The chairman of the Republican National Committee may have begun an irreversible descent into a future as a fear-bound paranoid victim of functional amnesia, possibly caused by a hysterical post-traumatic event such as the overwhelming victory of Democrats in the 2008 election and the nation’s repudiation of Republican policies.
In a two-page vitriol-loaded letter dated “Friday morning”-he apparently was unable to remember the exact date-Robert M. (Mike) Duncan, RNC chairman, told Americans that the Democrats plan to “impose their radical leftist agenda on America,” and that Republicans “must work vigilantly to guard our country’s freedoms from the inevitable assault [by Democrats] they will face.” He didn’t mention that not one of Barack Obama’s proposed cabinet members nor any of the members of the current Congress is a “radical leftist.”
It’s really sad that Mike forgot that fear-mongering, obstruction of justice, reduction of public information, distrust and resentment of the worker, and curtailment of civil liberties have been the base of the Bush-Cheney Administration and a Republican-dominated Congress for most of the past eight years. Perhaps I can shock what little memory Mike may have left in the hope that some of his brain cells may once again function.
On December 13, the whistleblowing website Wikileaks did investigative- and citizen journalists a great service by publishing the Army Special Operations Forces FM 3-05.130, titled Unconventional Warfare.
Published in September 2008, the 248-page document though unclassified, is restricted “to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors only to protect technical or operational information from automatic dissemination under the International Exchange Program or by other means.” The Department of the Army urges recipients to “destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.” Wikileaks has guaranteed that the disappearance of this critical primary source into the bowels of the Pentagon will not occur.
Special Warfare’s Nazi Provenance
Since the end of World War II, the United States has acted through proxies either to defeat leftist insurgencies or to subvert “hostile” governments, e.g. those states viewed by Washington and the multinational corporations they serve as ideological competitors.
“Palestinian Protesters Hurl Shoes,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Oil Producing Countries Seek Stability in Prices,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Can OPEC Stop Furthur Plummeting of Oil Prices?” Al-Alam TV, Iran
“Plans to Close Guantanamo,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Lebanese Security Forces Clash With Teachers,” NBN TV, Lebanon
“Faith Dialogue in Paris,” Saudi TV, Saudi Arabia
“Palestine-Israel: Waiting for Obama,” Link TV, USA
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
STUDENTS AT New York City’s New School ended a day-and-a-half-old occupation in the early-morning hours of December 19 after winning important concessions in their demands for greater democracy at their school.
New School President Bob Kerrey, a former senator and well-known figure in the Democratic Party, was forced to negotiate personally with the students, who took over a cafeteria in a building slated to be torn down soon to dramatize their call for a greater voice.
In addition to amnesty for everyone involved in the occupation, the New School administration agreed that students could continue using the building where the occupation took place as a library and study space. In addition, students were promised representation on the Board of Trustees and committees to choose future administrators, plus the formation of a committee on socially responsible investing.
The top demand of the students when the occupation began was Kerrey’s resignation, along with the school’s executive vice president–plus the treasurer of the Board of Trustees, Robert Millard, chairman of one of the largest defense contractors in the country.
Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.
by Elizabeth Woodworth
Global Research, December 19, 2008
There is something decidedly wrong when two UN special envoys are denied access to the occupied Gaza strip. In May of this year, Israel refused to allow peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, while on a UN fact-finding mission, to enter Gaza. Then on December 15, it did the same to Dr. Richard Falk—Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara—who sought to enter Gaza in order to perform his role as the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories.
How is the press reacting to these events?
The Canoe News, the Daily Mail, and others have responded by simply repeating the misleading, inflammatory accusation that Falk had “compared Israel to Nazi Germany.”
Earlier this year, while speaking in Fargo, North Dakota, Colleen Donley brought her nine year old son, Adam, from Perham, Minnesota, to the gathering to complain about the curriculum materials on the presidential race produced by Scholastic Magazine. Adam wanted to vote for me but their mock paper ballots had only two choices picturing John McCain and Barack Obama.
A “meet the candidates” again pictured only the Republican and Democratic candidates. Ms. Donley noted that it would not have been difficult to add the four other presidential candidates who were on enough state ballots to theoretically gain an Electoral College majority. There was extra room on the page to do so.
Pursuing her inquiry she noticed that only the Democratic and Republican options were available for research, games, posters and issues. For example, the game “Be a Candidate” had two party choices but only “their” issues and views.
By Gary Corseri
featured writer Dandelion Salad
Dec. 20, 2008
“… pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks. …” — Mark Twain (The Mysterious Stranger)
Those who take the long view of history often wind up with the short end of the stick.
That’s because, as John Maynard Keynes himself said, in the long run, we’ll all be dead.
While the handful of contemp philosopher-kings (largely on the Web these days!) ponder the ponderous evolution of humans over the eons–and even the ebb and flow of life-forms over the vast reaches of geophysical time–masses of consumer worker-soldier ants stuff and gorge, vomit and defecate on their own and others’ food and energy resources. They can’t help it. They’ve been programmed by nature and, worse, a rapacious, predatory-capitalist, materialist mind/heart-set to seize every opportunity to plunder, rape, steal, hoard, waste and conquer.
Katrina’s Hidden Race War: In Aftermath of Storm, White Vigilante Groups Shot 11 African Americans in New Orleans
In a shocking new report, The Nation magazine exposes how white vigilante groups patrolled the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, shooting at least eleven African American men. Local police have never conducted investigations into the shootings. We speak to reporter A.C. Thompson and New Orleans resident Donnell Herrington, who nearly died after being shot by a white vigilante. [includes rush transcript]
In a brief post yesterday, I wrote that African-Americans were treated as second-class citizens in the United States. I would now like to apologize for making such a controversial — and flagrantly incorrect — statement. Obviously, I was letting my knee-jerk liberal PC prejudices run wild. For as a new article in The Nation forcefully demonstrates, African-Americans are not treated as second-class citizens in the United States; they are treated as wild animals to be hunted down and shot in cold blood.
The article is a very detailed investigation of the white vigilante groups that formed, with police approval, in the white enclave of Algiers Point in New Orleans in the days after Hurrican Katrina. Although authorities had designated the area — which had largely escaped damage in the storm and flood — as a vital evacuation point for those trapped in the city, a group of white residents seized the opportunity to declare open season on anyone with black skin. Many African-Americans were shot and several were killed; but no one knows the exact number, because New Orleans police have refused to investigate any of the incidents, and coroner’s records of the gun-blasted bodies that showed up in the area have unaccountably gone missing.
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Dandelion Salad 