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: 29 Oct. 2006

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
Written by Frank Morales

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

READ THE REST.

Posted: 22 Oct. 2006

'Beginning of the end of America'
Olbermann addresses the Military Commissions Act in a special comment
By Keith Olbermann

Excerpt:
.............

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

"Hearing all the evidence," Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

READ THE REST.

From Grist on-line.

Marine "dead zones" on the rise around the world

There are now at least 200 oxygen-starved "dead zones" in the world's seas and oceans, a rise of more than a third over the past two years, the United Nations Environment Program announced yesterday. The algae blooms that suck up oxygen and cause dead zones -- killing off or driving out fish, oysters, sea grass, and other marine flora and fauna -- are triggered by phosphorus and nitrogen from fertilizer, sewage, animal waste, and fossil-fuel burning. Dead zones currently lurk off the coasts of the U.S., Scandinavia, South America, Ghana, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, and Britain. "There are numerous compelling reasons for combating pollution to the marine environment," says UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "These range from public health concerns to the economic damage such pollution can cause to tourism and fisheries." Unfortunately, the dead-zone problem is only getting worse; nitrogen pollution of waterways that drain into seas and oceans is expected to rise 14 percent from mid-1990s levels by 2030.


Scientists worry about declining numbers of honeybees and other pollinators

Researchers are warning of a significant population decline in species that together pollinate three-quarters of all flowering North American plants, including more than 90 commercial crops. A study released yesterday by the National Research Council indicates a "demonstrably downward" trend in populations of birds, bees, bats, and other pollinating species. The American honeybee population has declined 30 percent in the last two decades; last year, American farmers imported honeybees for the first time since 1922. European researchers have also documented a significant decline in pollinators. Contributing factors, says an NRC panel, include introduced parasites, pesticides, habitat loss, and possibly global warming. "Despite its apparent lack of marquee appeal, a decline in pollinator populations is one form of global change that actually has credible potential to alter the shape and structure of terrestrial ecosystems," says NRC panel chair May R. Berenbaum.

Posted: 20 Oct. 2006

A powerful piece. Remember that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire which the military attempted to cover up.

After Pat’s Birthday
By Kevin Tillman

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Posted: 15 Oct. 2006

Iraq for Sale: As Not Seen on TV
By John Patterson
The Guardian UK

Not coming soon to a TV near you, especially if you live in the US ... Iraq for Sale.

Iraq for Sale, the latest documentary from Robert Greenwald, tells a depressingly familiar tale of corporate corruption and war-profiteering in Iraq. Focusing on companies like Halliburton, CACI International and Blackwater Security Consulting, it recites a litany of rapacity and exploitation that ought to have American citizens swarming Congress, demanding heads on pikes.

It's all here: Halliburton charging $45 for a six-pack of sodas; undertrained and poorly safeguarded mercenaries earning megabuck salaries that dwarf the pittances awarded to regular troops; gigantic corporate profit margins netted by shafting the recipient at both ends of the process (lousy and dangerous services for mindbendingly exorbitant fees); and an unsupervised, no-bid, payment-guaranteed contracting system that utterly contradicts any defensible notion of free-market capitalism.

Like the bibliophobic Ronald Reagan, these days we apparently can't understand anything until we see it on TV. Greenwald has answered that need for us, and Iraq for Sale proves two things: first, that the gung-ho, warmongering capitalism of Joseph Heller's Milo Minderbinder is alive and well in the war zone; and second, that it is easier for the chairmen of Blackwell and Exxon/Mobil to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a serious and necessary dissident documentary to be seen by the broad American public.

Greenwald has earned praise for establishing an alternative distribution system for his movies, which have so far covered the entire spectrum of what is wrong with 21st-century America, including Fox News, Wal-Mart, the 2000 election, Enron, and the Tom DeLay-corrupted House of Representatives. Although most of his films achieve a nominal basic release, Greenwald also pioneered "watch-and-discuss" parties that allow citizens to download the film for free and discuss it in large groups in their homes. This is an excellent way to raise consciousness and build networks of dissent, but it also falls prey to the accusation that it is preaching to the converted. I think Greenwald is a hero, but his work should be seen by the widest possible audience. It's not as if his films deal with minor social and political nuances; they address the central realities of our age.

Well, fat chance of seeing his work on US television. The world of canned news is a total shut-out for anything to the left of John McCain. The best that most left-liberal documentaries can hope for (if not made by Michael Moore) is a limited release and a showing on cable. Take James Longley's remarkable documentary about life in Iraq since April 2003, Iraq in Fragments. It won awards at Sundance but has no US distributor. Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantánamo had its poster censored by the MPAA and ran for about a week. Winterbottom himself was treated like a pariah on US cable news shows, with mendacious Pentagon spokesmen trotted out to defame his movie - and not face-to-face. Corporate lobbyists and spokes-hacks even show up at film festivals to denounce movies such as Fast Food America and An Inconvenient Truth. And good luck seeing The Power of Nightmares in the United States, the one country that most needs to see it.

This is all very different from the Vietnam/ Watergate era, when the US media had full access to the battle zone, when Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News could report on near-revolutionary dissidence within the US military, without being accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and when journalists relentlessly asked the necessary questions that finally felled Richard Nixon.

The rise of a bought-and-paid-for news media means that the very notion of objectively verifiable truth is now suspect, and that facts themselves are derided as inherently leftwing and unpatriotic. Fox News, the bellwether of these trends, may presently be losing viewers and credibility and slashing costs in desperation, but the truth is that it won the war against reality a long time ago in the United States - and reality may no longer be in any condition to stage a comeback.

From The Center for American Progress.

Losing the Faith

"More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives," David Kuo, the former special assistant to President Bush on faith-based issues, is "going public with an insider's tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points." Kuo is a "self-described conservative Christian" who has worked with former Sen. Jack Kemp (R-NY), prominent conservative activist Bill Bennett, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. In his book "Tempting Faith," Kuo accuses Karl Rove and others in the Bush administration of "cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain," ignoring issues such as poverty, and limiting faith-based grants to organizations that are "politically friendly to the administration." Rove's office, according to Kuo, referred to evangelicals as "boorish," "nuts," "ridiculous," "out of control," and "just plain 'goofy.'" The revelations come as right-wing politicians "worry that angry evangelicals may stay home from the polls" because of the House leadership's mishandling of the Foley scandal. Kuo's new book reveals a conservative agenda which values crass politics over the "values" agenda. As E.J. Dionne writes, the current political climate presents a "national opportunity to break free from empty, politically driven rhetoric that has nothing to do with strengthening families and everything to do with electoral advantage."

NOT THE FIRST INSIDER CRITICISM: Kuo has criticized the administration's handling of faith-based programs before. In 2005, Kuo described the "minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda" during his time in the administration. Kuo bemoaned the lack of focus on poverty. "[The White House] never really wanted the 'poor people stuff,'" he wrote. Kuo was at one time the consummate right-wing insider. Keith Olbermann reported last night that during his stint at Jack Kemp's think tank, Empower America, "[Kuo] and his team taught more than 600 candidates how to run for office -- by blaming President Clinton for the nation's sad state of affairs at the time." John DiIulio, the head of the faith-based program until Aug. 2001, also spoke out against the administration's penchant for politics over policy. "What you’ve got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm," DiIulio said. "It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." DiIulio, like Kuo, endeared himself to conservatives by attacking Clinton. "During the Clinton impeachment drama, he beat the drum for Clinton's removal from office and decried the failure to do so as a signal of the 'paganization' of American political culture."

USING EVANGELICALS FOR POLITICAL GAIN: In his book, Kuo says officials in Karl Rove's office "knew 'the nuts' were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness." Staff members complained "politically involved Christians were 'annoying,' 'tiresome' or 'boorish.'" "National Christian leaders," Kuo writes, "received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous' and 'out of control.'" The White House did more than belittle evangelical leaders behind their backs. According to Kuo, White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman "knowingly participated in a scheme to use the [faith-based] office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly nonpartisan events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races." "[I]t can't come from the campaigns," Mehlman said. "That would make it look too political. It needs to come from the congressional offices. We'll take care of that by having our guys call the office [of faith-based initiatives] to request the visit." The revelations could hit conservatives where it hurts -- in the ballot box. Conservative Christian voters "were beginning to feel that they had been used," Newsweek's Howard Fineman said last night. "That was before this book came out, and I can tell you a lot of those same people...are going look at this new book and say 'Aha,' this is what we thought all along."

THE SHRINKING 'GOD GAP': "[L]eaders on the religious right have launched an all-out drive to get Christians from pew to voting booth," the Los Angeles Times reported several weeks ago, and "those guiding the movement say they owe it to God and to their own moral principles to do everything they can to keep social conservatives in power." But "the 'God gap' in politics is shrinking." By revealing the priorities of the right, the Kuo book and the Foley scandal may lead to decreased turnout among the religious right. ("It doesn't make you mad so much as it sickens you," one pastor said of the Foley debacle.) "I think there will be a lot of people who have done what they did in past elections," predicted Rev. Barry Lynn, the author of "Piety & Politics," "and just vote for third parties or not vote at all." During the summer, voters who describe themselves as "religious whites" favored conservative candidates by a 23-point margin. A recent Gallup poll shows the advantage has disappeared, with the Foley scandal being the "most likely reason for the drop in support."

DISCRIMINATION AND WASTE HAVE MARRED FAITH-BASED PROGRAM: The Kuo book paints the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives as haphazardly created and rife with discrimination. Kuo describes the creation of the faith-based initiative: "Karl Rove summoned [Don] Willett [a former Bush aide from Texas who initially shepherded the program] to his office to announce that the entire faith-based initiative would be rolled out the following Monday. Willett asked just how without a director, staff, office, or plan the president could do that. Rove looked at him, took a deep breath, and said, 'I don't know. Just get me a f***ing faith-based thing. Got it?'" Once the office had funding, the process of handing out grants was marred by political motivation and religious discrimination. "Many of the grant-winning organizations that rose to the top of the process were politically friendly to the administration," Kuo writes. And one member of the grant review panel told him "with a giggle," "When I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero. A lot of us did." Kuo's revelations confirm the findings of a recent Government Accountability Office report. The report found Bush's faith-based initiative "lacks adequate safeguards against religious discrimination and has yet to measure the performance of the groups."

STRENGTHENING PROGRESSIVE VOICES: Groups such as Faith In Public Life are working to give religious progressives, a group nearly as large as religious conservatives, a stronger voice. The Center for American Progress' Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative is pushing for policies that "strengthen the common good and respect the basic dignity of all people." The debate is already shifting away from "hot button" issues. A recent poll showed "moral issues people worried about most in their daily lives were very different from the ones dominating political debate." 28 percent of those polled thought the most serious moral crisis in America today is "kids not raised with the right values," with only 3 percent citing "abortion and homosexuality." 89 percent agreed the government should "take greater steps to help the poor and disadvantaged in America." The debate is shifting away from "hot-button" issues as religious leaders embrace progressive causes such as protecting the environment and raising the minimum wage.

Posted: 14 Oct. 2006

The 1950s all over again. And the 1960s. And so it goes.

OAKLAND
Police spies chosen to lead war protest
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer

Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence the demonstration, documents released Thursday show.

The department assigned the officers to join activists protesting the U.S. war in Iraq and the tactics that police had used at a demonstration a month earlier, a police official said last year in a sworn deposition.

At the first demonstration, police fired nonlethal bullets and bean bags at demonstrators who blocked the Port of Oakland's entrance in a protest against two shipping companies they said were helping the war effort. Dozens of activists and longshoremen on their way to work suffered injuries ranging from welts to broken bones and have won nearly $2 million in legal settlements from the city.

The extent of the officers' involvement in the subsequent march May 12, 2003, led by Direct Action to Stop the War and others, is unclear. But in a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by protesters, Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said activists had elected the undercover officers to "plan the route of the march and decide I guess where it would end up and some of the places that it would go."

READ THE REST.

Posted: 10 Oct. 2006

Worried that your vote may not count in November? You should be. Go here. Read. Take action.

Garrison Keillor: Congress' shameful retreat from American values

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964--Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright--and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the court will dispose of this piece of garbage.

If, however, the court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics--I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo Bay, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise. So why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

"War is a Racket": 9/11 Message of an Ex-Marine to the Anti-War Movement
Satyagraha: "work for truth, in pursuit of truth."
by Sam Lwin
Veterans for 9/11 Truth

9/11, Our Satyagraha; Message to the Anti-war Movement

I am Sam Lwin, an ex-Marine, a conscientious objector and an anti-war activist from the first Gulf war. I would like to say a few words about the connection between 9/11 and war.

In the fall of 1990, President George Herbert Walker Bush mobilized troops for the first Gulf War. I was a Marine reservist and a senior at the New School. Knowing that it was an oil war and finding out the various deceptions used by our government to gain support of the masses at anti-war rallies, I, as a conscientious Marine, refused to go. So did twenty-five other Marines, eight of them from here in New York City. We were all court-martialed and did time in the brig at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Many people supported us. They sent us letters and books to read and our prison sentences were shortened, in some cases by two years, due to public pressure through anti-war groups like Hands Off! and War Resisters League. During that time, one of the Marine resisters mentioned to me the name of Smedley Butler.

Smedley Butler was a Marine general who twice won the Congressional Medal of Honor. In 1933, he published a booklet called "War Is a Racket." I would like to read a few sentences from it. "War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses."

And he continued, "I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

READ THE REST.

44 Million Women at Risk of Thyroid Deficiency From Rocket Fuel Chemical
Federal Study Confirms Perchlorate as Widespread Public Health Threat

Although regulators have known for years that the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate contaminates hundreds of drinking water supplies across the country, new scientific evidence clearly shows that perchlorate is a much greater public health threat than previously realized. Tests of almost 3,000 human urine and breast milk samples — along with tests of more than 1,000 fruit, vegetable, cow's milk, beer, and wine samples — reveal that perchlorate exposure in the population is pervasive. And a startling new Centers for Disease Control study (CDC), released today, shows that perchlorate exposure is related to reduced thyroid hormone levels in women, particularly those with lower iodide intake. An Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis shows that 44 million women are at particular risk to perchlorate-related health effects.

READ THE REST.

Posted: 1 Oct. 2006

Why We Fight: A Mother's Guide to Civil Disobedience
By Elaine Brower

While my son is fighting for his life in Fallujah, under some false pretense that we are "defending democracy" or "killing terrorists," I decided to take up the fight at home. Very few here are left defending our Constitutional rights. Those who are trying are getting exhausted. We have march after rally after march again. Five years later, the war gets worse and the Middle East is on fire. There is extreme rendition, Hurricane Katrina "survivors," spying on US citizens in the name of preserving our freedoms, domestic economic failures and disasters, higher gas prices, and the global cowboy foreign policies that we have to listen to and witness on a daily basis.

Well, being a true patriot who flies the American flag and the Marine Corps flag outside her home in suburban Staten Island, New York, I decided to fight against the rapid whittling-down of our right to free speech. I made plans to get arrested at the United Nations when the liars and crime bosses were visiting - those being from our own government.

READ THE REST.

From The Center for American Progress.

Politics Over Children

Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned Friday after it became public that he had repeatedly sent predatory, sexually explicit emails and text messages to underage congressional pages. ABC News reported last night, "Foley's obsession with 16- and 17-year-old male pages has been known to Republicans on Capitol Hill for at least five years, but, other than issue a warning, little else seems to have been done about the congressman." At least 11 House members and staff, all Republicans, knew of the inappropriate emails sent by Foley to a page in 2005. The boy told House officials that Foley's messages "freaked him out" and were "sick, sick, sick, sick, sick." Among those informed were House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), who chairs the three-member House page board. None of these officials apparently ever contacted law enforcement about the emails. None of them informed the Democratic member of the page board. Foley was permitted to retain his position as a member of House leadership and as the co-chair of the congressional caucus on exploited children. New technology has forced parents to become increasingly vigilant about online predators, kidnappers, and cyberporn. The last thing they should have to worry about is a member of Congress preying on their child while he or she away from home. It is unconscionable that House leadership knew of Foley's abhorrent behavior for months and did virtually nothing to stop it.

HUMAN RIGHTS -- RUMSFELD ORDERED AIDES TO SHRED 2005 MEMO CALLING FOR NEW DETAINEE POLICIES: "In June 2005," the New York Times reported Sunday, "two senior national security officials in the Bush administration came together to propose a sweeping new approach to the growing problems the United States was facing with the detention, interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects." The officials urged in a nine-page memo that the administration "seek Congressional approval for its detention policies." "They called for a return to the minimum standards of treatment in the Geneva Conventions and for eventually closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The time had come, they said, for suspects in the 9/11 plot to be taken out of their secret prison cells and tried before military tribunals." The memo so enraged Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that "his aides gathered up copies of the document and had at least some of them shredded." Rumsfeld disagreed with the memo's substance, but Rumsfeld was most "angered that his new deputy, Mr. [Gordon] England, had worked on the memorandum with officials outside the Pentagon without his authorization." Hard-liners such as Rumsfeld and Cheney ultimately won the "sharp internal debate" with the State Department over detainee policy, as Congress gave President Bush "the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture," and to deny habeas corpus rights to detainees.

TERRORISM -- 9/11 COMMISSION NOT TOLD OF RICE-TENET MEETING WARNING OF AL QAEDA ATTACK: Administration officials did not inform the 9/11 Commission of a July 2001 meeting between CIA Director George Tenet, CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black, and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, during which, Rice was warned of an imminent attack and urged to take action against al Qaeda. According to reports in Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," Tenet wanted to "shake Rice" into action, but left the July 11 meeting "frustrated because they were not getting through." Black recalls, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head." Despite the importance of the meeting, the 9/11 Commission never heard about the encounter. 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer notes, "None of this was shared with us in hours of private interviews, including interviews under oath, nor do we have any paper on this. ... I'm furious." Jamie S. Gorelick, a fellow commission member added, "I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it." Peter Rundlet, counsel to the 9/11 Commission, wrote, "At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage. Very possibly, someone committed a crime. And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot."

LABOR -- WAL-MART PUSHES TO CAP EMPLOYEE WAGES, CUT BACK ON HEALTH CARE: Wal-Mart is "pushing to create a cheaper, more flexible work force by capping wages, using more part-time workers and scheduling more workers on nights and weekends." Employees say the changes will "further reduce their modest incomes and put strain on their personal lives." Some managers "have insisted workers make themselves available around the clock," and workers are "often given only a few days’ notice of scheduling changes." Wal-Mart's tougher work schedule is especially taxing for its employees because the chain has more than 1,900 stores open 24 hours. Lower-paid workers have received one-time payments of $200 to $400 to compensate for future wages lost from the income cap. Several workers described the payments as "hush money." The changes come a year after Wal-Mart's top human resources official circulated a confidential memo expressing concern that, as wages increase with an employee's tenure, Wal-Mart is "pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart." The memo also recommended hiring healthier and more part-time employees because they are "less likely to enroll in Wal-Mart’s health plan," which currently covers fewer than half of its employees.

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