When President Bush used an October 17 White House press conference to threaten that the escalating US confrontation with Iran posed a danger of “World War III” his remark was passed over in silence by most of the media. Those that did report it seemed, for the most part, to accept the White House claim that the president was engaging in hyperbole and merely making a “rhetorical point.”

In the nearly two weeks since, Bush’s remark has been followed up by a menacing speech by Vice President Dick Cheney, whose vow that the US would not “stand by” as Iran allegedly pursued a nuclear weapons program constituted an implicit threat of war. The heated war rhetoric has also been accompanied by the imposition of another round of sweeping economic sanctions backed by the unprecedented US designation of sections of Iran’s security forces as “proliferators” of weapons of mass destruction and as a “foreign terrorist organization.”

Given the Bush administration’s claim to be engaged in a permanent “global war on terrorism,” this designation is tailor-made for justifying a US military assault on Iran.

These events, undoubtedly accompanied by behind-the-scenes preparations for military action, have led to a somewhat belated reaction to Bush’s invocation of a third world war. Over the weekend, several Democratic legislators took issue with the president’s ominous statement. Senator Barbara Boxer of California, for example, called Bush’s World War III statement “irresponsible.”

“I’ve been briefed by the Pentagon who say if there were to be a conflagration with Iran, which we all hope to avoid, it would be generations of jihad right here on our shores,” she said. “We don’t want to go that way, so let’s calm down the rhetoric.”

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also warned of the implications of a war against Iran, including the potential closing of the strategic Strait of Hormuz. He made clear that he believed that the military option should be kept “on the table,” but urged the White House to stop talking about it.

“Don’t give them the weapon that they use against us that we’re trying to bully them, that we’re trying to do dominate them,” he said. “And that’s what this hot rhetoric does when it’s just constantly repeated, about World War III or that we’re going to use a military option.”

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also warned against the confrontational approach taken by Washington.

“My fear is that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we will end up into a precipice, we will end up into an abyss,” he said. “The Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary response from within the political establishment came on Monday in the form of a lead editorial in the New York Times entitled “Trash Talking World War III.”

The Times writes: “America’s allies and increasingly the American public are playing a ghoulish guessing game: Will President Bush manage to leave office without starting a war with Iran? Mr. Bush is eagerly feeding those anxieties. This month he raised the threat of ‘World War III’ if Iran even figures out how to make a nuclear weapon.

“With a different White House, we might dismiss this as posturing—or bank on sanity to carry the day, or the warnings of exhausted generals or a defense secretary more rational than his predecessor. Not this crowd.”

The implications of this assessment, coming as it does from the America’s newspaper of record, the voice of erstwhile establishment liberalism, deserve the most serious consideration.

Not this crowd. In other words, a remark about World War III from another administration might have been written off, in the words of Senator Boxer, as “irresponsible,” but in the mouths of Bush, Cheney & Co. it becomes a palpable threat.

With the US military already mired in two colonial-style wars with no end in sight, the Times indicates that there exist no grounds for believing that the White House will not pursue the seemingly insane course of launching yet a third war, which—far more than those already underway—carries with it the danger of spreading into a global conflagration.

Reflected in the tone of this editorial is a profound political crisis within American ruling circles. Its unstated implication is that US policy is presently determined by a militarist camarilla which is out of control and subject neither to constitutional restraints nor international law.

Such a statement would not appear in the leading US daily paper unless there were deep concerns within the political establishment that America is on the brink of a war that poses catastrophic consequences.

But what the Times editorial cannot explain and does not even attempt to elucidate is how this crowd has remained in control of the US government going on eight years now, and how the seemingly insane escalation of American militarism has become Washington’s predominant policy on a world scale, supported and funded by both major parties. This cannot be rationalized as the outcome of Bush’s or Cheney’s supposed dementia.

Instead, the editorial makes the following toothless criticism of Bush: “Four years after his pointless invasion of Iraq, President Bush still confuses bullying with grand strategy. He refuses to do the hard work of diplomacy—or even acknowledge the disastrous costs of his actions.”

Since when was the invasion of Iraq “pointless?” The point to attempting to subjugate Iraq was clear from the outset. As former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in his recently published book—describing it as “what everyone knows”—the war against Iraq “is largely about oil.”

That is, behind all of the propaganda lies about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, the war was launched in pursuit of definite imperialist aims. Washington consciously decided to utilize its military might as a means of offsetting US capitalism’s economic decline relative to its major rivals in Europe and Asia. Placing an American hand on the oil spigots of the Persian Gulf was seen as a means exerting decisive pressure on these rivals and preserving US hegemony in the affairs of world capitalism.

This war was not pointless, it was criminal. To pursue its aims, US imperialism was prepared to unleash destruction on a scale that has now claimed the lives of over a million Iraqis and laid waste to an entire society.

The same “point” lies behind the present escalation of US aggression against Iran, pursued once again in the name of curtailing weapons of mass destruction and combating terrorism. The results of such a new war will prove far bloodier.

The Times—as in the run-up to the Iraq war—is once again advocating the use of diplomacy to secure legitimization for the predatory imperialist interests that Washington is pursuing against Iran. Its differences with the Bush administration, like those of the Democrats, are merely of a tactical character.

The supposed insanity of the Bush and Cheney crowd is in the end shared, at least in its essential symptoms, by all sections of the American ruling elite. The fundamental source of this malady lies not in the psychology of those presently in the White House—however unstable it may be—but rather in the underlying contradictions of world capitalism, above all the subordination of the powerful forces of globally integrated capitalist production to the private profit interests of the ruling elites of competing national states.

It is these contradictions, which are objectively driving the eruption of American militarism, that threaten a new war against Iran and a broader conflagration, as other major powers are inevitably compelled to defend their own access to strategic energy supplies and markets. Mounting economic instability will only accelerate this process.

The Times editorial constitutes a serious warning. A far wider war is now seen within the US ruling elite as a real and imminent danger to which no section of the present political establishment has a viable alternative. Such a war poses the real threat of a nuclear conflagration and the extermination of hundreds of millions.

The decisive question is that class-conscious workers and youth grasp both the immense dangers and the emerging revolutionary possibilities in the present situation. Mankind is threatened with wars that will reproduce and eclipse the catastrophes inflicted by the two world wars of the last century. But this threat is itself a manifestation of the profound crisis of the capitalist system.

Nothing could make clearer the hopelessness and bankruptcy of a perspective of ending the war in Iraq or halting an even bloodier catastrophe in Iran by means of pressuring Congress or supporting the Democratic Party against the Republicans.

A genuine struggle against war must waged by politically uniting working people worldwide based on a common socialist and internationalist program aimed at putting an end to economic and political domination of a financial oligarchy that pursues its profit interests by means of military slaughter.

Bill Van Auken is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Bill Van Auken
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

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© Copyright Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, 2007
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see

Kucinich: Administration Needs To Heed Advice Of IAEA Director + Questions Bush’s Mental Health

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

It’s the End of the World as We know it and I feel fine #22 (video)

Dandelion Salad

stimulator

http://submedia.tv

This Week

1. WWIII
2. Famin and Fire
3. Sydnot
4. Hot-Lanta
5. Cheney’s heart of Oil
6. The APC Strikes back
7. Brother Ali
8. Gore’s Genocide
9. Buggin out

Added: October 31, 2007

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Bush Regime Targets Iran After 9/11 by Larry Everest

Dandelion Salad

by Larry Everest
Global Research, October 31, 2007
RCP Publications

For over 100 years, the domination of Iran has been deeply woven into the fabric of global imperialism, enforced through covert intrigues, economic bullying, military assaults, and invasions. This history provides the backdrop for U.S. hostility toward Iran today–including the real threat of war. Part 8 of this series examines why the Bush administration targeted Iran after 9/11, how the invasion of Iraq has backfired on them in many ways, and why this has increased their felt need to confront the Islamic Republic.

Iran, 9/11 and the “War on Terror”

George W. Bush’s capture of the U.S. presidency in 2000, followed by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, led to a radical shift in U.S. global strategy and the launching of Bush’s “war on terror.” Iran was a key target from the start.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. was suddenly the only global imperialist superpower. America’s rulers saw an opportunity to vastly extend their power, as well as the necessity to do so given the many contradictions–and potential contradictions–they faced worldwide. For a decade the “neo-cons” had been arguing for aggressively using U.S. military might to create an unchallenged and unchallengeable U.S. empire. They assumed key positions in Bush’s new administration.

After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush team felt compelled to forcefully lash back to preserve the U.S. empire’s global credibility. They also saw the opportunity–and the necessity–to push forward their broader agenda, which required crushing anti-U.S. Islamic fundamentalism and forcefully dealing with a host of impediments to their global power and ambitions–including states like Iran and Iraq.

During a secret November 2001 meeting, as reported by Bob Woodward in State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, leading strategists close to the Bush administration argued that the 9/11 attacks did not represent “an isolated action that called for policing and crime fighting.” Their solution: a “two-generation battle with radical Islam” to defeat this movement–as well as take down regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria that were contributing in one way or another to the spread of anti-U.S. sentiments and fundamentalism or that posed obstacles to U.S. plans. They thought this would open the door to transforming the entire region–“draining the swamp,” as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz put it shortly after Sept. 11–to eliminate the conditions giving rise to forces which, while reactionary, posed a growing obstacle to U.S. imperialist interests.

The first phase of this global war was launched on October 7, 2001 with the bombing of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Islamist Taliban government. The Bush regime then decided that Iraq would be phase two. Saddam wasn’t an Islamist, nor was he allied with al Qaeda, but his continued rule was creating a variety of problems for the U.S. in the Middle East.

Even as they invaded Iraq, the Bush regime had Iran’s Islamic Republic squarely in their sights.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and it aided the U.S. during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by backing the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, allowing U.S. search-and-rescue missions to operate from Iranian territory, and passing on intelligence from Afghanistan. But the imperialists still had a big problem with the Islamic Republic–not because it is a reactionary theocracy that brutally represses its people. The problem, from the imperialists’ standpoint, was that Iran has been a key font of anti-U.S. Islamic fundamentalism. It was the first place where current-day Islamists seized state power–and they have used that power to promote Islamic fundamentalism and support Islamist movements in the region. Tehran’s rulers have also sought to redefine Iran’s place in the regional order, including by negotiating economic and political deals with U.S. rivals like Russia and China. All this has made Iran a big obstacle to U.S. plans in the region, and so the Bush regime placed Iran high on its target list.

On January 30, 2002, Bush charged that Iran “aggressively pursues these [nuclear] weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom,” and he included Iran (along with Iraq and North Korea) in the so-called “axis-of-evil,” which he said posed “a grave and growing danger.”

After Iraq, Debating Iran

After the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, some within the Bush administration argued that the U.S. should continue to pressure Iran’s Islamic Republic to end its support for Islamist movements in the region and give up its nuclear program, while also keeping the diplomatic channel to Tehran open, if only to use Iran’s influence to first stabilize post-invasion Iraq before moving on to other targets in the “war on terror.”

But the neocons, and those around Vice President Cheney in particular, argued that such rapprochement with Iran would derail the U.S.’s momentum and mission. “Our fight against Iraq was only one battle in a long war,” Meyrav Wurmser, a fellow at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and wife of leading neocon David Wurmser, stated. “It would be ill-conceived to think that we can deal with Iraq alone… We must move on, and faster.” (Jim Lobe, Asia Times, 5/28/03)

As further justification for their call for more aggressive action, Cheney and others pointed to new revelations about Iran’s nuclear program. In February 2003, Iran admitted that it was building two uranium enrichment plants, although it had not yet enriched uranium. By November 2003 Iran was in discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over verifying its compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and stated it had suspended its enrichment program.

But the U.S. imperialists were determined to prevent Iran from having the bomb–not because they feared a preemptive Iranian strike on the U.S. or Israel, but because of the concern about “the constraining effect” a nuclear-armed Iran threatened “to impose upon U.S. strategy for the Greater Middle East,” as neocon Tom Donnelly put it. (Gareth Porter, Huffingtonpost.com, 9/8/07)

Iran’s rulers may want to acquire nuclear weapons, and they may have taken steps to do so. IAEA head Mohammed El Baradei, however, has stated that he’s found no evidence of any undeclared “source or special nuclear materials” or that such materials had ever been “used in furtherance of a military purpose.” (Farhang Jahanpour, oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk, June 2006)

In May 2003 the U.S. government secretly received a wide-ranging proposal from Iran’s leadership, perhaps motivated partly by fear that the U.S. was going to quickly turn its guns on Tehran. In exchange for an end to U.S. hostility, lifting of U.S. sanctions, and removal of Iran from the State Department’s list of countries supporting “terrorism,” the Iranian regime said it would meet the main U.S. demands and basically accommodate itself to a U.S.-dominated Middle East. Iran would also freeze its nuclear program and open it up to inspections that would guarantee it wasn’t making nuclear weapons. Iran also offered to support a democratic, non-religious government in Iraq, to cooperate fully in fighting al Qaeda and other groups, and to end its support for Hamas in Palestine. (Peter Galbraith, The NY Review of Books, 10/11/07)

The Bush regime summarily rejected Iran’s offer. The high-level dialogue between the U.S. and Iran over Iraq, Afghanistan, and other regional issues was abruptly shut down, and the neocons continued to push for regime change in Tehran.

The Fateful Decisions of May 2003

Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, fervent advocates of the war had predicted that Hussein’s overthrow would trigger upheaval, even the fall of the regime in Iran. But, in fact, U.S. actions ended up strengthening Iranian influence in Iraq and across the region–intensifying some of the very contradictions the U.S. was trying to solve by invading Iraq in the first place.

The Bush regime attempted to quickly and radically reshape Iraqi politics, economics, and society in the interests of U.S. imperialism. In mid-May 2003, less than a month after Bush declared “victory” in Iraq from the deck of an aircraft carrier, occupation chief Paul Bremer issued decrees banning Iraq’s Baath Party, disbanding Iraq’s army and police force, closing unprofitable state-run industries, and beginning the privatization of Iraq’s economy. Bremer also scuttled the proposed interim government in favor of a “Coalition Provisional Authority” (CPA) which would gradually unfold the political process and form a new Iraqi government under Bremer’s tight control.

Bush officials also calculated that Iraq’s Shi’ites (some 60 percent of the population) would be hostile to Iran. Some even predicted that backing the Iraqi Shi’a religious factions would serve U.S. aims. Neocon war architect David Wurmser wrote that “liberating the Shi’ite centers in Najaf and Karbala, with their clerics who reject the wilayat al-faqih [clerical rule], could allow Iraqi Shi’ites to challenge and perhaps fatally derail the Iranian revolution.” (Larry Everest, Oil, Power, and Empire, Chapter 9)

These were profound miscalculations. The Bush regime underestimated how the shock of the invasion and the dismantling of the Iraqi state would lift the lid on the deep contradictions roiling Iraq, including hatred of the U.S. and its ally Israel, and the growing strength of Islamic fundamentalism among both Sunnis and Shi’as. And it underestimated how the CPA’s handling of the political process and elections would raise tensions with Shi’as and strengthen Iran’s hand.

While the full scope of Iranian actions in U.S.-occupied Iraq is unclear, it appears that Iran has sought to prevent the re-emergence of a hostile Iraq on its western border, as well as extend its regional influence and strengthen the Islamist project. (And expanding its influence in Iraq as a means of increasing Tehran’s bargaining leverage with the U.S.) From 2003 to 2005, U.S. and Iranian actions in Iraq ran more or less parallel–even as the U.S. imperialists and Iran’s Islamic rulers had sharply antagonistic strategic objectives. During the invasion, Iraq’s Shi’a leadership (who have close ties to the Iranian regime) encouraged their followers to avoid confrontations with U.S. forces. Both the U.S. and the Iranians ended up supporting the same reactionary Kurdish and Shi’ite parties, neither wanted Sunni forces to return to power, and both wanted the establishment of a stable new Iraqi government.

But U.S.-Iranian tensions continued to develop. In June 2003, less than a month after coming to Iraq, Bremer complained that Iran was “meddling” in Iraq (this came from the mouth of an official representing a power that had just invaded this country!). Bremer singled out the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI, which was formed in Iran in the early 1980s) for threatening to boycott a Bremer-chosen interim Iraqi administration. (Financial Times, 6/10/03)

Tufts University Professor Vali Nasr, an expert on Iran, recently told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, “Iran’s policy since 2003 has been to provide funding, arms, and aid to several Shi’ite factions–including some in [current Prime Minister] Maliki’s coalition.” In the fall of 2004, during the run-up to the January 2005 Iraqi elections for a Transitional National Assembly engineered by the U.S., the CIA reported that Iran was spending $11 million a week to help the United Shi’a Platform, which ended up winning a majority of seats in the election. So while Iran wasn’t directly challenging the U.S. in Iraq, it was definitely increasing its leverage.

Larry Everest is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Larry Everest
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Larry Everest, RCP Publications, 2007
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7227

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Hezbollah, PKK and American Hypocrisy By Gwynne Dyer

Dandelion Salad

By Gwynne Dyer
ICH
10/31/07 “Arab News”

Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, attacked Israel’s northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks all across Lebanon that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, leveled a good deal of south Beirut, and killed around a thousand Lebanese civilians.

Washington, London, Ottawa and some other Western capitals insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response, and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks even when Israel launched a land invasion of southern Lebanon in early August, 2006. The operation only ended when Israeli casualties on the ground mounted rapidly and the Israeli government pulled its troops back.

So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern Turkey? More than forty Turkish civilians and soldiers have been killed in these attacks over the past two weeks, and a further eight Turkish soldiers were captured.

Well, it would be unreasonable for Turkey to bomb Iraq, where the PKK’s bases are, for any more than one month. It would be quite disproportionate for the Turkish Air Force to level more than a small part of Baghdad — say, 15,000 homes. Ideally, it should leave Baghdad alone and restrict itself to destroying some Kurdish-populated city in northern Iraq near Turkey’s own border. Moreover, when the Turks do invade Iraq on the ground, they should restrict themselves to the northern border strip where the PKK’s bases are.

What’s that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish lives are worth less than Israeli lives?

Never mind. At least the United States officially classes the PKK as a terrorist organization and refuses to let its officials have any contact with it. But what’s this? There is a parallel terrorist organization called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), essentially a branch office of the PKK, also based in northern Iraq, which carries out attacks into the adjacent Kurdish-populated region of Iran, and the United States does not condemn the PJAK? It even sends its officials to have friendly chats with the PJAK terrorists? How odd!

The PJAK’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, paid an unofficial visit to Washington last summer. One of his close associates, Biryar Gabar, claims to have “normal dialogue” with US officials, according to a report last Tuesday in the New York Times — and the American military spokesman in Baghdad, Cmdr. Scott Rye, issued a carefully structured nondenial saying that “The consensus is that US forces are not working with or advising the PJAK.”

Biryar Gabar also said that PJAK fighters have killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in the past three months. That’s a lot more people than the PKK have killed in Turkey in the same time, and yet neither Washington nor any other Western country has expressed sympathy for Iran. Could it be that Iranian lives are worth even less than Turkish lives?

And here’s something even more peculiar. Iran, like Turkey, is already shelling Kurdish villages on the Iraqi side of the frontier that it suspects of sheltering or supplying the PKK/PJAK. How come President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney simply ignore these actions, when they have been working hard for the past year to build a case for attacking Iran? As Pat Buchanan noted on MSNBC’s “Hardball” last week: “Cheney and Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going to have to meet. I don’t see how.”

The US military “assets” for an attack on Iran are all in place, so it can’t be that. Maybe the delay means that Bush and Cheney are having difficulty in persuading the military professionals to go along with this hare-brained scheme. Most senior American military officers see an attack on Iran as leading to inevitable failure and humiliation for the United States, and the last thing the White House wants is a rash of US generals resigning in protest when it orders the attack.

On the other hand, Bush is still the commander-in-chief, and how many American generals resigned when he committed the somewhat lesser folly of invading Iraq? Only one, and he did it very quietly.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Fresh protest by monks in Myanmar

Dandelion Salad

Al Jazeera
Wed., Oct 31, 2007

More than 100 Buddhist monks have marched and chanted in northern Myanmar for nearly an hour, in the first public demonstration since the government’s deadly crackdown last month on pro-democracy protesters, several monks say.

The monks in Pakokku on Wednesday shouted no slogans, but one monk told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based short-wave radio station and website run by dissident journalists, that it was a continuation of the protests last month.

The monk, who was not identified by name, told the radio station: “We walked around the town and chanted. … We are continuing our protest from last month as we have not yet achieved any of the demands we asked for.”

…

Continued…

h/t: ICH

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Organized Money Vs. Organized People by Cindy Sheehan

The Real Cindy Sheehan

by Cindy Sheehan
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
October 31, 2007

“At a time like this, scorching iron, not convincing argument, is needed.” Frederick Douglass

“Cindy’s campaign will prove that organized people can beat organized money.” Reverend Lennox Yearwood; founder of the Hip Hop Caucus

We are a nation that was created by “the rich, white, male property owners” and specifically for “the rich, white, male property owners.” Women and blacks, (who were counted as 3/5ths a person for representation purposes), were excluded from this self-proclaimed elitist establishment.

All throughout our history, however, our experience is imbued with the examples of courageous people who refused to be excluded and sacrificed everything for the human right to be heard.

From anti-slavery activism to the anti-Vietnam War movement, we have been blessed with individuals and groups who were willing to put their bodies on the line to support their rhetoric and oftentimes were murdered by the established order, which only seemed to always inflame the movements, not suppress them. The government always resisted the good that these movements tried to do and ultimately did do with dedicated sacrifices.

The establishment has forever tried to protect its status quo and personal wealth to the detriment of “we the people” who are the ones who suffer and sacrifice so the pigs of war can oink their way to the bank. With a fascist corporate media that supports the fascist corporate government, the voices of “we the people” are being silenced at an astonishing and frightening clip. In one very glaring and horribly tragic example, many people voted for George Bush in 2000, because they thought he was a “regular guy” and someone whom they would like to have a beer with. What a very unfunny irony as we have been constantly learning. The Bush family have been pro-fascist and anti-democratic all the way back to Grand-pappy Prescott. The media portrayed George as an “everyman” who “cutely” mangled our language with a “gee-whiz” smile that quickly became an “f’ y’all” smirk. This man who was foisted on us by the Corporatocracy has turned out to be worst disaster of our collective history.

Now, the Corporatocracy has anointed the presumptive nominees for the 2008 Presidential race—and it all comes down to a matter of money. Who has how much? Hillary has an obscene and immoral amount of mammon in her campaign chest and a staff of 500 who are running a very careful and well-modulated (except for her cackle) race that is designed to support the “by and for” privileged entitlement syndrome while claiming to be “groundbreaking.”

One of the hurdles that people believe that I have to overcome to beat Nancy Pelosi in California’s race is the fact that she has a bottomless well of cash and I do not. I challenge these people to look beyond the “green-colored” glasses of greed and help me dream of an innovative campaign that is fought with the truth and waged with old-fashioned shoe leather and hard work.

I would love my fellow Americans to dream, with me, of a country where basic human rights are valued over even a Constitution that has a compromised beginning but has been thoroughly trampled and desecrated by BushCo with the consent and help of Congress, Inc, led by Speaker Pelosi.

I have received support and encouragement from every corner of this country and, indeed, from all over the world. Our human family is watching the race in California’s 8th District very carefully. With the “fix” already being in presidential politics, our hope for peace, democracy and accountability rests in this important race. But I do not consider that it is only I running against Nancy Pelosi, it is “we the people” running against the established, murderous status quo. It is true grass-roots democracy running against the corporate fascists. It is peace and justice loving people running against the Bushes and Pelosis of the world who work fist in glove to suppress and enslave us.

It is essential that “we the people” prove that “organized people” can be victorious over “organized money.” It may be our last chance to do so.

The world is watching and cheering us on.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is a co-founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace and the author of two books: Not One More Mother’s Child and Dear President Bush. http://www.cindyforcongress.org/

h/t: ICH

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

New Cold War: Great Game for Supremacy in the New World Order? by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Global Research, October 31, 2007

Imperial Playground:

The Story of Iran in Recent History

PART 4:

There has been much talk in recent months of a return to the Cold War, as increasingly there is growing disparities and tensing relations between the West, namely the Anglo-Americans, and the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Union, as well as China. ‘Is the Cold War Back?’ as the headline of a Reuters article asked, stating, “Russia has revived its Soviet-era practice of continuous long-range bomber patrols, sending 14 aircraft on such missions in the latest in a series of moves apparently designed to show off Russia’s new-found assertiveness,” and that “Russia’s military is now receiving a major injection of cash to modernise ageing equipment — including new planes — after years of under-funding and neglect since the Soviet Union ceased to exist.”¹ Recent plans made public that the United States is building missile shields in Eastern European countries has sparked equal controversy over a revival of a Cold War. As the Austrian Defense Minister Norbert Darabos stated in late August of 2007, “That the United States are installing a defense shield in eastern Europe is a provocation in my view,” and that, “The U.S. has chosen the wrong path in my opinion. There is no point in building up a missile defense shield in Europe. That only unnecessarily rekindles old Cold War debates.”² The article continued in saying, “The United States plans to deploy elements of its shield — designed to intercept and destroy missiles from ‘rogue states’ like Iran and North Korea — in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia sees the initiative near its borders as a threat to its own security. On Tuesday Russia’s military chief told the Czech Republic that hosting the shield would be a ‘big mistake’. Darabos said he saw no danger from Iranian long range missiles and the United States should try for a different solution.”

Continue reading →

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Civilization Ends with a Shutdown of Human Concern. Are We There Already? By George Monbiot

Dandelion Salad

By George Monbiot
ICH
10/30/07 “The Guardian”

A powerful novel’s vision of a dystopian future shines a cold light on the dreadful consequences of our universal apathy

A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small Is Beautiful or even Walden. It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world.

Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road considers what would happen if the world lost its biosphere, and the only living creatures were humans, hunting for food among the dead wood and soot. Some years before the action begins, the protagonist hears the last birds passing over, “their half-muted crankings miles above where they circled the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl”. McCarthy makes no claim that this is likely to occur, but merely speculates about the consequences.

All pre-existing social codes soon collapse and are replaced with organized butchery, then chaotic, blundering horror. What else are the survivors to do? The only remaining resource is human. It is hard to see how this could happen during humanity’s time on earth, even by means of the nuclear winter McCarthy proposes. But his thought experiment exposes the one terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our dependence on biological production remains absolute. Civilization is just a russeting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change. Six weeks after finishing The Road, I remain haunted by it.

So when I read the UN’s new report on the state of the planet over the weekend, my mind kept snagging on a handful of figures. There were some bright spots – lead has been removed from petrol almost everywhere and sulphur emissions have been reduced in most rich nations – and plenty of gloom. But the issue that stopped me was production.

Crop production has improved over the past 20 years (from 1.8 tons per hectare in the 1980s to 2.5 tons today), but it has not kept up with population. “World cereal production per person peaked in the 1980s, and has since slowly decreased”. There will be roughly 9 billion people by 2050: feeding them and meeting the millennium development goal on hunger [halving the proportion of hungry people] would require a doubling of world food production. Unless we cut waste, overeating, biofuels and the consumption of meat, total demand for cereal crops could rise to three times the current level.

There are two limiting factors. One, mentioned only in passing in the report, is phosphate: it is not clear where future reserves might lie. The more immediate problem is water. “Meeting the millennium development goal on hunger will require doubling of water use by crops by 2050.” Where will it come from? “Water scarcity is already acute in many regions, and farming already takes the lion’s share of water withdrawn from streams and groundwater.” Ten per cent of the world’s major rivers no longer reach the sea all year round.

Buried on page 148, I found this statement. “If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress.” Wastage and deforestation are partly to blame, but the biggest cause of the coming droughts is climate change. Rainfall will decline most in the places in greatest need of water. So how, unless we engineer a sudden decline in carbon emissions, are we going to feed the world? How, in many countries, will we prevent the social collapse that failure will cause?

The stone drops into the pond and a second later it is smooth again. You will turn the page and carry on with your life. Last week we learned that climate change could eliminate half the world’s species; that 25 primate species are already slipping into extinction; that biological repositories of carbon are beginning to release it, decades ahead of schedule. But everyone is watching and waiting for everyone else to move. The unspoken universal thought is this: “If it were really so serious, surely someone would do something?”

On Saturday, for some light relief from the UN report (who says that environmentalists don’t know how to make whoopee?), I went to a meeting of roads protesters in Birmingham. They had come from all over the country, and between them they were contesting 18 new schemes: a fraction of the road projects the British government is now planning. The improvements to the climate change bill that Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, announced yesterday were welcome. But in every major energy sector – aviation, transport, power generation, house building, coal mining, oil exploration – the government is promoting policies that will increase emissions. How will it make the 60% cut that the bill enforces?

No one knows, but the probable answer is contained in the bill’s great get-out clause: carbon trading. If the government can’t achieve a 60% cut in the UK, it will pay other countries to do it on our behalf. But trading works only if the total global reduction we are trying to achieve is a small one. To prevent runaway climate change, we must cut the greater part — possibly almost all — of the world’s current emissions. Most of the nations with which the UK will trade will have to make major cuts of their own, on top of those they sell to us. Before long we will have to buy our credits from Mars and Jupiter. The only certain means of preventing runaway climate change is to cut emissions here and now.

Who will persuade us to act? However strong the opposition parties’ policies appear to be, they cannot be sustained unless the voters move behind them. We won’t be prompted by the media. The BBC drops Planet Relief for fear of breaching its impartiality guidelines: heaven forbid that it should come out against mass death. But it broadcasts a program – Top Gear – that puts a match to its guidelines every week, and now looks about as pertinent as the Black and White Minstrel Show.

The schedules are crammed with shows urging us to travel further, drive faster, build bigger, buy more, yet none of them are deemed to offend the rules, which really means that they don’t offend the interests of business or the pampered sensibilities of the Aga class. The media, driven by fear and advertising, are hopelessly biased towards the consumer economy and against the biosphere.

It seems to me that we are already pushing other people ahead of us down The Road. As the biosphere shrinks, McCarthy describes the collapse of the protagonist’s core beliefs. I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel before we decide that civilization is in trouble.

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. www.Monbiot.com

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Attacking Iran for Israel? By Ray McGovern

Dandelion Salad

By Ray McGovern
Consortium News
October 30, 2007

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is at her mushroom-cloud hyperbolic best, and this time Iran is the target.

Her claim last week that “the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world” is simply too much of a stretch.

To gauge someone’s reliability, one depends largely on prior experience. Sadly, Rice’s credibility suffers in comparison with that of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohammed ElBaradei, who insists there is no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iran.

If this sounds familiar, ElBaradei said the same thing about Iraq before it was attacked. But three days before the invasion, American nuclear expert Dick Cheney told NBC’s Tim Russert, “I think Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong.”

Here we go again. As in the case of Iraq, U.S. intelligence has been assiduously looking for evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran; but, alas, in vain.

Burned by the bogus “proof” adduced for Iraq—the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes—the administration has shied away from fabricating nuclear-related “evidence.”

Are Bush and Cheney again relying on the Rumsfeld dictum, that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?” There is a simpler answer.

Cat Out of the Bag

The Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Sallai Meridor, let the cat out of the bag while speaking at the American Jewish Committee luncheon on Oct. 22. In remarks paralleling those of Rice, Meridor said Iran is the chief threat to Israel.

Heavy on the chutzpah, he served gratuitous notice on Washington that effectively countering Iran’s nuclear ambitions will take a “united United States in this matter,” lest the Iranians conclude, “come January ’09, they have it their own way.”

Meridor stressed that “very little time” remained to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. How so?

Even were there to be a nuclear program hidden from the IAEA, no serious observer expects Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon much sooner than five years from now.

Truth be told, every other year since 1995 U.S. intelligence has been predicting that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in about five years.

It has become downright embarrassing — like a broken record, punctuated only by so-called “neo-conservatives” like James Woolsey, who last summer publicly warned that the U.S. may have no choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons program.

Woolsey, self-described “anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,” put it this way: “I’m afraid that within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they [the Iranians] could have the bomb.”

The day before Meridor’s unintentionally revealing remark, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated, “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

That remark followed closely on President George W. Bush’s apocalyptic warning of World War III, should Tehran acquire the knowledge to produce a nuclear weapon.

The Israelis appear convinced they have extracted a promise from Bush and Cheney that they will help Israel nip Iran’s nuclear program in the bud before they leave office.

Never mind that there is no evidence that the Iranian nuclear program is any more weapons-related than the one Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld persuaded President Gerald Ford to approve in 1976 for Westinghouse and General Electric to install for the Shah (price tag $6.4 billion).

With 200-300 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, the Israelis enjoy a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. They mean to keep that monopoly and are pressing for the U.S. to obliterate Iran’s fledgling nuclear program.

Anyone aware of Iran’s ability to retaliate realizes this would bring disaster to the whole region and beyond. But this has not stopped Cheney and Bush before.

The rationale is similar to that revealed by Philip Zelikow, confidant of Condoleezza Rice, former member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and later executive director of the 9/11 Commission. On Oct. 10, 2002, Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia:

“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat is—it’s the threat to Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name…the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.”

Harbinger?

The political offensive against Iran coalesced as George W. Bush began his second term, with Cheney out in front pressing for an attack on its nuclear-related facilities.

During a Jan. 20, 2005, interview with MSNBC, just hours before Bush’s second inauguration, Cheney put Iran “right at the top of the list of trouble spots,” and noted that negotiations and UN sanctions might fail to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Cheney then added with remarkable nonchalance:

“Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.”

Does this not sound like the so-called “Cheney plan” being widely discussed in the media today? An Israeli air attack; Iranian retaliation; Washington springing to the defense of its “ally” Israel?

A big fan of preemption, Cheney has done little to disguise his attraction to Israel’s penchant to preempt, such as Israel’s air strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981.

Ten years after the Osirak attack, then-Defense Secretary Cheney reportedly gave Israeli Maj. Gen. David Ivri, commander of the Israeli Air Force, a satellite photo of the Iraqi nuclear reactor destroyed by U.S.-built Israeli aircraft. On the photo Cheney penned, “Thanks for the outstanding job on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981.”

Nothing is known of Ivri’s response, but it is a safe bet it was along the lines of “we could not have done it without U.S. help.”

Indeed, though the U.S. officially condemned the attack (the Reagan administration was supporting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq at that point), the intelligence shared by the Pentagon with the Israelis made a major contribution to the success of the Israeli raid.

With Vice President Cheney calling the shots now, similar help may be forthcoming prior to any Israeli air attack on Iran.

It is no secret that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began to press for an early preemptive strike on Iran in 2003, claiming that Iran was likely to obtain a nuclear weapon much earlier than what U.S. intelligence estimated.

Sharon made a habit of bringing his own military adviser to brief Bush with aerial photos of Iranian nuclear-related installations.

More troubling still, in the fall of 2004, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and as Chair of the younger Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, made some startling comments to the Financial Times.

A master of discretion with the media, Scowcroft nonetheless saw fit to make public his conclusion that Sharon had Bush “mesmerized;” that he had our president “wrapped around his little finger.”

Needless to say, Scowcroft was immediately removed from the advisory board.

An Unstable Infatuation

George W. Bush first met Sharon in 1998, when the Texas governor was taken on a tour of the Middle East by Matthew Brooks, then executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Sharon was foreign minister and took Bush on a helicopter tour over the Israeli occupied territories.

An Aug. 3, 2006, McClatchy wire story by Ron Hutcheson quotes Matthew Brooks:

“If there’s a starting point for George W. Bush’s attachment to Israel, it’s the day in late 1998, when he stood on a hilltop where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and, with eyes brimming with tears, read aloud from his favorite hymn, ‘Amazing Grace.’ He was very emotional. It was a tear-filled experience. He brought Israel back home with him in his heart. I think he came away profoundly moved.”

Bush made gratuitous but revealing reference to that trip at the first meeting of his National Security Council on Jan. 30, 2001.

After announcing he would abandon the decades-long role of “honest broker” between Israelis and Palestinians and would tilt pronouncedly toward Israel, Bush said he would let Sharon resolve the dispute however he saw fit.

At that point he brought up his trip to Israel with the Republican Jewish Coalition and the flight over Palestinian camps, but there was no sense of concern for the lot of the Palestinians.

In Ron Suskind’s Price of Loyalty, then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who was at the NSC meeting, quotes Bush: “Looked real bad down there,” the president said with a frown. Then Bush said it was time to end America’s efforts in the region. “I don’t see much we can do over there at this point,” he said.

O’Neill also reported that Colin Powell, the newly minted but nominal secretary of state, was taken completely by surprise at this nonchalant jettisoning of longstanding policy.

Powell demurred, warning that this would unleash Sharon and “the consequences could be dire, especially for the Palestinians.” But according to O’Neill, Bush just shrugged, saying, “Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things.” O’Neill says that Powell seemed “startled.”

It is a safe bet that the vice president was in no way startled.

What Now?

The only thing that seems to be standing in the way of a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is foot-dragging by the U.S. military.

It seems likely that the senior military have told the president and Cheney: This time let us brief you on what to expect on Day 2, on Week 4, on Month 6—and on the many serious things Iran can do to Israel, and to us in Iraq and elsewhere.

CENTCOM commander Admiral William Fallon is reliably reported to have said, “We are not going to do Iran on my watch.” And in an online Q-and-A, award-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently spoke of a possible “revolt” if pilots were ordered to fly missions against Iran. She added:

“This is a little bit of hyperbole, but not much. Just look at what Gen. [George] Casey, the Army chief, has said…that the tempo of operations in Iraq would make it very hard for the military to respond to a major crisis elsewhere. Beside, it’s not the ‘war’ or ‘bombing’ part that’s difficult; it’s the morning after and all the days after that. Haven’t we learned that (again) from Iraq?”

How about Congress? Could it act as a brake on Bush and Cheney? Forget it.

If the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with its overflowing coffers supports an attack on Iran, so will most of our spineless lawmakers. Already, AIPAC has succeeded in preventing legislation that would have required the president to obtain advance authorization for an attack on Iran.

And for every Admiral Fallon, there is someone like the inimitable, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a close associate of James Woolsey and other “neo-cons.”

The air campaign “will be easy,” says McInerney, a Fox News pundit who was a rabid advocate of shock and awe over Iraq. “Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can’t penetrate,” he adds, and several hundred bombers, including stealth bombers, will be enough to do the trick:

“Forty-eight hours duration, hitting 2,500 aim points to take out their nuclear facilities, their air defense facilities, their air force, their navy, their Shahab-3 retaliatory missiles, and finally their command and control. And then let the Iranian people take their country back.”

And the rationale? Since it will be a hard sell to promote the idea, against all evidence, of an imminent threat that Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon, the White House PR machine is likely to focus on other evidence showing that Iran is supporting those “killing our troops in Iraq.”

The scary thing is that Cheney is more likely to use the McInerneys and Woolseys than the Fallons and Caseys in showing the president how easily it can be done.

Madness

It is not as though we have not had statesmen wise enough to warn us against foreign entanglements, and about those who have difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of the United States and those of other nations, even allies:

“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”
(George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

see

Turning truth on its head By Abbas Edalat and Mehrnaz Shahabi

Kucinich: Administration Needs To Heed Advice Of IAEA Director + Questions Bush’s Mental Health

What will World War IV cost? By Paul B. Farrell

Secret move to upgrade air base for Iran attack plans by Ian Bruce

US imposes unilateral sanctions on Iran: One step closer to war by Bill Van Auken

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Waterboarding is Torture… Period + US accused of torture by Ian Munro

Dandelion Salad

SWJ Blog
http://www.smallwarsjournal.com
Oct. 29, 2007

I’d like to digress from my usual analysis of insurgent strategy and tactics to speak out on an issue of grave importance to Small Wars Journal readers. We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.

Continue reading →

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Dems Philly Debate (videos; links)

Dandelion Salad CSPANJUNKIEdotORG

OCTOBER 30, 2007 MSNBC
DEMOCRATIC DEBATE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0DuX11AqsY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hf5fE_u5Aw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QliWPAwFgsE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcexS3BtlKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YzbsGouZl0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITcLTaVo0ec

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wx-SKiRq7Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4bsi09ibvE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3iuA7vrudA

***

Please vote before and after tonights MSNBC debate for Dennis Kucinich at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21454088/

h/t: Corporations_Ate_My_BABY!, Dennis Kucinich for President (Official)

and these folks, too:

Serina/ Seb*Strength through Peace Nature boy Kucinich For Prez Vegemini (Lauren) d.j.101,, a.k.a. The White Rabbit Irishlass Wants Strength Through Peace!

see

Dennis Kucinich Calls For Impeachment During The Debate + UFOs (videos)

October 31, 2007 by dandelionsalad

Dennis Kucinich Calls For Impeachment During The Debate + UFOs (videos) + Russert Uses the “Giggle Factor” to Dismiss Dennis by Manila Ryce

Dandelion Salad

Sorry the videos are no longer available.

CSPANJUNKIEdotORG

OCTOBER 30, 2007 MSNBC
DEMOCRATIC DEBATE
Added: October 30, 2007

Dennis Kucinich Admits Seeing U.F.O. Durring The Debate

14% of Amerikans have seen UFOs, that’s 42,000,000 people! ~ Lo

Gov. Richardson: Government Covering Up Evidence Of U.F.O.S

Richardson says he doesn’t believe in UFOs, though. ~ Lo

***

Please vote before and after tonights MSNBC debate for Dennis Kucinich at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21454088/

***

Russert Uses the “Giggle Factor” to Dismiss Dennis

By Manila Ryce
Published Wednesday, October 31st, 2007, 12:09 am

I am by no means a fan of Hillary, but Tim Russert focused so much of his time during the debate aggressively attacking Clinton that I thought he himself had secretly won the Republican nomination. However, Russert saved his most damning attack for Kucinich, who already has the unfair reputation of being a tin-foil hat candidate.

First off, what the hell do UFOs have to do with anything? The Onion put out a video titled: “Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters”. This issue is indeed bullshit. It’s a clear hit job which had nothing to do with American politics, and served the sole purpose of belittling a politician the corporate media does not want elected into office.

Secondly, ridiculing someone for seeing a UFO, then cutting them short when they try to answer the question honestly is outright shameful. Russert asked this question during a 30 second lightning round so he could get his laugh and move on. Dennis may have been able to properly clear up McClain’s colorful interpretation of the event, but was not allowed to elaborate. Russert’s intention to destroy Kucinich’s presidential aspirations was quite clear. There is a profound disdain towards underdogs amongst the network pundits. Is there any doubt that this bit of blood in the water will continue to feed that frenzy whenever Kucinich is mentioned on any network?

Third, UFOs are not spaceships. They would be categorized as identified flying objects if they were. Claiming you saw a UFO means by definition that you’re not completely sure what you saw. Therefor, UFOs undoubtedly do exist. They have been reported by pilots, astronauts, and cosmonauts for decades. Dennis tried to explain that distinction, but was talked-over by Russert.

Fourth, I haven’t read Shirley McClain’s book, but for the sake of argument I’ll just assume that Dennis believed the UFO to be a flying saucer. Is this as ridiculous as it sounds? The answer is quite simply, no. The conventional wisdom prevalent in our society simply persists due to ignorance. The most rational minds in the world believe in extraterrestrial life, and I’ll explain why.

The Drake Equation, developed in the 60’s and notably supported by Carl Sagan, mathematically estimated that millions of alien civilizations exist in the universe (around 10,000 in the Milky Way alone) and that thousands of those civilizations are probably capable of contacting Earth. More skeptical scientists put the number much lower, but no serious astronomer completely dismisses the possibility that life has developed elsewhere. Now that extrasolar planetary systems are known to be quite common, the odds of life existing elsewhere are simply too great to deny any longer. In fact, you’d be ridiculed in the scientific community to claim that aliens don’t exist. Scientists who do insist that we are alone are also in the same minority as those who defend creationism or say global warming is a myth.

Peter Sturrock, emeritus professor of physics and applied physics at Stanford, has personally stated that people should overcome the “giggle factor” that normally accompanies a study of UFOs. To a mature and educated crowd, Kucinich’s sighting would not be dismissed as something outside the realm of possibility. What does Tim Russert or any of the other candidates know about astrophysics or astrobiology? Evidently nothing, yet that didn’t stop them from laughing at what they didn’t understand. After all, the debate itself was a hoax, meant for entertainment purposes only.

We laughed at President Carter for also seeing a UFO. He was derided as a kook, not just because of the UFO sighting, but because of his equally insane views on alternative energy, civil rights, foreign relations, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and human rights in general. Corporate conservative arrogance was prevalent in society then and it allowed for the ignorant to taunt the enlightened. A reversal of Carter’s progressive policies took place with Reagan and have continued to this very day. We now know that Carter wasn’t crazy. It was America and his political opposition who were irrational.

None of the Democrats on that stage last night, with the exception of Dennis, are worthy of being called progressives. By the time the Democratic Party realizes that Kucinich was also right, despite his uncommon idiosyncrasies, our country won’t exist anymore. Democrats have regressed into conservatives in their ignorance, arrogance, and greed. Another “loony” UFO watcher is exactly what we need in the White House. Hell, Kucinich could be an alien himself for all I care. Perhaps we should outsource our political positions to extraterrestrials. Intelligent life on Earth seems to be in short supply.

It should also be noted that rather than dodge the question, or deny the incident completely, Kucinich told the truth. He could have just as easily turned it around on McClain and said he had no idea what she was talking about. Well, that concludes my rant on that one question. Impeachment was actually the overall message Dennis was trying to get across. The reason being that he will invoke a privilege of the House to force a vote on the issue of impeachment. Contact your members of congress and tell them to vote against the motion to table the resolution, which would kill the bill.

see

Dems Philly Debate (videos; links)

Are They Out There? By David H. Levy

	The Brief Origins of… on How Debs Became A Socialist, b…
	The Brief Origins of… on The Brief Origins of May Day,…
	The Brief Origins of… on The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack…
	The Brief Origins of… on The Haymarket Riot: “It is a S…
	The Brief Origins of… on Plutocracy I-V (must-see)

Dandelion Salad

Month: October 2007

The Neocons’ Crazy Dream of World War III by Rodrigue Tremblay

El-Baradei says No deviation in Iran’s nuclears (video)

U.S. to build military base in Lebanon (video)

The New York Times and Bush’s threat of World War III by Bill Van Auken

It’s the End of the World as We know it and I feel fine #22 (video)

Bush Regime Targets Iran After 9/11 by Larry Everest

Hezbollah, PKK and American Hypocrisy By Gwynne Dyer

Fresh protest by monks in Myanmar

Organized Money Vs. Organized People by Cindy Sheehan

New Cold War: Great Game for Supremacy in the New World Order? by Andrew Gavin Marshall

Civilization Ends with a Shutdown of Human Concern. Are We There Already? By George Monbiot

Attacking Iran for Israel? By Ray McGovern

Waterboarding is Torture… Period + US accused of torture by Ian Munro

Dems Philly Debate (videos; links)

Dennis Kucinich Calls For Impeachment During The Debate + UFOs (videos) + Russert Uses the “Giggle Factor” to Dismiss Dennis by Manila Ryce