Thanks to everyone for voting! ~ Lo
Thanks to Danielle
There is a CSpan poll and Kucinich is winning.
http://www.capitalnews.org/
Day: November 17, 2007
Suffer the Children By Hind al-Safar
By Hind al-Safar in Baghdad
11/16/07 “ICR” No. 237, 16-Nov-07
Number of children dying higher than when the country was under sanctions.
Child mortality in Iraq has spiralled because of the tense security situation, deteriorating health services and lack of medical supplies, say experts.
According to a report released in May 2007 by aid agency Save the Children, “Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150 per cent since 1990, more than any other country.”
The report, entitled State of the World’s Mothers 2007, said that some 122,000 Iraqi children – the equivalent of one in eight – died in 2005, before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of the deaths were among newborn babies in their first month of life.
“Even before the latest war, Iraqi mothers and children were facing a grave humanitarian crisis caused by years of repression, conflict and external sanctions,” said the report.
“Since 2003, electricity shortages, insufficient clean water, deteriorating health services and soaring inflation have worsened already difficult living conditions.”
The study listed pneumonia and diarrhea as major killers of children in Iraq, together accounting for over 30 per cent of child deaths.
“Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality following the 2003 invasion of Iraq at 37 per cent,” it said.
In the capital of Baghdad, there are four paediatric hospitals and three gynaecological hospitals, as well as individual children’s wards in other medical institutions.
The city’s central paediatric hospital is in the capital’s Islam neighbourhood – a volatile area which is hard for families and medical staff to reach.
The hospitals fall short in providing quality care because they do not have enough medical supplies or staff – who, in many cases, have fled to other countries.
Experts draw parallels between the dire state of Iraq’s health care system today and the way it was when the country was under sanctions during the 1990s, when there was a similar limited supply of drugs and other medical resources.
The UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions against Iraq in 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and these continued until 2003.
In 2000, the UN children’s agency UNICEF published a survey which showed the mortality rate among Iraqi children under five had more than doubled in the government-controlled south and centre of Iraq during the sanctions.
At the time, Anupama Rao Singh, a senior UNICEF official, said in an interview with Reuters that around half a million children under the age of five had died in Iraq since the international embargo was imposed.
“In absolute terms, we estimate that perhaps about half a million children under five years of age have died, who ordinarily would not have died had the decline in mortality that was prevalent over the 70s and the 80s continued through the 90s,” she said.
Mohammed Zahraw, a paediatrician with the ministry of health’s inspector-general’s office, said that similar threats to children’s health exist today – and that these are compounded by the lack of security which now prevails in Iraq.
“In the past [infant deaths] were caused by the economic sanctions and the lack of medicine and medical supplies. The same problem exists now, in addition to the deteriorating security situation. This is particularly true in Baghdad, where it’s difficult to access hospitals,” he said.
Fahima Salman, the head of the inspector-general’s monitoring force, said the primary reason for high infant mortality in Iraq is a lack of drugs and medical supplies.
The inspector-general’s office at the health ministry is tasked with inspecting hospitals and reports back to the ministry on the sanitation, performances and needs of health facilities.
Salman said that poor security and a lack of transport meant that it was hard to transfer drugs and supplies to hospitals and clinics. This means that families of patients usually buy basic medicine, such as antibiotics and hydrocortisone, on the black market and bring the medicine to the hospital or clinic.
“We, as the inspector general’s office, visit health facilities to determine the level of shortages and note the difficulties,” said Salman. “We try to provide what we can…but we still face major challenges.”
Sometimes, drug deliveries fail to reach the ministry of health’s warehouses, and go missing en route.
Amal Abdul-Amir, a paediatrician at the Yarmook Teaching Hospital in Baghdad’s Karkh area, said that infants were also dying because paediatricians and gynaecologists had fled the country in droves, resulting in a lack of skilled staff.
“People are turning to midwives who do not necessarily have experience with births or emergency cases,” she explained. “This is causing the number of infant mortalities to rise.”
In hospitals throughout the country, it is not uncommon to hear the wails of grieving mothers, such as 30-year-old Zaineb Mohammed, whose two-month-old baby died after she failed to get him to hospital in time.
She told IWPR that en route to the hospital in the impoverished Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, her family was repeatedly stopped at roadblocks and checkpoints erected to combat security problems there.
The delays caused the child’s condition to worsen and when they finally arrived there weren’t paediatric specialists to treat her.
Mohammed has vowed not to have another child. “I don’t think that I can bear to lose another baby to the poor health and public services in Iraq,” she said.
Hind al-Safar is an IWPR contributor in Baghdad.
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.
The Palestinian path to peace does not go via Annapolis By Jonathan Steele + MIR: Annapolis: Dead on Arrival (video)
Dandelion Salad
By Jonathan Steele
ICH
11/16/07 “The Guardian“
World opinion is still on the side of the people of the occupied territories. But as long as they are divided, talks are futile
As the United States-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, approaches, the key question is what follows when it fails. Fiasco is looming, so what do the Palestinians do next? In their decades-long bid for justice, they have already tried everything.
The “armed struggle” of the 1970s, with its publicity-seeking aircraft hijackings, won global attention but no major concessions. The suicide bombings of the 1990s hardened Israeli attitudes and lost the Palestinian struggle much of its legitimacy. The Qassam rockets which continue to be fired from Gaza inflict damage and occasional death, but bring disproportionate retribution from the Israeli airforce.
Taking the political path has been only marginally more productive. When the Palestinian leadership in the 1980s made the historic compromise of accepting Israel’s implantation on 78% of pre-1948 “mandate Palestine”, they were rewarded with no equivalent Israeli recognition that Palestinians should control the remaining land.
There was a flicker of optimism in the dying months of the Clinton administration, when a peace deal was almost brokered between Yasser Arafat and the Ehud Barak government. Although it failed, the mood among most Israelis and Palestinians favoured a two-state solution. The line was: “Everyone knows what the outlines of a peace deal are. It just needs political decisions at the top.” But Ariel Sharon’s government put paid to that, and the Israeli definition of what constitutes a viable Palestinian state has continued to diminish.
Today no major party is willing to contemplate a reasonable concept of Palestinian independence. Instead, the ancient settlement project of Zionist dreams moves forward unabated, with the outrage of the ever-expanding wall and the annexation of east Jerusalem and its hinterland. According to the latest figures, Palestinians only control 54% of the West Bank. The rest has been taken by Israeli settlements. Meanwhile 570 closures – concrete blocks, mounds of earth and checkpoints – divide the remaining Palestinian land into mini-enclaves of anger and indignity.
Attempting to convince successive US administrations that pressure needs to be put on Israel has also not worked for the Palestinians. Even Bill Clinton confined himself to sweet-talking. He never wielded any muscle, let alone hinted at sanctions for Israel’s serial non-compliance with UN resolutions.
To expect anything tougher from George Bush is futile. Indeed, it is hard to fathom what his people are up to by proposing the Annapolis meeting. The president shows no real energy or engagement on the issue, compared with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or even his father. Does he seriously think he can get an agreement, and have one foreign policy success after the disaster of Iraq? Even if Mahmoud Abbas were to sign a meaningful piece of paper at Annapolis, the Palestinian president lacks the moral or political authority of Arafat. He is more likely to be denounced than praised by most Palestinians.
Efforts to send a message to Washington and Israel through the ballot box have also yielded the Palestinians no benefits. When voters elected Hamas two years ago in the hope of showing the world their frustration, the Israeli and US response was first to punish them and then to try to split them by pampering the defeated Fatah movement diplomatically and giving it arms. Had Fatah been rewarded with substantial Israeli concessions on lifting roadblocks and releasing prisoners, undermining Hamas might have worked. The opposite has happened. If Abbas thinks he can win new elections on the basis of an Annapolis deal, he will be disappointed. Everything suggests Palestinian voters would give Hamas more support in the West Bank than they have already.
So what options do the Palestinians have? Could non-violent resistance on a mass scale make a difference, as it did in the intifada, which started 20 years ago next month? Mary King’s new study, A Quiet Revolution, provides a timely reminder of what they achieved through courageous and disciplined mobilisation. A former activist of the US civil rights movement and now a professor of peace and conflict studies, she explains how Palestinians shook off the Israeli military occupation through a sustained campaign of boycotts and defiance. The template was South Africans’ mass democratic movement against apartheid. Of course, like Pretoria, the Israeli government highlighted the occasional Molotov cocktails and sporadic stone-throwing to demonise the entire movement as violent, but the core of the protests was unarmed civil disobedience.
The first intifada was more impressive than the much-touted “colour revolutions” of recent years, or even of the east European uprisings of 1989, with the exception of Solidarity in Poland. It did not receive US or other foreign government funding. It was not an affair of a few days against a weak and divided regime. It required months of brave activity and the endurance of mass arrests and heavy repression from opponents like defence minister Yitzhak “break their bones” Rabin who, unlike the crumbling Communist elites of 1989 or the administrations of Milosevic, Shevardnadze, and Kuchma, had no compunction in repeatedly using force.
Palestinian success in getting the Israelis to abandon their military administration of the land seized in 1967 and accept the Oslo arrangements for Palestinian self-rule did not, alas, lead to peace or a final settlement. Most Palestinians now deride Oslo. But it was a victory, and a key stage in their struggle.
Should non-violent resistance be revived on a large scale? What would the focus be? Mass sit-ins at the major roadblocks with crowds pushing through? Marches to the sites where the wall is going up? Or should the target of popular protest first be the Palestinians’ own elites? In recent months nothing has been more damaging to the Palestinian cause than the violence between Fatah and Hamas, egged on by the Israeli government, the Bush administration and a supine European Union.
The central requirement for any new Palestinian initiative is Palestinian unity. Don’t let opponents divide you. Resist international flattery. Ignore the instinct for revenge. The jury of international public opinion is still on the side of the Palestinians’ demand for justice. It may not have achieved as much as it could have, but it matters, and needs to be preserved.
j.steele@guardian.co.uk
© Guardian News and Media
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.
***
MIR: Annapolis – Dead on Arrival
Producer Jamal Dajani reports from the streets of Palestine. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators prepare for the Peace Conference in Annapolis. Why is the public on both sides not excited? Does the US have a hidden agenda?
Answers to these questions and more on Link TV’s Mosaic Intelligence Report.
For more visit http://www.linktv.org
see
AIDS origin (video) + Who Says Africans/Haitians Gave AIDS to the World? by Jafrikayiti + 6 min video
replaced video Apr. 2, 2014
1 hr 29 min 49 sec – 29 Jan 2007
AllDocumentaries.org Aug 18, 2013
“One Of The Greatest Human Tragedies Of Our Time”
This video on the possible origins of the HIV pandemic is a “Must Watch”.
It needs to seen by as many people as possible.
The U.S. Congress Legislates Genocide Of The Mind By Jeff Knaebel
By Jeff Knaebel
11/17/07 “ICH”
Introduction.
There are two mutually exclusive means of livelihood. One is to work and earn from production and exchange. This has been called the “economic means.” The second is to seize the labor product of others through force and violence. This has been called the “political means.” Sociologist Franz Oppenheimer defined the State as the Organization of the Political Means. It is the systemization of the predatory process within a given territory.
· “There are two distinct classes of men… those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon taxes.” ~ Thomas Paine
· “The State enjoys a monopoly not only on the lawful use of violence, but on the power to define the extent of its authority.” ~ Butler Shaffer, 17 March 2006
· “You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it.” ~ Isabel Paterson, New York Herald Tribune
“Thought Crimes,” HR 1955 Passed With 404 Votes.
Submit, Ye Citizens, Silently to State Murder.
.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955, titled the
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.
The full text is available at www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=110-1955. It was passed with 404 votes in favor.
A close reading within an historical context – keeping especially in mind the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and Presidential Executive Orders, pursuant to which the government has engaged in massive surveillance of its own citizens, as well as detentions, extraordinary renditions, assassinations, and torture – leads me to the following conclusions:
· This is a “Thought Crime” bill of the type so often discussed in an Orwellian context.
· It specifically targets the civilian population of the United States.
· It defines “Violent Radicalization” as promoting any belief system that the government considers to be extremist.
· “Homegrown Terrorism” and “Violent Radicalization” are defined as thought crimes.
· Since the bill does not provide a specific definition of extremist belief system, it will be whatever the government at any given time deems it to be.
A few extracts of the Bill are presented below to show you its tone or “flavor.”
“(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system… to advance political, religious, or social change.”
SECTION 899B. FINDINGS.
“(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”
“(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions.”
Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. This will be an institution affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security. It will study and determine how to detain thought criminals.
THIS LEGISLATION ENDS THE POSSIBILITY OF A CULTURE OF REASON.
It is an attempt at legislative lobotomy of conscience. It aims to eviscerate ethical sensibilities of an entire culture.
Having usurped the power of war and peace, life and death, the Corporatocracy now bludgeons even the thought of speaking for conscience. This is State murder of the mind.
It is just too awesomely obscene for words. It exceeds not only the scope of my vocabulary, but my imagination as well.
The minions and hired agents of politicians are free to murder, rape and pillage on government hire using our money, but to imagine alternatives to them and the degraded, psychopathic political “leaders” who design and perpetrate these atrocities is legislated as a thought crime!
This is the legislated, politically promulgated end of man as a thinking, self-directed being. Surely this must be the outer limit of “positive law,” that is, statutory laws passed by “Lawmakers.”
It further entrenches the Power Elite as separate from and above their “subjects.” It clearly demonstrates the paranoid delusions of the Establishment, pursuant to which it legislates a massive defense mechanism to protect itself from the populace that it subjugates.
I use these terms deliberately, because the so-called freedom of the vote has turned out to be a big con game. It is only the “freedom” to choose one set of thieves over the other. The blue suits or the red suits… all of them manufactured suits of the corporations.
Following in the train of this legislation will doubtless be internal travel documents, body tracking by subcutaneous RFID chips, neighborhood snoops and spies, rewards granted for turning in politically incorrect thought criminals, mass civilian detention centers – in short, the whole totalitarian control mechanism that we associate with the SS, KGB and other code words of criminal regimes. There will be “re-programming / rehabilitation” centers to correct errant free thinkers.
The infrastructure for this – especially mental conditioning – is essentially already in place. We have become accustomed to birth certificate (the government’s initial warehouse receipt), driving license, social security number, business and professional licensing, the Corporate Warfare State control of media, and recently announced, Google’s navigation to your house by keying telephone number into the web. Take note that the Department of Homeland Security already has more than 750,000 persons on its watch list.
For a glimpse of past as prologue, read Solzhenitsyn.
Who Will Be Thought Police and Under What Standards?
Who will define radical thought, and by what standards? For example, how about the reported millions who believe that 911 was an inside job, citing a mass of evidence from eye witnesses, physicists, engineers, and recorded statements such as “We pulled it,” essentially a confession by the building’s owner of the planned demolition of Building 7?
Will the writings of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire be thought crimes? Will this very essay be a thought crime?
What about Operation Northwoods, pursuant to which the Joint Chiefs of the United States planned for innocent people to be shot on American streets, for boats carrying passengers to be sunk on the high seas, for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched within the country, and for other depraved acts conceived in the minds of government-hired psychopaths? Previously top secret documents about this were released on 18 November 1997 and can be researched at www.wikipedia.org. Evidently, members of the Establishment will be permitted to engage in thought crime.
Soon enough, we will all be killing each other, and the statement of Mohandas Gandhi will be borne out: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
Will thinking about cleansing the national soul of our atrocities – of Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, the advanced plans underway to nuke Iran, the crimes of Blackwater murders, the government’s domestic coercion and violence – be “Thought Crimes?”
Will it be thought crime to conceive of a domestic Truth and Reconciliation Commission pursuant to which high government officials are brought to book for crimes against humanity?
Will it be “radicalization” to think of alternatives to a government of, by, and for the Corporatocracy, which accumulates its vast wealth through the blood money of endless war?
What about imagination-consideration of a non-coercive society of free individuals acting in voluntary cooperation, what is commonly referred to as anarchy?
Would Thomas Jefferson be liable for saying, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it …”
Will it be radical to conceive of preventing the Cheney-Bush cabal from launching WWIII and the incineration of earth through a false flag operation against Iran?
Would the likes of Mohandas Gandhi be jailed for saying, as he did, “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless and corrupt.”
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF OUR GOVERNMENT
BECAUSE WE PAY FOR IT
It has taken me too many years – and too much income tax – to come to the awful realization that these “public servants” are only hired mouthpieces and puppets of the Money Powers who operate behind the scenes to orchestrate war, to coordinate the Military Industrial Complex, the Homeland Security Complex, the NGO Help-The-Poor Complex, the “Third World Corporate Development” Complex. In short, the Exploitation Complex.
The roaring inside me is about the self-disgust at living by the whims of Nice Government Men and their intellectual and financial pimps – men who, for just one example, can force starvation upon Indian farmers by their money printing press maneuvers to save their own hides from the overreach of blind greed. Men like those in Goldman Sachs who have the power to bail out their own companies and pay billions in bonuses while manipulating currencies such that basic food staples become priced out of reach of the rural Indian poor.
Let our excuse for the sorry state in which we find ourselves be not ignorance, for history is quite clear to those who would study. I quote founding father James Madison, “History records that money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible, to maintain their control over governments, by controlling money and its issuance.”
A more honest excuse would be our own greed and laziness. The quick buck. Buy now, pay later. If you want to stop the war, quit taxes.
Statement of Conscientious Objection
HR 1955 as recently passed by the House of Representatives is in effect a Thought Crime Prevention Bill. This action simply stops my mind. It cannot be absorbed. This ultimate Police State freezes my imagination.
This newest version of draconian legislation on thought control is where Jeff Knaebel says enough is enough. Speaking truth to Power, I say – I am not your puppet. I declare my self-ownership. Come and get me if you wish. If you wish to own my body, you will have to imprison it. I am breaking the paper chains by which I have allowed you to enslave me.
You see, it is all a mind game. The government is powerless before our non-cooperation. Of course, although an abstraction, it is a heavily armed abstraction. I suggest that nonviolent civil disobedience has proven to be the most effective method of regaining control of our lives. There would be significant loss of life, but much less than with an armed struggle. It has succeeded many times, in many places.
Our thoughts arise from within us, not from or through someone else. It is not possible for someone else to come between us and our minds.
Is murder an act that involves the human conscience? Can any other hear the voice of my inner conscience? Then, how can any such other claim the power to “represent” me in choosing to kill? How can such other “represent” me in determining which of my thoughts is criminal?
To say, or even to imply, that these people “represent” me cannot be described as an obscenity. It is an absurdity. Really, I should laugh. Instead it generates a roaring inside me – the inner roar of a man who would be free.
Earlier Voices of Dissent
The following draws upon three writers of the mid 19th Century – Wendell Phillips, Lysander Spooner and Herbert Spencer.
Spooner. The right of rebelling against what I think a bad government is as much my right as it is anyone’s. It is nothing but tyranny to require of me an oath to support the constitution, as a condition for my being allowed the ordinary privilege of getting my living in the way I choose.
Phillips. The act of voting serves to delegate authority to an agent, and what one does by an agent, he does himself. Every voter, therefore, is bound to see, before voting, whether he could himself honestly swear to support the constitution.
Spooner. There can be no law but natural law. No human enactments can overturn the natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Legitimate governments must rest on consent. This contract cannot lawfully authorize government to destroy or take from men their natural rights, for natural rights are inalienable, and can no more be surrendered to government – which is but an association of individuals – than to a single individual. A majority, however large, cannot agree to a contract that violates the natural rights of any person whatsoever. Such a contract is unlawful void, and has no moral sanction.
Spooner. The right forcibly to resist unjust law is inalienable. The constant fear of an uprising by the people is the only thing that keeps rulers from becoming tyrannical. The right and physical power of the people to resist injustice are the only real securities that any people can have for their liberties.
Spooner. The whole American revolution turned upon, and in theory established, the right of each and every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the government under which he lived. This principle was asserted as a natural right of all men, at all times, and under all circumstances.
Spooner. A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world. Any infringement of them is a crime, whether committed by one man or by millions – whether committed by one man calling himself a robber (or any other name indicating his true character), or by millions calling themselves a government.
THIS IS MY PLACE OF “LIVE FREE OR DIE.”
One cannot deal with this except to speak out and be willing to put his life on the line. One must resist this legislation and this government, or else surrender his humanity and become a dead thing.
This is the place where the soles of my feet meet the path of Liberty. This is where Jeff Knaebel refuses to renew his “permission to live” identification documents pursuant to which Big Brother tracks him like an owned domestic animal. Any situation in which I am not free to leave means that my presence is by coercion or threat of coercion.
If one cannot leave some “place” except by permission of the “owners” (passport), then he is a slave. To learn more about issues of expatriation and “man without a country,” visit my website at www.statelessfreedom.org. I have chosen loneliness, insecurity, and occasional bouts of fear over the guilt of blood on my hands from payment of taxes to finance murder.
My body is not the property of the U.S. Government. I will challenge the U.S. Government for ownership of my body, with my body itself. My mind will be forever free.
I was never the property even of my biological father, leave aside the absurdly stupid abstract concept of Nations — bounded by arbitrary lines drawn on maps — across which opposing armies of blood relations gun down the other.
I did not ask for US citizenship, and I will not accept its rules even if forced upon me. Suppose my birth under the system of Pol Pot or Idi Amin and their killing fields. Does this birth require me to uphold a regime of murder? Then, why would my birth in USA require me to uphold the murdering regime of Cheney-Bush?
Any situation in which I am not free to leave means that my presence is by coercion or threat of coercion. If I cannot leave some “place” except by permission of the “owners” (passport), then I am a slave.
The US State does not own the land called America, and it does not own anybody who was born there or lives there.
No bureaucrat has the right to define who I am — and the murder of which other person I may be forced to finance — by his stamp upon some arbitrary piece of paper. I served the USA in Vietnam during that unconscionable war. I was too young, ignorant and public school brainwashed to know better. And even at that, had they not a grip on me by paper chain of birth certificate, SSN and draft card, I would never have served.
I belong to none, other than Almighty Creation.
I claim my freedom to respect the lives of others, as I would be respected. Freedom to do no harm, and to eschew violence. Freedom to express compassion in action. Freedom to support life. Freedom not to finance murder.
No other can hear the voice of my conscience, let alone “represent” it, or speak for it. My conscience will be muffled by no person and by no law. Nor will I ever knowingly aggress against another.
Right to Ignore the State
Herbert Spencer. Right to Ignore the State: Even in its most equitable form, it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil. Unless the right to ignore the sate is recognized, its acts must be essentially criminal.
The State is an organization that controls territory through force of arms. It claims ownership of all property and even ownership of its citizen’s lives.
The laws of States are not about ethics, but about the application of political power to control their subjects and to make them perform in ways which serve political interests.
It is self evident that if I ignore the State, relinquishing its protection and refusing to pay for its support, I in no way infringe upon the liberty of others, for I am passive and not aggressive. It is equally self evident that one cannot be compelled to continue support of a political corporation without breach of moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes, which is a taking of property against the person’s will, and thus an infringement upon his rights.
A person cannot be coerced into political combination without breach of the law of equal freedom. However, he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach, and he has therefore a right to withdraw.
An obvious implication is that the ethics of government, originally identical with the ethics of war, must remain akin to them, and can diverge only as warlike activities and preparations become less. – End Spencer –
No contract can be entered by a fresh young child. If my father is a thief, I don’t have to obey.
I entered no contract with the United States after reaching the age of majority because I would not knowingly enter into a contract with murderers. I obeyed due to coercion.
THE RIGHT OF NONVIOLENCE IS A UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT
This Requires Conscientious Objection To Mandatory Citizenship
Great minds writing in great Universal Charters of mankind have said violence arises in the mind of man, and that men have right to life and liberty.
Yet, mankind continues to institutionalize the most bestial and degraded aspects of his nature through Sate promulgation of the three great poisons of greed, hatred and delusion.
These great charters drawn by great men do not grant a man the right not to finance the murdering State. This shows to me that these great men were part of the Political Establishment.
To grant citizens the Universal Right not to finance war would put them out of business.
I would not choose to live in a violent neighborhood where local thugs and criminals were ruling the neighborhood by force and terrorizing the populace. I would not choose to associate myself with murderers. Yet, in the present system of the institutionalized Corporate Warfare State, we have mass murderers, thieves and criminals in charge of the future of all life on earth who are claiming to represent me.
“The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy [a façade of moral legitimacy], and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer affords to indulge.” ~ Butler Shaffer, June 2003.
The great job of Man on this earth is to alleviate suffering. How does financing the organized crime of the State help?
How did we get here? Break the frame. Get out of the box. Don’t be bound by the frame the dark forces have made.
It Is Man’s Duty To Love.
Imagination is more powerful than knowledge or thinking. By imagination we can create a new world. But, we must let go of the greed which hold us bound in shackles. We must move to the freedom of love.
It now must be of the “tough love” variety. We must see clearly and face bravely the reality of what we continue to create for ourselves. We must take up tough ethical positions.
We have proved again and again, over spans of millennia, that any kind of violent revolution will only turn the wheel of violence another revolution, around and around.
If we will but cease to destroy, we may live. We cannot negotiate with melting glaciers. Perhaps we can negotiate with the storms of insatiable greed and desire raging within our own minds. Perhaps we can come out of our addiction to more, more and faster, faster.
What is the money calculation of love? There is no solution at the level of political economy. Former questions in the realms of philosophy and abstract ethics have now become questions of survival. We must reach for a higher psycho-spiritual level.
To issue from the workshops of Nature, a thing must be worthy of Nature’s loving care and most painstaking art, exercised with the patience of billions of years of biological evolution. Should it not be worthy of my respect, at least? In fact, it is worthy of my love, and I would not destroy it, nor would I finance a government to destroy it.
“All works of life are significant – yea, marvelous, surpassing and inimitable. Life busies itself not with useless trifles. Men’s fevers are transmutable. The fever of war may be transmuted into a fever of peace. The fever of hoarding wealth may be transmuted into a fever of hoarding love. Such is the alchemy of the Spirit.” ~ Mirdad
The revolution we must undertake to save ourselves is a revolution within our own minds toward loving kindness, truth, and respect for life.
I maintain that it is the right of any individual person to reject and renounce a government which violates his moral conscience. I maintain that it is my personal right, in this very body, here and now, to ignore the State, and to refuse participation in its actions which violate humanity and life itself. I also declare that the same is my intention insofar as refusal to pay direct tax to any nation-state. There can be no treason if one’s first loyalty is to humanity and to life itself. Human life is above Nation-State. Personal conscience and individual moral sovereignty is above State sovereignty. How can the question of treason arise when one refuses to murder innocent women and children? He who claims self ownership can never commit treason because the State cannot own him. He is not the property of the State.
“Once it is conceded that any man or body of men have any right to make laws of their own invention – and compel other men to obey them – then every vestige of man’s natural and rightful liberty is denied.” ~ Lysander Spooner
I have not entered into a contract granting the United States Government any authority over my life whatsoever.
To those who would accept a legislated statutory slavery, I say — may your shackles bind you without too much pain. May you go quietly into oblivion, and may you not burden me with the memory that you ever stood a watch with me on Spaceship Earth.
(If you are interested in further exploration of personal statelessness, stop by and visit www.statelessfreedom.org .)
Jeff Knaebel [send him mail] is an expatriate American domiciled in India since 1995. He formerly practiced as a registered professional engineer, having been trained at Cornell Univ. and the Colorado School of Mines.
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
Mentes Peligrosas: Confession of an American Thought Criminal By Jason Miller
It’s Time to Fire Washington! by Debbie Lewis (Homegrown Terrorism)
One Nation Under Siege – What if everything you were ever told was a lie? (vid; over 18 only)
Cut Israel Off By Charley Reese
By Charley Reese
ICH
11/16/07 “Antiwar”
It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress’ craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.
America’s strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government’s slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.
Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it’s the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don’t want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.
Israel’s goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.
Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were “abandoned property.”
Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.
It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America’s slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.
The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaeda, don’t hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself.
Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world’s leading military powers. It doesn’t need American aid. It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America’s interests.
Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it’s time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.
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.
Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or more US casualties in Iraq War By Mike Whitney
By Mike Whitney
11/17/07 “ICH”
The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.
CBS’s Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and “submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense”. After 4 months they received a document which showed–that between 1995 and 2007–there were 2,200 suicides among “active duty” soldiers.
Baloney.
The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the “suicide epidemic”. Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans’ suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone “THERE WERE AT LEAST 6,256 AMONG THOSE WHO SERVED IN THE ARMED FORCES. THAT’S 120 EACH AND EVERY WEEK IN JUST ONE YEAR.”
That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that “multiple-tours of duty” in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.
If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the “official” 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.
That’s right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that–as yet–has no legal or moral justification.
CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, “There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.”
Maybe Katz right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it’s perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it’s normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it’s normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm’s-way for their country.
It’s not normal; it’s is a pandemic—an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one’s friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.
The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of Bush’s war. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.
Check it out the video at: CBS News “Suicide Epidemic among Veterans” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml
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.
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Taking Liberties (video; links)
October 20, 2007
This is Taking liberties and is about the evil Tony Blair. Now you will see what he has done to us and the UK. This is in eleven parts because, it is a long documentary film.
This is a good documentary but there may be some bits that you’re not interested in. Just ignore those parts if you want.
The last two parts are even shorter because it would be silly to have a video for a few seconds.
for more information, see here http://www.noliberties.com/ and there is a forum there as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQv0cF_in3Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Ex_KaiXi8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZvgZSqDkKs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20frO8GMpJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnKhQuIMmdA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwimdEazxrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLk1bvyuKI8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy72ap7iyCQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14_rTziMS0g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V1cRjryFuE
BadGal§al
The right to Protest, Right to Freedom of Speech. Right to Privacy. Right not to be detained without charge, Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Prohibition from Torture. TAKING LIBERTIES will reveal how these six central pillars of liberty have been systematically destroyed by New Labour, and the freedoms of the British people stolen from under their noses amidst a climate of fear created by the media and government itself.
TAKING LIBERTIES uncovers the stories the government don’t want you to hear – so ridiculous you will laugh, so ultimately terrifying you will want to take action. Teenage sisters detained for 36 hours for a peaceful protest; an RAF war veteran arrested for wearing an anti-Bush and Blair T-shirt; an innocent man shot in a police raid; and a man held under house arrest for two years, after being found innocent in court. Ordinary law-abiding citizens being punished for exercising their ‘rights’ – rights that have been fought for over centuries, and which seem to have been extinguished in a decade.
h/t: Scruffy: Enemy Combatant, Number One Insurgent, Coalition for Truth UK, BadGal§al
Kucinich: Dennis on Health Care; Peak Oil & Elizabeth on Ron Paul; 9-11 Truth (video)
This is our uncut interview with presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, discussing health care, UFOs, and Peak Oil. Afterwards, his wife Elizabeth joins us to discuss reopening the investigation of 9/11 and the possibility that Dennis might run on a ticket with Ron Paul.
More Nuggets From A Nut House by Prof. Edward S. Herman
by Prof. Edward S. Herman
Global Research, November 17, 2007
Z Magazine
It is amusing to contrast the September 24, 2007 treatment of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger with Bollinger’s September 16, 2005 treatment of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and the treatment of the Shah of Iran in 1955 by Columbia University President Grayson Kirk (and by the media). As we all know, after having invited Ahmandinejad to speak at Columbia, Bollinger proceeded to give the guest a nasty, pedantic, and misinformed attack, calling him a “cruel dictator” with a “mind of evil.” But in 2005, Bollinger welcomed Pakistan President Musharraf with a warm accolade, as “a leader of global importance…[whose] contribution to Pakistan’s economic turnaround and the international fight against terror remain remarkable—it is rare that we have a leader of his stature at campus” (“Columbia University has standing ovation for President,” press release, General Pervez Musharraf, President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, September 16, 2005).
In February 1955, the Shah of Iran was a guest at Columbia receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and he, like Musharraf, was greeted deferentially by Grayson Kirk and gave a well-received speech featuring an accolade to the U.S. “policy of peace backed by strength.” The New York Times also noted that the Shah was “impressed by the desire of Americans for a secure and enduring peace” (“Shah Praises U.S. For Peace Policy,” NYT, February 5, 1955). This was, of course, just a few months after the United States had overthrown the elected government of Guatemala via a proxy army and had installed a regime of permanent terror.
In the real world, both Musharraf and the Shah of Iran fit comfortably the category of “cruel dictator,” whereas Ahmandinejad does not. Musharraf came to power in a coup and has ruled by decree ever since, in the interim carrying out quite a few massacres of his own people. The Shah was installed as ruler by the United States in a coup in 1953 (only 18 months before his Doctor of Laws degree award—or reward—at Columbia University) and from the very beginning displayed his cruelty and intention to rule by dictatorial authority. Ahmandinejad won a contested election and has limited personal power.
The Shah’s torture chambers were famous, modernized with the help of his CIA and Israeli advisers and probably topped anything the Iranian regime has engaged in since the Shah’s departure. The crucial difference between the winners of Columbia presidents’ accolades and denunciations is obviously that the one denounced is a declared U.S. enemy and target, whereas the good guys served U.S. interests. As in so many cases of leaders who serve, any little defects like torture or dictatorial rule somehow fail to get noticed by the presidents of Columbia (or by the mainstream media), whereas the lesser defects of the leader of the target state arouses furious indignation as the Columbia president displays his deep concern for human rights and democracy.
It is a little awkward for Bollinger that since Musharraf’s 2005 visit to Columbia he has fallen out of complete favor and there is talk of ousting this “leader of stature” who has not shaped up adequately. But if Mus- harraf came to Columbia again, we can be sure that Bollinger would find the proper nuance for a leader who was of somewhat diminished stature, but still a U.S. instrument.
The Shah was even encouraged to pursue nuclear energy, just as the target Iran of today is being threatened for trying to do what the Shah was allowed to do, by dictate of the ruler of the world. In short, the double standard is comprehensive and even funny in its crudity, but the United States and its propaganda system prevent large numbers from seeing this and laughing the responsible char- latans off the stage.
Israel Bombing Syria “Fuels Debate”
Almost daily the title and framing of news articles puts on clear display the internalized bias of propaganda system journalism. A nice illustration is the September 22, 2007 article in the New York Times by Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger, “Raid on Syria Fuels Debate on Weapons.” The continuation page headline is “Israeli Raid Renews Debate on Nuclear Arms and Syria.” Then in a box we see this thought: “Washington worries, Is Damascus trying to build or buy an arsenal?” Now if Syria had bombed Israel to knock out some of its threatening weaponry, it is obvious that the Times headline would be much larger and the focus would be on the bombing attack itself, not on any “debate” that might ensue about nuclear arms. This would be considered an act of war and very bad business and deserving of retaliatory action (which would surely ensue). There would be no box that says, “Damascus worries, Is Israel trying to build an arsenal?” And there would be an indignant editorial denouncing Syrian aggression violating the UN charter.
What this reflects is the New York Times’s journalistic principles. That is, Israel has a right to an arsenal, whereas any Syrian arsenal and any Syrian effort that might enable it to defend itself is highly debatable. Furthermore, Israel shares aggression rights with the United States, so that if it attacks Syria that is not in itself bad or even problematic, whereas if Syria or Iran or any non-ally bombs another country, aids dissident or resistance movements like Hezbollah, or intervenes anywhere outside their own territory, this is very bad business. These principles are so well internalized that people like Mazzetti and Sanger probably don’t even realize that they are pretty brazen propagandists.
An old favorite of mine that beautifully illustrates the New York Times’s structured bias and normalization of Israeli state terrorism is an article by Joel Greenberg on “Israel Rethinks Interrogation of Arabs” (NYT, August, 14, 1993). This was a period in which Israel’s torture of Palestinians was running at 400-500 victims per month, a point mentioned rather matter-of-factly deep in Greenberg’s article. But instead of the article featuring the torture itself—and it was alone in even mentioning the subject and giving the estimated number of victims—it is framed around Israeli thoughts on whether such “interrogation” procedures are helpful. The torture “fuels debate.” It isn’t worthy of an article on the torture regime itself. The Times has always steered clear of reporting on Israeli torture and, in a notorious case, when the London Times Insight team produced a lengthy study of Israeli torture in 1977, the New York Times refused to pick up the story (also fended off by the Washington Post) and mentioned it first in an article featuring the Israeli rebuttal to the torture charges (which were not spelled out).
Anti-Semitism as a Function of Israeli State Terrorism
The point was made years ago by Alexander Cockburn, but retains its value as a virtual social science law: that the more ruthlesslessly Israel behaves toward its untermenschen the more furious the outcries of growing anti-Semitism. This law is easily explained: when Israel escalates its violence, the “defenders of anything Israel chooses to do” realize that Israel’s actions might provoke criticism in the West among those elements of the population overly sensitive to enlightenment values. So the best defense is a good offense. That is, start proclaiming that anti-Semitism is once again on the march, picking out or even manufacturing illustrations, and continue the long-standing effort to conflate hostility to Israeli actions to anti-Semitism. Of course, the conflation is rendered plausible by the fact that the campaigners who are identifying critics of Israeli actions as anti-Semites are usually Jewish and are usually linked to the well-financed Jewish lobby. So these Jewish campaigners are de facto supporters of Israeli state terror, making it not unreasonable to see a definite connection between the two, even if these campaigners don’t represent Jews in general.
The purpose of these campaigns is not only to silence criticism of Israel, but beyond that to help mobilize the West for war against Israel’s targets, now notably Iran. This program has been frighteningly successful. The U.S. Senate and Congress are now virtual appendages of the Israel lobby and rush to denounce its enemies and clear the ground for war against Israel’s targets. The political leaders compete for subservience honors and are afraid even to denounce the leaked suggestions that nuclear weapons might be used against Iran, let alone put a brake on further U.S. aggression. The media not already in service have been beaten into submission and the lobby has had notable successes in its McCarthyite campaigns against academics who don’t meet their standards of political correctness on Middle East issues. A stream of quality academics have been attacked and some of them damaged by Lobby campaigns—Juan Cole, Rashid Khaladi, Nadia Abu el-Haq, Joel Beinen, Joseph Massad, Norman Finkelstein, among others. People like Jimmy Carter, Stephen Walt, and John Mersheimer have been under steady attack for expressing critical views on Israeli policy and Lobby influence. Speakers not satisfying the Lobby principles have been denounced and invitations withdrawn because of the systematic pressure. Publishers of books deemed overly critical, most recently Pluto Press, have been threatened. Although the efforts of Campus Watch, CAMERA, Israel on Campus Coalition, and the David Project are such a clear throwback to the McCarthy era efforts of Red Channels and other private thought-police operations, you would hardly be aware of the civil liberties threat if you read only the mainstream media.
Democracy in Its Last Throes?
The already weak (plutocratic) democracy is in deep trouble in the United States, and good arguments can be made that it is likely to be stripped of its façade in the very near future. Right now it is crystal clear that “the people” do not rule and that monied interests and powerful lobbies determine eligible candidates—it is power sovereignty, not popular sovereignty. We have had a telling illustration of this following the 2006 election, where a majority of the the public clearly rejected the Bush policies and Iraq war, verified by polls, but were unable to do anything about it through the political process.
The Bush–Cheney team has already done serious damage to the democratic structures of this country: the checks-and-balances system is badly impaired, executive power to ignore congressional legislation is now openly asserted and still in place, executive power to permit torture and ignore international law has been strengthened, the right to privacy and due process has been weakened, habeas corpus is in jeopardy, and the executive’s power to go to war and carry out assassinations and other covert and military operations abroad has also been strengthened. In a recent speech, Daniel Ellsberg argues convincingly that a coup has already taken place with these legal-structural changes making for an all-powerful executive (‘A Coup Has Occurred’ By Daniel Ellsberg September 27, 2007, http://www.consortiumnews.com). But he then goes on to point out that a war with Iran, with its more catastrophic effects, including an impact on energy prices and supply, as well as wider warfare (possibly including the use of nuclear weapons), would almost surely produce a second coup and a police state. He argues that this may be just what Cheney, his chief-of-staff David Addington, and other elements of the Iran war support network want, but it would be the end of a great U.S. experiment and would usher in a new dark age.
Edward S. Herman is an economist, author, and media and social critic.
Edward S. Herman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Edward S. Herman
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Edward S. Herman, Z Magazine, 2007
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7349
see
Benazire Bhutto First Interview After House Arrest (video)
‘A Coup Has Occurred’ By Daniel Ellsberg
Benazir Bhutto First Interview After House Arrest (video)
Why Isn’t Dennis Kucinich A Frontrunner? (video)
If only his name was included in the polls, maybe he would have higher numbers. Kucinich does well in most of the online polls I’ve seen and the after the debate polls, too. ~ Lo
NOVEMBER 16, 2007 MSNBC TUCKER
see
Dennis Kucinich’s replies @ 11-15-07 Dem. debate (video)
Dennis Kucinich Demands Impeachment Now! During Debate (video + poll)
The Democratic Presidential Debate In Las Vegas: Who Won? (Poll) DK takes the lead at 25%!
Daily Kos poll on the Las Vegas Democratic Candidates debate DK takes the lead at 25%!
Bill Moyers talks with Manuel A. Vásquez (video link; immigration)
Bill Moyers talks with Manuel A. Vásquez
November 16, 2007
A different take on immigration from author Manuel Vásquez. “This whole concept of illegality…is really problematic. Because it really doesn’t go to the complexities of the situation,” he says.
Manuel Vásquez, born in El Salvador, is an associate professor of sociology and religion at the University of Florida in Gainesville, specializing in the ways in which Latino immigration affects American communities.
In his studies, Vásquez has focused upon a growing sense of transnationalism among immigrant populations. “Today’s immigrants are able to have dual loyalties,” he explains to Bill Moyers. “That it’s not one or the other, but that one can have roots in the country of settlement, but also one can still have ties with your home country.”
…
More at Bill Moyers Journal
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.
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Bill Moyers Journal: Media Ownership Rules (video; Action Alert)
More at Bill Moyers Journal. ~ Lo
From their web site:
“On November 2, 2007, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced that the Commission would hold the sixth and final public hearing on media consolidation November 9, 2007 in Seattle, Washington. Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein blasted the Chairman’s decision to give the public only five business days notice before the hearing: “With such short notice, many people will be shut out … This is outrageous and not how important media policy should be made.”
The Seattle hearing was contentious — reflecting the aptness Chairman Martin’s opening words to the Seattle meeting:The decisions we will make about our ownership rules will be as difficult as they are critical. The media touches almost every aspect of our lives.”
There is little time left to write to the FCC and tell them your thoughts on this matter. Do not let them further erode what has happened to the MSM in this country with too few owners and too little journalism.
**
Bill Moyers Journal: Media Ownership Rules
The decisions we will make about our ownership rules will be as difficult as they are critical. The media touches almost every aspect of our lives.
WEIGH IN ON FCC RULE CHANGES:
THE FCC REVOLVING DOOR:
The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan watchdog group recently released a new study on the workings of the FCC called “Well Connected.” It documents the revolving door between FCC commission membership and industry lobbying. The study contains several items of note:
- A Travel report documenting FCC trips and expenses paid for by industry groups.
- Databases enabling you to find out who owns what media outlets in your own neighborhood.
- A survey of the media ownership in the hometowns of the five FCC commissioners.
- Documentation on how the FCC gathers and disseminates its data on media ownership.
FIND OUT MORE:
- Read statements from the Seattle hearing
- Response from Commissioners Copps and Adelstein (PDF)
- Letter to Commissioner Martin from Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Jay Inslee of Washington State (PDF)
- “Few Friends for Proposal on Media,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 13, 2007.
Published on November 16, 2007
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.
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Socialism or barbarism? By Alex Miller
By Alex Miller
The Greanville Journal
Cyrano’s Journal
October 22nd, 2007
Intro & Reminder To The Reader
Betrayed by the rightwing social-democrat Friedrich Ebert (whom Luxemburg had once tutored in economics) and at his behest, Rosa was captured by the Freikorps (a rightwing militia of decommissioned soldiers soured by the First World War defeat and manipulated by the German plutocracy) and promptly assassinated. Luxemburg’s last known words, written on the evening of her murder, were about her belief in the masses, and in the inevitability of revolution:
Continue reading
Dandelion Salad 