Iran Election Irregularities Update

As of this posting, still no reply back from MSNBC.com. Of course, I'm not surprised.

However, Diego Jimenez tweeted me this link to a BBC Q&A article on the election.

First off, here are the reasons for claims of voting irregularities:


"The way the result was announced was very unusual. It came out in blocks of millions of votes, in percentages, rather than being announced province-by-province as in past elections.

And as the blocks of votes came in, the percentages for each candidate changed very, very little. That suggested that Mr Ahmadinejad did equally well in rural and urban areas. Conversely, it suggested that the other three losing candidates did equally badly in their home regions and provinces.

This overturns all precedents in Iranian politics and there has been no explanation, despite repeated questions, from the authorities.

It is all very suspicious. But it does not necessarily mean there has been widespread electoral fraud. For example, a group of international pollsters did an independent telephone survey three weeks ago which suggested a two-to-one level of popular support for Mr Ahmadinejad over Mr Mousavi, with the other candidates on less than two percent each."

So, we have international pollsters predicting an Ahmadinejad win. We have suspicious circumstances with questions going unanswered. And we have the fact that there may not necessarily have been widespread electoral fraud.

We also have two powerful leaders with many followers vying for a top parliamentary position. As numerous commentators (and Pres. Obama) have said, Ahmadinejad and Mousavi's policy positions are, in effect, not much different from each other.

Could this be a case of a sore loser using the power of his popularity and multitude of followers to gain the upper hand? From the same BBC article:

"But there are two things happening at the moment. There are the street demonstrations and then there is a tense power struggle between leading figures in the ruling elite as well."

Two leading, elite rulers are struggling for power. What would make Mousavi not pull the "voting irregularity" and "fraud" cards out to use in his favor? Especially when he is well-aware of Ahmadinejad's global unpopularity and the effect global media will have on promoting his view of the election, however inaccurate it may be?

The fact that 99% of the coverage has been on protesters and virtually none on actual election statistics, pre and post polling, and vote-count evidence may signal that Mousavi's bluff has turned into a trump card.

Where is investigative journalism when you need it?

Iran Election, Iran Corruption, Iran Questions

I watched a video here, about Ahmadinejad's win over Mir Hossein Mousavi, and then read the article. I also read this one and can't help but think we're not getting the full story for some reason. Here's the analysis and what I mean:

Why is not the main focus of these articles on the actual, factual discrepancies Mousavi has in claiming that this election was a "charade?"

Why is Mousavi the only one slighted? The BBC article says: "Four candidates contested the election, with Mohsen Razai and Mehdi Karroubi only registering about 1% of the vote each."

So, what about Razai and Karroubi? Do they feel the election was tainted? Why are these two presidential candidates not questioned on this and given a voice; one or two sentences even?

Instead, it's about people protesting. "Thousands" according to the BBC article. And only in Tehran. Is no one protesting anywhere else? And exactly how many is "thousands?" Do they not have an accurate count? Why or why not? And who's doing the counting? In my opinion, these articles seem biased on the side of the protesters, something that does not happen when people protest in this country, but more on that later.

Ahmadinejad, in the aforementioned article, says that the foreign media has been helping to rile people up. Why is that angle not explored? Why not analyze the media coverage over this event and really investigate what he's saying? I mean, you can only prove him wrong, right? So, why isn't this done?

Next, according to the BBC's Iranian affairs analyst, the "margin of the win was so wide [for Mousavi] that it made a lot of people suspicious." OK, what does that mean? The margin of the win? What margin, how, and set forth by who? I don't know why these questions, many of which could be answered in a sentence or two, are missing from a major news organization's coverage of an election so interesting as this one.

The analyst goes on to say that, "Millions of people, especially the young, voted for change through the ballot box and by peaceful means and now there is shock and disappointment."

Again, what does this mean? How many millions? Why is this "news" article so vague? Where is the author getting this data from? Many millions in this country voted for change through the ballot box and by peaceful means in 2000 and 2004 and were similarly shocked and disappointed.

I just don't see any evidence how, exactly, the protesters have a legitimate grievance here. And I'm not saying there isn't one, I'm saying the media has not reported on what that might be. We have an official result: 64% for Ahmadinejad versus the 34% for Mr Mousavi, but that's it.


Fast forward two days. It's now Monday the 15th of June and here is the lead article from MSNBC.com on the situation in Iran. Again, no mention of what is actually corrupt in the election. All they mention is "voting irregularities." We had those here in 2000 and 2004 also. Why would you make no mention of what these voting irregularities are? Isn't the main thrust of this entire situation?

Maybe there is a media slant. Hardly any of the First World countries like Ahmadinejad. Continual focus on rioting and beating and one-liners and protest messages (which could be covered in another blog - so I'm not ignoring them as insignificant - it's just not the focus of the article here) could be used to let viewers think that those protesting have a legitimate cause they are fighting for. First and Third World countries can use propaganda. The BBC and CNN are no exceptions.

Of course the censorship is of grave concern and lends no credence to Ahmadinejad, but the censorship is not the cause of the protests - it's a reaction to it. So why not say what that cause is?

What are the voting irregularities? What is the evidence of fraud?

** Just called NBC news and was told that they would research the answer to these two questions and get back to me. I'll keep you posted.


One last thing: Check out this story on how there never was a significant ideological difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Who are We "Securing?"

At the end of last summer, I took a trip to Philadelphia's Old Town. Being a student of American politics, I was eager to look upon Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin's house and walk the cobbled streets where our founding fathers once tred.

Things always happen, whatever those "things" may be, when you least expect it. And sure enough, this happened during my visit. Before I get into that, however, let me set the context of my mental state. I was brought up being told (and believing) that this is the land of the free, that all men are created equal, that we should live free or die, and that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights....

So here I am, in what some may call the birthplace of American constitutional and political thought, in line, to see the Liberty Bell but what I see first are armed Wackenhut security guards and signs that say I am not allowed to chew gum or bring inside water bottles. I'm not kidding. And the building you're going into is not some pristine, richly-decorated, top-of-the-line visitor center. It is a very nice, light-filled building, however, and the flooring is slate tile while along the east side are picture and storyboards behind plexiglass. At the end of this rectangular building, behind guideropes that the Park Service meticulously monitor for those trying to stick a camera under, is the Bell itself. So, why no gum? Why no water bottles allowed? Why armed Wackenhut guards standing beside Park Service employees?

I fully understand making sure people don't put any part of their body under or past the ropes - it's a national treasure we're protecting. However, no gum? no water bottles? It was over 90 degrees outside that day - and yes, they were also doing full searches of our backpacks and belongings. Sweet land of liberty and the free? Methinks not.


After this experience, which really upset me quite a bit, I ended up on the banks of the Delaware River at one of the riverside parks and there was a U.S. Naval vessel docked there, the name of which I do not remember. In any event, to the left here is a picture of it. What is not shown, to the left of the ship on land, is a barricaded perimeter set up with a, I'm guessing, 24-hour guard watch. The soldier paced the area armed with an M-16. However, notice what is, or what is not, on the right side of the ship - any type of defensive protection! I didn't get a picture of it, but there were two guys on jet skis going up and down the river. What would be to stop them from getting close to this ship? What is there to stop them from having explosives on their skis and driving right at it? I would hope the land guard wouldn't be responsible for that area as well. So, why this lack of security - in this era of a "Global War on Terror" now that "everything has changed" in our post-9/11 world?

Moreover, why is there this serious lack of security around a U.S. Naval vessel at the same time I have Wackenhut guards (with guns!) as well as the Park Service officials "guarding" me with requests to search my private person, take out my gum and trash my water bottle? All I'm trying to do is view a symbol of the "freedom and liberty" that this country tells the rest of the world it has.

Kucinich Introduces Articles of Impeachment

I bet you didn't know this happened last night. I sure didn't until just now, and I barely missed it.

I found nothing about in my daily readings of MSNBC.com, CNN.com, and other news sites. Luckily, I happened to looking at Alternet.org's video page and came across it here.

I then did a Google search on "Kucinich Introduces Articles of Impeachment" and found that CBS news devoted two whole paragraphs to it! Upon going to cbsnews.com, the only place I could find the story was under the category "most viewed stories." It's not under the main news stories and it's not under politics. So where the hell is it? (At least it's under most viewed!).

In any event - do you need more proof that our media corporations are manipulating news? Here is a story that is obviously important to a lot of people if it makes CBS news' most viewed list, yet the story is nowhere to be found on its site, let alone almost anywhere else in the mainstream media. Why? Give this some time and seriously think about this.

Why would the fact that a Congressman introduced Articles of Impeachment on the House floor NOT make headlines?

Wanna know what did make headlines?

Sleeping at work -- more of us are doing it (CNN)

$200 bird poop facial offered by spa (CNN)

Panda killed in China earthquake mourned (CBS)

Trial halted after jurors found playing Sudoku (Fox News)

Retired worker gets catfish named for him (MSNBC)



How is any of this crap news, let alone more important than Impeachment articles being brought upon a sitting president?

Don't just take my word for it. Watch and listen to Bill Moyers' speech at the National Conference for Media Reform.

Rumsfeld the Guilty; Citizens the Who Cares...

I don't know who to be more angry at: the media or my fellow citizens. Here is a news story about Donald Rumsfeld (former Secretary of Defense under W) talking to military analysts in December of 2006. Totally contradicting one of the many reasons President Bush gave for invading Iraq, Rumsfeld says he agrees "that Iraq needs an authoritarian dictator." On other parts of the taped meeting, "Rumsfeld suggests that the American public lacked the "maturity" to understand that the nation remained under threat from terrorists and that the only "correction" would be another attack on the U.S."

As of this writing, it is listed on MSNBC.com under the "other top stories" section. In fact, "Down to 2 on Idol" gets more prominent display and bigger font than this story. Making my way over to CNN.com, there is nary a word - either on it's front page or the politics page. Let's check out the always-balanced Foxnews.com: nope - not a peep there. How about the networks? Nothing on ABC or CBS.

So I'm angry at the media for not giving this story any weight, traction, or shred of existence (save MSNBC.com). It's still hard to believe that here is a story regarding one of the central figures in the disaster and humanitarian crisis that the Iraq war was destined to become not only clearly favoring authoritarian dictatorships (wasn't Saddam an authoritarian dictator?), but that the only way for the American public to be afraid of terrorists is for an attack to actually happen.

But all of my wrath cannot be spread upon the media alone - even though they're quite guilty of selling us a war based on roses and lies. A really good video highlighting the Bush Administration's successful manipulation of you and me can be seen here. It's of another guilty fellow, Douglas Feith the Undersecretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld, who says that Americans "misremember" what was really said about Iraq before the invasion.

No, the other half of my heartache, really, is caused by the towering heights of apathy and ignorance that my fellow citizens seem to posses about not just the Iraq war, but the economy, food shortages, and rapidly approaching irreversible climate change. The few people who actually want to talk about these issues are ignorant of a lot of important facts, or just plainly haven't thought about them much, if at all. Now, some may say that that's because they're much more focused on and consumed by rising gas prices, a recession, and falling wages. And I would probably agree with you, however, it is exactly these issues that are caused by, and can be ameliorated through, our government.

Who's the government? Not some people off in Washington, D.C. or even your state capitals. No, it's you and me. We the People. So when the leaders of this country - those of you reading this - don't do anything like call your representatives (they are there to represent your views), or write letters to the editor of your local newspaper, or hell, even read the damn thing - you're letting us all down. We the People, together, educated, and involved are the only ones who can solve these problems in ways in which we all benefit.

So the majority of you out there who still drive Hummers and other extremely pollutive vehicles or don't recycle or don't read the news or don't get involved in your communities and get to know and work with your neighbors....knock your shit off! You're pissin' me the #$!* off! Quit chasing the Jones' and drop back down to planet Earth, upon which our continued existence is questioned, and start doing things - no matter how small, that make a difference.

What if we don't have that much time left? Would you then wish you had done something now?

News in Review

I have nothing of real substance to say this week -aside from my post on the "liberal," pro-war newspaper the New York Times. Television and cable news still frame Clinton and Obama as a horse race - only talking about who's ahead of who; versus talking about the merits and demerits of each candidates health care, domestic or foreign policy platforms. So, here are some news stories I have found thought provoking. May they provoke thoughts in you as well.



The Land of the Almost Free to Speak Up: "Americans, she said, love to trumpet their freedom. But it’s hard to square that with political correctness that straitjackets communication for fear of giving unintended offense, hair-trigger litigiousness that requires major corporations to treat customers (”Caution: Coffee is hot”) like idiots for fear of being sued, zero tolerance policies and mandatory sentencing guidelines that remove human judgment from human encounters for fear of rendering unequal justice."



How Part of the Economy is Rigged Against Us: Leveraged Buyout - Private Equity - what do these terms mean? More to the point, what's going on with the economy and why are we in a recession while some money managers and such are making millions and oil and food companies are raking in record profits every quarter?



Celebrity Gossip = "Bona Fide Newscast": "Hard-hitting journalism is nearing extinction on television, and the Federal Communications Commission just threw another shovel-full of dirt on its grave when it recently ruled that Rupert Murdoch's TMZ and Pat Robertson's 700 Club meet the test for "a bona fide newscast.""



US Consumers Rank Last in World Survey of Green Habits: "Americans were least likely to choose the greener option in three out of four categories - housing, transportation and consumer goods_ according to the assessment. In the fourth category, food, Americans ranked ahead of Japanese consumers, who eat more meat and seafood."



Human Society Says Video Shows Abused Livestock: (Reason # 4,623 why I'm a vegetarian). "The Humane Society of the United States on Wednesday released new video taken at animal auctions in four states that showed sick and injured cows lying on the ground, and called on the U.S. government to prevent further cases of animal abuse at similar facilities." Video here.



EPA Might Not Act to Limit Rocket Fuel in Drinking Water:"An EPA official said Tuesday there’s a “distinct possibility” the agency won’t take action to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has contaminated public water supplies around the country."

Comments on the News Round Up

Thomas Jefferson quote of the day: All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.



For about a fortnight now network and cable news have gone on and on about Obama's Preacher, the Rev. Wright. Long story short, Rev. Wright wrote a powerful sermon after 9/11 where he pointed out some of the reasons he (and coincidentally, Ron Paul among others) have for believing it was payback. (The book Blowback, with its title derived from "a term coined by the CIA to denote the unintended consequences of policies that were in many cases kept secret from the American public," speaks directly to this point of contention). So, Obama has been raked over the coals about the fact that he has not only been endorsed by Rev. Wright, but was a member of his congregation...20 years ago. Every major news media have taken and run with this story for days: asking Obama to denounce the endorsement, to denounce the preacher; and they've even attacked Rev. Wright.

Yet, strangely, they are silent (crickets chirping here) about the Rev. John Hagee's endorsement of Senator John McCain. Frank Rich in today's New York Times, here, explains it all by saying that, "it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates - and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them - we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick."

Why are they silent about this; about someone who has made much more inflammatory and derogatory remarks than Rev. Wright has? Some of Rev. Hagee's beliefs are: "God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins," that the Roman Catholic Church is "the Great Whore," and that "most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews."

Are those in power and control of the media, racist? anti-black?, pro-McCain?, all of the above?





First there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, then there weren't. Then we were there to get rid of Saddam, then we weren't. Then we were there to bring democracy to Iraq, then we weren't. There were ties between Saddam and al Qaeda, then there were not. Al Qaeda was in Iraq prior to our invasion, then they were not.

Then Iran was training people to fight in Iraq, then they were not. And then Iran was making and sending weapons into Iraq...well...maybe not.





What's important is not who's starving or being oppressed. What's important is my stock price. Money, baby: gimme, gimme, gimme!

"Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry."




Guess what? I went to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and all I got was this stupid T-shirt! "As these astonishing mementoes [sic] show, the US authorities are promoting the world's most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for American sunseekers – a revelation that has drawn international anger and condemnation."




I was a first-born kid and, according to this new study, it looks like we have it harder.

Where's The Balance?

In my last post, I gave a one-day sample of some major news corporations' websites top stories and compared them with other important stories published that same day.

The results from my little survey brought forth some interesting questions regarding what news corporations view as important and worthy of top-story recognition:

Worthy: Man gets out of jail with one-word blog

Not Worthy: Shops rations sales of rice as US buyers panic

Worthy: Man survives 500-foot fall into strip mine

Not Worthy: WWF warns Arctic ice melting faster than predicted


Which brings me to where I left off in the last post. With an agenda. Not mine, but the big news corporation's. What's their agenda? Why would a news company only present one side of a story?

Well, let's look at it this way. If I'm a researcher looking for answers to a specific question (and all I'm after is the truth), then I'm going to try and seek out all possible answers so that I may find out what the truth really is. Once I have all possible answers, I'll keep narrowing it down until I find one that fits best. I give all answers a fair shake at being the right one. It is only through testing, debate, discussion, retesting, etc., that I come to conclusions.

I don't want to favor one answer over another (unless evidence proves that's the correct one) because then I will taint my study and come to conclusions I want; not conclusions shown by independent verification.

Now, if someone has a vested interest in what is being studied, and therefore may desire a particular outcome, are they really the best person to conduct and/or report on this study?

If someone stands to make a lot of money if their product is deemed safe, and therefore to lose a lot of money if it is found unsafe, should they be the person, or have a hand in, testing or reporting the outcome of the tests? Isn't this called a conflict of interest? Bias?

Then why is it ok for the New York Times, one of our nations foremost newspapers, to show glaring evidence of bias? (After all - the were one of the biggest cheerleaders of the Iraq war, were they not?)



On Sunday, March 16, 2008, the NYT Sunday Opinion section published 9 articles on the Iraq War - five years on.

"To mark this week's fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the Op-Ed page asked 9 experts on military and foreign affairs to reflect on their attitudes in the spring of 2003 and to comment on the one aspect of the war that most surprised them or that they wished they had considered in the prewar debate."


Who are these 9 experts and what did they have to say?

• L. Paul Bremer, III - former presidential envoy to Iraq: "Our soldiers were magnificent in liberating Iraq.

• Anne-Marie Slaughter - dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton: "Our government knew how to destroy but not how to build."

• Kenneth M. Pollack - a former director of Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council and a fellow at the Brookings Institution: "If we leave behind an Iraq more stable and less threatening to its neighbors than the one we toppled, I think the intelligence community's (and my own) mistakes about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration's exaggerations of that threat and its baseless insistence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda will all lose their edge - even though they will not, and should not, be forgotten."

• Paul D. Eaton - a retired Army major general who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004 and who is an advisor to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton: "Without hearings, the Army could not advance its case for increasing the number of troops and rearming the force."

• Richard Pearle - an assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute: "The right decision was made, and Baghdad fell in 21 days with few casualties on either side."

• Danielle Pletka - the Vice President for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute: "After all, for those of us who supported the war, rebutting arguments about weapons of mass destruction has become reflexive."

• Frederick Kagan - a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute: "I supported the 2003 invasion despite misgivings about how it would be executed, and those misgivings proved accurate."

• Anthony D. Cordesman - a fellow at the Center for Strategy and International Studies: "...I did not expect that we would discover no meaningful activity in rebuilding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and no Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda."

• Nathaniel Fick - a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the author of "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer." "We made bets not on whether it would happen, but when."

Eight out of the 9 commentaries are unarguably pro-war, with only Anne-Marie Slaughter's lone voice dissenting.

At least two of the 9 were in the Bush administration and had their hands deep in planning the war itself.

Two are from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, that " is associated with neoconservative domestic and foreign policy views" and "has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy" with "More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions."

One is from the Brookings Institution, a liberal centrist (though some argue it is too supportive of Bush administration policies) think tank.

One from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which includes Henry Kissinger as one of its board members one from the Center for a New American Security, which includes Richard Armitage (the "primary" source for leaking the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame).



How is this an unbiased assessment of where we were and where we are now? Where are the thoughts, then and now, of those major figures who opposed and/or seriously questioned the war from the start, like: Ron Paul, Barak Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Phil Donahue, Brent Scowcroft, Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Ambassador Joesph Wilson, former Iraqi weapons inspector Scott Ritter...

Why were none of these people asked to write for the New York Times' Op-Ed commentary?

Unbalanced, biased, pro-Bush, pro-war - and this is what many on the right call the bastion of liberal newspapers?

Mr. Toads Wild Ride

I'm not aware if you've heard a lot regarding the sad and quite disgusting lack of journalistic integrity at the most recent debate on ABC between Clinton and Obama; if not read about it here.

It's not just about being wrong on so many levels journalistically, it reeks of how far gone our democracy is and how much control We the People have given up. But I'll go 50/50 in terms of responsibility between the American citizen on the one hand, and how we get informed on the other. (For this post at least). A major part of the problem is our news media.

Let's just take a look at what the top stories are, listed in order, as of right now (12;39 pm EST, 4/26/08) from MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News.


MSNBC

- Democrats fear lasting racial divide
- McCain teams up with Huckabee
- Newsweek: If Clinton wins it's payback time
- Half say presidential campaign too negative
- Beach closed after killer shark attack
- Bell's fiancee: 'They killed Sean all over again'
- Mugabe's rivals win parliament
- Report: 14-year-old girl killed in Gaza clashes
- Heavy security thwarts Japanese torch protests



CNN

- Bell's Fiancee: 'They killed Sean all over again'
- Man gets out of jail with one-word blog
- Truck driver questioned in train station accident
- Zimbabwe recount shows opposition ahead
- Chicago cops out in force to deter shootings
- FBI investigates possible kidnap for ransom
- Atheist soldier claims harassment
- Man survives 500-foot fall into strip mine
- Ticker: Obama plays b-ball with WNBA star



Fox News

- Experts debate cause of rising oil prices
- Dems on road to victory?
- Fla. Official: Buy clothes, not booze
- Turkey confirms mediation between Syria, Israel
- R.I. illegals face crackdown amid state budget crisis
- Boy, 7, faces Grand Theft Auto after SUV joyride
- Fiancee of groom shot by cops: 'It's not over'
- Airlines lure fliers with gourmet menus, star chefs
- NFL draft day: College stars turn pro



Most of these news stories, while I won't say they aren't worth reporting, are, to put it bluntly, crap. Who ranked these as "Top Stories?" I mean, a school board official emailing parents who were complaining about school uniforms to prioritize their spending is a top news story? A man getting out of jail because he text-messaged his friends is a top news story? And what about half of whoever was polled saying the campaign for president is too negative. How is this news? How do these stories contribute in any way to the fact that I've watched gasoline go up almost 35 cents the last week?

Now, some of these stories are very newsworthy, don't get me wrong. Mugabe's rivals win parliament is good and debating rising oil prices is very good. But you really have to read between the lines here, and see the news that is not making it onto these three major news corporations' website. Let's go have a look at news posted today and then yesterday:

- U.S. weighing readiness for military action against Iran (Washington Post)
- Many states appear to be in recession as deficits grow (New York Times)

- Shops rations sales of rice as US buyers panic (The Guardian)
- Experts fear nation's waterways need rescuing - from us (Associated Press / Common Dreams)
- Town in the Andes face crisis as glaciers melt (San Francisco Chronicle)
- WWF warns Arctic ice melting faster than predicted (Agence France Presse / Yahoo News)
- Hundreds of EPA scientists report political interference (Los Angeles Times)





These are very serious issues being reported by mainstream, reputable news sources. Why have not MSNBC, CNN, or FOX News picked any of them up as a top story? Arctic ice melting faster than predicted? Um...isn't this a little more serious than a man trespassing in a mine falling 500 feet? Or how about even more evidence that "during much of the Bush administration, there have been reports of the White House watering down documents on climate change, industry language inserted into EPA power-plant regulations and scientific advisory panels' conclusions about toxic chemicals going unheeded." Surely that has to be more important than who Obama played basketball with?

The most logical conclusion I can come up with is that the corporations who own these major networks must have a very large stake in political and economic policy outcomes. Not only do they own the networks listed above, but they also own newspapers, radio stations, other TV stations, and major corporations like Microsoft, NBC, General Electric, HBO, the Atlanta Braves, DC Comics, Time magazine, People magazine, LA Dodgers, LA Kings, LA Lakers, and HarperCollins Books, just to name a few.

With such a HUGE stake in national, and indeed global, finance, would it not be in these corporations best interest to help sway public opinion in their favor? What is their incentive to do otherwise? In any event, it's a moot point. Just taking my totally unscientific, yet very interesting survey sample of what was reported on major national news networks versus news from other major national and European sources in the last two days, it would seem that there are many very important, very time-sensitive issues out there not being reported on nationally.

Could this be one reason why Americans are apathetic to politics? Could the triviality and absurd reality of major network and cable news turn people off to any type of serious debate about current issues and our future? The President of the United States, right after 9/11 tells Americans to go shopping; with a recession gearing up for full-force in 2008, this same guy gives us a tax rebate so we will go shopping.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Could there be a connection here?

Just a Recap of Sorts

Losing easy access to the Internet sometimes makes me feel like I've dropped off the face of the planet. On the other hand, there's a whole other world out there; free of "news," free of soundbites and talking points; free. I'd advise you to go be free sometime in the next few days. It's good for the soul.

I'm working on a few deeper issues for some upcoming blogs but in the meantime, here are some continuing story follow-ups as well as some interesting things to read:



Is Organic Food Really Healthier?

"In the late 1990s, researcher Anne-Marie Mayer looked at data gathered by the British government from the 1930s to the 1980s on the mineral contents of 20 raw fruits and vegetables. She found that levels of calcium, magnesium, copper, and sodium in vegetables, and of magnesium, iron, copper, and potassium in fruit had dropped significantly."

"....researchers at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania were seeing a tradeoff between use of synthetic fertilizers and food nutrient values in the Institute's Farming System Trial (FST). The FST is the longest-running side-by-side comparison of organic and conventional farming systems in the US."




Pope Ignores the War, Gets Free Pass on Sex Abuse


"While still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- the Vatican office that once ran the Inquisition. In that capacity he sent a letter in May 2001 to all Catholic bishops throwing a curtain of secrecy over the widespread sexual abuse by clergy, warning the bishops of severe penalties, including excommunication for breaching "pontifical secrets."

"Lawyers acting for the sexually abused accused Ratzinger of "clear obstruction of justice."

"Very few American bishops have been disciplined. And when Bernard Cardinal Law was run out of Boston for failing to protect children from predator priests, he was given a cushy sinecure in Rome; many believe he should be behind bars.

"In an interview with the Catholic News Service in 2002, Ratzinger branded media coverage of the pedophilia scandal "a planned campaign ... intentional, manipulated, a desire to discredit the church."

"It is nice that the Pope has now changed his tune. Nicer still for him, he found himself mostly in the congenial atmosphere of Washington, where very few powerful miscreants are held accountable."

Climate Change May Put 'World at War': "Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned."

It's not "save the planet" or "save the Earth" or even "save the climate;" it's Save Humanity. Really. The planet, the Earth, the climate - they will all go on without us. It's ourselves we should really be worried about.



Arctic Ice Melting Fast in Summer Sun: Ummm...see above. "New Arctic sea ice is now so perilously thin on average that it melts under the sunshine of clear summer skies it once could survive, American researchers conclude in a study published today."



One would think that the "greatest country in the world" wouldn't have this problem: " For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women." What with our bridges collapsing, high infant mortality rates, being the biggest spender on missiles, guns, and bombs, invading sovereign nations, and lacking health care for its citizens...maybe we aren't so "great" after all?



This is a good blog-summary of a lot of things I've been talking about lately.



Pssst....Do Something!




You and me, the American citizen and taxpayer, (aka: the U.S. Government) shouldn't be giving money to bail out airlines or give huge subsidies to oil companies. No. Give that money to people who are really doing something to help our society, like this man, the Segway inventor who just invented a water regenerator.

We Continue the Backslide

We just had our house fitted for FIOS, the new fiber optic internet package the other day. In so doing, the router was put on the opposite side of the house so we must rewire it. At the moment, my PC is cut off from the rest of the world - so my posts may be a bit sporadic and short. If you're reading this for the 2nd or even 5th time, check out some of my earlier posts. :)

Onto some not so good news, but some things that are giving us a clear signal of what our economy is doing and where it is going:

Student loan economic trouble: "Sallie Mae, the largest U.S. student loan company, on Thursday affirmed its 2008 profit forecast, but warned of a “train wreck” in the $85 billion education financing market without urgent government intervention."

Gas pices pass $3.40; expected to rise higher: "Overall, crude prices have jumped more than 4 percent this week, in part due to the falling dollar, as well as a host of supply and demand concerns in the U.S. and abroad."

Merrill Lynch about to cut 3,000 jobs: "Merrill Lynch & Co., the world’s largest brokerage, on Thursday said it would cut another 3,000 jobs after more than $6.5 billion of fresh write-downs pushed it to a loss for the first quarter."

I posted a blog a few weeks regarding the unbelievable fact that 2 airlines went bankrupt in the same week, with another one announcing it will cease to exist at the end of May, putting thousands of people out of work. Yet at the same time, we've got presidential hopeful Bush Light (McCain) as well as the President himself saying that the economy is strong and this is just but a slight bump in the road, yada, yada, yada. What uber rich planet are they living on? Surely not the one where I have don't have a taxpayer-funded travel account, pay $3.15 a gallon for gas and hope I don't get hurt because I have no health insurance.

Where is the media on this? They report exactly what Bush says like it's the truth, yet blow Obama's "American's are bitter" statement totally out of proportion. We ARE bitter! What happened to fact checking and presenting all sides of an argument? Especially in the face of the numerous lies and chicanery the Bush Administration has been guilty of these past 7 years. Liberal biased media my a$$. Criticism of this "liberal media bias" here.



Here's some GOP hypocrisy for you: Why is David Vitter still in office and not Eliot Spitzer?

"Happy" Tax Day

Today is the day that most of us pay our taxes. What exactly does all this money we're shelling out go for? Let's see: some of it goes to pay members of Congress and the Executive branch a salary, free travel for government business (including golf trips), as well as lifetime health care.

However, in 2007, nearly 40% of every dollar went towards military spending. Remember, that war over there in Iraq? Yeah, well, there are some solid people who are brave enough to stand up in the face of adversity and declare that killing people to settle differences and achieve peace doesn't work. Knowing full well that it's our tax money that pays for these wars, they have decided to stop paying the portion of their taxes that go for war.

This morning on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman interviews a Portland, Oregon couple who have not paid for war in 30 years. You can read the transcript here.


According to Goodman, "the total amount allocated for the Iraq war through fiscal year 2008 is more than $520 billion." The questions us Americans should be asking are: how many bridges could be brought out of "deficiency" ratings with that money? how many children could we feed and give health care to with that money? how many of our roads could we fix with $520 billion? how many schools could we buy new books and gym equipment for?

It'll be a great day when schools get ALL the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

And don't give me this crap about "protecting America." Again: Iraq did NOTHING to us and had NO weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda was NOT in Iraq until AFTER we invaded that sovereign country. All we're doing is making more enemies, killing innocent civilians, pissing more people off, and giving people good reason to hate us. I miss Ron Paul.



Also in today's tax news: Fewer Large Corporations Audited by IRS (but more smaller ones are)



As a Cardinal, he did nothing. While he has chosen to meet with President Bush, he has chosen to not meet with people who were sexually abused by priests. Yet, the Pope says he is "deeply ashamed" over sexual abuse in the Catholic church. Oh really? Words do nothing to fix the problem of Church officials moving known child molesters to another parish. How about a little more action Mr. Pope?

"Jason Berry, a New Orleans writer who first drew national attention to clergy sex abuse in the 1980s, said the root of the problem is that the Vatican doesn’t punish bishops who shelter offenders. "Until the church creates a genuine system of justice to redress these wrongs the abuse crisis will continue...""




A very good argument for doing something about global overpopulation?

"Oshiya, or "pusher", is an informal Japanese term for a worker who stands on the platform of a railway station during the morning and evening rush hours, and pushes people onto the train. This video is a good example of just how crowded it gets on Japanese trains." Watch here.

Two Blurbs and Some Fun

I've been sitting here at my computer, half staring at the monitor and half looking through random websites and articles I've saved. Nothing has motivated me to write today - nothing of substance anyway.

I mean, we have Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker telling a Senate Committee that they have no idea when things will be better or what "better" will even look like. But as soon as they see it, they'll begin bringing my step-brother, many high school and college friends, and the rest of our troops home. Idiots and bad news - not going there today.

This guy here, Dr. James Hansen is the head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and he is "call[ing] for a sharp reduction in C02 limits.Hansen says the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 - the most stringent in the world - should be slashed to 350ppm. He argues the cut is needed if “humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed”. Bush says joining the Kyoto Protocol which aims to lower CO2 in our atmosphere, would be bad for the economy. But now we're in a recession, so the economy sucks and the air I breathe is still polluted.

Ok, I lied. I guess I did have two things of substance on the top of my mind. But I was short about them. Now...onto some fun things!



This is funny: The End of the World



Good engineering, but this can't be safe, I'm sure.



A canoe made out of used chopsticks is here.



" Einstein@Home is a program that uses your computer's idle time to search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors. Einstein@Home is a World Year of Physics 2005 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS) and by a number of international organizations."



It's all about perspective: Sidewalk Chalk Guy

Going.....Going.....

I'm sure it's a good thing that President Bush stopped saying how great our economy is doing; sooner or later people would actually begin to realize how out of touch with planet Earth (and America in particular) he really is. If this is the beginning of the end, it's happening a lot faster than I expected. Now, that's not to say that we're heading towards a depression or full economic collapse, but I think it could easily go in that direction.

The title of this article from the Independent UK doesn't help me sleep any better at night: USA 2008: The Great Depression. According to the article, "Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive - a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisis."




What has really struck me as an ominous sign is the abrupt end of two of the United States' major airlines and a charter airline. Champion Air, with about 550 employees, announced on Monday, March 31, 2008 that they will cease operations effective May 31, 2008. Also on Monday, Aloha Airlines went out of business laying off about 1,900 workers. And today, Thursday, April 3, 2008, ATA Airlines went out of business laying off about 2,200 workers while it was reported that workers in the banking sector will see 200,000 of their co-workers, if not themselves, laid off in the next 12 to 18 months. The article on commercial banks cutting their workforce, found here, compares these record cuts to the record cuts made just last year when 153,000 employees were let go as well as Citigroup's firing of 20,000 people "with at least 2,000 more to come."

According to the White House web page on the economy here, "The U.S. economy is structurally strong, but we are experiencing a period of economic challenge." What exactly do they mean when they say "structurally strong?" What exact "structure" are they talking about? The workers aren't strong, they're getting laid off in record numbers. The businesses aren't strong, they're going out of business one after the other. How this administration is still in office is one question I really wish I could answer.

In an interview with Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food?, here, he talks about how he came to value a more balanced interaction with nature and human farming efforts. Pollan also discusses his opinions on why we eat food (not just for nutrition), what goes into our food, and how mom's good advice on what to eat has gone the way of the rotary phone. Here's a sample:

The more you process the food, the more profitable it is. If I go to the supermarket, I can buy a pound of organic oats for 79 cents. Now that's a lot of oats, and no body's making much money. But if you turn it into Cheerios, suddenly you have a brand. You've got your little doughnut shape, you've got an ad campaign, and suddenly you're charging four bucks for a few ounces of oats.

Then you come up with a Honey Nut Cheerio Cereal Bar with a layer of artificial milk in the middle. Now you've got a convenience food that's very much your own, because you've got this special formula to make your fake milk. And kids can eat them in the car or on the way to school. Now you're charging $10 or $20 for a few penny's worth of oats. That's the gist of the food industry. That's the economic imperative.

If you don't think the United States is an empire or even if you know we are, this video animation by Howard Zinn is a great watch. It's simple, effective, and tells you what you weren't taught in school.

Welfare We Should All Be Concerned About

We supposedly live in a free-market, Capitalist economy. That means that through competition and risk, the best companies and products win. Consumers will only buy a defective or poorly-made product once (maybe twice). After that, they steer away from that product or company and tell their friends about their negative experience. Those friends tell other friends and because they somewhat trust each other, few people continue to buy the defective or bad product. And the good products and services win.

That's a very simple version of what is meant by the "free-hand of the market" that we hear so many Capitalist ideologues pontificating about these days. Especially in light of the recent buyout of Bear Stearns by J.P. Morgan, it's very relevant today to point out that it's all crap.

Here's a very brief and simple run-down of what happened: Bear Stearns, an investment bank, made some risky investments. They turned out to be very bad and very risky investments. Because of said bad, risky investments, Bear Stearns was about to go under. (Kind of like what happens if you have a mortgage and car payment and blow all of your money at the blackjack table in Atlantic City).

So, what did the Federal Reserve do? They gave J.P. Morgan a $30 billion line of credit (interest loan), so they could buy out Bear Stearns. How is this the free-hand of the market working?

Who's gonna bail me out if I blow all of my money at the blackjack table in A.C.? Moreover, who's gonna help bailout the millions of Americans who have lost their home due to foreclosures from rigged mortgage interest rates? Oh, that'd be welfare....consumers must learn from their mistakes....read the fine print....etc. But if you're a big-business economic leader, it's somehow ok?

If we live in a Capitalist economy like Bush and most government officials say we do, then why doesn't the Fed act like it? Why is it ok to bend the rules - but only in their favor?

But wait...the Bush administration has proposed sweeping new changes to our financial infrastructure here. Too good to be true however, it's just bait and switch. Paul Krugman breaks it down here, with a nice insider view of what's really going on. For more on the housing crisis by Krugman, check out this video.



I kind of saw this coming. Cell phones and radiation and our brains are not a very good mixture. The more time elapses, the more studies are starting to show that these convenient devices are quite harmful to our well-being.



Why are none of the presidential candidates talking about Iraq anymore? My step-brother is over there. I care about what's going on - as I'm sure many in and out of the military and many with no military connections at all, still do. So, why are we receiving less and less coverage?



President Bush gets booed by many in the crowed while throwing out the first pitch. Warms my heart.



Free speech, private property, and T-shirts: Read.



Why don't we ask what's best for the Iraqi's? Watch and listen, here.

"Oh My God"

I'm short on time this week - and so much is happening that I want to write about it all! Alas, I can't, though wish I could. So, for this Friday, I'm trying something a little different. I'm posting the lyrics to one of my favorite songs - a song you won't hear on corporate dominated radio - by Michael Franti. It's called Oh My God, and I'll put links in where I feel that what he's talking about relates to current issues of the day. If you like the song - please buy it from iTunes (or wherever). May it move your soul.

Oh My God

Oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ suicide

Singin’ oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ genocide

Oh my, Oh my God

Slam bam I come unseen

But like gasoline you can tell I’m in the tank

Like money in the bank

I smell appealing, but I’m toxic, can send you reeling

Without an inklin’, keep ya thinkin’

‘Cause you gave cash to the feds, left your school district for dead

Fuck you up in the head, but still they sayin’ nothin’s wrong

Selling fire-water but outlawin’ the bong

Still believing the system is workin’

While half of my people are still out of workin’

Anonymous notes left in the pockets and coats

Of judges and juries from ‘Frisco and Jersey

Threats and protests politicians mob debts

Trumped up charges and phony arrests

Stage a lethal injection, the night before the election

‘Cause he got donations from the prison guard’s union

Oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ suicide

Singin’ oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ genocide

Oh my, Oh my God

Listen in to my stethoscope on a rope

Internal lullabies, human cries

Thumps and silence, the language of violence

Algorithmic, cataclysmic, seismic, biorhythmic

You can make a life longer, but you can’t save it

You can make a clone and then you try to enslave it?

Stealin’ DNA samples from the unborn

And then you comin’ after us

‘Cause we sampled a James Brown horn?

Scientists whose God is progress

A four-headed sheep is their latest project

The CIA runnin’ like that Jones from Indiana

But they still won’t talk about that Jones in Guyana

This ain’t no cartoon, no one slips on bananas

Do you really think that that car killed Diana?

Hell, I shot Ronald Regan, I shot JFK

I slept with Marilyn she sung me “Happy Birthday”

Oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ suicide

Singin’ oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ genocide

Oh my, Oh my God

Well politicians got lipstick on the collar

The whole media started to holler

But I don’t give a fuck who they screwin’ in private

I wanna know who they screwin’ in public

Robbin’, cheatin’, stealin’

White collar criminal

McDonald eatin’, you deserve a beatin’

Send you home a weepin’, with a fat bill for your Caribbean weekend

For just about anything they can bust us

False advertising sayin’ “Halls of Justice”

You tellin’ the youth don’t be so violent

Then you drop bombs on every single continent

Mandatory minimum sentencin’

‘Cause he got caught with a pocket full of medicine

Do that again another ten up in the pen

I feel so mad I wanna bomb an institution

singin’

Oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ suicide

Singin’ oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ genocide

Oh my, Oh my God

Recaps and Roundabouts

I'm very happy indeed that I've begun to see the mainstream media continue to do follow-up articles on very important stories. The only way a democracy can function is if its citizens are educated; and articles that follow a story through to conclusion are wonderful and much-needed.



Sedatives and Sex Hormones in Our Water Supply: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman explores what's in our water, how it got there, and the current state of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water.



France Won't Rule Out Opening Ceremony Boycott: It's better than nothing, but still not good enough. "French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that he cannot rule out the possibility he might boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics if China continues its crackdown in Tibet."



The Real Rev. Wright: The Footage Fox and the Other Networks Won't Show: An awesome and moving video of Obama's preacher telling telling the bare, dirty, glorious truth to his congregation. This is a must watch.



TV, film, game violence threatens public health: Bowling for Columbine explored the topic of fear and if it makes the United States a more violent nation. (If you have yet to see it, please do). Parents were up in arms over the very popular Grand Theft Auto video game series where you can carjack, kill, knife, and sleep with prostitutes anytime you want. And if you get out of the car and go kill the prostitute, you get all your money back. How can this be good for us?




Take a political break and watch this; it wouldn't be so funny if it weren't so true! Eddie Izzard comments on the end of the world, but more so about computers and humans.

China, Tibet, and Freedom

No Olympic Games Without Democracy!



This short post today closely resembles my feelings, blogged about here, concerning the lip service paid by the United States to liberty, freedom and democracy. We talk the talk - big time - but do nothing to stand behind what we say.

Once again, a nation of people, proudly independent even though repressed, stood up to their oppressors and were virtually ignored by the Bush Administration. According to this article, President Bush " has long said the United States and China have “a complex relationship,” and that complexity was on full display this week." It sure was. It displayed that we only want to "free" people if they happen to have lots and lots of oil under their sand.

In all truthfulness, it comes down to money. According to this story, Tibetans have learned to keep "their requests modest. They know few countries have the appetite to cross China, particularly at a time the world is counting on the emerging superpower to keep the global economy ticking as the United States appears headed into a recession." Oppression, domination, lack of freedom, and that liberty Bush can't live without sure was on full display this week as he said not a word. It's the economy, stupid.

And yet, once again, the mainstream media is all but ignoring this connection between money and our condoning of severe human rights abuses. (Read all about this connection here). It's there if you dig a few pages deep (like stories on boycotting the Olympics, here and here). The latter story reports on the boycott effort by Reporters Without Borders and its online petition says that ""Given the massive human rights violations in China, it seems unacceptable to us that the Chinese government be allowed the right to host the world's most prestigious sporting event," it reads in part."

The Chinese government has promised improvements in its human rights abuses but has failed to keep those promises: the government blocks access to thousands of news and political web sites as well as currently holds in prison about 80 journalists and Internet users. The full story on China and why we should boycott is here.

If you feel like signing the petition to boycott the Olympic games in Beijing, go here. When the total number of people reaches one million, it will be sent to China's president Hu Jintao. As of today, 719,494 people have signed it.

*(Photo: Brian Sokol / The New York Times)

Genetically Modified Foods - Beware!

"The results will be essentially new organisms, self-perpetuating and hence permanent. Once created, they cannot be recalled"



Genetically modified foods - like canola oil and Pasta Roni - are being deceptively pushed into our diets everyday. One example is "Round-up Ready" corn sold and manufactured by Monsanto. More about that here. Simply put, Monsanto makes Round-up, it's the liquid weed killer you can buy at your local nursery; you spray it on the leaves of the plants where it's absorbed and blocks an enzyme the plant needs to live.

Here's where I have serious issues with entire fields of "Round-up Ready" corn:

• The corn seeds are genetically modified in a violent way (a "gun" and high velocity is used to ram the new DNA into the cell).
• The plants are not the only thing that is getting sprayed with this chemical. It also lands onto and is absorbed by the soil. Where do the plants get their vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that make them good for us to eat? The sun and the soil. And here we are dumping hundreds of gallons of a toxic chemical on them week?
• Round-up then gets into the soil and mixes with the water used to irrigate the corn; the corn "drinks" up the water/chemical mixture where it then becomes part of the cellular structure of the plant.
• Humans are supposed to eat this "Round-up Ready" corn that has been grown in a bath of chemical herbicide and believe it's safe.
• (Does any of the chemical herbicide get into our aquifers and drinking water supply?)
  

According to Howstuffworks.com, Round-up contains glyphosphate - the main ingredient used to stop the plants from producing that enzyme. And, "most people react badly to glyphosphate (and other chemicals mixed with it) when ingested or applied to the skin, so you want to avoid any contact with the chemical."

So, Round-up (which contains glyphosphate) is sprayed on corn fields hundreds of gallons at a time. The corn ends up "drinking" the Round-up as it's mixed with water and/or rain. Glyphosphate ends up in the cellular structure of the corn (it could be said that the plant has "ingested" the glyphosphate). I go to the store, buy the "Round-up Ready" corn or a product made with it, take it home, and eat (ingest) it. Does anyone else see a problem here?

Oh, and Monsanto, Con-Agra and other big-business "leaders" in the field of genetically modifying our food supply pay big bucks for lawyers and lobbyists so that they don't have to label foods that have been genetically modified. That and the FDA's role is here.

Many people including genetic scientists and biologists agree that genetically modified foods need hard, rigorous study, and that they are unfit for human consumption.

Thanks to a recent lawsuit, internal FDA documents revealed "that agency scientists warned that GM foods might create toxins, allergies, nutritional problems, and new diseases that might be difficult to identify."

In addition, a panel of experts from the Royal Society of Canada reported that "it was "scientifically unjustifiable" to presume that GM foods are safe," and the UK's Royal Society reported in 2002 that "genetic modification could lead to unpredicted harmful changes in the nutritional state of foods."

One independent study published on GM foods being fed to animals "showed evidence of damage to the immune system and vital organs, and a potentially pre-cancerous condition." Two other studies "showed evidence of a potentially pre-cancerous condition." Moreover, seven other studies were designed specifically not to identify these details.

For a very good account of genetically modified foods, read Seeds of Deception.

Truth, Liars, and a Very Lonely Girl

"If we could share our time, would I disappoint your fantasies?"


Why is it so hard for people to tell the truth, to be honest with one another; especially those we say we love? What propels one to lead people on, gain their trust and confidence, only to throw up brick walls after they've abruptly changed course?

While I in no way condone it, I can understand why President Bush felt he needed to lie to the American people about the real reasons for attacking Iraq: American hegemony, further military expansion, and disaster capitalism; you can't just tell ordinary citizens that these are the reasons hundreds of thousands of innocent people and, as of this week, almost 4,000 American soldiers are going to die. No, evil-doers, people who hate you, your country, and your religion work much better to stoke the fires of fear.

Especially because Bush put his rationale in writing, and especially because all reasons have since been proven false, it angers me even more that Congress, and we as a nation, let him get away with it. Bush earned impeachment 5 years ago today.



Is there some unknown law that engenders the masses to lie to each other as well? Like some trickle-down theory of wayward, selfish thinking? If the president is put on a pedestal and allowed to lie, cheat, and steal (from American taxpayers with no-bid contracts to his friends) and allowed to get away with it, then maybe we should all just give up this silly notion of being honest with each other. Lie as you must, betray those you will, hurt those you may. It's the American way, right?

Lies about the My Lai Massacre

Lies about the Iraq War reversed

Lies by Bush about the economy uncovered



The Jones' can keep up with themselves. It's time for a new paradigm in thinking, a new understanding of who and what we are. There's a Hindu salutation: Namaste, that loosely translated means: the Divinity in me sees and acknowledges the Divinity in you. It means We. It means Us. It means we are One.

And “when you come from ‘we are all One,’ it is virtually impossible to find that hurting another ‘feels good.’ So-called ‘irresponsible behavior’ vanishes. It is within these parameters that evolving beings seek to experience life. "

Drug Free America

No one knows what the long-term effects of drinking tiny amounts of pharmaceuticals will have on the human body. According to a recent study that analyzed the drinking water in 28 out of 62 water suppliers, a sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water and antiepileptic and antianxiety medications were found in parts of southern California's water supply. The study also showed that if you live in Philadelphia, you're drinking tiny amounts of at least 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts "including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness, and heart problems." I guess if you have chronic pain, an infection, high cholesterol, respiratory problems, or other ailments, this could be welcome news.

Or could it? And what if you don't have any of these illnesses and are a healthy human being? Why is marijuana so evil, even with its medicinal properties, yet every three minutes a commercial has me wondering if I need to go ask my doctor for a pill to cure blindness, baldness, asthma, erectile dysfunction, hearing loss, heartburn, sleep problems and a host of other issues; never mind the fast-speaking voice that says side effects may include dizziness, drowsiness, loss of appetite, temporary blindness, cramps, pain, and in some cases death. And now many of these drugs are ending up in our drinking water and "the federal government doesn’t require any testing and hasn’t set safety limits for drugs in water." Why are we ok with this?





There was coast-to-coast Republican uproar over Bill Clinton's infidelity while in the Oval Office. Never-ending calls for impeachment were shown on every news cast, written about in every paper, and continually spoke of inside Congress.

Yet, after nearly 4,000 soldiers and close to 900,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and a host of reports and studies show outright lies and fabrications on the rationale the Bush Administration gave for the Iraq War, barely a blip of incredulity, disgust or outrage appears on the radar of the MSM or Congress.

A review of more than 600,000 documents captured during the United States' invasion of Iraq have shown absolutely no evidence of any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. "The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report." Warren Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers has the story here.

It is interesting to take a look back and see just exactly what members of the Bush Administration have said regarding their insistence of a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda. These quotes are all from the BBC here:

• "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda." (17 June 2004 - President Bush)
• "There's overwhelming evidence... of a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq". (January 2004 - Vice President Cheney)
• "Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qaeda." (November 2002 - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld)

How much money, time, energy, and blathering was spent and wasted on an oral fixation that should have been much more important to his wife and daughter than an entire nation? And how much consideration is now given for our immoral actions in Iraq; something that not to be kept in the family but thrown open to the nation for discussion and analyzation?

Maybe most everyone listened to Bill O'Reilly back in February of 2003 when he said, "Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can't do that, just shut up."

The Week of Follow-Ups

It seems that this weeks' news wire is abuzz with the continuing saga of many stories. That's good. All too often a story gets a prominent spotlight only to vanish backstage and never be heard or seen from again. (Did we ever find out who sent the anthrax to Congress? Or who placed the put-options on United and American Airlines stock days before 9/11?)



Global warming - peak oil: I tend to put them in the same category since the latter is causing the former, but also because they're both happening at the same time. It's going to create quite a calamity, as I've blogged about here. Thankfully, I'm not the only one to see this and recognize other facts like how over 99% of Americans are dependent on the 0.3% of us that grow our food. Tom Whipple and the coming storm is here.



According to the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have the power to...provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States...[and] to regulate commerce with foreign nations...."

What part of that does the Bush Administration not understand? And will Democrats or Republicans in Congress do anything about it? Let's bet they won't.

The following is from: Bush officials: Congress irrelevant on Iraq.

"The Bush administration also feels it does not need to seek the authorization of Congress to ratify two pending agreements with Iraq: a “Strategic Framework” that would govern “normalized” relations with the U.S., and a Status of Forces Agreement that would govern the “authorities and protections” of U.S. troops in Iraq past Dec. 31, the expiration of a U.N. resolution that the administration says authorizes their presence."



Our precious supply of fresh drinking water is running out. The FDA thinks you don't need to know about cloned meat or milk. And Monsanto, of Agent Orange fame, is trying its hardest to keep you from knowing the dangers of rBGH - or recombined Bovine Growth Hormone. They're injecting dairy cows with it. It's genetically modified. It's linked to cancer. Read all about it here. If you want to live long and prosper - Buy Organic!



Our friend Hillary "I"ll say whatever I have to in order to be elected President" Clinton has contradicted her policy platform yet again. Yesterday, I wrote about her ties to corporate America. Today it's her lack of ties to the American worker.

Three years ago, she helped negotiate a deal for 23 high-tech "Marine One" presidential helicopters being made by numerous companies - including European ones. However, "this past week, [she] derided the Pentagon's decision to award a $40 billion defense contract to build mid-flight refueling tankers to a team consisting of Northrop Grumman and EADS, a European company." Sam Stein has blogged his analysis here.

Are any Americans paying attention to this? If your priest, pastor, car salesman, father-in-law, school teacher, or any such person in a position of authority consistently changed their story only for the benefit of selling you a car or getting some extra bills in the collection plate, would you stand for it? If you're a Hillary supporter, why is this ok? Someone help me on this...please...



This would definitely be a follow-up on my hypocrisy rant: with an endorsement from this guy, John Hagee, how can McCain seriously represent anything approaching Christian morals or American values?



Do not watch this if you're a human being. This really has nothing to do with the fact that this guy is an American. It does, however, have everything to do with what war does to the consciousness of a human being. The last paragraph of this story explains it well.


Something fun, something light, something cool...Volk Hände.

Holding Feet to the Fire

Last night was a telling night in primaries across Ohio and Texas. Much air-time and hot air was wasted on whether or not Hillary or Obama should concede defeat were either to not win these two battleground states. Back and forth go the talking heads, arguing and debating on how many delegates and superdelegates there are voting for who and why and where and what the hell is going on?! Really. I mean, where is substance and issues and background on these two candidates?

I found some here. Watch this video of a CBS news clip regarding the time Hillary Clinton served on the Board of Wal-Mart. Yep, the anti-union, sweatshop-laden, mom & pop shop destroying, women-hating Wal-Mart. (They'll pay for Viagra, but not birth control). How ironic that once Hillary decides to run for President, her views change and she's now pro-labor, pro-American-made goods, and pretty much for everything Wal-Mart is against. Just one more reason I'm quite leery of Hillary and won't be voting for her.

Here's an informative and humorous look at sweatshop & child labor: Pranktivism.



I'm a big proponent of the truth. Therefore, things like this and this, really piss me off. If the Iraq war really is the defining war of our time, so vitally important that our government makes sure we are really terrified of Al Qaeda Islamo-fascist, freedom-hating, Arabs, then why are these two twins and the Five Brothers allowed off the hook? Mitt Romney said, in August of last year, "it's time, in my view, for the people of America to show a surge of support, including our leaders in Washington, for these families and for the troops."

Oh, ok. Just support the troops and their families; those willing to live with the death or mutilation of their loved ones, and all is good...I don't have to actually sacrifice anything myself. I support the troops and life is good because I'm not one of them....is that it Mitt? I'm glad you lost, buddy.



Questions, questions, too many questions:

Wasn't this supposed to happen? Here is an article from January of 2003 - two months before we invaded the innocent country. "I don't think they're planning as far as I know to use Iraqi oil to pay for the invasion, but they are going to use it to pay for the occupation." Oh, really?


Why doesn't this make headline news? Whether they're lying or not - we could hold their feet to the fire, couldn't we? Then again - we like being the bully on the block - where we have a little less than 10,000 nuclear warheads. And we want more!

Why do we think we're smarter than mother-nature; smarter than an evolutionary biology that has been continually perfecting itself over millions and millions of years?

It's like the world has gone mad

The FDA, as well as those on the side of the meat industry, feel that it is safe for humans to eat meat and drink milk from cloned animals. (I do not in any way, shape, or form, support this position). In addition, they are against the labeling of such meat and dairy products in order to let consumers know what they are about to ingest has come from cloned animals. “The problem with labeling is that it implies that something is wrong with the food,” says William Hallman, director of the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University. “Just like a label warns of peanuts, a label on cloned foods will be interpreted as a warning.”

Excuse me, but, does the "warning" label on cigarettes stop people from smoking? And the peanut warning label is so that people who have allergies know to stay away from food containing peanuts or processed in a facility that processes peanuts. It's called health and safety. It's called allowing the "free hand of the market" to decide, right? Isn't that what all of these big industry capitalist CEO's are always raving about? So, why not label cloned animals as such - and let the consumer decide if he or she feels safe eating an animal that has no evolutionary genetic history on this planet and is literally made up from a brand new, rarely discussed or debated technology in a laboratory?



More hypocrisy. Hey, all of you conservative, right-wing, "family-values" Americans...why don't you do something about this truly disgusting situation? Isn't this more important than abortion?



Speaking of disgusting... Those killed in the twin towers on 9/11 have never been given proper, body-identified burials. The remains of their bodies as well as the buildings they died in were rushed out of NYC: sold, junked, scrapped, melted, and otherwise destroyed and retransformed. Even though it was a crime scene, no investigation was ever done on any of the "evidence" contained at ground zero. Why? And why is it OK to use crime and burial scene evidence and steel as building material?



Why is this being released now? The report even states that, “At this time, there is no credible intelligence regarding specific plans by any extremist groups or individuals to perpetrate an act of terrorism against the U.S. mass transit system." So, why scare and frighten people? Is it because enough people aren't paying attention to Bush's low approval ratings? Is it because Hillary and Obama are dominating national television coverage? Why does my government continually try to terrorize me?

Water, Water Everywhere?

A friend of mine a number of years ago once commented on the fact that I had let water run from the tap while cleaning the counters. All he said was, "you know, if that was beer, people would never waste it like that."

I've thought about that statement many times: from the knocked-over beer bottle when my roommate said, "whoa, that's alcohol abuse" to every time i force myself to turn the water off while washing my face ( I'm reluctant to get the faucet all soapy - how ridiculous!). Yet I feel it's true that if beer came out of the tap it would be a different story. People would be quite agitated, and probably a lot more conservative, if it was Sam Adams running down the drain instead of water.

Where did this mindset come from that water is a never-ending supply of the basic ingredient of life? Was there ever a time when it wasn't acceptable to let the faucet run and waste water?



All too soon, the people of the United States (and the other countries of the world like us) will come to realize that our grandiose way of life and living is unsustainable. Democracy Now recently devoted time on its daily news program discussing the documentary Flow: For Love of Water. Flow discusses the fact that we're running out of water and how its privatization is only making matters worse. Democracy Now has a transcript of the segment, found here.

A few excerpts from the documentary are quite striking: "This notion that we'll have water forever is wrong. California is running out. It's got 20-some years of water. New Mexico has got 10, although they're building golf courses as fast as they can, so maybe they can whittle that down to five," "We're treating the water resources of the planet with contempt, which is just so stupid, because we depend on them. We need water to live. We will only survive for a day or two if we don't have water," and "You know those movies where there's the comet coming at the earth, and all of a sudden the governments of the world say, "Gee, we're not -- our differences aren't so big anymore, because we're about to all die"? That's really where we are. There is a comet coming at us. It's called water shortage."



What is sad about the state of our water situation is it barely makes a blip on the mainstream media's radar. There are certain stories that make national attention, however, these are played off as something happening to only a few states and mostly due to the mismanagement of the water or debates and disagreements about how much to use for wildlife.

For example, the water negotiations between Alabama, Georgia, and Florida have failed as of Saturday. "The talks appeared to unravel further in recent days, with Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue saying the water problems facing Florida and Alabama are not as critical as Georgia's and accusing the other states of approaching the talks without the same urgency as Georgia." However, "Florida and Alabama argue that Georgia hasn't adequately planned for growth. The extra withdrawals, they argue, would damage the environment and dry up river flows into their states that support smaller municipalities, power plants, commercial fisheries and industrial users like paper mills."

According to the New York Times here and here, "To support growth...Albuquerque will virtually abandon 40 years of pumping ground water out of the regional aquifer and replace it with surface water from the Rio Grande," which "is no longer strong enough to reach the sea."



And there are many more examples of water shortages in the United States. In Orme, Tennessee, they are living off of three hours of water a day, "the Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York's reservoirs have dropped to record lows...and in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year." All that is here.



One would think that the most precious combinations of elements in our solar system running out, the one's without which we die in two days, would cause more care and concern. Well, never fear, the growing water shortage does attract attention and demand action - and people are doing something about it - making money off it. Now if you'll excuse me, I just threw up in my mouth and need a glass of water.

When does karma assert itself?

The New York Times reported today that all 16 American intelligence agencies say Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. That's almost five years ago...

On August 17, 2004, John Bolton, then Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security said during a speech at the Hudson Institute, "Iran is pursuing two separate paths to nuclear weapons, one that would use highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and one that would use plutonium."

A report here, from McClatchy Newspapers on November 4, 2007, says that President Bush and Vice-President Cheney speak of Iran's nuclear weapons program as fact:

"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 having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," he said Oct. 17 at a news conference.
"Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney warned on Oct 23. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

I was watching CNN this morning and there were various reports about the above cited New York Times article and the fact that all United States spy agencies agree that Iran has not tried to make nuclear weapons since 2003. Amazingly, none of these news stories I saw even mentioned the fact that Bush and Cheney have very recently said just the opposite. Where is the accountability and the outrage at being lied to yet again?

How can these "journalists" devote an amazing amount of time to Hillary Clinton's cackle on various TV news magazines, but not question the Executive Branch's assertions of Iranian nuclear capability when it flies in the face of a National Intelligence Estimate? Should this not be another nail in the coffin of the Bush Administrations' credibility?

Where we're heading

Everyone should be really paying attention to this, because these kinds of fights are going to start happening more frequently as we continue doing nothing about changing our planet's atmosphere. The biggest problems aren't going to come from dwindling water supplies as much as the fighting humans will do over the most important ingredient for life. According to a 2004 Pentagon analysis: "Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology or national honor."

What's going down in Georgia right now definitely highlights the situation of what we will all be dealing with all too soon:

"Atlanta politicians, the newspaper said, "can't bring themselves to tell their greedy constituents complaining about the low flows in their toilets this week that perhaps if they didn't have six bathrooms, it might ease the situation a bit. That watering your lawn isn't as important as watering crops. Or that their greedy overbuilding has taxed their supplies of natural resources beyond their capabilities.""


It's not just Atlanta politicians - it's politicians and average citizens everywhere. There's this capitalistic mantra that worms its way into everyday consciousness: grow, Grow GROW - with anyone who tries to argue against it branded as un-American or anti-business.

Simply put - we live on a planet with finite resources: meaning that one day they will run out (like water is starting to do). Yet we have business models with unlimited growth as the book of divine inspiration. How many Starbucks does San Francisco really need? There's 81 listed on their website!

If you look at growth statistics since the 1950s, the average American house size has more than doubled; it now stands at 2,349 square feet. This is from a recent NPR report here in which they also talk about how we've become so greedy for goin' large that we're "atomizing the American family."

I mean - when are we going to start seeing recycling and sustainability as not just a concept for allowing the pursuit of happiness but something as foundational to the survival of our species. . . when we've chopped down the last tree to make a subdivision or produce that non-recycled paper cup? when we have to start having oxygen bars inside every Starbucks? How can you keep growing when your resources are going to run out? Is there anything more suicidal?

When are the citizens of this most enterprising country going to rise above Madison Avenue, Wall Street and their political backers and start to think for themselves? This tunnel-vision of growing by any and all means necessary for the adolescent goal of making more and more money is ridiculous - especially when it comes at the expense of our health, well-being, and future existence -- as evidenced by the Georgia drought.

All Knowing Eyes or Big Brother?

With Keith Olbermann probably being the most left-leaning news program on cable television, I still find him at the political center with maybe a leftist touch here and there. Aside from his jokes and inserted personal comments during interviews, he’s only reporting the obvious inconsistencies and hypocrisies of our political “leaders.”

However, has anyone else had the same creepy feeling about the intro graphic for Countdown? I can’t help but see it as the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings which Wikipedia says "…is referred to as having the capability to "see all", although that must be meant as a term of fear…” and the Combine tower from the popular computer game Half Life 2 in which an alien military force has taken over.

The Countdown graphic has an “all seeing, searching” eye set high-up in a spiny tower with dark clouds above and sun rising to the right. Close-ups of the tower show numerous video screens, pipes, tubing, Olbermann’s face, and numbers.

It looks menacing, kind of scary, and brings to mind oppressive thoughts of Big Brother much more so than those of journalist integrity or freedom.

To be free or not to be free

So much hot air comes out of not only President Bush, but the Democratic and Republican members of Congress as well. Who needs oil? Just stick a few of these hypocrites in the trunk of your car bla-bla-blabbing away and zoom! off you go.

Hot air? Hypocrites? I'm speaking in reference to this never-ending stream of talk about freedom and liberty and democracy. How we're bringing it to the Middle East; how we have so much of it; how we're the standard-bearer of it all. How so full of shit it all is.

Recently, there was Burma. I talked about it and our pathetic reaction here, here, and here. This week, we've had Pakistan instantly lose what little democracy they had. And why? Of course the leader who staged a coup to get into power, General Pervez Musharraf, said that it's "because the courts were hampering his efforts against extremist groups, such as by ordering the release of suspects held without charge." That's here.

However, the timing of his abolishment of freedom and liberty came at quite an ironic time. General Musharraf "suspended the constitution on Saturday ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether his recent re-election as president was legal. He ousted seven independent-minded Supreme Court judges, put a stranglehold on independent media and granted sweeping powers to authorities to crush dissent."

What he did was to order the arrest of freedom, liberty, and democracy because the court system was about to rule on whether he could remain president! If his argument about protecting the country and "democracy" from extremist groups was really true, then why would you shut down newspapers, television stations, and arrest hundreds of lawyers? While that bothers me immensely, it's to be expected from a egotistical thug who gained power in a coup. What is not to be expected is the supposed "greatest nation on earth" to stand idly by in a corner sucking its thumb asking for the General to please not do that. At least American hypocrisy is great.

"Pressed on whether the US backed the anti-Musharraf demonstrators, as it had recent anti-government protests in Myanmar [Burma], Perino replied: "Let me put it this way: We certainly support the right to free speech, and freedom of expression and freedom to assemble."" So, the Bush Administration supports people assembling, expressing, and talking about how their democratic rights were taken away, but says nothing about those rights actually being taken away! How nice.

It is interesting to note that Deutsche Welle reported the other day that "since 2001, Musharraf has received nearly $11 billion from Washington and $150 million continue to flow in each month. Of this, only 10 percent goes to economic and social projects. The rest goes to the soldiers."

Who cares about SCHIP and giving poor children health care with that money - or fixing the hundreds of bridges that are structurally deficient in this country. "Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told Congress on Wednesday that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is an "indispensable" ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism and that "partnership with Pakistan and its people is the only option."" What has he done that has made him so "indispensable?" (Besides suspend their constitution twice, the initiation of a police state and the ending of democracy this week?) Where's Osama again?

Hypocrisy. Lies. Distortions. Saddam was our friend. We invaded Iraq to bring "democracy" to a population that was not in the streets protesting for it, yet we totally ignore two countries with citizens actually in the streets protesting and being arrested calling for democracy...

Answer to the previous quiz

Q. Who said that "These people are very unskilled in arms...with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished?"


A.

B.

C. Christopher Columbus

D.


It's quite a shame that we celebrate this marauder who raped, pillaged, and enslaved innocent peoples.

These are the days of our lives

According to a top news article here, 2007 has been the deadliest year for U.S. troops.

In light of that; they're old enough now to ask how dad died. I also hope that they're asking (and being told) exactly why their fathers (and mothers) are no longer alive. Here's a hint: it wasn't weapons of mass destruction (like Bush said), or bringing democracy to Iraq (after no WMD's were found), or going after al-Qaeda in Iraq (after democracy didn't work), or - well, al-Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until we invaded that country so - get the pattern?





Just in case you don't get the pattern, retired Army Gen. John Abizaid said that our war in the Middle East could last 50 years. "...but we shouldn't assume for even a minute that in the next 25 to 50 years the American military might be able to come home..." It's all part of a much bigger plan that has been obvious for quite awhile now. From the stated goals of the Project for a New American Century to presidential candidate Mitt Romney when he says, "For me what America should do is strengthen our military, strengthen our economy and strengthen our family structure so that we always remain the most powerful nation on earth. A world without America as the leader is a very frightening place."

How arrogant is that!? What would a German citizen or English, or Indian, or take your pick of other citizenry, think of that? That's like a kid on the playground saying he's not going to let anyone else run things - it's his way or you get pounded. Surely our founding fathers didn't have empire in mind when they created the grandest experiment in democracy saying that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."






A good part of the problem is our media. Not only that it's highly concentrated by mega-corporations, but that the people asking and discussing important questions are incompetent at best. The always on target Eric Alterman discusses that here.

Our newspapers, magazines and television programs do a horrible job of telling us what we need to know about candidates. How does Clinton's health plan differ from Obama's? Moreover, what exactly is Clinton's health plan? Oh, I hear plenty about how the Republicans are against it, how she's the front runner, how she cackles; but what are the ins and outs - the particulars - of her health care plan? Why isn't this discussed? About half-way down this article by Eric Boehlert talking about the press' reaction to a Stephen Colbert presidential run, you come across this:

"Look at the latest research findings from the campaign trail: "Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election," according to Editor & Publisher magazine. "And just one percent of stories examined the candidates' record or past public performance.""

A functioning democracy must have an engaged and informed citizenry. If we're not getting pertinent information from the media, what kind of democracy are we living in?

Sorry State of Affairs

The Democrats were elected to end the war. They have not and will not. This is part of the problem with a two-party system. I am not ideologically aligned with the Republicans and I'm maybe half-way aligned with the Democrats. I don't respect either party - so who am I to vote for? Many people share this sentiment, including Greens, Libertarians, and Constitutional party members. Back to the war and Democrats: they say they do not have enough votes to stop the war - and I have yet to know about one instance where a reporter has called them on their bullshit. Not one reporter... save Paul Krugman here:

"But the truth is, Democrats have all the votes they need to stop the war — if they are willing to use the power given them by the Constitution to block the supplemental funding bill unless it includes a deadline for bringing the troops home. As Norm Ornstein told me: “Whatever the White House sends to the House is constitutionally merely a suggestion.” The prerogative to bring a funding bill to the floor rests entirely with the majority — which, in case Democrats have forgotten, is theirs. As for the Senate, Democrats there would only have to find 41 votes to block the supplemental funding bill."





I can't say this enough: if you have not read 1984 by George Orwell - GO READ IT!! It will help highlight the ways in which our liberties and freedoms (that we take for granted) are being "legally" taken away from us.

Why do I bring this up? Because the Bush Administration is trying very hard to get the American people supportive (through terrorizing us) of a war with Iran. The same methods used to scare (terrorize) its own citizens into a war with Iraq are being used again. Bush and Co. say that Iran could develop a nuclear bomb in a few short years. However, "the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Sunday he had no evidence Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons and expressed concern that escalating rhetoric from the U.S. could bring disaster." You can read the full article concerning Mohamed ElBaradei, who leads the International Atomic Energy Agency here.






This is a very good example of profound slavishness to the Bush Administration's hatred of regulation, fairness, and objectivity. "Ms. Nord, the top official for consumer product safety, opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistleblowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws."





If we do not take action on this like, yesterday, life as we have come to know it is going to be radically altered - probably forever. And it won't be pretty.

"Humans are changing the Earth's climate so fast and devouring resources so voraciously that the survival of the world's ecosystems and of humanity itself is at stake, a new UN report says. The 570-page Global Environment Outlook, published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), paints a dire picture of planet-wide death and degradation. With more than six billion people, Earth's population is now so big that "the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available," the report warned, adding that the global population is expected to peak at between 8 and 9.7 billion by 2050."

It's laughable to the point of insanity that our country is hyper-focused on immigration, gay marriage, and abortion rather than the fact that we are destroying that which gives us nourishment and life.





The United States has military troops in about 135 countries around the world. If that's not the tentacles of empire, I don't know what is. How many countries have troops in our country? How many foreign militaries have bases in our country? That's why I must applaud Ecuador for being fair and balanced in this regard.

It's All About The Benjamins

According to the National Priorities Project, taxpayers in the state of Hawaii (where I currently reside), " will pay $1.5 billion for the cost of the Iraq War through 2007. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

495,930 People with Health Care OR

2,455,230 Homes with Renewable Electricity OR

36,168 Public Safety Officers OR

28,333 Music and Arts Teachers OR

399,014 Scholarships for University Students OR

112 New Elementary Schools OR

4,617 Affordable Housing Units OR

497,457 Children with Health Care OR

197,000 Head Start Places for Children OR

28,333 Elementary School Teachers OR

21,354 Port Container Inspectors

Some more interesting facts and figures, this time from Adbusters magazine:

The Real Threat to Americans
(est. number of deaths 2001-2005)

-- 3,000 Terrorism

-- 96,000 Homicide

--- 102,000 Drunk Driving

---- 180,000 Suicide

----- 228,000 Second Hand Smoke

-------------- 436, 890 Diabetes

--------------------------2,311,134 Cancer*

---------------------------------2,652,000 Smoking Related

-----------------------------------------------------3,119,142 Heart Disease*


* Excluding smoking related deaths





Pop quiz time: What do $500,000 for a "Virtual Herbarium" in New York, $100,000 to celebrate Lake Champlain's quadricentennial, and $50,000 for an ice center in Utah, all have in common?

I doubt you guessed it (something like this should be on the nightly news, shouldn't it?) - but the answer is: These are Congressional pet projects which were given money over children's health care! That's right ladies and gentlemen, our elected leaders really do represent us. Don't polls show 56% of Americans want an ice center in Utah?





More on lies and money: this story, in which the White House redacted six full pages of research on climate change only goes to show you: the Bush Administration cannot be trusted! It's been long known, through their own words and actions, that Bush and his oil and gas buddies would lose profits if they had to take action on global climate change. That is why the auto industry so heavily lobbies Congress to not make car emission standards higher - they'll lose profits! Who cares if we're killing life and helping make species extinct, who cares if the seas will rise flooding major cities or fires will tear across densely populated areas? What matters most is the bottom line: profits. Profits über alles!

If the Bush Administration will go to blatant lengths to hide this information from you (information that may very soon save our lives - or at least help us prepare for disaster) what else are they hiding from us?

The Lies We Love

One of the biggest things I have learned about my country, and what so many seem to shrug off by saying, "that's just the way it is," is that what matters most - above health and human wellness, above happiness, above morality and care for out neighbors -- is profit.

The fogginess surrounding my thoughts of a country that has not only held up the enlightened ideals forged over two hundred years ago by men of heart and soul, but carried them forward into ever new and promising visions of "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," is only growing more dark and dim.

What is the reason NASA has chosen not to release a study to the public about airline and air traffic safety (which shows twice as many bird-strikes and near mid-air collisions)? "A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits." (Emphasis is mine).

In other words - people may demand something be done! In the meantime, they just might take the train. If something must be fixed, that's going to cost money. And if less people fly, that's less money the airlines (and corporations like Boeing) make. Our safety doesn't matter as much as profits, so NASA won't tell us the truth in order to protect bottom lines. Countries that put their citizens (the true holders of governmental power) first are great countries. At least it's something we used to be.




Remember, President Bush vetoed the S-chip bill that would have given health insurance to poor children. He said that $35 million was too much money to spend on something like this. Thankfully, today he came to his senses and asked Congress for $46 billion - with a B - for war. "To date, Congress has already provided more than $455 billion for the Iraq war, with stepped-up military operations running about $10 billion a month."

In saying why he vetoed S-chip, "Mr. Bush argue[d] that the expansion is too costly..."

Kudos to Rep. David Obey (D-OH), here.





We're all in really big trouble. Everything we use runs on oil: our cars; the machines that make our cars; the trucks and ships that get our cars and good to the stores; the machines that make the machines that make the ships and trucks; the combines and harvest our food, the plants that process our food - everything. Our entire life-support system is based on oil.




As if undermining out life support system wasn't enough; we're REALLY stabbing ourselves in the back with this: "...an alarming new study finds that warming signals are stronger, and happening sooner than expected, due to increased human emissions of carbon dioxide and an Earth less able to absorb them."





P.S. Glenn Beck is an idiot.

Living in an Alternate Universe

That's how I feel lately. Like I'm living in an alternate universe. Everything I was brought up to believe in has been used and exploited, at the expense of people's lives and freedoms, so that a few powerful, rich white men can maintain their exploitative dominance.

For instance, while growing up I was imbued with a sense that pollution was not just wrong, but immoral and that we as a society were actively cleaning up our lakes, rivers, and air to right our wrongs. As a kid and into my young adulthood, it gave me a sense of pride in the U.S. and made me want to give back to society. To paraphrase from my fraternity's guidebook of brotherhood activities, "the situation in which I find myself must make sense to me if I am to be a contributing member to my country and to transmit the country, not only not less, but greater than it was transmitted to me."

What a detriment to us all - especially children and those not yet born - that President Bush doesn't have the same moral compass. And we wonder why our children (and adults) are so apathetic and Bowling Alone. "The Bush administration signaled...that is has no intention of taking enforcement actions against [power plant pollution] for the same kind of Clean Air Act violations in the future." The full story is here.



I've been thinking that Bush and company like where the Iraq war is at. Even though the war is a horrible, disgusting mess, there's really not much more that can go wrong. The fact that mistakes keep being made; simple ones, easily fixable ones - and yet nothing happens aside from blunder after blunder after blunder, I've concluded that this all must be part of the plan. Because, in reality, the guys who started this war have only enjoyed immense amounts of power and profits. (At the start of the war in March 2003, oil was at $35 a barrel - today it is over $88 a barrel).

• Debate on troop withdraws is on hold. (Democratic front-runners say they won't pull out troops)
  
• $592 billion dollar, 104 acre U.S. embassy in Iraq. (Why so big and permanent if we're not staying?)
  
• Gen. John Abizaid (Ret.), the former CENTCOM Commander, said about the Iraq war: "Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that."
  

Which brings me to this:

"Iraq is 'unwinnable', a 'quagmire', a 'fiasco': so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be 'stuck' precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no 'exit strategy'. Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient 'super-bases' are in various stages of completion."

Must Read Articles---------------------------------------

1. Qwest CEO Not Alone in Alleging NSA Started Domestic Phone Record Program 7 Months Before 9/11


2. More on what happens to people who demonstrate for democracy in Burma. Too bad the U.S. doesn't care.

3. I like my food natural. No chemicals, pesticides, or insecticides and definitely not genetically modified. Looks like I won't be drinking anything Anheuser Busch makes.

"Rice used by Anheuser-Busch Cos. to brew Budweiser beer is tainted with an experimental, genetically engineered rice strain, according to an analysis released yesterday by the environmental organization Greenpeace."

What is Democracy?

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, democracy is:

"a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections"

So the majority rules. But more importantly it is the people, you and me, who hold the supreme power. Why is it then, that the majority of the people want us out of Iraq and the Democratically-led Congress continues to do nothing about it? According to an ABC/Washington Post poll here, 54% of Americans believe that we should withdraw our forces "even if that means civil order is not restored there." This same poll shows that since January 2007, a majority of Americans want our forces withdrawn.

Democrats were elected to end this war. They have not. They attempted once and have since maintained that they do not have enough votes to override a presidential veto. However, there are three other options. 1. Continue to send the bill to the president over and over, or 2. Filibuster, or 3. follow the Constitution's power-of-the-purse clause and stop funding the war. Just like impeachment, none of these options are on the table.

Not only do they continue to do nothing about it, but since they're now the party in power in Congress, they don't care. Talking about anti-war protesters on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that it was ""a waste of time" for them to target Democrats. ""

Why? It's what the majority - the supreme rulers - want; so why is it a "waste of time?" You were elected to do what the majority want and you're not doing it! Why not?

Because ending the Iraq war was only a way for these greedy, power hungry people to get elected. Now that they are safely being paid by us (including full dental, vision, and health care as well as retirement benefits), they no longer need us. Until the next election rolls around, that is. Which brings me to my main point: We need to do away with our monopolistic two-party system.

As it is now, if I do not like Republican policies, I have to vote for a Democrat. But what if I don't like their policies either? (For example, this.) Then what am I supposed to do? The Republicans and the Democrats are not stopping this war that the majority (the supreme rulers) wants stopped. Aside from a few key issues such as abortion and the death penalty, Dems and Repubs are two sides of the same greedy and corrupt coin.

You know what true democracy is? A place for all voices and viewpoints in Congress. I'm talking about third-parties. When I vote for president, the ballot has selections for not only Dems and Repubs, but also Green, Libertarian, Constitutional, and Natural-Law parties. Depending on the state, there may be even more choices. So, why aren't these presidential candidates invited to the presidential debates aired on publicly owned airways? Could it be that they would bring up issues the two major parties do not want to deal with or ideas which may benefit the common person at the expense of huge corporate profits? And why are there severe obstacles for third parties to overcome that the Republicans and Democrats don't face?

Third-parties face such obstacles as ballot-access laws which require them to gather thousands of signatures just to appear on the ballot; something the Republicans and Democrats do not have to do. In addition, the presidential debates are run by a commission made up of....that's right, Democrats and Republicans. When is the last time you saw all the people on your presidential ballot at a debate together? And we call ourselves a democracy?



Then again, we continue to celebrate a man who raped, enslaved, and killed thousands and thousands of people. We close our banks and federal offices for Christopher Columbus. If we can't be honest to our children and ourselves about 1492, can we finally admit that we do not really live in a democracy?

Perpetuating Dysfunction

While reading and ruminating on a story about the 20-year old deputy in Wisconsin who shot 6 people here, many thoughts and feelings were coursing through my body and mind.

The big question everyone always asks in these situations is: Why? Why did this happen; why did he choose this as his option for dealing with whatever set him off (being rebuffed by a girlfriend)? Here's what I've got:

Are we given enough options and education and training to make correct decisions about dealing with our tempers and anger? No one can argue that we get plenty of instruction - overkill it could be argued - in math and science and reading courses in school. And that's good as it prepares us for our careers. However, what prepares us for social, relationship, and child-rearing life? Our parents? LOL - c'mon.

While I'm positive there are wonderful parents out there, there are many dysfunctional and bad parents. Because who taught them? Their dysfunctional parents. And who taught those dysfunctional parents? Their parents, etc., etc.... Do you see the pattern here?

How many hours (days, months, years) of TV do we subject our kids to? And there's not much good on TV, so what are they watching? Jack Bauer slap, beat, punch, and torture people when he doesn't get his way. The majority of television shows and video games (24; CSI; Gladiator; Saw 1, 2, and 3; Halo 1, 2, and 3; Battlefield 1942; Battlefield 2; Day of Defeat; Brothers in Arms; Medal of Honor; Doom) are centered around mean, vindictive, barbarous, vengeful and painful behavior, if not outright killing. And I've only named a very few but very lucrative selection here. (Halo 2 made $125 million on its first day of release).

Children copy adults. We buy them shaving kits and easy-bake ovens so they can pretend to be like us. They push baby strollers with baby dolls and play house and play war. (Oh how cute - are kids are pretending to kill each other. . . shouldn't this trouble us?)

Since I have been alive the U.S. has sent troops into and killed people in Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Lebanon, Honduras, Bolivia, Afghanistan, and Iraq among others.

That's how adults deal with problems. When talking doesn't "work" anymore, you go kill people. Who's to say, however wrong it was, that the 20-year old deputy, in his mind, didn't exhaust all "diplomatic" options and do what he saw on TV, on video games, and on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC? Shock and Awe, right? The Iraq war live and in color.

Over 600,000 dead civilians in Iraq. General Tommy Franks: "We don't do body counts." Collateral damage. Here, here, and do not go here unless you are ready for the true picture of war.

What we put into our society is exactly what we get out of it. Learn this, and we will grow up. When adults act as they expect their children to act, then peace will come and killing will become more infrequent; greed will not rule but vested interests arguing for the safety, security, and prosperity for ALL the Earth's people will be a priority.





Fox's drama "24" shows that torture works, and works well. We kill people to show that killing people is wrong. We violently attacked a country that did nothing to us, are preparing to bomb another country that has done nothing to us and our government doesn't talk with those it perceives as enemies. Yet we're amazed by a shooting?

When adults stop acting like children, our children will start acting like adults.

Give me your tired, your poor...

Just don't expect that we'll give a shit about them. We here in the United States are all about individuality. If you can't get into college or get a good job or if you can't afford health insurance, even if you're a child, it's your fault and your own damn problem. We cater here in the U.S. to those who make something of themselves and get rich. That's what we value. That's what's important. And quite frankly, that's what makes me sick. Aside from the fact that we have the most powerful and destructive military in the world and can bomb and kill whoever we want; what makes us so great again?

There's ALWAYS money for war, bombers, jets, guns, tanks, bullets, and missiles. "The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute" here. And that's ok. But an extra $30 billion to give health insurance to children because it could "be a move toward socialized medicine" is just insane. The potential of giving everyone health care is worse than war. How sick have we become?




As capitalism reaches its dynamic climax, it can be seen that all of those values such as democracy, human and civil rights, and liberty aren't really as important as making money. Of course it's couched in terms of keeping our lifestyles "normal," which means that we have access to all the energy we need; no matter how much we over-consume and pollute.

The Mayanmar/Burma protests highlight this point yet again. Amy Goodman talks about it here. And published in Newsweek, an article by Melinda Liu talks about why the sanctions won't work.

The title says it all: It's the Oil and Gas, Stupid.

"Burma’s economic picture would be depressing enough without the involvement of Big Oil. One of the key reasons why sanctions against the regime are unlikely to work is because the junta's foreign partners hope to maintain business as usual. Foreign firms have been scrambling for a piece of Burma's oil and gas industry since the regime liberalized investment rules in 1988.

"These are not obscure players or small-time plays. Burmese natural gas, worth $2.8 billion, generates one fifth of Thailand’s electricity. China wants to build pipelines and roads through Burma that would allow its oil imports to bypass vulnerable chokepoints in the Malacca Straits, which could be blocked by the U.S. Navy in the event of Sino-U.S. tensions."

And so it goes...

I kept hoping that the world community would do something about Myanmar. Isn't this exactly what we're told, over and over again, that this is what the United States fights for? Isn't this why we have the United Nations and peacekeeping forces? Wasn't the fourth (or fifth or sixth) reason for invading Iraq to bring democracy to a people who really really wanted it?

I don't remember any Iraqi's holding demonstrations in the streets of Baghdad. I don't remember thousands of Imam's peacefully protesting Saddam's government. Yet this past week we've had a military junta killing journalists while having destroyed over 3,000 villages and forcefully relocating people. In addition, today it was reported that "thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle."

Why don't we see a Colin Powell up in front of the UN showing samples of satellite photo's like these? Here is a population literally dying for democracy - and the world's "leaders" only action is to say how bad it is. That's like a teacher standing on the playground watching a bully beat up someone while all they do is say how wrong the bully is acting.

In one of my recent blogs, I was wrong in saying that oil was a reason we weren't doing anything about Myanmar. It's because of oil that we aren't doing anything:

"Diplomats and analysts say Myanmar's resources, including natural gas and oil fields that foreign companies are vying to tap, make many nations reluctant to impose economic sanctions or other measures as punishment for the bloody assault on pro-democracy demonstrators."




MUST READ ARTICLES -------------------------------

1. More "progress" from the Iraqi government.

"Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is orchestrating a campaign of persecution against political rivals "even worse" than Saddam Hussein's reign of terror, his predecessor has claimed."



2. Money. Profits. Definitely more important than morals, values, or human life.

" For the time being, General Dynamics has the best of both worlds: strong demand for jet aircraft, and healthy sales of combat equipment even with a troop reduction in Iraq."



3. We used to be great once. What the hell happened?

""If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back," he said."



4. Whoops...sorry. We still are great at selling weapons. And number one at locking people up.

"The United States maintained its role as the leading supplier of weapons to the developing world..."



5. I wish we would do something like this here.

"A landmark case upholding the citizen's right to non-polluted air could lead to local governments in Germany being held responsible for the health of their constituents and the cleanliness of their immediate environment."




6. Leaving out history here.


How come we write this: "Iran and the U.S cut off diplomatic relations in 1979 after Iranian militant students seized the U.S. Embassy and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days." ...which is true and accurate, but leave out the fact that we overthrew their democratically elected government in 1953 and that that's a big part of the reason leading up to hostage taking?

Word Definition

According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, the word "condemn" means, "to declare to be reprehensible, wrong, or evil usually after weighing evidence and without reservation."

According to the United States Constitution, the First Amendment says that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Today, the House of Representatives voted to condemn - to declare to be reprehensible, wrong, or evil - MoveOn.org's Petraeus ad that was in the New York Times. Last week, the Senate voted to condemn - to declare to be reprehensible, wrong, or evil - MoveOn.org's Petraeus ad.

In effect, what we have here is Congress saying that - because they did not like the ad - it is wrong. Since when did freedom of speech become wrong? When did it become so important for Congress to stop work on actually running this country (Iraq war, health care, infrastructure), to find time to condemn freedom of speech?

And not once - not once - was this idea of condemning free speech brought up when the republicans placed an ad in Georgia where Sen. Max Cleland, a veteran who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, was placed in a TV ad with Saddam and Osama.

There are numerous ads, both on television and in print, that I have seen and read and in no way, shape, or form like or agree with. Yet I do all I can to ensure that they are able to say what they believe and have a viable avenue to express it.

The actions by the House and the Senate I condemn. This is something one would expect from China or Stalinist Russia; not from the supposed "leader" of the free world. Not from the country who invades other countries to bring "liberty" and "freedom."



But then again, this same country engages in revising history. Compare what the White House website says Bush said yesterday here with what he actually said here. One may say they were just fixing a mispronunciation, but that is still changing the official record of what was said. If you can fix it in print, why not edit it out of the video as well? When does it stop?

I barely know what to say...how can this be allowed to happen? And this isn't the first time. Look here. The official White House press transcript has words purportedly said by the President that were NOT said by the President! Why doesn't the House and Senate condemn this?

Is this not what Winston did in 1984, for Big Brother?

"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record."

How soon will it be before the White House changes what facts and figures Bush (or any president) said? How long before the president has always been correct and said the right things?



It is actions like this that make me truly proud to be an American. There is hope -- better 6 years late than never.



Here we have devoutly peaceful monks staging protests against a military junta (government by a committee of military leaders). In 1990, the military junta called a general election, which the National League for Democracy won decisively. Being the NLD's candidate, Aung San Suu Kyi under normal circumstances would have assumed the office of Prime Minister. Instead, the results were nullified, and the military refused to hand over power. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest - and is still there today.

Why isn't President Bush sending into troops to Burma? Here is a total crackdown on peaceful, nonviolent protesters demonstrating for democracy (which was stolen from them); something Bush loves to say he is bringing to the world.

Why, then, are we doing nothing for these people? Sorry noble citizens of Burma, maybe if you weren't so geographically close to China or maybe if you had some oil under your land, we'd actually care about you.



Here are true American patriots. In a time of war, in a time of need, they show us what sacrifice really means.

So Much Work for Patriots

A lot of important things have been brought to my attention in the past few days. So much so that I would have a week's worth of blogging if I talked about every issue. At the end of this blog - and maybe all future blogs - I will have a section titled: Must Read Articles. These are articles I find very important that should be on the nightly news at least once - if not repeatedly. It will also contain articles pertaining to subjects that I have previously written about. You could consider them follow-up articles.


This morning I received an email from George W. Bush. Well, from GOP.com - one of those HTML form letters trying to rally people to vote for them and give money. I get them from the Democrats as well. While reading today's email, this struck me as particularly interesting:

"After the enemy attacked us, I vowed I would rally this nation and use our resources to protect you. And that is exactly what we have done. We have reformed our intelligence services to make sure we can find the enemy before they strike. We have fought to deny them safe haven in Afghanistan and Iraq so they cannot plan and plot again.

"The fight for freedom in Iraq is the fight for the security of the United States of America and we must prevail. If we leave before the job is done, the enemy that attacked us would be emboldened."


The GOP write that "the enemy" attacked us. Who is this "enemy?" If it was al Qaeda, why wouldn't you write that? This is nothing more than a continued blurring of the lines between what really happened and what the Republicans want people to think happened.

More to the point on this is the last sentence saying that we denied them safe haven in Iraq. GOP = Grand Ol' Phibbers? Everyone - all together: al Qaeda was NEVER in Iraq prior to us invading! In fact, our intelligence communities all tell us that our being in Iraq has actually caused al Qaeda to go to Iraq.

And finally, the last sentence is very telling. The fight for freedom in Iraq is now not for WMDs, it is not for the toppling of Saddam, it is not to bring democracy to Iraq, it is not to bring freedom and liberty to the people of that nation. No, the fight for freedom in Iraq is "the fight for the security" of the U.S.

What? Our invading a sovereign nation actually caused people to hate us more and has become a rallying cry for al Qaeda. It's what they wanted. It proved their point that all we do is stick our big, bullying bombs and guns into the politics and business of nations in the Middle East. Ron Paul has said it best:

"Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there- we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East - I think Reagan was right. We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. "

MUST READ ARTICLES

1.

"The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials."

and

Activist Silenced for Fear of Surveillance

-----Repeat after me: P O L I C E S T A T E. If you don't really know what that means, simply put, it means that you have no privacy and everyone is a suspect for everything. Go read 1984.

2.

"The White House approved a Transportation Department campaign to lobby against California's application for a waiver to combat global warming through auto emissions limits tougher than federal standards, a lawmaker charged Monday."

-----While growing up, I was taught that the government was here to protect us and help make our country a better place to live. Oh my how the tides have turned....


3.

"US soldiers are luring Iraqis to their deaths by scattering military equipment on the ground as "bait", and then shooting those who pick them up, it has been alleged at a court martial."

----- So this is how we get to say that we are killing more "insurgents." Amazing.


4.

"The US Senate is expected to vote as early as Tuesday on a Bosnia-style plan to subdivide Iraq on ethnic lines, touted by backers as the sole hope of forging a federal state out of sectarian strife."

----- Why are WE making their decisions? What happened to the whole "democracy" and "elections" thing? We go in and destroy their country, kill 700,000 civilians, and then vote to break up their country? Amazing.


5.

"Bush: We Can’t Spend $22 Billion On America Because We Need $200 Billion For Iraq War"

----- Reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker: It Will Be A Great Day When Our Schools Get All The Money They Need and The Air Force Has to Hold a Bake Sale To Buy A Bomber. There's ALWAYS money to kill people...amazing...

History the Media Neglects

The drums are getting louder...Bush, Cheney, and their war machine's fear-mongering about the imminent threat from Iran are all over the news. (Why wasn't Iran an imminent threat when Iraq was an imminent threat?).

All of a sudden, Iran is the new Iraq, they want nuclear weapons that Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, and the U.S. have, and they're supposedly training Iraqi's - a people who are their religious enemies.

They are enriching uranium which can be used for two things: 1. nuclear power and/or 2. nuclear weapons. The funny thing is that Iran has signed the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which allow it to enrich uranium for nuclear power.

In any event, aside from the very astute Ron Paul, I have yet to hear any politician or major media news outlet bring up the history between Iran and the United States. My presumption is that when one does this, it becomes easy to see that we bear a lot of the fault for the Middle East in Crisis.

Excerpts from the main story (1) in this month's edition of Adbusters tells the tale simply:

1953: After an economic blockade and the presence of British warships in the Persian Gulf failed to break Mohammed Mossadegh's will, the British government persuaded the incoming Eisenhower administration to send in the CIA. (Mossadegh was a liberal democrat who believed fervently in national independence - Time magazine's Man of the Year - and was democratically elected as Prime Minister in 1952). A CIA operative named Kermit Roosevelt helped bring about this cautionary note in an official CIA report: "Possibilities of blowback against the United States should always be in the back of the minds of all CIA officers involved in this type of operation."


1954: Anglo-Iranian (Oil) changes its name to British Petroleum and regains its assets, but must share its monopoly with American oil companies. Mohammed Reza Shah is restored to the throne with help from the American-trained SAVAK secret police who torture and disappear even the most timid of dissidents. (Mossadegh had nationalized Iran's oil industry in 1951).


1971: The Shah throws himself a $100-million party at Persepolis to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian Empire...the party must be held behind barbed wire, guarded by men with machine guns as protests erupt at Tehran University.


1979: After enduring a long reign of terror, a broad-based popular revolution overthrows the Shah. Five million Iranians crowd the streets of Tehran to welcome the revolution's symbolic leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, on his return from exile in Paris.


November 1979: Fueled by the belief that the U.S. is about to launch another coup after allowing the Shah to take refuge there, militant students seize the American embassy in Tehran, holding 52 hostages for 444 days. Ayatollah Khomeini, who was not involved in the hostage-taking, nevertheless lends his support and uses the distraction to consolidate power. Students piece together hundreds of pages of secret documents outlining the extent of former American control of Iran and its plans to destabilize the new regime.


1980: President Jimmy Carter orders a hostage rescue operation that goes terribly wrong. With Carter's popularity plummeting, Ronald Reagan wins a landslide victory in the presidential election. The hostages are released six minutes after Reagan is sworn in, contributing to allegations that his emissaries secretly negotiated to extend the hostage-taking until after the elections.


1983: Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran in 1980 with the quiet encouragement of the U.S., has begun to use poison gas on Iranians on an almost daily basis. According to the Washington Post, "The administration of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague."


1983: Donald Rumsfeld visits Saddam Hussein in Baghdad as special envoy of Ronald Reagan to discuss common interests and Iraqi oil shipments. Rumsfeld was previously involved (along with Dick Cheney) in promoting the development of Iran's nuclear program under the Shah.


2005: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, is elected president of Iran. Within days of his election, the country announces it is proceeding with uranium enrichment.


2007: As Iraq descends into chaos with 700,000 Iraqis dead, the U.S. administration issues a troop "surge" in hope of regaining control, and makes the unusual argument that Tehran is arming anti-US insurgents - most of whom are Sunni and traditional enemies of the Shia Iranians. In January the U.S. raids an Iranian consulate in Kurdish Iraq, capturing low-level Iranian diplomatic staff; Iraqi troops working for the U.S. later capture an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad. Soon after, Iran captures 12 British sailors on an intelligence mission in disputed waters. The sailors are released a day after the Iranian diplomat, who claims to have been tortured by the CIA, is returned to Iran.


2007: U.S. fleet carriers gather in the Persian Gulf; Mohammad ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announces that a military attack on Iran would be "an act of madness," and stresses that nonproliferation efforts are undermined as long as the "big boys" - such as the U.S. and Israel - are permitted to have nuclear weapons. The U.S. president authorizes the CIA to engage in covert operations to destabilize the Iranian regime.

In the media coverage, comparisons to the 1953 CIA regime change in Iran are nowhere to be found.





1. Campbell, Deborah Iran vs. The United States of Amnesia; Adbusters #73, Volume 15 Number 5; 2007.

Where Are We Heading?

Sunday night, my roommate and I were playing some football on our Playstation 2. The game was ESPN 2K5. It's a regular football game - just like Madden - however there are some twists to it. One being that there is a cool halftime report where they talk about key plays made in the first half. The other involves "crib credits." You get crib credits - money essentially - for making touchdowns, sacking the QB, playing for certain amounts of time, and other such activities. What can you use these crib credits for? Only one thing: pimping out your crib!!

That's right. You have no choice but to buy more and more expensive furniture, TV's, DVD players, home theaters, etc. You are given no option to save your "money," no option to invest it or even give some to charity. The entire goal of the game is to get "money" so that you can buy things; buy really expensive and honestly unnecessary things. What kind of message are we sending to our children? We give them no options but only point them in the direction of consuming more and more and more.

There was a time when this nation was above that - wasn't there?


I read an interview today with a woman who has written a book on the luxury industry and how it impacts our society. This part really struck me:

"Yesterday, after a signing, I went to have dinner with friends out in Mill Valley and they showed us the town and the town square, and there was a young boy selling lemonade, and my daughter wanted to get some, so I gave her a quarter and she went to buy it. I went with her, and one of the little girls there was about 8 years old -- about the same age as my daughter -- was standing there with a little Louis Vuitton handbag on her shoulder. I said 'Well, that's a nice handbag," and she turned to me and said, "Thank you, it's Louis Vuitton." Eight years old! That is how they are realigning our social network and our self-worth."

It doesn't matter what you do for a living. It doesn't matter if you are devoting your life to picking up all of the trash I and my neighbors generate; it doesn't matter if you devote your life to researching a cure for cancer (both extremely noble, by the way). No, no, no. This little girl didn't have such lowly ambitions. She's already at the top of her game, respected among her 8-year old peers. She has a Louis Vuitton handbag. THAT is making it American style. That is success, accomplishment, and truly making something of yourself.


Here is it comes. Are you ready? It's being done just the way it was before. Subtle hints of deception along with public pronouncements - more each month - that we're doing all we can, we're trying our best but it's really their fault that our diplomacy is failing. I don't blame the Administration anymore. I blame the media - and unless you protest this, I blame you.

A Great and Wise Man Once Said...

During my 3rd and 4th grade years, I was living in southern New Jersey and a distinct memory I have during that time period is quite poignant for today. Driving around, I would look out the window from my usual seat in the back and stare at huge smoke stacks with endless columns of smoke pouring into the air I was breathing. I couldn't help but notice thick black clouds of exhaust coming out of buses and trucks. As a 9 year old I thought: this can't be right, how can adults let this happen and be OK with destroying the air I'm breathing?

The only answers I can come up with are ignorance and greed.


A great and wise man once said:

The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water; how can you buy them from us? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people....

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities; no place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frog around the pond at night?

The Whites too shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view to the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the eagle? Gone. Where is the buffalo? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt, the end of living and the beginning of survival?


Chief Seattle to President Franklin Pierce, 1855

We're becoming the Borg

Part of what makes a democracy a democracy is the ability of citizens to be given facts and figures for all sides of an issues. Especially with the war in Iraq, there is all kinds of howling on the Right that the media is unfair to Bush & Co. and that it's a vast wasteland of Liberal thought. Oh, if only it were true.

Here's a study released today that analyzed Syndicated Op-Ed columnists in papers all across the country. And guess what they found:

• Sixty percent of the nation's daily newspapers print more conservative syndicated columnists every week than progressive syndicated columnists. Only 20 percent run more progressives than conservatives, while the remaining 20 percent are evenly balanced.

• In a given week, nationally syndicated progressive columnists are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of 125 million. Conservative columnists, on the other hand, are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of more than 153 million.2

• The top 10 columnists as ranked by the number of papers in which they are carried include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.

• The top 10 columnists as ranked by the total circulation of the papers in which they are published also include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.

• In 38 states, the conservative voice is greater than the progressive voice -- in other words, conservative columns reach more readers in total than progressive columns. In only 12 states is the progressive voice greater than the conservative voice.

• In three out of the four broad regions of the country -- the West, the South, and the Midwest -- conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists. Only in the Northeast do progressives reach more readers, and only by a margin of 2 percent.

• In eight of the nine divisions into which the U.S. Census Bureau divides the country, conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists in any given week. Only in the Middle Atlantic division do progressive columnists reach more readers each week.

There is NO liberal media. 99% of all newspapers and television stations are owned by only 10 HUGE corporations. What's the #1 goal of a corporation? It's bottom line. Not democracy, not hearing all sides of an issue and obviously not letting all sides have equal air & print time.

Same ol', Same ol'

Am I the only one that hears the end of our society as we know it approaching? In 45 years, almost all polar bears will be gone. Gone. These penguins are going, too. In one week - that's 7 days - a portion of the Arctic Ice shelf the size of Florida has melted away. Gone. If you don't care or understand why the loss of a species is bad, then lets think about ice - when it melts it becomes water. More water in the ocean makes the oceans rise. From the same report by ABC News - it gets worse because, "2007 has already broken the record for the lowest amount of sea ice ever recorded, say scientists, smashing the old record set in 2005."

Honestly, I don't care about universal health care right now. I don't care about Osama bin Laden or the Iraq war. Because what is about to happen; what we are on the verge of crossing into, will make us wish we only had those things to argue about.

What is going to happen to the coastal cities once the ice starts melting faster and faster? Pretty soon, we won't even be measuring the sea ice melting - we'll be measuring how fast the seas are making their way into our cities; our business and our homes.

Remember Katrina? Remember how completely unprepared we were? Remember how we had thousands and thousands of people displaced with no food and no water? Well, what happens when that same situation presents itself in Miami and Tampa and Houston and San Francisco and Seattle and Honolulu and New York City and -- hopefully you get the picture.

Am I the only one who doesn't want to look into our children's eyes and say I'm sorry. That I'm sorry for not doing enough to help others from screwing up your future?

I do not want to have to say that. But I do and I shall.

I'm sorry I couldn't help convince my fellow humans that Hummer H3's really aren't cool - that whoever has the fattest crib, takes up the most space, throws away the most garbage, and buys the most crap every weekend aren't really those people we should be modeling our society on. I'm sorry I couldn't stop Exxon and Chevron and other oil companies from paying millions of dollars to lie to people about global warming.

However...

I am the change I seek in the world. I have passed the word on and been an example for others to see. I have been laughed at and asked if I had a job (yes I did - and while going to graduate school at the same time). I have done - and many others like me have done - all we can. But it looks like it's still not nearly enough. And I'm sorry it wasn't enough.

You Can't Keep Keepin' Us Down

The more I hear Ron Paul talk and the more I see the MSM ignore him, the more I know he's onto something and the more I truly respect him. I don't know if I'd vote for him because some of his Libertarian views are just too far of a stretch for me to take, however, he's smart, articulate, full of integrity and has a firm grasp on the issues -- which is a lot more than I can say for any other Republican candidate and quite a few of the Democratic ones. I'd like to include those from the Green, Libertarian, or other third parties in this discussion, but for some odd reason, we in this country like to limit our freedom of representational choice to two sides of the same coin.

Outstanding Ron Paul at the recent Republican Debate can be seen here with some transcripts and a blog by Eric Garris about it here.



Now this (and this) has been making me smile all day. I truly love good ol' fashioned checks and balances. Let's hear it (finally) for some democracy in the USA!



This just really amazes me. It amazes me not only that the MSM doesn't report on this, but that Congress allows it to happen. If you have this revolving door of people who work for the government, then go work for major corporations, then back to the government - are they really going to represent the people and do what is in our best interest? Or are they going to bend over backwards to please those who gave them these cushy loyalty jobs?



I get a very dark, sinister feeling about this. (Another Eric Garris blog - the original story is here.) Bush has already admitted that his plan is to keep troops in Iraq up to, and hopefully after, he leaves office. Iraq is without question a gigantic illegal and immoral disaster. Maybe some quick strikes on Iran will help bolster the GOP's chances for a favorable outcome in 2008. We wouldn't bomb people just to win elections...would we?




Kudo's to Sony (and Japan) for pushing the limits and boundaries of human ingenuity. This is just awesome! Our imaginations are the only boundaries to our creativity.

That's why not for one second do I buy into this crap that Bush & Co keep polluting our national discourse with regarding CO2 limits and reduction: It'll hurt the economy or Other nations pollute, too! What are we, only the greatest nation when it comes to bombing people? News flash - creating new energy resources through research, development, and productions WILL CREATE NEW JOBS AND HELP THE ECONOMY! Why is no one throwing this back at Bush when he repeats the same tired lies?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

If any teacher of mine, or parent or other person in a position of leadership, kept changing their reason for doing something - whether it be where they ate lunch or how Einstein's theory of relativity worked, I'd be highly skeptical of their trustworthiness. You'd be hard pressed to get me to accept much of anything they said after that.

So why is it so hard for the MSM to question our President. They keep parroting everything Bush says regarding his rationale for the war like he's never changed it! Unbelievable. We've had WMD's, democracy for Iraq, democracy for the Middle East, liberty, liberation, human rights, oil, strategic advantage, Libyan disarmament, blah blah blah.

However, with the release yesterday of a new book on Bush by Robert Draper called Dead Certain, it seems that, maybe, we are finally getting some truth out of Bush. At least about why we're staying in Iraq. And that is "To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence."

So, it's all political, isn't Mr. Bush. It's all so that you and your neo-con friends' political ambitions can be carried out. You're a sick man and I'm very ashamed that the American people tolerate having you represent us -- because in no way do you represent me.


Thanks Keith.



I love my planet. It's amazing how diverse it is (we're still discovering new species) and how wonderfully it all fits together. Truly the most beautiful and awe-inspiring experience of my life is my life on our planet Earth. That's why I'm upset, angry, and really pissed off that the majority of people in our self-proclaimed "greatest nation in the world" are doing absolutely nothing about this. It's like watching a fully-loaded airliner crash in slow motion - only multiply it by 15 million times.



What more can I say about this? The airwaves that CBS, NBC, and ABC use are OURS. They belong to the American people, by law, and are rented to the networks provided they serve community interests. When they don't do that, when they stifle dissent and American public opinion - how is our country any different than Stalinist Russia or Communist China?



The Pentagon supports our troops! Ok....honestly, they don't.



A little light hearted truth: "It's called the American Dream...because you have to be asleep to believe it!"

Things that go bump in the day

Under the United States Constitution, citizens are given "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

In other words - we can protest, write, call, petition, etc., our representatives (Senators, Congressmen and women, the President, Vice President: those people that we hire to represent us) in order to persuade them change laws, policies, and the like.

How are we to do this if they can't see or hear us? How can we get proper redress if peaceably protesting American citizens are arrested? How can we persuade our leaders if they never see or hear that a large segment of citizens, let alone other democratic countries, disagree with their (our) policies?

You expect me to believe that our goal is to bring democracy and liberty to Iraq, when it's slowly being eroded here? When Bush & Co. can't even export our First Amendment to Australia, how am I to believe they're going to do that in Iraq? John F. Kennedy said it best:

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable."



I do not know how true this is - and the author readily admits as much. However, they did it for the Iraq War and there are telltale signs of it starting up up again, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least. What with General Petraeus's report coming up next week, it makes sense. The Iraqi government is now the fall guy for our disaster there, but do not be surprised if they start saying, or some other mouthpiece for them (read that: a Bush Administration official), starts saying that it's not their fault after all. If Iran would just stop interfering, then the Iraqi government could get their act together. It's all Iran's fault now. The evidence will be there, just like the WMDs.


This one is for all of those people who still trust Bush to tell us the truth. And if he honestly just doesn't remember something so vitally important about the invasion of a sovereign nation, among all other things, he doesn't deserve to be President.

Oh the Humanity

It does not matter if you are Asian; Japanese, Chinese, or from Hong Kong. It does not care if you are American; North or South, Peruvian, or an Eskimo. There is no difference between a German, an American, a Russian, or an African. Every single one of us is human.

A human being.

We're trying to be better. But war does not discriminate hate it prescribes it for us all. Like ripples caused by throwing a pebble into a pond, those waves at the epicenter are largest. Those at the center of this war are having their souls drenched in gasoline and set on fire. Our fellow humans are in hell and here is what hell does to people.





What kind of humanity lets this happen? If any country came into ours and caused this, in no way, shape, or form would it be seen as liberation, democracy, or freedom. Maybe that's not really why our government, and those who agreed with this disgusting pre-meditated homicide, invaded. Do drunk-with-power, arrogant, selfish "leaders" care about anything besides their stock price?

From my August 8th post:

I can't help but think of the scene from Fahrenheit 9/11 where Blaine Ober, the president of a company that makes armored vehicles, said, "Unfortunately, at least for the near term, we think it's going to be a good situation. Er, a dangerous situation. Good for business, bad for the people."

Privatization

It's when privately owned corporations increasingly buy things the government used to own. For example, the "privatization of Social Security" means that the government sells its shares and control of our national pensions to people who run the stock market. Another example of privatization is when corporations buy the water supply in communities. The public no longer owns them, the public no longer has a say in how they are run; and the services that were bought become the means to a profit-driven end.

This is not good for America. Or any society for that matter. The people, communally, should have stakes and a say in how common necessities like water, sewer, roads and our wars are run and organized. For a good take on this and the privatization of our military, read this.


Close to 7 years later, "9/11 changed everything" is still being used as political smoke and mirrors to justify the legal destruction of our rights, liberty, and democracy. We have held American citizens in jail with no access to a lawyer. This is against the constitution. We have held American citizens in jail and not presented any evidence as to why. This is against the constitution. Where is our collective outrage? This man killed no one - but is being killed by the American government. (Updated). Where is our concern? An "Impeach Bush" sign-waving man is arrested. Who are we? If you are not yet awake, maybe this will help you.

Just remember, this is nothing new.


One last thing. In case you haven't heard, the family-loving, job-creating President Bush is trying to allow trucks from Mexico into our country to deliver goods. What about American trucking jobs? What about the safety of those trucks - mechanically and insurance-wise? Whose side is he on? Yours, mine - or those companies that will get to pay Mexican truck drivers much lower wages than they can pay American truck drivers. If you don't believe that, ask yourself -- why else would they do it?

Equal pay for equal work

Let's say there's this guy named Tom. Tom works for a cell phone company's call center. He is the voice of the cell phone company - especially when dealing with irate and upset customers. Tom is the one who customers will remember. Tom has the ability to win over or lose customers.

He processes orders, fixes billing mistakes, calms down customers, files reports, talks to customers and potential customers 8 hours day, and (for some companies) must meet a certain quota of sales or retentions in order to keep his job. Tom sits in front of a computer all day - with an hour for lunch and 2 15-minute breaks. (In a lot of call centers - there are no windows or natural light).

Then there's Mike. Mike works in a factory that builds cars. He is a robot technician and he is responsible for programming the robots that build part of the cars. Mike is also the troubleshooter and repair man whenever any robot fails or malfunctions. Mike too works 8 hours a day in a loud and noisy environment. His breaks are the same as Tom's.

I know these are very simplistic profiles - but go with me here...

Without these employees (and thousands others like them) companies wouldn't able to function. It is these people who actually make the corporations products or carry out their services. What does Ford do? They make cars. Who actually makes the cars that earn Ford so many millions of dollars in profits? Mike - and thousands of others like him.

So why is it that CEOs feel entitled to make millions of dollars per year? They get posh offices, private jets, lush compensation packages, health care, life insurance, guaranteed pensions, and other benefits. At the same time their employees - those who make the company the company, take pay cuts, and lose pensions and benefits; some after 35 years of dedication to the company.

Are they really that much more important than the Toms and Mikes? No way. That's why this is pretty disgusting.

And you'd be mistaken to buy into the fabrication that our economy is growing and we're all doing well. For a good breakdown of American income gains, poverty levels, and the state of our economy, read this.

Central Office Matrix

Year after year, our prisons grow. More and more of our fellow citizens are behind bars - many of them with only minor infractions, yet they are now neighbors of gangs, rapists, and murderers. How does this make them better? Effectively shut out of society and thrown into an even more violent place - how can we even imagine that upon release, they're going to be better? Sounds pretty crazy to me.

Even crazier when you see that locking people up doesn't stop crime. Hell, even killing people to show that killing people is wrong doesn't work. People are still killing each other.

But check this out. Beautiful. Now, who knows if it will work or not. But, at least they're trying something new because it is quite obvious that locking people up (we have more people in prison than any other country in the world) does not work.

We used to be a forward thinking nation, we use to rise above. What happened? Our bridges are falling down, our own kids can't find the U.S. on a map, our President is a C student, New Orleanians drown and we watch it on TV.

Educate, learn, teach, repeat.

One of my biggest pet peeves is lying. Whether it be from family, friends, teachers, or government. You know, even more so if the lie is from teachers or government. This is because we heavily influence our children about justice and truth and the American way and how great we are because of it. So, what does one do when you find out that the American way is lying; is deception, and anything but total justice?

While growing up, I was taught that Christopher Columbus was a great guy. I mean, we close the banks and government and get a holiday because he discovered a land that people had already discovered and that I don't even live on! He must be swell! Let's just not teach our children that he stole a bunch of people and enslaved them back in Spain; on plantations in the Caribbean, and that his crew beat, raped, and killed countless others. Why are we teaching an outright lie and celebrating a disgusting criminal?

Fast-forward to today. If we can't believe the "truth" about Columbus, what else is out there that we've been lied to about? Why are we told over and over again that we support democracy and justice and liberty; but continually act to deny those enlightened freedoms to other people?

Here are some examples, since our C-student of a President got confused with his Iraq is like Vietnam speech last week:

Vietnam: We invaded because the South Vietnamese were going to become communist. By voting for it. Democratically.

Democracy: We don't have one according to Presidential candidate Edwards who last week said, "Real change starts with being honest - the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits." (p.s. democracy is not voting for a President every 4 years).

Socialism: We live in a partly socialist country already. A very, very simplistic explanation of socialism is when everyone in a community helps pay for things that benefit everyone. Some examples are roads and schools. So, why is it so bad?



Truth is painful. It has wounded me deeply to find out that my country - the one I've been taught to view as the best in the world - tortures people, celebrates a rapist and enslaver, tested toxic chemicals on its own military, plotted the death of a hundreds by blowing up a Navy ship to get public support for war, invaded a country because they were going to vote in a way we didn't like...

Until the light of day is shone upon truth - none shall be free. Educate yourselves; knowledge is power - it's harder to walk all over a smart person. Teach someone what you've learned.


Here's some books to start out on:

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips

A Preface to Economic Democracy by Robert Dahl

Does the consumer decide?

We hear all the time that corporations do not choose to make this or that product and news companies only air the stories that we the people want to hear about.

Really? I've never had any corporation or any news media outlet question me about what kind of product I would like them to make or what I feel should be on the evening news.

Maybe I'm just one of those who didn't get polled, but I don't know anyone who has ever been polled in such a manner.

It's just a nice little ploy to get you to believe you're in control. How many of us really want more commercials, for example?

For some straight facts and analysis, this can't be beat.


An unrelated note:

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.....For purple mountains majesties...

Democracy and Representation Part II

The White House doesn't care about people who support their views either. (Walter Reed or 15 months in a war-zone anyone?) They care about your vote, that's about all. If they did care about you, why would they hide a potentially VERY dangerous situation from you and your family? Like they did here. And why would they not rush armored vehicles to Iraq?


If they cared about you and "family values" so much, why would they bail out the shady mortgage companies instead of helping the families who are losing their homes?

First, read this and learn what these sub-prime mortgages are all about. There's even a cool video go to with it.

Then read this to see the fallout this is generating.



If the people who run the government are also the people who own huge corporations, including almost every major media outlet - will we ever see all sides to a story?

First - check this out to learn how 10 corporations own all of our newspapers, television stations and internet access points.

Then watch this to see how even ABC news (part of the big 10) manipulate us.

Then watch this and and see what propaganda looks like. Josef Goebbels couldn't be prouder.

Do something.

The time is now.


Nazi Germany didn't just happen. People didn't just wake up one day to find Jews in concentration camps and the SS asking for allegiance to Hitler. It was a slow, gradual, and legal maneuver. The National Socialists actually brought much needed relief at first. But, slowly, things changed. Everything they did was legal - passed into law by the government. And it was all for their safety. Just trust us, they said. There's an evil enemy out there, let us protect you.

Well, here in America we have no-fly lists - that Senator's and 4-year olds are on; a national ID card is in the works; the Pentagon keeps track of you if you support peace; the Patriot Act allows federal agents to track what books you borrow, access your health records, and search your house without you ever knowing it. We had TIPS - which asked neighbors and friends to spy on each other; our elected President has signing statements where he chooses which laws he wants to obey; we have a President who has the power to call anyone, even a U.S. citizen, an "enemy-combatant," thereby stripping them of all rights guaranteed in our Bill of Rights. This is all to keep us safe. There's an evil enemy out there, let them protect us.

Just turn your iPod back on and stop paying attention.

or

DO SOMETHING!

Democracy and Representation Part I

Growing up, I learned that we live in a democracy. I was taught that one of the reasons the Revolutionary War was started was because our voices weren't being heard in England.

No taxation without representation.

In other words, unless I have a say in how I am governed, I do not consent to you governing me. Like Thomas Jefferson said, government is the servant of the people. We pay their salary, they are supposed to do what we the people want. We are their bosses. They work for us.

What happens when this breaks down? What happens when people in government go out of their way to prevent representation? Actively and deliberately throwing a dark blanket over those who want their voices heard. Didn't Stalin do this? Didn't the Taliban do this? Didn't all of those people we say are so bad and so anti-democratic and so full of hate for our freedoms do stuff like this?

How do we explain to our children, and each other, that we're fighting in Iraq for their democratic liberties, for their right to be represented, when we don't have that right ourselves? This White House manual, finally released under the Freedom of Information Act, bluntly shows Bush does not care about representation nor what others have to say, and will suppress it at all costs.

We do not live in the land of the free anymore. Yes, a lot of things changed since 9/11 - one of the biggest being the slow and steady destruction of our constitution and way of life.

What kind of democracy says that if anyone pulls out a sign or says anything against White House policies, they are to be shouted down by "rally squads." What kind of a democracy writes this:

"If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and that they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the President, or has the potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrator's effect."

Sadly, I know a lot of people won't see anything wrong with this. The president needs to be safe, they'll say, or protesters always disrupt speeches. This guidebook says nothing about disruption or safety, however. It's all about opposing viewpoints.

--- (continued)

Small-Time Tuesday

According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2006 here, for a family of four, the poverty-level income threshold is $20,444. (That comes out to $5,111 per person per year. Can an adult in today's world live off of that in a year?)

Per month that's $1703.66.

Let's analyze this real quick. Let's say that this family lives in a two bedroom apartment, one room for the adults and one room for the kids. They have no pets and try to live as frugally as possible.

Rent: $850 (Price of a 2-bdrm I found on apts.com in Austin, Tx.)

Food: $400


Phone: $100


Electric: $100


Gasoline: $ 300


Uh Oh... wait..

We're at $1750.00 right now. The above are necessities. Just to have a roof over your head, food in your belly, and gas to get to work. (and lets just assume a family member gave them a car or something). I haven't even begun to list clothing, bedding, school supplies, medical and dental and vision bills....

And this is the poverty level? On what planet? If I make more than this, I'm ok? From the above, unscientific mini-analysis, even if I made more - I still couldn't make it! This is sub-poverty. And we're giving tax cuts to the rich? No wonder people get sucked up in drugs and alcohol. Can you imagine the amount of stress and frustration put upon the parents (to say nothing of the kids) in this situation? There's something REALLY wrong in this country, folks.

The people who run our government are very wealthy individuals who do not have to worry about health care or pensions. (You and I pay that for them.) These wealthy individuals are mainly concerned with one thing - making more money and helping their friends make more money. If they weren't they would be moving right now to help out all of those families losing their homes through foreclosure. But they're not. Government is not the problem. It's the people we keep voting in office year after year.

Don't believe me? Then why would you not - at the very least - give innocent, young children health care?

Why? I don't know. Ask Bush. (And remember - this is based upon the poverty level i wrote about above).




Because some people think that the war is going well and that they hate us because of the same freedoms that most of the rest of the world has, read this.




When I turn on my TV, I'm bombarded with ads. When I'm watching a TV program - I'm shown ads for other programs. When I use my cell phone, call the surf report, go outside, ride a bus, get in a taxi, use the ATM, etc, etc, etc...I am bombarded with ads! When is it going to stop? For the world's fourth-largest city, it already has. This makes me smile.



Favorite Timely Quotes

A Republican president said it best, followed by true American patriots.

" If all Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."
-Pres. Dwight Eisenhower


"Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our` servant, not our master!"
-Thomas Jefferson


"If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
-Samuel Adams

What about upgrades?

How's this for an upgrade? I'm always looking for ways to consolidate all the gadgets, appliances, and the like into one nice, neat package. This is nice, this is neat, and after a few hours my work will definitely be more creative!
Just one thing - will it automatically notify the beer company when I'm low and place an order?



One of my friends, who is in the Army, received a letter from one of her friends; a pilot over in Iraq. He talked about how great things were going, especially north of Baghdad. (He failed to mention the car bombs killing over 400 people). I have also talked with other people who are under the impression that things are really great and that the media just isn't reporting the good stuff. However, all of these people only point to broad generalizations about what "good" things are happening over there - without ever really naming anything. (Yes, some good things are happening - but not near enough to counteract the enormous amount of horrible disasters happening).

When you bring up the fact that women are prostituting themselves to buy food for their children, hardly any water or electrical supply, millions of refugees, and that the Iraqi people have said time and again that they would like us to leave, well...these things don't matter.

What matters is if we "cut and run" and don't "fight them there" then they are going to "fight us here." Leaving Karl Rove's pedantic talking points aside, lets look at a few things.

If we were doing the right thing ( like we did by going after Osama in Afghanistan ) then why does the rest of the world disagree? Is it because they get the full picture.? The media in their countries, before, during, and after the war, analyzed the WMD claim and found it severely lacking. Every major media outlet in this country argued for war in Iraq and believed everything the government said without question. How is that any different than State-run media?

(State-run media: when what the government says and does is taken as fact, truth, and the right way of doing things without question.)

Speaking of without question. When a public health expert went to Afghanistan to document reconstruction programs, he found many of them unfinished. When he tried to report this to the Pentagon, they didn't want to hear it. ""I was brought aside and they told me, don't tell that story," Warner said. "I said why not. And they said well, this is one of our success stories."" The whole story can be found here.

I grew up in a very pro-military family; my father was in Vietnam as well as one of my grandfathers, my other grandfather was in World War II. I went to military school for high school. But then something happened. I began to read reports (and articles and books) about how our government would make sailors line up on the deck of ships, spray them with chemicals, and then test them to see what happened. I read about Operation Northwoods, which is where members of our government wanted to get the American public to back a war with Cuba. How did they propose to do this? One of the ways was to blow up a ship. A Navy ship. Our own, manned Navy ship.

WTF??!!

And you want me to trust the government? You want me to believe that we went into Iraq and invaded a country that did nothing to us because they had WMDs? Wait, I'm sorry, it was for regime change. Wait, sorry again, it was really because of Iraq's violations of U.N. resolutions. Wait...read this and pick your own reason - just like Bush and Co. did.

For an on-the-ground report of the situation in Iraq - don't just take my word that things are bad. Take Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray, and Jeremy A. Murphy's words here. They know better than I.




The President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, wrote in a book recently that he was told by the U.S. that if he did not cooperate with us after 9/11, we would bomb him back into the stone age.

We weren't kidding. We're liberating Iraqi's from the 21st century and ruining our military in the process.


Drugs are bad kids, mmmKay? Stay away from Drugs. Hugs not Drugs. War on Drugs. Drugs are bad kids, mmmKay?

But some drugs are good you say. They take my pain away. They sure do. But they also mask the symptoms - like Prozac. It doesn't end your depression - it puts it in a closet where it's not dealt with and where it festers and grows. What we need to be doing is actually treating the causes of our ailments - not masking them with a pill that makes a select few people disgustingly rich at our expense. (While outlawing and imprisoning people who use an all-natural plant that takes pain away, too).

Why don't we start by getting rid of all the chemicals in our food? Lessen our stress levels by giving us more vacation days, socialized health care, more and better access to top-notch day care for our children. Let's face it, Americans are fed-up and stressed out and the result is that we're losing it. Just like our national infrastructure, our bodies need continual maintenance, care, and up-keep to be happy and healthy human beings. I don't care what Bush says, health care is NOT an emergency room.

Give me health care where i can get preventative care, help me attain a life less stressful where I can exercise and play in the middle of the day and not be stuck in a building behind a desk for 8 1/2 hours. Give me security and the dream of a world better for our children - and I'll give you my vote. Hell, I'd even work for your campaign!

It's Not Over Till It's Friday

Or that's just when the fun begins. ;)



And I'm proud to be an Earthling. This is sweet.



Kudos for Krugman!



And I'm ashamed, angry, and scared to be an American. How many more steps closer do we have to get to a fully-actualized police state before people turn off their iPods and pay attention??!! This, too.



I'd like an extra-helping of Dictatorship to go along with my police state, please. Oh, and do you have any Constitutions I can wipe my $$$ with?



Mind you, this a 25% increase. Who needs money for Walter-Reed or bridges or schools or roads. This is definitely worth it.



I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional and abusive "family." ....I can only begin to imagine what a childhood in Iraq would be like. This is what we've created. We've really liberated them haven't we? Sad, sad, sad...

Give me Saddam or give me raids on my house, fear of car & mosque bombings, hardly any water & electricity, sheer terror from midnight commando raids on my city, bombs, missiles, guns, grenades, blood, blown apart bodies? Sad to say, but I'd say give me Saddam.




Maybe one day our "leaders" will recognize that societal conditions created this. Can you imagine what kind of crazed, f-ed up people we're creating in Iraq right now? And the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons....


I need a vacation. One of these days. And $4 million. Anyone wanna help me out?

And We Keep Rollin' On...

First - regarding my post from yesterday and the stranglehold our two-party system has on representation - Kucinich agrees here.


Second - we're in 42nd place for life expectancy - but number one here.


I'm all for the spread of democracy, freedom, and total justice to other nations. It matters not whether that nation has oil or strategic advantages for our empire's bases. But when "more than 40 politicians, activists and party workers have been killed so far," you'd think our democracy-spreading, war is peace Administration would care about something like this. But you'd be wrong. Oil and strategic advantages for the empire's bases do not exist here. And neither does democracy.



This is a religious war just as much as it is a war for American hegemony. President Bush has called it a crusade, a senior Army officer says that we are at war against Satan here, and this is just another way it is fought. One of many reasons why we need a free and independent press.




What would government controlled news look like? Would they tell us all sides of the story and allow us, lowly citizens that we are, to decide what's right and wrong for our country? Read this and then go read 1984. And then DO something!



Did Rome have this problem before they fell? I think so... And didn't they have this problem, too?

So, the Bush Administration may now be putting Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the largest branch of Iran's military, on the foreign terrorist list. That's here. But what about what happens in Georgia? Shouldn't we put this (more here) on the foreign terrorist list, too?

Those in the Middle East do not hate our freedoms. They hate this.



Stranger things have come to light in our newly forming police state.



Ok, so...I'm on this train and I see that the bridge we're about to cross is gone - it's collapsed because there wasn't any money put towards its upkeep. The train is moving really fast and I'm trying to get people to help me stop it from flying full-speed into the canyon below. Only problem is, hardly anyone is listening and some are even threatening to throw me off the train...if only I were so lucky. The collapsing bridge is here.



China's tallest building catches fire and burns for longer than 75 minutes and doesn't collapse! Both WTC towers burned for less than an hour and completely destroyed themselves! Maybe they used different steel than we did, or maybe....

Till Death Do Us Part

"But I do think there are clouds of neofascism in the sky and they're not on the horizon; they're getting closer to being overhead." ..... "Just last week Barbara Boxer said to Ed Schultz on the Ed Schultz radio program that this is as close as this country has ever come to a dictatorship. Dictatorship was her word. A senator, Barbara Boxer."

If this doesn't get you, then a fond farewell do I bid to our country - and why do you hate America? Really...why?



Is there any other time that was more ripe for a 3rd (or 4th for 5th..) party?

I mean c'mon people...we just keep going back and forth here. If the Republicans don't do what we want, then we vote for the Democrats. But what happens when the Democrats don't represent us? What do we do? Just get angry and blog like me?

Worse than Nixon? Seriously...who is worse - those who concoct evil plans - or those who vote for them?

Two sides of the same coin, my friends. And the "please vote for me issues" of abortion and gay marriage are a joke. Smoke and mirrors.

Republicans and Democrats voted for: Iraq War, "surge" funding, the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, the renewal of the Patriot Act, the recent FISA update with no debate, let alone public discussion....

Republicans and Democrats have taken impeachment off the table, vote themselves raises, get family health care and pensions for life, yet continue to deny us health care and give money (corporate welfare) to corporations who go bankrupt...

Where's the party that represents me? Where's the party who does something different than the above?

Of course, the argument could be made that with Democrats in power, the outcome of 9/11 would have been much different. And I agree. But need I remind you - Democrats voted for the Iraq War, "surge" funding, the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, the renewal of the Patriot Act, and the recent FISA update with no debate.

Real people, Hillary. Right; real people just me like.

This is not democracy - this is a JOKE.

Why aren't candidates running for president - who are on the ballot when I vote - allowed to be at the "presidential" debates? Where are the candidates from the Green, Libertarian, Constitutional, or Natural Law, parties? Democracy my a$$.


"Presidential debates can change the course of elections, but George Farah, executive director of Open Debates has evidence showing that the debates' rules of order have been hijacked by the two main political parties. The result? Moderators can't ask follow-up questions, important issues are never raised, and credible third-party candidates are excluded from the proceedings altogether." NOW with Bill Moyers (2004).


Speaking of debates. This is not my idea, but why not do this for our candidates?
This is my idea: why don't we do this for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. I mean, like they keep telling us....why be scared if you have nothing to hide?


I've been thinking this all along.

The state of our health care: here.

On a very happy note...people like these with ideas like this are what makes me proud to be a human.

Just Another Manic Monday

I hope being a vegetarian helps me with this.


Maybe it's because my mom's side of the family came from Germany and her mom grew up during the Nazi come to power. Maybe it's because both of my grandfathers fought in the war against Nazi fascism. Whatever it was, growing up I always was, and still am, intreguied by the Third Reich. The most burning question I had was: how could they let this happen? How could millions of people stand idly by while their freedoms and liberties and neighbors were killed - literally?

I now know...and it really pisses me off! I see it here and here and here and of course here.




And this is just from what I found today. A whole week's worth of blogging would only begin to shed light on the shredding of our Constitution. It's amazing to me how people would rather go see a movie or play video games than take the time to see how we're all slowly being driven, legally, into this. Read it.

For all the right-wing talk of supporting the troops and what a dire necessity the Iraq war is (who's Osama?) - why don't they get it? Paul Krugman's on it here.

Week's Review

Start off positive! I forgive.



We're facing one of the biggest, most threatening disasters ever, and this is how we deal with it.



Maybe the issue hasn't been framed correctly by most of the media; like this feature here.

Headlines should be: Save Homo Sapiens or The Last of the Humans? Maybe that will wake people up.

The planet will be fine. It will recover and new life will flourish eventually. It's us...humans...that are in serious danger and need saving. Mother nature will adapt and overcome but we keep treating this as if we are the benevolent, caretakers who had nothing to do with the soiling of our own bed. Slowly that mindset is changing - but not as fast as the weather.




Ok, let me get this straight...

These are good:

• $8 Million for a Congressional gym
  
• $ 10 Million for a road in Florida from a congressman in Alaska
  
• a $ 4,400 per year raise for Congress this year
• an increase of almost $40 billion over current levels in the Pentagon budget

And these are bad:

• fixing bridges - "an estimated 160,000 bridges have been judged to be “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete” by the American Society of Civil Engineers" here
• full educational benefits for returning vets

Remind me what makes our country so much better than any others?

(If there's no one to compare yourself to, you ARE great!) Study this.




If our democracy is so great and wonderful, why don't we just give it to the Iraqi's? We didn't let them decide whether or not we invaded their country, so why let them decide what kind of constitution they should have? Force them to use ours. A good point made here. Then again, why give them something we're destroying? That's here.


And I haven't seen this very many places either.



And please, once and for all, quit the lies about the "invisible hand" of the free market. It just ain't so. That's here.




MSNBC is the new FOX. Downhill baby, downhill... here.




"There's not a global war on terror," Romney said. Good thing Bush and Co. haven't been repeating this mantra for years...oh wait....

Through Which Lens?

It was reported here today that, "...some recent breakthroughs in Iraq were down to luck, and quoted an unnamed US official as likening the situation to "three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you.""

So, in other words, we really have no idea what the the hell is going on in Iraq. We just keep on trying to pretend we do.

Couple this with reports here about thousands of weapons missing and unaccounted for as well as the breakdown of elementary necessities of civilized life, and one has to wonder if this isn't all planned.

I think it only proves this theory when you add in the fact that we're selling advanced weaponry to countries in the Middle East, here. Who is going to attack, let alone prevail, against the most lethal killing machine on the planet...ever?

No one.

Unless we give them the weapons with which to fight us. And that keeps the military-industrial complex making bank, which gives us more weapons, which we sell to nations around the world, which use them to attack us, which allows us to declare war on them, which keeps the military-industrial complex making more weapons, which we sell to nations around the world....

I can't help but think of the scene from Fahrenheit 9/11 where Blaine Ober, the president of a company that makes armored vehicles, said, "Unfortunately, at least for the near term, we think it's going to be a good situation. Er, a dangerous situation. Good for business, bad for the people."

Maybe when the evidence from Iraq is viewed through a lens of how we think it should be going, it looks like a complete mess. Maybe when the evidence from Iraq is viewed through a lens of global hegemony (the largest embassy in the world - ever) and fossil fuel acquisition, ...well, maybe it looks like things are coming together nicely. Most media agree, here.

Human Brilliance Rant

I've been thinking a lot lately, three years or more lately. What I'm thinking about is why our world is so crazy and backwards? Not even world, lets just focus on our own country. I have so many questions that no one can answer with any bit of logic or critical thinking going into their answer.

Why does the richest nation in the world have so many in poverty? without health insurance?

Why do human beings....the most amazing, wonderful, and beautiful creature in our know universe...why we enjoy watching other humans get shot, raped, blown apart, killed, murdered, hacked, and mutilated?

Oh, we don't enjoy that you say? Take a look at the top games for the PS2, XBox, and PC. They're mostly first person shooters. War games where it's fun, exciting and entertaining to go around shooting and blowing up fake people, that keep getting more real and "life-like" in their death. Also, take a look at the catch-phrases used to advertise for these games:

• "Psychiatrists say it is important to feel something when you kill. Feel the sensation. Feel the vibration. Feel the mutilation."

• "Join a biker gang and carry out malicious mischief."

• "Love thyself and plunder thy neighbor."

• "Meet people from all over the world, then kill them"

• "More fun than shooting your neighbor's cat"

• "As easy as killing babies with axes"

Some of the top grossing movies have included extreme amounts of horrific graphic details of humans doing the sickest things to each other.

And we enjoy this.

We give them Grammys, and the actors Oscars, we buy the DVDs and invite our friends over to watch and talk about how real the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan is.

Why do humans do this? Why do we relish and find entertainment in watching us kill each other? Isn't it enough that that's what we do in real life...every single day?

Action, horror, killing and violent movies are rated PG-13 and up. Although even some PG-13 movies are pretty violent...and our children watch them. Played Call of Duty lately? Games are increasingly accurate in their portryal of violence, blood, and gore...almost always done against other people.

Yet, if we are to show nudity on tv, or catch our children masturbating, we shame them, and hide from them part of what makes us all so beautiful: our bodies. Rape and sexual assult/molestation is rampant in this culture. I wonder why.

Could it be because we represe ourselves sexually, while doing nothing but fill our advertising and entertainment outlets with sexual titilation? And when part of a breast is seen during a halftime show..a woman's breast...that gives a child life through nourishing milk...people are outraged!! And pissed and upset..where's our morals and family values they shout!!

When did humans become so backwards and twisted around? Where is the love? The compassion and understanding?

Why do we enjoy killing ourselves?

Galloway Gets Twisted by CNN

I found this quite interesting and thought you may as it begs the question, yet again, what liberal media?

In reference to U.K. MP Galloway's comments before the Senate panel this morning, he said, "I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies."

As of 2:23pm (PST), on CNN.com, their headlines portray something quite different. On their main page, the link to the full story says "U.K. lawmaker: Oil-for-food charges 'a pack of lies'.""

And, when you go to that link here, the major thrust of his accusations are turned around. In between the third and fourth paragraphs talking about the oil-for-food scandal is the sentence :"He called the accusations against him "a pack of lies."" When, while disputing the allegations, he never referred to them as "a pack of lies."

That comment was reserved for the Senate's actions regarding the pre-war intelligence.

I called CNN and got routed to a Carolyn in the Public Information department who said she would pass my comment on and seemed rather indifferent about the whole situation. A comment was emailed as well.

How much more obvious do things need to be?