Cabinet candidate Bill Richardson was clean enough to run for president?

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd, that Arizona governor Bill Richardson withdraws his name from consideration for the Secretary of Commerce because of some unseemly quid pro quo scheme, yet it hadn’t stopped him from running for president? Where was the press to dig up the story when Richardson was still a potential Democratic presidential nominee?

It’s not as if the subject of corruption hadn’t come up. Greg Palast had exposed the governor in Armed Madhouse.

I like Palast’s extrapolation on Richardson’s ethnic heritage. To summarize, Richardson came by his Hispanic hyphen through his mom’s side. His dad was a Citibank executive, which qualifies Richardson to be a Citibank-American. As a partner in Henry Kissinger’s lobbying firm, Palast also terms him a Kissinger-American.

But what most interested Palast was the corrupt election of 2004, and how George Bush stole Arizona, under the nose of a supposedly Democratic governor. With Richardson momentarily in the spotlight, here’s an excerpt which Palast is circulating:

Bill Richardson – Kissinger-American
by Greg Palast, excerpted from Armed Madhouse

Henry Kissinger and Bill Richardson
January 5, 2009

Bill Richardson is out: Caught with his hand, if not exactly in the cookie jar, at least you could say his sticky finger were near it. I’m not surprised.

For years I’ve been investigating the second-most corrupt state in the USA (after Alaska). I like to check in on the enchanted state with my bud Santiago Juárez.

I knew it was not a polite question, but it was really bugging me, so I asked him, “Exactly how does a Mexican get the name William Richardson?”

Governor Richardson’s dad, Santiago explained, was a Citibank executive assigned to Mexico City. There he met Governor Bill’s mom, and-milagro!-a Mexican-American was born. Richardson gets big mileage out of his mother’s heritage, and that makes him, legitimately, a Mexican-American, a politically useful designation. But it’s just as legitimate to say that Richardson is a Citibank-American.

But Governor Richardson is more than that. Between leaving Bill Clinton’s cabinet where he was Secretary of Energy and grabbing a Hispanic-district seat in Congress, Richardson became a partner in (Henry) Kissinger and Associates. That would make Richardson a Kissinger-American as well.

In 2004, John Kerry won New Mexico-if you counted the votes. But they didn’t – and George Bush won the state and the presidency by just 5,000 ballots. Everyone was talking about the theft of Ohio by Republicans, but few noted that New Mexico was stolen as well. But one fact drove me straight nuts: In the end, this state and its damaged elections were in the hands of Richardson, A Democrat and a Mexican-American one at that.

In New Mexico the issue of uncounted votes is more than skin deep. Lots of Mexican-American votes don’t tally, but Citibank-American votes never get lost. Kissinger American votes always count. The story of America’s failed elections is not about undervotes. It’s about underclass. Disenfranchisement is class warfare by other means. It just happens that in New Mexico, the colors of the underclass are, for the most part, brown and red.

Class War by Other Means

As community organizer Santiago told me:

You take away people’s health insurance and you take their right to union pay scales and you take away their pensions-taking away their vote’s just one more on the list.

Some New Mexico Democrats have no trouble at the voting booth. In Santa Fe, you find trust-fund refugees from Los Angeles wearing Navajo turquoise jewelry and “casual” clothes that cost more than my car. Each one has a personal healer, an unfinished film script and a tan so deep you’d think they’re bred for their leather. They’re Democrats and their votes count. Voting-or at least voting that gets tabulated – is a class privilege. The effect is racial and partisan, but the engine is economic.

The second- and third-highest undervotes in New Mexico were recorded in McKinley and Cibola counties-85% and 72% Hispanic and Native. But the undervote champ is nearly the whitest county in New Mexico: DeBaca, which mangled and lost 8.4% of ballots cast. White DeBaca, whose average income hovers at the national poverty level, is poorer than Hispanic Cibola. No question, disenfranchisement gives off an ugly racial smell, but income is the real predictor of vote loss.

And what about those Bernalillo ghost voters for Bush? Those spirits are, it turns out, quite well-to-do, haunting the mesas west of Albuquerque where the real estate provides unobstructed views of Georgia O’Keeffe sunsets.

This was my third investigation in New Mexico in twenty years. The first time, the state’s Attorney General brought me in to go over the account books of Public Service of New Mexico (PNM), a racketeering enterprise masquerading as an electric company. Too young to understand what I wasn’t supposed to know, I proudly mapped out the sewerage lines of deceit connecting the gas drillers, water lords and political elite of New Mexico. The AG’s office handed me a nice check – which I took not as a reward, but as a payment to leave the state. After a decade away, I returned as a reporter, to look into prisons-for-pro?t out?t Wackenhut Inc. In September 1999, a company insider told me, Wackenhut was cutting costs at its New Mexico jails by sending guards alone into the cell blocks. Ralph Garcia of Santa Rosa, who’d lost his ranch to drought, took the $7.95-an-hour job guarding homicidal neo-Nazis and Mexican mafia thugs in the local Wackenhut lock-up. Inexperienced, untrained and alone, he was stabbed to death by inmates just two weeks after the insider’s warning. So that’s how Garcia became one more impoverished Chicano who lost his vote. No question, that’s not your typical case of voter disenfranchisement, but that’s the reality of the “Land of Enchantment.” New Mexico is the New America, where growing income inequality is creating a feudal divide between the prison-owning class and the prisoner-and-guard class.

Vote spoilage is the owning class’s weapon of choice.

Whose flag does Bill Richardson carry in the nouvelle class war? When I was checking out the New Mexico vote in 2005, my old friends Public Service of New Mexico hit the front page, sued by the State of California for conspiring with Enron to rig the California power market. It is still in court. It was a scam called “Ricochet.” Enron and PNM say it was not illegal. It played out about the time Garcia was walking the cell block. Where was Richardson? He was in Washington, Clinton’s Secretary of Energy, playing chubby cheerleader for PNM’s plan for “deregulation” of the energy market. Deregulation made PNM’s games possible-and Richardson’s employment by Kissinger inevitable.

Richardson, Ready for Takeoff

What about all those suspect spoiled votes in Hispanic and Indian precincts stuck inside the machines? Why didn’t this Mexican-American Democrat ask for a recount? It didn’t just slip Richardson’s little mind: He actively did everything in his power to stop a recount. I was told that it was Richardson himself who encouraged Secretary of State Vigil-Giron to reject the $114,000 payment from pissed-off Democrats and the Green Party. The Governor was too busy to speak with me about this.

Halting the 2004 recount wasn’t enough for Governor Bill, however. He demanded the legislature pass a “reform” law that would require anyone wanting a recount of a suspicious vote to put up a bond of over one million dollars. As a result, “free and fair elections” are now effectively outlawed in New Mexico. You can have a choice of a “free” election or a “fair” election, but not both. Want fair? Then you have to pay a million to recheck the ballots. In other words, it’s against the law to buy votes, but in New Mexico not against the law to buy the vote count.

On his phony reform law, Richardson was called out by a fellow Democrat, State Senator Linda Lopez-an act of indiscreet defiance that would not be forgotten by the Governor’s circle.

The centerpiece of the law signed by the Governor: Ms. Fox-Young’s proposal to require photo ID for new voters. Maybe the former Cabinet Secretary and United Nations Ambassador Richardson couldn’t imagine that photo IDs would be a problem for some voters. After all, Mexican-Americans in Little Texas may have trouble producing acceptable IDs, but it’s no problem at all for a Kissinger-American like Governor Richardson. The Governor and Jimmy Carter both have passports, they have credit cards and they have chauffeurs who will vouch for them.

Richardson wouldn’t speak with me about the 2004 vote fiasco. Instead, he busied himself with his space program. He announced the state would chip in $200 million to build a “spaceport” to land private rocket ships that will be launched beginning in 2009 by Richard Branson, the British billionaire. Passengers have already bought tickets for $200,000 each (round trip, they hope).

Who has the famous al-Zaidi Bush shoes

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Everyone’s clamoring for the shoe heard around the world. The several
manufacturers who claim to have cobbled the offending black oxfords are deluged in orders. A Saudi man has offered ten million dollars for Muntadhar al-Zaidi’s original pair. But the NYT reports: “Explosives tests by investigators destroyed the offending footwear.” Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

I don’t believe that shit for a minute. If airport security can verify footwear inertness in a few seconds…

Not that a pair of worn leather shoes matters a whit. But there is more than shoe fetish at foot here. And I find something about the fate of this pair of shoes that’s awfully unlike a Skull and Bones man.

Idolatry
The Saudi who offered the king’s ransom for the “Medal of Freedom” shoes, may have been enraptured by idolatry, but he knows the magical allure which those shoes will always possess. How can any of us deny the mystical energy we attribute to baseballs marked by having been hit to home runs? All Americans take, or aspire to take, a pilgrimage to the Smithsonian to see the actual, for real, objects of their common heritage.

Museums of art and natural history, glean an idolatry all their own, but historical collections like the Smithsonian and the British Imperial War Museum, peddle in pure talisman mysticism.

The crown jewels come to mind, or any ordinary person’s diamond. Stones, crystals, runes, coins, fetishes, heirlooms, antiques, personal designer accessories, safety blankets. We swim in stuff which have meaning greater than their utility. Even poor Diogenes had his lantern.

Who are we kidding that mere objects don’t have enormous power over us? I myself keep everything. I frequently feel I’m drowning in remembrances and chanced-upon objects for which I aspire sentiment. Would that I could focus on strength-building empowering articles.

I’m reminded of last year’s sale of a copy of the Magna Carta, was it, to a modern Wall Street robber baron. I was not alone to surmise that he paid 21 million for the now-transgressed compact, probably to wipe his ass with it. As the great white hunters paid their safari guides in hope of being the last to personally vanquish whatever late species was next to be rendered extinct.

The al-Zaidi Shoes
This famous pair of shoes were thrown by Muntadhar al-Zaidi at President Bush, al-Zaidi being the first man to dare show defiance to the US Nero. Although, certain intellectuals do come to mind, for having voiced their discontent with his policies. I remember too, a certain brave Indonesian witch doctor who cast a magic curse on the universally despised Bush. Ki Gendeng Pamungkas placed a jinx to shorten Bush’s stay in Indonesia, it wasn’t a fatal voodoo spell, for that would have been just as illegal as making threats is in the US. I will always believe there must have been countless more who’ve cursed Bush to his face, if prudently under their breath.

But journalist al-Zaidi did the one act above all others. He showed open, physical defiance. At the bottom line, against an imperial oligarchy which dominates the world by military force, it’s the only defiance that really matters. And George Bush knows it.

Once subdued, was it necessary to bludgeon al-Zaidi? He had disarmed himself, and was now completely out of ammo. Was the rough apprehension in any manner appropriate? Everyone in the room had already been checked by security. What was the purpose of beating al-Zaidi in the next room? Or of the torture later?

Regicide
Would-be assassins of kings, in the times of kings, were drawn and quartered, made to suffer excruciating deaths, but their body parts desecrated as well. It wasn’t to insure their mortality.

From a historical perspective, I believe al-Zaidi’s projectile footwear represent an enormously momentous act, even more by being common objects. We all have shoes. And see, shoes have provide a ready aeronautic diversion from the path most taken. A significant number of common citizens can get close enough to our leader to lambast him with their shoes.

Do we approve of him or not? Does he listen to our protestations, or does he laugh them off as our America-given freedoms to disagree?

Is it a mere disagreement we have with Bush over his regime’s genocide, high crimes and theft from the American People?

I’m convinced that al-Zaidi’s shoes had to be drawn and quartered, lest they inspire further acts of bravery from the ranks of Bush’s subjects.

Is it time to throw our shoes? In this divide and conquer feudal age, by design an anti-social world which celebrates the individual lest a community spirit trounce the narcissism imperative to thwart organizing into collectives, a next shoe-thrower would be mocked for being a copy-cat. I can hope that we recognize the humility of extremely diminutive stature. We want to be voracious proponents of social justice, but have tragically impoverished resources, . The struggle against capitalist imperialism will require many foot soldiers. We can’t all be Che and al-Zaidi. We didn’t think to throw our shoes, we won’t be improvisers of the next gesture. For the better part of us, the most effective we can be is follow their lead.

Let’s imagine, for the populist courage they might ignite, that the al-Zaidi shoes were effaced from man’s heritage. Bush has done worse, he’s razed Iraq, cradle of civilization, the untold undiscovered archeological sites, the historic library, I can’t even go on, the losses were unthinkable.

Occult Talisman
Except, this is a man who like his father, and strangely like an odd many in his cabal, came out of the secret “Skull and Bones” club at Yale. The exclusive order was originated by a forefather, who amassed the Bush fortune with help from Hitler by the way, named for the club’s alleged possession of the remains of Sitting Bull. What, was Sitting Bull a famous Yalie? A forefather of modern empire building? Was he a banking/usury supremacist?

Sitting Bull was but one of the fiercest American indian leader to have defied the white man’s global conquest. Of course, it’s not uncommon for warring cannibals to feel that they gather strength from their opponents, even as they’ve defeated them.

The Bushes and their cadre of global elites are also members of Bohemian Grove. As occultist as blue-blood better-than-thous can get. I’ll not assert they celebrate witchcraft, but it’s more pagan than average churchgoers could comfortably countenance. Traditional religions hold it as false idolatry, academia dismisses it as mysticism.

Which brings me to the Lance of Longinus, allegedly the weapon which pierced Jesus’s side to deal the Coup de Grace. Though scholars have traced its existence to only 900 AD, the “Spear of Destiny” retains a tremendous occult allure, in particular the Nazi Third Reich. Other such talisman weapons have been sought by warrior leaders throughout history, as bestowing upon whoever possessed them, divine powers over challengers to their throne.

Let’s face it, since the success of the American industrial and banking driven democracy, in rising to dominate over all its WWII adversaries and allies, our elected leader has become absolute ruler of the known world. It wasn’t our intent, but it’s human nature.

Absolute Power Corrupts
We live again in a world of kings. Of moats, of food tasters, of royal jesters, of showing not just deference but fealty. We live in a world of a leisured class, where right to wealth and privilege is considered hereditary. A birthright to nobility is reinforced even by what we understand of genetics. Men are not created equal. Man at his highest is preordained. It’s no great leap to expect these men will search the firmament for signs to affirm that their supremacy is granted by divinity.

I expect earthly objects which defy a monarch’s impregnability have irresistible personal allure to kings for whom nothing remains but to divine their life’s purpose.

It’s not uncharted territory, there have been global empires before, except the world known to earlier supreme leaders had horizons closer in. Alexander ruled his whole known world. The Roman Emperors did, with the unconquered bits being just so much backwoods. Such leaders had no rivals in trade, power, or wealth. Charlemagne, Ghengis Khan, Shaka Zulu, ruled their entire known realms. While these leaders were empire builders, the related personages less lauded, were their progeny who succumbed to proving Lord Acton’s Dictum that “absolute power corrupts–” Each it seems resolved to challenge the last part “–absolutely.”

Now John Dalberg-Acton’s Essays on Freedom and Power is a scrap of paper I’d be surprised to find enshrined in a megalomaniac’s personal collection of power-emitting talisman keepsake chatchkes.

Obamapologists task growing Sisyphean

Posted on December 20, 2008 by Eric Verlo

The anticipation is building for one hell of a JANUARY 21ST wouldn’t you say? While emails are flying, about invitations to this inauguration party or that, or about holding Obama’s feet to whose fire on Day One, Two or Three, the President Elect continues to stack a cabinet to defy all Hope.

What is this B-Team Obama is assembling, even beyond the Cabinet? He’s chosen pop- Fundamentalist minister Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation.

Southern Colorado should be pleased to see its Senator, Ken Sell-Out Salazar, off to DC pastures where he can do less immediate harm, but at the Department of the Interior’s expense, where he might take a run at pal and predecessor Gale Norton’s ignoble high score. It was a supreme relief, this election season, to hear Salazar booed when he made appeared at Obama rallies.

Can you name a single office appointment with which you’ve agreed? Obama’s every single choice has been a gift to the Center Right, and Democrat Loyalists have run the gamut of excuses to describe their anointed one’s mysterious ways. His wisdom been so opaque, I’m hopeful it’s actually subterfuge.

To hear his pundits spin it, Obama’s reasons range from wanting experience, to a smooth transition, to keeping his rivals close. It won’t be until he’s in office when Americans will really know what the one will do.

But we already know twice as many US troops are going to Afghanistan, and we know a resolution to the war in Iraq has likewise been pushed off into the future. What were everybody’s reasons for hoisting Barack Obama aloft as their deliverance from Bush?

Obamapologists will no doubt spend the entire of Mr. Change’s first term reminding us that the tortoise ultimately won over the hare. When do you imagine that analogy will finally lose steam? I’m guessing lack of health insurance will compel most of us to cheer a speedier finish.

I’m looking forward to the judgment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for their crimes against humanity. I anticipate that some Democrat apologists will even preach forgiveness, undoubtedly in the name of leaving Obama unencumbered to address bigger challenges. And turd-speak like that will be fine with me. I don’t even care if he pardons Bush Co in a grand ceremony festooned with glittery Medals of Freedom and Yankee Doodle Macaroni.

I don’t even care if Bush pardons himself, and all of Fox News, indeed the whole Beltway, for their crimes of treason, theft, profiteering, usury, and illegal war. And Obama signs it and washes everybody’s clawed feet.

(Psst, no need to alert Bush, but War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity are the jurisdiction of The Hague. They’re neither self-pardonable, nor outside of the reach of the International Criminal Court. In fact, it doesn’t matter if the US is a signatory or not. There are no exemptions, and no statutes of limitation.)

The question of course then arises, would Barack Obama block efforts by the ICC to bring the Bush Cabal to trial? What sob story are Obamapologists going to contrive for that one?

How my vote was stolen

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Eric Verlo

How I lost my vote to EARLY VOTING. Alright, to be less dramatic: How my vote is now in somebody else’s pocket.

Following the prevailing advice, Obama’s for example, among others, I voted early. But against the most important precautionary warnings, I wasn’t able to use a paper ballot. You can’t, for EARLY VOTING. In El Paso County, for some reason, early voting is all electronic.

Why do I presume there is something inherently wrong with the Diebold touch-screen voting machines? The problem is, no one can make a case for how the computers involved can be defended from corruption.

While it sounds unfair to consider electronic voting devices guilty until proven otherwise, imagine we were talking about a leaky boat. If experts can point to the holes, it would become the obligation of the designers to demonstrate how their perforated vessel is going to stay afloat. Can we agree that we might require some such proof before we put our destiny in their hands. Isn’t that fair enough?

Let’s also admit that reassurances from inexperts, who maintain that no such holes exist, do not hold water. Especially when they’re backed by party bosses who profess expertise, minus technical degrees. And cling to power, mysteriously unaccountable to their constituents. Think about the issue of building the County Jail, in spite of the incredible local outcry.

In much of the country, electronic voting devices, manufactured by GOP-backers Diebold for example, or otherwise, have been taken out of the election loop. Many state legislatures have taken heed of the 2004 election experiences, and popular outcry, and banned “black box voting” altogether. Colorado is not one of those wised-up states. What better indication do you need that to be “conservative” really means to be an idiot?

Really. The “conservative” take on the Diebold anti-democratic vote theft of 2004 is to say “balderdash.”

At least our Secretary of State was made to provide paper ballots to all who request them. Except in El Paso County, for early voting.

In all three early voting centers in Colorado Springs, your only option is to use the Diebold touch-screen machines. When I asked about a paper ballot, I was told that I would be able to verify my vote on a paper receipt generated by the machine.

Here’s how it works. After you make your choices on the touch-screen, and after you scroll through the completed ballot on the screen, you have the option to make a print out of your votes on a cash-register-like roll of paper located inside a compartment beside the Diebold screen. There, behind a small plastic window, you can see a line by line record of your votes, in three inch length glimpses. Each time you touch the “print” button, the paper advances with the next three inches of your votes. Eventually it line feeds into the upper portion of the compartment, presumably to accumulate until the roll is replenished. Exactly like a cash register, actually.

Now if you’ve used a cash register, you might also know that it often keeps two separate tapes. One for the customer, and an abbreviated one for the sales tax records. The latter is compressed to save paper, but in substance they are identical. But a programmable point of sale machine could produce different tallies, if such was desired.

Likewise, the Diebold print-out which you see but cannot touch behind the plastic, needn’t be the print-out being archived. As simple as that.

Interestingly, the printout visible under the plastic is more a translation of your vote, in plain English, than a coded abbreviation of what your vote represented. Meaning, to reassure you that your vote is recorded according to your wish, the paper trail sacrifices being in a format easily tabulated by an auditor. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the rolls processed at all. Even the election volunteer giving my tutorial explained that the roll is kept only for extenuating circumstances. I was not polled upon emerging from the election center, to survey how El Paso County’s early voters are leaning. So, will there be any call for election workers to review the roll of paper representing my vote?

Now I cannot remember for certain, but it seemed that the push “print” operation was optional. Because of the numerous ballot initiatives this year, the ballot was particularly long. I had to push “print” at least a half-dozen times. That’s rather strange, isn’t it, if printing would not be optional? But then, what kind of a paper trail would represent each Diebold unit, if the rolls only recorded the votes which only particular users were concerned to see in print?

Thus my choices for office holders and local amendments are now recorded with Diebold. They will be counted on other electronic devices, and communicated to central devices. Experts have pointed to man-in-the-middle vulnerabilities where results can be processed at intermediary points-unkown before being retransmitted to their official destinations.

These are the vulnerabilities which other states have determined pose a risk to democratic elections. El Paso County officials, GOP bureaucrats determined that things remain exactly as they are, are plenty happy to stick to their tried and true Diebolds.

Perhaps they know that El Paso County is expected to fall in line with the GOP, and thus no one is planning to challenge the results anyway. Even if this were true, what about the local issues on the ballot. Might the public not want to verify the votes on the sales tax measure? The county administrators themselves benefit from that tax increase. Might taxpayers want to audit that vote, in case it’s really the citizen’s preference not to raise a regressive tax that weighs more heavily on those with less money? The county has been in financial trouble because of the breaks it’s been giving to the wealthiest of clients. Why should they make up the shortfall on the backs of the needy?

Don’t give El Paso County your vote to do with what they please. Cast a paper ballot which remains traceable to your authentic vote. If you believe that your only role in this Democracy is the right to vote, at least, make certain it counts.

Stock markets shoot up as European give aways to super rich go online

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Tony Logan

The European countries more than matched the US government give aways to the super rich and as a result, the markets everywhere are celebrating this Grand Theft Robbery today. Wall Street soars 11 percent on bank rescue and Morgan deal

The kingpins think everywhere that its once again clear sailing for them. However, there is eventually a big price for them to pay for all this, as the common folk everywhere will have to begin to suffer because of these handouts of their money, their work, their children’s futures to these financial and government vultures.

With this suffering will come a rising anger about these gargantuan robberies of national and international wealth, when the people themselves need these funds to make a decent society. Never post WW2 has the system of private property run by the super rich spun itself so totally into the wrongest directions. Dead now is the idea of inter-class cooperation within the capitalist markets of the imperialist nations. Many will still support the super rich no matter how far they go with their criminality, but the foundations of that support have been severely undermined.

Further, since no real correction of any of the main problems that the world economy has faced have been put into place, all that has been bought is the smallest increment of time for the capitalist governments to regroup. These markets are eventually going to collapse again, and when they do, what will then be left for the rich folk to plunder to keep their pyramid schemes afloat? Nada.

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.

Honor Above Orders.

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Brother Jonah

Not about the Mai Li – Lt Calley Massacre, or the Kent State Massacre, or other well known incidents when U.S. soldiers refused to question orders.

See, I get a little flack from ReichWing Trolls saying that Scottie McClellan was a “traitor” for documenting SOME of the lies and other machinations BushCorp did to start the war against the Iraqi people, for the profit of the shareholders of BushCorp.

And that Tony Snow was a hero for not “ratting out” his Accomplices in Treason. And Thefts. And Murders.

So I dug into my extensive memories, and came up with this one incident.

It involves Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher, George Bush Sr and ONE USN seaman who disobeyed an order.

It’s not surprising, Ronnie did associate and do a lot of business with the Bush Klan. (Kartel?) and other unsavory types. Gordon Liddy, Ollie North, Bill Casey, Dick Nixon, Dick Cheney…

All of them are the type who, when you shake hands with them, you have to count your fingers afterward to make sure they didn’t Steal any of them. Theft and Lying, to these guys, is as natural as eating worms is to robins.

Bush and Family, they made one fortune financing the Slave Trade. Yep, not content to just steal people’s property, they went ahead and stole the people as well. Arguably, the ones alive today didn’t do the actual dirty deed, but they still have the money, now, haven’t they?

And they fight tooth and nail against the concept of Reparations.

But that’s not the focus of this story, just an unpleasant diversion.

Treaty law comes into the story, so allow me to explain, yes?

According to the Constitution, the Constitution itself is the Law of the Land, and the final decider in any court in America. In a related Article (VI, if I recall correctly) Treaties are given equal weight in all matters of Law to the Constitution itself.

English Law has similar provisions, that’s where the Framers got it.

Seeing the Company Kept By Reagan, one of whom has declared the Constitution to be “just a goddamned piece of paper”, it’s hardly surprising that Reagan, also, treated the Law as something to be used for his own pleasure and convenience, and put aside when it was more convenient to do so.

Organization of American States. A treaty organization to which the United States belongs. So does Grenada, which is why the invasion had to be called a “rescue operation”.

So does Argentina. Which fought a war with Britain during Thatcher and Reagans Rein of Terror.

A war involving an island where the sheep outnumber the people by tenfold at least.

An island which is strategically located and has a Naval Base and an Air Base.

A war in which, we, the United States, were either Treaty Bound to support Argentina, or stay way the hell out of it.

Charleston Naval Station. British Navy ships refueled and provisioned there, at the expense of the American Taxpayers. Considering the treaty, that was illegal.

Which is probably why the U.S. Navy ordered the sailors not to mention it to anybody.

One of those sailors defied those orders and told of all people, ME.

I am honored to know such a person. A REAL hero, unlike North or Reagan or Liddy or Bush, or their bootlicking accomplices like our own Local Liar “Gunny” Bob.

This impinges on current events because, you see, Reagan had his poodle, Ms Thatcher, Bush had HIS poodle Blair, and they had and have a whole regiment of lying coward pukes who insist that Orders are more important than Honor.

Update: Tony Snow still dead…

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Brother Jonah

Now on the epitome of hubris, the Republicans are setting up a Trust Fund, and asking Americans to contribute.

Steely Dan, Jethro Tull and the Doobie Brothers are planning a benefit concert.

all contributions tax deductible of course. Meaning, we the people are going to be paying for it.

And, Tony Snow didn’t die in poverty. Had plenty of insurance. Got paid well for selling American Soldiers and Iraqis to their deaths based on what anybody who had any sort of sources of information, and the pure courage to use those sources, would know to be a LIE.

A whole series of lies.

Acting as GWs mouthpiece he deliberately joined him in Murder and Theft. That makes him an accomplice under any legal system on earth.

A lot of the people in the Springs don’t give a damn about any Iraqi people being killed, but they pretend to care about American casualties.

So I’ll focus on that. Tony Snow, like everybody associated with Bush, was heavily invested in the Oil and “defense” industries.

He, like the Bush family still do, made money every time an American soldier became a casualty.

I can easily picture him doing a little jig and saying “Cha-ching! yeah, baby, c’mon and die, daddy needs a new pair of dancin’ shoes! Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!”

I strongly suspect the same thing about ALL supporters of this war. They no likey, me no givey damn they no likey.

Ali Burton, the Thief of Baghdad, makes enough money in One DAY to put the Poor, Impoverished Rich Widow on easy street for the rest of her unnatural life.

This is the widow of one of Bush’s accomplices, who made excuses for Mr Bush when Mr Bush refused to increase and tried to decrease VA benefits and other Veterans, their dependents or Widows and Orphans programs.

The widows and orphans of the soldiers Mr Bush and Mr Snow had Murdered for their fun and profit (mostly profit) are given the collective cold shoulder here, but one of the Murderers is being honored for his crimes,

and we, the people, are without our consent directly subsidizing the payments of a trust fund for the Murderer’s wife and children… because it’s a tax deduction…

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

Posted on April 22, 2008 by Eric Verlo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Texas State Government witch hunt and theft of Eldorado children goes on trial

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Tony Logan

The Texas State Government theft of 416 children went on trial today, with 350 lawyers for the kids and their parents, packed into 2 buildings trying to defend against this total abuse of governmental powers. This is just the beginning of this newest government inspired legal nightmare, which certainly matches the legal nightmare of having to defend the federal government use of torture on the POWs at Guantanamo in the courts, too. The Bush Administration really knows its law NOT. They simply think that what they say always goes down, but this time they are going way too far.

Despite the fact that so many in this country think the parents totally guilty of organized pedophilia just by way of being in this Mormon cult, the government has hardly made any case that would justify what it did in seizing these vulnerable children away from their equally vulnerable parents. This old style Mormon cult does believe in polygamy, but that is hardly the same as automatically believing and participating in pedophilia and the sexual abuse of children, despite media attempts to connect the two into being somehow one and same thing.

How far can the government and its Right Wing Christian religious supporters go in abusing children, prisoners, and any folk that seemingly get in their way? They claim to be big supporters of families, yet they cannot even provide the children of this nation with medical care, despite spending trillions of dollars in murdering people in other lands, and occupying their countries. And yet, the type of government they support is out there claiming to be protecting these children from their families?

How far can the liberal Democrats go in turning their backs on these poor parents of this pathetic religious cult and the poor kids being abused by the Texas State government? Supporting abuse of governmental power is not defending children against pedophilia at all. Short cutting normal legal measures that guarantee rights to children by attacking parental rights is not protecting vulnerable children, but abusing them. The State of Texas has yet to prove that even one single case of sexual abuse of a minor actually took place at this Eldorado ranch, and it is more than a week after they initiated their raid!

The government is simply using the media to try and convict these parents and has little to no evidence of any crimes having taken place. It is all government hear say, and no hard evidence. If the Mormon cultists can have their legal rights shredded in this manner, next it might be you. It’s time to wake up about what a monster your government has been turned into. They are the guardians and protectors of very little these days, and it is just stupid to automatically side with what ‘the authorities’ are doing, even if you have no great love for their victims.

Britney -just what big pharma ordered

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Star Magazine prognosis Britney Spears is not just the latest celebrity substance abuse train wreck, nor is she just the opportune diversion for our media eager to obscure private grand theft of the public sector. (Ignore war, warming and the economy, give me more Britney!) Ms. Spears is now also the poster child for corporate America’s biggest crime partners, the pharmaceutical industry.

Is there a medicinal remedy for alcoholism, for a methamphetamine habit, or any chemical addiction? Not really. But there certainly is a burgeoning market for psycho stabilizing, mood tempering meds. And Britney is their “it” girl.

Unlike Clara Bow, or for that matter Mary Pickford forward to Lindsey Lohan, Spears is being pegged for mental disorder normalization, not behavior correction. There’s a well paved road of drug and alcohol excess in Hollywood. Some stars overdose, some recover, just as you or I in anytown, anystate USA far off the tabloids. Frances Farmer was an unwelcome trend setter in the days before Lithium and Thorazine. Imagine if Ed McMahon had been able to pitch Paxil in the wings like Alpo.

Poor Brit. She’s got something the drug companies can cure and they can cure you too if you exhibit her symptoms. Lord knows it’s not uncommon, driving intoxicated, clinging to your children as they are taken from you because you are being judged unfit. Take heart, the diagnosis is not alcoholism which would require government intervention, education, diminished alcohol sales and advertising revenue; it’s not illegal drugs, which would mean more education and law enforcement; it’s not prescription drugs which would require more regulation, education, and a big hit to drug company profits. It’s… would you believe it? MORE PRESCRIPTION DRUGS!

A quick fix for Britney. She’s not drunk, she’s not addicted, she’s certifiable! She’s psychotic, bipolar, manic, etc, it’s treatable! Have you been feeling angry, depressed, tired, driven mad yourself? The pharmaceutical peddlers have a remedy for you. Not less booze, less drugs, or less meds, but more meds. Everyone’s a winner!

The solution to gluttony isn’t fewer potato chips but more of the Olestra butt leakage variety. Consumer-temperance paradox averted. patient’s infirmity stabilized, IV firmly tapped into bank account. Have you seen the prices of the insanity-normalizing medications? Insane! You’re going to wish you had universal health insurance. Or that you could just stop drinking.

Say’s Law and undemocratic monetarism

Posted on January 20, 2008 by Eric Verlo

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.”

Kenya’s ethnic civil war today is a result of the US-Ethiopian invasion of Somalia one year ago

Posted on January 4, 2008 by Tony Logan

Kenya is threatened by a fall into a horrible ethnic civil war since last week’s theft of the national elections there by the US supported puppet who was voted out of office.

This dictator named Kibaki, has made 200,000 Kenyans refugees within a period of one week, and the US refuses to denounce him. Why? The answer is simple. He, along with Ethiopia’s dictator, Meles Zenawi, are the US allies in destroying the peace of neighboring Somalia, where the US took its stupid so-called ‘War on Terror’ and terrorized that people. See you tube video about the US role in planning Ethiopia’s invasion

Key to the US planning of this intervention intro nations that expand from Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda is Jendayi Frazer, a former assistant of Condoleeza Rice who backed here to become Bush’s principle director as US interventionist in the Horn of Africa. She was prominently seen on the previous video, and can be seen once again on you tube video Jendayi Frazer on Al Jazeera

Frazer is at this moment in Kenya trying to patch up a deal between the winner of the Kenyan elections, Raila Odinga, and the US backed dictator still in office, Kibaki. See Kenya opposition demands poll re-run as US envoy flies in It is rather doubtful that the US government is planning to dump the man in power, just as they have not done so in Pakistan with Pervez Musharraf.

Jendayi Frazer is an interesting figure, because it is she that is the present US thug in charge of directing US intervention against Sudan. And it is she that is in charge of current US meddling in Congo, too, where what was called ‘Africa’s World War’ is on the brink of reopening back up once again.

Refugees from Kenya are flowing into Uganda at this point, too. The best thing that the US, Britain, and France could do for Africa, is just to get out of the region altogether. The more they meddle and try to control, the more destabilization is brought to the region. For example, without French meddling in Burundi and Rwanda, there might never have been a Holocaust there. It was an integral part of the cause of the genocide.

No more militarization of Africa. US out of Africa Now! Economic aid and not military interventions. US military intervention in Somalia is spreading disaster throughout the region and needs to be stopped.

Pinheads in High Definition

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Eric Verlo

I hadn’t yet seen HDTV, or watched a football game in high definition I guess. Over Thanksgiving I had the chance, and got a closeup of the Sports Center-esque after-party where guys in chip covered Barca-loungers watch suits at a conference table lend a business air to their giddy analysis. What made this so different in Hi Def? Maybe you knew it already. Each of these dapper jock-industry everymen wears a flag pin!

Pins with the American flag on them.

I know there’s a school of thought which urges us not to relinquish our patriotic symbols to the bastards making them look so horrifically bad. Might I ask hypothetically, when might we consider the symbol irretrievable? When you drop the lipstick into the toilet, public or private, I’ve learned from women, it’s irrecoverable. You have to retrieve it, obviously if it’s your toilet, but that’s it for the lipstick.

A flag is a symbol for what you stand for, by definition, a standard. When bad guys take it, do bad things with it, make it stand for THEIR ideals: rape, torture, theft, murder, mass murder, genocide, supremacy, imperialism, conquest, a new world order, wouldn’t it be fair to retire what you thought the flag meant? It’s theirs, leave it to them. This isn’t just a little shit with which they’ve desecrated the flag, this is shit with which they’ve varnished the damned thing. This is karmic shit with which they’ve DAMNED the symbol of our higher ideals. Our higher ideals used to shove immorality into innocent throats until they thought they were suffocating or drowning and for good measure until they were dead.

That is the symbol which each of those TV jocks wears on their lapels. Militant US supremacy.

Jena style legalized lynching is as American as apple pie, unfortunately

Posted on September 22, 2007 by Tony Logan

Millions of people around our country are legally lynched by the legal system. Some live through it, but most have their lives damaged, destroyed, and otherwise taken away from them in part or in entirety.

The whole country knows this simple truth, but many people favor just that and keep the wheels of this legalized lynching machine constantly well oiled with their support.

Many are folk like our local rag, The Gazette, which for reasons of local political expediency ran a picture of Thursday’s march for The Jena 6 big on the front page. This is what keeps the paper in decent standing with the local NAACP chapter, which has a heavily military influenced leadership.

The Gazette wants to not endanger that constituency’s tolerance for the paper’s Business as Usual support for the US War Machine, but The Gazette editorial staff along with the whole US chain of Right Wing papers called ‘Freedom Publishing’, doesn’t care a damn about stopping legal lynching, whether in Jena, Louisiana or anywhere else. They really don’t want racial justice, they just want the social tranquility where Black folk accept their own political dominance by others.

In fact, the editorial staff at The Gazette are big proponents of continuing all the current legal injustice now totally codified in America’s courts. They are big proponents for ‘law and order’ when used against the lower classes, and against all Law and Order when directed at the fat cats who are primarily rich White men. The local NAACP will never get The Gazette and the fat cats they write opinions for to offer up any more than the most superficial posturing in regards to stopping the racist legal lynching that the Jena 6 case has brought to the fore.

Jena style legalized lynching is as American as apple pie, unfortunately. We need a new America where the legal system is taken away from the control of the super rich and then used by the exploited to stop the super rich’s theft of America’s wealth. We need a racially just America and the legal system as it currently is, is the biggest obstacle to obtaining that goal. It must be totally changed, transformed, and democratized, for as of today democratically controlled it most certainly is not.

Free the Jena Six Now! Stop Legalized Lynching of Black Americans Today!

Also, Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism
The Injustice in Jena

Operation Quagmire, 1994

Posted on August 12, 2007 by Brother Jonah

You know, the times come around and around and around… So this has been resurrected, I give you: Dick Cheney, advising NOT to invade Iraq.

Video Surfaces of Cheney, in 1994, Warning That An Invasion of Iraq Would Lead to ‘Quagmire’
By E&P Staff
Published: August 12, 2007 10:20 AM ET

NEW YORK It’s not the first time that citizen “investigative journalists” have uncovered some embarrassing, or telling, nugget from the past that apparently remained buried for years. But it has happened again with the posting of a now wildly popular video on YouTube that shows Dick Cheney explaining in 1994 that trying to take over Iraq would be a “bad idea” and lead to a “quagmire.”

The people who put it up come from a site called Grand Theft Country, the on-screen source appears to be the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and the date on the screen is April 15, 1994. That looks right, by the age of Cheney.

Posted on Friday, it had received over 100,000 hits by this morning, after being widely-linked around the Web. The transcript of this segment is below.

Cheney had helped direct the Gulf War for President George H.W. Bush. That effort was later criticized for not taking Baghdad and officials like Cheney had to explain why not, for years. Some have charged that this led to an overpowering desire to finish the job after Cheney became vice president in 2001.

Here is the transcript. The YouTube address is at the end.
*

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

The Madness of King George

Posted on August 12, 2007 by Marie Walden

Escaping tyranny by sailing to the New World was a temporary fix. A ghost has come back to haunt us. We have another King George.

In the past six years, George Bush has sought to accumulate all governing powers into one place, his grubby hands. Bush has repeatedly violated the Constitution’s command that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” by breaking many and refusing to enforce others. The Constitution grants Congress the power to make laws; after both houses pass a bill, the President can only sign it or veto it. Bush, however, takes a different tack. He has vetoed just three bills, then quietly attached “signing statements” to more than 1,000 congressional laws, indicating his intent to follow only those parts with which he agrees. He flouts the law every chance he gets. Usually with a stupid grin on his face.

The King’s latest blatant power grab, the Protect America Act 2007 (PAA), revises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA was passed in 1978 in response to Tricky Dick and the FBI’s unlawful surveillance of critics of national policy and other political enemies. FISA required that a panel of judges grant permission to an administration to spy on individuals within the U.S. Surveillance would only be allowed if the judges could be convinced that the communications to be monitored were exclusively those of foreign powers and that there was no substantial likelihood that an American would be overheard. FISA was designed to protect us from the government, not the other way around.

Not surprisingly, this new act takes the power to approve spying out of the hands of the judges and gives it the the Attorney General. Currently the highly esteemed Alberto Gonzales. An old friend of the King’s. A known lackey. It also requires telephone companies to collect data and turn it over to the Feds. And, of course, grants them immunity from lawsuits. Our brave and noble Congress passed this bullshit legislation with nary a whimper. Behavior we’ve come to expect from our “representatives.”

King George Protect America, my ass. To say that this shocking theft of our freedom is to save us from terrorists, from Al Qaeda, is a frank lie. Terrorists are well-trained. They move with stealth. They have face-to-face meetings. They don’t call each other’s cell phones and chitchat about the latest and greatest plans. Our government is well aware of this. No, PAA is directed at us. The American public. Especially those of us who slander the dictator.

King George is simply a tyrant.

Mass murder of civilians their only strategy left

Posted on July 10, 2007 by Tony Logan

The US government war to control declining world oil supplies for itself is running into obstacle after obstacle. A foreign policy that ultimately has no real political aim other than pure theft, in the end always finds itself to resort principally to using pure violence.

Mass murder of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan has become the US government’s only strategy left. How ironic that a war that has had as its stated #1 goal a design to stop terrorism, has now absolutely devolved into having its #1 goal to simply do nothing more than spread terrorism to others, and therefore supposedly away from ourselves.

When laws protect the criminals and not the common people

Posted on March 10, 2007 by Tony Logan

Somebody has just burglarized your place, they get caught, but then the police walk away with them, laughing about the whole ‘misunderstanding’. It’s even worse than that, since while the judge watches, the burglars ‘apologize’ to you for their crimes and then walk out the courtroom door with the loot!

Hey! Maybe these robbers are actually in with the police, you think. What else can one think, when the burglars admit they’re guilty of the crime, apologize to you, and then say they won’t let it happen again and will take measures to make sure you stay safe in the future! And the judge lets them off the hook for the theft! If you had taken $5 of food unauthorized from your local grocery, you might have gotten locked up for life!

How is it that American has come to coddle its criminals in such a manner? I know of more than a few cases, where after the criminals did bodily harm to some of our neighbors, they got off Scot free! Can you believe that? These folk sustained permanent injuries that they will have to suffer with the rest of their now destroyed lives, and the criminals get to go on about their business, laughing and boasting of what they have done!

It seems that there are now 2 sets of laws; one for the decent common fok, and another set of much cushy regulations for the criminals! Hard working people get the shaft while hardened lifetime criminals drive around with their stolen goods and thuimb their noses at the rest of us. Is this really America?

Look at this case from Washington DC for example. The powers that be practically are giving awards out for these crimes and to these criminals. Where is the concern for the victims here? And one of the criminals actually has the gall to say,

‘And it’s frustrating.’

Damn right it is, you need to be in jail, Pal. What has come to America when criminals like these 2 in DC continue to run loose? Doesn’t anybody care about stopping crime any more? Stop coddling these criminals!

Pueblo police steal baby from immigrant mom

Posted on March 2, 2007 by Tony Logan

One of the most unreported aspect of US immigration policy is how it breaks up immigrant families, oftentimes under the guise of saving children from abuse. The recent case of a undocumented mother in Pueblo accused of ‘selling’ her baby is case in point.

This young woman came to the US trying to find money to feed her 2 children left behind in Mexico with her grandmother. Instead, she ends up arrested on felony charges and her third child is taken away from her and put into Child Protective Service’s control. There it may well end up being put up for permanent adoption while the mother may end up behind bars for years unable to help provide for the other 2 children in Mexico!

In addition, a couple who tried to assist her, themselves were arrested and put into jail under felony charges! This couple has 4 kids that are also possibly up for grabs by the police, if there would be no other relatives to help to care for them.

What a total mess the police have made out of this situation. It’s not like any US government agency cares one wit about the children Involved. For all the US authorities care, this mother’s 2 children in Mexico could be allowed to starve to death. All the time mothers giving up their children to adoption in the US are offered financial incentives to do so. They are not charged with ‘selling’ their babies. But when an ‘illegal alien’ mother tries the best she can to work things out while being considered an animal that needs to be hunted down and deported, suddenly the terms of US law are altered. She is accused of traffic in babies, her own no less! If she had just handed it over to an adoption agency forever and away from her ever seeing the baby again, all would have been sweet and legal! Instead, she wanted to hold on the best she could to that baby.

The Pueblo police need to get their butts out of the baby theft business, and free this mother and the couple that she was living with that befriended her. What a travesty the US law is when it steals babies from their mothers, while accusing the mothers of ‘selling’ their own flesh and blood. Immigrants are human beings, and the US law degrades them instead of helping them. It is disgusting how the victims are blamed of crimes, while the government authorities are always hailed as being the decent folk involved. They most certainly are not. They are the real traffickers in human flesh.

One might want to think that this case is an exceptional mess up, and that it is not typical of how the US law is applied against the interests of undocumented parents and their children. However that is not the case, and this abuse of police power happens all the time, yet most cases never make it into the news. Immigrant children are constantly taken away form their parents while the parents are jailed and ultimately deported, leaving their children in protective custody within the US and placed into foster families.

New Iraqi oil laws made in USA

Posted on February 23, 2007 by Tony Logan

There is since the days of legal slavery, probably no worse example of theft written into law than the proposed new Iraqi oil laws will be when passed. Written first in English by the US oil companies and their US government co-conspirators, they were recently re-translated back into our home tongue from Arabic by an Iraqi blogger, Raed Jarrar. Key word here is PRIVATIZATION, and it won’t be for the benefit of any minuscule Iraqi companies still in existence.

To the hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars already robbed from the US treasury for the benefit of the US armament crowd, like CS homey company Lockheed et al, now will be added hundreds of billions of dollars to be robbed by corporations like Halliburton and Exxon-Mobil from the decimated people of Iraq. A perfect picture of modern predatory capitalism in action. Sick. See Democracy Now- New Iraqi Oil Law to Open Iraq’s Oil Reserves to Western Companies

US out to control Iran’s natural gas

Posted on January 29, 2007 by Tony Logan

Most thinking people in the world now realize that the US invaded and occupies Iraq in order to control the oil underground there. While other oil producing countries were rapidly depleting their major oil fields of the precious natural resource that lay underground, that was not the case with Iraq. The country lagged far behind in developing their oil fields due to its disastrous war with Iran and the economic sanctions that the US later initiated against them. The oil largely stayed in the ground for about a 20 year period of time. But what about Iran? Why is the US government on the move to try to regime change there?

Iran at first seems to be not as worthy of Iraq to fall victim to a US energy grab. Their reserves of oil are in decline, and that is one reason that the government seeks to develop nuclear energy. However, there are 2 other carbon energy forms that are also of vast importance besides oil. Natural gas and coal. Iran has three and one half times the reserves of the US in natural gas, and is only behind one much larger country, Russia, in underground stocks of that commodity.

As we know, much of Europe is dependent on Russia’s natural gas to get their communities heated each Winter. This is an extremely important fuel resource even if it is not as central to the world’s growing energy crisis as oil is. And just like oil, both India and China are looking to increase their imports of natural gas, too. Being Number 2 in reserves of natural gas in the world is no small matter. And world natural gas supplies are due to peak in several decades, all the more to make Iran’s naturla gas a very important target for other’s greed.

It is true, that the American government’s political desire to destroy Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf is probably as large a factor to the US drive to engage in war against Iran as just the desire to commit outright theft.. But the drive to rob and control this huge reservoir of natural gas plays almost as prominent a part in the neocon ‘surge’ to fuck Iran over, as does the desire to only politically neutralize/neuter them. Excuse the bad language. But when I discuss the American mafia imperialist strategy, for some reason I begin to talk like Richard Nixon?

Natural Gas. All cause for more war profiteering.

We are weeks, and maybe just days before the US assault on Iran begins. No Blood for Oil! No blood for Natural Gas! This is not the way to begin to deal with the world’s energy crisis. A continued world wide resource war will only make the transition away from the unsustainable excessive misuse of carbon energy forms, even more painful and disastrous than it has to be.

To: Bush and Gates Re: OUR Plan

Posted on January 27, 2007 by Brother Jonah

Dear Messieurs Bush and Gates.
Today you have once again proposed that anybody who does not support YOU and YOUR War have some obligation to put forth a better plan for victory in YOUR WAR.
Also Mr Gates has presented the idea once again that LEGITIMATE PROTEST of YOUR WAR somehow emboldens YOUR enemies. Which would be an accusation of Treason, (a capital offense) against the majority of Congressmen and a majority of the people of the United States.

Apparently you are both somewhat confused about what exactly your legal status is.

Mr. Bush, you are at most an elected official. In a Democracy, or if you prefer, a Republic, THE PEOPLE are the ones who are the Decision Makers. You are our employee and NOT our master.

I realize that you have the mistaken notion that as a public employee you have no obligation to listen to the clearly expressed will of the people. You call it “leadership by polls”, and sneer at the prospect that mere mortals can criticize you or tell you what to do. You call yourself the Commander in Chief. Mr Bush, there are somewhat less than 2 million members of the Armed Forces in America. That means 298 million citizens of the United States are in fact Civilians, and therefore NOT under Your command.

Now, Mr Bush, I realize that Laura will have to read this to you. I would ask Mrs. Bush to point out that 298,000,000 is substantially a larger number than 2,000,000. In other words, as your Poppy used to say, YOU do the math.

You and Mr Gates and Mr Cheney are OUR employees. WE are the deciders and WE have decided to support Our Other Employees, the Men and Women of the Armed Forces. Current and Future.

These men and women, and the children your ROTC and recruiters are grooming for future employment in the Armed Forces, have been placed in Harm’s Way by your stupid policies. Your policies are based on deliberate manipulation and deception of the American People, and the Congress, for more than 6 years now.

Apparently you don’t listen to polls. You keep repeating this, so I and others like me will have to repeat our reply: When the American People voted for President in 2000, more people voted against YOU. The only way you managed to attain office was by skillful manipulation of the electoral process by your family and their henchmen. Men like Mr Cheney and Mr Gates. You again failed to get a Majority of the votes in 2004, yet somehow you have represented that failure as a mandate from the people to allow you to lead us.

I know you can not read fast, so I am writing this very slowly… The people who you feel should obey you, are not going to obey you.

Your policy has continually failed since the day you stole your job. It has specifically failed with respect to YOUR personal war against Saddam Hussein. You have, through a long series of Lies, unlawfully targeted the people and government of Iraq as the Enemy, and demanded that we do the same. You have had Mr Hussein killed. You have done what you said you wanted, i.e.; Killed Mr Hussein, been allowed to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction throughout Iraq, been allowed to install a New Puppet dictator in Iraq, taken the Oil Fields of Iraq to give to Mr Cheney and your other Henchmen in the petroleum industry.

In the 4 years since the unlawful conquest and pillage of the nation of Iraq began, exactly zero none nada zip bupkas of your promised Glorious Victory have emerged. You have murdered more than 3,000 members of the Armed Forces. At the lowest count, you have Murdered 75,000 citizens of the nation of Iraq. The higher count of up to 300,000 Iraqis is disputed by you and your Lying cabinet and lying supporters.

Your unofficial Spokes Freaks at the FOREIGN owned Fox Television Networks have made the threat, repeatedly, that people who oppose this systematic Murder and Theft and Deception that you have been doing for so long, should be rounded up and punished for their Patriotic defiance of your unlawful policies.

Today, YOUR henchman Mr. Gates has used the same lie, that not supporting you is giving “aid and comfort” to the alleged Enemies .

These people did not declare war against the United States. The people of the United States did not declare them to be the enemies. YOU and your Chicken Hawk Cabinet and advisors did. By allowing your spokespersons, either the official ones like Cheney and Gates, or the unofficial ones like the employees of Mr Rupert Murdoch, to threaten Americans with nothing short of DEATH for opposing your murderous policies, is Terrorism.

Mr Gates and you, and the people at Fox Networks, and other corporate information media, know very well that threatening Americans with death or in fact any punishment for engaging in conduct which is not only Lawful, but mandated by Our consciences, is unlawful in and of itself.

Perhaps you believe that Americans who oppose you have no resolve. To cling to that mistaken belief, you would have to neglect and ignore the fact that we have not been cowed into submission, We Have Not Backed Down, but instead grown stronger in our Resistance.

Many of us are former members of the Military, like you, Mr Bush. However, most of the former military who oppose you, unlike you or any member of your cabinet, are actually combat veterans. The Congressmen you and Mr. Gates say are traitors, AND MAKE NO MISTAKE you have openly accused us of TREASON, are likewise Combat Veterans.

The fact that we have been using every Lawful Means to resist and defy your so called “leadership” is not an indication of weakness on our parts, it is instead a strong resolve to not destroy our nation further by abandoning Rule of Law.

This restraint has kept the Opposition to your Dictatorship from taking up arms against our fellow citizens, in spite of you and your henchmen making terroristic threats and in many cases actually carrying out such threats.

The time for such restraint is rapidly approaching its end. If you and your lapdogs insist on making war against The American People, you and your lap dogs will have to be restrained, by force if necessary.

Your New Plan for Victory, which you have arrogantly commanded us to support or propose a better, is the same Old Plan, which you have insisted on following, at the cost of our National Treasure, in short our relatives and friends who are in the military. Also you have spent the National Treasury and any conceivable payments into that Treasury, for generations to come. You have taken away our ability to respond to Real National Threats, as opposed to Non-existent threats from people like the late Mr Hussein.

Your plan has been given 4 years to work, it is not working and, even though you and your goon squads and lying henchmen keep saying otherwise, We The People are capable of seeing that it has not worked, and will not work.

We do not owe you a better plan. You owe us your respect, and your obedience to the People. You, and your cabinet, owe us your resignations. You owe our fellow citizens in the military your respect, for their lives and for their service.

You can no longer hide behind the lies that a dictatorship is somehow a guarantee of freedom.

Your incompetent dictatorship is instead a guarantee of slavery, but ONLY if we fail in our real duties, to bring your dictatorship to an end.

The people who you and Mr. Gates threaten, are quite capable of forcibly ending that threat. Mr. Bush, Mr. Gates, I strongly caution you not to make the rash mistake of continuing in your terroristic campaign.

Made in the US- Iraq’s wave of refugees

Posted on January 23, 2007 by Tony Logan

WalMart may be as Chinese as rice these days, but there is still one product that’s made still in the US of A. Our government still leads the world in making refugees out of people. Let’s look at Iraq alone, where 2,000,000 have fled outside the country’s, and 2,000,00 more are internal refugees at ‘home’. Iraq’s population was only about 27,000,000. One out of seven then, have been made refugees by the violence of the US invasion and occupation.

Before that, when the US gave Afghanistan the Taliban and Osama, 1/5 of the population there had already become refugees. I don’t know how they can even do a count there now? It is hopeless, after decades of US warmaking there, to even try. And US war making in South America has made about 1,000,000 Colombians internal refugees, though that number may be down at moment. And who can forget how US foreign policy has kept 4,500,000 Palestinian refugees in place, and who can forget the refugees of SE Asia? Those of Central America? So many everywhere…. US made.

From time to time there are contenders to our throne, especially form locales like the Congo and Sudan. But the US has always been a leader in Africa at refugee making, too. The US heyday was back when it was supporting the South African and Rhodesian Apartheid regimes, as they waged wars across half the continent. Millions became refugees due to that US African foreign policy, in just Angola and Mozambique alone. And the US vs Russia in the horn of Africa? Well who can count them?

One strategy of the US to stop the iraqis from fighting the theft of their oil underground? Shoot! Well why not just make ALL THE COUNTRY refugees? Totally depopulate it then! Maybe that’s what’s really behind Bush’s hidden strategy, The Surge? Like a tsunamai wave on shore, all to wash all out to sea! Brilliant! Made in America, the 21st Century refugee. How proud can we be, with the American production of this product of our Great Society? Go for Iran, too?

MoveOn flexes non-electoral muscle at last

Posted on January 12, 2007 by Tony Logan

Yesterday the Democratic Party’s liberal appendage, MoveOn.org, organized around 500 demonstrations throughout the US to express opposition to the War Against Iraq. There was one even in Pueblo, Colorado, not to mention the activities here in Colorado Springs, that got excellent TV coverage last night!

What caused them to finally get off their butts and show their real strength? After all, MoveOn claim to have 3,000,000 supporters (Democratic Party voting) in the US, so why ‘move on’ now at long last, when they have all the while pretty much sat around doing much of nothing for so very long? In short, the answer is that some Democratic Party politicians are beginning to panic at continuing to follow the Republican Administration into continuing The Petrol Wars, from Iraqi and Afghanistan occupations into launching an extension of this war into Iran, Syria, Africa, Pakistan, and Lebanon. This disaccord represents a beginning fracture within the US ruling stratas over whether united they can actually pull off this neo-con megatheft of the world’s most important natural resource, or not.

From the point of view of some of them, the consequences of military failure to successfully recolonize the Middle East petrol producing region and totally monopolize world oil resource supply, will be far more cataclysmic than even an Iraqi pullout at this time would be. Bush’s speech was a Rubicon crossed, of sorts. Is it better to pull out now, or go for broke? Many think it better to pull back instead of continuing to charge into disaster.

In short, some of America’s elite are beginning to think that throwing more bad money after all the bad money already looted from the American treasury by the Pentagon, Lockheed, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, Boeing, and others of the same ilk, is total suicide for the country, and even its super rich, too. Still, there is nothing to make us think that this fracture within US elites at this point can stop the upcoming Bush escalation into a major US government attack on Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. The dominant sector of the US elites think that it is now the only option that willl work, so the rest of us should not be surprised when this new and higher level of violence is begun. In fact, it already has been.

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