The Ultimate Weakness of Violence

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. . . Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. . . . Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; Only love can do that." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Budget deficit reaches $765B in 5 months

Budget deficit reaches $765B in 5 months by AP

Lower tax revenue and massive government spending on the bank bailout pushed the federal deficit to $765 billion in the first five months of the budget year, well on its way to hitting the Obama administration's projection of a record annual imbalance of $1.75 trillion.

The Treasury Department also said Wednesday that the February deficit reached $192.8 billion. That's a record for the month and up 10 percent from a year ago, but below analysts' expectations of $205.7 billion.

With seven months left in the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, the deficit already has shattered last year's record annual gap of $454.8 billion.

As some one who was recently laid off, I have some recent experience in what to do when revenues suddenly drop. YOU STOP SPENDING!

If you read this article, what is the one word that never appears? "War" is the word that never appears. Yet, this is exactly where we could immediately cut back our federal spending. Obama and the Democrats have proposed a $22 billion increase in the Pentagon budget. This is in ADDITION to the money being spent on the war, which is still officially 'off-budget' for Obama and the Democrats. (That also means the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan isn't included in this $765 billion figure in the headline ... remember, the wars are 'off-budget').

Obama and the Democrats have also proposed spending over $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between the Pentagon budget and the supplemental war funds, Obama and the Democrats want to spend about $750 billion. We simply do not have that money. We need to end both wars as soon as possible and stop spending there. We need to cut the Pentagon budget drastically. We simply can't afford it.

And this $750 billion isn't even all we are spending on 'defense'. It doesn't include for instance the billions that the Energy Dept is spending making 'nuclear sustainment' our 'top priority'. It also doesn't include the intelligence agencies like the CIA or the National Reconnaissance Office, which spends billions launching and maintaining spy satellites such that the US can spy on anyone in the world. I think I saw Winston Wheeler (writing on Counterpunch.org) estimate that last year the real 'defense' budget was over $1 Trillion. And Obama and the Democrats just keep raising every aspect of this, when instead they should be cutting hundreds of billions of dollars here. We are borrowing all of this money, and we simply can not afford it.

INSIDE OBAMA'S HEALTHCARE SHOW SUMMIT: SINGLE PAYER PRESENT BUT IGNORED

INSIDE OBAMA'S HEALTHCARE SHOW SUMMIT: SINGLE PAYER PRESENT BUT IGNORED by Oliver Fein, MD on Progressive Review

Well, after a stink was raised, some people who support single payer were actually allowed into this 'Summit' staged by Pres. Obama. Not that they were allowed to actually speak, but there were allowed into the building.

In sum, I came out of the White House Health Care Summit with conviction that single payer that is, publicly funded, privately delivered health care, which removes the wasteful for-profit, private health insurance companies as middlemen, remains the only solution that can guarantee access to comprehensive, quality health care with choice of doctor and hospital, and reduce overall cost. Single-payer, an improved and expanded Medicare-for-All, is the gold standard against which all other proposals for health care reform should be measured.

Advocates need to focus on Congress during the next few months. We need to make the case that co-sponsorship of H.R. 676 raises its legitimacy as a gold standard, and that single-payer advocates should be called to testify at congressional hearings.

The one thing that gets me is that people elect Democrats, then expect them to act like Greens. Very few Democrats have backed single-payer in the last decade or so. This is striking to someone like me who grew up listening to Democratic rhetoric where 'national health insurance' was one of their key talking points back in the 70's. So, its no surprise that in a Congress full of these pro-corporate Democrats, single-payer advocates barely can get in the door, and have to beg to even speak at a hearing.

Face it, except for a few exceptions, the Democrats don't support this. That simply means that the majorities of Americans who respond favorably to the idea in poll after poll need to stop voting Democrat. The few Democrats who support this, we should of course support. But we should also realize that for most Democrats, the (D) after the name just indicates an auxiliary employee of the big health corporations.

If you are a part of the majority of Americans that feels this is the solution, then go find your local Green Party.

----------------

Here in CO, a group called Health Care for All - Colorado is pushing the state legislature to consider HB09-1273. There's a key hearing on March 18th if you happen be passing through this neck of the prairie.

Nuclear sustainment is top priority

Nuclear sustainment is top priority from Middle East Times

OK, most of this article is just double-talk. I notice that the word 'sustainment' in the headline isn't even recognized as a word by my spell-checker. Be wary of anyone who makes up big new words. They probably just want to steal your money.

The scariest sentence in the article is this one...

Thomas said nuclear sustainment, ... requires proper attention to provide "war-winning capabilities to the war fighter," according to a press release.

The ellipses are there because the reporter makes the article very confusing by referring to something completely irrelevant for half the sentence. Cant' tell if that's just incompetent writing, or a deliberate attempt to mask the very scary impact of the quote from the general.

The US military views nuclear weapons as 'war-winning capabilities', while most of the rest of the world views them as the ultimate terror horror that we wish had never been unleashed. And the US military feels these terror-horror weapons should always be available to 'the war-fighter.' Note how far away this is from the old cold-war notion that these weapons of mass terror were only there as a deterrent. The words 'deter' or 'deterrent' never appear in this article.

Our economy is crashing. We've borrowed too much money already, and now we need to borrow trillions of dollars more to try to prop up the collapsing financial system that's left after the crooks stole all they can. Yet, the US government and the US military view these horrible weapons of ultimate terror as a 'top-priority' for our nation.

If you don't agree, stop voting Democrat or Republican. Check out www.gp.org for a different vision of the world. Are you for that vision or against that vision?

Message from Charles Freeman

Message from Charles Freeman by Charles Freeman in the Wall Street Journal

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United State

I'm old fashioned enough to believe that the US government should be following policies that help the American people and improve the lives and security of the American people. I would call it 'treason' for individuals in the US government to be working for the benefit of a foreign nation.

ADDENDUM: I've reread the last words a few times since I wrote and posted them. Its striking that those of us on the left who care about and love our country and try to move towards what we see as the best future for it, we are often accused as being 'traitors' by those who disagree with us. Meanwhile, we have people with power and influence in this country that set policies that favor another nation at considerable cost to our own.

Can anyone think of a country who's economy is in the tank, and that is borrowing money like mad, which could use $5 to $10 Billion a year to pump up our own economy and help take care of citizens who are struggling through tough times? That's roughly how much we give Israel every year. Regardless of what you think of Israel, its time to bring that money home.

Open Thread

..........

U.N. report says U.S. rendition policy broke international law

U.N. report says U.S. rendition policy broke international law from McClatchy newspapers.

A U.N. expert is accusing the United States and some of its allies of breaching international law for the so-called extraordinary renditions and subsequent alleged torture of terrorism suspects during the Bush administration's global war on terrorism, and is launching a probe into the detention of suspects.

Of course, this is still refered to as the 'Bush administration's global war on terrorism' even though the Obama administration deliberately refused to stop this policies in its executive orders.

This means two things legally to the Obama administration. One is that it is the responsibility of government officials to move to investigate and prosecute breaches of the law. This is a report from a "U.N. special rapporteur and expert on international law" to the effect that international law (and most likely US law) has been broken. This places an obligation on the Obama administration officials to investigate to see if crimes were committed, and to prosecute them if they were.

Secondly, since the Obama administration deliberately refused to stop this practice of extraordinary rendition, then it may very well be breaking international law as we speak. The Obama administration needs to move quickly and decisively to make sure international law is obeyed in this area.

So, we add to the list of impeachable offenses being committed by Obama. He is refusing to follow the oath he took to 'uphold and defend the Constitution'. He is refusing to properly investigate and prosecute people who've violated the law. His administration is likely continuing to break the same laws. Add this on top of his launching of illegal strikes into the sovereign nation of Pakistan, the refusal of the US military to obey the SOFA with Iraq, and his continued detention of some 26,000 prisoners in the CIA's secret gulag.

Officials: Iran does not have key nuclear material

Officials: Iran does not have key nuclear material by AP

Actually, the headline undersells this a bit. By saying 'key nuclear material', they act like they are just missing one of several materials. But the 'key nuclear material' that they are missing is the essential stuff that goes BOOM to make a nuclear bomb.

Kinda like calling flour a 'key material' for a cake. Or maybe calling 'eggs' a 'key material for 'scrambled eggs'.

This is the most important thing to watch in the discussions about Iran and nuclear weapons. Do they have the highly enriched uranium that they need for a bomb? Don't let the corporate media confuse you on this. There are two dramatically different levels of enrichment for a nuclear power plant and a nuclear weapon. A nuclear power plant require enrichment to around 3% U-235. A nuclear weapon requires enrichment to somewhere around 95% U-235. The two aren't even close. Doing one doesn't mean that they've done the other. Doing the 3% enrichment (referred to as 'low-level' in this AP piece) doesn't even mean that they are capable of doing 95% enrichment.

Inspectors should be able to tell if a facility has been used to enrich beyond 3%. As just one example, they could test trace residues left on equipment or in pipes and see if there is more U-235 than they would expect from low-level enrichment. I won't say that's completely certain, but it seems like a massive amount of work would need to be done to scrub an industrial facility to hide that sort of high-level enrichment.

The key point is that at no time has the IAEA ever said that they've found more than 3% enrichment in Iran. And here you have the leaders of US intelligence saying they have no evidence that Iran has gone beyond 3% enrichment.

This is the key fact to watch. Ignore a lot of the other BS that the killers throw around to justify another war. If you don't ever see PROOF, rock-solid proof, that Iran has gone to bomb-grade, 95% or so enrichment, then you should assume that its just the lying killers who used phony fears of a non-existent nuclear weapon to start that war trying to do it again.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said Tuesday that Iran has only low-enriched uranium — which would need to be refined into highly enriched uranium before it can fuel a warhead. Neither officials said there were indications that refining has occurred.

See Also: Muslim Weapons of Mass Destruction by Eric Margolis

UN inspectors report Iran has produced 1,010 kg of 2–3% enriched uranium (LEU). Iran insists it is for energy generation. Theoretically that is enough for one atomic bomb.

But to make a nuclear weapon, U-235 must be enriched to over 90% in an elaborate, costly process. Iran is not doing so, say UN inspectors, though they have raised certain technical questions about Iran’s nuclear process. Some believe Iran may go up to "breakout position," that is, having the components to assemble a weapon on fairly short notice.

Mr. Margolis is mostly very accurate in this piece. But I strongly disagree when he says 1000 kg of 2.5% enriched Uranium is 'theoretically enough for one atomic bomb.' You can have all the 2.5% enriched uranium you want and it will NEVER be enough for a bomb. Because to have a bomb you need it enriched to somewhere in the 90% range. Since he goes on to say something similar in the next sentence, I'm hoping maybe bad editing got to Mr. Margolis on that sentence.

Guantánamo Under Obama

Guantánamo Under Obama by Stephen Lendman on counterpunch.org

Despite Obama's EO, "conditions at Guantanamo have not improved" and continue in violation of the law. Since it opened in 2002, CCR enlisted over 500 pro bono lawyers to represent hundreds of detainees. This report is based on "direct accounts from (them) and their attorneys," as recently as January and February 2009. The results are deeply disturbing.

Current Guantanamo Conditions

In a word, they're unchanged, outrageous, and illegal. Inmates struggle for their sanity and say conditions are like living in a tomb. The Pentagon and Obama administration deny it and describe isolation as greater "privacy" and "single-occupancy cells." Conditions, however, "speak for themselves."

Much more detail in the article, so I'd encourage you to follow the link and read it. There is so much I could quote, but I'll stick to just this one other part that really strikes me.

'By its own admission (then and likely now), the US government (is detaining up to) 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests that around 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.' The Bush administration's response (at the time was) silence." So far, it's no different under Obama.

On February 22, the UK Independent's Stephen Foley headlined: "Very Bad News - Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base Will Be Obama's Guantanamo." It's to undergo a $60 million expansion to hold 1100 more prisoners, above the 600 now there, and nearly five times the 240 at Guantanamo. Other than occasional ICRC visits, human rights groups and journalists are barred from a facility notorious for the worst of mistreatment, according to the few former inmates released.

Twenty Six thousand prisoners. 26,000! Stop and think about that huge number for a minute.

To Nationalize or Not to Nationalize

To Nationalize or Not to Nationalize on Bill Moyers Journal blog.

"People talk about nationalization – I just call it restructuring. Restructuring is part of capitalism. That’s how the airlines get restructured when they go through bankruptcy, or how you deal with the auto industry, how you deal with venture capital projects. Do the same thing with the banks... I think the notion of ‘nationalization’ has been a little bit of a PR spin. Restructuring is what you do in capitalist economies to maintain function and continuity. Nationalization evokes the specter of the state seizing the means of production, like Che Guevera is about to take over or something... The government just becomes the stockholder until such time that they sell the stock back to the market and get paid back a little bit for all the lost support that they’re creating for these banks." - economist Robert Johnson

US says 12,000 US troops to leave Iraq by Sept.

US says 12,000 US troops to leave Iraq by Sept. from AP

So, Obama's promise to remove a combat brigade every month has transformed into a vague promise to remove a few troops from Iraq six months from now. Of course, we have to wait six months to see if this token withdraw really occurs, or if we are then told the situation is maybe 'too unstable' for us to leave. Given Obama's record of breaking campaign promises ....

Meanwhile, what does the presence of US troops in Iraq mean for Iraqis ...

U.S. forces kill citizen, relatives say was executed from Aswat al-Iraq.

“The dead man was in his thirties, and he was shot in the chest,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
“The U.S. side of the story is that he was a gunman who attacked a U.S. patrol in central Baiji suburb (35 km north of Tikrit), and the patrol responded and killed him instantaneously,” he said.
Ahmed Abdullah, one of the dead man’s relatives, said “U.S. forces conducted a raid operation on al-Taameem neighborhood and killed the 37-year-old man in front of his family after entering his room.”
“The victim was detained by U.S. forces and released three days ago,” Abdullah added.
No comment is available from the U.S. side.

What's beyond me is how the so-called 'anti-war' Democrats can be perfectly happy with these sorts of deaths? It may be all a game to them, with their personal accumulation of power as their goal. But its life-and-death for others.

Obama lawyers argue to drop Yoo torture suit

Obama lawyers argue to drop Yoo torture suit in SF Chronicle.

President Obama's Justice Department defended former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo in a San Francisco federal court Friday, arguing that a prisoner formerly held as an enemy combatant had no right to sue Yoo for writing legal memos that allegedly led to his detention and torture.

"We're not saying we condone torture," department attorney Mary Mason said at a hearing on the government's request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Jose Padilla. But any recourse against a government lawyer "is for the executive to decide, in the first instance, and for Congress to decide," not the courts, she said.

"You're not saying that if high public officials commit clearly illegal acts, a citizen subject to those acts has no remedy in this court?" asked U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White.

Not unless Congress has expressly authorized a lawsuit, Mason replied. She cited the argument the Justice Department made in Yoo's case last year, with President George W. Bush still in office, that courts should not interfere in executive decision-making, especially in wartime.

So lets see, the Democrats in Congress have been remarkably steadfast for two years now in refusing to prosecute Bush era crimes. And the Obama administration has been strongly on the side of making sure there are no prosecutions of Bush era criminals. And now they argue that the VICTIMS of the crimes have no ability to seek any justice for Bush era crimes.

Remember, top Democrats were secretly briefed on this during the Bush years. They did nothing to oppose it. Remember, most of this came out into public during the Bush years, but still the Democrats in Congress did nothing to oppose it. Now that the Justice Dept and the CIA are under Democrat control, they do everything possible to make sure that the torturers are not punished.

And, the Democrats started extraordinary rendition during the Clinton years, and Obama has refused to end the practice. What this really means is that the US still tortures. Only, we don't hold the blade or throw the switch to the electricity ourselves. Instead, we give the victim to someone like Egyptian intelligence. Then we stand there and listen to the screams while they wield the knife or apply the electricity. Then we look all pompous and proud as we use the technicality that we didn't wield the blade ourselves to say that we don't support torture.

Gotta love them Democrats.

Open Thread

Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss

Supreme Court urged to drop enemy combatant case on Yahoo News.

Al-Marri's lawyers filed papers to the Supreme Court late Tuesday asking the justices to keep the case alive because the government "has not renounced the legal authority under which al-Marri was designated and detained as an 'enemy combatant' and has made no commitment that al-Marri will not be re-designated and re-detained as an 'enemy combatant' in the future."

The Obama administration once again continues the course of the Bush administration. What they desperately don't want is a Supreme Court decision that states the obvious. Under the US Constitution, a President can not order the indefinite detention of a person.

Of course, the great lie is put forward that Obama is different from Bush.

The transfer signals that Obama is likely to handle accused terrorists in a significantly different way from the Bush administration's aggressive use of preventive detention.

That's a total, bald-faced lie. This case is being handled in exactly the same way the Bush Administration handled the Padilla case. That is they kept him in a military brig up until the moment when the Supreme Court threatened to rule against their power to do so. Then they hurriedly filed criminal charges against Padilla before telling the Supreme Court not to rule because the arguments were no longer valid. Obama is doing EXACTLY what Bush did.

Ron Paul on War Lies

Ron Paul on War Lies

This is a short video of a speech made on the floor of the US House of Representatives, so no text excerpts. Follow the link to watch it.

One giant problem we have is that our efforts are always splintered into separate little pieces, while we never unify behind a single effort. We see that in our protest efforts, where we always have separate groups staging their own protests. Or in the current case, we see the groups that are closer to the Democrats refusing to protest at all against a Democratic President's wars. What we don't see is one mass unified protest.

We see it in campaigns, where we splinter off into separate campaigns. In the last election, there were three separate candidates who all took nearly identical positions on issues like opposing the wars, opposing the attacks on civil liberties, and calling for the prosecution of Bush/Cheney officials for their crimes. Barr, McKinney and Nader all had nearly identical positions on key issues like these, but they ran three separate campaigns instead on one unified campaign.

Our goal is of course to return America to being a nation with a government 'of the people, by the people and for the people' to recall Lincoln's wonderful turn of a phrase. To do that, we must throw out of power forces that are powerful in their own right, and which also have the power of the incumbency in controlling the power of the US. We want a country that puts the interests of its people first. But if we achieve that, the people and forces now in control will lose wealth, power and influence. And they are determined to hold on to just that.

We face an uphill battle in every fight we wage. We face a government that is turned against us. We face a corporate media that serves the interests of those in power and not our own. We face deceit and trickery. We face dirty tricks and sabotage. We face an enemy that can spend great amounts of money to defeat us and not release its hold on what they regard as the golden goose making even larger sums of money for them. Its nothing for them to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to retain their control over billions of dollars.

I don't say this to discourage or depress others. I say this to point out that its critical that we stop being stupid. When we fail to unify. When we all splinter and go our separate ways, we weaken ourselves. And we already seem to be fatally weak. One key measure of this is that our political campaigns are lucky to get say 2% or 3% of the vote.

Its ridiculous for us to fail to unify to oppose such great power. So, go give a listen to this speech by Ron Paul, and ask yourself what parts of this you disagree with. Then ask yourself in the last election why we ran two separate campaigns in the primaries (Paul and Kucinich) when neither had anything close to the strength required to challenge in either party? Then ask yourself why we ran three separate Presidential campaigns when none had anything close to the strength required to challenge Obama or McCain?

There is great agreement between the dissenters on the left and the dissenters on the right. Sure, there are differences. But why can't we focus on what we agree on, which to me happen to be the key issues of ending these wars, returning our economy to one that benefits the people and not the elite, and cleaning up our corrupt elections and government?

So, follow the link and watch this speech.

Impeach Obama!

Obama DOJ Defies Federal Judge from "The Washington Independent"

So on Friday, in a move that Al-Haramain’s lawyer called “mind-boggling”, the Obama administration told the federal court, once again, that it did not have the authority to order the government to make the critical document in the case available to the organization’s lawyers. The decision to reveal the document, wrote the government, “is committed to the discretion of the Executive Branch, and is not subject to judicial review.”

We've already had him break his campaign promises to withdraw from Iraq. And we've already had what's been a combination of a refusal to investigate and indict criminals from the last administration combined with an active defense to shield them. As a part of that work to shield the Bush criminals, the Obama administration has taken up exactly the same sort of fascist arguments about the power of the executive that the Bush administration used.

Now, in front of at least one federal judge, those don't seem to have worked. A judge is ordering that defense lawyers be able to see a document that the Bush/Obama administration considers to be a 'state secret.' The defense lawyers would have to obtain security clearances to even see the document, and would not be allowed to make it public. The document is important because it is purported to state that their client was indeed under NSA surveillance. The government has made other lawsuits about their illegal spying go away by contending that the plaintiffs had no 'standing' to sue as they couldn't prove they were the targets of the secret and illegal spying. So, I'm guessing that's the reason this document is important in this case.

So, a federal judge has ordered the Obama administration to make this document available. And the Obama administration is now in OPEN DEFIANCE of a federal court by REFUSING to do so.

The original design of this country's government was to have three separate but co-equal branches of government. The idea was that each would provide checks and balances against the others grabbing too much power and destroying our sacred liberties. One would suspect that a case like this, where the government has been engaging in illegal and unconstitutional spying on its own citizens is precisely the sort of case that the framers of our constitution had in mind when they create this system.

And note very, very carefully, this puts the Obama administration as taking exactly the same positions as the Bush administration in claiming unconstitutional powers for itself. And by claiming that its 'national security' powers somehow trump and over-ride the other branches of government.

During the last two years, as the Democratic controlled Congress refused to investigate or control the unconstitutional executive powers claimed by the Bush administration, one could get the sense that perhaps they didn't do so because they wanted those powers for themselves on the day they grabbed power.

The Democrats are fully in power today, and they are vigorously defending the executive's right to exactly those same powers that the Bush/Cheney group of criminals so obnoxiously claimed for themselves.

Anyone wishing they'd voted for McKinney or Nader last time? Or willing to start right now to be putting together the long grassroots campaigns we need for 2010 and 2012?

Open Thread

I keep trying to remember to do this! Honest! :)

Obama and the Democrats RAISE Pentagon Spending by $22 Billion

Obama to seek $537 billion defense budget: Murtha by Reuters

OK, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, when the government is having to spend TRILLIONS of dollars to try to prop of failing financial institutions and keep the economy from crashing, when the government is having to BORROW that money because its already running a deficit, when the government is having trouble borrowing the money and when the entire worldwide financial system is on the verge of switching to the EURO as its 'reserve currency' .............................. one would think this is the time to CUT BACK on military spending and try to invest any dollar we can into the American economy, right?

Not if you're Obama and the Democrats. They just announced that they plan on INCREASING the Defense Dept budget by $22,000,000,000.00 (that's $22 Billion if you don't want to count all those zeroes).

Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who oversees defense spending in the House, told Reuters that "$537 billion will be the base budget" for the Pentagon.

...

The Pentagon's base budget -- not counting most war funding -- totaled $515 billion for the current year.

Further more, just like Bush and the Republicans, Obama and the Democrats are keeping the wars 'off-budget'. They won't announce the details until Thursday, but this article says they are going to ask for ANOTHER $140,000,000,000.00 (that's $140 Billion for those who don't want to count all those zeroes) to continue fighting the wars in Afghtanistan and Iraq.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the White House Office of Management and Budget will announce a supplemental war request -- on top of the regular military budget -- on Thursday when it unveils the Obama spending plan for fiscal year 2010.

"There will be a war supplemental for FY'10," he told reporters at a briefing, without disclosing budget numbers.

Oh yeah, there's other stories out there that Obama now wants to keep the troops in Iraq both longer than the SOFA agreement allows and also longer than what his 'plan' was during the campaign.

REMEMBER
70% of the American people oppose these wars. We've tried voting Democrat to end what's been misleadingly labeled the 'Bush wars'. But that obviously hasn't worked. If that wasn't obvious from the actions of the last Congress before the last election, surely its becoming obvious now.

REMEMBER
Any news network that has to go out of their way to tell you how they are 'fair and balanced' likely is not fair and balanced. Likewise, any political candidate that has to go out of their way to tell you that they represent 'Change' probably doesn't.

WHAT TO DO?
Its time for the American people to stop these wars. We've been misled into believing that voting Democrat would do just that. But clearly that wasn't the solution. Join the MARCH 21, 2009 antiwar protests!

And next time, stop voting Democrat!

Update: When the announcement was made, the Obama Administration actually asked for over $200 billion more of our money to continue these wars. The number above that leaked early was only for the year 2010. There's another huge chunk of money requested to also continue the wars in 2009.

Messages ...

Not sure what happened to the little message tool. I went back to try to find the Gadget again in Google\Blogger, mainly to see if the author left any contact links. The one hint I found there said that they'd added the popup ads because they couldn't afford the bandwidth the tool was using. Maybe the author hit some limit and the site is now shut down???????

All I really wanted was something that could be commented on, but that stayed at the top of the page. Oh well. I'll try to remember to add some Open Thread entries ... Feel free to comment below.

Also, since there seems to be a small number of people who like to comment, I could also open up the ability to post new blog posts to others.

Messages

Hi ....

Thanks for the idea about a way to leave messages at the top of the page. When I first read that, I thought "Gee, I can't do that." But it got me exploring the 'gadgets' that Blogger provides. It turns out I'd just been looking at a page called 'Basic' in setting up my blogs. But now I found lots of new toys. :) Probably wouldn't have gone looking, certainly wouldn't have tonight, if someone hadn't made the suggestion. :) Thanks!

And once I started looking, the "Home Foreclosure Search tool" gadget seemed like such a nice statement on the times. What a lovely way to remember to say THANK YOU to Wall Street and all their Republican and Democratic friends!

Holy Cow! Is that tool correct? I typed my home Denver, CO zip code into it, and came back with a page listing about 425 properties as coming up in auction and over 500 as "bank" or "government" owned. Is that all really in my one little Zip Code?

Damn. And here I was thinking of trying to sell my condo now that I'm unemployed. Maybe not!

And Denver's not supposed to be getting hit that bad. I wonder what a south Florida or a LA or a Las Vegas zip code looks like? If that's any indication of the problem, and not just a bad website or me misreading something, that points out the real problem they needed to be solving all along. All those loans are 'bad' or 'toxic' because of the drop in real estate prices. As the market keeps getting flooded with more foreclosures, that keeps getting worse. That means more home end up as foreclosures and the problem gets worse. I know the Democrats have started doing little bits to try to say they are trying to slow down foreclosures, but if the problem is this big, then what they really needed was to be putting all of those trillions of dollars they keep promising to their Wall Street buddies instead into propping up the housing market from the bottom. If their ain't no bottom on that market, then all the money they keep pumping into the banks won't do any good. If it isn't 'stolen', or euphemistically used for 'bonuses', then it will just go down the tubes as everything else follows the housing market down.

ANALYSIS-U.S. raises hackles with Karzai, looks for change

ANALYSIS-U.S. raises hackles with Karzai, looks for change from Reuters via Antiwar.com

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.

Karzai has become increasingly vocal about saying that the US killing Afghan civilians is wrong and must end. So, what a shock, now the US is talking about how Karzai must go.

Most of the reasons given in this article are probably bs. The US knew he was basically powerless, and had a big say in creating the office that way. The US has always empowered the warlords outside of Kabul by making their own deals with them. You've never seen the US make any major effort to strengthen the central government or to weaken the warlords.

Nope, this one seems pretty obvious. Karzai has been making statements critical of the US killing innocent civilians in his country. Afghan Govt Condemns Australian Raid That Killed Children is just the latest example. The message to Karzai is very clear ... he's expected to be a puppet that toes the US line. If he won't do that, then he can be replaced.

So, one of Obama's early acts is going to be putting his own puppet leaders into place? Wow, I'm so glad we elected the Obama administration and everything is changing from the way it used to be.

And why is it that the Diem assasination\coup in Vietnam under Kennedy comes to mind?

What Price Hollywood?

What Price Hollywood? by Chris Hedges on Truthdig.com

Chris Hedges on 'celebrity culture.' Brilliant, as usual with Mr. Hedges. I guess maybe going to the seminary after years of working in war zones gives one an excellent perspective on American culture ... or what passes for culture.

Been reading Cornell West of late. He points out that for a long time, American culture compared itself to and strove to achieve what European culture was achieving. American culture tended to be either a copy. Or the sort of insecure statements that tried to assert American culture as independent of European culture.

Of course, that's changed since WWII and the assumption of the United States of the role of great power in the world. Today its American culture that blasts itself into every brain, and to which other cultural ideas try to compete or imitate. But, is this really culture at all? Journeys to Graceland or Hollywood to gawk at 'the stars'? Or trips to Las Vegas where we can pretend to be a celebrity ourselves and try to live like one, as long as one has the money?

Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully

Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully by Glenn Greenwald on Salon.com

I always liked the music of the Talking Heads. Right now, I've got that voice going in my head saying

"Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was ..."

A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn't changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.

Same as it ever was. Did you think you voted for Change?

If the Obama administration refuses to prosecute criminal acts that occurred in the previous administration, and if they assertively act in the courts to try to protect and shield those who committed crimes in the previous administration, then that makes the Obama administration an accomplice to those crimes.

No grey area here. You either prosecute torturers, or you protect and shield them. The Obama administration has come down quite clearly on the side of the torturers and is acting to protect and shield them.

Not only is this highly immoral, but its also doing terrible things to the nation. First, it means that any slow down (not a halt, just backing off a bit) of the Obama administration with regard to torture is temporary at best. That's because the Obama administration is sending a clear message to people who serve under future administrations. That is that the law will not be enforced in this area. If a future President feels that torturing other human beings (such as the recent revelations that people's genitals were being sliced), then they can look back on the Obama Administration and feel safe in ignoring the real laws of the land and the world that forbid such torture.

And secondly, the Obama administration is sending a general message to everyone on all fronts, whether it be theft or fraud or kidnapping or murder or torture, that crimes will not be prosecuted. The message is clear that there is no opposition party in this country, and no dedication to a rule of law, therefore, anything goes. If you are a criminal in the guise of a public servant or defender, then you don't need to worry that a change of the party in power might expose you to prosecution. Such criminals are obviously considered to be part of the team, and the protection of such criminals ranks as more important than protecting the nation, the Constitution, or the impartial rule of law in America.

From Glenn Greenwald ...

That's what Barack Obama is now shielding from judicial scrutiny. Those are the torture victims he is preventing from obtaining judicial relief in our courts. And he's using one of the most radical and destructive tools in the Bush arsenal -- its wildly expanded version of the "state secrets" privilege -- to accomplish all of that dirty work. I've been as vigorous a proponent as anyone for waiting to see what Obama does before reaching conclusions about his presidency, but this is a very real and substantial act

and ...

At the end of 2006, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick listed the Bush administration's "10 most outrageous civil liberties violations" and it included this:

6. The State-Secrets Doctrine

Petraeus Leaked Misleading Story on Pullout Plans

Petraeus Leaked Misleading Story on Pullout Plans by Gareth Porter of IPS via Antiwar.com

Yesterday, when I was writing, I referred to Gen. Petreus' statements on Afghanistan as a 'Gen. Petreus is mounting a pre-emptive strike against ongoing 'strategy' reviews...'

Of course, I'm not sitting in Gen. Petreus' office, so I didn't know that as a fact. But it seemed logical from bits I'd heard. I'd heard the Obama White House say they were doing 'strategy reviews'. And it just seemed very natural to assume that a political general like Petreus was not just talking randomly to some reporter, but instead was trying to push a specific point of view out into the media. And to do it before the Obama strategy reviews were finalized to both influence those reviews and to get the first shots in of any media campaigns to try to swing the people and Congress to a particular plan. It just seemed logical.

Today, I'm reading Antiwar.com, and I see a longer piece by Gareth Porter describing the media manipulation that Gen. Petreus is currently involved in concerning timetables to withdraw from Iraq.

One interesting note is that you almost never see mentioned in the media that the withdraw date for American troops in Iraq has already been set. Its in the SOFA that the US and Iraq signed in the waning months of the Bush Administration. From reading the mass media, it appears that the US feels that this agreement is totally optional, and that Gen. Petreus and\or the Obama administration are perfectly free to pick slower withdrawal plans if the choose.

Of course, there are already other news stories out there that say the US is already violating other terms of that agreement.

The Third-Party Delusion and the Need for a Mass Movement for Progressive Change

The Third-Party Delusion and the Need for a Mass Movement for Progressive Change By Dave Lindorff up on Commondreams.org

The problem with this piece is revealed if you carefully read Mr. Lindorff's tortured logic. He starts by saying that he routinely hears many people say he's nuts when he calls for pressure on Democratic politicians. Then he goes on to bash 3rd parties throughout the rest of the piece. Easy to see why the Democrats at CommonDreams put it at the top of the page.

But, while he manages to bash any hopes of a 3rd party for several hundred words, he fails to provide any alternative. Mr. Lindorff is one of the people who spent much of the last three years trying to 'pressure' the Democratic politicians into impeachment. How'd that work out for ya? Seems like the Democratic politicians just laughed in his face, that is if they paid any attention to him at all.

The key is to realize is that there is no mechanism for people to try to apply any pressure on Democratic politicians. The Democrats have chosen to build their party entirely on money. They collect huge amounts of money in each election cycle now. They've gone from the party that was always outspent by the Republicans to one that massively outspent the Republicans in the last election. The Obama campaign alone raised over $700,000,000.00.

If you want to pressure the Democrats, one way to do it would be to be a major contributor and threaten to cut off the money. The Democrats certainly listen to their major contributors. Just to give one example, the major contributors to the Democrats include the insurance and health care agencies. So, you see one critic of single-payer health care after another appointed to this administraion.

But, since we all know that we are not the rich moneybags that currently fund the Democratic party, just exactly are the other means to 'pressure' the Democrats? There's only one other way to get their attention. Threaten their ability to win elections. That's the real power over any politician. Threaten their ability to win elections.

There are two ways of doing this. One is to challenge the Democrats within their own party in primaries. Of course, the problem is that the current leaders of the Democrats set the rules for those contests. And they set the rules such that the rich, and the candidates backed by the rich, have huge advantages. There are no campaign funding limits or public financing schemes in internal Democratic party races that are any stricter than federal law. None. The Democrats could set rules in their own races outlawing say contributions bigger than $100. But it ain't gonnna happen. The rich own this party and they intend to keep it.

So, what have we seen since 2000? We've seen precious few real primary challenges inside the Democratic Party. The Democrats appoint well-funded candidates, and if there dares to be a challenger to them, we see 1) pressure on the challenger to withdraw, 2) attempts to take away the challenger's funding and support, 3) major support from national Democratic sources to the candidate for the rich in the primary, 4) no sense of neutrality at all from the national Democrats, and 5) elections often run by well connected Democrats who control local voting boards.

At best it is a very uphill struggle. Its playing a rigged game in a rigged casino. And so far its been very unsuccessful. And then there are the quixotic campaigns like Kucinich that seem designed to go absolutely nowhere, but suck up tons of progressive money and effort.

Nope, if you want to 'pressure' the Democrats, the way to do it is in the General Elections running as a UNIFIED opposition third party. The key is that 'success' in 'pressuring' the Democrats can be had for much fewer votes. All you need is for the Democrat to lose. We don't have to beat them ourselves. Just make them lose.

Think for an instant if the Democrats were looking ahead to the 2010 elections and seeing either 1) a number of internal primary challengers, or 2) 3rd party candidates running campaigns in key districts across the country. The leaders of the Democratic party would just laugh at the first. But the second would cause them to be taking 'safe' races and having to mark them as 'competitive' or 'losing' races. This then would mean they would be taking seriously the notion of losing control of the House. And if its the left that is doing this with the 3rd party, well then congratulations, you've successfully 'pressured' the Democrats. They'll come to you asking what you want, and for the first time in a generation we would see the corporate Democrats picking up progressive causes.

Mr. Lindorff is correct in one way. We need to build a large populist opposition movement. But there is no reason on earth why this can't be done as a part of also building a 3rd party. Heck, its a pre-requisite for success in any case, not some sort of bizarre 'either-or' choice like Mr.Lindorff suggests. He appears to be saying that we need to give up all hopes at political power to build some movement beyond politics that will somehow then change politics and political power in this country. That of course is nonsense.

If you want change, we must build political power. You don't do that outside of politics. You don't do that by running hopeless primary campaigns in a game rigged by the Democrats such that money always wins. The only way to do it is to take the Democrats head on in close races they feel then need to win.

Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for the Top US Health Job

Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for the Top US Health Job By Vincente Navarro on counterpunch.org

I find it highly worrisome that Dr. Sanjay Gupta is likely to be appointed head of the USPHS. He is not an expert on public health and is not sufficiently knowledgeable, or competent, to do the job. Training and experience in neurosurgery do not provide the public health knowledge that the position requires. But, what is far more alarming is that he will most likely be the media spokesperson for the task force on health care reform. And this means that a person hostile to a single-payer system (the type of system that has most support among people in the U.S.); a person clearly unsympathetic to the principle of the government’s guaranteeing universality of health care coverage; a person who is part of the media that have been obfuscating, negating, and avoiding the real problems in health and medical care in this country , will be in control of selling the message of change in U.S. medical care. Is this the change we were promised by candidate Obama?

Afghanistan

Two articles on Afghanistan ....
Grim Appraisal in Afghanistan on Antiwar.com

Blog entry that contains links to several articles on Afghanistan. The main 'story' is that Gen. Petreus is mounting a pre-emptive strike against ongoing 'strategy' reviews and declaring that Afghanistan is in a 'downward spiral', and that of course the answer is that we need to send more troops and kill more people.

Of course, the main question is .... what on earth are we fighting in Afghanistan for? How is this is the strategic interests of the American people?

A quick review. We supposedly went to Afghanistan because Bin Laden had camps there. Supposedly, the only reason we attacked the Taliban was because they were sheltering Al-Qaida. Well, couldn't we have just left afterwards? Let them know that if they dare to let Bin Laden back, then we'll come back and blow up more stuff? Why on earth are we still there some 8 years later? How is spending billions of dollars, getting young Americans killed, and killing many (700 is the estimate for last year) civilians who dare to do things like hold a wedding party in their home village, doing anything to improve life for Americans?

It makes much less sense for us to be in Afghanistan than it ever did to be in Iraq. And it makes zero sense for us to send MORE troops. The only reason I can see for it is that the Afghan war 'polled' well so Obama and the Democrats seized on it to try to pretend they they can be as viscious and unprinicipled killers as the Republicans even though the Democrats thought we should (slowly) get out of Iraq and (slowly) close Gitmo.


Anti-war lawmakers worry over plan for Afghanistan from the AP

"WASHINGTON – After campaigning on the promise to end one war, President Barack Obama is preparing to escalate another.

Obama's dual stance on the two wars is not lost on congressional Democrats, many of whom also ran on anti-war platforms. In coming weeks, they expect to have to consider tens of billions of dollars needed for combat, including a major buildup of troops in Afghanistan."

Of course, knowing the Democrats, this will amount to just a few speeches and a few symbolic 'No' votes. They'd never do anything real, like refuse to support the House leadership. I'm not sure of the size of the 'anti-war' caucus in this Congress, but I think if they left the Democratic Party then the Democrat's majority in the House would be in question. But, they'd never do anything like that. They'll just make a few statements, cast the symbolic 'no' votes, then let the money and the troops flow to Afghanistan ... and let the body bags start to come home in greater numbers.

Indians face racist mascot backlash

I received the following via email, so no link to follow.

Does anyone remember the debates of the definiion of 'terrorism' right after 9-11? If I remember correctly, the official government definition was along the lines of someone who uses violent acts to try to change political policy.

So, what about people who use death threats and violent physical attacks (throwing a rock at peaceful protestors) to try to change the town policy about a friggin school mascot of all things?

I've long felt that immigrants of middle-eastern background were not nearly the most dangerous 'terror' threat in this country. Maybe its because I grew up in the south at the tail end of the KKK era, but I know the way violence and intimidation have been used by some whites against any other group that may want to have a say in what happens in their community. And don't ever forget who bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Shouldn't people who are willing to threaten to kill other people over something as minor as a school mascot be considered very dangerous? More likely the Feds are busy investigating some family of arab immigrants who came here to try to find a better life.
--------------------------------------------------------

Indians face racist mascot backlash
Posted by: "Mark Anquoe by way of Mark Cohen" buildingbridges@mindspring.com acjobim2002
Sun Feb 8, 2009 1:48 pm (PST)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Mark Anquoe
American Indian Movement - West
(415) 566-5788
gazelbe@yahoo.com
http://www.aimwest.info

Corine Fairbanks
American Indian Movement ­ Santa Barbara
(805) 212-4947
corine68@yahoo.com
http://www.myspace.com/aimsantabarbara

Native Americans Face Violence and Intimidation
Over Mascot Removal in Carpinteria
CARPINTERIA, California - The small town of
Carpinteria, California is the latest
battleground in Native Americans’ fight against
racism. The controversy over a supposedly
“harmless” high school sports mascot has
alienated the Native American population of
Carpinteria, who have come to fear violent
reprisals from the non-Native community.

The Carpinteria “Warriors” mascot is the
standard Indian chief stereotype, complete with
generic plains-style war bonnet and stoic gaze.
The school logo consists of a spear with dangling
feathers; a visual symbol also associated with
plains Indian cultures. Last spring, 15 year old
Chumash youth Eli Cordero voiced his objections
to the use of this stereotypical imagery by
Carpinteria High School. On April 22nd, 2008, he
brought his concerns before the school board
which then voted to retire the use of all Native American imagery.

Since the April 2008 decision, many citizens of
Carpinteria have waged a campaign of terror
against those who supported the school board’s
decision, as well as the school board itself. A
local businessman placed a quarter-page ad in the
local newspaper explicitly naming and targeting
Eli Cordero, the young student who originally
brought the issue to the school board. Since that
time, the 15 year old has received death threats
and his family has been harassed. Death threats
were also made against the child of a school
board member who voted to remove the imagery.
Local police began escorting school board members
to and from school board meetings. Some citizens
of Carpinteria shouted racial epithets at John
Orendorff, a Native American Army Reserve colonel
who spoke at a school board meeting in favor of removing the racist imagery.

Some Native American people have moved out of
Carpinteria due to the climate of fear and
anti-Indian sentiment. Ashleigh Brown, until
recently a resident of Carpinteria, spoke of her
decision to move away, “There is a community
member who refused to do our printing for our
cultural awareness event. Her son…started telling
my roommate to keep my nose out of Carpinteria
issues, or else I might regret it…So after other
townsppeople found out where I lived I decided to move out of Carpinteria.”

An organization called “Recall CUSD - Warrior
Spirit Never Dies” (http://www.recallcusd.org),
has waged a largely successful campaign to
discredit and oust the school board members who
supported the anti-mascot measure. Having
successfully installed pro-mascot sympathizers on
the school board, there is now a petition to
rescind the earlier decision and keep the racist
imagery at the public high school. On January
27th, local Native American people organized a
protest to voice their objection to the measure,
and were met with verbal abuse by drivers and
passers-by. One protestor was hit with a rock
thrown by an adult man shouting obscenities. This
occurred despite the presence of a representative
of the federal justice department, who was sent
from Los Angeles to ensure proper police conduct
and the safety of the demonstrators. Many local
Native Americans, while supporting the
anti-mascot effort, refused to join the protest, fearing violent reprisals
by the townspeople.

The next school board meeting in Carpinteria is
scheduled for February 10th.. At this meeting the
board will hear from a committee which was formed
to assess each specific Native American image on
display at Carpinteria High School. The school
board is then expected to adjourn until February
24th, when the vote to rescind the previous
ruling will be held. Protests and
counter-protests are expected at both board meetings.

AP Impact: Pentagon boosts spending on PR

AP Impact: Pentagon boosts spending on PR by the AP.

Hey, I think we just found $5 billion a year that can be diverted to helping economic recovery and preventing home foreclosures on hard working (or trying to work) Americans.

On an abandoned Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, editors for the Joint Hometown News Service point proudly to a dozen clippings on a table as examples of success in getting stories into newspapers.

What readers are not told: Each of these glowing stories was written by Pentagon staff. Under the free service, stories go out with authors' names but not their titles, and do not mention Hometown News anywhere. In 2009, Hometown News plans to put out 5,400 press releases, 3,000 television releases and 1,600 radio interviews, among other work — 50 percent more than in 2007.

The service is just a tiny piece of the Pentagon's rapidly expanding media empire, which is now bigger in size, money and power than many media companies.

So, do you think sometimes you see articles in the local paper, or stories on local TV news that seem ridiculously tilted towards the US military. Well, that's your tax dollars hard at work.

First off, this is very, very close to being illegal. Even the AP, which is not exactly hostile to the US military, hints at that in this article.

And the reason that this was at one time made illegal is that this is very destructive to democracy and freedom. Do you ever notice how its become almost impossible to speak against the US military in this country? Its becoming very hard to have any sort of discussion that might lead to lower defense budgets, or less of our military going around the world killing people. And when you realize there's a $5 billion a year operation employing 27,000 people promoting the US military, then one starts to see why.

In a democracy, power is supposed to reside with the people. The government is supposed to reflect the will of the people. As such, its not the government's role to be telling the people what to think. That distorts the process. That puts power with the government, as opposed to power residing with the people.

Anyone want to make a small wager that this doesn't change under Obama? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe his radical pick of Gates as Sec of Defense means that policies like this under previous Sec of Defense Gates will be reversed.

In Washington, Public Policy and Private Wealth are Hopelessly Tangled

In Washington, Public Policy and Private Wealth are Hopelessly Tangled by William Pfaff on Truthdig.com

Good article on health care ....

To get back to Washington, while ex-Sen. Daschle is a reputed expert on health systems, he has also, since leaving the Senate, made a quarter of a million dollars as speaker, consultant and adviser to private health insurance and health-care companies.

Does anyone think that, as secretary of health and human services, he would have recommended a new system that cuts out the private health insurance industry? The insurance companies are the ones that killed Hillary Clinton’s health proposals eight years ago. Where do you think the money goes that makes American health care the most expensive in the world? It’s not going into nurses’ salaries.

My one problem with the article is that he perpetuates the myth that Obama is some sort of saint trying to work around all of this corruption. To check that, let's go to Maplight.org. There we can find who the health insurance industry gives money to in Congress. Hey, look, there's Obama as the number 1 recipient of health insurance money in Congress at $232,000.

Note carefully that this is only money given to Congressional campaigns. I don't believe it includes any health insurance money that's a part of the $700,000,000.00 that just got Obama elected President. This is only money given to Senate campaigns from 2001 to 2008. Interestingly, Obama's first campaign was in 2004. So, he either became the largest recipient of health insurance money in that one race, or they were giving a lot of money to his 2010 accounts on top of other money that probably went to his Presidential campaign.

Now, is it any big surprise that Obama's first choice for HHS was someone else who gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health insurance industry? And he sure as heck ain't gonna pick a proponent of 'single-payer', or maybe someone like the head of the CA Nurses union to replace Daschle.

Green960 Radio and Cindy Sheenhan's Soapbox

I guess I'm still on Cindy Sheehan's email lists after the elections. One thing I got from her was a letter saying she's already planning on running against Pelosi again in 2010. Yahoo! Pelosi needs a challenger. And one thing I think we have a problem with is that too many of our political campaigns are 'one and done'. We need to build a grassroots movement, and to do it in the face of massive propaganda. That doesn't happen overnight, and having the same campaign just roll over into the next cycle is a very good way to fight.

Her recent email was about her radio show. And it mentioned that it could be 'podcast' (ie played back anytime) on the Green960.com website. Then, the link I followed not only led me to her shows, but also what seems like a bunch of other decent voices from the left. So, I thought I'd pass it along. And I'll also add it to the lists on the left.

Green960.com Podcast Page

Afghanistan says foreign fighters coming from Iraq

Afghanistan says foreign fighters coming from Iraq on Antiwar.com

Interesting. For years we heard about the 'foreign fighters' in Iraq. Of course, they never showed up as prisoners captured after actions, or as dead bodies on the battlefield. Analysis of those sorts of hard facts always showed the Iraqi resistance was almost entirely Iraqi. There were a few foreign fighters, but never the numbers that were implied by the propaganda about them.

Now, amazingly enough, as the US shifts its active war fighting from Iraq to Afghanistan, these mythical foreign fighters are also flocking to Afghanistan.

Growing up in East Tennessee, I used to watch some pro wrestling on TV. I became convinced that they only had a limited number of scripts that were constantly recycled. Now I'm starting to think the same thing about US propaganda. They really don't have many new stories to tell. They just keep recycling the same scripts over and over. Heck, this reminds me a lot about those nasty Cubans and Soviets that were flooding into Nicaragua so they could drive up through Texas and thus destroy the American way of life. Same script, they just changed the name of the bad guys. These days with computers and printers, they don't even have to use 'white-out'.

Killer in Chief

Killer in Chief by Allan Nairn at counterpunch.org

I first heard of Allan Nairn sometime back around the early nineties. He was one of the leading journalist going into East Timor and documenting the Indonesian attrocities there. At one point, him and Amy Goodman were hiding in the bushes outside a village that was being massacred.

Don't hear from him so often these days, but he's got a nice short piece up on counterpunch.org.

As Americans today justly celebrate their sweet win over the country's own racism they should at the same time see that they are now installing the world's new killer in chief. Obama , on taking office, will inherit a state pre-programmed in ways that kill civilians, a vast, globe-spanning machine on autopilot, unconstrained by murder law.

As president, Obama will instantly become the world's number one arms dealer, number one trainer of secret police, number one detonator of bombs, and number one sponsor of forces, US and foreign, that by objective definition do terrorism.

If Obama doesn't stop this immediately upon taking office ...

he'll become responsible for mass murders, and the first victims will likely fall sometime between today's swearing-in and the last inaugural ball.

What else do I see in the news today. Obama's team is working on a 'draft' order that would keep Gitmo open for up to one more year.

When do we start trying to impeach Obama? As Mr. Nairn points out, he probably became a war criminal yesterday before the million dollar balls were over.

UNRWA Chief Appalled at Israeli Destruction in Gaza

UNRWA Chief Appalled at Israeli Destruction in Gaza by Thalif Deen of IPS at antiwar.com

"The Israelis violated every single international convention governing the rules of war and the treatment of civilians," he told IPS. "Their military excesses can, in no way, be justified."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who praised Israel at a press conference in Jerusalem last week, describing the Jewish state as "a responsible member of the United Nations," apparently had second thoughts when he saw the devastation caused in Gaza.

Standing outside a UN compound that was destroyed by Israel, Ban told reporters Tuesday: "I am just appalled. Everyone is smelling this bombing still. It is still burning. It is an outrageous and totally unacceptable attack against the United Nations."

Despite pleas from the secretary-general, Israel bombed UN-run facilities, including schools and warehouses, on four different occasions.

One of the bomb attacks on the UNRWA compound took place on the same day Ban arrived in Israel.

Ok, you know the last bit wasn't an accident. So, what was it? A message to the UN not to mess with Israel or else face terror bombing? Is that why Mr. Ban was being so polite to Israel in his statements while in Israel?

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the final tally read: 1,314 Palestinians killed, including 416 children and 106 women; 5,320 injured, including 1,855 children and 795 women.

In comparison, the number of Israelis killed included four civilians and nine soldiers, along with 84 injured.

And according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the buildings destroyed included 4,100 residential homes (with 17,000 damaged), 20 mosques, 25 educational institutions and medical facilities, 31 security offices, 16 government buildings, and 1,500 factories and shops.

The Office of the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator pointed out that 16 health facilities and an equal number of ambulances were destroyed or damaged during the 22-day conflict.

20 mosques ... 25 schools and hospitals. One can be an accident. But that many of each? What does the civilized world think of a nation that deliberately bombs schools, hospitals and religious buildings? (well, the 'civilized world' paid for it and cheered it on, at least its official organs and government bodies did).

And 16 ambulances were shot up. Think about that for a moment.

Speaking from Gaza, Ging told reporters that the population in Gaza remains shell-shocked, traumatized, and living in real fear.

Asked about the "most outrageous" incident he had witnessed, Ging said: "The dead children."

The dead children indeed.

Innaguration

I tried flipping the Inaguration on TV. It was late. I got laid off from my job last week, so today I'd slept late. By the time I flipped on, the speech and ceremonies were over. So it was just CNN talking heads blathering away. I listened to it for about 30 seconds and couldn't take any more. I'll have to go find a video or transcript of what Obama said somewhere else.

What I couldn't take was more of this blather about how this was a historic day because a man with non-white skin was elected. I'd heard way too much on Monday about how this was the cumlination of Dr. King's Dream. Really?

Was Dr. King's dream really that some Republican with darker skin would be elected as President to continue more Republican rule. And make no mistake, especially back in Dr. King's day, Obama would have been a far right Republican.

Go back and read Dr. King's speech at Riverside Church about the Vietnam war, then ask whether having a black man continue all the wars started by Bush is the culmination of Dr. King's dream. His dream was that we all find a way to live peacefully with each other. Not that a black man be in charge of the killings.

Go back and look at the Poor People's march on Washington that Dr. King was organizing when he died, and ask yourself if having a black man keep Wall Street in charge of the economy was really Dr. King's dream? Or was he dreaming of something more like economic justice for all of us. Remember that Dr. King was in Memphis on that fatal day helping a bunch of garbage men try to organize a union. Can you picture President Obama even talking to a bunch of guys who ride the garbage trucks in between his dinners with neo-cons and his Wall Street friends?

Is it a historic day that all the crimes of the last eight years are being approved and validated? That none of the money that was stolen is coming back. That no one will be facing any charges for the theft of millions, for fraud, for torture and crimes against humanity? Is it a historic day that the Republicans and the generals still control the military and our 'foreign policy', and that Wall Street still controls the money? Is it a historic day that all the rights that we've lost are going to stay gone and that this administration is going to spy on us just like the last two administrations?

Sorry, I couldn't take much of the blather on the TV set today.

Don't get me wrong. If Obama wants to be a force for good in the world, I'd love to see it happen and I'd be glad to support him. But I just don't see it. Seems to me like all that happened was that they changed the face on the stage, but otherwise, nothing much has changed. I hope Obama proves me wrong.

Under Obama, feds may still snoop library files

Under Obama, feds may still snoop library files from SF Chronicle

President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general has endorsed an extension of the law that allows federal agents to demand Americans' library and bookstore records as part of terrorism probes, dismaying a national group of independent booksellers.

Eric Holder said at his confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he supports renewing a section of the USA Patriot Act that allows FBI agents investigating international terrorism or espionage to seek records from businesses, libraries and bookstores. If not renewed by Congress, the provision will expire at the end of 2009.

The searches must be authorized by a court that meets secretly and has approved the government's requests in nearly all cases, according to congressional reports. The target of the search does not have to be suspected of terrorism or any other crime. A permanent gag order that accompanies each search prohibits the business or library from telling anyone about it.

Wow, that's a big change from the last bunch. I really like the Democrats supporting the bit about ...

The target of the search does not have to be suspected of terrorism or any other crime.

Of course, if anyone is really surprised about this, remember that the Democrats voted almost unanimously for the Patriot Act that put this into law in the first place. The Democrats always talk like they oppose this stuff, but they always, repeat ALWAYS, support it when it really comes up for a decision.

Gaza: Israeli troops reveal ruthless tactics against Hamas

Gaza: Israeli troops reveal ruthless tactics against Hamas in timesonline.co.uk.

A reporter for what's a relatively conservative British paper conducts an interview with an Israeli lieutenant who's home from the front on leave. Undoubtably this was done with official Israeli permissions and likely approved by Israeli censors.

“We are treating everything as hostile right now. We were told not to take chances — to shoot rather than ask questions.”

Remember, this is in the middle of one of the most densely populated places on earth. Israel is attacking into a small strip occupied by a million and a half people.

“I’m not a newcomer in the army,” Alon told The Times. “Both my brothers served in combat units that saw action in Gaza. And I can say that this is the most aggressive line that we have ever taken towards fighting the Palestinians. As you say in English, the gloves were off.”

I'm starting to really dislike the 'gloves are off' euphemism for committing horrible war crimes. We've heard it here in the US as an euphemism for brutally kidnapping and torturing people, as well as for deliberate killings outside of any judicial system. Now we here it from Israel for deliberately killing a thousand people.

“It doesn’t look like we’ve been there a few weeks — it looks destroyed, demolished, like we were bombing it for years. You can’t imagine what damage we have done. We didn’t want any civilians to die, we do everything we can to make sure that Palestinian civilians there, the non-fighters, aren’t hurt. We tell them to leave the areas that we are fighting . . . but it’s not easy; what we are doing there is difficult work.”

From what you can see in the article, as he repeats the military propaganda, he seems unaware that he's contradicted himself. In the quote above, he says that his orders were to shoot anyone. Now he tries to claim that they are doing everything they can to make sure non-civilians aren't hurt. I suppose he thinks shooting them is the way to accomplish this, since he's already said he'd shoot anyone before figuring out who they are.

In one account, tank crews leading an armoured column to the beachfront suddenly saw a person standing in an open cabana less than a mile away. The figure quickly retreated as the tanks opened fire. “There have been several attempts to use antiarmour weaponry against us, in at least one case a long-range missile,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Erez, a tank commander, giving only his first name as per standard military policy. “We have responded pre-emptively and forcefully. We also hit anyone seen trying to observe our movements.”

So, to the Israeli army, again operating in a densely populated area, looking out your window at Israeli troops to see what they are doing is a death penalty offense.

In another account, published in the Israeli media, the Armoured 401st Brigade convoy had left Gaza’s coast and was heading towards Israel when its commander spotted people, apparently armed, on a rooftop about 800 metres away from the road. A few days before the Israelis had dropped leaflets calling on all residents living near the road to get out.

Like Alon, Lieutenant-Colonel Yigal had little room for doubt. After checking none of his comrades were in the area — four Israeli soldiers were killed by “friendly” fire in the first days of the offensive — he gave the order and machineguns and tanks opened up.

"Apparently armed". Yeah, like he could tell that from 800 meters away. Try that test with a friend. Have them move a half a mile away from where you are, then look at them and tell them what they are holding in their hands. Sounds like US troops who automatically say that everyone they kill was 'apparently armed'. It sounds better in an official report than 'we just murdered a bunch of civilians because they looked at us.'

For Alon, a return to the action cannot come fast enough. “It feels good to be winning again, to show that we are still the strongest army in the world,” he said — a reference to the 2006 Lebanon war, when confidence in the country’s forces was badly shaken by its inability to stop Hezbollah’s rocket attacks. “It was important to go in and remind them what we can do. It’s the only way to get them to stop.”

They've killed a thousand people, wounded thousands more, destroyed houses, schools, hospitals, mosques, government buildings, and terrorized a population of a million and a half people just to prove how tough they are.

And the official position of the US government is that we just love this. We think its great. We have a 'special relationship' with the killers. (US Senate supports Israel's Gaza incursion)

"When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel's inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said before the vote.

Noting that Israel was bent on halting Hamas rocket fire into its southern towns, Reid said: "I ask any of my colleagues to imagine that happening here in the United States. Rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada, into Buffalo New York. How would we as a country react?"

Co-sponsor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican said before the vote: "The Israelis ... are responding exactly the same way we would."

Toronto had better be careful.

And what is Obama doing?

President-elect Barack Obama Tuesday evening attending a dinner party at the home of conservative columnist George Will, attended by fellow conservatives William Kristol and David Brooks.

Aren't you glad you voted for 'change'?

The Nov. 5th Movement and Single Payer Health Care

The group of Nader supporters who are organizing under the name of 'November 5th' have decided to try to focus their efforts on a drive towards 'Single Payer Health Care'. Go visit http://november5.org/ for more details.

Beyond Grief and Rage

Beyond Grief and Rage by Robert Jensen on counterpunch.org

We need to analyze and strategize about political realities, but let’s begin with an emotional reality: For the past few weeks the scenes from Gaza have been driving many of us mad.

For all the horrors in the world, there has been something especially brutal and barbaric about Israel’s use of fighter jets and other sophisticated weapons to pound this small strip of land, to target the 1.5 million people crowded there, to destroy a society. Out of that grief flows rage, not just at the sadistic Israeli violence but also at the “we must stand with Israel” declarations coming from Republican and Democratic politicians alike.

later ...

But I believe that authentic hope lies in seeing one movement with many fronts. The goals must be justice and sustainability, which are inseparably linked. The struggle goes on in Palestine and Iraq, in Venezuela and Bolivia, in Oakland and Austin. The targets are the empire and economic interests it serves. We have to continue to struggle against the corrosive effects of arrogance and affluence, in others and in ourselves.

We all have limited time and energy for political work, and we direct that energy toward activities that are meaningful to us. One person cannot do everything, but each one of us can work within our political groups and communities to develop the analysis needed to integrate these many campaigns for justice and sustainability, linking our efforts with others’.

The Language of Death

The Language of Death By Chris Hedges on truthdig.com

The incursion into Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace. The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use the lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase of the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building ringed Palestinian enclaves where Israel will always have the ability to shut off movement, food, medicine and goods to perpetuate misery. The Israeli attack on Gaza is about building a hell on earth.

Remember, every Democrat in the US Senate and all but four Democrats in the US House just stood up and said that they are extremely supportive of Israel creating this 'hell on earth'. Gotta love those Democrats.

The refusal by political leaders from Barack Obama to nearly every member of the U.S. Congress to speak out in the major media in defense of the rule of law and fundamental human rights exposes our cowardice and hypocrisy. Those who openly condemn the Israeli crimes, including Israelis such as Yuri Avnery, Tom Segev, Ilan Pappe, Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, as well as American stalwarts Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Norman Finkelstein and Richard Falk, are ignored or treated like lepers. They are denied a platform in the press. They are rendered nearly voiceless. Falk, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied territories and a former professor of international law at Princeton, was refused entry into Israel in December, detained for 20 hours and deported. Never mind that nearly all these voices are Jewish.

later ...

The lesson of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to halt genocide, and you do not—no matter who carries out that genocide or who it is directed against—you are culpable. And we are very culpable. The F-16 jet fighters, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250-pound “smart” GBU-39 bombs are all part of the annual $2.4 billion in military aid the U.S. gives to Israel. Palestinians are being slaughtered with American-made weapons. They are being slaughtered by an Israeli military we lavishly bankroll.

In last year's elections, I voted Green in every race I could. From Cynthia McKinney for President on down the ballot. Democrats would tell me that I 'wasted' my vote. But I voted for a party that would not be so supportive of genocide as the Democrats are being right now. I voted for a party that does stand for peace and justice and international law.

Those who voted Democrat voted for a party that supports and enables and cheers on genocide.

The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza

The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza by Norman Finkelstein on counterpunch.org

An excellent piece laying out what's been going on over there. It starts with quotes from the IDF website stating how they broke the cease-fire and that its Hamas 'retaliating' against that by firing rockets and goes on from there.

I found this passage notable ...

The law is very clear. July 2004, the highest judicial body in the world, the International Court of Justice, ruled Israel has no title to any of the West Bank and any of Gaza. They have no title to Jerusalem. Arab East Jerusalem, according to the highest judicial body in the world, is occupied Palestinian territory. The International Court of Justice ruled all the settlements, all the settlements in the West Bank, are illegal under international law.

So, the question becomes, when Obama is sworn in as President next week, will he stand by and uphold international law? Here's what he said in the campaign. Obama answered questions on international law in a survey found on the Harvard International Law Journal website ...

“Since the founding of our nation, the United States has championed international law because we benefit from it. Promoting – and respecting – clear rules that are consistent with our values allows us to hold all nations to a high standard of behavior, and to mobilize friends and allies against those nations that break the rules. Promoting strong international norms helps us advance many interests, including non-proliferation, free and fair trade, a clean environment, and protecting our troops in wartime. Respect for international legal norms also plays a vital role in fighting terrorism. Because the [George W. Bush] Administration cast aside international norms that reflect American values, such as the Geneva Conventions, we are less able to promote those values abroad.”

Obama could always speak pretty words during the campaign. My problem was that I never believed them. Well, eventually you get a chance to judge a person by 'actions' instead of words. So much of what Obama has said during the campaign has already been dismissed by him as 'overheated rhetoric' of the campaign.

So, will Obama stand by international law once he's sworn in? The Palestinians, including Hamas, and all of the Arab world have been repeatedly saying that they would accept a peace deal with Israel on the 1967 borders. Precisely those borders that the International Court of Justice has recognized as the legal borders of the State of Israel. Will President Obama demand that Israel pull its forces back to within those borders? Will President Obama demand that Israel stop killing the people who live outside those borders? Will President Obama demand that Israel dismantle all the illegal settlements that they've built outside those borders? Will President Obama demand that Israel dismantle the wall they've been building outside of those borders?

I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for Obama to do this. I've regarded him as a manipulator and a liar who would say anything to be elected. But, now we'll quickly have a test of whether Obama stands by his words and promises in the campaign to respect and stand by international law, or will he continue American support for a criminal Israeli regime as almost every member of the Democratic Party in Congress (Kucinich and a few others excepted) said he should do last week?

Eventually, we judge people by their actions, not their words. We've already seen the actions of Cynthia McKinney, who put her life at risk trying to journey to Gaza and who was almost killed by the Israelis to do so. Next week, Obama is sworn in and we will begin to see his actions.

Revisiting the Tale of Samson

Revisiting the Tale of Samson by Gary Leupp on counterpunch.org

Me, I'm just an old hippie who doesn't want to cut his hair, and I always liked the song. :)

If I had my way, If I had my way,
If I had my way, I would tear this old building down.

From Mr. Leupp's article ...

The author of this fictional work, writing perhaps 2600-2800 years ago, states that Yahweh himself was looking for a fight. The secular humanist might interpret the passage to mean that the worshippers of Yahweh were spoiling for a fight with the Philistines, whose land they coveted.

(2) “Then the spirit of Yahweh seized on him. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty men there, took what they wore and gave the festal robes to those who had answered the riddle…” (Judges 14:19)

Ashkelon, the former Palestinian town taken over by Zionist settlers since 1948, has been in the news lately. We have heard a lot about the indiscriminate Palestinian bombardment of the town which is occasionally hit by homemade rockets from Gaza. Here in the Samson story we have the Israelite hero indiscriminately killing thirty men there. But he does so filled with the spirit of God!

Gaza Seen From Paris

Gaza Seen From Paris by By JEAN BRICMONT and DIANA JOHNSTONE on counterpunch.org

Since the article starts with sentiments similar to what I wrote below, I can't resist posting it ....

There are surely millions of us, invisible to each other, enraged and powerless as we watch the massacre of Gaza and listen to our media describe it as a "retaliation against terrorism", "Israel’s right to defend itself". We have reached a point where answering the Zionist arguments is both useless and unworthy of humanity. So long as it is recognized that the shells landing on Ashkelon are likely to have been fired by descendants of the inhabitants of that region who were driven out by the Zionists in 1948, talk of peace is a smoke screen for continued Israeli assault on the survivors of that great injustice.

What then is to be done? Yet another dialogue between "moderate" Arabs and "progressive" Israelis? An umpteenth "peace plan" to be ignored? A solemn declaration from the European Union?

All such mainstream gestures are mere distractions from the ongoing strangling of the Palestinian people. But more radical demands are just as futile. The call to create an international tribunal to judge Israeli war criminals, or for an effective intervention by the United Nations or the European Union will accomplish nothing. The real existing international tribunals reflect the relationship of forces in the world, and will never be used against the cherished allies of the United States. It is the relationship of forces itself that must be changed, and this can be done only gradually. It is true that Gaza is a dire emergency, but it is also true that nothing really effective can be done today to stop it, precisely because the patient political work that should have been done before still remains to be undertaken.

On the three modest proposals that follow, two are ideological and one is practical.

Silence

What does silence mean?

I fear I've grown silent the last week or so. On a personal level, I've been with friends and family celebrating the holidays. A wonderful time. But, when I try to read the news, I get depressed at what I can only describe as the mass murder of hundreds of people, the wounding and maiming of thousands more, and what seems to be the collective torture of a million and half peopl by the US and Israel. The result is silence as I turn back towards the pleasant. A silence driven by a sense of powerlessness.

But, what is silence when one does have the power to stop this if one wanted to? If one is the President-elect, and who with a word could do much to bring this to a halt, what then does silence mean? Sometimes silence is complicity. Sometimes silence is support. Sometimes silence is collaboration. When speaking a word could end horror, what then is silence?

Since I'm not posting much right now, here's an open thread .....