Thomas Paine's Corner

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Super Bowl XLI was an indictment of our society?s true priorities
2007-06-13 20:28:00
?The grand jury was silent on whether Rod K. Williams? seat for Super Bowl XLI was an indictment of our society?s true priorities.?By Paul A. Moore6/13/07This is the story of four young men.They all endure longer than Rod K. Williams. His body was found in a dumpster eight days after he died. Rod?s family and friends say he wanted to play football someday but he was only 14-years-old when he was wrapped in plastic bags and thrown in the garbage. While his body decomposed in the shadow of Dolphins Stadium they played Super Bowl XLI there. The game is described with Roman numerals due to its gravitas. An estimated one billion people watched the game on CBS, part of Viacom?s media empire. Tony Dungy beat Lovie Smith to the Lombardi Trophy and was lauded as the first African-American coach to win a Super Bowl. While Peyton Manning was named the game?s Most Valuable Player many Black athletes on the field made spectacular plays that drew loud cheers from the crowd. The Bears Devin Hester...
More About: Society , True , Indictment

The Denial of Equality is the Root of All Evil
2007-06-13 03:47:00
By Michael Goodspeed 6/12/07 "To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of all creation as oneself." ---Mahatma Gandhi Late last week, I returned home to Portland, OR, after attending a three-day conference on the Electric Universe in Las Vegas, NV. The event brought together an impressive array of scientists, authors, and independent researchers from many different disciplines and walks of life, all unified in their quest to develop a better understanding of the cosmos and our place in it. Throughout the event, I had the privilege of interacting with some very accomplished scholars in such seemingly disparate fields as electrical engineering, physics, plasma physics, geology, and comparative mythology. In every instance, I was very pleased to find that I was treated as an equal, even though I claim no special expertise on the topics discussed. This lack of pretension on the part of the "experts" ...
More About: Evil , Equality , Quality , Root , The D

Report Details CIA Prisons In Europe
2007-06-10 16:49:00
By Joe Kay 6/10/07 A report released Friday by the Council of Europe confirms that the CIA has used interrogation centers in Europe, including in Romania and Poland, to secretly hold and torture prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the globe. The report is the most detailed description of a secret program initiated by the US government, with the collaboration of Europe. In addition to Poland and Romania, many European and other powers have taken part in the program, including Germany, Italy, Britain and Canada. An earlier report from the council released in June 2006 provided some information on the program, and singled out 14 European governments for complicity. The report was prepared by Dick Marty, a rapporteur for the council, which is tasked with monitoring human rights in Europe. It was issued the same day as a trial began in Italy against CIA agents suspected of involvement in capturing one of the prison network's victims (see today's article on ...
More About: Report , Sons , Details , Riso

Wall Street Journal's Looking Glass World
2007-06-09 18:31:00
Photo: Mary O?Grady Wins Bastiat Prize for Journalism By Stephen Lendman 6/9/07 She's at it again on the Journal's editorial page in her June 4 article called "The Young and the Restless," subtitled "Is this the beginning of the end for Hugo Chavez?" The writer is self-styled Latin American expert Mary Anastasia O'Grady always getting top grades in vilification and disinformation but failing ones on regional knowledge and legitimate journalism. This time she may have overstepped. Her article reeks with disinformation, outright lies, and most disturbing of all - incendiary commentary straddling the tipping edge of inciting insurrection. She can get away with it because she represents elitist interests and the Journal's editorial view supporting the Bush administration's fixation on ousting Hugo Chavez by any means, including through violence. It doesn't matter that Chavez was just reelected again in December by a near two to one margin or that he's admire...
More About: World , Wall Street , Street , Wall , Glass

Losing Afghanistan: Firepower Doesn?t Always Win Wars
2007-06-09 18:20:00
By Ramzy Baroud 6/8/07 In a statement made available through the country?s Foreign Office, Pakistan?s Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri chastised the ?international community? for the ?abandonment? of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. In his estimation, it was this attitude that created the conditions which eventually culminated in the rise of the Taliban, the hosts of al-Qaeda. The statement was reportedly made at the G-8 Foreign Ministers? recent conference in Potsdam, Germany, according to Pakistan?s Daily Times. Kasuri was, expectedly, packaging his critique within a context specific to Pakistan?s own concerns: namely the 2.4 million Afghani refugees - according to UNHCR figures ? and who have crossed the border into Pakistan seeking shelter and relative safety. Moreover, Pakistan, under consistent censure for allegedly failing to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaeda militants operating around its Western border, deployed 90,000 soldie...
More About: Wars , Ghan , Always

Beyond PTSD: the Moral Casualties of War
2007-06-08 23:19:00
BY CAMILLO ?MAC? BICA6/4/07According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, during the Iraq war, 56 percent of soldiers and Marines (henceforth I will use the term ?soldiers? to include members of all branches, both male and female) have killed another human being, 20 percent admit being responsible for noncombatant deaths, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains.[i] According to Colonel Charles Engel, MD, MPH, director of the deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, between 15 and 29 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because soldiers still on active duty are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq, experts say that the PTSD rate among Iraq veterans could well eclipse the 30% lifetime rate found in a 1990 national study of Vietnam veterans. While these numbers are staggering and should give any rational human being pause, the readjustment difficulti...
More About: Casual , Oral , Moral , Casualties , Mora

Stay in NYC?
2007-06-08 22:26:00
Originally published at Speaking Truth to Power 6/8/06[In 2006 Phillip Botwinick helped organize and coordinate the Local Energy Solutions Conference in New York City. His years of research on Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse, as well as his experience as an instructor of Permaculture, superbly qualify him to critique Plan NYC as a public relations pipedream disconnected from current reality.?Carolyn Baker]I remember Earth Days in the seventies. It was a big deal. People seemed genuinely interested in saving the planet. As the years passed the crowds got smaller and it became a human interest story for the local media. Until this year. Maybe Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" was a catalyst for many people. Maybe people read more stories about -­Climate Change in papers, magazines. Whatever the reason, I frequently hear conversations about the weather in elevators, on subways and on the street. This year I saw more events, more people and more questions at t...
More About: Stay

Gas Prices Could Go Up - Way Up
2007-06-08 19:08:00
by Rowan Wolf6/6/07Hold onto your hats folks. Gas prices could skyrocket shortly due to cyclone Gonu which is hitting Oman and heading into Gulf of Oman. This could have a significant effect on oil fields, production facilities and shipping. There is an extensive discussion at the Oil Drum at this link and the most recent thread at this link. I will try to summarize the high points.Gonu has hit Oman and is heading on into the Gulf. The reports range from this being the most powerful storm to hit Oman in 60 years, to reports that no cyclone has ever entered the Gulf of Oman. Storm surges of 10-15 feet are expected to hit the coast of Iran. This will definitely impact shipping in the region - even oil shipping.According to Oil Drum, Oman produces 774,000 bbl/day, and their operations could be impacted for 30 days or more. Combined with other likely impacts in the Gulf of Oman, there could be a drastic reduction in oil movement out of the region.(The image above - Courtesy of Wired New...
More About: Gas Prices , Prices

Resource Wars - Can We Survive Them?
2007-06-08 00:36:00
By Stephen Lendman6/6/07Near the end of WW II, Franklin Roosevelt met with Saudi King ibn Saud on the USS Quincy. It began a six decade relationship guaranteeing US access to what his State Department called a "stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history" - the region's oil and huge amount of it in Saudi Arabia. Today, the Middle East has two-thirds of the world's proved oil reserves (around 675 billion barrels) and the Caspian basin an estimated 270 billion barrels more plus one-eighth of the world's natural gas reserves. It explains a lot about why we're at war with Iraq and Afghanistan and plan maintaining control over both countries. We want a permanent military presence in them aimed at controlling both regions' proved energy reserves with puppet regimes, masquerading as democracies, beholden to Washington as client states. They're in place to observe what their ousted predecessors ignored: the rules of imperial managemen...
More About: Wars , Survive , Resource , Vive

Or, maybe it's just totally wrong to kill and let's not even go there.
2007-06-08 00:07:00
?You say you want a revolution? Well, you know ... we're all doing what we can."--John Lennon"Is This Heaven?"by Mike Palecek"Nope.Iowa."Where brown puppies are frisky, U-Turns aren't risky, and good girls sip their whiskey.On the road, on my book tour, I was asked a few times, well, then, what should we do??I don't know. ... I just don't know."Hey.The new presidential directive says that in case of emergency George W. Bush has dictatorial powers.The new presidential directive.What's that? What was the old presidential directive? Who said he gets directives?Did you vote for that?So. If you don?t like that, what do you do in the United States?Vote for a Democrat?Try to figure out whom to shoot?Speaking of voting. Didn't we think we did this big thing awhile back when we elected a bunch of Democrats and Nancy Pelosi was the new house mom?And the first thing she said before she was even the leader was that impeachment was off the table, and now they support Bush.People also asked...
More About: Wrong , Total , Kill , There , Ally

Some democracy, America
2007-06-07 21:30:00
The America n President is selling a product that America does not have.by Anwaar Hussain6/6/07President Bush is in Europe flaunting, in a hard sell pitch, his brand of democracy to the world at large and to Russia in particular. He is known to have said: ?We believe that the voice of the people ought to be determining policy, because we believe in democracy.?That, ladies and gentlemen, is as fallacious a statement as any that the President of United States has been giving since he took over the reins of his great country. Fallacious too because the American President is selling a product that America does not have.Granted that we in the Muslim countries have not much idea of the fruits of democracy, having been perpetually ruled by kings, despots, generals, tyrants, autocrats and dictators of all hues. Granted too the fact that no democracy is perfect and at any given time it is either getting better or getting worse, yet the President?s statement is a wholly fallacious one. Fallaci...
More About: Democracy , Some

AN OPEN LETTER TO LIBERTARIAN ACTIVISTS
2007-06-06 20:34:00
?We can thank workers? struggle for the abolition of child labor, not the wonders of the free market which thrives off of cheap labor sources, including the children of the poor.?By Paul Donovan6/5/06Dear Libertarian s,I sincerely appreciate the passion and sincerity you exhibit in your endeavors, and that is why I?d like to bring up a few points to your attention. These comments originate in my recent exposure to a very large number of posts commenting primarily on an article on the Thomas Paine?s Corner blog of Cyrano?s Journal, Annals of Stupidity: The Demise of Alexander Cockburn, by Gerald Rellick. I discern in this thread what I have observed elsewhere, a tremendous infatuation by Libertarians with Rep. Ron Paul. That certainly strikes me as logical: Paul is one of your own. The point of divergence, however, is equally simple. The reasons and personal qualities you adduce for elevating Mr. Paul to the status of national saviour are matched, and in many dimensions clearly exceed...
More About: Open , Letter , Open Letter

Electoral Blowback: Reality Kicks us in the Rump One More Time
2007-06-06 19:05:00
BY JOE MOWREY5/30/07Everyone is carping about the betrayal of the antiwar movement by the Democrats. It won?t take more than a few paragraphs to state the obvious. We no longer live in anything resembling a democracy, and we haven?t for many decades now. We live in a corporate-fascist theocratic oligarchy, or whichever multi-syllabic label you want to tack onto our current laissez faire capitalistic religious-extremist nightmare. If you need to have this explained to you in more depth, then you are probably one of those dreamers who did volunteer work for some Democratic candidate last year. Get over it. You?ve been duped again. No big surprise.It is not now, and hasn?t been for at least the last 100 years, a question of which party holds power. Both parties are branches of the same form of governance. Those of you out there who think this is about a good system gone awry, look again. The system is working just the way it was intended to. The power elite who controls and operates co...
More About: Reality , Time , Al B , Kicks , Oral

The End of the Line
2007-06-06 18:29:00
By Guy Zimmerman6/1/07From the VOXPOP section of Cyrano?s JournalCapitalism, for all its effectiveness in certain arenas, is the source of potentially fatal imbalances in the ways human being interact with others and with the environment. Capitalism is unspeakably cruel to those it enslaves, and it is a moral catastrophe for those it empowers. It should correctly be viewed as the socio-economic embodiment of the ?3 poisons? of greed, hatred and ignorance given historical expression by the Enlightenment. The human species must move to an entirely different way of interacting with each other and with the geosphere, and the first step is clarity about where we are now and hence what this process will entail.The rubric of ?right? and ?left? is itself a holdover from the 18th century and the French revolution and I suspect its usefulness is nearly over. In any event, in my last post I wasn?t at all promoting the right as successful in anything but defending the prerogatives of an utterly...
More About: Line

I AM A PALESTINIAN
2007-06-06 16:55:00
BY GARY CORSERI(originally posted at Dissident Voice, 2006)Before Moses or the Romans,Before Jesus and Muhammad,Before the Turks and the English,We dwelled in this land.We built cities out of the dust,Watered with our tears,Mortared with our joys;We fished the abundant seas,Blessed our children?s marriagesIn our cool olive groves.We did not botherTo give ourselves a name.We were ?the People,?The ones who had always been.Intruders cameAnd marched across our land.They brought Sky Gods with weaponsOf iron and steel.When we complained,They butchered our babies.The old men prayed,And they were murdered where they prayed.The women keenedAnd were murdered where they keened.We wrote petitions to World CouncilsAnd were laughed off the stage.We appealed to the Great PowersFor mercy, understanding, justice.Sometimes they listened politely.(We were pawns in their games.)Sometimes they yawned at our wounds.We are a small people, and our skin is dark with the desert sun.White men with pink skin a...
More About: Palestinian

Annals of Mendacious Punditry: When the Shill Enables the Kill
2007-06-04 09:06:00
By Jason Miller 6/4/07 Jonah Goldberg is the living, breathing embodiment of virtually all that is pernicious in the malignant socioeconomic and political structures collectively known as the American Empire. Yet tragically, this scheming sycophant to the cynical, privileged criminals of the US plutocracy reaches countless millions through myriad corporate media conduits as he weaves his sophistic arguments supporting nearly every morally repulsive aspect of United States foreign policy. Rising to his position amongst the US mainstream punditry elite through vigorous and shameless self-promotion based on his mother?s involvement in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, young Jonah quickly learned our culture?s ferocious appetite for the sordid, the lurid, and all that validates our collective pathological narcissism euphemistically called the American Dream. To this day, he skillfully crafts malevolent agitprop to convince and reassure us here in the United States that it is ...
More About: The Kill , Hill , Kill

This is Not the Life I Ordered
2007-06-03 07:30:00
By Michael Goodspeed 6/3/07 Every man with the smallest inklings of humility and courage is forever discovering new things about himself. The self-images we cultivate through arrogance and ignorance are easily exposed in the harsh light of life experience. One may think himself a hero or genius or saint, but all too often, these grandiose self-analyses are born of egoic delusion rather than objective reality. When one's false pride has fallen and his ego stands defenseless and trembling, therein lays the greatest opportunity for self-discovery. One can either wait for the ego to re-inflate and again retreat to its comforting shelter, or one can leap head-first into the cavernous abyss that the ego once filled. The latter is the action advised by some of history's great spiritual teachers, but the former is the one preferred by almost all of humankind. We only do the really serious introspection when we have no choice, when we're at life's bottom. Stripped of every f...
More About: Life , Order

For Boycott to Be Effective, an International Coalition Is Indispensable
2007-06-02 15:11:00
By Ramzy Baroud 6/2/07 South Africa's Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils whispered to me as I sat down following a most enthusiastic speech I gave at a recent conference in Cape Town: "if you want the world to heed to your call for boycotting Israel, the call has to originate from the Palestinian leadership itself." Kasrils is obviously right. The call for boycotting the racist Apartheid government was an exclusively South African endeavour, made resonantly and repeatedly by the African National Council (ANC) and backed by the various liberation movements in the country and in exile. It took years for the dedicated campaign to be effective. The message communicated to the international community was clear and simply persuasive: put an end to Apartheid. It was but only a facet....(Here is the article in its entirety)Thomas Paine's Corner is a site dedicated to advancing universal human rights, fostering social and economic justice, and supporting the cause of al...
More About: International , Coalition , Boycott , Effective , Intern

ONE EARTH FLAGS: Passports for World Citizenry
2007-06-02 15:01:00
by Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) 6/2/07 I am a citizen of the world, my countrymen all mankind. --Thomas Paine With, without.And who?ll deny it?s what the fighting?s all about? -- Pink Floyd "Us and Them" Imagine there's no countries... -- John Lennon "Imagine" Imagine the image of Earth stitched onto a corner of every national flag. Not quite what John Lennon sang to us to do but it is a start. One World flags would help us to remember our connection with the world as a whole. And anything nasty done by a nation -- wherever they might raise their flag....(Click here to read the full article) Thomas Paine's Corner is a site dedicated to advancing universal human rights, fostering social and economic justice, and supporting the cause of all oppressed, exploited, and impoverished human beings on our Earth.
More About: Pass , Flag , Spor

The House of Cards Collapsed in 1929
2007-06-01 18:31:00
Photo: Civilian Conservation Corps at an experimental farm in Beltsville, Maryland. (Circa 1933)By Carolyn BakerSpeaking Truth to Power6/1/07?..that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.?The Glass Menagerie?, by Tennessee WilliamsWilliam Faulkner famously stated that ?good history is not was.? By this Faulkner meant that history is a tapestry of interconnected events whose meaning and significance cannot be appreciated unless past causes, present manifestation, and future consequences are assessed. Robert S. McElvaine, author of The Great Depression, America 1929-1941, provides us with the kind of tapestry to which Faulkner was alluding as McElvaine analyzes the first momentous collapse that the United States ever experienced.I was recentl...
More About: House , Cards , Ouse , The House , Coll

Just Say ?No!? to Coal
2007-06-01 18:07:00
by Rowan Wolf of CJO Avenger6/1/07There needs to be a call to action. Big Coal (like Peabody Energy Company aka Peabody Coal Company) is pushing hard to get us (via the government) to make massive investments in coal, and coal to liquid fuel legislation. The plan is to take our current estimated 250 year supply of coal and use it as a liquid fuel to replace imported oil. Imported oil makes up 60% of the oil used in the United States. This plan is so stupid on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start.Coal is being pushed as an ?alternative? fuel. Oh please spare me. Coal is neither ?clean,? ?green,? or renewable. There is a big push to increase coal for electric generation as well. Even though the ?scrubbing? technology for emissions have improved, more plants using more coal means more emissions - including CO2 emissions. Let us not forget that ?energy? is not the only crisis facing us. There is the ?little? issue of global warming. The New York Times (May 29, 2007...

Symbols and Their Power
2007-06-01 17:35:00
Graphic: Chinese symbol for loveby Ivor Hughes6/1/07The heart also thinks but not in the same way as the mind.. the heart thinks holistically... holographically.. it thinks in pictures.. symbols.. the beam of light between a man and woman?s gaze.. the heart consciousness operates at a greater magnitude of speed than does the mind.. glance at a painting .. ?a picture speaks a thousand words?. The mind would need considerably more time to process that amount of information than that which is conveyed to the heart in a trice.It is because symbols communicate with the heart that they are used to sway human minds... That explains nicely why our rulers make such good use of symbols for example the Union Jack ... the flag of Britain raises much patriotic feeling amongst Britons.The national flag in other nations must do the same. Men march to War behind a flag .. so we may understand it is a very powerful symbol.. Just as the Cross is for Christians.. and the Koran is for Muslims.. So havi...
More About: Power , Symbols

TRUMP PIMPS ?MEMORIAL DAY? MISS UNIVERSE! OPRAH SHILLS ?THE SECRET.? AND
2007-06-01 01:05:00
By Gary Corseri5/31/07So I broke down and I watched the Miss Universe pageant.It just happened to come on while I was finishing my late dinner. I hadn?t planned on it. Suddenly, there are these 77 gorgeous limbs, torsos and faces saying ?Miss Denmark,? ?Miss U.S.A.,? ?Miss Angola,? ?Miss India,? etc.It?s a lot showier than when Bert Parks used to sing:There she goes--Miss America.There she goes--my ideal.It?s also a lot more globalized. Blondes and white skin are quickly sidelined as the contest rolls on. My wife says, ?How can anyone choose who is the most beautiful?? I suggest that each of the 77 gets a medal and that?s that.But we watch anyway. We?re tired from our day of brain-work, and the little I?ve seen this Memorial Day of Brad what?s-his-name emoting about the ultimate sacrifice of our soldiers, or Diane Wiest acting the role of a brave mother sitting..... (Click here for the complete essay)Thomas Paine's Corner is a site dedicated to advancing universal human rights, fos...
More About: Oprah , Miss Universe , The Secret , Secret

Why I am Ashamed to be an American
2007-05-31 23:49:00
By Doug Soderstrom5/31/07Having grown up in a small town in Central Kansas I was taught to believe that my country, the United States of America, was a land committed to justice and peace, a nation that one could count on to do the right thing, a country of civilized folks who had but one thing in mind??.. that of doing the will of God. I also began to realize that there is nothing wrong with feeling ashamed for having done something wrong, that such a response is a rather natural consequence of having violated one?s conscience, a voice from deep within that is no doubt a reliable guide for how a man (or woman) of true integrity ought to live his (or her) life. However, for those who seem to lack the capacity to feel ashamed, one can only wonder what must be wrong with them.As I began to emerge into manhood there was an ever, ongoing flow of hints, subtle suggestions that things were not as I had been told. However, it wasn?t until our country vented its awful wrath upon a post 9-11...
More About: American , Asha , Sham , Shame

Terrorism Defined
2007-05-31 23:10:00
by Stephen Lendman5/31/07Probably no word better defines or underscores the Bush presidency than "terrorism" even though his administration wasn't the first to exploit this highly charged term. We use to explain what "they do to us" to justify what we "do to them," or plan to, always deceitfully couched in terms of humanitarian intervention, promoting democracy, or bringing other people the benefits of western civilization Gandhi thought would be a good idea when asked once what he thought about it.Ronald Reagan exploited it in the 1980s to declare "war on international terrorism" referring to it as the "scourge of terrorism" and "the plague of the modern age." It was clear he had in mind launching his planned Contra proxy war of terrorism against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua and FMLN opposition resistance to the US-backed El Salvador fascist regime the same way George Bush did it waging his wars of aggression post-9/11.It's a simple scheme to pull...
More About: Terrorism , Error , Fine , Defined , Define

Like a toddler driving a garbage truck on ice with marble tires toward a cl
2007-05-31 22:11:00
?Part of the reason I did it was to protest the injustice of so much money going to Offutt and letting the poor people in North Omaha, the blacks, wallow in poverty. Nobody seemed to care about that.?"I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."---The AnimalsIs This Heaven?by Mike PalecekNo. It's Iowa.God Bless Rosie O'Donnell, huh? Having the guts to question the official government story of 9-11 on national television. What if Matt Lauer had guts or Katie Couric or Jay Leno?It really wouldn't take that much to really, really change this country.You know, there are so many people working hard ? hard ? every day to make something good happen.And then somebody like these pretty boys and girls with so much power, if they would just decide one day to make something of themselves ? they could do in one day, one hour, what a million of us out here will not be able to do in our lifetimes.Hey.How you doing? It's been rainy and cool here ...
More About: Driving , Truck , Garbage , Marble , Ward

What I Admire Most About Cindy Sheehan
2007-05-31 21:35:00
by Carolyn Baker5/31/07Corporate media?and even some alternative websites, are blaring with headlines about Cindy Shee han ?quitting? the anti-war movement. It is true that Sheehan has stepped down as the consummate symbol of the ordinary, salt-of-the-earth American mother crusading against the empire for the end of the war that brought about her son?s meaningless death. But it is not true that Cindy is ?quitting.? After years of sacrifice, incomprehensible losses, and several hundred stages of burnout, she has walked away from a role and the symbolism inherent within it, but even more significantly in my opinion, and reverberating through her article ?Letter To The Democratic Congress,? she has rejected the Democratic Party and its pretense of offering an alternative to the politics of empire.Last night I watched Keith Olbermann begin his ?Countdown? show with the story of Sheehan?s ?quitting? the anti-war movement, even including some quotes from her, but mentioning nothing about h...
More About: Indy , Admire

Shape Up Democrats: Anybody But Bush Will Not Do
2007-05-30 18:57:00
By Paul A. Donovan5/30/07With the 2008 election approaching fast, I find myself with the same unsettled feeling I had in the last presidential race to the bottom. Perhaps it is because I feel that the age-old maxim, ?Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,? is as true for today as it was in 2004. Fact is, if we do not wake up quick, and start pressing the current Democrat ic Party frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, to be more leftist, or in other words to be more like Presidential candidate Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), then we can hope for little substantive change in the next administration.Recent polls reflect that President Bush ?s approval ratings have fallen to a staggering low of 28%. As a result, many feel confident that it may very well be an easy stroll into the Oval Office for most Democratic hopefuls, who seem to be operating under the false illusion that Bush himself is running for a third term. If this assumption were false, how do ...
More About: Democrats , Shape , Rats

Need is a Nasty Word
2007-05-30 17:37:00
By Sally Erickson5/30/07Sally Erickson, Producer of the documentary "What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire" writes of the extent to which we need each other in the face of collapse and how our programming for "rugged individualism" is not working and will not sustain us?Carolyn BakerSay hello to the last throes of America?s collective dementia. No amount of medication in the form of alternative therapy, I mean alternative energy, is going to repair the years of abuse to our collective body and spirit by the machinations of Empire. Antidepressants, I mean anti-inflationary economics, are rapidly losing their effectiveness. We?ve reached peak insanity. We?re sunk. Thank the gods. It?s all downhill from here.We need help.I come from a quietly dysfunctional, but highly functioning, middle-class American family. My brother and sister have both had incomes way into six figures for decades. I think. It?s not polite to discuss income so I can only presume.I never had the guts to go th...
More About: Word , Nasty

New Opium Crops - In Iraq
2007-05-30 15:19:00
By Rowan Wolf5/30/07One would have thought this would have been big news, but somehow it has largley escaped the U.S. corporate media. Patrick Cockburn, however, writes Opium: Iraq ?s deadly new export. While apparently in the beginnings of cultivation, the poverty and chaos which has enveloped Iraq is spawning opium fields in southern Iraq. Iraq has historically been one of the opium highways for Afghanistan?s trade.Now Iraq is turning to opium cultivation for the same reason that Afghanistan returned to it - poverty, profit, and chaos:As in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, these conditions of primal anarchy are ideal for criminal gangs and drug smugglers and producers. The difference is that Afghanistan had long been a major producer of opium and possessed numerous laboratories experienced in turning opium into heroin. The Taliban, on the orders of its leader, Mullah Omar, had stopped its cultivation by farmers in the parts of Afghanistan it (The complete article...
More About: Crop , Crops