a week we wish hadn't been??

The following pretty much sums up the output of the White House this week:

Have some highlights from last Wednesday’s Grover Norquist breakfast meeting:
* Tony Snow: “The Iranian people are more pro American than any American university faculty.”

Spinning more war rather than acknowledging that the US is in serious trouble, Bushco moves forward with plans to support an Israeli nuclear strike against Iran. Then, when the protests erupt, they will send troops into US cities, using "non-lethal" weapons to increase fear and vile coercion to oppress and repress dissent and opposition. Finally, they will cancel 2008 elections as the entire US economy goes into the toilet.

Yes i am making this up, sort of. Most serious political critics of Bushco acknowledge that what i suggest is all too entirely possible, and therein lies the tragedy and travesty of Snow's offhand stupid comment. Are we really to believe that the entire 68 million Iranians are loving the US more than the entire US demographic of faculty at this nation's 2500 four year universities and colleges??? Of course not. This is pure bullshit hyperbole, but for what purpose.

The Iranians certainly don't care. US university students and faculty know this is pure falsehood and lies. The vast majority of media reporting understands Snow is fabricating. Yet no one is holding him accountable for why he is doing so. The remark on its face is polarizing and partisan. It reeks of a hideous and vile anti-intellectualism, reducing academics to the status of un-american sub-humans, lesser than even the despicable hezbollah and hamas revolutionary classes of Iran. So why was Tony saying this??

Because he's an asshole!

faggot faggot faggot, nigger nigger nigger, kyke kyke kyke

What the fuck happened to the First amendment? I remember when they took down the Fourth, and pretty much raked over the Fifth and Sixth along with the Ninth (can you say no-fly list). I even remember the last couple of campaigns where the clause in the First about peaceable assembly was denuded by the ambiguous and arbitrary reduction of that civil liberty to a small specific zone of a locality only. But I do not remember when they took away my right and liberty to use my speech freely.

Words do not have any power. Words are words, they are not weapons, nor clubs, nor bombs, nor flames, nor good, nor evil. Words are symbols and signs, semioticities awash with use and meanings that are ascribed to both the communicator and communicatee. The responsibility of our Constitution places the burden of protecting our rights and liberties upon those who would choose to deny them or diminsh them. Those that are offended by an utterance (Faggot, for example) do not have the right to stop people from using the word. They have the right to be offended if they so choose, and they have the right to speak out about their offense, but not about the word nor the use of the word. They only have the right to express their own displeasure during the experience of listening or reading the word. This is particularly true when one class of persons feels a certain word "belongs" to them, and can only be used by them, and that others who choose to use their word need to have their rights violated. This is also particularly true for people who rally around their own identity politics placards hosting all sorts of rights demeaning defamation claims against words being uttered by someone not of their particular identity.

Fuck being offended by words, you assholes. Be offended by the war, be offended by the poverty, be offended by the violence, be offended by the lack of basic necessities for healthy and safe survival. But stop behaving like the spoiled rich little children you are about the use of words. Reducing my right to free and unfettered speech, by coercing employers and corporations to punish people who use words that for some carry connotations that seem too much to bear (it is a fucking "word" dipshit), only further increases the depths to which our national police/security state has been made manifest. Give me my liberty back you bastards. How dare you claim words are powerful and dangerous? How dare you impose arbitrary and harsh punishments on people who use words to which you choose to take offense (loss of income, blacklisting, restraints on free trade)? Words are just textual signifiers for the holy shit's sake.

And speaking of Fuck, use it correctly for homo's sake

In the mean time watch this little video and think about how not to be like the FCC!

Ventis secundis, tene cursum as i hit the ___60?

So, fifteen minutes before the idiot monkey spews on about this or that escalation of troops that will lead to thousands of more dying, and inevitably provide Israel to nuke Iran, and Iran to organize massive retaliation for which these new troops will be the defense of the precious oil... i am taking off to see the desert. It is cold here, and getting colder. Minus Celsius is not all that bad, but negative Farenheit temperatures totally suck. I'll be back when it warms up enough to snow or some such thing. And i will do my very best to have no idea whatsoever what that batshit public employee who lives in the big White House has to say.

Ciao fo now...

Noli me vocare, Magister Mundi sum!

I was going to make a number of observations about the execution of Saddam and the apologetics and revisionist history of Ford, but better writers have made these points much more succinctly than i. Thus i will try to complete my thoughts on why our economy will be our ruin in the near future. Several post-holiday stories reveal that the overall retail sales were down, and did not even meet the lowered expectations proposed by financial analysts and corporate fiduciary spokespeople. This is not good news, but more than that, it hints at some serious miscalculations by the general population concerning their own well being.

First, we must realize, that no matter how much we all want to feel good about the way we live, our lifestyles are inordinately excessive in terms of planetary resources and the production of streams of human waste products. These wastes are beginning to extract a deadly toll on the planet. The lists are numerous and constantly in the news, and thus i don't need to go into that litany right now. What has been hidden, by our own choosing is the increasing costs of the infrastructure that our way of life requires. Our economy is structured in such a way that currency is exchanged for ever-increasing value (artificially induced) from which is extracted ostensibly miniscule percentages to provide direct development and maintenance of the infrastructure. In toto, we pay a remarkably large percent of our daily value to maintain our system itself, without regard for anything other than that system. This value is transfered directly to corporate accounts and further removed from the cycle as in any hierarchical rentier system.

Every aspect of our lives requires this extraction and capitulation of our own personal value to the system itself. We are paying and paying to just barely maintain that system, at the massive overwhelming personal benefit of a core group of human beings at the top of the hierarchy. When less than 1% of the citizens of the US are extracting and removing value from the other 300 million, each and every single day, we are living in an empire, a top down totalitarian state, mediated and hidden by our own paid for media. Look at everything in your immediate environment, calculate the cost and value of all that matter, how it got to you, how you acquired it, why you chose it, what it does, how it works, and realize that somewhere along the line an incredible stream of taxes, fees, excises, adjustments, etc are taken out and handed over to the corporations.

Our roads alone, upon which each and every one of these material products must travel demonstrate the hellish nightmare that is the economic ruin of our lives and the unsustainable destruction of the earth. How they are created, how they are maintained, how they are funded and paid for, how they are changed and altered--at each step of the process our own personal values are diminished and extracted. And if we simply no longer have any more value to give?? Well, fewer and fewer material resources will be available in the stream. The roads will degrade, the infrastructure that thrives from the use of those roads (food, energy, products, waste removal) will diminish, and the detritus of our failing economy will be expanding literally in our front yards. We cannot expect to continue to have our value extracted from us, mined from our beings in both physical and mental assets, and not become tailings and refuse ourselves. Look at the people of New Orleans. The hundreds of thousands of already poor who are now completely neglected at the expense of a few making whatever remaining efforts to extract the last vestiges of value from them (corporate contracts to provide: substandard housing, commodity foods that are toxic and unhealthy, and grossly mismanaged healthcare). As there becomes fewer and fewer chunks of value to extract from our cities and communities, the infrastructures will collapse.

This has all happened before, many times in human history. Often such precipitous collapses are linked to massive die-offs of people and their livestock. But now we have compounded the problem to such an extent that the causalities of collapse, the failing planetary economy and the inability to safely utilize the remaining available resources, are running smack into the most terrible of all proverbial walls: worldwide environmental collapse. The planet itself is reaching its threshold of sustaining complex lifeforms. Massive species extinctions are occurring at increasingly alarming rates. The list of new pathogens that can eradicate human beings has grown faster than research can fend them off. The death of the oceans is imminent, in terms of pollution, carbon changes, methane releases, and the melting of planetary ice. Dramatic weather and climate extremes will increase, placing even more demands on the artificial infrastructure to adapt, which it will not be capable of doing, given the failing economy.

And what i realize right now is that this isn't even the worst case scenario. NO, that involves that 1% of the population utilizing its remaining capacity to extract value to intentionally destroy wholesale infrastructures to keep for themselves the last resources. Can you say nuclear war???

I have only one small point to make

about the death of Gerald Ford. Okay, maybe more than one, but these are simple straightforward wonderings.

For instance, he was not elected to the office of Vice President, nor that of President. He was appointed, as directed by the recently passed 25th Amendment. Thus Nixon, and his cabal of venal henchmen chose the successor knowing that he was a functioning puppet who could be controlled to the end of his days.

We are treating our dead Presidents as if they were kings, holding rituals and ceremonies for them, ignoring the Constitution's Article I, Section Nine which forbids these acts of nobility and aristocracy. What makes this one public servant so much more worthy than a Senator who has served this great nation for 24 years? Nothing except the pomp and ceremony given over to Kennedy when he was killed. Nixon jumped all over this, raising the imperial standard over the White House, claiming his emperorship and the mantle of all mighty power. Ford is a loser and glaringly unworthy of this puff and consequence.

Ford committed the unforgiveable pardon of Nixon, the hideous Kissinger approved destruction of East Timor, the invasion of Cambodia and Laos, and silly post- Vietnam proclamations. Ford was the puppet under which the first major robberies of the US Treasury were instituted by corporations led by the cabal. Ford was directed to allow the big oil companies to make billions in profit while preparing a second fake crisis. Ford is a loser and glaringly unworthy of any attention whatsoever.

essential economic problems

The richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half the world's wealth, according to a new study released by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University. The study's authors say their work is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. They found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total. In contrast, the assets of half of the world's adult population account for barely 1 percent of global wealth.

<>"It reflects the extreme nature of inequality around the world," one of the study's authors, New York University Professor Edward Wolff, told OneWorld. "Yes, we are richer than Africa and Latin America and most of Asia, but how much richer is what hadn't really been established until our study came out," Wolff added. According to the report, the average American's wealth amounted to $144,000 in the year 2000, more than 100 times higher than the average Indian or Indonesian, whose assets totaled $1,100 and $1,400, respectively. The study defined wealth as physical and financial assets--like personal savings and home, land, and stock ownership--less debts. Besides the United States, only Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Israel showed average personal wealth of more than $50,000.

These are powerful statistics, especially when viewed through the haze of how citizens in the US use the planet's natural resources to provide the infrastructure necessary to maintain such a dysfunctional unsustainable lifestyle. The nature of this economic disparity is rooted in the acceptance of three fundamental flaws in the basic philosophical principles that form the base for the US. Each of these alone would be sufficient to demonstrate the insanity of the attempts to keep it functioning, yet the irrational faith the public has in living these lies, further erodes the capacity of the earth to sustain life.

The most egregious of these flaws is that the economy is predicated on forcing US citizens to pay for basic life sustaining resources. All human beings require earth resources to effectively function in the environment of the planet. The capitalistic system demands that these resources be marketed rather than provided, although the planet itself provides. In essence, some humans beings, who have no direct connection to the process of extracting the resources and the humans using them to nurture their physiological needs, have inserted themselves into the flow, diverting not only resources, but also increasing the destructive processes of waste, toxicity, and unsustainability, as well as forcing an economic rentier taking from this. It is the ultimate in selfish greed. And yet no one complains, because everyone has faith that this is the only way to do it. No one questions the authority of why this must be so. No one challenges the flawed principles that are used to frame the constructs that allow immense human suffering to be increase in direct proportion to the apparent virtual increase in non-existent values. No one can eat money, or gold, or houses, or cars; no one can drink oil, or vinegars, or alkalais, etc. No, only food and water are useful, and in most of the populations of the planet, access to these essentials for life are free. But not here in the US, nope, we can't have that, because otherwise our unnecessary and earth destroying economic system would collapse.

The second flaw is one that libertarians find particularly attractive to promote. At the core of their demands for hierarchical wealth accumulation and private property, is the idea that a human being owns their personhood. While this is attractive, and justifies an incredible array of behaviors, all of which lead to the destruction of the planet at the expense of selfish affluence, the flaw is in the necessary separation of humans from all other species of life. The ownership principle must accept a distinct qualitative and quantitative difference between human dna and that of all other species, so that the hierarchical construct provides the argument that human consciousness is something authoritative and deserving. This of course must deny the functional necessary dependence of humans on other species to survive, including the species within their own physical bodies, without which humans could not survive. We cannot casually toss of the mantle of dependent interconnectedness in order to justify extracting virtual value from exploiting the earth and even other humans. Yet onward it goes, demanding more and more obedience and subservience of the masses of all species, including humans, to satisfy the greed and selfish behavior of those who have the audacity to suggest they are superior to others and deserve the plentitude of resources they take from everything else.

Takings are part of the third flaw, in that profit is nothing other than taking something for nothing. It is a form of theft, stealing value from others, from the earth, using portions of that profit to purchase the labor of some for security to increase the takings. The staunchest advocates for private property (owning parts of the earth) must take from others to sustain their way of life. No matter how they disguise it, they are nothing other than theives of the wellbeing, despoilers of the common good, and damagers of the planet. Profit is theft of labor and utility, theft of resources, generated on the toxification of environments, and so far forth. Profit is a legal construct that protects this form of robbery within the system, in order to maintain the system, designed solely to protect itself even up to the point of destroying the earth rather than acknowledge its own flaws and failures. We citizens in the US must begin to reject the authority of a system that allows some to steal so much from us and from the earth. We must reject, condemn, deny, and throw out the infrastructural constructs that allow some to claim they are better than others in order to use more of the planet for their own desires, and therefore increase planet wide suffering.

a lazy day blog away...

The instructions i received to facilitate the playing of this game:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence.
3. Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog.
4. Name of the book and the author.
5. Tag three people.

I: Well damn, i sit next to a bookshelf with a few hundred books, and by closest to me, i can only infer they are referencing a measure of differing distances which are not at all easily discernible given the size and shape of the bookcase. I wonder if i should get up and get a tape measure and start with that problem. mmmmm okay, that narrows it down to three four choices all within a millimeter of difference in distance. We have Journeys in Microspace; The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, an Intimate History of Humanity, and Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. I therefore arbitrarly select the last volume for the thrill of the game.

II: the page heading is James Joyce and features a variety of entrees from "In Flanders Fields" to Joyce, James.

III:
Irving, Washington An American author of the nineteenth century; "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" are two of his best known works.
it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done A sentence from the end of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
The Character who says this is about to die in place of another man.

IV: Hirsch, E.D., Kett, Joseph, Trefil, James: The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.

V: I never tag other people

This is not good... and won't be for a long time

So here are some stories that have a great deal to do with one another, and almost nothing to do with any good or beneficial direction in the state of the planet. Consider three distinct areas of operations in which the money is flowing: military expenditures, energy resource costs, transportation of necessities. All of these are huge burdens on the mass of the population of the Earth, yet there are those that extract the financial rent from the system, who are under no illusions about their desparate need to keep the status quo in order to insulate themselves from the coming global depression.

With labor under attack the "share of American workers carrying union cards has plunged from over 20 percent in 1980 to under 13 percent in 2005, and almost half of those are government employees." In a report on the recent boom in corporate profits, economists at Goldman Sachs wrote plainly, “The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income." Cornell University researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner writes, at least 5 percent of workers involved in unionization campaigns are fired, which is both quite illegal and quite routine: Companies would rather pay the nominal fines than pay their workers higher wages and lose the absolute control they hold over the work lives of their employees." Today's labor movement faces union-busting law firms and consulting agencies which are increasingly enlisted by union-wary employers to keep labor from organizing. Today, the vast majority of union members -- 84 percent -- live in only 12 states, leaving workers with little organized power in much of the country.

Dare we say that most citizens of the US, 95% of them, are not experiencing the best possible potential future, given the current state of their lives, their access to healthcare, their costs for energy, and their costs for food??

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs will set a record this year when it comes to paying bonuses. It is giving out $16.5 billion. Some top executives are expected to get a whopping $100 million dollars. They are the highest paid people in one of the world's richest cities, and they're about to make even more. After a year of record profits on Wall Street, investment banks are dividing up the winnings. Goldman Sachs is reportedly leading the way:

Average worker at Goldman will take home $622,000 this year

Senior administrators will get $5 to 10 million dollars

Senior executives and traders get $10 to 20 million each

Company CEO and department heads get $25 million

Top traders will get $50 million and more

"The reason they're making so much money for themselves is because they're making so much money for their firms ... You can debate all day whether it's fair or unfair but they're being compensated as a portion of what they're making," Neil Weinberg, of Forbes Magazine, said. The bonuses help fuel the city's economy through income taxes and sales taxes. Everyone from luxury car dealers to jewelers will feel it. But economists say Wall Street's richest drive up the cost of living in New York and widen the gap between the rich and everyone else.

But that is not all, by any stretch of the imagination

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., led by its strength in bond trading, reported a 22 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit and ended the year with a record $4 billion in earnings. Lehman, the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm by market value, increased earnings at a slower pace than competitors Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. Growth was led by a 31 percent gain in revenue from fixed-income sales and trading. Fees from investment banking rose 5 percent, reversing a third- quarter decline

So we live in a country that is now so glaringly dysfunctional that those that are reaping the direct benefits from it all are demanding and requiring the rest of us to keep ponying up so that they won't begin to slide down. They need us to believe that because as long as we do, they "promise" to protect us from the depression that will happen anyway.

Why this isn't a problem, but a solution--Totum dependeat

Dark economic clouds are gathering ahead. After six years of booming home prices, the great American housing bubble has finally popped, and the market is now on the verge of collapse. Tens of millions of families who bought homes at bubble-inflated prices "now face the prospect of seeing their life savings disappear." This development will have wide-ranging effects on the American economy. "Over the last few years," writes Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, "most good U.S. economic news has been the result of soaring home prices." With this engine of economic growth now broken down, America faces a potential future of rapidly falling house prices, rising default and bankruptcy rates," lost jobs, fewer consumption, even a possible recession." The dark clouds ahead may be a perfect storm hitting the U.S. economy.

So, what is good about this?? Well it is really quite simple, though a bit abstract. Our entire national economic engine functions solely because people buy stuff. And by "stuff" i refer to the extraneous, unnecessary consumer items upon which a vast assortment of taxes, fees, tariffs, etc. are generated for local, state, and federal governments. Sales taxes and excise taxes, road user fees, transportation levies--all manner of funding of our infrastructure and services to just simply survive is predicated on convincing the majority of the population to keep purchasing things they do not need, that damage the planet, that corrupt governments, and create massive suffering. Without a home mortgage deduction on income taxes, without the capacity to pass on property taxes exemptions and deductions on other taxes, consumer would not be sufficiently financed to help the capitalists keep the economic system operating. And therein lies the direct benefit of the next global depression.

We have chance, a real and serious opportunity, to end the cycle of carnage and damage to our planet, to increase sustainability and social justice, to empower and use redistributive justice to enact participational parity, to reduce and constrain greenhouse gas emissions and so forth, simply by rooting for the depression. People will stop having money to spend on useless junk, and focus solely on providing for their families. They will be forced to travel less, reduce their use of fossil fuels, seek solutions to growing and producing local foods, design more cooperative and collaborative localized relations to function in the place of bankrupt governments. Our dependency on foreign oil, on products from outside the US, on maintaining this militarized empire to supply itself will be cast aside as more and more people find it absolutely necessary to reprioritize the very core of their survival, basing decisions on their real needs, and not on their whims and wants. TV's will turn off, when cable bills are unpaid in exchange for buying food. Cars will stop being driven so that people can access healthcare and cheaper mass transit.

These will have egalitarian benefits, as the rich and powerful realize that without a functioning economic engine, their peasant-serf workforces, who are supposed to protect them and their precious property, will have other, much more visceral and meaningful priorities. Gone will be the capability and capacity of the systems to evict folks from their foreclosed homes. Local governments will find it better to simply ignore orders from national and international financial operations, and focus their diminishing resources on providing as best they can for the people for whom they have allegiance (and a serous survival stake). We can foresee the end of recreational vehicle toys and use, we can envision the end of large scale movement of crappy GE and GMO foods around the planet and country, we can finally take a breath from the onslaught of capitalists demanding we keep them happy.

Depression or planetary salvation? You make the call.

November wrap up and then sum..

A case that best represents the imperial centristic conceit of the US would be the take on hurricanes this year. We have arrived at the official end of the season and our own press suggests the following:

Hurricane Season A Breeze... This Time The Ledger - Nov 30, 2006
Hurricane season bows out quietly CNN International
The calm instead of the storm NATURE.com

The irony of this cannot be lost however, since in the same round up of the season we find the following stories:

Official: Typhoon casualties in Philippines could attain 200 MANILA, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Over 200 people are feared dead as typhoon Durian battered Albay province, central Philippines, with heavy downpour that caused mudslides from Mount Mayon volcano, a top government official said Friday.
Death toll rises to nearly 200 in Philippine typhoon, 260 missing Canada.com
Death Toll In Philippine Typhoon Rises To 147 Playfuls.com

Opps, did someone forget to tell the billions of people living in Asia that their experience of eight super-typhoons (and twelve other ones), killing thousands, destroying billions of dollars of property and infrastructure was just a quiet calm breeze of a season???? But that also fails to mention our nearest neighbor as well, Mexico. I guess they don't count either, what with the four Cat 3+ storms that wasted the Pacific Coast and thrashed Cabo San Lucas three of those times. No, of course the only substantive measure of a bad hurricane season is the Gulf Coast. Hell these idiots didn't even bother to reference the massive rains and flooding that the Mexican hurricanes created in the Southwest. The mindnumbing provincialism of this should help people realize that the rest of the world sees us for what we truly are: selfish arrogant conceited mindless bigots.

I have a problem with the supposed hit TV show: HOUSE. This season they introduced the most unrealistic and bizarre character portrayl ever, of an overzealous, self-righteous police detective. The role has this minder of virtue acting like one of Stalin's or Beria's private thugs, pursuing House with vicious unconstitutional illegal due process behaviors; behaviors that even an inept and incompetent attorney would have stopped a while ago. To continue down this idiotic and stupid script plot only destroys all that is best about the show. This guy must die, and soon too. No police detective would ever be free to act as this guy; that is why we have district attorneys, special investigators, layers of evidenciary and rights protections, and courts with skilled and knowledgeable judges. If the idea is to suggest to the American people that this is how we want our government to behave, then we are indeed headed for a fascist hell that is beyond measure. Kill the guy off and save America.

thanks for what???

In a Paul Craig Roberts essay published today, i find myself and my thoughts being echoed. There will not be anything to be thankful for until we are done with Bushco. And we cannot be done with Bushco until they are all, every single one of them (legislators, political appointees, hired staffers, justices, all of them) out of government service and their leadership in prisons around the world. If, as a nation, we are unable to do this, accepting the trite and petty bullshit that bygones shall be bygones, and that can go into the past, well then we won't be done with them. They will still be in power, manipulating and controlling the future of the country and the planet. PCR writes:

George Orwell warned us, but what American would have expected that in the opening years of the 21st century the United States would become a country in which lies and deception by the President and Vice President were the basis for a foreign policy of war and aggression, and in which indefinite detention without charges, torture, and spying on citizens without warrants have displaced the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution?

If anyone had predicted that the election of George W. Bush to the presidency would result in an American police state and illegal wars of aggression, he would have been dismissed as a lunatic.

What American ever would have thought that any US president and attorney general would defend torture or that a Republican Congress would pass a bill legalizing torture by the executive branch and exempting the executive branch from the Geneva Conventions?

What American ever would have expected the US Congress to accept the president's claim that he is above the law?

What American could have imagined that if such crimes and travesties occurred, nothing would be done about them and that the media and opposition party would be largely silent?

Except for a few columnists, who are denounced by "conservatives" as traitors for defending the Bill of Rights, the defense of US civil liberty has been limited to the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. The few federal judges who have refused to genuflect before the Bush police state are denounced by attorney general Alberto Gonzales as a "grave threat" to US security. Vice president Richard Cheney called a federal judge's ruling against the Bush regime's illegal and unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program "an indefensible act of judicial overreaching."

But, alas, "law and order conservatives" have been brainwashed for decades that civil liberties are unnecessary interferences with the ability of police to protect us from criminals. Americans have forgot that we need protection from government more than we need protection from criminals. Once we cut down civil liberty so that police may better pursue criminals and terrorists, where do we stand when government turns on us?

Americans should be roused to fury that attorney general Alberto Gonzales and vice president Cheney have condemned the defense of American civil liberty as "a grave threat to US security." This blatant use of an orchestrated and propagandistic fear to create a "national security" wedge against the Bill of Rights is an impeachable offense.

Mark my words, the future of civil liberty in the US depends on the impeachment and conviction of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales.

We must stand together and renounce this national nightmare. We must undo the more than one thousand edicts and orders that are destroying the environment of the planet and space. We must retake our own institutions, especially schools and other public commons, freeing ourselves of the fascism that has become endemic to the core beliefs of most citizens. Too many of you are accepting too much, stop it!

what threats?? ooohhh i get it.

The top U.S. general in the Middle East, Army Gen. John Abizaid, said on Friday that if the world fails to stop the escalation of military crisis in Middle East, it will face a third world war. Among the major problems tearing up the Middle East region Abizaid named Arab-Israeli tensions, militant extremism, and Iran's nuclear program. However, dealing with Iraq is number one priority, according to Abizaid, who thinks that al Qaeda ideology is dangerously similar to fascist ideology in 1930s that led to World War II.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said speaking at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge. "The sacrifice that is necessary to stabilize Iraq, in my view, must be sustained in order for the region itself to become more resilient." Abizaid earlier in the week warned U.S. Congress against setting up a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Abizaid's comments came only a week after President George W. Bush's Republicans lost the congressional elections largely because of growing angst in the American society over the 4-year-long Iraq war.

Shall we read between the lines then?? Okay. What we got here is the military version of three card monte. First the shark shows you the threat, in this case al Qaeda terrorism. Then he hides Iraq under the threat as Iraq is a breeding ground for al Qaeda. Then Iraq gets covers the Middle East in general, and finally all of that covers the planet and there we have it. What?? You don't get it?? Then you weren't following the threat, but rather the facts, and we all know that facts ruin a perfectly good attempt at propaganda.

You see, the US invaded Iraq to control the water and oil resources (Israel needs the water, and the US needs the oil to be sold in US dollars). Then the US claims that Iraq is liberated, but secretly supports the insurgency through fundings contracts without controls. The insurgency then becomes a breeding ground for terrorists, and that allows the US to claim that we must continue this war in perpetuity. Iraq is Iran (since Iran is a threat to Israel and to the US dollar) and therefore we need to attack Iraq/Iran to stop it/them from becoming powerful. Because if we allow them (you know, we have all this power to let them do whatever we want see) to get stronger and have more weapons and non-US dollars, they will fund more terrorists. And then we need to expand the war on many horizons, since other countries (like Venzuela, Nigeria, Myanmar, and Sudan) won't sell us our oil cheap. That way the world is at war. But it will always be there fault, for not just bending over and being screwed like the citizens of the US have been doing so wonderfully up until a couple of weeks ago. Which means that a world war is necessary to get the US population to lay back down on their stomachs and let the military/security/police corporate fascist state screw them where they lie.

Because, we have so much power, we get to change the name of things, and therefore those that oppose our institution of a US global fascist imperial regime must be the real fascists (this of course assumes that the word no longer means anything other than a dysphemic label). The only real fascists must call those that oppose them fascists in order to foment the spread of war further and farther than before.

the election sheen is scratched and dirty

Now that the politicians have settled back into their regular activities, the stain of fascism is still showing through in this country. The behavior of the White House and the GOP particularly do not bode well for the planet and the future. I was thinking about how a core cabal of national leaders, agreeing to set in motion fixed plans to facilitate the creation of a US militarized security state, that uses nuclear weapons to dominate the rest of the world and its resources, is not something outside of possibility. It is likely, given the election results, the resistance of the media to accept and project a view that people might not think as they do, and the ongoing behavior of the leaders, we are well on the way to not having a 2008 election at all. And unfortunately, as the ravages of global climate change and its accompanying diseases and other natural catastrophic problems fall upon the citizens, most of them will happily allow their government to keep them living in the best possible status quo. Talking with seemingly reasonable people locally reveals that they are in fact quite accepting of doing whatever it takes to control the planet's resources just for the citizens of the US. That ain't cool, and can only represent the ongoing thinking among the rich and powerful that they have an open season on the Constitution, the nations of the world, the expansion of a US gulag, and the repression of dissent.

I can't see how people here will avoid the same human thought processes that have led whole nations to blindly follow Alexander, Moghul Shah, Genghis Kahn, Saladin, Julius and Augustus Caesar's, Holy Roman Emperors, Napolean, Victoria, Kaiser Bismark, Mussolini, Hitler, et all throughout human history. Why shouldn't we imagine that Cheney and his fellow clan of elitist Straussian/Randian objectivist libertarians see the entire planet at their beck and call. There are numerous philosophical rationales for such behavior. And from what i can see, there isn't much in the way to stop them at this point.

wtf happened???

There was this election the other day, and a few things changed. But why do i keep thinking that things didn't really change at all??? Well it could be the fight over who is Chairperson of the House Intelligence Committee. Harmon, one of the more corrupt and centrist DLC Dems wants the job, so she can continue to cover up the malfeasance of her corporate contributors. And Doc Hastings wants the job, so he can help his previously corrupt contributors continue to bribe him some more. If these are the two choices, we haven't moved at all towards a better country. Promise goes up in flames of stupid again.

I think we all need a Dylan refresher course

They're selling postcards of the hanging -/- Saddam
They're painting the passports brown -/- Detain citizens as enemy combatants
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors -/-
Fashion is more important than global climate change
The circus is in town -/- General Election of 2006
Here comes the blind commissioner -/-
Can you say inspector generals relieved of duties
They've got him in a trance -/-
Listen to Kerry's joke, pay no attention to the GOP House members
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker -/- Congressmen Sweeney and Hastert
The other is in his pants -/- Foley and Haggard
And the riot squad they're restless -/-
Call out the private security forces to protect the hacking of machines
They need somewhere to go -/- Out of Iraq and Afghanistan?
As Lady and I look out tonight -/- Liberty and Justice
From Desolation Row -/- the USA

Cinderella, she seems so easy -/- Angelina Jolie
"It takes one to know one," she smiles -/- Nicole Kidman
And puts her hands in her back pockets -/- Jennifer Aniston
Bette Davis style -/- Renee Zellwegger
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning -/- Brad Pitt
"You Belong to Me I Believe" -/- Tom Cruise
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You had better leave" -/- George Clooney
And the only sound that's left -/- Hear those cameras click
After the ambulances go -/- Keith Urban
Is Cinderella sweeping up -/- Angelina in the third world
On Desolation Row -/- the USA

Now the moon is almost hidden -/- Hope for a better planet
The stars are beginning to hide -/- Global climate change killing species
The fortunetelling lady -/- Gaia's corporate-government enemies
Has even taken all her things inside -/- Document shredding begins in DC
All except for Cain and Abel -/- Dick in Bush
And the hunchback of Notre Dame -/- Roman Catholic pedophelia
Everybody is making love -/-
Conservative Christian anti-homosexual but still gay leadership
Or else expecting rain -/- ACLU
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing -/-
Entertainment infotainment celebrity attention span diversions
He's getting ready for the show -/- Follow the bouncing celebrity tits and ass
He's going to the carnival tonight -/- Main Streaming media
On Desolation Row -/- the USA

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window -/- Marisa Hargitay
For her I feel so afraid -/- Nicole Ritchie
On her twenty-second birthday -/- Lindsey Lohan
She already is an old maid -/- Paris Hilton
To her, death is quite romantic -/- Winona Ryder
She wears an iron vest -/- Gweneth Paltrow
Her profession's her religion -/- Madonna
Her sin is her lifelessness -/- Micha Barton
And though her eyes are fixed upon -/- Scarlet Johansson
Noah's great rainbow -/- the Kate/Cate/Kathryn/Kirsten
She spends her time peeking -/- Reese Witherspoon
Into Desolation Row -/- the USA

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood -/- Affleck and Damon
With his memories in a trunk -/- Another set of films
Passed this way an hour ago -/- Trying to open a dialog
With his friend, a jealous monk -/- Ferrell or Willis or Kutcher
He looked so immaculately frightful -/- Schwarzenegger
As he bummed a cigarette -/- Martin Sheen
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes -/- Sean Penn
And reciting the alphabet -/- Denzell and Samuel L
Now you would not think to look at him -/- Fishburne or Whittaker
But he was famous long ago -/- Hoffman and Newman
For playing the electric violin -/- Stephan G et Jean Luc P
On Desolation Row -/- the USA

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world -/- Cheney
Inside of a leather cup -/- Hadley and Addington
But all his sexless patients -/- Hastert and Frist
They're trying to blow it up -/- Foley is Haggard
Now his nurse, some local loser -/- Rove
She's in charge of the cyanide hole -/- Card
And she also keeps the cards that read -/- Dobson & Falwell
"Have Mercy on His Soul" -/- W or DeLay?
They all play on penny whistles -/- Boehner and the boys
You can hear them blow -/- Rumsfeld
If you lean your head out far enough -/- Capitol nor Pentagon
From Desolation Row -/- the USA

Across the street they've nailed the curtains -/- NASA, EPA, FDA
They're getting ready for the feast -/- corporate dinner donor lists
The Phantom of the Opera -/- DeLay of the K Street
A perfect image of a priest -/- Norquist
They're spoonfeeding Casanova -/- the citizens of the USA
To get him to feel more assured -/- celebrity news and the new TV season
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence -/- ignore all science for political pursuits
After poisoning him with words -/- what won't kill you won't hurt you too much
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls -/- food industry's GMO and other increased fats
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know -/- choking on global climate change
Casanova is just being punished for going -/- you people are all on your own
To Desolation Row" -/- the USA

Now at midnight all the agents -/-
DHS, FBI, DOJ, NSA, CIA, DOD, NCIS, ACID
And the superhuman crew -/-
all local militarized law enforcement
Come out and round up everyone -/-
the Constitution is in shreds
That knows more than they do -/-
pretty much most of the Earth's human population
Then they bring them to the factory -/-
the heart of the matrix of TV, iPod, Internets, media mind control central
Where the heart-attack machine -/-
overeating, over indulgence, over stimulation, over stress
Is strapped across their shoulders -/-
wage slavery fails to keep up with standard of survivable living
And then the kerosene -/-
disparity of the rich becoming ever richer and healthier
Is brought down from the castles -/-
increasing world poverty, more diseases, more catastrophes
By insurance men who go -/-
globalization of remaining capital assets
Check to see that nobody is escaping -/-
militarizing all foreign policy, a nuclear weapon is necessary
To Desolation Row -/- the USA

Praise be to Nero's Neptune -/- Rumsfeld
The Titanic sails at dawn -/- FoxNews
And everybody's shouting -/- Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh
"Which Side Are You On?" you are all terrorists
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot -/- Berube and Brayton
Fighting in the captain's tower -/- blogsphere expanding trope
While calypso singers laugh at them -/- 50¢, Eminem, JayZ, Snoopp
And fishermen hold flowers -/- commentors and posts on threads
Between the windows of the sea -/-
NYRB or Newsweek; Moyers or Blitzer; Olberman or Gibson
Where lovely mermaids flow -/- Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue
And nobody has to think too much -/- hours of celebrity infotainment
About Desolation Row -/- the USA

Yes, I received your letter yesterday -/- the ballot came in my mail
(About the time the door knob broke) -/- it could easily not be counted
When you asked how I was doing -/- i vote the bottom up anyway
Was that some kind of joke? -/- submit it to be counted
All these people that you mention -/-
the candidates, their supporters, and the corporations who run the machine
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame -/-
they are mostly scum who are zealously selfish about their own interests
I had to rearrange their faces -/-
evolution provided wonderful alkaloids for this purpose
And give them all another name -/-
changing the labels on the same old bottles of wine
Right now I can't read too good -/-
damn those alkaloids, all i see are geometric pattern fluctuations
Don't send me no more letters no -/- the voting processes are void of verifiability
Not unless you mail them -/- with NCR paper trail record keeping
From Desolation Row -/- the USA

either they are insane

or they really believe that lying to you is necessary? Of course that syllogistic interrogative may not be and either/or proposition, rather just a cause/effect one. All i can discern is that the leadership of the GOP is spewing some of the most disingenuous and vile propaganda ever. The lies and deceits are becoming legendary going into the final days of the campaign. Here are just a few, culled from the headlines.

A male prostitute alleges that he had a three-year relationship with prominent right-wing evangelical leader Ted Haggard, who has said that homosexuality is a sin; every Monday, Haggard participates in a conference call with members of the Bush administration. He has stated, “I’m a right-wing religious conservative..."

Representative and GOP House Majority Leader Boehner says:
"Let's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld… the generals on the ground are in charge."
"to beat John Kerry to death if he doesn’t apologize for his comments on Iraq"
"There are a lot of people who want to blame what’s happening in Iraq on Donald Rumsfeld. But when you look at the transformation that our military has been through, it’s nothing short of remarkable. And I think there’s only person in America who could have brought about that transformation and that’s Donald Rumsfeld"

Bush says:
“I really don’t think it’s fitting for the president to drag the presidency into that kind of a mudslinging.”(is this not a classic Nixon redux?)
"However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses"
"I’ve never really resorted to name-calling. And I’m not trying to say, well, you know, I’m innocent and everybody else is guilty. That’s not what I’m trying to say."

“President Bush said Wednesday he wants Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to remain in his administration until the end of his presidency, extending a job guarantee to two of the most-criticized members of his team.”

Inspectors general from NASA and the Commerce Department will investigate if Bush’s “political appointees have prevented climate researchers at from conveying their findings to the public.

it's an economic headline mash mucking

Today we reflect on this week in the economy, as revealed in the business and political headlines:

Bush: Tax Cuts Good For Economy

Growth slowest in more than 3 years

Housing slump hits US economy growth

Q3 profit climbs to $10.49 billion

Chevron Continues Big Oil's Hot Streak

Chevron earns record profits

GDP Slows Sharply to1.6% Rate

Wall St. closes lower as growth falters

US economy falters as service sector dips

US economy losing its global dominance

Slump May Chill Asia's Hot Exporters

Global trade no longer hostage to US consumers

The rich get richer in Bush economy

Poor people die earlier: but why?

Reducing poverty will cut health bills, says research

Stakes are High for Business in Nov. Elections

Masticate Feces and Be Deceased you shriveling lunatic!

This from the most nefarious of idiots managing the US government at this time:

At the Pentagon press conference this afternoon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked what would happen if the Iraqi government failed to meet the “benchmarks.” Rumsfeld first responded that “it is not complicated,” but just seconds later said, “This is complicated stuff. It’s difficult. We’re looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty.” He added, “So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it’s complicated, it’s difficult.”

All that i can think to say is: shut the fuck up you spineless lizard of a chickenhawk! If no one can predict the future, then why in your own godheaded assbackward mind, did you promote and manipulate the US into invading Iraq in the first place??? The senility is no longer being hidden, the man is stark raving insane. He must be fired immediately, if not, then impeach the bastard.

a short pause in today's moments.

If the Repugs are able to withstand the onslaught and keep control of the House and Senate, it will be one of the crowning achievements of Karl Rove's life. It will also provide substantive evidence for something that the US military, the CIA, the NSA, and every other federal intelligence and security apparatus agency, has known for a long long time: there is a profound use of, and need for, political assasinations.

reading between the lines time again

Official disclaimer: My sister, upon receiving her Ph.D. was hired as a research nutritionist for the largest processor of tuna products in the US. This was during the mid to late-1970's, at the beginning of the focus on the Japanese experiencing large scale mercury poisoning from their seafood. Her analysis led her to warn members of her family to stay away from most seafood along the upper end of the protein food chain. She found unsafe levels of mercury, PCB's, and other contaminants in all fish brought through her lab; though the USDA, FDA, and NHS had agreed that the levels (the news ones they proposed) had not been exceeded, the levels my sister found were too high for her to accept. Now a new report from a taskforce on health and sea food suggests that we need to balance the healthy benefits with the known risks. How does this work??? Welll the following paragraph in the report certainly ought to illuminate that:

• For all seafood categories, levels of contaminants such as dioxin and PCBs in commercially obtained fish generally do not pose health risks when consumed in amounts recommended by federal agencies. These contaminants tend to be geographically specific problems. State advisories are intended to alert the public about contaminated fish and shellfish from regional and local sources. Most people can gain nutritional benefits from seafood while minimising their risk of exposure to contaminants by selecting fish and shellfish in amounts that fall within current dietary guidelines, the report says. Because seafood supplies and cultivation practices change constantly, it would be difficult for federal agencies to develop a list of "good fish" and "bad fish" that would not become obsolete in a short time.

Read that paragraph carefully again. Did you see that lovely and amazing equivocation? "Fish generally do not pose health risks" speaks volumes here. Generally is a gianormous category isn't it? Another valid way to say this would be that only in specific cases would the consumption of fish pose health risks; and that those cases include eating fish in amounts outside of those recommended by a consortium of federal agencies. However those federal agencies cannot agree on those recommendations, each suggesting different levels of exposure and quantities for safe and health eating. Then of course there is the reliance of consumers on state advisories; somehow commercial media, paid for by the largest food corporations in the US are going to provide education to the population regarding the safety and health of seafood??? I can't see that happening, any more than i can see people only eating recommended amounts. The US over eats constantly, in massive quantities. And if that isn't sufficient, then they note that bothering to actually work on these guidelines is pointless because they would have to change them constantly. So the people should rely on information that is current, but that current information isn't reliable, and no new information will be used in the recommendations, but people should pay attention to advisories. This is an objectivist libertarian's wetdream.

The rest of the report isn't really any better. Perhaps one of the most striking aspects may be that it does admit that all of our seafood is toxic at some levels. That human beings have successful polluted the oceans and rivers, lakes and seas, with massive amounts of hazardous materials should be the banner headline of this report. But they bury that information pretty deep down in there.

Seafood is the major source of human exposure to methylmercury, a contaminant that accumulates in the muscle of animals over time. Because evidence suggests that methylmercury can disrupt neurodevelopment in the foetus, the report supports current recommendations that women who are pregnant or wish to become pregnant avoid consumption of lean, predatory fish such as swordfish, shark, king mackerel, and tilefish, and limit their consumption of albacore, or "white" tuna. Other potential risks associated with seafood are exposure to persistent organic pollutants such as dioxin and PCBs - though there is not clear evidence on the adverse effects associated with these compounds - and microbial infections, which are contracted mainly through the consumption of raw or undercooked fish and shellfish.

The report supports current dietary guidelines and seafood advisories. However, the committee's interpretation of the risks and benefits differs in that it consolidates information on both risks and benefits for sensitive population groups and addresses all segments of the population. And it does not support giving those with a history of heart disease advice different from that given to the general population

Among their other recommendations are these gems:

• Lean fish are good sources of protein, are low in saturated fat and cholesterol, and provide moderate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. Predatory fish with long life spans - such as swordfish, shark, and tilefish - contain levels of methylmercury that are too high for pregnant and breast-feeding women.

• Fatty fish such as salmon are good sources of protein and provide the highest amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. They also contain higher levels of saturated fat and cholesterol and can accumulate higher amounts of pollutants such as dioxin and PCB, depending upon the source. Their methylmercury burden is lower than that of many lean fish.

• Shellfish and crustaceans are good sources of protein and low in saturated fat, although some contain moderate amounts of cholesterol. They present the greatest risk of microbial infection if eaten raw.

Can you make sense of this? Eat salmon for the protein and omega-3 fatty acids; don't eat salmon because it contains some of the highest levels of toxic chemicals humans have spewed on the planet. Don't eat long-lived lean fishes (most of those sold throughout the US) because they contain the most mercury; eat long-lived lean fishes because they have good proteins and best balance of fatty acids w/ zero cholesterol. And so forth.

The problem is solved quite simply. Eat more vegetables, fruits, legumes, grains, and much less seafood, and very little meat.