Time to Boycott VotingLet's Take Back Our Government
By Joel Hirschhorn
After many years of political disappointment, more progressives, liberals and conservatives - and certainly moderates and independents - know in their hearts that voting for Democrats or Republicans is a waste. Just imagine if voter turnout was cut to 25 percent or less! Let the whole world see Americans boycotting a broken and corrupt political system and rejecting what has become a delusional democracy. To keep voting in an unjust political system makes us willing political slaves that the rich and powerful elites exploit.Just leaving the major parties is not good enough and, besides, most Americans are not party members. We need a bolder strategy. We must humiliate the political elites in both major parties and the corporate interests that support both of them. We can send a shock wave throughout the political establishment by not voting in the 2008 presidential election.Stop playing THEIR game. Take back control. Take back YOUR nation. Time to boycott voting. This strategy is consistent with the thinking of Gandhi and King: peaceful resistance to political tyranny that can bring the corrupt system to its knees. Ultimately, the most effective protest is through civil disobedience - to visibly and stubbornly refuse to respect what has become a corrupt, untrustworthy system. Before it can be fixed it must be deconstructed and then rebuilt. Taxation with MISrepresentation means we need a Second American Revolution; it must begin - not with violent action - but with massive withdrawal by citizens that have seen the light. We have a good head start with about half of eligible voters already so turned off that they don't vote. Obviously that has not been sufficient to change the system...... LINK

Hello everyone,

I made to it to Almeria safe. My host famiy is made up of one women and two other girls/women who are studying here as well. Everyone seems really cool and one talks english if I get to confused. The one that speaks english worked at the campground I stayed at when I was here last time....but not this summer when I was here. Today I got a semi run down of what my class load will be but it still left me confused on what the hell I will be doing. I will know a hell of alot more after this week and will fill everyone in with the correct information. Besides that nothing interesting has happend. I have been getting the itch to run or bike or some form of exercise and might do something this afternoon. The bus took 45 min to get to Almeria which was way to damn long....I think a bike would have been a faster option.
PAz
Ty

The End of Bonapartism and the War on Terror by Juan Cole
NYT columnist Tom Friedman's column, "9/11 is over," sounds the death knell for the Neoconservative use of 9/11 and is in particular an attack on Rudy Giuliani.Friedman's main arguments are that the Bush administration's approach to dealing with al-Qaeda has so damaged the US image abroad, has so inconvenienced foreign travelers and visiting business investors, and has so diverted spending from essential US infrastructure such as bridges and airports, that it risks making the US economically backward in a globalizing world.The column is significant because it argues that Bushism- Cheneyism is bad for business. The United States is the world's foremost business society, and virtually everything in the society (low taxes on the wealthy, no health care for the middle classes and poor, no protections for labor organizers, favoring of certain kinds of international trade over lower middle class job security, etc.) is arranged for the convenience of the business classes. If Friedman's conviction becomes widespread in that community, the pressures to abandon the 'War on Terror' will be irresistible.
Bushism-Cheneyism has aspects of Bonapartism, whereby the state rules in an authoritarian way and disregards the people, representing itself as the true representative of the business classes. In fact, it serves only a small spectrum of corporate cronies of the ruling elite, disadvantaging almost everyone else. It expands government, but not into provision of useful infrastructure (bridges, airports), but toward the provision of "security" (often just a label for make-work unnecessary jobs, such as extra al-Qaeda-fighting police in Wyoming) or of artificial "investment opportunities" such as an Iraq under US military occupation.. LINK

9/11 Is Over
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Not long ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran a fake news story that began like this:
“At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”
Like all good satire, the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.
What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again. LINK

Homeland Security's Data Vacuum Cleaner In Action
An Investigation by the Identity Project
I. ATS, APIS, Secure Flight: Different Bottles, Same Water
A. The Bottles
For years, DHS ran a secret travel surveillance program called the Automated Targeting System. This data mining program came to light earlier this year when DHS announced plans to openly monitor the international comings and goings of Americans with a legal version of the scheme called the Automated Passenger Information System, or APIS.
APIS, which is now fully operational, places requirements for government-issued travel credentials on all Americans as well as individualized, explicit, prior, per-flight permission to travel ("clearance") by DHS on every American citizen wishing to leave or enter the United States. In conducting APIS, DHS pulls in huge amounts of data on every passenger.
Secure Flight will put these same requirements on all Americans for domestic travel. Under Secure Flight, an American wishing to fly within the United States will need permission from DHS for each segment of his travels.
B. The Water
The main source of information DHS uses to determine whether to grant an American permission to travel by air comes from their flight reservation, or PNR. The PNR contains a wealth of deeply personal information, as this report will soon show. For DHS to argue that the APIS foreign travel surveillance program and the Secure Flight domestic travel surveillance program are separate and distinct is a fiction, if not an outright falsehood. They are but two bottling plants drawing water from the same spring.
II. The Identity Project Investigation...... LINK FOR REST

Hola Todas....

Just a short little note to tell everyone that I am in Spain for the fall semester. Once I am settled in Almeria I will try to update my blog with stories of class, my day, thesis research and any other information that seems interesting. I arrived on Wed and stayed in Madrid for two nights. Although I am heading to Almeria, I was put with the Salamanca group and thus have been forced into hanging out with a group of people that I will only know for a limited amount of time. And one thing that I dislike is touring around tourist sights with a bunch of english speaking people. The toures have generally been great but the sur amount of people in the groups makes me uncomfertable.
The day of arrival I just made myself stay up until about 10pm before passing out from pure jet lag...
Thursday we visited the Prado and the Royal Palace. Because of stupied people who can not turn off there flashes on there cameras both places have stopped allowing pictures. THis seems a bit extreme and thus I took the oppurtuniuty to take pictures regardlss....although I had to senak them in and caugh when my shutter closed and opened. Although the Prado was beutifal, the tour was limited in not only what they were showing us but in the amount of time given to interrpurt the paintings to get a better understanding of the paintings. Vasquez, Goya and Ribiera were basically the only painting we saw....my favorite are Goyas darker paintings. Mosy of my op undercover pictures did not turn out to well but a few made it into the photo album.
After the Prado we walked towards the Royal Palace with an hour break for lunch inbetween. I made the mistake of ordering tripe marinated soup............which I did the last time here except this trip I am even less of a meat eater. Thus I dipped my bread in it a few times left and went and got an apple and water from a chinese run grocery store. The royal palace was not that impressive besides a few rooms and again I attempted to take a few pictures inside.....all of which did not turn out. Once that was over with I walked back to the hotel by myself with a short stop for internet, tapaps and beer.....in that order.
Thursday night I watched the Real Madrid soccer game (they won 2-0), had a beer, then went back to the room and drank some beer with my temp room mate until 2am before crashing out.
Friday (Today) we headed to "The Valley of the Fallen". This is a park that was built by Franco to be a memorial for the soilders under Franco that dies in the 1930s Civil War against the republic sipporters. The inglesia that is built into the mountain and the cross that sits apon the ssame moutain are huge massses of rock that seem unlikely built by human hand. However, Franco had plenty of prisoners at his disposal and they would work 24/7 (to death) to complete this place. Franco is burried there as well. There was a church ceremony going on when we got there and I def got the opes dei felling from the place???? Amassing yes, but the stroy behind it makes it that less important for me!!!!
After that we visited the old winter palace of the royal family in San Lorenzo. Beutifal, no pictures and one of the best guides I have ever had. He was a maestro and used Spanglish to make the tour that more fun and interesting.
Now im in Toledo. I went into town with a group of the Salamanca students but like I said....me and groups do not do to well!!! Like I said I will be glad to be in ALmeria.
PEACE LOVE NO MORE WAR
TY

Lost In Translation: Ahmadinejad And The Media By Ali Quli Qarai09/28/07 "ICH" -- -
First I want to make some remarks about that now world-famous statement of President Ahmadinejad at Columbia: “We do not have homosexuals in Iran of the kind you have in your country.” The American media conveniently ignored the second, and crucial, part of his sentence as something redundant.Obviously he was not saying, We don’t have any homosexuals whatsoever in Iran—something nobody in the world would believe, not even in Iran. And by implication, he was not telling his audience, I am a plain liar! —something which his audience at Columbia and the American media construed him to be saying.What he was saying is that homosexuality in the US and homosexuality in Iran are issues which are as far apart from one another as two cultural universes possibly can be. They are so dissimilar that any attempt to relate them and bring them under a common caption would be misleading. “Homosexuality is not an issue in Iran as it is in present-day American society.” This was, apparently what was saying in polite terms.Homosexuality in the US is a omnipresent social and political issue which crops up in almost every discourse and debate pertaining to American society and politics. So much so that I think it was a major issue, if not the deciding factor, in the last two presidential elections which paved Bush’s way to the White House and saddled the Democrats with defeat, because a large so-called conservative section of the American public (the red states) felt wary of the pro-gay liberalism of the Democratic Party. LINK

See No Evil
The Teflon Alliance with Israel
By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

Two recent offhand comments, both widely publicized, have seriously undermined whatever progress might have been made in exposing the fact that the Iraq war was initiated at least in large part to guarantee Israel's safety and regional dominance in the Middle East.
In late August, Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell's chief of staff when he was secretary of state, told Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service that, when Israel first got wind of U.S. planning for a war against Iraq, a wide range of Israelis, including political and intelligence officials, began warning against such a war. "Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy -- Iran is the enemy," Wilkerson said. Israeli warnings against an attack on Iraq were "pervasive" in Israeli communications with the administration during early 2002, according to Wilkerson.

This story garnered a fair amount of publicity and in at least one instance was used by a radio talk show host to shut off discussion of the John Mearsheimer-Stephen Walt book on the influence of the Israel lobby, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Just a few days after the Wilkerson story came out and also only days after release of the Mearsheimer-Walt book, a caller to the Thom Hartmann radio program commended the book, urged Hartmann and his guest at the time, Senator Bernie Sanders, to read it, and asked Sanders to address the issue of Israel's and the lobby's support for the Iraq war. Hartmann shut the caller off with a comment that "we don't hype books on this program" (after having just allowed another caller to hype another book). Sanders then proceeded to denounce "conspiracy theories" such as the notion that Israel had anything to do with the war, and Hartmann finished off with a remark that, "besides," a report just came out --obviously meaning the Wilkerson story -- that demonstrates there was no Israeli link to the war. LINK

Massive Surveillance Net Keeps Track of Americans' Travel -- Even the Size of Hotel Beds

Raw Story

The Bush Administration has been collecting detailed records on the travel habits of Americans headed overseas, whether you fly, drive or take cruises abroad -- not simply your method of transit but the personal items you carry with you and the people you stay with, according to documents and statements obtained by the Washington Post.

They even keep sometimes keep track of what books you read. For as long as 15 years.

In a terrifying front-page article Saturday, the Post outlines the latest in US government surveillance.

According to officials, the records are intended "to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country." LINK

(I have not read this book yet but this article does a great job of summing it up...I look forward to reading it and I think everyone should)
Surviving Democracy
Reviewing Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" By Stephen Lendman
Her newest book just out is "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" that explodes the myth of "free market" democracy. It shows how neoliberal Washington Consensus fundamentalism dominates the world with America its lead exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks, economic meltdowns, competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic shifts, and natural disasters to impose its will everywhere. Wars are waged, social services cut, and freedom sacrificed when people are too distracted, cowed or bludgeoned to object. Klein describes a worldwide process of social and economic engineering she calls "disaster capitalism" with torture along for the ride to reinforce the message - no "New World Order" alternatives are tolerated.
"Free market" triumphalism is everywhere - from Canada to Brazil, China to Bulgaria, Russia to South Africa, Vietnam to Iraq. In all cases, the results are the same. People are sacrificed for profits and Margaret Thatcher's dictum applies - "there is no alternative."
"The Shock Doctrine" is a powerful tour de force, four years of on-the-ground research in the making and well worth the wait. In an age of corporatism partnered with corrupted political elites, it's must reading by an author now firmly established as a major intellectual figure on the left and champion of social justice. Naomi Klein is all that and more. Even for those familiar with her topics, the book is stunning, revealing, unforgetable and essential to know. This review will cover a healthy sample of what's in store for readers in the full equisitely written text. It's in seven parts with a concluding section. Each will be discussed below starting with a brief introduction. LINK

The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now
By Carolyn Baker
In April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf's article, "Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps" posted in several places online. I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had been looking for a list-or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf's "10 Easy Steps" was perfect, but her just-published book, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture-a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I have encountered since Thomas Paine's Common Sense. No wonder then, that the book's cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract by Paine written in 1775-as well it should.
One of the most frightening realities of teaching college history is that most students rarely have a clue what fascism is. They know about Hitler and the extermination of Jews, but they see little connection with Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s and the current political milieu in the United States. Overwhelmingly, they cannot define fascism, nor can they define socialism or democracy. After all, they were pre-occupied during grammar school with becoming standardized human beings by way of taking standardized "No Child's Behind Left" tests, five hours a day, four days a week. So why would they know the definitions of fascism, socialism or democracy? LINK

Hessians Redux: Blackwater, U.S. and England
By Dr. Sam Hamod 09/20/07 "ICH" --- -
It's strange that most of our American brethren have forgotten the Hessians, the mercenaries the British hired to fight against us in the Revolutionary War. You may recall that George Washington and his small band of patriots, men who were fighting for their country, crossed the Delaware River during the icy winter season in small boats and caught the Hessians unaware in Trenton and defeated them and broke the spirit of the British regulars who had depended on the famed Hessian mercenaries to finish off General Washington and his troops.
These Hessians were mercenaries, fighting for money, not for any moral cause; the Blackwater "security" people are mercenaries and who come from all over the world, South Africa, the Congo, Chile, Nicaragua and other places. Though Blackwater is an "American firm," its mercenaries are not all Americans, though some are. But, they, like the Hessians, are there for money, to do the bidding of those who wish to occupy a land against the will of the natives of that land—in our case, we were fighting for our independence, in the case of the Iraqis they are fighting for their country. We label them "terrorists" for fighting for their families, their homes and their religion—but we label Blackwater, "security forces"! Ah, what euphemisms, wrongful labeling and upside down semantics can do for you. LINK

Greenspan and the Economy of Greed
As the Empire Slips
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's memoir has put him in the news these last few days. He has upset Republicans with his comments on various presidents, with George W. Bush getting the brickbats and Clinton the praise, and by saying that Bush's invasion of Iraq was about oil, not weapons of mass destruction.
Opponents of Bush's wars welcomed Greenspan's statement, as it strips the moral pretext away from Bush's aggression, leaving naked greed unmasked.
It is certainly the case that Iraq was not invaded because of WMD, which the Bush administration knew did not exist. But the oil pretext is also phony. The US could have purchased a lot of oil for the trillion dollars that the Iraq invasion has already cost in out-of-pocket expenses and already incurred future expenses.
Moreover, Bush's invasion of Iraq, by worsening the US deficit and causing additional US reliance on foreign loans, has undermined the US dollar's role as reserve currency, thus threatening America's ability to pay for its imports. Greenspan himself said that the US dollar "doesn't have all that much of an advantage" and could be replaced by the Euro as the reserve currency. By the end of last year, Greenspan said, foreign central banks already held 25 percent of their reserves in Euros and 9 percent in other foreign currencies. The dollar's role has shrunk to 66 percent. LINK

Justice Forgotten
Whatever Happened to Palestine?
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
A group of anti-war leaders held a conference call at the end of August under the sponsorship of Michael Lerner's Network of Spiritual Progressives to do some long-term strategic planning for the anti-war movement. The discussants included leaders of the country's best known peace groups -- United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Pax Christi, the Department of Peace, and others -- as well as Lerner himself and Democratic Congressmen Lynn Woolsey and Jim Moran. They talked about Iraq, of course, but of virtually nothing else. There was a bit about "peace and justice" in general, one passing mention of trying to stop an attack on Iran, and a whole lot of talk about avoiding action on all issues, including even Iraq, until Woolsey and a couple of progressive colleagues try their hands at manipulating weak-kneed congressional Democrats into "showing some backbone" on a withdrawal from Iraq. This must be a new concept in opposing war: do nothing.
You would think there was nothing else wrong in the world. There was no talk of the U.S. aggression in Afghanistan (which is assumed even by the anti-war movement to be a "good" war, despite the excessive number of innocent civilians -- never remembered -- who have been killed there). There was nothing about safeguarding Lebanon from frequent Israeli attack and nothing, of course, about supporting Palestinian human and national rights or opposing Israel's gross violation of these rights. There was nothing, in short, about any of the massive injustices perpetrated around the world by the United States, primarily as part of the so-called war on terror, and ignored by the anti-war/peace movement. This is a peace movement but apparently not a justice movement. LINK

Pakistan Heading Towards Total Anarchy
by Muhammad Khurshid

Again, Pakistan has reportedly been trying to sign a deal with Taliban and terrorists in Waziristan tribal region. According to reports, the local Taliban and the political administration in South Waziristan finalized an agreement for the release of more than 250 soldiers held hostage since last month.
According to the agreement, the Taliban will release the abducted soldiers in phases, a private TV channel reported. Efforts for the safe release of the abducted soldiers have been underway for the last two weeks.
In return, the army will leave the area and the Frontier Constabulary (FC) will take responsibility for security. The administration will also release the local Taliban who were arrested. Sources present during the talks with the local Taliban said that the abducted soldiers were kept in different locations, so they will be released phase wise starting on Monday. Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Major General Waheed Arshad told the TV channel that he has no information about the truce made between the political administration and the local Taliban.
In another development the retired generals have warned full-scale civil war in the country if the present campaign against the terrorists has not been stopped immediately.
According to a newspaper comment, SOME retired army generals have warned the government that continuing the current policies will push Pakistan into a state of civil war, creating no less serious situation than in Afghanistan and Iraq. The observation coming on the heels of the recent suicide strike on an army mess in Terblea-Ghazi is not without a rationale LINK

Iraq Death Toll Rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
A new study estimates that 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since Bush and Cheney chose to invade.
According to a new study, 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since the 2003 invasion, the highest estimate of war-related fatalities yet. The study was done by the British polling firm ORB, which conducted face-to-face interviews with a sample of over 1,700 Iraqi adults in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Two provinces -- al-Anbar and Karbala -- were too dangerous to canvas, and officials in a third, Irbil, didn't give the researchers a permit to do their work. The study's margin of error was plus-minus 2.4 percent.
Field workers asked residents how many members of their own household had been killed since the invasion. More than one in five respondents said that at least one person in their home had been murdered since March of 2003. One in three Iraqis also said that at least some neighbors "actually living on [their] street" had fled the carnage, with around half of those having left the country.
In Baghdad, almost half of those interviewed reported at least one violent death in their household.
Before the study's release, the highest estimate of Iraqi deaths had been around 650,000 in the landmark Johns Hopkins' study published in the Lancet, a highly respected and peer-reviewed British medical journal. Unlike that study, which measured the difference in deaths from all causes during the first three years of the occupation with the mortality rate that existed prior to the invasion, the ORB poll looked only at deaths due to violence. LINK

Why U.S. Food Aid Benefits Big Business and Not Starving People
By Megan Tady, In These Times
How current policies favor giant shipping companies and agribusinesses over the starving populations they are supposed to serve.
Critics charge that current U.S. food aid policies are inefficient and possibly harmful.
Last month, in a move that shocked observers, CARE, one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations, rejected $45 million in U.S. food aid, shining a spotlight on a practice the group says may hurt starving populations more than help them.
Complaining that U.S. food aid policy is inefficient, unsustainable and perhaps even detrimental to combating food insecurity, CARE belives "enough is enough," according to Bob Bell, director for CARE's Food Resource Coordination Team. The decision comes at a time when other humanitarian and food advocacy organizations are calling on members of Congress to rewrite food aid policy that puts starving populations first when they authorize this month's 2007 Farm Bill. LINK

American Economy: R.I.P.

By Paul Craig Roberts

09/10/07 "ICH' -- -- The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.

In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders, and the government sector lost 28,000 jobs.

In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market. LINK

Why Has Congress Failed Americans?

by Joel S. Hirschhorn

The Founders of our nation and the Framers of our Constitution surely did not foresee the day when, of the federal government’s three branches, the public would have the least confidence in Congress. In fact, the public has a little less confidence in Congress than it has in HMOs. At 14 percent, the fraction of Americans with a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress is the lowest in Gallup's history of this measure -- and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year's Confidence in Institutions survey. The Supreme Court received 34 percent confidence and the awful presidency of George W. Bush received 25 percent – nothing to be proud of.

The 2006 congressional elections show that switching power between the two major political parties is an act of utter futility. We have a bipartisan failure of Congress to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities and serve the public. In the end, Democrats may have a different style, but like Republicans are also corrupt, arrogant, and incompetent. Things have gotten so bad institutionally and culturally that we cannot vote our way out of a dysfunctional and destructive Congress as long as the two-party duopoly maintains its grip on our political system. LINK

Will the US Really Bomb Iran?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"They're about taking out the entire Iranian military."
This particular spine-chiller comes from Alexis Debat, excitingly identified as "director of terrorism and national security" at the Nixon Center. According to Debat, the big takeout is what the U.S. Air Force has in store, as opposed to mere "pinprick strikes" against the infamous nuclear facilities.
Predicting imminent war on Iran has been one of the top two items in Cassandra's repertoire for a couple of years now, rivaled only by global warming as a sure-fire way to sell newspapers and boost website hits.
Debat was re-roasting that well-scorched chestnut, the "Shock and Awe" strategy, whereby-back in March of 2003-the U.S. Air Force proposed to reduce Iraq's entire military to smoldering ruins. In the event, "Shock and Awe" was a resounding failure, like all such pledges by Air Force commanders to destroy the enemy's military since the birth of aerial bombardments nearly a century ago. Such failures have never stopped the US Air Force from trying once again, and there are no doubt vivid attack plans now circulating the government.
LINK

Big Houses Are Not Green: America's McMansion Problem
By Stan Cox, AlterNet.
The recent mansion boom produced millions of energy-wasting homes with thousands of square feet that Americans don't need -- not the behavior of a society that's thinking about a sustainable future.
In Los Gatos, Calif., controversy has raged this summer over the city planning commission’s approval of a proposed hillside home that will occupy a whopping 3,600 square feet – and that's just the basement. Atop that walkout basement will be 5,500 more square feet worth of house.
The prospective owner says he’ll build to "green" standards, but at the Aug. 8 meeting where the permit was approved, the city's lone dissenting planning commissioner stated the obvious when he told the owner, "You have a 9,000-square-foot house with a three-car garage and a pool. I don't see that as green."
The just-popped housing bubble has left behind a couple of million families in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. It has also spawned a new generation of big, deluxe, under-occupied houses bulked up on low-interest steroids. LINK

Profit of Doom: Of Vampires, Parasites, and the Demise of Capitalism by Jason Miller
“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”
-Malcolm X
Striving with the unwavering dedication of true believers and slaves to the grind, those of us who exist within the geographic, social, cultural, economic, and political boundaries of the United States are collectively destroying the Earth.
With dutiful efforts, heavily sedated consciences, and sweet obliviousness to the depth of our depravity, we toil away at our chosen or assigned tasks. After all, predatory plutocrats like “Mitt” Romney would be impotent without his minions-the hundreds of millions of wage slaves exercising their “right to work” (for as small a wage as they desire) while obediently manning the bulwarks of a system so putrid that were it possible to feed it to a pig, our porcine friend would wretch his guts out. LINK

Crackpot Realists and Permanent War
by Ann Berg

While economic pundits point fingers at loose lending for the malodor in the housing market that is now filling the noses of financiers, they miss the primary cause: permanent war. Permanent war has caused the nation's institutions – political, social, and economic – to be organized into an impervious structure without which war could not be tolerated or financed.
Although 9/11 pushed the war machine into high gear, political centralization and the structuring of American society around war first gained a foothold during World War II. In 1956, five years before President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address of the ascendancy of the military-industrial complex (a phrase that originally included the word congressional), the anti-imperialist C. Wright Mills described the triad of power in his book The Power Elite. Stressing how the military entered the political and economic spheres only temporarily during the First World War, he related how modern warfare and its need for massive industrial capacity – along with support from the technological and scientific communities – propelled the military to new heights of influence. Wrote Mills:
"For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end. … The only seriously accepted plan for 'peace' is a fully loaded pistol. In short, war or a high state of war preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States." LINK

Aqua Thieves, Inc.
Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
That was Balzac.
Update to Balzac -- behind every great political issue lies a corporate crime.
Take water, for example.
For centuries, water was part of the commonwealth.
Then came the corporations.
And they had to control it.
In the United States, more than 1,000 community water systems have been taken over by corporations.
Then you had people fighting the big corporations, trying to wrest control back.
Think Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.
But worldwide, the fight is starting to heat up.
And two activist film maker writers -- Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow -- are now out with a movie -- Thirst -- and a book -- Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water -- documenting the battle. (See thirstthemovie.org)
The movie lays out the fight. LINK

just so you know via Bush:

•I attacked and took over 2 countries.
•I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.•I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).•I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.•I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market. •In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history (tough to beat my dad's, but I did). •After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history. •I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history. •In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs. •I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history. •I set the all-time record for most real estate foreclosures in a 12-month period. •I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV. •I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed. LINK FOR MORE

Former Reagan aide: 'Brownshirt' Bush among top 'mass murderers of all time'
Nick JulianoRaw Story
President Bush's apparent plans for a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran will only add to the civilian death toll as a result of US intervention that has placed the president "high on the list of mass murders of all time," a former aide in President Ronald Reagan's administration known for strident anti-Bush rhetoric said Friday.
"Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening 'the security of nations everywhere' and of the Iraqi resistance for 'a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power,'" writes Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury. "Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration."
Roberts, who has emerged as a fierce critic of Bush's war policies, accused the president of ignoring habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justifying torture and demonizing critics as anti-American. LINK

The Great Iraq Swindle How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury By Rolling Stone MagazineIssue 1034 08/27/07 "Rolling Stone" --- Aug 23, 2007 -- - How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq. You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq. Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life. LINK

Edwards Goes After the 'Corporate Democrats' -- Is This a Turning Point for His Campaign?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet.
In a dramatic speech, John Edwards fired a major broadside against corporate America and, more significantly, "corporate Democrats," -- the likes of which hasn't been heard from a viable candidate with national appeal in decades.
Last week, John Edwards fired a broadside against corporate America and, more significantly, "corporate Democrats," the likes of which hasn't been heard from a viable candidate with national appeal in decades.
Edwards is en fuego right now, and if he keeps up the heat, his candidacy will either be widely embraced by the emerging progressive movement or utterly annihilated by an entrenched establishment that fears few things more than a telegenic populist with enough money to mount a credible campaign.
"It's time to end the game," Edwards told a crowd in Hanover, New Hampshire. "It's time to tell the big corporations and the lobbyists who have been running things for too long that their time is over." He exhorted Washington law-makers to "look the lobbyists in the eye and just say no."
LINK

Why Cheney Really Is That Bad
By Scott Ritter
Karl Rove, interchangeably known as “Boy Genius” or “Turd Blossom,” has left the White House. The press conference announcing his decision to resign has been given front-page treatment by most major media outlets, but the fact of the matter is the buzz surrounding Rove’s departure is much ado about nothing, especially in terms of coming to grips with the remaining 16 months of the worst presidency in the history of the United States.
Rove is a domestic political marauder, the personification of a conservative movement which lacks a moral compass and has a complete disregard for facts. The master of exploiting mainstream America’s predilection for news-as-entertainment, under which the likes of Rupert Murdoch can manufacture headlines out of thin air, Rove helped turn “fair and balanced” into a national joke which everyone laughs at but few actually comprehend. Rove served as the maestro of a political-smear orchestra composed of such intellectually challenged muckrakers as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, manipulating the NASCAR/professional wrestling crowd’s addiction to seedy gossip in an effort to maintain the all-important 51 percent majority needed to win elections. LINK

The poisonous rhetorical legacy of Karl Rove
Even Fox's Chris Wallace wants to know why Bush's newly departed advisor had to paint Democrats as traitors.
By Juan Cole
On Fox News Sunday morning, Karl Rove played the victim. He told host Chris Wallace that in the wake of his resignation as White House deputy chief of staff, his enemies were on the hunt. Rove compared himself to a legendary monster whom the ancient Anglo-Saxon hero Beowulf sought to slay. "I mean, I'm a myth, and they're ... You know, I'm Grendel. ... They're after me."
But Rove, who pursued his Democratic foes with a relentless repertoire of dirty tricks, smears, and outright lies, won't win many sympathizers by depicting himself as unfairly maligned. He is likely to be remembered above all for his own expertise at demonization, specifically for his ability to paint his political opponents as unreliable partners in the "war on terror" -- as traitors to the United States. A master propagandist, he portrayed his rivals as fellow travelers with Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Like Cain, from whom Grendel was said to be descended, Rove was more interested in fratricide than in the welfare of his people. LINK

The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense. LINK

(Not my favorite person, but a well done article)
Here Come the Corporate Bailouts
Greed and Folly on Wall Street
By RALPH NADER
The corporate capitalists' knees are shaking a bit. Their manipulation of the sub-prime housing market has led to a spreading credit crunch and liquidity crisis. So it is time for them to call on Uncle Sam--the all purpose bailout man.
Only don't call it a bailout yet. It is just an injection of over $200 billion in the past week to stabilize the heaving financial markets by the European Central Bank and our Federal Reserve. Governments to the rescue--again.
My father many years ago asked his children during dinner table conversation: "Why will capitalism always survive?" His answer: "Because socialism will always be used to save it." As a small businessman himself (a restaurateur), he was not referring to the little guys on Main Street. He was talking about the Big Boys. Today, we call these self-paying CEOs "corporate capitalists."
Central Banks are government regulators after all. Among other impacts, they regulate interest rates. But they are so saturated with banking executives or former banking officials on their Boards, Committees and at the helms, that they see themselves as part and parcel saviors of their banking brethren.
Brother Henry M. Paulson, formerly with the Goldman-Sachs investment giant and now U.S. Treasury Secretary just said: "The markets are resilient. They can absorb those losses. We've gone through challenging times in the markets, and we will rise to the challenge." LINK

Progressivism is not dead! (But it's on life support ...) From "Blast Off" Blog, a graph showing where the canidates stand in the right-left, libertarian-authoritarian spectrum.

LINK TO GRAPH

Are You Scared? By Craig Winters

Multinational corporations sell our jobs to the lowest overseas bidders. The credit industry preys on our poor. The for-profit healthcare system is the leading cause of bankruptcy while hospitals dump indigent patients on skid row. Our country’s infrastructure is breaking down from New Orleans levees to Minnesota bridges even as we are mired in a war that drowns us in debt and advances only the interests of big oil and arms merchants. The Medicare prescription drug law leaves an enormous hole in coverage while it forbids the government from negotiating lower prices on behalf of the people. Bush signed into law a bill making bankruptcy harder and more expensive for people who need relief and now he threatens to veto health insurance for poor children.
How can the government ignore such obvious and immediate needs? LINK

Bush's Booming Economy -- For The Rich

By Sheila Samples

08/14/07 "ICH" -- -- Sometimes I'm amazed at how much I know about the financial markets and the economy. I don't understand any of it, but I know a lot of stuff, thanks to my friend and mentor, Richard Walrath, who's been to the market more than once. He says when George Bush brags that the economy is booming, he's probably right. The economy is exploding with a big boom, and Walrath says now we are engaged in a great battle to see how long this country can endure.The Fed just poured a bunch of money into the market, which was news to me, but Walrath said the Fed has been manipulating the market for years, especially during the Bush years. "There was great fear the United States was going to follow Japan into a period of deflation and recession -- maybe even a depression," Walrath said. "Interest rates were cut close to zero while hundreds of billions of dollars were added to the National Debt through tax-cuts for the rich and 'Big Bidness.' And it gets worse just at the time the National Debt limit has to be raised again." With things as bad as they are, Walrath says it's going to be interesting to see how this crisis is handled. Congress may have to return early to pass legislation to raise the National Debt. But it makes more sense to me -- since the bulk of our lawmakers were so eager to get out of school for recess, that Bush could decide to handle the whole thing like he does everything else to avoid partisan jawboning or oversight -- just dash off an Executive Order.But the National Debt is just one of many problems battering our economy. Walrath points out a major problem is "all those margin accounts out there with people getting calls to come up with some real money because their stock is down. As you might expect, this led to speculation in housing -- let's flip it -- and millions of people who couldn't afford to pay their rent bought houses." LINK

Find out why your canidate is not the one to vote for....and yes this includes Democrates and Republicans

by Stephen Pizzo

LINK

Is Cheney betting on Economic Collapse? By Mike Whitney
Wouldn’t you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money? Then you’d know whether his “deficits don’t matter” claim is just baloney or not. Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney’s financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly. The article is called “Cheney’s betting on bad news” and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in “a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation.” Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in “Old Europe”. As Blackburn sagely notes, “Not all ‘bad news’ is bad for everybody.” This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets. LINK

(Ok so if you want to see people who are completly fucking loony, check out this new Blumenthal video. Its scary to think there is a huge population of people like this, who unfortunetly vote, and breed more brain washed children)
Looking Forward To Armageddon Rapture Ready: The Christians United for Israel Tour
Max Blumenthal's latest takes us on a shocking and at times bizarre tour of right-wing Pastor John Hagee's annual Washington-Israel Summit, blowing the cover off the Christian Zionist movement in the process. Starring Joe Lieberman, Tom DeLay, Pastor John Hagee, Ambassador Dore Gold and a host of rapture-ready evangelicals praying for Armageddon

LINK TO VIDEO

(Ok what the hell.....watch this video, think about where we are now, what we have done, and then it makes you think if Cheny has been replaced by a robot or something. Weird, weird, and leaves me confused about what the hell is going on)

Dick Cheney '94: Invading Baghdad Would Create QuagmireIn this interview from April 15th, 1994, Dick Cheney reveals the reasons why invading Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein wouldn't be a great idea. He also stipulates that "not very many" American soldiers' lives were worth losing to take out Saddam during the Gulf War.

LINK TO VIDEO

Smoking Pot Won't Make You Crazy, But Dealing with the Lies about It Will
By Paul Armentano and Mitch Earlywine

Smoking pot won't make you crazy, but trying to find the truth behind the recent rash of headlines regarding a supposed link between cannabis and mental illness might.
According to the Associated Press and other news sources, a new study in the British medical journal The Lancet reports that smoking cannabis -- even occasionally -- can increase one's risk of becoming psychotic. It sounds alarming at first, but a closer look at the evidence reveals that there's less here than the headlines imply.
First, there is no new study. The paper published in The Lancet is a meta-analysis -- a summary of seven studies that previously appeared in other journals, including some that were published decades ago. Second, the touted association between cannabis and mental illness is small -- about the same size as the link between head injury and psychosis. Finally, despite what some new sources suggest, this association is hardly proof of a cause-and-effect relationship between cannabis and psychosis, So why the sudden fuss? LINK

Surge is spiraling out of control.
by winston winston
Big bro 43 took his "Mission Accomplished" photo-op dressed in an air force costume. His flight is plummeting earthward on a collision course with reality in September when Petraeus' report is released.The GOP will spin that there has been improvement in the military aspects of the surge-which is a lie, but the political environment in Iraq is horrendous and will eventually implode.
On August 7th 2007 five more ministers announced they will no longer attend Iraqi cabinet meetings. This brings the total number of ministers who have at least partially withdrawn from the government to 17 out of a total of 38. The latest to withdraw are members of a secular Shiite coalition led by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. As of August 7th 2007 the southern Iraqi city of Basra has turned into a lawless and violent mess as three Shiite political groups are fighting for control and British forces continue to pull back from the area. Earlier this year Vice President Cheney said the oil-rich city was a place "where things are going pretty well" but a U.S. official says "it's hard now to paint Basra as a success story." LINK

(Scary as shit, I hope they are wrong....or else we are in a shit load of trouble)

Fears of US attacks on Iran grow as media campaign heats up
Muriel Kane

Cheney continues to urge Iran strike
At a press conference on Thursday, President Bush delivered an apparent threat against Iran, stating, "One of the main reasons that I asked Ambassador Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq was to send the message that there will be consequences for people transporting, delivering EFPs, highly sophisticated IEDs, that kill Americans in Iraq."
Neither Bush nor the State Department would elaborate on the meaning of "consequences." However, McClatchy Newspapers reports that "the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy."

(Ok so maybe Edwards is not the best canidate, at least according to this article.....I guess in the end, we have no good vote....maybe Kucinch?)
Is "Populism" Left Wing? Is Bush a Moderate?
by max blunt
America's Phoney Fear A spectre is apparently haunting America – the spectre of “populism”. “New populism spurs Democrats on the economy,” cried the front page headline in The New York Times the other day. Republicans rail against unseemly “class warfare”, while centrist Democrats fret that hard-edged populist appeals will spook suburban voters. “It is not unusual,” The New York Times explained, “for candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to move left in the primary season.” However, rhetoric aside, there is little reason to view today’s supposedly wild-eyed Democrats as “populist” or “leftwing” at all. Consider John Edwards, who the press and Republicans have cast as the heartthrob of the resurgent “left”. The centrepiece of Mr Edwards’ agenda is a call for universal health coverage. It sounds radical to American ears, perhaps. But Margaret Thatcher would have been chased from office in the UK if she had proposed a health plan as radically conservative as Mr Edwards’ – under which private doctors would supply the medicine, and years would still pass with millions of Americans uncovered. Mr Edwards wants to lift the minimum wage substantially, and to boost wage subsidies for low-income work besides. But the outer limits of Mr Edwards’ ambition would leave low income work less generously compensated than the minimum wage and subsidy blend enacted by Britain’s New Labourites Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – arrangements Conservative party leader David Cameron says suit him just fine. LINK

(Good article by Chomsky, thanks for the heads up jk....PEACE)
Noam Chomsky: How Propaganda Works in the West
In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective than a propaganda system imposed in a totalitarian regime. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice the influence of propaganda — or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice — and think that, because we have “free” media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it. The American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's “prop-agenda.” It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false “intelligence” and selected “leaks”. With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then “use the democratic process” to agree or disagree — for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.
Keeping the People Passive & Obedient LINK TO REST

Why the Government Tests Few Chinese Imports
by Joel S. Hirschhorn

Massive amounts of Chinese imports are threatening public health and safety. Many food and consumer products pose risks. Lead in children’s toys and jewelry. Toxins in foods for pets and humans, and in toothpaste. Unsafe automobile tires. Many prescription drugs made with few safeguards. The list is endless. The federal government is not safeguarding American citizens through thorough testing of imports. Why?
Simple: The Chinese have us by our budget-deficit balls. Our government depends on China for loaning us money and for not dumping the vast hoard of over one trillion dollars it has accumulated by financing our huge deficits and selling us virtually everything. Dumping dollars is called the Chinese economic nuclear option. They can wreck the American economy any time they want. America is being held hostage because of our government’s disastrous fiscal and trade policies. And, yes, all this middle-class-killing free trade globalization favors corporate interests.
It is hard to keep track of all the ways the American public is being sold out by the federal government as our Constitution and rule of law are shredded. Our jobs are sent overseas and shifted to lower paid illegal and special-visa-legal immigrants. There is no economic security. Banks and credit card companies rape us financially through criminal interest rates and fees. Mortgage companies took advantage of millions of home buyers that now face foreclosure and financial ruin. We pay outrageous amounts for gasoline and, in many parts of the country, for electricity and natural gas. And still 15 percent of the population lacks health insurance, and those with insurance face rising costs. And millions of Americans face hunger and homelessness. And by the way our education system sucks. LINK

How the Democrats Blew It in Only Eight Months
By Alexander Cockburn
Thanks to the Democrats' inaction on Iraq and compliance with Bush on the FISA bill, Congress now has a "confidence" rating of 14 percent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than Republicans scored last year.
Led by Democrats since the start of this year, Congress now has a "confidence" rating of 14 percent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than Republicans scored last year.
The voters put the Democrats in to end the war, and it's escalating. The Democrats voted the money for the surge and the money for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement was to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wiretapping for "foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States." Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The Democrats' game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.
The row over the US Attorneys and the conduct of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has always been something of a typhoon in a teaspoon. The Democrats love it, since they imagine it portrays them to the public as resolute guardians of the impartial administration of justice, a concept whose credibility most Americans sensibly deride. The Democrats now plan to track Gonzales's firing of the US Attorneys back to that comic opera villain of the Bush era, Karl Rove, another great provoker of dust storms. LINK

The Timeline to Tyranny
by Paul Joseph Watson
1) The USA Patriot Act
2) Total Information Awareness
3) USA Patriot Act II
4) Military Commissions Act
5) John Warner Defense Authorization Act

LINK to next five and descriptions of all

Watch Henry Rollins tell the truth in.....well Rollins fashion

http://www.liberalrevolt.com/article/henry-rollins-fk-you

(Please do not vote for Clinton and continue the Bush, Clinton, Bush...presidential line...We should all be looking at Edwards...he is the only one working for the middle and working class)
Hillary Clinton: The GOP's Favorite Democrat
by Ernest Partridge
Officials at Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation have contributed to Hillary Clinton's campaign, and Murdoch himself has held fund-raisers in her behalf. Lawyers at Kenneth Starr's law firm, Kirkland and Ellis, have donated more to Clinton than they have to all of the Republican candidates combined. In addition, Bloomberg.com reports that "Large US [law] firms ... are giving thousands more to Democratic hopefuls than Republicans. Top Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds are also giving more to Democrats." We can assume that most of these donations are going to the front-runners, Clinton and Obama. And finally, Hillary Clinton's appearance last week at the Yearly Kos, was cut short by her appearance at a fund-raiser at the estate of billionaire, Ron Perlman.Hillary Clinton appears to be the favorite Democrat of Republican haves and have-mores. LINK

Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now ...
In the Hole to China
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China’s considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds “contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.”
Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, “the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.”
If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve. LINK

(Very 1984)
Portions Censored From Pearl Jam Webcast
Story by: Conor McKay
According to Pearl Jam's website, portions of the band's Sunday night set at Lollapalooza were missing from the AT&T Blue Room live webcast. Fans alerted the band to the missing material after the show. Reportedly absent from the webcast were segments of the band's performance of "Daughter," including the sung lines "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home." After questioning AT&T about the incident, Lollapalooza was informed that material was indeed missing from the webcast, and that it was mistakenly cut by AT&T's content monitor. Tiffany Nels of AT&T told CMJ that they are working the matter out with the band. "We regret the mistake," she explains. "This was not intended and was an unfortunate mistake made by a webcast editor." She went on to explain that AT&T has a policy for any excessive language, and that it was set up because of its all-ages audience. LINK

(This was to scary and weird not to post)
Florida theme park offers bloody crucifixion performances
RAW STORY
CNN's Sean Callebs reported Tuesday on a religious theme park in Orlando, Florida called "Holy Land Experience."
"The biggest attraction at Holy Land Experience is the crucifixion that you can see six days a week, as graphic and grim as possible," said Callebs, showing shots of a bloodied Jesus writhing on the cross, before interviewing the actor, who called the experience "humbling."
However, Callebs continued, "the performances, along with what's billed as the largest private collection of Biblical artifacts outside the Vatican, haven't been enough to keep the park out of debt." Holy Land Experience was $8 million behind and had almost been forced to close several times, before it was purchased this June by Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world's largest Christian television network. Since then, attendance is up, and the park has also won a battle to retain its tax-exempt status. LINK

Iraq Is About to Become a Lot Worse
By Chris Hedges
The war in Iraq is about to get worse -- much worse. The Democrats' decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses. This will be sudden. The security of the Green Zone, our imperial city, will be increasingly breached. Command and control will disintegrate. And we will back out of Iraq humiliated and defeated. But this will not be the end of the conflict. It will, in fact, signal a phase of the war far deadlier and more dangerous to American interests.
Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. The experiment that was Iraq, the cobbling together of disparate and antagonistic patches of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers in the wake of World War I, belongs to the history books. It will never come back. The Kurds have set up a de facto state in the north, the Shiites control most of the south and the center of the country is a battleground.
There are 2 million Iraqis who have fled their homes and are internally displaced. Another 2 million have left the country, most to Syria and Jordan, which now has the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on Earth. An Oxfam report estimates that one in three Iraqis are in need of emergency aid, but the chaos and violence is so widespread that assistance is impossible. Iraq is in a state of anarchy. The American occupation forces are one more source of terror tossed into the caldron of suicide bombings, mercenary armies, militias, massive explosions, ambushes, kidnappings and mass executions. But wait until we leave. LINK

Freedom or Totalitarianism, the Choice is Yours By Sgt. Kevin Benderman
The apathetic American public needs to pull their heads out of the comfortable little hole in the sand where it has been for far too long and do something about the way our country is being stolen from us by an administration that has its well-being and only its well- being in mind.
Our congressional representatives have no spine when it comes to doing what needs to be done to stop the war that the Project for the New American Century has pushed down the throats of the American public. This group has hi-jacked the country out from under us and we are standing by and letting them get away with it.
I remember my father watching the Watergate trials of the Nixon White House and I remember the nation having the spine to go after them with a vengeance for something that is much less worse than what the current White House is doing. The Nixon White House wanted to know what the opposition party was doing to get elected to the presidency and they staged the break-in of the opposition headquarters to get that information.
President Nixon was impeached for this, yet now we sit back and let a so-called President violate the United States Constitution, The Geneva Convention, and the Nuremberg Tribunals by starting a war in Iraq. This is a country that has been proven time and time again to have nothing to do with the September, 11th 2001 attacks on our country. The “interrogation” methods used and authorized by this administration very specifically violate our constitution because our constitution states that any treaty we sign and ratify becomes the law of the land. We signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions of 1949 which made it a law of America. LINK

Environmentalism for Billionaires
By Glenn Hurowitz, The American Prospect
Big business is trying to cash in on extremely dangerous projects painted green by their unscrupulous backers
Lately, I've been inundated with phone calls from venture capitalists, private equity guys, and hedge fundistas. They're coming to me because I'm their environmentalist friend and they all want to know one thing: how they can make a buck off the surge in interest in combating global warming.
In a way, that's a sign that the environmental movement has finally arrived. After decades of struggling to convince the titans of finance that protecting the planet and making money weren't mutually exclusive, the tycoons are now coming to us.
But many of these capitalist converts need watching. While Wall Street's eco-splurge has generated a flood of financing for legitimately clean ventures like wind and solar power, it's also spawned extremely dangerous projects that are painted green by their unscrupulous backers, but that at their core are as black as, well, coal. LINK

Death to the Bourgeoisie!
by max blunt
How do you feel towards those who want to help you? Who care for your well-being? Who sacrifice themselves for you benefit? Those good liberals and conservatives who do charity work for the poor and under-privileged. Bake a cake for the destitute. Send a Christmas present to the suffering children of Iraq. You know the type. Patronising, condescending wimps who salve their consciences by praying to God and giving to charity. These are the people I hate most. The privileged kill with their kindness. This is why the bourgeoisie are still the ruling class. Karl Marx predicted the inevitable implosion of capitalism and theorized that a much more humane, egalitarian, and democratic system would rise in its place.
It is little wonder that the bourgeoisie in the United States have striven so tenaciously to inculcate the unwashed masses to despise, fear, and ridicule socialism, communism, and nearly all aspects of Marxist thought. Sound bites, emotionally evocative images, ahistorical presentations, fear mongering, jingoism, advertising, and numerous temptations of instant gratification comprise a vast array of highly refined and insidious propaganda that perpetually hammers our minds to create a potent and effective false consciousness, and an irrational fear of anything but capitalism. LINK

Removing A Failed President
by Joel S. Hirschhorn

We no longer can trust Congress to impeach and remove a terrible president. The Washington Post has published an op-ed piece by Robert Dallek that proposes a constitutional amendment to allow “ouster by the people” for removing a president other than by impeachment or because of incapacity. Considering the dismal performance of George W. Bush and his administration and the difficulty in obtaining impeachment, this is a fine idea.
Here are the main features of the amendment: The recall procedure would begin by obtaining a 60 percent vote in the Senate and House. Public pressure on Congress could help it shift decisionmaking to the electorate. Congressional support would initiate a national referendum that would be open to all eligible voters in state elections. Clearly, it should be done fairly quickly. The ballot would simply offer the choice of voting “yes” or “no” to the option of removing the president and vice president from office immediately. If the majority votes in favor of removal, then the Speaker of the House would become president and choose a vice president who would have to be confirmed by majorities in the House and Senate. LINK TO ARTICLE

Self Terrorism by Steve Fournie

Who needs terrorists when people are scared to drive over a bridge? They know that the bridge-maintenance authorities are understaffed, chronically short of money, and run by political hacks with friends and relatives in high places. They don’t know which bridges are defective and which ones aren’t, and they don’t want to know. Whenever they have a chance, they vote to impoverish government by cutting their own taxes, ensuring the further deterioration of their public assets. So we're frightened whenever we pass over one of these structures, and we should be.
First order of business in a catastrophic event like the collapse of a bridge over the Mississippi is to get the public officials before the public to express their condolences, pray on TV, and accept the congratulations of the press for showing up to do so. Never mind that they're responsible for maintaining the bridge and spent the money that should have been allocated for maintenance on bullets and bombs instead. “Never again,” these folks like to say whenever this sort of thing happens, which is regularly. LINK

Americans Stuck In Political Stupor
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
The latest bipartisan George Washington University Battleground Poll rightfully received media attention because of its depressing data. There is historic political pessimism and cynicism. But something is more troubling than the data on the dire views of Americans about their elected representatives and government. It is that 72 percent of voters still believe that “voting gives people like me some say about how the government runs things.” Unbelievable! Such confidence in a system that has failed them.
Despite untrustworthy elected officials and a dysfunctional government that takes care of the Upper Class more than everyone else, Americans retain still believe in their democracy. This logical absurdity – or delusional state – is best explained by avoidance of the pain of cognitive dissonance. Americans resist the reality that they are living in a sham representative democracy where the rule of law is a growing fiction. LINK

Under the Radar: Ten Warning Signs for Today

by Heather Wokusch

1. Protest war, lose your property?

On July 17th, The White House quietly announced an Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq." Among other developments, it gives Bush the power to "block" the property of people in the US found to "pose a significant risk of committing" an act of violence which might undermine "political reform in Iraq."......More

2. Market meltdown

Economic fallout from the subprime mortgage market collapse has extended further, with prominent investment company Bear Stearns admitting last week that two of its hedge funds, once estimated at $1.6 billion, are now of "very little value.".....More

3. Escalating US military operations in Pakistan

Following 911, the Bush administration propped up Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf as a key ally in the "war on terror," spending billions of dollars on Pakistan's military while ignoring Musharraf's support for the Taliban. Those days might be over. Just last week, the White House announced US military forces could be deployed to strike "actionable targets" in the country - with or without Musharraf's permission.......More

LINK TO OTHER SEVEN

(I actually got a similar feeling from returning after seeing Morocco but from a much different scale then Iraq.....but still similar)

After Reporting in Iraq, America Feels Like a Bizarre Disneyland

By Dahr Jamail, Tomdispatch.com

"In violence we forget who we are" -- Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic

1. Statistically Speaking

Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.

But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country -- and once defined my own life as well.

Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.

The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds......LINK

American Rant: We're Vampires Living on the Blood of Others
We're the Fat, Mindless Blobs That Ate the Planet. At present, Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact that he didn't deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as "the mission" doesn't drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves. How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it? I'm afraid it's come to that: We are a people who psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage -- all the distortions of national character inherent to privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters......LINK

The Militarization and Annexation of North America
by Stephen Lendman
The Militarization and Annexation of North America - by Stephen LendmanBesides the Bush administration's imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control. They target the people of three nations slowly becoming one headquartered in Washington. That's the apparent aim of those in power here wanting one continent, "indivisible" minus old-fashioned ideas like "liberty and justice for all" we used to believe in when, as kids, we recited our "Pledge of Allegiance." They now have a whole new meaning. They're just words drummed into young minds hoping they'll still believe them when they're old enough to know better......LINK to a great article

A Wake-up Call
By Paul Craig Roberts
07/19/07 "ICH" -- -- This is a wake-up call that we are about to have another 9/11-WMD experience.
The wake-up call is unlikely to be effective, because the American attitude toward government changed fundamentally seventy-odd years ago. Prior to the 1930s, Americans were suspicious of government, but with the arrival of the Great Depression, Tojo, and Hitler, President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Americans that government existed to protect them from rapacious private interests and foreign threats. Today, Americans are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to government than they are to family members, friends, and those who would warn them about the government’s protection.
Intelligent observers are puzzled that President Bush is persisting in a futile and unpopular war at the obvious expense of his party’s electoral chances in 2008.
In the July 18 Los Angeles Times (“Bush the Albatross”), Ronald Brownstein reminds us that Bush’s behavior is disastrous for his political party. Unpopular presidents “have consistently undercut their party in the next election.” Brownstein reports that “88% of voters who disapproved of the retiring president’s job performance voted against his party’s nominee in past elections. . . . On average, 80% of voters who disapproved of a president’s performance have voted against his party’s candidates even in House races since 1986.”.......LINK

One of many sad stories from Iraq, yet we are still there and Bush is not faceing impeechment even though he lied to the American people....this stuff drives me crazy and sad like the author of this article..............
Maria Made Me Cry
by Joel S. Hirschhorn

I unexpectedly found myself crying over the Iraq war as I read the obituary of Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz, a highly praised Army nurse. What I read broke my heart. The story of this remarkable woman and her tragic, pointless killing in Iraq had so much more power than the endless statistics that have numbed our emotions and fed our anger about Bush’s Iraq War.
Maria was just 40 years old. She volunteered for duty in Iraq, eager to do her part. She wanted to take care of soldiers. She was the first Army nurse killed in combat since the Vietnam War.
Everyone who ever worked with Maria adored and respected her. She was one of those truly exceptional people who transcended her professional status with loving care for those she nursed and worked with.
Maria was killed on July 10 in the Green Zone in Baghdad. She was caught outside by a barrage of mortar shells and killed by shrapnel.....LINK to read the rest

A long needed update.

First off I apologize if any one has been waiting for an update from me. I have been sticking to emails and postcards and just did not ever do the blog thing. I will try to summarize the trip the best I can, but will surely come short of a description worthy of the trip's various stories.

I started this trip in Madrid, Spain but only spend about 6 hours in the bus station, as I missed my bus by about five minutes. The bus ride to Almeria was not to bad and looking back at it in comparison to bus rides in Morocco, it was quite the luxury. The first night in Almeria I stayed in a hotel way more expensive then I was willing to pay but because of how tired I was and on the verge of not being able to speak Spanish or English I payed and got a great night of sleep.

The next day I took the bus to my new temporary home for the next two weeks, a campsite right on the sea. The campsite was made up of Ex-pats burning and tanning the end of their life away, gypsies staying as long as the campsite would allow and then once they had stayed long enough would move on to the next campground, the occasional traveler, lots of French coming to work for the summer, locals coming for the day or to camp a night, and various other interesting individuals. So I spend my days trying to develop contacts for my trip in the fall, going to the library to find books on greenhouses, touring a greenhouse, getting plenty of sun, siestas, and internet.

After the two weeks I jumped on a boat and 8 hours later was in Melilla, the Spanish enclave in Morocco. Then a bus ride later was in Morocco. I have spent two and a half weeks here and it has been great but I am ready to move on. I have walked alone in cedar forest, seen monkeys in the Atlas mountains, ate food in a Berber adobe house, ate dinner with the town clown who lived on top a roof covered in rubbish, multiple bus rides where the heat seems to only go one direction....up, walked through waist deep water through gorges because that was the only way to get through, walked in arid mesas where the only form of life is beetles and plants that can stick you, medinas that seem to be lost in time, tanneries that are 2000 years old, and cites where the veils come off and the beer flows.

To Portugal on July 4th for a week. Then to Salamanca, Spain to visit my friends.

Peace and Love Ty