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"Scum always rises to the top, but instead of scraping it off and discarding it, most people follow it!?!"
--Sherlyn Meinz, 2008
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 | Politics: The Anti-Empire Report - September 2010 |
 By William Blum, www.killinghope.org
Things which don't go away. Things the American government and media don't let go of.
And neither do I.
Iraq
"They're leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts," declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq. [1]
It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.
Enough to make him forget.
But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, September 01 @ 20:55:20 EDT (27 reads)
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| Politics: Calling Them Out: War Profiteer Steven R. Loranger |
 by: Nick Mottern, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
War profiteering is defined by Stuart Brandes in his book "Warhogs, a History of War Profits in America," as "a gain in economic well-being obtained as a result of military conflict."
As he shows, there is a long history of war profiteering in the United States and an equally long history of public disgust for it. One of the most quoted expressions of this disgust came from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II: "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."
Brandes also notes there was a time when war was exceptional and war profiteering a nasty exceptional thing that accompanied it. But after World War II, the United States moved more and more to a status of permanent war.
In his new book "Washington Rules," former Army Col. Andrew Bacevich says a group of "semi-warriors" ... "some in uniform, others in suits," operators in the military-industrial complex, had by 1961 "gained de facto control of the U.S. government." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, August 27 @ 22:44:32 EDT (38 reads)
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| Politics: Peace: The Real Deficit Buster |
 FCNL.org – A Quaker Lobby in the Public Interest
For the first time in decades, real cuts in Pentagon spending could be on the agenda.
Recognizing that federal budget deficits will put military spending under the microscope, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has called for the Pentagon to “restrain spending.” In response, military contractors and some members of Congress are demanding that no cuts be made in their favorite Pentagon projects.
We need to mobilize thousands of concerned people to persuade Congress that deficit reduction and smart security call for real cuts in military spending.
Members of Congress should hear from you, right now. Before they return for the September legislative session, they should know that their constituents support cutting the Pentagon budget.
You can help make sure that cuts in Pentagon spending are on the table as Congress considers ways to reduce the federal government deficit. Write your representative today. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, August 26 @ 20:30:18 EDT (32 reads)
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| Politics: Dishonoring MLK's Legacy |
 What do Beck, Palin, and the NRA have to do with the 1963 March on Washington?
By Dedrick Muhammad
This year's anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington promises to be memorable.Though big commemorations aren't typical for 47th anniversaries, thousands will be in the streets on August 28 commemorating the march, including many people advancing a social agenda that would make Martin Luther King Jr. roll over in his grave.
Flamboyant talk-show host Glenn Beck has called for a national rally on the anniversary at the exact same location as the historic protest, the Lincoln Memorial. Beck's rally theme is "Restoring Honor." According to his website, this "celebration of America" won't be political. Well then, why have Sarah Palin scheduled to deliver the keynote speech, and why is the National Rifle Association endorsing this right-wing spectacle?
From what I can gather, these folks think that America can restore its honor by strengthening individual virtue, especially if enough people come to Washington on Aug. 28 to listen to inflammatory speeches. Or pick up copies of Beck's new book "The Plan," which he'll launch at this absurd event.
What do Beck, Palin, and the NRA have to do with the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered the landmark "I Have a Dream" speech? Nothing. Beck has admitted not realizing that the legendary March occurred on Aug. 28. He credits "divine providence" for having his rally/book launch converge with such a historic event. Beck now proclaims that he is working "to finish the job" that was at the heart of King's poetic vision. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, August 11 @ 21:09:34 EDT (62 reads)
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| Politics: The Anti-Empire Report - August 2010 |
by William Blum
So please tell me again: What's the war about?
When facts are inconvenient, when international law, human rights and history get in the way, when war crimes can't easily be justified or explained away, when logic doesn't help much, the current crop of American political leaders turns to what is now the old reliable: 9/11. We have to fight in Afghanistan because ... somehow ... it's tied into what happened on September 11, 2001. Here's Vice-President Joe Biden: "We know that it was from the space that joins Afghanistan and Pakistan that the attacks of 9/11 occurred." [1]
Here's Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC): "This is the place [Afghanistan] we were attacked from 9/11." [2]
Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking House Republican, asserted that the revelations in the Wikileaks documents do not change his view of the Afghan conflict, nor does he expect a shift in public opinion. "Back home in Indiana, people still remember where the attacks on 9/11 came from." [3]
Here's President Obama a year ago: "But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, August 04 @ 22:16:52 EDT (71 reads)
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| Politics: Our Prisons Don't do us Justice |
 By William A. Collins
Lock the prisons,
Toss the key;
Just don't send
The bill to me.
Prison numbers are tough to pin down. There is the federal system, there are 50 state systems, and no one is just sure how many local jails or military brigs. All told, professionals estimate that one in every 100 Americans resides in one of them.
To observe that this figure sounds surprisingly high badly understates the point. It's totally obscene. We have replaced Russia and China as the world's incarceration powerhouse. And whatever else you may think of some of our allies, our incarceration rate is six times that of Canada and eight times that of France.
No, nothing special has happened to our actual crime rate to cause this jump. The difference is politics. President Ronald Reagan decided that wars on drugs and crime would be good vote-getters and his idea stuck. Then, to consolidate the change, along with all the new prisons came a slew of new guards. To protect their jobs they have quickly become a potent lobby against any sort of criminal justice reform. What a mess! ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, August 02 @ 22:04:42 EDT (80 reads)
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| Politics: Candidate appearances affect election outcomes |
 MIT researchers demonstrate people around the world have similar ideas about what a good politician looks like
by: Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office
When you vote in an election, your choice is surely not influenced by anything as superficial as a candidate’s looks, right?
Right?
New research from MIT political scientists shows that the appearances of politicians do indeed strongly influence voters — and that people around the world have similar ideas about what a good politician looks like.
While few political observers would be surprised to learn that good looks earn votes, the MIT researchers have quantified a phenomenon that is more often assumed to be true than rigorously measured. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 28 @ 17:56:47 EDT (78 reads)
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| Politics: It Takes too Much Money to Run |
 Who are we to tell other countries how to manage their elections?
By William A. Collins
Our elections
Run on lies,
Best distortions
Bucks can buy.
There's no small irony in the United States forcing "democracy" down the throats of our adversaries around the world while our own democracy is teetering on so many perilous brinks. Given the shaky system here, what nation abroad would want to take direction from us?
We seem to feel that the American system is above reproach because that's essentially what we learned in school. But the rest of the world is not so easily deluded. There's widespread understanding that money rules Congress, both by promoting specific candidates and by fawning over them when they win. That's why a few enlightened lands have imposed strict contribution limits and much shorter campaigns. They view our experience with horror. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, July 27 @ 21:42:58 EDT (79 reads)
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| Politics: Double Dividend: Make Money by Saving Nature |
 by: George Lakoff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Saving nature is the central issue. Carbon fuels destroy nature. The Gulf Death Gusher is the most visible sign. But signs are everywhere. Overall global warming increases hurricanes and floods; destroys habitats for plants, fish, birds and ground animals; spreads deserts; causes deadly waves; and destroys glaciers and our polar ice caps. The use of carbon fuels has been destroying nature. Our job now is to save it.
Interestingly, there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR bill, first suggested by Peter Barnes and introduced by Maria Cantwell (D-Washington and Susan Collins (R-Maine). It is simple; it works and it pays you!
The principle behind it is this: We US citizens own the air over the US equally. Carbon-fuel sellers are dumping pollution in our air, not just poisoning the air, but destroying nature. At least they should pay for permits to dump, poison and destroy and should be forced year-by-year to stop. Who should the sellers pay for permits? All of us, the citizens who live here, should be paid handsomely. And there should be predictably fewer permits every year, till the practice ends or reaches tolerable levels.
Here's how cap-and-cash works. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, July 16 @ 19:39:15 EDT (96 reads)
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| Politics: What Tea Party Activists Owe Liberals |
By Sherwood Ross
Tea Party activists may put up as many billboards as they like accusing President Obama of “socialism” and comparing him to Hitler but the fact is the only people Obama successfully bailed out so far are the big bankers and, as economist Dean Baker puts it in the July 19th issue of The Nation, when it came to helping ordinary folks, Obama’s 2009 stimulus package “was nowhere near large enough.” The rest of the republic is struggling with 9.7 per cent unemployment, with millions of people working two or more lousy jobs to make ends meet, with still other millions whose unemployment insurance has run out, and with yet other millions who have just given up looking.
To begin with, it’s doubtful some of the Tea Party Obama-haters brought to you by Fox News know what “socialism” is. Webster’s defines a socialistic society as one “in which the means of production and distribution of goods are owned and controlled collectively by the government.” In point of fact, as more and more U.S. corporations have abandoned Michigan and Ohio to manufacture products in Communist China there isn’t a whole lot of goods being made in America anymore left to distribute. Tea Party activists need to take a walk past those rusting Midwest factories and explain how it was government, not private enterprise, that failed those communities. Where was the Made In America spirit when countless private businesses took off and set up shop south of the border in Mexico? Not only is there no socialism in America, but there ain’t much capitalism left, either. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, July 15 @ 21:35:03 EDT (88 reads)
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| Politics: The Pentagon's Threat to the Republic |
by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The New York Times' David Brooks minimized General Stanley McChrystal's remarks in Rolling Stone magazine as "kvetching." For the Times' Maureen Dowd, McChrystal and his "smart-aleck aides" were merely engaging in "towel-snapping" jocularity. The Washington Post editorial board noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai called McChrystal the "best commander of the war," and concluded that the general should be retained as the Afghan commander. The Post and Times' editorial boards have called for the replacement of President Obama's key civilian advisors on Afghanistan. Meanwhile, these papers and many others have downplayed the critical issue that dominates this sad affair - the fundamental importance of civilian supremacy in military policy and decision-making.
There is no more important task in political governance than making sure that civilian control of the military is not compromised and that the military remains subordinate to political authority. Unfortunately, President Obama has demonstrated too much deference to the military, retaining the Bush administration's secretary of defense as his own; appointing too many retired and active-duty general officers to such key civilian positions as national security adviser and intelligence tsar; and making the Pentagon's budget sacrosanct in an age of restraint. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 29 @ 21:55:56 EDT (91 reads)
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| Politics: From Mississippi to Arizona: For Freedom and Human Rights |
by: Linda Burnham, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The room was small, but it was filled with enormous possibility. And everyone in there knew it.
On Saturday, May 29, after a long, hot day of marching, chanting and rallying, a group of activists met in a windowless room at the Phoenix Doubletree Inn. Many had worked nonstop for weeks on end, mobilizing the tens of thousands, who poured out of their homes in support of justice for the migratory workers and families whose lives and livelihood are threatened by Arizona's immigration policy. Their phone banking, door knocking, emailing and community meetings had produced sea of people who filled the streets with their bodies and their voices.
Obama, escucha. Estamos en la lucha.
Que queremos? Justicia. Cuando? Ahora.
And now, though their day had started before sunrise, here these activists were, 14 hours later, eager to engage in a historic dialog with veterans of Mississippi Freedom Summer. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, June 18 @ 22:03:52 EDT (107 reads)
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| Politics: Governor’s race update: Democratic candidates debate marijuana penalties |
 From: Marijuana Policy Project www.mpp.org
For years those of us advocating for reform of our nation’s marijuana laws have said repeatedly that we need to have a frank, open, and honest discussion about the consequences of our bitter war to maintain marijuana prohibition. Last week’s debate among Vermont’s Democratic candidates for governor was a great example of just that. When asked about ways to begin work on closing Vermont’s gaping budget shortfall, Senate President Pro Tempore Pete Shumlin had this to say: "I believe it's a mistake to be sending young people on second, third, fourth offenses to prison on marijuana-related charges. That's where we could make a difference."
He’s right, by the way. Our analysis shows that there were 788 individuals arrested in Vermont in 2008 on stand-alone, single counts of misdemeanor marijuana possession. Taking into account the cost of arresting, booking, processing, prosecuting, and in many cases defending them, together with post-conviction monitoring, the conservative estimate of the cost of Vermont’s harsh marijuana penalties is $2-3 million dollars per year. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 15 @ 20:15:12 EDT (99 reads)
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| Politics: The Drug War: More Wasted Money and Lives |
 Remember Prohibition?
By William A. Collins
The Drug War
Has a mission;
'Bout as smart as
Prohibition.
The Associated Press recently reported on some exhaustive research, undertaken by the nonprofit International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. These tireless scholars examined 300 studies covering the past 20 years, evaluating the public good arising from police crusades against drug peddling.
The result of all those beefed-up crackdowns? Increased violence! It seems that whenever you finally nab the top drug lords, a deadly struggle erupts to replace them. Gang wars explode, body counts rise, and new openings arise for upwardly mobile young thugs. This is capitalism in its purest form, visible just now in Mexico. Of course, these results are obviously tainted. As you can guess from the spelling of "Centre," the research is British and Canadian, and thus somewhat suspect. It's not necessarily sensitive to America's special culture. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 08 @ 20:24:38 EDT (106 reads)
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| Politics: Supremely Important: Genetically Engineered Crops |
More questions are being raised about the long-term impact of these crops on the environment.
By Ben Lilliston
Fifteen years after farmers and agribusinesses began planting genetically engineered crops in our nation's fields, we still know very little about their long-term environmental, economic, and social consequences.
The Supreme Court is finally getting involved. It recently heard a case involving Monsanto's genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa, which is resistant to the herbicide Roundup. Farmers, including many that use pesticides and herbicides and others that don't, asked that approval for this variety of alfalfa be blocked.
They argued that the Department of Agriculture hasn't completed a required environmental impact statement yet. Farmers fear that GE alfalfa will cross-pollinate with conventional or organic alfalfa that hasn't been engineered. Organic certification prohibits genetically engineered crops entirely. What's more, this kind of contamination could block exports to many other countries, particularly countries within the European Union, who have not approved biotech crops. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, May 19 @ 22:37:23 EDT (136 reads)
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