What do you think?

Join the rant..... What do you think?... Put your view out here for everyone to see. We're all in this together. Contact me at firemansforge@hughes.net, and speak up...
Your sarcasm can set you free.....

"IN A TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH IS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - GEORGE ORWELL

Thursday, July 4, 2013

City of Berkeley stands up to the Feds and Tells Them to Back Off Their Gestapo Tactics.


AlterNet / By Kristen Gwynne
City of Berkeley Fights Back Against Federal, Anti-Medical-Marijuana Bullies
The feds won't close Berkeley's largest medical marijuana dispensary without a fight.

July 3, 2013 |

The City of Berkeley has filed a claim aiming to protect the city's largest medical marijuana dispensary, Berkeley Patients Group, from closure prompted by the federal government. In May, US Attorney Melinda Haag targeted the dispensary's landlord for asset forfeiture, a bullying tactic that has been used regularly in the feds' war on state-sanctioned, legal medical pot programs. Now, Berkeley is fighting back.

“It is time for the federal government to wake up and stop these asset forfeiture actions," Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said in a press release. "Berkeley Patients Group has complied with the rules and caused no problems in the City. The federal government should not use its scarce resources to harass local law-abiding businesses."

The Berkeley Patients Group has been legally providing marijuana to patients in the city since 1999, complying with local laws. Nonetheless, Haag said in a statement this May that, "The marijuana industry has caused significant public health and safety problems in rural communities, urban centers and schools in the Northern District of California. Because some believe marijuana has medicinal value, however, we continue to take a measured approach and have only pursued asset forfeiture actions with respect to marijuana retail sales operations very near schools, parks or playgrounds, at the request of local law enforcement, or in one case, because of the sheer size of its distribution operations."

"There are no schools around there," Bates struck back. "It seems to me Attorney General [Eric Holder] has really messed up [going after BPG]...He needs to say 'stop this.'"

On May 21st, the city adopted a resolution opposing the forfeiture on the grounds that Berkeley Patient Group has “contributed significantly to our community, providing good jobs and paying millions of dollars in taxes. They have improved the lives and assisted the end-of-life transitions of thousands of patients. They have been active supporters of dozens of Berkeley community organizations.”

On Wednesday, the City filed a claim in US District Court asserting that the closure of Berkeley Patients Group will hurt the city via loss of revenue (including taxes paid by the dispensary), while subverting the City's hard work and resources invested in the control and regulation of medical marijuana, a program intended to treat ailing Berkeley residents.

“Medical marijuana is legal under California law. The federal government, against the wishes of the community, is undermining Berkeley’s concerted efforts to control and regulate medical marijuana distribution within its borders. The U.S Attorney’s action harms patients, the community, and the City -- and benefits no one. It is pure folly; sadly, it is also deeply destructive folly," Senior Staff Attorney at Drug Policy Alliance, the group representing the City of Berkeley, Tamar Todd said in a press release.

The Berkeley case could be a sign of growing pushback from the localities against whom the federal government has waged marijuana wars. Just over a week ago, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution urging the federal government to leave local marijuana laws alone.

Friday, June 28, 2013

"THE NAKED EMPIRE"

BY Robert C. Koehler, Published by Common Dreams, June 28th 2013


Certainly Edward Snowden’s crime is one of public relations. In this day and age, power ain’t just jackboots, tanks and missiles. What he did by outing the NSA and its gargantuan surveillance operation was mess hugely with the American image — the American brand — with its irresistible combination of might and right.

That’s the nature of his “treason.” The secret he gave away was pretty much the same one the little boy blurted out in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale: “The emperor has no clothes!” That is, the government’s security industry isn’t devoted, with benevolent righteousness, to protecting the American public. Instead, it’s obsessively irrational, bent on accumulating data on every phone call we make. It’s a berserk spy machine, seemingly to no sane end. How awkward.

For instance, the government of Hong Kong, in refusing to extradite Snowden as per the Obama administration’s request, explained in its refusal letter that it has “formally written to the U.S. Government requesting clarification on reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies. It will follow up on the matter, to protect the legal rights of people of Hong Kong.”

In other words, sorry, Naked Empire. We’re not going to do what you ask, and by the way, we have some issues with your behavior we’d like to discuss.

This is not the sort of insolence the world’s only superpower wants to hear, and it’s Snowden’s fault, along with other whistleblowers who preceded him, some of whom, such as Bradley Manning, are enduring harsh consequences for their truth-telling. Traitors, all of them — at least as far as the government is concerned, because, when you strip away the public relations mask, the primary interest of government is the perpetuation of power. And anyone who interferes with that perpetuation, even, or especially, in the name of principle, is a “security risk.”

Incredibly, so much of the Fourth Estate goes along with this, aligning itself with the raw, unarticulated interests of power — with the idea that security equals the status quo. Mainstream coverage of the Snowden affair assumes that a crime has been committed and has no further interest in that aspect of the story: a crime is a crime. The unspoken assumption is that the government protects us by doing whatever it does, and we don’t really need to know the details. We just need to round up the transgressors and bring them to justice, because this, rather than the upholding of some sort of principle independent of raw power, is what constitutes the “national interest.”

The privileged social position of the media is based on the idea that it’s beholden first and foremost to principle and speaks truth to power, not that it’s a glib collaborator with power, but that old saw has been on the wane for decades. It’s just one of many principles that consumer culture seems to have given up on. (Nobody, for instance, seems to worry that “Christmas has gotten too commercial” anymore, either.)

Outside the mainstream, there has, of course, been excellent critical analysis both of Snowden’s revelations and the mainstream media’s snarky dismissal of same, but one assumption strikes me as largely unexamined: that the U.S. government essentially has the power to do whatever it wants, independent of the citizenry living under its auspices, and that our choices are either to go along with it or rail angrily against it. But maybe we have other options as well.

Gene Sharp, the extraordinary historian and theorist of nonviolent power, writes in Power and Struggle: The Nature and Control of Political Power:

“Basically, there appear to be two views of the nature of power. One can see people as dependent upon the good will, the decisions and the support of their government or any other hierarchical system to which they belong. Or, conversely, one can see that government or system dependent on the people’s good will, decisions and support.

“One can see the power of a government as emitted from the few who stand at the pinnacle of command. Or one can see that power, in all governments, as continually rising from many parts of the society. One can also see power as self-perpetuating, durable, not easily or quickly controlled or destroyed. Or political power can be viewed as fragile, always dependent for its strength and existence upon replenishment of its sources, by the cooperation of a multitude of institutions and people — cooperation which may or may not continue.” (Emphasis added.)
Indeed, Snowden, Manning and other whistleblowers have demonstrated the fragility of governmental power with their very actions. Hence the government’s kneejerk response: They’re traitors! They disobeyed and must be punished, because any unofficial leakage of government policy is, by definition, bad for security. Of course the security in question is the security of those in power. The belief that their security is our security is the link that must be broken. As Sharp points out, we don’t automatically owe those in power our good will.

Tim Wise, in an excellent essay putting the NSA revelations into context, writes: “Maybe it is time to remind ourselves that the only things worse than what this government and its various law enforcement agencies do in secret, are the things they’ve been doing blatantly, openly, but only to some, for a long time now.”

From a genocidal war against the continent’s original inhabitants to the institution of slavery to Jim Crow . . . to Vietnam, Agent Orange, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, shock and awe bombing, torture, ecocide, drone warfare . . . to the millions of people trapped in our prison gulag . . . the agenda of empire has been going on, with unquestioning public support, for far too long. What the empire fears most is the day that it can no longer take this support for granted. That day is coming.

© 2013 Tribune Media Services

Friday, June 7, 2013

SOMETIMES YOU'VE JUST GOT TO SAY...... THIS GUY IS A TOTAL BANANA!

THE REALLY SCARY THING IS THE FACT THAT THIS GUY IS TRYING TO BE A LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR. REALLY?
FROM: NEWSMAX.COM

Thursday, February 14, 2013

THIS IS A VERY SCARY GUY........ REALLY!!!

A friend of mine just came back from South Korea, where he had been a Peace Corp volunteer in the sixties. He was treated royally by the South Korean Government. He visited the North Korean Border. Not a fun place to go.

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has issued the following letter to the citizens of the world:

Dear World People:
For decades, North Korea was threatened by hostile foes with nuclear weapons. With our safety constantly at risk from violent intruders, we asked: How can we possibly defend ourselves? In the immortal words of my dad, the glorious Kim Jong-il: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”
I sleep safely at night knowing that a loaded nuclear silo is as close as the launch button on my nightstand. And now I understand what Dad, in his genius, instinctively knew: that the world will not be truly safe until every nation has nuclear weapons.
Perhaps because these weapons are so necessary to our defense, the U.S. government, with its lapdogs at the United Nations, is plotting to take them away from us. But as Dad used to say, “When they come for our nukes….”
That is why today I am founding the Nuclear Retaliation Association to defend the sovereign right of every nation on the planet to engulf that planet in a hellish inferno. If you join today, we will waive the initiation fee and send you this bumper sticker: “Nuclear weapons don’t kill people. People kill people who don’t have nuclear weapons.”
Peace out,
Kim Jong-un


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/02/a-letter-from-kim-jong-un.html#ixzz2Ku7FZWn0

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

THE HUBRIS OF DRONE ATTACKS....... We Can't Believe We're Winning Allies With This Action.

IF MY FAMILY WAS KILLED BY INDISCRIMINATE MURDER BY DRONE, I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE SEEKING REVENGE. WHO WOULDN'T???




Published on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 by Common Dreams
The Hubris of the Drones
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Last week, The New York Times published a chilling account of how indiscriminate killing in war remains bad policy even today. This time, it’s done not by young GIs in the field but by anonymous puppeteers guiding drones that hover and attack by remote control against targets thousands of miles away, often killing the innocent and driving their enraged and grieving families and friends straight into the arms of the very terrorists we’re trying to eradicate.

The Times told of a Muslim cleric in Yemen named Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, standing in a village mosque denouncing al Qaeda. It was a brave thing to do — a respected tribal figure, arguing against terrorism. But two days later, when he and a police officer cousin agreed to meet with three al Qaeda members to continue the argument, all five men — friend and foe — were incinerated by an American drone attack. The killings infuriated the village and prompted rumors of an upwelling of support in the town for al Qaeda, because, the Times reported, “such a move is seen as the only way to retaliate against the United States.”

Our blind faith in technology combined with a false sense of infallible righteousness continues unabated. Reuters correspondent David Rohde recently wrote:

“The Obama administration’s covert drone program is on the wrong side of history. With each strike, Washington presents itself as an opponent of the rule of law, not a supporter. Not surprisingly, a foreign power killing people with no public discussion, or review of who died and why, promotes anger among Pakistanis, Yemenis and many others.”
Rohde has firsthand knowledge of what a drone strike can do. He was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008 and held for seven months. During his captivity, a drone struck nearby. “It was so close that shrapnel and mud showered down into the courtyard,” he told the BBC last year. “Just the force and size of the explosion amazed me. It comes with no warning and tremendous force… There’s sense that your sovereignty is being violated… It’s a serious military action. It is not this light precise pinprick that many Americans believe.”

“It’s a serious military action… not this light precise pinprick that many Americans believe.”
A special report from the Council on Foreign Relations last month, “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,” quotes “a former senior military official” saying, “Drone strikes are just a signal of arrogance that will boomerang against America.” The report notes that, “The current trajectory of U.S. drone strike policies is unsustainable… without any meaningful checks — imposed by domestic or international political pressure — or sustained oversight from other branches of government, U.S. drone strikes create a moral hazard because of the negligible risks from such strikes and the unprecedented disconnect between American officials and personnel and the actual effects on the ground.”

Negligible? Such hubris brought us to grief in Vietnam and Iraq and may do so again with President Obama’s cold-blooded use of drones and his indifference to so-called “collateral damage,” grossly referred to by some in the military as “bug splat,” and otherwise known as innocent bystanders.

Yet the ease with which drones are employed and the lower risk to our own forces makes the unmanned aircraft increasingly appealing to the military and the CIA. We’re using drones more and more; some 350 strikes since President Obama took office, seven times the number that were authorized by George W. Bush. And there’s a whole new generation of the weapons on the way — deadlier and with greater endurance.

According to the CFR report, “Of the estimated three thousand people killed by drones… the vast majority were neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban leaders. Instead, most were low-level, anonymous suspected militants who were predominantly engaged in insurgent or terrorist operations against their governments, rather than in active international terrorist plots.”

By the standards of slaughter in Vietnam, the deaths caused by drones are hardly a bleep on the consciousness of official Washington. But we have to wonder if each innocent killed — a young boy gathering wood at dawn, unsuspecting of his imminent annihilation; a student who picked up the wrong hitchhikers; that tribal elder arguing against fanatics — doesn’t give rise to second thoughts by those judges who prematurely handed our president the Nobel Prize for Peace. Better they had kept it on the shelf in hopeful waiting, untarnished.

Friday, January 4, 2013

A FASCIST GOVERNMENT OUT OF CONTROL



HEY, IF YOU CAN'T WIN BY THE RULES, JUST ELIMINATE THE RULES.


WASHINGTON - January 4 - (AS REPORTED IN COMMON DREAMS)

What: Pretrial hearing, U.S. vs PFC Bradley Manning
Where: Reece Rd. and Rt. 175, Fort Meade, MD
When: January 8-11, 2013

PFC Bradley Manning, the whistle-blower on trial for passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the transparency website WikiLeaks.org, returns to Ft. Meade, MD, from January 8-11, 2013, for another pretrial hearing. The government prosecutors will argue their motion to preclude discussion of PFC Manning’s motive from the merits portion of his trial. If granted by military judge Col. Denise Lind, this would undercut PFC Manning’s long-argued whistle-blower contention: that he released these documents to uncover crimes and abuse and to better inform the American public.

This hearing could also see a ruling from Judge Lind on the defense motion to dismiss charges based on the abusive treatment PFC Manning endured at the Quantico Marine brig prison. PFC Manning was kept in solitary confinement for over nine months, against the consistent recommendations of brig psychiatrists. If Judge Lind finds this treatment was punitive, she could throw out the charges against PFC Manning, or she could award him multiplied credit for sentencing.

PFC Manning’s court-martial trial is currently scheduled to begin March 6, 2013. Following next week’s hearing, PFC Manning is scheduled to return to Fort Meade on January 16 and 17, to conclude the defense’s motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial. When that motion is argued, PFC Manning will have been awaiting trial in prison for nearly 1,000 days.


Smokey's Comment ..... We Believed in you Mr. President, and you have betrayed us yet again. So much for freedom of speech and protection under the U.S. Constitution. President Obama has lied to the American people on so many occasions, it is becoming hard to track them all. Am I the only one who remembers his campaign speech that stated "Whistleblowers should be rewarded and protected"?



Friday, December 14, 2012

FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE

Published on Thursday, December 13, 2012 by The Boston Phoenix
'I'd Rather Fight Like Hell': Naomi Klein's Fierce New Resolve to Fight for Climate Justice
'Climate change is the human-rights struggle of our time'

by Wen Stephenson
Naomi Klein, black-clad and sharp-tongued mistress of the global anti-corporate left, friend to Occupiers and scourge of oil barons, stood outside a dressing room backstage at Boston's Orpheum Theatre one night last month, a clear-eyed baby boy on her hip.


Author and activist Naomi Klein. "The climate crisis," Klein says, "is the ultimate indictment of capitalism, certainly the model of capitalism that we have, and the solutions to the climate crisis are the same as the solutions to the economic crisis." (Photo: Ed Kashi/The Phoenix)
"I'm really trying not to play the Earth Mother card," Klein told me over the phone the week before, as she talked about bringing Toma, her first child, into the world. But she didn't need to worry.

Inside the dressing room, she'd been fielding questions from a small gaggle of young reporters alongside 350.org's Bill McKibben, who had invited her to play a key role in the 21-city "Do the Math" climate-movement roadshow that arrived at the sold-out Orpheum that night. With a laugh, Klein noted to the reporters that McKibben's devastatingRolling Stone article last summer, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" — revealing that the fossil-fuel industry has five times more carbon in its proven reserves, which it intends to extract, than the science says can be burned if we want to avoid climate catastrophe — had received no industry pushback.

"I mean, that's remarkable, for a piece like that, to not feel the need to correct the record in any way? Actually, we don't plan to destroy the planet."

Then she offered an anecdote, as if to dispel any assumptions that she's a conventional green, planet-saving type. Fresh from the Superstorm Sandy disaster zone, she described visiting an "amazing" community farm in Brooklyn's Red Hook that had been flooded. "They were doing everything right, when it comes to climate," she said. "Growing organic, localizing their food system, sequestering carbon, not using fossil-fuel inputs — all the good stuff." Then came Sandy. "They lose their entire fall harvest, and they're pretty sure their soil is now contaminated, because the water that flooded them was so polluted."

"So, yeah," she said, "it's important to build local alternatives, we have to do it, but unless we are really going after the source of the problem" — namely, the fossil-fuel industry and its lock on Washington — "we are gonna get inundated."

For McKibben and Klein, going after that source means, to begin with, going after the industry's business model and its very legitimacy. To that end, they've used the sold-out national tour, which ended on December 3 in Salt Lake City, to help launch a student-led divestment campaign calling on universities to stop investing in fossil fuels. As of early December, that effort had already spread to more than 150 campuses around the country, including more than a dozen in New England. The point of divestment may not be whatever economic leverage it can wield over some of the richest companies on Earth, but instead a kind of moral leverage, as a rallying point for a broad-based movement — committed to mass protest and nonviolent direct action — that aims to delegitimize what McKibben calls a "rogue" industry and its lobby.

Later that night, on the Orpheum stage with McKibben, Klein told the audience: "Remember this moment. This was the moment we got serious."

Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein have been plenty serious, in their respective ways, for a long time. McKibben, one of the world's leading environmental writers and activists, has fought the climate fight in every conceivable way. In 2007, together with a small band of students at Middlebury College, where he teaches, he founded the global 350.org network. Last year it spearheaded the campaign against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, resulting in the largest civil-disobedience action in a generation at the gates of the White House. (The week after the election, they were back, thousands strong, pressuring Obama to kill the pipeline once and for all, and a major action is planned for Washington on February 17.)

For her part, Klein "came of age politically," she told me, with the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, when she was 29, shortly after which her international best-seller No Logo made her an intellectual star of the anti-globalization movement. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, her 2007 magnum opus, exposed the ways neoliberal free-market profiteers have exploited chaos and catastrophe in disaster zones, from hurricane-shocked New Orleans to "shock-and-awe"-shocked Iraq.

Bill McKibben & Naomi Klein on the Do The Math bus tour of US cities and universities. (Photo: Ecobuddhism)

So seeing McKibben and Klein on stage together, launching a mathematical and moral assault on the carbon corporatocracy, says something significant about the charged atmosphere of this particular moment — as we end a year, the warmest on record, in which we lost half the Arctic ice cap and saw off-the-charts global weather extremes, while the political and media establishments seemed not to notice. It also says something about the direction the climate movement may be taking — or, rather, the direction McKibben and Klein argue it should be taking, as they seek to merge climate and economic justice in a way that goes beyond both traditional environmentalism and the old-school, climate-clueless left.

So it's time to come together, for real, and fight to preserve and extend what you care most about — which means engaging in the climate fight, really engaging, as if your life and your life's work, even life itself, depended on it. Because they do.

Each has a tough-love message for their own constituency — McKibben for an insular environmental movement that's been woefully ineffective on climate; Klein for a left, including many in the Occupy movement, that has failed to grapple with the seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis. Look, they're saying, this is it: science tells us that time is running out, and everything you've ever fought for is on the line. Climate change has the ability to undo your historic victories and crush your present struggles. So it's time to come together, for real, and fight to preserve and extend what you care most about — which means engaging in the climate fight, really engaging, as if your life and your life's work, even life itself, depended on it. Because they do.

Klein, as it happens, is at work on a book in which she hopes to tie all of this together. Due to appear late next year, it's part of a joint project with her husband, documentary filmmaker Avi Lewis. In a long interview from her home in Toronto before coming to Boston, Klein explained how the book and film — separate but interrelated pieces of a larger whole — make an ambitious argument, one she first laid out in a cover story for The Nation last November, "Capitalism vs. the Climate."

"The climate crisis," Klein told me, "is the ultimate indictment of capitalism, certainly the model of capitalism that we have, and the solutions to the climate crisis are the same as the solutions to the economic crisis." That means restoring democracy and reinvigorating the public sphere, reining in and re-regulating corporations, re-localizing our economies, taxing polluters and the wealthy to put a stiff price on carbon and bring basic fairness into the system, and building alternatives to limitless profit and unsustainable growth. The book's argument, she said, is "an attempt to weave together disparate movements under the banner of rising to meet the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced."

To illustrate, she pointed to a community in El Salvador, one of the many places where she and Lewis have researched and filmed. Set in a floodplain, the residents now find themselves regularly inundated. "It's a community that was born out of the civil war, a community of refugees," she explained, "and they bring their revolutionary history — and their history of fighting for economic justice — to the climate fight. They're finding ways to respond to climate change that really transform their community in every way, from housing to health care." For Klein, it shows that the climate fight can and must be about "deepening democracy."

Indeed, Klein wants to see more young activists, inspired and galvanized by the Occupy movement, making the same connections.

"If I had a role in Occupy Wall Street, it was to try to push the climate issue," Klein said. She told me about Yotam Marom, one of the many OWS organizers she's met in New York. "Yotam, who's an amazing organizer, was one of the more resistant" to integrating climate into his worldview, she said. Not that he didn't think it's important, "but he just couldn't find a way to connect." She's found this fairly typical.

"For a really long time," said Klein, "lefties thought climate was the one issue they didn't have to worry about, because big, rich green groups had it covered. And now it's like, actually, they really don't. That was a dangerous assumption to make."

But she had just spoken to Marom again the day before. "Obviously, Sandy has changed the game for New Yorkers," she said. Marom told her he was writing an article that would be a kind of "12-point recovery program for leftists, about what they need to do to engage with climate."

"But he said something so insightful," she told me. "When he thinks about why he was resistant, he realized that if he accepted the reality of climate change, truly accepted it into his body, his soul, then he would have to drop everything he was doing. And he doesn't want to drop everything he's doing."

"So it's not about abandoning all [our other] fights, it's actually about supercharging those fights, and weaving them all into a common narrative. That's the story we need to tell. It's a 'go big or go home' moment."

What Klein is trying to say to those like Marom is that they don't have to drop everything. "In fact," she said, "you need to do it even more."

"Climate change lends urgency to our fights for social justice, like nothing else before," Klein said. "We have to win these battles against free trade, we have to win these battles to re-localize our economies. This isn't just some little hobby.

"So it's not about abandoning all of those fights, it's actually about supercharging those fights, and weaving them all into a common narrative. That's the story we need to tell.

"It's a 'go big or go home' moment."

I asked her what she thinks it signifies to see Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein working together so closely.

"Climate change is the human-rights struggle of our time," she said. "And it's too important to be left to the environmentalists alone. I mean, we need the environmental movement — but not if they're going to be afraid of the left."

If there's a central idea driving Klein these days, it's that the historic projects of economic and social justice and the urgency of climate justice are interdependent and inseparable — from the local level on up to the global.

Klein's entry point into the climate issue was her interest in reparations for slavery and the historic crimes of colonialism. In 2008, covering the United Nations conference on racism known as "Durban II," she realized that the reparations movement had shifted its focus to the idea of "climate debt" — that is, what the developed world, in tangible economic terms, owes to the people of developing nations who will bear (and are already bearing) the brunt of climate change, but have done little or nothing, historically, to cause it.

"The refusal to accept the importance of economic justice is the reason we have had no climate action. It's just that simple," Klein told me. "What has bogged down every round of UN negotiations on climate is the basic principle that the people who are most responsible for creating this crisis should take the lead and bear a heavier burden." And for poor nations, "there should be a right to develop a certain amount, to pull oneself out of poverty." The issue remains a sticking point for any global climate treaty, as witnessed again last week at the UN conference in Doha, Qatar, where wealthy nations failed to make concrete commitments to help the most vulnerable countries deal with climate change.

Klein first met McKibben and the 350.org team in late 2009 at the disastrous UN climate conference in Copenhagen, where she was pushing these issues. She was profoundly impressed, a friendship formed, and in April 2011 she joined 350's board.

"I'm sort of used to the environmental movement seeing me as a pain in the ass," she told me. "You know, when I talk about reparations and climate debt — it's seen as being off-message. You're just supposed to shut up about things like that. It's inconvenient — an inconvenient truth that can't be sold to the American public."

"So I was surprised when Bill invited me to be on the board, because I sort of thought that I was toxic," she said. "I think it just speaks to 350's deep understanding that these movements have to come together."

Klein is known for saying that the job of the left is to "move the center." I asked if that's what she and McKibben are up to with "Do the Math" and the divestment campaign.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "And when I said 'Move the center,' you know what I was always saying is, let's nationalize the oil companies."

She laughed, and so did I, and I reminded her that she's also been known to say that "moving the center" can require "saying some crazy shit."

"When I say that," Klein replied, "I mean stuff that sounds crazy to other people. But it doesn't sound crazy to me. I think we will get to a point where saying we should nationalize the oil companies won't sound crazy. Because the bills are just going to add up."

"You know what's crazy," she said, "is letting the corporations who've left us with the most expensive mess in history just keep all the money they've made for themselves," instead of paying to clean up the mess, and helping fix it. "No. That's insane," she said.

"This economic model is failing us spectacularly, on multiple levels," she added, "but we're still acting as if our goal is to save it," rather than transform it into something that won't destroy us.

Indeed, I suggested, that appears to be the case even among progressives who still prioritize economic growth at the expense of the climate.

"I'd rather fight like hell than give these evil motherfuckers [more] power," says Klein

"The levels of denial are so complicated," she said. "We are all in denial. All of us. People are holding back a tremendous amount of anxiety. You don't let yourself care about something that you have no idea how to fix. Because it's just too terrifying. And it would derail your whole life, as Yotam was saying.

"That's why there has to be a narrative, a plan, for how we integrate so much of what we're already doing into a common project. Because so long as people feel like nothing that they know now applies, then they will work really hard to keep this information at bay.

"This is our meta-issue. We've all gotta get inside it. Because this is our home. We are already inside it, like it or not, and it's inside us. So the idea that we can somehow divorce from it is a fantasy that we have to let go of."

I asked about her decision to have a baby, in spite of everything she knows.

She got quiet. "For a long time," she told me, "I just couldn't see a future for a child that wasn't some, like, Mad Max climate-warrior thing."

Somehow, though, her engagement in the climate movement seems to have changed that. Another future seemed possible. She and Lewis decided to have a child, but struggled with infertility. Then, having given up, surprise: along came Toma.

If anything, the experience has made Klein all the more a fighter. She now believes that denying her desire to have a child, because of the mess being made by those willing to destroy the planet for profit, would be a form of surrender.

"I guess what I want to say is, I don't want to give them that power," she told me. "I'd rather fight like hell than give these evil motherfuckers the power to extinguish the desire to create life."


© 2012 The Phoenix

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

ISRAEL AND THE U.S.A..... Partners For Decades Without Regard For The World's Opinion.



Taken from ALTERNET, by Noam Chomsky


December 3, 2012 |

An old man in Gaza held a placard that read: “You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”

The old man’s message provides the proper context for the latest episode in the savage punishment of Gaza. The crimes trace back to 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes in terror or were expelled to Gaza by conquering Israeli forces, who continued to truck Palestinians over the border for years after the official cease-fire.

The punishment took new forms when Israel conquered Gaza in 1967. From recent Israeli scholarship (primarily Avi Raz’s “The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War”), we learn that the government’s goal was to drive the refugees into the Sinai Peninsula – and, if feasible, the rest of the population too.

Expulsions from Gaza were carried out under the direct orders of Gen. Yeshayahu Gavish, commander of the Israel Defense Forces Southern Command. Expulsions from the West Bank were far more extreme, and Israel resorted to devious means to prevent the return of those expelled, in direct violation of U.N. Security Council orders.

The reasons were made clear in internal discussions immediately after the war. Golda Meir, later prime minister, informed her Labor Party colleagues that Israel should keep the Gaza Strip while “getting rid of its Arabs.” Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and others agreed.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol explained that those expelled could not be allowed to return because “we cannot increase the Arab population in Israel” – referring to the newly occupied territories, already considered part of Israel.

In accord with this conception, all of Israel’s maps were changed, expunging the Green Line (the internationally recognized borders) – though publication of the maps was delayed to permit Abba Eban, an Israeli ambassador to the U.N., to attain what he called a “favorable impasse” at the General Assembly by concealing Israel’s intentions.

The goals of expulsion may remain alive today, and might be a factor in contributing to Egypt’s reluctance to open the border to free passage of people and goods barred by the U.S.-backed Israeli siege.

The current upsurge of U.S.-Israeli violence dates to January 2006, when Palestinians voted “the wrong way” in the first free election in the Arab world.

Israel and the U.S. reacted at once with harsh punishment of the miscreants, and preparation of a military coup to overthrow the elected government – the routine procedure. The punishment was radically intensified in 2007, when the coup attempt was beaten back and the elected Hamas government established full control over Gaza.

Ignoring immediate offers from Hamas for a truce after the 2006 election, Israel launched attacks that killed 660 Palestinians in 2006, most of whom were civilians (a third were minors). According to U.N. reports, 2,879 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire from April 2006 through July 2012, along with several dozen Israelis killed by fire from Gaza.

A short-lived truce in 2008 was honored by Hamas until Israel broke it in November. Ignoring further truce offers, Israel launched the murderous Cast Lead operation in December.

So matters have continued, while the U.S. and Israel also continue to reject Hamas calls for a long-term truce and a political settlement for a two-state solution in accord with the international consensus that the U.S. has blocked since 1976 when the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution to this effect, brought by the major Arab states.

This week, Washington devoted every effort to blocking a Palestinian initiative to upgrade its status at the U.N. but failed, in virtual international isolation as usual. The reasons were revealing: Palestine might approach the International Criminal Court about Israel’s U.S.-backed crimes.

One element of the unremitting torture of Gaza is Israel’s “buffer zone” within Gaza, from which Palestinians are barred entry to almost half of Gaza’s limited arable land.

From January 2012 to the launching of Israel’s latest killing spree on Nov. 14, Operation Pillar of Defense, one Israeli was killed by fire from Gaza while 78 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

The full story is naturally more complex, and uglier.

The first act of Operation Pillar of Defense was to murder Ahmed Jabari. Aluf Benn, editor of the newspaper Haaretz, describes him as Israel’s “subcontractor” and “border guard” in Gaza, who enforced relative quiet there for more than five years.

The pretext for the assassination was that during these five years Jabari had been creating a Hamas military force, with missiles from Iran. A more credible reason was provided by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who had been involved in direct negotiations with Jabari for years, including plans for the eventual release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Baskin reports that hours before he was assassinated, Jabari “received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip.”

A truce was then in place, called by Hamas on Nov. 12. Israel apparently exploited the truce, Reuters reports, directing attention to the Syrian border in the hope that Hamas leaders would relax their guard and be easier to assassinate.

Throughout these years, Gaza has been kept on a level of bare survival, imprisoned by land, sea and air. On the eve of the latest attack, the U.N. reported that 40 percent of essential drugs and more than half of essential medical items were out of stock.

In November one of the first in a series of hideous photos sent from Gaza showed a doctor holding the charred corpse of a murdered child. That one had a personal resonance. The doctor is the director and head of surgery at Khan Yunis hospital, which I had visited a few weeks earlier.

In writing about the trip I reported his passionate appeal for desperately needed medicine and surgical equipment. These are among the crimes of the U.S.-Israeli siege, and of Egyptian complicity.

The casualty rates from the November episode were about average: more than 160 Palestinian dead, including many children, and six Israelis.

Among the dead were three journalists. The official Israeli justification was that “The targets are people who have relevance to terror activity.” Reporting the “execution” in The New York Times, the reporter David Carr observed that “it has come to this: Killing members of the news media can be justified by a phrase as amorphous as ‘relevance to terror activity.’ ”

The massive destruction was all in Gaza. Israel used advanced U.S. military equipment and relied on U.S. diplomatic support, including the usual U.S. intervention efforts to block a Security Council call for a cease-fire.

With each such exploit, Israel’s global image erodes. The photos and videos of terror and devastation, and the character of the conflict, leave few remaining shreds of credibility to the self-declared “most moral army in the world,” at least among people whose eyes are open.

The pretexts for the assault were also the usual ones. We can put aside the predictable declarations of the perpetrators in Israel and Washington. But even decent people ask what Israel should do when attacked by a barrage of missiles. It’s a fair question, and there are straightforward answers.

One response would be to observe international law, which allows the use of force without Security Council authorization in exactly one case: in self-defense after informing the Security Council of an armed attack, until the Council acts, in accord with the U.N. Charter, Article 51.

Israel is well familiar with that Charter provision, which it invoked at the outbreak of the June 1967 war. But, of course, Israel’s appeal went nowhere when it was quickly ascertained that Israel had launched the attack. Israel did not follow this course in November, knowing what would be revealed in a Security Council debate.

Another narrow response would be to agree to a truce, as appeared quite possible before the operation was launched on Nov. 14.

There are more far-reaching responses. By coincidence, one is discussed in the current issue of the journal National Interest. Asia scholars Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen describe China’s reaction after rioting in western Xinjiang province, “in which mobs of Uighurs marched around the city beating hapless Han (Chinese) to death.”

Chinese president Hu Jintao quickly flew to the province to take charge; senior leaders in the security establishment were fired; and a wide range of development projects were undertaken to address underlying causes of the unrest.

In Gaza, too, a civilized reaction is possible. The U.S. and Israel could end the merciless, unremitting assault, open the borders and provide for reconstruction – and if it were imaginable, reparations for decades of violence and repression.

The cease-fire agreement stated that the measures to implement the end of the siege and the targeting of residents in border areas “shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the cease-fire.”

There is no sign of steps in this direction. Nor is there any indication of a U.S.-Israeli willingness to rescind their separation of Gaza from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords, to end the illegal settlement and development programs in the West Bank that are designed to undermine a political settlement, or in any other way to abandon the rejectionism of the past decades.

Someday, and it must be soon, the world will respond to the plea issued by the distinguished Gazan human-rights lawyer Raji Sourani while the bombs were once again raining down on defenseless civilians in Gaza: “We demand justice and accountability. We dream of a normal life, in freedom and dignity.”

Friday, November 30, 2012

WHY IS ISRAEL SO AFRAID OF A PALESTINIAN STATE???

AND,..... WHY IS THE U.S. SO SUPPORTIVE OF ISRAEL BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE??


The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a resolution upgrading Palestine to a "non-member observer state," from a "non-member observer entity."

Before the vote and in front of the assembly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said this was the body's "last chance to save the two-state solution."

He said despite all the violence and Israeli "aggressions" and its "occupation," Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority have insisted on harmony and have looked at the "U.N. as a beacon of hope."

"We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel. Rather we came to affirm the legitimacy of a state that must now achieve its independence and that is Palestine," Abbas said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly.
"The moment has come for the world to say clearly: enough of aggression, enough with settlements and occupation," Abbas said.

Exactly 65 years after the General Assembly convened at Lake Success, N.Y., voted to divide Palestine between a Jewish state and an Arab one, the same body voted — 138-9, with 41 abstentions — in favor of recognizing the State of Palestine.

The United States and Israel, which suffered a stinging diplomatic setback, voted against the measure, while France and Spain voted in favor.

This vote gives Palestinians the same status as the Vatican, but perhaps more importantly, it gives Palestinians access to other U.N. bodies like the International Criminal Court, where Palestinians could launch complaints against Israel.

The United States has repeatedly said that this was not the right way toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"This resolution is not going to take [Palestinians] closer to statehood," Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said in a briefing yesterday. "It does nothing to get them closer to statehood, and it may actually make the environment more difficult."

The resolution reaffirms the "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine," and also declares the Palestine Liberation Organization the "representative of the Palestinian people."

The PLO and its leader, Abbas, control the West Bank, but not the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of Hamas. As The New York Times explains it, the credibility of Abbas and his Palestinian Authority has suffered, especially after the recent eight-day Israeli assault on Gaza.

"That shift in sentiment is one reason that some Western countries give for backing the United Nations resolution, to strengthen Mr. Abbas and his more moderate colleagues in their contest with Hamas," the Times explained.

Israel, which has had a relationship with Abbas but does not talk to Hamas directly, said it would take action against the Palestinian Authority in response to this vote.

Israel's UN Ambassador Ron Prosor addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.

"I can only say that our response will be proportionate to what is ultimately a fundamental violation by the Palestinians of signed agreements," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told NPR's Philip Reeves. "I mean they committed to solving all outstanding issues through negotiations. And by going to the U.N., they are doing the opposite."

Nuland said yesterday that the Obama administration was trying to get Congress to release money reserved for the Palestinian Authority, but the resolution doesn't "make it any easier."

The Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Ron Prosor, said in a speech before the General Assembly that the resolution "raises expectations that cannot be met."

Israel wants peace, he said, while Palestinians are "avoiding it." This resolution, he said, meant the Palestinians were "turning their backs on peace."

"No decision of the U.N. can break the 4,000-year bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel," Prosor said.

As the vote took place, the celebrations that started earlier today in Ramallah continued into the early morning.


Tuesday, November 27, 2012

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? You have the power to do what?

President Obama states he can kill me if he wants to.... W.T.F.??
[Interjections of a hopefully sane nature added by Mike Staples]
As reported by Charlie Turner of "Demand Progress. Org"
(Demand Progress has teamed up with ....The RootsAction.org team to call President Obama to account.)
You can sign a petition to ask President Obama to uphold the rule of law, at...
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6570&track=DP

It's astonishing, but he claims that he has the power to assasinate people all over the globe -- including Americans -- with no due process.


"Due process" can be a trial, or a missile through your roof.


[I think I'd prefer a trial, if you don't mind, Mr. President.]


President Obama told CNN this week that he can kill Americans or non-Americans, the difference being that with Americans their killing amounts to their Constitutionally guaranteed due process.

CNN asked Obama how he chooses names for his kill list, but he declined to say. Obama claimed that there are checks on his power, pointing only to checks by his own subordinates, not by courts, not by Congress, and not by the public -- which he reassures with vague statements that amount to "trust me."

Obama claimed that his preference is to capture people rather than to kill them. This does not fit with cases like that of Tariq Khan, a 16-year-old killed by drone strike following his participation in a conference at which he could have easily been captured. It does not fit with the lack of criminal charges against virtually any of the people killed.

Obama claimed that he avoids killing civilians, yet careful research has documented large numbers of civilians killed, including this week in Yemen.

Due process is not, as comedian Stephen Colbert pointed out, just some process that you do.

[I never thought I'd miss Richard Nixon, but this shit is getting scary. Come on Mr. President..... Really? Does this sound like a story that's been played before,...



or is it just me?]
[When did the power of life and death get granted to the President of the United States? Have we become so decadent that we can dictate who lives, and who dies in our world, without fear of retribution by law? President Obama is not the first to believe he has this power. The names of Hitler, and Musolini are the first to come to my mind.]


( RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, and many others.)

Background:
Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Holding the US to account for civilian drone deaths in Yemen
Bureau of Investigative Journalism: U.S. Secret Wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia
Washington Post: U.S. Drone Targets in Yemen Raise Questions
New York Times: Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

FRANKENCORN..... THE MONSANTO MONSTER WANTS TO OWN YOUR FOOD SOURCE.


THIS IS POSTED FROM COMMON DREAMS....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 18, 2012
9:14 AM
CONTACT: Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA)
Media contact:
Jim Gerritsen
Email: press@osgata.org
Phone: 207. 429. 9765
Send General Inquiries to:
General Manager
Laura Parker
P.O. Box 512
Montrose CO, 81402
Email: laura.parker@osgata.org
Phone: 970. 275. 3409

Landmark Family Farmers Lawsuit Grows

Prominent Allies Join Effort to Reinstate Challenge to Monsanto Patents
WASHINGTON - July 18 - Eleven prominent law professors and fourteen renowned organic, Biodynamic®, food safety and consumer non-profit organizations have filed separate briefs with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit arguing farmers have the right to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement by agricultural giant Monsanto. The brief by the law professors and the brief by the non-profit organizations were filed in support of the seventy-five family farmers, seed businesses, and agricultural organizations representing over 300,000 individuals and 4,500 farms that last year brought a protective legal action seeking a ruling that Monsanto could never sue them for patent infringement if they became contaminated by Monsanto's genetically modified seed. The case was dismissed by the district court in February and that dismissal is now pending review by the Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs recently filed their opening appeal brief with the appeals court.

"Monsanto continues to claim that Plaintiffs' concerns about being accused of patent infringement after being contaminated by Monsanto's transgenic seed are unsubstantiated and unjustified," said attorney Dan Ravicher of the not-for-profit legal services organization Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), which represents the plaintiffs in the suit against Monsanto known as Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association et al. v Monsanto. "But now two impeccable groups have joined with plaintiffs in explaining to the Court of Appeals how real and legitimate their concerns really are, especially since Monsanto continues to refuse to simply promise never to sue contaminated farmers for patent infringement."

The first group filing a brief in support of the OSGATA plaintiffs includes eleven prominent law professors from throughout the United States, including Professor Margo Bagley of the University of Virginia School of Law, Professor Michael Burstein of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Professor Rochelle C. Dreyfuss of the New York University School of Law, Professor Brett Frischmann of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Professor Erika George of University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Professor Shubha Ghosh of the University of Wisconsin Law School, Professor Megan M. La Belle of the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, Professor Kali Murray of Marquette University Law School, Professor Ted Sichelman of the University of San Diego School of Law, Katherine J. Strandburg of the New York University School of Law, and Melissa Wasserman of the University of Illinois College of Law.



In their amicus brief, the law professors point out that, "broad standing to challenge the validity of patents ensures that the courts can effectively play their critical role in screening out invalid patents." They add, "In actions challenging the validity of a patent, the alleged injury is not only the risk of an infringement suit, but a present restraint on economic activity due to the presence of a potentially invalid exclusive right." The law professors went on to note, "But the validity of issued patents is uncertain until they are tested in court. This uncertainty creates real and present risks for persons wishing to engage in economic activity that might be the subject of an issued patent....When a person is deterred from undertaking valuable activity by the risk that the activity may encroach on another's exclusive rights, that person has incurred an actual, concrete and particularized injury."

"We are grateful for the brilliant and powerful amici briefs submitted to the appeals court by these two stellar groups, supporting our family farmers' quest for justice," said Maine organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen, President of lead Plaintiff, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association. "An erroneous interpretation of law by a single judge is not going to cause our farmers to abandon our rights to farm the way we choose, to grow good food and good seed for our families and for our customers, free from Monsanto's trespass and contamination. Denial of the property rights of American farmers is an attack on the property rights of every American. We will fight until family farmers receive justice."



The second group filing a brief in support of the OSGATA plaintiffs, made up of fourteen non-profit agricultural and consumer organizations, includes the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, Food and Water Watch, International Organic Inspectors Association, Maine Alternative Agriculture Association, Michigan Land Trustees, Natural Environmental Ecological Management, Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society, Organic Consumers Association, Slow Food USA, Virginia Association for Biological Farming, Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, and Wisconsin Natural Food Associates.

In their amicus brief, the non-profit agricultural and consumer organizations point out, "The Plaintiff and Amici organizations, farmers, and seed businesses have suffered significant harm due to the threat of patent infringement suits by Monsanto." They also noted, "Defendants have chosen to patent products that, by their very nature, will inevitably end up on the private property of people who have no desire to use them. Plaintiffs' uncontroverted allegations show that, for the first time in history, they can be sued for something as natural as pollen drift, while simultaneously being forced to take expensive and burdensome steps in order to continue their normal businesses. The quandary of this type of liability is precisely the sort of situation that the Declaratory Judgment Act was intended to address." The amicus brief further explained, "The Supreme court has stated that the plaintiff "need not 'bet the farm'" yet in this case, that is precisely what the district court effectively required Plaintiffs to do in order to get their day in court - continue farming the disputed crops until they are unquestionably liable to Defendants for potentially crippling levels of damage before being able to seek a declaratory judgment as to their rights...The district court noted that 'unlicensed - and unintented - use of transgenic seeds is inevitable...' but then failed to address the fact that such unlicensed use is actionable and places Plaintiffs at risk of enforcement actions by Defendants."

"It's time to end Monsanto's scorched-earth campaign of frivolous lawsuits against America's family farmers," said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, a grassroots community of more than 300,000 farmers and citizens dedicated to reforming food and agriculture. "Monsanto's claims against farmers for patent infringement are exceedingly weak, violating Americans' most basic sense of fairness and decency. Our Founding Fathers would be outraged", stated Murphy.

The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) develops, protects and promotes the organic seed trade and its growers, and assures that the organic community has access to excellent quality organic seed, free of contaminants and adapted to the diverse needs of local organic agriculture.
Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA)

Saturday, April 28, 2012

"FREE YOUR MIND AND THINK".......... Now here's a concept I can get behind.

While dawdling on Facebook, someone hooked me up to this link. It is so right on, it's hard to understand why I haven't hooked up to it before.

Here's a few samples of things on this blog. I highly recommend you all check it out.




And, that's just for starters. There is so much truth and good common sense on this site, it would take all day to show it. You can be a friend on Facebook, or just follow the blog at "http://freeyourmindandthink.blogspot.com/"

Sunday, March 25, 2012

67 YEARS AFTER ...... But, Have We Learned Anything?


Although the genocide that this tattoo reflects is one of the most heinous acts in the history of mankind, it is not the only black mark in recorded history.

1492-1890, North America.Genocide of Aboriginal Americans
Between 15-100 million people killed. Considered the most massive act of genocide in history.

1932, USSR. Joseph Stalin's Genocide in the USSR
40,000,000 (not including 20 million war dead) total civilians, including 7,000,000 starved to death in the Ukraine. Another six million farmers were starved or shot. 3,000,000 Muslims killed. Rampage included Lithuanians, Bulgarians, Estonians, Germans, and Cossacks.


1941, Germany. Nazi Holocaust (Genocide)
Total of people killed approximately 11 million: 22% Polish population (3 million Jews; 2 million non-Jews); 2.8 million Soviet POWs and 1.2 million Soviet civilians; 500,000-1,500,000 Gypsies (Romanies); 75,000-250,000 disabled people; 60% of the Jews in Europe.


1939-1945 World War II- Deadliest military conflict in history.
Highest death tolls were: 23 million in Soviet Union; 10-20 million in China; 6.5-8.5 million in Germany; 5-6 million in Poland; 3-4 million in the Dutch East Indies; 1.7 million in Japan; 1.6-2.6 million in India; 1-1.5 million in French Indochina; 1 million in Yugoslavia; .5-1 million in the Philippines; and around 1/2 million each in Great Britain, the US, Italy, France, Hungary, and Romania.


1945, Japan. Worst single act of genocide: Bombing of Tokyo, Toyama, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Death toll was between 450,000 and 1 million, mostly civilians. Tokyo: 90,000 people; Toyama: 128,000 people; Hiroshima: between 90,000-140,000 people; Nagasaki (plutonium bomb) 74,000 killed, 75,000 injured, several hundred thousand more died later from radiation poisoning.

1949-1969, China. Genocide by Mao Zedong of 49-78 million people in China and Tibet.

To remember isn't just enough. To progress, we must learn from the Genocide we have inflicted on all humankind, and we must vow to put an end to its perpetration by anyone, to anyone, for any reason.

We have entered an age where we can inflict the horrors of Genocide at almost any time with the push of a button. The key to our survival as a species, is to destroy those buttons, and stop them from ever being pushed again.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

SOMETIMES IN THE MAELSTROM OF CRAP THAT PERVADES OUR LIVES.......

YOU JUST HAVE TO TAKE A BREATH AND RECOGNIZE WHAT TRULY COUNTS.

This poem, titled "The Embrace", was sent to me by my friend from Berkeley that I've known since Garfield Junior High School. It provoked feelings and memories within me, that always make me realize what's really important. Thanks John.

THE EMBRACE
A poem by John Schweizer
".....what it is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?"---Kahlil Gilbran

Monday, February 6, 2012

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING......

Did you ever wonder how our President is perceived throughout the world?

This is how artist Carlos Latuff of Brazil sees our President and the U.S. relationship to other countries.

While at home our President is perceived, by many, like this......

There are some who perceive him as this......
I personally think he's getting a bum wrap on the third one.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

ARE WE ALL FEELING SAFER, NOW THAT WE'VE GOT THE UNLIMITED POWER TO DEFEND OUR COUNTRY?



So, once again our Liar of the First Office is telling us how much he believes in a free and prosperous country, while simply signing into law an act that can put anyone, any time, anywhere, into prison for any reason, without trial or charges.

Is it just me? Or does that sound like Hitler has been resurrected?

Yes folks.... the same man who got elected on principles we all wanted to believe in, has signed into power the "National Defense Authorization Act". NDAA for short.
And with this act comes some really fun stuff for a "Democracy". Like being able to detain anyone at any time for any reason without the inconvenient need for a trial or filing charges. Thanks.... Mr. President. I feel so much safer.

I know it's probably not my place to point this out, but isn't there a few amendments to the Constitution that this sort of ignores????????

Like IV, V, and VI for starters? Not to mention VII and VIII.
And,... while we're on the subject,... what about that little innocuous document called "The Bill Of Rights"? What ever happened to that?


"IF YOU AREN'T OUTRAGED,... YOU AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION"

IF CONGRESS HAS THEIR WAY, YOU AND I WILL NEVER HEAR THE TRUTH AGAIN !!!


Congress is about to vote on two bills that could change the way we receive information for ever. The "SOPA"(Stop Online Piracy Act), and the "PIPA"(Protect internet Piracy Act) are the most insidious attacks on our rights to know the truth since the Warren Commission sealed away their report on JFK's assassination. It is virtually pissing on the first amendment of the Constitution, and that's just for starters.
Got Freedom??? Not for long. If Congress gets away with this, what we know as democracy will be gone forever. The wheels of Fascism roll heavy and hard. Free speech is what's at stake here. Make no mistake about it.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world, will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to "go dark" on Wednesday in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently being debated in Congress. "What these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites," says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "What we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net." Chief technology officials in the Obama administration have expressed concern about any "legislation that...undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet." But the bills’ main backers—Hollywood movie studios and music publishers—want to stop the theft of their creative content, and the bills have widespread bipartisan support. A vote on SOPA is on hold in the House now, as the Senate is still scheduled vote on PIPA next Tuesday.

If ever there was a time to call your representatives and voice your opinion,... now is that time.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The Constitution is Under Attack..... Again. Who's Representatives are They Supposed To Be?

GOT FASCISM??? WELL YOU WILL HAVE. IT'S RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER.


You and I both know that freedom is not free.  Its price cannot be measured in dollars - and its defense requires eternal vigilance.

On December 1, the U.S. Senate passed S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), by a vote of 93-7.

A slightly different NDAA, H.R. 1540, had already passed the U.S. House in May, and it has been reconciled with the Senate version in a closed session of a Joint Conference Committee.

The NDAA is passed annually to specify the budget and expenditures for the U.S. Department of Defense, but this year's version would essentially strip American Citizens of due process - protections that used to set us apart from despotic nations.

The Senate version of the NDAA declares the homeland to be part of the battlefield in the "War on Terror."

In simple terms, Sections 1031 and 1032 of S. 1867 allow American citizens to be detained indefinitely - without charges or trial - until the War on Terror is declared over.

There has been some recent confusion over what exactly the Senate bill actually stipulates.

In fact, when you call your representative and BOTH of your senators, as I'm about to ask you to do, the staff will probably give you one of two canned responses:

1.) "The Feinstein amendment #1456, which passed on Dec. 1 (by a vote of 99-1), says that no provision of Sec. 1031 can be taken to "affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens."

In reality, this was added nearly unanimously at the last minute to appease those of us rightly opposed to these detention provisions.  In the Congressional Record that day, there are arguments from Senators Lindsey Graham and Carl Levin, both of whom supported this amendment, stating they believe the President and Congress already have the authority to detain American Citizens, since the Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled otherwise.  This is not the case, but it explains why the bill's main supporters did not oppose the Feinstein amendment.

2.)  "It already exempts American Citizens.  You should know that Sec. 1032 actually states: "The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States."

Don't fall for their cleverly chosen legislative language.

A careful reading of the suspect sections bears out that, while there is no requirement to detain an American citizen, the act thereof is not explicitly prohibited.  By extension, it is actually permitted.

As if the above is not bad enough, the power to determine which American citizens will be indefinitely detained without charges or trial will be left to the President alone.

I'm certain you would agree that something as important as overturning longstanding American jurisprudence deserves to be the subject of a vigorous debate in a public forum.

But, late last week, the House, by an overwhelming majority (406-17), passed a motion that allowed this Joint Committee to meet in secret.

Last night, the House and Senate conferees emerged without having changed the offending detainee provisions of the NDAA.

And the section numbers (formerly 1031 and 1032) have been changed to 1021 and 1022.

A vote on the conference report could come as early as this Wednesday in the House of Representatives!

So I need your members of Congress to know where you stand immediately!

It is imperative you contact your representative and both of your senators today to urge them to vote NO on the NDAA (H.R. 1540/S. 1867) Conference Report unless Secs. 1021 and 1022 are removed or modified to explicitly exclude all U.S. citizens and lawful resident aliens.

FOR YOUR REPRESENTATIVES....GO TO.... http://house.gov/representatives/

FOR YOUR SENATORS.....GO TO....
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Monday, December 12, 2011

Please Sir.... Could We Have Our Billion Dollar Robot Killing Machine Back?

You've got to admire the sheer balls of President Obama, for having the nerve to ask Iran for the return of our top secret multi-million dollar flying drone. Oh hell yes Mr. President, we'd be happy to return it so you can kill us at will.......NOT!!!



This story from the Associated Press....

Sunday, November 20, 2011

GOT RIGHTS?...... Not For Long if Government Has Their Way.

We are witnessing a revolutionary movement. Not the Occupy Movement, although that is a good start from the Peoples point of view.
The "Revolutionary Movement" I'm referring to... is the move of our own government to service the will of the 1% of ultra-rich Americans, at the expense of the other 99%. That would be you and me.
Okay, maybe "revolutionary" isn't the proper term. How about "unprecedented"? Does that sound more like what we're seeing?
The makings of Fascism in Our society are poised to be initiated. See my post of April 5, 2011. "The 14 Characteristics of Fascism, by Dr. Lawrence Britt.
Then you tell me..... Are We There Yet?

Excerpted from Common Dreams
UC Davis: Chancellor Linda Katehi held a press conference and then refused to leave the building as students gathered outside chanting, “We are peaceful” and “Just walk home.” After several hours, she was persuaded to walk out through two long, seated, deafeningly silent lines of outrage. Faculty and pretty much everyone else is calling for her resignation after the attack by police and pepper-spraying by the now-I.D.ed Lt. John Pike.


Excerpted from AlterNet

Interesting report this evening in the San Francisco Bay Guardian suggesting that big city mayors have not been the only ones making conference calls in an effort to coordinate crackdowns on Occupy Movement encampments:

...a little-known but influential private membership based organization has placed itself at the center of advising and coordinating the crackdown on the encampments. The Police Executive Research Forum, an international non-governmental organization with ties to law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been coordinating conference calls with major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs to advise them on policing matters and discuss response to the Occupy movement. The group has distributed a recently published guide on policing political events....
The coordination of political crackdowns on the Occupy movement has been conducted behind closed doors, with city officials and PERF refusing to say how many cities participated in the conference calls and the exact nature of the discussions. Reports of at least a dozen cities and some indication of as many as 40 accepting PERF advice and/or strategic documents include San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Portland [Oregon], Oakland, Atlanta, and Washington DC....PERF coordinated a November 10 conference call with city police chiefs across the country – and many of these cities undertook crackdowns shortly afterward.

We can take an educated guess at "the exact nature of the discussions" by looking at the leadership of the Police Executive Research Forum:

PERF’s current and former directors read as a who's who of police chiefs involved in crackdowns on anti-globalization and political convention protesters resulting in thousands of arrests, hundreds of injuries, and millions of dollars paid out in police brutality and wrongful arrest lawsuits.
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If history teaches us anything, it's that the repression can get a lot worse. As Glenn Greenwald noted astutely today,

Law enforcement officials and policy-makers in America know full well that serious protests — and more — are inevitable given the economic tumult and suffering the U.S. has seen over the last three years (and will continue to see for the foreseeable future). A country cannot radically reduce quality-of-life expectations, devote itself to the interests of its super-rich, and all but eliminate its middle class without triggering sustained citizen fury.
The reason the U.S. has paramilitarized its police forces is precisely to control this type of domestic unrest, and it’s simply impossible to imagine its not being deployed in full against a growing protest movement aimed at grossly and corruptly unequal resource distribution.

Put another way: "Dancing With the Stars" can only keep so many people anesthetized for so long. Or, as Gandhi described it, in a situation where people knew they'd been colonized: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they crack down..."

We know what happens after that.