Dumb Government's topics - tribe.net

President B.H.Obama needs to check RED DWARF, Season 7 Episode 5, and SING ALONG:

2009-01-29T23:13:15Z

FED DWARF needs to review Season 7, Episode 5, of RED DWARF, and get back to us.

Only a complete RIMMER would front for energy inflation during wars, for an illegal 1882 Zionist invasion of Palestine, which has incited WWI and WWII, and it is headed for WWIII.

So naturally, President Barack H. Obama is going for the golden "H" on his forehead, like young Rimmer earned, when he caused an O-boom-boom on the mining ship, known among BBC folk as the RED DWARF.

Naturally, Israel is neither pure nor natural, and never kosher. Jews are from Ethiopia, see Isaiah 20:5. The star is from Egypt. The language Hebrew is from 'Habiru,' the language of the slaves. Rahm's tainted name is from Ra-moses, or 'son of the sun.'

So what are my and Chelsea's and Chuy's F-15s and F-16s and jet-X and phosphorous doing bombing Gaza, for illegal Israel, of the same 1882 invasion, which incited WWI and WWII, so young Obama gals go to private school, protected expensively, to fail to learn how their fees since 2001 are illegally inflated, with the costs of wars, illegally waged?

Obama invited the $100,000 toolbag to float away, with hundreds of offices and measures, through his deliberate mismanagement of all Democratic media, related to energy reform, BEFORE BAILOUTS OR STIMULI ARE PROPOSED. Yet these are to be enacted, in fraud.

Mr. Blagojevich can bring down the Obama White House, as soon as he sues for even enforcement of the law, including under Title II ADA or 42 U.S.C. 1983.

High crimes may constitute inciting riot in Pakistan, including the Black Friday massacre, inciting riot in Gaza, when the Palestinians shot rockets, concurrent with the Obama-ordered Blago-chase by the US Senate and the Illinois Legislature, and then cops shot a 22 or 23-year-old black man, per day, after Roland Burris called Blagojevich 'reprehensible,' without a hearing. What a price to pay, already!

Misdemeanors include the Mann Act, aggravated in California by CPC 404 infractions, including incitement of riot and failure to disperse, by evading review, with both Burris players, Senator Roland and despicable John at misconduct, leading to death and immininent further injuries, to classes for discovery.

A Rimmer would get his own stupid mining ship blown up by a radiation leak, Mr. President Rim-shot. Don't go there, and then enjoy sunny California. We have an Arnold Hole, already.

Somebody's DADDY is a President Rimshot, who needs to review Red Dwarf basics, and then see Soundgarden tapes, of BLACK HOLE SUN. But this Rimmer side is a heckuva hit:

-------------------------------------------------------
If you're in trouble, he will save the day
He's brave and he's fearless, come what may
Without him, the mission would go astray
He's Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer

Without him, life would be much grimmer
He's handsome, trim, and no one's slimmer
He will never need a Zimmer
He's Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer

More reliable than a garden Strimmer
He's never been mistaken for Yul Brynner
He's not bald and his head doesn't glimmer

Master of the wit and the repartee
His command of space directives is uncanny
How come he's such a genius? Don't ask me
Ask Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer

He's also a fantastic swimmer
And if you play your cards right, then he just might come round for dinner

He's Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer
No rhymes left now apart from quimmer
He'd better fade us out before we get to schlimmer
Fade out you stupid plimmer

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Obama stinks, by Hillary, Rahm, and Tim Gaitner, and he may be about gone, already:

2009-01-22T22:33:00Z

See Darth, without the wig? See Frodo, with the ring? Hillary must have hit her head, coming to STAR WARS. No wonder Darth, Luke, and Palm Lightning Dorothy fight like girls.

Why did candidate Barack open Debate III with a rant, how the deregulated power deals are robbing us of our wealth, yet he let McCain jam Joe as a plumber, when Sam Wurzelbacher actually owed $1200 on an IRS lien, paid only AFTER the election, AFTER Maddie Dunham called Barack to Hawaii, for a death conference? THAT is when she let out the rave about Barack wasn't born in the US. STRANGE. Then the toolbag floated. Then Janet lost her Governorship and Cali faces Prop.8 in CSC, again.

Blago got mad, AFTER the election. He called Rahm-hose-us only AFTER Obama had fubarred the lineup, on November 4, 2008, letting Joe pretend Sam does not exist, letting John McCain cook, after the bizarre media demurrer, of Debate III, BLACK OCTOBER 15, 2008. Grandma Maddie saw Obama the New York crackhead dropping a virtual bindle, on McCain's foot, so she let Barry know, she was in a hurry, like Dick Nolan left with his cancer, when his son Mike stayed on top of Mike Singletary, at the 49ers, now winning in the NFL.

Sorry about our luck, but Obama is more Urkel, than he is Cosby or Powell. He is raving about the 'terror,' as I write this. But he hasn't re-regulated energy OR the use of depleted uranium, to blast away and start wars, while leaving Saddam AND the highest rate of serious birth defects in Iraq, after Gulf War I. No wonder OBL didn't like Bush or the USA, you know? The US drove Saudi fighters into a killing zone, for the British-appointed Saudi royal family, to violate royal favors exclusion clause, in the US Constitution. Bills of Attainder and Standing Army Clause violations stem from this travesty. Illegal establishment of religion is widespread. Obama? He is questionable.

President Obama has been pretending the Senate does not infract the commerce clauses, by failing to represent the territories or D.C. or non-parties to the prevailing seditious conspiracies, to unfund the USA with deregulated power deals, during war, during escalated interest gouging, and yet, President Obama as announced no fraud, at funding OR seditious conspiracy and obstruction, since al Queda directed the 9/11 attacks at WTC 7, to warn of the imminent, unfair, illegal increase in food and energy prices, now despicable and obviously evaded, by all reviews AND by the 9/11 Commission, tainted now, by a new President, which appoints tax cheats and crime family superstars, to the new administration!

EXCUSE ME, Rahm's uncle was in the Irgun, but that started WWII. The British invasion of Palestine in 1882 incited WWI. Tim the tax cheat cheated $34K without disclosing how the energy deals ate his AND Joe Plumber's margins. So they leave, or President Obama is about to get served, for high crimes and misdemeanor suspicious activity, from CALIFORNIA, or you can delete this like the private school campaigners did, to all my posts, in Obama '08. This will make it, to court.

Rahm and the Treasury guy who owed $34,000 need to back up, or when Cali goes bankrupt, Barack will have to explain how he drew fire from Gaza by sending the Senate and Illinois Legislature after Blago, who didn't get a hearing, about how the Senate isn't free from fillibuster, is it. Roland Burris called Blago 'reprehensible,' and the Illinois Secretary of State wouldn't sign the appointment!

Cops in Cali and elsewhere started shooting a young black man, about 22 or 23, per day, until after OSCAR GRANT's mom Wanda Jackson ran off with John Burris in Oakland, and told the incited riot to cool it, since Barack is a CPC 404 perp, aggravated by Mann Act violations. To delete this is electioneering and commerce clause violation, which may complicate the rehabilitation of the Obama Presidency.

By the way, Rahm, your Habiru-ized and diaspora-affected name is from RA-MOSES, son of the sun. The six-pointed star comes from Egypt, like not only Jews from Ethiopia, but any other escapees from Pharoah, at the time of the Santorini eruption. With all the corruption, why are our airplanes and Joe the Reporter doing goon work for the Purple Gang, in Israel? Not because private schools are kosher.

The clue to all the family matters ripening is look how Emanuel Lewis was ''Little Arnold," on TV. Big Arnold has to declare bankruptcy, next month. When you do not re-regulate before bailouts and stimuli, BOTH, you need to wise right up and watch the re-runs and muse. BUT THESE ISSUES GET SOLVED EARLY, OR MR. OBAMA WILL NOT BE STAYING LATE, AS EXECUTIVE.

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New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan

2008-07-27T06:33:50Z

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate [oil pipeline] interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama and McCain are proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO THE BIPARTISAN OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN!!!!

NO TO OBAMA and MCCAIN'S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

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1950: 100,000 Executed by Imperialism's Korean Dictatorship

2008-05-19T17:54:55Z

[The US war of aggression in Korea murdered 5 million Koreans. Part of that murder was the cold blooded executions of over 100,000 leftists and suspected leftists by the South Korean government in 1950. Over 54,000 U.S. soldiers died in the U.S. war to defend that murderous U.S. imposed regime. The following AP article exposes what many on the left have known about for decades, but has been hidden from the general public in the United States by the government and corporate media. -Steven Argue]

AP Probes 'Cold-Blooded Slaughter' in South Korea
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003805038

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press

Published: May 18, 2008 4:15 PM ET

DAEJEON Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

The mass executions - intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners - were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were ``the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War,'' said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings.

Hundreds of sets of remains have been uncovered so far, but researchers say they are only a tiny fraction of the deaths. The commission estimates at least 100,000 people were executed, in a South Korean population of 20 million.

That estimate is based on projections from local surveys and is ``very conservative,'' said Kim. The true toll may be twice that or more, he told The Associated Press.

In addition, thousands of South Koreans who allegedly collaborated with the communist occupation were slain by southern forces later in 1950, and the invaders staged their own executions of rightists.

Through the postwar decades of South Korean right-wing dictatorships, victims' fearful families kept silent about that blood-soaked summer. American military reports of the South Korean slaughter were stamped ``secret'' and filed away in Washington. Communist accounts were dismissed as lies.

Only since the 1990s, and South Korea's democratization, has the truth begun to seep out.

In 2002, a typhoon's fury uncovered one mass grave. Another was found by a television news team that broke into a sealed mine. Further corroboration comes from a trickle of declassified U.S. military documents, including U.S. Army photographs of a mass killing outside this central South Korean city.

Now Kim's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has added government authority to the work of scattered researchers, family members and journalists trying to peel away the long-running cover-up. The commissioners have the help of a handful of remorseful old men.

``Even now, I feel guilty that I pulled the trigger,'' said Lee Joon-young, 83, one of the executioners in a secluded valley near Daejeon in early July 1950.

The retired prison guard told the AP he knew that many of those shot and buried en masse were ordinary convicts or illiterate peasants wrongly ensnared in roundups of supposed communist sympathizers. They didn't deserve to die, he said. They ``knew nothing about communism.''

The 17 investigators of the commission's subcommittee on ``mass civilian sacrifice,'' led by Kim, have been dealing with petitions from more than 7,000 South Koreans, involving some 1,200 alleged incidents - not just mass planned executions, but also 215 cases in which the U.S. military is accused of the indiscriminate killing of South Korean civilians in 1950-51, usually in air attacks.

The commission last year excavated sites at four of an estimated 150 mass graves around the country, recovering remains of more than 400 people. Working deliberately, matching documents to eyewitness and survivor testimony, it has officially confirmed two large-scale executions - at a warehouse in the central South Korean county of Cheongwon, and at Ulsan on the southeast coast.

In January, then-President Roh Moo-hyun, under whose liberal leadership the commission was established, formally apologized for the more than 870 deaths confirmed at Ulsan, calling them ``illegal acts the then-state authority committed.''

The commission, with no power to compel testimony or prosecute, faces daunting tasks both in verifying events and identifying victims, and in tracing a chain of responsibility. Under Roh's conservative successor, Lee Myung-bak, whose party is seen as democratic heir to the old autocratic right wing, the commission may find less budgetary and political support.

The roots of the summer 1950 bloodbath lie in the U.S.-Soviet division of Japan's former Korea colony in 1945, which precipitated north-south turmoil and eventual war.

In the late 1940s, President Syngman Rhee's U.S.-installed rightist regime crushed leftist political activity in South Korea, including a guerrilla uprising inspired by the communists ruling the north. By 1950, southern jails were packed with up to 30,000 political prisoners.

The southern government, meanwhile, also created the National Guidance League, a ``re-education'' organization for recanting leftists and others suspected of communist leanings. Historians say officials met membership quotas by pressuring peasants into signing up with promises of rice rations or other benefits. By 1950, more than 300,000 people were on the league's rolls, organizers said.

North Korean invaders seized Seoul, the southern capital, in late June 1950 and freed thousands of prisoners, who rallied to the northern cause. Southern authorities, in full retreat with their U.S. military advisers, ordered National Guidance League members in areas they controlled to report to the police, who detained them. Soon after, commission researchers say, the organized mass executions of people regarded as potential collaborators began - ``bad security risks,'' as a police official described the detainees at the time.

The declassified record of U.S. documents shows an ambivalent American attitude toward the killings. American diplomats that summer urged restraint on southern officials - to no obvious effect - but a State Department cable that fall said overall commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur viewed the executions as a Korean ``internal matter,'' even though he controlled South Korea's military.

Ninety miles south of Seoul, here in the narrow, peaceful valley of Sannae, truckloads of prisoners were brought in from Daejeon Prison and elsewhere day after day in July 1950, as the North Koreans bore down on the city.

The American photos, taken by an Army major and kept classified for a half-century, show the macabre sequence of events.

White-clad detainees - bent, submissive, with hands bound - were thrown down prone, jammed side by side, on the edge of a long trench. South Korean military and national policemen then stepped up behind, pointed their rifles at the backs of their heads and fired. The bodies were tipped into the trench.

Trembling policemen - ``they hadn't shot anyone before'' - were sometimes off-target, leaving men wounded but alive, Lee said. He and others were ordered to check for wounded and finish them off.

Evidence indicates South Korean executioners killed between 3,000 and 7,000 here, said commissioner Kim. A half-dozen trenches, each up to 150 yards long and full of bodies, extended over an area almost a mile long, said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, chairman of a group of bereaved families campaigning for disclosure and compensation for the Daejeon killings. His father, accused but never convicted of militant leftist activity, was one victim.

Another was Yeo Tae-ku's father, whose wife and mother searched for him afterward.

``Bodies were just piled upon each other,'' said Yeo, 59, remembering his mother's description. ``Arms would come off when they turned them over.'' The desperate women never found him, and the mass graves were quickly covered over, as were others in isolated spots up and down this mountainous peninsula, to be officially ``forgotten.''

When British communist journalist Alan Winnington entered Daejeon that summer with North Korean troops and visited the site, writing of ``waxy dead hands and feet (that) stick through the soil,'' his reports in the Daily Worker were denounced as ``fabrication'' by the U.S. Embassy in London. American military accounts focused instead on North Korean reprisal killings that followed in Daejeon.

But CIA and U.S. military intelligence documents circulating even before the Winnington report, classified ``secret'' and since declassified, told of the executions by the South Koreans. Lt. Col. Bob Edwards, U.S. Embassy military attache in South Korea, wrote in conveying the Daejeon photos to Army intelligence in Washington that he believed nationwide ``thousands of political prisoners were executed within (a) few weeks'' by the South Koreans.

Another glimpse of the carnage appeared in an unofficial U.S. source, an obscure memoir self-published in 1981 by the late Donald Nichols, a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, who told of witnessing ``the unforgettable massacre of approximately 1,800 at Suwon,'' 20 miles south of Seoul.

Such reports lend credibility to a captured North Korean document from Aug. 2, 1950, eventually declassified by Washington, which spoke of mass executions in 12 South Korean cities, including 1,000 killed in Suwon and 4,000 in Daejeon.

That early, incomplete North Korean report couldn't include those executed in territory still held by the southerners. Up to 10,000 were killed in the city of Busan alone, a South Korean lawmaker, Park Chan-hyun, estimated in 1960.

His investigation came during a 12-month democratic interlude between the overthrow of Rhee and a government takeover by Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee's authoritarian military, which quickly arrested many then probing for the hidden story of 1950.

Kim said his projection of at least 100,000 dead is based in part on extrapolating from a survey by non-governmental organizations in one province, Busan's South Gyeongsang, which estimated 25,000 killed there. And initial evidence suggests most of the National Guidance League's 300,000 members were killed, he said.

Commission investigators agree with the late Lt. Col. Edwards' note to Washington in 1950, that ``orders for execution undoubtedly came from the top,'' that is, President Rhee, who died in 1965.

But any documentary proof of that may have been destroyed, just as the facts of the mass killings themselves were buried. In 1953, after the war ended in stalemate, after the deaths of at least 2 million people, half or more of them civilians, a U.S. Army war crimes report attributed all summary executions here in Daejeon to the ``murderous barbarism'' of North Koreans.

Such myths survived a half-century, in part because those who knew the truth were cowed into silence.

``My mother destroyed all pictures of my father, for fear the family would get an image as leftists,'' said Koh Chung-ryol, 57, who is convinced her 29-year-old father was innocent of wrongdoing when picked up in a broad police sweep here, to die in Sannae valley.

``My mother tried hard to get rid of anything about her husband,'' she said. ``She suffered unspeakable pain.''

Even educated South Koreans remained ignorant of their country's past. As a young researcher in the late 1980s, Yonsei University's Park Myung-lim, today a leading Korean War historian, was deeply shaken as he sought out confidential accounts of those days from ordinary Koreans.

``I cried,'' he said. ``I felt, 'Oh, my goodness. Oh, Jesus. This was my country? It was true?'''

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission can recommend but not award compensation for lost and ruined lives, nor can it bring surviving perpetrators to justice. ``Our investigative power is so meager,'' commission President Ahn Byung-ook told the AP.

His immediate concern is resources. ``The current government isn't friendly toward us, and so we're concerned that the budget may be cut next year,'' he said.

South Korean conservatives complain the ``truth'' campaign will only reopen old wounds from a time when, even at the village level, leftists and rightists carried out bloody reprisals against each other.

The life of the commission - with a staff of 240 and annual budget of $19 million - is guaranteed by law until at least 2010, when it will issue a final, comprehensive report.

Later this spring and summer its teams will resume digging at mass grave sites. Thus far, it has verified 16 incidents of 1950-51 - not just large-scale detainee killings, but also such events as a South Korean battalion's cold-blooded killing of 187 men, women and children at Kochang village, supposed sympathizers with leftist guerrillas.

By exposing the truth of such episodes, ``we hope to heal the trauma and pain of the bereaved families,'' the commission says. It also wants to educate people, ``not just in Korea, but throughout the international community,'' to the reality of that long-ago conflict, to ``prevent such a tragic war from reoccurring in the future.''

CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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ILWU to Shut Down Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

2008-05-02T21:00:46Z

[Liberation News is in agreement with the following article of the Internationalist Group and both have also actively advocated these kinds of industrial actions.]

For Workers Strikes Against the War!

ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 Demanding End to War in Iraq, Afghanistan

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, "One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq."

This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that this mobilization of labor's power is to take place on May Day, the international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S. Moreover, the resolution voted by the ILWU delegates opposes not only the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, but also the war and occupation of Afghanistan (which Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want to expand). The motion to shut down the ports also demands the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the entire region, including the oil sheikdoms of the strategically important Persian/Arab Gulf.

The Internationalist Group has fought from the moment U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in September 2002 for American unions to strike against the war. Despite the fact that millions have marched in the streets of Europe and the United States against the war in Iraq, the war goes on. Neither of the twin war parties of U.S. imperialism - Democrats and Republicans - and none of the capitalist candidates will stop this horrendous slaughter that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The only way to stop the Pentagon killing machine is by mobilizing the power of a greater force - that of the international working class.

The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations throughout the United States and internationally. The ILWU should be commended for courageously taking the first step, and it is up to working people everywhere to back them up. Wherever support is strong enough, on May 1 there should be mass walkouts, sick-outs, labor marches, plant-gate meetings, lunch-time rallies, teach-ins. And the purpose of such actions should be not to beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!

Now is the time for bold class action. Opposition to the war is even greater in the U.S. working class than in the population as a whole, more than two-thirds of which wants to stop the war but is stymied by the capitalist political system. In his letter to Sweeney, the ILWU president asked "if other AFL-CIO affiliates are planning to participate in similar events." Labor militants should make sure the answer to that question is a resounding "yes!"

There should be no illusions that this will be easy. No doubt the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) bosses will try to get the courts to rule the stop-work action illegal. The ILWU leadership could get cold feet, since this motion was passed because of overwhelming support from the delegates despite attempts to stop it or, failing that, to water it down or limit the action. And the U.S. government could try to ban it on the grounds of "national security," just as Bush & Co. slapped a Taft-Hartley injunction on the docks during contract negotiations in the fall of 2002, saying that any work stoppage was a threat to the "war effort," and threatened to occupy the ports with troops!

The answer to every attempt to sabotage or undercut this first labor action against this war, and against Washington's broader "war on terror" which is intended to terrorize the world into submission must be to redouble efforts to bring out workers' power independent of the capitalist parties and politicians. If the ILWU work stoppage is successful, it will only be a small, but very important, beginning that must be generalized and deepened. It will take industrial-strength labor action to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses' war on immigrants, oppressed minorities, poor and working people "at home."

ILWU in the Forefront of Labor Action Against the War

Workers strike action against imperialist war isn't new - it just hasn't happened here for a long, long time. During World War I there were huge mass strikes in Germany against the battlefield carnage, culminating in the downfall of the kaiser in November 1918. A year earlier in Russia, working-class opposition to the war led to the overthrow of the tsar and the October Revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky's Bolsheviks. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International call today for transport workers to "hot cargo" (refuse to handle) war shipments. In the early 1920s, Communist-led French dock workers did exactly that, boycotting ships carrying war materiel to suppress a colonial rebellion in the Rif region of Morocco, as they
also did during France's war in Indochina in the 1950s.

In the U.S., the ILWU struck in 1948 amid Cold War hysteria and in defiance of the "slave labor" Taft-Hartley Act to defend its union hiring hall against the bosses and government screaming about "reds" in the union leadership. In 1953, at the height of McCarthyite witch-hunting, the ILWU called a four-day general strike in Hawaii of sugar, pineapple and dock workers over the jailing of seven union members for being communists. During the Vietnam War, socialist historian Isaac Deutscher said that he would trade all the peace marches for a single dock strike. The ILWU was the first U.S. union to oppose the Vietnam war, but during war and especially during the 1971 strike union leader Harry Bridges refused to stop the movement of military cargo. (Ship owners made use of this by falsely labeling cargo as "military" to evade picket lines and undermine the strike.) This betrayal went hand in hand with a "mechanization and modernization" contract that slashed union jobs.

As the U.S.-led imperialist invasion of Iraq was looming, in January 2003 train drivers in Scotland refused to move a freight train carrying munitions to a NATO military base. The next month, Italian railroad unionists and antiwar activists blocked NATO war trains by occupying the rails. In the United States, ILWU dock workers were a target of "anti-terrorist" government repression, as police fired supposedly "less than lethal" munitions point blank at an antiwar protest on the Oakland, California docks, injuring six longshore workers and arresting 25 people (who eventually won their legal case against the police). And every year since the war started, the San Francisco/Oakland ILWU Local 10 has voted for motions for labor action against the war. Usually they were voted down at caucuses and conventions of the ILWU, but not this time.

Last May, Local 10 longshoremen and Local 34 ships clerks refused to cross picket lines set up by the Oakland Teachers Association and antiwar activists, defying arbitrators' orders by refusing to work ships of the notorious antiunion outfit, Stevedoring Services of America (see "Oakland Dock Workers Honor Picket, Shut Down War Cargo Shipper," The Internationalist No. 26, July 2007). In the aftermath of that action, the union issued a call for a Labor Conference to Stop the War that would "plan workplace rallies, labor
mobilizations in the streets and strike action against the war." The Call to Action stated:

"ILWU Local 10 has repeatedly warned that the so-called 'war on terror' is really a war on working people and democratic rights. Around the country, hundreds of unions and labor councils have passed motions condemning the war, but that has not stopped the war. We need to use labor's muscle to stop the war by mobilizing union power in the streets, at the plant gates and on the docks to force the immediate and total withdrawal of all U. S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq."

As the conference date approached, the union was the target of several police attacks, including a vicious cop assault on two black dock workers from San Francisco working in the port of Sacramento. Some 250 demonstrators from every ILWU local in Northern California rallied in their defense outside the courthouse. Their trial to be set march 18 at a hearing will encounter even larger demonstrations.

The Internationalist Group and its union supporters helped build and attended the October 20 conference, along with some 150 labor and socialist activists from the Bay Area, elsewhere in California and across the country. At the meeting, a particular focus was resistance to the Transportation Workers Identification Card (TWIC), which threatens minority workers and the union hiring hall, and which the Democratic Party in particular has been pushing in order to carry out a purge of dock workers in the name of the "war on terror."
Not long after that conference, a federal judge ordered Local 10 elections canceled and replaced by a Labor Department-run vote, on the eve of 2008 contract bargaining. Federal agents even invaded the union hall to enforce their order. This action is a threat to the independence of all unions.

This set the stage for the recent longshore-warehouse caucus, which voted a motion for a 24-hour "No Peace, No Work Holiday" against the war. The resolution was introduced in Local 10 by Jack Heyman, who also presented the motion for the 24 April 1999 coast-wide port shutdown demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and renowned radical journalist who has been on Pennsylvania's death row for the last quarter century. Although the union tops maneuvered to prevent Heyman from being elected as a delegate to the Coast Caucus, the motion passed in Local 10. At the Caucus, the delegate from Local 34 referred to the October Labor Conference to Stop the War as the origin of the motion.

At the close of the Caucus on February 8, there was a vigorous debate on the resolution. The union tops tried to stop it, to no avail. They kept asking, "are you sure you want to do this action." The delegates overwhelmingly said "yes." Even conservative trade unionists, including veterans of the Vietnam War, were getting up saying the government is lying to us, we've had it with this war, we've got to put a stop to it now. So instead the bureaucrats tried to gut the motion, which was cut down from 24 hours to 8, and changed into a "stop-work" meeting (covered by a contract clause) instead of a straight-out shutdown, thinking that this would lessen opposition from the employers. In the end there was a voice vote and only three delegates out of 100 voted against.

The efforts to undercut the motion continue, as is to be expected from a leadership which, like the rest of the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy, seeks "labor peace" with the bosses. In his letter to Sweeney, ILWU International president tried to present the action as an effort to "express support for the troops by bringing them home safely," although the motion voted by the delegates says nothing of the sort. Playing the "support our troops" game is an effort to swear loyalty to the broader aims of U.S. imperialism. It aids the warmongers, when what's needed is independent working-class action against the system that produces endless imperialist war. Yet despite the efforts to water it down and distort it, the May 1 action voted for by the ILWU delegates is a call to use labor's muscle to put an end to the war.

Mobilize Labor's Power to Defeat the Bosses' War!

For the West Coast dock workers union to shut down the ports against the war means a big step forward in the class struggle. The Internationalist Group has uniquely fought for workers strikes against the war, when all the popular-front "peace" coalitions dismissed this and even some shamefaced ex-Trotskyists refused to call for it, saying it had "no resonance" among the workers (see our October 20007 Special Supplement to The Internationalist, "Why We Fight For Workers Strikes Against the War [and the opportunists Don't]"). With signs, banners and propaganda we have sought to drive home the central lesson that it is necessary to defeat the imperialist war abroad and the bosses' war "at home" by mobilizing the power of the workers movement independent of and against the capitalist parties.

That means fighting the war mobilization down the line. First and foremost, this means actively joining the struggle for immigrant rights as the government turns undocumented working people into "the enemy within." Class-conscious workers should demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Last year, San Francisco Local 10 voted to stop work and join marches for immigrant rights on May 1, but this was opposed by the employers PMA and sabotaged at the last minute by the union tops. Shamefully, Local 13 in Los Angeles, a majority Mexican American port, made no protest when police attacked immigrant rights protesters that same day. Today, as the ICE immigration police stage Gestapo-style raids across the country, organized labor should take the lead in organizing rapid response networks to come into the streets to block the raids. Despite the campaign by the capitalist media and politicians to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria, there is widespread disgust among American working people toward the jackbooted storm troopers who are terrorizing immigrant communities.

At the same time, the unions should use the power to put a halt to the attacks on civil liberties which are part of the home front of the imperialist war. Driver's licenses with biometric data, TWIC identification cards with "background checks," warrantless spying and phone tapping, setting up special military tribunals for "trials" in which defendants are denied the right of habeas corpus, to know the "evidence" or even the charges against them - all these are part of a drive that is in high gear pushing the United States toward a full-fledged police state. There have been scores, perhaps hundreds of resolutions by unions and city, county and state labor bodies against the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, showing that labor activists are well aware of the danger. But just as is the case with the countless union antiwar resolutions, there has been no labor action. It is commonplace in the labor movement to bemoan the lack of real action when Reagan broke the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers' strike, paving the way for massive union-busting, takeaways and racist attacks all down the line. Let's not let the labor bureaucrats bury the vital struggles of today.

Now is the time to turn words into deeds, to speak to the capitalist rulers in the only language they understand. The imperialist war parties must be defeated by a class mobilization of the working people at the head of all the oppressed. The ILWU motion to stop work on May Day to put a stop to the war can provide working people everywhere with the opening to turn from impotent protest to a struggle for power. For that the key is to build a class-struggle workers party fighting for a workers government, for socialist revolution here and around the world, that will put an end once and for all to the system of endless war, poverty and racism.

This is an Article of the Internationalist Group:
www.internationalist.org

and distributed by Liberation News, Subscribe Free!
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

2008-04-18T19:54:49Z

Join the new “Cool Earth Party” tribe

The Democrats and Republicans are the paid agents of the oil, armament, and insurance industries. Their continued rule of America will assure a future of more imperialist war, a healthcare system that doesn't work, and no meaningful action on global warming (the single biggest threat to the future of humanity and a healthy planet).

The Cool Earth Party is being established on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism. We call for an end to the dictatorial power of the wealthy through the nationalization of major industries and for the establishment of a planned economy run to meet human and environmental needs. This socialist society must be established within the framework of full democratic freedoms and multi-party proportional democracy. To be truly Democratic all parties running in elections will be legally guaranteed equal time in the media, big campaign spending will be outlawed, and electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections) will be eliminated.

Upon taking power the Cool Earth Party will establish a system of socialized medicine for the United States, end all U.S. military occupations of other countries, end U.S. military aid to repressive governments, and nationalize the auto and energy industries to carry out immediate emergency measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

listen to it

2008-03-08T22:19:37Z

http://asx.ljcentral.net/mp3/eir/tls/2008/tls080209_en_hi.mp3

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Conspiracy History compilation DVDs torrents

2008-03-06T15:18:58Z

**************************************************

Greetings to all my relations.

This is the last step of our project History Watch. If History is
defined and known by the texts, we can now add to this definition the
recorded events of the filmed archives. Animated images are harder to
deny than printed words. Our objective is to spread out freely some of
the little broadcast, even hidden informations about our collective
History.

We put online a collection of 391 documentaries and other selected and
recut videos, to offer to a wide public the best of the infos
available on the net in english and in french. If you are interested,
you have the time, the right equipment and connection, all you have to
do is open the joint document and decompress it if needed (but normaly
your system should do it automaticaly). You'll find therein nine links
that will open the torrents for the nine DVDs we compiled (around 4.6
Gig each, for a total of a little over 41 G, being over 100 hours of
videos).

Otherwise, you can go directly to btjunkie.com and search for these titles.

11 Septembre 2001 - 9-11
Bush family & friends
Capitalist & Communist regimes
Capitalist conspiracy
Mind Kontrol - Secret Programs
New World Order - Secret Societies
Secret services - cover up - covert ops
Secret weapons - UFO
Terrorism Theories propaganda

Torrents are a system of peer to peer data transfer. The more people
download a torrent, the faster it spreads and the longer it stays on
the net. If you don't have a bittorrent software, we suggest that you
download uTorrent on utorrent.com. If you want to participate in
facilitating the diffusion of these infos about our collective
History, download these torrents on as many computers as possible,
whether it is in cybercafes. It takes one or two minutes to open up
the links and the downloading will keep proceeding on its own.

Please spread this out, take part in this action for social education
on a planetary scale. Thanks.

For more info: watch.history@gmail.com History Watch

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming

2008-02-10T17:23:29Z

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming

By STEVEN ARGUE

Today, every national academy of science of the industrialized world recognizes human caused global warming as a fact. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who explicitly use the word "consensus" on the issue.

The problem of global warming is one that will, and is, devastating the planet’s environment, causing mass extinction of species while also destroying agricultural and habitable land through rising oceans, more severe hurricanes, droughts, more unpredictable weather, increases in tropical diseases, year round freezing weather with a potential ice age in the northern hemisphere combined with higher temperatures closer to the equator, and the potential of runaway global warming with the melting of the ocean’s methane hydride that could actually cause the extinction of the human species.

Despite the severity of the problem, and despite the United States being the biggest contributor to global warming in the world, the U.S. government and corporate leaders continue to do worse than nothing, through blocking and sabotaging all potential solutions for the past fifty years up until the present. This is due to the massive profits that continue to be made by the big oil corporations, and the political strength they have in being able to buy the politicians in Washington.

On the biggest question facing humanity, human caused global warming, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are ignoring the urgent proposals of global warming experts and instead put forward conservative proposals of carbon credit trading for big corporations and proposals for so-called “cleaner” fuels for cars. Carbon credit trading, giving big corporations the “right” to buy and sell the “right” to pollute, will undermine the ability to pass other legislation that can better curb carbon pollution. And the “cleaner” bio-fuels being proposed make no substantial difference because it takes energy involving carbon emissions to grow the plants used to make bio-fuels. In addition, rainforests that would help remove global warming causing carbon from the atmosphere are being cleared to grow bio-fuels. To make matters worse, converting food-stuffs and croplands to bio-fuels increases world food prices, causing increased world hunger.

What is really needed, as opposed to the pro-oil industry measures of Obama and Clinton, is an immediate emergency program to begin the process of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 through converting to green technologies such as solar, energy conservation, and eliminating the combustion engine by going electric and cleaning up the grid. Such a program would also create jobs and could be paid for through cutting the military budget. To develop this program it will be important to nationalize the energy industries under the democratic control of society in order to run them for human and environmental needs, and to eliminate private energy’s corrupting influence on politics, where they promote policies of war and pollution. Socialists offer these real solutions. Meanwhile, the Democrats and Republicans have made human caused global warming a reality by promoting the policies that have caused it, even though the problem was known 50 years ago. Once again in this election, the Democrats have offered no real solutions to this problem that we are running out of time to address.

Just as the energy industries are promoting the destruction of the planet through carbon emissions, they, along with the powerful weapons industries, promote the mass murder of war as well.

In September 2007, when asked if he would have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013 Barack Obama said "I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out."

Similarly Hillary Clinton Said, “I agree with Barack” ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07).

The U.S. must leave by air, sea, and land as quickly as possible. Citing fear of violence and civil war is the oldest trick in the dirty book of imperialist oppression. U.S. imperialism has created a horrible situation, but that is no excuse to stay, and U.S. troops, Halliburton, etc. are only making matters worse. Over a million Iraqis are dead. These deaths are not just caused by the civil war that the U.S. has ignited, nor are they just caused by the death-squad government that the U.S. has put in power. U.S. guns and bombers are also the direct cause of a large number of deaths. Iraq needs to be turned over to the Iraqi people through immediate withdrawal.

Not only do Obama and Clinton make no promise to get out of Iraq, both have both voted for war appropriations. This puts them both in the position of having directly supported the war.

In addition, Clinton voted to invade Iraq. Obama was not yet in the Senate, so he didn’t vote on that resolution. Yet on the verge of the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq Barack Obama repeated Bush’s lies at an anti-war rally stating, “He [Saddam Hussein] has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.” (Obama, 10/2002 Speech, Federal Plaza)

Last year Hillary Clinton stated she has no remorse for her murderous decision of voting to invade Iraq saying, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." (Hillary Clinton, “No regret on Iraq Vote”, CNN.Com)

In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush "did not fairly represent intelligence". Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren't their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead of war, we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for the Democrats a Republicans Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to pretend to distance themselves from the same Bush policies that they actually support.

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While the number of deaths was partly due to the capitalist nature of Iraqi economy, and a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered well over a million people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq had the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial, and execute him, for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980's the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise, the CIA helped Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba'athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

"In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein's capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons, socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

"While defending Iraq against imperialist attack, and supporting their right to defend themselves, socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal..."

"U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women's liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

"The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise, they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead." -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women's rights and women's rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992. The invasion has also set off a civil war that, combined with U.S. bombings and other murder, has killed over a million Iraqis, and forced millions more to flee their homes as refugees.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn't completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq's resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and nearly half-a-trillion dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too they left the people of New Orleans to die.

Yet for the ruling class, their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

The words of Hillary Clinton make abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:

"Let us not confuse the leadership's failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks." Hillary Clinton

Likewise, Barack Obama has made similar complaints, saying that Bush should have sent more troops into Iraq.

Unlike Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, socialists see nothing good that can come from the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now!

Liberation News calls for ending the war and global warming through becoming better organized; building the mass movement in the streets; striking with political demands against arms producers and polluters; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks as has been done on a few occasions along the west coast; becoming ungovernable; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise, we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist these wars. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz who have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for the nationalization of the energy industry, building the socialist movement, voting socialist, and ultimately ending imperialism and environmental destruction through a socialist revolution holding high the principles of an egalitarian socialist economy used for human and environmental needs rather than profit, an economy controlled by the people through full democratic rights and universal suffrage.

Also see:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Closing Our Eyes Won’t Make Racial and Ethnic Inequalities Disappear
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/21/18473855.php

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

No to Rightist Ron Paul, How We Can Really End the War

2008-01-12T07:33:22Z

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." Socialist Anti-war Candidate Eugene Debs (who garnered nearly a million votes while he sat in prison for opposition to U.S. involvement in World War One).

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action" wrote Ron Paul, who voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in Congress, the act that gave Blacks the right to vote, quote from his “Ron Paul Newsletter”.

No to NYC Indymedia Censorship, How We Can Really End the War

By STEVEN ARGUE

Claiming that only an alliance with Ron Paul conservatives can end the war, New York City Indymedia volunteers have allowed blatant slander against Liberation News and have censored attempts to respond to those lies. Among the slanders posted were accusations that Liberation News is opposed to Ron Paul because we support Hillary Clinton and her healthcare program. I tried posting the following response, but it was censored on the site:

Ron Paul supporter: “it's pointed out that yes Ron Paul is a racist but Stevies candidate Hillary is even worse.”

Steven Argue: “I don’t support Hillary Clinton. Never have, but you don’t listen. This is pure slander.”

They then repeat their slander that I support Hillary Clinton for her healthcare plan saying, “It's pointed out that Stevie is willing to sacrifice liberty for a bogus health care plan”

Steven Argue: “Hillary Clinton opposes both socialized medicine and single payer healthcare. She supports insurance company healthcare, the kind that is killing untold millions in the United States. This is one of many reasons I oppose her.”

“And no, I don't see Clinton as a first step towards socialized medicine. Her promise to force people to buy insurance has nothing in common with socialized medicine, nor partially socialized medicine (i.e. single payer). I’m clear about this in my article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It, By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

“As for Ron Paul, he wants to privatize everything, including public education, Social Security, and Medicare, eliminate the Voting Rights Act and Roe V Wade in the name of "states rights", signed on to the "Marriage Protection Act", would eliminate every environmental and labor protection, etc. etc. etc. This is a prescription for the slavery of the majority to protect the “liberty” of a tiny handful of capitalists to exploit.

“I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul. But I’ve already made that clear as being my position. These accusations are slanderous.”

Ron Paul supporter: “Then Stevie moves the goal posts again. Waaa. He's being censored.”

Steven Argue: “I repeatedly posted a response to the slander that I support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the response is censored every time. I have no motive to make that up. I mentioned it because I wanted people to see my response. Frankly, I’m quite surprised it is happening. Let’s see if this one goes up.”

That response, as I feared, was also censored. Revealing the reasons behind the Ron Paul censorship at the site, the Ron Paul backers posted the following:

“Get off your sectarianism.

“What you don’t get is that there are only two ways we're going to end the occupation of Iraq:

“1.) A recession, and a bad one.

“2.) Convincing the vast majority of conservative Americans it's wrong. Ron Paul reaches these people. The guy with the Free Mumia shirt selling the "Socialist Worker" doesn't.

“To get anything done in a democracy you're going to have to work with people you don't agree with and people you might not even like. People in grown up countries do this all the time. They're called "coalitions".

“The Labor Party in Israel, for example, makes alliances with the ultra orthodox. The Liberal Democrats have made common cause with the Tories in the UK. The left made common cause with Vicente Fox to get the PRI out of power in Mexico.

“It's only in the puritan USA where everybody thinks you have to like all your political allies and agree with them on everything.”

Besides the fact that the majority of Americans already oppose the war; and besides the fact that these points show a total lack of understanding of the bourgeois nature of the coalitions in the countries mentioned; and besides showing a total lack of understanding of what it will take to end the war (I discuss this at the end of the article); New York City Indymedia’s lack of confidence in the ability of people to change has caused them to build a coalition with a capitalist politician who is a racist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environmental, bible thumping, sexist, anti-labor, anti-poor, free-market privatization fanatic. On top of that, they censor the left in order to achieve that coalition.

While a Ron Paul presidency would likely end the war, at what price would this come?

Ron Paul uses the term liberty a lot, so let’s take a look at what he means by liberty.

The liberty Ron Paul demands is:

The liberty of the capitalists to exploit without labor laws and environmental protections;

The "state’s right” to prevent Blacks from voting without the interference of the Voting Rights Act (voted against its renewal in Congress);

The "states right" to ban abortions without the interference of Roe v Wade;

The freedom of the government to deny same-sex rights (was an original sponsor of the "Marriage Protection Act");

The freedom of children not to attend schools (would abolish public education);

The freedom of the elderly and disabled to starve (would abolish Social Security);

The freedom of the sick to die (would abolish Medicare);

The freedom of the U.S. to destroy the planet without even the most basic limits on carbon emissions (opposes signing on to Kyoto and all other carbon limitations);

This is, in short, the liberty of a wealthy minority to make their money from the exploitation of labor and the environment with zero interference from labor laws, environmental laws, and the IRS. While his program is liberty for a minority of rich white heterosexual males, it is slavery for the majority.

Simply put, Ron Paul’s promises to end the war are not enough when one looks at the fact that he would eliminate two centuries of hard fought social progress in the United States.

Some of the anti-war backers of Ron Paul argue that we don’t have to worry about these things because Ron Paul will never be elected. They think that backing his campaign is a way to win over his supporters. What is clear is that such arguments could only come from people who are utterly lost and rudderless, which leaves unclear the question of what they are winning Ron Paul supporters over to. They are supporting a candidate whose program is George Wallace on crack cocaine! Yet, the ultimate absurdity is the fact that they are backing a candidate whose most reassuring feature is that he won’t get elected! Is this point lost on these people? And is the chance that their support may help him get elected a chance they really want to take? Nobody thought that third party candidate Jesse (the body) Ventura would get elected in Minnesota either, but he was, and as soon as he was elected he discarded his libertarian values on drug legalization and prostitution and instead proceeded to carrying out attacks on labor and carrying out disastrous cuts in education and other social spending.

Others argue that if Ron Paul is elected, he will easily be able to pull the troops out of Iraq, but congress will block him on the other issues. There is no doubt that they would block parts of Ron Paul’s program in order to prevent the social unrest such measures would cause, but with the ruling class’s desire to step up the exploitation of labor and the environment through eliminating regulation and through privatization, there can be little doubt that if he is able to maintain his presidency without being shot, aspects of Ron Paul’s domestic program would be implemented.

Today, in the United States we have two rightwing capitalist parties that rule. The activists who run New York Indymedia are floating around utterly lost and rudderless. On the one hand, their anarchist philosophy prohibits them from putting forward their own leadership or supporting socialist candidates; and on the other hand, they are stuck in the “real politic” of supporting “lesser evil” capitalist politicians. It is these characteristics that made them susceptible to being swept up on the Ron Paul band wagon. Despite their “libertarian” values of “freedom”, they have now taken this to the point where they are even willing to censor critics of Ron Paul on their website.

While Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate opposed to the war, is not worth supporting, the front running Democrats are also very bad. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are all pro-war. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama supporters claim that Obama never supported the war. While Obama was not yet in the Senate at the time of the Iraq war vote, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have all voted for war appropriations. This puts them all in the position of having supported the war. Over a million Iraqis are dead due to the U.S. invasion and occupation, and billions of dollars have been squandered. Obama, by helping pay for the war, has his hands in this mass murder just as Clinton and Edwards do.

Obama’s Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 supposedly would have begun troop withdrawal in May 2007. Yet, it didn't call for full nor immediate withdrawal. In addition, under the bill, the withdrawal could be halted if the Iraqi government met a number of criteria laid out by the Bush administration. These included a broad number of things such as changes in the use of oil revenue, government reforms, an end to sectarian violence, and other economic and reconstruction criteria. In Obama’s bill we have a crystal ball into the future. The excuses laid out in the bill will be heard once again as Obama, Clinton, or Edwards explain why they are keeping the troops in Iraq for their entire presidency; that is unless other actions are taken by the people to stop the war.

This brings us to the fundamental question of how to stop the war. If we are to listen to the Ron Paul censors / supporters at NYC Indymedia the only thing we can do to stop the war is support Ron Paul or hope for (pray for?) economic collapse. Yet, this ignores other less damaging possibilities. These include the troops refusing to fight, a general strike, strikes against the movement of war materials, or socialist revolution.

1. The troops refusing to fight. This worked in the struggle to end the U.S. aggression against Vietnam. It was the socialist movement who were the primary organizers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. That movement, immediately after the government’s murders at Kent State in May 1970 had 8 million students out on strike, and some Universities, such a Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. Refusal to fight was widespread, and the fragging of pro-war officers was common. Nixon could not continue to wage a war with soldiers who refused to fight. This, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese, brought an end to the war in Vietnam.

Troops refusing to fight also helped bring an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, and helped bring down two pro-war governments in 1917.

2. A general strike or strikes against the movement of war materials. Strikes with such political demands have a long history of success. France has many good social programs because the workers there were willing to shut down their country to achieve them; and they are still willing to do the same to protect those hard fought gains.

3. Socialist revolution. The October Russian Revolution achieved an end to Russian involvement in the First World War. This was a good thing, despite the undemocratic nature of the revolution. Learning from those lessons, Liberation News opposes the dictatorial system of one party rule and raises the banner of revolutionary democratic socialism, while at the same time learning from many of the revolutionary strategies of Lenin and Trotsky.

Protests, pickets, information distribution, building a socialist movement, and answering pro-Ron Paul and pro-Obama-Clinton-Edwards propaganda all help towards building the momentum needed in achieving the kinds of actions that can end the war. Putting support behind Ron Paul only helps an extreme rightwing movement achieve the mantel of leadership for an anti-war sentiment that already represents majority public opinion. In addition, backing a guy like Ron Paul who just crossed a picket line to appear on Jay Lenno’s “Tonight Show” destroys the anti-war strategy of reaching out to the working class, as does backing a racist candidate like Ron Paul hurt the ability to reach out to the multi-racial working class.

No to the Democrats and Republicans!

U.S. Out of Iraq Now!

No to Insurance Company Healthcare, For Socialized Medicine!

Save the Planet, Curb Carbon Emissions Now!

Vote Socialist, Build the Labor Movement, Build the Anti-War Movement, Build the Socialist Movement.

[Note, small changes were made to the response that was censored at NYC Indymedia to make it more readable within the format of this article. Those wishing to see the original version will be given it upon request. Likewise, anyone wishing further sources will be provided them upon request]

This is an article of Liberation News, a low volume newsletter, Subscribe free!
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

2008-01-09T23:58:32Z

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

By STEVEN ARGUE

For the most part the Iowa caucuses were business as usual for the Democrat and Republican Parties. Among the Democrats, “Anti-war” and “pro-single payer health care” Democrat Dennis Kucinich put his support behind pro-war anti--single payer health care, Barrack Obama. Yet on the far right, anti-war Libertarian and Republican Ron Paul gained a stunning 10% of the vote.

Seeing the failure of the Democrats to deliver a candidate worth supporting; some left leaning individuals have been suggesting support to Ron Paul. One is anti-war Vietnam veteran Stan Goff, who suggested in his January 4, 2008 article ”Monkey Wrenching the System, Ron Paul’s Revolution” that people vote in the primaries for Ron Paul, switching party registration right away if they live in a state where such a move is necessary to vote in the Republican primaries.

At the root of the Ron Paul "revolution" is the dismantling of Social Security and the Department of Education as well as other basic social programs, and the elimination of worker and environmental protections. Advances like single payer health care? No way. Ron Paul's message is that you need to take care of yourself, and that there shouldn't be such government programs, nor such interference with private profit. While he puts forward reasons for not supporting going to war abroad, his domestic policies would ignite civil war at home.

In addition to pretending he's against all government, he's for outlawing abortion and supports the continued ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the original co-sponsors of the "Marriage Protection Act".

He's also a religious extremist who thinks that creationism should be taught in the schools.

On race, Ron Paul was one of 33 Congress members to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, an act that was first passed to give Blacks in the south the right to vote. On a similar note, he says the Civil Rights Act violates the Constitution and impedes on individual liberties. Speaking of Blacks in Washington DC he states in campaign literature, "95 percent of African Americans in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal".

No wonder the American Nazi Party has close relations with him (see letter from Nazi Commander Bill White below). In addition, Ron Paul has the support of other white supremacists such as David Duke, and has knowingly taken donations from former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.

Hell would freeze over before I'd support Ron Paul. And being an atheist; that will be a long time.

There are plenty of candidates to the left of the Democrats worth considering supporting who oppose the war, would preserve public education and Social Security, who would provide single payer or socialized medicine, and who aren’t raving racist, homophobic, and sexist “Libertarian” fanatics. Why not look at them rather than someone from the loony right?

I discuss some of the campaigns that may be worth supporting in the following article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Or here is a different version of the same article:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/93820.html

*****************
American Nazi Party Chief says Ron Paul is one of us

Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, aka The American Nazi Party, wrote the following on the Nazi Vanguard News Network:

Comrades:

I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.

For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.

I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous — and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.

Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party

*********
Poor Bill White. He’s having trouble with his brand of racism, anti-Semitism, mass extermination, and genocide not being "in fashion". But hey, you've got to thank the knuckleheaded Nazi for confirming our suspicions on Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan! -Steven Argue

Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

The Fight For Single Payer and National Healthcare

2007-06-28T18:01:13Z

The Fight For Single Payer and National Healthcare

By Steven Argue

As an advocate for social justice and someone with no healthcare, I am strongly in favor of national healthcare like in Cuba, and short of that a single payer system would be a significant step forward.

National healthcare does work. It is working very well in Cuba. It is interesting that tiny poor Cuba under a U.S. economic blockade is able to provide good healthcare for everyone. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment or turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance. Cuba has taken the profit out of illness and injury and provide healthcare as a human right.

Likewise, while the United States is sending military troops to set up death squad governments in Iraq and Haiti and to intervene in Afghanistan, the Phillipines, and prop up the death squad government of Colombia, Cuba instead sends doctors. Cuban doctors save lives. They are on the ground in a number of countries providing regular care, and they are also sent to countries in emergencies. A few years back Cuba sent doctors to Central America after a bad hurricane and saved many lives. Likewise they offered to send doctors to New Orleans immediately after Katrina, they were well trained in dealing with that type of situation and would have saved lives, but Bush refused to let them in. A similar thing happened with the Nicaraguan government refusing entry, but that government let the Cuban doctors in due to protests.

And Canada, also unlike the United States, has better healthcare where everyone is covered. Lately the NAFTA agreement has unfortunately been intervening against the Canadian single payer system, but it is still a much better system of healthcare than in the United States. Single payer is much cheaper and more efficient than the health insurance racket. Unfortunately the Democrats and Republicans are subservient to the insurance, pharmaceutical, and for-profit hospital industries. Single payer eliminates the health insurance racket with all of its waste in profits, paperwork, and overpaid CEOs. And despite the cries of the extreme right neo-cons and libertarians, none of the major candidates have any plans to make any significant change to the healthcare racket in America.

It will take a major struggle against the corporate power structure to gain single payer healthcare. The main force that has the potential strength to do so is organized labor, a force that could shut down production to make our demands.

Unfortunately many of the unions that are supposed to represent labor are in the back pockets of the corporations and the Democrat Party. Instead of fighting for single payer healthcare the SEIU recently held rallies for Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). None of these corporate politicians support single payer healthcare.

This is bad enough, but Dawn Lee, spokesperson for the SEIU, says the SEIU takes no position on HR 676, a single payer bill introduced by Conyers.

There are unions, such as the California Nurses Association (CNA), that support single payer. But until the labor movement breaks its love affair with the corporate Democrat Party, and begins to once again rely on the militant action of the rank and file, as it did in the 1930’s, we will not only not gain single payer healthcare, our standard of living will continue to decline by every other indicator as well, while massive corporate profits soar.

Pass HR 676, single payer for the United States!

Pass SB 840, single payer in California!

Put union dues into strike funds instead of the Democrat Party!

For mass action and a general strike for single payer healthcare!

End the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba!

Preserve Canadian Single Payer, Repeal NAFTA!

Steven Argue for Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

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No to Angelides and Schwarzenegger! Yes to Janice Jordan!

2006-10-09T00:48:56Z

No to Angelides and Schwarzenegger!

Critical Support For Janice Jordan, Peace and Freedom Party Candidate For Governor

By Steven Argue

Last night’s debate between Phil Angelides and Arnold Schwarzenegger was a grueling hour of corporate politics. Angelides leveled criticisms against Schwarzenegger for cuts to education under his governorship. Schwarzenegger countered by asking where Angelides was when Democrat governor Gray Davis was making cuts to education and asked why Angelides supported those cuts under Davis. Schwarzenegger went so far as to ask why Angelides didn’t join in the student protests for education that had marched by his office under Davis.

It was a valid criticism, yet Schwarzenegger never supported those student protests either and as Angelides pointed out, he has made his own cuts to education.

On a similar note Angelides criticized Schwarzenegger for his praise for the racist anti-immigrant vigilantes called the “Minutemen” while in the same breath calling for a "guest worker" program that would create a new class of super-exploited worker with no political rights. Under the same type of program in the past U.S. bosses often failed to even pay Mexican workers for their hard labor. The fact that Angelides and the Democrat Party are now calling for this kind of legalization of indentured servitude place them firmly in the same racist camp as Schwarzenegger.

What was missing from the debate was the voice of an official candidate that will be on the ballot in November, but was excluded from the debate by the California Broadcasters Association. This candidate, Janice Jordan of the Peace and Freedom Party, could have chimed in that she did in fact support the protests against the cuts of both Davis and Schwarzenegger and that she opposes both the racist Minutemen and the racist guest worker program. But she was excluded from the debates, showing once again the bias of the corporate media as a pillar in preventing true democracy in America.

A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).

It will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to America.

Liberation News sees the participation of socialists in the corrupted electoral politics of America as a critical platform in explaining how we differ from the capitalist Democrat and Republican parties. Likewise all of the undemocratic measures that are used against us, which will only intensify as we grow stronger, expose the parallel need for a revolutionary program to accompany any socialist electoral activity.

The Peace and Freedom Party is primarily an electoral party that speaks of the need for socialism, but generally avoids talk of the only step that will bring socialism, a step that can be summed up in one word: revolution. Revolution is about abolishing the current racist anti-worker and anti-poor police, military, and judicial system and carrying out a sweeping redistribution of the wealth.

Likewise the campaign literature the Peace and Freedom Party hand out at demonstrations often contain good criticisms of the Democrats and Republicans and outline a good platform for social and economic emancipation, but are usually missing another key component that will make putting human and environmental needs before profits possible in a socialist society. That being the nationalization of industry including oil (and other energy), “defense”, auto, the banks, the railroads, chemical, and the agricultural monopolies.

It is due to this lack of a true socialist program in the Peace and Freedom Party, and lack of any campaign statements from Janice Jordan countering it, that Liberation News can only give critical support to the campaign of Janice Jordan.

In giving this critical support to Janice Jordan we recognize that the social reforms called for by the Peace and Freedom Party do still have a revolutionary component in that they go far beyond anything that the capitalist class of the United States will ever allow short of their total overthrow. In giving critical support we intervene to denounce the undemocratic actions of the corporate media and capitalist campaign financing used against the campaign of Janice Jordan, but unlike the Peace and Freedom Party, we take those undemocratic actions to their logical conclusion: the ultimate need for socialist revolution.

While giving critical support to Janice Jordan’s campaign for governor, Liberation News is withholding support for the Peace and Freedom Party’s candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Stewart Alexander. Alexander’s campaign is spreading illusions in the Democrat Party. In his campaign statements Alexander pretends that the Republicans represent corporate interests and that the Democrats do not, their problems being "sitting on the fence" and an unwillingness to spend "political capital". This is nonsense; the Democrat Party is just as much a corporate party as the Republican, both in its financing and in its program.

In another campaign statement Stewart Alexander opposes the Peace and Freedom Party’s platform that calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq from the right. In the statement he claims that the Peace and Freedom Party needs to draw up an exit strategy from Iraq. Yet immediate withdrawal is an exit strategy. It is an exit strategy that takes no consideration of continuing to prop up the undemocratic puppet death squad government the U.S. established, nor does it consider the logistical needs of keeping troops fighting and dying in Iraq to defend military hardware as it is evacuated. Troops are to be evacuated immediately by air, sea, and land the same way they were sent in; and the biggest cause of the bloodshed in Iraq will be gone. This is the exit strategy.

Liberation News calls for U.S. troops out now! Build the mass movement! For the labor movement to break from the Democrat Party of war and exploitation and to end the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. For the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. For student actions against recruiters, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. For building the socialist movement as part of the anti-war resistance today and to ultimately end U.S. imperialism through socialist revolution.

While Phil Angelides and Arnold Schwarzenegger will carry out austerity connected to the U.S. war in Iraq and the economic problems of capitalism, neither the Democrats nor Republicans offer any solutions to the problems of war and capitalism because they support both.

Vote Janice Jordan for governor!

Money for social and environmental needs, not for war and capitalist profit!

For socialist revolution to end imperialism and establish democracy in the United States!
On other state offices Liberation News critical support to the following Peace and Freedom Party candidates:

Gerald Sanders for State Treasurer

Margie Akin for Secretary of State

Liz Barron for Controller

Jack Harison for Attorney General

Tom Condit for Insurance Commissioner

Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

mirror Liberation News:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Liberation-News/

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Pro-War Diane Feinstein, What Are The Alternatives?

2006-09-07T05:50:32Z

Pro-War Diane Feinstein, What Are The Alternatives?

By Steven Argue

In California pro-war incumbent Democrat Diane Feinstein has a lead of around 20% over Republican challenger Richard Mountjoy. There are also three socialist candidates running in California for the Senatorial seat now held by Feinstein. Of these, the two that Liberation News is giving critical support are Jeff Mackler of Socialist Action and Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party. In addition International Socialist Organization (ISO) member, Todd Chretien, is running as a Green Party candidate.

Feinstein has voted for every war the United States has carried out since she came into office in 1992. Diane Feinstein also voted to take away our civil liberties by supporting the “Patriot Act” and its renewal. She voted for the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Effective Death Penalty Act speeding up the government’s ability to carry out the racist death penalty and ignore evidence of innocence. And she has supported expanded wire tapping as well as a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.

Feinstein is a capitalist politician, representing a capitalist party. She also has a personal net worth of 50 million dollars, so she benefited directly when she voted to eliminate the estate tax. Ironically Feinstein has also stated, “Food stamps for the poor are cut ... so that millionaires can have a tax cut.'' Indeed, while this statement was directed at the Republicans, it also applies to her. (Feinstein Urges Regime Change, San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 2006)

Diane Feinstein, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum of the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans.

And just as she is no defender of human rights in the United States she has voted for continued military support to the right wing death squad government of Colombia.

Diane Feinstein: Supporter of Imperialist War

In a press conference on August 21, 2006 George Bush Jr. finally admitted what Liberation News has been pointing out since before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Yet Bush had used a supposed connection as a pretext for the U.S.’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq. In addition, Bush Jr. also admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

All of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Diane Feinstein included, supported going to war with Iraq. As anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has pointed out, “She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops." (Cindy Sheehan May Challenge California Senator AP, Jan. 26, 2006) Cindy Sheehan’s son was a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.

In trying to let herself of the hook Diane Feinstein claims that Bush “did not fairly represent intelligence”. Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren’t their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make Feinstein look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they may not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for Bush and Feinstein Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats and Republicans to try to rethink, or at least distance themselves from, the Bush policies they have supported.

Feinstein herself has directly profiteered from the U.S. imposed misery in Iraq. Her husband, Richard Blum, is a billionaire investor that together with CEO Ronald Tutor own investment companies that hold 75% of the voting stock in a company called Perini. On March 12, 2004 Perini was awarded a $500,000,000 contract for rebuilding the electrical infrastructure of southern Iraq. So Feinstein is profiting from the U.S. bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure as well as its inefficient rebuilding by private U.S. contractors. Perini also received the contract for the construction of facilities to support the First Brigade of the Afghan National Army. These include barracks, dining facilities, a power plant, a water treatment facility and a wastewater treatment plant. Diane Feinstein not only voted for the wars and occupations that made these contracts possible, she also sits on the Appropriations Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. (Perini Corporation, The Center For Public Integrity)

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Clinton administration. That blockade, due to the capitalist nature of the Iraqi economy under Saddam Hussein, cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered over 100,000 people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq have the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980’s the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was used as an ally of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise the CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party come to power supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba’athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

“In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein’s capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

“While defending Iraq against imperialist attack and supporting their right to defend themselves socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal...”

“U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women’s liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

“The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead.” -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women’s rights and women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn’t completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq’s resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and billions in dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need.

Yet for the ruling class their failure in Iraq is not in the undemocratic and anti-woman nature of the puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

As a result some Democrats that voted for the war like John Kerry have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Yet the Kerry-Feingold plan actually calls for keeping troops in Iraq that are "critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces." The Kerry-Feingold plan also calls for "an over-the-horizon" troop presence in the region that could come to the aid of a failing puppet government in Iraq as well as intervene elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. (Lawmakers begin Bitter Debate on U.S. Troop Withdrawal Plan for Iraq, FOXNews, online report, June 2, 2006)

Senators Harry Reid and Carl Levin have put forward a similar proposal, rendered meaningless with similar loopholes to Kerry-Feingold’s, but their proposal calls for the [partial] withdrawal of troops by the end of 1997.

Diane Feinstein supported the Levin-Reid proposal. Defending the proposal Feinstein said, “Our amendment is not about cutting and running. Rather, our amendment acknowledges that staying the course is a strategy that shows no promise of success, and it is time to change that strategy.” (Video clip shown on CNN’s O’brien Show, online transcript, June 23, 2006)

Unlike Feinstein, Liberation News sees nothing good that can come from the Levin-Reid proposal of staying at full war with the Iraqi people for another year and then carrying out a possible partial Iraqification of the war the year after. We disagree with Feinstein when she says, "We all know we can't cut and run, what I'm talking about is changing the nature of this mission. We have to say to Iraq that it's time for your soldiers and police forces to take over.'' (Feinstein Urges Regime Change, San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 2006)

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now! On this issue we agree with the campaigns of Jeff Mackler of Socialist Action, Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party, and Todd Chretien of the Green Party that are all calling for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq:

“More than 2,250 young American troops and over 100,000 Iraqis have died with no end in sight. If we want to stop the dying and respect the Iraqi people's right to run their own country, then we must immediately withdraw all American military forces from Iraq and the surrounding countries.” -Todd Chretien, California Senate candidate of the Green Party

“Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East!”
Marsha Feinland, California Senate candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party

"Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq! War is an inherent part of capitalism and the ultimate solution to the internal contradictions of the profit-driven and competition-driven system. The U.S. military-industrial complex is organized and designed to maximize profit rates for the corporate few and to serve the imperial economic and political interests of the war-making class—regardless of the capitalist party in power. Socialists acknowledge our fundamental obligation to challenge the U.S. war-makers and their twin parties and to defend the rights and struggles of all those who resist imperialist domination and oppression.” -Jeff Mackler, California Senate candidate of Socialist Action

Liberation news agrees with these calls for U.S. troops out now. In addition we call for the labor movement to break from the Democrat Party of war and exploitation and to end the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for building the socialist movement to end imperialism through socialist revolution.

The Role of Peace Action (Formerly Sane / Freeze)

Diane Feinstein has never seen a pending imperialist war she didn’t like. In her entire time in office she has voted for them all. Likewise Feinstein voted for the “Missile Defense System” and other “defense” boondoggles meant to line the pockets of the military industrial capitalists. Yet the group “Peace Action” gives Feinstein the passing grade of voting for peace 89% of the time.

“Peace Action” is deceiving the anti-war vote. Why? Because Peace Action is a pillar of the status quo that sees no alternative to delivering votes to what they see as the “lesser evil” Democrat Party, even when the Democrats are equally pro-war. This strategy has made “Peace Action” an obstacle to peace and a pillar of the status quo.

Every few years the ruling class of the United States parades its selected representatives in front of the American people to give us the chance to vote for their so-called “lesser” and “greater evil” representatives in the Democrat and Republican Parties. The corporate media and liberal pro-war groups like “Peace Action” ignore the anti-war candidates and back pro-war Democrats by misrepresenting their records to the people.

Liberation News urges all of the super-exploited workers that go door to door raising money for the Peace Action bureaucracy to quit your meaningless jobs and look for better work while looking for ways to hook up with the real anti-war/anti-imperialist movement that is marching in the streets. Likewise we urge all of the liberal and leftist minded people that give money to Peace Action to stop doing so and instead participate in the mass anti-war movement in the streets with your bodies, minds, and your money if you can afford it.

In response to the reformist call of, "Anybody But Bush," Socialist Action candidate Jeff Mackler aptly replied, "No to the twin parties of war and oppression!" and "Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!"

Feinstein, Supporter of Racist Israel

Diane Feinstein, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid every year and Senator Feinstein’s vote backs that money for death. Israel is a racist settler state established in 1949 that has denied the original inhabitants, the Palestinians, all basic rights. Besides denying Palestinians the same rights to travel, jobs, housing, and education as allowed Jews, the racist Zionist State has used massacres and other forms of terror, wars, and torture to drive out the original Palestinian inhabitants.

Likewise Israel is always at war with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s recent attack against Lebanon where their aerial bombardment of the civilian population murdered 1,150 people and destroyed vital infrastructure is only the latest such terrorism by Israel. Yet when Senator Bill Frist introduced a bill backing Israeli / U.S. aggression in Lebanon Diane Feinstein voted for it along with Senate Democrat colleagues John Kerry (Mass.), Barack Obama (Ill.), Harry Reid (Nevada), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), and Edward Kennedy (Mass.).

Claims of Israel being the victim, bombing and invading Lebanon on the pretext of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner do not hold water in light of the fact that Israel is holding 2,000 Lebanese prisoners in their torture chamber dungeons from their previous invasion of Lebanon. In addition numerous reports say those two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon, not in Israel. Those reports are from such sources as AP, Hindustan Times, and AFP.

In contrast to Diane Feinstein and her pro-war Democrat colleagues, here is what the candidates to the left of her have to say:

“Israel is a racist state. It has separate laws for Arabs and Jews. The leader of the South African trade union COSATU recently stated that he thinks that the Palestinians face worse conditions than Blacks faced during South African Apartheid. There will never be peace in the Middle East as long as the Zionist state is given a blank check from the United States to treat the Palestinian people as less than human. Israel is part of the American empire and is key to US plans for permanent domination of the Middle East. If we ever want to see our troops come home from Iraq, then the anti-war movement must fight to cut off all American aid to Israel.” -Todd Chretien, California Senate candidate of the Green Party

“As a Jewish American, I chose to run for U.S. Senate partly as an act of conscience in support of the rights of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. The wall which impedes people from conducting a normal life must come down. Israel should abandon the settlements and retreat to its pre-1967 borders. I do not condone any violence against civilians, and favor full rights for all people in any state…End U.S. aid to Israel until it withdraws to its 1967 borders.” -Marsha Feinland, California Senate candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party

“For a democratic and secular Palestine! End all U.S. aid to apartheid Israel! Stop the bombing of Lebanon and Gaza! For a united socialist federation of the Middle East! Socialists reject the legitimacy of the Zionist colonial settler state of Israel, just as we do all colonial settler states. We see no difference between the imperialist colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East of yesteryear and today’s U.S.-backed Zionist conquest and occupation of Palestine. Israel today serves as the chief U.S. instrument for the imperialist domination and exploitation of the Middle East”. -Jeff Mackler, California Senate candidate of Socialist Action

All three candidates of the left take the correct and most important position of ending U.S. aid to Israel, but there are important differences in building an international movement.

While Todd Chretien holds a good position on Israel, the Israeli Green Party is a Zionist capitalist party that holds the position of deputy mayor of Tel Aviv. In a recent letter to the Green Party of the United States by Green Party chairman and deputy mayor, Pe’er Visner, the closest he got to recognizing any crimes by the Israeli government was saying, “We are “sorry” that the Israeli army prevents Palestinian suicide bombers from “expressing” their “human rights” to bomb themselves among Israeli citizens.” This racist response to the suffering of the Palestinian people should serve as a warning to Green Party members in the United States of what happens to parties that fail to put forward a revolutionary program for the overthrow of capitalism as well as fail to be a tribune for all of the most oppressed and exploited in society.

Unlike Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party, Liberation News does not call for a withdrawal of Israel to its conquered borders of 1967. We instead call for pushing Israel back to its 1948 borders for a democratic, secular, and socialist Palestine within the 1948 borders with a separation of religion and state and equal rights for Palestinians and Jews including the Palestinian right to return, a society to be formed by the multi-ethnic working class through socialist revolution.

This is our context of demanding an end to U.S. military aid to racist Israel as well as to the repressive capitalist governments of Egypt and Jordan. Such a cut off is not intended to pressure Israel into a better two state “solution” as Marsha Feinland asks the U.S. government to do, but to allow the people of the Near East self-determination and revolution without the interference of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to murderous regimes.

Jeff Mackler, in seeing Socialist Action as part of an international socialist movement with an international revolutionary program, has proposed a similar revolutionary program to that of Liberation News, but missing a key ingredient:

“Zionism is an ideology of racism and apartheid segregation. It is a deathtrap for the Jewish people, a central source of almost 60 years of war and oppression of the Palestinians. Socialist Action supports the creation of a democratic and secular Palestine, where Jews and Arabs can live together as equals in a new society, a society predicated on the immediate right of return of all dispossessed Palestinians. In this society, revolutionaries will fight for the construction of an egalitarian socialist state.” -Jeff Mackler, California Senate candidate of Socialist Action

Missing from this formula is the understanding that only socialist revolution, led by (a) secular multi-ethnic socialist party or parties will be capable of solving the national and democratic questions of Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. The capitalists and their parties, be they Kadima, Likud, Labour, Shas, Hamas, Fatah, or the Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan base their rule on capitalist exploitation and are incapable of providing any real solutions. Liberation News disagrees with the idea that democratic secular revolution should occur now and provide the basis for a later struggle for socialism, pointing out that this is the essence of Stalin’s Two-Stage Theory of Revolution when we instead hold high the banner of Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.

It was this Stalinist Two-Stage Theory that provided the political basis for the Communist Party of South Africa putting all of their resources into building the African National Congress (ANC) as the democratic alternative to the racist apartheid government of South Africa. Yet by building a political party and movement that supported the continuation of the capitalist system they created a new capitalist party that now rules South Africa for the rich white capitalists at the continued expense of the super-exploited and poor black majority workers, minus overt racist laws. Strikes for healthcare and other workers’ demands have been broken by the ANC for the capitalists, HIV-AIDS goes untreated, and the massive mineral wealth of South Africa continues to go into the pockets of the capitalists instead of their potential of benefiting the workers, environment, and world revolution.

So when is the Communist Party of South Africa going to set about fighting for the next stage of the revolution? The answer is never. They are now part of the capitalist apparatus and part of the problem. It will take the other socialist parties of South Africa, the Trotskyist parties, to lead the socialist revolution.

While Stalinism has done much to stifle workers’ democracy in the deformed workers states under Stalinist control, it has also greatly sabotaged the world socialist revolution through Stalin’s Two-Stage Theory. Socialist Action is not a Stalinist organization, but they appear to have adopted part of their program.

So what would be Socialist Action’s ANC for Palestine? Fatah? They’ve already discredited themselves. They’ve sold the Palestinian people out with the Oslo Accords placing the Palestinian people on tiny Bantustan’s without a real basis for an economy. Would their ANC be Hamas? The imposition of Islamic law could hardly be considered a democratic secular revolution. Would they then suggest that Palestinian and Israeli socialists build a party with a purely democratic secular program, abandoning the socialist program as the Communist Party of South Africa did? Let’s drop the nonsense, build for the socialist revolution! For a democratic, secular, and socialist Palestine!

Liberation News rejects Stalin’s Two-Stage Theory of Revolution. We instead hold up the banner of Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution. It was through this theory that Trotsky explained that the democratic and the socialist revolutions are inseparably linked.

Yet the differences between Liberation News and Socialist Action as well as our differences with the Peace and Freedom Party on these questions do not prevent us from giving critical support to both in this election.

The Role of the Green Party

While Todd Cretien of the Green Party has good immediate positions on the war, Liberation News does not support Green Party candidates because the Green Party is a capitalist party. In Santa Cruz, where the Green Party has elected their party member Tim Fitzemaurice to office, Tim Fitzemaurice has backed the fears of local shop owners by voting for anti-homeless laws such as the law that makes it illegal for the homeless to sleep at night. While criminalizing those who cannot pay the high rent Fitzemaurice refuses to take a stand for rent control. Likewise Tim Fitzemaurice has refused to take any stand against police violence used against anti-war protesters in 1999 and other repressive measures against activists including my arrest and beating for distributing literature and the police murder of homeless activist John Dine. Recently Fitzemaurice did take a stand against police infiltration of the organizers of a Santa Cruz anti-war parade, but his stated reason for doing so was an attempt to maintain the credibility of the Santa Cruz police.

Tim Fitzemaurice is not a leader for change in Santa Cruz. He is instead a pillar of the status quo. This is the future of all political parties and politicians that do not have a clear program for the overthrow of the capitalist system.

The Green Party is clear in their program. They state that they are for a system of small capitalism. Yet the small capitalists commonly have a smaller profit margin and often exploit workers worse than the big capitalists. In opposition to such a vision of small and inefficient capitalist exploiters, Liberation News looks to labor struggle and the nationalization of industry under workers’ control as the way to fight and neutralize the corporate exploiters and bring justice for the working class.

On a national level the Green Party generally is not even seeking power, but pressure and reform of the Democrat Party. Yet the policy of many Greens in promoting votes for Democrats when the vote between the Democrat and Republican is close only promotes further illusions in the Democrats. Likewise promising votes to Democrats when it looks close does nothing to pressure the Democrats and their super rich backers to move to the left.

It was a massive and fighting labor movement led to large extent by socialists that forced the American ruling class and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to carry out the New Deal reforms in the 1930’s. This was out of fear of further unrest and potential revolution. It is the position of Liberation News that the most meaningful reforms do not come from reformism, such as that of the Green Party, but from revolutionary and working class struggle.

While making these criticisms Liberation News does recognize that there are differences between the program of Todd Chretien and that of the Green Party. If Todd Chretien was also speaking out for the Green Party to adopt a socialist program we could possibly give him support, but he is not. By running as a candidate and being a spokesperson for a party with a capitalist program Todd Chretien is helping build that capitalist party and program, so we must respectfully withhold our support.

Critical Support To The Socialist Candidates

Liberation News is giving critical support to Jeff Mackler of Socialist Action and Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party. These are two socialist parties that hold socialist programs (for the most part) and are also active in the anti-war, free Mumia, and labor movements. To a large degree they represent the kind of political alternative that Liberation News promotes in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans.

Jeff Mackler of Socialist Action

Jeff Mackler is a long time socialist that has done much in organizing protests against imperialist wars, for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal, for socialism, and other leftist causes.

Jeff Mackler and other expelled members of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) were part of establishing new groups that continued on in some of the better traditions of the SWP, a party that led the 1934 Teamster’s Strike (a turning point in U.S. labor history), a party that was a major leader in the anti-war movement of the 1970’s and 1960’s, and a party that helped establish the world Trotskyist movement and expose the crimes of Stalinism.

Yet Jeff Mackler’s group, Socialist Action, was also born with a few programmatical errors. One was their abandonment of Trotsky’s concept of Political Revolution. The call for political revolution in the deformed workers states, such as the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, was a call for overthrowing the repressive Stalinist bureaucracy and institutionalizing workers’ democracy without overthrowing the nationalized planned economy itself. While Trotskyists call for political revolution in the deformed workers’ states, we also defend those socialist economies from imperialist attack and internal counter-revolution. The failure of Socialist Action to understand the true nature of the counter revolutionary movements in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Afghanistan led to important mistakes.

In supporting Solidarnosc in Poland Socialist Action backed a political movement that had a clear program for capitalist counter revolution and joined ranks with the CIA, the Pope, and Ronald Reagan in backing Solidarnosc’s rise to power. After taking power Solidarnosc’s program became even clearer with the outlawing of abortion (that used to be free on demand) and privatizations of the economy that led to 50% unemployment. Yet despite how clear it is today that Solidarnosc led a capitalist counter-revolution as opposed to a socialist political revolution (that would maintain the socialist economy, but oust the Stalinist bureaucracy and institute workers’ democracy) Socialist Action has not changed their position on Solidarnosc.

On Black liberation we at Liberation News advocate Richard Fraser’s Theory of Revolutionary Integrationism as opposed to the Black Nationalism promoted by Socialist Action. Socialist Action’s advocacy of Black Nationalism has brought them to the point of even promoting the religious and pro-capitalist Nation of Islam of Louis Farrakhan. Liberation News sees the promotion of Black Nationalism as a dead end. There is no geographical area that we can point to on a map and say by its demographics that it would make sense to set up Black nation there. Even if it were possible or desirable to set up a separate Black Nation in the United States the pain and suffering such an adventure would cause in terms of dislocations of the working class would not be worth the price. Liberation News, in contrast, calls for the overthrow of the racist capitalist system and the building of an egalitarian socialist society that guarantees racial equality, full employment, and access to health care for all.

Liberation News does, however, see Socialist Action’s campaign for Senate as a supportable campaign that, despite its mistakes, is promoting socialism as the alternative to the capitalist Democrats, Republicans, and Greens.

Here are some of the demands that Mackler is putting forward with his campaign:

1) Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq! No U.S. aid to Israel! Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza! Shut down Guantanamo! U.S. hands off Cuba and Venezuela! End the Cuba blockade!
2) Tax the rich, not working people! Jobs at top union wages for all! Shorten the work-week with no cut in pay! For a revitalized and fighting labor movement! For a Labor Party!
3) Human needs before capitalist profits! Nationalize so-called bankrupt corporations under workers’ control.
4) Free quality health care and education for people of all ages! Build schools not jails! Quality affordable housing for all!
5) An emergency program to combat global warming! End our dependency on fossil fuels! No to nuclear power and weapons!
6) Stop the attacks on civil liberties! Repeal the Patriot Act! End police brutality! Support the right of marriage for same sex couples!
7) Defend a woman’s right to control her own body! Ready access to abortion is a fundamental right!
8) Immediate amnesty, legalization, and equal rights for all immigrants! No to La Migra! Demilitarize and open the border! Self-determination for oppressed nationalities! Affirmative action with quotas to remedy past discrimination! Support to Black and Latino independent political action!
9) For a government of, by, and for working people and the oppressed! For socialism!

While Liberation News agrees with many of these slogans we see a couple as too transitional. We do not see any good reason for limiting calls for nationalization to so-called “bankrupt corporations”. Perhaps this is in imitation of the economic crisis of Argentina and the many “bankrupt corporations” that have been taken over and run by workers as part of a miniature workers’ economy that employs about 10,000 Argentinean workers.

Liberation News sees no reason for limiting the nationalization of companies to those that the capitalists don’t want anymore, companies that the capitalists are no longer making super profits from. The exploitation of workers’ and the environment have produced all wealth, and the revolutionary movement of the working class wants it all back! We want the railroads, the banks, the health care industry, and of course oil! Only a society with a planned economy can meet the needs of the working class, can end war for capitalist profit, and can begin to save the environment. Revolution takes bold vision; we want it all; leave the conservatism to the Democrats and Republicans!

Imperialism has caused the poverty of Mexico, and an open border is the only right thing to do. Yet an open border would be coupled with a massive influx of immigrants and should be combined with the call for a socialist economy that guarantees jobs for all. Only socialism can solve the national question.

Jeff Mackler’s campaign for senate, despite its errors, does help show the way forward by pointing to socialist demands and solutions.

Due to the undemocratic laws of the state of California making it very difficult for third parties to gain ballot access Jeff Mackler will not be on the ballot so if you choose to vote for him you will have to write in his name.

Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party

The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is the only socialist party in California that does have ballot status. Liberation News is also extending critical support to the PFP candidacy of Marsha Feinland. Here are key points of Marsha Feinland’s campaign:

1) Withdraw troops and advisors from Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and Colombia
2) End aid to Israel until it withdraws to its pre-1967 borders
3) Raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour
4) Create universal health care with a "single payer" (Canadian type) system- no insurance company profits
5) Shorten the work week with no loss in pay and guarantee paid vacation time for all workers
6) Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act - restore the right to strike and end "right to work" laws
7) Abolish the death penalty
8) End the phony "war on drugs" - legalize marijuana and decriminalize drug use
9) Fully fund the U.S. government share of education costs, particularly special education
10) End the war on children - stop the government mandated testing craze in public schools
11) Protect the National Forests and other public and native lands from corporate exploitation
12) Abolish the Senate and the Electoral College - one person, one vote

In this platform Marsha Feinland raises a number of good points, including opposing the undemocratic nature of the Senate itself stating, "Abolish the Senate and the Electoral College - one person, one vote." This is in reference to the way that the senate has equal numbers of representatives from each state, regardless of that state’s population. On a similar issue Diane Feinstein has been criticized by activists in Washington D.C., a district where the people do not get representation in the Senate, for supporting Washington D.C. school vouchers that were undemocratically crammed down their throats.

In the United States more than 45 million Americans have no health coverage. These include 9 million children. Millions of others have inadequate coverage. It is a crime that the richest nation (rich due to imperialist exploitation of the world) leads in medical technology, but has the worst access to healthcare of any developed nation. Marsha Feinland’s call for single payer healthcare of the Canadian model, covering everyone and getting rid of the insurance industry middlemen would be a welcome change. And yes, despite the propaganda, government programs are always more efficient than private profiteering with its stockholders, overpaid CEOs, and advertising. But the Cuban model with nationalized healthcare and no private hospitals or pharmaceutical companies profiteering from illness works even better. It is this healthcare model that Liberation News advocates.

In fact Marsha Feinland’s platform is not just missing a full socialized medicine program, it is missing another key ingredient. Besides calling for eliminating the private insurance industry through single payer, nowhere in her platform or other materials does she call for the nationalization of the capitalist economy. She has no reference to the expropriation of big oil, industry, and finance capital or even any calls for the nationalization or municipalization of the generation, distribution and sales of electric power. Without such a socialist program it will be impossible to neutralize the power of the capitalist class and meet the needs of the working class.

Liberation News also strongly disagrees with the Peace and Freedom Party’s practice of endorsing Democrats in city elections. In Santa Cruz this has meant that the Peace and Freedom Party has helped elect some of the most anti-worker, anti-homeless, and pro-police oppression Democrats such as Mike Rotkin. Rotten Rotkin publicly opposed the bus drivers when they went on strike, is currently campaigning against a city initiative to raise the minimum wage, has voted for and supported every anti-homeless law in Santa Cruz, and has backed the police in every act of repression, violence, and spying that they have carried out against the left in the city. The local PFP may not support Rotkin anymore, but they did help get him elected, and they continue to help elect other Democrats and Greens in Santa Cruz that have virtually identical programs to that of Rotkin. Liberation News says: No to support for Democrats or Greens in local or national elections! Yes to the socialist candidates!

It will take a massive working class movement for good socialist candidates to actually win elections. An important element of this will be breaking the labor movement from the Democrat Party. By backing the candidates worth voting for today we at Liberation News feel that we are helping build the foundations of that movement today and into the future as people get more and more fed up with capitalist exploitation and wars. Ultimately the ruling class will use ever more violence to try to maintain their grip on power and a revolution will be necessary for the working class to actually seize power and transform society.

Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Marsha Feinland, California Peace and Freedom Party Candidate for Senate:
http://feinlandforsenate.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Jeff Mackler, California Socialist Action Candidate for Senate:
http://www.socialistaction.org/macklerforsenate/index.html

Todd Cretien, Green Party Candidate for Senate:
http://www.todd4senate.org/

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Impeachment Forum across the Nation 7/19

2006-07-18T16:23:58Z

Signed up at the official Constitution Summer website:http://www.constitutionsummer.org/?q=node/15

Do you want to know how to impeach a President? RSVP NOW!

You're Invited. Please RSVP NOW!

Who: You ALL are invited
What: to an impeachment teach-in near you (nationwide)
When: July 19, 2006
Where: check your local listening for time & place
Why: "We've had enough. This President has ruined this country. Let's impeach him."
How: "Register your dessent" and RSVP NOW!

To view the ENTIRE documentary; RSVP NOW! to a teach-in. These screenings are part of a nationwide series of impeachment teach-ins based on the book, Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush , written by attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights and published by Melville House .

HAVE YOU RSVPed YET? Which city? Let us know? Join Constitution Summer on myspace:

To RSVP:
http://www.articlesofimpeachment.net/

To visit the Constitution Summer website:
http://www.constitutionsummer.org/

to buy the book, articles of impeachment against George W. Bush:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933633085/ref=ase_constitutions-20/104-8273108-3999125?s=books&v=glance&n=283155&tagActionCode=constitutions-20

to visit the Center for Constitutional rights website:
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp

to visit the Melville House publishing website:
http://www.mhpbooks.com/

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Well.....Duhhhhhhhh!

2006-04-14T00:43:58Z

Subject: CNN Breaking News

-- A federal grand jury is hearing evidence about whether Barry Bonds may have lied in 2003 court testimony, multiple sources tell CNN.

oh, god, I am *shocked*!!!.....and stunned...(sorry, can't help that one...the reference, I mean...I...well, at one time watched that t.V. thing...)

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Please help

2006-04-08T02:31:16Z

please go to this website to send a fax to the related US
congress and senate members to Request a Congressional Hearing on the
Sujiatun case. it's a very easy to Fill out form, With just a click, the fax will be sent.
thank you,
joshua

here is the link:
http://publicpetition.unvcc.com/UN/index.php

there is more information about Sujiatun on the website:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Existence of Chinese Concentration Camp, Says Organs Removed from Live Prisoners

2006-03-25T02:30:28Z

Please help us to end this horrible persectuion. knowledge is our greatest weapon, so please share this information. together in peace we can make a difference.

Falun Dafa is a peaceful meditation practice that teaches putting others before yourself, kindness, always telling the truth and being tolerant of others. We are literally being killed for being good people. The national media has done very little to help us because of trade issues with China. It is up to us to let the world know. Please help us.

By Ji Da
The Epoch Times Mar 17, 2006
www.theepochtimes.com

The witness, a former employee at the Liaoning Thrombosis Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, and says the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners are cremated immediately after the organs are removed. (The Epoch Times)
[High-resolution image ] A former employee of Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine told The Epoch Times during a recent interview that the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in China was actually a part of a hospital. The concentration camp has engaged in taking organs from Falun Gong practitioners when they were still alive and selling the organs. Since 2001, the concentration camp has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners, none of whom have been able to leave the camp alive. The hospital removed many kidneys, livers, and corneas from the practitioners. After the organ removal, the practitioners were thrown into an incinerator, which was converted from a boiler. Their ashes were dumped together with burned charcoal.

Organs from Three Quarters of the 6,000 People Were Removed
Those whose organs were removed were in various states of health. Because many of the victims were illegally detained, there was neither an arrest warrant nor identification as to who these people actually were. Often after their organs were removed, nobody claimed the bodies. Sometimes their bodies were picked up by crooks who pretended to be their family members.

About three-quarters of the 6,000 people died after their hearts, kidneys, corneas, or skin was removed; their bodies were then burned. This witness, whose family member participated in the removal of Falun Gong practitioners' organs, said that approximately 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners remain in the hospital. She was afraid that the authorities would kill all of them to destroy evidence.

The Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine is located at 49 Xuesong Road, Sujiatun, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China. It was the first hospital in China to specialize in the heart, the brain, and surrounding blood vessels. The hospital is composed of several organizations, including the Liaoning Traditional Chinese Medicine College Teaching Hospital and the Shenyang Thrombosis Treatment Center.

Concentration Camp Details
The hospital site is 21,087 square meters, with 17,564 square meters of building area. It employs 460 people in 24 departments and 20 specialized offices. Information from the Chinese government shows that the hospital was established in December 1988, and was formerly named the Shenyang Research Institute of Thrombosis and Liaoning Province Thrombosis Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine. In June 1998, it was renamed China Traditional Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center.

The Chinese Business Morning View said in a story on July 4, 2004, that a farm worker died of abnormal causes in Sujiatun, Shenyang and was later cremated. The death certificate was provided by the Chinese Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center in Sujiatun. The news caused a stir in China.

Epoch Times: Did the hospital's medical staff inside the concentration camp know about this?

Answer: This hospital has a small number of officials and some doctors involved secretively in the operation of organ harvesting. Some other staff in the hospital knew about this, but this is absolutely a taboo [to talk about]. They all are afraid of being killed or courting trouble, so they all avoid the issue. Only those highly trusted doctors could be chosen to be the surgeons for organ harvesting operations.

ET: Were Falun Gong practitioners alive when their organs were harvested? Did their families know about this?

Answer: Falun Gong practitioners who were imprisoned there came mostly from Dabei Prison, Masanjia Labor Camp, and other prisons in Shenyang, or they were Falun Gong practitioners arrested in parks or residential homes. Because they refused to denounce Falun Gong, they were arrested without formal warrants, and their families did not know their situation. Many did not even have their names [recorded]. In addition, since the Chinese authority exercises a policy of "not being responsible" for killing Falun Gong practitioners, the death of Falun Gong practitioners is not a very big issue for prisons. The Chinese Communist Party persecutes Falun Gong, [but] these medical personnel were told Falun Gong practitioners were facing death because they killed people, or they were sentenced to death because of crimes, or they had become insane from practicing Falun Gong.

Those Falun Gong practitioners whose organs were harvested came from several types.

Organs harvested from live bodies are worth far more than organs taken from dead bodies. Many Falun Gong practitioners were still alive when their organs were taken. After their organs were cut out, some of these people were thrown directly into the crematorium to be burnt, thus leaving no evidence. For some others, after their organs were stolen, the doctor sewed up the wound and asked the family or family representative to give a signature for cremation. Family members did not know at all that the dead had their organs taken out.

Furthermore, there were some healthy Falun Gong practitioners in prisons in other areas who were injected—without their knowledge—with psychoactive drugs that made their minds confused. They then were transferred to Sujiantun concentration camp to suffer further torture, till in the end their organs were harvested and their bodies were cremated in secret.

Among the Falun Gong practitioners whose organs were harvested, some were weak and some were healthy. Since most of them were illegally arrested, there were no arrest warrants or identification cards. After their organs were taken out while they were still alive, no one came to claim their bodies; or [sometimes] people using fake identities claimed their bodies.

None of these people have come out [of the concentration camp] alive; three-quarters of these 6,000 people have died, having their hearts, kidneys, retinas, and skins harvested and their bodies disposed of. I think now about 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners are still in this hospital, and I am afraid now that the authority will destroy all evidence and kill them.

Question: How did you know these things? Were you yourself a doctor involved in organ harvesting?

Answer: I worked at the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, Shenyang. This is exactly where this concentration camp is located. One of my family members was involved in the operation to harvest Falun Gong practitioners' organs. This has brought great pain to our family.

Question: Please tell us what you knew about.

Answer: From 2001, our hospital started to detain Falun Gong practitioners. At the beginning, these people were detained in the single-storey houses in the back yard of the hospital. Later, the hospital authorities demolished the single-storey houses, and it was unknown where in the hospital the Falun Gong practitioners were transferred. Many staff of the hospital discussed in private that these Falun Gong practitioners had been secretly transferred to the underground chambers of the hospital. According to some people working inside the hospital, the hospital has a huge system of secret underground chambers.

At the time when we went to work there, the person in charge of logistics and purchasing in the hospital said that the quantity of disposable sterile gloves used for operations and daily supplies that the hospital authorities asked to be purchased had increased dramatically. The logistics people estimated based on the scale of purchases at that time that there were at least 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners detained in this hospital.

These Falun Gong practitioners were not detained in the 4-story building under the in-patient department and administration at the front of the hospital, in order to keep the hospital staff from seeing them at all. We only occasionally saw Falun Gong practitioners being sent on a mobile intensive care bed to the first floor for physical examinations. These people were very weak. For the majority of the Falun Gong practitioners, nobody knew where they were being secretly kept. While they still did not know where these people were kept, some staff inquired to the hospital authorities about why so much food and so many sterile gloves and daily supplies were purchased. The hospital authorities said, "You only need to do your job well. There is no need for you to ask any other questions."

Starting in 2001, a family member of mine participated in organ-harvesting operations. My family member tried to keep me from knowing about this at the beginning. The hospital authorities selected doctors they trust in different aspects to perform the secretive operations. After a period of time, I found that my family member was in a lot pain, often had nightmares, and appeared panic-stricken. After repeated inquiries, this family member told me the truth. The leader of the hospital had asked my family member to participate in the organ harvesting operations on Falun Gong practitioners as early as 2001. It was 2003 when my family member confessed. A few years after, my family member felt so much pain from participating in this incident that it was impossible to continue with the evildoing. My family member decided to go abroad to get away from this matter.

My family member also told me: "you don't understand my suffering; those Falun Gong practitioners were alive. It might be easier for me if they were dead, but they were alive."

Question: Were there any other doctors from the hospital taking part in the operations of cutting out Falun Gong practitioners' organs?

Answer: I know there were some. All these things have been carried out secretly. Many doctors at our hospital involved were practicum doctors transferred from other hospitals. Because the government does not want to be responsible for Falun Gong practitioners' bodies and lives, their lives are treated as garbage by the regime, and their bodies were used in experiments by new doctors doing their practitcums.

Many doctors came and left the hospital because they suffered a lot after having been involved in these kinds of things. They either requested to be transferred to other places, or changed their names. Some might have been killed to eliminate the evidence, their identity files were taken out from the hospital's filing system, or their names were changed. Nobody knows where the doctors have gone.

The hospital staff all know that the rear part of the hospital is forbidden. It is always watched. The staff avoids talking about the place.

Question: It is said the hospital is equipped with an incinerator. The person whose organs were removed will be burned when he or she is still alive. Is that true?

Answer: The employees in our hospital call this place "the incinerator." Actually, it is a boiler room. Some poor farmers from nearby places were hired to work in the boiler room. They were penniless when they first came here. But they could scrape up some watches, finger rings, necklaces, and so on. The amount is not small. It is said by the employees in the hospital these jewelry and watches were collected from the Falun Gong practitioners whose organs had been removed when they were about to be thrown in the boiler to be burned. It is also said by the employees in the hospital, some were still alive when being thrown into the boiler.

Question: Do they get injection of anesthetic when in surgery?

Answer: Yes. There is a cap to the anesthetic quantity used in mainland China's hospitals. Generally, the supply of anesthetic was determined according to the accommodation of the hospital. To the public, the number of patients in our care appears to be very small, and publicly reported number of surgical procedures performed is quite low. But the equipment and articles used in surgery are abundant. Because the amount of anesthetic is limited, these secret surgeries could not use the normal anesthetic doses. In order to save anesthetic, they economized on the anesthetic used in surgeries on these Falun Gong practitioners. The amount of anesthetic used was very small. However, many whose organs were removed were still alive. You can imagine the pain suffered by the Falun Gong practitioners whose organs were removed.

Question: Are there any survivors among the 6,000 people detained since 2001?

Answer: Nobody has come out alive. The number of them gets smaller and smaller. The Falun Gong practitioners detained at Sujiatun are fewer now than before. But I believe that the sin of removing the organs of the Falun Gong practitioners is still continuing.

Question: Where are these organs usually sold to? Do the higher authorities in the government know about this?

Answer: They are mainly sold to Thailand, but I believe they are also sold to other regions of the world. Nowadays, there are many patients in China who need human skin, corneas, and kidneys for organ transplant surgeries. Many patients have to wait in line to purchase organs. Currently, a kidney can be sold up to the price of 30,000 to 100,000 U.S. dollars. The profit from selling organs is simply too great. The people who benefit from this are not only the top leaders of hospital and the officials of the Chinese Communist Party's Heath Department. This is a crime present across the entire nation. People ranging from government officials to doctors to organ sellers are all involved in this and are profiting greatly.

Question: Why did they target Falun Gong practitioners as the source of organs?

Answer: Because relatives of many Falun Gong practitioners don't even know that their family members were arrested. So if the Falun Gong practitioners are killed, there will be no one to come and claim their dead bodies.

Question: Why did you want to expose this? This may bring great danger to you.

Answer: I know that there are many Falun Gong practitioners who are currently detained at the hospital. I would like to expose this to the international community, so those who are not yet killed can be saved. Also, I would like to expose this as an atonement for my family.

I am not a Falun Gong practitioner. But as a former staff member of the hospital, I have the responsibility to expose the truth, and let the world to save those Falun Gong practitioners who are still alive. Organs of some Falun Gong practitioners are still living on patients' bodies. I would like to call on all society to pay attention to this issue and stop this shocking crime.

you can find out how you can help at www.fofg.org

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

New American Independent Party tribe.

2005-09-19T22:00:10Z

Dump the Democrats & Republicans!

New American Independent tribe.
http://tribes.tribe.net/NewAmericanIndependent

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

ripples

2005-04-06T03:17:17Z

skip a stone across the water
and its ripples will journey far
sunbeams will dance upon them
it might reflect them to a star

smile sweetly to someone passing
and it makes there morning glad
it may greet you in the evening
when your own soul may be sad

whatever you give away today
or think or say or do
will multiply
and then return to you

start a ripple in time
~namaste~

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

help!

2005-04-06T03:12:42Z

hola.
gods blessing.
will be with you always.

....push the ON button...
aim the mouse...

HE loves and praises all..............
after you break for the beer pee seel-breaker reliever!

ONE KNEE DOWN ON THE PEW
shuffle for a contribution
THESE WALLS EMANATE WITH THE POWER OF HIM...
...........AND the holy ghost.
ALSO..... the son and the father.....

ONE NATION, under tyrannical adherence to relegated FEAR, directed by HIM.
with ignorance and self-percieved precocity

!!!!!!!!!FOR ALL!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS is AMERegimented pride.
THIS is pop.... culture. existing beside and inside us.

THere really is no escape..... SAD.

++++++when once I've hoped for an actual attainable level of human development that reached to an asymptote of sustainable existence.... a progression towards "utopia"..... i realized that hoping for hope can spark hope's hope to become a hope won +++++++++++

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

PRINT YOUR DISSENT @ Agirprops.org

2005-04-01T16:39:31Z

BECOME the Media. Get the truth out.

The purpose of Agitprops.org is to provide fact-based posters on issues poorly covered by the mainstream media for people to print and post in neighborhoods across America.

http://www.agitprops.org/

Just click on a thumbnail to go to a page-sized jpeg of the poster that you can download and insert into a Word doc (set with narrow margins) for printing. While most look fine in black & white, I encourage folks to print as many as they can at work if they have access to a color printer (or to forward links to friends who do).

There are LOTS of posters about Jeff Gannon (the male prostitute in the White House), and the ever-reptilian “Hot Tub Tom” DeLay.

Please forward this link to every politically active person you know – especially anybody in Red States or GOP enclaves in exurbs and rural areas.

Coordinate with your friends – you may be able to print a lot more that you can post, so make packets for your pals to post. Or you may not be able to print any, but you like the posters enough to send the link to a friend who can crank out a few copies for you to distribute.

Post them on grocery store bulletin boards, on magazine racks at check-out lines, on cars in big-box store parking lots – post them in malls and public places, leave them surreptitiously around the office.

If we each take responsibility for spreading the truth in our own communities, we can take back America one Wal-Mart parking lot at a time!

PRINT YOUR DISSENT!
http://agitprops.org

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Don't worry, the Government will protect you...

2005-03-02T01:22:35Z

...From the imminent zombie attack! Read on:

http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=2989614&nav=EQlpWjof

CLARK COUNTY
Student Arrested For Terroristic Threatening Says Incident A Misunderstanding

A George Rogers Clark High School junior arrested Tuesday for making terrorist threats told LEX 18 News Thursday that the "writings" that got him arrested are being taken out of context.

Winchester police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole's home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police.

Poole told LEX 18 that the whole incident is a big misunderstanding. He claims that what his grandparents found in his journal and turned into police was a short story he wrote for English class.

"My story is based on fiction," said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. "It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies."

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

Poole disputes that he was threatening anyone.

"It didn't mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn't mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn't mention no principal or cops, nothing,"
said Poole. "Half the people at high school know me. They know I'm not that stupid, that crazy."

On Thursday, a judge raised Poole's bond from one to five thousand dollars after prosecutors requested it, citing the seriousness of the charge.

Poole is being held at the Clark County Detention Center.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

The Good German and the Good Government

2005-01-31T14:55:51Z

'Work As A Prostitute or Risk Losing Benefits'
By Clare Chapman
The Telegraph - UK
1-29-5

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners ñ who must pay tax and employee health insurance ñ were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile" and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job ñ including in the sex industry ñ or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a "nude model", and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.

Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.

Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.

Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court. Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services.

"They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution," she said.

"Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

Rapture

2005-01-12T07:42:27Z

White House Exploring 'Rapture' Contingency Plans

White House Exploring 'Rapture' Contingency Plans
The White House is reportedly exploring contingency plans in the event that President Bush and other prominent Christians are 'raptured.' But succession plans are complicated by Vice President Dick Cheney's poor health and the fact that Representative Tom DeLay, like President Bush, will be summoned to heaven along with millions of other Christians.

Party leaders address presidential succession, security needs in event that President Bush, other believers are summoned to heaven.

By Deanna Swift

WASHINGTON, DC—What if the rapture, the much-anticipated event in which God summons his faithful followers out of this world, happened on George W. Bush's watch? Until recently this seemingly far-fetched question was the stuff of Christian message boards. But with the White House well known for putting faith front and center, officials are reportedly at work on a contingency plan spelling out how to run the country in the event that President Bush and other top-ranking Christians are 'raptured.'

White House officials are said to be concerned by a recent up-tick in the Rapture Ready Index, a self-proclaimed prophetic speedometer of end-time activity that monitors such seemingly disparate factors as the crime rate, unemployment, wild weather and the "mark of the Beast," evidence of activity related to the antichrist. The Rapture Ready Index recently reached 157, a high for 2004, pushed upwards by a new CUNY study showing that the number of Pagans in the US has skyrocketed of late. The "mark of the Beast" category was also upgraded as a result of a nation-wide push to replace bar codes product labels with radio tags.

Who will rule?
For the White House, the possibility that the dramatic events described in Thessalonians 4:13-18, in which "the dead in Christ will rise, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord," presents an obvious dilemma: if President Bush is summoned to meet his maker, who among the "left behind" can govern the country? According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, if the president is incapacitated, dies, resigns, is for any reason unable to hold his office, or is removed from office, he is to be succeeded by his vice president, in this case Dick Cheney. But top White House officials have expressed concern that Cheney's health may make such a transition impossible, especially after the shock of witnessing his boss disappear through the ceiling of the Oval Office.

Next in the succession chain would be Speaker of the House Tom DeLay. But the Texas firebrand known as "the Hammer" is, like President Bush, a born-again Christian, meaning that he too is likely to be raptured. With DeLay unable to serve, the honor moves to the president pro tempore of the senate: 81 year-old Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who, at 36 years and counting, is that august body's longest-serving senator.

Security vs. tribulation
But Republican Party officials are already expressing concern that Stevens may not be up to the task of seeing the US through the turbulent years of Tribulation, a seven-year long period in which the antichrist takes advantage of the Christians' absence, and makes a treaty with the Jews, enabling them to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and to reestablish their ancient liturgical system of animal-sacrifices. "We're preparing for tough times ahead," said an administration official. "We don't know what's going to happen or what to expect." He notes that the White House is being helped in its efforts to plan for the post-rapture period by Professor Lee Clarke, a Rutgers University sociologist and the author of Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster.

A number of senators have also expressed misgivings over the possibility that Senator Stevens may use the confusion of the Tribulation period to divert excessive discretionary spending, known as pork, to his home state of Alaska. Since Stevens became chairman of the Appropriations Committee in 1997, per capita federal spending in Alaska grew by more than 50 percent, to nearly $12,000 last year, by far the highest in the country and almost double the national average. "We're talking about a guy who is basically the King of Pork," said one senator. "Is this really who you want running the country during a period of floods, plagues and unprecedented violence? The people of Alaska may survive the seven years, but what about the rest of us?"

Ready or not, here he comes
Of course there is always the possibility that the rapture won't happen during President Bush's term, if at all. But millions of Christians, including many of those who recently voted to give the president a second term, are convinced that the rapture isn't just coming, but coming soon.

In a recent poll of Christians conducted on leftbehind.com, the online counterpart to the popular Left Behind series by Reverend Tim LeHaye, more than 50 percent of respondents said that they expected the rapture to happen any day. Nearly 3 in 10 either had unfinished business or didn't want to end their earthly good times just yet. Many Republicans are probably feeling the same way these days.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Bush's plan to shut down GPS to prevent terrorist attack

2004-12-17T18:07:08Z

Um, isn't GPS depended on by most military hardware for guidence purposes? Not to mention many other systems that would be affected by such a shut down, such as our entire telecommunications infrasturcture (which relies on GPS to synchronize clocks), and much of our transportation network...

----------
Bush Prepares for Possible GPS Shutdown

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.

Any shutdown of the network inside the United States would come under only the most remarkable circumstances, said a Bush administration official who spoke to a small group of reporters at the White House on condition of anonymity.

The GPS system is vital to commercial aviation and marine shipping.

The president also instructed the Defense Department to develop plans to disable, in certain areas, an enemy's access to the U.S. navigational satellites and to similar systems operated by others. The European Union is developing a $4.8 billion program, called Galileo.

The military increasingly uses GPS technology to move troops across large areas and direct bombs and missiles. Any government-ordered shutdown or jamming of the GPS satellites would be done in ways to limit disruptions to navigation and related systems outside the affected area, the White House said.

``This is not something you would do lightly,'' said James A. Lewis, director of technology policy for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. ``It's clearly a big deal. You have to give them credit for being so open about what they're going to do.''

President Clinton abandoned the practice in May 2000 of deliberately degrading the accuracy of civilian navigation signals, a technique known as ``selective availability.''

The White House said it will not reinstate that practice, but said the president could decide to disable parts of the network for national security purposes.

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

protestforchange.tribe.net/

2004-11-30T03:05:22Z

http://protestforchange.tribe.net/

Hi friends

I thought you might like to know that I've started a Tribe for the discussion and organisation of protests in the London area, and of course worldwide.

We live in an age of corporate power & dominance, government unaccountability. We need to organise ourselves to let those at the top know we will not stand for the commercialistion of Planet Earth.

It is predicted that unless we change the way we ’re living, we will destroy the Earth and ourselves within the next 1,000 years (Terence McKenna). I don't want to be responsible for the destruction of our planet, and i hope you don't either.

so join up, lets make a difference, join protest for change. Our activities will reflect the views of our members, probably starting with a protest against the commercialisation of Christmas

Thanks,

Hag[]p

http://protestforchange.tribe.net/
http://www.undeadarmy.org

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Dumb People

2004-11-29T03:48:04Z

> Original article is at:
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/115676.php
> Uploaded file is at:
http://la.indymedia.org/uploads/phelan5-001.jpgp5a61n.jpg (399.3
kibibytes)
>
> Public Extermination Project
> Janet C. PhelanP.O. Box 2941 Venice, CA 90294 (213) 861-6139
> Saturday August 14, 2004 05:45 AM
>
> A specifc public works project became "classified"
following 911. This project, which has been on-going throughout the U.S., has
lethal capabilities for innocent U.S. citizens.
>
> There has been intensive media attention since 911 to the resultant
war on terrorism and our aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. The media
has, however, failed to report a shocking post 911 “project” here in
the U.S.
>
> Following 911, there began intensive and
concentrated infrastructure work that has lethal capabilities and intent. In
an extremely non-forthcoming governmental atmosphere, I have been able
to document a small portion of this work, which was ongoing in Los
Angeles County in the spring of 2004.
>
> Through the use of t-valves, the government can
regulate, on an individualized, residence by residence basis, the
introduction of another substance into the water lines. As fluoride goes in
at the plant, we are not dealing with the capability to add fluoride.
It is quite a bit more nefarious than that.
>
> In the first interview in May, 2004, with
Engineer Mike Downs and Head Engineer Julie Spacht, Department of Water and
Power, downtown Los Angeles office, the two engineers issued a blanket
denial that t-valves were used in any capacity by DWP. Spacht stated
that she had never heard of t-valves, and asked, somewhat disingenuously,
whether I could draw one so that she could see what they looked like.
>
> Several days later, I happened upon surface work
by DWP contractor Spiniello Co. The work involving t-valves is
generally done under the street; however, the surface work on La Brea Avenue
between Washington and Venice Blvds. revealed a t-valve in front of
every house.
>
> When I informed Downs that I had the valves on
film, it seemed to jog his memory. When I asked him to state in writing
the DWP policy on t-valves, he submitted a fax (Exhibit A) stating
that t-valves were never used in mainline construction (note the
capitalization and bold type used for emphasis).
>
> Photograph 1 is a t-valve on mainline
construction on Washington Blvd. and Harcourt, under the authority of DWP.
>
> According to Spiniello workers, every single
t-valve is being replaced by ones that respond to computer commands. The
Spiniello foreman at this job site revealed that the main computer is in
a centralized location.
>
> Photograph 2 features the replacement t-valve.
It is manufactured by Tyton. The picture was taken at the above site,
prior to installation.
>
> We must now consider why DWP, through Downs, is
misstating fact about something as seemingly benign as regulatory
valves. As a rule of thumb, there is generally no cover-up unless there is
something to hide.
>
> I have secured a sample directly from a DWP water
line. It is simply toxic, causing extreme cardiac discomfort.
However, it tastes just like water.
>
> In order to fully understand the implications
here, we must comprehend the larger context. Students of history are
aware of the striking similarities between 911 and the Reichstag fires in
Hitler’s pre-war Germany. Briefly, Hitler had his own troops burn down
the German Parliament. Hitler then blamed the fires on the Communists,
in order to obtain the powers to govern under a bogus “state of
emergency.”
>
> 911 and the resultant Patriot Act have
essentially duplicated the political situation here in the U.S. The media has
dutifully reported the increased incidence of surveillance, the
governmental intrusion into library and bookstore records, and other losses of
civil liberties. However, the media has failed to explicate that we
have also lost the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
More specifically, the right to life. Ask any civil rights lawyer. If
you can still find one.
>
> The tie in the t-valve project now becomes clear:
our government is denying the capability of making additions into the
water system when the work is ongoing. If the introduction of a toxic
substance into the lines were planned, would they admit it? It might
cause a generalized panic.
>
> For those concerned how our own leadership could
possibly be involved in such a questionable matter, one needs to
understand the ongoing relationship between the Bush family and Adolph
Hitler. It has been well documented by Webster Tarpley and Antonin Chaitkin
in the book, “George Bush: An Unauthorized Biography,” that our
President’s grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush, was funneling millions of
dollars into Hitler’s war effort through Union Bank Corporation. In
October, 1942, the government seized UBC under the Trading with the Enemies
Act, declaring the bank to be a Nazi front. Prescott Bush was at that
time a director of UBC. For those who are interested in further
documentation of this, I refer you to chapter 2 of the above cited book.
>
> The Bush-Hitler connection did not end with the
seizing of the bank. It simply became more covert and less easy to
detect. It was continued on through Skull and Bones, the Yale secret
society with massive Nazi connections, into which both Presidents Bush
immersed themselves at Yale.
>
> It is important here to understand that using
water as a medium for poisoning had its genesis in the Nazi prison camps,
where the first introduction of the hotly debated compound sodium
fluoride was used as a form of hippocampal dulling.
>
> According to Charles Perkins, who was appointed
post-war head of the German chemical giant I.G. Farben, “The real
reason behind water fluoridation is not to benefit children’s teeth…The real
purpose behind water fluoridation is to reduce the resistance of the
masses to domination, control and loss of liberty…The German chemists
worked out a very ingenious and far-reaching plan of mass-control which
was submitted to and adopted by the German General Staff. This plan was
to control the population in any given area through mass medication of
drinking water supplies…Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of
fluoride will in time reduce an individual’s power to resist domination,
by slowly poisoning and narcotizing a certain area of the brain, thus
making him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him.”
>
> His remarks were reinforced by Dr. E.H. Bonner,
who was the great Albert Einstein’s nephew: “Even in small quantities
sodium fluoride is a deadly poison to which no effective antidote has
ever been found.” For those wishing a more complete reading on this
subject, please reference “The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben,” by
Joseph Borken.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Government & Politics

2004-11-20T02:36:42Z

Just Released!!!

The Tribe that has a Category named after it.
Everyone's opinion is welcome here.
http://governmentandpolitics.tribe.net/
governmentandpolitics.tribe.net

Also Check Out
http://coldwarsurvivors.tribe.net/
coldwarsurvivors.tribe.net

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Sermon: Living Under Fascism

2004-11-18T17:37:03Z

Living Under Fascism

Davidson Loehr
7 November 2004
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
512-452-6168 • www.austinuu.org

SERMON: Living Under Fascism

You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word
“fascism”
in a serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap
name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies. But
I am serious. I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to
persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is
most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary
implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying. That’s
what I am about here. And even if I don’t persuade you, I hope to raise
the level of your thinking about who and where we are now, to add some
nuance and perhaps some useful insights.

The word comes from the Latin word “Fasces,” denoting a
bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented
citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this
metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the
individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that
the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the
chamber of the US House of Representatives.

Still, it’s an unlikely word. When most people hear the word
"fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini
and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of
fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic
dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as
"corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini’s and
Hitler’s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and
Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few
intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago (in “The Corporation Will Eat
Your Soul”), Fortune magazine ran a cover story on Mussolini in 1934,
praising his fascism for its ability to break worker unions, disempower
workers and transfer huge sums of money to those who controlled the
money rather than those who earned it.

Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and
Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the
1930s. Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on our present, and
point the way to a better future. So I want to begin by looking back to
the last time fascism posed a serious threat to America.

In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a
conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a
nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz
Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism.
Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional
American democracy — those concerned with individual rights and
freedoms — as anti-American. That was 69 years ago.

One of the most outspoken American fascists from the 1930s
was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book, The Coming American
Fascism — a coming which he anticipated and cheered — Dennis declared
that defenders of “18th-century Americanism” were sure to become "the
laughing stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling block to the
development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal norms of
law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."

So it is important for us to recognize that, as an economic
system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s, and nearly
worshiped by some powerful American industrialists. And fascism has
always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all kinds.

Mussolini, who helped create modern fascism, viewed liberal
ideas as the enemy. "The Fascist conception of life," he wrote,
"stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only
in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to
classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the
individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the
real essence of the individual." (In 1932 Mussolini wrote, with the
help of Giovanni Gentile, an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the
definition of fascism. You can read the whole entry at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html)

Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to
protect individual rights: The essence of fascism, he believed, is that
government should be the master, not the servant, of the people.

Still, fascism is a word that is completely foreign to most
of us. We need to know what it is, and how we can know it when we see
it.

In an essay coyly titled “Fascism Anyone?,” Dr. Lawrence
Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas
common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini,
Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 “identifying
characteristics of fascism.” (The following article is from Free
Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. Read it at
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm) See how
familiar they sound.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans,
symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as
are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in
fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in
certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way
or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long
incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need
to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or
religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists,
etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given
a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic
agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively
male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are
made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and
anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in
other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government
regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.
Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in
the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric
and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major
tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's
policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are
the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually
beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a
fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are
severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher
education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other
academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts
is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to
enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses
and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is
often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist
nations
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and
associates who appoint each other to government positions and use
governmental power and authority to protect their friends from
accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national
resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen
by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times
elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even
assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control
voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of
the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to
manipulate or control elections.

This list will be familiar to students of political science.
But it should be familiar to students of religion as well, for much of
it mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalisms
worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand
fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political
fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that
have always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our
in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha
male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so
forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have
tried to raise us above, but it is always a fragile thing,
civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again.

But, again, this is not America’s first encounter with
fascism.

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry
Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following
questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous
are they?”

Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was
published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the
war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. See how much you
think his statements apply to our society today.

“The really dangerous American fascist,” Wallace wrote, “…
is
the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what
Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would
prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of
public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to
present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive
the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more
power.”

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw
rising in America, Wallace added, “They claim to be super-patriots, but
they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They
demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested
interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is
directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the
state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the
common man in eternal subjection.” By these standards, a few of today’s
weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection include
NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, union-busting, cutting worker
benefits while increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits,
security and pensions, rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing
of jobs — not to mention the largest prison system in the world.

The Perfect Storm

Our current descent into fascism came about through a kind
of
“Perfect Storm,” a confluence of three unrelated but mutually
supportive schools of thought.

1. The first stream of thought was the imperialistic dream
of
the Project for the New American Century. I don’t believe anyone can
understand the past four years without reading the Project for the New
American Century, published in September 2000 and authored by many who
have been prominent players in the Bush administrations, including
Cheney, Rumsfleid, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Kagan to name
only a few. This report saw the fall of Communism as a call for America
to become the military rulers of the world, to establish a new
worldwide empire. They spelled out the military enhancements we would
need, then noted, sadly, that these wonderful plans would take a long
time, unless there could be a catastrophic and catalyzing event like a
new Pearl Harbor that would let the leaders turn America into a
military and militarist country. There was no clear interest in
religion in this report, and no clear concern with local economic
policies.

2. A second powerful stream must be credited to Pat
Robertson
and his Christian Reconstructionists, or Dominionists. Long dismissed
by most of us as a screwball, the Dominionist style of Christianity
which he has been preaching since the early 1980s is now the most
powerful religious voice in the Bush administration.

Katherine Yurica, who transcribed over 1300 pages of
interviews from Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” shows in the 1980s, has
shown how Robertson and his chosen guests consistently, openly and
passionately argued that America must become a theocracy under the
control of Christian Dominionists. Robertson is on record saying
democracy is a terrible form of government unless it is run by his kind
of Christians. He also rails constantly against taxing the rich,
against public education, social programs and welfare — and prefers
Deuteronomy 28 over the teachings of Jesus. He is clear that women must
remain homebound as obedient servants of men, and that abortions, like
homosexuals, should not be allowed. Robertson has also been clear that
other kinds of Christians, including Episcopalians and Presbyterians,
are enemies of Christ. (The Yurica Report. Search under this name, or
for “Despoiling America” by Katherine Yurica on the internet.)

3. The third major component of this Perfect Storm has been
the desire of very wealthy Americans and corporate CEOs for a
plutocracy that will favor profits by the very rich and disempowerment
of the vast majority of American workers, the destruction of workers’
unions, and the alliance of government to help achieve these greedy
goals. It is a condition some have called socialism for the rich,
capitalism for the poor, and which others recognize as a reincarnation
of Social Darwinism. This strain of thought has been present throughout
American history. Seventy years ago, they tried to finance a military
coup to replace Franlkin Delano Roosevelt and establish General Smedley
Butler as a fascist dictator in 1934. Fortunately, the picked a general
who really was a patriot; he refused, reported the scheme, and spoke
and wrote about it. As Canadian law professor Joel Bakan wrote in the
book and movie “The Corporation,” they have now achieved their coup
without firing a shot.

Our plutocrats have had no particular interest in religion.
Their global interests are with an imperialist empire, and their
domestic goals are in undoing all the New Deal reforms of Franklin
Delano Roosevelt that enabled the rise of America’s middle class after
WWII.

Another ill wind in this Perfect Storm is more important
than
its crudity might suggest: it was President Clinton’s sleazy sex with a
young but eager intern in the White House. This incident, and Clinton’s
equally sleazy lying about it, focused the certainties of conservatives
on the fact that “liberals” had neither moral compass nor moral
concern, and therefore represented a dangerous threat to the moral
fiber of America. While the effects of this may be hard to quantify, I
think they were profound.

These “storm” components have no necessary connection, and
come from different groups of thinkers, many of whom wouldn’t even like
one another. But together, they form a nearly complete web of command
and control, which has finally gained control of America and, they
hope, of the world.

What’s coming

When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political
agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt), then it is not hard to predict
where a new fascist uprising will lead. And it is not hard. The actions
of fascists and the social and political effects of fascism and
fundamentalism are clear and sobering. Here is some of what’s coming,
what will be happening in our country in the next few years:

* The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to
those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those
dependent on social security and social welfare programs.
* Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already
has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in the
developed world.
* Increased loss of funding for public education combined with
increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their
children’s education to Christian schools.
* More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into
the police state necessary for fascism to work
* Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio
and
the Public Broadcasting System. At their best, these media sometimes
encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen as enemies
of the state’s official stories.
* The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of
privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest
children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that could
never benefit them anyway. (That was my one-sentence Veterans’ Day
sermon for this year.)
* More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the
construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq.
* More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national
security.
* Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument
of free communication that is exempt from government control. This will
be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure.
* Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this
one, and to characterize them as anti-American.
* Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and
demonization of the few media they are unable to control – the New York
Times, for instance.
* Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs,
to produce greater profits for those who control the money and direct
the society, while simultaneously reducing America’s workers to a more
desperate and powerless status.
* Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an
increasing number of Americans to own their homes. As they did in the
1930s, those who control the money know that it is to their advantage
and profit to keep others renting rather than owning.
* Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with
arrests, detentions and harassment increasing. We already have a higher
percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country in the
world. That percentage will increase.
* In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to
say the things I have said here this morning. In the fascist story,
these things are un-American. In the real history of a democratic
America, they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of
critical questions that kept the American spirit alive — the kind of
questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed to be pressing.

Can these schemes work? I don’t think so. I think they are
murderous, rapacious and insane. But I don’t know. Maybe they can.
Similar schemes have worked in countries like Chile, where a democracy
in which over 90% voted has been reduced to one in which only about 20%
vote because they say, as Americans are learning to say, that it no
longer matters who you vote for.

Hope

In the meantime, is there any hope, or do we just band
together like lemmings and dive off a cliff? Yes, there is always hope,
though at times it is more hidden, as it is now.

As some critics are now saying, and as I have been preaching
and writing for almost twenty years, America’s liberals need to grow
beyond political liberalism, with its often self-absorbed focus on
individual rights to the exclusion of individual responsibilities to
the larger society. Liberals will have to construct a more complete
vision with moral and religious grounding. That does not mean
confessional Christianity. It means the legitimate heir to
Christianity. Such a legitimate heir need not be a religion, though it
must have clear moral power, and be able to attract the minds and
hearts of a voting majority of Americans.

And the new liberal vision must be larger than that of the
conservative religious vision that will be appointing judges, writing
laws and bending the cultural norms toward hatred and exclusion for the
foreseeable future. The conservatives deserve a lot of admiration. They
have spent the last thirty years studying American politics, forming
their vision and learning how to gain control in the political system.
And it worked; they have won. Even if liberals can develop a bigger
vision, they still have all that time-consuming work to do. It won’t be
fast. It isn’t even clear that liberals will be willing to do it; they
may instead prefer to go down with the ship they’re used to.

One man who has been tireless in his investigations and
critiques of America’s slide into fascism is Michael C. Ruppert, whose
postings usually read as though he is wound way too tight. But he
offers four pieces of advice about what we can do now, and they seem
reality-based enough to pass on to you. This is America; they’re all
about money:

* First, he says you should get out of debt.
* Second is to spend your money and time on things that give you
energy and provide you with useful information.
* Third is to stop spending a penny with major banks, news media
and corporations that feed you lies and leave you angry and exhausted.
* And fourth is to learn how money works and use it like a
(political) weapon — as he predicts the rest of the world will be doing
against us. (from
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110504_snap_out.shtml)

That’s advice written this week. Another bit of advice comes
from sixty years ago, from Roosevelt’s Vice President, Henry Wallace.
Wallace said, “Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop
the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance
the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must
appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must
not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form
of monopolies and cartels.”

Still another way to understand fascism is as a kind of
colonization. A simple definition of “colonization” is that it takes
people’s stories away, and assigns them supportive roles in stories
that empower others at their expense. When you are taxed to support a
government that uses you as a means to serve the ends of others, you
are — ironically — in a state of taxation without representation.
That’s where this country started, and it’s where we are now.

I don’t know the next step. I’m not a political activist;
I’m
only a preacher. But whatever you do, whatever we do, I hope that we
can remember some very basic things that I think of as eternally true.
One is that the vast majority of people are good decent people who mean
and do as well as they know how. Very few people are evil, though some
are. But we all live in families where some of our blood relatives
support things we hate. I believe they mean well, and the way to
rebuild broken bridges is through greater understanding, compassion,
and a reality-based story that is more inclusive and empowering for the
vast majority of us.

Those who want to live in a reality-based story rather than
as serfs in an ideology designed to transfer power, possibility and
hope to a small ruling elite have much long and hard work to do,
individually and collectively. It will not be either easy or quick.

But we will do it. We will go forward in hope and in
courage.
Let us seek that better path, and find the courage to take it — step,
by step, by step.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

GOTV Flyers!!

2004-10-27T18:54:34Z

It's all a ground game now, folks. I've stocked the top of the agitptops.org page with GOTV flyers, most with the 866-OUR-VOTE number on it. They fit four to a page and look good in color or B&W.

The links below let you download ready-to-print Word docs directly from the site. Go to agitprops.org to view all the flyers and LOTS of other downloadable full-page posters: http://agitprops.org

http://agitprops.org/kerrylandslidepage.doc
http://agitprops.org/voteforpage.doc
http://agitprops.org/honorsacrificepage.doc
http://agitprops.org/fightpage.doc
http://agitprops.org/bringitonpage.doc

Please forward these links to activist pals in swing states. (Especially folks who can print stuff out at work!)

PRINT YOUR DISSENT!
http://agitprops.org

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

You're an Asshole

2004-10-20T15:31:31Z

http://filmstripinternational.com/

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

president who??

2004-10-20T01:52:30Z

soooo. i went to the meeting at my school on the election and heres the scoop.
- the reason US invaded iraq and not north korea is because north korea "has" nuclear bombs --- hmm that's ironic and hypocritical. and because the middle east is "holy land"
- kerry has not indicated if he will expand war further but has not introduced any strategies of staying or leaving.
- bush will encourage the draft
- "rich man's war, poor man's fight"
- both kerry and bush want to be able to track people -- what like implant tracking devices in our asses??? sounds too much like 1984 and big brother to me
- why is democracy not actively inforced in the countries like Iraq that US has torn apart? because they don't speak the same language and they want their traditions that work for them - duh...
- is soft power an idea we could use - no because of poverty and resentment (fabrication of more people that hate US) and because of cultural differences.
- kerry will enforce a radical change in health policies.
- kerry and bush went to the same college and belong to the SAME secret society called SCULL and BONES and are distant cousins...hmmm
- kerry would ask the international world for consent in making war decisions - or so he says.
- would it be possible to do something to make it likely for there to be more choices in the election??? they didn't give me a strait, coherent answer but i think we need to start making some changes!!!
- what about John joseph kennedy the environmental activist for election - hah! out of the 5 teachers we interviewed only one of them even heard of him.
- so who do you choose the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left.
if professors for political science, history, and social work can't give straight answers - who will?? and who will have the knowledge to effect this situation???
http://www.johnjosephkennedy.com/media/stream_1.html<http://www.johnjosephkennedy.com/media/stream_1.html>
http://www.johnjosephkennedy.com/>
please pass this email on to everyone

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

The apocalypse is coming! Really! I swear!

2004-10-19T23:21:36Z

Since half of Tribe seems to be in the San Francisco area, I'm sure most of you read this already, but if not, you should check out Mark Morford's column on SFGate.com:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/09/08/notes090804.DTL&nl=fix

I always love his rants about Bush and all the idiots in his administration. Informative while being entertaining.

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

Calling all Superheroes

2004-10-07T22:53:09Z

calling all supeheroes!!
October 15th is your day to save the world. And
announce it to everyone you run into.

Anytime throughout the day, October 15th
don your superhero clothes, and get yerself out saving
the world, and write back here to tell us about it. We
want stories of the world being saved!

the rest is up to your creativity.

If you dont have a suit, wear your jammies, use what ya got, consider it a birth of your baby superhero self. ... er whatever.

for more information, go to www.tribe.net and join the
comedy terrorism tribe or warriorgirl tribe.

or email me:)
big super saludos
wg

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Feel a Draft?

2004-10-05T18:43:30Z

http://www.blatanttruth.org/draft.php

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Fahrenheit 9/11

2004-09-30T03:04:47Z

I finally saw this movie tonight - had to wait for the discount art theater to get it - and I have to say I was disturbed. I knew going in that it was tough to watch, but it unsettled me enough to turn off the radio and drive home in silent contemplation.

Anyway, I think there should be free screenings of this movie at every theater in America from now until November 1. That way, everyone can see for themselves. I wish it was possible to make this film a pre-requisite for voting. I wish that you would have to show your ticket stub at the polls when you sign in to vote before they let you in the booth. I might add that the movie is not any more gory or violent than a PG-13 movie or the 6 o'clock news. If you haven't seen it because you're afraid of the R rating, you needn't worry about that.

I believe it comes out next week (or the 5th?) on video and dvd. If you haven't seen it yourself, then do it then and get your friends to watch it with you. Otherwise tell everyone you meet to go see it - especially if they are republicans. Maybe it won't change their minds, but they should know what they're voting for.

Oh yeah... and make sure you're registered to vote!!!! DO IT NOW!!!! TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!! GO!

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

'The Daily Show' Bush Video about his 'Words'. Awesome!!!!!!

2004-09-04T16:00:14Z

Couldn't resist posting this brilliant piece of reporting on behalf of Comedy Central's Daily Show from the other night. Just thought people might enjoy this. Absolutely brilliant.

http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/dsbush.html

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

for smart information

2004-08-29T21:09:44Z

some websites that may be of interest, one way or another.

www.protestwarrior.com/
www.rncnotwelcome.org/
nyc.indymedia.org/

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Smart Lessons for Dumb Government

2004-07-10T04:02:05Z

Would you like to get a chance to earn a $100 donation for your favorite 2004 Presidential Candidate?*

There is a lot to be said about the circus environment in politics and government. I have to admit, I like to bitch and moan. I like to piss on the right side of the aisle from time to time. And yes, I will occasionally recognize that the shit on the left side of the aisle smells just as bad as the right. The problem is that despite all my bitching and moaning, things aren’t getting better. So, it is time to send a message… Public Service for Dummies: Smart Lessons for Better Government, By the People, For the Politicians. There are over 20 million “Dummies” books in print, so lets make government less dumb with smart lessons from YOU, or should I say from “We the people.”

Curious? Visit, read and enjoy the current lessons that are available at:
http://www.dare2dare.com/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.cgi?board=customer_service

Lesson 1 - Under Promise, Over Deliver
Lesson 2 - Accept Responsibility
Lesson 3 - Be Naive... Become Enlightened
Lesson 4 - Be a Castle Builder
Lesson 5 - Keep It Simple Sacramento (K.I.S.S.)
Lesson 6 - The highest bidder is NOT always right
Lesson 7 - Deliver Solutions NOT Sound Bites
Lesson 8 - Be Liked, Be Respected, Be Trusted
Lesson 9 - Embrace Diversity
Lesson 10 - Size Doesn't Matter.... Really!
Lesson 11 - Be People Oriented Less Party Oriented
Lesson 12 - No Vision, No Better Budget. Know Vision, Know A Better Budget
Lesson 13 - A Better Life and Taxes
Lesson 14 - Not Partisan, Positive Decision Making
Lesson 15 - Not Divide & Conquer, Unite & Prosper!
Lesson 16 - Light on the Labels, Heavy on the Leadership, please.
Lesson 17 – T.E.A.M. - Together Entrepreneurs Accomplish More: Unfortunately, There is no 'E' in politician
Lesson 18 – Demand the Best of the Best NOT the Least of Two Evils
Lesson 19 - Don't forget your table manners: Say "Please" and "Thank you" – COMING SOON

Interested? Share your SMART lesson(s) for DUMB government today at:
http://www.dare2dare.com/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.cgi?board=customer_service

------------------------
*Contest Rules: Contest to earn a $100 donation for your favorite 2004 Presidential Candidate ends July 18, 2004. Submit as many lessons as you desire. To be considered a valid lesson/submission for the contest it must be posted as a thread in the Public Service for Dummies forum hosted by Dare2Dare.com by July 18, 2004 at:
http://www.dare2dare.com/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.cgi?board=customer_service
All valid submissions will be reviewed. One (1) lesson will be selected as the winning lesson. The winning lesson/submission will be determined by July 22, 2004. The author of the winning lesson will be contacted. I will make one (1), One hundred dollar ($100) donation to the winning author’s preferred 2004 Presidential candidate’s campaign.
------------------------

My money, your lesson, our voice for a better government!

Dare 2 Live! Live 2 Dare! Dare 2 Dare!

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

Website dissing Moore

2004-07-08T07:25:13Z

http://www.moorewatch.com/

check out this right wing site.
kind 'o crazy.

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

This gov is dumb, especially with regards to the Terrorists

2004-06-27T21:40:03Z

Hey, I am serious for the most part, but right now, I've got a parody going and here it is: go to http://terrorists.reallysuckass.com

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Al Franken

2004-06-27T06:56:28Z

I just got finished reading his book "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them". Here's a link to a particularly poignant (and disgusting) few pages of that funny-and-sad-at-the-same-time- book.

www.livejournal.com/users/anemone_paz/5635.html

posted in Dumb Government - 3 replies

Using a few old tricks...

2004-06-26T04:34:53Z

Recently the independent commission investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11 came to the conclusion that Saddam and Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with Al Qaeda, the attacks, or anything remotely related to any of it. No way, no how. Saddam offered no support to the terrorists.

The following day our illustrious president gave a speech wherein he stated specifically that there WAS a connection between Saddam and the September 11 attacks. Since I don't believe his advisors are too stupid to update his speeches in light of new information, I have to accept that they're taking a page from Hitler's propaganda playbook:
If you say something loud enough and often enough, people will believe you, regardless of whether you are telling the truth.

At this point I'm praying that "the masses" are smarter than I think they are and can see through the complete pile of B.S. spewing out of G.W.'s pie-hole. Is this all our leaders have learned from history - Gee, those Nazi's sure were smart about how to use propaganda to get public support. Let's do what they did.

What's next? The Department of Fatherland Security perhaps? The Bush Youth? It is all very disturbing.

posted in Dumb Government - 2 replies

Terrorism condoned by US Guv

2004-06-09T19:12:34Z

ccr-ny.org

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

James McMurtry- radio4all.net-The Red Pill

2004-06-03T03:42:04Z

This is a link to an audio presentation I heard today on the Rensselear Polytechnic Institute's radio station. Two downloads. Incredible. Highly recommend.

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=4101&nav=&
Program Information
Unwelcome Guests: #87 - The Red Pill
Series: Unwelcome Guests
Subtitle: Consenus Illusion and World Domination
Program Type: Regular Show
Featured Speakers/Commentators: Richard K Moore, John McMurtry, John Stauber
Producer: Unwelcome Guests Collective
Broadcast Restictions: For non-profit use only.
Summary:
Credits: Producer: Unwelcome Guests Collective unwelcome@radio4all.net
Uploaded by: outfarpress@saber.net

Notes: A recent science fiction movie called the Matrix is set in a future world where humanity lies sleeping in a drug-induced collective illusion, connected to a monstrous machine that's sucking the life out of them while they dream that they are free people living out real lives. The hero of the film begins to wake and see through the illusion, and, he finds others who are also waking. He is told that he may return to his fairly pleasant dreams by taking a blue pill, or take a red pill and face the unvarnished truth. Tonights program will address our collective social illusions and make the case we are in fact already the sleeping subjects of a totalitarian one-world government that views our lives much the way that we view batteries in a flashlight - use them while they work, trash them when expended.

First, a reading of "Escaping the Matrix" by Richard K. Moore of cyberjournal.org. Then an interview with John Stauber of PR Watch on how public relations techniques have been used to propagandize war and push harmful corporate products. We conclude with a talk by Professor of Philosophy John McMurtry of the U. of Guelph on f the one-world government by tyranny.
a talk by Professor of Philosophy John McMurtry of the U. of Guelph on f the one-world government by tyranny.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Stupid fucking liberal

2004-06-02T04:53:28Z

I just got called a "stupid fucking liberal" and a "fucktard" for posting a link to a news story about the new FCC regulations. Here's my reply:

http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/000430.php#000430

Feel free to pass that on.
Enjoy!
-s

posted in Dumb Government - 10 replies

why is the President on vacation(again)?

2004-05-12T09:00:27Z

there are horrible things happening to our troops in Iraq. So again I ask, why is President Bush in Crawford, TX. Maybe he's not a war President, but perhaps the Vacation President.

posted in Dumb Government - 5 replies

Media Ownership - Take back what's ours

2004-02-08T00:35:31Z

Last night I was watching PBS of all things and they ran a report on how the changes to the Media Ownership rules first proposed by the FCC last summer were put into the Omnibus Appropriations Spending Bill that just recently passed into law. In addition to all the pork-barrel pet projects you've heard so much about, and the budgets for the majority of government agencies, the media ownership rules also found their way into law. These are the very same rules that were voted down by both the House and Senate last year after they were proposed.

However, due to backroom dealing they got into the Omnibus bill and passed into law with it. Needless to say, I'm ticked - and you should be too!

There is something happening on the positive side though. Shortly after the Omnibus bill passed, the Senate got together and passed a "Resolution of Disapproval" which basically prevents the media ownership changes from being a law. This Resolution was passed in the Senate with support from both Democrats and Republicans. (Even Trent Lott agreed with the Democrats on dumping the media ownership changes!) So this Resolution was sent to the House of Representatives for a vote.

Here is the situation: The Resolution of Disapproval is not going to be voted on in the House because the House Republican Leadership - both the republican Majority leader and the Speaker of the House - are not going to allow a vote to be scheduled. Why not? Probably because if they allow a vote on the resolution it will pass and the media ownership changes will be canned. I don't know who the Speaker or the House Majority Leader a supposed to represent, but I'm pretty sure that Rupert Murdoch doesn't live in their districts. They sure aren't representing the will of the people who have already said they don't want these rules. It makes me sick honestly.

Here's what you need to do: Write to your Congressperson in the House of Representatives and tell them they need to force a vote on the Resolution of Disapproval so that the media ownership rule changes are not allowed to remain as law. You can go to www.house.gov and they have a form that lets you lookup and write directly to your Representative. You just need your Zip code.

If you've never written to an elected official before don't worry, it's easy. Just tell them they need to vote FOR the Resolution of Disapproval created by Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. If your Representative wants more info they can talk to Congressman Bernard Sanders of Vermont who is working to get the House to vote on the Resolution. (http://bernie.house.gov/statements/20031216175917.asp)

If you've been thinking about writing to your representative, now is the time and this is the issue. I know it may not seem like a big deal but I can assure that if these rule changes stand we will all be sorry. (CBS's decision to not run an ad that criticizes The Bush administration during the super bowl is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine if any one company owned every major TV station, major radio station and major newspaper in your town. How easy it would be for them to make certain that you see and hear only the things they want you to.)

So there you go. The dumb government is ignoring 3 million+ regular people in favor of rules that benefit FOX and Viacom. This whole thing is an outrage for that reason if for no other.

posted in Dumb Government - 3 replies

Brit Politico...

2004-01-29T23:50:25Z

Interesting article from www.thefridaything.co.uk

THE TRUTH IS...
=

If there's one mantra that Campbell, Blair, Straw and Hutton have
all been chanting this week, it's the expression 'impugning the
integrity of the Prime Minister'.

It's as if they think there's something wrong with this. There
*are* some people whose integrity you mustn't impugn. The Pope.
The President. Military dictators. God.

But the whole point of having a Prime Minister is that we can
impugn his integrity. That's what it's there for. And if he keeps
telling us not to, that turns from a 'can' into a 'must'.

Alastair Campbell was quite clear about this on Jeremy Vine's
Radio 2 show. He spent most of his time explaining how journalism
is in a sorry state because there are so many stories which are
critical of the government. What he finds 'poisonous' isn't
inaccuracy - it's negative reporting. Again, this is what
journalists outside of Cuba are *supposed* to be doing.

But if Michael Howard, or a newspaper says that they've found the
Hutton Report a disappointment, they get a pat on the head and
told to be 'sensible' and grow up, as if the only reasonable
response to this flimsy non-document is to say 'where shall we
invade next?'.

There are - however - good reasons for hearing Hutton and then
pulling the face you'd pull if you ordered a five-course meal and
been given a Filet O Fish. For two million pounds.

And what's especially galling is having seen all the transcripts,
and noticed James Dingemans and Peter Knox asking questions which
suggested they were interested not merely in whether Gilligan is
a duff journalist (which we know, but at least he's not a whiney
grass like Susan Watts), but also in how our country is managed,
and whether this can go badly wrong.

The Hutton Inquiry had the potential to produce a fascinating
analysis of modern British life - and now we'll never know what
it would have said.

However, we still have all the evidence.

Here are five questions which Hutton was eminently qualified to
comment on, which his Report wholeheartedly dodged.

1) Are our intelligence services reliable?

Above and beyond anything else, no-one was under oath. If there's
one thing a spy has to be able to do, it's to tell the truth only
when it benefits his country. Even given this, though, we found
out plenty about how intelligence is regarded by the government.

We learned, for example, that chief spook John Scarlett removed
the qualification that Saddam would use WMDs 'if he believes his
regime is under threat', that he changed 'may be able's to 'are
able's, and that the claim that Iraq had 'sought uranium' from
Africa (itself based on a falsified document) became the even-
more-false 'secured uranium'. And that all of this was done at
Alastair Campbell's behest, because they were 'a bit of a
problem'. That is, official intelligence was over-ridden by the
imaginings of a PR.

Dingemans pursued this line. 'Do you accept you can transform a
dossier by omission, Mr Scarlett?'. he asked 'You see, such a
change would make a great effect, would it not, on the threat in
fact presented by Saddam Hussein in the eyes of the public?' What
did we hear of this in the Report? Not a peep.

It turns out that inconvenient facts provided by the security
services are ignored - making them effectively a preferred
supplier for PR rather than the defenders of out safety. You have
to wonder why Hutton didn't consider this worthy of note.

...

2) How does the government treat its critics?

In short, we have Campbell on the Beeb: 'Fuck Gilligan'.

There's also Blair on Kelly. First he chaired the meeting
deciding the strategy to name and shame Kelly. Then he lied to
the country about having done so. Then it turned out in the
Inquiry that he'd lied. Again, Hutton wasn't especially
interested, either in the lie, or in the campaign against an
expert who he found a nuisance.

We learned that Campbell wrote of Kelly: 'the biggest thing
needed was to get the source out'. We learned that the inaccuracy
of Gilligan's report was of no interest to Number 10, and that
their complaint was part of a virtually-daily series of
threatening letters in response to any criticisms of the
government on Today. Hutton virtually supported this maniacal
behaviour.

...

3) Is our country under threat?

It's interesting, isn't it? The question of whether there's a
danger that biological weapons are going to drop on Britain?

It was Hutton's own questioning which revealed that the weapons
which could be deployed within 45 minutes were, in fact,
'battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry'. And as the
report went on, we learned that the government has made no effort
to reassure the people they weren't all going to die.

On top of the shocking irresponsibility of this, any probing mind
would be led to wonder why you would attack a country which posed
no greater immediate threat than the A-Team.

...

4) How does the government keep the citizens informed?

We learn that the only criterion for inclusion in the dossiers
became whether they 'would strengthen certain political
objectives'. That something which purported to be based on fact
was in fact based on political convenience. That the title of the
dossier changed from 'Iraq's Programme for Weapons of Mass
Destruction' to 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction' just before
publication.

Lord Hutton had a good long unpleasant glimpse of the triumph of
propaganda across many areas of public life. Again, this was of
less interest than a brief 6.07am despatch. Public response to
the report tells us which everyone else is more concerned about.

So you don't have to disagree with its findings to find the
Hutton Report a damp squib. You can look at the enormous
opportunities it gave us to see more the more complex forces and
phenomena behind Dr. Kelly's death, and recall the words of
Andrew McKinlay MP:

'It just shows how the Government do everything they can --
this Government is not the only one, there have been previous
Governments -- to obstruct scrutiny. They do not like
scrutiny. They see scrutiny as automatically going to be
criticism, whereas it can be investigatory. Thank you, my
Lord.

...and wonder whether his Lordship was listening to a word he
said.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

we the people

2004-01-25T23:16:58Z

"We the people are the rightful master of both Congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution"

Abraham Lincoln

Something to think about people!

posted in Dumb Government - 8 replies

The Year that Trembled

2004-01-25T00:55:18Z

Everyone needs to go out and rent this movie, it does a great job of documenting the chaos at Kent State university during the Vietnam war. Why can't college be like this today? The movie intermingles a story about several studants with real news footage from the times.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

You Should Not Be Allowed to Disagree With the President

2004-01-13T02:28:50Z

http://www.americaforsale.org

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

Invitation to join the Virtual Greens

2003-12-27T13:16:10Z

You are invited to join the Virtual Greens e-group. The purpose of this group is to become a conduit for the coordination of a national effort to support the next Green presidential campaign in "safe" states using research, e-mail, bulk mailings and long distance telephone banks. By focusing a national campaign on the "safe" states we, as a third party, would be capable of putting our efforts exactly where we have the best chances of success.
We believe that the very existence of a successful Green cyber-campaign that is aimed at "safe states" in 2004 could break the barriers of distance that have historically held back the advancement of third parties in America.

We also intend to work in support of other campaigns where the Green Party has a real chance of achieving a significant political victory, such as the Matt Gonzolez campaign in San Francisco or the IRV referendum in Alaska. We believe that with a large enough active membership base we could take advantage of our numbers nationwide to conceivably overwhelm a political opponent and thus nullify the power of big money in certain key political campaigns.

To subscribe to this e-group please send an e-mail to:
virtual_greens-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Bush's Resume

2003-12-27T08:20:28Z

> > > RESUME
> > > > George W. Bush
> > > > The White House, USA
> > > >
> > > > EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
> > > >
> > > > LAW ENFORCEMENT: I was arrested in Kennebunkport,
> > > > Maine in 1976 for driving under the influence of
> > > > alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my
> > > > driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas
> > > > driving record has been "lost" and is not available.
> > > >
> > > > MILITARY: I joined the Texas Air National Guard and
> > > > went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions
> > > > about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was
> > > > able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.
> > > >
> > > > COLLEGE: I graduated from Yale University. I was a cheerleader.
> > > >
> > > > PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
> > > >
> > > > I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.
> > > >
> > > > I began my career in the oil business in Midland,
> > > > Texas in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't
> > > > find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt
> > > > shortly after I sold all my stock.
> > > >
> > > > I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a
> > > > sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.
> > > >
> > > > With the help of my father and our right-wing friends
> > > > in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I
> > > > was elected Governor of Texas.
> > > >
> > > > ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR:
> > > >
> > > > I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies,
> > > > making Texas the most polluted state in the Union.
> > > >
> > > > During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the
> > > > most smog-ridden city in America.
> > > >
> > > > I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the
> > > > tune of billions in borrowed money.
> > > >
> > > > I set the record for the most executions by any
> > > > Governor in American history.
> > > >
> > > > With the help of my brother, the Governor of Florida,
> > > > and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I
> > > > became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.
> > > >
> > > > ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
> > > >
> > > > I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing
> > > > cost of over one billion dollars per week.
> > > >
> > > > I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted
> > > > the U.S. Treasury.
> > > >
> > > > I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit
> > > > in U.S. history.
> > > >
> > > > I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any
> > > > 12-month period.
> > > >
> > > > I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the
> > > > U.S. stock market.
> > > >
> > > > I am the first president in U.S. history to enter
> > > > office with a criminal record.
> > > >
> > > > I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in
> > > > any one year period.
> > > >
> > > > After taking-off the entire month of August, I
> > > > presided over the worst security failure in
> > > > U.S.history.
> > > >
> > > > I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical
> > > > Bunker Buster," a WMD.
> > > >
> > > > In my State Of The Union Address, I lied about our
> > > > reasons for attacking Iraq, then blamed the lies on
> > > > our British friends.
> > > >
> > > > I set the record for most campaign fundraising trips
> > > > by a U.S. president.
> > > >
> > > > In my first year in office over 2-million Americans
> > > > lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
> > > >
> > > > I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month
> > > > period.
> > > >
> > > > I appointed more convicted criminals to administration
> > > > than any president in U.S. history.
> > > >
> > > > I set the record for least amount of press conferences
> > > > than any president since the advent of television.
> > > >
> > > > I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S.
> > > > history and refused to intervene when corruption
> > > > involving the oil industry was revealed.
> > > >
> > > > I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
> > > >
> > > > I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut
> > > > in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families -- in war
> > > > time.
> > > >
> > > > I have set the all-time record for most people
> > > > worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public
> > > > venues (15 million people) shattering the record for protest against
> > > > any person in the history of mankind.
> > > >
> > > > I've broken more international treaties than any
> > > > president in U.S. history.
> > > >
> > > > I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the
> > > > richest of any administration in U.S. history. My
> > > > "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron
> > > > oil tanker named after her.
> > > >
> > > > I am the first president in U.S. history to order an unprovoked,
> > > > preemptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation.
> > > > I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of
> > > > U.S. citizens, and the world community.
> > > >
> > > > I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the
> > > > largest bureaucracy in the history of the United
> > > > States government .
> > > >
> > > > I am the first president in U.S. history to have the
> > > > United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
> > > >
> > > > I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
> > > >
> > > > I refused to allow inspectors access to U.S.
> > > > "prisoners of war" (detainees) and thereby have
> > > > refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
> > > >
> > > > I am the first president in history to refuse United Nations
> > > > election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
> > > >
> > > > I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the
> > > > most corporate campaign donations.
> > > >
> > > > My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of
> > > > my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the
> > > > largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. history. My political
> > > > party used the Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure
> > > > my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.
> > > >
> > > > I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against
> > > >>> investigation
> > > > or
> > > > prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica
> > > > Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest
> > > > corporate rip-offs in history.
> > > >
> > > > We garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the
> > > > World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later I made the
> > > > U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of
> > > > diplomacy in world history.
> > > >
> > > > I am first president in history to have a majority of Europeans
> > > > (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and
> > > > security.
> > > >
> > > > I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals
> > > > to be awarded government contracts.
> > > >
> > > > I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring
> > > > Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to justice.
> > > >
> > > > I am having John Ashcroft look into the scandal of illegally
> > > > revealing
> > > >>> the
> > > > name of a CIA agent by a high administration official (an outrageous
> > > > conflict of interest)
> > > >
> > > > I am stealing from the Social Security trust fund at tremendous
> > > > peril to future generations.
> > > >
> > > > I am expanding the US Federal debt at an extraordinary rate, also at
> > > > tremendous peril to future generations.
> > > >
> > > > RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
> > > >
> > > > All records of my tenure as Governor of Texas are now
> > > > in my father's library, sealed, and unavailable for
> > > > public view.
> > > >
> > > > All records of SEC investigations into my insider
> > > > trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in
> > > > secrecy and unavailable for public view.
> > > >
> > > > All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-president,
> > > > attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and
> > > > unavailable for public review.
> > > >
> > > > Please consider my experience when voting in 2004 -

posted in Dumb Government - 2 replies

A tiny accounting error!

2003-12-25T11:11:11Z

Ok someone explain this to me. because I don't know how you can mistakenly over charge someone 65 million dollars and how someone can over charge you that much.

This story from Yahoo:
President Bush said Friday the United States will expect Vice President Dick Cheney's former company to pay back money that it is suspected of overcharging the government on contract work in Iraq.

ok back to me: where's the outrage? this is the VP's former company. how can we let them get away with it??

"If there's an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money be repaid," the president told reporters.

back to me: no its simple, they should be fired from the job. look, if i was a contracter building a home, and decided that i would charge an extra 60 million dollars, i would be fired. its that simple.

A Pentagon audit found Cheney's former company may have overcharged the Army by $1.09 per gallon for nearly 57 million gallons of gasoline delivered to citizens in Iraq, senior defense officials say.

ok last point. this is very important. why are we sending oil to Iraq. I thought they already had it.

posted in Dumb Government - 3 replies

Miserable failure!

2003-12-07T17:52:18Z

LOL I just found this and HAD to show it to as many ppl as I could. Go to www.google.com and type in "miserable failure" and click on "im feeling lucky" to see the top result!

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Bush's intelligence quotient

2003-12-06T18:25:04Z

Report: President Bush Has Lowest IQ of All Presidents of Past 50 Years

If late night TV comedy is an indicator, then there has never been as widespread a perception that a president is not intellectually qualified for the position he holds as there is with President GW Bush.

In a report published Monday, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania, detailed its findings of a four-month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush.

Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published its research to the education community on each new president, which includes the famous "IQ" report among others.

According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 50 years, from F. D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking.

The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:

147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 Harry Truman (D)
122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174 John F. Kennedy (D)
126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155 Richard M. Nixon (R)
121 Gerald Ford (R)
175 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald Reagan (R)
098 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
091 George W. Bush (R)

The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155.

President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91. The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126.

No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176.

Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President G. W. Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis. The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis.

"All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers. Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said. "He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking."

The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania, think-tank includes high-caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist.

This study was commissioned on February 13, 2001, and released on July 9, 2001, to subscribing member universities and organizations within the education community.

posted in Dumb Government - 2 replies

Lick Bush!

2003-12-04T04:26:37Z

America needs me.
The world needs mah leadership.
It is time for the King to re-emerge.

Ah will be appearing in Times Square, New Year's Eve.
Ah intend to drop the cloak of secrecy of the last 25 years.
Mah fans demand ah campaign fo' President and save the world.

See ya there.
Brang donuts. Brang drugs.
Brang signs so ah kin recognize mah supporters.

Be theah or be square.
Vote Bush and yore cruizin' for a bruizin'

Think of Tha Kang as Leader of the Free World.
Won't ya hep me? Can ah count on yo' vote?
Thank ya, that ya verry musch!
How bad could ah be?

Ah don't need enny campaign contributions. Afta all, ah'm rich.

Mah whole plan (platform) boils down to:
Make love, not war.
Make crystal meth, not Pentium chips.
Less taxation, less privatization.
More medication, more fornication.

Sincerely,
Tha Kang (who will soon become tha Prez)
PLEASE SPREAD THA WURD!!!

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

lies my teacher told me

2003-12-04T04:06:10Z

"When information which properly belongs to the public is systmatically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them and eventually incapable of determining their own destinies" - Richard Nixon - yah he should know all about it after being impeached for his extreme secrecy and scandal.

"my happiness is built on the misery of others" - John Reed

"What did you learn in school today dear lil boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong - it's always right and never wrong" - song by Tom Paxton

"capital should be less important than laborers - for with out laborers their would be none such capital" - Abraham Lincoln
- to me Lincoln is like Jesus - destroyed for interFEARing with his RADical beliefs.

"mind control is working"
I dance along these candid roads
low pitch sounds of truths untold
blind to the air we breath
deny the capacity of the free
REAL-ly sparce but within our reach
we dare not see
the tree
the eye three
a thin line in just letting
it be
-aphrodite

even if conspiracies are not genuine and we are just rebellious, radical, pot smoking, youth with no voices ---we are the future - we are evolving - and uniting! the truth will be told - do not fear the truth - embrace it! AND! motherearth mad pot as opposed to avarice ciggarette dealers put over 500 different harmful chemicals in them - who do you trust. besides the myth that pot is more harmful - The CIA is pushing as much drug money on us as possible and jailing thousands for it - HAH! Like a snake eating it's own tail! Why do many revolve around greed - they trample all and hearts bleed! Why do they call it a correctional facility - or is that just another way to be proud of the pain they've caused? This ego biz has got to go! actually - this whole quick to judge of good and bad has to end - don't point your finger - take an un-vain transcending concious into unconcious look in the mirror! Listen to your dreams.

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

bushwacked

2003-11-29T00:58:04Z

If you have a phat downloader then check out the bushwacked video in this site:

http://www.warprecords.com/news/?offset=0&ti_id=573

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

i would like to see bush out of office next year

2003-11-24T18:09:06Z

my name is maria and i live in san francisco. my email address is musicamaria@yahoo.com

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

feeling like an ex-patriot

2003-11-20T00:43:56Z

The Economist ran a special report on the USA a few weeks ago, which included an article comparing American and European patriotism. The full article is here:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2172144

A passage that particularly caught my attention is this one:

-----
Patriotic Europeans take pride in a nation, a tract of land or a language they are born into. You cannot become un-French. In contrast, patriotic Americans have a dual loyalty: both to their country and to the ideas it embodies. “He loved his country,” said Lincoln of Henry Clay, “partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country.” As the English writer G.K. Chesterton said in 1922, America is the only country based on a creed, enshrined in its constitution and declaration of independence. People become American by adopting the creed, regardless of their own place of birth, parentage or language. And you can become un-American—by rejecting the creed.
-----

This leads to my dilemma: what happens when our government fails to live up to the American Creed? With the secrecy and cronyism demonstrated by the Bush White House, exaggeration of the case for the War in Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, dismantling of the free press through massive consolidation of media outlets, etc. etc., there's a pretty good case we can build for this.

Or could it be argued that the American Creed has shifted away from the liberal ideals championed by our founding fathers to a consumption-oriented oligopoly where we all be good little corporate slaves? It seems as though those fundamental values of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" have been replaced with "safety, security, and protection from fear".

If that's what the American Creed has evolved into, then I'm calling Tank for an exit...

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

Dancing Bush

2003-11-17T19:53:41Z

Here's a fun useless little thing . . .

http://www.supernetworks.de/_site/flash/dancingbush.swf

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

brilliant essay

2003-11-10T17:49:43Z

Ya might have to copy & paste the last part after the "html" in the URL...

http://www.mykeru.com/weekly/2003_1026_1101.html#103003

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

14 defining characteristics of fascism

2003-11-02T04:19:25Z

"Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections."

Scared?

posted in Dumb Government - 3 replies

terminator

2003-11-02T04:08:37Z

Yes folks, thats right, the Terminator is the new governor of my -hopefully-going-to-be-soon-wonderful state. I dunno, he hopes to have us out of a deficit in 5 years, isnt that what they all say? But I am a big fan of the idea of more casinos, with slot machines. Gamble!!!!

posted in Dumb Government - 9 replies

any dumb gov't employees about?

2003-10-27T15:42:16Z

As a current local, and former, State (NC), Federal (USA), and other dumb government employee... I was wondering if I was alone with the anarchy/government employment cognitive dissonance thing going on?

posted in Dumb Government - 2 replies

vote yes on no

2003-10-15T13:35:14Z

that's my favorite slogan.

miss inga duchess of slogans.

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

Who you voting for?

2003-10-14T03:48:52Z

So, who you guys gonna vote for in the upcoming election?

Personally, as of now, I think Howard Dean has the best chances of beating Bush. Check out www.deanforamerica.com to check out his views.

There should really be a choice on the ballot "Anybody but fucking Bush!". That's who I wanna vote for.

posted in Dumb Government - 10 replies

What the fuck

2003-10-10T00:23:25Z

The New Futures Market

posted in Dumb Government - 9 replies

Clark

2003-10-09T16:25:45Z

Does anyone know what he stands for?

Does anyone know what he stood for a month ago, before he became a Democrat and decided to run for President?

Just like Arnold, this guy seems to be popular for his label -- General. He rocketed to the top of the pack the day after the press reported that Democrats wanted him to run and, it seems, weeks before he said word one about what he wanted to do as President.

I'm surprised to read on the other thread that many of the folks who support Dean, a known entity with a record and positions, also support Clark, a complete unknown who's creating an agenda and persona before our eyes.

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply

Star Spangled Ice Cream

2003-10-01T00:09:22Z

So this doesn’t have much to do with dumb government, but damn it is funny!

http://www.starspangledicecream.com/

posted in Dumb Government - 0 replies

The Prez as Action Figure

2003-09-28T21:11:08Z

Funny how much mileage they Republicans have been able to get out of this. I'd buy it but won't waste the money on something I'd destroy pretty quick.

http://www.kbtoys.com/genProduct.html/PID/2431939/ctid/17/place/aguc?_ts=y&ls=collect&_e=3f326&_v=3F32631CnGYOa6F929CBE986&_ts=y

posted in Dumb Government - 1 reply