June 1, 2007

Poised to Take Over -- Posted at roguegovernment.com is a report on a recent Bush administration directive called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which says that in the event of a "Catastrophic Emergency" the President will be entrusted with leading the activities to ensure constitutional government. The directive would in effect make the president a dictator in the case of such an emergency. But don't take roguegovernment's word for it. Look on the White House website. Of course there has been little doubt since the Bush mob seized power in December 2000 that they would like to set up a full-fledged dictatorship if they could get away with it. They've taken hundreds of steps to consolidate power and nullify checks and balances and dispose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It's easy to see what they would like to do, whether they can or not is another story. They are opposed by so many even in the fairly high echelons of the power structure. There is little doubt in my mind from their behavior that Bush and Cheney would nuke an American city if they thought they needed to to hold on to power. They are not restrained by such human weaknesses as compassion or conscience. But again, whether they could get away with such a coup at this point is anyone's guess. Whether they will stand or fall through the current series of crises is also hard to predict.

Good weekend reading -- Christopher Michael Langan, who is supposed to have the highest IQ ever, who got a perfect score on the SAT and worked for 20 years as a bouncer, claims you can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife using mathematics. See Wikipedia.

Approaching Critical Mass -- Here's an interesting group: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Assault on Architectural Reason -- Richard Gage, member of the American Institute of Architects, is in Canada this week giving presentations. According to the Winnipeg Sun, "Gage says Building 7 fell after sustaining relatively minor damage due to the collapse of one of the twin towers hours earlier, with small fires on its fifth and 12th floors. Explosions were heard around its base as it collapsed and a large amount of molten metal was found in the basement area, said Gage. He claims the only good explanation for the presence of the metal is that it came from certain kinds of incendiary charges. 'Two small fires -- even large, hot-burning, long-lasting fires -- have never brought down a steel frame highrise building, ever,' said Gage....'We don't know who did it and we don't know why,' he said. 'That's why we need an investigation.'"

Sheehan Sees Controlled Demolition -- Cindy Sheehan went on the Alex Jones radio show and said the collapse of the WTC looked like controlled demolition and there should be a new investigation.

June 4, 2007

False History -- New York Times columnist Frank Rich makes some excellent points and fascinating observations in his editorial "Failed Presidents Ain't What They Used to Be." He mentioned a January Newsweek poll in which "a sizable American majority just wished that Bush's 'presidency was over.'" And "The last New York Times/CBS News poll found that a whopping 72 percent of Americans felt their country was 'seriously off on the wrong track,' the highest figure since that question was first asked, in 1983." And he makes many other worthwhile points in his article. But in today's world, increasingly one encounters false history, that is, discussions about things based on conclusions drawn from false information, or from lack of information.

In this article, for example, he mentions Jimmy Carter, and as always the comment is within the context of the conventional wisdom that Carter was a failed president. But how different might things have gone if George Bush and William Casey had not been in negotiations at the time with Iranians that resulted in the hostages being held for an additional three months beyond the election when they could be released simultaneously to Reagan's inauguration? That part of the story is never told. Unfortunately, it sours an analysis whenever it reaches one of these bits of conventional wisdom that is really a false piece of information created and ingrained by the official media of the corporate state.

As false information mounts in the mainstream, the discussions that flow from that false history become increasingly meaningless. I recently watched Part Eight of Ric Burns' excellent documentary about New York, which focuses on the World Trade Center. The original series, which came out in 1999, had seven two-hour episodes. After 9/11 an eighth episode was added to include the collapse of the WTC. The discussions about the architecture and engineering in the building of the towers had to accommodate the presumption that they just fell down on September 11 because of some fires on a couple of floors, a story which defies the laws of physics that have operated everywhere else in the universe in history except that day. So the building gets a bad rap. It looks pretty pathetic now that these enormous buildings were so poorly engineered that some low-grade fires melted the steel and made the whole things collapse into dust.

The suspension of physical laws was so pervasive that day that a third WTC building, WTC 7, fell without even being hit by an airplane missile. It's the physical science version of the Supreme Court decision Bush vs Gore, in which the tricky justices inserted a clause that said this decision can never be used as a precedent in any other case that ever comes up. In other words, no future justices can skirt the democratic process to install their favorite, only just this one time. It's the same with the WTC. No other building has collapsed or ever will collapse because of fire melting the steel structure. We don't yet know what really happened that day. Will we ever?

There are millions of examples as the BS piles up. The Lone Gun theory is still religiously subscribed to by such institutions as the New York Times, which ignores even the government report of the 1976 House Committee on Assassinations that corrected the earlier Warren Report and said it was impossible for one shooter to have been responsible for all the bullets flying around Dealy Plaza that day. There is apparently an official word that is even higher than the House of Representatives, directed by invisible rulers to whom the Times pays homage as it delicately avoids the conflicting evidence and reverts to the conclusions of President Johnson's early whitewash committee.

In 2004, there were the stories of how a sudden surge of concern over gay marriage turned the 2004 elections so that an unpopular, unelected president who lost the election according to the exit polls, suddenly won according to official voting machine tallies. So the pundits had to talk about how despite the disastrous war in Iraq, the fiscal calamity produced by these "conservatives", the environmental destruction of corporations enabled by the corporate presidency, and many other pressing issues that make Bush the most unpopular president ever, the country suddenly became more concerned with the threat of gay marriage than anything else. I loved the way they termed that swing a concern for "moral issues." With all the "morality" being thrown around in the Iraq deception and disaster, the use of the word was an added comedic touch. The list of false history memes could go on and on and on. We're now wading in piles of historical falsehoods so deep that we inhabit a fantasy world with fewer and fewer reference points to reality. Very strange, very surreal, very Orwellian.

And Elsewhere in Fantasyland:

Why the New Cold War -- In an interview in the Globe & Mail, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a question about whether a new cold war is now taking shape between Russia and the West. Putin said, "in the relations between the states, always throughout history, the key principle was the observance of interests, and the more civilized the relations have been, the more clear it was that the interests of the country should be correlated with the interests of other countries, and compromise is to be found when resolving even the most complex issues. The largest complexity of today — I'm not going to say that this is impassable in complexity, but nevertheless this is a complex issue — is that some of the participants of the international dialogue believe that their ideas are the ultimate truth, their interests are the ultimate truth. This of course does not facilitate the creation of an atmosphere of trust and confidence, which I believe is the mandatory thing for the finding of acceptable and appropriate optimal decisions."

Money to be Made -- Kevin Kerr, writing for Marketplace. The fact that we're now back in hurricane season means different things to different people. For some, like thousands whose homes we're irretrievably destroyed a couple of years ago, it may mean disaster if another huge hurricane comes. But to the investment community, all such possibilities mean only one thing: opportunity. "Friday was the official start of hurricane season, signaling volatility, and therefore opportunity, in certain markets..." writes Kerr. "Few people relish making money off of disaster, including me. But the fact of the matter is that disasters do happen and hedging oneself for these events is an important part of investing."

Mounting Death Toll -- Fourteen more U.S. troops reported killed in Iraq, reports the LA Times.

Headlong to Disaster -- Following the lead of the U.S., China "rejected the European Union's key climate change target of keeping global warming within a limit of 2 degrees Centigrade, saying it lacked a scientific basis," according to the Telegraph

Look Out! Republicans are now openly hoping for more attacks on the U.S., a la their fervently wished-for New Pearl Harbor of 9/11. Dennis Milligan, chairman of the Saline County, Arkansas, Republican Party, said, “I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,” Milligan said. (Northwest Arkansas News Source)

Blatant Corruption -- Cheney is getting even richer, by the day, off the war in Iraq. According to the New York Times, Dick Cheney, one of the little cabal who lied the U.S. into a war that benefits Halliburton more than anyone, has been making money directly from Halliburton the whole time he's been pushing and facilitating the war that enriches Halliburton. The Times writes that "From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Cheney received 'deferred salary payments' from Halliburton that far exceeded what taxpayers gave him. Mr. Cheney still holds hundreds of thousands of stock options that have ballooned by millions of dollars as Halliburton profited handsomely from the war in Iraq."

Who Represents the People? According to a Gallup Poll , only 3% of Americans favor sending more troops to Iraq. So what do we get? More troops to Iraq. As always, Congress lines up firmly behind the tiny minority with the big bucks. (more)

Bush Over the Edge -- According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, "But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness. Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of 'our country's destiny.'" What strange breed of insanity possesses this rich do-nothing kid who found himself elevated to the most powerful office in the world? (See also Think Progress)

Rove Again -- Karl Rove has been implicated in the politically motivated prosecution of the former Democratic governor of Alabama. Time

June 6, 2007

Proof that life has now left science fiction far behind -- According to ABC, "Lt. Col. Harrison Ulrich Jack, a 1968 West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. Jack, a former officer in the California National Guard, and nine Hmong leaders, including former Laotian military Gen. Vang Pao, were arrested Monday, June 4, 2007, in California during a sweep by more than 200 federal, state and local agents." The charge? "Plotting to overthrow the Laotian regime." The days of Joseph Conrad have not left us. Nor H.G. Wells. That's the top story on Google News tonight, and it's a bit of a scene stealer. Elsewhere in this world ...

How Annoying it must be to be Bush, Cheney and the whole mob these days. There's so much rubble falling down on their heads, it must get annoying even for someone so masterfully arrogant and oblivious as they are to shield themselves from any of the consequences of what they do. Still. It must be annoying after inhabiting a world in which it seemed no one or nothing would ever check them. They could do whatever they wanted -- it seemed. They were so pathetically naive! Of course the Iraqi people and civilization took the brunt of the stupidity of the Neocons, the hopeless ivory tower intellectual naivete. I'm talking now of the theoreticians of the Neocon cabal, not Bush, who is essentially -- still and always -- a cheerleader. Other than the Iraqis, the Americans have been the main losers. The rest of the world can stand by as observers.

But now for Bush, et. al., every day there are thirty thousand splinters in them, thousands of tiny attacks from the Lilliputians of the world. And that mass is reaching a critical point. They had such an abstract, ideologically perverted view of how the world works. They really thought they were going to just intimidate the rest of the world with their ruthless exercise of the military might of the United States. They imagined they would subdue and occupy Iraq in nothing flat, a war barely registering as a hiccup amid masses of cheers before it was over. The American public would cheer them on. They would have established control over the energy center of the world and would intimidate the rest of the world, enforce a world order in which no country is allowed to build up arms that could ever remotely rival those of the U.S. And that order would be enforced by aggressive armed attack, newly deemed U.S. policy, the pre-emptive war. War justified not by anything that had happened, but something that could possibly happen. They foolishly wanted to "shock and awe" the whole world into submission. But much of the world and many of the world leaders were wiser and had broader vision than the neocons. Someone like Jacques Chirac, who had seen military action himself and did not romanticize it like the military virgin neocons, tried to persuade that the situation would end up just like it has. Others like the Russians and the Chinese were more cagey. Rather than confront the U.S. directly, they stood aside, let it play out, watched the U.S. deplete itself militarily, economically, spirirually. It was like a geopolitical rope-a-dope. They let the fool neocons burn themselves out.

Now Bush, out on his feet in terms of any effective action, just struggling to hold on, is forcing the country to "stay the course", which is a course to destruction. The highway to hell. He can leave the country strapped on to this horrible war and occupation he created on false pretenses and God help us. He and Cheney will be enjoying their millions, what do they care about the rest of us? Even now, after all Bush's lies have been exposed in regard to the justification for going to war, he still doesn't have the honor to try to begin to undo the mess he got us into. It's only his "stay the course" crap, "complete the mission" garbage. "We're making progress," they say. "Mistakes were made ... blah blah blah."

Now that the Bushites are wounded, all the predators and all the parasites are perched to get their own bites of flesh. Those who have so thoroughly trampled so many are now seeing an equal and opposite, though diffuse, reaction. Only this morning, on the New York Times, the top two lead stories on the upper right hand columns were both digs into the Bush administration. One was the court decision that overruled the FCC's attempts to fine networks for obscenities and cited Bush and Cheney's outbursts of obscenity as reasons why the standard could not be enforced against the networks. Ouch. Such a sentiment does not appeal to a royal. How they must burn, angry men that they are. The second article was on how judges are throwing out the Guantanamo cases because the military has not even met the loosened to nothing restrictions on them holding and abusing prisoners without trial or even being charged with anything. A recent front-page article talked about an authoritative board of analysts called the Bush administration's tough-guy torture interrogation methods are amateurish, ineffective and taken from the Soviet Union. What irony! All that crap about the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama called it "the end of history as such, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

And now those who supposedly picked up the torch for democracy -- the U.S. -- are using Soviet interrogation practices, which incidentally are proven to be ineffective anyway, but more importantly are outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. So who won the Cold War anyway? If the Soviet tyrannical ways have taken over in the U.S., how can anyone say the West won the Cold War? It's all too crazy. Ever since these lunatics got their supreme court stooges to bend the law to put them in power, it's been insane every day in America.

And On Another Vital Point -- Rolling Stone has made a very important point. In case you don't believe anyone could be worse than Bush, think again. President Giuliani would be very very scary. According to Matt Taibbi, "Rudy giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days -- like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a 'stuck pig,' and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers."

June 7, 2007

The Net Tightens -- While conservatives clamor for a pardon and say the conviction of Libby is "unfair", the Judge seems to think lying to authorities conducting a criminal investigation is fairly serious, even if you're powerful enough to usually ignore the law. Perjury's not a real crime, according to the conservatives, at least not if it's one of their own involved. It was a little different when the perjury was about a certain sexual act. But lying about the exposure of the identity of a covert agent of the United States, not a big thing if you're a big powerful White House good ole boy like the Scooter. Judge Reggie Walton said, "The CIA believes one of its agents was improperly outed. ... They had a legitimate concern. So they contact the Justice Department and they say 'this needs to be investigated.' ... And the Justice Department ... goes to investigate and they make inquiries. ... And that person lies. ... When law enforcement officials ... initiate an investigation ... it is the obligation of the American citizenry to be honest and forthright." See a good article by David Corn about this on CBS.

Will the Coverup Unravel? asks Robert Parry. If Libby has to actually start serving his sentence, it tightens the screws, increases the pressure on Libby to tell the whole story to get his own neck out of the noose. But Bush needs to wait to pardon Libby until the political fallout will not be so damaging. Tick tock tick tock tick tock...

Weekend
June 9, 2007

My God, how does one ever know where to begin? There is so much craziness all around it's hard to focus any one scenario. Just pick anything at random. It's all screaming ot of control -- from anyone's point of view. Surely Rove, Cheney and the mad mob are not sailing along right now thinking everything is okay. Even for them, the ones for whom and by whom this world is designed, things must be getting a little harried.

If not, it will eventually get to them. Reality will some day come knocking. With increasing environmental disasters, it's going to be everyone's problem eventually. Even the likes of Cheney, if he's still kicking around by then.

People often point out that Bush is not a fool, he's a very cagey character, very clever, very wiley, very strong and determined. Even though he often appears to be a fool, that is far too simplistic, and as he pointed out, it's a grave error to "misunderestimate" him.

Cheney, on the other hand, and Rove, are often referred to as geniuses, even among people who like to use the word in conjunction with "evil". As much loathing as they inspire, their intelligence is not usually what is questioned. No, they are obviously very, very clever people, very experienced, very determined, and unrestrained by conscience.

But one has to wonder, as you see these types drag the world kicking and screaming to environmental disaster, how smart can they be? How much of their scandalous success is just due to the lethargy of the system and the population? And the fact that no one is stopping them.

Never has any administration dared to even think of doing what they have done. No, I take that back the Bush, Reagan and Nixon administrations all wanted to do these things, they did think of them. They worked toward a kind of world in which they would be possible. But no one ever dared to openly fake their way into a pre-emptive war against a defenseless population; introduce torture as a policy of the U.S. government; make millions off of a war so tainted in its origins, nothing ever approached what we are seeing now.

But it seems that, although they have great dreams and visions and delusions of grandeur about their New American Century -- this is really madness -- it is questionable how intelligent they are on many other levels. It takes a lot of your time being a tyrant. You don't have a lot of time to educate yourself, or even to climb down from your paranoid perch for a minute and see how the world really works.

So yes, they are determined as hell, unprincipled as sin, calculating, and very experienced in manipulating power within the bureaucracy. A guy like Cheney has just entrenched himself so deeply in the Washington power circles, literally since the Nixon administration, that he's amassed a great deal of power.

Similar to J. Edgar Hoover, Cheney is a lifelong bureaucrat, cold and calculating, very adaptable under different commands, but now finally turned loose with almost unlimited power and the opportunity to operate behind the scenes because of not being hampered by the role of the presidency, but still having practically the whole power of the executive branch under his finger. This bizarre skill set, no doubt honed over generations of neglect by his frigid wife, has enabled him to pull off unbelievable things, many of which are clearly criminal. But it does not indicate any great intelligence beyond the sphere in which he has operated for the last half century. It certainly does not give any sign of anything that could be called wisdom. The man never ever looks like he's leveling with you one drop. He's performing and lying in every single public act.

So it's really quite possible that these guys really are as dumb as they look when it comes to anything beyond thieving and lying and manipulating in the shady corridors of power in Washington, and they really are driving us headlong into environmental disaster, which is only the most serious of all the kinds of disasters they are creating. This could really be serious. Like end-of-a-civilization serious. Civilizations do end, you know. It does happen, over and over. Check out Rome some time. Beautiful ruins. Check out Mississippi. A lost civilization. Take a walk around Ground Zero New York some day.

It really looks like everyone, for all practical purposes, is going to stand and watch everything collapse. The rate at which the Bush mob has dismantled the American Dream is breathtaking. At some point we en masse are going to have to wake up and take action to stop this train wreck and get back on a survivable track, if that is still possible. Wake up, America! I'm yelling to myself, of course.

What is good is that while the tall structures of power in our society seem deadly rigid and unable to adapt to a fast-changing world, down on the bottom there is a rumbling and it's getting louder and louder. Because the fact is there are now huge numbers of people who are getting angrier and angrier, and are taking some kind of action. The media has done its best to ignore any opposition to the golden corporate goose administration. And that inhibited resistance for a while because

During the G8 conference I saw news footage of people in inflatable craft just trying to hold up signs at the G8 Conference to get a message to the Holy Ones inside the castle. And the sea cops were running them over with their bigger craft. It was total brutality, as if they were carrying machine guns or something. Just trying to hold a sign up to those people is apparently a capital crime, summary executions right there at sea.

Everywhere George Bush went, he was greeted by mobs of protestors. The little group of world leaders is so popular and revered they can't even find any place to meet where they are actually welcomed by the people. Good God, when is this whole thing going to crack? Bill Moyers Journal reported on Friday night how airline CEOs are raking in masses of millions for "turning around" airlines, that is bringing them out of bankruptcy by "cutting costs", which means starving their employees, cutting their wages by half -- no lie! For their reward for cutting all the costs, a huge hunk of the money goes in the CEOs' pockets. From the employees pensions into the pockets of the hatchetmen. They have to be paid so much, allegedly, because they are so important. They may go to another company if you're not really nice to them. And what is their unique talent, the heartless hatcheting away of people's livelihoods to stick in some other people's pockets while taking a nice chunk for yourself. That's beautiful. You should see this Northwest CEO. He doesn't even look human. He looks like some sort of cyber nub with a walrus-like beard rendering his mouth utterly invisible. It just appears as a shadow under his moustache. What is he going to do with all that money, start something like Carnegie Hall or Rockefeller Center, the Frick?

Sleep well Mr. Walrus.

Check out these links:

Truly Vile -- One more little glimpse of how truly sordid Rudy Giuliani is -- he's the worst -- read "Bracewell & Giuliani, the ‘guiding’ law firm on the privatization of Texas State Highway 121" by Jerry Mazza at Online Journal. The privatization of highways! You like that idea? Remember the California electricity crisis, which broke the state's budget? You want your highways controlled by private capitalists? Giuliani -- no one who was out of the New York area during "Giuliani Time" can quite grasp what a horror it is to think of him with the power of the presidency of the United States. How can this be happening? How can the world keep throwing up worse and worse candidates. Reagan made Nixon look good. Bush makes them all look good. But Giuliani? The cops were killing black people practically every week in New York when Giuliani was mayor. He hired untrained bozos to be on an "antidrug task force" and gave them automatic weapons and they just couldn't kill enough people. Every time an innocent black man would be killed by mistake, Rudy would come out before the blood was dry and say the guy was a creep anyway, he got what he deserved. This is not a man we want as president of the United States. That would be it. That would be the final croaking of the American dream, if not the whole nation. Remember how beneficial Mussolini was for Italy? This fascist crap works okay for a while, but it eventually heads toward disaster. It's not productive, it's predatory. Required reading on Giuliani, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi. "Rudy tried to use the tragedy to shred election rules, pushing to postpone the inauguration of his successor so he could hog the limelight for a few more months. Then, with the dust from the World Trade Center barely settled, he went on the road as the Man With the Bullhorn, pocketing as much as $200,000 for a single speaking engagement. In 2002 he reported $8 million in speaking income; this past year it was more than $11 million. He's traveled in style, at one stop last year requesting a $47,000 flight on a private jet, five hotel rooms and a private suite with a balcony view and a king-size bed." And this: "Rudy proclaimed that there were "no significant problems" with the air at the World Trade Center. But there was something wrong with the air: It was one of the most dangerous toxic-waste sites in human history, full of everything from benzene to asbestos and PCBs to dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange). Since the cleanup ended, police and firefighters have reported a host of serious illnesses -- respiratory ailments like sarcoidosis; leukemia and lymphoma and other cancers; and immune-system problems."

Cheney Crimes Overseas -- Cheney is no longer limiting his crime empire to the U.S. These people know no limits. Cheney is lately implicated in a big scandal that's erupted in the U.K., based on a BBC investigation. According to War & Piece, which gathers links to background stories on the scandal and sums it up, "A Saudi prince received secret payments from the UK's biggest arms dealer, a BBC investigation has revealed. BAE Systems made regular payments of hundreds of millions of pounds to Prince Bandar bin Sultan for more than a decade. The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence." According to the Washington Post, Bandar has caused some trouble among the Saudis because of "back-channel trips" to meet with top U.S. officials, including Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. See also Cursor.org: "As long-standing ties between Bandar and the Bush family and rumored secret meetings with Vice President Cheney raise questions about whether Washington pressured Blair to cover up the BAE investigation, the allegations of corruption threaten the company's attempted acquisition of a U.S. defense contractor."

Bush Drinking Beer -- Getty, GettyImages

Job Open -- Now General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is hightailing it. (See New york Times via Truthout) Robert Gates, the wormy Kansan who took Rumsfeld's place at the head of the Defense Department, doesn't want to re-appoint Pace because the appointment would have to be approved by the senate, and the Bush administration could not have the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the time of the Iraq disaster being questioned by the Senate. On TV no less. Gates said confirmations hearings would have focused "on the past, rather than the future, and further, that there was the very real prospect the process would be quite contentious." What? Some contention? Oh my! Mustn't have that! Not when there's a war going on. Those pesky Democrats, they always want to talk about the past! Why talk about the past? It's all over, says Gates. Let's focus on the future. What horseshit!

Now This Is an Interesting Battle -- States rights versus federal power, and inversion of how Republicans and Democrats used to stack up on the "states rights" issue. Now the Republicans support federal power, because it's essentially private corporate power, the government having been totally subsumed by the corporate state. According to LA Times, "An unusual rift has emerged between top congressional Democrats over a draft global warming bill that would prohibit California and other states from taking tougher action than Washington to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles." Corporations who have won over the government and influenced it to allow them to pollute freely, may now have to deal with states that wish to restrict them. Since the federal level is controlled by corporate power, the corporations want to use federal power to outlaw the states' right to outlaw pollution by the corporations. So-called "free trade" agreements, like NAFTA, are really laws that make corporations more powerful than governments. They are essentially constitutions for the global corporate state. The battles will be fought between corporate power and democratic power. It's just a matter of where and when. The battles will be fought or people will go on dying more and more, and the corporations will continue to destroy the environment forever for their short term profits until the earth's biosystem no longer sustains the web of life our survival depends upon. Let's see how this battle plays out. This is a worthwhile stand.

Good Stuff -- Jason Leopold on Truthout interviews Joseph Wilson. Good stuff. While Chris Matthews on Hardball was spending the evening talking about Paris Hilton...

June 12, 2007

Clinton: Bush Has Made Us Safer (?!) If Hillary Clinton is the nominee of the Democratic Party for president, then all is lost, the corporate state has won. She has won the title "frontrunner" because she has been endorsed and promoted by the biggest corporate powers, including the rogue Ruppert Murdoch, precisely because she poses no threat whatever to the dreadful, unsustainable status quo. She offers no hope for the people at large against the corporate juggernaut and is no threat whatever to the big corporate powers that run America, including the war industry. This Walmart boardmember saying the U.S. is "safer" than before all Bush's madness since 9/11 is as unforgivable as her refusal to admit her error in voting to authorize Bush to attack Iraq, or anyone else he wanted to. Though she seems essentially a more moderate, less offensive person than Bush, Cheney or Karl Rove, she shows little sign that she would differ from their policies significantly if she were president. There is nothing at all to support her claim that the U.S. is safer now other than the repeated claims of the tough-guy posers in the Republican party. There is plenty of hard data to show the opposite. To see her bow to this ridiculous logic is disheartening, and shows to what lengths she will go if she sees a political advantage. She will sacrifice any principle or belief if she thinks it will advance her. Let's hope it doesn't. See Ariana Huffington, Paul Krugman, New York Sun, Daily Kos

June 13, 2007

Kindness to the Cruel -- Even in a time when the country has turned against the Bush administration in massive numbers, the news media are still extremely kind to it, which is ironic because there's never been a less kind administration. It just goes to reinforce the notion that power is always more respected than kindness. Look what happened to Jesus. I heard a report on NPR today saying that Bush "wants to give illegal immigrants a crack at citizenship." This paints a picture of Bush as a compassionate man who wants to help the down and out, but we know that no such thing could possibly be true. Other than pretty words, Bush has never shown a sign of a single compassionate deed toward anyone but what he calls his "base", the richest corporations, who happen to make out very well from war. He cuts benefits for soldiers as he pushes them into a war on false pretenses without adequate training, without equipment, cutting their leave privileges. He's a brutal, heartless man, not by his appearance, but by his actual deeds. Call it what it is, Bush's immigration maneuvers are about providing cheap labor to the corporate elite. The news media have an obligation to go beyond the PR slogans of the Bush administration and call a spade a spade. Can they really be that naive? Or is it their integrity that is in question? Did they learn anything from Judith Miller's cheerleading the U.S. into war from the editorial offices of the New York Times? Apparently not what one might hope.

June 14, 2007

VIDEO NIGHT IN BIZARRO UNIVERSE

Watch the Ugliest Faces in the world push for a military attack on Iran. On glorious Fox News, Sean Hannity starts with a clip from "Face the Nation" of the ultra arrogant Joe Lieberman, whose face is like a melting candle of deceit, a pure agent of the Israel lobby, pushing to get that Middle East war cooking up at a higher notch, to move into the Neocon/Zionist dream of an American/Israel dominated region, the 52nd state of oil. Then Hannity brings on that most foul of creatures, John Bolton, the cretin Bush foisted on the world as UN ambasssador when even the Republican-controlled Senate refused to approve the nomination. Bolton, one of the most offensive human beings since Atila the Hun, the most supremely undiplomatic diplomat ever, with his hideous milk moustache pouring over his mouth -- oh God what a creature, urging and urging and urging to attack, more war. Hannity obsequiously frothing in deference to the human boil. "I think your insights are very keen, Sir, as are Senator Lieberman's." How wonderful it would be to see these guys in a platoon doing their own dirty work! That would wipe those arrogant smirks off their faces.

The Questions Spread -- Filmmaker David Lynch raises questions about 9/11. But you have to watch Dutch TV to see it, or go to YouTube. The Dutch TV show host asks him if he thinks the U.S. government was behind the attacks. He says, "It's too big to think about." She waits, beckons for more. "It's just too big to think about. No one wants to think about it." See Lynch interviewed by Alex Jones. More questions from Lynch. James Brolin on the Rosie O'Donnell show says, check out www.911weknow.com.

Psychologists and Psychiatrists say the official version of 9/11 is false. Moreover, many of these mental health experts have concluded that the government's account is so obviously false that people who believe the government's version are in psychological denial.

Too Much Free Speech -- Tony Blair, like the Soviets a couple of decades ago, is worried about too much free speech. (See Telegraph) He specifically singles out the Net and says news on the Net is "even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five." God knows what might happen if people are free to discuss whatever they want, including "conspiracy theories". It could lead to the collapse of Western Civilization, if in fact it can still be said to be standing. Tony Blair is particularly worried about some of the rumors going around about him. Pernicious indeed. The "regulatory systems", he said, need to be "revised". Tony Blair, scared to death now that the world will learn things about him he'd rather they not know, may need a history lesson to recall the rationale behind free speech. As John Milton put it: "Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter." And then there was John Stuart Mill, the inspiration for the founders of the U.S., who wrote in On Liberty, "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." But then, liberalism is so discredited now. But now that we have wise men like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney, who cares what these old fogeys said? Comment on Tony's remarks by Curly

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