November 30, 2008
Video - Hopeful stories of humanity
Posted by doctormatt at 8:16 AM
Opinion from Regressive Antidote - Hope you die before you get old.
As a Baby Boomer, I'm sure not encouraging generational warfare in America. I have everything to lose from such a battle.
On the other hand, though, as a political analyst, I can hardly believe we're not seeing it.
A harsh, but thoughtful perspective.
Continue reading "Opinion from Regressive Antidote - Hope you die before you get old."
Posted by doctormatt at 8:13 AM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2008
Is vaginal plastic surgery wrong?
Appalled at the popularity of so-called designer vaginas, a grass-roots organization called the New View Campaign staged its first-ever protest on Monday outside New York City's Manhattan Center for Vaginal Surgery.
What does this say about our culture? LINK to full article here
Posted by doctormatt at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2008
Video - Olbermann on Proposition 8 vote
Very moving commentary. I agree with his message. Think about this with an open mind.
The religious right was fundamental in the repeal of the rights of gays in California to marry.
What does this tell you about those people?
Infiltrate. Educate. End Hate.
Posted by doctormatt at 5:02 PM | Comments (0)
November 7, 2008
ACLU on the U.S. Army's domestic deployment
Last month, The Army Times reported that for "the first time an active [U.S. Army] unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." The brigade, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, has spent most of the last four years fighting a war in Iraq, and will now be assigned on a permanent basis to engage in numerous domestic functions -- including, as the article put it, "to help with civil unrest and crowd control."
Continue reading "ACLU on the U.S. Army's domestic deployment"
Posted by doctormatt at 7:29 PM | Comments (1)
November 6, 2008
Commentary - Obama Wins: Why All Americans Have a Reason to Celebrate
By Arianna Huffington - Why All Americans Have a Reason to Celebrate
Huffington Post compilation of related stories
Continue reading "Commentary - Obama Wins: Why All Americans Have a Reason to Celebrate"
Posted by doctormatt at 6:04 AM
Video - Naomi Wolf on new book, Give Me Liberty
Do we now have a police state?
As of 10/1/08, the president has his own private army (3000 strong) within the territorial borders of the U.S.
Naomi Wolf -
Rep. Brad Sherman -
Preview of documentary film The End Of America
Posted by doctormatt at 3:49 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2008
Palin Pathology: What's Wrong with Sarah and Her Fans?
Continue reading "Palin Pathology: What's Wrong with Sarah and Her Fans?"
Posted by doctormatt at 9:21 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2008
Will the Repubs steal the 2008 election?
The Republicans have gone to extraordinary lengths to steal the last two elections. It is truly breathtaking just how badly compromised America's election process has become. What has been perhaps even more astounding has been the American and Canadian media's lack of willingness to engage this story. Is this election beyond the reach of theft?
Read the Theft Component - courtesy of Countercurrents.org
Continue reading "Will the Repubs steal the 2008 election?"
Posted by doctormatt at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2008
Monetary reform act proposal
The Two Step Plan to National Economic Reform and Recovery
1. Directs the Treasury Department to issue U.S. Notes (exactly like Lincoln's Greenbacks) to pay off the National debt.
2. Increases the reserve ratio private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby terminating their ability to create money, while simultaneously absorbing the funds created to retire the national debt.
These two relatively simple steps, which Congress has the power to enact, would extinguish the national debt, without inflation or deflation, and end the unjust practice of private banks creating money as loans (i.e., fractional reserve banking). Paying off the national debt would wipe out the $400+ billion annual interest payments and thereby balance the budget. This Act would stabilize the economy and end the boom-bust economic cycles caused by fractional reserve banking.
For the full text of the Act click here to read the
Support the Monetary Reform Act - write your Congressman today!
..........................
In Debt Virus Dr. Jaikaran writes: "The most pernicious of all viruses is the one that confiscates the wealth of the productive elements of society and transfers it to the hands of a nonproductive few." The monetary system, based upon debt, functions to transfer land, money and wealth from the many to the few.
In the past, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Rome fell when a small percentage of the population controlled nearly all of the wealth. Today 358 people are worth the combined income of 45% of the planet's population -- 2.5 billion people. The rich have never been richer nor the poor poorer.
Posted by doctormatt at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2008
Want a president who lies about crashing planes?
McCain - American hero?
The GOP highlights his valor as staying alive after being captured in an immoral, and possibly illegal war. (Remember the Tonkin incident - President Johnson's fraudulent basis for escalating the war.)
Yet even McCain jokes about his status as graduating 5th from the bottom of his class at Annapolis, and during his career, he was involved in the destruction of at least 4 U.S. Navy aircraft.
Highly competent?
Continue reading "Want a president who lies about crashing planes?"
Posted by doctormatt at 9:26 PM | Comments (0)
October 8, 2008
CONSCIENCE OF A PROGRESSIVE - A book in progress
Read the book here:
Progressive Manifesto by Ernest Partridge, Ph.D
Posted by doctormatt at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
Evolution of the apocalypse - financial meltdown
Commentary of Carol Brouillet (running for Congress in California):
The most surprising factor is that people who have created the crisis think that they can continue the scam by stealing another $850,000,000,000 overtly through the bailout, and even larger amounts covertly, to
keep the game going for the world's wealthiest people at the expense of everyone else.
Also -
Learn more about
Community currency
Continue reading "Evolution of the apocalypse - financial meltdown"
Posted by doctormatt at 12:00 AM | Comments (1)
October 7, 2008
The Optimism of Uncertainty - by Howard Zinn
In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I
manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
Posted by doctormatt at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
Is the financial crisis cascading into a meltdown?
Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said the global financial system may have reached a "tipping point" -- the moment when a crisis cascades into a
full-blown meltdown
and becomes extremely difficult for governments to contain.
Posted by doctormatt at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)
Video - Olbermann's Special Comment Scorches Palin for Slandering Obama
Posted by doctormatt at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)
If John McCain were to win the presidency, he would be the oldest man elected to a first term.
Ready for President Palin?
Posted by doctormatt at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)
October 5, 2008
A few more commentaries on Palin
Creationism rapes the environment
Head of the coming police state?
Posted by doctormatt at 8:34 PM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2008
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?
For more than 100 years -- since the end of the Civil War -- deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies in the "War on Drugs"), the bright line ban on using the U.S. military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more or less honored -- until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, "expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one."
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?
Posted by doctormatt at 12:57 PM | Comments (1)
September 28, 2008
2009 Project Censored stories
The News that didn't make the news
# 1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters' Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
# 9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
# 11 El Salvador's Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
# 15 Worldwide Slavery
# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
# 17 UN's Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
# 21 NATO Considers "First Strike" Nuclear Option
# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
# 25 Bush's Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
Posted by doctormatt at 11:05 PM | Comments (1)
September 25, 2008
Bush Does a 9/11 Replay in Asking for Unprecedented Powers and Unprecedented Budget
Tonight, George Bush succeeded I think in scaring Americans that this crisis could be a systemic threat. Bush said "our entire economy is in danger."
That's the fear button. He pushed it. And he said the clock was ticking.
This seems like a bad episode of 24.
What is shocking about the presentation by Bush -- and the deal that is unfolding is that we don't see any acceptance of responsibility for the failure of his team's stewardship of the economy. We didn't hear acknowledgment that the compulsive deregulation mantra of Bush's political and economic allies created a massive bubble where lots of billionaires were created and now tens of millions of less fortunate Americans are holding the bill.
Bush Does a 9/11 Replay in Asking for Unprecedented Powers and Unprecedented Budget
Posted by doctormatt at 6:01 AM
Book review - The Spy Who Tried To Stop a War
The import of the NSA memo was such that it shook the government of Tony Blair and caused uproars on several continents. But for the media in the United States, it was a minor story. For the New York Times, it was no story at all.
At last, a new book tells this story. The spy who tried to stop a war packs a powerful wallop. To understand in personal, political and historic terms -- what Katharine Gun did, how the British and American governments responded, and what the U.S. news media did and did not report -- is to gain a clear-eyed picture of a military-industrial-media complex that plunged ahead with the invasion of Iraq shortly after her brave action of conscience. That complex continues to promote what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."
Posted by doctormatt at 5:51 AM
September 20, 2008
How much of a religious Extremist Is Sarah Palin?
"I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."
Continue reading "How much of a religious Extremist Is Sarah Palin?"
Posted by doctormatt at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
Atheism vs. delusion
Posted by doctormatt at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
The wall street bailout - This time we are Really getting screwed.
I am so mad about this proposed federal bailout of Wall Street, I can't see straight. Do you understand what they're going to do? They are about to steal ONE TRILLION dollars from us and just hand it over to the guys on Wall Street who screwed everything up. They are going to take all of their bad loans and dump it on us. We're going to have pay for their mistakes!
But they already made the money. They keep the profits and we keep the debts. It is absolutely, positively outrageous. The only thing more outrageous is that both of the presidential candidates are going along with it. Obama seems to be supporting it almost more enthusiastically than McCain. That is a terrible idea.
Here are two important things you must know about the impact of the financial bailout.
First, when the American people find out what's been done here, they are going to be livid. Conservatives, liberals, moderates, everyone. Why should we have to pay a trillion dollars of our own money to save the asses of bankers who already made a killing from these loans? Now, they get to unload all of their "toxic assets," as Paulson is calling it, on us. Who in their right mind would support that?
Wall Street is ecstatic. The market is through the roof right now because they can't believe they got such a good deal. Understand this is not an isolated bailout here and there. The Treasury Secretary just said he is going to take ALL of their bad loans off their hands. Why wouldn't they be elated?
The Bush administration and the Republicans (especially Phil Gramm) pushed for deregulation that allowed for, and almost encouraged, these mistakes. Now, the guys who told us they didn't believe in big government are going to send in big government to pick up the tab. Privatize the profits, socialize the debts. We have been robbed!
Even Jim Bunning (R-KY) said that when Hugo Chavez nationalized industries in his country at least the Venezuelan people get the profits as well. We only get the losses.
Posted by doctormatt at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2008
Looking Forward, Rather Than Backward, on Another 9-11
The dominant color of our new national security since 911 is neither red, white nor blue. Everyday is orange. Everyday reminders of fear of 9/11 become banal... Yet we no longer hear the airport announcements nor see the orange colored warnings because they have commonplace standards in our new national security state, as is the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and a host of invasions of privacy and diminution of civil liberties. The Constitution has been roundly attacked by the very people who took an oath to defend it.
Posted by doctormatt at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)
Sarah Palin thinks there's one set of rules for stupid voters, and another life of privacy and privileges for the elite.
No one would give a whit about any of the Palin peccadilloes if Sarah hadn't made such a spectacle of herself campaigning as a pro-lifer, gay-hater, abstinence-monger, Creationist-dork. Where does she get off mandating public policy that tells anyone how to live their life?
Susie Bright comments on Palin
Posted by doctormatt at 8:19 PM | Comments (0)
George Bush with big hair
The hustling Evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder could be our first woman president.
Garrison Keiller comments on Palin
Posted by doctormatt at 8:05 PM | Comments (0)
What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick.
The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is incompatible with the Founding Fathers' commitment to tolerance and democracy, which is why they forbade the government to "establish" or officially support any particular religion or denomination.
A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian.
Posted by doctormatt at 7:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 2, 2008
The Palin Choice - The reality of the political mind
By George Lakoff
This election matters because of realities-the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform.
Continue reading "The Palin Choice - The reality of the political mind"
Posted by doctormatt at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
The U.S. political system is broken - What to do
Anyone reading these words already knows our political systems are broken beyond repair. They already know that trying to patch them up by changing one political party for another every few years merely conforms to Einstein's definition of insanity: 'Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' The great man also said something else worth reapeating: 'We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them ... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.'
Given that we know things are broken, surely the debate must now move on to what exactly should we DO about it?
Continue reading "The U.S. political system is broken - What to do"
Posted by doctormatt at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2008
Satire - Prescott Bush on American values
Originally published
St. Petersburg Times, Aug. 24, 2004
Chris Floyd
Continue reading "Satire - Prescott Bush on American values"
Posted by doctormatt at 9:01 PM
Joe Biden - critical commentary
This would be the same Joe Biden who spent year after year relentlessly pushing the creation of what I once called "the nuclear bomb of class warfare": the Bankruptcy Bill, which put a stranglehold on millions of Americans -- the weakest, the poorest, the sickest, the unlucky, the ripped-off, the young couples just starting out, the old people trying to hang on. Biden poured filth on them, he joined his campaign paymasters -- the hoggish credit-card conglomerates -- and his ideological soul-mates on the Republican side to drop this bomb on the hard-pressed working folk he was now claiming to roll up his shirt sleeves and go to work for.
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/08/death-match-iii-follow-money-and-follow.html
Continue reading "Joe Biden - critical commentary"
Posted by doctormatt at 8:55 PM | Comments (0)
What's missing from the Democratic convention?
Commentary by Glenn Greenwald
As one would expect them to be, virtually all of the prime-time speeches at the Democratic Convention have been -- from a rhetorical perspective -- very well-crafted and well-delivered. Bill Clinton's speech, in particular, deserves all the plaudits it is receiving, both in terms of content and delivery. But as competent, well-executed and even dramatic as the Convention has been, at least as striking is what has been missing.
First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.
Other than a fleeting reference to such matters by John Kerry in a (surprisingly effective) speech which most networks did not broadcast, one would not know, listening to the Democratic Convention, that any of those things have happened. Even our unprovoked and indescribably destructive attack on Iraq, based on purely false pretenses, has received little attention. Those things simply don't exist, even as part of the itemized laundry list of Democratic grievances about the Bush administration. The overriding impression one has is that the only things really wrong during the last eight years in this country are that gas prices are high and not everyone has health insurance.
More:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/28/dnc/index.html
Posted by doctormatt at 7:16 PM | Comments (0)
Video - Kucinich tells Democratic convention: Wake Up America!
Posted by doctormatt at 6:58 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2008
Anthrax - FBI describes details of case against Bruce Ivins
20 days after the Bush Administration consoldated control of all security agencies under the executive appointed Director of National Intelligence, we have this:
NPR All Things Considered link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93710969
The FBI held a press conference today in order to deflect criticism of their assertion that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the sole evil-doer behind the 2001 anthrax attacks.
The spokesman informed the press (for the very first time) that the FBI had been able to produce a product as deadly as the "flowing like water" 1 micron spore powder that stayed in the air for hours by using only "simple tools" such as those available to Ivins in his lab.
Of course, the FBI would not provide details, so as to "not help the terrorists".
I do not find it credible that microbiologist Ivins was single handedly able to produce the spore powder that was sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy.
Continue reading "Anthrax - FBI describes details of case against Bruce Ivins"
Posted by doctormatt at 8:56 PM | Comments (0)
Anthrax case in context
Courtesy of Tom Dispatch in 2005:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/43459/the_forgotten_anthrax_attacks_of_200
Continue reading "Anthrax case in context"
Posted by doctormatt at 8:34 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2008
Video - Bill Moyers with Colonel Andrew Bacevich
Is an imperial presidency destroying what America stands for? Bill Moyers sits down with history and international relations expert and former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich who identifies three major problems facing our democracy: the crises of economy, government and militarism, and calls for a redefinition of the American way of life.
Video
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/watch.html
Audio
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/rss/media/BMJ-1218.mp3
Continue reading "Video - Bill Moyers with Colonel Andrew Bacevich"
Posted by doctormatt at 8:19 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2008
If I Were a Betting Man, I'd Wager that Cheney Was Behind the Anthrax Attacks
http://www.alternet.org/story/94702
Posted by doctormatt at 6:50 PM
August 14, 2008
Were anthrax attacks U.S. State sponsored terrorism?
http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=172&a=7911
Posted by doctormatt at 10:58 PM
August 10, 2008
Link to latest Keith Olbermann Countdown show - Video
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=65852
Posted by doctormatt at 11:16 PM
August 6, 2008
A White House Forgery Scandal?
Investigative reporter Ron Suskind's new book charges that the White House, seeking to justify its invasion of Iraq, ordered the CIA in late 2003 to forge evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Suskind, a Pulitzer-winning reporter and relentless chronicler of this administration's secrets, depicts a White House with a simpleminded bully in the Oval Office taking direction from a paranoid vice president -- and caps off his latest expose with what he acknowledges sounds a lot like an impeachable offense.
Continue reading "A White House Forgery Scandal?"
Posted by doctormatt at 6:30 PM | Comments (0)
August 4, 2008
ABC news and unresolved Anthrax questions
Doctor Matt says:
I have been following this story closely.
The gaping hole is whether Mr. Ivins had co-conspirators. The smoking gun is the second batch of anthrax spores (weapons grade) that were mailed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.
Apparently, those spores may have been coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. ("The Russian Recipe"). The FBI has not released evidence that Mr. Ivins had access to such equipment, nor the expertise to perform this process.
Other commentators follow:
......
Even before the latest twists in the anthrax case, ABC News was deeply tarnished by its terrible journalism in 2001 and its protection of liars who may well be criminals. Every day that passes takes ABC further into the kind of scandal territory that, at some point, it cannot overcome.
Questions for ABC:
1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they
lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources
when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic
attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement?
2. It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax
came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who
were the "four well-placed and separate sources" who falsely told ABC News
that tests conducted at Fort Detrick had found the presence of bentonite in
the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the
attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001?
3. A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising
fears about enemies abroad attacking the United States is released into
public debate because of faulty reporting done by ABC News. How that
happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public
interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out
what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were
misled?
..............................
* Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News, in which he shows that ABC News was probably duped by someone on a story of huge importance, putting Iraqi fingerprints on anthrax attacks that actually came from the U.S at a time when the case for war with Iraq was beginning to get traction. (Salon.com, Aug. 1)
* Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation in which he makes the case for revealing the sources who completely misled ABC News or lied to it, including precedents where journalists have done just that. (Salon.com, Aug. 3)
"Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to be afraid. The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it. "
Continue reading "ABC news and unresolved Anthrax questions"
Posted by doctormatt at 9:47 PM | Comments (0)
Anthrax mystery - more information unfolding
If we've learned anything in the United States during the Bush era, it's that we have to resist rushing to judgment in the face of catastrophic events. The exercise of careful, independent judgment is the best tool available - we should use it. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who often wrote on the benefits of both privacy and transparency, offered the reminder "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Continue reading "Anthrax mystery - more information unfolding"
Posted by doctormatt at 6:56 PM | Comments (1)
Bush admin attempts to cripple occupational health - again.
There's a mighty storm a brewin' in the occupational health world. It is always a marvel to us that no matter how jaded we think we are, there is always room for more indignation. It is the Bush administration's only form of renewable energy.
Continue reading "Bush admin attempts to cripple occupational health - again."
Posted by doctormatt at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
August 2, 2008
A Tale of Three (Electronic Voting) Elections
Electronic voting has made great strides in reliability, but it has a long way to go. When reformers push for greater safeguards, they often argue that future elections could produce the wrong result because of a computer glitch or be stolen through malicious software. That's being too nice.
There have already been elections in which it is impossible to be certain that the right candidate was declared the winner. Here are three such races. It is not just remarkable that these elections were run so badly, but also that the flaws are still common - and could easily create havoc in this fall's voting.
1. The 2002 Georgia Senate and Governor Races - Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was defeated for re-election and Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, was unseated. Polls had suggested that both men would win.
The votes were cast on Diebold A.T.M.-style machines. A whistle-blower who helped prepare the machines reported that secret "patches" - software intended to fix glitches - were installed late in the process without being certified by the state, as the law required.
The unexpected outcomes were likely because of heavy turnout by rural whites, prompted by a Confederate flag dispute, not faulty voting machines. Still, skeptics wonder if the patches contained malicious software that changed votes. Because the Diebold machines did not produce paper records, there is no way to put those doubts to rest.
Lesson: Electronic voting makes large-scale vote theft easy. A patch slipped onto voting machines or centralized vote tabulators can change an election's outcome. Every piece of software must be scrutinized by neutral experts. If there is not enough time, election officials need a backup plan, such as conducting voting entirely on paper ballots.
2. The 2006 Congressional Race in Florida's 13th District - The machines said that Republican Vern Buchanan defeated Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes. But in Sarasota County, a Democratic area, up to 18,000 ballots, about 13 percent of the total cast, did not record a vote for Congress. That is extraordinarily high; in Republican Manatee County, only 2 percent of ballots didn't contain a vote for Congress.
Sarasota's low vote may have been because of a bad ballot design, which made the Buchanan-Jennings race hard to find. But the Jennings campaign said it received hundreds of complaints that the machines would not accept a vote for Ms. Jennings, or recorded a vote for her as a vote for Mr. Buchanan.
Did Ms. Jennings lose a seat in Congress because of a glitch? Could there have been sabotage? We'll never know, because there are no paper records.
Lesson: Electronic voting machines must produce a voter-verifiable paper trail for each vote so voters can see that their choices register properly. In a disputed election, the paper, not the machine tallies, should decide who wins.
More than half the states require votes to be recorded on paper, but many still don't. These include battleground states like Virginia.
3. Alabama's 2002 Race for Governor - Former Gov. Don Siegelman has been in the news because it appears that federal prosecutors may have put him in prison for political reasons. The controversy has brought attention to the odd way he lost the governorship.
Mr. Siegelman went to sleep on election night thinking he had won. But overnight, Republican Baldwin County reported that a glitch had given Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, about 6,000 extra votes. When they were subtracted, Republican Rob Riley won by roughly 3,000 votes.
James Gundlach, a professor at Auburn University, crunched the numbers and concluded that Mr. Siegelman lost because of "electronic ballot stuffing," possibly by an operative who accessed the computers and "edited" the results, though others dispute his analysis.
Baldwin County used paper ballots that were then read by an optical scan machine. Mr. Siegelman says local officials gave him permission to count the paper ballots by hand, but the attorney general threatened to arrest anyone who did. No count was done.
Lesson: Paper ballots alone are not enough. There must be strong audit laws that mandate comprehensive hand recounts when an election is close.
After the 2000 election debacle, Americans demanded a better system of voting. What we have gotten is new technology with different flaws. If the presidential race is close, this year's "hanging chad" could be a questionable result on electronic voting machines that cannot be adequately investigated.
Posted by doctormatt at 10:04 PM
July 28, 2008
Did A Culture of Right-Wing Hate Lead to Church Shootings?
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire at a Unitarian church, killing two people, left behind a note suggesting that he targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal policies, including its acceptance of gays, authorities said Monday.
A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson's small SUV indicated he intentionally targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because, the police chief said, "he hated the liberal movement" and was upset with "liberals in general as well as gays."
Adkisson, a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps, had 76 rounds with him when he entered the church and pulled a shotgun from a guitar case during a children's performance of the musical "Annie."
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported Monday that Adkisson may also have chosen the church because his ex-wife was a former longtime member of the congregation.
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By MARC McDONALD
A man who is accused of shooting and killing two at a Tennessee church apparently targeted the congregation "out of hatred for its support of liberal social policies," police said Monday.
One might ask: where would such extreme hatred of Liberals come from?
To get the answer, turn on Right-Wing talk radio any day.
There, on a daily basis, you'll hear the most amazingly vicious bashing of Liberals imaginable.
From Savage to Limbaugh to Hannity to the rest of HateWing radio, every day, one hears the most extraordinary demonization of Liberals and Democrats. If you get all your news and views from HateWing radio (as many Dittoheads do), you'll be convinced that Liberals are traitors who are working hand-in-hand with Al Qaeda to undermine the American nation.
Along with the hate, there's a hefty of dose of violent threats against Liberals on the AM radio dial these days.
Take right-wing nutcase Michael Graham, for example. In June 2007, he said he wanted to see someone "whack" the Clintons in a Sopranos spoof. And in 2003, Graham said of Hillary Clinton: "I wanted to bludgeon her with a tire iron."
Such inflammatory language is nothing new for the right-wing. Recall how Ann Coulter once wrote that the debate over Bill Clinton should be about "whether to impeach or assassinate."
Such seething hatred and threats of violence have ricocheted around the GOP echo chamber for at least the past couple of decades. And it hasn't been limited to right-wing talk radio.
Recall the comment by Jesse Helms in 1994: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."
Or G. Gordon Liddy's comment in 1995, when discussing how he'd used stick figures of the Clintons for target practice. "Thought it might improve my aim," he said.
Given this toxic stew of hatred and violent threats that poisons our nation's political discourse, we really shouldn't be surprised that there are many people out there who harbor extreme hatred toward Liberals.
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Right Wing Blogosphere Completely Ignores Domestic Terrorism In Knoxville
By: Blue Texan
Some wingnut crazy shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee, killing 2 and wounding 7. His hatred of liberals and gays was the motive.
What's notable about this is the complete radio silence on the right.
Almost exactly two years ago, there was another tragic shooting at a place of worship -- and they were all over it.
The difference? The shooter in 2006 was a Muslim.
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Courtesy of Young Turks -
Over the weekend, years of conservative hate speech reached a deadly crescendo when Jim D. Adkisson walked into Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and opened fire. His reason?
Adkisson claimed he couldn't find a job and expressing a profound "hatred for the liberal movement" and further ranting that "liberals and gays" were taking jobs and had prevented him from finding work. Adkisson acted on what the conservative talk radio has been advocating for years.
There is no dissent if you kill the dissenters.
Figuratively, by character assassination, misinformation and outright lies and now...literally. We've all heard it. Coulter's "satire" about murdering liberals, G Gordon Liddys "head shot" show, Limbaugh's disinformation and veiled threats and invocations of political violence against all those who disagree with him, O Reilly, Savage, the list goes on.
Even on these pages we have "conservatives" who relish violence against any diversity of opinion, in all its forms. We have all read the misogynistic hate and misguided machismo of these posts. One even advocated the "hanging" of Cenk , myself and others who opposed the Iraq war. Other "conservatives" have advocated violence in various forms against, among others, homeless, gays and the poor. Consider this gem of tolerence from conservative "pastor" Jerry Falwell:
But these things speak evil of those things, verse 10 [reading from Jude] which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches. Almost, the vote was against them. But they will try again and again until they get in, and the tragedy is that they would get one vote. Because they are spoken of here in Jude as being brute beasts, that is going to the baser lust of the flesh to live immorally, and so Jude describes this as apostasy. But thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there'll be a celebration in heaven.
Adkisson as it turns out was an out-of-work mechanical engineer. Obviously not an uneducated man, he left a four-page letter in his car that was abandoned in the church parking lot in which he railed against liberals and the fact that he had been unable to get a job since 2006.
Adkisson was also angry that his food stamps were about to be reduced or eliminated.
Like most "conservatives" he was clueless about who was really impacting his life, namely his job being outsourced and the anger at his cut in benefits and the disappearance of those conservative boot straps we hear so much about.
As it turns out the cuts were at the hands of Republican "conservatives" being more "fiscally responsible" to pay for additional state tax cuts and Bush Administration's compassionate plan to cut food stamp benefits to about 185,000 people in the U.S. for 2007-2008.
Well buck up Ditto-heads ,things arent all bad. The consevatives can look on the bright side, if the parishioners had been packing heat...
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RJ Eskow blogs:
I'd say that Unitarians were God's thoughtful people, but they make no particular claims about God. In some parts of the country that takes real courage.
My first wife and I joined a Unitarian church in suburban DC and raised our kids there. She and I were from different religious backgrounds - in a way, I was from different religious backgrounds, raised in Judaism but with Catholic and Southern Baptist relatives. We both practiced Buddhist meditation (and found others there that did the same.)
Unitarians tend to be intellectual, verbal, literate, thoughtful, and from a variety of backgrounds. Some are atheist, some are agnostic, others believe in God in a variety of Eastern and Western forms. Some would describe themselves as "ethically Christian," although others would not - and it is not an exclusively Christian group. The running joke among Unitarians was that the name "Jesus" is only heard when someone falls down the stairs, and that the only sacrament is the black coffee brewed after services.
The Unitarian Universalist (or UU) denomination is the product of a merger between Unitarianism and Universalism, two centuries-old Christian denominations. Unitarianism was founded on the belief that the Trinity was illogical and that there could only be one divinity. Universalists believed that God was too merciful to condemn anyone to an eternity in hell, and that even the most evil person would get out of there eventually (after fifty thousand years or so). Eventually they merged and abandoned all dogma. (You can read the Knoxville church's website for a summary of beliefs.)
When my work sent me to Hungary, I arrived in the only nation on earth that ever had a Unitarian state (during the reign of King John Sigismund, who decreed religious tolerance in 1568). Ralph Waldo Emerson is the closest thing to a saint that UU's have. An ordained minister in the church, his Harvard Divinity School address was revolutionary in its day.
Emerson rejected all claims of the supernatural in the Bible. He said that miracles were "monster," in the original meaning of that word as "against nature." In a characteristically striking turn of phrase, he said they were "not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain." Emerson was telling us that the beauty of the manifest world should be enough.
Is it worth killing a person for believing that?
My current (and future) wife and I were married by the Rev. Forrest Church at All Souls Unitarian in Manhattan. (Dr. Church is now teaching us how to face death.) When at several points in my career jobs came up in the Deep South, I always checked to see if there was a Unitarian Church nearby. One of those job possibilities, which I chose not to pursue, was in Knoxville.
Jim Adkisson of Powell, Tennessee was the man with his finger on the trigger. He had mental health problems, and a hard and bitter life. He apparently left a letter explaining that he hated the church for its liberal beliefs and opinions. And the church had a sign outside indicating it welcomed gays and lesbians.
Who really killed those Unitarians? Was it the preachers who spread hatred and intolerance? The politicians who court and flatter them instead of condemning their hate speech? The media machine that attacks liberals, calls them "traitors" and suggests you speak to them "with a baseball bat"? The economic system that batters people like Jim Adkisson until they snap, then tells them their real enemies are gays and liberals and secular humanists?
If you ask me, it was all of the above.
You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest of you at Fox News.
The shooting began while the children of the church were putting on a musical based on "Annie." One broad-shouldered church member blocked the bullets from hitting other people, and died. You don't need to believe in dogma to be a hero. Remember that song from "Annie"? It probably got on your nerves like it got on mine. "The sun'll come out tomorrow."
The sun coming out. That's natural. It's one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. But a man driven insane, then programmed by society to kill people just because they're loving and tolerant?
That's monster.
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Posted by doctormatt at 6:26 PM
July 26, 2008
House hearing on abuses of executive branch - Opinion: Michael Collins
WASHINGTON, DC - Today's hearing on the abuse of presidential powers before the House Committee on the Judiciary turned into a devastating political ambush by Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), committee Democrats, and the extraordinary panel of witnesses.. At least 12 Democratic Committee members were present plus the Chairman while only four Republicans bothered to show up.
Belying their casual appearance in the committee chambers, the Democrats presented a well coordinated, hard hitting case against President George W. Bush. This lead to a double climax in the form of surgically erudite testimony by conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official, and former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's stunning summary statement. The best the Republicans could offer was inappropriate humor by Rep. Don Lundgren (D-CA) and a request to clear the chambers when the audience cheered Mr. Bugliosi's remarks.
The hearing resulted from the non stop campaign for the impeachment of President George W. Bush by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). That effort received an overwhelming endorsement last week with the votes of a 238 majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 229 Democrats and 9 Republicans voted to refer the single count impeachment bill to the House or Representatives Committee on the Judiciary chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).
The Kucinich Resolution - H.R. 1345 outlines the case for the impeachment of President Bush. Specifically, as president, Bush:
"Deceived Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to fraudulently obtain support for an authorization for the use of force against Iraq and used that fraudulently obtained authorization, and then acting in his capacity under Article II, Section II of the Constitution as Commander in Chief, to commit US troops to combat in Iraq."
There was speculation prior to the hearings that the Republicans might scuttle the entire process due to House rules that prevent disparaging comments about the president. Apparently they failed to read the entirety of House Practice, Sec. 25 which lists a number of negative comments that House members have used in the past and makes clear they're available in the present.
"Few issues more important"
Chairman Conyers opened the hearing by noting that there are "few issues more important" than the actions of Congress to curtail the abuse of presidential powers. As a member of the House committee that heard the Nixon Impeachment case, he speaks with a certain authority. He listed the various abuses of presidential power by Bush laying out the case that his fellow Democrats would elaborate. The senior member of the committee, Republican Lamar Smith (R-TX) responded that he'd seen a lot from this committee but today's hearing was like "hosting an anger management class."
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a strong advocate for the hearings, responded by pointing out that given the evidence of high crimes, this isn't a Democratic or Republican issue, it's an American issue. The Democrats continued the theme of gravity with Cong. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) referring to Bush as "the worst president our country has ever suffered"
Cong. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-X) returned to what would lead to the most devastating and startling charges of the hearing - the basis for the invasion of Iraq and the disregard for civil liberties through the torture of foreigners and the domestic assault on privacy. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) responded that the hearing was nothing but "a do-over that amuses our terrorist friends."
"If lying about casual sex" is an impeachment issue, "then certainly lying to the American people about invading Iraq" is, responded Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA). Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), another strong supporter of impeachment, continued the hard hitting attack
The Republicans were still not taking the hearing seriously when Cong. Don Lundgren resorted to nothing more than wise cracks in response.
Murder & Tyranny
The peroration came from conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein's testimony about the Bush administration's descent into tyranny. Had Bush showed up at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he would have been barred at the door by George Washington, Fein said with confidence. He made the comment in a fashion that betrayed contempt for any defense of the Bush administration's behavior. Bush was labeled a tyrant from one of the best and brightest of the United States' legal establishment.
The finale was the testimony of former Los Angeles District Attorney, Vincent Bugliosi. As DA, Bugliosi tired and convicted Charles Manson of first degree murder gaining a death sentence even though the state admitted that Manson was never at the seen of the murders. In the past, Bugliosi has said that preparation is the key to winning cases and that he knows that he's won after the opening statement. With only five minutes, he had a tall task but the syllogism he established was air tight.
On October 1, 2002, President Bush was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD). On October 7th, Bush clamed that Iraq was a threat to the United States due to the possession of WMD. He then used this claim to justify the war in Iraq making him guilty for the death of over four thousand U.S. soldiers and over 100,000 documented deaths of Iraqi civilians.
There were other members of the witness panel, including the author of today's hearings Dennis Kucinich (D-O), Republican Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), and Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC). But it was the patient and cagey Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, his supporting cast of Democrats and the two star witnesses, Fein and Bugliosi who made charges of rule by tyranny and murder - charges that will not be easily forgotten no matter how much the mainstream media and politicians choose to ignore this issue.
Posted by doctormatt at 7:06 PM
July 8, 2008
Who planned the anthrax attacks
Who Planned the Anthrax Attacks?
It's the $5,800,000 question
by Justin Raimondo
You remember the anthrax attacks - or do you? It often seems, to me at least, that this important catalyst for the invasion of Iraq and our supremely wrong-headed post-9/11 foreign policy has been flushed down the collective memory hole. For all the attention that's been paid to that spooky chapter in the history of the "war on terrorism" in the intervening years, it may as well have never occurred. That's why news of the former prime suspect's ultimate vindication - and his victory in a $5.8 million lawsuit in which he accused the feds of unfairly targeting him as a "person of interest" (as John Ashcroft put it) - seems like a visitation from another time, the ghost of 9/11 past, haunting and mocking us. It sends chills down my spine - because, you see, the real culprits are still out there.
The FBI's non-investigation of this heinous and sinister crime was a joke from the beginning: after all, since when do FBI probes have official names, and why such a silly one as "Amerithrax"? Such brazen corniness has about it an unmistakable Keystone Kops air, which was certainly evident throughout the long-playing media circus that will evermore be known as the persecution of Steven J. Hatfill.
Hatfill, you'll recall, is the long-suffering victim of this horror story, a bio-weapons expert and "insider" who was targeted as the culprit not only by the FBI and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, but also by dustbin Dylanologist A.J. Weberman, who, with characteristic restraint, accused him of being "the scumbag who killed several people in an attempt to awaken America to the dangers of biological warfare." This profile of the killer or killers as a "rogue insider" was also pushed by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biowar expert at the State University of New York at Purchase, who chairs the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Program of the Federation of American Scientists.
It was Rosenberg who became the mainstream media's expert-in-residence at the height of the anthrax scare, and, although she never named Hatfill, it was she who relentlessly pushed the "insider" thesis to the major news organizations, which settled on her detective story as the conventional wisdom. A story that turned out to be spectacularly, disastrously, and tragically wrong. Tragic, that is, from the perspective of poor Hatfill, who found himself vilified and hounded out of his job, deprived of his position in the community, and practically run out of human society by his relentless pursuers.
The Hatfill-haters' narrative went something like this: Senor Hatfill is a right-wing nut-case with dubious connections to South Africa's apartheid regime, and quite possibly a "bio-evangelist" (as Weberman put it) who might conceivably have planned the attacks to "warn" us of the dangers of biowar - by demonstrating, on a small scale, how terrorists might envelop a nation in a miasma of fear.
Which is precisely what the anthrax attacks accomplished. The administration invoked them as part and parcel of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the War Party pointed to Saddam Hussein as the probable culprit. Andrew Sullivan, who had earlier accused the antiwar movement of being part of a bi-coastal "fifth column," was so certain the anthrax attacks were proof of Iraq's perfidy that he called on the U.S. to drop nuclear bombs on the Iraqis in retaliation.
The anthrax letters that arrived at major media outlets as well as the Senate offices of two prominent Democrats certainly added a special fillip of fear to the war hysteria that ensued in the wake of 9/11: the senders definitely had an agenda, and there seems little doubt as to what they aimed at: to prepare the nation for war, for some kind of massive retaliation against the Arab world. That was the agenda, and it largely succeeded - but whose agenda was it? Hatfill's exoneration raises the question: if he didn't mail the anthrax letters, then who did?
The answer is not really a mystery, since all the facts are on the public record, but I'll reiterate them here in case you aren't familiar with my past writings on this fascinating subject.
Just before the anthrax letters became public knowledge but after they'd been mailed, military police headquarters at Quantico, Virginia, received a letter that accused an Arab scientist who once worked at the USAMRID facility, a biowarfare lab at Ft. Detrick, of being a terrorist about to unleash biological warfare against civilian targets in the U.S.
The author of this anonymous missive claimed to have been one of the scientist's former co-workers, and appeared to have a detailed knowledge of Assaad's career and daily routine. When the anthrax letters were opened, the FBI paid a visit to Dr. Ayaad Assaad, a former Ft. Detrick employee, and questioned him extensively.
The FBI cleared Assaad of any connection to the anthrax letters early on, but then seemed to have let this significant clue grow quite cold, failing to follow up on it until the winter of 2004, when they launched an investigation into the Quantico letter. It seems clear that whoever sent that letter had at least foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks, and discovering the writers' identity could certainly lead us to the source of the attacks. Yet for years the FBI did nothing: instead, they chased Hatfill around, following him everywhere, blackening his name - and diverting attention away from the only hard evidence that has so far surfaced in this baffling case.
What were the results of the Quantico investigation? The Hartford Courant, which ran a series of articles on the anthrax case and the attempted framing of Dr. Assaad, was the only media outlet, to my knowledge, that reported on this development, which seems mysterious in itself. As for the outcome, that, too, remains a mystery - as does practically everything connected with this murky affair.
Dr. Assaad, an Egyptian-born biologist who worked at USAMRID in the early 1990s, was the target of a hateful harassment campaign that became the subject of a federal lawsuit later settled out of court. The defendants in the suit were a group of USAMRID employees who targeted Assaad by sending him anti-Arab missives - including a rubber camel outfitted with a sex toy - and composed poems that they left on his desk. An account in the Courant depicts the bizarre atmosphere in which U.S. government scientists worked on toxins powerful enough to kill off entire populations:
"Assaad said he was working on the Saturday before Easter 1991, just after the Persian Gulf War had ended, when he discovered an eight-page poem in his mailbox. The poem, which became a court exhibit, is 47 stanzas - 235 lines in all, many of them lewd, mocking Assaad. The poem also refers to another creation of the scientists who wrote it - a rubber camel outfitted with all manner of sexually explicit appendages.
"The poem reads: 'In [Assaad's] honor we created this beast; it represents life lower than yeast.' The camel, it notes, each week will be given 'to who did the least.'
"The poem also doubles as an ode to each of the participants who adorned the camel, who number at least six and referred to themselves as 'the camel club.' Two - Dr. Philip M. Zack and Dr. Marian K. Rippy - voluntarily left Fort Detrick soon after Assaad brought the poem to the attention of supervisors."
The ideological flavor of the Camel Club's jibes isn't too hard to fathom: they sound just like the participants in the hate-fest over at Little Green Footballs, or, come to think of it, the editorial board of the Weekly Standard. The anthrax-laden letters read "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," and invoked the name of Allah. Clearly this wasn't just an attempt to set up a particular Arab, Dr. Assaad, but to finger all Arab-Americans, and Muslims, as potential terrorists - weeks after bin Laden and his boys downed the World Trade Center and took out the Pentagon.
The trail that leads us to the perpetrators of the anthrax letter terrorist attacks ends at Ft. Detrick, where the "Camel Club" held court. Check out this Courant story that details the incredible laxity of the security controls in place at one of the U.S. government's most sensitive military facilities - and then imagine how easy it was for the terrorists to have smuggled out anthrax and other even more lethal toxins.
Doesn't any of this merit investigation by our "law enforcement' agencies - or are they too busy reading ordinary people's email and spying on antiwar organizations to bother going after a gang of dangerous poisoners and murderers?
In settling with Hatfill for mega-bucks, the U.S. government isn't officially admitting any wrongdoing, - and we shouldn't hold our breath waiting for anything like an apology - but clearly something was going on behind the scenes that looks very much like obstruction of the investigation. Of course it's easy for a libertarian like me to scoff at the inefficiencies of government agencies: that's comes with the territory - and is, furthermore, a well-known fact [.pdf]. Yet there seems something a bit more dicey than mere incompetence at work here.
Posted by doctormatt at 12:02 AM
July 7, 2008
Ron Paul - "Something Big is going on"
I have, for the past 35 years, expressed my grave concern for the future of America. The course we have taken over the past century has threatened our liberties, security and prosperity. In spite of these long-held concerns, I have days--growing more frequent all the time--when I'm convinced the time is now upon us that some Big Events are about to occur. These fast-approaching events will not go unnoticed. They will affect all of us. They will not be limited to just some areas of our country. The world economy and political system will share in the chaos about to be unleashed.
Though the world has long suffered from the senselessness of wars that should have been avoided, my greatest fear is that the course on which we find ourselves will bring even greater conflict and economic suffering to the innocent people of the world--unless we quickly change our ways.
America, with her traditions of free markets and property rights, led the way toward great wealth and progress throughout the world as well as at home. Since we have lost our confidence in the principles of liberty, self reliance, hard work and frugality, and instead took on empire building, financed through inflation and debt, all this has changed. This is indeed frightening and an historic event.
The problem we face is not new in history. Authoritarianism has been around a long time. For centuries, inflation and debt have been used by tyrants to hold power, promote aggression, and provide "bread and circuses" for the people. The notion that a country can afford "guns and butter" with no significant penalty existed even before the 1960s when it became a popular slogan. It was then, though, we were told the Vietnam War and a massive expansion of the welfare state were not problems. The seventies proved that assumption wrong.
Today things are different from even ancient times or the 1970s. There is something to the argument that we are now a global economy. The world has more people and is more integrated due to modern technology, communications, and travel. If modern technology had been used to promote the ideas of liberty, free markets, sound money and trade, it would have ushered in a new golden age--a globalism we could accept.
Instead, the wealth and freedom we now enjoy are shrinking and rest upon a fragile philosophic infrastructure. It is not unlike the levies and bridges in our own country that our system of war and welfare has caused us to ignore.
I'm fearful that my concerns have been legitimate and may even be worse than I first thought. They are now at our doorstep. Time is short for making a course correction before this grand experiment in liberty goes into deep hibernation.
There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced. Instead of using globalism in a positive fashion, it's been used to globalize all of the mistakes of the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers.
Being an unchallenged sole superpower was never accepted by us with a sense of humility and respect. Our arrogance and aggressiveness have been used to promote a world empire backed by the most powerful army of history. This type of globalist intervention creates problems for all citizens of the world and fails to contribute to the well-being of the world's populations. Just think how our personal liberties have been trashed here at home in the last decade.
The financial crisis, still in its early stages, is apparent to everyone: gasoline prices over $4 a gallon; skyrocketing education and medical-care costs; the collapse of the housing bubble; the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble; stockmarkets plunging; unemployment rising;, massive underemployment; excessive government debt; and unmanageable personal debt. Little doubt exists as to whether we'll get stagflation. The question that will soon be asked is: When will the stagflation become an inflationary depression?
There are various reasons that the world economy has been globalized and the problems we face are worldwide. We cannot understand what we're facing without understanding fiat money and the long-developing dollar bubble.
There were several stages. From the inception of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to 1933, the Central Bank established itself as the official dollar manager. By 1933, Americans could no longer own gold, thus removing restraint on the Federal Reserve to inflate for war and welfare.
By 1945, further restraints were removed by creating the Bretton-Woods Monetary System making the dollar the reserve currency of the world. This system lasted up until 1971. During the period between 1945 and 1971, some restraints on the Fed remained in place. Foreigners, but not Americans, could convert dollars to gold at $35 an ounce. Due to the excessive dollars being created, that system came to an end in 1971.
It's the post Bretton-Woods system that was responsible for globalizing inflation and markets and for generating a gigantic worldwide dollar bubble. That bubble is now bursting, and we're seeing what it's like to suffer the consequences of the many previous economic errors.
Ironically in these past 35 years, we have benefited from this very flawed system. Because the world accepted dollars as if they were gold, we only had to counterfeit more dollars, spend them overseas (indirectly encouraging our jobs to go overseas as well) and enjoy unearned prosperity. Those who took our dollars and gave us goods and services were only too anxious to loan those dollars back to us. This allowed us to export our inflation and delay the consequences we now are starting to see.
But it was never destined to last, and now we have to pay the piper. Our huge foreign debt must be paid or liquidated. Our entitlements are coming due just as the world has become more reluctant to hold dollars. The consequence of that decision is price inflation in this country--and that's what we are witnessing today. Already price inflation overseas is even higher than here at home as a consequence of foreign central bank's willingness to monetize our debt.
Printing dollars over long periods of time may not immediately push prices up-yet in time it always does. Now we're seeing catch-up for past inflating of the monetary supply. As bad as it is today with $4 a gallon gasoline, this is just the beginning. It's a gross distraction to hound away at "drill, drill, drill" as a solution to the dollar crisis and high gasoline prices. Its okay to let the market increase supplies and drill, but that issue is a gross distraction from the sins of deficits and Federal Reserve monetary shenanigans.
This bubble is different and bigger for another reason. The central banks of the world secretly collude to centrally plan the world economy. I'm convinced that agreements among central banks to "monetize" U.S. debt these past 15 years have existed, although secretly and out of the reach of any oversight of anyone--especially the U.S. Congress that doesn't care, or just flat doesn't understand. As this "gift" to us comes to an end, our problems worsen. The central banks and the various governments are very powerful, but eventually the markets overwhelm when the people who get stuck holding the bag (of bad dollars) catch on and spend the dollars into the economy with emotional zeal, thus igniting inflationary fever.
This time--since there are so many dollars and so many countries involved--the Fed has been able to "paper" over every approaching crisis for the past 15 years, especially with Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, which has allowed the bubble to become history's greatest.
The mistakes made with excessive credit at artificially low rates are huge, and the market is demanding a correction. This involves excessive debt, misdirected investments, over-investments, and all the other problems caused by the government when spending the money they should never have had. Foreign militarism, welfare handouts and $80 trillion entitlement promises are all coming to an end. We don't have the money or the wealth-creating capacity to catch up and care for all the needs that now exist because we rejected the market economy, sound money, self reliance and the principles of liberty.
Since the correction of all this misallocation of resources is necessary and must come, one can look for some good that may come as this "Big Even" unfolds.
There are two choices that people can make. The one choice that is unavailable to us is to limp along with the status quo and prop up the system with more debt, inflation and lies. That won't happen.
One of the two choices, and the one chosen so often by government in the past is that of rejecting the principles of liberty and resorting to even bigger and more authoritarian government. Some argue that giving dictatorial powers to the President, just as we have allowed him to run the American empire, is what we should do. That's the great danger, and in this post-911 atmosphere, too many Americans are seeking safety over freedom. We have already lost too many of our personal liberties already. Real fear of economic collapse could prompt central planners to act to such a degree that the New Deal of the 30's might look like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.
The more the government is allowed to do in taking over and running the economy, the deeper the depression gets and the longer it lasts. That was the story of the 30ss and the early 40s, and the same mistakes are likely to be made again if we do not wake up.
But the good news is that it need not be so bad if we do the right thing. I saw "Something Big" happening in the past 18 months on the campaign trail. I was encouraged that we are capable of waking up and doing the right thing. I have literally met thousands of high school and college kids who are quite willing to accept the challenge and responsibility of a free society and reject the cradle-to-grave welfare that is promised them by so many do-good politicians.
If more hear the message of liberty, more will join in this effort. The failure of our foreign policy, welfare system, and monetary policies and virtually all government solutions are so readily apparent, it doesn't take that much convincing. But the positive message of how freedom works and why it's possible is what is urgently needed.
One of the best parts of accepting self reliance in a free society is that true personal satisfaction with one's own life can be achieved. This doesn't happen when the government assumes the role of guardian, parent or provider, because it eliminates a sense of pride. But the real problem is the government can't provide the safety and economic security that it claims. The so-called good that government claims it can deliver is always achieved at the expense of someone else's freedom. It's a failed system and the young people know it.
Restoring a free society doesn't eliminate the need to get our house in order and to pay for the extravagant spending. But the pain would not be long-lasting if we did the right things, and best of all the empire would have to end for financial reasons. Our wars would stop, the attack on civil liberties would cease, and prosperity would return. The choices are clear: it shouldn't be difficult, but the big event now unfolding gives us a great opportunity to reverse the tide and resume the truly great American Revolution started in 1776. Opportunity knocks in spite of the urgency and the dangers we face.
Let's make "Something Big is Happening" be the discovery that freedom works and is popular and the big economic and political event we're witnessing is a blessing in disguise.
Posted by doctormatt at 11:46 PM
May 29, 2008
Bush mounted dishonest campaign to sell Iraq invasion, says ex-White House spokesman
A former senior aide to President Bush claims that the White House deliberately mounted a dishonest propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq invasion to the US public, in the most damning insider account of the presidency so far.
(No, REALLY! Tell me it isn't TRUE!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/29/georgebush.iraq
Posted by doctormatt at 5:40 PM
May 21, 2008
Behind the Rise in Prices: A Plan to Torpedo the Dollar
“The financial crisis that we now face was created by design. It is intended to destroy the labor movement, crush the middle class, quash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, reduce our foreign debt by 50 or 60%, force a restructuring of America’s debt, privatize all public assets and resources, and create a new regime of austerity measures which will divert more wealth to the banking and corporate establishment.”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/19/9047/
Continue reading "Behind the Rise in Prices: A Plan to Torpedo the Dollar"
Posted by doctormatt at 9:55 PM | Comments (0)
March 5, 2008
Economic costs of war
The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.
On Thursday, the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, conducted a public examination of the costs of the war. The witnesses included the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (who believes the overall costs of the war — not just the cost to taxpayers — will reach $3 trillion), and Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
Both men talked about large opportunities lost because of the money poured into the war. “For a fraction of the cost of this war,” said Mr. Stiglitz, “we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more.”
Matt Yglesias notes, “Few people seem to appreciate it, but it’s quite literally true that al-Qaeda’s strategy is to cripple the U.S. economy by dragging us into quagmires abroad.” Arianna Huffington writes, “The thing about $3,000,000,000,000 is that, at a certain point, it becomes hard to ignore.”
Posted by at 1:23 AM
Marijuana Regulation vs. Prohibition
Criminalizing marijuana results in the arrest and prosecution of more than half a million Americans every year for possessing even small amounts of herb.
http://www.progress.org/2008/cannabis.htm
Continue reading "Marijuana Regulation vs. Prohibition"
Posted by at 1:12 AM
March 1, 2008
God Bless Ralph Nader
Running for president...
http://atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/3494/81/
Posted by at 6:09 PM
Industrial Hemp Background
Industrial Hemp Background
Continue reading "Industrial Hemp Background"
Posted by doctormatt at 12:36 PM
February 24, 2008
When Change Is Not Enough: Seven Steps to Revolution
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future
http://www.alternet.org/story/77498/
Posted by at 6:21 AM
February 17, 2008
Senators Corker and Alexander try to subvert Rule of Law.
The Rule of Law is what distinguishes our government from
tyrannical dictatorships and monarchies. Actions that undermine
this principal erode the foundation of our great republic. The
recent votes of Senators Corker and Alexander should be viewed
in this context.
Continue reading "Senators Corker and Alexander try to subvert Rule of Law."
Posted by doctormatt at 10:36 AM
Video - FISA satire cartoon - The Spies Who Love You
Great flash video courtesy of Mark Fiore:
http://www.markfiore.com/spies_who_love_you_0
Posted by at 6:16 AM
February 15, 2008
Video - Olbermann on FISA
Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on today’s Countdown was a scathing rebuke of President Bush for continuing to play the fear card, trying to scare the hell out of the American people and vowing to veto any FISA legislation that does not contain telecom amnesty.
You are a liar, Mr. Bush, and after showing some skill at it, you have ceased to even be a very good liar.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/77138/
Continue reading "Video - Olbermann on FISA"
Posted by at 12:54 PM
February 13, 2008
Smoking Mirrors blog
Opinionated blogger - some good rants at:
http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/
Posted by doctormatt at 1:04 PM
Political reasons for Conyers to start impeachment hearings of Cheney
http://www.democrats.com/conyers-start-impeachment-hearings
Posted by doctormatt at 12:08 AM
February 11, 2008
Iranian Oil Bourse - Commentary
A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations.
For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation.
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
Continue reading "Iranian Oil Bourse - Commentary"
Posted by at 9:24 PM
February 10, 2008
G.W. Bush Is a Criminal, Like His Dad
Watching Attorney General Michael Mukasey evade the obvious fact that waterboarding is torture – and the reluctance of Democrats to press him – I was reminded of how the first President Bush got away with an earlier batch of national security crimes.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/013108.html
Continue reading "G.W. Bush Is a Criminal, Like His Dad"
Posted by at 2:20 AM
Iranian Oil Bourse set to open - Fasten your seat belts
If tiny bubbles floating up from the ocean floor could tell tales, we might learn a thing or two on the surface. On the heels of Iran announcing the grand opening of its new "Oil Bourse," not many US financial institutions are cutting colorful ribbons or breaking Champaign bottles in celebration over this announcement. In fact, Wall Street is painfully developing acid reflex because this could very well be the beginning of the end for monopolizing "Texas Tea" exclusively being sold using only American dollars. In truth, this could very well plummet the American dollar deeper into the abyss of nothingness. Having said that, strange things are surreptitiously happening on the ocean floor with scant reporting in the US corporate mainstream news media...sneaky little devils.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_vincent__080209_could_iran_s_new__22oi.htm
Continue reading "Iranian Oil Bourse set to open - Fasten your seat belts"
Posted by at 2:03 AM
Video - Iraq war costs $720M per day. How would you rather spend it?
Posted by doctormatt at 1:55 AM
The Emails that Dick Cheney Deleted
Late last month, right after official White House spokesmen made a series of either evasive or completely false statements about the mysterious case of the vanishing, then reappearing, then perhaps no really vanished White House emails, Henry Waxman and his Oversight Committee announced some of the conclusions they had reached.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002219
Continue reading "The Emails that Dick Cheney Deleted"
Posted by at 12:49 AM
January 26, 2008
Video - Olbermann on Telecom immunity
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22811475#22831421
Posted by at 10:53 PM
Jay Rockefeller’s Unintentionally Revealing Comments
As the Senate takes up “debate” today over granting the President new warrantless eavesdropping powers and granting immunity to lawbreaking telecoms, the individual who joined forces with Dick Cheney to get this ball rolling, AT&T’s personal Senator Jay Rockefeller, made some comments yesterday to The Politico that illustrate just how twisted and dishonest is the thinking of telecom immunity advocates.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/24/6594/print/
Continue reading "Jay Rockefeller’s Unintentionally Revealing Comments"
Posted by at 9:10 PM
Telecom Immunity: Covering Up Illegality by Secrecy and Fear
Dick Cheney was at his best shilling for immunity for telecom companies today before the Heritage Foundation. His speech came one day before the Republican rubber stamp machine in the Senate attempts another push to give blanket immunity to the telecommunication companies suspected of engaging in illegal eavesdropping and surveillance of Americans. Although wiretapping is usually justified as a necessary tool in the “War on Terror”, there is good reason to doubt the official story and question the legality of the Bush administration’s practices.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/24/6595/print/
Continue reading "Telecom Immunity: Covering Up Illegality by Secrecy and Fear"
Posted by at 9:04 PM
The End of Privacy
Amid the controversy brewing in the Senate over Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform, the Bush administration appears to have changed its strategy and is devising a bold new plan that would strip away FISA protections in favor of a system of wholesale government monitoring of every American’s Internet activities.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/25/6625/print/
Continue reading "The End of Privacy"
Posted by at 8:53 PM
January 23, 2008
Comments of Wamp, Corker and TN Rep Lincoln Davis on 1-22-09
Wamp and Corker comment on Fred Thompson's dropping out of presidential race.
Wamp says:
"I still think frankly that on the issues Fred Thompson was the best candidate."
Lincoln Davis calls for prudence regarding the Fed's huge rate cut.
Continue reading "Comments of Wamp, Corker and TN Rep Lincoln Davis on 1-22-09"
Posted by doctormatt at 4:46 AM
January 18, 2008
Video - Lapdogs of the Corporate Press
Satire - Thanks to National Lampoon!
http://blimptv.blogspot.com/2007/11/lapdogs-of-corporate-press_21.html
Posted by doctormatt at 10:50 PM
Video - Satire - New Bush Coins
Thanks to National Lampoon!
http://blimptv.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-bush-coins.html
Posted by doctormatt at 9:42 PM
Why the Claim that Progressive Secular Values and Policies Are Bad For Societies is a Great Big Lie
Why the Claim that Progressive Secular Values and Policies Are Bad For Societies is a Great Big Lie The propaganda industry that is the social and religious right never ceases in its campaign to perpetuate a myth. It is the all critical cutting edge of a long standing wedge strategy that cannot fail if anti-progressive traditionalism is to retain its legitimacy. The myth is that societies that adopt progressive secular values are doomed to societal collapse and chaos.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_gregory__080118_why_the_claim_that_p.htm
Posted by at 7:16 PM
January 10, 2008
The Financial Cost of the Bush Administration
What we as American taxpayers have suffered financially since Bush assumed office is 165% of what the debt was for the previous 200 years of the United States. When Bush took office the debt was $20 Trillion. It is now $53 Trillion.
This debt currently amounts to about $175,000 for every person alive in the United States. So, that means your long term debt has increased about $109,000 since Bush came into office.
Continue reading "The Financial Cost of the Bush Administration"
Posted by at 11:08 PM
January 2, 2008
Let’s Toast to Ten Good Things About 2007
As we close this year on the low of Congress giving Bush more billions for war, and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, let’s remember some of the year’s gains that can revive our spirits for the New Year. Here are just ten.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/26/6083/
Continue reading "Let’s Toast to Ten Good Things About 2007"
Posted by at 10:38 AM
December 31, 2007
Assault on free speech
The Pope had his Index of Forbidden Books. Japan had its Thought Police against subversive or dangerous ideologies. And the United States Congress and President Bush have learned nothing from those examples.
Congress is perched to enact the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 20007 (Act)," probably the greatest assault on free speech and association in the United States since the 1938 creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
Continue reading "Assault on free speech"
Posted by at 8:40 AM
December 25, 2007
Understanding American Capitalism
This is an important book about a vast and important subject - economics - which, except for hermits and recluses living in the wilderness, affects just about everyone, every single day, in more ways than most people realize. Understanding economics - or rather, to be more precise, the political economy, a term I amplify later - is critical to any person wishing to make sense of the world, and essential to choosing rationally how to position oneself on the political map.
Continue reading "Understanding American Capitalism"
Posted by at 10:48 PM
The voting system is broken, and so are political parties.
Last Friday Ohio's top election official, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner issued a report concluding that the voting systems that decided the 2004 election in Ohio were rife with "critical security failures". The perpetrators were so cocksure they could pull it off that the servers for the computation of the Ohio vote count were in the same basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee that houses servers for the Republican National Committee. The programmers who (worked) for Ken Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State, were Republicans who did websites for the Bush administration.
So why do we keep throwing billions of dollars down a black hole just to maintain this pathetic charade that fools no one? This year every one of the leading candidates is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Every one of them is a "dual loyalist" with a globalist agenda. Every one of them accepts the new regime of curtailed civil liberties, endless war, and free trade. They're all part of the same corporate effluent that washed into Washington on a wave of special interest payola.
Continue reading "The voting system is broken, and so are political parties."
Posted by at 10:41 PM
December 22, 2007
Video - Shock Doctrine
http://bodo.gnn.tv/blogs/25233/The_Shock_Doctrine_by_Alfonso_Cuar_n_and_Naomi_Klein_VIDEO
Posted by doctormatt at 6:24 PM
December 15, 2007
The American Dream Is Alive and Well ... in Finland!
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/70103
Fewer than 1 percent of Americans are millionaires, but almost one in three believe they'll end up among that group at some point.
The belief that our chance of moving up the economic ladder is limited only by our innate abilities and our appetite for hard work is almost universal in the United States. When you define the "American Dream" as the ability of working-class families to afford a decent life -- to put their kids through school, have access to quality healthcare and a secure retirement -- most will tell you it simply doesn't exist anymore. In stark contrast...
Continue reading "The American Dream Is Alive and Well ... in Finland!"
Posted by at 5:01 AM
November 26, 2007
Chomsky on Iran
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18772.htm
Posted by doctormatt at 11:40 PM
November 25, 2007
War-making is a socialist government program, hobgoblin of the right
I’m amused when far right ideologues denounce equitable health care, affordable housing and other safety net features of liberal democracies as “socialized medicine” or other derisive labels. Such offenders of language are insulted when I fire back: “There’s nothing more socialized than the U.S. military.” It’s true. Every soldier gets government housing, price-fixed salaries, government education (indoctrination into killing), health care, clothing and much more. And with an annual budget that threatens decades or centuries more of national debt to finance war in the name of “spreading democracy,” children not yet born will pay for our socialized army should civilization last long enough. These payments could come at the expense of other, more constructive programs, such as bridges, highways, fuel-efficient cars, basic research, schools, disaster relief, Social Security, the campaign to stop global warming and much else. Meanwhile the effects of this military / industrial complex–financed by your tax dollars–will be disastrous, even murderous, for millions or billions of innocents, as we spread nuclear technology, depleted uranium, ethnic cleansing (face it, we put the Shiites now busy murdering Sunnis–who respond in kind–in charge of Iraq) and worse around the globe.
Posted by at 11:51 PM
November 23, 2007
Video - Apathy Kills
The Art of Mental Warfare:
Posted by doctormatt at 9:56 AM
You believe the official story about 9-11 because...?
They lied about Iraq having biological and chemical weapons. They lied about former NFL star Pat Tilman's murder in Afghanistan. They lied about Saddam Hussein refusing to allow U.N. WMD inspectors into Iraq. They lied about the level of care our wounded veterans were receiving. So, why in the hell should anyone believe ANYTHING this pack of professional liars has to say about the events that took place on September 11, 2001?
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/4752
Continue reading "You believe the official story about 9-11 because...?"
Posted by at 9:44 AM
November 22, 2007
Missing Nukes - Treason of the highest order
According to a wide range of reports, several nuclear bombs were "lost" for 36 hours after taking off August 29/30, 2007 on a "cross-country journey" across the U.S., from U.S.A.F Base Minot in North Dakota to U.S.A.F. Base Barksdale, near New Orleans, in Louisiana. [1] Reportedly, in total there were six W80-1 nuclear warheads armed on AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACMs) that were "lost." [2] The story was first reported by the Military Times, after military servicemen leaked the story.
It is also worth noting that on August 27, 2007, just days before, three B-52 Bombers were performing special missions under the direct authorization of General Moseley, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. [3]
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=24168
Continue reading "Missing Nukes - Treason of the highest order"
Posted by at 1:10 AM
November 16, 2007
The Exact Opposite series
How can you tell when a "Conservative" is lying?
http://www.romm.org/exactopposite_1.html
Posted by at 12:22 AM
November 9, 2007
Mad Cow Nation: America's Willing Surrender
Michael Massing has written a very important story about at very important truth: the main reason that the American people are so deeply uninformed about the reality of the war of aggression being waged in their names in Iraq is that they do not want to know.
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2794/81/
Posted by at 2:32 AM
Kill the messenger, On with the war
Great piece by Chris Floyd
http://www.chris-floyd.com/8/8/
Posted by at 1:51 AM
Video - George Carlin - You have no choices
They own you.
Warning - George uses some "dirty words".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18690.htm
Posted by at 12:08 AM
November 1, 2007
Voting As Political Narcotic
Voting became a political narcotic when it stopped working to improve government and became used to legitimize a corrupt, two-party failed government.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18650.htm
Continue reading "Voting As Political Narcotic"
Posted by at 11:36 PM
October 28, 2007
Music Video - The Oil Factor
Go here. Enter site. Then, in left column, click on "Music Video" for an In Your Face music commentary.
The 4th Branch.
Caution - Lyrics and images suitable for adults able to cope with harsh truth.
Posted by doctormatt at 2:49 PM
Depleted Uranium and Depleted Democracy
Remarks by David Swanson October 27, 2007 at a rally in Jonesborough, Tenn., preceding the march to Aerojet Ordnance, manufacturers of Depleted Uranium weapons.
Continue reading "Depleted Uranium and Depleted Democracy"
Posted by at 11:43 AM
October 27, 2007
Naomi Wolf - Video - The End of America
VERY IMPORTANT VIEWING
Posted by doctormatt at 12:02 AM
October 24, 2007
The Imperial Presidency - by Ralph Nader
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/23/4758/
Posted by doctormatt at 11:26 AM