Here comes the police state ptII

Notice how the liberals clap when he is being tased. This is how the police state is brought upon us with the clapping hands of the liberals.

Short Film

Here is a short film made by the guy who did Children of Men. It is based on the book by Naomi Klein.

9/11 I already forgot.

And also on this date -- on Sept 11 1973, US-backed Pinochet forces rose to power in Chile to overthrow the democratically-elected Salvador Allende. Allende died in the presidential palace. On Sept 11 1990, American anthrologist Myrna Mack was murdered by US-backed Guateleman security forces. On September 11, 1977 in South Africa oSteve Biko founder of the black consciosness movement was being beaten in the back of a van by apartheid forces. He died in the early morning hours of Sept. 12, 1977. On 9/11 1993, in the midst of the US-backed coup in Haiti, Antoine Azenery was dragged out of a church by coup forces and murdered in broad-daylight. He had been commemorating a massacre of parashiners at the Saint John Boscoe church that had occured five years earlier on September 11, 1988. Father Jean Bertrand Aristide had narrowly escaped death in that attack. He later became president of Haiti.

It is becoming obvious that the government, not solely the Bush Administration but the Democratic hacks, is getting worried. They are so scared that they had to gang tackle a Minister and break his leg because they didn't like the pin he was wearing. Free speech my ass. On the plus side, this is proof that they are becoming terrified of their subjects.


This is humorous.

I have a Pre-Sept. 11th mindset

One of our official enemies has released a tape talking to the American public. Of course, Americans are not allowed to know exactly what Bin Laden says, so I have provided a link. Why we are not allowed to know what our greatest enemy is saying is bizarre.
One of the most interesting lines in the Bin Laden speech is this."And among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn't like those who give advice."
This reminds me of when Hugo Chavez went before the UN General Assembly, held up a Chomsky book and told people they needed to read it.
What is weird is how two of America's official enemies cite an American intellectual and the press doesn't even mention it. Why is that? WHy won't the press ask, "Who is this Noam Chomsky and why do our official enemies cite him?" This says a lot about the American press. They refuse to look into a man who was referenced by our enemies.
The press is scared of what Chomsky says. THis is the reason they refuse to mention him in their reports. You can bet that had Chavez and Bin Laden talked about Angelina Jolie every news organization would talk about it. What is it about Chomsky or his ideas that threaten them?
Their silence speaks volumes. What a bunch of sell outs.

Finkelstein

It begins.

Today, two scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, from University of Chicago and Harvard, released a book on what they term the "Israel lobby" and how it effects our foreign policy. Let it be known that Mearsheimer and Walt are no screwballs by any stretch of the imagination. Both are/were widely respected for their knowledge of foreign policy and were considered "realists".
It all started when the Atlantic Monthly asked them to do a study on the influence of Jewish lobbying groups and how they may or may not effect our foreign policy. After the Atlantic Monthly read it they decided that they couldn't print it. Of course this is America and we are not allowed to talk about Israel's human rights violations. So since American journals are total sell out fucks they had to take it to England where their people are at least allowed a little more truthful information from their press. It received condemnation immediately from all sides, of course mostly American Jews which in a sense supports their thesis. From Alan "Lets torture people" Dershowitz to Abe "Grand Wizard" Foxman of the ADL. They spewed nonsense about how these professors are anti-semites and aren't qualified scholars. (This coming from a man who plagerized a fraud, for Christ's sake and is still the chair of Harvard Law School.) It is worth noting that two of the world's leading experts on Israel also had reservations about the book but no one wanted their opinions because they are "self-hating" Jews or as some have called them "Hamas Jews". It is an unwritten rule that Noam CHomsky will not be given air time in the U.S. so his opinion on the piece, which was very valuable, was not relevant because the press knows what Chomsky will go on to say about the history of Israel and we don't to open debate.
The book has been out one day so far and it is already raising an uproar. So far they have had an invite rescinded from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. It turns out that criticism of Israel is not acceptable in America home of a supposed free press. Abe Foxman wrote a book countering the points made in the book even though the book had not been released and Foxman could have no knowledge of what is in the book. My guess is that he falls back on the old canards of Antisemitism, shoddy scholarship(which makes you wonder about the quality of teachers at Harvard, if they can't write a research paper) and how the whole issue is "very complicated".
My thought is, if the authors are anti-semites and have a faulty arguement then why the need to attack them? Could it be that they are hitting it right on the head. THis of course, is just the latest in American Jewish reaction to criticism in the last year. Remember the rabid anti-semite Jimmy Carter who dared called Israel's actions in the West Bank as apartheid. As it turns out so do many Israelis. It should be said that no one attacked Carters thesis or facts instead it was typical ad hominem bullshit. Though that time it didn't work and it is proof that the "Lobby" is losing strength. I mean it is one thing when the world's leading intellectual condemns Israel but for people from Harvard and the University of Chicago(birthplace of Neo-Conservative thinking) to do so is too much. They must be stopped by whatever means possible and the more outrageous the better. Maybe next week Dershowitz will accuse of them as offspring of a Nazi or something, which of course, it is okay for a Jew to call a Gentile a Nazi but never the other way around.

The New Yorker Attacks
So does the NY Sun
National Review
At last some sanity from CounterPunch

Mike Gravel

Hillary Is Dangerous

Then there is this.

chomsky

Chomsky on Iran/American relations.

Moyers on Rove

We are lucky to have a journalist like Bill Moyers.

Some Readings

Here's some doom and gloom about our economy.
THe Gloom
and
The Doom
Then here are some hopeful words from Albert Einstein
Einstein On Socialism

What a difference seven years makes.

Don't you just love how the educated intellectuals say nothing about this. Instead they toss it down the memory hole. It is amazing how well the media followed the official line from the White House. The people who led the Soviet Union would be amazed at the discipline of the American media.

Ron Paul

I don't agree with him on about 95% of his views but on the War he is dead on.

Time to Resign

This petition has been brought to my attention and I figured I had to act. I have been looking for an excuse to resign and this killed two birds with one stone. I didn't mean to use a pun when I referred to throwing stones.

To Whom It May Concern:

It has come to my horrified attention that my Union, and therefore me by extension, has signed onto a petition denouncing the courageous stand taken by British Unions to boycott the State of Israel. That there is a basic level of Human Rights seems self-evident and it is painfully obvious to anyone, who reads non-American newspapers, that Israel violates even the most basic Human Rights of the Palestinians continuously. I could go into detail but that seems unnecessary since it is has been well documented and from the looks of it, irrelevant to you. So if the UFCW is against a boycott of the State of Israel it is easy, even if incorrect, to follow a logical path to the point where one says, “British Unions are using one of the only effective incentives for change, economics. The UFCW doesn’t think that boycotting Israel is right, therefore the UFCW does not think that Israel should change and grant even the most basic Human Rights, like freedom of movement, control of one’s borders, what roads one can travel on, even whom one can marry, etc., to the Palestinians.” Well I do, and I strongly disagree with the Unions stance on basic Human Rights, as does nearly the entire world.
Israel is a First World nation and should have to play by its rules not those of the Third World. Israel’s Human Rights record is, at the moment, the worst in the First World with its legal torture, detention without charges, use of F-16 fighter jets to shoot missiles into densely populated neighborhoods, kidnapping family member to use as “bargaining chips”, complete control of movement with a series of hundreds of checkpoints, extra-judicial targeted assassinations, illegal settlements, and many other violations of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Human Rights record of Israel is so well documented it is amazing that it is even mentioned in the same breath, as Palestinian Human Rights violations, which, of course, do exist.
The statement signed onto argues not enough attention is given to other Arab Governments, but that is a red herring. This conflict is between the Israelis and the Palestinians and, no matter what the government of Yemen does, it is irrelevant to Israel’s Human Rights record. The statement also questions the motives of singling out one country when there are so many other conflicts and repressive regimes around the world. Here the writers are using the logical fallacy To Quoque where one argues that since the Unions are not actively trying to stop all the world’s conflicts then therefore the idea of stopping the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is flawed or of questionable motives which is a sly way to imply Anti-Semitism as its root. Anyone with even a minor understanding of the conflict has heard these all ad nauseam.
Many people over thirty years of age remember the name Checkpoint Charlie, the famous checkpoint separating East Berlin and West Berlin. Most also remember Ronald Reagan’s famous speech in which he called on Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” Eventually Walls always come down and repression comes to an end, history has proven this true time and time again. People were on the wrong side of Jim Crow laws, the Vietnam War, abolition, Universal Suffrage, and one could go on. By signing this statement it seems as if the leaders of the UFCW haven’t read history and will end up on the wrong side of history like so many before them.
People have to be able to look themselves in the mirror each day, and as much as my deep-seated political and economic views make it hard to terminate my position as an advocate for my fellow workers, I must. Otherwise looking at myself in that mirror would be impossible. So therefore I must hereby resign my post as Union Steward.



Sincerely,



Justin Loper

"Higher Taxes" is a Red Herring.

Our country is a Democracy in name only. Our leaders do not follow the public’s wishes or opinions. One prime example is our health care. Virtually every poll taken, asking if people think their government should provide health care, shows that at the least 60% believe that it should. It seems self-evident that it is the job of our government to protect our citizens from harm but many powerful interests would prefer that not to be the case. So they attempt to frighten people with talk of higher taxes. It is true that taxes would have to increase but in the end you wouldn’t notice the difference on your paycheck because your insurance premiums would disappear.
On pay day I open my check to see that the amount of money I am paid is different then the amount I receive. Damn those evil taxes, which go to fix potholes, educate our youth and launch cluster bombs, have been removed but wait that isn’t all I’m missing. Nearly 30% of my money is gone. Of that, 23% went to my government and almost 7% went to an insurance agency. So would it be correct to say I’m taxed at a rate of 23%, or is it 30%? All I am concerned about is that 30% of my money is being taken.
The insurance industry, the Pharma industry and the Doctor industry have used their proxies for years to convince the people of the fact that their taxes would increase if a national health care system was implemented. Factually correct their statement is but it is also deceiving. So for instance, continuing to use me as the example, it is true that my tax rate of 23% would increase. Whether it would reach 30% is doubtful.
This is a world of pluses and minuses but not blacks and whites. The perceived negative part of the equation is that your taxes may increase, though it is doubtful your paycheck will decrease. The truly positive aspect is living in a society that takes care of its most vulnerable especially its children. It should be shameful for all Americans, and a negative, that 30 million children have been punished with a lack of health care because of their parents, and it would be a positive for that to change.
In order for our country to do what is right and protect its citizens, especially the ones in the most dire straits, we need a national health care system. To achieve the health care system this country deserves our taxes will invariably increase, yes. Will your paycheck be affected, no. Removing the outrageous health care premiums and moving that money into the Medicare tax makes it a wash. As a result we, as Americans, can have one less aspect, of our great country, to be ashamed of.

More Crap

This is the other piece I submitted the the local paper. Unfortunately when I opened the file I realized that the spacing between paragraphs was all fucked up. That can be my excuse when I get denied because the "white man" excuse is a tad bit weak.

There is a huge problem with our elections, we are told, so rampant that it may destroy the whole process. What is this emergency? Voter fraud, yes, there is widespread voter fraud being committed, they say. Though when one actually looks at the numbers there doesn’t really seem to be much fraud at all. The real crisis, which these people ignore, is not that one guy, here, tried to vote twice or one woman, there, didn’t realize she was disenfranchised and tried to vote. The crisis with our democracy is that the people don’t vote.
The last time that over 60 percent of voters turned out to the polls in a Presidential Election was 1968. Of the nine Presidential elections held since then, 2004 had the highest turnout with a little over 55 percent voting. Contrast that with the latest elections, for heads of state, in France where nearly 74 percent went to the polls, Bolivia where 84 percent voted and Finland which had 74 percent show up to the polls.
It becomes worse in off year Congressional Elections. In our most recent Congressional Election, which switched control from one party to the other, just under 37 percent bothered voting. If we take a look around the world we find similar differences as we did before. We can look across the pond to Austria where 78 percent came out and if we gander southward to Peru we should be ashamed since they turned out 88 percent of their voters.
Ralph Nader sold tens of thousands of tickets, at 7 bucks a piece, in 2000, to people who wanted to hear his message. His main thesis, right or wrong, was that the Democrats and the Republicans have become too much alike and control all political debate.
Ross Perot’s message of how terribly irresponsible our national debt was, got airtime because people were looking for another voice. Before Ross Perot no one talked about our National Debt but now it is commonplace in political speak.
I offer up two suggestions that, though they won’t fix the problem, could help move us in a direction that brings out more voters to the polls. It is true that we may never reach the levels of countries like Peru but we should and could get at least 2/3 or 3/4 of the population to care enough about elections to vote in them.
We should allow more voices into the debates, Presidential and Congressional. There are two common arguments for why this should not be the case and both are very flimsy. The most common is that it is just too hard to have debates with a stage full of candidates even though we do it for the Presidential Primary debates and it seems to work.
The other argument is that anyone could become a Presidential candidate even if they couldn’t feasibly win and this would allow anyone and everyone to be in the debates. Right now there is a threshold of 15 percent in the polls that must be crossed to gain entry into the debates. What could be done is to make it so that if a candidate is on the ballot in enough states, in which it is theoretically possible to get enough Electoral College votes, to win, they get entry into the debates.
The one thing the countries listed above and their elections have in common with each other but differ with America is that they are all held on Sunday when a larger percentage of the general public is off from work. The reasoning behind the 1845 law making our elections fall on the second Tuesday in November is gone. America is no longer an agricultural society who can’t vote while the crops are in the field and need time to travel into the city.
We, as Americans, need to find ways to fix our elections and democracy. We have so many intelligent citizens in this country with a myriad of ideas. We need to stop fearing change and see that there is a crisis in American democracy. If this is the Democracy we are trying to sell to the world, I fear we won’t be finding too many takers.

Save What?! Revised

Here is one of my two pieces I wrote for the local paper in an attempt to land a job as a community columnist.


There is a new wave of protest sweeping the nation and all the usual suspects are out calling for action. We have stars like George Clooney urging us to take action and most recently music artists from Aerosmith to Green Day have contributed songs for an album to raise funds to supply relief to the people in a war zone. Where is this war torn area they are so concerned about? It is the Darfur region of Sudan. My question is, why not Iraq instead?

The crimes against humanity going on in Sudan are horrendous, no doubt. The figures of dead in Darfur range from 200,000 to 400,000. Of those it is estimated that ten percent died from actual violent conflict with the remainder a result of the war going on around them. If a person dies due to starvation, disease or other factors related to the conflict then they are counted with the war dead.

A study conducted last year by Johns Hopkins University showed that around 650,000 people have died as a direct result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Many critics argue the study was flawed. They argue that the method used, referred to as “cluster sampling”, can’t be an accurate measure of deaths. This “cluster sampling” is the same technique used, by the U.S., to find out how many people had been killed in Kosovo and Afghanistan. And the U.S. continues to spend millions to train UN workers and non-governmental agencies to employ this exact same technique in other parts of the globe.

Since the end of the last Gulf War to the beginning of this latest, estimates show that at least 1/2 a million people died from the sanctions we placed on Iraq. If you add that to the 650,000 dead that Johns Hopkins University figured then you are looking at over a million citizens. Really, a million citizens died as a result of our government’s actions. America, the nation that we think is the greatest, is responsible for that many deaths?


A major obstacle preventing anything from being done in Darfur is China’s support for the Sudanese Govenrment. How is it that these activists plan to pressure the government in Beijing? Typically the best method for changing people’s behavior is through economic incentives or punishments, like boycotts. Though boycotting Chinese products would be virtually impossible since their products are ubiquitous in our society and it would hurt the Chinese workers the most.

In a perfect world the Chinese citizenry would rise up in support of the people of Darfur and demand their government take action. It is an unfortunate fact that the Chinese are not free to assemble and protest because they live under totalitarian rule. We, on the other hand, live in, most likely, the freest nation on the planet and we have shown, throughout history, the ability to change what it is doing.

That leaves us with the only option of pressuring our government to call out China or attempt to lean on them to change their backing of Sudan. There is a minor problem and that is we have no moral high ground for which to stand on. As we speak our government is engaged in a war against an enemy that never attacked us or could, for that matter.


So it seems quite obvious that the best way to stop the terrible atrocities happening in Darfur is to stop the actions of our government in Iraq. It has been said that it is almost cowardly to call out the crimes of someone else’s government while your own is committing massive crimes. We as citizens of a Democracy are responsible for the actions of our country and the predictable outcomes of those actions. That is not to argue that the people in Darfur don’t deserve hope or help, they truly do, yet so do the people in Iraq. We can and must force our government to do what is right because I doubt the centers of power in China are paying much attention to what happens on U.S. campuses.

Michael Moore FIghts Back

The Facts From Moore's Website

I've been so fucking uninspired as of late.