Oct 11 2007

Huck Farper for President – Anti SPP/NAU Resources

harper splash2spp t

The image above is a spoof, but reflects concern that Canadians feel re Bush’s Mini-Me, also known as the Republican Prime Minister.&nbsp

I’ve read and collected enough information on the SPP to believe that Americans and Mexicans should be worried, too. Bushite plans for the Security and Prosperity Partnership/North American Union are bad for all the countries involved.  Here you will find resources and action tools on the SPP/NAU.
 

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What Is The Security and Prosperity Partnership?
The Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America was formally launched in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005 by President Bush, along with Mexico’s then-President Vicente Fox and Canada’s then-Prime Minister Paul Martin. The three leaders let it be known that their new SPP initiative was an effort to build upon and expand NAFTA, the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. Their expressed goal for the SPP was the creation of “a safer, more prosperous North America.”

Conceived completely as an executive-branch initiative, without any participation or authorization from Congress, the SPP established 20 trilateral “working groups” composed of current and former government officials, academics, and corporate leaders. The groups are directed to bring about continental “integration” on a wide range of political, economic, and social issues, such as manufacturing, transportation, energy, environment, e-commerce, financial services, food and agriculture, law enforcement, immigration, infrastructure, and health.

Who are the members of these working groups? Where and when are they meeting? What policies, programs, projects, and proposals are they hatching? How will these things affect our lives?

http://www.thenewame…

16 states have pending Anti-NAU legislation and 3 states have passed
Anti-NAU or Anti-SPP legislation in both their House and Senate.
Over 1/3 of state legislatures have introduced resolutions opposing the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP), the NAFTA Superhighway, and the developing North American Union (NAU).

States: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, SouthCarolina, SouthDakota, Tennessee,Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington

States with legislation “Indirectly” related to the “Fight” against the SPP/NAU:
Nevada, New Hampshire

View a Map of Anti N.A.U. States & What they’re doing at:
http://www.stopthena…

Bills in the United States Congress:

U.S. Congress HCON 40 – SPP/NAU HCON 40
http://www.stopthena…

H. Con. Res. 22-110th Congress (2007)
http://www.govtrack….


American Street: Why don’t we hear more about the SPP?
http://www.reachm.co…

Council of Canadians on SPP, NAFTA and more:
http://canadians.org…

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A word to the wise in Lasthorseman’s diary here – this thing has had a head start –
http://www.dailykos….

Prime Minister Stephen Harper claimed that the SPP is about regulation of jellybeans:
http://www.theglobea…

To better understand the Security and Prosperity Partnership and North American Union watch this 27 min. video
http://video.google….
and this 22 min. slide show
http://www.freedom.o…

A Dark Moon Rising:
http://www.rangemaga…


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The devil in Stephen Harper:
http://www.nowtoront…


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Murray Dobbin and others from Council of Canadians talk about sellouts here:
http://www.workingtv…

Talking points, courtesy Murray Dobbin:
* It is clear from documents coming out of a Calgary conference in the spring that bulk water exports are being actively considered and that Canadian rivers are at risk.
* part of the “security” in the SPP is that Canada is being asked to guarantee US energy security – that is why there are no limits on the development of the tar sands. But this is in the US interests – not Canada’s and it will mean that we will never be able to get even close to meeting the Kyoto targets that we are committed to.
* some 300 areas of regulations are being reconciled with those in the US – most often meaning they are becoming weaker. Just one area that has been revealed shows that we are going to end up with higher levels of pesticide residue on our fruits and vegetables
* the only non-government sector guiding the government is big business – the largest corporations in Canada. The pesticide example demonstrates this: we are changing health standards because they are a “trade irritant” according to the govt. But is health experts were advising the government, and not just big business, they would recommend against these changes.
* part of the SPP/deep integration agenda has already been implemented and that is Stephen Harper’s adoption of US foreign policy and a blind acceptance of the so-called”war on terror” – something Canadians don’t agree with
* we are already integrating our police forces so that situations like the Mahar Arrar case cold easily happen again
* promoters of the SPP and deep integration with the US know that if there was a national debate they would lose – that is why the SPP is not a forma agreement like NAFTA but just an agreement between the three executive branches of Canada, the US and Mexico. They don’t want elected representatives to talk about this agreement.
* there is also growing opposition to the SPP in the US – for many of the same reasons – concerns over sovereignly and democracy.

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http://www.informati…
Canada’s Sovereignty in Jeopardy
The Militarization of North America
By Michel Chossudovsky
Canadian jurisdiction over its Northern territories was redefined, following an April 2002 military agreement between Ottawa and Washington. This agreement allows for the deployment of US troops anywhere in Canada, as well as the stationing of US warships in Canada’s territorial waters.

Also see
http://www.globalres…
http://www.globalres…


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Canada: Petition – Stop the Security and Prosperity Partnership
Get your copy of the petition at
http://www.vivelecan…
and get those signatures!

A CALL TO SUSPEND THE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP OF NORTH AMERICA (SPP) ON CONTINENTAL INTEGRATION
PETITION TO THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
We, the Undersigned Citizens of Canada, draw attention to the House of the following:
WHEREAS, the implementation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), further advances NAFTA’s goal of continental economic integration by pushing Canada towards establishing common policies with the United States and Mexico in key areas such as security, energy, and food and health standards, while shrinking the range of choices open to Canadian policy makers;
WHEREAS, the SPP encompasses over 300 wide-ranging initiatives, many of which reduce protection in areas such as pesticide use, food safety, air safety, and the environment to the lowest common denominator, as well as securing even greater U.S. control over Canadian resources and national standards, including energy and water;
WHEREAS, the SPP also seeks to incrementally merge our security policies and practices with those of the United States, and include measures such as a common security perimeter, with fully yielded control to the Bush administration over defence,
intelligence, immigration, and refugee policies, including sharing a vast amount of personal information with the US government;
WHEREAS, under the SPP, Canada will possess less and less ability to adopt autonomous and sustainable economic, social, cultural, and environmental policies, including public programs like universal healthcare and public education;
WHEREAS, the SPP has been proceeding away from public scrutiny, with no democratic mandate from the Canadian, American, and Mexican people;
WHEREAS, the Parliament of Canada has not been allowed to review, debate, or vote on a process that will fundamentally alter the fabric of our society and challenge our existence as a sovereign nation;
THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to stop further implementation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) with the United States and Mexico until there is a democratic mandate from
the people of Canada, Parliamentary oversight, and consideration of its profound consequences on Canada’s existence as a sovereign nation and its ability to adopt autonomous and sustainable economic, social, and environmental policies, and urge
the Government of Canada to conduct a transparent and accountable public debate of the SPP process, involving meaningful public consultations with civil society and a full legislative review, including the work, recommendations, and reports of all SPP working groups, and a full debate and a vote in Parliament.


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Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen J. Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa
K1A 0A2

Fax: 613-941-6900

E-mail: [email protected]

In a decade, there have been about 200 deaths from “Avian Flu”.
But mailboxes and media are now full of warnings about “The Coming Flu”. Who is behind this costly Shock Doctrine-style scare?
William Steiger,  head of both Homeland Security  and the SPP/North American Union. From their site:
http://usinfo.state….
Canadians, where do you think your health records might be now?


more soon… militarization of Canada, Atlantica, Cascadia, the AMERO currency…

Oct 11 2007

The Stars Hollow Gazette

I don’t really like swimming very much though I’ve done a lot of it.  I find it difficult to enjoy myself in the water because there’s always this sense that I should be doing something.

When I was in Swim Team we’d do 3 to 5 miles a day and it is the most boring, grinding, isolated kind of exercise you can imagine.  No view except the feet of the person in front of you.  Nothing to hear except an occasional whistle when you breathe.  Endless circles of aching effort regulated by 15 or 30 second breaks before it is time to push off again.  I’d sing symphonies in my head (I was into long haired music- Mozart, Bach, and Brahms) to alleviate the endless counting.  Stroke, stroke, stoke, stroke, stroke, stoke… 25.  Stroke, stroke, stoke, stroke, stroke, stoke… 50.

Everything about me stank of chlorine all the time.  My hair turned green.  I’d tell you my fingers and toes turned permanently pruney but that’s not quite true, they usually recover after a couple of hours.

Monday through Friday 6 to 8 and if you were on the elite squad there were the mandatory practices from 6 to 7 in the morning.  In the winter your hair would freeze and in the summer?

Ah… nothing like an outdoor pool in the early morning after it’s had all night to cool off.

I’ve had my head burnt to near Emergency Room levels when someone flushed the toilet while I was in the shower (actually I should probably have gone, it was that bad).  I’ve swum in pools so green you couldn’t see the bottom and had to feel for the wall (no flip turns, Team safety orders).

You get to a point where you can tell by feel fast water where you’ll get good times and personal bests from slow water.  But it’s slow for everybody as coach would say.

Anyway, now that I’m no longer a professional Life Guard and have to do my 400 yards every day, I rarely swim except to get somewhere and it should be somewhere fun.  A rock you can jump off.  A boat you can sail.  I will take a dip to cool off, but I hardly call it swimming, in and out.  I watch kids play in pools and I think- how are they having fun?

Oct 11 2007

Comparisons of Leadership and President Bush

People like comparisons because they help to give them some perspective on historical and recent historical events. Direct comparisons cannot be made for the obvious reasons: No two eras or people are the same. Yet politicians seem to thrive on making just such comparisons especially when it comes to Americas greatest Presidents. George W. Bush is no exception as he likes to compare himself to President Harry S. Truman. As stated direct comparisons really can’t be made but lets try and compare their leadership styles.

Leadership and leadership styles manifest themselves in many ways from the simplest of problems to ones which involve life and death. Both President Truman and President Bush served in the National Guard Bush as a pilot and Truman as an artillery officer. In comparing their service the out comes are vastly different. Harry Truman ended his service in the National Guard in  1911. But with the onset of the First World War he reenlisted and served as the commander of a field artillery unit in France. During Truman’s time in France the Germans launched a surprise attack on his artillery unit the men broke ranks and began to scatter. Using some rather “Colorful Language” Captain Truman was able to rally his men and lead them to safety. 
George Bush’s time in the Air National Guard is fraught with controversy especially but not including how he was able to gain a position in the National Guard at a time when it was almost impossible to do so: His actual  service including large gaps in which there is no record of him having reported for duty along with his failure to take his flight physical to maintain his operational status. While President Truman’s service had a profound effect not only on his life it would set the tone for his leadership style through out his professional career. For George Bush his service it seems was just away to avoid serving in Vietnam and had little or no effect instilling any type of real leadership qualities in him.

As I said George Bush likes to compare himself to President Truman’s time in office so let’s try and compare their presidencies if that is possible.

Harry Truman was the serving Vice President when he ascended to the office of the President of the United States upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April of 1945 and World War II still in progress.

As with the ending of any major conflict the problems resulting from that conflict remain such as ruined national economies the displacement of huge numbers of people and along with governments trying to reconstitute themselves these were just some the problems Truman faced. Truman believed that it would take international cooperation to solve these problems as they were just beyond the scope of any one nation and its government that is why in favored the formation of the United Nations.
President Bush is just the opposite as was proven by the appointment of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador  to the United Nations.  Here’s what he had to say about the United Nations:

”  There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.”[37] He also stated that “The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

It wasn’t only John Bolton who has been or is hostile towards the UN the Bush administration and the Republican party have shown out right hostility  towards the UN. Cooperation and diplomacy have never been the first choice of the present administration.

One of the most difficult times for any leader is to be faced with a situation which could lead to armed conflict with a known adversary. President Truman was confronted with just a moment when on June 24, 1949  military forces of the Soviet Union blocked all land routes under the control of the Western Powers leading to West Berlin. Several options were open to President Truman: Diplomacy, the use of military force to reopen  the access roads, or an airlift.  Those are 3 very limited choices. While diplomacy is always preferable to war considering the time and the paranoia felt on both sides by the time an agreement was reached the citizens of West Berlin would probably have been faced with a grave humanitarian crisis. Trying to force the land routes open through a show of military force could have lead to another full scale war in Europe. The airlift while not the most efficient way for providing relief to the citizens of West Berlin it avoided military conflict and it allowed time for both sides to find a diplomatic solution to the problem. 

Faced with the same set of circumstances what would President Bush and his advisers have done to resolve the problem? First some background. President Bush has stated that he views the world in terms of black and white. In other words he recognizes by his own standards  good and evil. Further this administration  has a real penchant for not communicating in anyway with those governments whom they view as obstructing their policy initiatives even though finding some rapprochement with these governments could at least lead to some stability in various regional hot-spots such as the Middle East. With that background one can only surmise that the Bush Administration would have chosen the least desirable of the three options. Forcing open the land routes through the use of military force because they would have only seen the inherent evil of the Soviet Union rather than the real consequences of military action a wider war involving all of Europe along with the inability to provide West Berlin with enough aid to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the city.

Considering what President Truman faced in those years following World War II in terms of domestic and foreign policy any lesser person might have folded their tent and gone home. Truman desegregated the military, initiated the Marshal Plan greatly adding Europe in its recovery from the war. Recognized Israel, helped in the creation of NATO and fought to preserve the rights of unions by opposing the Taft-Hartley Act these are just a some of what his administration accomplished. Harry was also an advocate for Universal Health Care which he proposed in 1948.

What has President Bush accomplished that is comparable to that of President Harry Truman? What George Bush has accomplished is this: Allowing the NSA to spy on Americans with Warrantles Wiretaps, used National Security Letters as search warrants thus circumventing oversight by the courts and violating the Bill of Rights, used Signing Statements to circumvent laws passed by the United States Congress because he disagreed with the laws. In other words a line item veto which is unconstitutional. Finally the Iraq war: A war based on lies which has lead to almost 4,000 American service members deaths. The use of torture and the Global War on Terror. Secret C.I.A prisons, holding people indefinitely  without being charged, kidnappings and the denial of rights of those being held.

Somehow President Bush considers these policy decisions along with his alleged leadership skills to be Trumanesque in nature if not in deed. Nothing could be further from the truth. A true leader doesn’t set out to obstruct the rights enshrined  in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Leaders don’t approve of torture as a means to obtain vital information in an effort to contain terrorism or any other criminal activity. Leadership doesn’t mean using false information as means for gaining the public’s consent to invade a sovereign nation which is no threat to your own. Tunnel vision and blind single mindness are not qualities of a leader either.

President Truman showed what leadership meant when backed the creation  of the United Nations and forced the U.S. military to integrate. He showed vision in realizing that without the Marshall Plan the countries of Western Europe might not recover from the aftermath of World War II and in dealing with the Soviet blockade of West Berlin.

Leadership isn’t obtain because you make statements like this: “I’m the Commander Guy,” “I’m the Decider” and “I make Decisions.” Nor is it leadership just because you hold a “position of leadership.”

Qualities of leadership come from many facets of a persons life many learned others inherent where it doesn’t come is a gift box. 

 

Oct 11 2007

Docudharma NY Meetup: Let’s Do It.

Hey, y’all. I have just recently returned from the NYC Mega Meetup. And I’ll freely admit to being somewhat on the too many side of my two or too many rule. It was a lovely event, invigorating both socially and politically. Good thing, since I’ve been feeling pretty politically depressed.

It’s fun to get out of the tubez and into the flesh!

Anywho, I mentioned this to the one and only Ms. Nightprowlkitty and she and I think that a Docudharma Meet-up is in order! Now, not only because New York is the center of the world (I keed! I keed!), but also because she and I both live here, we propose to hold a Docudharma meet-up in NYC.

So, who’s up for an NYC Docudharma Meetup?

Mid-week is best for a Manhattan venue–not too crowded. Npk and I are looking at November. How does Wednesday, November 14th work for people? Let’s figure out the who and the when and then we can take care of the where.

Out of the tubez and into the flesh, Docudharmists!

Oct 11 2007

Army for Iraq, Marines for Afghanistan

(FP’ed…3:06 PM EDT, Thursday, October 11, 2007

So, let’s talk…where is the rationale for this?

– promoted by exmearden)

So– the latest plan being argued is to make Afghanistan a Marine mission while the Army takes full responsibility for Iraq. This makes sense. More below the fold.

How does this make sense? Because it’s nonsensical. This would mean that the army and air force operate in Iraq, while the marine corps and marine air operate if Afghanistan.

Since there are, at present, about NO marines in Afghanistan, and 26,000 Army and other troops, doesn’t it make perfect sense to replace all of these folks with MArines? This would free up numerous brigades for the mission of pacifying iraq ( or whatever… not enough,not enough).

So, the overstretched, overused Army would be in place in Iraq to thwart those dastardly iraqis, al quaiders, and now the irtanians. The marines would server as the blocking forces, almost a thousand miles away. Yerh… this is sensible.

All I can do is quote the guinness commertcial. “Brilliant!”

let’s all fart and swear it’s perfume.

Oct 11 2007

Kafka-corp

A world renown scientist is escorted out the front door.  Why, well I did go to business school and as such could translate a proper “separation” statement.  Bottom line though is that a well educated man refused to put up with the Kafkaesqueness of the company he worked for.  When I get fired too it will make a good book.

Then I come home.  My wife is upset even incredulous.  A reputable company would put people through this shit?
Guido’s Health Care says she is not covered.

http://www.zwire.com…

They play subliminal propaganda during the first half hour on hold, then oops, a “dropped call”.  After the second half hour and enduring the painful propaganda again they tell me they will “review it in 15 days”.  Trust me these people are not only trained in ambiguity with this company it is institutionalized.

Now if that’s no enough to raise your blood pressure here in mAssachusetts health insurance is now MANDATORY.  That simply means Kafka insurance, the model for this state will come to an insurance “provider” where you live.

Actually do I really want to go the doctor’s anyway?  Hmmm….the life insurance companies can know if I was tested and found to have genetic tendencies to…..
http://www.healthpri…
http://www.natural-h…

I said, Ok honey, tonight I’ll finish the wallpaper, tomorrow I’ll go see the horse.

Oct 11 2007

Suffer the little children…

“Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.”

  — Mark 10:14

The cesspool of vitriolic evil that comes from the lunacy of the radically unhinged — those who so often tout the importance of “family values” yet staunchly fail to promote or defend anything remotely resembling an actual “value” — has come alive, foaming at the mouth and conducting focused attacks upon two young children and their family. The curtain has been pulled away, and the creature behind it revealed for what it truly is: an un-evolved cretin, wearing a fleshy mask of humanity in an effort to blend in with the rest of the human race, but screeching an ungodly hypocrisy that is no longer hidden behind by a veil of illusion.

These are the same people who support an illegal war. These are the same people who forsake the freedoms our forefathers fought to provide this nation over 200 years ago. These are the same people who call themselves Christians and Patriots while undermining the fundamental teachings of Christ and subverting our Constitution.

They call themselves “conservatives.” They call themselves Republicans…

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

  — Mahatma Gandhi

There are outraged comments flying across the blogosphere, clogging the tubes from every direction. “Righteous indignation” by the radical lunatics as they attack blindly, then suffer the slings and arrows of retaliatory realization that they have, yet again, blundered mightily.

These are the Keyboard Kommandos and the pundit-class mouthpieces of the Republican Party of today. Get to know them well; keep a record of what they’ve said and how they’ve acted, because they — the “righteous” ones, the “moral” ones — they lie. They lie a lot. And they support lying by those they love if it gets them what they believe is rightfully theirs. They support murder and theft, too — note their support and justification for the Iraq war, and their support of attempts to carry water for an Administration dead-set on initiating hostilities with Iran.

Is that what it means to be moral? Is that that it means to be compassionate or conservative or Christian? Because, frankly, if it is — then they can all go to hell together, the sooner the better.

The recent brouhaha over Graeme Frost and his family reminded me of the piece that I wrote early in January of this year — a piece I’ve already recently referred back to — called Bless the beastly little children of a lesser god than mine.2 Now, I almost feel that it needs to be reprinted everywhere it originally appeared, with the smiling and stupid sh!t-eating grins of the moronic jackasses who inspired it plastered all over the page.

These “people” are not Americans. They aren’t Christians. They aren’t Patriotic.

They are neither compassionate nor conservative.

They do not speak for America. They do not care about our people. They cater to their own self-important, arrogant aristocracy and foment their culture of hatred and oppression simply to support themselves and augment their own self-inflated egos. Their words are lies, proven and exposed time and again.

Rush Limbaugh. Michelle Malkin. Ann Coulter. Bill O’Reilly. Name a few more — those in the media who support and work to protect the precious few (and dwindling) hate-spewing puss-brained fear-mongering assclowns who, miraculously, managed to sieze command and control of so much of our once-great nation.

They are an infected, cancerous boil that spreads diseased thought and ideas unchecked throughout the body politic. We must lance that boil, clean the wound and apply copious amounts of disinfectant. Reject their poison by loudly attacking it with truth. Bring mirrors — they fear their own reflections, which show them their sin and make it obvious to all much like the portrait of Dorian Gray.

Mitch McConnell. Lincoln Diaz-Balart. David Vitter. Larry Craig. Mark Foley. Pete V. Domenici. Conrad Burns. Bill Frist. Rick Santorum. Lisa Murkowski. Ted Stevens. …and, unfortunately, many others beyond good old fall-backs like Tom DeLay or Dennis Hastert. These are the actual viri (viruses), the collection of sick, demented, twisted and manipulative agents of destruction and change that have wrought more damage to our national psyche than a parade of pink elephants in tutus could inflict upon a field of crystal flowers.

It’s time to administer a massive, organic anti-viral enema and clear these dangerous obstructions out of the bowel of this country before the backup of bile and disingenuous, patronizing propaganda permanently shuts down our capacity to act and react as a nation of people acting together as one.

They are the party of pundits, propaganda, pedantic semantics and divisiveness.

We are better than that.

We must be better than that, and resist their poisonously addicting call toward childish antics.

The piece Bless the Beastly Little Children of a Lesser God Than Mine was originally crossposted on DailyKos, ePluribus Media, Street Prophets and My Left Wing. This piece shall be published to the same spots, plus Docudharma, BooMan Tribune and NION. I’ll attend comments as I’m able, but keep in mind the distinctions made above, and share this piece (with appropriate attribution, please) as widely as you can.  Thank you.

_________________________________

Footnotes
________________

1. From WikiQuote. Full quote:

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.
          o As quoted by William Rees-Mogg in The Times [London] (4 April 2005). Gandhi here makes reference to a statement of Jesus: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:13)

2. Originally crossposted on DailyKos, ePluribus Media, Street Prophets and My Left Wing.

Oct 11 2007

Is Bush Incompetent – Or The Last Resort?

(FP’ed 3:20 AM EDT, Thursday, October 11, 2007.

This question will be the defining question of the GWB Presidency…if we all survive the future. (spoken like a true ex-history teacher.)
– promoted by exmearden)

I have to admit that as stupid as I sometimes portray Bush, I really have problems with the idea that he is incompetent.

I doubt that anyone incompetent has a chance of becoming president, unless they are so unbelievably stupid that they really can be just a hand puppet.

I think it would show publicly more than it does, and I doubt he’d be able to carry off his deceptive ‘just a dumb good ole boy’ act if he was that stupid.

Bush is a clown definitely, but I think stupid clown is a gross over-simplification.

Owning the World – The Great Illusion:

In the sixties and seventies, a group of right-wingers in the United States formed a society of vindictive and power hungry men who thought they could reinvent reality. Initially they received little notice and operated inside the American Enterprise Institute; that think tank became the womb for these megalomaniacs and their monstrous ambition of remaking the world. Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were among them and the movement was to turn into a preposterous beast…

As the group assumed greater visibility, they established their goal as the creation of an artificial world which the U.S. empire would rule single-handedly. Ignoring history, they were set on creating an illusory world, one where they alone would set the rules, decide who would run big corporations, who would dominate the world scene, who would control the enormous oil wealth of the Middle East and Central Asia, who would dictate the fate of the world – without taking into consideration the ambitions of the rest of the world or the aspirations of human beings. This virtual universe began to turn into a frightening reality decades later when these men managed to seize power. And they did this through manipulating the Supreme Court into appointing a clown as President, a marionette to serve as their front man. The clown didn’t have to do anything other than smirk and occasionally lift his hand in a fist; they knew that would be enough to impress the world and, in particular, the American people. Oh yes, and he would pretend to be one of the people, just like your cousin Dave or your next-door neighbor.

Joshua Muravchik, American Enterprise Institute:

We got lucky with Reagan. He took the path we wanted, and the policies succeeded brilliantly. He left office highly popular. Bush is a different story. He, too, took the path we wanted, but the policies are achieving uncertain success. His popularity has plummeted. It would be pigheaded not to reflect and rethink.

But we ought to do this without backbiting or abandoning Bush. All policies are perfect on paper, none in execution. All politicians are, well, politicians. Bush has embraced so much of what we believe that it would be silly to begrudge his deviations.

Calling Bush incompetent I think is making a too dangerous assumption.

Calling Bush incompetent I think might be dangerously minimizing and masking real and deeper issues:

Absolutely convinced we possess the right to pursue our “happiness” and “security”, regardless of the cost to the Earth and the rest of its sentient inhabitants, we US Americans are in a race to hoard the most toys, to eat the most food, to have the most orgasms, to be the best looking, and to be the biggest winners as we engage in a repugnant orgy of narcissistic and gluttonous hedonism.

We wage war perpetually, strip the world bare like a swarm of locusts, and give virtually nothing in return. Ensuring our “happiness” and “security” extracts a tremendous price from the rest of the Earth.

Since it rose to military and economic hegemony at the close of World War II, the United States, its proxies, an array of US-installed ruthless reactionary tyrants, and the World Bank have worked in concert to slaughter, torture, and impoverish untold millions of human beings in the “developing world” in an endless quest to satiate our plutocracy’s insatiable thirst for power and treasure.

Bush, his henchmen, and their multitude of war crimes are not anomalies.

Who will provide the grand design?

What is yours and what is mine?

Cause there is no more new frontier

We have got to make it here

We satisfy our endless needs and

Justify our bloody deeds,

In the name of destiny and the name

Of god

And you can see them there,

On Sunday morning

They stand up and sing about

What its like up there

They call it paradise

I don’t know why

You call someplace paradise,

Kiss it goodbye

“The Eagles – The Last Resort”



Cross-posted from Edgeing

Oct 11 2007

A great film

reposted from dailyKos

Last Mother’s Day, my mother insisted that I watch a movie.  She has never done this before or since.  The movie is called Paper Clips, it’s out on DVD, and I urge everyone to see it. It’s about the holocaust, it’s about a small town in Tennessee, it’s about changing people and changing the world, and there is more after the fold

Why am I recommended a film on docudharma? This isn’t a site about film, after all.  There are two big reasons: First, from dailyKos spillover and from my time here, I’ve come to think of myself as part of this community, and to count some as friends.  My friends should see this movie.  Second, although it isn’t totally obvious, this is exactly a docudharma kind of film

Before I go into a little detail, I will say that the movie, while uplifting overall, does deal with a lot of horrible information.  It’s a disturbing film.  It’s a good kind of disturbing, but I think that it might not be right for kids younger than about 10, and even older ones will need guidance with it, particularly if they do not know about the holocaust.  It’s not graphic like Schindler’s List or Shoah, it all takes place in Tennessee, in the 1990s. 

OK, some details, without (I hope) spoiling it.  In 1998, in Whitwell, Tennessee (a small, all-white, all-Protestant town near Chatanooga)the high school principal decided that the kids should learn about some different people.  She decided that the school would study the holocaust.  They started off with not much idea of what to do.  Few of the teachers knew.  One of the teachers admits to having been rather prejudiced.  They got the idea to try to collect a paper clip for every Jew who died in the camps.  This is their story.

Go see it.

It’s inspiring.

Oct 11 2007

Pony Open Thread: The Mother

Cost of the War in Iraq
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Through October 15, I plan to devote my Pony Party slots to support International Blog Action Day and its focus on our environment, of which we are as much a part as any other creature or plant or ecosystem. In fact, we are ecosystems within one, made up of 70% water and 30% earth, much like the surface of our mother, Gaia, Planet Earth.

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“”First in my prayer, before all other deities,
I call upon Gaia, Primeval Prophetess . . .
The Greek great earth mother.”
~Aeschylus~

Looking at Planet Earth as itself a Living Entity…
as described by Ozi
[http://www.ozi.com/o…]

We can visualise the Equatorial rainforests functioning as the planet’s lungs, exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide in concert with the oceans.

Observe the atmosphere functioning as a global respiratory system.

Imagine that our rivers and streams are like a circulatory system for the planetary body, bringing clean water and flushing the system.

Feel invisible currents of universal force that run longitudinally, latitudinally and diagonally around our planet. These unseen but sensed *Ley lines are like acupuncture meridians that carry this life force within the human body.

Notice that the whole planet “breathes” by contracting and expanding with the moon’s gravitational pull.

Witness the seasonal cycles mirroring bodily changes, from the contraction of autumn to the inevitable rebirth of spring.

Oct 11 2007

On Iran: Bush is selling war, but Britain’s not buying

An interesting dimension of the Bush Administration’s attempts to catapult the propaganda about Iran has been reported in a series of separate articles, in the Guardian, the past couple weeks. They’re trying to sell a war to Britain. Thus far, Britain’s not buying.

On September 30, the Guardian reported that John Bolton was in England, doing what John Bolton does: warmonger.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country….

He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the “source of the problem”, Mr Ahmadinejad.

Because that worked so well in Iraq, let’s try it again: bomb them, then remove their leadership. Because we’re allowed to do such things. Because we’re exceptional.

On Monday, the Guardian reported that some-time general, and increasingly full-time political hack, David Petraeus, was also in England, also to sell a war:

The commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, yesterday sharpened America’s confrontation with Iran, claiming that a leader of its Revolutionary Guard corps was in direct charge of policy in Baghdad.

The charge that Tehran’s ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, was a member of the Quds force, a unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, takes US accusations of Iranian meddling in Iraq’s violence to a new level. It strengthens suggestions that Washington is ratcheting up the rhetoric against Tehran in preparation for military strikes against Revolutionary Guard facilities in Iran.

Ratcheting up the rhetoric is right. Whether or not the rhetoric has any relation to the truth is, as always with the Bush Administration and its minions, irrelevant. And the Guardian had already reported that during last Spring’s standoff over the Iranian capture of fifteen British sailors, even Tony Blair’s government turned down Bush Administration offers of aggressive and provocative military patrols in Iranian airspace.

The latest encouraging news came from the Guardian’s sister paper, the Observer, last Sunday:

Diplomatic relations between Britain and the United States over Iran are under increasing strain after Gordon Brown’s special security adviser warned that American claims about Tehran’s military capability should be taken ‘with a pinch of salt’.

As a new conservative campaign group with links to the White House prepares to make the case that Iran is a direct threat to the US, Patrick Mercer urged scepticism towards any US justification for strikes against the country.

What the Bush Administration is presenting as “evidence,” Mercer isn’t buying.

Mercer, who last month accepted a post as an adviser to the Brown government, said: ‘All that I heard when I was in Iran was British authorities saying “be careful about what you hear from America”. I’m not saying for one moment that it is necessarily wrong, but it’s got to be taken with a pinch of salt. Is it American rhetoric, propaganda or fact?’

The Observer says British military commanders have talked with America military commanders, but there has been no British offer of support for possible attacks. This would seem to be a potential key to preventing such attacks. If Prime Minister Gordon Brown is unwilling to don Tony Blair’s lapdog collar, Bush will have, essentially, no international backing for a new war. Our friends in Britain need to keep up the pressure, and be vocal and active in their support of Brown’s reticence.

There’s no telling what will or won’t be a deciding factor in Bush’s decision about Iran. Clearly, facts, the legitimacy of threats, and basic morality will not be factors. Being able to claim allied support might be. Pausing to consider the disastrous consequences of a war on Iran, one cannot help but conclude that the lives of millions of Iranians, and perhaps of what’s left of the America we once knew, may now lie in the hands of the British Prime Minister. Before the Iraq War, France and Germany tried to be good friends and allies by telling Bush what he refused to hear. If Britain now does the same, with Iran, it might make the difference. That much-touted special relationship now needs take on an unprecedented maturity.

Oct 10 2007

RFID & The Future

Most of us are aware of the RFID tags and chips…now there are
DragonFlys…

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Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.
“I heard someone say, ‘Oh my god, look at those,’ ” the college senior from New York recalled. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.”
Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.
“I’d never seen anything like it in my life,” the Washington lawyer said. “They were large for dragonflies. I thought, ‘Is that mechanical, or is that alive?’ ”

and MagicMirrors…

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What it does is let you try on virtual outfits and share with friends, allowing them to then text you back with a yay or nay. Besides the main panel where you can see your proposed new look, there are two other panels: the left showing you available pieces from the store, while the right offers up info on accessories that you might like.

Radio-frequency identification, it IS useful, I suppose.  For Alzheimer’s patients and others with certain medical conditions, for lost dogs & cats, merchandise location, toll roads, and many passports.

The Future of RFID….

Though I am not really a conspiracy theorist, there are certainly some windows of possibility to use this technology against average citizenry. 
As it is right now, DHS (.pdf) says;

RFID appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity. Instead, it increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security. Most difficult and troubling is the situation in which RFID is ostensibly used for tracking objects (medicine containers, for example), but can be in fact used for monitoring human behavior. These types of uses are still being explored and remain difficult to predict.

For these reasons, we recommend that RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings. When DHS does choose to use RFID to identify and track individuals, we recommend the implementation of the specific security and privacy safeguards described herein.

Yet it has been mentioned for use in tagging our military, for quick identification purposes.  Verichip has been lobbying the Pentagon for the authority to implant RFID tags in virtually all military personnel, according to a series of articles in The Examiner a Washington, D.C., newspaper.

VeriChip wants to insert the chips under the skin of the right arms of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen. The idea is to be able to scan an arm and obtain that person’s identity and medical history.

What do Conspiracy theorists say?  Listen…

That was Aaron Russo, who passed away a few months ago after a six year battle with cancer.  Was he a conspiracy theorist?  Personally, I don’t know, maybe some of you have some light to shed on that, I’ll remain open-minded.

Of course the Religious right has Hal Lindsey commenting on the subject also…

OKAY…..I find myself somewhere in the middle of those opinions.  I feel we must move forward technologically as a society, there will be innovations that will at first feel uncomfortable….progress, change, motion in inevitable.  But I am not willing to EVER insert something of this sort into my body…You would have to seriously sedate me and tie my down to get a chip into me.  Even then, I’d be screaming my lungs out!  But technology is pushing the chip to even smaller limits with plenty of storage capabilities and farther ranging transmissions.  What if one day all they had to do was pass by you in a bar and tap you on your shoulder…and not even know you had just been “tagged”!
Gives a whole new meaning to “Tag, you’re it!”

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