Public Theatre Presents: U.S. Military Dramatically "Withdraws" From Iraq's Cities The Day Before Iraq's Oil And Gas Is Put Up For Public Auction.

Call me a cynic, but I think there is a strong connection here. The play's the thing. Truth does not matter. It's just what kind of a story you can sell to the world.

First, the U.S. military supposedly "withdraws" from Iraq's cities yesterday, with much hoopla and pomp and circumstance. The puppet regime in Iraq even declare today a holiday. See? We left, we were not interfering. The Yahoo frontpage today said something to the effect that U.S. Military Completes Withdrawal from Iraq. They didn't even mention that it was just the cities.

Then today, Iraq's oil and gas is put up for public auction. Most of the oil companies are holding out for better terms, meaning they want all the profits, and undoubtedly are working together to bust down the Iraqi government to take what they offer. Or, then again, the whole thing may be staged for public consumption. "Well, we did the best we could," the Iraqi government will say later when they take a deal that gives the people nothing for their own resources, and gives the western oil corporations everything.

Is it possible that the U.S. "pulled out" of the cities to create the appearance that they were not in control at the time of the auction? You bet.

Besides, if we can leave the cities, why don't we leave the country? That's right. Because our military is waiting there to guard the oil fields for the corporations when they come in.

Remember in March of 2001 when Cheney had secret meetings with the oil corporations, and requested maps of Iraq be delivered to him to use in those meetings? He refused to disclose what was discussed in those meetings, and the right-wing Supreme Court backed him up. Some people speculated that Bush and Cheney somehow knew about the planned 9/11 attacks and were preparing for war against Iraq from the time Bush stole the election. Or maybe they would have started a war even without 9/11. I'm wondering if the Iraq military invasion program included directives to our military about which oil fields they should guard as soon as they got there? That is why we're there, after all. It's all about the oil.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/business/global/01iraqoil.html?hp

The Stonewall Riots And Gay Rights. A Failure To Protest Injustice Against Others Is The Equivalent Of Weaving The Noose For Your Own Lynching.

What is it about the United States and sex? Children are taught that their (biological and natural) feelings of sexual pleasure are dirty. Worse still, if a child enjoys those feelings, or touches him or herself for pleasure, God will send them to Hell to burn for all eternity. Who came up with that one?

Adults are taught that sex is dirty. Women are taught that it is their duty to have sex with their husband whenever he wants, to "submit" to him, but if they enjoy sex, or have sex with a man to whom they are not married, God will send them to Hell to burn for all eternity. Men are taught that if they even think about having sex with a woman other than their wife, they are evil and despicable. Men are also taught that they are weak and unable to deny their sexual impulses, that women will try to force them to have sex when it would be wrong to do so, that they must shun women because women are evil and Satan.

Any questions? Any wonder we’re so screwed up? Is it possible that the reason our leaders insist on waging war against everyone always is because they’re all so sexually frustrated? Or does the government just use sex as a tool to gain political and financial control of the country?

Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of what are commonly called the "Stonewall Riots" (June 28, 1969). The Stonewall Inn was located in Greenwich Village in New York City. On that night, the police "raided" the place to arrest homosexuals, just like they routinely raided any business that served homosexual customers. But on that night, for the first time, the homosexuals fought back and all hell broke loose.

For most of us, it’s hard to imagine how oppressive our society historically was towards homosexuals. The police in many cities would routinely "raid" bars, coffee houses or restaurants if it was rumored that homosexuals frequented the business. In other words, simply by "allowing" a homosexual to sit at a table and drink a cup of coffee in the middle of the day, a business owner was putting themself at risk of having the police storm into the place, en masse, make every customer line "up against the wall" to be frisked and questioned, and any customers who were perceived by the police as being there for improper purposes – such as trying to meet other homosexuals – would be arrested. Their name would be printed in the newspaper. They would undoubtedly be fired from their job. They would be evicted from their rented apartment. Their families would often disown them as would any non-homosexual friends. The business owner could be shut down for running an immoral establishment.

In other words, the mere act of "being" homosexual, without any related conduct, could result in a person being completely banished from society, unable to find shelter or employment, unable to earn a living, rejected by friends, neighbors, acquaintances. It was a complete banishment. In Haiti, and other societies which practiced "dark" arts like voodoo, as well as in some modern cult-religions, the total banishment of a person from society is considered the equivalent of a sentence of death. That was the punishment for people who were discovered to be homosexuals: complete banishment, a form of social death.

In today’s world, many cities have communities where homosexuals live and work, openly, and of course there are legal protections against many forms of discrimination. But until very recently, there were no openly gay communities. There were just isolated individuals living in shame because all the professionals in the country said homosexuals were perverts and were trying to destroy the moral underpinnings of society. They were declared to be mentally ill, undeserving of shelter, employment, friendship, or support from their families. It was believed that they could change if they wanted, and they chose to live life as a pervert. Most gays lived in terror of being "found out." There were no places for gays to gather and meet other homosexuals, try to develop relationships or friends. Everything was secret and "in the closet."

Of course in the bigger cities, homosexuals would tend to frequent certain places which were known to tolerate homosexual customers. And the police would inevitably find out and begin regularly raiding the business. It was a fact of life.

During the post World War II "McCarthy" era of anti-communist repression, the focus of the federal government’s inquiries were often "homosexual-and-communists" allegedly working inside the federal government to destroy it.

The anti-homosexual fervor during the 1950s was as intense as was the anti-communist fervor. Anyone who was employed by the federal government and was discovered to be homosexual could and would be immediately fired. The justification was the claim that the communists might find out somebody was a homosexual, then blackmail them by threatening to expose them, and then the homosexual would have to become a spy for the communists.

There is a sociological theory about rising expectations: when things start to look a little bit better, people often begin developing big hopes for further improvement. So in the 1960s, we saw many disaffected social groups of people who organized to try to improve their position in society. Then, as now, everything was dominated by straight white men. So women got together and demanded that they have a voice, and that the institutions of society accept them as equal citizens with equal rights. Black Americans were involved in organizing for more rights from the 1950s on. Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, many groups began demanding something more from society. It is undoubtedly true that the beginning of the movement for equal rights for homosexuals, or at least an end to oppression, was strengthened and influenced by these other social movements in the 1960s.

For some reason, on June 28, 1969, when the police came for their routine raid on the Stonewall Inn, the people inside declined to go quietly. Soon a crowd gathered outside and a riot erupted. Of course for the police, the idea of homosexual men fighting back was simply unimaginable, since they assumed all homosexual men were sissies. Surprise!

The riots continued for several nights. Gays began to organize groups and committees to prepare a list of demands including the right to go to local businesses without being subject to raids and arrest.

The Stonewall Riots are considered a turning point in homosexual history. (At some point in time, the word "homosexual" was abandoned, and the word "gay" became more common for homosexual men). Following soon after those riots, many gay and lesbian groups formed inside New York City, several gay-themed newspapers were set up, and the influence began to spread across the country where gay organizations were created in other communities.

The "Gay Pride" parades which take place in many communities in this country are on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

Stonewall memorial sculpture:

The right-wing devotes itself to continuing to attack gays, hoping to raise the hate level in our country and to increase the oppression on them as well as on everyone else.

What can we learn from the gay-rights movement? First, that we the people have given the federal and state government very limited rights to act on our behalf, but we did not give them the right to dictate to us what are acceptable sexual practices among consenting adults. I think it was Justice Douglas who referred to the constitutional right of the citizen to simply be "left alone" by the government. There are limits and restrictions in our constitution on the right of the government to intrude into our private lives. They are not supposed to tap our phones, plant bugs in our homes, peep through our windows, read our mail, photograph our actions, or other wise attempt to direct or control us, or punish us, based on our personal decisions. It's none of their business. As long as we don't rob a bank or kill somebody, they need to butt out.

Second, that all these things are connected. When we allow the government to persecute gays (or Muslims, or Arabs, or blacks) or deny any group (such as women) equal rights or opportunities, the government will inevitably add more groups to the list and try to take away all our rights.

Third, that we all need to defend our liberties and beat back the government. Keep an eye on them. Protest when they ignore us (such as by continuing these wars when we have demanded that they be ended) or oppress us or others. Defense of one is defense of all.

A failure to protest injustice against others is the equivalent of weaving the noose for your own lynching.

For more on the McCarthy-era attack on homosexuals-and-communists, see http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/404811in.html

Military Coup in Honduras. President Beaten, Kidnapped, Forced Into Exile. Questions Raised Whether The U.S. Is Behind This Coup.

President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown in a military coup on Sunday. The military attacked his residence in the early morning hours while he and his wife were sleeping, beat him, bundled him, kidnapped him, and removed him from the country and against his will out of the country and into exile in Costa Rica. The military coup is supported by the right-wing in that country that wants to have a dictatorship to control the nation. President Zelaya is a leftist/liberal, aligned with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Most countries in the world have demanded that the the President be allowed to return to office. The new dictatorship claims that they are now the government, and that they will refuse to step down.

In a bizarre move, President Obama (or is it Orwell) declared, through his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that it wasn't really a "coup." This position was not supported by any other nation in the world but then again, no other nation is so likely the sponsor of the coup. Apparently by claiming it wasn't really a coup, the U.S. remains free under existing law to funnel millions to the military dictatorship so they can secure their right-wing control over the entire nation.

The United States and some of its well-funded fascist thugs from the Reagan era, the Iran-contra and death-squad folks, have continued their efforts to install military and fascist dictatorships throughout South and Central America. They have on several occasions attempted to have a coup against Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

President Zelaya was elected in 2005, and his term would expire in 2010. The primary government in Honduras was set up under the military dictatorship which governed, at Reagan's direction, in the early 1980s. It is designed to keep control of most issues in the hands of the few, and prevent the citizens from having much input. Zelaya wanted to have a referendum to ask the people whether they want a constitutional convention to change some aspects of how the government is run. It is believed that Zelaya wanted to change the constitution so that he could run for a second term. The military, the Congress, and the Supreme Court in Honduras are all right-wing, and they have joined together in supporting the military coup, and installation of a military dictatorship.

The Supreme Court of Honduras just ruled that Zelaya's efforts to have a referendum to ask the people if they wanted to convene a constitutional convention was illegal. Zelaya was backed by a majority of the labor unions and social movements in the country, who have been demonstrating in the streets ever since the Supreme Court's ruling.


Below are excerpts from an article at Z-Net titled
Obama's First Coup d'Etat: Honduran President has been Kidnapped.
June 29, 2009 By Eva Gollinger

"President Zelaya's wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, speaking live on Telesur at approximately 10:00am Caracas time, announced that in early hours of Sunday morning, the soldiers stormed their residence, firing shots throughout the house, beating and then taking the president. "It was an act of cowardice", said the first lady, referring to the illegal kidnapping occurring during a time when no one would know or react until it was all over. Casto de Zelaya also called for the "preservation" of her husband's life, indicating that she herself is unaware of his whereabouts. She claimed their lives are all still in "serious danger" and made a call for the international community to denounce this illegal coup d'etat and to act rapidly to reinstate constitutional order in the country, which includes the rescue and return of the democratically elected Zelaya."

"Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela have both made public statements on Sunday morning condemning the coup d'etat in Honduras and calling on the international community to react to ensure democracy is restored and the constitutional president is reinstated."

"Reports coming out of Honduras have informed that the public television channel, Canal 8, has been shut down by the coup forces."

"Just minutes ago, Telesur announced that the military in Honduras is shutting down all electricity throughout the country."

"Those television and radio stations still transmitting are not reporting the coup d'etat or the kidnapping of President Zelaya, according to Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas. "Telephones and electricity are being cut off", confirmed Rodas just minutes ago via Telesur. "The media are showing cartoons and soap operas and are not informing the people of Honduras about what is happening". "

"The situation is eerily reminiscent of the April 2002 coup d'etat against President Chávez in Venezuela, when the media played a key role by first manipulating information to support the coup and then later blacking out all information when the people began protesting and eventually overcame and defeated the coup forces, rescuing Chávez (who had also been kidnapped by the military) and restoring constitutional order."

"Honduras is a nation that has been the victim of dictatorships and massive U.S. intervention during the past century, including several military invasions. The last major U.S. government intervention in Honduras occurred during the 1980s, when the Reagan Administration funded death squads and paramilitaries to eliminate any potential "communist threats" in Central America. At the time, John Negroponte was the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras and was responsible for directly funding and training Honduran death squads that were responsible for thousands of disappeared and assassinated throughout the region."

[The OAS condemned the coup.]

[Honduras was devastated by Washington's dirty wars in the 1980s, which caused many Hondurans to flee to the United States for work. The money they send back to their families is one of the largest sources of income for the nation of Honduras. The country also receives a large amount of assistance through the program known as USAID, which in fact funds right-wing organizations in that country.]

[Conveniently enough, the United States already has a military base inside Honduras with 500 military personnel, so if we decide to intervene military to prop up the new military dictatorship, we're all set with accommodations.]

"[T]he ambassadors of Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua in Honduras were reportedly kidnapped along with Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas. "

"Opposition forces in Honduras, led by a US-funded NGO Grupo Paz y Democracia, have stated via CNN that a coup has not occurred, but rather a "transition" to democracy. [Note how Obama and Clinton told the same lie -- it isn't a coup, it's a severe disruption in a democratic norm. This is a bullshit phrase and a lie.] Martha Diaz, coordinator of the NGO, which receives USAID funding, has just declared minutes ago on CNN that "civil society" does not support President Zelaya nor his "illegal quest" to hold a non-binding referendum on a potential future constitutional reform. She justified his kidnapping, beating and removal from power as a "democratic transition". Again, this is eerily reminiscent of the coup d'etat in Venezuela in April 2002, when so-called "civil society" along with dissident military forces kidnapped President Chávez and installed a "transition government". Catch live blogging at http://www.chavezcode.com/.

"Dan Restrepo, Presidential Advisor to President Obama for Latin American Affairs, ... stated that Obama's government is communicating with the coup forces in Honduras, trying to "feel out" the situation. He also responded to the reporter's question regarding whether Washington would recognize a government in Honduras other than President Zelaya's elected government, by saying that the Obama Administration "is waiting to see how things play out" and so long as democratic norms are respected, will work with all sectors. This is a confirmation practically of support for the coup leaders. Restrepo also inferred that other countries are interfering in Honduras' international affairs, obviously referring to Venezuela and other ALBA nations who have condemned the coup with firm statements earlier this morning."
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21817

The Washington Post reported today that the Obama administration claimed the coup in Honduras was not a coup. I wonder whether Obama would say the same thing if an armed crowd of Marines burst into the White House in the early morning hours, threatened to kill him and his family unless he did what they said, then took him against his will out of the country and dumped him somewhere, warning him never to return to the U.S. Do we think Obama would understand, if it happened to him, that yes, Obama, it is a real coup.

Washington Post Headline: "Clinton: U.S. Not Declaring Events in Honduras a 'Coup' "
By Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 29, 2009 5:15 PM

"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said today the U.S. government is refraining from formally declaring the ouster of Honduras's president a "coup," which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the Central American country. "

"Her statement appeared to reflect the U.S. government's caution amid fast-moving events in Honduras, where President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya was detained and expelled by the military yesterday. But the move could put Washington at odds with the rest of the hemisphere, which has roundly condemned the Honduran military's actions. "

"We are withholding any formal legal determination," Clinton told reporters at a State Department briefing. She acknowledged, however, that it certainly looked like a coup when soldiers snatched a pajama-clad Zelaya and whisked him off to Costa Rica.

Later in the day, President Obama said the U.S. government believed the takeover was "not legal" and that Zelaya remained the country's leader.

[This reminds me of that video I posted last week in which AG Eric Holder refused to answer Sen. Feingold's question of whether the warrantless wiretaps of the Bush administration were illegal. Sleazy, slippery, sneaky people we've got in the Obama administration. I thought we were going to get sunshine, opennness, honesty, but this looks like Reagan Part Duex. ]

"Gibbs called the military coup a "severe disruption in any sort of democratic norm" and said U.S. policy is aimed at returning to that norm. "

"U.S. foreign aid to Honduras totaled $43 million in 2009, according to budget documents the administration submitted to Congress. Under the Foreign Assistance Act, no U.S. aid can be given to countries whose elected heads of government are removed by military coups."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062902793.html?hpid=topnews

Honduras's New Government Vows to Maintain Power
By Juan Forero Washington Post Foreign ServiceMonday, June 29, 2009 4:04 PM
CARACAS, Venezuela, June 29 --
"Honduras's new government vowed on Monday to remain in power despite growing worldwide opposition to the military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya."

"This coup will be defeated," [Hugo] Chavez said in the meeting in Managua, also attended by the leaders of Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries allied with Honduras. "We have to be very firm, very firm. This cannot end until Jose Manuel Zelaya is returned to power, without condition."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062902806.html?sub=AR

Another article quoted a Venezuelan representative as saying that an American named Otto Reich was involved in staging the coup. "We have information that worries us. These is a person who has been important in the diplomacy of the US who has reconnected with old colleagues and encouraged the coup: Otto Reich, ex sub-Secretary of State under Bush. We know him as an interventionist person... In 2002 he tried to deny the lawfulness of Pres. Hugo Chavez." Mentioning episodes of the dark history of Reich in the hemisphere, he concluded, "We suffered the First Reich, the Second Reich, and now we are suffering the Third Reich." He said Reich is operating under an NGO.

Otto Reich served in the Reagan, and both Bush administrations. He is a Gusano (Worm) -- a right-wing Cuban-American and was involved in the Iran-Contra scandals and death-squads sponsored during the Reagan administration. He was also allegedly involved in the U.S.-sponsored efforts to stage a coup to overthrow the democratically-elected presidency of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He sits on the Board of Directors of the School of the Americas.

Here's an article that says two of the leaders of the Honduras coup were trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia. Nasty old U.S. fingerprints all over this thing. http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-military-coup-trained-in-us.html

The School of Americas is a torture school run by the U.S. government in Georgia. We pay to bring to that school the military and police squads from central and south America, and to train them to torture and murder. We then send them back to their own countries where they will eagerly await the call from the U.S. to tell them to start the coup. Venezuela claims that Reich is involved (through some phony front-organization) in this coup in Honduras. Reich sits on the Board of Directors of the School of the Americas, and reportedly the top general in Honduras leading the coup was trained at the School of Americas.

It is really critical that everybody oppose this coup. It could well be the beginning of a new era of U.S.-sponsored coups in Central and South America. the U.S. response is highly suspicious. Here the U.S. government has been crying big crocodile tears over an election in Iran, but they've got not much more than a yawn when a democratically-elected president is ripped from his home by an armed military force of 60 and forcibly removed from his own country under threat of death. This stinks.

The Improbable American

Watch this terrific, amazing video about a self-proclaimed burned-out druggie CBGB club guy from New York City who now lives in Pakistan where he set up and runs a hospital and medical clinic to help the very poor people in the Kashmir. He has no medical degree. He has no college degree. He just does what he can and somehow, that turns out to be an awful lot in a part of the world that is this poor.

Then ask whether our country should continue to attack and drop bombs on these people, or whether we should follow this young man's example and start helping other people in the world.

Poster Boy

"Poster Boy" is the name of a New York City graffiti artist who creates collage out of public billboards and subway posters by cutting the posters up with a razor, then re-applying the pieces to make whatever art he wants. His identity is apparently unknown or uncertain.

A man was arrested in early 2009 and charged with being responsible for some of the Poster Boy graffiti in New York subways, but he denies being Poster Boy.

To make things more uncertain, the original Poster Boy has called publicly for many graffiti artists to do the same as he is, so it is unknown whether the person arrested is the original Poster Boy, or just a supporter.

His work generally is critical of society, and he turns the public advertisements and billboards against the person or company that paid to put it up. He has been called Zorro with a razor blade, and a guerrilla artist.

There is a group in the UK called "Cutup" that does similar public art. Some of his work has been shown in galleries.

The authorities remove and destroy his art as soon as they find it. So the only evidence of his art generally are the pictures that people take of it -- proof that it existed at some point in time.

Here's a link to an article about him in New York Magazine: http://nymag.com/arts/art/profiles/50969/


Remember when the New York Post ran the drawing showing a monkey being shot and killed, and it clearly was supposed to be President Obama being murdered? This was his response.


This is a trash-can inside a subway station.




Sean Bell was a young black man whose friends took him out to a club, the night before his wedding, for his last night as a bachelor. When the young men left the club, police opened fire on their car for no apparent reason (nobody claims these young men had done anything wrong), killing Sean Bell and seriously injuring two other young men, shooting 50 rounds into the car. Three of the five detectives involved were indicted on criminal charges and tried, but acquitted.

A Sad Week.

Today is a sad day. It's been a sad week. All the media is covering the death of Michael Jackson with a footnote for Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon. We seem to have a pattern of days, weeks of national catharsis, crying, sincere pronouncements about how life is short, be kind to the people around you, be sure to tell people how much they mean to you because you never know when your turn will come. Media people, tough news-announcers, politicians, all get a little choked-up, a little weepy-eyed, making statements about those who have died.

But think about it, people. We're waging war against numerous countries in the middle east. Why no connection? 50 people killed here, 64 there, some at a wedding, children in a school, people at a grocers just trying to buy some food for their families. What is the disconnect? Those people in Iraq must go to funerals every week, for young people, completely unexpected deaths, murders really, with no possibility of justice. The entire population of Iraq and Afghanistan have probably been sad for years now because their people keep getting killed. By us.

I heard the House of Representatives had a "Moment of Silence" for Michael Jackson. I wish they'd have one for peace. Have one for ending the wars. I don't begrudge Michael Jackson -- I'm sad he died too. But I'm also sad about all the people we've killed, all the people we will kill tomorrow and next week, all the children in the middle east who won't enjoy a summer, won't play in the sprinklers or eat a bar-be-que because we are attacking their country. I'm sad because the Democrats seem less interested in peace than even the psychotics under the Bush regime. I'm sad about the prospects for this country, for the unemployed, for global warming, for peace. And I'm really sick and tired of reading about rich doctors who are nothing more than drug pushers, whose patients die, but they never get prosecuted for murder. If that's what happened.

It is a sad week.

Roy Orbison, "Crying."




Ray Charles and Barbra Streisand, "Crying Time."



Kathleen Battle and the Boys Choir of Harlem, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

Michael Jackson (8/29/58 - 6/25/09)

Michael Jackson was a cute kid. Here he is at 11 years old performing with his siblings in the Jackson 5, on the Ed Sullivan Show.



When he got older he became a solo performer, and the world stood up and cheered.
He was baaaad. But not really. He was cool. He could sing, he could dance, he could write, he could perform. He was a presence, a star. They named him the King of Pop, and his album Thriller sold 50 million copies, more than any other album ever in the history of the world. And he wasn't just popular in the U.S. -- he was a star in every country in the world.


He had a lot of plastic surgery and other "cosmetic" procedures done to change his appearance. In the end, he was ambiguous, ambivalent, uncertain, part black or was he. Male, but really more female. He was growing up before the world's eyes, but, remarkably, like a predecessor to Benjamin Button, he seemed to keep getting younger, getting smaller, always rail-thin like a teenage girl and never growing into the body of a man. He was beautiful.


He could dance like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly and a whole lot more than that.


In the end, time, life, money, fame, success, drugs, maybe people who wanted something from him, were dependent on him, or just made lots of money off of him, all combined to allow him to have everything he wanted, and he destroyed his own life in typical tragic style. He went too far, had too many procedures done and ended up looking like a monster, unable to go out in public without draping handkerchiefs across his face to hide the hideousness of the doctor's work.

And the stories came out about him spending too much time with young boys, having young boys sleep in his bed with him when he was a grown man. There was a story about him paying a large amount of money to the family of one such boy, and it was suggested the payment was to keep them from reporting him to the police. Then there finally was a criminal trial, allegations of him sexually molesting a young boy. He was acquitted. But only by the jury in the courtroom, not by the public. The fact that he slept with young boys was enough for most people.

I don't think people are born twisted. Something happened to him. I blame his parents who either did it to him, failed to protect him, or failed to pay enough attention to realize something was going on, and get him help.

Too many drugs, too many combinations of drugs, let him stay thin like a young girl but also become drunken and stumbling in appearance like an old man. His face was monstrous, and the doctors could no longer help him no matter how much money he had. Well, it doesn't matter what he looks like now. He's dead. He wanted a comeback. I guess he'll get one now, in a fashion.


But there was a time, long ago, before all these bad things came about, when he was quite simply F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!!

Make A Phone Call. Save A Life. (Troy Davis).

The State of Georgia is planning to execute a man named Troy Davis. But the overwhelming available evidence suggests that Troy Davis is innocent. For example, seven out of nine witnesses who testified against him at his trial have now recanted their testimony. We all know that cops and D.A.s "coach" witnesses, or coerce witnesses, to say things that are not true.

In this case, the majority of the witnesses now say their testimony was untrue. There was no physical evidence that tied Troy Davis to the crime for which he was convicted. The crime was the murder of a police officer, and, again, we know how overzealous the police and prosecutors can be in trying to get a conviction against someone they think is a "cop-killer." And overzealous cops and prosecutors often mean the wrong person was convicted, and there was not a fair trial.

The District Attorney in Savannah can reopen the case and stop the planned execution.

Call District Attorney Larry Chisolm and demand he reopen Troy Davis' case
[CALL 912-652-7308]

Tell him the state you are calling from so they will know that people all over this country are aware of the injustice in the Georgia legal system, and we are watching to see whether the state will do anything to remedy this injustice.

Farrah Fawcett (2/2/47 - 6/25/09)

Farrah Fawcett has died at the age of 62 after a long, and very public course of medical treatment for anal cancer, which apparently is related to colon cancer. A documentary was made by a friend of hers to show Fawcett as she went through the various medical treatments, including some which were considered experimental, including flying to Germany for treatment.

At one point in the documentary, when she appeared half-dead already because she was throwing up and had lost so much weight, somebody said "Well, that's what cancer does to you." And I thought "Well, that's what chemotherapy does to you." Her friends and the people who loved her all said that she fought hard against the cancer, which struck me as a silly thing to say. You can't "beat" cancer by fighting hard, or being a good person, or being dedicated or courageous. It's a disease, not game-show competition. And the decision of how to proceed, which treatment to undergo, is clearly an agonizing one.

Farrah Fawcett seemed to come from nowhere, in the late 1970s, and immediately become a national pin-up girl. She was very pretty, and had a great body. Her pinup photo was reportedly very popular among the boys. And all the girls wanted to have their hair cut just like Farrah's.

In later years Fawcett struggled to try to be recognized for something other than her looks. She was briefly in a TV show called "Charlie's Angels," then left that and got parts in a few films, but was panned for the efforts. She had high-profile and sometimes volatile relationships with men, and was seen publicly appearing to be messed-up on drugs or alcohol, which added notoriety and brought attention of the not-too-good type. But she also acted in a few TV movies and showed that she was a very talented actress, such as "Burning Bed," in which she played the victim of spousal abuse, and "Small Change," in which she played a woman accused of murdering her own children. She also hooked up with Ryan O'Neal, himself another "burster" who gained quick and instant fame early in his career then seemed to have descended into the tacky problems of alcohol, relationship issues, and screwed-up, neglected, abandoned kids. A very sad story on both parts.

Farrah Fawcett was embraced by the revisionist, reactionary forces who were reasserting control of the nation in the late 1970s, the right-wing that would soon re-invent history to claim that the U.S. "lost" the war in Vietnam because we didn't try hard enough, that people who smoke marijuana become serial killers, that women who have sex before marriage are sluts, that "real men" are still cowboys or marines and long hair is for homosexuals. The morons, in other words. The same group of people who would soon put the senile B-movie actor Ronald Reagan into office to loot and bankrupt the country and sponsor death squads throughout central America. The same group of people who later put George W. Bush into office. Those people.

I think they wanted to resurrect the Marilyn Monroe image of the 1940s and 50s, the idea that women should either wear house dresses with heels and stay home to clean and cook and raise kids, or they should be sex kittens, pinups, for the sexual gratification of men when they leave home, and go out into the world. She was from Texas, she had all-American blonde (and sexy) looks, and these men could look at her and pretend that it was 1950 again, and all was right in the world.

Of course this has nothing to do with her. She was just another young, pretty woman who was offered fame and fortune to pose for some sexy photos, and probably never imagined that it would govern and maybe destroy much of the rest of her life.

She was 62 years old. She had cancer. She died from it. That's pretty young, and it's very sad.

Want To Learn A Foreign Language? Or Refresh Your High School Spanish?

Here's a pretty cool website where you can learn a foreign language online, for free. They include the full textbook, and many tapes for learning to speak and understand. For example, in the beginning Spanish language tape they say Buenos dias, then they pause and you repeat what they said. The accompanying 700-page text starts with common phrases, such as Buenos dias, and an English translation.

The U.S. government's foreign service group developed its own programs to teach foreign languages to their employees. Those programs are considered part of the public domain, and are therefore made available to the public, free of charge, on this website.

http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php

June 25: Torture Accountability Day.

June 25, 2009, is Torture Accountability Day. The Democrats continue to ignore the law, to ignore us, and refuse to enforce the laws against the rich and powerful people in this nation. There are laws that make it illegal to torture. The U.S., under the Bush administration, created a program of torture. They tortured people to try to get them to "confess" that Iraq had some involvement with 9/11 (which it did not) so that Cheney and his Oil Corporation friends could use the U.S. military to invade Iraq, and let the Oil Corporations steal Iraq's oil.

Although Obama has made some generalized statements against torture, there are reports that it is continuing in various locations around the world where the U.S. is holding people they have kidnapped, refused counsel, no charges, no evidence, just torture. This needs to stop.

Go to this website. http://tortureaccountability.webs.com/ The Torture Accountability group is demanding that there be investigations, hearings, and prosecutions if the evidence supports it, of the following people from the Bush Administration who, the evidence shows, had direct involvement in and responsibility for the torture conducted by the U.S.:

George W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Jay Bybee (now a 9th Circuit Court of Appeal Judge)
Alberto Gonzales
John Yoo
Douglas Feith
David Addington
William Haynes
Stephen Bradbury

Attend an action if there is one near you. Or write a letter to your local paper, post a comment on a local blog, make a sign, talk to somebody. Demand that the people responsible for international war crimes including torture be investigated, prosecuted, imprisoned, and held accountable for their crimes.

http://democrats.com/special-prosecutor-for-bush-war-crimes?cid=ZGVtczI3ODA2ZGVtcw

Call the Attorney General, Eric Holder at 202-514-2001.
Fax him at 202-307-6777

or send him a free fax: http://www.peaceandjustice.it/

Ask him to begin prosecution of people who are responsible for the torture conducted by the U.S.

A nation that refuses to enforce the law against the rich and powerful is not a democracy.

The U.S. is a party to the U.N. Treaty on Torture and is legally obligated to prosecute the people against whom there is any evidence of torture. We've got the people. We've got the evidence. And we've got a new administration that refuses to enforce the law. This is not acceptable.

Summer Songs: Martha & The Vandellas, "Heat Wave."

Don't Whine. Organize.

Okay. I'm personally disgusted and disheartened. But it is a legitimate criticism to say that being disgusted is not a plan for life. Certainly it is not a worthy theme song for anyone who claims to be a progressive.

Let's talk about what the situation is, and what are the available options.

BACKGROUND

The Democrats In The Bush-Cheney Years

The Democrats have been overwhelmed in recent years by the Bush-Cheney administration and their fanatical supporters, including Rupert Murdoch's Whorehouse, the 24-hour-per-day Fascist propaganda organ for the right wing which promotes war, hatred, and violence. It has been a somewhat terrifying time for many people in this country, although I think the Democrats mostly have been terrified at the thought of losing their own job.

The response of many Democrats has been to simply go along with Bush-Cheney, try to wait it out without drawing too much attention to themselves. Maybe they were afraid of being shot by the crazies who supported Bush-Cheney, a legitimate concern. But those who voted for the Wars, who voted for the tax-cuts, who supported silly new laws to make it a crime to burn a flag, who supported imprisoning more and more non-white poor young men as a solution to a failing economy, those who supported "free" trade policies which took more and more good-paying jobs out of this country and threw more and more Americans out of work, seem to have the heart and soul of Republicans.

But nonetheless, the Democrats are all we've got. So when they started telling us several years ago that we need to elect more Democrats so they could get the majority in Congress, we needed to fund-raise and make phone calls and campaign to elect Democrats, and donate, then donate some more, many of us got on board. Okay. We'll do our part. Save the nation.

Democrats Get Controlling Majority in 2008

Now the Democrats have control of both houses of Congress and the white house. Even though people blame Obama for the apparent failings so far to change anything, the fact is that Obama has no authority to pass laws. Congress is charged with the responsibility to pass laws. Congress holds the purse strings when it comes to war. Only Congress has the authority to declare war, to authorize war. So let's see how they're doing.

Democrats Provide Working People With No Economic Assistance

The economy is the key to people's ability to have a decent life. But from the Democrats, when it comes to helping the working people, nothing so far. No jobs programs from Congress. Obama has a big "recovery" program but it has pennies for a jobs-creation program, compared to billions in give-aways to the Wall Street criminals. Congress has failed to raise minimum wage to a living wage -- it probably should be double what it currently is. No discussion of that. Congress refused to cap interest rates on credit cards. I just got a notice from my credit card company that they are raising the interest rates to 14%. So they borrow money from the government for .25% -- 1/4 of 1% -- and they loan it to me for 14%. Do you know what an incredible con that is? But Congress refused to cap how much they can charge in interest, which should be tied within a few points of what they pay to borrow. If they pay 1/4 of 1% to borrow, maybe they should be capped at 3%. But 14% is outrageous.

As for ending the war as they promised they would do, they didn't. Instead, they keep voting to give billions more for war, to extend the wars indefinitely, to expand the wars, to kill more people, drop more bombs. Nothing for the working people and citizens, but everything for war. All of which is a corporate subsidy because we are in the middle east to provide private security for the Oil Corporations as they steal Iraq's oil, build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Maybe next steal Iran's oil. It's all about oil. And corporate control.

Speaking of which, not only is our reliance on foreign oil the direct cause of our starting wars to steal oil, it is also destroying the planet. The Democrats know this. So where is our major green push from Congress? To get off of oil. Green jobs, R&D money, development, funding? New community planning, new shelter/home/apartment designs, materials, concepts. Where is the Congress's major new proposal -- like A New Deal, or The Great Society -- where is the Congress in funding green work, developing industries, creating jobs, getting the universities involved, retrofitting people's homes, creating non-automobile transportation? Where are they on this subject? Not much there either.

On Health care, which they claim will be a radical reform to help the people -- all the rumors have it that there will be no real change, no help for the people. The Medical Industry -- Doctors' lobbies, Hospital groups, Drug Dealers -- have paid so much money in bribes to Congress that Congress will do nothing to stop them from continuing to rob us blind.

So all in all, the Democrats have been a complete failure. And worse -- it is a betrayal of everything that they promised they would do.

Organize: Where? How?

So what should we do, besides whine?

The traditional answer is we need to organize, to get enough people to take action to force the government to work for us instead of working for corporate bribes.

But how, where?

"Organize": The Unions

Traditionally, the term "organize" refers to the union movement, which was very active in the early part of the 20th century, then became somewhat complacent post-war as the anti-communist insanity was directed against them. Some of the unions began siding with the conservatives. After all, when unions become nothing more than an insider organization staffed by white men who get big paychecks, and whose job is to pay bribes to politicians and work with management to guarantee jobs and benefits and pensions and good wages to other white men, to exclude non-whites and women, then the unions actually become a reactionary force in society. By adopting those policies which benefit the insiders, they lay the seeds for their own destruction.

I know people who were union organizers in the 70s, trying to get the established unions to recognize that what was called "women's work" was a great place for expanding unions. But the white men who ran the unions saw "workers" as being macho men, and actually felt like they would be embarrassed to associate with the lower caste of people known as women workers. For example, the typesetters union was all white men, working on big typesetting presses, hard work. But along came computers, and the likely new typesetters suddenly became the class of workers who are typists -- women. But the typesetters union refused to go after the women, refused to include them, so laid the seeds for their own destruction.

The same is true for the building trades unions. They were mostly white male, except the separate laborers union was mostly black male. Male, notice -- women rarely were allowed on a job and if they were brought in, they were subject to malicious sexual harassment -- not off-color jokes, but actual threats of rape, groping of breasts. Not just boys having fun -- malicious conduct designed to force women out of the field. Some of the building trades unions simply became hiring halls for an insider exclusive group of white men. Instead of expanding their union, reaching out to other groups and people, they became a reactionary racist and sexist force, aligned with the conservatives in government. A few decades down the road, the buildings trade unions were undercut by developers hiring coyotes to bring illegal immigrants in by the truckload to take the jobs. If the unions had been more inclusive, had continued to expand their organizing and increase their strength by alliances with other workers, and had brought in women and non-whites, they would have been in a much stronger position to protect their jobs.

So the biggest problem with the unions is that they are sexist and racist, and short-sighted. Why didn't they include as a non-negotiable demand that the pensions be funded on an ongoing basis. In other words, everytime Employee A gets a paycheck, the boss must immediately transfer into Employee A's retirement account a certain amount of money so Employee A's pension will be fully-funded when he retired. And the Employer can never touch Employee A's pension money. It is safeguarded and protected. But the unions didn't take care of that. We now have retired autoworkers who will lose their pensions because the company did not fund the pensions for those employees -- just planned to pay it out of future earnings. A terrible mistake.

Some unions, many unions have agreed to two-tiered plans. They destroy unions. Here's how that works. Company agrees to continue paying current employees at a certain rate, providing them with benefits and pensions. But they get a two-tiered provision in the new contract that says new employees will receive a lot less money per hour, and receive a lot less in benefits. They did a two-tiered contract in one of the grocery stories I go to, and within a few months all the Adults disappeared -- I swear, the place was staffed with 14-year-old checkers within 6 months. All the long-term employees who had the higher pay were re-assigned, often to stores that were a long commute from home, to force them out. Two-tiered contracts are deals with the devil made by the existing employees to benefit themselves, selling out newer employees, and always leading to destruction of the union.

The male-only leadership continues to be a problem with unions. Women don't really want to pay part of their already diminished wages to a bunch of men, mostly paying themselves over $200,000/year as union "leaders," when the unions do not include as a non-negotiable demand the elimination of sexism in hiring, promotion, and wages -- by employers and by the unions themselves.

Some of the newer more aggressive unions seem to be following very questionable policies. For example, doormen and cleaning crews in commercial building (i.e. offices) in one City were earning about $10-12/hour through their union. But the commercial property owners fired the union workers, busted the union, and started hiring all illegal immigrants at $5/hour (thanks to the program by Bush and Fox to flood the U.S. market with millions of desperate illegal immigrant workers from Mexico). Nobody did a thing to stand up for the Americans who lost their jobs. But soon, a new union came along to represent the illegal immigrants (scabs one might say), and promised them what? First, that if they joined the union, the union would fight to get them $6/hour. And second, if they joined the union, they would have protection against being deported.

So the union comes in, "fights" with the property owner to get $6/hour, but the property owner gladly pays because it means he's protected against having the "American" workers come back and demand the full $12/hour they were making. It's a huge benefit to the property owner. The union works with management to screw the Americans. And the union I'm thinking about has a group of insiders who are paid over $200,000/year for their "organizing" efforts. This same union fought against single-payer healthcare in California because their management friends didn't want it.

Unions have been under assault, there's no question, particularly accelerating under Reagan when he fired all the air traffic controllers and busted the unions. But they also have been uninspired in coming up with a real program to fight outsourcing, fight against companies taking American jobs to other countries, fight against all these "free" trade agreements which have allowed cheap imports to flood our country, throwing more Americans out of work.

I understand the concept of One Big Union, an international perspective. But you need to fight for the jobs of the people in your own country if you expect to grow. Not based on racism or xenophobia, but based on the right of people to be employed, the right to have laws enforced so employers can't throw Americans out of work and replace them with slave labor illegal immigrants. Fight for the rights of all Americans, women and minorities included, instead of having unions remain white men's clubs. And the union insiders should stop paying themselves so much money, and start respecting their members by capping their own paychecks to some nominal multiple of the amount their dues-paying members are earning. Set an example for honesty, fairness and real democracy instead of taking advantage of terrified poor people, desperate for protection.

I think it's 10% of the private jobs are unionized today. And there's lots of infighting. So the unions strike me as a highly unlikely source for organizing people in this country. They may be re-made, but as of today their primary political activity consists of paying bribes to politicians. They can't even get the majority Democrats to pass EFCA. That's a disgrace. It shows that the Democrats are no longer the party of labor, and they don't care one bit what the unions think about it.

Organizing On A Community Basis

So what else? Some people suggest organizing on a community level. Neighborhood by neighborhood. Go knock on your neighbor's door. Engage them in conversation about healthcare. I don't think so. We don't have community in this country, for the most part. We have residences, dwellings. Places where people live as long as they have a job and can pay, and in today's environment there will be lots of moving around by people in foreclosure, unemployed, going somewhere else trying to find work, get a new start. Our society is structured in a manner designed to increase isolation. Go home and watch TV. We should try to change that, but for now, for purposes of using community as a basis for organizing, I can't see it.

Besides, there is little people have in common simply as a result of residing in the same neighborhood. Location of residence says nothing about political beliefs and leanings, gun-loving, hunters, progressives, religious fanatics -- they're so mixed in together. They can live alongside each other, but trying to organize blindly is like making cold-calls from a phone book in trying to sell a product. Lots of effort, little results.

Organizing: Within The Churches

Of course there are the churches which, historically, have in some cases gotten involved in progressives issues such as help the poor or end the war. But many of the churches are extremely conservative. I would suggest this also is likely too much effort, little likely results. Except in the case of churches which have a well-established history of social justice programs and concerns.

What's left? Two things:

Issues Organizing

1. Issues Organizing.

This has worked well in the past on some issues. The problem is that if Congress does something, or votes something, the issue may be co-opted. For example, the anti-war movement should be strengthened. But there is so much public deception about these wars, no draft, lots of mercenaries and private contractors, no real news, it seems this would be easy to co-opt. I think Obama already has done that. When he announced that he had a plan for a phased withdrawal from Iraq -- in the future -- which didn't mean all the troops would leave -- and wasn't writ in stone in any event -- many people seemed to say "Great, war over." But it's not over, and this administration does not plan for it to be over until every drop of oil is sucked out of the sand of Iraq.

Issues organizing, in order to have ongoing viability, needs to include many different issues. Which makes it begin to look more like a political party.

Organizing: Within A Political Party

2. Political Party.

Another alternative is for people to organize and get active inside a political party.

Within The Democratic Party

The first option is to work from within the Democratic party to try to change it. I do not think this will succeed until and unless strict laws are passed to cut down on the corruption. I would include the following as a minimum:

(a) Campaign Finance Reform, Bribery, Kick-Back Laws. Make it illegal for any candidate to accept any money or anything of value from anyone for any purposes. They get a paycheck, that should be the end of it. Same for any promise to pay in the future. Same for spouses, parents, siblings, kids. Have publicly-funded campaigns, and limited campaigns. It does the public no good whatsoever to have hundreds of millions of dollars spent on these political circuses. It's just decorating corruption with sparkly lights.

(b) No Future Employment Or Compensation For Five Years. We need a law making it illegal for any politician to go to work for, or accept money or anything of value from, any business, or industry that benefitted from any government contracts during the time the politician was in office. For five years. Five years after they leave office, they can do what they want. Until then, nothing. End this disgraceful practice by which a politician leaves office and is showered with hundreds of millions of dollars in kick-backs from foreign countries and corporations that benefitted from the politician's actions while in office. No money received at all -- not wages, not consulting fees, not even in these ridiculous "private" charity scams that have become so popular.

(c) No Ex-Parte Communications. We need a law making it illegal for a politician (or their staff) to receive or originate any communication with any person about any issue which is, or may come before the Congress, except for communications made as part of a public record, recorded or documented at the time of the communication, and immediately disclosed to the public.

Here's the idea. Take a Judge. He's got a trial scheduled in a few weeks in which Attorney A represents Dog-bite Victim who is seeking to recover money from Dog Owner, represented by Attorney B. Let's say that Attorney A and Judge both attend a dinner party, and Attorney A wants to talk to Judge about his case, about his client, about dogs. Let's say Judge listens. The Attorney A could be disbarred, and the Judge could lose his job too. That's because the laws of most states make it illegal for any attorney (or party) to communicate with a Judge about a matter before the judge, or scheduled to come before the judge, unless the other side is present or given notice and the opportunity to be present at the time of the communication, the communication is recorded or documented, and the other side has an opportunity to respond. You don't get to take the Judge in the corner and try to butter him up about how good your case is, when the other attorney isn't even there.

We need the same laws in Congress. Why should the Defense Industry be able to send lobbyists to meet with the politicians and convince them to support some new weapons contract, when the meetings and communications are in secret, the public is excluded, and none of us really know what went on in the communication. Were bribes offered or solicited?

I don't see any reason for any politician or their staff or agents or representatives to ever meet or communicate with a lobbyist or industry or business representatives in private. If the politician wants to learn more about some proposed weapons system, they can hold public hearings at which the public can "attend" either by real-time streaming on-line, or televised hearings, made available on-line for years. Written communications should be scanned and likewise available. We need to stop the secret meetings. Bring some sunshine and light to Congress and try to kill off the rot.

New Political Party

The other alternative to trying to organize within a political party would be to start a new political party. Create a platform with specific positions, demand politicians agree in advance to support each of those positions if they want to run as part of this new party. Would the party likely win immediately? No. Might it throw the election to Republicans? Possibly. Another alternative is that there would be a new conservative party started. After all, if only 20% of the country identifies themselves as Republicans, that leaves 80% up for grabs, many of whom consider themselves to be independent.

We hear a lot of speculation about the Republican Party being on its last legs. I think the Democratic Party is as well. They are just too corrupt. The fact that they did nothing during the Bush years to protect the people, the fact that Bill Clinton changed the party to be the Corporate Party, the fact that now they have the majority of the Congress and yet they do nothing to help us, suggests to me that the party is committed firmly to a policy of corruption, bribes, and kick-backs. They believe they will continue to receive the support of the majority simply because they can always raise the bogeyman "Remember Bush." I do remember. But what I remember is that the Democratic Party, my party, did nothing to help me, or to protect me, from the fascist administration of Bush-Cheney. That's what I remember.

Stories From The Great Depression - From The National Archives.

President Obama's Proposed Changes To Banking Regulations

Here is a link to an excellent article by William Grieder about some of the glaring deficiencies in the proposals President Obama made last week to change the regulations for the banks. Supposedly to prevent future economic disasters such as the one we are now experiencing.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/21-2

I would go even further than Mr. Grieder.

First, of course, there is no mention of restrictions on loans. Perhaps that is to be covered elsewhere. But for many decades the lending rules on residential real estate were as follows: the borrower can borrow 80% of the current fair market value of the home; the down-payment of 20% must be their own money, not loaned to them by someone else; and the borrower can borrow no more than three times gross income. That way, when the loan is made, the property has a value 20% greater than the amount of the loan. If there was a default, the lender takes the property and does not suffer a financial loss (to be paid by the taxpayers).

This would bring property values back down to where they need to be -- an affordable level. If the average American family has a gross income of $60,000, that means the maximum they can borrow is $180,000, and they can afford to buy a home for about $220,000 but they need a $40,000 down payment. Housing prices must come down to the point that they are reasonable and affordable. If they don't, if Obama does not put new restrictions on lenders, then we will just see more and more waves of foreclosures, and further radical and disruptive collapses in the housing market, in years to come.

The federal treasury, the taxpayer's money held and managed by the federal government, should not be turned over to private individuals for them to use to control our country, turn it into a dictatorship-of-the-banks. Which is what we have now. They take our money and use it to corrupt our government.

Here's how it works. Our government is currently loaning money to the Banks and to Wall Street (jointly the Financial Criminals) for .25% interest per year -- 1/4 of 1% interest per year is all they pay. The Financial Criminals take that money, turn around and loan it to Americans for between 8% to 25% per year. What a racket.

Here's the question: why should the Financial Criminals be allowed to sit in that privileged, cushy, lucrative position and take all the money paid by American working people for a loan? Put differently, why do the Financial Criminals get to borrow money from the government at .25%, but the rest of us don't?

It's not right. It's not good. It has the effect of transferring wealth from your average working person to the parasitic class of usually white men who constitute the Financial Criminals. Why would we want to profit and benefit them so much? Why do we punish your average American working person by depriving them of the opportunity to borrow money from the federal government at .25% per year? That's a much better deal than I got on my car loan. I'm a citizen. Why does some scummy corporate Wall Street entity get to borrow at .25%, but I've got to pay 8%?

There is no benefit to society to supporting a system which has the effect of transferring so much money from your average working American into the hands of a few, wealthy, generally dishonest and criminal white men with big offices on Wall Street. Just think of the amount of debt most working people have -- credit card, department stores, car, home -- then ask why the average person should be required to send so much money every month to a few privileged white men on Wall Street so they can become richer than the rest of us can imagine. If people could just pay off their loans at .25% directly to the federal government, they'd be out of debt in a few years.

When President Obama announced his financial "reforms" last week, his prefaced his statement by saying that the current problems we have are the result of all of our wrongdoing. We did this to ourselves. The American people are at fault. If you're out of work, broke, in debt, in foreclosure, homeless, hungry, it's your own fault for being so greedy.

According to the President, the average working person, who maybe buys a new pair of running shoes at some cheap import store once a year, and other than that never buys anything for themself, who can barely afford food for their families, who cannot afford dental so they just have the bad teeth pulled and get more toothless as the years pass, who cannot afford medical care so they die young, the average person is to blame. Not the Financial Criminals, not the politicians who have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from Wall Street and the Banks, not the Clinton administration that stripped away regulations to allow Wall Street to plunder and loot our country. No. The fault lies with Joe the Unemployed Factory Worker. Come on Obama. I expect that kind of garbage from a Republican.

If people had a living wage, they wouldn't have to use credit cards because they could afford to live without borrowing every month. So how about passing the EFCA law, Democrats? No unions, no living wage, no jobs, no job security. That's not the fault of the working people -- it's the fault of the Corporations, the CEOs, and the corrupt politicians who have passed laws to let these Corporations take jobs out of this country and to fire people who try to organize unions.

If people didn't have to pay 20-25% interest on their credit cards, they would be paid off already. The crushing debt imposed on Americans is the fault not of working people, but of the Credit Card industry and the corrupt politicians that refuse to make credit card companies obey the usury law, which restricts interest to about 10% max. That's not the fault of working people -- it's the fault of the Financial Criminals and the corrupt politicians.

The foreclosures are also not the fault of working people. Here's what happened: Greenspan slashed interest rates to boost borrowing and spending to try to cover up the disastrous tech collapse in about 2000. He held the interest rates down for so long that it had an artificial and deceptive effect on the housing market. Let's say a house that sold for $250,000 in 1995 with interest at around 6%: monthly payment would have been around $1400, affordable for a two full-time working parent home. By deregulating the Banks and allowing them to make funny loans, and by slashing interest rates, people could borrow a lot more money but pay relatively little per month. All people want to know is how much will it cost me per month. So the same house increased in price to $750,000. Interest at 2%, monthly payments would still be around $1400.

Of course most people could not afford a $750,000 loan in reality, and eventually the loan "adjusts" upwards, people default, foreclosures are the result. As well as the property plunging back down to its "real" value. If we've had a 30% drop to date, hold on, it's still got to go further down before housing is affordable given average wages (and unemployment) in this country. So actually, that too was the result of political actions by Greenspan, inaction by Congress, and greed by the Lenders and the real estate developers. Not the fault of your average working American who, after all, needs shelter. If the price of housing goes up 3 fold, you can't blame people for paying what they have to pay to have a roof over their heads.

Here's what should happen. Banks should be considered something like a public utility. Like the company that delivers water to our communities. The water is owned by the people. The company that delivers it is entitled to a reasonable payment to cover their costs (and maybe a little profit). But they are not allowed to charge as much as they want, to deny people something as basic as water. The charge is (or should be) regulated by the government, since the people own the water to begin.

Banks should be treated the same way. Any lender should be. They can borrow money from the federal government but lending should be restricted, as well as "fees" and interest, to allow the bank to pay their costs and make a modest profit. The federal government should charge the banks more than .25% interest, but the interest the banks can charge to the public should be radically lowered.

President Obama also suggests that any bank that makes a loan then sells it should be required to keep a 5% interest in that loan. That's nonsense. As Mr. Grieder points out, the Bank will just charge the borrower another fee and recoup that 5% up-front.

Here's what should happen instead. Bank makes a loan. They can sell a small percentage of the loans they make to another regulated bank. But the loans cannot be sliced up and sold off in pieces. Any lender who buys the loan must keep 100% of the loan. And all banks must keep a large percentage of the loans they originate. There is no benefit to the people of this country to allowing their mortgages to be securitized -- bundled with thousands of other mortgages, sliced into small percentages, sold around the world. It is in fact simply a highly speculative gambling scheme that encourages fraud, deceit, unsavory practices. There is no benefit in allowing it to continue, and it should be halted.

So, my advice is this: back to the drawing board.

Senator Russ Feingold Is A National Treasure. Eric Holder Is A Disgrace.

I have a friend who just moved to Wisconsin. I told her she is so lucky -- despite the snow, despite the cold, despite the relatively sparse population where they are now living, despite the cabin fever in the winter -- she is so lucky, because she has Russ Feingold as her Senator. She agreed.

How few politicians we have on a national level who are as consistently principled as Russ Feingold. So committed to fairness, justice. And truth. Principles before personalities. He has not caved to the charm of the ever-charming President Obama. He is taking that rare step, at least among the current crop of corrupt politicians in Congress, of continuing to pursue the principle, continuing to question, continuing to demand the Constitution be respected and the law be enforced.

What a shame that President Obama selected Eric Holder to be Attorney General. I don't know much about him, but what I hear just keeps getting worse. The DOJ is seemingly on the wrong side of every issue. Starting with their refusal to prosecute anyone, or conduct investigations, relating to war crimes, torture, murder by the Bush-Cheney administration, and refusal to investigate and prosecute the criminals on Wall Street who have looted and plundered our country. What Justice?

How fitting then that the esteemed Senator Feingold and the lackluster Attorney General Holder should come face to face last week on television, for the whole nation to see. My, Eric, you come across looking just like -- a BushMan! Arrogant, condescending, evasive, dishonest, sleazy. Contemptuous.

Does this AG believe, just like all the string of sleazy AGs from the Bush crowd believed, that they are above the law, that the president can do what he wants and the AG reports only to him, the law and the constitution be damned? This guy Holder looks like a BB shot into a steel barrel full of vegetable oil: he jumps, he bolts, he skids, he slides, he evades, he's back and forth and up and down, he's sleazy. And he refuses to answer the simple question, for which a simple answer is readily available. It could have been Cheney sitting there answering the question.

Question: You agree, don't you, that the warrantless wiretaps used by the Bush administration were illegal?

Answer: Well, it depends on what the meaning of "used" is, or what you mean by Bush, or whether you mean "used" like some think of that word, or in some other fashion. I mean it just depends. It's hard to say. It's confusing. Illegal? Is that what you asked? Well, who can say? I mean illegal -- that's a pretty big word, isn't it? Whose law? Your law? Somebody else's law? What law? Does it really matter, anyway? Can't we just look forward, not spend our time looking backwards. Can't we all just get along. Illegal? Is that the question? Well, I'm sure some might say it was unwise, or perhaps unknown, or uncertain, or undercover, or underling. But illegal?

What a sleazy con man this guy Holder appears to be.

Yes Eric, that was the question: do you agree the wiretaps were illegal? Because if you do, then why haven't you done anything to prosecute the Bush-Cheney people who have violated our rights? When should we expect your indictment to be filed, and who do you anticipate naming as a defendant. How about answering those questions, or are these simple constitutional issues just way beyond your legal understanding, as the chief law enforcement officer of the land? Remember the 4th Amendment? No warrant no wiretap. Remember that one? Do you agree with Bush-Cheney that the Constitution is toilet paper, and you as the AG exist mostly to cover up and avoid and deceive and allow the wealthy and powerful to break the law and get away with it? That's my own personal expanded version of the question. I'm not nearly as polite as Senator Feingold.

Oh yeah: here's the answer. YES. YES THE WIRETAPS WERE ILLEGAL. YES THEY WERE A VIOLATION OF LAWS -- LOTS OF LAWS AND A VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. THAT'S THE ANSWER. NOW DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. ENFORCE THE LAW. INDICT THE CRIMINALS. DO YOUR JOB.

"Witness - President Evo" -- Evo Morales, President of Bolivia.

Bolivia is a land-locked country in South America. Since 2006, its President has been Evo Morales, the first indigeneous person ever to be President of Bolivia.

Historically, the Spanish invaded and took over Bolivia in 1500 and stayed until the early 1800s, when Bolivia became independent. In modern times, the country has been the scene of numerous coups, military dictatorships, and general instability in its government. The population is only 15% "white" (Spanish descendents), but the whites own or control most of the land and resources, and wealth of the nation. The ownership of the resources of Bolivia had been sold off to foreign investors by governments before Evo Morales was elected.

When Evo Morales was elected, the 15% of the population that was white, which lives mostly concentrated in certain parts of the country, decided they would secede from the nation so Morales could not try to take any of their land or assets away from them. Morales' platforms included agrarian reform by which he promised to take "non-productive" land from the rich and redistribute it to the poor. 60% of the population of Bolivia lives in extreme poverty. Morales' platform also included taking back control of the gas from international ownership, and having more of the income from the gas go to the nation instead of going to foreign investors.

Evo Morales comes from a union background, and his support was from the indigenous majority of the country, as well as from various union groups, including the miners. Bolivia, under Morales, is one of the countries in South America which has begun to emerge from its neo-colonial status and to develop a politics of citizens' rights. Hopefully this trend will continue and spread throughout South America.

Filmmaker Rodrigo Vazquez spent three years following Evo Morales, from his presidential campaign through the years of bitter struggle for constitutional and economic reform in Bolivia. This documentary was shown on Al Jazeera - English TV.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:

Summer Songs: Frank Sinatra, (and the Brooklyn Dodgers), "The Summer Wind."

Seems Fair.

Gymnast Shawn Johnson Put To Sleep After Breaking Leg

The Honeymoon's Over: Tell The Democrats To Pass Medicare-For-All. Now. Stop The Shake-Downs, Stop The Corruption, Stop The Betrayal.

The Democrats announced early this year that they were really mad at the credit card industry, they were really going to make some "reforms" of that industry to help the public. So they set up a bunch of meetings between the No-Change President and the CEOs of the major credit card companies. And the Democrats in Congress met with the major credit card companies. Presumably to negotiate enormous bribes to be paid by the credit card companies to the Democrats. What you call a Shakedown.

Because after those secret meetings, there was no "reform" of the credit card industry. Instead, the Democrats passed some completely toothless and meaningless law that says before the credit card industry sends Guido and Carmine out to bust people's knees, they've got to send a written notice. Whoopie. Despite the efforts of a few politicians to have real reform, which means to limit the amount of interest that can be charged to consumers for loans, the Democrats refused to support any such limits. The Democrats refused to pass a law that would "limit" the credit card companies to "only" charging 37% per year on loans. As far as the Democrats are concerned, the higher interest that's charged to the citizens of this country by the credit card companies, the bigger the kick-backs and bribes paid to the Democrats.

And now we're seeing the same type of manipulation and deception by the Democrats in connection with their promise to "reform" healthcare. First they announce, through several leaders, that they're not going to have single-payer. Then they refuse to even meet with representatives from groups supporting single-payer, and refuse to let those people have a voice in Congress. To explain, for example, that the most cost-effective reform, the one that would provide the most healthcare and save the most money, would be a single-payer system.

Instead, we have a series of secret meetings between No-Change Obama and the leading Democrats, on the one hand, and the CEOs of the Medical Industry on the other hand, presumably shake-down meetings in which the Democrats agree they won't reform anything in healthcare if the Medical Industry pays the politicians enough money in bribes.

Sold out again. Betrayed. Abandoned and deceived.

First No-Change Obama comes out and announces that some of the big CEOs have "promised" they will "really really really" try to not raise how much they charge us so much. Ten years from now, they will really really try. No enforcement mechanism, nothing in writing -- spit is what it is. Meaningless nonsense.

Now we hear that No-Change Obama has also negotiated some deal with the Drug Dealers by which they promise they will really really really try not to charge so much. Meaningless. These Medical Industry people have been raping the American public for decades, and they aren't going to change unless we force them. How much money did the Drug Dealers promise to kick-back to the Democrats in exchange for the Democrats doing nothing to control the prices that average people have to pay.

The Democrats have the majority in Congress and can do anything they want. What they should do is pass Medicare for all. Anybody who wants to stay with private insurance should do so. Anybody who wants to join Medicare should be allowed to do so. People with sufficient income should be required to pay something to buy into the system, something like a premium but a lot less expensive. And anyone who goes into Medicare would be saved from the private insurance company's practice of dumping people as soon as they get sick, or raising their premiums to they are unaffordable.

The Democrats claim that the mean old Republicans won't let them do a Medicare for All. Nonsense. The Democrats have the majority and can pass anything they want.

Some apologists claim that Obama wants to represent all the people, and there aren't enough people who support Medicare for all. Another lie designed to cover up corruption.

The New York Times reports today that in a poll conducted last week, they found that 72% of the public supports Medicare for all.

"The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed. " http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html?hp
If the Democrats don't pass a Medicare-for-all system which allows anyone to join Medicare, then they are useless.

Think about it. They give hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street and the Banks, who kick back millions to the politicians individually. They vote hundreds of billions of dollars to fund more wars in which our military is being used as a private mercenary goon squad on behalf of the Oil Corporations, committing international war crimes, torture, kidnapping, and murder across the world. And they ignore the public's demands that these wars be ended.

They refuse to enforce the laws against the wealthy and powerful by establishing commissions to investigate and prosecute, and seize assets, for the financial crimes and the war crimes committed in recent years in this country. Not one person in our government will even allow hearings to be held to investigate the clear evidence of crimes by the top people from Wall Street and the top people from the Bush-Cheney administration. What do you call a government that refuses to enforce the laws against the rich and powerful? Certainly not a democracy.

We have an actual unemployment level of 17%, predicted to go higher every single month through 2009 and possibly through 2010, and the Democrats have failed to do anything to create jobs programs or jobs for Americans. Instead, they are supporting more trade agreements to send more American jobs out of this country, throw more people out of work.


Being a Democrat is like having the boyfriend who never calls, having the boss who never makes payroll, having the spouse who never brings home their paycheck because they spend it on themselves.

They ignore us, they ridicule us and what we want, they tell us we're stupid and we don't know what we're talking about, they tell us to shut up because they'll do what they want, when we demand our rights they say we're nagging, when we demand attention they tell us they're too busy with somebody else. I'm beginning to feel like I've got the battered spouse syndrome: they beat me up, steal my money, treat me bad, lie to me, cheat on me, then show up on Sunday evening and expect me to have a pot roast on the table, cold beer in the frig. One day they're going to show up on Sunday and we'll all be gone.

Feel The Hate In Jerusalem - Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal made this video, titled "Feel The Hate In Jerusalem," -- young, obviously privileged kids in Israel being interviewed, asked what they think about Obama. The video has been the subject of a massive right-wing attack in this country by the people who want to keep Americans ignorant about the reality of the situation in Israel. Exodus it ain't. Think more South Africa, Apartheid, Warsaw Ghetto, non-whites walled off and starved and murdered while white Europeans steal all the land, take all the money. And live a very comfortable life thanks to the Billions of Dollars of U.S. tax money that is sent to them every year. Of course they kick back a very nice bribe to the U.S. Congress to make sure they will vote to send more money next year.

Israel is essentially just another criminal enterprise. The last European colony. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to bring white Jewish people from Europe to "settle" on stolen land owned by non-white Arabs and Muslims -- it's beyond me how anybody could have been so delusional to think this was a good idea. But now that it's 60 years down the road, the Israelis should either make peace with their neighbors or leave. Instead, too many of them are mired in racism, hatred, ignorance and bigotry -- one of these young people even called Obama the "n" word -- one of them said he should be shot. Billions of dollars of American money goes to Israel every year so these people can live comfortable lives. And they spit in the face of our president. And our nation.

If, as the Israelis argue, their neighbors are all murderous fanatics and it is impossible to live in peace with them -- then so be it. That's the answer. It's impossible. Therefore, you need to leave. Certainly a European colony of 5 million land-thieves can't possibly suggest that they have the right to massacre 95 million of their neighbors. Or have the U.S. do it for them.

Well actually, that is exactly what Israel has requested in their position paper, released around the same time as the PNAC paper. Israel put out a position paper in 1996 titled "A Clean Break" in which they said, essentially, that everything would be so great if only all their neighbors were dead, if only "somebody" (hint-hint) would come over and invade all their neighbors, murder lots of people, destroy the governments and much of the infrastructure, leave their neighbors so weakened that Israel could claim military dominance over the entire region (along with U.S. occupying troops) far into the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break

Israel's position paper "A Clean Break" was written mostly by American neocons, many of whom were given top-level jobs inside the Bush-Cheney Regime. It was all planned a long time ago. This whole idea of the U.S. invading the middle east and overthrowing most of the countries, was all planned by the neocons back in the 1990s. And guess what? That's exactly what's happened.

Of course for the U.S., the main reason we have attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, and Obama has now started an illegal war against Pakistan, and we may have started an illegal war against Iran by funding chaos, is because the U.S. wants the oil. Israel wants all their neighbors dead. The U.S. Corporations want the oil. It's called fate. Fate brought the two together. Which is unfortunate for all those dead people, but you can't fight fate.

Anyway, all we ever hear is about how saint-like all the Israelis are, everyone else is awful. Our media censors any story that is critical of Israel. Any professor in a university who criticizes Israel is attacked by groups of right-wing attack dogs such as David Horowitz who earns a very very good living as attack-dog for the right (he's got a nice spread with horses in a very wealthy community) and gets to hang out with all the right-wing Hollywood losers who have joined his "We're Hollywood Right-Wingers" group so they can have lunches once a week and pray. Pray for work. Actually I think they close their prayer meetings with "Thank God For ABC And Fox."

Any politician who criticizes Israel finds themself met with an opponent well-funded by Aipac, which is essentially a laundramat that launders money to U.S. politicians from Israel. Secretly, since that would be illegal. It doesn't have to disclose its donors -- guess why? Because they bought an exemption from the law for themselves. From our corrupt politicians.

So Max Blumenthal makes this tiny little video, interview of some young Israelis out in bars apparently having a good time, who make unimaginably racist and offensive comments about Barack Obama. Think Alabama with money: privileged, ignorant, racist, murderous, arrogant trash. Max Blumenthal records these ignorant foul-mouthed kids and he releases the video, and the right-wing in this country loads their weapons and goes after him, trying to prevent anyone from even being able to see the video. How sick is it that we are not allowed to see or hear anything critical of Israel.

He submitted it at Huffington Post, which has run many of his articles and pieces in the past. They refused to run it. So much for "independent" media.

Then he posted it at You Tube. But the right-wing launched an attack there, and You Tube caved in and just removed it.

For anyone who wants to see it, the link is below.

There is something about religion. These young people remind me so much of the right-wing Christian groups, the Falwell groups, those indoctrination centers they call religious schools, the home-schooled zombies, the Mormons, the ultra-right Mel-Gibson/Fascist style of Catholism -- they are all exactly alike.

They indoctrinate these young people in a certain "religious" viewpoint which turns young people into aggressive, threatening, obnoxious, sometimes murderous scum. "Their" group is justified in killing anyone else from some different group. In fact, they'd better kill all the people from the "other" group as a defensive move. The essence of war.

This is how young kids are turned into hamburger for war machines. Nice young kids become -- little Fascists, is exactly what they are. Give these kids a brown shirt and send them out into the neighborhood for them to hunt down and destroy the "Enemy." They are ignorant, racist, red-necked, foul-mouthed trash. Just like we've got littering our own country. And these people are very scary: the adults who teach this hate, and these young fanatics who are so eager to kill.

Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem -- The Censored Video from Max Blumenthal on Vimeo.

Summer Songs: Willie Nelson, "That Lucky Old Sun."

Summer Songs: The Beatles, "Here Comes The Sun."

PBS's Frontline: "Breaking The Bank." (Give Me A Break)

PBS's Frontline normally has terrific in-depth reporting about complicated and controversial topics. Not this time.

I just watched a Frontline production titled "Breaking the Bank," which purported to explain the financial melt-down beginning in the fall of 2008. But it really seemed to be a revisionist story, one designed to cover up what went on instead of to illuminate it. The entire hour was focused on two personalities (John Thain of Merrill Lynch and Ken Lewis from Bank of America), and the two financial entities with which they were associated.

Following not too raptly, it would be possible to come away with the conclusion that the entire financial problems of the world were caused by the failures of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, and the not-too-good decision of Lewis to go ahead and buy Merrill Lynch.

That's it. Story explained.

Who are the bad guys? Well, this guy Thain comes across as kind of a sharpy, going from one top spot to the next collecting millions, meeting with Lewis and trying to pull a quick one by getting Lewis to agree to put up funding and a buy a small minority share of Merrill Lynch.

Lewis is portrayed as an outsider, somebody not a part of the insiders on Wall Street but who is nonetheless smart, hardworking, and ambitious. We keep hearing that he is ambitious, driven (unlike the insider criminals on Wall Street?), and we are led to believe that Mr. Lewis' ambition is somehow to blame for everything that has happened.

Here's the thing about that word "ambition": it's used as a derogatory term when applied to women, minorities, or outsiders. We need to assume it is bad when found in those people, people who want to achieve or attain but are not insider white males. Anybody on the outside who wants a piece of the action is "ambitious," and tacky. The insiders, those who have looted the place blind, are seemingly born to the manor.

If you back away for a minute, the absurdity of the entire hours' program becomes clear.

For example, where did the money from Lehman Brothers go? Why doesn't anyone ever talk about fraudulent transfers, transfers of assets in fraud on creditors, for example? Same for Merrill Lynch. Their insiders apparently looted the businesses and stiffed the customers, the investors and the creditors. Nobody went to Thain and took back the millions he paid to himself during his brief reign at Merrill Lynch. Nobody went to the other insiders at Merrill Lynch who enriched themselves, knowing full-well the whole place was going to collapse. What should happen to every person who worked at Merrill Lynch in the past ten years? All their assets should be seized until we can sort out exactly what happened.

They also don't bother discussing the fundamentally fraudulent transactions of most of the Wall Street Firms and banks in this country, the speculative, gambling, musical-chairs pyramid-scheme underlying nature of what they were doing. Which really is fundamental to explaining the looting. The insiders stripped these companies bare because they knew the time would come when the whole ponzi scheme would collapse, and they wanted to pay themselves first. Screw the public and the investors and the creditors.

No mention of the fact that the richest people in this country, including the politicians to whom millions have been paid in bribes so they would allow the country to be looted, have now hidden their money outside of the country, put it into secret hedge funds and private equity funds, where nobody will ever find out about it. You know why people hide their money outside of the country? Because much of their money was fraudulently and illegally obtained, and they figure if anyone ever comes after them, they are gone in their private jets, with their hundreds of millions secretly hidden away.

Why doesn't our government seize every single one of these hedge funds and private equity funds, every dollar that has been taken out of our country during the recent looting, and bring it back here while we try to sort it all out? Don't ask PBS to mention possible remedies for the international con game. They want to convince us that two guys named Ken and John brought the whole place down. By themselves.

Why no mention of the odd fact that the same criminals who ran these fraudulent schemes are now in charge of the entire economy, put into those positions by our "Change" President. Why no mention of the odd fact that all the hand-wringing and sighing at the national level by our government ("What to do, what to do?") omits any mention of the clear remedy of seizing the money that has been taken, putting it into a national trust fund to be overseen by the courts, then let the investigations and prosecutions for these crimes proceed. Not a word about that.

They try to make this guy Lewis look like the chump, when he was pretty much an outsider. People like Paulson came in and maybe sold him a truckload of ice in Alaska, but Lewis is made to look like the shady guy.

All the other financial institutions are barely mentioned. Yet they were almost all doing the same fraudulent transactions. The difference is that their friend Paulson handed them billions of dollars to rescue them, let them cover up their failings, while he let Merrill and Lehman go down the toilet as scapegoats. Why didn't Frontline mention all the other criminals, all the other major financial institutions? Funding for this program is provided by ..... The same reason our government won't do a thing to go after these criminals. PBS gets their money from where? The federal government and Corporations.

I really wonder about any claim to independence by the people who made this one hour program. It's beginning to feel like the Obama administration and the criminals they've put in charge of our economy have completed the new Propaganda Scheme for the nation: Tiny Green Shoots will save us all. Lehman and Merrill and the Bank of America were the bad guys, Thain and Lewis should be publicly reproached. End of story.

Now let's not look at the past anymore, let's all just look at the future.

The next PSA we see from the federal government will probably show Obama, Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner in little tiny ballerina skirts singing that song from Annie: "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you're only a Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaay AaaaaaaaaaaaWaaaaaaay.

Close your eyes. Try to imagine Hank Paulson in a red curly wig, starring in his own show on Broadway. We could call it "Hankie." "Tomorrow, tomorrow ...."

Summer Songs: Martha and the Vandellas, "Dancin In The Streets"

Summer Songs: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B"

Summer Songs: The Drifters, "Up On The Roof"

Summer Songs: "Summer In The City" - The Lovin' Spoonful

Unemployment Footnotes: Actual Unemployment As Of May 2009: 16.4%.

The U.S. Department of Labor has a terrific web-site full of charts, statistics, and reports including specifically a sad report of the number of Americans thrown out of work every month. As with so many "official" reports, you need to read the footnotes to understand what any of it means.

On the unemployment field, here's a summary: more Americans were thrown out of work in May, 2009. Another 350,000 Americans lost their jobs last month. That's another 350,000. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm The "baby-green shoots" mantra from the federal government tells us to ignore this information, that it's not as bad as it could be, but the cumulative effect of jobs being taken out of this country is devastating. Every single person who loses their job will likely also run up tremendous debt trying to survive, cash in their IRAs, maybe lose homes and cars, and spend years trying to dig themselves out of the hole. It keeps getting worse. It is a really bad time in our country for working people.

But of more importance, for those trying to gauge just how bad things are, we need to remember that the "official" unemployment rate for May of 2009 of 9.4% is not the "real" unemployment rate in this country, certainly not an accurate picture of what's going on in the jobs area of life for most people.

The Department of Labor includes a second number, which I call the "actual" unemployment level, which shows at a minimum 16.4% unemployment. This measure includes people who only can find part-time work (so they can't pay their bills) but want full-time and can't find it, as well as other categories such as "discouraged workers" -- people who have been job-hunting recently, but technically do not comply with the labor department criteria for "unemployed."

It is of course important to realize that minorities often have an unemployment rate twice that of the "general" (white) population, which means unemployment in minority communities may be over 30%.

Table A-12. Alternative measures of labor underutilization

Seasonally adjusted

May 2009

"Official" Unemployed As Of May, 2009
9.4%

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate): 9.4%.

Total Percentage "Actual" Unemployed In U.S. As of May, 2009

16.4%

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers: 16.4%.

NOTE: Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past.

Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job.

Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule

For more information, see "BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures," in the October 1995 issue of the Monthly Labor Review.


http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

Shoots? I Don't See No Stinkin' Shoots.

Why do so many Americans pretend that we are all children? There seems to be a tinkerbell theory prevalent in parts of our country. A belief that if we pretend we are children, and have child-like beliefs and aspirations, then we can fool the world, and everyone will think we are innocent. We can go out during the day and rape, pillage and plunder in our business activities, but go home at night and watch a child's movie or cartoon for "family" time, and we will become pure again. We can go out in our religions and condemn and hate and advocate the killing and murder of anyone who does not believe as we do, but then if we bow our heads in prayer: voila, innocent as the newborn babe. We can steal elections, try to enslave and oppress whole groups inside our country, lie, cheat, and steal in trying to get "our" politicians into office, but then put on some nice clothes and show up for the party, and pretend to just be just some sweet kids out for fun.

Oh yeah. It's not a film. It's not an "animated" feature. It's a cartoon. I'm sick of seeing a listing for what is called a "movie," but then the description further down explains it is an "animated feature." No. It's a cartoon. We're not all children, and we adults may choose to go see real movies -- the kind with actors in them -- as opposed to simply watching cartoon-drawings created by some middle-aged pedophiles who always draw the little girls as having tiny waists and very large buttocks. What is it about those animators anyway? Do they have to be perverts to get the job. It's like that whole scoutmaster issue.

This whole Christian Nation is the same thing. Slimey, Scummy, Smarmy, Despicable People walk around with these huge crucifixes hanging around their necks, telling everyone "Jesus Christ Is My Personal Savior," gloating, bragging, telling the world that they are superior human beings, God has saved them, their miserable, corrupt, lazy, self-centered narcissistic lying cheating sacks of crap. And they think that some divine being touched them with a magic wand, like a fairy godmother, and now they are "saved," and soon they will have pretty little wings and float through the air with all the other nice people. You know what's the weirdest part about this whole Christian thing? Jesus' whole teaching was about helping the less fortunate. But American Christians never do anything for anybody else. Ever. They don't have to: they're saved!

It's the oddest thing, you let some guy duck your head into a swimming pool and you come out with some life-time pass that excuses you from ever having to do anything to help another person. It's like people get those "I'm a Friend Of The Police" decals for their cars, and they can speed or park in a handicapped zone forever because they kicked-back a few bucks to the cops. Because American Christianity is all "internal" -- it's unrelated to actions. "I believe," and therefore I'm saved. No action required. If you have sentiment, you are saved. If you tear up when someone says God, or Jesus, you are saved. If you walk right over the starving bodies of poor people in your town, and don't bother to help them, but you loudly sing some religious song on Sunday, you are saved. It's exactly the type of absurdity that only a child could believe.

Our economy is in a depression. Please, let's not spar, we're not children. It's a depression. Or worse. Our economy has collapsed. The truth of the severity is being hidden from us by our politicians, the media, and the Corporate Dictators that run everything. They don't want us to know just how bad it is. So they lie. They turn the entire government over to some criminal Insiders from Wall Street, and let them give billions of dollars of my money to Wall Street and to the Banks. And they sing us lullabies at night, and tell us "there there, lay down your head, don't you fret, everything will be okay." Yeah, like I'd trust somebody from Wall Street. Or the government. Wall Street is in charge. I am saved.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Millions of jobs have been ripped out of this country and sent to third world countries because the Corporations can use slave labor in those other countries. Those jobs are not coming back. Unless, that is, we cancel the "free" trade agreements and bar any imports of products from any American business that has taken its jobs elsewhere. Which is what we should do. When they tell us that globalization is good -- that's another lie, a story for children. "It's good that your job has gone away. Trust us." "Globalization" just means that millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and will never again in their life have steady work or a living wage.

The "new" government has made its priorities clear. First they announce that the U.S. War Against The Middle East will go on for decades, and will require billions more in funding. So our military can serve as personal muscle for the Oil Corporations as they go about the middle east and steal all the resources. Bush went after Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama sees him those two then raises on Pakistan and (possibly by fomenting instability in) Iran. Who's next?

Second, the "new" government announces that they have given billions more of our money to Wall Street. The same people who have stolen our pensions, destroyed our economy, are rewarded by being given hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Next, they announce: Oops, no more money, we have to tighten our belts, no jobs programs, no healthcare, no education assistance, no retraining, no nothing for the citizens of this country. We can't afford it. All our money has been given away to the wealthiest people in this country, the criminals who have stolen everything from the rest of us. And for war. Much of our money goes to war, more war.

That's the "change" government of Obama. Because it's really not Obama in charge. It's the Corporations. And it's the Democrats in Congress, probably the most corrupt (by dollar amount of bribes taken) group of politicians who ever existed in the world. "Our" Democrats. Sell-outs and traitors to a person.

Now we hear the Obama administration and the Democrats explaining, setting the table for why we don't need any help for the citizens of this country. No jobs programs, no healthcare, no retraining, no education, nothing. But that's okay, we don't really need it because: THERE ARE GREEN SHOOTS RISING FROM THE GROUND, SHOWING THEIR LITTLE BABY FACES, GREETING THE SUN OF THE NEW MORNING. http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20090510/pl_cq_politics/politics3114220

Just like in a cartoon. I'm surprised they don't have a soundtrack in the background with a dog playfully barking, birds singing, a soft breeze blowing: shoots, there are green shoots everywhere, we are saved.

Shoots? That's it? Should we make Shoot Soup? Try to live off of that?

I hate to be the one who blows up the mirage, but I don't see no stinkin' shoots. I see millions of Americans who are unemployed, millions more have lost their savings and pensions, millions have lost their homes or will soon lose their homes, millions have no healthcare, millions have no future. And all the while their overcrowded neighborhoods receive less social service support, and are saturated by guns, drugs and violence. Shoots? I don't see no stinkin' shoots.

And now we learn, to cap off this disgusting cartoonish propaganda system, that the Re-Virgin movement has again reared its ugly head. Yes, Sarah Palin's daughter who had a child out of wedlock, the Republican definition of slut, whore and tramp, she can be saved again and become a virgin again. Thank God. I was fearful in a time of the complete collapse of our economy and destruction by corruption and rot of our government, in a time when our country is being turned into a brutal war machine attacking the whole world in quest for empire, that we might actually have to learn to live with the possibility that adult females past a certain age are not virgins. And furthermore, that adult men should keep their noses out of women's private business, and stop obsessing over their desire to have sex with little girls. Virgins.

I've never heard a woman carry on about wanting to have sex with a virgin male. I have heard of 40 year old American businessmen going to Thailand and "renting" a 10-year-old girl to have sex with because they really wanted to have sex with a virgin. Which, I guess in their mind, if they are really just a little child, a cartoon figure, they can look at themselves as the nice, clean-faced young boy with a nice clean-faced young girl, see the whole episode as a "crush," an innocent affection for a sweet little girl. Although I personally see it as rape and perversion. But then again, I've never been a fan of "animated" features, preferring real movies with actors instead.

I'll take my reality straight-up. Harsh as it may be.

Here's my idea: the people of the United States should do what the people of Iran are doing. Get out in the streets and shut the whole place down, either throw every single politician out of office and start over again, or force them to start working for us instead of for the Corporations.

If absolute power creates absolute corruption, then the only logical response to absolute corruption is to absolutely shut everything down and start all over again. This bus is driving off the cliff.

Guantanamo Torture: Kind Of Like A Frat-Boy Gang Rape Party -- In A Hospitality Suite.

The more we know, the sicker it is.

It now turns out that not only did the U.S. and its mercenaries, psychotics and goon squads enjoy torturing prisoners at Guantanomo, but we actually extended official invitations to delegations of psychotics from other countries to come join in the fun.

The U.S. was running Guantanamo like a hospitality suite, with different groups of "guests" from different countries rotating in and out, getting a chance to brutalize men in ropes and hand-cuffs, take pictures, jerk off, maybe rape the prisoners too. It was a multinational, multi-cultural experience. Group Rape for the international set. The "elite" of the world are "invited" by the U.S. to come to Cuba and torture people.

Being well-mannered hosts, the U.S. had its guards soften up the prisoners before the international torturers arrived to brutalize them. Ever the accommodating people.

The people being tortured were the Uighers -- some people from China, a small, unpopular group within their own country, apparently. They did nothing to hurt the U.S. They were apparently sold to the U.S. by Afghanis looking to make a quick buck. When the U.S. realized these people had done nothing at all that constitutes a crime -- had in no way harmed the U.S. -- instead of releasing them, or setting them free, the U.S. called the military dictatorship in China and asked if they wanted to come torture the Uighers. Maybe China wanted to make some claim against these people -- jaywalking?

After these innocent people were kidnapped and tortured by the U.S., then tortured by the Chinese "friends" of the U.S., and everybody agreed these people were innocent -- the U.S. nonetheless continued to keep them in prison for years. Years. Now they are slowly being released to other countries. It's just sickening.

See Ryan Grim at Huffington Post, link below.

"While at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002, Uighur detainees were interrogated, abused and threatened by a delegation from the People's Republic of China, recently liberated Uighurs told the Huffington Post in a phone interview from Bermuda."

"'When the Chinese delegation came we didn't really want to meet with them and answer their questions. They brought us out anyway,' said Khalil Manut through a translator. 'They made threats, turned down the temperature in the room, made the room very cold.'"

"'The Chinese interrogated each of the detainees in 2002. Basically they made many, many threats against them and against their families and even said, 'We will either take you back or we will make sure that you end up here for a long time. You will never be free,' and things like that,' said Manut."

"The Chinese delegation -- which the Uighurs estimated at five total interrogators -- questioned some of the Uighurs for 18 hours straight in the extreme cold, depriving them of food and sleep."

"They said, 'You're not talking now, [but] we have ways to make you talk when we take you back.' Basically implying they would torture us and get whatever out of us,' recalled Manut.
[T]he American guard's involvement in the Chinese interrogation was one of the most troubling parts. ... It's one of the most shameful parts of this shameful episode. Not only did [the Americans] allow the Chinese delegation to intimidate and scare these men to death, our American soldiers were told to soften them up for the interrogation."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/16/uighurs-us-let-chinese-ab_n_216332.html

Bored Obama Wants A New War: North Korean Ships To Be Assaulted By U.S. Navy. (Pot Calls Kettle Black).

Back in the early days of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the Soviet Union was believed to be hauling missile parts to Cuba, so they could be an imminent threat to our nation 90 miles offshore (U.S. Propaganda) or so Cuba could defend its new revolution against the threatened and anticipated attacks and invasion from the U.S. (Cuba Propaganda). So we got what became known as the Cuban Missile Blockade. The world held its breath as two hostile superpower nations with stockpiles of nuclear weapons confronted each other on the open seas. Terrible times.

Cuba's position was borne out in time, as the U.S. repeatedly attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro, to murder civilians, set loose paid terrorists to try to blow up civilian airplanes and create chaos in the country so it would be softened up for a U.S.-sponsored coup, embargoed, boycotted, set up an entire radio network designed to barrage the people of Cuba with crazy propaganda to destabilize the country, and provided millions of dollars every year to a group of old, lazy, Cuban-expatriotes in Florida who spend most of the year sitting around the private "social" clubs crying about the good old days when they were goons for the Mafia, and go out once a year and parade around the block with signs saying "Cuba Libre!." All the young kids cheer because they think these old guys mean "Drinks all around."

Even now, almost 50 years after the Cuban Revolution threw out the Mafia and the U.S. Criminals and Corporations, our government still will not allow me to go to Cuba on a vacation. It's "too dangerous." A tiny island, a poor people, subject to 50 years of the wrath of the biggest military nation in the world. What a disgrace.

But however you view history, the fact is that Cuba is very close to the U.S., and certainly it is understandable that the U.S. would not have wanted nuclear weapons set up there and pointed at Florida. Although personally I've never really liked Florida, so I'm ambivalent on the subject at best.

What other really stupid and dangerous policies did our government adopt back in the post-war years of anti-communist hysteria? Among other things, we sent U.S. military troops into Korea, and engaged in a long, ultimately pointless war against the North Koreans. We never left. We divided the country in two, cut off and embargoed, blockaded North Korea, watched for decades as a large percentage of their population starved to death, and issued routine propaganda releases saying it's their own fault. The U.S. attacked what became North Korea almost 60 years ago and has been essentially poised on the border ever since ready to pounce at a moment's weakness. No wonder North Korea is ruled by such a militaristic government: they've been under threat from the largest military in the world for over 60 years. Who benefits from this insanity? The Corporations, the Defense Industry. Nobody else.

Now President Obama, pursuant to the Bush/Cheney/Obama theory of American Empire, has decided that the U.S. has the right to "confront" any ship anywhere in the world, stop it, threaten to attack it, inspect it, control it, without any apparent restrictions at all. This is an assault -- a threat of a battery. The battery would be any unlawful or unwanted "touching," such as having U.S. military people board a ship in international waters without the consent of the ship's captain. We are so arrogant and so illegal in everything we do. Laws have no effect on our government at all. Aren't we behaving just like the pirates we condemn? Except that we've got bigger ships? And bigger guns?

Laws? What laws? Laws were meant to be broken.

The reason for the new U.S. policy of using our Navy as one big Pirate System to control all the international waters is because North Korea has, or may get, or may be shipping in, "arms" or nuclear technology. Not 90 miles from our coast anymore. The new American Empire provides that we have the absolute right to control every person and every country in the entire world. Think about it. What would we do if some other nation threatened to assault our ships in international waters? What better way to start a war.

I'm going to start calling this the Bush-Obama Regime. What change?

See article in today's New York Times, "U.S. to Confront, Not Board, North Korean Ships," by David E. Sanger, link below.

"The Obama administration will order the Navy to hail and request permission to inspect North Korean ships at sea suspected of carrying arms or nuclear technology, but will not board them by force, senior administration officials said Monday." ...

The United Nations is providing the legal support for these acts by the U.S.

"The planned American action stops just short of the forced inspections that North Korea has said that it would regard as an act of war. Still, the administration’s plans, if fully executed, would amount to the most confrontational approach taken by the United States in dealing with North Korea in years, and carries a risk of escalating tensions at a time when North Korea has been carrying out missile and nuclear tests. " ...

"Mr. Obama’s aides have said that while the new president is willing to re-engage in either the talks with North Korea and its neighbors, or in direct bilateral discussions, he will not agree to an incremental dismantlement of the North’s nuclear facilities. "

What would happen if North Korea said they are willing to discuss anything with the United States, but only after the U.S. permanently ends its wars in the middle east, removes their troops, and renounces their aggressive designs on that region? Unconditional demand to negotiations: "Mr. Obama, Tear Down Those Wars." Who, after all, is the proven aggressor and war-monger in this story?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/asia/17korea.html?_r=1&hpw

I'm not saying the North Korean government is an agent of peace. But as of today, the biggest warmonger in the world, the one that has killed the most people and is the biggest proven threat to other nations and to peace, is the United States. Not North Korea.

Quilapayun: "El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido." ("The People United Will Never Be Defeated")

Quilapayun is a musical group which was formed in Chile as part of the Nueva Cancion, performing with such other social-justice artists as Victor Jara and Inti-Illimani. This posting of a performance by the group below (from You Tube) says that this was a video of Quilapayun performing in front of the government buildings just a few days before the U.S.-directed coup and massacre in Chile which began on September 11, 1973. You can see the people standing in solidarity in the audience, supporting the new democratically-elected government led by president Salvador Allende.

As soon as the election results were in, the U.S. began working to overthrow Allende because he was a socialist, and he wanted to take control of the nation's resources for the people. The resources were claimed by western corporations, U.S. corporations, who called on the U.S. government to destroy Allende. Corporate Dictatorships. At the time this performance below was filmed, the government of Allende was already under economic attack and general threat by the United States. President Salvador Allende would be murdered by a U.S.-sponsored coup within a few days along with thousands of other Chileans.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes the military coup and installation of the Pinochet dictatorship as the first in what would become a pattern by the U.S. and multinational corporations: create or take advantage of a disaster (a military coup with lots of killing), immediately turn the control of the nation and the government over to western corporations and financial groups, have a brutal police and military force use extreme violence against the people to terrorize and subdue them, to prevent the people from fighting against the destruction of their country.

Thousands of Chilean citizens were slaughtered, thousands were "disappeared" -- picked up by goon squads in unmarked cars, murdered, their bodies thrown in ditches -- and thousands more were imprisoned without charges and tortured. Many of the torture victims who survived said that the voices of the people directing the torture were clearly Americans. We did this. Then the corporations create new laws (such as eliminate minimum wage and all workers' rights, eliminate unions, shut down the schools, cut all public services budget items, take all the tax money for the corporations, sign long-term contracts giving corporations ownership of all the resources of the country, suspend the constitution and all civil rights).

The song, El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido, is perhaps true in the long-run: "The People United Will Never Be Defeated." It was written in 1970 by Sergio Ortega (music) and Quilapayun (lyrics).

The song was written in support of the new government of Salvador Allende, which had been democratically elected by the people of Chile. The working class and poor people of that country believed that Salvador Allende represented them, and would work to help them to have better lives, and to stop the western corporations from stealing the resources and paying slave wages to the people of that country.

The pro-western upper classes in Chile hated Salvador Allende and all his policies and programs. They wanted to continue the system in Chile by which the small upper-class received enormous wealth from the western corporations that dominated the economy, and the mass of the people suffered great poverty. The upper classes worked with the right-wing and the military, and worked with the United States to try to destroy the new government of Salvador Allende by an economic boycott, to begin, and eventually by a U.S.-directed and sponsored military coup which resulted in the murder of Allende and thousands of Chileans, and installed the dictator Pinochet to rule over Chile for decades.

The coup took place on September 11, 1973, and many of those who were not murdered fled the country and mounted a resistance around the world. The song "El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido" became the unofficial anthem of the Chilean resistance to the dictatorship of Pinochet and to American corporate control of their country.

Another group from the Nueva Cancion movement in Chile, Inti-Illimani, recorded the song and their version became well-known around the world.

The song has been adopted in many other countries among groups rallying to protest against right-wing corporate control and in favor of workers’ rights. One version was recorded by a group in the Philippines and re-titled "Song of Victory," and has become popular among progressives in that country. There was a Ukrainian version that became popular in that country. The song was adopted by the Greek left party named Coalition of the Radical Left and used by them during the 2007 elections in their country. The Chilean version (Spanish-language) is popular throughout the world. It is very common to see people in nations around the world demonstrating against war or in support of workers' rights and carrying banners and chanting "El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido."

El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,
el pueblo unido jamás será vencido
De pie, cantar que vamos a triunfar.
Avanzan ya banderas de unidad.
Y tú vendrás marchando junto a mí
y así verás tu canto y tu bandera
florecer, la luz de un rojo amanecer
anuncia ya la vida que vendrá.

De pie, luchar el pueblo va a triunfar.
Será mejor la vida que vendrá
a conquistar nuestra felicidad
y en un clamor mil voces de combate
se alzarán dirán canción de libertad
con decisión la patria vencerá.

Y ahora el pueblo que se alza en la lucha
con voz de gigante gritando: adelante!

El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,
el pueblo unido jamás será vencido

La patria está forjando la unidad
de norte a sur se movilizará
desde el salar ardiente y mineral
al bosque austral unidos en la lucha
y el trabajo irán la patria cubrirán,
su paso ya anuncia el porvenir.

De pie, cantar el pueblo va a triunfar
millones ya, imponen la verdad,
de acero son ardiente batallón
sus manos van llevando la justicia y la razón
mujer con fuego y con valor
ya estás aquí junto al trabajador.

The people united will never be defeated,
The people united will never be defeated
Stand up on your feet and sing. Because we are going to win.
Flags of unityare now advancing.
And you will come marching together with me,
and so you'll see your song and your flag blossom.
The light of a red dawn already announces
the life to come.

Stand up on your feet and fight, the people are going to win.
The life to come will be better
To conquer our happiness
and a clamor of a thousand fighting voices will rise,
speaking a song of freedom.
With determination the fatherland will win.

And now the people, who are rising in struggle
with a giant voice crying out: Move Forward!

The people united will never be defeated,
The people united will never be defeated

The fatherland is forging unity,
from north to south they're mobilizing.
From the burning salt and mineral mines
to the southern forests
united in struggle and labor
they go covering the fatherland.
Their steps already announce the future.

Stand up on your feet and sing,
the people are going to win.
Millions now are imposing the truth
Their steel battalions are on fire,
taking in their hands justice and reason.
Womanwith fire and courage is already here
Along side the worker.

Let's All Leave The Democratic Party

The Democrats are a corrupt organization, similar in most respects to the Republicans, financed by bribes and kick-backs from businesses, the rich, and foreign countries. They hide their wrongdoing by a careful propaganda war against their own supporters which would confuse the most informed voter. It is 1984, it is new-speak, it is sophisticated propaganda. The reason they pay so much money to PR/consultant firms is because propaganda works. It does what it's supposed to do: it fools the people.

For example, the Democrats rode into office on a two-year horrendously expensive campaign of "Change," demanding that we all tithe to them, our future Kings and Queens who promised to free us from the despotic Bush/Cheney regime. Yet once the Democrats took control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, they have done nothing but reaffirm and ratify everything that the Bush/Cheney regime did for the past 8 years.

Obama ran as an anti-war candidate, but since he got into office he has affirmed the wars, escalated the one in Afghanistan, started a new one against Pakistan, appointed Hillary Clinton ("I will annihilate Iran") as Secretary of State and allows her to intensify the rhetoric and presumably the secret interventions into Iran, and recently had one of his spokespersons tell the public that the U.S. military will occupy Iraq for at least another ten years. What change?

Obama's Department of Justice has supported the Bush/Cheney regime in all its dictatorial and illegal war-crimes policies including the "right" to kidnap, torture, and murder without any consequences (Obama just said they won't torture in Cuba -- but did not stop the practice in the CIA black-hole secret prisons around the world).

They have intervened in every lawsuit by an injured victim trying to receive compensation for being kidnapped and tortured, and they intervene on the side of Bush/Cheney to stop the lawsuit, stop the truth from being revealed. They refuse to let the public see the evidence of torture and war crimes, refuse to release prisoners wrongly and illegally held, refuse to release prisoners against whom there is no legitimate evidence of a crime.

The Obama DOJ refuses to enforce the law against the rich and powerful, which is the most important indicia of a dictatorship: the rich and powerful can get away with anything, even murder. The police and military state can kill working people (in this country and others) without consequence. The prison industry flourishes from the millions of small-time criminals locked up for decades for minor property crimes while the rich and powerful kill by the thousands, and nobody does a thing to hold them accountable.

Obama and the Democrats ran as the party that would stop the looting and plundering of America by Wall Street and the CEOs. But the fact is they have been the primary party (even under Bush) in supporting the hundreds of billions in bail-out money given to Wall Street. They support this theft of taxpayer money because Wall Street gives the Democratic politicians enormous bribes and kick-backs.

They refuse to conduct hearings, investigations, prosecutions of the criminals on Wall Street, which includes pretty much every person who worked there for the past ten years, despite the fact that these criminals have defrauded the public, and plundered and looted our country, perhaps destroying our economy and setting the stage for most of us to live the rest of our lives in dire poverty. They've put hundreds of millions of dollars into their own pockets of stolen money, yet Obama's Justice Department refuses to seize the assets or prosecute these people for international financial crimes against the world. They've stolen people's jobs, homes, and retirement funds, and the Democrats do nothing to try to take that money back and help the people of this country. And all along, Wall Street keeps paying the big bribes to the Democrats.

Obama and the Democrats claimed they would re-take control of the economy to help the citizens, yet since they've been in office they have done nothing to create jobs except a few part-time, temporary census workers hired by Obama.

Obama and the Democrats claimed they would get tough on the financial sector, and proudly proclaim their credit card "reform" bill which did not one thing to help the people of this country. They refused to cap interest rates, which is the only part of the credit card transaction that really matters.

The Democrats have been playing the Supreme court game for weeks, and apparently will for months: those mean old Republicans won't let us confirm Sotomayor. The problem with this story is that they only need 51 votes to confirm, so they should have immediate hearings then vote, and stop the fund-raising nonsense of turning the impotent Republicans into the bogeyman.

The Democrats blame the lobbyists, they blame the cost of campaigns, they blame the chamber of commerce, the blame the "powerful" healthcare and financial industry, say they won't let the Democrats do what they want. "Powerful" interests are working against them. Nonsense. Write the bill, vote on the bill, pass the bill. I wish my job was that easy. But instead of doing their job, the Democrats spend most of their time soliciting and accepting bribes. None of the lobbyists would be employed if the politicians would simply refuse to take bribes.

If the Democrats want to help the people, they should pass the strictest bribery law, strictest campaign finance laws imaginable. Stop the corruption. Stop taking bribes, stop selling their votes.

The efforts to pass the Employee Free Choice Act ("EFCA") have supposedly bogged down in Congress, the Democrats claiming they "can't" get it passed because the Chamber of Commerce and corporate lobbyists are battling against it. I don't blame the Chamber of Commerce or the lobbyists. They do what they say they will do: represent businesses. Who represents the people? Nobody.

Generally a left or progressive movement is developed at least in part through a political party that works on the local level to help organize people around the important issues, such as jobs, job security, benefits, environment, education, healthcare, and works on the national level to support those policies. But the Democrats don't do that. All the Democrats do is ask for money. And the Obama people ask for blind loyalty, labor, and money. I'm tapped out.

I just got an e-mail last week asking me to go out and campaign and lobby in support of Obama's health care reform policy. What policy? I replied: what policy is it that I'm supporting? What exactly is it that Obama is promising to do for me? What change? But they don't bother to tell me that, just as Obama has not bothered to tell us what exactly is it that he supports. It's beginning to appear that what he supports is just another corporate give-away. He will order all Americans to buy health insurance. Then "HOPE" that the costs come down. That kind of HOPE I don't need. No thanks.

I suppose Obama's next anti-foreclosure policy will consists of ordering all Americans to cure their defaults and begin paying their mortgages on a timely basis. He can deal with the issue of unemployment by ordering all Americans to go out and get a full-time job. End hunger in America by ordering all the citizens to begin buying food every day and eating it. How stupid do the Democrats think we are?

We hear "the left" blamed for the failures to stop Bush and the Republicans. But the primary blame falls on the Democratic Party which, under the guidance of Bill Clinton and Terry McCauliffe, became the Party of Corruption, the corporate party, the party of vote-selling and bribes and kick-backs. I don't know if it can be reformed. I don't think so -- I think it's too far gone.

Everyone is screaming that the Republican party is on its last legs. Maybe we should push the Democratic Party over the cliff at the same time, let new parties rise up and begin to provide leadership in this country. Such as, for example, if this healthcare "reform" goes down as expected, with nothing for the people, maybe millions of us can change our registration to Independent all at the same time. Maybe that would get somebody's attention.

The Democratic Party serves to prevent a progressive movement from taking shape by promising to do things to help the people, failing to do anything, then lying and deceiving the public by claiming that some evil Republican force prevents them from doing their job.

This is the perfect storm for the Democratic Party: they've got all the power, the Republicans are busted, and the Democrats can do what they want. But all we see are millions of dollars being paid to the Democrats by the corporations and a continuation of the Bush/Cheney policies.

I'm about ready to become an Independent, remove that little (d) from after my name. I'll send a Good-bye Card: Dear Nancy, Harry, Barack, Hillary and Rahm: This is good-bye forever. I'm just not that into you.

Siberian Tigers

Siberian Tigers used to live throughout Western and Central Asia, and eastern Russia, but they were systematically exterminated by people seizing land for other purposes. The only Siberian Tigers still living in the wild are located in far eastern Siberia, where they are now, finally, a protected species.

There are only a few hundred Siberian Tigers living in captivity. Which is why it was such good news that on June 1, in a zoo in China, a Siberian Tiger gave birth to six cubs. Happy Birthday to everyone, and good job, Mom.


Siberian Tigers are one of the top 10 most endangered species in the world. Also one of the most beautiful animals in the world.

A Siberian Tiger male is often four feet tall, seven feet long, and weighs up to 700 pounds. The female is smaller, coming in at 200-400 pounds.

The Decemberists

The "Decemberists" is the name of a rock band from Portland, Oregon. The members are Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query and John Moen. Their fifth album, "The Hazards of Love," was released in March of this year on the Capitol Records label.

The Rake's Song

I had entered into a marriage
In the summer of my twenty-first year
And the bells rang for our wedding
Only now do I remember it clear
Alright, alright, alright

No more a rake and no more a bachelor
I was wedded and it whetted my thirst
Until her womb start spilling out babies
Only then did I reckon my curse
Alright, alright, alright
Alright, alright, alright

First came Eziah with his crinkled little fingers
Then came Charlotte and that wretched girl Dawn
Ugly Myfanwy died on delivery
Mercifully taking her mother along
Alright, alright, alright

What can one do when one is widower
Shamefully saddled with three little pests
All that I wanted was the freedom of a new life
So my burden I began to divest
Alright, alright, alright
Alright, alright, alright

Charlotte I buried after feeding her foxglove
Dawn was easy, she was drowned in the bath
Eziah fought but was easily bested
Burned his body for incurring my wrath
Alright, alright, alright

And that's how I came your humble narrator
To be living so easy and free
Expect you think that I should be haunted
But it never really bothers me
Alright, alright, alright
Alright, alright, alright




Eli, the Barrowboy

Eli, the barrowboy, you're the old town
Sells coal and marigolds and he cries out all down the day
Below the tamarac she is crying
Corn cobs and candlewax for the buying, all down the day
Would I could afford to buy my love a fine robe
Made of gold and silk arabian thread
She is dead and gone and lying in a pine grove
And I must push my barrow all the day
And I must push my barrow all the day

Eli, the barrowboy, when they found him
Dressed all in corduroy, he had drowned in the river down the way
They laid his body down in a churchyard
But still when the moon is out, with his pushcart, he calls down the day
Would I could afford to buy my love a fine gown
Made of gold and silk arabian thread
But I am dead and gone and lying in a church ground
But still I push my barrow all the day
Still I push my barrow all the day

Black Panther Cubs Larisa and Sipura

Germany's two newest stars are female black panther cubs named Larisa and Sipura who were born in a zoo in Berlin in April of this year.

Thanks to JMBHB for sending this story to me.

"Globalism" Is Just Another Name For Corporate Dictatorships: Nigeria, the Oil Corporations, And The Murder Of Ken Saro-Wiwa.

All the rich people, all the politicians, all the business people tell us that "Globalism" is wonderful. Globalism is here, it's now, you can't fight it, we'll all benefit from it. But that's just a lie, intended to fool the citizens and prevent them from standing up to fight against this terrible force. "Globalism" means that a few powerful and rich people from all around the world pool their money and work together to take over and control the world. They take everything in their new "Global" institutions called Corporations, and the average person gets nothing.

"Globalism" is just another word for Corporate Dictatorships. Corporations run everything from their secret meetings with their secret hidden shareholder groups, they exist only for the purpose of maximizing profit, they do not answer to any government or any group of citizens, they now have private military and mercenaries like Blackwater to do their killing for them, and they will kill if necessary to continue their quest to take all the money for themselves, and to dominate the world. They're a lot like Fascists.

What is a Corporate Dictatorship? It is the dominant form of governance and control in the world today. Although territory is still divided up into what we call "nations," the fact is that the major international corporations have bribed so many politicians in so many governments, have overthrown democratic governments and set up puppet military dictatorships, and have taken control of so much of the military and police forces of the world, that the corporations are the "real" governments. The corporations own most of the resources, take most of the money, dictate what will happen inside countries including deciding what countries will be invaded, they own the media and strictly control what information is or is not made available to the people, and they decide which people will be murdered, who will get a job, who will eat, who will starve, who shall live and who shall not.


It does not matter what country you go to: they are all controlled by the multinational corporations. Which, in turn, are owned by a small group of very rich people from almost every country in the world. The Bushes and the bin Ladens, the Clintons and the Saudi Princes, the Queen of England and the President of Nigeria, the Russian Mafia and the Mexican drug lords: they are united in one thing, which is that they are rich, they pool their money in offshore private (and secret) Hedge Funds, Private Equity Funds, secret Swiss Banks, and they work together to take over more and more of the world.

There is no such thing as patriotism or loyalty to country in this group: they only want money. 2% of the people of the world own 50% of the assets of the world. They have everything, they want more, they use their wealth and power to grab more, they will kill to get more, and most of the world has nothing. These people are destroying the world not just by inequality, but by dumping poison and destroying the earth and water and air everywhere they go. They don't care.


Corporations bribe politicians to get them to do what the corporations want. They bribe the politicians in the United States: they all take money and sell their votes. Both parties do. It's public knowledge. The war in Iraq, for example, was supported not just by the horrible people in the Bush Administration but also by many Democrats in Congress. Those who did not "support" it also often did not speak against it. But why? Because they receive bribes and kick-backs from the Oil Corporations which wanted the U.S. to invade Iraq so they could steal its oil. And they receive bribes and kick-backs from the Military Defense Industry that makes billions off of wars.

So "our" politicians, the ones who knew this war was unlawful, knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or al Queda -- "our" politicians too often said nothing against the war. They just took their bribes and kept their mouths shut. Both of the major political parties (Democrat and Republican) are owned by the Corporations, although there are individual politicians who have integrity and do try to work to help the people of this country. They are in the minority.

In other countries the Corporate Dictatorship is more open and brutal than in the U.S. The Corporations sometimes hire mercenaries to overthrow the existing democratic government and install a puppet government in its place. Sometimes the puppet government will consist of people who have spent their lives working for the corporations. For example, Hamid Karzai, the head of the puppet regime in Afghanistan, used to work for the California-based Oil Corporation named UNOCAL. http://www.counterpunch.org/tomenron.html Then the corporations get the puppet government to sign an agreement saying the corporation can take all the resources of a country, and pay a few pennies to the government. The politicians take the money, the corporations take the resources, the people starve.

When people say "why is Africa so poor, why are the people starving," you need to understand that the western countries and corporations did just that: they go in, install puppet military dictatorship governments, steal the resources, pollute the country so that nobody can survive, and the people are left with nothing.

The people are disregarded. It is a Corporate Dictatorship because only the wishes of the corporation are enforced. It is often brutal and murderous, because the Corporation hires private mercenaries like Blackwater, or pays enough to the local government to simply get them to use their police and military to kill anyone that tries to stop the Corporation from stealing the resources.


Remember reading about the European Explorers? The Kings or Queens would finance these men to go out in ships to other countries and do what? Kill the people and steal their wealth. Sometimes they went in search of fountains of youth, but more often there were more practical things on the shopping list like precious metals and jewels. Any country that had these resources was quickly declared to "belong" to the Europeans who had sponsored the "Explorers." Any local who tried to stop the Europeans was murdered, and all the wealth of the "discovered" nation was stolen and sent back to Europe.

Well it's basically the same thing today. Except today the Kings and Queens are really just rich people who hide their identities behind the Corporate form. Actually groups of them from all countries in the world get together and combine their money in things like secret Hedge Funds, or Private Equity Funds. Those Funds are used to support "Explorers" (Corporations) in going into countries and stealing their resources, bringing back incredible wealth to the already rich people in these small groups. People who remain hidden, who don't want the rest of us to know who they are.

How many of our politicians, for example, receive millions of dollars from Corporations while they are in office or after they leave, or through their spouses or children, and hide it away in private Hedge Funds or Equity Funds off-shore? We know for sure that when Bill Clinton left office he was given almost a billion dollars from Corporations and from foreign countries who apparently profitted from the policies he adopted while he was President, such as the Globalism-Is-Us doctrine which has so enriched the Corporations and impoverished the citizens. Do we think he's unique? He was a civil servant, well-paid by the Corporate masters. And as a result of the Globalism (Corporate Dictatorship) policies that Bill Clinton put into place, with "free" trade treaties and policies, millions of jobs have been taken out of the United States, millions of Americans have been thrown into poverty, and the Corporations just keep getting richer. Thanks again, Bill.

Many of our national politicians, when they leave office, are immediately given cushy jobs as "consultants," or "advisers," by the Corporations. Because they belong to the Corporations, they sold their votes for years and they sold out the American public.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq, we were just letting the oil corporations use our military to go into Iraq and seize its oil. Everything that has happened since then, all the stories, all the killing, all the lies, all that "God-made-me-do-it" babble from Bush, everything that has been uncovered, has not changed that central fact: we went in there as a private security force to let the Oil Corporations steal Iraq's Oil. Period. The real terrorists in this scenario wear suits and sit in boardrooms for major oil companies.


The U.S. military is also saturated throughout the world to put some drug growers and dealers out of business to the benefit of their competition, while somebody gets a big cut of the world drug business. The biggest recipients likely are sitting inside corporate board rooms, probably on Wall Street, counting up the hundreds of millions they make from the cocaine and heroin trade. The U.S. is not in a war "on" drugs. We're in a war to help one side control the drug business and profit from it.

Identify the most valuable resources in the world, and you will always find the corporate dictatorships own and control the trade in the resource, use the military and police to enforce that control, and kill anyone who tries to stop them. Raise your hand if you really think that some dude named Jose who lives in Tijuana gets most of the money from the world drug trade? Not.

The Corporations control enough countries, have enough mercenaries, enough weapons and missiles and airplanes and governments under their control, that they are in effect a global Corporate Dictatorship with tentacles spread around the world. The corporations are big, and wherever they go they create puppet governments, corruption, torture and oppression and extreme poverty for the people. And murder. Don't forget murder.

Nigeria is a good example of the Corporate Dictatorship. This week Shell (of the Royal Dutch variety) agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a lawsuit against Shell based upon their colluding with the military dictatorship of Nigeria in the murder of a local citizens' group which opposed Shell in its efforts to steal all of Nigeria's oil and leave the people destitute, the land polluted.


One of the people murdered by the Nigerian dictatorship was a well-known writer named Ken Saro-Wiwa who, along with other citizens, engaged in peaceful protests against the Corporate Dictatorship and theft of their nation's resources. He was killed for opposing Shell in its quest to steal everything from that country. The claims in the lawsuit included crimes against humanity, and human rights abuses. Shell actually spent 13 years with a team of sophisticated big-city lawyers fighting that lawsuit and trying to get it thrown out of court. Only when they were finally faced with a trial did they agree to settle.

What happened is that Mr. Saro-Wiwa and some other citizens engaged in peaceful protests against Shell. The government arrested them, held a ridiculous military tribunal trial like we do in Guantanamo, the stalinist definition of anti-democratic and illegal proceedings. They were found "guilty" by the dictatorship's military tribunal, and were executed. Eight men, murdered. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6364435.ece

According to the lawsuit, the corporate dictatorship Shell was annoyed that the citizens of Nigeria were protesting the destruction of their environment and theft of their resources by Shell. Shell didn't want the bad press. So Shell demanded the puppet government clamp down on Mr. Saro-Wiwa. Even after Mr. Saro-Wiwa and others were arrested on bogus charges, Shell's management intervened in the military tribunals to ensure that these men would be found guilty. And would be murdered by the government. According to the lawsuit, Shell's management met with Mr. Saro-Wiwa's brother at one point and offered to let him go free, and to live, if he would agree that he would stop organizing the citizens of Nigeria to protest Shell's theft of their resources and destruction of the environment. Keep that in mind the next time you pull into a Shell gas station. Proceed with caution, they play rough.

The Center for Constitutional Rights was one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in Nigeria in the lawsuit against Shell.

There are many groups inside Nigeria who are organized and fighting against the Corporate Dictatorship. Violence has increased as have kidnappings and sabotage of oil equipment. Last year Chevron, the U.S. oil company, was cleared by an American jury of involvement in the 1998 shooting by Nigerian soldiers of protesters who occupied an oil barge belonging to the company. I wonder why Chevron wasn't "tried" by a Nigerian jury, and wonder if the outcome might have been different if the Nigerian people got to vote on that one. Last month Nigerian militants bombed a Chevron pipeline in the region.


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6459634.ece
The people of Nigeria are desperately poor despite the fact that their nation is rich in resources. So what should happen in Nigeria? The people should go get every politician and insider who has made so much as a penny more than their salary over the past 50 years, seize their assets, and redistribute the money to the citizens of Nigeria. That would be the right and fair thing to do. And sue the oil companies, get money to clean up the environmental disaster they have created, cap off the oil, create their own national oil company, and only take such oil as can be done consistent with environmental safeguards so the people can live.

Amy Goodman also writes about this in her article titled "Chevron, Shell and the True Cost of Oil" (June 3, 2009), at the following link:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090526_chevron_shell_and_the_true_cost_of_oil

Finally, here is an excellent piece about the corporate dictatorship in Nigeria by the oil corporations, their puppet military dictatorship and goon squads of local thugs that they use as "muscle" to enforce their rule. It also shows the severe poverty of the people of that country who receive nothing while their resources are stolen by a European corporation, and their environment, and ability to survive, are destroyed by the corporation simply dumping oil on the land and in the water. It certainly provides a different perspective on the whole silly "eeke, there's pirates in the water" stories we've heard from the media recently. This was run on Current TV. Find Current TV on your listings and start watching it. http://current.com/ They've got some great reporting.

Any Compensation In Excess of $250,000 Should Not Be Deductible, And Should Be Taxed At 90%.

President Obama and Wall Street's biggest friend, Tim Geithner, just announced that they will not do anything to try to cap the salaries of the Wall Street Criminals. No surprise there. They just gave Wall Street Hundreds of Billions of Dollars which has been paid out to the insiders, all with the permission of the politicians in D.C. Why would the politicians suddenly "get tough?" It makes no sense. It's all just a show for the public.

The I.R.S. has general rules restricting business deductions to items which are not lavish or extravagant. In addition, salaries must be reasonable under the circumstances of what the person does. http://www.irs.gov/publications/p334/ch08.html#en_US_publink100025345

All Congress needs to do to stop the looting of our country by the CEOs and insiders is to say that the maximum compensation or consideration of any type (include the value of the whole package, including stock options, retirement, medical and other benefits) that can be deducted by a business is $250,000.

There is general law that prohibits the Board of Directors and corporate insiders from doing anything that is not in the best interest of the corporation. Incurring an expense which cannot be deducted would be the definition of waste, and would get get them all sued by the shareholders.

So let's just change the tax law. Let's get real. Cap deductions of compensation at $250,000.

And, to reinforce that, provide that any compensation of any type in excess of $250,000 will be taxed at 90%, not subject to any other deductions or offsets.

End of problem.

If the Democrats or Obama or Geithner wanted to stop the looting and plundering of our country, they could do so easily. The fact that they don't do so just shows that they don't want to. It's very lucrative for them. The CEOs, Wall Street, the insiders, the Corporate Dictatorship owns all the politicians in Congress, and pays them kick-backs for all the money they plunder from our country. And all the press releases and floor fights are just a circus put out to keep the public ignorant. And poor.

Stop Congress From Passing The War-And-Eurotrash-Bailout-Bill.

President Obama wants billions more of our taxdollar money.

Not to create jobs.

Not to provide healthcare to Americans.

Not to help our teachers and cops and firefighters to keep their jobs.

Not to increase unemployment compensation or pay for the healthcare for the un- and underemployed.

Not to fund daycare for working parents.

Not to pay for Americans to get such simple (but expensive) tests as mammograms and colonoscopies, which could save thousands of lives every year if only Americans could afford the tests.

Not to give jobs to the newly-unemployed auto workers, not to convert the auto factories into new green industries, not to create economic zones and employment education and training programs for our most-devastated regions like the Rust Belt.

Not to fund organic farms to stop agri-business with their Frankenstein laboratory-manufactured food-stuff which is taking over the world and probably will kill us all.

Not to provide flu shots for all of us. Not to fund the world Aids programs, as President Obama promised he would when he took office.

Not to provide medical care for injured vets, or jobs for those whose tours of duty are over.

Not to fund the international war crimes tribunal that we should be conducting right now to have investigations, hearings, prosecutions, imprisonment of every person from the Bush administration who participated in starting the war of aggression against Iraq, and all those who directed, authorized, approved, ratified torture.

Not to fund the financial crimes tribunals that we should be conducting right now to seize the assets of every person who worked on Wall Street during the past 10 years, arrest them, prosecute them, throw them in prison to rot for the rest of their useless and despicable lives.

Nope.

President Obama wants more money for more wars.

And he wants to send $100 Billion of U.S. Taxpayer Money to his friends, the Eurotrash who run Europe's version of Wall Street.

I call it the "War-And-Eurotrash-Bailout-Bill."

Just like our Wall Street Criminals need multi-million dollar bonuses to pay for their summers in the Hamptons, so too the Eurotrash Financial Criminals need multi-million dollar bonuses to pay for their summers at Cannes or Lake Como. Maybe while he was in Paris last week, Obama learned that simply nobody stays in Paris in August, so returned to the states with a renewed sense of urgency about the need to send $100 Billion of U.S. Taxpayer Money to his Eurotrash friends in Europe.

Think I'm kidding? See the articles below.

Firedoglake has a link to some key representatives that people should call and urge to vote against this combo War-And-EuroTrash-Bailout-Bill. The site is a little confusing, but I think if you just call any of those representatives and ask them to vote against this bill, you would be helping to stop it.
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental

No money for the Eurotrash. And you know what? Let's just end the wars and bring the troops home. Do we have to go so deep in debt trying to help the oil corporations destroy the entire middle east that we will all, for generations, sleep in gutters and beg for crumbs. Are the Democrats as insane as the Republicans were? Do all Americans need to die for Empire, in service of the Corporate Dictatorship? I'm sick of it. End the Wars. Now, not ten years from now. Now.

The International Monetary Fund ("IMF") is like a financial hitman that serves the corporate dictatorships of the U.S. and Western European countries in trying to take over all the resources of the world. Basically they are an arm of the uber-rich and are used to help set up puppet regimes and dictatorships to steal everything from local populations, turn over the resources of a country to western corporations, and charge obscene amounts to bankrupt the country and leave the people poor and helpless.

Now President Obama is trying to sneak through a big give-away of U.S. taxpayer money to the IMF. But he does not want a stand-alone bill that just says: "Steal Money From Americans, Send It To Eurotrash." Instead, he snuck this provision inside a new War Funding Bill. Trying to sneak it through. Supposedly the money would go to the IMF which would turn around and immediately give it to the biggest financial institutions in Europe -- European Wall Street -- to bail out their billionaire Eurotrash. With our money.

More money for war. More money for the rich. Nothing for working people.

"The Next Big Taxpayer Bailout? IMF Could Get Hundreds of Billions for European BanksBy Mark Weisbrot"
June 8, 2009, Firedoglake

"The bailout of private banks and financial institutions has become a touchy political issue in the United States, ever since President Bush’s Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson asked Congress for a $700 billion dollar blank check last September."

"Now the Obama administration is asking the Congress for $108 billion for the International Monetary Fund. This was in accordance with a plan that the administration has helped organize to raise $500 billion in additional funds for the IMF. This would add to the approximately $200 billion that the IMF has on hand, $100 billion in gold reserves, and another $250 billion that the Fund will create in its own currency. These are enormous sums of money that the IMF has never come close to before. "

"What is all this money for? There is an answer staring us in the face from the financial press: European banks."

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/the-next-big-taxpayer-bailout-imf-could-get-hundreds-of-billions-for-european-banks/

Notice how every single economic move by the big boys since Clinton got into office consists of looting and plundering the U.S. -- taking all the money out of our country, leaving us with nothing. Hedge funds (secret private banks for rich people), "offshore" private equity funds, secret Swiss bank accounts, major companies moving all their investments into third world countries. I'm beginning to think they're getting ready to nuke us -- not North Korea, but "our" people. Why else are they stealing all our money and leaving us with nothing?

See also: http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog/index.php?/archives/114-The-IMF-Accountability-Moment.html

Let the Eurotrash steal from their own people, just like the Wall Street Criminals steal from us. I'm sick of this betrayal by all our politicians and even more sick of bail-outs for the rich and powerful. And I'm really tired of these wars.

The Boys From Brazil

In the late 1970s, there was a book by Ira Levin, quickly made into a movie, called The Boys From Brazil. Here's the basic story: supposedly when the Nazis fled Germany after World War II, they took with them the sperm or DNA from Adolph Hitler so they could clone a bunch more Hitlers, or clone the perfect "Aryan" male-Nazi who would take power in the future, and make sure the world ended up being dominated by the Fascists.



Silly story, right?

Who would believe that somebody would create a bunch of test-tube Nazi males who would grow up to become indistinguishable blonde, bloodless, vacant-eyed, repulsive men, their faces covered with sagging folds of pale thin skin, each of them rotten to the core. And then these men would all be placed into some nation, "called upon" by their creators to step forward into leadership positions to preach the gospel of Fascism? What a ridiculous idea.




(Separated at birth?)

We Need Single-Payer, Medicare For All. And We Need To Strictly Regulate Or Shut Down Private Health Insurance Companies.

We hear the Democrats in Congress coming out loudly proclaiming that they would never do anything to take business away from their bffs, the Health Insurance Industry and the lobbyists for same who pay so much money in bribes to the politicians in Congress. "Why, if I didn't keep getting bribes from the health insurance industry, I wouldn't be able to buy myself castles, hideaways, gold bars and other useless crap," many Senators have been quoted as saying.

But the truth is that the Health Insurance Industry kills more Americans than the mafia or their gang-banger successors ever dreamed of killing. Ted Bundy looks up from the deepest recesses of hell and asks: "I don't get it -- they killed me, but these insurance guys not only get away with it, they also get paid big bonuses." The health insurance industry insiders should be sitting on death row with their names printed on little tiny needles for the torture and suffering they have caused to Americans, having in-house competitions and earning huge bonuses and free holidays for all the sick, weak, sufffering cancer patients they deny coverage and send to a coffin instead of a hospital bed.

Yet the Democrats receive so much money in bribes from this criminal enterprise known as the Health Insurance Industry, that they willingly turn the lives and health of American working people over to these institutions which see health care as a racket, and force people to pay exoribitant fees to see a doctor for 3 minutes and be told they should take drugs, which are not covered, then come back in 6 months if they're still alive and have a follow-up appointment.

Am I exaggerating?

Ask Patsy Bates, a 52 year old woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thank God she had private health insurance through Health Net, Inc. After receiving this terrible diagnosis of breast cancer, Patsy Bates began going to the doctors appointments to receive the chemotherapy that had been recommended, that horrible treatment known as chemotherapy which Patsy Bates willingly did because it could save her life.

When the medical costs for treatment of Patsy Bates' breast cancer reached $130,000, Health Net abruptly cancelled her coverage. Isn't that a good trick? You wait until somebody gets sick , then you either cancel the insurance altogether or raise the premiums by so much that people cannot afford it. Cool, huh? That's what they did to Patsy Bates, which meant she could not get the chemotherapy treatment that her doctors had recommended.

What is the excuse that Health Net used to cancel the policy after Patsy got breast cancer, and before she had completed her treatment? Her weight -- they said if they'd know her actual weight, they wouldn't have issued a policy. What difference does that make? She wasn't a contestant in The Biggest Loser -- she was a cancer patient who needed chemotherpy to save her life. The insurance company also claimed that they should be allowed to cancel the policy because they learned that Patsy had some kind of pre-existing heart "condition?" One of those dime-a-dozen valve things? In any event, what difference does it make? She got breast cancer, not a heart attack.

The case was submitted to private arbitration, and the arbitrator found in favor of Patsy Bates and against the Health Insurance company, finding its practices to be "egregious." I'll say. Health Net, Inc. operates Blue Cross of California, the state's largest for-profit insurer. There was evidence that the for-profit insurance companies have a standard practice of cancelling the insurance policies of any patient who accumulates a bill over a certain amount of money. In other words, as soon as an insured gets sick, the company cancels the policy.

I guess, if we want to be fair, the health insurance industry figures they can't afford to both pay for medical care for sick people and pay enormous bribes to the Democrats in Congress. One or the other, right?

All over this country there are people who have private health insurance, either that they buy for themselves because they can afford it, or their employer provides. And they figure they don't need any health care "reform" so they're against it. But what they don't understand is that a health insurance policy is illusory. People pay a premium every month, and the health insurance company will provide coverage for the covered medical costs incurred during that month.

What people don't understand is that if they get cancer in month 1, the insurance company can go ahead and cancel the insurance in month 2 which means they'll pay for the doctor's visit in month 1 when you get the bad news, but after that they're on their own. Or, in the alternative, in month 2 they announce that the premiums are now $1500/month. Most people can't afford that, which means the insurance is cancelled. The contract is "illusory" because the consumer pays good money, but what they get in return is a fairy-tale that they are protected, when the fact is they are doing a deal with the devil.

And here's the part where you thought I was just kidding. One of the things that came out during the arbitration of the Patsy Bates dispute is that Healthnet has an employee rewards-and-bonuses system that rewards employees for each policy that they cancel on a sick person. The reward and bonus is calculated based upon the amount of money that the insurance company calculates they would have had to pay to provide coverage for the insured. I wonder if they get a gold watch at the end of the year for each policy cancelled in which the insured quickly died. No muss, no fuss, just quietly send them to their coffins.

http://medheadlines.com/2008/02/23/court-awards-9m-to-cancer-patient-over-cancelled-coverage/print/

These blood-sucking parasites have been living off of a system of fraud, deceit, and highway robbery for too long. We need to eliminate health insurance from our health care industry.

A good start is to make Medicare available to any American, regardless of age. People who have an income can buy in, just like paying an insurance premium except they will hopefully get charged an affordable amount, and the coverage will not be cancelled on them when they get sick and need it. This is what's called a Single-Payer plan.

The Democrats in Congress take money from the health insurance industry. The industry does not want any single-payer plan made available because they know that if Americans were given the choice, they would quickly move to join a public plan where their premiums would be affordable and coverage would not be denied once they get sick. Demand single-payer. It is almost a make-or-break issue on the Obama administration.

If President Obama and Congress abandon the people of this country on this issue, and force through some meaningless "modifications" to the existing healthcare system, for-profit and anti-health, then the Democrats are useless.

How Women Invented Peace. How Men Invented War.

I'm trying to tell you something important. I remember this because it's in my bones -- my DNA -- and hasn't yet been erased by the TV-Rays. See here's how it works.

A group of women were sitting around a fire, a long time ago, and one of them said "Well, what should we do?" Then another one of them said: "I know. Why don't we form a ring, put two of us inside the ring, then the two women inside the ring have to punch each other in the face until one of them is knocked unconscious." Then all the women, at once, started laughing out loud and someone said "That's funny. Can you imagine anything so stupid?" Then another one said: "Let's divide up the work, cooperate, a few of you boil some water and get down the gourds, the rest of us will go out and find some tea and fruit, then we'll have a snack and sit around and talk and have fun."



But then a group of men was also sitting around a fire, and one of them said "What should we do?" And another one answered: "I know what. Why don't we form a ring, put two of us in the middle, the two in the middle will punch each other in the face until one of them falls down unconscious. Then the next guy will step up and go into the ring, and we'll do it again." And the other men said "Yeah, sounds cool, count me in." Which is exactly how we ended up with neverending wars.

But you men won't listen. Instead, you just shake your heads when we women try to explain. You laugh at us, but you don't listen.

Free Journalists Laura Ling And Euna Lee

*
North Korea has sentenced American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to Twelve Years of Hard Labor for "committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry." Both are young American women, courageous journalists, who travel throughout the world to report on the "real" news that our mainstream media ignores. Laura Ling reports on Current TV, the station begun by Al Gore, and which station shows exceptional documentaries and intelligent programming. Here's a link to some of Laura Ling's work at Current TV. She is a fearless and exceptional journalist. http://current.com/users/lauraling.htm

Apparently these two American journalists were somewhere near the border with North Korea in March of this year, and accidentally may have stepped onto North Korean land. Big deal. They were not armed with weapons, were not attacking the country, but instead, at most, may have missed the invisible line between the two sections of Korea. Or maybe they never entered North Korea and were just grabbed by North Koreans to have leverage to use against the United States. In either event, these two women did nothing to North Korea, nor did they threaten, or have any apparent intent or ability to harm North Korea. This is a travesty.

The two journalists have been held in separate North Korean cells since early March. Their "trials" were conducted in secret. Sounds just like what we do in Guantanamo. Talk about the chickens coming home to roost. Maybe now the public will begin to see that kidnapping people, imprisoning them without legitimate charges, then holding them forever based on vague claims that they are a "threat" to the nation, is the type of conduct of dictatorships and despots, and should have no place in a democracy. Shame on the United States for setting up the international kidnapping, torture, and murder of others which North Korean can now rely on in its imprisonment of these two young American journalists.

Here is a link to a petition to free the two journalists: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/free-euna-and-laura

I cannot find a link to any North Korean Ambassador (I don't know if they have any) or government official, so I figure the best immediate alternative is to e-mail and call President Barack Obama and ask that he intervene to free these two journalists (he has already expressed his concern), and e-mail Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ask her to assist to bring these two journalists home.

President Barack Obama
(202) 456-1414
president@whitehouse.gov

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
(202) 647-4000
(I can't find an e-mail address for Hillary Clinton, but here is the link to the general form they use at the U.S. Department of State):
http://contact-us.state.gov/cgi-bin/state.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php?p_sid=VkRoKgzj&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD0xMTYsMTE2JnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9ubCZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**

Josephine Mary Nelson (6/7/1924 - 8/29/1991)

*

If The HealthCare "Reform" Is Anything Like The Credit Card "Reform," CEOs Will Rejoice.

(President Obama and Medical Industry corporate representatives).

We're all holding our breath. The White House spokespeople and President Obama tell us that they will complete health care "reform" before August. Okay, but what "reform" are they talking about? Are they going to give us meaningless reform that they can use to fool the public into thinking that they are doing something for working people, when the truth is they are doing nothing?

We just went through all the hoopla about credit card reform. It appears to me it was a straight-up shake-down by the Democrats. First they went out in public and created a frenzy of anger among the jobless and homeless by screaming that the credit card companies have been unfair, and they, the democrats, the new sheriff in town, are going to get tough. Boy, things will change.

Next, the Democrats set up a series of secret meetings with the credit card companies and their lobbyists to negotiate enormous bribes to be paid to the Democrats in exchange for the Democrats doing nothing to "reform" the credit card industry.

Next, we have President Obama and all the democrats opposing the idea of capping interest rates charges by credit card companies on working men and women, even refusing to "cap" them at 36%. For God's sake, in most civilized countries anybody who charged 36% interest per year on a loan would be thrown into prison. But in our country, the "liberal" party won't do a thing to stop them. Or to help the people who are victimized by this loansharking industry.

Finally, the Democrats come out popping the champagne corks celebrating themselves because they passed credit card "reform." But read the fine print. The only thing they reformed will have no effect whatsoever on the essence of the transaction: how much money, in interest and fees, is charged to average Americans for unsecured loans.

Oh sure, the loansharks have to give two weeks notice before they send the goon squad out to bust your kneecaps. No more dragnet clauses saying a default on the car loan will increase the credit card interest. No more increases in interest UNLESS IT'S A VARIABLE RATE CARD. Guess what? From now on, they will all be variable rate cards.

In fact, not only did the "reform" not change a thing to help the citizens, it actually snuck in a provision that the credit card industry wanted, to force parents to take on legal responsibility for any credit card charges of their adult children under the age of 21. This is the sneakiest, most reprehensible and despicable provisions. They won't give a credit card to someone 18 unless the parents co-sign. When Junior defaults, the loansharks will grab Mom's paycheck.

And the Democrats touted this as a good thing. Not for us. How much money will the Democrats get in kick-backs and bribes for passing these meaningless minor alterations, then telling the public that credit cards have been "reformed," so we need speak of that no more

And now those same lying despicable vote-selling Democrats tell us that they are really going to get serious, this time they mean it, and the health care industry will be reformed.

What's the first thing they do? Arrange secret meetings between President Obama and the CEOs of the major Medical Industry: Doctors lobby, hospital lobby, drug dealers. What exactly was negotiated in that meeting? The amount of the kick-back?

Then we have secret meetings between the Democrats in Congress and the Medical Industry. Did they set up payment terms, when the bribes will be paid and how much? Because we know the Medical Industry has already bought an agreement that Congress will not pass single-payer.

What if the entire health care "reform" consisted of a taxpayer giveaway to the Medical Industry? It's beginning to sound like that's the essence of the proposal. It's just another corporate bailout. There will be no restrictions on costs or charges, even though these criminals in the Medical Industry raise their prices by double-digits every year to increase their wealth.

The Medical Industry has made a non-enforceable, vague agreement that they will do something to try to control costs ten years from now. They say they will "really try" to cut costs in ten years -- Two Trillion Dollars in Costs Savings. But it's nonenforceable, and no penalty if they just blow it off. Since they're not going to do it anyway, they should have said they will "really try" to saving Two Bazillion Dollars. Or even Two Gazillion Dollars. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090607/ap_on_an/us_health_taxes_analysis_4

The Government is going to give the Medical Industry money to buy computers, and software, and to pay to have every American's entire medical history put onto computers and made available to the entire Medical Industry. And to the government. Forever. Now all they need is to add our DNA, and Big Brother will have a party. The Medical Industry will use this information to deny coverage and refuse claims. That will be hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars given to these criminals to use against us.

Finally, the Government is going to give the Health Insurance industry hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars, to buy private, exorbitantly-priced, no-cost-restrictions insurance for every person in the country below a certain income level. These people, previously uninsured, will be given insurance with high deductibles to provide healthcare at 3 or 4 times what it should cost because of the failure to include cost restrictions, and failure to provide single-payer.

I see just another big corporate give-away coming. A bailout for the medical industry. More money to the corporations, more money taken away from the working people of this country.

Don't cheer because some Democrat says "public option." Wait for the details. Remember, what Obama promised was that he would allow Americans to buy the same insurance that people in Congress get. That's a meaningless offer, because most Americans couldn't afford it. I suspect the "public option" will consist of private insurance people can buy, but it will be called "public option" because it will include the same basic package available to Congress. Which nobody will be able to afford anyway.

And now we hear that taxing workers for their employer-provided insurance is being pushed as part of the "solution." That's more money out of the pockets of working people. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090607/ap_on_an/us_health_taxes_analysis_4

I want to be wrong on this. But so far, since the Democrats got the majority in both houses in Congress and the White House, they have done nothing to help the working people of this country. They have accelerated the plundering of our nation by Wall Street and the corporations, giving away hundreds of billions of dollars to corporate insiders without any conditions or restrictions. Instead of ending the war in Iraq, they have now committed to continuing it for ten years, and are starting a new war in Pakistan. They have done nothing to create jobs while (real) unemployement is close to 20%. And now they want to add more taxes onto modest-income working Americans by taxing the healthcare benefits, and to slash Social Security and Medicare. I want to be hopeful, but other than imagining that I see a secret promise in Obama's eyes, there is nothing factual to encourage hope.

I'm beginning to feel sick. My health insurance premiums were just increased by 13%. This is what they call the squeeze -- theft, taking everything from working Americans and giving it to the corporations. The Democrats are not going to do a thing to help us. And we have no option except to pay the ransom every month or forgo insurance and medical care and die young.

We'll know soon enough.

June 6, 1944: D-Day (65 Years Ago)

Sixty-five years ago, on June 6, 1944, the allied nations invaded France on D-Day to begin taking Europe back from the Nazis.

(Americans in England waiting for D-Day).

The Allied forces involved in D-Day mostly were Americans, English, and Canadians. The men, weapons, tanks, and ships were all gathered in England in anticipation of crossing the English Channel and landing on the coast of France. The Germans knew that the Allies would come by ship, and knew they would come across the English Channel. They did not know when the attack would take place, and did not know exactly where it would take place.

There were months of decoy operations by the British to try to fool the Germans into thinking the landing would come from the North. Once the preparations were completed, the Allies waited on a day by day basis, controlled by the weather. They could not launch the attack if the seas were too rough, or if there were major storms anticipated. So they waited. And the Germans waited on the coast of France, which they had fortified with concrete and steel bunkers and cannons.

The Landing forces included gliders that were flown to France then released, gliding to the ground; paratroopers who were flown into France then dropped into areas where the Allies hoped the German presence would not be too concentrated. These airborne drops were made to have people in France in advance of the coastal landing. The Allies knew it was imperative to quickly take out the communications lines as well as blow up some bridges and prevent the Germans from communicating to Berlin that the invasion had begun and reinforcements were needed.

On June 6, 1944, the public was briefly advised that the invasion had begun: "Under command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France." The first ships and men hit the beaches of Normandy at 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944.


There were 156,000 troops landed in France on D-Day, 73,000 from the U.S.. In addition to the airborne troops who landed by gliders and parachutes, the seaborne troops landed on the beaches in Normandy whose names became familiar to generations who followed: Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, Juno, and Sword Beach. The allied aircraft flew almost 15,000 sorties that day.


The name of the naval part of the operation on D-Day was Operation Neptune. It included almost 7000 vessels consisting of naval combat ships, landing ships and landing craft, ancillary craft, and merchant vessels. Almost 200,000 personnel worked in the Operation Neptune part of the D-Day operation.

There is no "official" casualty number for D-Day because of the chaos of the invasion. But the unofficial figure is that 10,000 members of the allied invading forces died on D-Day. However, recent studies suggest the numbers may have been much higher. In addition, 24 warships and 35 merchant or auxiliary ships were sunk in June of 1944 in connection with D-Day.

From June 6, 1944 through the end of August, over 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing in connection with the Allied advances after D-Day. This figure includes over 200,000 Allied casualties. Roughly 200,000 German troops were killed or wounded, and 200,000 Germans were taken as prisoners of war.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were also killed on D-Day in the Allied bombing.

Seventy (70) Million people were killed during World War II.

http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/faq.htm

When you look at photos of World War II, or newsreels, there is an obvious respect for the common men and women working and fighting to stop the Nazis, working together, as allies, to protect our world. Not worship, not the nonsense that we hear from the politicians about the military -- just respect for the simple men and women making sacrifices and putting their lives on their line out of a sense of duty to others.

It seems like this may have been the last time that we all were part of a team, working together, united against the clear evil of the Fascist governments of Germany, Japan and Italy. There was a very brief period after World War II when it seemed like our politicians and business leaders acknowledged that American men and women deserve to have jobs, education for their kids, nice communities and homes, living wages, so they created programs and policies to make sure tha happened. No more.

We don't have a team anymore. We have an elite group of incredibly rich people who would steal a lollipop out of the mouth of a child if they thought they could sell it on e-bay, people who see most of us as chumps, clearly not on the same team. These wealthy people have their own team which is made up of the richest people in the world. That's why Daddy Bush was hanging out with the bin Ladens and the Saudi Princes on the morning of 9/11 -- because they're on the same team, and it's not our team. As are Gates and Buffett and the Clintons -- not on our team. As are the CEOs of the major corporations, and all the management insiders of Wall Street and the politicians they own.

They're on one team which is not tied to the U.S. or to its people. The entry fee for their team is that you must have hundreds of millions of dollars. We, the working people of the U.S., are on our own team -- but somebody stole our equipment and uniforms, sold our field and the lights, took all the food from our snack bar, stole our cars while we were waiting on the field for the game to start. Now what do we do?

Victor Jara: Chile Continues Its Search For Truth And Justice. When Will Ours Begin?

(From The Latin-American Herald Tribune):

Chile Exhumes Singer Victor Jara, Slain Under Pinochet

"SANTIAGO – Chilean police and medical examiners on Thursday exhumed the body of singer-songwriter Victor Jara, who was killed just days after the September 1973 coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The procedure, ordered by Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes, who is heading the probe of Jara’s death, could clarify key aspects of the case and it is hoped it will serve to corroborate or refute the declaration of army veteran Jose Adolfo Paredes Marquez, the only person ever arrested for the crime."

"Paredes, 54, confessed to being one of the soldiers who on several occasions shot the popular singer, but later he retracted his statements, said he was innocent of the crime and said that Jara was murdered by another officer with a single shot to the chest. This version differs from the circumstances of Jara’s death, as determined by coroners, who found that the singer was tortured and shot 44 times all over his body."

".... Fuentes has already charged several people in connection with the slaying of Jara, who was a prominent supporter of the Socialist government toppled by Pinochet. Among the defendants is retired army Col. Mario Manriquez Bravo, who commanded the detention and torture camp set up at Santiago’s Chile stadium in the wake of the putsch, the site where Jara was killed. Jara’s murder became a symbol of the atrocities committed by the 1973-1990 military regime, which is blamed for more than 3,000 deaths. Chile stadium was renamed for Victor Jara in 2003."

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=336574&CategoryId=14094
Also see, at this blog, http://nabnyc.blogspot.com/2009/01/victor-jara-desalambrar.html

Te Recuerdo Amanda is one of Victor Jara's most popular songs.

It tells the story of a young girl in Chile named Amanda who used to go every day to the factory where her sweetheart, Manuel worked, to see him for just five minutes on his break. Somebody, the narrator telling the story, talks about seeing Amanda every day running up the wet streets to the factory, the rain in her hair and a big smile on her face, so she could see her sweetheart for those five minutes until the factory siren went off, and Manuel had to go back to work. One day when she went to the factory, Manuel as well as many of the other young men had left, gone to the mountains to fight against the repressive government. But they were all slaughtered. So when the factory siren sounded after that, many of the young men never returned -- including Manuel.

Te recuerdo Amanda
la calle mojada
corriendo a la fabrica
donde trabajaba Manuel

La sonrisa ancha,
la lluvia en el pelo,
no importaba nada
ibas a encontrarte con el,

con el, con el, con el, con el
Son cinco minutos
la vida es eterna,
en cinco minutos

Suena la sirena,
de vuelta al trabajo
y tu caminando
lo iluminas todo

los cinco minutos
te hacen florecer

Te recuerdo Amanda
la calle mojada
corriendo a la fabrica
donde trabajaba Manuel

La sonrisa ancha
la lluvia en el pelo
no importaba nada,
ibas a encontrarte con el

con el, con el, con el, con el
Que partió a la sierra
que nunca hizo daño,
que partió a la sierra

y en cinco minutos,
quedó destrozado
Suenan las sirenas
de vuelta al trabajo

muchos no volvieron
tampoco Manuel

Te recuerdo Amanda,
la calle mojada
corriendo a la fábrica,
donde trabajaba Manuel

(English)

I remember you Amanda
in the wet streets
running to the factory
where Manuel was employed

With your big smile,
the rain in your hair
nothing mattered to you
you were going to meet with him

With him, with him, with him, with him
it was just five minutes
but life is eternal
in five minutes

then the factory siren would sound
back to work
and you, walking again,
would illuminate everything.

Those five minutes
had made you blossom like a flower.

I remember Amanda
in the wet streets
running to the factory
where Manuel was employed

With your big smile,
the rain in your hair
nothing mattered to you
you were going to meet with him

With him, with him, with him, with him
who left for the Sierra,
who never hurt anyone,
who left for the sierra,

and in five minutes,
was slaughtered.

The factory siren sounds,
back to work
but many will never return
including Manuel

I remember you Amanda,
the wet streets,
running to the factory
where Manuel worked.

Naomi Klein Discussing Her Book: The Shock Doctrine

If there is one book that every person should read today it is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. It is brilliant. It is also a dense and intense book, and best read short passages at a time. But it is a critical book for anyone trying to make sense of the destruction of our country, the looting and plundering of our economy and theft of people's wages and pensions and benefits and savings and homes. Because what she lays out, country by country over a period of decades, is a systematic program in place among the wealthiest people in the world to steal all the wealth of the world, to take all the power and control in the world, and leave Americans, along with all the other people, poor and powerless. If we hope to have any chance of stopping this, standing up, saving our country and ourselves, the critical information and analysis set forth in this book seems a necessary foundation. Here is a link to Naomi Klein's website which has further discussion of her work and other books, as well as The Shock Doctrine. http://www.naomiklein.org/main

For those unable to read the book at this moment, here is a brief discussion by Naomi Klein of the book and the important points that she makes about what is happening to our world. This was a speech given by her at the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:


Part 5:


Part 6:

President Obama's Speech In Egypt

Matthew 7:4: How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye?

President Obama has traveled to the middle east this week to try to start a new relationship between the United States and "the Muslims." I think that's an excellent idea. But we should keep in mind that "the Muslims" did not attack the United States, did not threaten to attack us, have no apparent ability to attack us nor any apparent intent to do so. A gang of rich white men from Saudi Arabia apparently attacked us. But to assume that "the Muslims" attacked us shows the underlying problem in the U.S. assumptions towards the middle east.

President Obama warns Muslims everywhere that they should not resort to violence, should not blow up people, or kill them. I agree. I think that's a terrific idea. And that means that the biggest attacker, bomber, killer in the entire middle east -- the United States -- should stop doing that. Oh yeah: it's not our country, region, territory, or anything else, and we have absolutely no right and no business traveling so far around and the world and lecturing other people about how they should live their lives.

If President Obama wants to give morality lectures about how people should be decent, I suggest he return immediately to the United States and arrest all the war criminals from the Bush administration and enforce the law, as set forth in the U.N. Convention Against Torture, by investigating, prosecuting, and imprisoning those who are liable.

If President Obama wants to give morality lectures about how people should be decent, I suggest he return immediately to the United States and arrest all the members of the criminal enterprise loosely named "Wall Street," many of the leaders of which are now sitting inside the Obama Administration within the White House, with complete control over our entire treasury and our economy, and they are ripping money out of the citizens' hands so fast that they've got fleets of trucks lined up outside the White House to haul away the loot. An insider job. These criminals need to be arrested, their assets seized, public hearings and investigations, prosecutions, and they need to be sent to prison.

Did somebody from Egypt attack the U.S.? Threaten us? No. So why would President Obama go to Egypt to give a lecture?

It's the old log in the eye syndrome.


SUMMARY OF OBAMA’S SPEECH

Lots of religion. You’d think this was a speech from the Bigoted Pastor Warren, so heavily overlain with references to holy books and major religions. I would prefer our political leaders speak English – in fact maybe we need a new "English Only" movement to stop our politicians from speaking "Religiousese" and instead speak English. I would prefer they quote the Constitution as support for their ideas instead of the Bible. I would prefer they spend their time studying the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions instead of studying the Koran or the Torah.

After all, the reason people developed governments subject to civil laws, made by men, is because the religious governments proved themselves to be solely war-mongering perverted murdering thieving manipulative fanatics trying to destroy the entire world to get more gold and jewels for themselves. Not to mention all the particularly bizarre sexual exploits of the men in cloth. Is it really a good idea to tout Christianity and the Bible to a Muslim country in the middle east when that moron and religious fanatic-Christian George W. Bush started wars against many of their neighbors based on his claim that his Christian God told him to go kill all the Muslims? And given Israel’s ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians, is it really likely that an audience of Egyptian Muslims want to be lectured about the morality of the Torah? Doubtful. Obama should stick with the reality-based world and leave the God-stuff to the fanatics, of which there are already way too many.

Beyond the preaching, Obama made seven points:

Issue #1: Violent Extremism

He’s against it. But he seems to define "violent extremism" as meaning non-state groups. Gangs, small groups of people who have hand-held rocket launchers and grenades to fight whatever their battles are. He does not seem to include in the category nations with full militaries. Under this discussion, it seems that a penniless and homeless Palestinian child whose land was stolen by some guy from Brooklyn, and who is roped into becoming a suicide bomber, is bad, but when Israel’s air force bombs the Gaza Ghetto, Israel’s re-creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, sends tanks in, knocks down homes, knocks down everything that grows in a field, denies people medical help, targets U.N. buildings, murders without limitations, that apparently is Okay. But I guess he can’t really condemn violence and murder when the U.S. is responsible for most of it in the middle east. How about speaking out against all violence, against war, and committing to end war being waged by nations against the people of third world countries.

He claims that the only reason the U.S. is in Afghanistan is because of 9/11 and al Queda. He says we have to stay there because people in Afghanistan and Pakistan want to kill Americans. President Obama, listen carefully: there is no Congressional declaration of war against Pakistan. If you are conducting a war against that country, you are already violating the constitution as well as committing international war crimes. Pakistan has not attacked the United States. There is no legitimate grounds to start a war against that country.

He also says that, unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a "war of choice." Nice wording there. Otherwise known as a war of aggression and an international war crime. Unprovoked. And now that he has admitted that, he needs to get us out of there.


Issue #2: Israel And The Palestinians: Need Two States

His discussion on this subject is silly and weak in parts. If he wants two states, tell Israel we’re cutting them off instead of sending them billions of my taxpayer dollars every year. Kind of a mixed-message, sending them all that money then trying to "get tough." He talks about the Europeans who set up the colony called Israel as being a persecuted group of refugees in search of a home. But then he says the same thing is true of the Palestinians. That’s just silly. As well as false.

The Palestinians had a home – but the Europeans took it. The Europeans should have stayed in Europe, or maybe they could have come to the U.S. But they had no business stealing the Palestinian’s land. And they have no business staying there. Obama says the Palestinians must recognize Israel’s right to exist. This is also one of those silly mantras. Why must they? What if the Palestinians disagree completely with that bizarre claim by the Europeans? Does that mean they should be killed? People are allowed to think and believe what they want. To condition somebody’s right to live in peace on their willingness to believe something sounds like the inquisition, the crusades.

Issue #3: Nuclear Weapons - Iran

He says he’s against nuclear weapons, but then he says well, only against Iran having them. He admits the U.S. overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran but fails to mention we installed and propped up the Shah, a brutal and murderous dictator.

Issue #4: Democracy

He says we want it everywhere.

Issue #5: Religious Freedom

This is ridiculous. Our government is required by our constitution to stay out of religion. For him to go overseas and include as a major point in a speech that our government is committed to going around the world and enforce religious freedom makes him sound as batty as Bush was.

Issue #6: Women’s Rights

Excellent. I wonder if we have Hillary Clinton to thank for this.

Issue #7: Economic Development And Opportunity Through Globalism

Economic development and opportunity are good ideas. If we stopped stealing the resources, stopping bombing and occupying and murdering people, then maybe they would have a chance. As far as the pitch for globalism, I disagree. Globalism is likely to destroy the world, and is certainly responsible for much of the current suffering. With Monsanto, for example, chemically modifying the foodstuff of the world so they can demand a royalty for every grain of rice eaten, starvation will likely rise along with the oceans due to global warming. Globalism is bad. We need to emphasize local agriculture and business. Too bad Obama is in the pocket of the U.S. corporate world which does not care if everyone dies, as long as they get all the money.



****************************************************
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary(Cairo, Egypt
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 4, 2009
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON A NEW BEGINNING
Cairo University Cairo, Egypt


PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al_Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I'm grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I'm also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum.

We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim_majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. All this has bred more fear and more mistrust.

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. I know there's been a lot of publicity about this speech, but no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have this afternoon all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do today -- to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.

Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I'm a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities -- it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

I also know that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims." And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers -- Thomas Jefferson -- kept in his personal library.

So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words -- within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum -- "Out of many, one."

Now, much has been made of the fact that an African American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President. But my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores -- and that includes nearly 7 million American Muslims in our country today who, by the way, enjoy incomes and educational levels that are higher than the American average.

Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state in our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That's why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it.

So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America. And I believe that America holds within her the truth that regardless of race, religion, or station in life, all of us share common aspirations -- to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. This is the hope of all humanity.

Of course, recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all.

For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.

And this is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes -- and, yes, religions -- subjugating one another in pursuit of their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; our progress must be shared.

Now, that does not mean we should ignore sources of tension. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: We must face these tensions squarely. And so in that spirit, let me speak as clearly and as plainly as I can about some specific issues that I believe we must finally confront together.

Issue #1: Violent Extremism

The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms.
In Ankara, I made clear that America is not -- and never will be -- at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security -- because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.

The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America's goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice; we went because of necessity. I'm aware that there's still some who would question or even justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.

Now, make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We see no military -- we seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.

And that's why we're partnering with a coalition of 46 countries. And despite the costs involved, America's commitment will not weaken. Indeed, none of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths -- but more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as -- it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it is an important part of promoting peace.

Now, we also know that military power alone is not going to solve the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's why we plan to invest $1.5 billion each year over the next five years to partner with Pakistanis to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses, and hundreds of millions to help those who've been displaced. That's why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend on.

Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future -- and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. And I have made it clear to the Iraqi people -- I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq's sovereignty is its own. And that's why I ordered the removal of our combat brigades by next August. That is why we will honor our agreement with Iraq's democratically elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, and to remove all of our troops from Iraq by 2012. We will help Iraq train its security forces and develop its economy. But we will support a secure and united Iraq as a partner, and never as a patron.

And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter or forget our principles. Nine-eleven was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

So America will defend itself, respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.

Issue #2: Israel And The Palestinians: Need Two States

The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.

America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people -- Muslims and Christians -- have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

For decades then, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It's easy to point fingers -- for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's interest. And that is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience and dedication that the task requires. The obligations -- the obligations that the parties have agreed to under the road map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them -- and all of us -- to live up to our responsibilities.
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered.

Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

And Israel must also live up to its obligation to ensure that Palestinians can live and work and develop their society. Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be a critical part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.

And finally, the Arab states must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state, to recognize Israel's legitimacy, and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.
America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and we will say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.

Too many tears have been shed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra -- as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer.

Issue #3: Nuclear Weapons

The third source of tension is our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons.

This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is in fact a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I've made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question now is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.

I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude, and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect. But it is clear to all concerned that when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point. This is not simply about America's interests. It's about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.

I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. And any nation -- including Iran -- should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I'm hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.

Issue #4: Democracy

The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.

I know -- I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other. That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.

But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.

Now, there is no straight line to realize this promise. But this much is clear: Governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments -- provided they govern with respect for all their people.

This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they're out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. So no matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who would hold power: You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

Issue #5: Religious Freedom

The fifth issue that we must address together is religious freedom.

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition. I saw it firsthand as a child in Indonesia, where devout Christians worshiped freely in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. That is the spirit we need today. People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it's being challenged in many different ways.

Among some Muslims, there's a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of somebody else's faith. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld -- whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt. (Applause.) And if we are being honest, fault lines must be closed among Muslims, as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.

Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That's why I'm committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.

Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism. In fact, faith should bring us together. And that's why we're forging service projects in America to bring together Christians, Muslims, and Jews. That's why we welcome efforts like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's interfaith dialogue and Turkey's leadership in the Alliance of Civilizations. Around the world, we can turn dialogue into interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action -- whether it is combating malaria in Africa, or providing relief after a natural disaster.

Issue #6: Women’s Rights

The sixth issue -- the sixth issue that I want to address is women's rights. I know -- I know -- and you can tell from this audience, that there is a healthy debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well educated are far more likely to be prosperous.

Now, let me be clear: Issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, we've seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.

I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons. Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity -- men and women -- to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. And that is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.

Issue #7: Economic Development And Opportunity Through Globalism

Finally, I want to discuss economic development and opportunity.

I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory. The Internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into the home. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and change in communities. In all nations -- including America -- this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we lose control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities -- those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith.

But I also know that human progress cannot be denied. There need not be contradictions between development and tradition. Countries like Japan and South Korea grew their economies enormously while maintaining distinct cultures. The same is true for the astonishing progress within Muslim-majority countries from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai. In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education.

And this is important because no development strategy can be based only upon what comes out of the ground, nor can it be sustained while young people are out of work. Many Gulf states have enjoyed great wealth as a consequence of oil, and some are beginning to focus it on broader development. But all of us must recognize that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century -- and in too many Muslim communities, there remains underinvestment in these areas. I'm emphasizing such investment within my own country. And while America in the past has focused on oil and gas when it comes to this part of the world, we now seek a broader engagement.

On education, we will expand exchange programs, and increase scholarships, like the one that brought my father to America. At the same time, we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities. And we will match promising Muslim students with internships in America; invest in online learning for teachers and children around the world; and create a new online network, so a young person in Kansas can communicate instantly with a young person in Cairo.
On economic development, we will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with counterparts in Muslim-majority countries. And I will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship this year to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.

On science and technology, we will launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries, and to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create more jobs. We'll open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, grow new crops. Today I'm announcing a new global effort with the Organization of the Islamic Conference to eradicate polio. And we will also expand partnerships with Muslim communities to promote child and maternal health.

All these things must be done in partnership. Americans are ready to join with citizens and governments; community organizations, religious leaders, and businesses in Muslim communities around the world to help our people pursue a better life.

The issues that I have described will not be easy to address. But we have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world that we seek -- a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God's children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together.

I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort -- that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the ability to re-imagine the world, to remake this world.
All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort -- the dignity of all human beings.

It's easier to start wars than to end them. It's easier to blame others than to look inward. It's easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There's one rule that lies at the heart of every religion -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples -- a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us: "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now that must be our work here on Earth.

Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Baby Jaguars - Triplets! Born In A Zoo In Berlin In May, 2009.

Weight: Perfect!

Meet and greet the fans.


Naptime.

Race, Age, Class, And Gender Discrimination In The United States.

For most of our history, our businesses, government, and laws have all discriminated in favor of privileged white men and against everyone else. In particular, the discrimination favors white men with money, or born into privileged families, over everybody else. The boys taking the golf and tennis lessons at the country clubs this summer will be smiling for good reason, because they know that our country has things set up so that they will get way more than their fair share regardless of how lazy, stupid, and corrupt they are. The fix is in.

The best jobs in our country are almost exclusively held by white men. White men only represent around 35% of the population, but they hold about 98% of the best jobs, the jobs with the big paychecks and the life-long titles. Notice that men give themselves lifelong titles, like King, Prince. Senators (for life), Judge, Ambassador, Professor: even if they only held the job for a few years, they use the title forever. It's so silly. So pretentious. Women, who are over 50% of the population, are not only excluded from the better jobs, but they are viciously attacked when they try to move up in their professions. Blacks are excluded. Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, all excluded.

So white men get the best paying jobs. They also get the jobs with the most power. They get to control everything in our society, and they use their positions to enrich and protect themselves and other white men. For example, Congress (mostly white men) pass laws saying that Wall Street (mostly white males) cannot be sued or held liable for stealing money from the public. Cops (mostly white men) are never held liable for wrongful death of a citizen, even if they walked up to an unarmed, blind, 90-year-old grandma and shot her in the face, the media and the courts immediately label it a "Suicide-By-Cop." What a stupid term. It's like when women get raped, and the media says she asked for it. Same thing. Automatically blame the victim and excuse the (usually) white male.

And we now know that even when the white men engage in international war crimes, start wars of aggression, lie the nation into war, torture and murder people, loot and pillage and plunder the nation, even then they are not held accountable for their actions. They have permanent immunity. Privileges and immunities, like Princes or King. How creepy is that? Even when they kill people, they get away with it.

Certainly our entire nation and its laws have always given preference to whites and to males. For example, after the country gained its independence, it was decided that there should be some law saying how a new person can become a citizen. So a law was passed in 1790, and it said that any person who had lived in the U.S. for at least 2 years, and was free and white, could become a citizen.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6551182.html

Note that non-whites were excluded. Many blacks in this country were slaves and, even after they were freed, they were denied status as citizens by the southern states. Regardless of how many laws are passed, the Republican Party to this day continues to have an official organized policy dedicated to preventing black people from voting in our elections.

Of course voting was always reserved based on gender and race and class. Originally, only white male property owners could vote. At the time George Washington was elected our first President, in 1789, only 6% of the population of this country was allowed to vote -- white, male, property owners only. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was executed at the end of the U.S. War Against Mexico, and provided that Mexicans residing within the then-claimed land of the United States would be citizens, although they were routinely denied civil rights based on a variety of tactics. In 1856, all states in the country had finally removed the requirement of property ownership for voting, but voting was still generally limited to white males. In 1870, blacks were given the right to vote, but were prevented from doing so by local vigilantes. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony decided to test the exclusion of women, so she tried to vote, and was arrested and tried for her "crime." Women were not legally given the right to vote nationwide until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Our actual history doesn't quite live up to those patriotic songs. A little shoddy on closer examination. http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/education/digitalmedia/us-voting-rights-timeline.pdf


I saw three stories today that made me think of this national, institutional, legal and historical bias in favor of white men and against everyone else in our society. The first, of course, was about Pat Buchanan and the drug addict from the radio, as well as their hangers-on, trying to incite hatred and violence among the population by hysterically screaming that Sonia Sotomayor was out to destroy white men, and that white men need to join together to defend themselves against their enemies -- I guess women? Hispanics?

Then I saw a story that Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia was back in the hospital again. He was just there a few weeks ago. He's 91 years old. White, male, and 91 years old, yet he's still allowed to hold one of only 100 seats in the Senate. God forbid anybody should tell this guy to go home, he's old enough to retire. Let somebody else have a chance. We see this same thing in judges -- sometimes suffering from dementia, peeing their pants on the bench, drooling, falling asleep, yet nobody will remove them from the position. See http://www.metnews.com/articles/2005/nels120805.htm (rarely, the judicial commissions will remove a judge when they are completely disabled. Example: Justice Marshall McComb of the California Supreme Court was only removed from the bench when the state finally intervened. He was totally disabled by senile dementia, yet the other privileged white men on the California Supreme Court just turned his chair around during the hearings, and let him keep the job). So it is special treatment and privileges for the wealthy white men, and unemployment, no healthcare, no rights for anybody else. White men not only get all the good jobs, but they get to keep them long after they no longer are able to properly acquit their responsibilities.

Finally, I saw a story about a basketball player who allegedly cheated on his SAT exam. Apparently this young man is a terrific basketball player who is good enough to go pro right now. But the monopoly professional basketball team owners in this country, for some bizarre reasons, want to keep kids out of the profession until they are at least 19. That means that a kid gets out of high school, and has to get into college to play basketball there, for one year, in order to get picked up by the pros when they turn 19. I see no legitimate reason for this. None. Supposedly the white males who own the teams and run professional basketball don't want to have to pay these young men at 18, and can save a lot of money by blacklisting these young men for a year. Which is all it is -- blacklisting without any rational basis. The person who wrote the article noted that in effect (regardless of intent) this rule mostly discriminates against young black men. It seems like a really stupid rule to me. There's certainly no rule that prevents young people from getting professional contracts as singers, or actors, when they are under 19 years of age. What's the difference? See "The NBA's uncool rule - College Basketball - Rivals.com" http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaab/news?slug=dw-rose060109&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

But again, when I put these together, it makes me think of how much things remain the same in our society. Most young black men are completely excluded from any opportunity in our society, which is why sports is such an attractive option. Many black families live in poor neighborhoods and their kids are sent to crumbling, unsafe, poorly staffed schools where they do not receive a decent education. Many of them, like most poor people in our country, are fed only high-starch low-protein and low-nutrition food which makes them fat, sluggish, unhealthy, and destined for diabetes and heart disease at a young age. These kids are screwed from the time they are born. But once in awhile, a sports star comes along, and he has a big ticket out. And the white-male professional basketball owners of America, who have a monopoly control of the sport, decide to park these kids somewhere for one year out of high school and prevent them from earning a living. How is that fair?

At the same time that these 18 year old kids are denied opportunity, we have a 91-year-old white man who's had way more than his fair share, but he will not let go.

And we have a woman who has done exactly what our society said she should do: work hard, go to school, get an education. Yet when she asked for the well-deserved promotion, she's attacked by a bunch of vile, threatening, racist old white men who seem dedicated to inciting violence among their followers -- "Defend The White Men Of America." They're crazy. And dangerous.

That's the thing about the privileged. It does not matter how much money they have, how many times they get to go to the "insider" dinners and bars and get-togethers and resorts, doesn't matter how many homes they have, how much art or stocks or shoes, doesn't matter that they will never live long enough to spend even a big chunk of what they already have -- they won't let go of a penny. I know quite a few people who are extremely wealthy by most people's standards, and they are cheap. The worst tippers, most resentful at having to fund public schools, nastiest about the unemployed (why don't they get a job), strongest opponents to public healthcare (that's socialism), least likely to pay a bonus to their employees.

I know a guy who is very wealthy, mostly because he's a privileged white country-club male, upper class, private schools, an insider from birth. Every year when a group of us go out for a holiday lunch, and invite all the office staff as well as the professionals -- he will not pay for his secretary's lunch. That's how cheap he is. I don't think there's a person in the world who likes him, and doubt he'll live long enough to spend all the money he has accumulated like a miser. But it doesn't matter -- he will not buy his secretary a sandwich at the Christmas/holiday lunch.

He's typical of people I know with money. There is no reason to try to appeal to them based on fairness or justice, because they don't believe in either. And, needless to say, most of these people are white men who use their accumulated wealth to try to get control over the people around them -- employees, wives, kids. They don't care if everyone hates them, as long as they feel like they have control. If they'd gone into politics, they would be starting wars to make themselves feel strong and powerful. It's a sickness.

When Bill Gates claims he's charitable, don't believe it. He, and Warren Buffett, and Bill Clinton, (all white males) all set up and fund private charities as a way to hold onto their money and avoid paying taxes. They can put up to 1/2 of their income into a private charity which they completely control, and keep all that money tax-free. Let's say they earned $200 million in a year, they put $100 million into a separate account, label it "charity," and don't pay $30-40 million in taxes that they otherwise would owe. It's all a tax fraud. As long as they pay out 5%/year of the money, they will never have to pay taxes. So guess how much they pay out every year? 5%. How much of that 5% goes to a kid, or relative, as compensation for them "managing" the charity? And they spend all their time going around telling the rest of us that they don't want the money for themselves -- they just want to help others. Warren Buffett keeps saying he's going to give away all his money when he dies. Don't bet on it. If they wanted to help, they would give their money away now, not hide it in private charity accounts in their own names. What's the problem? They don't think there's enough need, enough starving, enough suffering in the world already?

The politicians in Congress are mostly white men. I don't think putting privileged white women, or non-white women, into Congress, will change much. I'm not suggesting that other people are kind and honest, but white men are bad. Just that our society has built in a bias towards white men which is unfair to the great majority of the people in this country. 65% of the people are not white men. We need affirmative action to change that and try to bring about some equality.

And we need a serious change in our taxes to go back to when the tax system made sense. Stop these private charities and start taxing rich people again. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett should never have been allowed to accumulate so much wealth, because it should have been taken in taxes. And Microsoft should have been busted up as a monopoly decades ago. Bill Clinton should never have been allowed to leave office then go out and solicit close to a billion dollars from the corporations he benefitted while in office, and from foreign countries that he helped while he was the president. Politicians should be prohibited from taking so much as a penny from anybody for any reason when they leave office, other than reasonable compensation for an actual job.

A woman should be allowed to move up in her profession without being viciously attacked by an organized group of white men, publicly threatened and humiliated just because she wanted a better job. A 91 year old white man should step down, move out, and let somebody else get a chance, instead of holding onto power just because he can. And an 18 year old black kid should not be prevented from getting a job by a conglomerate of millionaire basketball-team owners who figure they can do whatever they want, because nobody ever listens to young black men in this society.

They Only Need 51 Votes To Confirm Sotomayor. The Democrats Need To Stop Hiding Behind The Republicans.

We're all waiting for that change. You know, the change that President Obama promised. The change-claim that the corrupt Democratic Senators and Representatives hid behind in their own coattail elections in 2008, claiming "yeah, -- me too -- I'm change too." But all we're seeing is a Republican Presidency with Republican policies being ratified and promoted by a Republican majority in the Congress. Who won the elections? I thought the Democrats did.

To begin, President Obama campaigned on his opposition to the war in Iraq and promised to end it. Yet he's already broken that promise by double-speak and clever wording, extending the official killing campaign to sometime next year, saying 50,000 U.S. military troops will remain even after 2010 for some indefinite period, then waiting a few months and having some top-level military guy casually mention that the U.S. plans to militarily occupy Iraq for at least another 10 years. That's not called ending the war. That's called continuing and extending it.

Maybe not a surge in Iraq, but a surge in Afghanistan. For what? All that exists in Afghanistan are poor people and rubble. Is there any reason the U.S. military continues to murder people in Afghanistan other than for the purpose of grabbing real estate to use as an oil pipeline for the oil corporations on whose behalf the U.S. military is waging these wars?

And a surge in Pakistan where the U.S., under the "change" government of Obama, is now apparently waging another illegal war, an international war crime, an undeclare, illegal, unconstitutional war against Pakistan. What part of "International War Crimes" and "Constitutional Law" do Obama and the Congress not understand? Only Congress can send the nation to war. Did they declare war against Pakistan but just forget to mention it? And besides, Congress cannot legally declare war against Pakistan because that would be [another] war of aggression against a nation that has not attacked nor threatened to attack us. WTF is going on?

And finally, a purge in the military where high-level, trained, experienced, decades-of-honorable-service career military men continue to be purged, stripped of their jobs and exiled from the military community in disgrace, not because they did something, not because of any action or inaction, but because they said something. If somebody says "I'm gay," they will be thrown out of the military, even if they're not gay. Even if they never had sex in their life. No requirement that they have engaged in sexual harassment, had sex with a fellow-military person, no conduct required. Just say the words "I'm gay," and they're out. No First Amendment rights at all. And contrast that with the heterosexual males in the U.S. military who harass women in the military to the cheers of their fellow men. President Obama said he opposed this policy, but now that he's in office he won't do a thing to end it.

Of course Congress does nothing, ever, under any circumstances, to help the people of this country, or even to acquit their constitutional responsibilities. What was that joke about dragging a dollar bill through a trailer park? That's what Congress is like: if you want them to do anything, you need to drag a dollar bill through Congress to get their attention. They don't even hide it anymore. That's their new mantra. They say "well, yes, we are corrupt, but we can't help ourselves; if you want us to do something, you will need to get all your fellow unemployed, homeless and destitute working people to contribute money, pay us bribes -- then we'll think about it."

Then we have the collapse of the economic foundation of American working people. Millions of American jobs have been taken overseas to third world countries (like GM did -- transferring all the knowledge and know-how and trade secret information developed by generations of Americans to third world countries, along with the hundreds of millions stripped from the company by management insiders, leaving only the rusted plants and debts and American workers behind, stealing the money from the retirees' pensions and healthcare programs). But Obama will give them more money -- the same criminals who have looted the business, sent all the assets to other countries so they can hide from American taxes, the same company that has thrown so many Americans out of work -- Obama is going to give them my money. Reward for a job well-done. Just like Bill Clinton said: send all the American jobs to other countries. What happens to the retirees? For the people who still have a job, their wages are slashed and their benefits stripped away (no pension, no healthcare, in some cases a loss of sick days and vacation days, no job security).

For the Wall Street Criminals who should have been arrested and thrown into prison, held without bail, a long time ago, Obama instead gave them cushy jobs in his administration where they can solicit bribes on the side from their friends on Wall Street, and come up with more programs to send billions more to their criminal friends. Rewarding the criminals, punishing the people in this country, the taxpayers, who actually work and live by the law.

What about job creation? We heard last week that Obama claims he saved 150,000 jobs. It's just so pathetic, with millions unemployed and millions more on the edge, this is absurd.

The first job of Obama and Congress should be to protect Americans, not by starting corporate wars against third world nations, but by protecting and defending and creating and promoting economic stability for Americans here in our own country. I'm supposed to be happy that the military is murdering people who live in Afghanistan? I want the military brought home and largely dismantled, and the war-money used instead to rebuild this country, make sure Americans have good-paying jobs and the benefits of being Americans which they are owed: decent roads, police, firefighters, good schools, healthcare.

Why is it that Americans are treated like inferior human beings by our own politicians? They act like we are worthless, deserving of nothing, we should simply go away, keep our mouths shut, and let them get on with their criminal enterprise of looting our country. Because that's the only apparent function of Congress: a criminal enterprise to negotiate a percentage kick-back from every deal in this country. They're corrupt. They sell their votes and their access and their influence.

Health care? We want single-payer. Every person who has studied the options concludes single-payer is the best. The government pays for every citizens' healthcare and sets the amounts to be paid to doctors. If somebody is so rich they want to buy private insurance, let them. For everyone else, you're covered. But the Medical Industry doesn't want that. The doctors charge obscene amounts for their services. Drug companies grossly overcharge Americans for stupid and needless drugs, and refuse to provide life-saving drugs to people because they want to keep their prices up. Hospitals overcharge for everything, and often kill patients because of a lack of basic sanitation and inadequate staffing. The Medical Industry wants to be able to rape the American public. They don't care if half the people can't afford medical treatment, as long as they keep making the big bucks.

So what does Congress announce? No single-payer. It won't even be considered. No speakers will be allowed to address the issue in Congressional hearings. It's like a "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy for the healthcare issue. Instead of (Don't Ask), they are saying that there will be a "Public Option." I think Obama came up with that term. What does it mean? Nobody knows.

Here's my best guess what they mean by Public Option. We have Blue Cross as a private insurance company. They will create a subsidiary called Blue Public Option, and they will claim that this is a big savings, a really good deal. But it won't be. It will be a fraud, and might charge slightly less per month but will provide inadequate coverage. It's a scam, a con. Every time you hear a politician say "Public Option," what you should hear is "I think Americans are so stupid that they won't realize we politicians have just negotiated an enormous bribe from the Medical Industry in exchange for agreeing not to pass single-payer healthcare." Because right before the Democrats started pushing this "Public Option," the Democratic politicians did have private meetings with the CEOs and lobbyists from the Medical Industry. Want to bet money changed hands? Or at least the promise of future bribes?

What excuse do we hear from the Democrats for their failure to do anything to help the working people? They say the mean old Republicans won't let them. So what is it the Republicans are doing to stop the Democrats? Do they say mean things? Is it the drug addict on the radio? Are the Democrats afraid he won't like them? Do the Republicans punch the Democrats in the face when they try to speak? Do they bar the doors, bring guns to Congress and threaten to shoot the Democrats? Kidnap the Democrats and prevent them from showing up for a vote? Have the Republicans planted bombs in Congress so nobody can go in and do any work?

No. None of that. The Democrats claim that they cannot do anything to help the working people of this country because the Republicans threaten a filibuster. That's it. It's like saying the Republicans threaten to blow their bad breath in the Congressional halls, and the Democrats just can't take that risk. This is ridiculous.

Now we have the right wing collectively jerking off over the last week about President Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court, a middle-of-the-road judge named Sonia Sotomayor, who happens to be of Puerto Rican heritage. Because she is female of Puerto Rican heritage, the right-wing has gone ballistic. They are blanketing the airwaves with vicious, racist sexist attacks against this woman. Pat Buchanan is rallying his troops to fight on behalf of white people everywhere. The vile, violence-promoting attacks on right-wing media has been astonishing. The Republicans say they will refuse to complete the hearings before August -- two months isn't enough time? The Republicans are demanding this, and threatening that, and suggesting the other. They want to turn this into a race war, and a gender war, and drag it out till Christmas.

Oh dear. Pity the poor Democrats, helpless in the face of these threats. Or are they?

How many votes does it take to confirm a President's Supreme Court Nominee? 51. Fifty-One Senators is all it takes to confirm Sonia Sotomayor. So the Democrats should stop their cowardly hiding behind the Republicans, because I'm sick of it. Let the Republicans filibuster for six months if they want, while the country goes to hell, but refuse to shut down the hearings for even ten minutes. Let's see how long these privileged, corrupt, lazy gasbag old white male Republicans will actually stand up on cspan and talk in their filibuster. I don't think they'd last four hours. They'd be worried about missing the noon cocktail hour.

In any event, it only takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, and there is likely at least one Republicans remaining in the Senate who would vote to end a filibuster. But the Democrats need to be called out on this cowardly act they're using as an excuse for them selling out the public. They can't keep hiding behind the Republicans who are completely powerless to stop the Democrats from doing anything they want. No more excuses.

Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution, the role of the Senate is to provide its advice and consent to a nomination. Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee may be consulted in advance by the White House about potential nominees. After a nomination is made, it is assigned to the Judiciary Committee. The Committee holds a public hearing and a subsequent vote is taken to report the nomination to the full Senate. A majority vote of the Senate is required to confirm a nominee.