The Open Dimension

Obama Drone Strikes in Pakistan Have Targeted Funeral-Goers and Rescuers

2012-02-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

democracynow.org - 2/6/2012

The CIA’s drone campaign targeting suspected militants in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals. So concludes a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It found that since President Obama took office three years ago, as many as 535 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. The investigation also revealed that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. We speak to Chris Woods, award-winning reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. "We noted that there were repeated reports at the time, contemporaneous reports in publications like New York Times, news agencies like Reuters, by CNN, that there were these strikes on rescuers, that there were reports that there had been an initial strike and then, some minutes later, as people had come forward to help and pull out the dead and injured, that drones had returned to the scene and had attacked rescuers," Woods says. "We’ve been able to name just over 50 civilians that we understand have been killed in those attacks. In total, we think that more than 75 civilians have been killed, specifically in these attacks on rescuers and on mourners, on funeral-goers."

( Please see democracynow.org for additional information )

The American Police State

2012-02-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

Is America a Police State? ( By Sherwood Ross, opednews.com, 2/6/2012 )

You know you live in a police state when the president allows the military to continuously harass a prisoner against whom no crime has been proven by interrupting him every five minutes of the day to ask him, "Are you okay?" and forces him to stand to attention naked at roll call. What it can do to one man it can do to every man.

You know you live in a police state when said prisoner is barred from exercising in his cell and told where he may and may not put his hands when he goes to sleep at night. Only a police state would dictate how an individual can sleep.

You know you live in a police state when the government punishes, rather than honors, whistle-blowers who reveal its crimes such as the U.S. massacre of civilians in Baghdad that Bradley Manning exposed.

You know you live in a police state when wardens force pregnant women prisoners to deliver their babies while in chains. (Not exactly "the new birth of freedom" of which Abraham Lincoln spoke.)

You know you live in a police state when the president orders the assassination (i.e., murder) of American citizens without bothering to arrest them and bring them to trial.

You know you live in a police state when police forces across the country attack unarmed and non-violent citizen protesters with pepper spray and clubs.

You know you live in a police state when hundreds of thousands of citizens are rotting in prisons for victimless "crimes" such as smoking pot and your country leads the world in incarcerations with 2.3 million behind bars and when hundreds of thousands of these prisoners are sexually assaulted.

You know you live in a police state when working people who say overwhelmingly that they want to join a union cannot do so for fear of being fired, and in which the money earned by the poor is taken by the state and given to the rich. If the government can rob one person, it can rob every person.

You know you live in a police state when your government makes terrible, punishing wars on small countries after falsely accusing them of having a "weapon of mass destruction" while it possesses tens of thousands of them.

You know you live in a police state when the president signs into law an Act allowing him to arrest innocent citizens on his say-so and have the military imprison them indefinitely without charge, legal counsel, or trial before a jury of their peers.

You know you live in a police state when you can be barred from flying in an airliner on suspicion of "terrorism" that has not been proven and which is impossible for you to challenge.

You know you live in a police state when you are under surveillance by Federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, for your political views rather than the commission of any crime against the state, and when said agencies can access your medical records, bank statements, and "private" papers, tap your telephone, question your neighbors and employer and follow you around.

You know you live in a police state when the military gets the biggest percentage of your tax dollars so that it can spend as much for war as the next 20 nations combined while claiming it is attacking other countries in the name of peace and order.

You know you live in a police state when the Pentagon has more than a trillion dollars in research projects underway to make sophisticated killing machines that will give it control of the entire planet from 2,000 military bases and outer space and to terrify the world with its arsenals of nuclear weapons and germ warfare.

You know you live in a police state when people write to you to commend you for your "courage" for writing critically against the government when, in fact, you should have every good reason to live in fear of so doing.

2012-02-03T16:19:00.000-08:00

American Evolution

2012-02-03T16:09:00.000-08:00

"We live in a country in which we have miraculously transitioned from barbarism to decadence without the usual interregnum of civilization." ( Jurassicpork )

2012-02-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

Take that, Simpson

2012-02-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming, Co-Chair of Obama's deficit commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared Social Security to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats. Here's a response in a letter from Patty Myers in Montana :

"Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight." 1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS. 2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63). 3. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud. 4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN. 5. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills. 6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt. To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" on your incompetence. Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU. 1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career? 2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers? 3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance? 4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies? It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators called Congress who are the "greedy" ones. It is you and your fellow nutcases who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That's right, sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers. You know it, we know it, and you know that we know it. And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch!"

2012-01-26T23:03:00.000-08:00

The Corporate State Will Be Broken ( By Chris Hedges, www.truth-out.org )

2012-01-26T21:55:00.000-08:00

The Corporate State Will Be Broken
Monday 23 January 2012
by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig Op-Ed

A protester with the Occupy Wall Street movement waves to Auubi, a 17-month-old boy whose father was also demonstrating, on the grounds of the Capitol in Washington, on January 17, 2012. Protesters plan events in Washington throughout the week. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)
I spent Friday morning sitting on a wooden bench in a fourth-floor courtroom in the New York Criminal Court in Manhattan. I was waiting to be sentenced for “disturbing the peace” and “refusing to obey a lawful order” during an Occupy demonstration in front of Goldman Sachs in November.

Those sentenced before me constituted the usual fare of the court. They were poor people of color accused of mostly petty crimes—drug possession, thefts, shoplifting, trespassing because they were homeless and needed a place to sleep, inappropriate touching, grand larceny and violation of probation. They were escorted out of a backroom by a police officer, stood meekly before the judge with their hands cuffed behind them, were hastily defended by a lawyer clutching a few folders, and were sentenced. Ten days in jail. Sixty days in jail. Six months in jail. A steady stream of convictions. My sentence, by comparison, was slight. I was given an ACD, or “adjournment in contemplation of dismissal,” which means that if I am not arrested in the next six months my case is dismissed. If I am arrested during this period of informal probation the old charge will be added to the new one before I am sentenced.

The country’s most egregious criminals, the ones who had stripped some of those being sentenced of their homes, their right to a decent education and health care, their jobs, their dignity and their hope, those wallowing in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, those who had gamed the system to enrich themselves at our expense, were doing the dirty business of speculation in the tall office towers a few blocks away. They were making money. A few of these wealthy plutocrats were with the president, who was in New York that day to attend four fundraisers that took in an estimated $3 million. For $15,000 you could have joined Barack Obama at Daniel, an exclusive Upper East Side restaurant. For $35,000 you could have been at a gathering hosted by movie director Spike Lee. Most of those sentenced in that courtroom do not make that much in a year. It was a good day in New York for Barack Obama. It was a bad day for us.

Our electoral system, already hostage to corporate money and corporate lobbyists, gasped its last two years ago. It died on Jan. 21, 2010, when the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission granted to corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts on independent political campaigns. The ruling turned politicians into corporate employees. If any politician steps out of line, dares to defy corporate demands, this ruling hands to our corporate overlords the ability to pump massive amounts of anonymous money into campaigns to make sure the wayward are defeated and silenced. Politicians like Obama are hostages. They jump when corporations say jump. They beg when corporations say beg. They hand corporations exemptions, subsidies, trillions in taxpayer money, no-bid contracts and massive loans with virtually no interest, and they abolish any regulations that impede profits and protect the citizen. Corporations like Goldman Sachs, because they own the system, are bailed out by federal dollars and given essentially free government loans to gamble. I am not sure what to call our economic system, but it is not capitalism. And if any elected official so much as murmurs anything that sounds like dissent, the Supreme Court ruling permits corporations to destroy him or her. And they do.

Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick-Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. You won’t hear it on the corporate-owned airwaves and cable networks, including MSNBC, which has become to the Democratic Party what Fox News is to the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. You won’t hear it on NPR or PBS. You won’t read about it in our major newspapers. The issues that matter are being debated, however, on “Democracy Now!,” Link TV, The Real News, Occupy websites and Revolution Truth. They are being raised by journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. You can find genuine ideas in corners of the Internet or in books by political philosophers such as Sheldon Wolin. But you have to go looking for them.

Voting will not alter the corporate systems of power. Voting is an act of political theater. Voting in the United States is as futile and sterile as in the elections I covered as a reporter in dictatorships like Syria, Iran and Iraq. There were always opposition candidates offered up by these dictatorships. Give the people the illusion of choice. Throw up the pretense of debate. Let the power elite hold public celebrations to exalt the triumph of popular will. We can vote for Romney or Obama, but Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil and Bank of America and the defense contractors always win. There is little difference between our electoral charade and the ones endured by the Syrians and Iranians. Do we really believe that Obama has, or ever had, any intention to change the culture in Washington?

In this year’s presidential election I will vote for a third-party candidate, either the Green Party candidate or Rocky Anderson, assuming one of them makes it onto the ballot in New Jersey, but voting is nothing more than a brief chance to register our disgust with the corporate state. It will not alter the configurations of power. The campaign is not worth our emotional, physical or intellectual energy.

Our efforts must be directed toward acts of civil disobedience, to chipping away, through nonviolent protest, at the pillars of established, corporate power. The corporate state is so unfair, so corrupt and so rotten that the institutions tasked with holding it up—the police, the press, the banking system, the civil service and the judiciary—have become vulnerable. It is becoming harder and harder for the corporations to convince its foot soldiers to hold the system in place.

I sat a few days ago in a small Middle Eastern restaurant in Washington, D.C., with Kevin Zeese, one of the activists who first called for the Occupy movements. Zeese and others, including public health care advocate Dr. Margaret Flowers, set up the Occupy encampment on Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. They got a four-day permit last fall and used the time to create an infrastructure—a medic tent, a kitchen, a legal station and a press center—that would be there if the permit was not extended. The National Park Service did grant them an extended permit, and Freedom Plaza is one of the encampments that has not been shut down.

“We do have a grand strategy,” he said. “Nonviolent movements shift power by attacking the columns that hold the power structure in place. Those columns are the military, police, media, business, workers, youth, faith groups, NGOs and civil servants. Every time we deal with the police, we have that in mind. The goal is not to hit them, hit them, hit them and weaken them. The goal is to pull people from those columns to our side. We want the police to know that we understand they’re not the 1 percent. The goal is not to get every police officer, but to get enough police so that you have a division.”

“We do this with civil servants,” he went on. “We do whistle-blower events. We go to different federal agencies with protesters blowing whistles and usually with an actual whistle-blower. We hand out literature to the civil servants about how to blow the whistle safely, where they can get help if they do, why they should do it. We also try to get civil servants by pulling them to our side.”

“One of the beautiful things about this security state is that they always know we’re coming,” he said. “It’s never a secret. We don’t do anything as a secret. The EPA, for example, sent out a security notice to all of its employees—advertising for us [by warning employees about a coming protest]. So you get the word out.”

“Individuals become the media,” he said. “An iPhone becomes a live-stream TV. The social network becomes a media outlet. If a hundred of us work together and use our social networks for the same message we can reach as many people as the second-largest newspapers in town, The Washington Examiner or The Washington Times. If a thousand of us do, we can meet the circulation of The Washington Post. We can certainly reach the circulation of most cable news TV shows. The key is to recognize this power and weaken the media structure.”

“We started an Occupy house in Mount Rainier in Maryland,” Zeese said. “Its focus is Occupy the Economy. This is the U.N.’s year of the co-op. We want to build on that. We want to start worker-owned co-ops and occupy our own co-ops. These co-ops will allow Occupiers to have resources so that they can continue occupying. It will allow them to get resources for the community. It will be an example to the public, a public where a high percentage of people are underemployed and unemployed although they have a lot of skills. People can band together in their community and solve a problem in the community. They can create a worker-owned collaborative of some kind. They can develop models of collective living.”

“We looked at polling on seven key issues and found supermajorities of Americans—60-plus percent—were with us on issues including health care, retirement, energy, money in politics,” he said. “We are more mainstream than Congress. We aren’t crazy radicals. We are trying to do what the people want. This is participatory democracy versus oligarchy. It’s the elites versus the people. We stand with the majority.”

The Washington encampment, like many Occupy encampments, has had to deal with those the wider society has discarded—the homeless, the mentally ill, the destitute and those whose lives have been devastated by substance abuse. This created a huge burden for the organizers, who decided that they were not equipped or able to deal with these wider, societal problems. The encampment in Washington’s Freedom Plaza enforces strict rules of behavior, including an insistence on sobriety, in order to endure through the winter and ensure its own survival. Other Occupy movements will have to do the same.

“We don’t want to become a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter,” Zeese said. “We’re a political movement. These are problems beyond our ability. How do we deal with this? Let’s feed the Occupiers first, and those who are just squatting here for free get food last, so if we have enough food, we feed them. If we don’t, we can’t. We always fed people, of course. We usually have enough peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everyone. But as we debated this issue, we stated talking about things like ‘how about a Freedom Plaza badge, or a Freedom Plaza wristband, or a Freedom Plaza card.’ None of those ideas were passed. What we ended up developing was a set of principles. Those principles included in them participation. You can’t be there because you want a [tent] or free food. You have to be there to build the community and the movement. You have to participate in the general assemblies.”

“The first principles, of course, were nonviolence and non-property destruction,” he said. “We don’t accept violent language. When you’re violent you undermine everything. If the protesters in [Manhattan’s] Union Square, who were pepper-sprayed, had been throwing something at the police, you would not have had the movement. It was because they were nonviolent and didn’t react when they were being pepper-sprayed that the movement grew. At UC Davis, when those cops just walked down the line and sprayed, the nonviolent reaction by those kids was fantastic.”

“We constantly kept hearing in the beginning what are our demands, what are our demands, is our demand to meet with Obama?” Zeese said. “We said: ‘Oh no, that would just be a waste. If we meet with Obama he’ll just get a picture opportunity out of that. We won’t get anything.’ You don’t make demands until you have power. If you make demands too soon, you don’t demand enough and you can’t enforce the demand that you get. So if you get promised an election, you can’t enforce that the ballots are counted right, for example. We realized late into our discussions—we had six months of planning, so four months into it—‘we don’t have the power to make a demand.’ That was very hard for a lot of our people to accept.”

“Instead of making demands, we put up what we stood for, what principles we wanted to see,” he said. “The overarching demand was end corporate rule, shift power to the people. Once you make that as your demand, as your pinnacle, you can pick any issue—energy, health care, elections—and the solution becomes evident. For health care it’s get the insurance companies out from between doctors and patients; on finance it’s break up the big banks so that six banks don’t control 60 percent of the economy and break them up into community banks so that the money stays at home rather than going to Wall Street; energy is to diversify energy sources so people can build and have their own energy on their roof and become energy producers. The overarching goal was: End corporate rule, shift power to the people. We developed a slogan: ‘Human needs before corporate greed.’ After that, everything fell into place for us.”

When the congressional super committee was meeting, the Occupy Washington movement formed its own super committee. The Occupy Super Committee, which managed get its hearing aired on CSPAN, included experts on the wealth divide, fair taxation, the military budget, job creation, health care and democratizing the economy as well as giving voice to the 99 percent. “The 99%’s Deficit Proposal: How to create jobs, reduce the wealth divide and control spending” resulted from the Occupy hearing. The report made evidence-based recommendations Zeese knew would not be considered by the Congress, but he saw it as foundational for the movement.

“History shows the demands made by those in revolt are never initially considered by government,” he said. “Our job is to make the politically impossible the politically inevitable.”

I do not know how long it will take to dethrone the corporate state, but I do know it is a dead and terminal system of power. As the global economy deteriorates and climate change causes greater disruptions, these corporations will be increasingly discredited. I know the iron grip of corporations over our lives will, eventually, be broken. The corporate state will, like all wounded animals, lash out with a blind fury, which is why I suspect we have been given the National Defense Authorization Act, which permits the military to arrest and hold U.S. citizens without due process. It will increase pressure to become crueler and more callous at the base of the columns it depends on for survival. And eventually it will break. No one knows how long this will take. It could be months, years, maybe even a decade, although the massive assault by the fossil fuel industry on the ecosystem will probably force a popular response sooner than we expect. The only question is how much damage these corporations will be permitted to inflict.

I attended a rally Friday night in Foley Square, a few blocks from the criminal court where I had spent the morning. It was part of the Occupy the Courts event held across the nation to protest America’s corporate coup and the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case. It was cold and blustery. Snow was on the way. Many in the crowd of a couple of hundred were visibly chilled. I spoke about the movement. I spoke about the lawsuit I have brought against Barack Obama and the secretary of defense to challenge the National Defense Authorization Act. I spoke about the inevitability of the Occupy movement.

I realized, afterward, I had forgotten to say what was most important. I forgot to say thank you. Thank you for standing up to corporate power on a cold winter’s night. Thank you for making hope visible. You must never underestimate your power. I was sentenced in the day. I was exonerated in the night.

2012-01-20T11:01:00.000-08:00

Stop the Corporate Takeover of the Internet

2012-01-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

From: "Bob Fertik, Democrats.com"

Subject: Stop the Corporate Takeover of the Internet
Date: Jan 18, 2012 11:24 AM

Since the dawn of broadcasting, our free speech has been dominated - and largely controlled - by the powerful corporations that control public airwaves and the shows they carry.
Real free speech on the Internet is a profound, existential threat to these media giants and the politicians they own. So they are desperately trying to seize control of the Internet with obscure bills called "SOPA" in the House and "PIPA" in the Senate.

Tell Congress: Stop the Corporate Takeover of the Internet

SOPA and PIPA would wreak havoc on the technical infrastructure of the Internet, and threaten thousands of Internet businesses which are truly creating jobs.

More importantly, these bills would give big corporations and the Attorney General the power to shut down websites large and small that somehow link to copyright violators, whether through their own posts or even visitor comments.

How on earth can a website - ours included - monitor thousands or millions of links that accumulate over the years? And why should a single link be sufficient to shut down a website or force a bankrupting legal battle with a giant corporation?

Tell Congress: Stop the Corporate Takeover of the Internet

No corporation should have that power. And no Attorney General should either - just think of Alberto Gonzales, who abused his vast powers by authorizing warrantless wiretaping and torture, then lied to Congress about it.

Websites large and small are fighting SOPA/PIPA, including Wikipedia and Google. Some are even going black for a day of protest.

President Obama opposes "legislation that reduces freedom of expression" and urged Congress to pass a bill that narrowly and carefully targets foreign piracy.

We'll reserve judgment on any future "compromise" bill. For now, we must tell Congress loud and clear:

Stop the Corporate Takeover of the Internet

Thanks for all you do!

Bob Fertik

2012-01-17T21:31:00.000-08:00

2012-01-12T21:06:00.000-08:00

Pledge To Overturn Citizens United

2012-01-12T20:58:00.000-08:00

I know that many of you are deeply concerned about the economy, health care, education, global warming and the environment, Social Security and Medicare, civil liberties, war and peace and the national debt. But here's an issue that's even more important because it encompasses all of these issues -- and much more.Will the United States survive, in any significant way, as a democracy in which ordinary people can control their future? Or, will "democracy" simply become another commodity owned and controlled by billionaires and corporations in order to serve their own purposes?

Today, as a result of the absurd Citizens United Supreme Court decision, corporations and billionaires can spend unlimited sums of money, without disclosure, in political campaigns. And that is exactly what they're doing.Karl Rove's American Crossroads has already pledged to spend at least $240 million in the elections of 2012. The extreme right-wing billionaire Koch brothers may be spending even more. And then there is Wall Street, the oil and coal corporations, the insurance and drug companies and the military-industrial-complex with all of their money.The goal of the top 1 percent is simple. They will spend as much as it takes to elect candidates who support a right-wing corporate agenda. They will spend as much as it takes to defeat those candidates who are fighting for working families. And that's about it!

Please join me, Daily Kos and Democracy for America in pledging to fight to overturn Citizens United.Our strategy must be equally simple. Short-term, we must do everything we can to support those progressive candidates in 2012 who are fighting for the middle class and the values we believe in. Long-term, we must overturn Citizens United and fight for real campaign finance reform which limits the power of big money.Last month, I introduced a constitutional amendment, the Saving American Democracy bill, to overturn Citizens United. This amendment states that:
Corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as human beings.
The people have the right to regulate corporations.
Corporations are prohibited from making campaign contributions.
Congress and states shall have the power to set reasonable limits on election spending.

As we approach the second anniversary of the Citizens United decision, please join me, Daily Kos and Democracy for America in pledging to fight to overturn Citizens United and to counter the unlimited resources of the right-wing in 2012.

Your pledge of support today will show the Big Money interests that while they may have unlimited sums of money, we have something more important -- the power of the people. Your support could mean volunteering on local, state or national elections, organizing against Citizens United, donating to progressive candidates or running for office yourself.Please pledge your support today. Please stand with us so that, together, we can transform American politics.

Sincerely,

Bernie

Sen. Bernie SandersU.S. Senator from Vermont

Democracy for America relies on you and the people-power of more than one million members to fund the grassroots organizing and training that delivers progressive change on the issues that matter. Please Contribute Today and support our mission.

" American Exceptionalism "

2012-01-12T17:49:00.000-08:00

The Anti-Empire Report

January 3rd, 2012by William Blumwww.killinghope.com

Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget.
"Most people don't understand what they have been part of here," said Command Sgt. Major Ron Kelley as he and other American troops prepared to leave Iraq in mid-December. "We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them."

"It is pretty exciting," said another young American soldier in Iraq. "We are going down in the history books, you might say." (Washington Post, December 18, 2011)
Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, ... how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again.

"It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.
No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't even think of ever apologizing or paying any reparations. Iraq is forced by Washington to continue paying reparations to Kuwait for Iraq's invasion in 1990 (an invasion instigated in no small measure by the United States). And — deep breath here! — Vietnam has been compensating the United States. Since 1997 Hanoi has been paying off about $145 million in debts left by the defeated South Vietnamese government for American food and infrastructure aid. Thus, Hanoi is reimbursing the United States for part of the cost of the war waged against it. (William Blum, Rogue State, p.304) How much will the United States pay the people of Iraq?

On December 14, at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina military base, Barack Obama stood before an audience of soldiers to speak about the Iraq war. It was a moment in which the president of the United States found it within his heart and soul — as well as within his oft-praised (supposed) intellect — to proclaim:
This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making. And today, we remember everything that you did to make it possible. ... Years from now, your legacy will endure. In the names of your fallen comrades etched on headstones at Arlington, and the quiet memorials across our country. In the whispered words of admiration as you march in parades, and in the freedom of our children and grandchildren. ... So God bless you all, God bless your families, and God bless the United States of America. ... You have earned your place in history because you sacrificed so much for people you have never met.

Does Mr. Obama, the Peace Laureate, believe the words that come out of his mouth?
Barack H. Obama believes only in being the President of the United States. It is the only strong belief the man holds.

Items of interest from a journal I've kept for 40 years, part VI

If the US really believed in 2002-3 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction why did they send in more than 100,000 troops, who were certain to be annihilated?

In a letter released August 17, 2006, 21 former generals and high ranking national security officials called on President George W. Bush to reverse course and embrace a new area of negotiation with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The group told reporters Bush's "hard line" policies had undermined national security and made America less safe.
Throughout most of the 20th century, the Catholic Church in Latin America taught its flocks of the poor that there was no need to do battle with the ruling elite because the poor would get their just rewards in the afterlife.

The US overthrew the Sandinistas in Nicaragua because the Sandinistas "intended to create a country where there was only a colony before." — Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer

"[George W.] Bush said last week that part of the purpose of the Indonesia trip 'is to make sure that the people who are suspicious of our country understand our motives are pure'." (Washington Post, October 22, 2003)

"Wars may be aberrant experiences in the lives of most human individuals, but some nations are serial aggressors. American society is unique in having been formed almost wholly by processes of aggression against external and internal Others." — The Black Commentator, June 8, 2006

President Obama should accompany the military people when they inform parents that their child has died in the latest of America's never-ending wars. And maybe ask George W. to come along as well.

During the Vietnam War some University of Michigan students created a brouhaha when they threatened to napalm a puppy dog on the steps of a campus building. The uproar of indignation at their cruelty was heard nationwide. Of course, when the time came they didn't do it, having successfully made the point that people cared more about napalming a dog than they did about napalming people.

"It's a lie and an illusion that we have an inefficient government. This government is only inefficient if you think its job is, as stated in the Constitution, 'to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' These objectives are beyond our government's talents only because they are beyond its intentions." — Michael Ventura

"Get some new lawyers" - US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook when he told her he was informed that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 (which Albright championed) was illegal under international law.
The two countries of the world, along with the United States, which have the greatest national obsession with baseball are two of the main targets of US foreign policy: Venezuela and Cuba.

The Cuban Five case: This is the first case in American history of alleged spying and espionage without a single page from a secret document. The government never presented any evidence of a stolen official document or any attempt to steal an official document. This is the first spy case without secrets from the government. (

Read more)

"If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a 'suspected terrorist' is inside, the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is 'inevitable'. So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians." — Howard Zinn

"The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose limited sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests, and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program." (Associated Press, July 15, 2006) ... Internet commentator: "Test some missiles that land harmlessly in the ocean? Unanimous condemnation. Fire some missiles at targets on land, kill hundreds of people, and destroy hundreds of civilian targets including power plants, airports, roads, bridges, TV stations, etc., all in violation of the Geneva Convention? Hey, no problem."

For some nine years, American B-52 bombers relentlessly dropped tons of ordnance on a southeast Asian country (Vietnam) that still cultivated rice fields using draft animals.
"The messianism of American foreign policy is a remarkable thing. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks it seems like Khrushchev reporting to the party congress: 'The whole world is marching triumphantly toward democracy but some rogue states prefer to stay aside from that road, etc. etc'." — Natalia Narochnitskaya, vice chairman of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament. (Washington Post, April 3, 2006)

Washington ... Propagandistan
The bulldozer, driven by an Israeli army soldier on assignment to demolish a home, rolled over Rachel Corrie, who was 23 years old. She had taken a nonviolent position for human rights; she lost her life as a result. But she was rarely praised in the same US media outlets that had gone into raptures over the image of a solitary unarmed man standing in front of Chinese tanks at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. — Norman Solomon

American sovereignty hasn't faced a legitimate foreign threat to its existence since the British in 1812.

There are two major patterns in foreign policy: the rule of force or the rule of law. On February 8, 1819 the US decided, after a very long debate in the House, to reject the rule of law in foreign policy. The vote was 100 to 70 against requiring the Congress to approve illegal invasions of other countries or peoples. This pertained to the "Seminole War", actually the invasion of Florida. Since then every president has had the right to "defend America", code words for the use of force against whomever he chooses. — Kelly Gelgering --------

A Very Merry Christmas !

2011-12-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

Tibetan Medicine Buddha Mandala

2011-11-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

( By Andy Weber Studios )

This is What Revolution Looks Like ( By Chris Hedges, OpEdNews, 11/15/2011)

2011-11-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.

Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool's paradise. They think they can clean up "the mess" -- always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security -- by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.

Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional super committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.

The rogues' gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it's over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are "cathartic" and "entertaining," as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.

The historian Crane Brinton in his book, "Anatomy of a Revolution," laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton's next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.

I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.

Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia's Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds.

The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan's deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor's legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. "Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators," Siegel tweeted after his resignation.

There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backwards from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor.

No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall.

Cross-posted from Truthdig

Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The (more...)

Sign Congressman Grijalva's Petition to Prevent Medicare and Medicaid Cuts

2011-11-17T08:21:00.000-08:00

You know just how hard things are right now, but the Super Committee either doesn't understand -- or just doesn't care.Today, as co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), I held a hearing today with some of the country's top economists to talk about the importance of job creation and protecting our social safety net. We invited the members of the deficit reduction "Super Committee" -- but none of them showed up. Rather than asking the 1% to pay their fair share, the Super Committee is going after the vital programs that make America strong -- these cuts would have a drastic impact on the health and financial security of far too many Americans.Join me and my friends at Democracy for America in telling them we will stand strong -- no cuts to Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

Over the past several months, I have offered constructive recommendations for deficit reduction while stressing the need to put Americans back to work -- there are real solutions to our debt crisis that don't hurt the 99%.Congress's top priority must be job creation. The Super Committee should be listening to the working people of this nation who reject proposed austerity measures.They should be asking the 1% to pay their fair share.In this economic crisis, the last thing we should be talking about is slashing the program that provides health coverage for our seniors and the most vulnerable.We must leave Medicare and Medicaid benefits off the table.

Let's send a message so loud the Super Committee can't ignore it -- join me and almost 100,000 Democracy for America Members to say -- no cuts to Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

It's time to focus on fair solutions. Together we can stand up for the 99%.Peace.

Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva Co-Chair, Congressional Progressive Caucus

2011-11-15T21:08:00.000-08:00

The USA in 2011: The Thin Veneer of Civilization

2011-11-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

22 Signs That The Thin Veneer Of Civilization That We All Take For Granted Is Starting To Disappear

From : theeconomiccollapseblog.com

In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust. Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of the people around us are going to act in a civilized manner. Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. When I was growing up, I was taught that challenging times reveal our true character. There are many that believe that the declining economy is causing a lot of the chaos that we are now witnessing, but perhaps what is going on is that these challenging economic times are simply revealing the character that has been there all along. For decades, a "false prosperity" that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt has masked a lot of the internal rot that has taken hold in America. But now that our prosperity is crumbling, our lack of values is becoming startlingly clear.

Greed, corruption and extreme self-centeredness have deeply infected our society. We see this on Wall Street and in Congress, and we see this among those that are trying to survive on the mean streets of our largest cities.

Our nation is breaking down on every level. If by some miracle we were able to fix our economy, that would mask our problems for a while, but it would not solve them.
Unfortunately, as I write about nearly every day, there are a whole host of indications that our economy is about to get even worse. When it does, millions of Americans will become even more desperate, and as we are now seeing all over this country, desperate people do desperate things.
The following are 22 signs that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear....

#1 In Detroit, 100 bus drivers recently refused to drive their routes out of fear for their own personal safety. An article posted on the website of the CBS affiliate in Detroit is quoting the head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, as saying that the drivers are "scared for their lives"....
“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.

#2 In Wilmington, Delaware recently, a man offered to help someone carry a television down the street, but quickly realized that it was his own television which had just been stolen out of his house....
A Wilmington resident who stopped home for lunch about noon today saw a man carrying a flat screen TV down the street and asked the man if he needed help.
He then recognized the television as his own, looked up and saw the door to his home ajar, said Master Sgt. Adam Ringle.

#3 Shocking video has surfaced of a young thug walking up to a defenseless elderly man in a Chicago subway station and knocking him out cold. In the video, the friends of the young man are cheering him on and laughing at how easy it was to knock the old man out cold.

#4 Beating up old people for no reason seems to be catching on all over the country. Just check out the following report from a recent article posted on philly.com....
AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of "get the old geezer."
Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn't enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear - his pride.

#5 All over the United States, police are wailing on Occupy Wall Street protesters with clubs and liberally using pepper spray on them. Whatever you may think of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the reality is that this is not a sign that things are becoming "more stable" in America. You can see video of one very disturbing confrontation right here.

#6 Clashes between police and protesters in Oakland, California recently became so violent that at one point the streets of Oakland resembled a war zone.

#7 Unfortunately, as the American people become increasingly frustrated with out system many of them are actually starting to consider violence as a solution. According to one recent survey, 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters "would support violence to advance their agenda".

#8 In New York recently, a confrontation between two female customers and a frustrated cashier ended with the cashier beating the living daylights out of them with a metal rod. The following is how a local CBS affiliate in New York described this incident....
It appeared to have started when two female customers argued and yelled obscenities at the cashier when he questioned a $50 bill they gave him.
One of the female customers then slapped the cashier. A woman is then seen jumping over the counter while the other woman goes behind the register.
That’s when the cashier can be seen on the video disappearing into the back of the fast-food restaurant. He comes back with a metal rod and begins hitting the women.
You can see video of this violent confrontation right here.

#9 These days, many Americans are so "on edge" that just about anything will make them snap. For example, a 60-year-old woman in New Mexico recently repeatedly stabbed her boyfriend because she thought that he was cheating during a game of Monopoly.

#10 If you thought that the above example was crazy, just check out what one man down in Georgia did recently. He actually firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa.

#11 In Cleveland last week, a 49-year-old man was sent to the hospital after a poll monitor working for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections tried to bite his nose off.

#12 Not only do TSA agents make us feel like dehumanized cattle as we go through airport security, some of them are evening making fun of us at the same time. For example, one TSA agent recently scribbled “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” on a TSA inspection notice after discovering a sex toy in the luggage of one female traveler.

#13 Identity theft is rising to very alarming levels all over the United States. For example, a recent article in the Palm Beach Post described what has been going on down in Florida this year....
In the first half of this year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 20,000 complaints from Floridians whose identities had been stolen -- nearly as many as in all of 2010. More than half of those reporting their Social Security numbers or other personal information had been ripped off and used to commit fraud or theft were in South Florida, with heavy concentrations in parts of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
"That kind of increase is really shocking,'' said Vance Luce, deputy special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in South Florida, which investigates identity theft and financial crimes. "The fact that it's on the upturn doesn't surprise me at all, but that's pretty alarming.''

#14 In the Seattle area, an elderly couple in their eighties was recently brutally attacked by a 31-year-old man armed with a crossbow and a hatchet. The following description of this brutal crime comes from King 5 News....
Prosecutors say 31-year-old John Chase was walking down the highway when he saw Ralph Aldrich, 88, in his back yard. Detectives say Chase shot and killed Aldrich with a crossbow and then went inside the home and repeatedly hit 83-year-old June Aldrich with a hatchet.

#15 As America falls apart, more of us than ever are taking medication for depression. At this point, more than 1 out of every 10 Americans over the age of 12 is taking prescription antidepressants.

#16 In some areas of the country, people have been literally tearing apart their own cities in an attempt to find things to sell. I recently discussed this phenomenon on The American Dream Blog....
In Fresno, California the damage caused by thieves stealing copper wire from city street lights is costing the city about $50,000 a month. So far, about 2,500 street lights have been stripped of their wiring.

#17 As people become more desperate, we are starting to see some truly bizarre crimes in many parts of the nation. In northern Alabama, one team of crooks has been using a forklift to pull entire ATM machines out of the ground.

#18 Most Americans don't realize this, but all over the U.S. livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The following is from a recent Associated Press article....
While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn't. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches.
Authorities say today's thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it's then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns.

#19 At this point, thieves are becoming so bold that they will steal literally anything that they are able to cart away. For example, in the San Francisco area a while back thieves actually stole a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons.

#20 According to the FBI, the number of gang members in the United States has increased by a staggering 40 percent since 2009. Right now, there are 1.4 million gang members terrorizing citizens on the streets of America.

#21 Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually been breaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them. Many of those guns undoubtedly are ending up in the hands of gangs members.

#22 Be careful who you befriend online. They might just hold you captive and use you as part of a Satanic sex ritual. The following description of an incident that recently happened in Milwaukee comes from thesmokinggun.com....
Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man--who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online--told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.

Anger and frustration are growing to unprecedented levels in this country, and all of this anger and frustration is manifesting in thousands of different ways.

As I have written about previously, the rioting, the crime and the violence that we are seeing now is only just the beginning of what is coming.

Unless a miracle happens, our country is going to keep heading down the road toward societal collapse. For even more examples that show that our country is starting to come apart at the seams, please see the following articles that I have authored previously....

-"18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating"
-"12 More Signs That Society Is Collapsing"

It won't happen all at once, but unless our nation changes direction dramatically, we will see things get progressively worse and worse.

Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved. Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment. Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent. As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly. Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes.

Ancient Proverb

2011-11-12T17:19:00.000-08:00

Confucius Say: If you are in bookstore and cannot find book you are looking for, you are obviously in the --------

India : The Lighter Side

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Kali Ma

2011-10-21T21:38:00.001-07:00

Dervish Musician, India

2011-10-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

Communication from Campaign for Liberty, 10/20/2011

2011-10-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

Subject: Stop the Obama Onslaught

Date: Oct 20, 2011 9:02 AM

After two years of President Obama installing his own handpicked bureaucrats in EVERY federal agency, I'm afraid we're about to witness an assault on our liberties like few we've ever seen.With congressional statists in disarray, Obama now plans to use the Executive Branch to ram through sweeping changes in policy to control speech, wreck private enterprise, install vast parts of Cap and Tax, and more.But a little-known law could stop Obama cold in his tracks - if Representatives and Senators have the GUTS to use it.

That's why it's vital you fill out the petition before it's too late.

As you'll see, the petition demand your Representative and Senator exercise their power of "Congressional Review" to STOP out of control government bureaucrats from ramming their agenda down the throats of the American people.How important is this?Just weeks ago, the Federal Communications Commission set the stage for a complete government takeover of the internet.Then, the so-called "Environmental Protection Agency" announced its intention to start regulating carbon dioxide emissions - the first step toward IMPOSING a full-blown "Cap and Tax" scheme without so much as a Congressional vote.Unless you and I fight back IMMEDIATELY, I'm afraid there could be much more to come, including:

***The so-called "Fairness Doctrine," a shameless FCC attempt to SHUT DOWN free speech and guarantee the only opinions you hear and see are "government-approved";

***Card Check Instant Union Organizing, where the NLRB would strip workers of the right to vote in a secret ballot election, subjecting hardworking men and women to threats, intimidation, and worse from union militants

***MANDATED naked body scans, not only required by "Homeland Security" for American citizens to board an airplane, but just to go to a mall, see a sporting event, or travel by bus or train, as well;

*** Death panels, handing "Health and Human Services'" unaccountable government bureaucrats the power to deny care - resulting in what amounts to life and death power over you and your loved ones

***401(k) seizure, allowing the IRS and the Social Security Administration to CONFISCATE Americans' private retirement accounts to help the federal government pay its bills.
And all that might only be the beginning!The truth is, for decades, presidents of BOTH parties and their federal agencies have abused their power to "rule by decree" - bypassing Congress and SHREDDING the U.S. Constitution - to impose their agenda

In fact, just during his two years in office, President Obama's administration has issued TWO HUNDRED new regulations - all with price tags of well over $100 million EACH

Now, especially after the "shellacking" that was the 2010 elections, the statists are looking even more to federal agencies to ram their agenda down the throats of the American people.The good newspc is Congress CAN stop these radical new schemes.Within 60 days of a new bureaucratic "rule" being issued, Congress can pass joint "Resolutions of Disapproval" with a simple majority vote.These resolutions were authorized in 1996 in a since all-but-forgotten law called the Congressional Review Act.These resolutions literally KILL any new regulatory measure - unless vetoed by the President.And believe me, under the white-hot heat of the pubic spotlight, President Obama will think twice before pulling out his veto pen just months before he stands for reelection.Knowing his 2012 reelection campaign is just around the corner, overriding the will of Congress and the American people to PERSONALLY impose some radical new scheme won't be a pleasant thought.But it's up to you and me to get the ball rolling by putting Congress on notice. And that means making sure every Representative and Senator knowspc that just "sitting on their hands" once the bureaucratic assault begins won't cut it.

Over the next few weeks, my plan is to use direct mail and email to recruit and mobilize a grassroots army to light the fire under Congress.In fact, I'm hoping to contact up to twelve million Americans just in the initial push!Believe me, those kinds of numbers will REALLY get Congress' attention - but that won't be the end of it.To make sure we sustain pressure on Congress, I've also prepared three rounds of hard-hitting internet, radio, and newspcpaper advertising.And finally - once the regulatory assault begins - I'm planning to launch yet another mail and TV ad campaign, targeting key Representatives and Senators to urge them to vote to pass "Resolutions of Disapproval."Now, this fight won't be easy - or cheap.In fact, outside of Audit the Fed, such a massive effort could literally dwarf any other program Campaign for Liberty has ever conducted.

But, if we don't act, I'm afraid all of our victories could go up in smoke as we see the statists' full agenda IMPOSED on American citizens without so much as a congressional vote.So I'm counting on your IMMEDIATE action.First, won't you please fill out the petition to your Representative and Senators, telling them they will be held accountable for refusing to stop the oncoming bureaucratic onslaught?

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Don't Reward Betrayal: Dump Oligarch Obama

2011-10-16T02:24:00.000-07:00

I voted for him too. But not again. Yes, I know, the argument is that if we don't vote for him we'll get even worse. Don't fall for it. The worst we'll get is someone just as bad. Obama is a fraud and a hypocritical hustler. What he really is is the best Republican candidate for 2012. As Boehner pointed out, Obama has given the GOP 98% of what they've wanted. Why? Not because he was forced to but because he is in fundamental agreement with the GOP agenda.

Obama received more money from Wall Street and the corporate elite than any political candidate in American history. And there is where his loyalties lie. Don't be fooled by his occasional populist rhetoric. That's just a ploy. He is a corporatist through and through. Look at the record and close your ears to the malarkey.

Look at his radical escalation of the profiteers' warfare. Look at the needless loss of life and limb.The only beneficiaries of Obama's wars are the banks and war industries which have made trillions from the slaughter. Obama is not "just as bad" as Bush. He's worse than Bush. Look at his refusal to hold the Wall-Street thieves accountable for their crimes despite the lives they've destroyed here and around the world. Look at his phoney "financial reform" that has kept the Wall-Street profiteers "too big to fail." They're raking in the money more than ever after Obama bailed them out at the expense of the American people. They are Obama's money suppliers and he takes excellent care of them. And take a gander at his "healthcare reform." The insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry are in full control and healthcare costs are increasing day by day. Have you seen the insurance companies complaining about Obama's "reforms?" Why would they? They are cashing in grandly with Obama's devoted assistance.

Yes, Obama isn't just Bush-all-over-again. He's worse. Did he fight hard to end the tax cuts to the wealthy? Of course not. He knows full well where his money comes from, astute Wall-Street Democrat that he is. And why is Timothy Geithner his Treasury Secretary? Because he was forced to appoint him? Come on. There are just no valid excuses for Obama--- and Progressives and others who continue to defend him need to get out of denial. Enough is enough.

Look at the grievous damage Obama is doing to this nation. Look at the terrible precedents he has set: Declaring an accused whistleblower guilty before trial and holding him in solitary confinement indefinitely under conditions amounting to torture; refusing to investigate and prosecute war crimes; conducting nationwide persecutions, home invasions and detentions of anti-war protestors; formulating "kill lists" of American citizens;appointing himself international executioner; refusing to even address the devastating increase in poverty in this nation that has resulted from the Wall-Street aberrations. And on and on.

This man is no leader, no custodian of the welfare of the American people. Obama is nothing but the willing puppet of the One Percent and we have to look that fact square in the face. This man cannot be rewarded for his utter betrayal of Americans who placed their trust in him. To support Obama for re-election would be to consent to being defrauded. Is this the message that we want to give out: that we are self-abnegating fools who forward the political careers of those who work against our legitimate interests and align themselves with profiteering plutocrats who are hostile to the best interests of our nation? God I hope not.

Obama has done nothing whatsoever to foster the well-being of the people of the United States. On the contrary he has served solely the interests of those who have profited enormously from the collective misery of the majority of Americans. Obama represents the low-point of the American presidency. I implore Americans of conscience and self-repect to reject this imposter unequivocally.

Let me say a word about the current Occupy -Wall Street movements. I have to admit that I had serious doubts that appreciable numbers of Americans would mobilize themselves against the tyranny that is besetting this nation. I am so happy that my doubts were mistaken. The protests have been managed with consummate skill and are growing steadily. I will not presume to offer advice. But I would just like to note that I would very much like to see the demonstrations result in Obama and the scores of other fraudulent and plutocracy-controlled politicians being exposed for exactly what they are.

And I would also note that the One Percent- Obama's backers and directors- understand only one thing --- profit---money. And the only way they can be made to loosen their iron-fisted hold on this nation is to threaten their profit. What else would work? Appeals to morality? Rational argument? Not on your life. Money is all they know, all they understand. And that is where they must be hit. And hit hard. I was happy to hear protestors encouraging people to start closing their accounts in the major bailed-out banks and transferring to community banks and credit unions and the like. That is just one example. But it seems clear that that is the direction that must be taken. Not just threats--- actions. Extensive planning for pertinent actions against offending banks, corporations, politicians and so forth must be an integral part of future strategy. The kind of sociopathic greed that we're dealing with will yield to nothing but the prospect of lost profits.

Finally, returning to Obama --- Please, the denial has to end. It is unpleasant to have to articulate fully the level of betrayal Obama has perpetrated. It has become painfully obvious that he came into office with the pre-planned agenda to function as the agent of the profiteers who made his election possible. Let us not venture to escape the obvious and let us not betray ourselves by submitting and consenting to our own undoing. We cannot just let this fraud saunter into the White House again. We just cannot.

2011-10-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

You Cannot Hide From Big Bro

2011-10-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

THIS IS HOW THE POLICE CAN NOW IDENTIFY TROUBLE MAKERS USING HIGH DEFINITION ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. DON'T THINK OF HIDING YOURSELF AMONGST THOUSANDS.............YOU CAN BE EASILY DETECTED & IDENTIFIED.

Using the same technology as Google Earth to track you, be warned it will be most difficult to lose yourself in any crowd.

YOU CAN EASILY BE DETECTED AND IDENTIFIED.

So wherever you may be - Just behave.

Don't say you have not been warned.

You can zero in on any one specific single face. The clarity is unbelievable.
This is the crowd before the riots in Vancouver.

Put your cursor anywhere in the crowd and double-click a couple of times.
To further help with image, use the scroll button in the centre of your mouse.

Zero in on any one specific single face. The clarity is unbelievable.

This is the photo taken by Port Moody photographer Ronnie Miranda that appeared in the Tri-City News on Friday (24-June).
Quite scary huh. You can see - perfectly - the faces of every single individual - and there were thousands!
Just think what the police and the military have at their disposal.

http://www.gigapixel.com/image/gigapan-canucks-g7.html

( Emailed to McGuire by Ira Landgarten, 10/7/2011 )

Posters from Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

( Image by Steve ben Israel )

2011-09-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

2011-09-28T21:41:00.000-07:00

Voting Machines Can Be Easily Hacked ( salon.com )

2011-09-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

2012 Elections

Tuesday, Sep 27, 2011 08:01 ET

Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control

Exclusive: A laboratory shows how an e-voting machine used by a third of all voters can be easily manipulated

By Brad Friedman

It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date.
Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the

Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

"We believe these man-in-the-middle attacks are potentially possible on a wide variety of electronic voting machines," said Roger Johnston, leader of the assessment team "We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine."

The Argonne Lab, run by the Department of Energy, has the mission of conducting scientific research to meet national needs. The Diebold Accuvote voting system used in the study was loaned to the lab's scientists by

VelvetRevolution.us, of which the Brad Blog is a co-founder. Velvet Revolution received the machine from a former Diebold contractor
Previous lab demonstrations of e-voting system hacks, such as Princeton's demonstration of a viral cyber attack on a Diebold touch-screen system -- as I wrote for Salon back in 2006 -- relied on cyber attacks to change the results of elections. Such attacks, according to the team at Argonne, require more coding skills and knowledge of the voting system software than is needed for the attack on the Diebold system.

Indeed, the Argonne team's attack required no modification, reprogramming, or even knowledge, of the voting machine's proprietary source code. It was carried out by inserting a piece of inexpensive "alien electronics" into the machine.

The Argonne team's demonstration of the attack on a Diebold Accuvote machine is seen in a short new video shared exclusively with the Brad Blog [posted below]. The team successfully demonstrated a similar attack on a touch-screen

system made by Sequoia Voting Systems in 2009.

The new findings of the Vulnerability Assessment Team echo long-ignored concerns about e-voting vulnerabilities

issued by other computer scientists and security experts, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (an arm of the Department of Homeland Security), and even a long-ignored presentation by a CIA official given to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

"This is a national security issue," says Johnston. "It should really be handled by the Department of Homeland Security."

The use of touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems of the type Argonne demonstrated to be vulnerable to manipulation has declined in recent years due to security concerns, and the high cost of programming and maintenance. Nonetheless, the same type of DRE systems, or ones very similar, will once again be used by a significant part of the electorate on Election Day in 2012. According to Sean Flaherty, a policy analyst for

VerifiedVoting.org, a nonpartisan e-voting watchdog group, "About one-third of registered voters live where the only way to vote on Election Day is to use a DRE."

Almost all voters in states like Georgia, Maryland, Utah and Nevada, and the majority of voters in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Texas, will vote on DREs on Election Day in 2012, says Flaherty. Voters in major municipalities such as Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh will also line up in next year's election to use DREs of the type hacked by the Argonne National Lab.
Voting machine companies and election officials have long sought to protect source code and the memory cards that store ballot programming and election results for each machine as a way to guard against potential outside manipulation of election results. But critics like California Secretary of State Debra Bowen have pointed out that attempts at "security by obscurity" largely ignore the most immediate threat, which comes from election insiders who have regular access to the e-voting systems, as well as those who may gain physical access to machines that were not designed with security safeguards in mind.

"This is a fundamentally very powerful attack and we believe that voting officials should become aware of this and stop focusing strictly on cyber [attacks]," says Vulnerability Assessment Team member John Warner. "There's a very large physical protection component of the voting machine that needs to be addressed."

The team's video demonstrates how inserting the inexpensive electronic device into the voting machine can offer a "bad guy" virtually complete control over the machine. A cheap remote control unit can enable access to the voting machine from up to half a mile away.

"The cost of the attack that you're going to see was $10.50 in retail quantities," explains Warner in the video. "If you want to use the RF [radio frequency] remote control to stop and start the attacks, that's another $15. So the total cost would be $26."

The video shows three different types of attack, each demonstrating how the intrusion developed by the team allows them to take complete control of the Diebold touch-screen voting machine. They were able to demonstrate a similar attack on a DRE system made by Sequoia Voting Systems as well.
In what Warner describes as "probably the most relevant attack for vote tampering," the intruder would allow the voter to make his or her selections. But when the voter actually attempts to push the Vote Now button, which records the voter's final selections to the system's memory card, he says, "we will simply intercept that attempt ... change a few of the votes," and the changed votes would then be registered in the machine.

"In order to do this," Warner explains, "we blank the screen temporarily so that the voter doesn't see that there's some revoting going on prior to the final registration of the votes."

This type of attack is particularly troubling because the manipulation would occur after the voter has approved as "correct" the on-screen summaries of his or her intended selections. Team leader Johnson says that while such an attack could be mounted on Election Day, there would be "a high probability of being detected." But he explained that the machines could also be tampered with during so-called voting machine "sleepovers" when e-voting systems are

kept by poll workers at their houses, often days and weeks prior to the election or at other times when the systems are unguarded.

"The more realistic way to insert these alien electronics is to do it while the voting machines are waiting in the polling place a week or two prior to the election," Johnston said. "Often the polling places are in elementary schools or a church basement or some place that doesn't really have a great deal of security. Or the voting machines can be tampered while they're in transit to the polling place. Or while they're in storage in the warehouse between elections," says Johnston. He notes that the Argonne team had no owner's manual or circuit diagrams for either the Diebold or Sequoia voting systems they were able to access in these attacks.

The team members are critical of election security procedures, which rarely, if ever, include physical inspection of the machines, especially their internal electronics. Even if such inspections were carried out, however, the Argonne scientists say the type of attack they've developed leaves behind no physical or programming evidence, if properly executed.

"The really nice thing about this attack, the man-in-the-middle, is that there's no soldering or destruction of the circuit board of any kind," Warner says. "You can remove this attack and leave no forensic evidence that we've been there."

Gaining access to the inside of the Diebold touch-screen is as simple as picking the rudimentary lock, or

using a standard hotel minibar key, as all of the machines use the same easily copied key, available at most office supply stores.

"I think our main message is, let's not get overly transfixed on the cyber," team leader Johnston says. Since he believes they "can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine," he recommends a number of improvements for future e-voting systems.

"The machines themselves need to be designed better, with the idea that people may be trying to get into them," he says. " If you're just thinking about the fact that someone can try to get in, you can design the seals better, for example."

"Don't do things like use a standard blank key for every machine," he warns. "Spend an extra four bucks and get a better lock. You don't have to have state of the art security, but you can do some things where it takes at least a little bit of skill to get in."

2011-09-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

Sign the Petition for Money-Free Federal Elections ( Post by Dylan Ratigan, 9/27/2011 )

2011-09-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

Money has bought our politics. Only we the people can take it back. But, HOW?

I have asked a professional lobbyist and a series of Constitutional scholars. They tell me that it will require a large, unrelenting, organized group aligned around a Constitutional Amendment to Get Money Out of politics.

So here is a draft of an Amendment and here is a petition to start the movement.

Read the Amendment and add your signature.

Our goal is to get a large, unrelenting, organized group to sign on to a petition asking our politicians to ban money in politics. If we can get it big enough, we can use my show on MSNBC as a platform to force this issue to the center of next year's Presidential debate. Without you I am just a talking head. With you we are 100,000 American s for Justice.
So join us, at GetMoneyOut.com

All of us know the problem, in our gut. I exploded this summer, in a "mad as hell" moment that went viral on the internet. You responded, but you too are Mad as Hell. But we also know that anger and logic are only useful if we turn our collective energy into positive action.
So join us, at GetMoneyOut.com

Our politicians know the problem, too. But they aren't going to fix the problem because if one of them forfeits money, the others will quickly find that person easy to beat. Instead, all of them must be forced to disarm at the same time. That will only happen if we the people, a large unrelenting, organized group, tell the politicians to Get Money Out.

So join us, at GetMoneyOut.comThere are serious legal questions around any Constitutional amendment. What will it do? How extensive can it be? My own sense is that the strongest amendments are a few paragraphs and lay out a simple and strong set of principles. I've asked Jimmy Williams, a frequent guest on my show and an experienced lobbyist, to come up with draft text. He's a lobbyist who has become as disgusted as we are at the fetid stench coming from DC, and he knows as well as anyone how corrupting money can be in our politics. He's been there.

But the legal questions are frankly small. More importantly, how do we make this happen? I believe we can make this happen by forming an army of Americans who want to get money out, and putting that front and center in 2012. We'll start with something simple: the voices of 100,000 of us. That is our challenge. Add your name.

And send me ideas at Dylan@DylanRatigan.com on how we can build a movement to Get Money Out. The clock is ticking, so let's get to it.

( Post by Dylan Ratigan, www. huffingtonpost.com, 9/27/2011 )

Durga Devi

2011-09-21T02:30:00.000-07:00

Whose Side Is The USDA Really On?

2011-09-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

September 20, 2011

It’s supposed to help organic farmers. But it’s more likely to be just another sneaky way to help Monsanto. New Action Alert!

Last week, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack gave a clear directive to his department’s new Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21): come up with a plan to compensate organic and conventional farmers whose crops become contaminated because of genetically engineered foods.

This directive is clearly intended to sound like it will help farmers. But we think it is actually intended to help Monsanto. To see why we think this, a bit of background.

The committee is comprised of a broad spectrum of interested parties: organic scientists and organic trade organizations, conventional farming industry reps (including makers of high-fructose corn syrup), DuPont, agriculture experts, genetic engineering companies, lawyers, and a few concerned individuals.

As we reported recently, courts have increasingly been siding against GE and biotech farming when surrounding farms and products become contaminated. Bayer CropScience recently agreed to pay up to $750 million to farmers in the Midwest to settle lawsuits over its contamination of the US rice supply.

This is in sharp contrast to the past when Monsanto was suing nearby farmers whose crops were contaminated for theft of product and using the threat of suit to intimidate and silence.
Could this possibly mean, asks Marion Nestle in her Food Politics blog, that instead of Monsanto suing organic or conventional farmers whose crops get intermingled with patented GM varieties, Monsanto might now have to treat organic farmers fairly and pay them for the damage caused by the contamination? Or does the USDA actually have in mind a new protection scheme for Monsanto—a legal shelter that will limit Monsanto’s future monetary damages?

This isn’t the first time that our crony capitalist-inclined government has created a system protecting industry from liability. You may recall our stories on “vaccine courts” like the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault system that compensates individuals harmed by vaccines. By denying the right to file lawsuits, it’s a way to protect the vaccine industry from potentially huge financial damages. Will this USDA compensation plan for GE crop contamination be just another gift to the biotech farming industry?

Tom Vilsack does not admit to being a crony of the biotech industry. The secretary was quoted as saying, “I have no favorite [type of agriculture] here,” but other statements—and past actions—make it clear that this is not a truthful statement. Today’s USDA acts virtually as an agent of Monsanto and other big GE companies. So do other government agencies which want to promote the export of this “American” product, as Wikileaks documents show.

Consumers, by contrast, have been voicing their objections to genetically engineered foods, and some elected officials are listening. In June, the House of Representatives amended the agriculture spending bill and prohibited the FDA from spending money to approve genetically engineered salmon. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) recently said she would attempt to do the same for the Senate version of the bill.

ANH-USA strongly advocates for clear labeling on all genetically modified foods to give consumers an informed choice, a position which the American public strongly supports. Citizen activists have organized the Right2Know March—a massive sixteen-day march from New York City all the way to the White House to demand GMO labeling. The march takes place from October 1 to October 16; they are looking for walkers, bikers, drivers, volunteers, cheerleaders, hosts, and supporters, so be sure to visit their website for details.

Today please contact Congress and USDA secretary Tom Vilsack and tell them America will not stand for any USDA’s attempt to shield the GMO industry from liability when their products contaminate surrounding organic and conventional crops. Please take action now!

TO SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO CONGRESS AND THE USD

Click THIS LINK to go to the Action Alert page. Once there, fill out the form with your name and address, etc., and customize your letter. We have a suggested message for you, but please feel free to add your own comments to the letter.

(www.anh-usa.org)

Proposed Herbs and Supplements Ban

2011-09-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

This is very important for those of you that choose to use herbs and supplements in your life. Well, very soon, you may lose that right as have the Europeans. Yes, the Europeans will have to go to a doctor to get a prescription to take herbs and supplements beyond the basic amount, or at all! Recently, a form of this bill was passed by the European Union and it's on it's way here by way of the FDA, 1/3 of which, is funded by guess who, Big Pharma! See, many of Big Pharma's patents are expiring, new drugs aren't being developed, and many people are self-medicating with natural products...so, they want a part of that market. Go to www.anh-usa.org or and sign the petition (or write your own letter) that will be forwarded to your Reps & Senators in Congress.

Guru Rinpoche

2011-09-12T15:51:00.001-07:00

American Idiocy

2011-09-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

Yes. And remember they put George W. Bush in the White House twice. And the more "progressive" of them are still defending Obama despite the obvious fact that he has been the willing puppet of Wall Street and the corporate elite from day one. And they have looked the other way for years while hundreds of thousands of human beings have been maimed and slaughtered in unjustified wars for oil and profit. They sit gaping at "Dancing with the Stars" while the One Percent take the food off their tables; devalue their property; rob them of their savings and pensions; magnify their indebtedness; yank away their privacy and civil rights - and turn them and their children and their children's children into perpetual serfs. Yes, as George Carlin put it: "The public sucks." They have colluded fully in the debasement of their lives and the destruction of their democracy. And the One Percent are laughing their asses off at them. Yes, the public. "When will they ever learn?"

Mahabala

2011-09-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

American Serfdom

2011-09-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

A Note of Appreciation from the Rich ---

Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.

On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it -- you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us -- and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!

You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to "break out of the mold."

Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking "foreign competition," "the law of supply and demand," "national security," or "the bloated federal deficit." We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening -- instead, you blame "Aliens," "Tree-hugging Environmentalists," "Niggers," "Jews," Welfare Queens," and countless others for your troubled situation.

We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the "work ethic," even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!

Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system -- robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.

So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for "knowing your place" -- without even knowing it

( Source: http://www.namebase.org/ )

2011-08-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Ravi Shankar Recital (bigissuescotland.com)

2011-08-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

Ravi ShankarUsher Hall, Edinburgh 5/5

How does one do justice to this recital by Ravi Shankar, the 91-year–old Indian sitar master, and one of the most influential musicians of modern times? A five star rating hardly suffices when this extraordinary concert ofening ragas was one of the most memorable and moving cultural experiences of this critic’s life.

This important event – a centrepiece of the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival’s turn towards the arts of Asia – leaves one in no doubt as to why the Indian virtuoso has left such a deep and indelible imprint upon the music of so many artists, from The Beatles to the great jazzman John Coltrane (who named his son, Ravi, after Shankar).Although a very healthy nonagenarian, Mr Shankar displays some of the frailty one might expect with his age. Assisted by members of his carefully-selected group, he takes his place centre stage. Reunited with his sitar, however, all sense of frailty melts away. As the musicians play the opening raga – a beautiful and gentle piece – the master’s hands move on the strings with the nimbleness and speed of a much younger man.Shankar sits among his musicians seeming like a benevolent conductor, an encouraging father and a trusted friend. Often – as in the superb duets which develop between him and each of his musicians – he is an equal with his players; but, paradoxically, he remains always the master.

As the musicologist Martin Clayton explains in his fine notes for the concert programme, ragas are not clearly-defined, time-limited compositions (as are, for example, the works of the European classical tradition) but, rather, they constitute a rich and almost infinite “system”, a set of “melodic modes” in which the musician elaborates (the connection with jazz and, therefore, with Coltrane becomes increasingly clear as the concert goes on). The extraordinary improvisatory scope of the music means that only four pieces are played in the 90-minute recital; one short work, in honour of the prankster childhood of the Hindu god Lord Krishna, and three longer, brilliantly performed improvisations.Whether Shankar’s sitar is being echoed by the flute of Ravichandra Kulur, or playing to-and-fro with the tabla of the immense player Tanmoy Bose, this music has a powerful capacity to pass, in an instant, between the meditative and the exhilarating. To witness the master at work, and still very much in his musical prime, was, surely, the greatest privilege which this year’s Festival has to offer.

Mark Brown

2011-08-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

Walmart On The High Seas

2011-08-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Wonder where the jobs went ? THIS IS WALMART'S SHIP.

The Emma Maersk, part of a Danish shipping line, is shown in the photo. What a ship -- no wonder "Made in China ' is displacing North American made goods big time. This monster transports goods across the Pacific in just 5 days!! This is one of three ships presently in service, with another two ships commissioned to be completed in 2012. These ships were commissioned by Wal-Mart to get all their goods and stuff from China . They hold an incredible 15,000 containers and have a 207 foot deck beam!! The full crew is just 13 people on a ship longer than a US Aircraft Carrier (which has a crew of 5,000) With it's 207' beam, it is too big to fit through the Panama or Suez Canals . It is strictly transpacific. Cruise speed: 31 knots.The goods arrive 4 days before the typical container ship (18-20 knots) on a China-to-California run. 91% of Walmart products are made in China . So this behemoth is hugely competitive even when carrying perishable goods. The ship was built in five sections. The sections floated together and then welded. The command bridge is higher than a 10-story building and has 11 cargo crane rigs that can operate simultaneously unloading the entire ship in less than two hours.

Additional info: Country of Origin - Denmark Length - 1,302 ft Width - 207 ft Net cargo - 123,200 tons Engine - 14 cylinders in-line diesel engine (110,000 BHP) Cruise Speed - 31 knots Cargo capacity - 15,000 TEU (1 TEU = 20 cubic feet) Crew - 13 people First Trip - Sept. 08, 2006 Construction cost - US $145,000,000+ Silicone painting applied to the ship bottom reduces water resistance and saves 317,000 gallons of diesel per year.

All of these containers are shipped back to China , EMPTY!! Yep, that's right. We send nothing back on these ships. What does that tell you about the current financial state of this country? Just keep buying those imported goods (mostly gadgets) until you run out of money. Then you may wonder what the cause of unemployment (maybe even your job) in the U.S. and Canada might be.

2011-08-10T01:54:00.000-07:00

Dzogchen Verse (8)

2011-08-10T01:33:00.000-07:00

The very meaning of Buddha Nature - Dharmakaya without transition or change, awareness supremely free of limitation, the Ground of Being as basic space - the true nature of phenomena that is immediately present, a supreme and inexpressible state that is nothing in and of itself, an unrestricted state of resting in the fundamental nature beyond ordinary consciousness - That is the key point of practice and to attainment of supreme timeless awareness. There are no obscurations if your very essence recognizes itself. Buddhahood is none other than your own natural Ground of Being.

( Dudjom Lingpa, Nang Jang- Refining One's Perception )

2011-08-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

What Happened to Obama ? ( By Drew Westen- NYTimes.com, August 6, 2011 )

2011-08-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

It was a blustery day in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009, as it often seems to be on the day of a presidential inauguration. As I stood with my 8-year-old daughter, watching the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come. It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him.

The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought. Our species existed for more than 100,000 years before the earliest signs of literacy, and another 5,000 years would pass before the majority of humans would know how to read and write.

Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight

Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:
“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again.” A story isn’t a policy. But that simple narrative — and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it — would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn’t tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit — a deficit that didn’t exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.
And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story — and there has been none since.

In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That’s what we saw in 1928, and that’s what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues — and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation’s food supply, and protect America’s land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.

Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.

In contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

The truly decisive move that broke the arc of history was his handling of the stimulus. The public was desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led. Yet instead of indicting the economic policies and principles that had just eliminated eight million jobs, in the most damaging of the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of his presidency — and against the advice of multiple Nobel-Prize-winning economists — he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert. The result, as predicted in advance, was a half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy. That, in turn, led the White House to feel rightly unappreciated for having saved the country from another Great Depression but in the unenviable position of having to argue a counterfactual — that something terrible might have happened had it not half-acted.

To the average American, who was still staring into the abyss, the half-stimulus did nothing but prove that Ronald Reagan was right, that government is the problem. In fact, the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, “stick.” Nor did anyone explain what health care reform was supposed to accomplish (other than the unbelievable and even more uninspiring claim that it would “bend the cost curve”), or why “credit card reform” had led to an increase in the interest rates they were already struggling to pay. Nor did anyone explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be. All Americans knew, and all they know today, is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job. And now the Republicans are chipping away at unemployment insurance, and the president is making his usual impotent verbal exhortations after bargaining it away.

What makes the “deficit debate” we just experienced seem so surreal is how divorced the conversation in Washington has been from conversations around the kitchen table everywhere else in America. Although I am a scientist by training, over the last several years, as a messaging consultant to nonprofit groups and Democratic leaders, I have studied the way voters think and feel, talking to them in plain language. At this point, I have interacted in person or virtually with more than 50,000 Americans on a range of issues, from taxes and deficits to abortion and immigration.

The average voter is far more worried about jobs than about the deficit, which few were talking about while Bush and the Republican Congress were running it up. The conventional wisdom is that Americans hate government, and if you ask the question in the abstract, people will certainly give you an earful about what government does wrong. But if you give them the choice between cutting the deficit and putting Americans back to work, it isn’t even close. But it’s not just jobs. Americans don’t share the priorities of either party on taxes, budgets or any of the things Congress and the president have just agreed to slash — or failed to slash, like subsidies to oil companies. When it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, Americans are united across the political spectrum, supporting a message that says, “In times like these, millionaires ought to be giving to charity, not getting it.”

When pitted against a tough budget-cutting message straight from the mouth of its strongest advocates, swing voters vastly preferred a message that began, “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work.” This statement is far more consistent with what many economists are saying publicly — and what investors apparently believe, as evident in the nosedive the stock market took after the president and Congress “saved” the economy.
So where does that leave us?

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.

The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.

As a practicing psychologist with more than 25 years of experience, I will resist the temptation to diagnose at a distance, but as a scientist and strategic consultant I will venture some hypotheses.

The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.
A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election. Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.

Or perhaps, like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been consciously or unconsciously corrupted by a system that tests the souls even of people of tremendous integrity, by forcing them to dial for dollars — in the case of the modern presidency, for hundreds of millions of dollars. When he wants to be, the president is a brilliant and moving speaker, but his stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others’ misery has no agency and hence no culpability. Whether that reflects his aversion to conflict, an aversion to conflict with potential campaign donors that today cripples both parties’ ability to govern and threatens our democracy, or both, is unclear.

A final explanation is that he ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue. He has pursued the one with which he is most comfortable given the constraints of his character, consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.

But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.

2011-08-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

Winners and Losers in the Debt Deal ( The Nation, August 2, 2011 )

2011-08-03T21:06:00.000-07:00

Credit- AP Images

August 2, 2011

Who will the debt deal help, and who will it hurt? ( 1 of 9 )

The Senate passed a debt deal today that will raise the debt ceiling into 2013 and reduce government spending by $2.5 trillion. Now that the bill has been signed into law by President Obama’s, it’s worth asking: who stands to benefit from the hard-won plan, and who stands to lose?

As The Nation’s George Zornick explains, the deal is a rout of the lower and middle classes by the wealthiest Americans. Since the deal relies entirely on spending cuts with no revenues—don’t believe the White House spin that revenues are possible, because that would require Republicans to suddenly desire them—the wealthy escape any sacrifice since very few of them rely on the government services that will be cut. There are a lot of ways the cuts will be worked out in the next few months, but here are the definite winners and losers of the bill.

Losers: Veterans (2 of 9)

Almost half of the first round of cuts will come from “security spending,” which includes the Pentagon budget but also the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and, notably, veterans benefits and compensation. More than 2.2 million veterans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001, many of whom have been seriously injured and require extensive care. The Disabled Veterans of America already has said it is “anxious” to see how these spending cuts are assembled.

Losers: Students (3 of 9)

Graduate students would be the hardest hit, as the bill proposes an elimination of the interest subsidy on federal student loans for “almost all” of them. This means that beginning July 1, 2012, grad students will be responsible for the interest on their loans while in school and during any subsequent deferment period.

Also, while the federal government currently offers subsidies for on-time payments in order to promote responsible pay-backs, they will be eliminated under the debt ceiling deal. Also, education accounts for the largest share of non-defense discretionary spending. It’s nearly inconceivable that budget-cutters won’t target that juicy budget line in making their cuts.

Losers: Seniors (4 of 9)

Medicare is subject to across-the-board cuts in the super-committee, and if the trigger is pulled, provider payments will be slashed—though only up to 2 percent. The makeup of the super-committee and outside-the-Beltway campaigns to protect Medicare will determine a lot about the degree of cuts, but remember that inside the Beltway, the “left” side of the debate has been defined by President Obama and the Gang of Six as raising the eligibility age to 67 and/or $500 billion in cuts. So this probably won’t end well.

Losers: The poor (5 of 9)

Medicaid will be subject to cuts by the super-committee. The Republican position, articulated in the Ryan budget, is a devastating 35 percent reduction in the next ten years, even as health costs rise. (However, Medicaid is protected from any cuts if the trigger should go off). Beyond that, federal housing assistance is the fourth largest slice of non-defense discretionary spending and is thus a likely target for cuts.

Losers: The unemployed (6 of 9)

Unlike what happened during the December showdown over the Bush tax cuts, the White House was unable (or unwilling) to secure any extension of help for the jobless. That December extension will expire at the end of this year, and this was one of the last best shots to make sure that 3.8 million people won’t lose their benefits at that point.

Winners: The wealthy (7 of 9)

Up until very recently, Obama and most Democrats were demanding that wealthy Americans pony up for some deficit reduction. The demands were admittedly narrow, and focused on itemized deductions on people who owned private jets or multiple homes—but both groups are exempted from sacrifice under the current deal.

Winners: Wall Street tycoons (8 of 9)

In his budget proposal earlier this year, Obama recommended taxing the profit share of private equity managers, venture capitalists and other Wall Street high-rollers at the ordinary personal income tax rate, instead of at the smaller capital gains rate. No such deal was struck under the current bill, so these mega-rich traders won’t spend a penny reducing the deficit—again, unless Boehner undergoes a religious experience and appoints pro-tax, anti-Wall Street Republicans to the super-committee. (He’d have to spend a long time looking first).

Winners: Oil and gas companies (9 of 9)

Obama repeatedly demanded that oil and gas companies lose their tax breaks, since they are raking in record profits and enjoy many deductions and subsidies in the tax code. “If we choose to keep a tax break for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of millions of dollars, that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship (and) that means we’ve got to stop funding grants for medical research,” Obama said in June. Since those tax breaks were preserved, in hindsight that soundbite was more of a prediction than a warning.

For more on the full repercussions of the bill, read George Zornick’s Who's Helped and Who's Harmed By Debt Deal?

2011-08-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

2011-08-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Crushing of American Youth ( By Bruce E. Levine- AlterNet )

2011-08-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

ACTIVISM & VISION
AlterNet / By Bruce E. Levine
212 COMMENTS

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance

July 31, 2011

Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.

How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?

1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force. There was no tuition at the City University of New York when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. While those days are gone in the United States, public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.

Today in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. While average undergraduate debt is close to $25,000, I increasingly talk to college graduates with closer to $100,000 in student-loan debt. During the time in one’s life when it should be easiest to resist authority because one does not yet have family responsibilities, many young people worry about the cost of bucking authority, losing their job, and being unable to pay an ever-increasing debt. In a vicious cycle, student debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life.

2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance. In 1955, Erich Fromm, the then widely respected anti-authoritarian leftist psychoanalyst, wrote, “Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.” Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” “often argues with adults,” and “often deliberately does things to annoy other people.”
Many of America’s greatest activists including Saul Alinsky (1909–1972), the legendary organizer and author of Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, would today certainly be diagnosed with ODD and other disruptive disorders. Recalling his childhood, Alinsky said, “I never thought of walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass.’ Then I would stomp all over it.” Heavily tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010); a major reason for this, according to theJournal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving antipsychotic drugs have nonpsychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other disruptive disorder (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients).

3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy. Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance by stating: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.” A generation ago, the problem of compulsory schooling as a vehicle for an authoritarian society was widely discussed, but as this problem has gotten worse, it is seldom discussed.

The nature of most classrooms, regardless of the subject matter, socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders, to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend to care about things they don’t care about, and that they are impotent to affect their situation. A teacher can lecture about democracy, but schools are essentially undemocratic places, and so democracy is not what is instilled in students. Jonathan Kozol in The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home focused on how school breaks us from courageous actions. Kozol explains how our schools teach us a kind of “inert concern” in which “caring”—in and of itself and without risking the consequences of actual action—is considered “ethical.” School teaches us that we are “moral and mature” if we politely assert our concerns, but the essence of school—its demand for compliance—teaches us not to act in a friction-causing manner.

4. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” The corporatocracy has figured out a way to make our already authoritarian schools even more authoritarian. Democrat-Republican bipartisanship has resulted in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, the Wall Street bailout, and educational policies such as “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” These policies are essentially standardized-testing tyranny that creates fear, which is antithetical to education for a democratic society. Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority. In a more democratic and less authoritarian society, one would evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher not by corporatocracy-sanctioned standardized tests but by asking students, parents, and a community if a teacher is inspiring students to be more curious, to read more, to learn independently, to enjoy thinking critically, to question authorities, and to challenge illegitimate authorities.

5. Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously. In a 2006 survey in the United States, it was found that 40 percent of children between first and third grade read every day, but by fourth grade, that rate declined to 29 percent. Despite the anti-educational impact of standard schools, children and their parents are increasingly propagandized to believe that disliking school means disliking learning. That was not always the case in the United States. Mark Twain famously said, “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” Toward the end of Twain’s life in 1900, only 6 percent of Americans graduated high school. Today, approximately 85 percent of Americans graduate high school, but this is good enough for Barack Obama who told us in 2009, “And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.”

The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they are of America’s ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class. In the 1880s and 1890s, American farmers with little or no schooling created a Populist movement that organized America’s largest-scale working people’s cooperative, formed a People’s Party that received 8 percent of the vote in 1892 presidential election, designed a “subtreasury” plan (that had it been implemented would have allowed easier credit for farmers and broke the power of large banks) and sent 40,000 lecturers across America to articulate it, and evidenced all kinds of sophisticated political ideas, strategies and tactics absent today from America’s well-schooled population. Today, Americans who lack college degrees are increasingly shamed as “losers”; however, Gore Vidal and George Carlin, two of America’s most astute and articulate critics of the corporatocracy, never went to college, and Carlin dropped out of school in the ninth grade.

6. The Normalization of Surveillance. The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control. While the National Security Agency (NSA) has received publicity for monitoring American citizen’s email and phone conversations, and while employer surveillance has become increasingly common in the United States, young Americans have become increasingly acquiescent to corporatocracy surveillance because, beginning at a young age, surveillance is routine in their lives. Parents routinely check Web sites for their kid’s latest test grades and completed assignments, and just like employers, are monitoring their children’s computers and Facebook pages. Some parents use the GPS in their children’s cell phones to track their whereabouts, and other parents have video cameras in their homes. Increasingly, I talk with young people who lack the confidence that they can even pull off a party when their parents are out of town, and so how much confidence are they going to have about pulling off a democratic movement below the radar of authorities?

7. Television. In 2009, the Nielsen Company reported that TV viewing in the United States is at an all-time high if one includes the following “three screens”: a television set, a laptop/personal computer, and a cell phone. American children average eight hours a day on TV, video games, movies, the Internet, cell phones, iPods, and other technologies (not including school-related use). Many progressives are concerned about the concentrated control of content by the corporate media, but the mere act of watching TV—regardless of the programming—is the primary pacifying agent (private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards).

Television is a dream come true for an authoritarian society: those with the most money own most of what people see; fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a “divide and conquer” strategy; TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities; and regardless of the programming, TV viewers’ brainwaves slow down, transforming them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically. While playing a video games is not as zombifying as passively viewing TV, such games have become for many boys and young men their only experience of potency, and this “virtual potency” is certainly no threat to the ruling elite.

8. Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism. American culture offers young Americans the “choices” of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist consumerism. All varieties of fundamentalism narrow one’s focus and inhibit critical thinking. While some progressives are fond of calling fundamentalist religion the “opiate of the masses,” they too often neglect the pacifying nature of America’s other major fundamentalism. Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. Fundamentalist consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. A fundamentalist consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulations, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulativeness, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form democratic movements. Fundamentalist consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult for the solidarity necessary for democratic movements.
These are not the only aspects of our culture that are subduing young Americans and crushing their resistance to domination. The food-industrial complex has helped create an epidemic of childhood obesity, depression, and passivity. The prison-industrial complex keeps young anti-authoritarians “in line” (now by the fear that they may come before judges such as the two Pennsylvania ones who took $2.6 million from private-industry prisons to ensure that juveniles were incarcerated). As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed: “All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.”

2011-08-03T00:49:00.000-07:00

Sri Yantra

2011-07-31T22:28:00.000-07:00

2011-07-31T21:53:00.000-07:00

The War on You ( By Michael Collins - OpEdNews )

2011-07-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

Let the word go forth from Washington! The corporate rulers occupying our nation's capital have declared war on just about every citizen.

Have no doubt: those in the upper ranges of the top 1% of wealth in this country (aka The Money Party) want to kick you to the curb.They want to reduce your social security and make you go broke paying for medical care.

They want to lower your wages and trash your retirement.

They ignore the clear facts that we've had negative job growth since 2000 and the situation is just getting worse.

They want to ship jobs, factories, and entire businesses overseas and give companies that do that a big fat tax credit for doing so.

They've been given so much for nothing for so long. Now, they're ready to take it all. It's their time!

The most recent assault is the ridiculous debate about raising the debt ceiling. There should be no debate. Failing to raise the ceiling right now means deliberate default on debts, refusing to pay bills the government can pay. It's called fraud.

The pressing need to fix the budget is a separate issue. Reduced spending and increased revenues should come through broad public involvement and open debate. It mandates that the rulers behave like adults.

But this crisis isn't about putting together a real budget. It's about creating a budget that punishes you, your family, and friends. It's about taking your attention away from your vital interests to maximize income and control by The Money Party.

Were the leaders on either side of the debate serious, the Bush era tax cuts would be rescinded. These cuts on the top 1% were temporary. Guess what? Congress lied. When the temporary tax breaks ran out a few months ago, they were revived and renewed just when we had the greatest need for revenues.

The Money Party won't give up its wars either. Iraq and Afghanistan have added $4 trillion to the national debt of $14 trillion. Why not stop the wars? How hard is that to figure that out?
Getting rid of Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, ending the wars, and moving out of the recession/depression would be huge steps toward balancing the budget. But that won't happen with this Congress and this president. Why? That would cost the financial elite money for taxes and lost income for all those weapons they sell to support the wars.

The Attack on You Began in Earnest Just Years Ago.
Congress repealed Depression era banking regulation that kept your banks from risky investments in 1999.

Congress enacted legislation in 2000 that allowed extremely risky investments in real estate and other derivatives, illegal for nearly a century.
In 2001, the big banks and Wall Street celebrated its newly purchased freedoms with a decade-long binge of fraud and risky investments. Like a greedy con artist, they took everything they could from people here and around the world until there was no more to take. We have now hit the wall thanks to them.

The outrageous expenses of wars based on lies caught up with us and shoved the deficit to new heights. The tax cuts for the top 1% took away revenues needed to balance the budget.
The money they steal from the Social Security surplus is no longer enough. They want to keep the tax in place for us and take an even bigger rake-off.

This crisis is manufactured by the ongoing greed of The Money Party. It is funded by the US Treasury. You pay for it, all of it.

2011-07-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Indian Musical Instruments (18): Tampura

2011-07-29T20:33:00.001-07:00

Indian Musical Instruments (17) : Shehnai

2011-07-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

2011-07-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

U.S. Imperialism Creating Police State At Home- By Sherwood Ross (OpEd News)

2011-07-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

As America's empire spreads abroad, it becomes ever more the police state at home. The methods used for the suppression of foreigners by military force and violence are eventually mirrored in the "homeland."

In an article last September 25 th titled "It Is Official: the US Is A Police State," author Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Treasury Secretary during the Reagan years, wrote, "'Violent extremism' is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning's FBI foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with 'the material support of terrorism'..."
The FBI raids at home are reminiscent of U.S. military raids overseas. In Iraq, for instance, labor union offices were raided and rifled and labor leaders imprisoned by the Occupation forces. Their "crime" was to oppose sweetheart contract deals with private oil firms.

The vast U.S. prison system, which houses 2.4 million Americans, may be compared with the Gulag the U.S. has built abroad. America today is the World's Jailer. As Allan Uthman reported on AlterNet, in 2006 the Bush regime began building "detention centers" to warehouse inmates for unspecified "new programs" when the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root nearly $400 million. What we do abroad, we do at home.

Adopting police state tactics on Americans the U.S. Empire first used on subjects abroad has a long history. When Filipinos rebelled against U.S. rule after their country was "liberated" from Spain, captured resistance fighters were subjected to water torture. Twenty years later, imprisoned American pacifists who opposed the Wilson administration's entry into World War One were hung by their hands, and had running hoses shoved in their faces.
In its editorial of July 25 th , The Nation magazine denounces America's use of "secret armies, covert operations...offshore torture centers, out-of-control armed corporations, runaway military spending, wars by fleets of robots, wars by assassination---and all the other features of the imperial presidency..."

The magazine has long sought to end these practices. It's still a great idea but now it's a tad late. The Reactionary Elite that runs America is powerful. Congress rubber-stamps President Obama's five wars of aggression abroad and enacts laws at home that scorch individual liberty. The result is the emergent police state.

The other day I watched people entering a bus station in Orlando, Florida, submit to a body scan by two security officers who had no probable cause whatever to search them. Americans boarding trains and planes now accept such scans routinely. In area after area, Americans are accepting violations of their privacy in the name of "national security" with hardly a murmur of dissent. The Bush regime created "watch"(75,000 names) and "no fly"(45,000 names) lists that restrict individuals' air travel--and those searched and/or stopped from flying can complain all they like because it won't do them any good.

Robert Johnson, an American citizen, Naomi Wolf reports in her book "The End of America"( Chelsea Green), described the humiliation factor of being strip searched when he attempted to board an airplane: "I had to take off my pants. I had to take off my sneakers, then I had to take off my socks. I was treated like a criminal." This has now become a commonplace ordeal for countless numbers of Americans. Even at the height of World War Two, such invasions of personal rights would have been unthinkable.

Fear of government, unlike anything I have ever known in my lifetime, appears widespread. How do I know people are fearful? Because many readers call me "courageous" (which I definitely am not) for challenging the government, revealing that they truly do fear to speak out.
David Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law School, writes in The Nation that Congress last May reauthorized provisions of the misnamed "Patriot Act" that "permit the government to obtain 'roving' wiretaps without identifying the person or the phone to be tapped, (to)demand records from libraries and businesses without establishing any reason to believe the target is involved in criminal, much less terrorist, activity; and (to)use surveillance powers initially restricted to agents of foreign governments or terrorist organizations against 'lone wolves' not affiliated with any such group or government." This is an echo of the ECHELON system the U.S. and its British Commonwealth allies have employed since World War Two to eavesdrop on the entire planet, track dissenters, and steal business secrets.

Cole also writes Attorney General Eric Holder will now allow FBI agents "to rummage through citizens' trash, conduct searches of computer databases and repeatedly use surveillance squads to track people without any suspicion of individual wrongdoing or court approval." (Just like the body searches at the bus terminal.) The absence of court approval is significant in that a court is the only legal bulwark a citizen has against unbridled police power. And now that's gone. The peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq have suffered far worse at the hands of American-led military.
The fact is, when the Empire goes to war, the life of its individual citizen is devalued and degraded---not only on the battlefield, where it is often sacrificed for all the wrong reasons, but at home as well. It's happening here. The right to form unions freely is scrapped in defiance of the vast majority of workers who want one. The public treasury is looted by Congress to bail out the bankers over the 100-to-one protests of constituents. Foreign wars are waged over the wishes of the popular majority who want them ended.

As liberty after liberty is being circumscribed or eliminated, the common man and woman are being reduced to the common serf. Harold Laski, a former chairman of the British Labor Party, once noted, "We live under a system by which the many are exploited by the few, and war is the ultimate sanction of that exploitation." Imperialism---whether practiced by Spain in the 16 th century, England in the 18 th century, Soviet Russia, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany in the 20 th century, or America today---is a gangrene that expands tyranny at home with the equivalent velocity that it spreads war abroad.

Arunachala

2011-07-23T22:09:00.000-07:00

Dzogchen Verse (7)

2011-07-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Natural State is called the Great Perfection of Bodhicitta. Without doing anything or searching for anything, simply leave this Bodhicitta or Great Perfection which you experience as it is. If you search or do something, you can't find anything. There is nothing special, nothing visible. This Nature has no root and there is nothing which can be found; it is very clear presence....

This Nature, called the Nature of Mind, neither grasps nor perceives anything. Seen from its perspective, the mind and consciousness are completely deluded. There is nothing particular to focus on within this Nature, nor is it possible to meditate upon it. If you focus on or think of it, you have lost your way, you are wrong. This Nature has neither subject nor object and is ever unborn. It is called Self-Born Wisdom. Your meditation should be this: Remain in equipoise in this Nature. This is the real knowledge of the Buddhas.

(Yongdzin Lopon Tenzin Namdak, Masters of the Zhang Zhung Nyengyud)

Indian Musical Instruments (16): Bansuri

2011-07-23T21:46:00.001-07:00

Indian Musical Instruments (15): Pakhawaj

2011-07-23T21:44:00.001-07:00

2011-07-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama: Wall-Street Democrat

2011-07-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

I'll ask the same question that Ralph Nader has asked: When will Progressives, Independents and many others who supported Barack Obama finally reach their breaking point with Obama and the corporate Democrats?

The following is a portion of an interview with noted economist Michael Hudson conducted on the Democracy-Now telecast on July 22, 2011. Professor Hudson's views on Mr. Obama's financial policies should be carefully noted by the thoughtful reader:

MICHAEL HUDSON: --- The Federal Reserve can create a deposit, just like a bank does. If you go into a bank, you sign an IOU, and the bank adds money to your account. It’s done on a computer keyboard. That’s what money—how it’s created these days. And the government can do exactly what the bank can do. They can create the money on their own computer keyboards. And that’s—usually, they do that by running a budget deficit. That’s why the economy needs a budget deficit to grow. When the government runs a budget deficit, that puts money into the economy and helps us recover from the recession. That’s pretty obvious.
Under Clinton, we had a budget surplus. And what that meant was, normally, that would have pushed the economy down, but the gap was all provided by banks, commercial banks, on their computer keyboards, at interest. They cleaned up. And that’s a situation that President Obama is trying to restore today. Instead of the government creating free money on its keyboard with a deficit, all of the increase in money used by the American economy will be created by Wall Street at interest. It’s completely unnecessary.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, let me ask you about the $3 trillion deal that no one yet knows the specifics of, but we’re already getting the outlines of it leaked little by little. This whole issue of eliminating the tax deduction that millions of Americans use for home mortgage interest, this was supposedly what helped so many people be able to buy homes. With the entire housing industry of the United States in crisis, why would they eliminate mortgage interest deduction, which it seems to me would make—mean fewer houses are bought and sold in the United States?

MICHAEL HUDSON: The banks, normally, wouldn’t back anything that was going to lead to more foreclosures. But in this case, the government has told the banks, "Yes, there are going to be a lot more foreclosures, but we’re going to bail you out, because we’ve insured the mortgages." Eighty percent of the mortgages in America are now insured by the government, so the banks won’t lose the money. By cutting the deduction, this is going to lead to a huge—a higher bailout by the government to Wall Street on the guarantees that Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Authority have done.
Now, you said one thing, that making mortgage interest deductible makes homes more affordable. It really didn’t. What happens is, it enables the banks to make a larger loan against the value of the home, and the buyer of the home now has to pay more interest and take on a larger debt, because they have more free money to pay. Whatever the tax collector relinquishes is available to be paid to the banks as interest. So all of this tax deductibility in the first place was an attempt to un-tax real estate, so that home buyers could take out larger mortgages. And 80 percent of banks’ business is making mortgage loans.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hudson, let me ask you about the Republican proposal dubbed "cut, cap and balance." It passed the House earlier this week, and the Senate will vote on the measure today. This is House Speaker John Boehner.

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Also this week, the House passed our "cut, cap and balance" legislation that represents exactly the kind of "balanced legislation" the President has talked about. It provides him with the debt limit increase that he’s requested. But it gives families and small businesses the real spending cuts and reforms that they’re demanding without any job-crushing tax hikes. What this legislation also shows, that it’s not only important to avoid default, it’s also important that we take a meaningful step toward real deficit reduction. This means, in addition to cutting and capping spending now, there should be real structural reforms to our entitlement programs. And there will be no tax increases.

AMY GOODMAN: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described the "cut, cap, balance" bill as one of the worst bills in the history of the country.

SEN. HARRY REID: I think this piece of legislation is about as weak and senseless as anything that has ever come on this Senate floor. And I am not going to waste the Senate’s time, day after day, on this piece of legislation, which I think is an anathema to what our country is all about. So everyone understand, we’re going to have a vote tomorrow. I’m not going to wait 'til Saturday. We're going to have a vote tomorrow, and I feel confident that this legislation will be disposed of, one way or the other. The American people should understand that this is a bad piece of legislation, perhaps some of the worst legislation in the history of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hudson, your response?

MICHAEL HUDSON: He’s quite right. This is an awful piece of legislation, and it’s too bad that Mr. Obama supports it. But you could see it all coming even before Mr. Obama took office, when he appointed the Deficit Reduction Commission. He appointed opponents of Social Security to the commission: Republican Senator Simpson and Bowles, who was Clinton’s chief of staff. Obama really believes in trickle-down economics. He believes that Wall Street are job creators, not downsizers and outsourcers and foreclosures. That’s the tragedy of all this.
Now, how—the question is, how can a Democratic president put forth a Republican program? There has to be a crisis. Now, in reality, there is no crisis at all. In reality, the raising the debt ceiling has been done for a hundred years automatically. There is no connection between raising the debt ceiling and arguing over tax policy. Tax policy takes many years to work out. All of a sudden, Mr. Obama is going along with the charade of saying, "Wait a minute, let’s create a crisis." As his former manager, Rahm Emanuel, said, a crisis is too important an opportunity to waste. And Wall Street doesn’t like real crises, so there’s an artificial non-crisis that Obama is treating as a crisis so that he can put forth the recommendations of the Deficit Reduction Commission to get rid of Social Security that he has supported all along. That’s the problem. He believes it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You know, I wanted to ask you specifically about that, because every time you turn on the TV now or you read a mainstream newspaper, there are all of these quotations from Moody’s and this rating agency and this expert that August 2nd will be a financial Armageddon for the country. And I’m saying to myself, we’ve already been through a financial Armageddon for the last couple of years, and now they’re suddenly saying that, on this date, if this stuff is not passed, if a deal is not reached, suddenly the entire world financial system will be under severe strain.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you had this kind of debt ceiling come up, I think, maybe 20 times under Bush’s administration. It’s a non-threatening thing. It’s something automatic. It’s technical. It’s sort of like going to the corner and having a certified—somebody certify what you’ve done. It’s a technical thing that has nothing to do with the real economy or policy at all. They’re pretending it’s a crisis because they have a plan. And the plan is what Mr. Boehner has put forth. Just like after 9/11, the Pentagon pulled out a plan for Iraq’s oil fields, Wall Street has a plan to really clean up now, to really put the class war back in business and get rid of Medicare, get rid of the programs for the poor, and say, "There’s no money for you. We’ve given it all away in the bailouts."

AMY GOODMAN: So, Michael Hudson, what could President Obama do?

MICHAEL HUDSON: He could say, "This debt ceiling has nothing to do with policy. You want to argue about the tax policy? Fine, let the Democrats and Republicans do it under non-crisis conditions. But this has nothing to do at all with the debt ceiling. If you want to refuse to increase the debt and plunge the economy into disaster, maybe you’d better talk to your campaign contributors and see what they want, because I know what they say. Your campaign contributors, in the Republicans, are my campaign contributors. They don’t like crises." And you’ll find that it’s all—the charade will—it’s just like pricking the balloon.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about that? I mean, the very people that are supporting the Tea Party, you know, congressmen activists, are these very same financial institutions that, of course, are demanding a lifting of the debt ceiling.

MICHAEL HUDSON: What they’re pushing for really isn’t a default on the debt. They’re pushing for a crisis to let Mr. Obama rush through the Republican plan. Now, in order for him to do it, the Republicans have to play good cop, bad cop. They have to have the Tea Party move so far to the right, take a so crazy a position, that Mr. Obama seems reasonable by comparison. And, of course, he is not reasonable. He’s a Wall Street Democrat, which we used to call Republicans.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the danger to Social Security and Medicare, how do you see the direction that they are hoping to go into, in terms of the reductions on this deal?

MICHAEL HUDSON: As Mr. Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission said, we have to get rid of Medicare, we have to get rid of Social Security, put the Social Security funds into the stock market, create a stock market boom, create a new business for his—for Wall Street. He believes in trickle-down economics.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the retirement accounts.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes. That’s what he believes in. And this would be a disaster, as people have already seen the last time the market crashed.

AMY GOODMAN: What about unemployment? How does it fit into this picture? We say 9.2, but in fact it is so much higher in so many communities. We’re talking 30 and 50 percent.

MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right. And it’s getting worse. The interesting thing is when you look at the press reports, the adjective you always see is "unexpected" or "surprising." What that means is plausible deniability, as if nobody could have foreseen it, while every economist I know says, "Look, we’re in the middle of debt deflation." In fact, before he took office, Mr. Obama said he was going to fight to make sure that mortgages—relief was given to mortgage debtors, because if there were foreclosures, there was going to be unemployment. He then did absolutely nothing. He broke the promise. And everything that he warned about has taken place. So it really should not be surprising.

2011-07-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

Dzogchen Verse (6)

2011-07-16T14:44:00.001-07:00

All and everything is the spaciousness of pure mind - so why strive for buddhahood ? Any attempt to revert to the Source is redundant because there is no distinction to be made between the Source and its manifestation. Since no experience is other than me, I, the Supreme Source, resolve all.

( Dowman,K. trans. The Treasury of Natural Perfection )

Indian Musical Instruments (14) : Taus

2011-07-16T10:25:00.001-07:00

Indian Musical Instruments (13) : Tabla

2011-07-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

2011-07-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

Sociopaths ( From www.youmeworks.com )

2011-07-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

When you say the word "sociopath" most people think of serial killers. But although many serial killers are sociopaths, there are far more sociopaths leading ordinary lives. Chances are you know a sociopath. I say "ordinary lives," but what they do is far from ordinary. Sociopaths are people without a conscience. They don't have the normal empathy the rest of us take for granted. They don't feel affection. They don't care about others. But most of them are good observers, and they have learned how to mimic feelings of affection and empathy remarkably well.

Most people with a conscience find it very difficult to even imagine what it would be like to be without one. Combine this with a sociopath's efforts to blend in, and the result is that most sociopaths go undetected.

Because they go undetected, they wreak havoc on their family, on people they work with, and on anyone who tries to be their friend. A sociopath deceives, takes what he (or she) wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought. They leave a path of confusion and upset in their wake.

Who are these people? Why are they the way they are? Apparently it has little to do with upbringing. Many studies have been done trying to find out what kind of childhood leads to sociopathy. So far, nothing looks likely. They could be from any kind of family. It is partly genetic, and partly mystery.

But researchers have found that the brains of sociopaths function differently than normal brains. And their brains function in a way that makes their emotional life unredeemably shallow. And yet they are capable of mimicking emotions like professional actors.
Sociopaths and psychopaths are the same thing. The original name for this disorder was "psychopath" but the general public and media confused it with "psycho" and "psychotic" so in the 1930s the name was changed to sociopath. Recently the media again caused a misperception that sociopaths were always serial killers, so now many call the condition "antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)."

But some experts think ASPD includes many things like narcissism, paranoia, etc., including sociopathy. And others think ASPD is the same thing as sociopathy, but the diagnostic criteria used to describe and diagnose ASPD is different than sociopathy, so for the purposes of this article, we'll stay with the term "sociopathy."

Sociopaths don't have normal affection with other people. They don't feel attached to others. They don't feel love. And that is why they don't have a conscience. If you harmed someone, even someone you didn't know, you would feel guilt and remorse. Why? Because you have a natural affinity for other human beings. You know how it feels to suffer, to fear, to feel anguish. You naturally care about others.

If you hurt someone you love, the guilt and remorse would be even worse because of your affection for him or her. Take that attachment and affection away and you take away remorse, guilt, and any kind of normal feelings of fairness. That's a sociopath.

SO HOW COMMON ARE THEY?
Some researchers say about one percent of the general population are sociopaths. Others put the figure at three or four percent. The reason the estimates vary is first of all, not everyone has been tested, of course, but also because sociopathy is a sliding scale. A person can be very sociopathic or only slightly, and anywhere in between. It's a continuum. So how sociopathic does someone have to be before you call him a sociopath? That's a tough question and it's why the estimates vary.

But clearly sociopaths are fairly common and not easy to detect. Even when the evidence is staring you in the face, you may have difficulty admitting that someone you know, someone you trusted, even someone you love, is a sociopath. But the sooner you admit it, the faster your life can return to normal. Face the facts and you may save yourself a lot of suffering.
Most of the information in this article is from two excellent books I strongly recommend: Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, and The Sociopath Next Door.

The first book is by Robert Hare, who has made his career out of studying sociopaths. He's one of the leading, if not the leading expert on the subject. His insights and examples are compelling. But because Hare has done most of his research in prisons, sometimes his book seems a little removed from everyday reality. We don't very often run into rapists and cold-blooded killers.
The second book, by Martha Stout, brings it to the everyday level, describing the kinds of people we are likely to meet in ordinary life.

HOW TO SPOT A SOCIOPATH

The big question is, of course, how can you know whether someone is a sociopath or not? It's a difficult question and even experts on the subject can be fooled. If you suspect that someone close to you is a sociopath, I suggest you read both of the books I mentioned, and also read the comments on the comments page, and think hard about it. Compare that person to the other people in your life, and ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you often feel used by the person?
2. Have you often felt that he (or she, because women can be sociopaths too) doesn't care about you?
3. Does he lie and deceive you?
4. Does he tend to make contradictory statements?
5. Does he tend to take from you and not give back much?
6. Does he often appeal to pity? Does he seem to try to make you feel sorry for him?
7. Does he try to make you feel guilty?
8. Do you sometimes feel he is taking advantage of your good nature?
9. Does he seem easily bored and need constant stimulation?
10. Does he use a lot of flattery? Does he interact with you in a way that makes you feel flattered even if he says nothing overtly complimentary?
11. Does he make you feel worried? Does he do it obviously or more cleverly and sneakily?
12. Does he give you the impression you owe him?
13. Does he chronically fail to take responsibility for harming others? Does he blame everyone and everything but himself?

And does he do these things far more than the other people in your life? If you answered "yes" to many of these, you may be dealing with a sociopath. For sure you're dealing with someone who isn't good for you, whatever you want to call him.

I like Martha Stout's way of detecting sociopaths. She wrote: "If ... you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to one hundred percent that you are dealing with a sociopath."

WHAT DO THEY WANT?
This is an interesting question. Of course most of our purposes are strongly influenced by our connections and affections with others. Our relationships with others, and our love for them, give us most of the meaning and purpose in our lives. So if a sociopath doesn't have these things, what is left? What kind of purposes do they have?

The answer is chilling: They want to win. Take away love and relationships and all you have left is winning the game, whatever the game is. If they are in business, it's becoming rich and defeating competitors. If it's sibling rivalry, it's defeating the sibling. If it's a contest, the goal is to dominate. If a sociopath is the envious sort, winning could be simply making the other lose or fail or be frustrated or embarrassed.

A sociopath's goal is to win. And he (or she) is willing to do anything at all to win.
Sociopaths don't have as much to think about as normal people, so they can be very clever and conniving. Sociopaths aren't busy being concerned with relationships or moral dilemmas or conflicting feelings, so they have much more time to think about clever ways to gain your trust and stab you in the back, and how do it without anyone knowing what's happening.
One of the questions in the list above was about boredom. This is a real problem for sociopaths and they seem fanatically driven to prevent boredom. The reason it looms so large for them (and seems so strange to us) is that our relationships with people occupy a good amount of our time and attention and interest us intensely. Take that away and all you have is "playing to win" which is rather shallow and empty in comparison. So boredom is a constant problem for sociopaths and they have an incessant urge to keep up a high level of stimulation. Even negative stimulation — drama, worry, upset, etc. — is more tolerable to a sociopath than boredom.
And here I might mention that the research shows sociopaths don't feel emotions the same way normal people do. For example, they don't experience fear as unpleasant. This goes a long way to making their inexplicable behavior comprehensible. Some feelings that you and I might find intolerable might not bother a sociopath at all.

HOW TO DEAL WITH A SOCIOPATH
There is no known cure or therapy for sociopathy. In fact, some evidence suggests that therapy makes them worse because they use the therapeutic interactions to learn more about human vulnerabilities they can then exploit. They learn how to manipulate better and they learn better excuses that others will believe. They don't usually seek therapy, unless there is something to gain from it.

Given all that, there's only one solution for dealing with a sociopath: Get him or her completely out of your life for good. This seems radical, and of course, you want to be fairly sure your diagnosis is correct, but you need to protect yourself from the drain on your time, attention, money, and good attitude. Healing or helping a sociopath is a pointless waste of your life. That's not your mission. It's not your responsibility. You have your own goals and your own life, and those are your responsibility.
If there are children involved, that complicates the issue, of course. You can read more on that here.

In Hare's book (Without Conscience), he says before you diagnose someone as a sociopath, he recommends you get a full clinical diagnostic, including an extensive interview with the sociopath by a qualified psychotherapist, plus interviews with the sociopath's bosses, co-workers, friends, and family. Uh, yeah, right. Good luck with that one. I agree, that would be ideal, but if you can get a sociopath to submit to an interview, I would be astonished. So you'll have to do the best you can with whatever information you can get.

I don't recommend you tell anyone you've diagnosed him (or her) as a sociopath. In fact, I strongly urge you not to. I don't even know if it's a good idea to tell anyone about your conclusion. Just get the sociopath out of your life with as little fanfare as possible. The only exception I would make to this rule is if the sociopath is making someone else's life a living hell, it seems wrong to leave her to the wolves while you slink off. I don't recommend you try to convince your friend she's dealing with a sociopath. I recommend that you simply say you got a lot of insight from this or that book or whatever, and let your friend draw her own conclusions. Maybe even buy your friend a book. But it's not your mission to save your friend, either. Tell her what you know and if she ignores your warning, that's her problem, not yours. Because you said something, she may figure it out eventually.

If this all sounds cold or heartless, maybe you're not dealing with a sociopath, or maybe she or he hasn't driven you to the point of madness (yet). But remember what the solution is; you may need it some day.

And besides, the point of all this dismal information is so you no longer need to think about such negative things and so you can turn your attention to positive, life-affirming, uplifting goals of your own.

You may also want to check out a support group for people who are in a relationship with a sociopath:
LoveFraud.com
SociopathicStyle.com
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Abuse Recovery: For Survivors of a Relationship with a Narcissist or Psychopath
If you have a sociopath in your life, you should take it seriously. For more resources, look in the sidebar of the comments page (click here). Learn what you need to learn, and if you're pretty sure you have correctly identified one, do what needs to be done to protect yourself and your non-sociopathic loved ones. Then get back to your own life. Accomplish your goals. Nurture your relationships. Learn and grow and enjoy yourself.

Here's a summary of Common Everyday Sociopaths:

1. They make you feel sorry for them.
2. They make you feel worried or afraid.
3. They give you the impression you owe them.
4. They make you feel used.
5. Sometimes you suspect they don't care about you.
6. They lie to you and deceive you.
7. They take a lot from you and give back very little.
8. They make you feel guilty (and use that to manipulate you).
9. They take advantage of your kindness.
10. They are easily bored and need constant stimulation.
11. They don't take responsibility, but place blame elsewhere.

Dzogchen Verse (5)

2011-06-26T21:14:00.000-07:00

The only reality (Dharma) that matters is the consummation of Ati, living in the here-and-now, where all impulses and intentions, indeed all experiences whatsoever, are spontaneously consumed, and where pure being is spontaneously accomplished... Naturally abiding in the nonconceptual field of sameness, complete and perfect from the first, without the slightest aspiration, whoever lives in such pure pleasure, he literally becomes the essence of all experience... that one single essence integrating all and everything, imperceptible, shines as the timeless Buddha- Mind... all and everything abides in timeless total presence.

(Dowman, K. trans. The Treasury of Natural Perfection )

Indian Musical Instruments (12): Vichitra Vina

2011-06-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

Indian Musical Instruments (11): Hansa Vina

2011-06-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

Saga Dawa - June 15, 2011

2011-06-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

OM MUNI MUNI MAHAMUNI SHAKYAMUNI SOHA

2011-05-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Obama : Kill But Don't Waterboard

2011-05-28T20:32:00.000-07:00

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Skip to comments.Obama values: Kill, but don't question bin LadenSan Francisco Chronicle

5/10/11 Debra J. Saunders

Posted on Tuesday, May 10, 2011 8:08:41 AM by SmithL

At the end of his "60 Minutes" interview, President Obama said of Osama bin Laden's death, "Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined."

The longer he serves in office, the more Obama sounds like George W. Bush.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd also has started to sound like Bush. In her Sunday column, "Killing Evil Doesn't Make Us Evil," Dowd writes that when Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, it seemed like "the only civilized and morally sound response."

Obama and Dowd long have claimed that it was morally reprehensible for the CIA to waterboard 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Candidate Obama said that waterboarding was "never acceptable" because it "contradicts our values." Obama even criticized his now-Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for having said in 2006 that she would authorize brutal interrogation measures to prevent a terrorist attack.

Apparently it fits with Obama's and Dowd's values to kill an unarmed bin Laden - as long as you don't waterboard him first to learn possible intelligence that might prevent a terrorist attack.

_______________***_____________

( Oh, and apparently the Europeans are unaware of Mr. Obama's "Bad Guy Exception to First-Degree Murder" rule. They captured and transported Mladic to the Hague for trial for his genocide of thousands of Serbian Muslims. Why didn't the Serbian military just shoot him? Summary justice without legal complications is the Obama ethic. Don't the Europeans understand that first-degree murder is the way to handle murderers like Mladic? These overly sensitive views of civilized behavior must be so frustrating to our president. Oh, are we subject to the World Court any longer? Did Mr. Obama ever reverse Mr. Bush's exit from World-Court jurisdiction? Need to check that. McGuire )

2011-05-23T00:15:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama : Law Reformer

2011-05-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

One of President Obama's greatest accomplishments has in my opinion been given too little attention, even by the corporate media, which have generally been so supportive of him. I am speaking of Mr. Obama's singular successes in the area of law reform. I believe that history will attest to the fact that Barack Obama will have shown himself to be a true revolutionary, a guiding light, in reforming antiquated concepts of law and justice which had been hampering the progress of our nation.It would require volumes to describe fully Mr. Obama's law-reform accomplishments; in the interest of brevity I will outline only a sampling of what I will designate as "Obama's New Principles of Law."

Obama's New Principles of Law

1.) The President Has The Right To Determine An American Citizen's Guilt Even Before Trial And Conviction.

President Obama had the wisdom to keep Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for months after Manning had been accused of leaking confidential Pentagon records to the website Wikileaks. Several witnesses described the conditions under which Manning was being held as torture. At a recent fundraiser the president was confronted by a group of demonstrators who were protesting Manning's treatment. President Obama responded that Manning "broke the law" and that therefore his retention in solitary was appropriate. Well, the corporate media didn't report Mr. Obama's remarks, but somehow some bleeding hearts caught wind of it all and got all aflutter, complaining that Obama had "pre-judged the case" and was "presuming an accused person to be guilty," and so forth. The whole controversy was no doubt provoked by Pacifica or one of those fringey stations. Can't these people understand that President Obama was just attempting not to waste time and to get to the justice of a matter without legal complications? Manning may be an American citizen entitled to "due process," but the fact is that he embarrassed the Obama administration. Isn't that the fact? So who better than our president to decide his guilt or innocence and to mete out the appropriate punishment? My advice is not to get involved in this kind of thing. Just go shopping and let our rulers do what they need to do. And please memorize this first principle and all the Obama Principles to follow.

2.) The President Has The Right To Order The Execution Of American Citizens Suspected Of Terrorist Activities.

No extensive discussion is required here. The president has the intelligence resources to know who is guilty and who is not. Accordingly, President Obama has issued "kill orders" against Americans whom he has deemed culpable. Again, expediency is the issue here. Arrests, prosecutions and imprisonments are simply too costly and time-consuming, and President Obama has the decisiveness to know how these matters need to be handled. Don't be concerned. Just be a bit careful in terms of becoming a suspect. For instance, be careful about making charitable contributions: An innocent-appearing agency may in fact be linked to terrorist sympathizers. Contributing to such an agency could get you on the wrong list --- and on the wrong end of a bullet. But don't worry - It may just get you on the no-fly list. President Obama knows how to judge these matters.

3.) Moving-Forward Is A Valid Defense Against Prosecution For Criminal Activity.

This was the first principle announced by President Obama shortly after his inauguration. And what a superbly all-embracing principle it is. Yes, it may be that in November of 1994 the United States adopted the Convention Against Torture as the law of the land and that every act constituting torture under the Convention was made a criminal offense under the law of the United States and no exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification for torture - Yes- That is the law. But President Obama from the first recognized the need to be realistic. Both Bush and Cheney admitted to authorizing torture and a host of military and civilian personnel appear clearly to have been involved in torture during the Bush years. But what was President Obama to do? Initiate investigations and criminal prosecutions? Would that have put a feather in the cap of American exceptionalism? Would that have been pleasing to Mr. Obama's Wall-Street and corporate backers, particularly the war industries? Of course not. And so President Obama announced the principle of moving-forward : We should ignore serious criminal activity if said activity should be embarrassing to the United States and/or if the prosecution of said criminal activity should be displeasing to a president's corporate funders. Do you see the perfect sense of Mr. Obama's decision? Are we going to get bogged down in medieval concepts of truth and justice or are we going to get ourselves re-elected? Let us move forward. Truly a transcendent vision, Mr. President.

4.) War-making Is A Presidential Prerogative And Congress Need Not Be Consulted Nor Its Approval Sought.

Yes, there is a law requiring the president to consult with Congress and secure its approval within a prescribed time limit before engaging in a foreign war. President Obama did not consult with Congress or secure its approval with regard to Libya, and a few liberals, most notably Dennis Kucinich, are talking about impeachment. Kucinich is clearly opposed to the LIbyan operation, but there are even some who, though in favor of the military intervention, believe that Mr. Obama should have gotten Congressional approval first. Mr. Obama has not troubled himself much with the matter, merely issuing a rather vague statement to the effect that he has been "in conformity" with relevant law. That's the spirit, Mr. President. You don't need to explain yourself to Congress or go kowtowing to them. Look at their popularity rate. And if you started taking all these laws seriously all you'd be doing would be getting legal briefings on every move you made all day. George W. Bush had the right idea about the law --- so many pieces of paper.

5.) First-Degree Murder Is Permissible If The Victim Is A Bad Guy.

This is one of President Obama's most innovative and decisive law reforms. I have been gratified to see that there has been very little criticism of President Obama's handling of the Bin Laden raid. We just don't waste chains and handcuffs on a bad guy like Bin Laden. Yes, he was unarmed and could have been easily arrested and confined by about 25 Navy Seals. But that was not President Obama's order. Armed or unarmed, Bin Laden was to be shot and killed - period. Bin Laden was a monumental bad guy, and Mr. Obama's law reform would appear to dictate that common-law and statutory prohibitions against first-degree murder do not apply where such a bad guy is concerned. Mr. Obama's reform will I'm sure come to be known as the "bad-guy exception" to first-degree murder. And let's be frank, if you were Mr. Obama would you want to go down in history as the man who arrested Osama Bin Laden or the man who killed Osama Bin Laden? No contest. And, look, don't worry. Unless you can be defined as a bad guy, anyone who kills you with premeditation can be prosecuted for first-degree murder --- well, unless he comes under another Obama exception. I'll tell you one thing : Anyone considered by our president to be a bad guy better be shaking in his or her boots - It's open season and the posse is on its way.

6.) Anti-War Protestors And Government-Agency Whistleblowers Are Grave Threats To The Nation And Should Be Investigated And Prosecuted To The Full Extent Of The Law.

The corporate media have given little or no attention to President Obama's valiant efforts to hunt down and prosecute anti-war activists and government whistleblowers. The public is generally unaware that anti-war activists across the nation have been subjected to home invasions and detentions by the FBI during these Obama years. Excellent work getting the best of these crazy throwbacks to the 1960s, Mr. President. And Mr. Obama has initiated the most extensive anti-whistleblower campaign in American history. Transparency may be one thing, but embarrassing the Obama administration is quite another. Isn't that right, Mr. President? I am so glad to see that Mr. Obama has done so much to preserve the legacy of Richard M. Nixon.

Well, let's keep moving forward.

( Note: An excellent resource for research into many of the issues discussed in this blog is democracynow.org )