Sunday, July 30, 2006

Believing things which we know to be untrue

As you read this blog, please keep this in mind;
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
~ George Orwell

9/11 American Scholars Symposium Panel Discussion

If you have been drinking the KoolAide about 9/11, take the time and see what a panel of respected scholars have to say about it.


Here is the description from the Google Video posting.

The information highlight of the symposium was undoubtedly the Sunday morning panel discussion. The panel was a who's who of the most credentialed 9/11 skeptics ever impaneled. It was moderated by Alex Jones who set the stage and pushed the envelope from his first statement; this seemed to energize the crowd as well as the panel members. The fact that C-Span had agreed to film this event had the panel chomping at the bit to hit bullet point after bullet point.


A larger version is here. A backup link is here. Spread the word.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

We Can't Make it Here

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Telling truth through protest songs. Vietnam again? We Can't Make it Here by James McMurtry.

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore

That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore

The bar's still open but man it's slow
The tip jar's light and the register's low
The bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore

High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what'll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it's way too late to just say no
You can't make it here anymore

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their sh@# don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the da$% little war
And we can't make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat sh$%, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore

And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you're listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore


Music and lyrics © 2004 by James McMurtry


Friday, July 14, 2006

Voting in America



1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

[more with references]

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Facism


fascism \fasc"ism\ (f[a^]sh"[i^]z'm) n.
1. a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government; -- opposed to democracy and liberalism.
[WordNet 1.5]

2. an authoritarian system of government under absolute control of a single dictator, allowing no political opposition, forcibly suppressing dissent, and rigidly controlling most industrial and economic activities. Such regimes usually try to achieve popularity by a strongly nationalistic appeal, often mixed with racism.
[PJC]

3. Specifically, the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini in Italy from 1922 to 1943.
[PJC]

4. broadly, a tendency toward or support of a strongly authoritarian or dictatorial control of government or other organizations; -- often used pejoratively in this sense.
[PJC]

Monday, July 10, 2006

Larry King interviews GW



From Missy Beattie's article on CounterPunch.
And, then, one of the most illuminating moments-Larry asked Bush, "So there is no doubt, if you had it to do over again, knowing the WMDs weren't there, you'd still go in?"

And Bush said, "Yes, This is-we removed a tyrant, who was a weapon-he was an enemy of the United States who harbored terrorists and who had the capacity, at the very minimum, to make weapons of mass destruction. And he was a true threat. Yes, I would have done the same thing."

Read the whole article, it's good. Can't this guy ever admit he made an mistake?

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Pink - Dear Mr. President

Arguably her best work.

"She [America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy, she is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

~ John Quincy Adams

Daniel Ellsberg on the Bush Dictatorship


"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

A Tough Question


15-year-old Ian Magruder asks Howard Dean and Richard Perle a tough question about Kuwait, at a question and answer period before the Tom McCall Forum. Both of them seem a little taken aback by the question. (h/t Current TV)

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Despotism

This is an instructional video by Encyclopedia Britannica from 1946.

"Despotism is a form of government by a single authority, either an individual (ie. autocracy) or tightly knit group (ie. oligarchy), which rules with absolute political power. On its classical form, a despotism is a state where one single man wields all the power and authority, and everyone else is considered as his slave. This form of despotism was the first known form of statehood and civilization; the Pharaoh of Egypt is a hallmark of a classical despot. Some Islāmic Third World countries can even today be considered as classical despoties."
Why don't we teach this to the kids any more?

The Great Conspiracy

A different take on 9/11 you won't find in the corporate media.

Friday, July 07, 2006

The Authoritarian Project

The Progressive American has a great post about King George and company's plans for America here.

"Much of this project involves the assertion of unprecedented executive authority — the right to imprison people indefinitely without charges (and torture them if the administration feels like it), the right to wiretap American citizens without court authorization, the right to declare, when signing laws passed by Congress, that the laws don't really mean what they say."


Lovely.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

July edition of Liberty News

As always, a good show. Click on the pic to have a look.

Speaking of the GOP

This quote reminds me of the neo-con fanaticism.
"What gets us in trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so."

Mark Twain

Cool free bumper sticker


MoveOn.org is giving away these nifty bumper stickers!
What will putting these stickers on your car do? Marketing experts call it "counterbranding"-taking a well-known name and giving it a negative association. Together, we'll remind folks everywhere that the Republican party is tied to big oil companies-and that's part of the reason that gas prices are so high and it's why we're not doing anything about global warming.

Nice.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Happy Independence Day!


Image by Michael R. Tomkins, thanks!

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,


When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King [George] of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

[more]

Does any of this remind you of the world we live in today?

Monday, July 03, 2006

Lou Dobbs - Secret trade/borders plan

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Lou Dobbs does it again and reveals a quiet agreement put in place by Bush without congressional approval.