MY POV

IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Benjamin Franklin

How Bush really feels about you.

"If there were such a thing as Intelligent Design, we wouldn't have George W. Bush."

Christy Marx

The Mars Society

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
34th President of the USA
a Republican, in a letter written to his brother on November 8, 1954

"...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."

Benito Mussolini

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln
November 12, 1864

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man."

Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

James Madison
(1751-1836)
4th President of the United States

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."

Heinrich Heine
Almansor, 1823

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarschall

"Authoritarian societies inevitably crumble because they silence the critics who could save them from errors of blind hubris. Dissent is not a luxury to be indulged in the best of times, but rather an obligation of free people, particularly when the very notion of dissent is unpopular."

Robert Scheer

"FASCISM: a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."

American Heritage Dictionary

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is
neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it
because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King

"My life is my message."

Gandhi

Posted: 28 Nov. 2006

Alas, I've had no time to post here this month, due to...well, life in general and getting a new computer system. I've been greatly heartened by the results of the elections, as long as I see some positive work out of the new Congress, like putting a check on Mad King George's ambitions and undoing the damage he's done. That's asking for a lot, I know. We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, would they shut up about the 2008 election already? It's two years away. GMAFB.

From Grist on-line.

Smog-eating mineral added to buildings and roads in Europe, Japan

Why do buildings just stand there when they could make themselves useful? Some companies have a solution: coating buildings and roads in Europe and Japan with a "smog-eating" mineral, titanium dioxide, that cleans surfaces and nearby air. The coating can reduce some pollutants by 20 to 70 percent, according to one company in Italy. It's a miracle! The smog just disappears! Right? Here's how Roy Colvile, a London air-quality consultant, explains it: "The titanium dioxide allows the pollutants in the air to react with the oxygen in the air and converts it to a form which then falls onto the ground and is washed away by the rain." Oh, washed away. Hmm. Well, hopeful greens still offer a cautious thumbs-up. "Philosophically, it is better never to form pollutants than to find ways to destroy pollutants," says environmental chemist Howard Liljestrand of the University of Texas at Austin, "but this is a useful technique for air pollutants that humans already make."


Christian Coalition leader-to-be resigns over climate change, poverty stance

We remember when evangelical leaders served time before stepping down in disgrace -- hello, fabulous Bakker boy -- but the latest kerfuffle involves a figurehead who hadn't even assumed his position. And this time the scandal isn't sexual, it's environmental. The Rev. Joel C. Hunter, a Florida pastor whose term as Christian Coalition president was to begin in January, has resigned over a difference in philosophy. The difference: he wanted the Pat Robertson-founded group to take a stand on poverty and climate change, and the coalition's board? Not so much. So Hunter won't show the way to the 2.5-million member organization, whose followers have expressed concern that its agenda is becoming too liberal. "These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter says. "To tell you the truth, I feel like there are literally millions of evangelical Christians that don't have a home right now." Remember, good people: you always have a home at Grist.

Posted: 6 Nov. 2006

Everybody get out and vote tomorrow! It's vital that we turn around the direction of this country by taking power away from the corrupt administration.

And if you live in California, don't be fooled by the fake "Guide For Democrats" that was recently mailed out, the one that has an eagle's head on it and a picture of Senator Feinstein. Neither she nor the Democratic party had anything to do with it. It's full of misinformation and was mailed as a dirty trick. Ignore it.

Posted: 2 Nov. 2006

How Neocon Favorites Duped U.S.
by ROBERT PARRY The Iraq War demonstrates a systemic failure in Washington—one that continues to this day because few of the culprits have faced any accountability.

When American voters go to the polls on Nov. 7, one of the foremost questions that should be on their minds is how did the United States get into the Iraq mess, which has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. soldiers and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. What went wrong with Washington and what can citizens do about it?

Part of the answer to what went wrong is that the normal checks and balances—in Congress, the national news media and the U.S. intelligence community—collapsed in the face of George W. Bush’s determination to invade Iraq. Pro-war neoconservative opinion leaders also acted as intellectual shock troops to bully the few voices of dissent.

Amid this enforced "group think," a self-interested band of Iraqi exiles found itself with extraordinary freedom to inject pro-war disinformation into the U.S. decision-making process. Despite many reasons to challenge the truthfulness of Iraqi "defectors" handled by the Iraqi National Congress, few in Washington did.

Now, four years later, the Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a long-awaited post-mortem on how the INC influenced this life-and-death debate. The report reveals not only specific cases of coached Iraqi "defectors" lying to intelligence analysts but a stunning failure of the U.S. political/media system to challenge the lies.

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line.

As feds close EPA libraries, researchers and others protest

Gagging didn't work, so the feds are trying something new. The U.S. EPA has closed four of its research libraries and cut hours at seven more. The agency says materials will still be available digitally, but many worry that the shift will stymie scientists seeking data on, say, the 1,700 potentially hazardous chemicals introduced each year. The library system houses some 400,000 sources; a 2004 report showed that its librarians have saved EPA staff over 214,566 hours of research time, equating to more than $7.5 million. (The cutbacks are expected to save $2 million annually.) The American Library Association called the cuts "draconian," while Jeffrey Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility equated them to a "self-imposed lobotomy." Meanwhile, others are protesting the apparent dismantling of EPA's Northwest environmental-justice office, which coincides with the appointment of a regional administrator who once worked at Dow Chemical. Weeding is fundamental!

christymarx.com | site map | Christy Marx: Writing Credits