Thomas Paine's Corner

RSS Feed Homepage

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

Kemo Sabe, kiss my ass
2007-04-18 20:27:00
?Howard Zinn talking sense on the television. That is something I have never-ever before seen in my life. I am from Norfolk?.#7 The American Dream Book Tour & Protest Across the USABy Mike Palecek4/18/07"But Tonto he was smarter, and one day said Kemo Sabe, kiss my ass, I bought a boat, I'm going out to sea." ? Lyle Lovett, If I Had A BoatSITTING IN THE MAY DAY CAFE, SOUTH MINNEAPOLIS ? I got a hug from a black lesbian in Iowa City.She was wearing a black stocking cap and heavy coat and dreadlocks.It was great. A hug.Wow.It probably says a lot about me, the way I describe that event. Sorry.Or not.I am from Norfolk, Nebraska. When I lived in Norfolk the only blacks were the basketball players for Norfolk Junior College, and the only housing they could find in town was in the locker rooms of the Catholic elementary. I guess nobody else would rent to them. I remember seeing them in there, coming in and out, when we went to the gym for P.E., didn't think anything of it.Oh, well.Cherry...
More About: Kiss

GIVE US YOUR HUDDLED TRANSLATORS: BUT NOT TOO MANY
2007-04-18 18:21:00
By William Fisher4/18/07As the numbers of Iraqi refugees continue to grow exponentially, the American president who earned a reputation as a bumbler who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time is increasingly being hailed as the hero who dealt effectively with a similar crisis forty years ago.The president was Gerald R. Ford, and the similar crisis was in Vietnam. On the evening of April 10, 1975, President Ford appealed to a joint session of Congress to act to ensure the safety of tens of thousands of South Vietnamese employees of the United States Government, of news agencies, of contractors and businesses for many years, whose lives, with their dependents, are in very grave peril. There are tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese intellectuals, professors, teachers, editors, and opinion leaders who have supported the South Vietnamese cause and the alliance with the United States to whom we have a profound moral obligation.Only a month later, Congress passed the Indochina...
More About: Translators , Give , Trans , Translator , Tran

Blacksburg: Let the Healing NOT Begin!
2007-04-17 21:12:00
By Gary Corseri4/17/07When I had cable, I found myself using CNN as a kind of background music, deluding myself that I could tune out the nonsense and tune in when something important came up, and thus. I thought, I was staying ?informed.?But after a while I realized that I was not informed; I was simply distracted by side-show stories, and lulled by the repetitiveness of dull reporting. I also found that, like a junkie, I needed a bigger and bigger ?fix? to keep me going, to excite me, to make me feel connected to the bigger world.But a couple of years ago, I gave up cable and reclaimed a morsel of my sanity. Thus, I got the news about the slaughter at Virginia Tech little by little during the day, gauging the progress of the unfolding tragedy with a picture here, a sound byte there?much as we gauge the progress and lack thereof in Iraq.The first thing I heard was Ed Schultz, a ?progressive? talk-radio jock who was arguing with one of his call-in listeners that this was an ?isola...
More About: Healing , Blacks , Ealing , Lack , Blacksburg

Time to Boycott and Contact Circuit City
2007-04-17 21:00:00
by Rowan Wolf of Uncommon Thought Journal4/17/07Circuit City has decided to lay off 3400 Associates who make above the "market range." That range is in the vicinity of $7.75 an hour. The rationale from the Circuit City press release reads:"The company has completed a wage management initiative that will result in the separation of approximately 3,400 store Associates. The separations, which are occurring today, focused on Associates who were paid well above the market-based salary range for their role. New Associates will be hired for these positions and compensated at the current market range for the job.New employee's will be hired at lower pay, and without benefits. Released employees may reapply for the lower paid positions after a ten week period. Investors apparently think this is a good idea as stocks rose after news of the restructuring.A Circuit City worker earning $7.75 an hour, makes $16,120 a year at full time. If we are generous with benefits and payroll taxes - say at...
More About: Time , Contact , Boycott

Please God, deliver us from the banality of evil
2007-04-16 01:46:00
(Photo: Adolf Eichmann during his trial in Jerusalem, Israel, May 29, 1961) By Jason Miller 4/15/07 I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler. ---Paul Robeson Virtually every day our mendacious corporate media publicizes the farcical ?debate? between officials of the Bush Regime and Congress. While numerous polls have indicated that over 2/3 of US Americans want an end to the war in Iraq, and voters positioned the Democrats to exercise the will of the people, the war rages on. Between the Gulf War, the subsequent US-driven draconian UN economic sanctions, and the seemingly endless US invasion and occupation of Iraq, well over a million Iraqis are dead. Infrastructure essential to vital human needs, including transportation, health, utilities, water, and sanitation has been decimated. Depleted uraniu...
More About: Live , Evil , Please , Lease , Elive

Feed The People, Not SUVs
2007-04-15 03:45:00
by Fidel Castro 4/14/07 Black Agenda Report The following speech was delivered to the people of Cuba by President Fidel Castro, on April 3. Here are President Castro's words: "This colossal squandering of cereals destined to fuel production shall serve to save rich countries less than 15 percent of the total annual consumption of their voracious automobiles." The Camp David meeting has just come to an end. All of us followed the press conference offered by the presidents of the United States and Brazil attentively, as we did the news surrounding the meeting and the opinions voiced in this connection. Faced with demands related to customs duties and subsidies which protect and support US ethanol production, Bush did not make the slightest concession to his Brazilian guest at Camp David. President Lula [of Brazil] attributed to this the rise in corn prices, which, according to his own statements, had gone up more than 85 percent. Before these statements were made, the...
More About: People , Feed , The People

Gotta love those pro-lifers....
2007-04-14 18:09:00
The American Dream Book Tour & Protest Across America By Mike Palecek 4/14/07"You open up their hearts, and here's what you'll find ... some humans ain't human, some people ain't kind." ? John PrineDRIVING TO DES MOINES ? It's sixty-three songs from Sheldon, Iowa to Rochester, Minnesota.I got my iPod back up and running. I won't be alone anymore. Got the Dixie Chicks, John Prine, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, John Denver, The Clash, Bill Hicks, Cat Stevens, The Soggy Bottom Boys, Alison Krause, The Eagles, Green Day, Greg Brown, Woody Guthrie, Steve Forbert, Harry McClintock, all squeezed into the brown Honda.Austin, Minnesota is thirty-four songs from Rochester. It is the home of the Spam Museum. I'm probably in there somewhere, maybe in the hall of fame with all my emails over the past ten years trying to hawk my books.In the early 1990s, Ruth, Sam, Emily and I lived in Byron, eight miles west of Rochester. We owned the tiny Byron Review, ra...
More About: Love , Those , Hose , Gott , Gotta

WAR ON THE WORLD
2007-04-13 20:56:00
(Image: Dresden after the Allied Firebombing)By Gary Corseri4/13/07?The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replacethe savage races throughout the world.?--Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man1.Support our troops!Bring them home alive!Support our troops!Tend to their wounds!Support our troops!Lest they relish killing!Support our troops!Before they are transformed!?We must fight them there,? says Dickface Cheney,?So we don?t have to fight them here.?But we?re already fighting here--An American citizen more likely killedIn the streets of his own capitalThan a US soldierIn Iraq.(Check it out! Check it out! Check it out!)Who is this ?them? we?ve learned to hate?Not long after the towers fellThe Taliban said, ?No more hell!We give Osama back to you;You taught him the worst that you can do--We?ll send him to the Hague.?Pulling his Texas-sheriff strut,The Little Prince said, ?He?s our mutt,But we don?t want him at the Hague!God knows what he?ll say or doWhen all the ...
More About: World , The World

Healthy Political Faith
2007-01-31 10:35:01
Americans have been conditioned like Pavlov's dog to fear a convention because of what might happen--that it would be some kind of Pandora's box. by Joel Hirschhorn1/30/07OpEd NewsIt's hard to avoid labels. I am a proud political dissident. Could the majority of Americans be dissidents? Think of the two-thirds of the country that believe the nation is on the wrong track, the 52 percent that believe politicians are dishonest, the majority that do not vote, and the vast majority that think of themselves as centrists, libertarians, moderates or independents, rather than liberals, Democrats, conservatives or Republicans. And definitely think of the many thousands of Americans out in the streets in recent months to protest the Iraq war, and the larger numbers reading Internet sites to sidestep the mainstream corporate media. Dissidents exist because placing faith in mainstream politicians is as delusional as George W. Bush believing that sending more American soldiers into the Iraq ca...
More About: Health , Faith , Political , Politica , Healthy

U.S. Muslims' beliefs vary like other believers, author finds
2007-01-30 22:34:02
(Photo: Muslim s becoming U.S. citizens)Saturday, January 27, 2007 NANCY HAUGHT The Oregonian Most Americans don't know many Muslims , familiar only with those whose names evoke fear, hatred and defiance. But others are curious, even concerned, about Islam, its American adherents and the creeping fundamentalism we've heard so much about. A new book by Paul M. Barrett, a Business Week editor and a former Wall Street Journal writer and editor, introduces readers to a range of Muslims who struggle to live their faith in a country that is often ignorant, ill-informed and unwelcoming.In "American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25, 304 pages), Barrett profiles several Muslims: an imam, a scholar, an activist, a webmaster, a newspaper publisher, a feminist and a pair of mystics. His subjects are as different from each other as any handful of Muslims gathered from across the United States.Each is a complicated person: Siraj Wahhaj, an African Am...
More About: Beliefs , Other , Find

Demagoguery Posing as Scholarship
2007-01-30 22:34:02
January 29, 2007by Ivan ElandDinesh D?Souza, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has raised a ruckus in his new book The Enemy at Home. In the book, he contends that the 9/11 attackers were motivated by neither U.S. foreign policy abroad nor by a hatred of U.S. freedom, as President Bush has repeatedly argued. Instead, D?Souza declares that Osama bin Laden hates the liberal U.S. culture that promotes contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post defending the book, D?Souza says that he doesn?t ?hate America.? No, he just hates liberal America and is reprehensibly trying to use the horrible 9/11 attacks to score points against the Democrats of the left.D?Souza is not the first person to try to turn the 9/11 attacks to his advantage. President Bush disingenuously tied them to Saddam Hussein and invaded Iraq. In fact, D?Souza is not even the first person on the right to try to pin the blame for 9/11 on the...
More About: Scholarship , Sing , Hola , Scholars , Ship

The Case Against Meat
2007-01-30 16:34:01
Somalian famine victims line up for food handouts. Producing a pound of beef requires 4.8 pounds of grain, and critics of our modern agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets aggravates world hunger.© David & Peter Turnley / Corbis"Evidence Shows that Our Meat -Based Diet is Bad for the Environment, Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health"by Jim MotavalliJanuary/February 2002Emagazine.comThere has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized factory farming?which allows diseases to spread quickly as animals are raised in close confinement?has given rise to recent, highly publicized epidemics of meat-borne illnesses. At presstime, the first discovery of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb caused beef prices to plummet in Japan and many people t...
More About: Case , Again

A Perception of Poverty, Universal Healthcare and the Presidency
2007-01-30 16:34:01
"....politicians are snake-slimy and known to do the unscrupulous seemingly out of a preference for it."by Don Robertson, The American Philosopher1/29/07In our society we often hear pleas for relief for the poor-people just as if they were a separate entity from the rest of us. The kindred humanist spirit is summoned as if by a cry beckoning from someone or some thing trapped at the bottom of a well. "Help!" "Meow?" "Woof-woof!"Let's look at this philosophically though.Everything we can know comes to us one of three ways. First: Through our senses, which more specifically means, yes, through our senses, but before we can consider it, know it, or even be aware of it, it must be translated into universal forms and ideas, the only data language our minds can understand.We do not know what our senses tell us, only what our minds make of what our senses tell us.Second: Through what others tell us, or write to us in the present.And third: Through what comes to us, as it was written or ot...
More About: Health , Healthcare , Poverty , Care , Residency

Bad man, bad plan
2007-01-30 04:33:02
by Gene W. DeVaux1/29/07While President Bush visited Lee?s Summit, MO on January 25th, a group of protesters stood isolated across the street from St. Luke?s East Hospital. Bush came to his favorite Missouri haunt , one that has a record of giving more support to the neo-conservative party than to progressive candidates.Those of us who got there early and waited until Bush left the hospital campus were treated to the thrill of facing armed men in camouflage uniforms as they led the Bush limousine out onto Douglas St. I was a bit surprised when my wife asked me, ?Did you see the guns?? I hadn?t because I was concentrating on holding my ?Bush is a Miserable Failure? sign high above my head hoping that the pretender-in-chief might get a glimpse of it. She said that an SUV was loaded with men in camouflage uniforms who had aimed rifles in our direction as the motorcade drove out. Now we have just a slight idea of how Iraqi civilians must feel when our troops kick in doors and storm into...
More About: Plan

He who says speciesism says fascism?
2007-01-30 04:33:02
BY PATRICE GREANVILLE1/29/07originally published on The Smirking ChimpForty-eight thousand million animals?yes, 48 billion creatures?are estimated to die each year as a result of human activities ranging from factory farming to hunting, the fur garment trades, commercial exploitation of various kinds, and biomedical research. That's more than 130 million creatures every single day, including birds, cows, and hogs, all of them highly sociable animals.The way we go about killing animals, wherever they may be found or kept, land, sea or air?murdering is probably a better word?is astonishing. We do it with abandon and we do it in such institutionalized, "tradition" approved ways that only a minority ever realize the extent of the tragedy. Thus, since the era of modern fishing began 200 years ago, we have made furious progress toward a complete decimation of the oceans, ostensibly infinite reservoirs of life, thereby converting many maritime regions into what Farley Mowat accurately dec...
More About: Fascism

RED
2007-01-29 22:32:01
(Graphic by Pepsii Altemark)By Gary Corseri1/29/07We are painting the world red with our blood.A celebration!?our blood, their blood.Red-washing the walls of temples and churches,Washing our feet with blood in the mosques,Buckets and buckets splashed on children,Splashed in our streets,Poured over fine upholstery.We baptize our babies with blood.Not the ?blood of the Lamb,? but fresh stuffDrawn from the wounds of soldiers,Taken from the breasts of mothers?Even their milk is red.A fine spray of blood over Baghdad?constant,A slow Hiroshima of blood.650,000 red corpses.We have painted our Capitol red with it.They are signing their ?bills? with blood.?No other color will do,? they say.?This one demands our attention.? [break]Color the marigolds red.No more blue skies, no more green forests.No chartreuse, amethyst, turquoise or silver.Only vermilion or maroonFor our ?generational struggle.?Red ...

The environmental cost of eating meat
2007-01-29 22:32:01
By Cheri Ketchum1/29/07Free Heretic PublicationsBeef, it?s what?s for dinner. And what?s for dinner too often in the U.S. is helping to destroy our environment. Eating a meat-centered diet not only clogs the arteries of the consumer, but contributes to the destruction of the natural world. Americans? meat-centered diet is unnecessarily harming the environment by wasting valued resources and encouraging deforestation.To produce meat for a meat-centered diet (versus a vegetable-based diet) it requires using 50 times the amount of fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels is the main cause of the greenhouse effect and causes many forms of pollution.Fortunately, not every country on earth has a meat-centered diet. We, as U.S. citizens have this dubious honor. If all people did eat this way the world?s known oil reserves would only last about 13 years. If humans stopped eating meat altogether the worlds oil reserves would last about 260 years.Water is also poured into a meat centered diet. In t...
More About: Environment , Mental , Meat , Environmental , Men

Bangladesh's State of Emergency
2007-01-29 22:32:01
By Simon Robinson Dhaka1/29/07Time/CNNThis should be a golden time for Bang ladesh , with its GDP surging by almost 7% last year, fueled by strong foreign investment, buoyant exports and a resurgent agricultural sector. But Bangla desh's leaders rarely miss an opportunity to sabotage their country's fortunes. In the run-up to elections planned for Jan. 22, long-standing political tensions erupted again, pushing the nation to the brink of chaos. Opposing political activists fought one another and police and soldiers for months, leaving at least 45 dead and hundreds injured. On Jan. 11, President Iajuddin Ahmed, presumably with the backing of the army, called a state of emergency, imposed night curfews across the country and postponed the elections indefinitely. An interim government promises to revamp the compromised election commission, fix dodgy electoral rolls and root out corruption. Just don't expect an election anytime soon.This political mayhem has its roots in the compromise...
More About: State , Ades

Danger at the Border: What the Media Misses about the Minutemen
2007-01-29 04:30:01
When the media talk about the anti-Minutemen protest at Columbia University as an issue of free speech, they miss the point: the Minutemen don?t just provide a controversial perspective on immigration, but a threat to American values.By Ed Quish 1/18/07originally published at InciteIt seems that everyone talking about the anti-Minutemen protest at Columbia University is talking about the wrong issue.On October 4, a group of students demonstrated against a presentation given by leaders of the Minuteman Project, a controversial border-patrol organization invited to campus by the Columbia College Republicans. Soon after Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist began his speech, students stormed the stage holding a banner reading ?No human being is illegal,? and shouted slogans comparing the Minutemen to KKK members and Nazis. The ensuing conflict prompted Gilchrist to flee the stage and end his presentation.So far, the mainstream media, Columbia President Lee Bollinger, and many Columbia stu...
More About: Media , The Media , Men , What , Hat

Iran ? The Top Ten Questions
2007-01-28 16:29:01
(graphic courtesy of Rense.com)by Steven Jonas1/27/07BuzzflashBushCheney are planning a War on Iran . That is very clear. That it must be stopped is also very clear. That it will be stopped is clearly uncertain. These men control the U.S. Armed Forces and clearly have no regard either for the consequences of their actions or the U.S. Constitution. However, there are two players on the stage who could bring the mad dash to nuclear holocaust or at the least the creation of permanent war in the Middle East (in my view the primary goal of BushCheney) to a halt. They are the Congressional Democratic Party and the media. Both blew it on the War on Iraq. Both have a chance to do the job right here.How do they do that? By shining the light clearly, harshly, and repeatedly on the obvious war buildup taking place. Harry Reid is to be congratulated for introducing his "Congress must be consulted" resolution.Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, a Republican no less, is to be congratulated for hi...
More About: Question , Questions , Top Ten , Quest

Jonesing for a Hit of Man Fuel:
2007-01-28 16:29:01
"In his recent book, ?The Slave Side of Sunday,? former NFL player Anthony Prior writes about the legacy of racism in professional sports." (Truth Dig) "Of Pigskin Pushers, Football (Fan)atics, and Blissful Blindness"(my revamped examination of the deleterious aspects of the NFL)by Jason Miller1/27/06According to the inanity dutifully recited by the talking heads of the corporate media, the Middle East is teeming with hordes of ?Islamofascist? human incendiary devices lining up to detonate themselves into martyr?s paradise.Fortunately for us highly civilized Westerners, those of us sporting the Y chromosome can channel Nirvana with a more click of our second most treasured tool, the television remote.Thanks to the benevolence of the NFL and its generous corporate partners, we can experience all manner of machismo delights without departing the physical plane.Fierce armor-clad gladiators satiate our lust for brutality and violence with displays of unbelievably wicked hits and bone-ja...
More About: Fuel , Jones , Sing

The American Philosopher Inspects Our Way of Life
2007-01-28 16:29:01
(Graphic: "consume" by ~Ghost City)by Don Robertson, The America n Phil osopher1/27/07It would be easy enough just to make a statement, our way of life is immoral. However in light of the discovery of the moral imperative of life, I intend here to explain exactly why our way of life is immoral. But let me not just count the ways.Ours is a society wholly focused upon the scientific wonders made possible since The Enlightenment. If one takes the time to read a good sized sampling of autobiographies and histories written over the last few hundred years, it becomes amazingly clear just how enthralled humanity has been with the great ages of discovery, the industrial revolution, the automotive age through the digital age. Periodicals containing advertisements also demonstrate how innovation and scientific know-how has reached a fever-pitched crescendo for describing what everyone in our society has for so long craved, Modernism.In our Post-Modernist world the backfires and broken bolts of ...
More About: Life , American , Hilo

As God Is His Witness
2007-01-26 22:27:01
Bush is no devout evangelical. In fact, he may not be a Christian at all. By Ayelish McGarvey10/19/04The American ProspectLate in the summer, at the Republican national convention in New York, a movie billed as the conservative alternative to Fahrenheit 9/11 debuted for the party faithful. The film, George W. Bush: Faith in the White House, opens with a montage of a billowing American flag, a softly lit portrait of Jesus in Gethsemane, and a shot of the tawny profile of our 43rd president with his eyes gazing heavenward. Myriad times throughout the film Bush is referred to reverently as a man of faith.Like no president in recent memory, George W. Bush wields his Christian righteousness like a flaming sword. Indeed, hundreds of news stories and nearly half a dozen books have evinced a White House that, according to BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb, ?hums to the sound of prayer.? Yet for the past four years the mainstream press has trod lightly, rarely venturing beyond the bio...
More About: God , Witness , Ness

The Atlantic slave trade, slavery and reparations
2007-01-26 22:27:01
by Franklin KnightWednesday, January 10, 2007The Jamaica ObserverThemes of the Atlantic slave trade, systems of slavery and the justness of possible reparations for the descendants of Africans are particularly pertinent this year. After all, for much of the English-speaking world this year marks at least two important anniversaries.The first commemoration is the founding of the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Defying great odds, Virginia went on to play such an important role on the British North American colonies and the United States of America. After 12 years the colony was secure enough to call its first general legislative assembly and consolidate its fragile hold on the surrounding areas. The success of Virginia had tremendous consequences for the history of the Caribbean, especially for the English colony of Barbados.The other commemoration has far greater significance for the English-speaking Caribbean. In 1807 the British Parliament abolished the lucrative a...
More About: Slavery , Trade , Para , Anti

We're Surging - The Hell With You
2007-01-26 22:27:01
(artwork courtesy of rense.com and velvetpaintings.com)By Rowan Wolf of Uncommon Thought Journal1/26/07The corporate media has been bad mouthing the "non-binding" agreements being put forward in the House and the Senate against Bush's sending of over 20,000 new troops to Iraq. However, I do not feel that the non-binding agreements are necessarily either "worthless" or "pointless."One way to interpret these motions being put forward by various committees and legislators is that they are an attempt to not escalate a conflict with the White House. Instead, they are an effort to send a message to Bush and Cheney that they do not have Congressional support to continue on their strategy in Iraq. Up till the current time, Bush has had a green light and a greased slope for whatever the administration has wanted to do. Now, the message is being sent that not only Democrats, but Republicans, are not willing to continue to support the disastrous strategy in Iraq.However, it seems that the Adm...
More About: With , Hell , With You

There Should Have Been Silence...
2007-01-26 10:26:02
(Graphic source: Rense.com)by Reg - co-editor of TvNewsLIES.orgTvNewsLIES.org1/25/07Tonigh t, George W. Bush was cheered and applauded by members of Congress as he approached the dais to present his sixth SOTU address. He was applauded regularly throughout his address to the nation. That response was an unforgivable, yet predictable disgrace. The members of Congress applauded the words of their failed and incompetent leader. They applauded when there should have been total silence.The almost festive gala broadcast around the world was a farce unlike any that has ever taken place in the halls of the US Congress. Everyone with an ounce of sanity knows that the state of the union is one of total disaster. No one with an iota of concern for the nation or the world should have raised one hand to applaud a single word spoken by George W. Bush. But they did.Applause and cheering are signs of approval and are accolades for a job well done. The man speaking to the nation, and indeed the world...
More About: Have , Here , Should , There , Silence

The Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism
2007-01-26 04:25:01
"In countries such as the United States, whose economies are commonly, though inaccurately, described as "capitalist" or "free-market," war and preparation for war systematically corrupt both parties to the state-private transactions by which the government obtains the bulk of its military goods and services. On one side, business interests seek to bend the state's decisions in their favor by corrupting official decision-makers with outright and de facto bribes. The former include cash, gifts in kind, loans, entertainment, transportation, lodging, prostitutes' services, inside information about personal investment opportunities, overly generous speaking fees, and promises of future employment or "consulting" patronage for officials or their family members, whereas the latter include campaign contributions (sometimes legal, sometimes illegal), sponsorship of political fund-raising events, and donations to charities or other causes favored by the relevant government officials." by R...
More About: Living , Military , Reality , Fascism , Real

Militarization and the Moon-Mars Program: Another Wrong Turn in Space?
2007-01-26 04:25:01
by Richard C. Cook 1/25/07Originally published on Global Research The way NASA has started its new moon-to-Mars exploration program, the October 2006 White House announcement of a new national space policy, and subsequent statements by the State Department raise grave concerns about whether a new push to militarize space has begun. Events are pointing to an aggressive extension of U.S. supremacy beyond the stratosphere reminiscent of Reagan administration actions in the 1980s. Then it was the militarization of the space shuttle and the start-up of the Strategic Defense Initiative??Star Wars??which were gaining momentum until space weapons technology testing halted with the space shuttle Challenger disaster.To date, the principal beneficiary of the moon-Mars program is Lockheed Martin, to which NASA awarded a prime contract with a potential value stated at $8.15 billion. Already the world?s largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin?s stock yielded an instant bonanza, rising more t...
More About: Space , Moon , Other , Prog

Venezuela's RCTV Acts of Sedition
2007-01-26 04:25:01
by Stephen Lendman1/25/07On December 28, Venezuela n President Hugo Chavez Frias delivered his annual "greeting speech" to the National Armed Forces (FAN) and announced the operating license of TV station Radio Caracas Television (known as RCTV) broadcasting on VHF Channel 2 won't be renewed when it expires on May 27, 2007. The station played a leading role, along with the other four major commercial private television channels in the country controlling 90% of the TV market, in instigating and supporting the 2002 aborted two-day coup against President Chavez. Later in the year they acted together again in similar fashion as an active participant in the economically destructive 2002-03 main trade union confederation (CTV) - chamber of commerce (Fedecameras) lockout and industry-wide oil strike that included sabotage against the state oil company PDVSA costing it overall an estimated $14 billion in lost revenue and damage.A collaborative alliance of the five media "majors" that inclu...
More About: Edit , Sedition , Edition

Scientific Crimes Against Humanity
2007-01-26 04:25:01
by Don Robertson, The American Philosopher 1/25/07When you are out in front, it is tough to get a fair hearing of your concerns because those behind are busy talking among themselves. They are sure they know where they are going and what is ahead, because they talk amongst each other and develop a consensus. Today, they are wrong. Listen up for a second. I work long hours to write what I write.It seems every day we read of yet another mountain of funding going toward the race to get in on the biotech revolution's fantastic promises of profits, jobs, inventions, cures, wealth and panacea. Who is fooling whom here? Utopia is a long way off, and few should doubt, given the current state of the world, it lays less distant in the past, than it does in the future.Science is driving this bus we are all on. And yet all scientists claim they are amoral. This is one of the great fictions of the scientific community, that science is amoral. This great lie casts a pall of moral immunity over t...
More About: Crime , Human , Mani , Humanity , Again