Wondering thoughts causing wondrous woes, making one wonder.
Labels: Al Gore, Constitutional Crisis, Corporate Profits, Democracy, Economy, Education, Elections, enviroment, Family Values, humanities Politics, Peace, Politics, President Obama, Sean Parker
Labels: 13, Anti-war, ArcadeFire, Bradley Manning, Chris Hedges, Constitutional Crisis, Corporate Profits, Education, enviroment, free speech, Gandhi, humanities, President Obama, unholy war
Our Environment is assaulted ... while we claim dominion over the earth from Colorado SpringsPublished on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 by The Washington Post
Cutting Medicaid Means Cutting Care for the Poor, Sick and Elderly
by Ezra KleinThe part of Paul Ryan’s budget that’s going to get the most attention is his proposal to privatize and voucherize Medicare. But the part that worries me the most is his effort to slash Medicaid, with no real theory as to how to make up the cuts.
Ryan’s op-ed introducing his budget lists Medicaid under “welfare reform,” reflecting the widespread belief that Medicaid is a program for the poor. That belief is wrong, or at least incomplete. A full two-thirds of Medicaid’s spending goes to seniors and people with disabilities — even though seniors and the disabled are only a quarter of Medicaid’s members. Sharply cutting Medicaid means sharply cutting their benefits, as that’s where the bulk of Medicaid’s money goes. This is not just about the free health care given to some hypothetical class of undeserving and unemployed Medicaid queens.
But perhaps cutting it wouldn’t be so bad if there were a lot of waste in Medicaid. But there isn’t. Medicaid is cheap. Arguably too cheap. Its reimbursements are so low many doctors won’t accept Medicaid patients. Its costs grew less quickly than those of private insurance over the past decade, and at this point, a Medicaid plan is about 20 percent cheaper than an equivalent private-insurance plan. As it happens, I don’t think Medicaid is a great program, and I’d be perfectly happy to see it moved onto the exchanges once health-care reform is up and running. But the reason that’s unlikely to happen isn’t ideology. It’s money. Giving Medicaid members private insurance would cost many billions of dollars.That’s why it’s well understood that converting Medicaid into block grants means cutting people off from using it, or limiting what they can use it for. You can see CBO director Doug Elmendorf say exactly the same thing here. There’s just not another way to cut costs in the program. You can, of course, work to cut costs outside of the program, either by helping people avoid becoming disabled or making it cheaper to treat patients once they become disabled or sick, but those sorts of health-system reforms are beyond the ambitions of Ryan’s budget.
To get around some of this, Ryan’s op-ed talks about state flexibility, with the implication being that states have some secret Medicaid policies they’ve been dying to try but that the federal government simply hasn’t let them attempt. But the truth is there’s been a tremendous amount of experimentation in Medicaid over recent decades. Indiana converted its Medicaid program into health savings accounts. Tennessee based its program around managed care. Massachusetts folded its Medicaid money into Mitt Romney’s health-care reforms. Oregon tried to rank treatments by value. Some of these reforms have worked well and some haven’t worked at all, but none have solved the basic problem that covering the sick and disabled costs money, and you can’t get around that by trying to redesign their insurance packages. For that reason, block-granting Medicaid ultimately means cutting health-care coverage to the poor, the elderly and the disabled, even as it doesn’t actually address the factors driving costs throughout the health-care system.
© 2011 The Washington Post
Politicizing contradictions to common knowledge, men who claim to be of truth, here is their truthTEPCO Implementing Massive Discharge of Nuclear Waste into Open Ocean
Friends of the Earth calls on U.S. government to intervene
WASHINGTON - April 4 - Friends of the Earth warned today that plans by the Japanese utility TEPCO to dump some 11,500 tons of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean pose substantial threats to people and the environment.
Given U.S. government involvement in efforts to control the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Friends of the Earth called on the Obama administration to intervene to stop this dumping of nuclear waste.
“Dumping this nuclear waste directly into the Pacific is dangerous and unacceptable,” said Damon Moglen, Director of the Climate and Energy Project at Friends of the Earth. “It’s incredible that while an international treaty forbids the dumping of even a barrel of this nuclear waste from a ship, Japan intends to send thousands of tons of that waste into the ocean. This dumping poses a direct threat to humans and the environment, and fisheries and industries depending on a clean Pacific could be devastated.”
Killing the Mentally IllWonderThe Religious Right's Anti-Union Crusade
| Mon Apr. 4, 2011 3:17 AM PDT
Wisconsin's ongoing labor battle has officially become a holy war. The Family Research Council, the evangelical advocacy organization founded by James Dobson, has been dipping into its war chest to defend Republican Governor Scott Walker's efforts to curtail collective bargaining for public-sector unions. FRC president Tony Perkins interviewed backers of Walker's anti-union bill on his weekly radio program and has tweeted his support for the bill, directly linking social conservatism with an anti-union, pro-business agenda: "Pro-family voters should celebrate WI victory b/c public & private sector union bosses have marched lock-step w/liberal social agenda."
The FRC's new political action committee, the Faith, Family, Freedom Fund, is airing ads on 34 Wisconsin radio stations in an effort to influence the April 5 judicial election that could ultimately decide the fate of the law. The ads target Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, who's running against a conservative incumbent, David Prosser, for a seat on the state Supreme Court. If elected, Kloppenburg would alter the balance on the court in favor of Democrats, giving them the ability to invalidate the recently enacted ban on public-employee collective bargaining. "Liberals see her as their best hope to advance their political agenda and strike down laws passed by a legislature and governor elected by the people," say the ads. "A vote for Prosser is a vote to keep politics out of the Supreme Court."
The FRC's anti-labor campaign in Wisconsin is part of its larger agenda to meld fiscal conservatism with its family-values message. Its recent priorities have included fighting health care reform, new taxes on the wealthy, and President Obama's budget proposals. In recent weeks, Perkins has used his radio show to hash through small-government talking points with House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Tea Party caucus head Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who told him, "The bigger government gets, the smaller God gets." After exploring the value of union busting with Republican state Representative Robin Vos of Wisconsin last month, Perkins expressed "our thanks to you, as conservatives across the country."
Perkins typically doesn't discuss the Biblical justifications for his ideas. (FRC did not return calls from Mother Jones.) However, some of the speakers at the "FRC University" online lecture series provide a clearer idea of the Biblical justifications for opposing limits on corporations and the wealthy. One recent speaker was Jay Richards, who edits a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank that the FRC describes as its "sister organization." His book, Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem, is a free-market treatise aimed at the faithful. In his talk he maintains that the sanctity of private property is the preeminent Christian value: "You might call it an idea being made in the image of God."
"You get these funny quotes about people saying, well, 'Jesus was the first socialist,'" Richards explained. "If you read the Bible, this idea of private property is everywhere presupposed. There is not a 'Thou shalt believe in private property' sort of verse anywhere, but it's so fundamental that it's presupposed in two of the Ten Commandments. 'Thou shalt not steal' assumes that people have property that is legitimate and that should not be taken."
Another recent FRC lecturer offered a related interpretation of the Bible's calls for social justice. "Christ does not necessarily condemn the rich per se," said Mark Caleb Smith, the director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University. But, he added, the good book does at times condemn the poor: "The Old Testament, especially in the Book of Proverbs, ascribes poverty to oppression, but also to other things like laziness, the love of sleep, the love of pleasure, the love of food, the love of wine. And so even Proverbs says, you know, sometimes you may be poor because of your behavior."
"Government-imposed social justice is unjust," Smith concluded, adding that Christians who support that notion are heretical and un-American. "For the Christian left, America is part of the problem. The American system of capitalism is part of the problem. They seek a fundamental reconstruction."
This strain of private-property-centric Christianity has deep roots within America's fundamentalist movement. For an excellent rundown of that history, check out Peter Montgomery's recent article in Religion Dispatches, "Jesus Hates Taxes." Among other things, Montgomery highlights an early Christian Coalition manual that interprets a New Testament passage in support of slavery to conclude that "Christians have a responsibility to submit to the authority of their employers, since they are designated as part of God's plan for the exercise of authority on the earth by man."
Of course, exegetical disputes with liberal Christians aren't the only reasons why FRC opposes labor unions. Not only do unions' economic principles put them at odds with evangelicals, so do their social values. A recent press release from Dobson's Focus On The Family, which was once conjoined with the FRC, complains that most political donations from labor unions go to Democrats and liberal social causes. "Over the past several election cycles, unions and their members contributed millions to fight against core American values—especially on issues of life, religious freedom and marriage." Still, explains a spokeswoman, "There are many good, hard-working Americans who are union members, but they would do well to consider whether union support of same-sex marriage and the taxpayer funding of abortion in government health care represents their interests."
Labels: Constitutional Crisis, Corporate Profits, freedom of religion, Politics, Religion, religious right, wondering not lost
A proposed Tennessee law would make following the Islamic code known as Shariah law a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail.
State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, introduced the same bill in the Senate and House last week. It calls Shariah law a danger to homeland security and gives the attorney general authority to investigate complaints and decide who's practicing it.
It exempts peaceful practice of Islam but labels any adherence to Shariah law — which includes religious practices such as feet washing and prayers — as treasonous. It claims Shariah adherents want to replace the Constitution with their religious law.
Labels: 13, Church and State, Constitutional Crisis, Faith, Family Values, freedom of religion, Hate Crimes, humanities Politics, Racism, religious right, The Great White Way, wondering not lost
Labels: 9/11, Anti-war, Bush, CIA, Constitutional Crisis, Corporate Profits, free speech, Hate Crimes, humanities, man, media, Mr President, Peace, State of the Union, The Great White Way, War
Greg Palast | The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Kingdom Greg Palast writes: "In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One.... And the committee members didn't even know it."
Palast Exclusive: The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Kingdom. . . .There's no pride in this. Our BBC team broke the story at the top of the nightly news everywhere on the planet --- except the USA --- only because America's news networks simply refused to cover this evidence of the electoral coup d'etat that chose our President in 2004.
And now, not bothering to understand the astonishing revelation in Goodling's confessional, they are missing the real story behind the firing of the US attorneys. It's not about removing prosecutors disloyal to Bush, it's about replacing those who refused to aid the theft of the vote in 2004 with those prepared to burgle it again in 2008.
Now that they have the keys, let's see if they can put them in the right door. The clock is ticking ladies and gents...
(Ed Note: You can easily contact your Congress Members to call and/or email them this information by clicking here. Let them know they need to take action. Now. And feel free to point them towards this article, URL: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4594)
. . . .
more at The BRAD BLOG
Free the Press!
Labels: Alberto Gonzales, Bush, Constitutional Crisis, Elections, Greg Palast, Politics
WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 22) - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) gave the following speech on the floor of the House of Representatives today:
"The Associated Press reports that the latest Iraq Supplemental funding plan, incredibly, will tie an increase in the minimum wage to funding the war through October.
"If this is true, and I hope it is not, it tells American workers that the only way they will get an increase in wages is to continue to support funding the war which is taking the lives of their sons and daughters.
"First blood for oil. Now a minimum wage for maximum blood. Aren't the American people giving enough blood for this war without having to give more to have a wage increase?
"What's happened to our country? We are losing our moral compass. We're losing our sense of justice. We're losing touch with the difference between right and wrong.
"We do not have to fund this war. We must leave Iraq now. Support our troops and bring them home. HR 1234 is a plan to end the war and stabilize Iraq and give Iraqis control of their oil.
"We must take a new path. We must take a path of truth and justice."
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Natalie Laber (202) 225-5871 (o); (202) 365-1040 (c)
Labels: Anti-war, Constitutional Crisis, Corporate Profits, Economy, Family Values, Iraq, Peace, Politics, War
Bill Moyers Journal takes a look at Regent University, Pat Robertson's Christian leadership institution, which is working to ensure that Biblical principles are reflected in the law of the land.
The recent controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors found Regent University graduate Monica Goodling - special counsel to Alberto Gonzalez and one of some 150 Regent students who have worked in the Bush administration since 2001 - at the center of a political firestorm. Bill Moyers Journal takes viewers to commencement at Robertson's university for a closer look at its mission to ensure Biblical principles are reflected in the law of the land.
Also on the program: Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of the libertarian monthly Reason magazine, discusses the war, the media and the impact of the religious right in Washington today; and historian Marilyn B. Young, co-editor of Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past, talks about history's lessons for the war in Iraq.
Labels: Bill Moyers, Church and State, Constitutional Crisis, Family Values, freedom of religion, Haliban, Hate Crimes, man, media, Politics, Religion, religious right, State of the Union, VT
He also coined the word "agnostic," to describe his own religious idea that the only things worth believing in were things that could be directly observed in the world. His definition:
Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of your intellect, follow you reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.
Labels: Atheist, Charles Darwin, Constitutional Crisis, Evolution, freedom of religion, Politics, Religion, Thomas Huxley
". . . Bill Moyers talks with Jonathan Miller about his upcoming series and his views on religion in the modern world. Jonathan Miller's series "A Brief History of Disbelief" will air on many PBS stations across the country starting May 4."
Labels: Atheist, Bill Moyers, Church and State, Constitutional Crisis, Faith, freedom of religion, Jonathan Miller, media, Politics, Religion, religious right
"It appears to me that the majority of the American people are followers who willingly bow down to that which they perceive as authority. The people want to be lead. They have a deep seated desire to be directed, to be told not only what to do, but how to live. Millions of them are waiting for a messiah to appear who will lead them to the Promised Land—a messiah that requires nothing from them before the judgment day. They only have to profess their faith and to follow—to do as they are told by the religious hierarchy, and wait.
Of course, followers require leaders, and that makes them vulnerable to charlatans and frauds. The trouble with leaders and followers is that leaders often mislead and followers obediently trail them to the very gates of hell. During the course of the journey, superstition and ignorance gradually replace rationality and knowledge. Truth gets lost in the shuffle or is cast into the flames of desire. Thus we find ourselves standing at the brink of an old and familiar abyss, the onslaught of a new age of darkness and fear. Lies supplant truth, darkness replaces light. War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. The lessons of history remain unlearned and endlessly repeat themselves in rhythmic cycles of human comedy and tragedy."
Labels: Anti-war, Church and State, Constitutional Crisis, Faith, Family Values, freedom of religion, Haliban, Hate Crimes, man, Politics, Religion, religious right, VT, War
Labels: Anti-war, Constitutional Crisis, Global Warming, Jimmy Kimmel, Mr President, Pink, State of the Union, War
Labels: Anti-war, Constitutional Crisis, Richard Burns, War
Mushroom-Clouded Thinking by Devin Helfrich, read it! at TomPaine.com
Buried deep within the volumes of the Bush administration’s annual budget proposal is an initial request for funds to start rebuilding its nuclear weapons infrastructure——at a price tag of over $150 billion. One possible location for this new H-bomb plant is the Savannah River site in South Carolina.
Why, in a world where the United States is legitimately worried about countries like Iran and North Korea building new nuclear weapons, is the Bush administration rebuilding its own nuclear weapons complex? While common in Washington, this type of hypocrisy is astonishing.
US Military, President Out Of Control . . . What Does 'Mildly Radioactive' Mean, Anyway?
By Bob Nichols Project Censored Award Winner 2-21-05
"I believe in the end that ... you will comprehend that the amount of DU [Depleted Uranium] released into the atmosphere since 1991 is far more than my estimate.
Whatever you or I think or differ about, the disaster is worse than we even know ... but that tale will be told each year, each decade, each century.
Humanity has changed the genome of the entire planet forever." - Leuren Moret ". . .
Remember the 100-hour-long First Gulf War? Only an unlucky few were killed.
We Americans used 375 tons of uranium munitions.
Out of the one half million, or so, soldiers in the prime of life in the war, 11,000 are now dead.
and hundreds of thousands are on Medical Disability "The latest good journalist to "Drink the Government Kool-Aid" was Bob Evans of the Daily Press in Virginia.
Evans used the deceptive Government term "mildly radioactive" over and over, in his recent seven-part series on uranium weapons in use by the US Military.
In his effort to be fair, Evans, a respected veteran journalist, never used the forbidden words "illegal" or "war crimes."
The Daily Press readership includes a large segment of "retired military." "Since uranium is a metal that also catches on fire and burns, the bombs, shells and bullets burn and vaporize when they hit something hard like a tank, bunker, or building.
Uranium gas and smoke ends up in the nose, throat and lungs of our kids and friends in the US Military and any unlucky Iraqi around. Some of the gas also hitches a ride on the desert winds to the rest of the world, including the American ally, Israel.
"This is a real bummer for the American Troopers and the Iraqis. Uranium by the thousands of tons has been dispersed this way in Iraq during Gulf War I, the No-Fly Zones era, Gulf War II, the war after the war, and to this very day.
Once the uranium gas and dust is in their lungs and bodies the soldiers and civilians become radiation poisoning victims and are forever changed.
"There is no way to remove the uranium smoke from the body. It is radioactive. There is no treatment; there is no cure. This stuff stays dangerous, lethal even, forever and a day. After all, it is highly radioact ...err, ... pardon me, "mildly radioactive," ... err ... whatever! ". . . It gets worse.
Captain Terry Riordon unknowingly brought radiation poisoning home with him from Iraq to his wife, Susan Riordon.
As recounted in the November, 2004 issue of the mainstream Conde Nast publication Vanity Fair, Mrs. Riordon was constantly burned by her husband's semen during intercourse.
"Seems Terry's semen was turned to a fiery alkali by the radioactive uranium that settled in his testicles. The happily married couple had no idea what this new and horrifying complication was in this intensely private part of their life together. Little did they know the American Department of Defense had hopped into bed with them with a deadly intent. "With her husband slowly dying of radiation poisoning and in intense pain herself, Mrs. Riordon resorted to filling condoms with frozen green peas to use on herself to obtain relief from the internal burning's intense, excruciating, lasting pain. Other couples do that and other wildly frantic and imaginative measures seeking relief. The burning can leave blisters and contamination. "
"It hurt [Terry] too. He said it was like forcing it through barbed wire," Riordon says. "It seemed to burn through condoms; if he got any on his thighs or his testicles, he was in hell."
In a last, desperate attempt to save their sex life, says Riordon, "I used to fill condoms with frozen peas and insert them [after sex] with a lubricant." That, she says, made her pain just about bearable.
Perhaps inevitably, he became impotent. "And that was like our last little intimacy gone."
"Children produced from radioactive soldier's couplings have devastating birth defects; both to war's children born in the United States and in Iraq. After all, uranium gas is just a dumb radioactive metal; it does not care one whit about the nationality of the body parts it targets."
. . . Bob Evans, in his series, even inadvertently let a Classified Specification out of the bag.
The 140,000 pound Abrams Main Battle Tank, a primary dispenser of radioactive, poisonous uranium gas and dust in Iraq, fires its big gun at a spectacular 2,100 MPH or three times the speed of sound (MACH III.) "The three foot long solid uranium projectiles then vaporize and burn at temperatures ranging from an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 degrees as they penetrate their target. Mr. Evans, guru-like, informs us the temperature is 5,600 degrees.
"What is the difference in "highly radioactive in Russia or "mildly radioactive" in Virginia?
Is it the same metal? Yes, it is.
Are both metals radioactive? Yes!
Whether they are in Russia or the United States, yes, they are: at 12,000 little bullets per second, anywhere in the known universe!
Uranium is our own perverse absolute value. "Well, this is kind of a bummer for all US citizens. President Bush and the US Military have gone and screwed the pooch.
Turns out that using uranium for weapons is, like, kind of a "Big Time" War Crime. Not only is it a War Crime, it is a War Crime four different ways, according to famous UN War Crimes and humanitarian lawyer Karen Parker, JD.
"Parker stated "My 'four-point' test is especially intelligible: people understand.
"It spreads" (beyond the field of battle);
"it lasts" (can't be turned off when the war ends);
"it injures people in impermissible ways" (as in making an as yet unborn child deformed);
and "it harms the environment". " . . Uranium bombs, shells and bullets are just different forms of slow-acting, stealth nuclear weapons.
They are slower than the instant big boom and flash of Nagasaki type Nuclear Weapons - the atom bomb and hydrogen bomb. They are the answer to the Administration's dedicated Crusade for the Holy Grail of a "usable" nuclear weapon.
"Time has telescoped from 1945 instantly-past to present; World War II is just over, and we used nuclear weapons on civilians. Now we are using the next generation of nuclear weapons on the hapless guerrillas and civilians of Iraq. They never had a chance. Not a prayer.
"Uranium weapons spread deadly radioactivity that kills and contaminates forever.
Iraq is simply "toast" because of the indiscriminate, promiscuous and criminal use of millions of pounds of uranium weapons by our kids and friends in the US Military, at the command of their political masters. The masters and troopers are war criminals, and we, the U.S. taxpayers, are accessories to war crimes.
US Military Out of Control - Defies Law "So, what to do? It's all right there, in US Army Regulations, according to Maj. Doug Rokke, Ph.D. Ret., the former Director of the Pentagon Depleted Uranium Project.
U.S. Army Regulations AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278 require the Army to "Clean and Treat."
The Army is required by US law to treat all persons affected and all areas contaminated by the radioactive uranium munitions. There are no ifs, ands, or buts.
"The self-claimed right to use war crime weapons carries the with it big responsibility to clean up after oneself. Refusing to clean up and treat is purposeful genocide. It is that simple.
We are guilty as sin. "Dennie Williams' breakthrough CommonDreams.org article of November 11, 2004 sets the record straight on the US Military's view of using and cleaning up after illegal uranium munitions. "The Department of Defense 'does not clean up DU [depleted uranium weapons] once it leaves a U.S. weapons system such as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and hits an enemy building, or vehicle', said Melissa Bohan, an Army public affairs official."
"The "suits" in the Pentagon can't be anymore clear than that. They absolutely refuse to treat the people poisoned, including their own troopers, and refuse to clean up the poisoned radioactive land.
The US Military did the same thing in Vietnam with the chemical Agent Orange, which was denied and covered up for decades. As one Vietnam War medic says "Uranium weapons are like Agent Orange on steriods."
"Therefore, the situation is this: the political leadership of the U.S. decided to secretly use thousands of tons of a genocidal weapon, uranium, in Iraq. Their servants in the US Military are gung-ho to irradiate the Iraqis and poison their land, forever, with illegal uranium-based war crimes weapons. The Army refuses to obey their own Regulations, that have the force of law, to Clean & Treat, in their slavish obedience to the sub-human, sick, perverted genocidal desires of their politically appointed controllers.
What's wrong with this picture? "This is real Nazi Germany stuff, isn't it? Closer to home, it is very similar to Andrew Jackson's policy of exterminating Native Americans. Citizens here in the U.S. may not want to know or accept that fact, but that is the sleight-of-hand dealt to us mere citizens in America in 2005 by our corporate-owned and sponsored politicians and media.
"Denying a fact situation does not make it disappear. The facts, and the thousands of tons of weaponized uranium oxide gas and dust, just hang in there. This is impossible for supposedly patriotic "My Country Right or Wrong - Love It or Leave It" type Americans to explain away.
"Uranium is as real as it gets, and it never goes away. As long as there are congenitally deformed Iraqis left in the world, and until the Iraqis are finally exterminated by these long-lived genocidal weapons, they will continue to whisper and croak in whatever voice left to them: "America Exterminated Me, Punish Them!" and demand justice.
"Americans of all political stripes should be enraged to hear of what our US Military has done to Iraq. It is not OK, and they should feel betrayed by the Bush Administration, perhaps especially the center-right Americans responsible for twice electing Bush. (And the results of Both elections are still disputed.)
"It was real Americans some 60 years ago "The Greatest Generation," as network news reader Tom Brokaw called them, in his book of the same name, who with the Russians, Free French, British and others stomped the fascist war makers in Germany and their Axis ally Japan in World War II.
"Now the "World's Only Superpower's" American Army has taken the place of Hitler's Storm Troopers in ruling the modern world. It is supremely ironic that their own uranium weapons kill them as well as the "enemy" civilians, as they set out to control.
These unthinking soldiers will ultimately destroy the world, and that seems to be the desired outcome of Administration's cult like "Rapture Me" Christo-fascist radical religious tradition.
"In the famous Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, established after World War II to try Nazi War Criminals and assess their guilt and punishment, the Chief Prosecutor said of the German people something that applies directly to Americans today. He speaks knowingly and directly across more than 50 years of time to resolutely instruct American citizens on exactly what our duty is today, right now:”
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience therefore have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." - Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950 "The statement was affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal. It is now international law and by extension, U.S. law. It is our duty as American citizens.
The fascist government controlling the United States and the US Military can no longer be allowed to exist.
The world and international law holds us all accountable, and the price is dear.
"These white-collar criminals must all be impeached and imprisoned for their war crimes, commensurate with their degree of complicity and guilt. If the House will not impeach and the Senate will not put them on trial, then, we have a problem."
We will have to do it ourselves.
Additionally, we have to vote out the co-conspirators in the Senate and the House for refusing to impeach.
That is the law, handed down in 1950 after a disastrous world-wide war.
We Americans must follow the law. It is our sacred duty. As President Bush likes to say "they [the House and Senate] are either for us or against us." "Can we wait till tomorrow, next week, or, next year to impeach?
"In a word, "No!" "Leuren Moret, world famous former Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab scientist, said the following in an Email on Valentine's Day, 2005, requesting hundreds of physicists, scientists, professionals, managers, writers and others to join in the world-wide effort to stop the current flagrant use of illegal uranium weapons: ""I believe in the end that ... you will comprehend that the amount of DU [Depleted Uranium] released into the atmosphere since 1991 is far more than my estimate. Whatever you or I think or differ about, the disaster is worse than we even know ... but that tale will be told each year, each decade, each century. Humanity has changed the genome of the entire planet forever."
"How can you help us present the disaster in a way that ordinary people can comprehend? Infant mortality is increasing globally for the first time in 41 years..." "This planet is being turned into a death star," Moret added.
"The time to act is now. The Bush Administration controls the big media on this issue. They do not control you. Tell your friends and email this article everywhere. As U.S. citizens, as human beings, we know what we should do, and we know that we cannot afford to wait any longer.
Writers & Warriors Speakers Group: Contact Bob Nichols at info-radiation-wars@cox.net
Labels: Anti-war, Constitutional Crisis, Depleted Uranium, media, Politics, War
“My ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. James Luther Adams, told us to watch closely what the Christian right did to homosexuals. He had seen the same tactic in Nazi Germany, where he spent 1935 and 1936 working with the underground anti-Nazi church known as the Confessing Church. The Nazis also used “values” to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered, culminating in the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin and the permanent exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfeld. Thousands of volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a bonfire. The stripping of these Germans’ civil rights was largely cheered by the public and the German churches. But it legitimated tactics, outside the law, that would soon be employed against others. Adams said homosexuals would also be the first “social deviants” singled out and disempowered by the Christian right, but not the last.”
A quarter of the way through Chris’s article I thought of Nazi Germany. It seems to me that everything is already in place here, or soon will be. Wire tap capabilities, ID cards or Driver’s license needed for practically everything. Cell phones can track one’s whereabouts.
Last time it was the Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles…… Who will it be this time? Most likely the Arabs, and Muslims in general. The propaganda and stereotyping against them seems reminiscent of the propaganda and stereotyping against Jews years ago, except perhaps the violence factor. I guess the Holocaust wasn’t horrifying enough to wake people up. Chris seems to suggest we’re on the road to reliving it.
Framing the Debate By George Lakoff is a book that sheds light on how Chris’s premise is accomplished.
But the most disturbing of all is, that most of us go only as far as the nearest blog to voice our concern, even outrage. Most of us feel powerless to do something or to know what to do to stop the madness. Our politicians are bought and paid for and perhaps all have their own dirty little secrets that could be exposed if they rebel. But most likely, it’s that they like their privileged jobs and know who’s paying the bills to keep them in power. And most don’t see or want to see the big picture. It’s every man for himself and the country be damned.
Remember the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892––1984). He wound up in a Nazi concentration camp for speaking out.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Which reminds me of my favorite from John Dunne, Meditation XVIII believe the last lines of which go like this:
“No man is an island entire to itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main ……. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel
by Ali Abunimah
A decade ago the author, a Palestinian activist based in Chicago, thought wishfully of then State Senator Barack Obama: "If only a man of this calibre could become president one day." No longer. Obama now identifies totally with the political line of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most relentlessly aggressive arm of the Israel lobby. Although saddened by Obama's "about-face," the author isn't surprised. "He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power."
Mayan Indians, victims of genocide at the hands of a succession of U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictators, this week announced they would attempt to "purify" a site visited by George Bush, to remove any evil spirits the president might have left there
Labels: Church and State, Constitutional Crisis, Faith, freedom of religion, Haliban, Joan Chittister, Peace, Politics, Religion, War
Inequality Links
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."~Edward R. Murrow
The present Constitution of the State of Tennessee declares that "all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their conscience; that no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship or support any minister against his consent; that no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience; and that no preference shall be given by law to any religious establishment; that no political or religious test, other than an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and of this state, shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust in this state."
