100% Growth

I was poking around the settings in Blogger, and I noticed this blog has a new follower. Wow. That doubles the number from 1 to 2. 100% growth. I should start marketing this as the fastest growing blog on the internet! :)

If you read this blog and like it, leave a comment every once in awhile. Its kinda nice to get feedback like this that says someone is reading this. And you'll undoubtedly encourage me to write more!

Wow, if both my followers were to ever comment on the same article, we would have a discussion going!

Nuclear BS from the NY Times

Report Says Iran Has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb by William Broad and David Singer of the NY Times.

Yet another scary headline from the NY Times about some country the US has declared to be evil being close to having a nuclear weapon.

Well, it would be scary if nuclear weapons were made from exploding 'data'.

As someone with a nuclear engineering degree, I have no idea about what they mean about having enough 'data' to design a bomb.

Nuclear weapons are really rather simple devices, at least in concept. You take a critical mass worth of uranium or plutonium. You keep it in several pieces that are smaller than a critical mass, since you don't want it going off in your hands like that fourth of july firecracker did back when you were a kid. Then, when you want it to explode, you put the pieces together (quickly) to allow it to form a critical mass.

That's it. Congratulations, you too now have enough data to design and build a nuclear weapon. Welcome to the club! We have t-shirts and hats for the new club members.

There are always these stories about how some nation that we hate is close to have a nuclear weapon. With Iraq, the line of bs was along the lines of 'IF Iraq had fissionable material, they would have a bomb in 6 months.' That of course is a really big if. Its like saying 'if I had a million dollars, I'd be a millionaire in six months.' Of course I would. Now the NY Times is writing strange, misleading and scary headlines about Iran having the 'data' to build a bomb.

The key is the fissionable material. The IAEA has continually inspected Iran's facilities and found that they are not, and that there is no evidence that they ever have, produced bomb-grade uranium from their enrichment facilities. The IAEA knows about the new facility in Qom because the Iranians reported it to the IAEA exactly as required under their agreements. Inspections are being arranged, before it becomes operational, just as required by the treaty.

But the key thing to remember is this. Without that bomb-grade uranium, they ain't building a nuclear bomb. No matter how much 'data' they have. Good luck getting 'data' to explode.

The question you should be asking is this. Why is the NY Times, along with SOS Hillary and President Obama, trying to mislead and confuse you?

BTW, remember the names 'William Broad' and 'David Sanger'. They appear to be the new Judy Miller in printing outrageous propaganda at the NY Times.

This is what a Police State looks like

Pittsburgh Police Take a Photo With Arrested Student video from IReport.com


The question is simply this, who holds the sovereign power of the United States? According to the Constitution, it is We the People. The fundamental concept of the United States, the idea that made the King of England charge our founding fathers as 'traitors', is that the sovereign power of a nation lies with the citizens of that nation.

A police state, where the power resides in the police, and a democracy, where the power resides with the people, are not the same thing. Watch this video, and then ask yourself whether these police officers believe that power resides with them, or with the citizen being held to his knees to force his participation in their group souvenir photo?

The Economy is a Lie, Too

The Economy is a Lie, Too by Paul Craig Roberts on counterpunch.org

If measured according to the methodology used when I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the unemployment rate today in the US is above 20%. Moreover, there is no obvious way of reducing it. There are no factories, with work forces temporarily laid off by high interest rates, waiting for a lower interest rate policy to call their workforces back into production.

The work has been moved abroad. In the bygone days of American prosperity, CEOs were inculcated with the view that they had equal responsibilities to customers, employees, and shareholders. This view has been exterminated. Pushed by Wall Street and the threat of takeovers promising “enhanced shareholder value,” and incentivized by “performance pay,” CEOs use every means to substitute cheaper foreign employees for Americans. Despite 20% unemployment and cum laude engineering graduates who cannot find jobs or even job interviews, Congress continues to support 65,000 annual H-1B work visas for foreigners.

In the midst of the highest unemployment since the Great Depression what kind of a fool do you need to be to think that there is a shortage of qualified US workers?

The last is just yet another data point in whom our Congress really represents. Nothing new there, but perhaps someone out there needed one more bit of proof to be convinced.

The real question is this. How long will American voters keep electing and re-electing a Congress that doesn't represent them? Shouldn't voting to fund foreigners to come take American jobs in the midst of the worst downturn since the Great Depression be a death knell to any chances of re-election? In a country where the elections represented the will of the people, surely that would be the case.

Honduras - Urgent Plea from Radio Progreso

Urgent Plea from Radio Progreso

The democratic resistance that CNN won't tell you about .....

Urgent Plea from Radio Progreso (my translation)
Sun, 08/16/2009 - 12:30 — AP

Help! Our Voice, Radio Progreso and ERIC SJ

Our Voice in the political crisis:

Radio Progreso and the Team for Reflection, Investigation and Communication ERIC of the Jesuit community in Honduras

Saturday, August 15, 2009

HELP!

Radio Progreso was placed under siege by an army contingent the very day of the coup d'etat. At gunpoint and without a warrant, the military penetrated our facilities and forced us to silence our equipment.

On August 14th, our radio sent two of its reporters to cover the protest that the resistance front had organized in the city of Choloma, between San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortés, in the north zone of the Honduran Atlantic. Radio Progreso would cover the events when the protesters were savagely attacked by the police contingent.

At noon, our reporter Gustavo Cardoza transmitted the news about the teargassing, the arrests, the physical attacks that the police were carrying out right and left on the protesters. All of the sudden, Gustavo Cardoza said that a policeman was pointing his weapon at him and immediately reported that other police were coming after him. Our reporter tried to run, and told them that he was a reporter for Radio Progreso. It was then that we heard his cries, and the blows that our reporter was receiving.

The transmission from our reporter was abruptly suspended. The police kicked him, hit him in the back, in the stomach, they threw him in a vehicle and laid him face down, and in the trajectory they kicked him, hit him with rifle butts, and attacked him with the worst possible insults.

Luckily, the Association of Lawyers in Resistance to the Coup and the Association of Judges for Democracy acted with speed and diligence, and although some of them were shoved and insulted, at the end of the day they managed to get the police to free our reporter and some of the other protesters who had been captured and tortured.

Before the world, we give testimony of our defenselessness. We raise our voice, our clamor before the community of international human rights organizations, because here, all those of us who oppose the de facto regime are exposed to barbarities, while the organisms of the state that are responsible for overseeing justice and human rights, instead of protecting us, point their accusing finger so that they can exterminate us. People of the world, don't leave us alone!

FBI

Attorney: FBI trained NJ blogger to incite others from Antiwar.com newswire.

Back when I was younger, some old 60's activists taught me a very simple rule. Its this. The person in your group who's trying to incite you to commit a crime, especially acts of violence, that's the FBI agent.

Hal Turner worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an "agent provocateur" and was taught by the agency "what he could say that wouldn't be crossing the line," defense attorney Michael Orozco said.

"His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest," Orozco said.

Ah, nothing quite like living in the land of the free. Makes one remember why the founders didn't want to have federal police.

2% solution

Obama on Drugs: 98% Cheney? by Greg Palast via ZNet.

Obama and the Democrats are bragging about how Obama got the insurance companies to cut the amount they plan to raise the cost of drugs by $80 billion. And be careful to note that they aren't cutting the costs by $80 billion. They are just agreeing to raise prices by that much less.

Greg Palast did the math, and compared to the current amount the US spends on prescription drugs ($3.6 trillion), that promise is worth 2%. Drug prices were expected to double in the next ten years. Now that 100% increase will only be a 98% increase. For that, the Democrats sold off single-payer and any other progressive ideas for health care.

What did that cost us? The New England Journal of Medicine notes that 13 European nations successfully regulate the price of drugs, reducing the average cost of name-brand prescription medicines by 35% to 55%. Obama gave that up for his 2%.

The Veterans Administration is able to push down the price it pays for patent medicine by 40% through bargaining power. George Bush stopped Medicare from bargaining for similar discounts, an insane ban that Obama said he'd overturn. But, once within Tauzin's hypnotic gaze, Obama agreed to lock in Bush's crazy and costly no-bargaining ban for the next decade.

What else went down in Obama's drug deal? To find out, I called C-SPAN to get a copy of the videotape of the meeting with the drug companies. I was surprised to find they didn't have such a tape despite the President's campaign promise, right there on CNN in January 2008, "These negotiations will be on C-SPAN."

This puzzled me. When Dick Cheney was caught having secret meetings with oil companies to discuss Bush's Energy Bill, we denounced the hugger-muggers as a case of foxes in the henhouse.

Cheney's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were creepy and nasty and evil.

But the Obama crew's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were, the President assures us, in the public interest.

We know Cheney's secret confabs were shady and corrupt because Cheney scowled out the side of his mouth.

Obama grins in your face.

See the difference?

The difference is 2%.

How is getting screwed by the Democrats and big corporations any different from getting screwed by the Republicans and big corporations? We keep hearing that the Democrats are a 'lessor-evil'. Now we know exactly how much lessor --- 2%.

Reminds me of the earlier Palast quote I keep up on the left side bar

"It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car."

Pressuring Obama

Back in the pre-election days when I was commenting on commondreams, I kept hearing from the Democrat loyalists that the reason to vote for Obama was because since he was more liberal that it would be easier to pressure Obama into decent policies. One of the reasons I'm probably banned from commenting on commondreams now is because I was rather sceptical about that idea, and said so.

So, how's that working out? Now that we've got our President who's supposed to be so friendly to the left, how's it working out applying pressure to get him to follow decent and progressive policies? What I suspected before the election seems true today. That is, the left can't even get in the door to talk to the Democrats.

The health care debate is a wonderful example. The left isn't even allowed in the room to talk about options like 'single-payer'. Like most other ideas left of Reagan in the last few years, that was immediately declared 'off-the-table' by the Democratic leadership. Meanwhile, cut to the White House to see how the big health insurance and pharmaceutical companies were treated.

The following piece by Ralph Nader is so important as to understanding how this country really works, and why voting Democrat doesn't change anything, that I'm going to copy in the whole piece.

Never much of a fighter against abusive corporate power, Barack Obama is making it increasingly clear that right from his start as President, he wanted health insurance reform that received the approval of the giant drug and health insurance industries.

Earlier this year he started inviting top bosses of these companies for intimate confabs in the White House. Business Week magazine, which proclaimed recently that “The Health Insurers Have Already Won” reported that the CEO of UnitedHealth, Stephen J. Hemsley, met with the President half a dozen times.

These are the vendors. They and their campaign slush funds cannot be ignored in the power struggle over the legislation percolating in the Congress. One public result of these meetings was that the drug industry promised $80 billion in savings over ten years and the health insurance moguls promised $150 billion over the same decade. Mr. Obama trumpeted these declarations without indicating how these savings would be guaranteed, how the drug companies could navigate the antitrust laws and what was given to the health care industry by the White House in return.

We have now learned that one Obama promise was to continue the prohibition on Uncle Sam from bargaining for volume discounts on drugs that you the taxpayer have been paying for in the drug benefit program enacted in 2003.

Unknown is whether the health insurance companies were also promised continuation of Medicare Advantage with its 14% added taxpayer subsidy to induce the elderly to make the move out of public Medicare. Also unknown is whether the Medicare public option that Mr. Obama formerly espoused but since has wavered on has been put on the concession table.

The whole secret process is seedy and demonstrates cruel disregard for the millions of American who, whether in dire need of medical services or not, voted in “change we can believe in.”

By stark contrast, President Obama has never invited to the White House the leading consumer-patient champions in this country who favor full Medicare and free choice of physician and hospital—often called “a single payer” system. Open to the corporate barons who have failed decade after decade to deliver what patients need, the White House door is closed to the likes of Dr. Quentin Young—a founder of the Physicians for a National Health Program and an old Chicago friend of Obama’s, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, who heads Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Drs. Marcia Angell, Stephanie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein, who are nationally known and accomplished single payer advocates or Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the fast-growing California Nurses Association.

Mr. Obama even tried to exclude any advocate of a single payer system—previously favored by Obama and still favored by a majority of the American people, doctors and nurses—from his roundtable meetings convened to receive the views of different constituencies.

“Make me do it” was the advice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to reformers when faced with legislation he desired but did not have the votes for in Congress. Mr. Obama is not exerting that plea for people power. Were he to do that, he would be encouraging daily public hearings in the Senate and the House on the bureaucratic waste, greed, overbilling, collusion, and fraud that many in the corporate world have inflicted with their costly, pay or die health care industry.

Such publicized hearings would keep him on the offensive. It would arouse the public and focus energies on the main problem—the corporatization of medicine. This commercialism has left tens of millions of people without health insurance, caused 20,000 fatalities a year, and cost Americans twice or more per capita than have full Medicare systems in western countries, which have better health outcomes than the U.S.

Further indication of Obama’s corporate dealings is that he never identified himself with a specific bill with a House and Senate number that he could rally the people around. No wonder people are confused, frustrated and angry. President Obama did not stand for an unambiguous proposal.

He thereby emboldened both the cash and carry Blue dog Democrats to rebel and the Republican yahoos to launch their lies and distortions via Rush Limbaugh and similar trash media.

Obama is about to make his biggest mistake to date by favoring the bipartisan deal his assistants are working out with Blue Dog Senator Max Baucus and his Republican counterparts on the Senate Finance Committee. This proposal has no public option, no consumer protections or restraints on the mayhem and skyrocketing charges of the so-called health care industry.

Already the less corporate-indentured bills being reported from the House Committee by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and his allies are getting short-shrift from a White House that clearly views the forthcoming Baucus-Grassley “compromise” as the “more practical” go-to legislation.

There is reliable word that the AFL-CIO will endorse whatever Obama approves, with the exceptions of the California Nurses Association and the Sheet Metal Workers’ union. The latter, through their president, Michael J. Sullivan, announced in late July that it was suspending all future campaign contributions to any candidate for Congress or the Presidency.

Already over sixty progressive members of the House, headed by Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) have declared opposition to these unacceptable compromises moving forward in both the House and the Senate.

So is gridlock around the corner? Will there be a health insurance reform of any stripe signed into law this year? It depends on the alliances that settle for the lowest corporate denominators being blocked by the unyielding principled stands of the progressives who want something that puts patients above the failed profiteering vendors.

The guess here is that Obama will sign anything which squirms through a cowardly Congress that cannot give to the American people in 2009 the health care system Congress stopped President Harry Truman from establishing in 1950.

It is up to the people of our country to “make him do it” whether this year or next. A mere one million immediate calls to members of Congress by one million assertive citizens will start sobering up these legislators who think they can get away with another sale of our public trust.

The Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121. The full Medicare, single payer bill (backed by nearly ninety legislators) is H.R. 676. The go-to citizen group for your sustained engagement is singlepayeraction.org. The rest is up to you, the majority, who want to put the people first.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Tell your friends to visit Nader.Org and sign up for E-Alerts.

To unsubscribe, e-mail: alerts-unsubscribe@lists.nader.org
For additional commands, e-mail: alerts-help@lists.nader.org

Victory Day

I tried to call the worthless company that the corporation that booted me out the door has hired to manage my Cobra health insurance. This company finds any excuse not to provide service. Today's excuse... Their offices are closed for 'Victory Day'.

Yes folks. In order to celebrate the mass murder of 150,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this company is refusing to answer questions about health insurance. With the outrageous gall to call this celebration of a horrible war crime as 'Victory Day'.

Only in America. I'm guessing that Germans aren't refused health care answers due to a corporate celebration of Auschwitz Day, or maybe the corps would call it Cleansing Day or some such Orwellian term the equivalent of 'Victory Day'.

Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years

Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years by Daniel Ellsberg.

I have enormous respect for Mr. Ellsberg, and I'd highly recommend this article and anything else he's written. His book 'Secrets' that he wrote a few years back is excellent.

But the scientists knew something else that was unknown to the public and even to most high-level decision-makers. They knew that the atomic bombs, the uranium and plutonium fission bombs they were preparing, were only the precursors to far more powerful explosives, almost surely including a thermonuclear fusion bomb, later called the hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb. That weapon—of which we eventually came to have tens of thousands—could have an explosive yield much greater than the fission bombs needed to trigger it. A thousand times greater.

Moreover, most of the scientists who focused on the long-run implications of nuclear weapons, belatedly, after the surrender of Germany in May 1945 believed that using the Bomb against Japan would make international control of the weapon very unlikely. In turn that would make inevitable a desperate arms race, which would soon expose the United States to adversaries’ uncontrolled possession of thermonuclear weapons, so that, as the scientists said in a pre-attack petition to the president, “the cities of the United States as well as the cities of other nations will be in continuous danger of sudden annihilation.” (In this they were proved correct.) They cautioned the president—on both moral grounds and considerations of long-run survival of civilization—against beginning this process by using the Bomb against Japan even if its use might shorten the war.

Of course, our government had put a general in charge of the Manhattan Project, instead of the scientists. When the scientists wrote this petition, they submitted it properly, through channels. Which meant it went to Gen. Groves. Gen. Groves decided not to pass it along to the Secretary of Defense or the President. They never saw it. After the war, the petition was then classified 'secret' to make sure the American people never knew the views of the scientists who were most familiar with the bomb.

America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years. But its not like we just dozed off. More like we've been drugged into submission by generals who decided we didn't need to know enough to question their sacred judgments.

Its enough to make one appreciate why the founding fathers of this country viewed 'standing armies' as the greatest threat to the freedom they had just fought for and won.

Hiroshima, 64 years ago

The Boston Globe has a set of 34 pictures from Hiroshima, 64 years ago

Sadly, 61% of Americans think that this destruction and the killing of some 150,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was 'the right thing.'

May God have mercy on our souls.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, 64 Years Too Late and Not a Moment Too Soon by Tom Englehardt and Frida Berrigan on TomDispatch.com.

And they were pikers compared to the top military brass who, in 1960, found themselves arguing over the country's first Single Integrated Operational Plan for nuclear strategy. In it, a scenario was laid out for delivering more than 3,200 nuclear weapons to 1,060 targets in the Communist world, including at least 130 cities which would, if all went well, cease to exist. Official, if classified, estimates of possible casualties from such an attack -- and by then, nuclear weaponry and its delivery systems had grown far more powerful -- ran to 285 million dead and 40 million injured (and this probably underestimated radiation effects).

Of course, to the American people, this was presented as only a 'response' that we would give to a Communist attack on us. But, note carefully how the planners dream of wiping out the Communist world. That was the real goal. And the fact that they were willing to consider killing nearly 300,000,000 people to achieve that goal might just be the recorded high water mark (so far) of the evil that the human heart is capable of.

We consider Bin Laden a vicious and evil man for killing 3000 Americans. We consider Hitler a historically evil man for killing 6,000,000 in his concentration camps. But we must now put that in context by remembering that American military leaders were willing to kill 300,000,000 people to achieve their goals. And remember with this that these were the same men who used to regularly send American nuclear bombers on raids over the pole towards the Soviet Union, only breaking off the raid at the last minute .... apparently in an attempt to provoke a response from the Soviets. And that these were the men who were actively planning to stage fake attacks in Operation Northwoods to provide the excuse to start such a war.

In this, at least, I know I'm not a typical American: Hiroshima and Nagasaki still seem all too real to me. As the child of anti-nuclear activists, I was raised to pay attention to two significant dates in American history -- the day when the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber named after the pilot's mother, dropped Little Boy, a five-ton uranium explosion bomb, on Hiroshima; and the moment, three days later, when another plane, jokingly named Bock's Car (after the plane's original pilot), dropped Fat Man (a moniker supposedly given it in honor of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill), a more complex plutonium implosion bomb, on Nagasaki.

I guess I'm another atypical American, in that I also consider these to be very important dates. I studied nuclear engineering in college. At some point, it became important to me to remember these dates, and the awful crimes against humanity that were committed on them. I consider that the price, or penance, of having learned too much of such a black art.

I remember listening to the blather coming out of the TV sets on 9/11 and 9/12, of how idiot commentators trying to fan a new war were calling the attacks of 9/11 the greatest atrocity in human history. Of how they were saying more people died in those crimes than in any other day. In my mind, I couldn't help to remember that Americans had killed 70,000+ on two separate days in a week. I suppose one reason I don't fit in well in an American corporate environment is that I tend to remind co-workers of such unpleasant historical truths when they mindlessly repeat the blather from the tv set to me while at work.

Meanwhile, my eclectic reading tastes took me somewhere else already today. I read a lot of history, and I had a history of WWII sitting in my bathroom. I'd already read it, but I was bored and picked it up to a random page today.

"Kurt Meyer of 12 SS Panzer Division became the youngest divisional commander in the German army at the age of thirty three. He was the perfect product of Nazi fanaticism. Tall, handsome, with penetrating blue eyes, he knew only what Hitler had told him, and believed it all. He was prepared to die for his faith in National Socialism and he was utterly ruthless in forcing others to die for it as well. Tried as a war criminal for inciting his troops to murder Canadian prisoners-of-war, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In such a man, the Nazi virus will always live. It has become part of his lifeblood."

"Defeat in the West" by Milton Shulman. (The book is from 1947, and is one of several books published by allied officers who had a chance to interview Nazi generals in prison camps after the war).

When I read that, I wondered how many Americans fit that description today. They know only what Fox News, Republicans and the Pentagon tell them. They believe it all.

We tend to paper over and forget our evil acts. Watch around you as the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki roll past yet again on the calendar. How many people around you even notice these dates. There is certainly no acts of national remembrance of the days when we killed 70,000+ innocent civilians. Attacking innocent civilians is a war crime. Made even worse when it occurs in the final days of a war that was winding down anyways against an enemy who was already beaten.

We tend to believe that we are a nation that does good. This idea of American exceptionalism is used to cover our more modern crimes. Our intentions are good, so its ok if a million Iraqis and thousands of Afghanistanis die in our wars. That's one of several good reasons why its important to remember the anniversaries of the days when American committed acts of great evil in the world. Its a reminder that we must always be careful as to what we do, even if its done with good intentions. We must always remember that we, like the rest of human kind, are indeed capable of committing horrendous atrocities. We must remember so that we can try to make sure we stop committing more atrocities in the future.

Sometimes you have to laugh

Sometimes the world is so absurd that you just have to laugh.

Taliban slick propaganda confronts US from the BBC.

The second front in the conflict between the Taliban and their enemies in government is the war of words - and in recent months that battle has intensified.

The Taliban have a sophisticated public relations machine which is making it harder for governments and their international allies to win the ever-important propaganda war.

The insurgents are keen to exploit a sense of alienation among people, fostered by "bad governance" and "mistakes" made during military operations.

Civilian casualties in American air strikes and the violation of local traditions including house and personal searches create an atmosphere where Taliban propaganda can take root.

Wow. The only possible response is laughter. The sort of laughter that is a roll on the floor clutching your gut because you are laughing so hard kind of laughter. Are they kidding?

Of course, to get the joke, you have to realize what a giant, slick propaganda machine that the Pentagon has had running for the past eight years. Swarms of PR officers, entire units designed to manipulate public opinion, outside contractors paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to run PR campaigns. Heck, in Fox News they've got an entire TV network creating and broadcasting propaganda. And since CNN always seems to try to out-Fox Fox, there's more like two major 24 hour worldwide networks doing nothing but creating slick propaganda to support the continuation of the US killing people in Afghanistan.

Then, if you weren't laughing already, that last sentence has to set you off. You see, according to the propaganda of the west, its not the fact that we keep setting off bombs in their country that kill innocent civilians that turns the people against us. Instead, according to the British propaganda broadcasting company, its the slick propaganda of the Taliban that turns people against us.

Yep, it couldn't be the fact that they had to dig into the rubble of a blown up building to find the bits and pieces of what was left of their loved ones.

Oops, I think I mis-spoke. From this piece, it looks like you can add the BBC to the list and say there are three 24 hour worldwide 'news' networks creating slick propaganda to support the war in Afghanistan.

Note: I haven't searched, but this seems like a fairly common story. If there is ever any sympathy in the world for the victims of American and British bombs, its pretty normal for the propagandists of the west to try to explain this away by saying those poor deluded folk are misguided by effective enemy propaganda. Sounds very familiar to me.

Repression, death, and media blackouts

Armed Police Infiltrate Funeral of Murdered Zelaya Supporter, Human Rights Abuses Mount in Desperate Attempt to Repress Popular Uprising by Laura Carlson at AmericasMexico Blog.

As I am listening to the live transmission of the funeral over Radio Globo, the scene turns from somber to mayhem. The Radio Globo reporter at the funeral begins to run from the scene. The crowd has identified and captured armed police infiltrators, interrupting the burial. The fear in the voices is palpable. Radio Globo is calling for people to avoid violence despite the pain and rage, to deliver the police to justice. They report that a third police infiltrator has been captured. All you can hear is shouting as some seek to attack the infiltrators. Rafael Alegria exhorts the crowd, "Our movement is peaceful... Do not attack them. We are going to remove them and deliver them to justice."

The police infiltrators have been taken into custody and disarmed. Alegria gives the names and says that the police are from the Direction of Criminal Investigations. "Who would send them into a burial when the people are already indignant..?", he says. "Our movement has proved that it is completely peaceful. We are protecting them so the people will not mistreat them even though we do not receive this treatment. This is a humane movement."

Alegria continues. "This is a direct provocation of the movement... We don't want any kind of confrontation."

Listening to the direct transmission is one of the moving experiences I have heard. The reporters and interviewees are out of breath, and the calm voice of Rafael Alegria comes across, controlling the situation. Imagine the scene to get an idea of what this movement has accomplished at this very moment--in the burial service of a murdered countryman, they are forced to flee, leaving the coffin unburied, when armed police infiltrators are discovered. There is clear potential for a lynching. And it is controlled by experienced, committed, non-violent leaders that have the full respect of the people.

There are reports of two more demonstrators killed in Honduras by the police and military supporting the coup. Now, remember when the Iranians killed a protester? Remember how her face and name were all over the American corporate media? So, after reading stories of how Zelaya has attempted to return, how protesters have been flooding the southern parts of the country to greet and support him, how the military has tried to lock down that whole part of the country, leaving protesters stranded on the roads, how two more protesters are reported dead, I thought I'd go visit CNN.com's front page to see how they were covering the story.

The big front page story there is on Sarah Palin's last speech as governor of Alaska. Wow, that's a story that's really important. Just below that as the next biggest type on the page is a story about how wonderful it is to visit Israel as a tourist. Among the smaller links to the right, there are two stories about opposition to Ahmadinejad in Iran, as well as another story on Israel about how Israelis are protesting Arab construction in Israel (you didn't think they'd cover Arab opposition to expanding settlement and wall construction, did you?).

Not a word about the dramatic events in Honduras anywhere I can see on CNN's front page.

Its important to note how the media in America manipulates popular preception of events around the world. Which events get publicized and promoted, and which events get blacked-out and ignored.

This is important because this media manipulation of public perception is a key component of how a system where the government doesn't follow the wishes of its citizens keeps power amongst the perception that the country is a democracy. If most of the citizens don't know the US is supporting a military coup in Honduras, then there is little popular outcry against a supposedly democratic government taking awful actions that undermine and destroy democracy in other countries.

The day the American citizens learn to pay absolutely no attention to CNN and the like, then that's a day that we've taken a big step forward towards once again becoming a country with a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Obama = Bush

Democrats scold Obama on signing statements from Raw Story

“In a letter to the president, four senior House members said they were ’surprised’ and ‘chagrined’ by Obama’s statement in June accompanying a war spending bill that he would ignore restrictions placed on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”

The letter stated, “During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the President’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce. We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude.”

Surprise, surprise, surprise. It turns out Obama likes signing statements just like Bush did. The article tries to give some cover to King Obama by saying he's issued 'fewer' of them than Bush did. But, since the Democrats control both houses of Congress, its very logical that Obama would be issuing fewer than Bush. Bush probably issued fewer back when the Republicans controlled Congress too.

The issue is over restrictions that the Congress placed on funding for the IMF and World Bank in the last war, death, and destruction funding bill that the Democrats passed in Congress.

The founders were quite careful to put control of money and how its spent in the hands of Congress. They specifically said that all funding bills had to originate in the House of Representatives, as the body who's members are most closely elected by the people. They knew that control of how money is spent is a key function of government, and they tried to keep that as close to the people as possible.

So, now we have King Obama saying he doesn't give a damn what the legislature said about how he could spend the money, and that instead he's going to do whatever he wants to do. Its good to be the King.

And, its exactly what King Dubya said.

And, you can now bet any money that the government and Wall Street haven't taken from you that the next time there's a Republican president that they'll cite Obama's precedent about how they can also ignore Congress and do anything they want to do.

If we lived in a true democracy and nation of laws, these congressional leaders would be starting impeachment proceedings instead of sending a weak letter to the White House. Of course, these are the same Democratic congressional leaders who ok'd Bush's signing statements by refusing to impeach him. I'd almost guess that if I did some research I might find that they sent a weak, do-nothing letter to King Dubya as well.

At some point, failing to fulfill your constitutional duties and instead just sending weak letters constitutes approval of the actions. You either stand for the Constitution and the rule of law, or you don't. Its like the old line about being 'half-pregnant'. If these Congressional leaders fail to do anything substantial to end this practice, then they support it by their inaction.

:Propaganda

A useful skill to develop is to be able to spot the propaganda pieces that counterfit themselves as 'news' articles. Sometimes, its ridiculously easy. Just look for the pieces in major media outlets that would probably get an F in a freshman journalism class. In that regard, I call your attention to Supreme leader Khamenei diminished in Iranians' eyes by Borzou Daragahi in the LA Times.

The lead on the article is this.

For two decades he was considered to be above the petty political squabbles, a cautious elder contemplating questions of faith and Islam while guiding his nation into the future.

But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose title of supreme leader makes him Iran's ultimate authority, has gotten his hands dirty. His decision in recent weeks to so stridently support the nation's controversial president after a disputed election has dramatically changed his image among his people, setting in motion an unpredictable series of events that could fundamentally change the Islamic Republic.

Note that there are no sources for this information. This is just the 'reporter' talking expressing his own opinions. But, we do gets some supporting quotes in the next paragraph.

"Public respect for him has been significantly damaged," said one analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Opposing him is no longer the same as opposing God."

So, in the opening three paragraphs you get two of the strong signs of a pure propaganda piece. The 'reporter' expressing his own opinions instead of reporting on what the rest of the world is doing. Then you get 'anonymous' sources. Anytime you see anonymous sources, you have to ask why. In this case, its an 'anonymous' analyst. Why? Are analysts around the world being assassinated for analyzing?

Or is it just because it would discredit the story if you knew who said that. For instance, if you read "analysts working in the CIA's 'color revolution' section" as the attribution to the quote. Or maybe, "my cousin Vinnie says" wouldn't go over very strongly with the reader. So it gets changed to an anonymous analyst. When you see this as a reader, you should just make up the biased or worthless 'analyst' that you can think of and picture that quote coming from them. That's about how credible it is.

But then we get in the last paragraphs of the opening section an even better 'source'.

The venerated Khamenei has even become the target of public jokes and criticism.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "commits crimes, and the leader supports him," was a popular slogan during the riots of June 20, the day after Khamenei delivered a blistering Friday sermon in which he said that the election a week earlier had been won by Ahmadinejad.

At July 9 demonstrations, protesters mocked the ayatollah's son, Mojtaba, who many believe hopes to succeed his father.

Wow! Protesters have mocked this person. That's a 'source' for a article in a major media outlet like the LA Times? I wonder what other major stories and people they could report on with standards like that?


Ok, so in the whole opening section of this article, you get 1) the reporters opinion, 2) some anonymous 'analyst', and 3) what the protesters said in a protest as the sources of information about the assertion in the headline.

The rest of the article highlights a fourth sign of propaganda. It does have attributed quotes, but they all come from one side. You see 'reformist cleric' and 'reformist journalist' a lot in the rest of the piece.

And they wonder why newspapers are going broke? Who on earth would be dumb enough to pay money to buy this junk?

Of course, the interesting question to ask is 'why was this article ever printed?' Surely no competent editor looked at this as a submission and felt it was such wonderful journalism that it had to go out to the world. Any new writer who turned in such a piece would seem to be deserving of scorn and abuse from an experienced editor. So, why is the LA Times running this piece?

And by the way, I went and looked at the LA Times website. I was wondering if they clearly marked this as a 'op-ed' piece from a person on one side of the conflict. Nope. Its under the section 'World News'. The author appears to be a staff member of the LA Times. He has four separate pieces on this day alone. From one, it appears that he's their writer stationed in Beirut to cover the region. Thus, the question seems to change to why does a struggling paper like the LA Times hire an incompetent propagandist who churns out one-sided pieces to cover a key region of the world? One thing you can tell is that its apparently not their goal to provide their customers with factual and unbiased information about this region. And they wonder why they are going broke?

So, I pretty much now know to ignore pretty much anything that appears in the LA Times about this key region of the world. Well, I knew that already.

Star Wars Insanity

How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia by Alice Slater via CounterPunch.org

If you watch American politics long enough, you eventually get to see both parties take both sides of any issue. For example, old fogeys like me remember how once the Democrats opposed the 'star war's idea of a missile defense shield.

Had Obama been willing to forego the illusory US missile shield (which is incapable of offering any protection against incoming missiles, since those missiles could easily be accompanied by a barrage of indistinguishable decoys rendering the missile defenses useless) Russia might well have agreed to larger reductions in their mutual arsenals which together now total about 25,000 warheads with only about 1,000 more in the possession of all seven other nuclear powers—UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. If the US and Russia agree to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear bombs to 1,000 or less, they would then have the moral authority required to bring all the nuclear weapons states to the negotiating table to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Lets be clear. This is a boondoggle that pumps billions into the 'defense' industries, while providing no real protection to any American. First off, its only useful against ICBMs that fly way up high into space and come back down. Nice in a 1960's JFK 'missile gap' sort of world. But completely useless against more modern weapons like the ground hugging cruise missiles that the US has been launching against the rest of the world for at least 20 years now. And also useless against submarine launched missiles and any sort of bomber attack.

Second, it doesn't really work against ICBMs. The US military has been rigging the tests by simplifying them for years, and the thing still barely works, sometimes, in the rigged tests. The big problem is that any such system can be overwhelmed by numbers. Russia today still has so many missiles we couldn't possibly defend against them all. And, there is the easy solution to be implemented to build cheap decoy warheads which would be used to flood such a system with targets to the point where it couldn't possibly stop them all.

And those last three words are important, "stop them all". Do we really want a 'defense' system where handfuls of doomed survivors can look up from the rubble of our nuked cities and say 'well, we stopped half the warheads coming towards us'. Not much good when your opposition launched a redundant four warheads at every target.

Nope, this whole thing has been one vast boondoggle to pump billions of dollars to the defense contractors building the thing. And now, Obama, just like Bush before him, has turned away a real possibility of negotiating down the numbers of suicide bombs that the US and Russia both aim at each other. And he's done so because he's unwilling to stop giving billions of dollars that we can't afford these days to contractors who are building a system that will never work.

And this is better than Republican rule exactly how?

Practically On the Table

Practically On the Table by Ralph Nader

Mr. Nader ends a good article on how the Democrats are shafting us on 'health care reform' with this ...

Face it, America. You are a corporate-controlled country with the symbols of democracy in the constitution and statutes just that—symbols of what the founding fathers believed or hoped would be reality.

Even when the global corporate giants come to Washington dripping with crime, greed, speculation and cover-ups, and demand gigantic bailouts on the backs of taxpayers and their children, neither the Republicans nor the now majority Democrats are willing to face them down.

The best of America started with our forebears who faced down those who told them “it’s not going to happen,” or “it’s not practical” to abolish slavery, give women the right to vote, elevate the conditions of workers and farmers, provide social security and medicare, make the air and water less polluted and so on. These pioneers, with grit and persistence, told their members of Congress and Presidents—“It is going to happen.”

To paraphrase the words of a great man, the late Reverend William Sloan Coffin, it is as if those legendary stalwarts from our past, knowing how much more there is to achieve a practical, just society, are calling out to us, the people today, and saying “get it done, get it done!”

Lying, deceitful politicians, who promise to represent and serve the people just to get elected, but who then serve only the rich and powerful once in office ... these are not new to America. What seems to be new to America is the lazy acceptance that their corrupt world is all that we can be.

Obama’s Rollback Strategy: Honduras, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan (and the Boomerang Effect)

Obama’s Rollback Strategy: Honduras, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan (and the Boomerang Effect) by Prof. James Petras on Global Research.

An excellent article that deserves to be read in its entirety.

The recent events in Honduras and Iran, which pit democratically elected regimes against pro-US military and civilian actors intent on overthrowing them can best be understood as part of a larger White House strategy designed to rollback the gains achieved by opposition government and movements during the Bush years.

In a manner reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s New Cold War policies, Obama has vastly increased the military budget, increased the number of combat troops, targeted new regions for military intervention and backed military coups in regions traditionally controlled by the US .

[skip a bit]

Obama’s rollback strategy is evident from his very first pronouncements, promising to reassert US dominance (‘leadership’) in the Middle East, his projection of massive military power in Afghanistan and military expansion in Pakistan and the destabilization of regimes through deep intervention by proxies as in Iran and Honduras.

Obama’s pursuit of the rollback strategy operates a multi-track policy of overt military intervention, covert ‘civil society’ operations and soft-sell, seemingly benign diplomatic rhetoric, which relies heavily on mass media propaganda.

OK, I'm a pretty consistent critic of President Obama. This isn't anything personal as I've never met the man. But, I've long had this feeling that Obama consisted of a weak and phony progressive cover over top of someone who would follow the same policies demanded by those with power. Now, as we near the 200 day mark of the Obama Presidency, isn't this becoming very apparent?

We have a Hoover-esque economic strategy that involves pumping trillions of dollars into the Wall Street firms that financed Obama's campaign. This is doing little or nothing to reverse the economic downturn that is clobbering most American citizens these days. But it has rescued the balance sheets of the Wall Street firms and created a phony stock market rally that is going in the opposite direction from real economic activity. Which means of course that it can't last for long.

We have a foreign policy that Reagan would seem to admire. We've expanded our war in Afghanistan, doubling the number of troops there. We've escalated that same war across the border into Pakistan, with both 'drone' strikes and a proxy military war there. We've attempted a coup \ 'color revolution' in Iran, and continue to threaten military attacks on Iran. Now we've orchestrated a coup in Honduras.

And here's a key point. Personally, I've been overjoyed watching watching the people of Central and South America elect populist leaders that actually seem to try to represent their citizens instead of making government just a tool to further enrich wealthy elites. Yet, the Obama administration has clearly always regarded these elections as 'set-backs' that need to be overturned and reversed. Obama's echoing of right-wing lies and rhetoric about President Chavez is a key sign of this attitude.

Of course, its no surprise that an Obama administration would oppose other Presidents who put the interests of their citizens ahead of the interests of wealthy elites. Clearly Obama is an opponent of such views. After all, his Hoover-esque economic policies and his Reagan-esque foreign policies are a clear declaration of his own dedication to serve the wealthy elites over the interests of ordinary American citizens.

If you doubt this, just watch what comes out of the 'health care reform' process in this Democratic government. Will it be a single-payer health care system that provides care to all at lower costs to the nation? Or will it be something else that protects and expands insurance, HMO, and pharmaceutical company profits? Wanna place a small bet who Obama and the Democrats are going to represent and serve?

The Obama Justice System

The Obama Justice System by Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com

...even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial. About this assertion of "presidential post-acquittal detention power" -- an Orwellian term (and a Kafka-esque concept) that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares at all about the most basic liberties -- Ackerman wrote, with some understatement, that it "moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective." Law professor Jonathan Turley was more blunt: "The Obama Administration continues its retention and expansion of abusive Bush policies — now clearly Obama policies on indefinite detention."

Wow, so if the King says you're guilty, then you're guilty. No matter what some useless jury says.

This has been a long and steady fight for nearly a thousand years now. Dates all the way back the Magna Carta, when the rebellious English peasants tried to put some limit on the power of the king to just throw anyone they wanted into prison. They insisted then that anyone had the right to a trial by a jury of citizens. This is the first and most fundamental right that exists in a western democracy. If the king can throw anyone in prison at any time for as long as they want, then it can't be a free society and a democracy.

Think about that the next time they tell you that they are doing this to 'protect your freedoms.'

Of course, its always some 'other' who's thrown in jail. But then again, they always come for somebody else first. The key question to ask is this ... "If we allow our government to have this power, who else will they use it on in the future?" These things always seem to grow and get worse.

And of course, the really big question is this. How long will the people on the left continue to support Obama as he continues one awful Bush policy after another? The 2010 elections are coming up. Right now is the time to be organizing the grassroots campaigns that we need to challenge for congressional seats. The best way to send a strong message of 'Stop This!' to the Democrats is to be seen to be organizing those campaigns right now.

------------------------
Meanwhile, another view of Democratic justice here in Colorado. Colorado is a medical marijuana state. This means that if a doctor certifies that you are a patient that has conditions that may benefit from marijuana, such as nausea or severe pain, then you can register with the state. You can also designate a care-giver who is allowed to grow marijuana for you.

This was set in the Colorado Constitution when an amendment was passed in 2000. Now the State Board of Health is trying to change the rules to make this much harder on people trying to use marijuana for health issues. They want to pass changes in the law saying a 'care-giver' can only serve five patients. And that they also have to come over and cook or clean.

Huh? Not exactly sure what a cleaning lady and someone who knows how to grow good pot have in common? Sounds like at best they are playing with semantics about the word 'care-giver'. The bottom line is that they seem to be intent on messing with people who use marijuana for medical conditions.

I'm waiting for the companion bill that says that Walgreens can only serve five patients per pharmacist, and that the people who make Viagra have to come over and clean up my house.

Keep in mind, this is an issue that was voted on by the citizens of Colorado and passed in a statewide election. Keep in mind also that currently the Governor of Colorado is a Democrat (Bill Ritter), and the Democrats control both houses of the state legislature. Thus, there's no doubt that this is a Democratic policy.

We keep being told that we are fighting for 'democracy'. But, shouldn't 'democracy' mean that when the voters in a state express their support for a policy, that the state officials should respect and implement that policy. Instead, it appears that the officials of the government elected and paid for by the citizens are opposing the policy the citizens have said they want implemented.

When the government refuses to act on the expressed wishes of the people, its not a 'democracy'. Just like it isn't 'freedom' when the President can hold anyone in prison even after they are acquitted by a jury.

Gawd, gotta love those Democrats. And this is better than the Republicans exactly how?

Sensible Colorado: Working for an Effective Drug Policy

PS ... if anyone in Colorado sees this, come to the State Board of Health hearing on July 20th at 8:30am in Denver at ...Turnhalle Room, Tivoli Student Union, Conference Room 250, Auraria Campus, 900 Auraria Parkway, Denver, CO 80204.