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"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis,
It Can’t Happen Here, 1935
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 | Politics: The Most Important Vote You Will Ever Cast |
 By Rosemarie Jackowski
Come November some will head for the hills. Some will head for the polls. Some have already decided to sit this one out. Most will cast uninformed votes. A few will break the mold. They have done their homework. They will vote for peace and justice.
Informed voters, who have researched what has been missing from the electronic and print media, know that one of the offices being contested will have the potential to make history. Neither McCain nor Obama is running for this office.
Across the country the office of State Attorney General will be more important during this election than at any time in the past. County Prosecutors and District Attorneys will also have a significant role to play. The time for War Crimes trials has finally come. We can stop holding our collective breath. The second shoe is about to drop.
The Bush Indictment Project has begun. The difference between Impeachment and Indictment is like the difference between night and day. The call for Impeachment looks like a Sunday School picnic by comparison. Impeachment has its flaws. It trivializes the war crimes. It is better than nothing, but not by much. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, July 24 @ 19:41:41 EDT (13 reads)
(Read More... | 5990 bytes more | 1 comment | Politics | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: TVs: Poisoning Bodies As Well As Minds |
 by Andrew Korfhage
It’s the beginning of the 28th Century, and the Earth is so overrun by garbage as to be uninhabitable for humankind.
It’s the beginning of the 21st Century, and the United Nations Environmental Program estimates that we generate up to 50 million tons of e-waste (televisions, computers, and other electronics) every year. That’s almost 70 tons a minute.
The first scenario is fictional, the plot of Disney’s summer blockbuster movie “Wall-E.” The second is scenario is real -- our actual e-waste situation right now. Is it so hard to imagine the reality of 2008 leading to the dystopia of 2700? In short, the bad news is that we’re discarding an ever-increasing volume of toxic e-waste. For example, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans trashed 47 million computers in 2005, up from 20 million in 1998.
The worse news is that while our lawmakers should be figuring out ways to reverse this trend, they’ve actually passed legislation that will accelerate it. Congress passed legislation last year shifting the nation’s television signals from analog to digital without any requirement to recycle the millions of TV sets that will be made obsolete by the switch. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, July 24 @ 19:26:34 EDT (10 reads)
(Read More... | 5359 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| Politics: Mukasey to Congress: Defy the Rule of Law |
 by Stephen Lendman
Along with other past and present administration
officials, Attorney General Michael Mukasey supports
lawlessness and police state justice. Weeks after the
Supreme Court's landmark (June 12) Boumediene ruling,
he addressed the conservative, pro-war American
Enterprise Institute (on July 21) and asked Congress
to overrule the High Court - for the third time. His
proposal:
-- subvert constitutional and international law;
-- authorize indefinite detentions of Guantanamo and
other "war on terror" prisoners (including US citizens
designated "enemy combatants"); and
-- deny them habeas rights, due process, and any hope
for judicial fairness.
Since June 2004, the (conservative) High Court made
three landmark rulings. Twice Congress intervened, and
Mukasey wants a third time. In Rasul v. Bush (June
2004), the Court granted Guantanamo detainees habeas
rights to challenge their detentions in civil court.
Congress responded with the Detainee Treatment Act
(DTA) of 2005 subverting the ruling. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 23 @ 21:44:22 EDT (14 reads)
(Read More... | 9257 bytes more | 1 comment | Politics | Score: 0)
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| International: McCain's Afghan Strategic Blunder |
 By Robert Parry
John McCain has denounced Barack Obama as being “completely wrong” on Iraq, but it was McCain who advocated what turned out to be the fundamental strategic blunder in the post-9/11 conflicts, the hasty – and premature – pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq.
Only weeks after the Taliban were routed from Kabul and the remnants of al-Qaeda had fled from bases in Tora Bora, McCain took the lead in urging the Bush administration to turn its attention toward Iraq.
In a Feb. 2, 2002, speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy, McCain said the United States and its allies needed to concentrate on overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
“The next front is apparent, and we should not shirk from acknowledging it,” McCain said. “A terrorist resides in Baghdad, with the resources of an entire state at his disposal, flush with cash from illicit oil revenues and proud of a decade-long record of defying the international community's demands that he come clean on his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
”A day of reckoning is approaching.” ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 23 @ 21:26:03 EDT (13 reads)
(Read More... | 12944 bytes more | Comments? | International | Score: 0)
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| War News: I Was a Victim of the Government’s Absurd & Over-Hyped War on Terror |
 By Dave Lindorff
I was injured thanks to the government’s ridiculous airport security program last week on a US Air flight from Chicago to Philadelphia. I also saw how pointless the whole thing is, if the supposed goal is really to prevent airline hijackings.
First, my injury. Because of a silly fear that I might blow up a plane with explosives tucked into my running shoes, I, along with everyone else in the security checkpoint line at O’Hare, including two-month-old babies wearing little booties, had to doff my footwear. Clad in just socks, I tried to maneuver my way around a metal counter that held those plastic trays carrying my laptop, my shoes, my belt and change and keys, and my carry-on bag, and in the process my unprotected big toe hit a sharp piece of metal protruding from the table.
The metal sliced right under my toenail, making a painful and bloody cut into the soft tissue under the nail. Cursing and bleeding, I made my way through the metal detector, and collected my goods.
Now, inside my bag, unbeknownst to the Transportation Security Administration inspectors, was a bottle of mouthwash. It was larger than the approved 2-oz size, and it was not in an approved sealed plastic bag. But TSA inspectors looking into their video screens at the X-Ray machine didn’t see it, because I made sure that it was vertical as it passed through. All they saw was a little circle of plastic. Likewise, on an earlier flight, I had made my way aboard with a Swiss Army knife. By standing it in my carry-on bag so that it would be vertical for the X-Ray, I was able to slip it through and onto the plane. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, July 21 @ 21:07:04 EDT (18 reads)
(Read More... | 5814 bytes more | Comments? | War News | Score: 0)
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| Science News: Voting Begins For 2008 Science Idol Editorial Cartoon Contest |
Artists draw attention to political interference in science
The Unionof Concerned Scientists (UCS) today announced the 12 finalists in its third annual Science Idol: Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest.
Now, it's the public's turn to vote.
UCS received hundreds of cartoon entries from artists of all ages across the country who used humor to shed light on a serious issue: the distortion, suppression and manipulation of federal science. A panel of award-winning cartoonists helped UCS narrow down the entries to the 12 that will appear in the 2009 UCS scientific integrity calendar. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, July 21 @ 20:47:39 EDT (22 reads)
(Read More... | 2031 bytes more | Comments? | Science News | Score: 0)
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| Politics: Mother’s Milk of Politics Turns Sour |
by: Bill Moyers & Michael Winship
Once again we're closing the barn door after the horse is out and gone. In Washington, the Federal Reserve has finally acted to stop some of the predatory lending that exploited people's need for money. And like Rip Van Winkle, Congress is finally waking up from a long doze under the warm sun of laissez-faire economics. That's French for turning off the alarm until the burglars have made their getaway.
Philosophy is one reason we do this to ourselves; when you worship market forces as if they were the gods of Olympus, then the gods can do no wrong - until, of course, they prove to be human. Then we realize we should have listened to our inner agnostic and not been so reverent in the first place.
But we also get into these terrible dilemmas - where the big guys step all over everyone else and the victims are required to pay the hospital bills - because we refuse to recognize the connection between money and politics. This is the great denial in democracy that may ultimately mean our ruin. We just don't seem able to see or accept the fact that money drives policy. It's no wonder that Congress and the White House have been looking the other way as the predators picked the pockets of unsuspecting debtors. Mega banking and investment firms have been some of the biggest providers of the cash vital to keeping incumbents in office. There isn't much appetite for biting - or regulating - the manicured hand that feeds them.
Guess who gave the most money to candidates in this 2007-08 federal election cycle? That's right, the financial services and real estate industries. They stuffed nearly $250 million into the candidate coffers. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, July 19 @ 19:19:25 EDT (26 reads)
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| Opinion: Happiness |
 by Christine Smith
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”– Thoreau
Are you happy? If you answered “yes,” you’re rare. Most people view “happiness” as an elusive state they haven’t attained, and they mistakenly think happiness comes from getting or taking from others. They think if they just get that raise, or if they meet the “right” person, or any number of things they think that if they obtain will bring them that feeling they dream of. In this society of consumers, many think having more things will give them that feeling they so crave. They even, sadly, view fellow human beings as objects to be obtained, thus relationships in society are often merely based on bodies seeking other bodies void of any deep committed love. They value the valueless.
But happiness is a state that occurs naturally, on its own, stemming from the choices you are making. I am very happy, with each day finding me contented and at peace. Inner happiness pervades each day’s experiences, keeps me centered, and keeps all in perspective despite appearances/circumstances. This seems to be my natural state, my temperament/personality, and one those who have known me for years still comment upon. There are so many blessings in life, and happiness stems from gratefully and wondrously experiencing all life has to offer. I believe happiness results from those who choose to love, endeavoring to understand and live love toward all. From hence comes a wonderful delight in every day!
There have been difficult times in my life, times of struggle or sorrow, but on the whole I find that happiness defines me well. I look back now and can truly say that even in the midst of pain, a deep contentment yet lay within which was the reason I could return, after the grieving or persevering through a difficult situation, to my usual state of happiness. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, July 18 @ 21:11:30 EDT (30 reads)
(Read More... | 16360 bytes more | Comments? | Opinion | Score: 5)
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| Politics: Time for Iraq War Oil Profits Taxes – Part II |
 by: Nick Mottern, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York - Based on an analysis of economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, we estimate about 25 percent of oil company profits since the 2003 invasion of Iraq can be traced to the war's impact on world oil prices.
On this basis, the excess war profit for ExxonMobil alone, between 2003 and 2008, would amount to about $40 billion.
A 25 percent excess war profits tax imposed on the Big Five oil companies - ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips - covering the first five years of the war would capture almost $90 billion. This estimate takes into account that Shell and BP are not American companies and that excess profits taxes would be only on profits from their US operations.
As discussed in Part I, there is justification for focusing the tax on the Big Five because of their size compared to their smaller competitors. The Big Five had combined profits of $120 billion in 2005, compared to about $31 billion for the next 20 largest oil firms combined, according to a 2007 report from the James W. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. The report noted the Big Five "also dominate the US gasoline market with roughly 62 percent of the retail market and 50 percent of refining capacity."
The Rice report found that the Big Five, unlike the smaller firms, have been spending a high proportion of their windfall profits on stock buybacks to enrich management and large stockholders. They were spending less, compared to their smaller competitors, on dividends, exploration, development and acquisitions. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, July 18 @ 20:27:50 EDT (25 reads)
(Read More... | 5984 bytes more | Comments? | Politics | Score: 0)
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| Politics: Don’t Lose Focus of the Real Issues |
 by: Wilmer J. Leon, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
By now, we have all seen or heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson's rather crude or off-color comments about Senator Barack Obama. Jackson was waiting to be interviewed on FOX News when he made his comments to a fellow guest. He articulated a growing concern within the African-American community regarding Obama's speeches at African-American churches. Some are concerned that Obama uses these forums to lecture and "talk down to" black people. Jackson also expressed disdain for Obama's support of President Bush's faith-based initiative program by saying, "I wanna cut his nuts off."
A few points need to be made right up front. First, it is unfortunate that what should have been a private conversation between Jackson and Obama was aired in such a public and embarrassing forum. Second, anyone as seasoned as Jesse Jackson knows that anytime, I repeat, anytime you see a microphone you must assume that it is on. Third, what Jackson did was amateurish if not stupid, and he has been in the game way too long to make such rookie mistakes.
It is also important to understand that Jackson has dedicated his entire life to furthering the cause of civil and human rights in this country and globally. Doing what he has done over the past five decades is not for the meek or faint-hearted. Does he have a huge ego? Sure he does. Has that ego clouded his judgment at times? Sure it has. However, it was that same ego that convinced him as a college student that he, along with others, could kill Jim Crow. It's that same ego that motivated him to work to abolish apartheid in South Africa, and to bring about greater racial balance to Wall Street. Too many of Jesse Jackson's detractors (particularly those of color) refuse to recognize that it's upon his shoulders (and others) that they stand. ....
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, July 17 @ 21:23:59 EDT (28 reads)
(Read More... | 8339 bytes more | Comments? | Politics | Score: 0)
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| Politics: ACLU Warns Against Intrusive Deep Packet Inspection |
From: aclu.org
Washington, DC – Americans’ online privacy was discussed today at a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. The hearing, titled “What Your Broadband Provider Knows About Your Web Use: Deep Packet Inspection and Communications Laws and Policies,” was meant to shed light on the practice of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) by Internet service providers (ISPs).
DPI allows ISPs to track users’ Internet browsing activities and can be data mined for targeted marketing purposes. The ACLU urges members of the committee to be wary of the privacy landmines inherent in DPI. ,,,
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, July 17 @ 21:12:30 EDT (26 reads)
(Read More... | 2173 bytes more | Comments? | Politics | Score: 0)
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| Action Alert: Impeachment Hearings: A Win is a Win |
By Dave Lindorff
There are two ways to view the news that the House Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on impeachable crimes by President George W. Bush.
One view would be that this is all a charade and that after all, it will not be a real impeachment hearing, but rather, simply a hearing into the impeachable crimes of the Bush administration. As committee Chair Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) put it, “We’re not doing impeachment, but he [Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who introduced 36 articles of impeachment] can talk about it.” Viewed that way, this is not such a big deal. Rep. Kucinich gets to make his case that the president is committing high crimes and misdemeanors and abuses of power and war crimes, but then Congressional Democrats will continue to ignore all the crimes as it has done since taking control of Congress in November 2006.
But a second way to view this is as a significant victory over the quisling Congressional leadership, which has been ducking its responsibility to defend the Constitution and to stand up for the rule of law not just since November 2006, but since the inception of the Bush/Cheney presidency.
I go for the second interpretation of events. It is clear, as was beautifully laid out in an article published by Glenn Greenwald in Salon magazine on July 15, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership both in Congress and in the party organization, have been blocking any action on impeachment for fear of having their own complicity in Bush's and Cheney's crimes revealed. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 16 @ 22:10:55 EDT (33 reads)
(Read More... | 6783 bytes more | Comments? | Action Alert | Score: 0)
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| Politics: Congress Takes A Shot At Family Farmers |
by Jeff Pausma
Many parents were appalled when we saw on our television screens a video of workers abusing a downer cow with electric shocks because the cow was too sick to stand up. We were even more horrified to learn that meat from that cow had gone into lunches served by the federal School Lunch Program. The scandal at the Hallmark/Westland plant in Chino, Calif., has sparked interest in the current trend of securing local meat from sources that are grass-fed, organic and come from animals raised humanely. Our kids deserve the safest meat in their food. Sadly, Congress is now considering squashing such efforts to get local foods into the School Lunch Program.
In June, the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, at the behest of Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and David Obey (D-Wisc.), said it was considering a provision that would force schools to buy meat for the School Lunch program from sources enrolled in the federal government’s National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The NAIS is hugely controversial among family farmers like me. The U.S. government wants us to inventory, identify and track the movement of all agriculture related animals. Step one is a premise registration where a federal ID number is assigned to our farm. The second step involves tagging each of our animals with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. And finally, we must report to the government any planned movement of our animals. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 16 @ 21:56:23 EDT (36 reads)
(Read More... | 4831 bytes more | Comments? | Politics | Score: 5)
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| Politics: Where the Fight is Truly the Most Fierce |
by Christine Smith
“…Some Americans claim that the Second Amendment is outmoded. They say that while U.S. personnel would do bad things to foreigners, they would never do bad things to Americans. Oh? You mean, like the way they tortured and sexually abused John Walker Lindh? Or the way they tortured, isolated, drugged, and brutalized Jose Padilla? Or the way they massacred people, including defenseless children, at Waco? Or the way they shot Vickie Weaver in the head, as she held her baby in her arms, and her teenage son in the back? Or the way they shot and killed antiwar demonstrators at Kent State? Or the way they rounded up Americans of Japanese descent and put them into concentration centers? Or the way they engaged in syphilis experiments with unsuspecting African-Americans? …” -From Jacob G. Hornberger’s July 8, 2008 article “Robert Mugabe and the Second Amendment.
What a powerful paragraph from an excellent article! It’s a warning and reminder to be heeded.
Most Americans entirely forget the reason for the 2nd Amendment, and they refuse to believe that the U.S. government is capable of using force against its own citizenry. When one speaks of the original intent behind the amendment, one is often met with scoff as so many Americans think it’s just paranoid to regard the government as a potential enemy. The excellent piece above details just what occurs when the citizens of a nation are unarmed, and it’s a story we’ve seen throughout history. Tyrannies haven’t any reason to stop at any length of oppression when a citizenry is powerless to defend itself.
When we look at the U.S., we see increasing acts of tyranny, arrogance beyond what I think Americans would have imagined in years past, and increasing power and control over every aspect of our lives. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, July 15 @ 13:25:34 EDT (35 reads)
(Read More... | 7449 bytes more | Comments? | Politics | Score: 5)
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| The News: Kucinich Pushes on Impeachment |
 By Jason Leopold
Congress has plenty of evidence that George W. Bush deserves impeachment for misleading the nation into war in Iraq, authorizing torture and other grave crimes, and violating the Constitution – and it is now time to act, says Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
“How many more hearings do we need to have to prove this administration has violated the Constitution, taken the law into its own hands, and condoned torture?” asked Kucinich, D-Ohio, author of some three dozen articles of impeachment. “These articles of impeachment are about accountability,” Kucinich said in an interview. “I think our country is at risk. We’re setting a terrible precedent for future administrations if we choose to turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by this administration.
“We need to send a message to the next President that if he conducts himself in a similar capacity it would be met with a response from the Congress that you are going to be held to account. … There is a point at which you reduce Congress to a debating society.”
Last month, Kucinich stunned colleagues when he introduced an impeachment resolution on the House floor and then spent nearly five hours reading the 35 articles, alleging that President Bush was guilty of a wide range of crimes. The articles of impeachment were introduced a few days after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a long-awaited report on prewar Iraq intelligence that concluded Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney knowingly misled the public and Congress about Iraq's links to al-Qaeda and the threat the country posed to the United States. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, July 14 @ 22:22:01 EDT (47 reads)
(Read More... | 7509 bytes more | 1 comment | The News | Score: 3)
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| Monday, July 14 | | · | Think It’s Easy to Form a Union? Better Think Again |
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