A Dangerous Precedent

A Dangerous Precedent by Ron Paul

Last week’s assassination of two American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, is an outrage and a criminal act carried out by the president and his administration. If the law protecting us against government-sanctioned assassination can be voided when there is a “really bad American,” is there any meaning left to the rule of law in the United States? If, as we learned last week, a secret government committee, not subject to congressional oversight or judicial review, can now target certain Americans for assassination, under what moral authority do we presume to lecture the rest of the world about protecting human rights?

and ending with ...

Awlaki’s father tried desperately to get the administration to at least allow his son to have legal representation to challenge the “kill” order. He was denied. Rather than give him his day in court, the administration, behind closed doors, served as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. The most worrisome aspect of this is that any new powers this administration accrues will serve as precedents for future administrations. Even those who completely trust this administration must understand that if this usurpation of power and denial of due process is allowed to stand, these powers will remain to be expanded on by the next administration and then the next. Will you trust them? History shows that once a population gives up its rights, they are not easily won back. Beware.

Governments are like serial killers. Once they start killing, they rarely stop killing on their own. Typically someone or some group has to stop them. The reason for this is that killing becomes a way to solve problems for the Government. And, its a very easy and convenient way to solve problems. Its much easier to send a team of assassins in black to kill someone in the dark of night than it is to argue and compete against a person in a free and open democracy which can be time consuming in its dedication to make sure that everyone has a voice and a vote. Its much easier for a Leader or a Government to simply say "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"

And isn't that precisely one of the arguments that one hears about why the assassination of Osama Bin Laden was necessary? Aren't we told that killing him was a better option because a public and fair trial under our constitution would have been so difficult?

Things become bloody and difficult because anyone who wants to stop the reign of killing by the government is viewed by that government as a problem needing to be solved. Thus, not only will a government tend to expand the number and range of problems that its willing to solve 'the easy way' with assassins in the night, but that they will also usually defend themselves by trying to easily solve the problem of those annoying idealists and moralists and just ordinary people concerned for their own safety who insist on this naive notion that Leaders and Governments don't automatically receive a license to kill.

The scary thought from the last time the US government practiced assassination as official policy is that it didn't stay offshore. It wasn't long afterwards that a US Presidential casket draped in black was drawn behind a riderless horse. And it wasn't too long before America was mourning the fact that some of the best and brightest among us, some of those who were willing to try to work to make America a better place for all of us were also the subject of tears at memorial services. This genie doesn't have a history of staying contained in the nice little bottle to which its been assigned by those who think they rule the world.

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The Occupation Heard Round the World

I tend to read a lot of history. Thus, as I stand with the #OccupyDenver occupation in support of #OccupyWallStreet, I am struck by the similarities with the 1st American Revolution.

Events happened more slowly back in the days when it might take a month for a piece of paper like a letter or a law to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a sailing ship. Thus, the American Revolution which is often thought to have begun in 1775 (not 1776 btw), actually began with the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

The British Parliament had passed an Act called the Tea Act which was designed to help rescue a failing corporation called the East Indian Corporation. The Act gave the East Indian Company the right to ship tea directly to the American colonies, and a legal monopoly on its sale. I guess even the tyrannical King George III wouldn't go so far as to mandate that people have to be the customers of a corporation. It also reignited the fight over taxation as many colonists felt it was another way of the British to impose taxation without representation. The act definitely had the effect of harming American based small businesses in the tea-trade in order to give more profits to the EIC which was highly politically connected in Parliament and the Royal Family. One of the main objections of the colonists was that parliament had given a legal monopoly on the tea trade to this connected company, and the colonists felt this had to be resisted before it was expanded to other areas and corporations.

In December, 1773, a dispute arose in Boston about three corporate tea ships that had arrived in the harbor. The people of Boston wanted the ships to turn around and leave. The Royal governor of Boston declared that the ships had to unload and pay the 'tea tax' on the tea on the ships before they could leave.

On the day of the deadline, 7000 citizens of Boston (approx 1/3 the population) rallied, and heard the news that the governor had refused to allow the ships to leave. Shortly after that, a group led by Samual Adams and called the Sons of Liberty dressed as Indians and then staged a direct action against the ships. They took over the ships, and threw some 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This is of course known as the Boston Tea Party, and yes, it was a direct action destruction of corporate property. It was also largely non-violent, as no injuries to the crew of the ships is recorded that I can find in a quick search.

The British King and Parliament responded to this with the "Coercive Acts". One effect of these acts was to suspend local democracy in the Massachusetts colony. Up until then, the local courts that handled foreclosures had been overseen by locally elected judges. These Coervice Acts instead gave the King the authority to appoint these judges.

In the summer and early fall of 1774, these Royal judges arrived in Massachusettes to take up the offices that they had purchased from the King in the expectations of the profits to be made as such a judge. The people of Massachusetts rose up to oppose this, and "occupied" the county seats with large crowds that prevented these judges from heading these courts. Crowds of thousands of people in the town squares instead forced these judges to resign their offices and thus return to Boston and to England.

Thus, in the 1770's, when the British Parliament tried to ensure the profits of a politically connected corporation, this led first to direct action that destroyed corporate property, and then to mass popular occupations of towns across Massachusetts by people committed to defending their liberty and their freedom.

Sound familiar? To someone like me who's standing in occupation against a government that currently puts corporate privilidge and profits over the liberties and freedom of ordinary Americans, it sure does.

Where do Paul Revere and Lexington and Concord fit into all of this? That occurred in the spring of 1775. The people of Massachusetts knew that they had committed an act of rebellion against the King. See movies like Braveheart for how the English Kings responded to such rebellions. Thus, the colonists started to stockpile muskets and gunpowder and other weapons with which to defend themselves against Royal retribution. Meanwhile, the King had sent more troops to Boston over the winter.

When the spring came in 1775, these troops marched out from Boston to attempt to raid and seize a stockpile of weapons that they believed was in Concord. Paul Revere was one of several riders who rode out from Boston to try to warn the militias. He was less than successful as he was captured by the British and held in custody. Nonetheless, word of the raid spread through the Massachusetts militias, and they formed at Lexington and Concord to resist this attempt. That was the Shot Heard Round the World.

But, the Shot Heard Round the World was a direct response to what might be called the Occupation Heard Round the World. It was thousands of American citizens standing up for their freedom and liberties over attempted taxation and favoritism to corporations that started the American Revolution.

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The Men Who Crashed the World

The Men Who Crashed the World An Al Jazeera Special Report. This is the link to Pt 1 of 4. Other parts available by clicking on the "Meltdown" link for the series from this page.

Of course, this piece of in-depth investigative journalism is largely unseen in the United States. Al Jazeera is generally banned in America. Too bad, as it most important that reports like this be seen in the United States because we are the center of the problem.

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WebCam Near #occupydenver

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Letter from a Wall Street Jail

On this nite of the occupation, I've been doing a little reading. Found Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail".

It sounds eirly familiar and relevant to the "Occupy" protests spreading across America. Of course, Dr. King's issue was racial injustice, while today's issue is Wall Street's economic injustice. But the eloquence with which he speaks against injustice still shines through.

To make a more concrete example, here's a small section updated to these more modern times. I'd apologize to Dr. King for these edits, but I don't think he'd mind. He was talking about leading a Poor People's March to #OccupyDC just before he died. His only question if he was here today would probably be what the heck took us so long.

Dr. King's original words:

"You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation."

By making some edits as to the particular injustice involved in the discussion, this becomes what sounds like a very relevant example below. To me, the whole letter can be read in this fashion, on this nite when so many #Occupy protests are spreading across America.

"

You deplore the demonstrations taking place on Wall Street. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals with merely effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place on Wall Street, but it is even more unfortunate that the nation's power structure left the 99% with no alternative.

In any non-violent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exists; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps at Wall Street. There can be no gainsaying that economic injustice engulfs our nation. Wall Street's control of our economy, our media and our government is well known. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Americans have experienced unjust treatment in the courts. We are experiencing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, activists have sought for years to negotiate with Wall Street leaders. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation."

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OccupyDenver Encounter with Denver Police

OccupyDenver is a occupation in the middle of the city of Denver in solidarity and support of the OccupyWallStreet action. On Saturday, there was a rally and march in support of what's going on at OccupyWallStreet.

After the speaking portion of the rally, an unpermitted march took off through the nearby 16th Street Mall. As the video below begins, a DPD officer has stopped someone on a bycicle, and appears to be starting to write him a ticket. The crowd comes around, and starts doing various chants in support. If you listen closely, you'll hear a part of the crowd away from the camera chant that "We are Fighting for your Pensions", or something close to that. Just after that, an officer who looks like he's a sergeant with more seniority goes over to the officer writing the ticket and appears to convince him not to write it. Maybe the senior officer is also the union rep? Or maybe he's just a bit closer to pension age.

This struggle is the 99% against the richest 1%. No police officer on a public payroll is ever going to be a part of the richest 1%. The officers of DPD have been wonderful to the OccupyDenver movement so far. Its just a wild guess on my part, but I'm thinking since they are members of a public employees union when cities are cutting back that they don't need any reminding that they are with us in the 99% side of that struggle.

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Why We Occupy

In NYC, the 'occupation' of Wall Street is in its third week. And across America, various 'occupations' in support and solidarity have arisen and are growing.

Why are we doing this? I can only speak for myself, but here's what I think.

Wall Street was the perfect target, as its the heart of the evil or disease that has infected America. We live in a country where money dominates all. Money dominates our elections. Democracy has been pushed aside in America to make room for a government of money, by money and for money. The candidate with the most money almost always wins. Politicians certainly believe this, as they want to win and thus they spend their time accumulating donations and talking to people who can give them large quantities of money. Basic American concepts like "one person one vote" have been discarded for a world where money has been legally equated with free speech and corporations have taken the rights of freedom of speech as rights of their own.

Everything in America is for sale. Everything in America is dominated by money. The location of the OccupyWallStreet encampment speaks volumes to this, as old "Liberty Park" in lower manhattan, near where George Washington was sworn in as our first president, and home to the OccupyWallstreet encampment is no longer a public park but has been sold to a corporation.

We live in a country where money makes all decisions. Since elections are dominated by money, our representative bodies and our Presidents, Governors and Mayors all serve money. One gets the distinct impression that the only bills that pass and become law are those that make someone more money. Politics today is more an exercise in fighting over who gets a share of the public money, taken from us with high taxes, than an exercise in democracy.

When we as a nation try to talk about helping the unemployed that have lost their jobs when Wall Street crashed the economy, the political debate is entirely about money. When we as a nation try to talk about giving health care to all Americans like any other civilized nation, the debate is distorted so badly by money that the bill that results could have been named the Big Health Corporations Profit Protection Act of 2009. The one thing that was obvious from the 'health care debate' is that the bedrock that all of our money dominated government could agree on was that the profits of the big corporations in the health care field had to be protected and guaranteeed. Health care for Americans was obviously a secondary concern.

And this is why we occupy. We live in America where its been made very plain that the lives and well-being of Americans is now of secondary (or lower) importance than profits for Wall Street. Across America, citizens are losing their jobs, losing their homes, losing their life savings, and denied health care because profits are much more important than people.

We want an America that is a democracy. That is once again a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We want an America where every human value is not sold for profit. We want an America where if one is sick or injured the first questions asked aren't 'how much money do you have to pay for it?"

That's nothing new. The original American revolution was a revolt against all the big money mercantile interests that had aligned with the King of England. The Boston Tea Party was as much about the East India Companies monopoly on trade as it was about tea. And, when the King and Parliament passed the Punitive Acts that tried to close Massachusetts democratically elected courts (that decided things like foreclosures) with officials who had bought the judgeship from the King of England, citizens of Massachusetts came out in the thousands and met these judges and just said No! That was the real beginning of the American revolution in the summer of 1774.

We want our country back. We don't believe that Wall Street should own America. We do not believe that every question and every decision should be made on the basis of who has the most money.

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Occupation

The Occupation of America is spreading. The #occupywallstreet protests are in their third week and still growing and gaining support. Some media types and celebrities have been showing up in NYC, and more importantly, people are rallying behind this.

Here in Denver, there are #occupyDenver protests in solidarity. Broadway in front of the state capital. Its an occupation, so there are people there 24/7. If you want to experience a democratic general assembly, that's at 3pm and 7pm. Any Americans reading this should do this if they can, as most Americans haven't seen a real democracy in their lifetimes.

#occupytogether is a place to search for other cities around the country. At the last count I heard, there are over 60 cities with protests/occupations in support and solidarity to what's going on on Wall Street.

Like all modern revolutions, its not televised. But it is on facebook and twitter. Go there, or your favorite search engine, and type something like "occupywallstreet", "occupytogether" or "occupydenver", or just about any American city name after the word "occupy" to learn more about what is going on around you in this country right now.

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NYPD's respect for non-violent protest

For anyone who might stumble across my blog and not have already seen the video of the #occupywallstreet protesters getting pepper-sprayed.

To me, this is torture. The NYPD has guidelines on the use of pepper-spray, and this commander in that police force went far beyond them. Whether its as an act of political intimidation to try to end the protests, or whether he's just a sadist who likes to hear women scream, who knows?

But, one of the interesting things to watch from all of this is whether the NYPD, the City government of NYC, and ultimately the people of NYC tolerate the presence of a know known torturer on the NYPD.

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Anonymous: Occupy The Planet

Anonymous: Occupy The Planet



Find a city near you and come out and join the movement. And help promote online and spread the word. There's largely a media blackout on this, so that just means we all have to spread the word ourselves. Through Facebook and Twitter. Through old fashioned emails. Through talking with family and friends. Through posters and leaflets. Spread the word any way you can imagine.

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The Philosophy Behind “Occupy Wall Street”

The Philosophy Behind “Occupy Wall Street” by VIJAY PRASHAD

It is this impulse to challenge Wall Street directly that shows how reasonable and necessary is the Occupy Wall Street protest movement underway in lower Manhattan (not far from where George Washington was inaugurated President). Those who have decided not to leave their tarpaulin homes, and who are being brutally treated by the New York police department, have an instinctively better solution for the country than those who want to throttle demand further by austerity (the GOP) and those who want to call for a stimulus without any challenge to the financial mandarins who would rather send the U. S. economy into a swamp than lose their own power over the world economic system (Obama).

Absent a fight against finance capital: to call for austerity is an act of cruelty; to call for a stimulus is illusionary.

We've tried to cure this 'worst downturn since the Great Depression' with a repeat of Herbert Hoover's policies.  We've given our money to the bankers, and we've cut taxes on the wealthy in the hopes that as in the theory of a b-grade cowboy actor named Reagan that these would 'trickle down' to the rest of us.

Have you been trickled on?

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Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa, May 19, 2011 (with photos)

Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa, May 19, 2011

So we face a historic opportunity. We have the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator. There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity. Yes, there will be perils that accompany this moment of promise. But after decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be.

Of course, as we do, we must proceed with a sense of humility. It’s not America that put people into the streets of Tunis or Cairo -– it was the people themselves who launched these movements, and it’s the people themselves that must ultimately determine their outcome.

Not every country will follow our particular form of representative democracy, and there will be times when our short-term interests don’t align perfectly with our long-term vision for the region. But we can, and we will, speak out for a set of core principles –- principles that have guided our response to the events over the past six months:

The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region. (Applause.)

The United States supports a set of universal rights. And these rights include free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders -– whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.

And we support political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa that can meet the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region.

Our support for these principles is not a secondary interest. Today I want to make it clear that it is a top priority that must be translated into concrete actions, and supported by all of the diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.

Let me be specific. First, it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.

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Obama Should Quit, but the Quiet Americans don't make him.

Obama Should Quit by Paul Street

On March 31, 1968, United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson told a national television audience that he would not seek and would not accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for another term in the White House. “When the address was over,” author Hampton Sides notes, “a euphoric Johnson leaped from his chair and bounded from Oval Office to be with family. ‘His air was that of a prisoner let free,’ the First Lady wrote: ‘We were all fifty pounds lighter and ever so much more lookin’ forward to the future’…The president described his mood this way: ‘I never felt so right about any decision in life.’”

Harassed and depressed by antiwar demonstrators, urban riots, rampaging youth, unruly professors and reporters, and a deadly colonial quagmire in Southeast Asia, Johnson felt that (as he later told historian Doris Goodwin) he “was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede coming at me from all directions.” And by Bobby Kennedy. He wanted out. He left and it felt good.

Read that paragraph, and you can see the failure of the left and the antiwar movement during the Obama years. You could say that Obama is mired in a deadly colonial quagmire in SouthWEST Asia. Other than that, none of these things that drove LBJ from office exist under Obama.

Obama has not been harrassed and depressed by antiwar demonstrations, despite escalating Bush's wars and starting his own.

Obama has not been harrassed and depreessed by urban riots or even protests, despite his offering of what was basically Herbert Hoover's economic recovery plan of money to the banks and tax cuts to the wealthy and making the size of the deficit more important than the homes and lives of Americans.

Unruly professors and reporters have basically been banned from American society. Professors are today removed from American universities if they believe and teach anything outside the narrow band of approved opinions. Reporters that criticized Bush were fired, and outside a fringe media there's no such thing as an unruly reporter.

There are no Bobby Kennedy's willing to challenge Obama in a primary.

Thus, we know why Obama will run for, and at this time apparently win, a second term. The lesson is that antiwar demonstrations, protests and urban unrest worked in the late 60's to remove a President who's policies were opposed by most Americans. The failure to have demonstrations, protests and unrests leaves Obama and the banker-Democrats free to be the favorite front-runner for four more years of war and a wall street economy.

The question for future historians will be why have Americans been so freakin quiet during these years.  They've lost their jobs and their homes. They pay exorbitant taxes to fund an over-sized military and so many wars overseas that they are becoming countless.  Yet, Americans refuse to do what history tells them has worked in the past to at least get a chance to for real change from this awful state.

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Most of what's 'News' is Crap!

I hold a degree in nuclear engineering. So, in this area at least, I feel I'm competent to listen to what's on the news as someone who's at least somewhat knowledgeable in nuclear issues. From this one area, where I know enough to think on my own, I am left with the belief that most of what's on American 'news' is crap and lies.

 Lets review a little bit of 'recent' news'

 -- Saddam Hussein has a nuclear weapons program and is close to being able to nuke the US.

Well, we all know, if we stop and think about it, that this was total crap. It turns out the Saddam had shut down the nuclear program that he'd run with US and western european support when the sanctions kicked. This of course made total sense as a nuclear program is big and expensive and no matter how much 'oil for food' was scammed and leaked, Saddam still had a lot less money under the sanctions than he had before. And of course, the weapons inspectors who'd been in the country were telling us exactly the same thing. That they had uncovered Saddam's nuclear program, that it was shut down, and that the inspectors were just working to fill in some paperwork blanks to understand what had happened.

-- Iran has a nuclear program and is close to being able to nuke the US.

Well, its not official that this is total crap, but the signs sure point this way. Especially since its pretty much the same people saying this that told everyone that Saddam was going to nuke the US within months. Again, the inspectors consistently say they see no signs of Iran having anything other than a civilian nuclear program with no enrichment anywhere near the 95-98% levels they'd need for a bomb.

-- Fukushima. 

It took them months to admit that they had melted the cores within hours of the earthquake. They recently just admitted that three times as much radiation has been dumped into the ocean as previously admitted. Now it seems that they've 'redefined' the magnitude scale of earthquakes to declare that this was a '9.0' that couldn't have been expected. The real magnitude appears to have been around 8.3 or 8.4, and the reactors were supposed to be designed to handle that. The same liars that claim that only 39 people died because of Chernobyl say no one has died this time. But remember, some of the cancers caused by Fukushima' radiation won't even be known for up to 40 years.

-- Missouri river nuke plants.

In the US, two nuclear plants were in severe danger from the flooding of the Missouri River last summer. Both needed emergency dikes and sandbags to keep the water from critical areas. And remember the real lesson from Fukushima that the news doesn't want to talk about. Every operating nuclear plant has a core that is very hot and takes months to cool down. Until then, you must have pumps running to keep cool water flowing past this hot core to cool it. Failure of these pumps at Fukushima led to melting nuclear reactor cores within hours. Good thing those sandbags held, because if they hadn't the pumps at the reactors along the Missouri River would have lost the power their pumps needed. Of course, the American news presented this as a minor curiousity that people didn't need to be concerned with.

-- America attacks itself with dirty bombs.

Not exactly a breaking news story, as we've done this damage to ourselves over 50 years. But, still, don't count on CNN making a big deal that the one measurable result of the American nuclear weapons program is that we have places like Rocky Flats that won't be safe for human occupation for generations. Same with Hanford, WA, Savanah River Plant, and some of the canyons off the back of Los Alamos. Plus we have leaking tank after leaking tank of highly dangerous nuclear waste as a byproduct of making nuclear weapons. We've never fought a nuclear war, but you can find the spots in the US that are now fenced off (hopefully) and where our quest for nuclear weapons has destroyed parts of America as surely as if we'd launched 'dirty bomb' attacks on ourselves.

 As someone with a background in nuclear engineering, in at least this area, the news and information presented to Americans is absolutely horrible. At the very best its very bad and very biased reporting, when it doesn't seem like we are being fed out-right lies. I'm not an expert in say food-safety, so I can't judge how good or how accurate the 'news' is in telling us how safe the food we eat really is. But, I do have an education as a nuclear engineer, and from that background, the 'news' we are watching and listening to is horrible.

In my house, I've used the parental blocking features of my tv system to block all the American 24 hour news channels from my house. No CNN, no FAUX, no GE-TV (aka MSNBC, CNBC). I use my TV's controls to block all of this from my home. I'm not uninformed. And I benefit from not getting all the lies and misinformation fed to me. From what I can see in the nuclear area, I'm not missing much. My advice to anyone is that they do the same and turn these 'news' channels off.

[edit 9/26]
I wrote the above before I saw the following about a study from the Pew Research Ctr. Apparently, I'm with the vast majority of Americans in believing that the 'news' is crap.

Only one-quarter of those surveyed say news orgs get the facts right, a new low since 1985 when the question was first asked. Two-thirds (66 percent) say stories are often inaccurate, a new high. And nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that journalists try to cover up their mistakes, rather than admit them.

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Big Bad Wolf

Big Bad Wolf Condemns Little Piggy for Building Brick House. Film at 11.

 US Condemns Iran for Making Civilian Nuclear Sites Harder to Bomb

VIENNA – U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu accused Iran of nuclear "denial, deceit and evasion" on Monday, warning that Tehran's decision to move some uranium enrichment facilities to an underground bunker brings it closer to being able to producing the fissile core of a warhead.

Ok, as a nuclear engineer, that's just nonsense. Either that, or its an open announcement of American intentions of bombing Iran. Take your pick. Certainly, the location of the equipment has nothing to do with the physics of uranium enrichment. The same equipment works pretty much the same above ground or underground. You don't get better efficiency or higher levels of enrichment because you are underground.

The only way this statement could be anything other than nonsense is if you take into account the fact that an above ground facility is more susceptible to bombing from American or Israeli warplanes. So, this statement is either more goobly-gobbly nonsense from the American government about Iran's nuclear program, of which there has been a lot over the years, or its an open statement of American/Israeli intentions to create a massive disaster by bombing Iran's civilian nuclear facilities.

And note that all of this is still over civilian facilities that are producing only domestic reactor grade levels of enrichment and nothing anywhere near bomb-grade levels of enrichment as regularly confirmed by IAEA inspectors. In some ways, one could well say that Iran is no closer to producing a nuclear weapon with the facility underground than above ground because the odds of it happening appear to be zero in either case with the IAEA inspectors keeping watch.

People always need to understand that building a nuclear weapon doesn't happen in someone's garage. During the Manhattan Project, the US government created three new secret cities in Tennessee, New Mexico and Washington state. It could be smaller today because we know more today, but we still aren't talking about building a nuclear weapon with two test tubes and a beaker in someone's garage. This is why inspections worked and were accurate in Iraq, and there's no reason not to believe that IAEA inspections aren't working and aren't accurate in Iran.

But still, this really just sounds a lot like the fake headline above. The Big Bad Wolf is complaining that the Piggies are daring to build a brick house, calling it a severe provocation to wolf rights to attack little piggies. And that such provocations can only be answered by pre-emptive strikes against the little piggies before the little piggies can successfully move into their brick house. Tell the file photo department to find a photo of Secretary Chu huffing and puffing to run with the story.

Secretary Chu of course runs the worlds largest nuclear weapon production line, and is lobbying Congress for billions of dollars in which to build new facilities to 'modernize' nuclear weapons. Talk about the Big Bad Pot calling the kettle black.

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Back to the Skunk

Sad and Happy About Palestinian Statehood Bid by Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery is someone who should always be read concerning matters in the middle east. Not only is he a famous peace activist, but he's been around long enough to have fought in the 1948 war, been a part of the kibbutz's, and been a leading voice in the Israeli Peace Movement ever since. And a wonderful philosopher and writer.

“Will this be the happiest day of your life?” a local interviewer asked me, referring to the approaching recognition of the State of Palestine by the U.N.

I was taken by surprise. “Why would that be?” I asked.

“Well, for 62 years you have advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and here it comes!”

“If I were a Palestinian, I would probably be happy,” I said. “But as an Israeli, I am rather sad.”

Let me explain.

Its worth following the link above to read the whole article and thus the full explanation. But here's a couple of highlights.

Three days ago, Benjamin Netanyahu told Cathy Ashton, the pathetic “foreign secretary” of the European Union, that he would agree to anything short of Palestinian statehood. That may sound strange, in view of the “historic” speech he made less than two years ago, in which he expressed his support for the two-state solution. (Perhaps he was thinking of the State of Israel and the State of the Settlers.)

In the few remaining weeks before the U.N. vote, our government will fight tooth and nail against a Palestinian state, supported by the full might of the U.S. This week Hillary Clinton trumped even her own rhetorical record when she announced that the U.S. supports the two-state solution and therefore opposes any U.N. vote recognizing a Palestinian state.

Again, maybe SOS Hillary thinks the second of the two states will be Settler's State?

One of the beautiful things about Mr. Avnery's thinking and writing is that he always is proposing a positive solution of what the world could become if only we'd choose to act towards peace instead of war.

According to the army, the Palestinians will get rubber-coated bullets and tear gas, but not the “Skunk.” The Skunk is a device that produces an unbearable stench which attaches itself to the peaceful demonstrators and will not leave them for a long time. 

I am afraid that when this chapter comes to an end, the stench will attach itself to our side and that we shall not get rid of it for a long time indeed.

Let’s give free rein to our imagination for just one minute. Imagine that in the coming U.N. debate something incredible happens: The Israeli delegate declares that after due consideration Israel has decided to vote for recognition of the State of Palestine. The assembly would gape in disbelief. After a moment of silence, wild applause would break out. The world would be electrified. For days, the world media would speak of nothing else.

The minute of imagination has passed. Back to reality. Back to the Skunk.

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US Contractor Funds Still Going to Taliban, Pentagon Admits

US Contractor Funds Still Going to Taliban, Pentagon Admits from Antiwar.com. Follow this link to get to their summary and thus on to original sources.

 So, lets see. We are told we can't afford teachers or nurses. We can't afford health care for our elders. We can't afford a retirement for our children. But we can afford to fund the frackin Taliban?

In testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform National Security Subcommittee, top Pentagon official Brigadier General Stephen Townsend conceded that contractor funding is still ending up in the hands of the Taliban. The comments come a month after the military estimated that $360 million had ended up in the hands of the Taliban and other criminals in Afghanistan,

The joke is that the so called 'Super Committee' that's going to decide exactly how we get screwed to balance their budget won't look at things like 'lets stop funding the Taliban' as ways to cut the budget. Of course, the best solution towards getting the deficit under control would be to end this war and bring our troops and our money home.

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Biased police training can only result in biased policing.

That graph is a part of official FBI training materials used for advanced training of FBI agents tasked with fighting terrorist threats to Americans.

Hmmm, where would Timothy McVeigh fall on that chart I wonder?

FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical’ from WIRED.com

“Seeing the materials FBI agents are being trained with certainly helps explain why we’ve seen so many inappropriate FBI surveillance operations broadly targeting the Muslim-American community, from infiltrating mosques with agents provocateur to racial- and ethnic-mapping programs,” Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the American Civil Liberties Union, tells Danger Room after being shown the documents. ”Biased police training can only result in biased policing.”

That's the hidden problem. The piece does a nice job of pointing out how having FBI agents taught with hateful, racist religious propaganda makes life a living hell for any Muslims who cross their paths. But, what about the real terror threats who don't get stopped while all the FBI agents are busy going to pot-lucks with Muslim families down at the local mosque? How does that catch the next Timothy McVeigh, or stop the next Eric Rudolph from trying to kill me when he set off a bomb in the midst of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?

One of the problems we've created in our society is that the FBI now has an institutional need to find terrorists everywhere in America. They've set up special Joint Terror Task Forces in 106 American cities. Now, here's a question for you. If you are an FBI agent assigned to one of these JTTF's and you want to have a successful FBI career, which do you think is most likely to be a step in that direction. Do you report back to your bosses that a thorough investigation has revealed that while the area has its usual mix of crazies and criminals, there's no sign of Al-Qaida or a similar organization recruiting and organizing in whatever is the 81st or 92nd biggest American city? Or, do you find a way to make a big deal about some terrorist threat in your area? Do you find a way to entrap some fool into a terrorist arrest so you can report back to your FBI bosses that you've stopped a terrorist plot?

Osama Bin Laden sat in the same safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan for four years, and we could never find him. Could it be that the reason for that was that we had our counter-terrorism agents scattered across 106 American cities desperately trying to make their careers proving that there's terrorism in Des Moines, IA or Topeka, KS? Did it occur to anyone that maybe having our counter-terrorism agents look for terrorists in some place like Pakistan might be a better use of the tax payers dollars?

Any bureaucratic organization, or sector of such an organization, tries to protect and grow their own budget. Every manager wants more dollars to spend and more people to supervise. Every manager will fight any cut backs to his portion of an organization. Thus, each of those 106 FBI Joint Terror Task Forces will attempt to justify their own existence and their own budget,and somehow even manage to plead that somehow we'd all be safer if Birmingham, AL had even more agents assigned to the local JTTF. Thus, the FBI now has a need to find terrorists everywhere.

Now we see the training materials to help the local anti-terror aqents achieve their true goal of protecting their jobs by finding terrorists everywhere. You just make every Muslim a terrorist. And, if you think its just limited to 'them', and thus that you are safe, then remember that his is the same FBI that has said in Colorado that says that anyone who 'attempts to pay cash' is someone who's a possible terrorist. Or that this is the same FBI that said in MO that everyone with a Ron Paul sticker on their car is a potential terrorist.

That's the really scary story in all of this. We have created a group of many government officials who want to justify their jobs and make their entire careers by proving that they can always find more and more and more terrorists in 106 cities all across America. If an FBI agent can't find or create terrorists in your home town, someone might decide that we don't need him there searching and thus either lay him off or to send him to some place like Abbottabad to search for terrorists over there. Its a pretty good guess that Mrs. FBI Agent won't be very happy if Mr. FBI Agent either loses his job or if the family has to move to Abbottabad because that's where it makes sense to search for terrorists. Nope. So, for domestic tranquility and for a happy career in the FBI, Mr. FBI Agent now has to prove that there are terrorists all over America. Have a nice day.

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The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.

A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe by Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is always an important voice.

What was played out in the weeks after the attacks was the old, familiar battle between force and human imagination, between the crude instruments of violence and the capacity for empathy and understanding. Human imagination lost. Coldblooded reason, which does not speak the language of the imagination, won. We began to speak and think in the empty, mindless nationalist clichés about terror that the state handed to us. We became what we abhorred. The deaths were used to justify pre-emptive war, invasion, Shock and Awe, prolonged occupation, targeted assassinations, torture, offshore penal colonies, gunning down families at checkpoints, massive aerial bombardments, drone attacks, missile strikes and the killing of dozens and soon hundreds and then thousands and later tens of thousands and finally hundreds of thousands of innocent people. We produced piles of corpses in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and extended the reach of our killing machine to Yemen and Somalia. And by beatifying our dead, by cementing into the national psyche fear and the imperative of permanent war, and by stoking our collective humiliation, the state carried out crimes, atrocities and killings that dwarfed anything carried out against us on 9/11. The best that force can do is impose order. It can never elicit harmony. And force was justified, and is still justified, by the first dead. Ten years later these dead haunt us like Banquo’s ghost.

and ending with ...

We could have gone another route. We could have built on the profound sympathy and empathy that swept through the world following the attacks. The revulsion over the crimes that took place 10 years ago, including in the Muslim world, where I was working in the weeks and months after 9/11, was nearly universal. The attacks, if we had turned them over to intelligence agencies and diplomats, might have opened possibilities not of war and death but ultimately reconciliation and communication, of redressing the wrongs that we commit in the Middle East and that are committed by Israel with our blessing. It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement’s most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too. The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.

Want to know why I react so strongly to all the pro-9/11 propaganda of this last weekend? Its because behind the soldiers and the red, white and blue I know about and see the piles of corpses that we've piled up around the world. Its because to me all of this flag-waving celebration of 9-11 just looks like the assholes throwing a victory party.

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How Many Americans did the NFL and NASCAR kill this weekend?

How many Americans did the NFL and NASCAR kill this weekend? Now, I understand they didn't pull out a gun and start shooting the people in their stands. But, its also almost a certainty that some of the people in those stands or watching on TV will die within a year or two because of what NASCAR and the NFL did this weekend?

Both NASCAR and NFL are filled, even more than normal, with patriotic displays and salutes to the troops on 9-11 weekend. How many impressionable young boys and girls will see those displays and join the military? How many of those impressionable young people are going to die because of this? How many are going to be maimed for life, and go through the rest of their lives blind, or deaf, or missing limbs? How many are going to be scarred psychologically by going and being part of armies of occupation in foreign lands, and by the acts that are required of such armies? How many are going to come home struggling with PTSD? How many are going to become a part of the record number of suicides by military veterans?

In the American market society, anything that is on television is there to draw eyeballs to advertisements. The business of television is structured in that way. TV stations and networks make their money selling advertisements to people who want to watch whatever drama, comedy, game show or sporting event that is what's listed in the TV listings. The NFL and NASCAR are on TV so that the advertisers can broadcast their messages to the audience that wants to see the game or the race.

In this environment, one major set of advertisers are the recruiting arms of the US military. Huge amounts of money are spent on military recruiting ads broadcast during races or games, or on the primary sponsorship of certain race cars. The purpose of these ads is to recruit young people into the military.

We as a society have decided to ban tobacco ads from television. Because of this, the top NASCAR series changed its name from being the "Winston" cup. The reason we as a society made the decision to ban tobacco ads is because tobacco is a product that when used exactly as directed by the manufacturer, it leads to the ill-health and death of its customers.

Morally, aren't military recruitment ads in the same category? We know as a certainty that certain percentages of the young people of our society who join the military will end up dead, maimed, or psychologically scarred. This happens when these young people do exactly what they are told and trained to do by the military that they join. These are not accidental deaths and injuries that can not be foreseen, nor or they deaths and injuries that were caused only by the negligence of the person who saw the ad, believed the message and bought the product.

Military recruiting ads must be effective or else the military wouldn't spend the money on them. Somewhere, someone probably has some statistics that say how many young people they expect to recruit into the military for every dollar that buys every rating point on TV. And somewhere else, someone knows the stats on how many of the people who join the military come through the experience alive, uninjured, and without psychological scars. As a math and science sort of guy, to me this tells me someone could put these stats together and come up with numbers of how many people are going to die or be maimed or otherwise damaged by each military recruiting ad during a NASCAR or NFL event. Or to compute the number of how many people are going to die each time the Army NASCAR race car goes out on the track. Hopefully the number is better expressed in terms of laps run by the Army NASCAR per dead young American than as numbers of dead young Americans per lap run by the Army NASCAR, but the relationship certainly exists and is very and fatally real.

So, to me there's a deep moral question to businesses like NASCAR and the NFL that accept military recruiting dollars. Or to the TV networks that take the dollars to broadcast military ads during the broadcasts of these events. To me, these businesses are making at least some of their profits by harming the young people of this country.

And that's the other place where military recruiting advertising is very similar to tobacco advertising. Both sets of ads deliberately target the young people our country. Thus, they combine a product that does the most harm to the young with advertising that targets the people most vulnerable to such ads in our society. And, surely the core of any sane and moral civilization has to be in nurturing and protecting our young.

But, the NFL and NASCAR both go much further than the questionable morality of building their businesses on selling advertising for products that harm or kill the fans of their sports. Both have moved beyond the role of merely being the lure that attracts eyeballs to advertisements into the delivering their own messages to the fans of their sports. And both have decided to deliver messages that seemed designed to elect more pro-war politicians to office and to get more young people to join the military. The elaborate 9-11 ceremonies that marked both the NASCAR race and NFL games of this weekend were not purchased advertisements of some outside third party, but were the direct productions of the NFL and NASCAR. Now, its not NASCAR and the NFL selling space to outsiders telling people to go join the military and die, but now its NASCAR and the NFL directly sending out this message on their own. And the message they are sending out will almost certainly kill at least some of their fans. There are young teenagers alive today who saw these elaborate 9-11 ceremonies at these sporting events and who will be influenced into joining the military because of these messages. And some of those young teenagers will die.

Thus, the question in the headline. How many Americans did the NFL and NASCAR kill this weekend?

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