Daniel Ellsberg is the former Defense
Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers during the
Vietnam War. He offered insights into the looming war with Iran and the
loss of liberty in the United States at an American University
symposium on Sept. 20.
If there's
another 9/11 under this regime it means that they switch on full extent
all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently
constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and
known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the
Republicans and so forth.
Will there
be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? They may
be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But
if they're not now they will be after another 9/11.
And I would
say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you
will then see an increased attack on Iran an escalation which will be
also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country,
including detention camps.
It's a
little hard for me to distinguish the two contingencies; they could
come together. Another 9/11 or an Iranian attack in which Iran's
reaction against Israel, against our shipping, against our troops in
Iraq above all, possibly in this country, will justify the full panoply
of measures that have been prepared now, legitimized, and to some
extent written into law.
This is an
unusual gang, even for Republicans. [But] I think that the successors
to this regime are not likely to roll back the assault on the
Constitution. They will take advantage of it, they will exploit it.
Will
Hillary Clinton as president decide to turn off NSA after the last five
years of illegal surveillance? Will she deprive her administration her
ability to protect United States citizens from possible terrorism by
blinding herself and deafening herself to all that NSA can provide? I
don't think so.
Unless this
somehow, by a change in our political climate, of a radical change,
unless this gets rolled back in the next year or two before a new
administration comes in and there's no move to do this at this point
unless that happens I don't see it happening under the next
administration, whether Republican or Democratic.
The
Next Coup
Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has
occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that
a coup has occurred. It's not just a question that a coup lies ahead
with the next 9/11. That's the next coup, that completes the first.
The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of
our Constitution, what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200
years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world in checks and
balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights
protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent
judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.
There have
been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of
the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal
surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson
in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.
I could go
through a list going back before this century to Lincoln's suspension
of habeas corpus in the Civil War, and before that the Alien and
Sedition Acts in the 18th century. I think that none of those
presidents were in fact what I would call quite precisely the current
administration: domestic enemies of the Constitution.
I think
that none of these presidents with all their violations, which were
impeachable had they been found out at the time and in nearly every
case their violations were not found out until they were out of office
so we didn't have the exact challenge that we have today.
That was
true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and
others. They were impeachable, they weren't found out in time, but I
think it was not their intention to in the crisis situations that they
felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.
It is
increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out,
that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had
precisely that in mind since at least the early 70s. Not just since
1992, not since 2001, but have believed in Executive government,
single-branch government under an Executive president elected or not
with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.
When I say
this I'm not saying they are traitors. I don't think they have in mind
allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign
power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country
and what they think is best for this country but what they think is
best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this
country and Constitution thought.
They
believe we need a different kind of government now, an Executive
government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we're getting
with signing statements. Signing statements are talked about as
line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are
unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the
president says "I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I
legislate."
It's [the
same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire
control of the Executive Branch, essentially of the president. A
concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one
branch, which is precisely what the Founders meant to avert, and tried
to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the
Constitution.
The
Founders Had It Right
Now I'm appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is
a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my
experience that on this point the Founders had it right.
It's not
just "our way of doing things" it was a crucial perception on the
corruption of power to anybody including Americans. On procedures and
institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because
the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars
like Iraq, wars like the one coming.
That brings
me to the second point. This Executive Branch, under specifically Bush
and Cheney, despite opposition from most of the rest of the branch,
even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran which even by
imperialist standards, standards in other words which were accepted not
only by nearly everyone in the Executive Branch but most of the leaders
in Congress. The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our
right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and
many other places. That is consensual in our establishment.
But even by
those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I
don't mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it's not only
aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme
international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms
of the consequences.
Does that
make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn't, it doesn't even make it
unlikely.
That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for
various reasons of the Congress Democrats and Republicans and the
public and the media, we have freed the White House the president and
the vice president from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts,
media, public, whatever.
And on the
other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not
entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.
And the
question is what then, what can we do about this? We are heading
towards an insane operation. It is not certain. It is likely. I want to
try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do,
what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality.
Nothing is impossible.
What I'm
talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on
Iran is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it
is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of
this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever
we do.
And we will
not succeed in moving Congress probably, and Congress probably will not
stop the president from doing this. And that's where we're heading.
That's a very ugly, ugly prospect.
However, I
think it's up to us to work to increase that small perhaps anyway not
large possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15
months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our
lives.
Restoring
the Republic
Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a
long time. And I think if we don't get started now, it won't be started
under the next administration.
Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a
further coup in the face of a 9/11, another attack, is for right now,
it can't be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage
of which we have seen very little
We have a
really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who
have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their
friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible
names, "traitor," "weak on terrorism" names that politicians will do
anything to avoid being called.
How do we
get more people in the government and in the public at large to change
their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy
Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds
of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs?
It isn't just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of
office.
I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as
an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State
Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an
oath of office which is the same oath office taken by every member of
Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in
the United States armed services.
And that
oath is not to a Commander in Chief, which is not mentioned. It is not
to a fuehrer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is
precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.
Now that is
an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department
without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public
was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are
being lied into war in Iran.
I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it
out then. I was not obeying my oath which I eventually came to do.
I've often
said that Lt. Ehren Watada who still faces trial for refusing to obey
orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an
unconstitutional and aggressive war is the single officer in the United
States armed services who is taking seriously in upholding his oath.
The
president is clearly violating that oath, of course. Everybody under
him who understands what is going on and there are myriad, are
violating their oaths. And that's the standard that I think we should
be asking of people.
Congressional
Courage
On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be
demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate and frankly
of the Republicans that it is not their highest single absolute
priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that
Pelosi can still be Speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate,
or to increase that majority.
I'm not
going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they
should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about
that.
Of course
that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they're
acting like it's their sole concern. Which is business as usual. "We
have a majority, let's not lose it, let's keep it. Let's keep those
chairmanships." Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to
save the Constitution in the last couple of years?
I am
shocked by the Republicans today that I read in the Washington Post who
yesterday threatened a filibuster if we get back habeas corpus. The
ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get
us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700
years ago in terms of counter-revolution.
We need
some way, and Ann Wright has one way, of sitting in, in Conyers office
and getting arrested. Ray McGovern has been getting arrested, pushed
out the other day for saying the simple words "swear him in" when it
came to testimony.
I think
we've got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the
time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which
is worth struggling for in part because it's only with the power that
the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with
that can we protect the world from mad men in power in the White House
who intend an attack on Iran.
And the
current generation of American generals and others who realize that
this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves they might be
people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in
Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their
career or their relation with the president to the slightest degree.
That has to
change. And it's the example of people like those up here who somehow
brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens
have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to
protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.
Daniel Ellsberg is author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the
Pentagon Papers.
Last Laugh
by Dave Brice
I don't feel
like adding to the hundreds of thousands of words that have already
been written, spoken, and spouted concerning Ahmedinejad's visit to New
York this past week and the domestic hatefest it generated. It's enough
to say that the president of Iran has now been designated our current
Satan incarnate, and that Saddam Hussein has a worthy successor, and
one whose country contains almost as much petroleum as the dead
dictator's.
I'll leave it to Dennis
Perrin to sum up (from his blogpost at dennisperrin.blogspot.com,
Booga! Booga!): "(W)hat (Ahmedinejad) says isn't important.
He's merely an archetype that American politicians and their media
megaphones can pelt with self-serving garbage. From Romney, to Hillary,
to Rudy, to Pious Joe Lieberman, no one can overstate their case. The
wilder, the better. In fact, I'd wager that Ahmadinejad is playing
these and like-minded Americans for howling chumps. His ever-present
grin is a giveaway."
Besides setting off ten
thousand cable news replays of the two-minutes' hate, Ahmedinejad's
visit was the subject of countless debates in internet discussion
groups. It was at one of these I found myself entangled with a poster
who referred to the Iranian prez as "subhuman scum," condemned him for
homophobia among other things, then loftily opined that "some cultures
are better than other cultures." I had to agree.
You have to wonder about
cultures that don't lose old habits and attitudes that imperil their
own survival. The Romans, for example, just kept on expanding their
empire and making new enemies. It wasn't the smartest thing to do, in
the long run.
An Associated
Press story on the financial page on Thursday, 9/27, provided
an example of what I'm talking about.
"Oil and other petroleum
futures surged Thursday amid supply concerns sparked by a decline in
crude inventories at a key Oklahoma terminal and the confrontation
between the West and Iran."
So with oil at record high
prices, we invite the prez of one of the world's largest oil-exporting
countries over here so we can take target practice at him.
The A.P. story continues:
"Many traders are betting the West will take action against Iran before
the end of the year, and worry that economic sanctions or a military
strike will result in the disruption of oil supplies from the Middle
East."
It's the mark of a superior
culture I guess. Having allowed itself to become addicted to petroleum,
the political arm of said culture responds by shooting itself in the
gas tank.
| YEAR |
MARIJUANA
ARRESTS |
| 2006 |
829,625 |
| 2005 |
786,545 |
| 2004 |
771,608 |
| 2003 |
755,187 |
| 2002 |
697,082 |
| 2001 |
723,627 |
| 2000 |
734,498 |
| 1999 |
704,812 |
| 1998 |
682,885 |
| 1997 |
695,200 |
| 1996 |
641,642 |
| 1995 |
588,963 |
| 1994 |
499,122 |
| 1993 |
380,689 |
| 1992 |
342,314 |
| 1991 |
287,850 |
| 1990 |
326,850 |
Police arrested a record 829,625 persons for marijuana violations in
2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform
Crime Report, released today. This is the largest total number
of annual arrests for pot ever recorded by the FBI. Marijuana arrests
now comprise nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.
"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest
minor marijuana offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St.
Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a marijuana
smoker is arrested every 38 seconds in America. "This
effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts
law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent
crime, including the war on terrorism."
Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent
some 738,915 Americans were charged with
possession only. The remaining 90,710
individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that
includes all cultivation offenses even those where the marijuana was
being grown for personal or medical use. In past years, roughly 30
percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.
"Present policies have done little if anything to decrease marijuana's
availability or dissuade youth from trying it," St. Pierre said, noting
young people in the U.S. now frequently report that they have easier
access to pot than alcohol or tobacco.
“Two other major points standout from today’s
record marijuana arrests: Overall, there has been a dramatic 188
percent increase in marijuana arrests in the last 15 years -- yet the
public's access to pot remains largely unfettered and the self-reported
use of cannabis remains largely unchanged. Second, America’s
Midwest is decidedly the hotbed for marijuana-related arrests with 57
percent of all marijuana-related arrests. The region of America with
the least amount of marijuana-related arrests is the West with 30
percent. This latter result is arguably a testament to the passage of
various state and local decriminalization efforts over the past several
years.”
The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2006 far exceeded
the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes
combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and
aggravated assault.
Annual marijuana arrests have nearly tripled since the early 1990s.
"Arresting hundreds of thousands of Americans who smoke marijuana
responsibly needlessly destroys the lives of otherwise law abiding
citizens," St. Pierre said, adding that over 8 million Americans have
been arrested on marijuana charges in the past ten years. During this
same time, arrests for cocaine and heroin have declined sharply,
implying that increased enforcement of marijuana laws is being achieved
at the expense of enforcing laws against the possession and trafficking
of more dangerous drugs.
St. Pierre concluded: "Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers
between $10 billion and $12 billion annually and has led to the arrest
of nearly 20 million Americans. Nevertheless, some 94 million Americans
acknowledge having used marijuana during their lives. It makes no sense
to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals for
their use of a substance that poses no greater - and arguably far fewer
- health risks than alcohol or tobacco. A better and more sensible
solution would be to tax and regulate cannabis in a manner similar to
alcohol and tobacco."
An Open Letter to Paris Hilton
ACTUAL YOUTUBE VIDEO
Okay
Paris, we've seen the video of you doing
something perfectly legal in Amsterdam, but if there's any implication
in this video that you think there's anything wrong with the laws
prohibiting this exact behavior in America, I must have missed it.
Paris, if you want to rise from the position of hoax celebrity, you've
got to actually do something FOR MANKIND and not for publicity or a
goof or as a tax break but for the good of the people. In this video,
all we hear is a typical stoned out conversation in between hits of
gee, whatever it is they're selling in this coffeeshop in Amsterdam,
and you blew a perfectly splendid opportunity to say something real,
something vital, something you obviously believe, that there is
absolutely nothing wrong with ingesting a flower, whatever it is, and
that the American war against marijuana and industrial hemp is TOTALLY
INSANE. Paris, haven't you got anything to say to the millions of
people in jail for doing what you're doing on YouTube? Don't you, I
don't know, kinda feel a little bit sorry for them? I mean they're in
jail. You know what that's like. Isn't there something you could do for
them?
You
bet there is, and the LA Free Press challenges
you to do it. For Christ sake, if the anti-drug war movement
can't even get a stoner like you to admit such a there's nothing wrong
with the herb, how will it ever rise from the ashes of the anti -Iraq
war movement and actually get something done?
I
know you don't remember but we once had a
president who said this:
"Penalties
against drug use should not be more
damaging to an individual than use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this
more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private
for personal use."
-
President Jimmy Carter addressing congress,
August 2, 1977 -
Who
at the time thought wow, this guy's a wild-eyed
liberal? Nobody. Now he seems like Kucinich ahead of his time. Back
then, we all naturally assumed that the world was coming to its senses
and voila, millions of people in the US and billions
world-wide would no longer have to think of themselves as criminals
just because they were fond of a plant, but the drug war continued to
escalate unabated. Anybody who wants to hate Bill Clinton should get
their eyes off his genitals and look at the amount of pot smokers
arrested during his administration, which was the largest on record.
Till
now, of course. Might I remind you that the
exact same geniuses who cooked up the war in Iraq also cooked up the
war on drugs? Shall we count the similarities? How about oil? You can
actually debate whether the Iraq war was about oil, but with hemp
there's no question. With hemp conveniently outlawed, DuPont made a
gazillion dollars selling oil based nylon ropes to the US navy.
Cooked evidence? You betcha. Thousands of lives lost for no
reason. Of course. Seem like they'll never end? Gosh.
Come
on, Paris, wise up. The war on drugs
has got nothing to do with liberal vs. conservative or good
vs. evil and much more to do with common sense vs. are they out of
their fucking minds? What's the matter with people? They need to get
their heads out of the past, when a cockamamie piece of anti-marijuana
propaganda was used to pass a law to enrich William Randolph Hearst and
Lammont DuPont. The laws against hemp never had anything to do with the
flowers you smoke but the stalks they grow on. The flowers were just a
convenient excuse to outlaw the primary competition against nylon and
wood pulp. Times have changed. Now we know that hemp is not only good
for rope and paper but clothing and soap and fuel and food and most of
all, medicine, where it has cleared every hurtle to reveal itself as
the safest medicine known to man. Yeah, that's right. Nothing safer,
with thousands of legitimate uses, and so cheap you can just grow it
yourself without any pesky pharmaceutical companies as middlemen.
Imagine
this. Your baby has gotten into your
medicine chest and managed to open two babyproof bottles, one of
aspirin, one a pungent gooey bud of medicinal marijuana. Which one
would you prefer your baby swallow? CLUE: All it takes is 15 aspirin to
kill your baby. 300 people a year die from aspirin overdose. No human
in the history of recorded medicine has ever died from an overdose of
marijuana. Can't be done. The most your baby will get is hungry. Okay,
choose.
Thank
you for choosing common sense against
outdated knowledge. You just admitted that marijuana is safer than
aspirin.
But the hardest hurtle isn't just that
there's something good about it but that there's also nothing wrong
with it. Oh sure, there's abuse. Here's an idea. How about a
war on abuse? Leave "use" alone. What's abuse? Before a math
exam might be bad. Driving, air traffic controlling, you know, the
standard situations where intoxication isn't a good idea, but in the
appropriate situation, basically nothing can go wrong. Quite the
opposite. While on pot, you're LESS likely to have any sort of seizure
or muscular spasm. On pot, people tend to mellow out. They're LESS of a
problem. It's hard for
some people to get past their backward thinking, especially when
decades of lying propaganda has convinced them that pot is bad, because
we're not just saying it's not bad for you, we're saying it's actually
good for you, and the research backs it up. It's science vs. faith all
over again. You can believe some ancient text or your own lying eyes
showing you deforestation and seriously ill people getting
well.
In
any case, if the current marijuana laws were
actively enforced, there would be more than 300 million new prisoners
in the penal system, which would just be splendid for the prison
construction and prison guard industries and a catastrophe for the rest
of the human race.
Did
you know cotton farming uses more insecticide
than any other crop on earth? Did you know hemp can be grown with no
pesticides? Now do you need me to point out that every single article
of clothing you wear that's made out of hemp instead of cotton actually
reduces the amount of poison in our groundwater? C'mon, Paris, wearing
clothes is one of the things you do best. But that's not the challenge.
You should be doing that anyway.
Paris, I challenge you to give a million dollars to
NORML
(National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law). What'll they
do with it? Help end the madness. Let them use it to move pot smokers
from prisons to your hotels. Change your bio in the history books from
"celebrity slut" to "celebrity slut turned political activist." Put
your money where your mouth was.
Sincerely,
Michael
Dare
Editor:
LA Free Press
Keep Your Eyes on the
Prize
Martin
Luther King, Pete Seeger, Charis Horton,
Rosa Parks, and Ralph Abernathy,
1957
High Coup
THE
SKY IS FALLING
A
GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR
CHICKEN
LITTLE BUSH
-
zEN mAN -
1984 Quote of
the Week
"Childrens do
learn"
"As yesterday's positive report
card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are
measured."
- George W. Bush offering a grammar lesson to a group of New
York school kids while reauthorizing the No Child
Left Behind Act. The flub was cleaned up by the White House
in the official transcript. Yes, somebody in the White House has Winston Smith's job.
Calling All
Biblical Scholars
We
were reading ¡Ask a Mexican!® about Speedy Gonzales when he
mysteriously quoted Howard Stern saying "God sneaked a fart
joke into the Book of Isaiah," which seemed well and good, but did God
REALLY sneak a fart joke into the Book of Isaiah? What was the actual
biblical quote Gustavo Arellano and/or Howard Stern was
talking about, or was this just some piece of blather that mysteriously
entered the blogosphere masquerading as reality?
And so the magical
yin/yang of internet surfing brings us full circle, back from whence we
came, with only one question left.
Where's the fart
joke in the Book of Isaiah?
Send your answers to
stupidquestion"at"dareland.com
Free Concert
We
love Hamill on Trial but he's not coming anywhere
near the Palm Desert Bureau of the Los Angeles Free Press. If you can
attend any of the above listed concerts, let us know and we'll mail you
press credentials to get you in for free so you can write about him for
us. Here's what he's like live. Go. Have a good time.
Wax poetic.
Which Means Gore
is President
"Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical
discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as 'one of the
most important developments in the history of science'.
The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US
physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics
that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.
In Everett's 'many worlds' universe, every time a new physical
possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of
possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own
universe.
"A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at
his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the
same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the
motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative
scenarios is endless.
"It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many
experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a
mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed
lightly - and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at
Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right
track...
"According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can
really be said to exist until it is observed. Until then, particles
occupy nebulous 'superposition' states, in which they can have
simultaneous 'up' and 'down' spins, or appear to be in different places
at the same time.
"Observation appears to 'nail down' a particular state of reality, in
the same way as a spinning coin can only be said to be in a 'heads' or
'tails' state once it is caught.
"According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by
'wave functions' representing a set of multiple 'probable' states. When
an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into
one of these multiple options.
"The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that
the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting
into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature
of quantum outcomes."
"We're
living in the future and none
of this has happened yet."
- Bruce
Springsteen -
History Lesson
from Hell
prohibition
(Verbot) by the
police authorities on the basis of the
Reichstag fire decree
The Patriot
Act Reichstag Fire Decree (Reichstagsbrandverordnung
in German) is the common name of the decree issued by
German president Paul von Hindenburg in direct response to the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933. The decree nullified many of the key civil
liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions of the German
government, the decree was used as the legal basis of imprisonment of
anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and was used to
suppress publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. The
decree is considered by historians to be one of the key steps in the
establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.
"The
really dangerous American fascist is the
man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler
did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not
to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public
information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present
the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the
public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more
power. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy
every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free
enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to
capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the
power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in
eternal subjection."
Daniel Ellsberg
on the Reichstag Fire Decree
and why
Bush/Cheney should be Impeached for War Crimes
Unpleasant
Reminder from The Herald, Wednesday, May 19, 2004
"Politicians
need to convey the impression at all times that they know what they're
doing, even when they don't. That's what they're paid for, after all.
But every so often the mask of competence slips. They reveal, in a
flash, that they simply haven't a clue; that they're winging it, making
it up as they go along, hoping no-one will notice.
"This moment
came yesterday when the government announced that it was 'full
throttle' to the handover of power to an Iraqi civil administration on
June 30. 'Six weeks to sovereignty' that's the message coming from the
US-led coalition. We've done the job, now it's time to hand over to the
grateful people of free Iraq. All we need to do, it seems, is send a
few more troops to train the Iraqi military, stage elections, and then
everyone can live happily ever after.
"Sounds
simple, but this promise of a handover to an Iraqi civil administration
was announced less than 24 hours after Izzedin Salim, the head of the
Iraqi governing council, was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad. It was
announced as US troops besieged the holy city of Kerbala, and on the
day Israel continued to defy the civilized world by bulldozing
Palestinian homes in Gaza.
- Iain Macwhirter: Iraq Disaster Isn't Coming to an End, it's
Only Just Begun
-
Tasing on a Sunny
Afternoon
This
clip compares the complete footage with
the edited CNN version, showing not just that the student was doing
absolutely nothing inappropriate when the incident began, but
that John Kerry had plenty of time to just say "Hey, leave him
alone," and the whole thing would have been averted. Fast thinker, that
Kerry.
Oh Goody
"Israel,
a few days before Yom Kippur,
declared that the Gaza Strip is now a 'hostile entity,' and the office
of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who is under investigation for
corruption) announced a collective-punishment plan that includes
'limiting the transfer of goods to the Gaza Strip, cutting back fuel
and electricity, and restricting the movement of people to and from the
Strip.' Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum condemned Israel's 'criminal,
terrorist Zionist actions.' U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
who recently was denied an audience with the Pope, went to Jerusalem to
bring peace, and it was reported that not long ago Vice President Dick
Cheney considered asking Israel to launch missiles at an Iranian
nuclear site to kick-start a new war."
Online Gallery
of the Week
Photos of
poverty butting right up against
wealth
Which Means Gore
is President #2
"About a year
after the Dutch government began seriously worrying about the integrity of e-voting machines,
they've literally pulled the plug on the venture. The biggest flaw was
the lack of a paper trail according to a special committee which
reported its finding this morning. As such, Nederlanders will return to
the 'red pencil method' in upcoming elections until an automated
paper-counting solution can be deployed... and then hacked.
"Update: To
be perfectly clear, the regulation allowing e-voting machines has been
withdrawn - i.e., effective immediately, there is no more e-voting in
the Netherlands. However, the Dutch government will make an overarching
decision in the next two months 'to regain the trust of the public in
our voting system.' Given that the government commissioned this study
themselves, the decision is expected to be a simple rubber stamp
approval."
- Dutch
government abandons e-voting for red pencil -
Quiz of the Week
|
|
Which one of the
civil wars we started in Iraq is going relatively better now?
|
|
|
A )
|
Sunni vs. Shia
|
|
|
B )
|
Sunni vs. Sunni
|
|
|
C )
|
Shia vs. Shia
|
|
|
D )
|
Kurd vs. Kurd
|
|
|
E )
|
Kurd vs. Arab
|
|
Hint: if you picked
any of the above, guess again.
|
Free Ad
Bad Food
Slurpees
by Lynette
Sheffield
Did you feel it?
Did you notice?
Were you even paying attention?
Tuesday, September 25th there was a satisfying "click" as the last
piece of the puzzle settled into place. The world became whole,
complete and at peace with the Microsoft release
of Halo 3 for the Xbox 360.
Once again, we are under the protection of Master Chief Petty Officer
Spartan 117.
I feel so much safer now.
Preliminary results of the release-day sales total $170 million. But
that was only for the game.
Accessories, special Xbox consoles and multiple
tie-ins also exploded on the scene.
And, of course, there is the official Halo 3 Slurpee.
Over 13 million Slurpees are sold each month and that is without the
new, special Mountain Dew Game Fuel flavor.
Billed as "Dew with an invigorating blast of citrus and cherry flavor,"
it was created especially for the Halo 3 game
promotion.
The Slurpee is sold in three different collectible cups. A real plus
for your china hutch display.
I tried it. I cannot recall the last time I drank Kool-Aid but drinking
this Slurpee reminds me of why I quit.
Trying to appeal to the stereotypical gamer, this Slurpee has piled on
the sugar. Master Chief, when he is wearing his full body armor stands
at seven feet tall and weighs half a ton. Personally, I cannot
understand why the Covenant, upon seeing Master Chief Petty Officer
Spartan 117 in his man suit, do not just fall over in a dead faint. I
certainly would and therefore, can't imagine the virile Master Chief
ever drinking a Mountain Dew Game Fuel Slurpee. I would think Spartan
117 would prefer something along the lines of a blend of muddy coffee,
beef and raw eggs, you know; something that would put hair on your
chest if you weren't wearing MJOLNIR body armor.
Mountain
Dew Game Fuel nutritional statement
gives the ingredients in an 8-ounce serving on their website. No one
drinks an 8-ounce serving of anything. Eight ounces would fill up an
average Dixie cup. Halfway. Maybe.
For the sake of argument, an 8-ounce serving of the Halo 3
Dew has 48 milligrams of caffeine. That is a little less
than a Red Bull, roughly the same as a Jolt
soda or cup of tea and more than twice as much as a regular Coke.
Add that to the sugar content and you have one wide-awake and superbly
alert Halo 3 player.
But can you abuse caffeine? Of course, you can! There's not a chemical
in existence that can't be abused in some manner and there's usually a
large supply of voluntary test subjects available. Consuming too much
caffeine can result in the obvious symptoms: restlessness, anxiety and
insomnia as well as gastrointestinal disturbance, irregular heartbeat
and hyperreflexia, the medical term for muscle twitching.
Wow! What a hunk of sensuality you would make after a dozen or so Game
Fuel Slurpees!
There are even four caffeine-induced psychiatric disorders recognized
by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Way to go, gamers!
Being a mom, I worry. I'm really quite good at it. After I handed the
brand-new Halo 3 game to my teenage son, who was
standing there with boggled eyes, mouth agape and maybe a trace of a
tear or two sliding down his cheeks, I became a tad concerned when I
realized I had not seen him for the last four hours. I walked into our
game room and saw the reason.
My son had bonded. He was one with his Xbox 360
and it was, in turn, one with him. He held the controller in a death
grip as he grimaced in a Spartan-like manner. His eyes were bloodshot
and I believe it was because for the last four hours he had never
blinked. I threw a couple of Mountain Dew Game Fuel Slurpees
in his face and once moisture was returned to his eyeballs he was able
to respond normally when I told him it was time for dinner.
"Just a sec, Mom."
Google Smackdown
of the Week
VS.
And
the winner is "nothing matters" by
572,000.
Read Responsibly
- A
new book implies
that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Spiritual cronies arranged the
death of Houdini.
- Two well-educated gentlemen in the aerospace industry
have issued "An Introduction to Planetary Defense",
telling the public how to prepare for alien invasion.
- The first full biography of
"anti-gravity pioneer" T. Townsend Brown clears up some of the
mysteries of his life. (No, I don't know who he is either.)
- In his article "PKD, The Unicorn and Operation Mind Control"
Adam Gorightly sets forth a theory that Ira Einhorn was framed for the
murder of Holly Maddox because he was about to unveil some Tesla
technology. This ties in to Philip Dick. (Einhorn-framing theories
don't wash with me, 'cause his girlfriend's putrid corpse was right in
his own bedroom, leaking fluids into the apartment below.
Even the smelliest hippie on the planet - and Einhorn was a contender
for that title - must have noticed the funny smell coming from the
closet...)
TRAVEL
Don't Go, You'll Ruin It
by David Schoen
My last
trip to the Garden Isle of Kauai was like no other. I expected to see
beautiful sunsets, smell the fresh tropical air and spend countless
hours snorkeling while getting a terrific sunburn on my back. I did
just that, but along with my normal activities I got to see the ground
breaking for Costco and heard that Sams Club was coming to my Island.
Kauai,
which used to be totally rural, now has just about every chain store
and restaurant imaginable, Longs Drugs, KFC, Carls Jr., Burger King,
etc., and they all produce piles of throw-away refuse cluttering up the
landscape.
In
addition to stores and eyesores, Kauai real estate is booming. They
build everywhere on the island, no matter the consequences. Who cares
about the frequent hurricanes and that land is being swallowed up by
development. Where are the tree-huggers? How come they will chain
themselves to a Redwood tree in California, but don't seem to be
protesting the land developers and builders in Hawaii who use those
cut-down trees to build and cover the land with houses, shopping
centers and pavement? I had thought about retiring on my island
sometime in the next century, but with all the development there, my
special piece of land (three whole acres I picked out years ago), went from $60,000
to $ 6,000,000 in just eight short years.
And
recently, Bette Midler, the Rose herself, was cutting down trees
without a permit, just because she can. I thought that she was a lib.
No state's more liberal than Hawaii...gay marriage and all,
and it's still got more free stuff to do than all of the other islands,
and things you DO have to pay for cost less. There are even bars where
they'll pour you a free drink if you can correctly pronounce HUMU HUMU
NUKU NUKU A' PU A'A, the State Fish of Hawaii that spits water at it's
prey to stun it, but I'm not going to tell you where they are.
My only
request is that if you're going.....don't! Kauai doesn't need any more
people. You'll just mess it up for the rest of us. As long as I can get
a room with a view off the ocean that's not clogged with tourists
instead of some high-rise, I'm happy.
If
you're going to Kauai, you had better get there before Bette cuts down
all the trees and the Japanese economy gets better. There's nothing
more distracting than a bus load of Japanese tourists with blonde hair
on a bald island. For all you future protesters, you don't need a fancy
hotel, just airfare. Then you can camp in the back country under a
waterfall, bathe once a month, find pot farms, get killed and lead
protests against America from the grave.
Let's
hope global warming is real. If the fucking planet warms up, then we
can all can skip the plane flight and go to the Farrallons off San
Francisco for our tropical fix.
Don't Take Our
Word for It
"You've
probably already heard that the President plans to veto funding for the
program which provides healthcare for kids whose parents work but can't
afford insurance. (He wants to spend the money prolonging the Iraq
occupation instead.) This is about as clear a chance to stand up for
the kind of America we want as we could ask for, and we're pulling out
all the stops."
"Iraq is Enron, and President Bush is Ken Lay. He's fighting a war with
phony accounting tricks. The Bush administration fudged the numbers to
get us into Iraq, and cooked the books to keep us there. 'The surge' is
simply another in a long series of inflated stock quotes. This past
weekend Marcel Marceau passed away at age 84. Doctors say he went
quietly. Thus proving that evil thrives when good men stay silent. And
just like with Enron, the good men and women who are blowing the
whistle on Iraq contractor fraud are being vilified, fired, demoted,
and those are the lucky ones.
"Last Friday morning the Senate Democratic Policy Committee held a
hearing entitled 'The Mistreatment of Iraq Contracting Whistleblowers,'
just in time to make the Friday news dump. According to the committee
more than $10 billion dollars in Iraq reconstruction and military
support contracts is unaccounted for. In other words, for every six
dollars spent in Iraq one dollar is in question. And folks, it's a
war-zone, you're dealing with a culture known for its haggling skills,
so you've got factor in a little skimming, but this is ridiculous. If
you stole that much money from the Mafia you'd be dead.
"Vicente Fox may have called President Bush a 'windshield cowboy,' but
Bush has certainly turned Iraq into a wild, wild, west. And here's
another one from the War in Iraq's this-is going-to-make-you-vomit
file. Some Iraq contract whistleblowers have been vilified and fired,
others have been detained by the US military and subjected to harsh
interrogation techniques...
"Meanwhile the Bush administration has not litigated a single case
against a contractor alleged to have defrauded the US Government in
Iraq. Apparently, like terrorism, this isn't a law enforcement issue
either."
"I
do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code
can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we
live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we
should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this
adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole
existence on our willingness to explore and experience."
- Martin Buber -
"Give to your close relatives what they need, and also give generously
to the destitute and to wayfarers. Do not squander your wealth; those
who are wasteful are the brothers and sisters of Satan — and
Satan is always ungrateful to his Lord. But if, while waiting for the
Lord's bounty, you are unable to help your relatives, the destitute and
wayfarers, then at least speak kindly to them."
- Qur'an: Al-Isra, Surah 17:26-28 -
"The
U.S. currency fell 1.6 percent this
week to $1.4091 per euro and touched $1.4120 yesterday, the lowest
since the euro's inception in January 1999. The dollar has lost 6.3
percent this year against the euro. It will drop to $1.45 per euro
within two months."
"What
a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever
mentioned it."
-
Margot Asquith -
"You
know you're getting old when you
stop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you're
down there."
-
George Burns -
"Once a person said to a dervish, 'All I
ask for is a small dwelling in Paradise.'
"The
dervish replied, 'If you displayed the same contentment with what you
already have in this world, you would have found ultimate bliss.'"
- Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jillani: Fayuz E Yazdani
-
"An
adventure is only an inconvenience
rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly
considered."
-
G. K. Chesterton -
"In
advanced, progressive, tolerant
societies, we also don't go up to strangers and tell them that they're
ugly, that their children are repulsive, that their clothes don't
match, that they need a bath, that the leisure activity they're engaged
in is stupid and a waste of time. In the same way, atheists should not,
unprovoked, go on and on about how sacred texts lack God's imprimatur.
And believers should not blithely go after atheists. If this sounds
like the credo of an American — an odd creature of
history who might be an atheist or believer — the
plea is guilty. One can, of course, line up the bolstering high-culture
quotations on this side too, against the belligerent atheists.
Schopenhauer's proviso that politeness is 'a tacit agreement that
people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on
either side be ignored and not made the subject of reproach.' Even Eric
Hoffer's lovely line that 'rudeness is the weak man's imitation of
strength.'"
"I have to
tell you that one man got up there on that forum, and he spoke of a
world that I want to live in, and he spoke like a leader that wants to
take our country and our world to a place that I've only dared dream
about. And people are afraid of him; people don't understand him. They
think he's weird because he is so far ahead of his time, and that's
Dennis Kucinich.
I fawned
all over him at the forum I know, I tried not to but if you seriously,
I mean, get past the name, get past how he looks, get past whatever.
Even if you think, "Oh, he can't get elected," just listen to what the
man has to say, and if you hear what he has to say and understand what
he's talking about, it is so exciting that that's even in our election
process today.
"I am very
hopeful. I am a Dennis Kucinich supporter and fan. I will support
whomever my party elects, but I really think that we need to listen to
what he has to say, and if we truly believe that we are worthwhile in
our thoughts and our feelings and our opinions and the way we want to
see the world then when a leader steps up and says, 'I believe this
too,' we have to support him."
"I
think it would be a good idea."
-
Mahatma Gandhi when asked what he
thought of Western civilization -
"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."
-
Oscar Wilde -
"Congressman Ron Paul called for an end to the Drug War and a repeal of
'most' Federal drug laws last night during the PBS Republican
Presidential Debates hosted by Tavis Smiley.
"'We have already spent over
$400 billion since the early 70s and it's wasted money,' he said.
'Prohibition didn't work; prohibition on drugs doesn't work.'"
"Common
sense is strengthened by joy."
-
Rabbi Nahman of Breslov -
"Never let the facts get in the way of telling a good story."
- Walt Disney -
"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth."
-
Rex Stout -
"The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's
unfamiliar territory."
-
Paul Fix -
"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."
-
Peter Ustinov -
"The
most erroneous stories are those we
think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question."
- Stephen Jay Gould -
