teen indentured servant, maybe someone who works a 12 hour shift sharing a bunk with the person who handles the other 12 hours, maybe someone who’s been incarcerated for the sole reason that their governor needs a low-wage labor pool, maybe it’s someone working off a debt which just keeps growing, maybe it’s an immigrant living in a special economic development zone from which one may neither move in nor out, maybe it’ll be you in a few years, without options in our race to the bottom global economy.