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 etermine 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: 21 June 2007

From The Center for American Progress.

Conservatives Dominate The Airwaves
Conservative Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) raised a furor last week when he called out the right-wing radio hosts working to defeat comprehensive immigration reform. "Talk radio is running America," Lott said. "We have to deal with that problem." Indeed, despite the dramatic expansion of viewing and listening options for consumers today, traditional radio remains one of the most widely used media formats in America, reaching an estimated 50 million listeners each week on more than 1,700 stations across the nation. More importantly, talk radio is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives. The Center for American Progress and Free Press yesterday released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. The results confirm the stunning lack of diversity in talk radio, and raise serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.

HOW BAD IS IT: According to the new report, in the spring of 2007, 91 percent of the political talk radio programming on the stations owned by the top five commercial station owners was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive. Ninety-two percent of these stations (236 stations out of 257) do not broadcast a single minute of progressive talk radio programming. In the top 10 radio markets in the country, 76 percent of the news/talk programming is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive. In four of those top 10 markets -- Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston -- the domination of conservative talk radio is between 96 and 100 percent.

MORE CONSOLIDATION, LESS DIVERSITY, LESS ACCOUNTABILITY: The increasing imbalance in talk radio has paralleled significant shifts in the media ownership landscape. Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, there has been a dramatic decline (34 percent) in the number of radio station owners, meaning a sharp increase in media ownership concentration. This trend has occurred because Congress eliminated restrictions on the total ownership of radio stations by any one media entity. Now, in the largest markets with 45 or more commercial radio stations, one entity may own or control up to eight commercial radio stations. As a result, women and minorities "have largely been shut out of radio ownership in this country," owning just 6 and 7.7 percent respectively of the nation's full power radio stations. Also, due to increasing deregulation, local accountability over the public airwaves has been sharply limited. Radio stations are licensed by the government and are meant to operate in the public interest. Yet stations no longer have to inform the community of their obligations as a federal licensee, and the needs and interests of local communities are being ignored.

HOW TO SOLVE IT: The primary goals of policy proposals to reduce the gap should be to encourage more speech on the airwaves, not less, and to ensure that local needs are being met and diverse opinions are being aired. First, the CAP/Free Press report recommends that Congress promote ownership diversity by restoring the local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations. For instance, no one entity should control more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market. Second, the report recommends that steps be taken ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. Radio broadcast licensees should regularly show that they are operating on behalf of the public interest, and provide public documentation showing how they are meeting these obligations. Finally, if commercial radio broadcasters are unwilling to abide by these regulatory standards or the FCC is unable to effectively regulate in the public interest, a spectrum use fee should be levied on owners to directly support local, regional, and national public broadcasting.

Posted: 12 June 2007

From The Center for American Progress.

In a "major setback" to President Bush's terrorism detention policies, the Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, VA, yesterday ruled that "the President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention." In a 2-1 decision, the court declared that Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari national who is the last person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant, must be released from military detention. The ruling barred military detention of any civilian captured inside the United States, though the decision is limited to those who are in the country legally and have established connections here. The al-Marri ruling is only the latest in a series of blows to the Bush administration's detainee policy. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the original military commissions set up by the administration "were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law." Last week, two separate military judges ruled that the revised military commissions set up by the administration currently have no jurisdiction over any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay because "there was a flaw in the procedure the military has used to file such charges against Guantanamo detainees." On Sunday, Gen. Colin Powell, Bush's first Secretary of State, publicly called for the closing of Guantanamo Bay and an end to the military commission system associated with it. As the New York Times writes today, this "ruling is another strong argument for bringing Mr. Bush's detention camps under the rule of law," which would entail repealing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, "closing Guantanamo Bay and...allowing the courts to sort out the prisoners...by the rules of justice that have guided this nation for more than 200 years."

There is no end to the stupidity. From Grist, "gloom and doom with a sense of humor".

North Carolina fines driver for not paying taxes on vegetable-oil fuel

A kerfuffle in North Carolina shows what might be in store for users of DIY fuel: the state fined a veggie-oil-burning driver $1,000 for not paying fuel taxes, told him to expect a $1,000 fine from the feds, and informed him that he'd have to post a $2,500 bond to be allowed to use veggie oil. "With the high cost of fuel right now, the [Department of Revenue] does recognize that a lot of people are looking for relief," says state taxman Reggie Little. "We're not here to hurt the small guy, we're just trying to make sure that the playing field is level." And by "make sure that the playing field is level," we're pretty sure he means make sure home-brewers still pay into the $1.2 billion in annual revenue the state gets from fuel taxes. "If somebody was going to go to this much trouble to drive around in a car that uses soybean oil, they ought to be exempt" from such taxes, said a state senator and fellow fry-oil fan. Other states are facing similar dilemmas. Welcome to our brave new world.

Posted: 6 June 2007

If that isn't an apt description of the Bush administration, and Cheney in particular, I don't know what is.

A senior Japanese diplomat said to me, last year, he said "You know the United States is a twelve year old with a shotgun". Gwynne Dyer

Posted: 5 June 2007

Terrorism Statistics
from Bruce Shneier's blog.

Interesting:

The majority of terrorist attacks result in no fatalities, with just 1 percent of such attacks causing the deaths of 25 or more people.

And terror incidents began rising some in 1998, and that level remained relatively constant through 2004.

These and other myth-busting facts about global terrorism are now available on a new online database open to the public.

The database identifies more than 30,000 bombings, 13,400 assassinations and 3,200 kidnappings. Also, it details more than 1,200 terrorist attacks within the United States.

A lot of this depends on your definition of "terrorism," but it's interesting stuff.

The database was developed by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) based at the University of Maryland, with funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It includes unclassified information about 80,000 terror incidents that occurred from 1970 through 2004.

The database is here:

The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world since 1970 (currently updated through 2004). Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on international as well as domestic terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period and now includes almost 80,000 cases. For each GTD incident, information is available on the date and location of the incident, the weapons used and nature of the target, the number of casualties, and -- when identifiable -- the identity of the perpetrator.

Posted: 4 June 2007

Not to See the Fallen Is No Favor
By David Carr
The New York Times

On this Memorial Day, thousands of United States men and women are engaged in untold acts of bravery and drudgery on behalf of what our leaders have defined as vital American interests in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But even as the flags wave to honor soldiers past, much of the current campaigns go on without notice, because while troop numbers are surging, the media that cover them are leaking away, worn out by the danger and expense of covering a war that refuses to end.

Many of the journalists who are in Iraq have been backed into fortified corners, rarely venturing out to see what soldiers confront. And the remaining journalists who are embedded with the troops in Iraq - the number dropped to 92 in May from 126 in April - are risking more and more for less and less.

Since last year, the military's embedding rules require that journalists obtain a signed consent from a wounded soldier before the image can be published. Images that put a face on the dead, that make them identifiable, are simply prohibited.

If Joseph Heller were still around, he might appreciate the bureaucratic elegance of paragraph 11(a) of IAW Change 3, DoD Directive 5122.5:

"Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member's prior written consent."

READ THE REST.

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