Oct 26, 2007
FEMA apparently held a press conference where they had their own employees posing as the press and didn’t allow the actual press to attend or ask questions. E.J. Dionne from the Washington Post weighs in.
Worst Person
And the winner is….Dana Perino. Runners up the Concord NH police and Glenn Beck.
see
F.E.M.A. Held “Fake Press” Conference On California Fires (video)
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Atlantic Free Press
Friday, 26 October 2007
As self-professed champion of the Constitution presidential candidate Ron Paul has missed a monumental opportunity to educate Americans about the criminal behavior of Congress in violating their oath of office. Even more important, he has not taken advantage of his 15 minutes of fame to promote the nation’s first-time use of what the Founders gave us in the Constitution in case the public lost confidence in the federal government – the Article V convention option.
Paul clearly recognizes the many failures of the federal government. Maybe as a member of Congress he just does not have the courage to confess that he too has been part of a long-standing refusal by Congress to obey Article V of the Constitution. Why don’t passionate Paul supporters see his lack of integrity, guts and consistency?
Support for using the Article V convention option should be a litmus test for any presidential candidate, which is reasonable considering that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt supported it.
First, let’s be clear that Paul has no problem in seeing the need for constitutional amendments. For example, he has been a proponent of an amendment that would not allow children born in the USA from illegal parents to become citizens. Second, he has maintained throughout his career his love and respect for our Constitution. Third, he has carefully refused to publicly state his views on the provision in Article V of the Constitution for the use of a convention of state delegates to make proposed amendments as the alternative to Congress proposing amendments (the only procedure used for 220 years). Fourth, he has made no attempt to pass any law that would modify, clarify or expand the single requirement now in Article V for a convention. How can a champion of the Constitution remain so silent on Congress’ refusal to honor over 500 applications from all 50 states for a convention that more than satisfies the one and only requirement in Article V?
Anyone who studies the history of attempts to get the first Article V convention will learn that it has consistently been opposed by people and groups on the political left and right that are part of the nation’s elitist political status quo establishment. So here is Ron Paul, supposedly an honest non-elitist political maverick that does not fit into the political establishment, yet too cowardly to stand up to the political establishment by backing the use of the Article V convention option. Paul has had virtually no real impact on what Congress has done, yet he does not support the convention option that would circumvent the power of Congress. What does he have to lose?
Of course, if all the passionate supporters of Paul would spend more time investigating all his congressional activities, they would find a lot more to seriously question. A chief example is that he has routinely inserted earmarks for pork spending to make constituents in his district happy. Then he hides behind his votes against the spending bills containing his earmark spending items. But those earmarks remain in those spending bills passed by Congress. Tell me, is that really virtuous behavior? His earmarks increase federal activities and spending. Many have been for projects by the Army Corps of Engineers, many to funnel money to the Texas Department of Transportation (including one for repairs to the Galveston Trolley system), and one for Texas A&M University/Galveston Campus to convert the Texas Clipper for educational purposes; maybe this was the $30 million for the Texas Maritime Academy to refurbish a ship. And then there was the $8 million for the marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 million to pay for research into shrimp fishing. This seems like pretty conventional Republican politics. This year Paul has requested about $400 million worth of federal spending for his district – not exactly consistent with Paul’s rhetoric on reducing federal spending and taxing. His duty is to inform his constituents about the wrongness of earmarks, not capitulate to their requests.
There is still time for Paul to search his soul and find the courage to either to support use of the Article V convention as the route to achieving deep political reforms that Congress itself will never have the integrity to propose through constitutional amendments, or to step up and make the case for an amendment that would remove the never-used Article V convention option.
Here is some irony: With our thoroughly corrupt and rigged political system Ron Paul has absolutely zero chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee, regardless of his high level of grassroots support. Odd then that Paul has not supported the one and only route to profoundly changing this awful political system. It is the method our Founders gave us with the Article V convention option. Indeed, his lack of support for using the Article V convention option seems to makes him a part of the political establishment, which is consistent with his recent announcement that if he does not get the Republican nomination he will not run as a third party candidate.
Joel S. Hirschhorn can be reached through www.delusionaldemocracy.com and is a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention at www.foavc.org.
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.
see
Open Letter to Ron Paul by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Why Has Congress Failed Americans? by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Ron Paul and His Congressional Earmarks (video)
Ron Paul- full list of Congressional votes (from 1.12.07 thru 5.24.07)
On The Issues: Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul by Lo
Oct. 26, 2007
Today I had my day in court.
On February 17th, I was arrested after saying “The American people voted to end the war in Iraq” as I was walking out of the Senate gallery. The Senate was debating the non-binding resolution to admonish Bush’s “troop surge”, and I felt obligated to speak truth to power in order to remind America’s elected officials that they were largely ignoring the will of the People.
So, after months and months of delays, I finally got my jury trial. My lawyer argued that I really didn’t disrupt anything because I did not interrupt any Senators speaking. He did his best to convey that I did not intend to disrupt the business the Senate. However, the jury did not take long to find me guilty for Disruption of Congress.
I was a little disappointed, but I must say that I did not regret what I had done in the Senate on that day in February… the Senators needed to hear those words. In fact, the good thing about my trial is that the prosecution was forced to repeat my words, “The American people voted to end the war in Iraq” over and over again… those words are forever in the court record!
Anyway, the prosecutor told the judge I should be put on probation and should serve 5 days in jail.
I got a chance to speak to the judge, and I told her that although I did not want to go to jail, I respected that I was found guilty of a crime that required her to punish me. I also promised her that I would not speak in the Senate again until I was elected by the people of Missouri to the United States Senate.
The judge said she would hold me to my promise that I would only speak in the Senate when I am an elected official. She also said it seemed clear to her that I broke the law, but it wasn’t really much of a violation, and that she felt the decision could have gone either way depending on the particular jury. In the end, she fined me the maximum fine of $500 and told me that if I ever came back to her court under similar charges, she would make sure I served REAL jail time if I were convicted.
This blog is pretty much done, but I do want to say that a whole bunch of my friends were there to support me… CODEPINK women and our allies are the greatest people in earth!!! The good news in all this is that the judge said that my “stay away” order would be vacated when my fine was paid… and it literally blew me away when Ann Wright came up to me with the entire amount of the fine for which all of my great friends had pitched in to pay. So, we marched right up to the finance office and paid the fine!
So, now I am off to give a presentation at a conference in Vermont tomorrow, then will continue traveling the east coast lecturing to college students in my Transforming Traditional Politics tour.
Keep the faith…
Peace & Freedom
Midge
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.
Their homes in Lebanon’s Nahr al Bared camp lie in ruins. For many there’s little more than rubble.
The media has been banned from entering the camp, but Aljazeera has obtained the first pictures from inside since the refugees were allowed to return. Zeina Khodr has our exclusive report.
see
For more episodes and other LinkTV programs:http://www.linktv.org/originals As the California fires rage and millions of Americans are displaced, the US media mobilized, devoting almost all their coverage to the event. But what about coverage of a more serious displacement issue: Iraqi refugees? Watch as we explore the US coverage vs. world coverage of these two very different groups of refugees.
Sources: ABC News, U.S.; NBC News, U.S.; Press TV, Iran; CCTV, China.
see
By Julio Godoy
Global Research, October 26, 2007
IPS
‘Non-lethal Weapons’ Tackle Protests Against Globalisation
PARIS, Oct 26 (IPS) – Several European governments are arming their police forces with a new range of “non-lethal weapons” to put down protests against globalisation, and among immigrants.
Governments in France, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and several other countries have ordered such weapons, or are about to, even though human rights groups are warning that the supposed “non-lethality” of the guns is a myth, and that they actually can kill people.
The most widespread “non-lethal weapon” is the stun gun Taser, that discharges electric shocks. Technically that should only paralyse the person shot at, and cause intense pain.
But in a report released Sep. 27, the human rights groups Amnesty International (AI) affirms that the stun gun might have caused “more than 290 deaths of individuals in the USA and Canada struck by police Tasers” between June 2001 and Sep. 30 this year.
“While (AI) does not reach conclusions regarding the role of the Taser in each case, it believes the deaths underscore the need for thorough, independent inquiries into their use and effects,” the report says.
The number of deaths caused by Taser stun weapons might actually be higher than claimed by Amnesty International. In the most recent case earlier this month, Canadian police killed Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant, who had been screaming and throwing things around at Vancouver airport, with a Taser stun gun.
Despite such incidents, former German police officials publicly praise use of Taser stun guns against demonstrators as harmless yet efficient. So far in Germany, only special police commandos are equipped with such guns.
Friedhelm Krueger-Sprengel, former official at the ministry of defence, says “the non-lethal weapons give police and army forces wider latitude in action.”
Krueger-Sprengel told IPS that “security forces can act against a rebellious population without pulling the weapons immediately. With the Taser guns for instance, police and army officers can impose themselves more easily, in the sense that their power has a larger spectrum, so that rebellious people cannot react against them.”
Rainer Wendt, director at the German Police Officers Union, says “the police need weapons that do not kill, but which hurt and cause wounds, in order to control demonstrations. Otherwise, we are declaring open season on our police officers in battles against violent demonstrators.”
A rationale for non-lethal weapons was presented by Kay Nehm, former German attorney general, in July 2006 at a conference on ‘Future Security’ in Karlsruhe city, some 550 km southwest of Berlin.
“The necessary assessment (on home security) begins with the changing social underlying circumstances, namely the economic upheavals associated with globalisation, and the smaller financial possibilities of governments and municipalities to meet the growing prosperity discrepancies between the have and have-nots in our society,” Nehm said at that conference.
According to Nehm, these social and economic upheavals, which others associate with imposition of neo-liberal economic policies, “will surely lead to more social sacrifices and difficulties, which represent new risks of fractures within society, and are the natural hotbed for radical, extremist, terrorist challenges.”
Such challenges can only be mastered by security forces with non-lethal weapons, which do not cause a blood bath at demonstrations, Nehm said.
Thomas Gebauer, of the German non-governmental organisation Medico International, interprets these justifications for non-lethal weapons as a symbol of the growing repressive character of European and North American governments, and of their readiness to violently suppress protests against the spreading social injustice.
“The development of such weapons aims at securing the growing social inequality, at ensuring that the poor do not have a chance of showing their discontent against the rich,” Gebauer told IPS. “The aim of these weapons is to guarantee social borders, to install perennial control of movements, to restrict democracy.”
In France, a Chinese immigrant woman was seriously wounded Sep. 1 after police agents shot at her with Taser pistols. The police officers tried to question the woman, an irregular kitchen worker at a Japanese restaurant in Paris. As she resisted identification, they first shot at her with their stun weapons.
According to the official version, the woman did not react to the electric from the stun gun, and tried to attack the police officers, who then pulled their standard guns and shot her.
About 3,000 French police officers are equipped with Taser stun guns. But following the rebellion of immigrant youth during the autumn of 2005 in the suburbs of Paris, municipal authorities have been demanding authorisation from the central government to equip more of the police with such non-lethal weapons.
On Oct. 16, the ministry of the interior in Paris announced that it will amend regulations to allow local community police to be equipped with stun guns.
In Switzerland, the National Council (the national parliament) voted in early October to equip immigration police forces with the Taser stun gun for use against irregular immigrants who may resist deportation.
Some of the police themselves have resisted the move. Roger Schneeberger, general secretary of the Swiss Cantonal Police Directors, said at a press conference Oct. 3 that “it suffices to use handcuffs and chains during deportation of immigrants.”
Other non-lethal weapons being discussed in Europe are laser pistols that cause temporary blindness, bean bags, which are small bags shot from barrels containing up to 150 small shots, gases, sticky foams, heat emitting screens, and high-tone sirens audible only to people under a certain age. (END/2007)
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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Warning
.
This video contains images depicting the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Selected Episode
Oct. 25, 2007
For more episodes and other Link TV programs:
http://www.linktv.org/originalseries
“Rice Announces New Sanctions Against Iran,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“What’s Behind the Sanctions?” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Turkey Attacks PKK,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Libya Hosts Darfur Peace Talks,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Israel Cuts Power & Food Supplies to Gaza,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Olmert Explains Plans for Two States,” IBA TV, Israel
“Bhutto Accuses Pakistani Government of Assassination Attempt,” Al-Alam TV, Iran
“Combating Drugs in Iraq,” Al-Iraqiya TV, Iraq
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
Infowars.com
2 hr 19 min 29 sec – Oct 25, 2007
See here: http://infowars.net/articles/october2007/241007Endgame.htm
Please support Alex Jones by subscribing to prisonplanet.tv and/or purchasing a DVD copy of ENDGAME.
A high-definition version of this film is available for download at prisonplanet.tv along many other Alex Jones documentaries.
This film has been made available for free distribution.
By John Nichols
After Downing Street
The Nation
Those echoes that Americans are hearing in the noisy-and-getting-noisier debate about Iran are from 2002 and 2003, when members of the current administration were busy spinning the fantasy that the United States needed to attack Iraq.
George “Uranium From Africa” Bush sure sounds like he wants to attack Iran. Just last week, the president said, “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from (obtaining) the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
Dick “Greeted As Liberators” Cheney sure sounds like he wants to attack Iran. This week, the vice president declared: “Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza “Mushroom Clouds” Rice sure sounds like she wants to attack Iran. “Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon…” Rice said on Thursday, as she announced drastic new sanctions against the country that serious analysts say poses little threat to its neighbors and no real threat to the U.S.
And, as in 2002 and early 2003, the most rational response is coming from Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who says, “After the lies and deception used to lead us to war in Iraq, the belligerent Bush Administration cannot be given leeway with statements that suggest a preemptive attack on Iran is necessary,” says Kucinich, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nod who deserves a much better hearing that he has been afforded so far by the media and Democratic power brokers. “We are systematically destroying every available route to restoring peace and security in the Middle East,” he adds.
Kucinich may be running for the White House, but his message is most relevant to Capitol Hill. “Congress,” he says, “must take back its exclusive authority to declare war from the Bush Administration.”
He’s right.
But being right is not always enough in tenuous times.
Being heard is what matters.
It could well be that the American experiment’s best hope lies in the remote prospect that, having been proven right in 2002 and 2003, it will be Kucinich’s counsel — as opposed to that of Bush, Cheney and Rice — that is heeded in this new moment of peril.
The point here is not a political one. This is not about whether Kucinich becomes president, or the Democratic nominee, or even a strong contender in his race with cautious Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This is about the most fundamental question in a democracy: At a time when talk of war is growing louder, will we hear a real debate or merely the exaggerated echoes of those who have never gotten anything right?
The answer could well be measured by the extent to which Dennis Kucinich and those who stood with him in 2002 and 2003 are afforded the forums that their record of having been able to cut through the spin of the past should afford them in the present.
h/t: Irishlass Wants Strength Through Peace!
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see
Dandelion SaladBy Khaled Amayreh
ICH
10/25/07 “Al-Ahram”
Israel’s regard for Palestinians can be summed up in how it imprisons and terrorises them, writes Khaled Amayreh in the occupied West Bank
A few weeks ahead of the upcoming “peace conference” in Annapolis, Maryland, Israel has been displaying its “goodwill” towards the Palestinians. At the notorious Kitziot Prison, a real concentration camp minus gas chambers, crack Israeli soldiers have been ganging up on helpless and fettered Palestinian prisoners, shooting, beating and humiliating them under largely concocted pretexts.
On Monday 22 October, in the quiet hours before dawn, hundreds of soldiers from two notoriously brutal army units, code-named Nachshon and Massada, stormed the prisoner camp for what was described as a “routine inspection”. During these routine inspections, inmates are forced to take off their clothes and are subject to every imaginable form of humiliation. Whoever protests is normally placed in open-ended solitary confinement.
Rudely awoken, Kitziot’s estimated 1,200 inmates, already fed-up with draconian punitive measures, decided to resist their tormentors. According to one prisoner leader, this resistance had not been planned, coming as an instinctive defensive reflex to “obvious provocation”.
Some prisoner leaders pleaded with the detention camp’s administration to wait until morning to carry out the impromptu inspection. The administration’s response came in the form of bullets, sonic grenades (which the Israelis call stun grenades), tear-gas and smoke bombs.
“I don’t know what a Nazi concentration camp looked like, but I imagine that Kitziot looked very much like a concentration camp yesterday,” said Abu Ahmed, a detainee from Hebron, who has been languishing at the facility for nine months without charge or trial.
Abu Ahmed, who was speaking via a smuggled mobile phone, described the assault on the prisoners as “planned and premeditated”, calling Israeli claims that the soldiers were only defending themselves against rioters “obscene lies meant to cover up a criminal act”.
The pogrom-like attack on the helpless Kitziot prisoners lasted for more than two hours as a huge cloud of smoke hovered over the area. When the dust settled, there were hundreds of prisoners who suffered significant to serious wounds, mostly in the head and upper body. At least nine inmates were severely injured, including Mohamed Sati Al-Ashkar, who was hit with a live round in the head, causing massive brain haemorrhage.
On 23 October, Al-Ashkar was pronounced clinically dead.
As is usual in such circumstances, the Israeli media and government spokespersons switched to damage-control mode, disseminating disinformation about what happened while barring reporters access to the notorious facility.
Even serious newspapers like Haaretz played a role parroting army propaganda that “violent clashes” took place between the prisoners and guards and that only “non-lethal methods” were used to disperse the protesting inmates.
The Israeli army has so far refused to reveal what it was that killed Al-Ashkar, whether a sonic bomb that hit him on the head, whether he was beaten with a club, or whether he was hit by plastic-coated bullets. Usually the Israeli army waits several days before issuing statements on such cases, seemingly to allow any protest sentiment to die down.
The murder at Kitziot is only a small leitmotif of the ferocious onslaught of repression being visited on Palestinians in the occupied territories, where Israeli death squads continue to roam and strike. This happens despite — or partly as a result of — close security coordination between President Mahmoud Abbas’s “forces” and the Israeli occupation army.
The low-key reaction by the Abbas regime is already raising eyebrows in the West Bank, with many seeing the Kitziot assault and general terror under occupation as a means of “softening up” the Palestinians ahead of Annapolis for a peace deal that fails to meet minimum Palestinian expectations.
Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, Israel continues its slow-motion genocide of the occupied territory’s estimated 1.5 million persecuted inhabitants. “Gaza is being sacrificed, is being decapitated but slowly, while the Arabs are watching ‘Babel Hara’ and the world is preoccupied with Iran and a peace conference in America,” said one unemployed worker who used to work in construction in Israel, alluding to a popular Syrian TV series screened during the Holy month of Ramadan.
Another man, a plasterer, also unemployed because Israel won’t allow raw materials, such as cement, into the Strip, insists on more daring language. “I don’t know why the world doesn’t call things by their real name. Here the Jews are starving us to death. Gaza is a large concentration camp. It is very much like Auschwitz. Yes, there are no gas chambers and crematoria. But people are dying for lack of food and lack of medicine.
“And I am 100 per cent sure that hadn’t it been for the world media and international public opinion, or whatever is left of it, Israel would have disposed of us a long, long time ago,” the worker added.
Earlier this week, Gazan hospitals faced an acute and critical crisis when they ran out of nitrous oxide, vital for operations. Eventually, an SOS by Gazan doctors embarrassed Israeli leaders, who decided to allow, for the time being, passage of a small amount of the gas, which Gazan doctors say will last only a few weeks.
When talking to foreign media, Israeli leaders and spokespersons claim the hermetic blockade of Gaza is a reaction to Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in mid-June, following sporadic clashes with Fatah. A few weeks ago, Israel declared Gaza a “hostile entity”, as if the occupied coastal strip of land where poverty, despair and occupation violence define daily life had been treated as a friendly entity before.
Finally, Israel doesn’t want to take sole responsibility for exterminating the people of Gaza. The Israeli government has been inciting the powerful Jewish lobby, which deeply influences American policies and politics, to pressure Egypt to seal its border with Gaza so that the concentration camp can be perfected.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly
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.
by Chris Floyd
Guest columnist
Glenn Greenwald’s Blog
Salon
Thursday October 25, 2007
This is the sound of one shoe dropping:
“Ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran, the United States on Thursday designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferater of weapons of mass destruction and its elite Qods force a supporter of terrorism. In total, Washington slapped sanctions on more than 20 Iranian companies, major banks and individuals, as well as the Defense Ministry, in a bid to pressure Tehran to halt its nuclear program and curb its ‘terrorist’ activities.”
The other shoe, when it falls, will sound something like this:
“At least 26 U.S. troops are reported dead after an assault on their small base near the Iranian border this morning, said Gen. David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq. While details are still sketchy at the moment, Gen. Petraeus said it was “almost certain” that the attackers were units of Iran’s elite Qods force, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. “President Bush is now consulting his national security team, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “When we have all the facts, then the president will decide upon the appropriate response. For now, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those killed in this horrible sneak attack.”
Administration officials have been warning of possible “revenge attacks” for months after President Bush formally designated the Qods force and the IRGC as terrorist organizations in October. Just last Thursday, Bush cited a “flood” of intelligence reports indicating “an aggressive build-up of Iranian firepower” along key points of the Iran-Iraq border. The president said the intelligence was copious, credible and disturbing: “Our guys tell me their hair is on fire, reading this stuff.”
In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute the next day, Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a stern warning to Tehran: “Armed retaliation would be an act of madness on the part of Iran’s tyrannical leaders. But we are dealing with an irrational enemy, so we must be prepared for anything. And let me assure you, and the mullahs: we are prepared.”
Denouncing what he called “a new Pearl Harbor,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced a measure this morning that would grant formal Senate approval to “whatever action the Commander-in-Chief deems necessary to protect our troops, and our nation, from Iranian aggression.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., signaled his support for “something along those lines,” but said he would hold off bringing it to the Senate floor “until we see what the president has to tell us.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that she too would act as soon as the president had made his decision, adding, “Today there are no Democrats or Republicans; there are only Americans united in our grief and our resolve.”
Look for it, get yourself ready — it’s coming.
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.
By Rand Clifford
crossposted at Thomas Paine’s Corner
10/25/07
Agriculturalists versus Industrialists
The King Hemp series began with: “America was just starting to crawl, and hemp was such an essential crop that farmers could be fined for not growing it—even jailed during periods of shortage in the mid 1760s.” A struggle for the heart of America was begun, and to this day remains the real reason for American exile of The King, cannabis hemp.
By Rand Clifford
crossposted at Thomas Paine’s Corner
10/1/07
Imagine…YOU are the legend, William Randolph Hearst. You unleash an old Mexican slang term—an alien, scary and macabre-sounding word, then hype it relentlessly in your national chain of newspapers…creating a monster to threaten civilization with plagues of rape and murder, mass insanity and boundless violence! Domestic terrorism…you must kill competition, protect pretty profits standing in your vast acreage of Mexican timber, pulp the trees into paper with the new environmentally-obscene sulfuric acid process patented by DuPont. His tentacles diddle the very heart of American politics….
Dandelion Salad 