Issue 2.05
The Editorial We
Watching the devastation of the California fires is a different kind of horrifying from  the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Mediawise, Katrina was presented as poor black people who lost their modest homes, victims of the weather, bureaucratic incompetence, and their own personal gamble in deciding to live in that area. The stadium they were herded into looked like hell on earth. But the California fires were presented as rich white people who lost their incredible mansions, victims of the weather, bureaucratic incompetence, and their own personal gamble in deciding to live in that area.  The stadium they were herded into looked pretty well stocked.

When the poor lose everything, they don't lose as much as the rich when they lose everything, but that doesn't make their hardship any less vital.

There are lots of agencies out there helping the fire victims, offering the exact same help any homeless person might need, yet their screening process weeds out all the homeless who didn't happen to own a home that recently burnt down. If you're homeless and living on the street because your home burnt down a month ago, you're shit out of luck as far as the agencies are concerned.

There were thousands of homeless before the California fires. Now there are several thousand more. You gotta ask yourself why the newly homeless get preferential treatment. Isn't it possible the previously homeless had catastrophes in their lives just as valid as fire? Shouldn't they be at the front of the line?

The lesson we've learned is that if you're going to lose everything, fire is better than water and rich is better than poor.

More than a million people displaced, the largest peacetime migration since the Civil War if you believe your television, a terrible spectacle of monumental proportions.
 
And yet its only a quarter of the four  million Iraqis who've been displaced by our war, so keep those fire images in mind and multiply by four  just to keep things in perspective.

Further proof that humans can wreak MUCH more havoc than tired old mother nature.

Whenever editors of newspapers are arrested in the middle of the night for exposing corrupt sheriffs, other editors of newspapers can continue to play it safe or further expose the corrupt sheriff. Guess which road we chose? No Dick Cheney he, we found it easy as pie to googlemap Joe Arpaio's home. What did he do? Read America's Most Cowardly Sheriff by Tony Ortega of the Village Voice.

If you were going to go out and hire someone to write a comprehensive history of the use of the N-word in stand-up comedy, you couldn't pick a more knowledgeable writer than Paul Krassner. Luckily, we didn't even have to ask. After reading A Brief History of  the N-Word, you'll totally understand why it was funny when Lenny Bruce said it but not funny at all when Michael Richards said it.

Now that we know Dumbledore's gay, you might be wondering what deep dark secrets are held by other fictional characters. If not, you certainly won't bother reading Top Ten Secrets of Fictional Characters, which you'll find right around Jeff Crook's piece, Dumbledore's Army.

We hereby acknowledge the existence of Pontifica, a new state owned by F.G. Fitzer, who says I Claim 200 Square Miles of Antarctica.
 
If like the rest of us, you've been waiting for a chance to smack Rupert Murdoch in the face, you will certainly want to play Whack-a-Murdoch.
 
Billy Graham was no Mother Teresa, as Michael O'McCarthy knows since he read and reviewed Cecil Bothwell's The Prince of War - Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire.
 
In case you've forgotten, Jim Carrey reminds you there's still a War on Buddha and the Miami Herald and Alternet remind you there's still  a War on Plants.
 
Last week, Bishop Desmond Tutu was forbidden to speak at the University of St. Thomas just because he nominated Mordechai Vananu , the Israeli Daniel Ellsberg, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Check out The Censoring of Bishops and Whistle Blowers.
 
Jim Watson apologized for saying something horrible. Pete Stark apologized for saying something absolutely true. One's a putz for saying something but a mensch for apologizing, one's a mensch for having spoken truth to power but a putz for apologizing. They add up to the Apologies of the Week., not the Scumbags of the Week, which is an entirely different feature.
 
When you get A Press Release from the Grim Reaper, you better print it if you don't want pitchfork scars on your buttocks.
 
Shhh, Don't Tell Anyone, is top secret to everyone who doesn't read it.
 
If I forgot to mention the cartoon by Justin Bilicki, High Coup by zEN mAN, Outside the Box, Get Involved, the Real Estate Deal of the Week, Lynette Scheffield's Bad Food, David Schoen's Don't Go, You'll Ruin It, the Google Smackdown of the Week, and lot's of amazing videos, you'll just have to take our word for it that I'll get to it next time.
 
We realize this issue of the Los Angeles Free Press is way too big to be presented in just one long column. There's a learning curve here as we learn InDesign to format everything in a more rational manner, which we assure you is coming up.

Michael Dare: Editor
michael@dareland.com


Sheriff Joe Arpaio
America’s Most Cowardly Sheriff
by Tony Ortega
 
    The owners of The Village Voice were thrown into jail last night, and I wish I could say that it was my fault. Instead, I have to give that credit to my former Phoenix New Times colleague, John Dougherty.
    It was Dougherty who, in 1993, first pointed out that the then brand-new sheriff of Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix), a clown named Joe Arpaio, was a menace. But over the years 1995 to 1999, that beat was all mine.
    By late 1995, two years into his tenure, Arpaio had already perfected his shtick as “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” He craved the attention of out-of-town journalists like the rest of us crave oxygen, and to get it, he turned the county’s jails into a sideshow.
    Arpaio’s big lie was that he was tough on criminals. But even the most cursory attempt at real reporting revealed a very different truth: Arpaio not only endangered the lives of inmates—most of whom were simply awaiting trial, and the majority of the rest serving time on traffic violations—but he also endangered his own employees with his policies and wasted county money and resources on attention-getting nonsense. And, increasingly, he was becoming a very, very paranoid despot.
    I managed to uncover stories about deaths in Arpaio’s jails, assaults on inmates (including one paraplegic inmate whose neck was broken by sadistic guards), and the dirty tricks that “America’s Toughest Sheriff” aimed at his political opponents—despite the fact that Arpaio blocked every one of our (perfectly legal) public-records requests and fired employees whom he even suspected of speaking to New Times.
    When I moved to New Times Los Angeles in 1999, John Dougherty returned to the Arpaio story and really turned up the heat. Though the constant parade of television journalists arriving breathless with admiration for Arpaio’s “courage” never slowed, Dougherty pressed ahead with the real story: that there has hardly been a more untrustworthy politician in Arizona, and perhaps in the rest of the country as well.
    Taking advantage of post-9/11 privacy statutes, for example, Arpaio had convinced the county to remove from public view records of the million-dollar commercial real-estate transactions he was making. How, Dougherty wondered, was a modestly paid county sheriff making those kinds of deals? Arpaio blocked every attempt to answer that question, and then did something even more outrageous: He convinced the county attorney to charge New Times and Dougherty with a felony for including his home address in the Internet version of a story about his real-estate dealings.
    As New Times pointed out, that address is available in multiple places on the Internet from various official and government sources that anyone, to this day, can access.



    Taking advantage of a pliant county attorney and the thug he’s hired to go after New Times, Arpaio is waging a war against my former colleagues’ First Amendment rights. Although Dougherty has since moved on and I’m now editor of The Village Voice, New Times journalists Steve Lemons and Paul Rubin and editor Rick Barrs continue to expose Arpaio for the megalomaniac that he is.
    In the 14 years that those of us at New Times have spent countering the bad journalism done by countless sycophantic reporters who have bought into the sheriff’s fraudulent reputation, we never had to be told that the owners of our company, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, fully support us.
    And that was never made more clear than last night, when Lacey and Larkin were hauled off to Arpaio’s jail after daring to speak out about the sheriff’s latest outrage: Through the county attorney’s lapdog, a grand jury has been conned into doing Arpaio’s dirty work. Although it was technically illegal to do so, Lacey and Larkin went public in a story this week about the draconian subpoena that New Times has been hit with, which calls not only for records about every story the paper has written about Arpaio, but also the identities and other information about every person who has ever looked at the New Times website since 2004.
    Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in D.C., has described the subpoena as “frightening in its scope.” Even those reporters who may have bought Arpaio’s line of bull in the past must see what an abuse of power this is, and how it threatens the journalism being done by papers that dare to question public officials.
    I hope my colleagues in the press understand how important this battle is.
 
Copyright © 2007, Village Voice Media
Posted with the permission of the Village Voice
www.villagevoice.com

"Journalists do not gather or report information merely to satisfy their own curiosity or for their employer's profit. They do so as surrogate stewards of the people's right to speak and publish as they choose. The existence of a free press going about its responsibilities unfettered by governmental intrusion is the practical vindication of the individual's constitutional liberties."
- Tim Rutten: Regarding Media - Reporters should be shielded from jail -

Update

    "As daylight broke, word of the arrests spread quickly. New Times' offices were inundated with queries from the media. TV cameras showed up unannounced at our front door. Phones of editors, reporters, and other staff buzzed incessantly.
    "The significance of what had just happened was immediately recognized by broadcast and print news organizations large and small. From the New York Times and blogs like Gawker to the Arizona Republic and the East Valley Tribune, the tale proved irresistible. After all, how many times in recent history have an American editor and publisher been jailed for a piece they penned?
    "That's more like something that occurs in Myanmar, Iran, or Venezuela. Not in the United States, where freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution.
    "Regardless of political affiliation, almost everyone but the most die-hard Arpaio-lovers blasted what they deemed an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.
    "Clint Bolick, director of the conservative Goldwater Institute's Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation, issued a statement, saying, 'Regardless of one's ordinary proclivities regarding the players involved, there is only one place for friends of freedom to stand at this moment: shoulder to shoulder with the New Times.' ...
    "Less than 24 hours after the arrests, Thomas' staff called the Friday, October 19, press conference that ended up being standing-room only. His introductory remarks were punctuated by nervous coughs. He soon zoned in on the reason for the hastily organized event.
    "'The arrests that were conducted last night I had no knowledge of,' he claimed. 'I got a phone call informing me of that fact. In looking at this matter in its totality over the last 24 hours, it has become clear to me that the investigation has gone in a direction that I would not have authorized. It was an error on my part to allow the matter to proceed to that point without having the proper, well, without basically having the personnel in place to ensure we didn't go off track.'
    "Thomas announced the firing of ally and former boss Wilenchik as a special prosecutor in this and all future matters, though he later admitted Wilenchik would remain on a list of attorneys used for civil litigation.
  



A Brief History of the N-Word
by Paul Krassner

    In the early 1960s, Dick Gregory called his autobiography Nigger, because, he explained, “I told my mama if she hears anybody shout ‘nigger,’ they’re just advertising my book.” Richard Pryor called one of his albums That Crazy Nigger and wrote an article for The Realist about the disproportionate amount of blacks fighting in Vietnam which he titled Uncle Sam Wants You, Nigger! After a visit to Africa, he reclaimed his heritage, promising not to use that word again. And then there was Lenny Bruce, on stage one night, riding an invisible unicycle as he balanced his way along a tightrope into uncharted comedic territory:
    “The reason I don’t get hung up with, well, say, integration, is that by the time Bob Newhart is integrated, I’m bigoted. And anyway, Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin are geniuses, the battle’s won. By the way, are there any niggers here tonight? [Outraged whisper, as if an audience member] ‘What did he say? Are there any niggers here tonight? Jesus Christ! Is that cruel. Does he have to get that low for laughs? Wow! Have I ever talked about the schwarzes when the schwarzes had gone home? Or spoken about the Moulonjohns when they’d left? Or placated some Southerner by absence of voice when he ranted and raved about nigger nigger nigger?’
    “[In his own voice]: Are there any niggers here tonight? I know that one nigger who works here, I see him back there. Oh, there’s two niggers, customers, and, ah, aha! Between those two niggers sits one kike - man, thank God for the kike! Uh, two kikes. That’s two kikes, and three niggers, and one spic. One spic - two, three spics. One mick. One mick, one spic, one hick, thick, funky, spunky boogey. And there’s another kike. Three kikes. Three kikes, one guinea, one greaseball. Three greaseballs, two guineas. Two guineas, one hunky funky lace-curtain Irish mick. That mick spic hunky funky boogey. Two guineas plus three greaseballs and four boogies makes usually three spics. Minus two Yid spic Polack funky spunky Polacks. [Auctioneer’s voice] ‘Five more niggers! Five more niggers!’ [Gambler’s voice] ‘I pass with six niggers and eight micks and four spics.’
    “[In his own voice] The point? That the word’s suppression gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. If President Kennedy got on television and said, ‘Tonight I’d like to introduce the niggers in my cabinet,’ and he yelled ‘nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger’ at every nigger he saw, ‘boogey-boogey-boogey-boogey-boogey-nigger-nigger-nigger-nigger’ till nigger didn’t mean anything any more, till nigger lost its meaning, you’d never make any 4-year-old nigger when he came home from school. Screw ‘Negro!’ Oh, it’s so good to say, ‘Nigger!’ Boy! ‘Hello, Mr. Nigger, how’re you?’”
    Four decades later, Dave Chappelle on his TV show played a man delivering milk to the all-white family, the Niggars, and he did indeed say, “Hello, Mr. Niggar, how’re you?” But consider the contrast between Lenny’s good-natured, poetic routine and Michael Richards’ mean-spirited, uncontrollable outburst. In November 2006, at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, in response to heckling from a table of four African Americans (three men and a woman), he suddenly became enraged with repressed hatred:
    “Shut up! Fifty years ago we’d hang you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass! [Laughter in the audience, apparently unaware of the heckler’s race and that the reference is to lynching] You can talk, you can talk, you can talk, now you’re brave, motherfucker! Throw his ass out! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger!”
    “[A woman in the audience] “Oh my god!”
    “A nigger! Look, there’s a nigger! [Imitating reactions in the audience] ‘Oooh! Oooh!’ All right, you see, this shocks you, it shocks you to see what lies beneath your stupid motherfuckers!”
    [A man at the heckler table] “That wasn’t called for.”
    “What was uncalled for? It’s uncalled for you to interrupt my ass, you cheap motherfucker! You guys have been talking and talking and talking.”
    [Voice from the audience] “Calm down.”
    “What’s the matter with you? Is this too much for you to handle?”
    “I said calm down.”
    “They’re gonna arrest me for calling a black man a nigger? Wait a minute, where’s he going?”
    “That was uncalled for, you fucking cracker-ass motherfucker!”
    “You calling me cracker-ass, nigger?
    “Fucking white boy!”
    “Are you threatening me?”
    “We’ll see what’s up.”
    “Oh, it’s a big threat. That’s how you get back at the man.”
    “You’re just not funny. That’s why you’re a reject. Never had no shows, never had no movies. Seinfeld, that’s it.”
    “Oh, I guess you got me there. You’re absolutely right. I’m just a wash-up. Gotta stand on this stage.”
    “That’s it, we’ve had it. Niggers--that’s un-fucking-called-for. That ain’t necessary.”
    “Well, you interrupted me, pal. That’s what you get when you interrupt the white man, don’t you know.”
    “Uncalled for, that was uncalled for.”
    “You see, there’s still those words, those words, those words.”
    Richards then walked off stage. Later, seemingly stunned at his own racist rage, he apologized again and again as best he could.
African-American comedians reacted to Richards’ use of the n-word. Chris Rock on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Real Time: “He said nigger? Nicotine?” Damon Wayans at a comedy club: “Welcome to Nigger Night.” Jamie Foxx defended the use of “nigger,” but only by black people. He began his monologue at the Borgata in Atlantic City: “I’m an Oscar winner, but I’m a nigger too.” Referring to the Richards incident, Foxx said, “He was just calling us niggers like it was the ’50s. Nigger, nigger, with a ‘e-r.’ Then they said we can’t use the word ‘nigger’ any more. That’s my shit. I need it. I need the word to describe certain things, because at a certain level of excitement, I need to tell you how the shit was, and there ain’t no other word that helps me say that better than that word. White people, you can’t use it. I would’ve booked his ass!”
    The NAACP Philadelphia Youth Council held a mock funeral for the n-word. And, at the NAACP annual convention in Detroit, a horse-drawn carriage pulled a pine casket with a black wreath on top, signifying the death of the n-word.
    In February 2007, a historically black school in Alabama held a four-day event titled the “‘N’ Surrection Conference at Stillman College.” Its goal was to challenge the use of the n-word “through the use of intelligent dialogue and a thorough examination of black history.” Kovan Flowers, co-founder of AbolishTheNWord.com, said that striking the word “nigger” from use would help set an example for other races. “We can’t say anything to Hispanics, or whites or whoever unless we stop using it ourselves,” he said. “It’s the root of the mindset that’s affecting why people are low, from housing to jobs to education.”
    Community activist Tim Robinson pointed out that blacks don't have a problem using the word “nigga” because it’s distinctly different and is considered a term of endearment when they say it to each other. He said, “It was ‘nigger’ which was the bad word, but you’ve got our people that just went and changed it up a bit.” The late rapper Tupac Shakur was credited with legitimizing “nigga” with his song “N.I.G.G.A.” which stood for “Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.”
    The first season of Aaron McGruder’s TV adaptation of his controversial comic strip The Boondocks on the Cartoon Network angered Al Sharpton and other black activists by the show’s frequent use of “nigger.” The second season was scheduled to devote an entire episode to “The N-word.” Co-executive producer Rodney Barnes explained, “You can’t bury ‘nigger.’ It’s like a vampire. It’s going to live forever. And we can’t let the fans down. Why be responsible now?”
    On the other hand, on the series Cavemen, the cavemen referred to themselves as “maggers,” but this was considered racist, and the word “magger” quickly disappeared from the sitcom’s scripts.
    Attorney Gloria Allred tried to arrange an informal three-member “jury” of a retired judge and two lawyers to decide “whether they think, under the facts and the law, Michael Richards should be accountable and, if so, in what way. We want accountability, and we want the public to understand the significance of the n-word and how it has hurt” her clients. Richards’ lawyer, Douglas Mirell, said that while Richards’ comments were “inappropriate, they are not legally actionable” and that, if Richards faced mediation or a lawsuit, he intended to oppose a cash settlement under his constitutional right to free speech--an incorrect claim, since the 1st Amendment applies only to censorship by the government.
    Elayne Boosler came to Richards’ defense in a blog on Huffington Post:
    “Words won't kill you unless they are ‘Ready, aim, fire!’ Now that some time has gone by since the Michael Richards rant, let's talk about the true victim of the ‘n-word’--stand-up comedy. The L.A. Times continues to feature articles on the Laugh Factory, focusing on further ‘n-word’ developments, and on black comedians lamenting the loss of their use of the ‘n-word’ at the club. They’re determined to say it, even though the club owner is fining them for it.
    “When I watch the majority of black comedians on cable and in clubs, I am amazed the TV version of Amos and Andy was called racist, and canceled due to the main characters speaking less than perfect English in their rhythms. (We're not discussing the radio show, which was done in blackface before television and which, by the way, was voted into the Radio Hall of Fame last week.) Those men had jobs, wore suits, had beautiful wives in earrings and pearls, and ate at tables with tablecloths. They were a classy version of The Honeymooners, the ostensible white welfare show.
    “By comparison, the ‘comedians’ on cable seem to be making Klan recruitment films. There is such a dearth of dignity, but most of all, such a lack of comedy, that every time I try to watch I say out loud to the performer on TV, ‘Hey, I’ve got the Kingfish on the phone here, he'd like an apology.’ These shows have reinvented comedy as style over substance, rhythm over writing. I can’t discern a joke, let alone root for the person up there. Between the ‘n-word,’ the ‘mf-word,’ and ‘bitches’ and ‘hos’ (talk about insulting half the population every waking hour of the day), they have annihilated stand-up comedy. Those words have made it possible for people to fill an hour set without five actual minutes of comedy. Maybe stand-up comedy could hire Gloria Allred to sue on its behalf, for a proper sum for not only hurting its feelings, but destroying its legacy. (Allred, what a great feminist. ‘We're going to find a retired judge and let him decide.’)
    “The rule about heckling is this: You fire at a cop, get ready to die. Yelling ‘You’re not funny’ at a comic is firing with an AK. Hurt your feelings? Tough. Anything goes for hecklers, including excessive force. I lay myself bare up here, at my most vulnerable you shoot me in the chest, I will kill you if I can. You know why Richards looked so shell-shocked at his own outburst? Because he's not a racist, he was simply in the zone. Comedy clubs are like Indian reservations. They are their own country. I don’t think he should have apologized. You pay your money and you take your chances, step right up.
    “Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, far from demanding apologies, should have apologized to Bill Cosby, who tried to point out the heartbreak and social defeat of how some blacks are undercutting their own dignity and chances (did you see Queens of Comedy?). It’s one thing to use the ‘n-word’ when you are an original, like Chris Rock or Bernie Mac, or if you’re a genius, like Richard Pryor. It’s another matter when you don’t have the talent to co-opt the enemy. These currently enraged black leaders are about ten years too late in their outrage, and they are mad at the wrong person. By the way, the best black comedian I ever saw was Marsha Warfield. She cut to the bone of race relations, was brilliantly funny, as well as intense, challenging, and seething with rage, and she never used the ‘n-word’ once....
    “When I started doing stand-up in 1973, the women working in comedy were the caricatures of their time; housewives who hated sex, loved jewelry, hated their husbands, hated themselves, etc. My oath to myself was that I would do nothing, no humor, no matter how easy it would have been, that propagated any of those images of women. I had to work harder, write better, face resistance, lose opportunity, to present a funny woman who was a worthwhile human being deserving of respect and dignity, and who could entertain not just a niche audience, but people. I don’t see too many comics striving for that on cable. You can’t legislate the end of the ‘n-word.’ Nobody can ever tell a comic not to say something, it runs against a comic’s soul. Don't take the ‘n-word’ out of your act because someone wants to ban it. Take it out because you are replacing it with actual comedy.”
    And editorial cartoonist Mr. Fish depicted Jesse Jackson saying, “In light of the Michael Richards tirade, I’m calling for the immediate removal of the letter ‘N’ from the alphabet so that racism will no longer exist in this country.” I decided to send a contribution to the NAACP in support of their anti-discrimination efforts, and I made the check out to the AACP.


    On 60 Minutes in 1998, Don Imus told Mike Wallace that his show had someone specifically assigned to do “nigger jokes.” In 2000, Newsday’s Philip Noble monitored the Imus show for months, then cited numerous examples of his racist, homophobic and misogynist references. In 2001, Imus promised syndicated columnist Clarence Page that he wouldn’t make racist comments about black athletes any more.
    But in April 2007, on the morning after the mostly black Rutgers University women’s basketball team had reached the finals of the NCAA women’s basketball championship, Imus offhandedly remarked, “That’s some nappy-headed hos.” Calls for his removal from the airwaves were invoked by public figures ranging from Barack (not black enough) Obama to Al (too black) Sharpton, from feminist Eleanor (not woman enough) Smeal to Jesse (“Let’s go to Hymie-town”) Jackson. Although Imus proceeded to apologize all over the media, ranging from Sharpton’s radio program to the Today show, he felt that he was only following the lyrics of black rappers, from the Wu Tang Clan (“nappy-headed niggaz”) to Ludacris (boasting of random “hos in different area codes”).
    Platinum-seller Chamillionaire, admitted, “I’ve always used the n-word,” but after he went on tour and saw mostly whites in the audience lip-synching it along with him, he announced that his new album, Ultimate Victory, would not include the n-word, explaining, “I’m not going to say the n-word on this one because when I go back on the road and I start performing, I don't want them to be saying it, like me teaching them.” He said this conversion was a moral issue and not a result of the backlash against Imus. Snoop Dogg said that rappers “are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We’re talking about hos that’s in the ’hood that ain’t doing shit that’s trying to get a nigger for his money.”
    In 1992, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons had stated that “oppression of artistic expression, like any sort of oppression, should not be tolerated.” In 2007, he told reporters that offensive references in hip-hop “may be uncomfortable for some to hear,” but that his job wasn’t to censor expression. Yet, only one week later, in the wake of Imusgate, he joined Al Sharpton’s insistence that broadcasters should ban “bitch,” “ho” and “nigger.” Sharpton, who had announced to the press in 1995 that record-label executives shouldn’t “cave in” to right-wingers wanting to censor lyrics because it would “infringe on our 1st Amendment rights,” now justified his turnaround because James Brown on his deathbed had urged him to “be more aggressive in cleaning up the music.”
    Two months before the Imus incident, New York City Councilman Leroy Comrie successfully sponsored a “symbolic moratorium on the use of the N-word.” (Other cities passed similar measures.) Ironically, at a hearing on Comrie’s resolution, the word “nigger” was said nearly fifty times in less than two hours. The founder of the Ban the N-Word Movement, Marcia Harris alone said “nigger” nineteen times. One man who didn’t say it was Atlanta-based attorney Roy Miller, who managed to get the word stricken from the Funk & Wagnall dictionary. A few days later, inside Harlem’s Uptown Jeans clothing store, the voice of rapper 50 Cent, one of whose songs is titled “To All My Niggers,” blared over the loudspeaker, “Nigger you front you gone get it, OK now maybe I said it.”
    “What difference does it make if they ban the n-word?” a bookseller asked. “Ban police brutality. Ban racial profiling. Ban that. Forget the n-word.” Four months after the plethora of rap-lyrics criticism that followed the Imus incident, New York City Councilwoman Darlene Mealy tried unsuccessfully to ban the words “ho” and “bitch” (which was referred to in the attempted legislation as the “b-word.)” Basketball star Isaiah Thomas said that although it’s wrong for a black man to call a black woman a bitch, it’s much worse for a white man to do it.
    On April 9, CBS Radio announced it was suspending the Imus in the Morning show for two weeks. Two days later, a Pennsylvania radio station fired a disc jockey for urging listeners to mimic the Imus epithet. That same day, MSNBC decided to cancel its simulcast of Imus’ radio show. Although sponsors - General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, American Express, Sprint Nextel, Bigelow Tea, Staples - had pulled their commercials from the Imus show, NBC denied that the loss of advertising motivated his cancellation. The next day, CBS fired Imus. Sponsors had already dropped out, and others were threatening to do so.
    Imus hired attorney Martin Garbus - who had once represented Lenny Bruce - announcing that Imus would sue CBS for $120 million, since they had contractually encouraged Imus. A clause acknowledged that his program was “unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial.” Garbus said the firing was “unconstitutional,” which could be considered an accurate claim, since the FCC is a government agency. Imus and CBS settled out of court. Meanwhile, a clue in the New York Times crossword puzzle was “Fired celeb,” and the correct answer was “Imus.”
    In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, civil rights attorney Constance Rice sounding somewhat like Lenny Bruce, wrote, “But rest assured, the Imus crew has plenty of kike, wetback, mick, spick, dago, Jap, Chink, redneck and unprintable Catholic priest jokes too. Not to mention the rabid homophobia and occasional Islamophobia... Imus’ remarks were racist, offensive and, given that these athletes are not fair targets, out of bounds. There is no excuse for what he said. But there’s also no basis for firing him or ending his show. Firing Imus for racist riffs would be like firing Liberace for flamboyance. It’s what he does. More to the point, Imus should only be fired when the black artists who make millions of dollars rapping about black bitches and hos lose their recording contracts. Black leaders should denounce Imus and boycott him and call for his head only after they do the same for the misogynist artists with whom they have shared stages, magazine covers and the awards shows.”
    Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz - Imus had once referred to as “a boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy” - stated, “I do not believe Imus is a bigot - not a man who raised millions for cancer-stricken kids of all races to stay at his New Mexico ranch.” New York Times columnist Frank Rich argued in favor of free speech, and that Bill O’Reilly should be allowed to say “wetbacks,” a term used as dismissive shorthand for undocumented Mexicans. O’Reilly claimed that he was actually searching for the word “coyote.”
    Gloria Allred represented a member of the Rutgers team who planned to sue Imus and CBS for slander and defamation of character, charging that his comment had damaged her reputation. This was reminiscent of the joke about a public speaker who stated, “The trouble with women is that they take things too personally”- then a woman in the audience stood up and said, “I do not.” In September 2007, the basketball player’s frivolous lawsuit was withdrawn, ostensibly so she could focus on her education.
    In April 2007, CBS fired the hosts of The Dog House with JV and Elvis, after they placed an on-air order to a Chinese restaurant for “slimp flied lice” and compared food items to body parts. “In the wake of the Imus case,” said New York City Councilman John Liu, “it would have been maddening to the community if these idiots did not get fired.”
    The next month, XM Satellite Radio suspended shock jocks Opie and Anthony for 30 days after they aired a segment with “Homeless Charlie.” When they mentioned Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Queen Elizabeth, he said about each, “I’d love to fuck that bitch.” Although the station is not subject to FCC regulation or punishment, it does need FCC approval to merge with satellite-radio competitor Sirius. In 2002, the pair had been fired by CBS Radio for broadcasting a call from two listeners who said they were having sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Now they expressed sympathy for Don Imus, saying that his career was “gone, just because he was trying to entertain people.” In fact, though, Imus would be returning to radio, on ABC.
    Meanwhile, Glenn Beck called antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan “a pretty big prostitute,” then softened that epithet to “tragedy pimp.” Michael Savage called Barbara Walters “a mental prostitute” and “a double-talking slut.” GQ editor Jim Nelson, parodying The Secret, advised readers to “visualize what you want (an Alfa Romeo? Leather pants? An Asian whore?), think positively and the universe will make it happen to you.” Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain used the racially offensive term “tar baby” and later apologized. Black comic Sheryl Underwood called Monica Lewinsky “an amateur ho.” And Don Imus referred to his own wife, Deidre, who is an environmental activist, as “the green ho.”


Paul Krassner is the author of One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist, and publisher of the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster--both available at paulkrassner.com.
 


Dumbledore's Army
by Jeff Crook

    Now that Dumbledore is officially out as a gay man, surely this just goes to prove that all those people who were against him and Harry Potter, people like Jerry Falwell, Bill O'Reilly, and Lord Voldemort, were justified in their hatred of this man and his very gay crusade to turn all the little witches and wizards into an army of homosexual tolerance crusaders of paganowiccaSatanifascism.
    Dumbledore made the kids use wands, after all - that should have been a dead giveaway, along with all the subliminal messages hidden in Rowling's seven guides... er, books. Let's see how many we can find:
    "The wand chooses the wizard." Wow, this is a pretty obvious reference to homosexuality, laying the foundation in young minds for the false lie that a person is born gay. At the same time, it shows the power of "the wand," especially a large, black, turgid wand with a phoenix feather core, to convert an otherwise straight man into a raging homowizard.
    Cornelius Fudge? Oh, come on! This name screams gay. And he was Minister of Magic! That's like the president or something.
    Quidditch is a game based on soccer (only slightly less gay than gymnastics), in which boys and girls compete as equals (as if) as: Chasers (chasing tail) who chase a quaffle (to swallow!); Beaters (!!) who whack mindlessly violent balls(!!!) called Bludgers (anti-man) with penis-shaped bats; a Seeker (code for gay temptor of straight men) who tries to catch a Golden Snitch (a spy trying to discover the real motives and methods of the gay agenda, someone like Rev. Ted Haggard or Sen. Larry Craig). When the Snitch is caught, the game is over!
    Speaking of Quidditch, what kind of man rides a broom? A gay man, of course. Real wizards ride gas-powered leaf blowers.
    I'm sure you can think of others. There's bound to be tons. Just be careful in your research. If you read these books too closely, you're liable to find yourself having odd thoughts and desires about your beer drinking buddies. Normally, it is perfectly safe to have odd thoughts and desires about other men, but these books will also have conditioned you to accept them as normal and fill you with an irresistible desire to act upon them, which you MUST NOT DO openly. REMEMBER, if you gaze too deeply into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you and turns you gay as a smurf.

http://jeffcrook.blogspot.com/2007/10/dumbledores-army.html
 

Top Ten Secrets of Fictional Characters
 
  1. Ahab used a butt plug.
  2. Mary Poppins was a man.
  3. Hamlet gave Ophelia crabs.
  4. Bob Cratchet molested Tiny Tim
  5. Forrest Gump had an enormous penis
  6. Fletcher Christian secretly enjoyed being whipped
  7. Kilgore Trout hated Philip K. Dick
  8. Batman couldn't get it up without Viagra
  9. Whenever Sherlock Holmes "played his violin," that was a metaphor for blowing Watson
  10. Jesus Christ was never circumcised

 
Pontification of the Week
 
    "You might have heard of the plan by the UK to claim sovereign possession of one million square kilometers of Antarctica.
    "The thought occurred to me this morning: If the British can do it, why can't I?
    "Here goes. I hereby declare possession of 200 square miles of Antarctica. This small area is hereby known as Pontifica, and will eventually be merely the ancestral homeland for a larger nation, Greater Pontifica.
    "Pontifican citizenship is open to all those who embrace liberty, and use their liberty to express what they have to say. Pontificate freely from Pontifica, with no restrictions. There will be no balancing of freedom and security in Pontifica.
    "Who's with me? Bring your coat!"

Play Whack-a-Murdoch
 

Read Responsibly

Reviewed by Michael O'McCarthy


    "Oh White God From Heaven, welcome to our shores and home..."
    Thus we are told Columbus and mates were greeted upon landing by the various and unsuspecting peoples who lived and thrived there.
    Thus, was the first evangelical named. Thus, he promptly began to fashion the means of the genocide to come. This chronicle of the exploitation and subversion of the human spirit by the Christian men of the cloth inflicted its torturous, hypocrisy upon the misnamed America and the world for the last 600 years.
    Cecil Bothwell's spare and well documented, unauthorized biography of William Franklin Graham, The Prince of War, captures Graham's rise from his familys anti-Semitic, quick dealing legacy in the south of Charlotte, North Carolina to become the Crown Prince of Protestantism. His position as Christian patron has been to the masses and Presidents alike; to the post-colonial destitute of the 3rd world; reaping both the privileges and patronage of the Oval Office. Billy Graham is friends and advisers to Senators, Generals, right wing businessmen, yellow journalisms giants and Commanders in Chief. Perhaps no other preacher broke through the barrier of church and state as did Graham, all too often in service to what President Dwight Eisenhower, one of his fondest worshipers, would come to call, the military industrial complex.
    The truth is: Billy Graham never saw an American war he did not love!
    Bothwell's is not an academic treatise. What Bothwell's book does is to tear away the chiseled-chin, white matinee idol glamorous mask of Graham and reveal a man who catered to the worst fears of America. From that of the black race seeking its freedom and its due to the much touted, little effective thirst of Communism for the soul of white folks and their servants of color at home and abroad.
    Further Bothwell does a service to all of us tired of the self-righteous condemnations of these Holy Roller messengers from Charlton Heston sets. Tired of the never-ending broadcasting pabulum sent at us in behalf of these liars of faith and their patrons in high corporate and government office.
    These savior-proxy hypocrites of a white Christ are caught often enough with their pants down with the whores they fuck and condemn male and female alike. Heard too often spouting their pious and non-ending promises of pie in the sky when you die as long as one gives their life, soul and tithes to Christ today. Shouting hallelujah from their multi-million dollar cathedrals in honor of they Lord Thy God they preach the lessons of Christ who loved the poor, all the while the poorest among us are homeless, laying dead and dying in the gutters and weeds. These embezzlers purses are filled with the dollars and dimes from the gullible and from out of which they pay for their overly bountiful fruits of the Earth. These spiritual-capitalist pied pipers pray seriously for only a few things other than their own longevity: that is your money and your idolatry.
    There are two Christs of this world. The first is the child Christ who in nursery rhyme and Sunday school calls come all ye little children, and whose giving spirit is as white as driven snow. Then comes the adult Christ who came, they now tell us, not to bring peace unto this earth but carrying a mighty swift and terrible sword. For the record Grahams child's Christ was over when at the infamous Bob Jones University, a citadel of right wing, racist, sexist Christian conservatism, Graham and friends threw rocks at kids cars as the came through campus playing stupid pranks with fireworks.
    We gave it to them good. Breaking all of their windows and showering them with broken glass.
    This narrow, mean mindedness of Graham would evidence itself in the later years in the company of the alcoholic traitor and would be thief of the US Constitution, Richard Milhous Nixon. Paranoiac, mean and spiteful, Nixon often sunk to the lowest of common denominator when scapegoating a people for the ills of failed imperialism. Like the Nazi hierarchy of his recent past, Nixon, his fascist shadow Kissinger and his Oberfuhrer Haldeman often lapsed into reviling the Jew for their troubles.
    Bothwell once again tears away the beatific mask of Graham in documenting how Graham participated in those demeaning, scurrilous rants against the Ever Present Nameless Jew whose fault it was that capitalism was under assault from within. On more than one occasion, Bothwell documents those enjoinders of Graham with Nixon. One in particular is that from a redacted ninety-minute tirade worthy of Hitler. As Bothwell notes from the archival research Graham is recorded as saying of the Jews: This stranglehold has got to be broken or this countrys doing down the drain,
    Bothwell rips through Grahams Madison Avenue PR attempt to position him as a regretful pal of Nixon just going alone with an obviously upset buddy; putting up with his letting off steam.
    I learned that the conversation had lasted an hour and a half, had rarely strayed from the denunciation of Jews and had sometimes been led by graham, writes Bothwell q. (p10)
    Then we have this schizoid pronunciation of love for the state of Israel by Graham. And what follows is nothing but a bizarre irony in the new love affair of convenience by the Christian fundamentalists who believe in the Tribulation and Rapture.
    This is wherein Jesus will return to earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "Biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the Antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. Then the Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to earth. What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (i.e., those who believe what THEY believe), will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.
    This is the whole cloth of these religious witches who prey upon the ignorance and fear of the common person. They feed this toxic brew to salve the pain of their exploitation by their bosses and political leaders. It is their infectious medicine for the ills of this planets most vulnerable species.
    But in the end it is not the philosophic that worries: One of the assets of being the color called white in America is that you are privy to the insanity that makes up the racist mind of these Euro-Americans.
    In the club locker rooms, the ball field bleachers, pool halls, intimate one-on-ones between father-in-law and prospective groom, in the corporate offices the denunciation of peoples of color, like the masculine form of gossip about bitches and cunts, is where one learns how seriously this culture is dominated by the myth of while male hierarchy and its pathetic insecurity. What comes with that package is the reference to niggers, spics, wops, kikes and slopeheads. What is result of this racial superiority leads not only to discrimination, but the underlying rationale for most of the US's wars.
    It is an all too human to err. But when you have God on your side, when you speak for the Lord Thy God, you give racism a Holy carte blanche. Likening to the noxious spiel of the Bin Ladens of this world is that when you play high priest to the ruler you insure his racism is carried out with God's blessing. And that just what Graham did for Johnson and more so Nixon.
    When Graham urged Eisenhower to invade Vietnam he became a military adviser; when he urged Nixon to bomb the dikes in North Vietnam, a barbarous act that would have killed a million people and destroyed the entire agricultural base of the nation, he was guilty of conspiracy to commit war crimes.
    As Bothwell notes, The German high commissioner in occupied Holland, Seyss-Inquart, was sentenced to death at Nuremberg for breaching dikes in Holland during WWII.
    Graham is in good company with George W. Bush. Both are partial to the commission of war crimes in the name of their Lord. Perhaps when Bush is indicted for his crimes against humanity Graham will be alive to offer him spiritual solace and visit with him in his cell, or walk with him on the way to the gallows.
 
Brave Ulysses Books
PO Box 1877
Asheville, NC 289802
www.Braveulysses.com

Good News

   
    "The Los Angeles City Council adopted a resolution Tuesday calling for an end to the war in Iraq, making it the largest city in the nation to make such a call.
    "'Today the city of Los Angeles is sending a message loud and clear -end the war in Iraq,' Councilman Bill Rosendahl said, drawing cheers from an anti-war audience packing the council chamber.
    "'We are calling for an immediate and complete withdrawal of United States military personnel from Iraq,' said Rosendahl, who introduced the resolution. 'We have lost too many of our young men and women to this illegal and unjust war.'
    "The resolution passed on a 12-2 vote, with Dennis Zine and Greig Smith dissenting. Councilman Jose Huizar was not present for the vote.
    "Rosendahl said that among the more than 3,500 members of the military who have died in Iraq, 409 came from California, including 115 from the Los Angeles area and 25 from the city.
    "'Supporting our troops does not mean keeping them in Iraq,' he said. 'Supporting our troops means taking them out of this war and bringing them home.'
    "Rosendahl said the expense of fighting the war has meant that more than $4.5 billion in tax revenues have been diverted from Los Angeles.
    "'This war has diverted funds that could be used for important domestic needs that would improve the quality of life for Los Angeles residents,' he said. "
- LA City Council Adopts Resolution To End Iraq War; Resolution Calls For Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq (PDF of the whole resolution) -

"Well, that's all well and good, but are they doing anything about pricey drinks and movie tickets?"
- Anil  -

    "The effort to unify and mobilize the indigenous of America took a large step last week with the first ever American Indigenous Peoples' Encuentro held in Yaqui tribe territory in Sonora, Mexico. Among its participants was a strong presence of indigenous from the United States and Canada, as well as the Mexico's National Indigenous Congress and Subcomandante Marcos representing the EZLN. Ral Romero and Juan Trujillo write from Sonora about the events of the inauguration of the Indigenous Encuentro and what its participants plan to bring to it.
    "Within the framework of working groups about 'The history and the word of our peoples,' indigenous nations members' participation, in particular those from countries that are called 'Canada' and 'United States' has had special strength due to the large number of delegates who have attended this encuentro."
"[T]he curator of the Rotterdam Natural History Museum asked the public to donate pubic crabs, claiming that their population was dwindling as a result of Brazilian waxes. 'Pubic lice,' he explained, 'can't live without pubic hair.'"
 
    "Money magazine columnist Jean Chatsky polled 1,500 people for her book You Don't Have to Be Rich and found that more money makes people significantly happier only if their family income's below $30,000, but by $50,000, money makes no difference.
    "'Once you get to that $50,000 level, more money doesn't buy more happiness,' she said."
- John Stossel: Myths, Lies and Straight Talk -
"The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) today announced the imposition of financial sanctions against 418 Burmese military generals and their family members."
- Mizzima: No more bank accounts for Burmese generals in Australia -
    "Liberal Al Franken is good enough and smart enough to win some of conservative Ben Stein's money and doggone it, Stein likes him.
    "Stein, an actor, writer and economist, has contributed $2,000 to Franken's Minnesota Senate campaign. The two men have known each other for about 30 years.
    "'I'm struck by what an incredibly capable, hard-working guy he is,' Stein told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday. 'He's a very smart liberal, he's a thoroughgoing patriot, and I would feel better with him in the Senate.' ...
    "The two worked together during Comedy Central's coverage of the 1992 political conventions. They also did debates together in front of corporations and universities 'because we could be billed as Franken/Stein,' Franken recalled. 'To have fun, we used to always insist on being billed as Stein/Franken.'"
 
"It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times."
    "The essential document in the current Iraq debate is a letter of commitment, now endorsed by 89 members of the House, that says the signers "will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during FY08 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq before the end of President Bush's term in office."
    "In an important new letter to President Bush, the 89 representatives -- 88 Democrats and Texas Republican Ron Paul -- say, 'More than 3,800 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 28,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisers gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues. We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.'
    "At a time when the president is requesting an additional $50 billion to maintain www.Braveulysses.comhis escalation of U.S. military operations in Iraq through next April, on top of the $145 billion he requested to continue military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2008 fiscal year, the letter says what all of Congress should be saying: No."
- The Nation: 89 House Members Tell Bush: No More Money for Occupation -
    "Santa Claus will once again parade down Hollywood Boulevard.
    "Though, in March, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce announced will no longer sponsor the annual holiday parade, the Los Angeles City Council decided to throw its financial weight behind the effort and ensure that a procession will indeed be held in Hollywood.
    "The value of the city's sponsorship has not yet been determined, but City Councilman Tom LaBonge said other sponsors will be sought to help pay for the event. The Chamber of Commerce said it was dropping plans for the event after 75 years because it had lost about $100,000 staging the 2006 parade and losses were expected to double this year.
    "The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce owns the name "Hollywood Christmas Parade," so the revived event will be known as the "Hollywood Santa Parade." The new event will happen on the evening of Nov. 25 -- the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It will include the traditional mix of floats and bands. Bill Lomas of Pageantry Productions, based in Lynwood, will produce the parade. "

"Trailblazing city plan provides services regardless of residents' immigration status or medical history."
- John M. Glionna: S.F. offering healthcare to neediest -
 
"In a major victory for Uganda's people, rainforests, environment and ecologically sustainable development aspirations; the Ugandan government has finally scrapped controversial plans to allow Mabira rainforest, one of the country's largest and most important protected area, to be partially cleared for sugar production for biofuels. This may sound slightly familiar, as on a previous occasion it was reported the plan was dead but it came back to haunt us. Statements by the government this time are from the Minister of Finance, other numerous sources and are more firm. Mabira rainforest will remain protected, and a precedent has been set that protected rainforests must not be cleared for biofuel production. This is huge!"
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
Bad News

   
"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise their power from behind the scenes."
- Justice Felix Frankfurter: USA Supreme Court -

"The entire horrific crime was captured on tape, and a (second) autopsy showed 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson died of suffocation after being gang-muscled by guards on his very first day at a Florida boot camp. Despite the medical and video evidence, an all-white jury took only 90 minutes to find the guards innocent of all wrongdoing - a miscarriage of justice so blatant it recalls the worst days of official Jim Crow lawlessness. The guards - who were careful to keep their hats sitting jauntily on their heads throughout the fatal assault on Anderson - enjoyed the impunity that flows from a society in which Black life has no value."
 
    "The Bush administration rejects the idea that the war in Iraq has driven young Arab men into the arms of al-Qaida. But if you believe the young men themselves, the administration is wrong.
    "At a Baghdad jail for prisoners who have attacked U.S. forces, everyone to a man says it was the U.S. occupation of Iraq that drove them to violence. And they are not alone. Across the Middle East and South Asia, the same story can be heard in Internet cafes, mosques, safe houses and prisons."
 
    "Consumers have unknowingly put the plastics recycling industry in the United States on a starvation diet by failing to recycle sufficient quantities of soft drink bottles and other waste. That's the conclusion of a story in the Oct. 15 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.
    "In the article, C&EN senior editor Alexander H. Tullo explores the critical role of consumers in efforts to save energy and raw materials by transforming plastic wastes into new products. Tullo notes that barely 25 percent of the billions of pounds of plastic bottles and containers manufactured annually in the United States enter the recycling stream.
    "While major cities like New York and San Francisco have shown that plastics recycling can be done successfully on a large scale, fueled by recycling educational programs and environmental pride, many municipalities are still falling far short of their desired recycling goals.
    "Financial concerns, technological difficulties, and stiff competition for raw materials by recyclers at home and abroad are among the combined challenges facing the plastics recycling industry, Tullo notes.
    "But the fate of the plastics recycling industry may ultimately rest in the hands of consumers, he writes. Tullo's bottom line is a quote from one recycling expert: 'There is not enough scrap material being collected.'"
 
 "Bo Ward, the proprietor of a barbershop near the Army's Fort Campbell, committed suicide at a town meeting in Clarksville, Tennessee. Ward had requested that his home be rezoned as a commercial property to increase its value and to offset the losses he suffered when most of his regular patrons, among them General David Petraeus, were deployed to Iraq; the City Council refused. 'Y'all have put me under,' said the barber before inserting a pistol into his mouth. 'I'm out of here.'"
- Harper's Weekly -
    "If the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers have their way, a 'vehicle barrier' made of railroad ties will cut across the river (although it will have to be removed each year before the monsoon floods, which would easily whisk it away). There are plans for permanent vehicle barriers just beyond the riverbed -- steel posts sunk into 3 feet of concrete. And for 'pedestrian fencing' made of double rows of concrete-filled 14- to 17-foot-high bollards. And for the 'Sandia'-style variant, which uses panels of tight steel mesh. There will be a new 'all-weather' road, lighting and electronic surveillance towers.
    "And a price tag of $7 billion. For starters.
    "Faraway Washington has forgotten just how much cowboys can't stand fences. And in this case, there are lots of cowboys: artists, students, activists, even politicians...
    "The San Pedro River, which runs atypically from south to north, will be virtually dammed as far as most people and many animals are concerned. Human migrants will be pushed from the river valley to torturous trails that cross the 9,000-foot-high peaks of the Huachuca Mountains; it is nearly certain the human death toll will begin to rise in the area.
    "This will happen because the Department of Homeland Security says so. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandates 700 miles of barriers, easily the most ambitious and controversial infrastructure project in border history. And although the department does indeed have the power to say so - including the authority to waive National Environmental Policy Act rules in the name of national security - resistance to the 'wall' is proving to be a political obstruction Beltway politicos and Homeland Security functionaries hadn't counted on...
    "The Great Wall of America underscores a delusional faith in technology as the only solution to a problem that has nothing to do with technology. Ultimately, such Ozymandian monuments say more about the minds that conceived them than any 'enemies' they actually contain. Think of the grandiose barriers of history - the walls of Troy and China and Berlin; the wall that kept the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Think of their fate, their ultimate symbolism. Each began with the idea that people - and their ideas - could be restrained by barriers, just like rivers can be dammed. A simple feat of engineering.
    "And yet we believe that our wall will be the exception.
    "Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has done his best to dress up the beast. During one news conference, he condescended to Texans fuming about their soon-to-be-erased view of the Rio Grande by assuring them the fence would be 'aesthetically pleasing.' During another, he appropriated a thin slice of environmental rhetoric: The wall will be 'good for the environment' because migrants would no longer leave a trail of litter.
    "The cowboys who can't stand fences -- the environmentalists and artists, the anarchists and the migrants -- know that the wall will cause more death in the desert and leave a scar upon the land...
    "It will not work, because not even the greatest engineers can make a mad idea sane."
 
    "Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.
    "As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it's time to get out.
    "What does Iraq look like on the ground? It's certainly far from being a modern, self-sustaining country. Many roads, bridges, schools and hospitals are in deplorable condition. Fewer people have access to drinking water or sewage systems than before the war. And Baghdad is averaging less than eight hours of electricity a day.
    "Iraq's institutional infrastructure, too, is sorely wanting. Even if the Iraqis wanted to work together and accept the national identity foisted upon them in 1920s, the ministries do not have enough trained administrators or technicians to coordinate themselves. At the local level, most communities are still controlled by the same autocratic sheiks that ruled under Saddam. There is no reliable postal system. No effective banking system. No registration system to monitor the population and its needs...
    "Iraqi security forces would not be able to salvage the situation. Even if all the Iraqi military and police were properly trained, equipped and truly committed, their 346,000 personnel would be too few. As it is, Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And, again, corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we're gone.
    "This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war - and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer."
- 12 Former Army Captains (Jason Blindauer served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Elizabeth Bostwick served in Salah Ad Din and An Najaf in 2004. Jeffrey Bouldin served in Al Anbar, Baghdad and Ninevah in 2006. Jason Bugajski served in Diyala in 2004. Anton Kemps served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Kristy Luken McCormick served in Ninevah in 2003. Luis Carlos Montalvn served in Anbar, Baghdad and Nineveh in 2003 and 2005. William Murphy served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Josh Rizzo served in Baghdad in 2006. William "Jamie" Ruehl served in Nineveh in 2004. Gregg Tharp served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Gary Williams served in Baghdad in 2003.): The Real Iraq We Knew -
    "Ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran, the United States on Thursday designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferater of weapons of mass destruction and its elite Qods force a supporter of terrorism. In total, Washington slapped sanctions on more than 20 Iranian companies, major banks and individuals, as well as the Defense Ministry, in a bid to pressure Tehran to halt its nuclear program and curb its 'terrorist' activities.
    "The other shoe, when it falls, will sound something like this: At least 26 U.S. troops are reported dead after an assault on their small base near the Iranian border this morning, said Gen. David Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq. While details are still sketchy at the moment, Gen. Petraeus said it was 'almost certain' that the attackers were units of Iran's elite Qods force, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.President Bush is now consulting his national security team, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. 'When we have all the facts, then the president will decide upon the appropriate response. For now, our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those killed in this horrible sneak attack.'"
-  - Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque: People Get Ready: One Shoe Away From War With Iran -
 
    "It is clear that Nancy Pelosi's reign as Speaker has been an absolute disaster for the Democratic party and for the entire nation. Her eagerness to cooperate with the Bush regime is matched only by her incompetence in leading Congress. Under her watch, Congress gave Alberto Gonzales, on his way to riding out of town on a rail, a significant victory by expanding FISA regulations to allow warrantless surveillance of American citizens.
    "The story of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act debacle has been blamed on Bush. It is true that he once again lied about a terror threat, but it is not true that Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats were innocently stampeded. The Democrats had every intention of caving from the very beginning. Pelosi and the rest of the leadership promised the ACLU and other civil liberties groups that they wouldn't pass a bill without first investigating the extent of White House law breaking and without consulting them first. They did no such thing. As an ACLU lobbyist put it, 'They turned around and screwed us over - and the Constitution - all at once.'
    "Disappointment in the Democrats, pleas to 'grow a spine' miss the point entirely. Pelosi and her clique have no interest in Democracy. They go through the flimsiest pretense of opposing Bush when they have no interest in doing so. Her goal is to preserve the status quo, not to overturn it...
    "Pelosi and her leadership clique have never had the slightest intention of seriously opposing George Bush, since they are quite content with a status quo of endless war, half of New Orleans abandoned, true universal health care on perpetual hold, and a growing police state. Every constituency of the Democratic Party has been betrayed, with the complicity of Pelosi and her crowd. And there must be pay-back for back-stabbing...
    "Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of what passes for Congressional leadership have perfected their criminal enterprise. Every act of treachery is followed by lame excuses for inaction. The truly spineless ones, progressives wallowing in denial, foolishly whine, asking each other what is wrong when the answer stares them in the face. The Democratic party is complicit in killing democracy. 


The War on Buddha

    "China lashed out Tuesday at President Bush's White House meeting with the Dalai Lama, arguing that it would seriously damage relations between Washington and Beijing, and called on the U.S. to cancel plans to honor the famous Tibetan figure with a Congressional Gold Medal.
    "'We solemnly demand that the U.S. cancel the extremely wrong arrangements,' Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters hours before the meeting. 'It seriously violates the norm of international relations and seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China's internal affairs.' ...
    "The White House dismissed China's concerns, saying the president has had private meetings with many religious leaders, including the pope.
    "'The president believes that people all over the world should be able to express their religion and practice their religion in freedom. And that's why the president wants to meet with him,' White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said. 'He believes he should be honored as a great spiritual leader.' ...
    "'These sorts of criticisms will not help the image of China internationally,' said Tsering Tashi, the Dalai Lama's London-based representative at the Office of Tibet, a group that considers itself the government in exile.
    "Beijing could find itself frustrated by the growing number of Chinese embracing Buddhism and becoming increasingly interested in Tibetan people and culture, he said"
- Mark Magnier: China fumes over Dalai Lama visit -
"Americans cannot look to the plight of the religiously oppressed and close our eyes or turn away, and that is why I will continue to urge the leaders of China to welcome the Dalai Lama to China. They will find this good man to be a man of peace and reconciliation, unlike myself."

    "In a rare statement in its mouth piece the New Light of Myanmar the Burmese military junta on Wednesday admitted to arresting nearly 3,000 protesters and is still continuing to hunt down more of them as a part of its ongoing crackdown on last month's demonstrations.
    "'Out of 2,284 persons who were summoned from Yangon [ Rangoon] till date, 2,094 have been already released on a pledge and there are 190 persons detention,' the statement said.
    "Of 643 persons arrested from different parts of the country 365 have been released after signing a 'pledge'. The newspaper does not elaborate on this.
    "Some of the detainees, who have been released, said they were made to sign a paper stating that they will not participate in any anti-government movement in the future.
    "'Those who led, got involved and supported the unrest which broke out in September were called in and are being interrogated,' the statement said.
    "The junta last month brutally crushed a monk-led protest that posed a direct challenge to its rule and began to arrest monks and civilians in midnight raids and random searches on the streets.
    "The junta said 10 people were killed when troops opened fire on protesters in order to disperse them. But diplomats and dissidents said the number could be far higher.
    "'Some are still being called in for questioning and those who should be released will be released,' added the statement.
    "The junta's statement came amidst increasing international pressure calling on the junta to immediately halt its man hunt and release all political detainees.
    "Gambari, the UN special envoy to Burma, on Monday told reporters that information of more arrests are disturbing and are countering the world body's effort to promote change in the country."
    "The brutal military dictatorship that controls Burma showed the world just how thuggish it is when it recently attacked and imprisoned Buddhist monks who had dared to protest peacefully against the regime. To see the military cracking heads and hauling off so many monks was appalling but what can we do?
    "Well, you can strike a financial blow against the Burmese oppressors by simply not doing something: Don't buy gems that are mined in that country.
    "Burma is rich in precious gems, producing 95 percent of the worlds rubies and 99 percent of the worlds jadeite, known as imperial jade. The military regime there pockets more than a quarter-billion dollars a year from exports of these gems money that helps fund its bloody repression.
    "Wait, you say isn't it against the law to import Burmese products into the U.S.? Sort of. The raw gems cant be brought directly here from Burma, but they can be imported indirectly. China, for example, buys raw Burmese rubies and jade, then cuts and polishes them into jewels, which it turns around and sells to U.S. retailers. So, bloody Burmese bling is being sold by American jewelers, ranging from Wal-Mart to Nieman Marcus.
    "Recently, a watchdog group called U.S. Campaign for Burma launched a national effort to persuade retailers and importers not to buy or sell any jewelry containing Burmese gems. Tiffanys is the first retailer to agree, and the campaign is now calling on consumers, shareholders, churches, students, and the general public to write letters and emails, make calls and visits, and join local protests and other actions to convince the other jewelry retailers to stop being a conduit for blood money to Burma's dictators.
    "To find out what you can do to support 'No Burmese Blood Bling,' call the U.S. Campaign for Burma 202-234-8022."
- Jim Hightower: Burmese Blood Gems -
 
    "I have been banned for over one and half year, nearly two years now. It affects one's livelihood. How can we survive without work? We know nothing about other trades. We can't learn how to fire a gun at this age. The ban brings a lot of trouble to these writers and artistes. As for the people, they have to suffer too; they cannot read the works of these writers and cannot see the films of these artistes.
    "As far as I know, we cannot say the movement has ceased. It is simmering under the ashes temporarily. It's just temporary, it cannot be stopped, and the movement is simmering in the hearts and souls of the people...
    "It has two sides, both positive and negative for the people and the country. I think it is good. My children who are in their early 20s can't believe the atrocities committed in the 88 uprising when I tell them about it. They think we are exaggerating and lying. Now they have seen what happened with their own eyes. Now they realized we are not lying only telling them the truth and facts. I like this situation very much."
- Burmese comedian, actor and director Ko Zargana (Tweezers) who was released from detention on the 17th this month -
    "MAE SOT, Thailand: One of the main organizers of the September protest marches in Myanmar, Ashin Kovida, a 24-year-old Buddhist monk, escaped to Thailand last week by carrying a false identification card, dying his hair blond and wearing a crucifix.
    "On Thursday, Ashin Kovida offered details of his harrowing escape and insights into what has remained a central question about the September protests: Who organized the orderly lines of saffron-robed monks who marched through Yangon - and how.
    "Ashin Kovida crossed the border to Thailand illegally and said Thursday that he was planning to request refugee status. He is wanted by Myanmar's military government, which accuses him of storing explosives in his monastery in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar.
    "The monk called that accusation absurd.
    "In a six-hour interview in this border town, he painted a picture of a bare-bones organization, a group of 15 monks in their 20s who organized the September demonstrations. He said he had been elected leader of the group and had been inspired by videos of the popular uprisings in Yugoslavia against the government of Slobodan Milosevic."

    "That Japanese journalist who was killed in Burma is a lesson to us all - when you go to a protest, even one that you believe or hope will be peaceful, don't wear flip-flops. Always dress as though you're going to have to run for your life, because you might.
    "The reason there has been so little response in the Western media to events in Burma is because there's no boogie man in Burma. Most articles you read about Burma only refer to the 'Military Junta.' A bunch of nameless faces are hard to get excited about. And 'Than Shwe' has too many soft consonants to sound threatening. Our great Satans have always had names that slap you in the face, with the stress on the first syllable, and the best ones have names that actually include negative words:
  • Hitler (HIT-ler)
  • Stalin
  • Kruschev (to crush)
  • Khaddafi (never was the best bad guy because his name could be pronounced 'ka-Daffy')
  • Saddam (both 'sad' and 'damn', and notice Bush the Smarter switched the stress to the first syllable whenever he said Saddam)
  • Khomeni
  • Hirohito (again with the hitting)
  • Osama bin Laden
    "Compared to these, Than Shwe sounds like someone with a lisp getting an erection."
- Jeff Crook -

The Human Rights Action Center
www.humanrightsactioncenter.org

U.S. Campaign for Burma
www.uscampaignforburma.org
 
Jim Carrey calls for people to support the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.
 
Update

"Dalai Lama Renaissance" Documentary (with Harrison Ford)
 
Let's hope Bush's visit with the Dalai Lama worked out better than Steven Seagal's
 
The Censoring of Bishops and Whistle Blowers
Bishop Desmond Tutu & Mordechai Vanunu
 
    "Bishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his courageous and fearless opposition against the South African apartheid system. This year, Bishop Tutu nominated Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle blower of Israel's WMD Program for the Nobel. Last week, the University of St. Thomas' president Father Dennis Dease, after pressure from a few local Jewish leaders, canceled a scheduled presentation by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
    "On April 30, 2007 , in Jerusalem, Vanunu was convicted on 14 [out of 21] counts of violating a court order which denied his right to speak to foreign journalists in 2004 after his release from 18 years in jail for telling the world the truth that Israel was already nuclear in 1986. Vanunu was also convicted for traveling the few miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem when he hoped to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity, his first Christmas after being released from 18 years in jail [most of it in solitary] on April 21, 2004. His appeal against a six month sentence in jail begins November 13, 2007.
    "Vanunu has spent the last three years under house arrest in Jerusalem forbidden to speak to the likes of me, but in 2006 he informed this civilian journalist, 'This administration tells me I am not allowed to speak to foreigners, the Media, and the world. But I do because that is how I prove my true humanity.
    "'The Dimona is 46 years old; reactors last 25 to 30 years. The Dimona has never been inspected and Israel has never signed the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty but all the Arab states have... Twenty years ago when I worked there they only produced when the air was blowing towards Jordan ten miles away. No one knows what is happening now.
    "'The Israelis have 200 atomic weapons and they accuse the Palestinians and Muslims of terrorism. The world needs to wake up and see the real terrorism is the occupation and the Palestinians have lived under that terror regime for 40 years.
    "'It's very sad that Hilary Clinton went to the Jewish Wailing Wall and forgot the real crying wall is the Palestinian wall...the apartheid wall... the wall is not for defense, but to keep this conflict permanent.
    "'My human rights have been denied me because I am a Christian. When I was on trial I was treated just like a Palestinian; no human rights at all and cruel and unusual punishment, all because I told the truth. The only real way to worship is in loving one's enemies. It was not easy to love my tormentors, it was only because I felt so much like Jesus crucified on the cross, and me crucified in prison, that I could do it. It was not ever easy. I have forgiven but not forgotten anything and I never will. In Israel, a life sentence is 25 years. Even murderers go free after 17. They imposed the same restrictions on me that Palestinians receive; no human rights at all.
    "'The only way to peace is peace; the only way is non-violence. The only answer to Israeli nuclear weapons, their aggression, occupation and oppression, the wall and refugee camps is to answer them with truth and a peace-full voice. When I became the spy for the world I did it all for the people of the world.
    "'If governments do not report the truth, if media does not report the truth, all we can do is follow our conscience. Daniel Ellsberg did, the woman from Enron did, and I did. The USA needs to wake up and see the truth that Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew.
    "'Israel is the only country in the Middle East where America can right now find WMD's. America can also find where basic human rights have been denied Christians, right here in Israel."
    "'When I decided to expose Israel's nuclear weapons I acted out of conscience and to warn the world to prevent a nuclear holocaust. The Israeli media demonized me. They published many lies about me and Israel kept me totally isolated in prison for most of the 18 years. I am also regarded as a traitor because I was baptized a Christian. Israel is only a democracy if you are a Jew.'"
    "For the last three years, Mordechai Vanunu's speech and movement have been restricted under the British Mandate Emergency Regulations -a relic from the British Mandate period in Palestine - before the state of Israel was founded and replaced British rule. Nothing like it exists in any democracy in the world. When Vanunu was convicted, he joked, 'Perhaps I should turn to the Queen or Tony Blair for justice.'"
- Eileen Fleming: The Censoring of Bishops and Whistle Blowers (for more information, visit The U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu and The Mordechai Vanunu website for a Nuclear Free World) -

    "Israeli Jewish citizens gain from the oppression of the Palestinians - cheap land and quality housing, additional water sources and much more. This is the 'calm' that even self-defined peace supporters refrain from disrupting.
    "In apartheid South Africa, objecting to oppression involved a high personal price, so one could understand the objectors who chose not to act. But Israel is a democracy for Jews. All those Israelis who ignore what is being done in their name bear a heavy responsibility.
    "Prime ministers and generals are not the only ones responsible. Anyone who theoretically objects to oppression, discrimination and expulsion, but does not actively take part in the struggle to topple Israel's apartheid regime is responsible. "
-  Amira Hass, from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz : Democracy is more than going to the polls -
OneVoice: One Million Voices to End the Conflict!


Apologies of the Week

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."
- Jim Watson, Nobel laureate for discovering the structure of DNA, after having said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really." He also claimed there was no reason to believe different races separated by geography should have evolved identically, and while he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."


"I want to apologize, first of all, my colleagues, many of whom I have offended, to the president, his family, to the troops that may have found in my remarks as were suggested in the motion that we just voted on... I hope that with this apology I will become as insignificant as I should be, he said, and that we can return to the issues that do divide us but that we can resolve in a better fashion."
-Pete Stark, US Representative from California, after having said "You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it, to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq, to get their heads blown off, for the president's amusement."
 


For Those in the Military
 
Immediate crisis intervention for troubled vets: Call the National Veterans Foundation Toll-Free: 1-888-777-4443. There is always someone there to answer the phone.
 
If you are presently serving in the military or in the Delayed Enlistment Program and beginning to rethink your participation, here are resources to help you.
 
- Thanks to the Project for the Old American Century -
 
Shhh, Don't Tell Anyone
 
    "The nation's premier terrorism preparedness exercise gets underway this week on Guam, making for the largest congressionally mandated exercise put on by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to date. TOPOFF-4 involves top officials at every level of government as well as representatives from the international community and private sector.
    "The scenario begins as terrorists, who have been planning attacks in Oregon, Arizona and on Guam, successfully bring radioactive materials into the U.S. The first of the three coordinated attacks begins locally with a simulated detonation of a radiological dispersal device (a "dirty bomb") that will cause casualties, and wide spread contamination in a populous area near a power plant. Similar attacks will then occur in the hours that follow in Portland and Phoenix.
    "The objectives for TOPOFF-4 include:
  • Prevention: test the handling and flow of operational and time critical intelligence between agencies to prevent a terrorist incident.
  • Intelligence/investigation: test the handling and flow of operational and time-critical intelligence between agencies prior to, and in response to, a linked terrorist incident.
  • Incident Management: test the full range of existing procedures for domestic incident management of a terrorist weapon of mass destruction event and to improve top officials' capabilities to respond in partnership in accordance with the national response plan and national incident management system.
  • Public Information: practice the strategic coordination of media relations and public information issues in the context of a terrorist WMD incident or incident of national significance.
  • Evaluation: identify lessons learned and promote best practices.
- Sabrina Salas Matanane: Largest homeland security training exercise gets underway -

Scariest Halloween Pumpkin of All Time


The War on Plants

    "The Bush administration will propose providing Mexico with about $1.5 billion to help Mexico combat rampant drug trafficking over several years, with Mexico expected to contribute another $7 billion to the plan, a top Pentagon official said Tuesday.
    "The U.S. aid will include helicopters and other equipment plus training for Mexican security forces, but no U.S. troops will be deployed to Mexico said Stephen Johnson, deputy assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere at the Department of Defense.
    "This is the first time U.S. officials have shed some light on one of the Bush administration's signature initiatives for Latin America, a program somewhat similar to the multibillion-dollar effort known as Plan Colombia in that South American nation. The Miami Herald first reported the proposal on July 28.
    "Johnson said the program, which he called a 'historic' effort to bring the United States closer to its neighbor, includes Washington supplying helicopters and other equipment."
- Pablo Bachelet: U.S., Mexico working on counter-drug plan -

    "The death of Alva Mae Groves on Aug. 9 of this year went largely unnoticed outside of her family and fellow inmates at the Tallahassee Federal Corrections Institution, where she lived out the last 13 years of her life. She never went to high school, lived her entire life dirt-poor and raised her nine children for the most part without the help of her abusive husband.
    "In 1994 Alva Mae 'Granny' Groves was locked up for conspiring to trade crack cocaine for food stamps. It was largely her son, whose trailer home she lived in, who ran an operation that her family and neighbors contested, but some customers testified that Alva Mae would sell them small bags when he wasn't around.
    "'The only money I received came from SSI (Supplementary Security Income) and what money I could earn selling eggs from my laying hens (I had about 100 chickens), Alva Mae wrote shortly before her death in a letter asking for a pardon so that she could die near her family. 'I also cleaned houses when I was able, and sold candy bars and soft drinks to the kids coming from school in the afternoons.'
    "Because she refused to testify against her son, and because of the money she had saved in the bank, which was weighed against her for its value in crack, and most of all because of the current sentencing system for crack cocaine offenders, Groves was condemned to 24 years in jail at the age of 72...
    "Nearly 6 out of 10 people in state prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or high-level drug-selling activity but are often receiving harsher sentences than people who do. People caught with the drug in 2004, the last year for which data is available, served an average of ten years in federal penitentiaries, while the average convict served 2.9 years for manslaughter, 3.1 years for assault and 5.4 years for sexual abuse."
- Jessica Pupovac: Crack Users Do More Time Than People Convicted of Manslaughter - When crack cocaine possession means 24 years in prison and manslaughter means only 3, you know something is seriously wrong with the U.S. criminal justice system. -
 
"I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy, you can only punish. And I warn you, that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys every one it touches. Its upholders as well as its defiers. Can't you understand?.... And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding."
- Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind -
 


Learn Something

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University Part 1 of 4
Hear his full answers, not the TV version.

The BBC version of the exact same story that got Dan Rather fired.


US Senator Larry Craig is Not Gay

High Coup

 
CONDI LOOKS GUILTY
WHEN FACED WITH THE OBVIOUS...
BLOOD IS ON HER HANDS!

- zEN mAN -
(observing Desiree Anita Ali-fairooz of Code Pink demontrating to the Secretary of State what the results of her actions are)
 
.
 


Scumbags of the Week
    "Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Tuesday that honoring the 72-year-old Dalai Lama would "seriously damage China-U.S. relations," although he did not specify how. He added that the U.S. should "correct its mistakes and cancel relevant arrangements."
    "We are furious," said Tibet's Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli. "If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there can be no justice or good people in this world."

"2. Slavery existed only briefly, and in limited locales, in the history of the republic - involving only a tiny percentage of the ancestors of today's Americans."
- Michael Medved: Six Reasons Slavery Wasn't So Bad -
"Paying money to families of an Iraqi murdered by a drunk Blackwater rent-a-soldier could encourage Iraqis to 'try to get killed so as to set up their family financially.'"

Outside the Box


Just a few of the thousands of airplanes in graveyards across the country that could be retrofitted to drop water on fires. With a fleet of a couple hundred, all fires could be out in hours.
 

Press Release of the Week
 
GRIM REAPER TO BEFRIEND RECRUITERS - IN SUPPORT OF ENDLESS WAR
 
    NEW YORK, NY - This Friday, October 19, 2007, the Grim Reaper will defy organizers of the Iraq Moratorium and "befriend" military recruiters at the Times Square Recruiting Center, an unidentified zombie said. The initiative is in support of Endless War, said Mr. Zombie.
    The second iteration of the Iraq Moratorium (www.iraqmoratorium.org) takes place on Friday and this time the forces of death and destruction are fighting back. The Grim Reaper has confirmed that he and "an army of the Undead" will kick off their "Befriend the Bottom Line" campaign - an effort to support military recruiters and war profiteers - with a rally at the Times Square Recruiting Center.
    Apparently upset with Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) and other groups doing "counter-recruitment" actions, Reaper and the Undead have decided to act. "We're tired of all this loose talk about peace," the Grim Reaper said. "We support death and destruction - which is much more organic and sustainable than peace - and we are very proud to endorse George W. Bush's policy of endless war," he added.
    "Bush and Cheney have been very good for business," Mr. Reaper observed. "My stocks are up too - all of my favorite companies: Raytheon, Siemens, Halliburton. I love Bush and Cheney - and recruiters too," he added. "They get lonely during long wars, being stuck 'in the rear with the gear' as an Army poet once said..."
    "The surge is a magnificent success," said a Zombie who looked shockingly like an Undead Richard Nixon - complete with a zombie dog named Checkers. "People need to give war a chance. Nobody lives forever - at least not the first time! Grim and I are standing up in support of death and bloodshed. It's healthy, we believe. Let's keep the mayhem alive. As Grim noted our stocks are up and and the War has enhanced the reputation of the US in the world community of felons and war criminals. Why risk that by working for peace? It shows no profit," 'Nixon' noted. "George Bush may not be able to say Nuclear but he loves the bomb...and we love W!"
    "The Bush war policy in Iraq could drag on for another decade or two if we act now to keep the Dream alive," said Reaper. He urged all those who support endless war and its corollary - war profiteering - to assemble at the Times Square Recruiting Center, Friday, October 19 at 11 am. "Look for my sign - 'I Love A Man In Uniform'," said Reaper.
    Join the forces of Death and Destruction in support of Empire and Endless War - come to Times Square, Friday, October 19 at 11 am. Recently converted members of MDS and Pratt SDS will have grease paint and blood available for anyone wishing to join the hellspawn as a soldier in the army of the Undead. Hunker down with the daemons until this peace craze blows over - support endless war! Befriend the bottom line!
 
For More Information: grim@loveandstruggle.net
 
Contact:
Grim Reaper    347.524.5631
Undead Nixon 646.228.0065
Vampira          347.647.1541
 
 
Shit Fit of the Week

Mary Lynn Rajskub freaks out after being left off the list of Hollywood's most influential Christians.
 
Free Ad
(Sweeney Todd again)

Get Involved

    "This Tuesday, Oct. 30, a congressional subcommittee has the power to overturn the massive rate hike instituted by the Postal Regulatory Commission.
    "The Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia is holding a hearing about this unfair rate increase. Time is running out. In order to reverse this bad decision, the members of this committee need to hear from the public before Tuesday.
    "Our goal is to reach 100,000 signatures before the hearing. And we're almost there! Take action at www.stoppostalratehikes.com. "
- Timothy Carr: freepress.net -
    "We have seen this before! The Bush Administration, with no visible opposition from the Democratically-controlled Congress, has taken another major step toward war. This time against the people of Iran.
    "Today, the Bush Administration announced a harsh new program of sanctions leveled against the people of Iran. Executive Orders 13382 and 13224 target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces, and three of Iran's largest state-owned banks, freezing any of their assets held in U.S. banks and prohibiting any U.S. citizen or company from engaging in financial transactions with these organizations. Sanctions themselves are an act of war! This is understood internationally. The Bush Administration latest announcement is clearly a precursor to military action against the people of Iran as such actions and language were in 2003.
    "The sanctions package, combined with the sending of a second US carrier group to the Gulf earlier this year, comes at the same time when the media is reporting that Bush is determined to strike Iran before the end of his term. More than half the U.S. Navy is not off the coast of Iran. ABC News reports that the Bush Administration has requested $88 million to modify B-2 bombers to carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb super "bunker-buster" designed to destroy hardened targets deep underground.
    "Just as in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration is using claims about "weapons of mass destruction" to build support for military action. The Democrats in Congress have done nothing to oppose the growing threat of war -- in fact, many of them, including leading Presidential candidates, are actively supporting the Administration's drive to war against Iran.
    "Bush's war in Iraq has already caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and almost 4,000 U.S. deaths. The cost will be over 2 trillion dollars with no end in sight while infrastructure in the U.S. is collapsing.
    "It is clear that we cannot rely on politicians to stop a new war against Iran. The only force that will stop an attack is a massive international grassroots movement of opposition.
    "NOW is the time for activists from across the globe to sign on to a call from Stop War on Iran saying, 'We urge an immediate end to Washington's campaign of sanctions, hostility, and falsehood against the people of Iran. We oppose any new U.S. aggression against Iran. We need funds for human needs, not endless war for empire.'
    "Every message signed will go automatically to members of every top congressional committee, the Bush Administration, the UN Security Council and to the major corporate media. Together lets make out voices heard NOW! ...
    "Here's how you can help: Sign the petition now, located at http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml.
Welcome to FundRace 2008

Want to know if a celebrity is playing both sides of the fence? Whether that new guy you're seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one? If your boss maxed out at that fundraiser or got comped? Whether your neighbor's political involvement stops at that hideous lawn sign?
FundRace makes it easy to search by name or address to see which presidential candidates your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors are contributing to. Or you can see if your favorite celebrity is putting their money where their mouth is.


Real Estate Deal of the Week

Titan Missile Base Central Washington
Huge Underground Facility on 57 Acres
Available on eBay
Starting bid: $1,500,000.00


Bad Food

Getting Fruity
by Lynette Sheffield
 
    While walking through the snack aisle Costco, (And no, it wasn't like I was going to actually buy anything that would ruin my diet, I was simply looking. Truly.) I saw this product that was called Fruit Leather.
    I understand that Fruit Leather is a fruit snack. But I can't believe that Fruit Leather was the name chosen by the company name-choosers.
    I mean, really?
    Fruit Leather was the best you could come up with?
    I can tell you with all sincerity that I have never, not once, looked down at my own shoes and thought, I wished they were made out of fruit so I could eat them.
    Maybe I should get out more. Maybe this is a personal expression that is quite common and I am so out of it, I cannot even consider this option.
    I don't know.
    What I do know is that if something is presented to me to eat and part of the name of that food is leather; I will go hungry.
    I'm not a radical vegan, protein disciple or a member of the Carb Police. I'm just on a lifelong leather-free diet.
    But fruit snacks are a big business. The International Market for Fruit Snacks, yes; it really does exist, puts the annual sales of fruit snacks at over three hundred million U.S. dollars in 2005.
    These snacks are promoted as healthy alternatives for children. However, a quick look at any given package reveals that the sugar content is high and the fiber content is virtually diddly squat. The level of Vitamin C is pumped up from 28% to 42% to 100% of the RDA on any given pouch of rainbow-colored mutant fruit shapes, but honestly, when was the last time you heard of any American being deficient in Vitamin C?
    There are no telethons for scurvy!
    Vitamin C is added to everything, even Ovaltine!
    A serving of Ovaltine have 45% of the RDA for Vitamin C which still doesn't explain why their commercials are so demented.
    The actors in the radio commercials, both children and adults, get so carried away in the excitement of actually being able to drink Ovaltine mixed with milk, cold, hot or, brace yourself; in milkshakes, they nearly swoon from an overdose of joy. Crazed mobs in the throes of last-minute Christmas shopping appear to be on decaf compared to these Ovaltine drinkers.
    Perhaps that is why there is so much unrest in the Middle East: an inadequate supply of Ovaltine. If you knew you would have to excise Ovaltine from your diet, wouldn't you lose all will to live and look for solace in the form of a roadside bomb?
    Answers a whole lot of nagging questions, doesn't it?
    Well, if Ovaltine truly does has 45% of the RDA for Vitamin C, I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that, based on their commercials, the other 55% of Ovaltine has got to be crack.
    I refuse to let my own children drink it until they are at least 21 and have turned to a life of crime.
    Hi-C promotes itself as being a beverage o health because they have injected 183% of the RDA for Vitamin C in their product.     You do know what happens to the extra 83%, right?
    Hint: its not absorbed.
    Hi-Cs rival, Kool-Aid, only has 10%, leaving one to wonder why Kool-Aid Man always looks so pleased.
    I think we all know the real reason, don't we?
    He is called Kool-Aid Man, although try as I may, I cannot see any sign of male or female genitalia, and he is very, very happy.
    They have tried to brute up Kool-Aid Man by giving him board shorts and an unbuttoned shirt but underneath he still wears red tights.
    He has this big permanent smile plastered on his weirdly-shaped head and is seen bursting through walls of homes much like one might leap from, oh, say, a closet.
    You guessed it; Kool-Aid Man is yet another part of the homosexual agenda whose goal it is to seduce our children into that glamorous, decadent lifestyle with its promises of well-groomed hair, snappy apparel and matching socks.
    It will only be a matter of time before our young people are sashaying around with dashing handbags like Teletubbie TinkyWinky and moving in with Ernie and Bert on Sesame Street next door to Patrick and SpongeBob SquarePants while watching reruns of Will and Grace.
    When will this wickedness end?
    Maybe instead of abusing our produce by smooshing it into shoe material or inflating it with sugar and excess vitamins or mixing it as a beverage, we should simply eat the fruit as is.
    A radical concept, I know; but desperate times call for desperate measures.
    Take your Vitamin C in its natural state.
    Fruit is yummy, low-fat and high in fiber.
    And besides, you don't really want to go through Ovaltine rehab, do you?

 www.lynetteisfunny.com
 Lynette 2007
 All Rights Reserved

 
 
Don't Go, You'll Ruin It
by David Schoen
This week: The Renaissance Faire
 
    The Los Angeles Free Press got its start at the Renaissance Faire in Agoura in 1964. We couldn't make it, so this past weekend my bride and I attended one of our favorite Renaissance Faires in Folsom California. This faire should not be mistaken for the Folsom Street Fair in San Fransicko that took place recently and will never get the national press's attention like the debauchery depicted on SF billboards did. All Renaissance Faires, in general, have their bawdy moments, however children can attend safely with their parents. Teenage girls are hereby notified "to cover that shit up" so old men of 18 don't get arrested for being men. There is no nudity allowed at Faire. Get a room!
    The Folsom Renaissance Faire is always held in October at Lion Park near old town Folsom. It costs about twelve bucks to get in. Some faires are more, some less. Look them all up at RenFaire.com.
    One reason for Conserves to go to the Faire is that you get to see anti NRA Liberals carrying Weapons of  Mayhem and Destruction. What hippocracy. Beautiful. Ren Faires, as a rule, depict a time in history when men were chivalrous ( and the sheep ran scared ), and women were sexy and available. The privileged class had more, of course, and the poor had more... children and higher mortality. Sort of like today in East LA.
    Another main reason for attending a Renaissance Faire is that, if you dress in Faire garb, you will experience a Utopian Society like you never believed possible. The fat, ugly, skinny, beautiful, short, tall, gay, straight, old, young, left wing, independent and right wing all get along without any trouble at all...and we all carry real swords, long bows with arrows, knives and other dangerous weapons around all day long without a thought to use them on anyone.
    You must wear appropriate clothing to experience this lack of aggression though. Don't come as Darth Vader or Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie. The regular public get to see wondrous entertainment, including belly dancers, bards and jugglers. There is "stuff" to do for even the most bored teenager.
    This years faire was especially nice. The woman who played Queen Elizabeth was not only pleasant, but down right attractive. Usually the Queen is played by a Bette Davis look-a-like. Some of you may still be alive to know what I am trying to say here. Bette Davis ( circa 1940-1950? ), portrayed QE in the movies and she was not only historically accurate nasty but historically accurate butt-ugly.
    The Faires have changed through the years and they still have rules for smoking, drinking and weapons inside the gates. Sometimes a joust is held, ( surely you joust ), and often patrons can throw axes or learn fencing. There is always great food at Faire, from skewered beef and chicken to turkey legs and shepherd's pie. Last but not least, THE ALE STAND. At Folsom each year phony Franciscan Monks serve the ale and beer to thirsty vagabonds and nobles alike. I like to refer to the Monks as Men of No Kharacter. Just around the corner a wondrous wench served wyne and meade to the gentler set. Tip any vendor in the Faire and you will receive a resounding Huzzah ! ... to the Tipper.  
    So why shouldn't you go? The handicapped parking. The entire upper and close to the gate parking lot is reserved for the handicapped. I saw one friggin wheel chair and a few canes. The Faire site is Wheel Chair friendly already. The Blue sign, white wheel chair painted on the ground....  parking lot, was full. Where the hell were all those disabled people? This always pisses me off because I have to walk a half mile from the downhill parking lot. I have a bad knee, a bad shoulder, a bad back and a bad attitude and I can't park close to the front gate. Next time I think I'll bribe my doctor to write me a prescription for one of them blue placards. For all of you people who aren't disabled and park in front...EVERYWHERE.. Don't go to Faire, You'll ruin it.
    And don't call me Shirley!

Google Smackdown of the Week



VS.


 
And the winner is "I should be president" by 72!
 
 
Don't Take Our Word for It
"It is quite possible that embracing new nuclear and coal energy will put off the pathologies stalking the human race for awhile, but at the expense of distracting from real solutions, and further entrenching trends that threaten the biosphere and humanity. Assuming they work, they would buy time on climate change, yet over-population and consumption will continue apace. The lights will be kept on a bit longer as we lose the Amazon, go from 6.5 to 9 billion people, destroy vital water resources, and the entire world strives for a western consumptive lifestyle."
- Dr. Glen Barry: Earth Meanders -
 
"This administration doesn't make decisions based on facts, it makes facts based on decisions."
- Hillary Clinton quoting Stephen Colbert -
    "So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious..."
   "A man who has in mind an apparent advantage and promptly proceeds to dissociate this from the question of what is right shows himself to be mistaken and immoral. Such a standpoint is the parent of assassinations, poisonings, forged wills, thefts, malversations of public money, and the ruinous exploitation of provincials and Roman citizens alike. Another result is passionate desire - desire for excessive wealth, for unendurable tyranny, and ultimately for the despotic seizure of free states. These desires are the most horrible and repulsive things imaginable. The perverted intelligences of men who are animated by such feelings are competent to understand the material rewards, but not the penalties. I do not mean penalties established by law, for these they often escape. I mean the most terrible of all punishments: their own degradation."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) -
    "The eavesdropping abuses began as soon as the Bush administration came into office WELL BEFORE 9/11.
    "In recent days, thanks to an enterprising reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, we learned that the president, vice president, and CIA director - not to mention the credulous crowd around Nancy Pelosi - have all been regurgitating a king-sized whopper aimed at providing justification for the National Security Agency program.
    "The White House PR folks made this easy by retroactively applying a clever label to the program: the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Nothing to fear, folks, unless you're telephoning or e-mailing Osama bin-Laden.
    "Whopper? Well yes. It turns out that seven months before the threat of terrorism got President George W. Bush's attention (despite the best efforts of then-counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke to install it on everyones screen-saver, so to speak), the administration instructed NSA to suborn American telecommunications companies to spy illegally on Americans.
    "The general counsel of Qwest Communications advised management that what NSA was suggesting was illegal. And to his credit, the head of the company at that time stuck to a firm No, unless some way were found to perform legally what NSA wanted done.
    "Qwest's rivals, though, took their cue from the White House, and adopted a flexible attitude toward the law - and got the business. They are now being sued. Lawsuit filings claim that, seven months before 9/11, AT&T 'began development of a center for monitoring long-distance calls and Internet transmissions and other digital information for the exclusive use of the NSA.'"
- Ray McGovern: NSA Spying: What Did Pelosi Know? -
"All art comes from demons. Not real demons, in most cases, but demons of angst and horrible memories and sexual frustration. You get beat up in school because, while the cool kids are putting bruises on each other on the football field, you were sitting on the steps writing your science-fiction stories. That fear and tension that winds itself around your soul like steel wire as you try nervously to sneak out of the locker room before the big kids give you a Wedgie and a Tittie-Twister and a Dirty Sanchez, all that builds up into adulthood. Art is how you let it out."
 
"The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end."
- Leon Trotsky -
 
    "I have been in the financial and political world for nearly 40 years. I have dealt with the most powerful political and business people during that time. That experience was enhanced by founding Air America Radio and Nova M Radio. For many years I used to be able to rely on what is called the 'prudent man rule.' An alternative to this is referred to as the 'rational adversary' concept. In political terms, the USSR was the best example of the 'rational adversary.' Even totalitarian nations generally have a survival instinct.
    "Yesterday I watched the PBS Frontline episode about Iran. Most people do not know as was pointed out in the episode that Iran condemned 911 and helped us overthrow the Taliban in 2002. Iran had a reformer as its president who was reaching out to the US until the famous 'axis of evil' speech by Bush in 2002. Despite that, the Iranian president sent through the Swiss channel an offer of a lasting piece with Iran and a cessation of their nuclear program and aggressive attitude towards Israel. Unfortunately for US, Bush did not respond because he was determined to invade Iraq and ultimately if successful do the same to Iran.
    "This was a blunder of monumental proportions to our national security and the stability of the region. Now that the Bush Administration is going into its last year, it would seem that they would be more willing to salvage some legacy. This would be true for any rational administration. But, as I have learned painfully in the last few years, the 'prudent man rule' and the 'rational adversary' theory are becoming less reliable. I have coined a term for this: 'insanity is trump.' You can throw away the rule book for the Bush Administration because he and Cheney have lost their minds. We are dealing with desperate wounded irrational people in those two. And that is cause for great alarm to those in the Democratic leadership that believe that they can ride out the storm until January 20, 2009. They cannot and human survival is in jeopardy if they do."

"Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
- Frederick Douglass -
 
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."
- G.K. Chesterton -
 
    "The fact that Al Gore won the Peace Prize award this year encourages our effort for Pete Seeger for 2008! I hope this recognition helps the environmental movement and increases ways to protect the planet that is our home. I hope it makes more of us aware of the chasm we endure between rich and poor, between obscenely rich and obscenely poor. I am also encouraged that it was through an art form, a film, that Al Gore got his message around the world so quickly and won such acceptance. How tired I am of having the arts referred to as artsy/fartsy, how insulting to have the Universities cut back programs in the humanities, and music and arts enhancement in grade schools be the first to go for budget cuts.
    "The folk music revival movement that spread around the world encouraged young people to learn to play an instrument, give poetic voice to political opinions, and find appreciation for the carriers of folk tradition who had kept those jewels of music alive in their families and communities. One of Petes most important contributions to our consciousness was that he always paid homage to the lineage of folk traditions and was one of the first to see that folk music, was not cute and quaint, but was a form of protest against oppression.
    "Pete Seeger is an ambassador for Peace and Social Justice and has been over the course of his 88-year lifetime. His work shows up wherever you look in the history of labor solidarity, growth of mass effort to end the Vietnam war, ban of nuclear weapons, work for international diplomacy, support of the Civil Rights Movement, for cleaning up the Hudson River and for environmental responsibility in general. Pete knit the world together with songs from China, the Soviet Union, Israel, Cuba, South Africa and Republican Spain. We learned that Crispus Attucks, born a slave, was the first man to die at the opening of the Revolutionary War, that the Farmer-Labor party in the mid-west had a socialist philosophy that lasted well into the 20th century, we learned that anti-slavery movements were often inspired by songs that indicated a map of escape, such as Follow the Drinkin Gourd, he popularized many of the IWW songs that helped in CIO organizing, and spread the Civil Rights Movement through promoting the SNCC Freedom Singers and making songs such as We Shall Overcome, known all over the world...
    "It is time that cultural work receives the recognition that the arts have great influence and global reach, that it is not only a medium of entertainment but of education, compassion and action. It is the desire of the committee that Pete Seeger be recognized as a beacon of integrity and principle in a time, and in a country, more defined by the absence of those qualities than by their honor."
- Eleanor Walden: nobelprize4pete.org -
"You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work... Fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest."
- Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine -
    "America deserves better. We the people deserve better.
    "This will be my America and my vote: (Are you listening, Democrats?)
    "An end to the war in Iraq and an end to its funding. An end to the lies that kill.
    "A Sunday morning bathed in autumn sunlight, presidential candidates and members of Congress standing on the tarmac at Dover AFB, ready and willing to serve as pallbearers for the caskets that cradle our American pride and joy now stilled by this senseless war.
    "A mosque in Detroit surrounded by Christian and Muslim Americans embracing their love of GOD and rejecting the fear of GOP.
    "A border town bulldozing chain-link fences and reciting Robert Frost.
    "A multinational corporation showing up at a veterans' hospital with building materials and employment counselors and funding for those for whom duty and honor are not political marketing slogans.
    "A child, born in the security of never going without health care, and parents never having to choose to which of their children they can afford to give medical treatment or where they will all live after selling off house and home to pay hospital bills.
    "Impossible, you say? Impractical and unreal?
    "My friend, this is America. We have danced on the moon and scuffed the dust of Mars. We once put pen to paper and ignited a revolution heard round the world.
    "We are not descended from fearful men."
- John Cory: America, Land of Fear? -
    "You have to wonder if the whole conservative movement in the U.S. is living in a weird alternate reality in which the only thing that matters is what you say, and facts, consistency and honor mean nothing.
    "The recent remarks by Rush Limbaugh in which he called military men who opposed the Iraq war 'phony soldiers' is another example of the strange world in which he (and a lot of neocons) exist. The reason: Limbaugh could be the poster boy of a group of war cheerleaders (including Dick Cheney, Mike Medved, Sean Hannity, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Mike Savage, et al.) who chose to avoid military service when it was their turn. Now that the coast is clear, they've all morphed into self-righteous war boosters sitting in comfortable offices lecturing the rest of us about patriotism and duty.
    "Picture Osama bin Laden acting that way, relaxing in a La-Z-Boy recliner and urging his followers to do what he never did. He'd be ridiculed. And, while there is nothing to admire in bin Laden's murderous ideology, at least he actually put his money where his mouth is and fought for his cause.
    "Limbaugh and the far right cheerleader squad talked us into a war that likely would end overnight if they (or most of our politicians) actually had to endure any sacrifice themselves.
    "I guess the majority of the neocons who have been vocally supportive of the war, and so quick to insult and denigrate those opposed to it, suffer from a case of self-loathing brought on by doing nothing.
    "Locally, Mike Medved, our own homegrown war booster, was fond of calling decorated Gen. Wesley Clark 'Weasely Clark' when he was running for president in 2004. I remember feeling angry that a Vietnam War avoider would have the gall to insult a war hero simply because he was against the Iraq war and predicted disaster. (Incidentally, Clark was obviously right.)
    "Limbaugh, though, may well represent the ultimate example of the far right's 'do as I say, not as I do' philosophy. Can a three-times-divorced, draft-dodging, Viagra-chomping guy with a drug problem really be the far right's standard-bearer?"
 
"Art is either plagiarism or revolution."
- Paul Gauguin -
 
"It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear."
- Dick Cavett -

    "As propaganda, the elements that are deliberately left out of media are as important as those that are retained. It is propaganda by omission, as much as by content. What people are not told shapes their world view and influences their behavior, as surely as what they are told. Imposed ignorance and selective knowledge go hand in hand to forge public opinion and to shape cultural identity. These conditions set the stage for belligerent government and aggressive nationalism.
    "It is not coincidental that professional journalists, those who write for profit in the mainstream media, are the least likely to tell us the truth, the whole truth; whereas, free-lance writers, who operate under a different set of rules and out of the mainstream, are more likely to serve the public interest, and tell us what we need to know in order to be a free people, and good world citizens.
    "Professional journalists are beholden to a code of ethics and personal conduct that free-lance writers are not. Namely, they are part of a fraternity, a part of the cultural orthodoxy, with an incentive in maintaining the established order. The incentive is always financial and professional, and involves creating the acceptance and trust of those in power, which may, when properly executed, even result in the celebrity status of the journalist.
    "Journalists who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo or advancing their careers do not operate in the public interest. Their purpose is not to inform but to deceive.
    "When a major news anchor reports upon the invasion and occupation of sovereign nations, uncritically putting forth pentagon propaganda as justification for the attack, he or she is in essence acting in the manner of a celebrity athlete endorsing a product. The basketball star may endorse Nike sneakers, manufactured by indentured servants in foreign sweatshops; while the news anchor is endorsing war and disaster capitalism projected around the world by Lockheed Martin and the Carlyle Group. Both are prostitutes.
    "Mainstream corporate journalism is not about speaking truth to power, it is about selling products and perceptions. It is about creating a culture of ignorant consumers incapable of distinguishing between propaganda and news, fact and fiction.
    "This is marketing and perception management masquerading as unbiased, objecting reporting. I call it the big lie.
    "If the mainstream journalist wants to prosper, if they want to have access to the inner circles of power, they must play the game according to the established rules. They must toe the corporate line, and provide cover for the corporate assault on human freedoms, and the conquest of nature, while keeping hidden agendas concealed from public view. Journalists must be able to sell widely objectionable concepts to the people, packaged in the garments of seductive - often patriotic language, in order to make them palatable.
    "How many soldiers, outside of those under the private contracts of firms like Blackwater, would voluntarily stake their lives for corporate profits, and the subjugation of a sovereign people, if they knew that is what they are really fighting for, rather than the more popular and desirable goal of freedom or democracy?"
- Charles Sullivan: Truth Matters -
 
"My approach to writing is intuitive, not analytical, which is one of the things that makes it hard to talk about. Because I'm not a formula writer, every time I start a book it's beginning all over again. I don't know how to write a novel, I couldn't tell you how to write a novel, it's a new adventure every time I begin one, and I like it that way. I rarely have even the vaguest sense of plot when I begin a book, what I usually begin with is about three things, three themes, concepts, ideas, that are completely unrelated. Well, everything is related, but I'm not aware of the relationships, the connections are not present in my mind. And then I hold auditions in the teatro cognito and a character or two will show up, frequently a woman, and I will put that character in a scene, and it's like putting that character in a little boat and pushing it out into the water, and then I literally follow that character out of that scene and into the next, one scene begetting the next."
- Tom Robbins: My Life and Work -
    "You look at the post-elected-office lives of Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, even Richard Nixon, and you see former presidents and vice presidents who were determined to continue fighting for their beliefs and causes.
    "What the hell is Dubya gonna do?
    "Seriously. Bush will be just 62 when he leaves office -- seven years younger than Ronald Reagan when Reagan was elected.
    "Is Bush going to make an important cause his life's mission, a la Gore?
    "Is he going to get involved in all sorts of humanitarian efforts and international politics, like Carter?
    "Is he going to be a globe-trotting, much admired superstar, like Clinton?
    "Is he going to become a respected elder statesman and counsel to presidents of both parties, as was the case with Nixon?
    "I don't think so either.
    "You may dismiss this as the sniping of a liberal/moderate, but even if you believe President Bush is a great leader, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what he'll do once he's out of office.
    "No doubt Bush will be asked to serve on this or that board, and he'll be able to collect fat speaking fees.
    "But what else? Nixon wrote books with titles such as Beyond Peace, No More Vietnams, and 1999: Victory Without War. I can see Bush writing books with titles such as, Where'd I Leave My Boots?, I Still Say Brownie Did a Heckuva Job, and That bin Laden Sure Was a Tough Turtle to Drown."
- Richard Roeper: Life after the White House for Dubya -

"The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights."
- J. Paul Getty -
 
"Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realize we cannot eat money"
- Cree Indian Proverb -

"Don't criticize what you can't understand."
- Bob Dylan -

Don't Let This Happen to You
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