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See BlackBoxVoting.org or VerifiedVoting.org to learn about corruptible, untrackable electronic voting machines. 9/11 Links
May 6, 2008Further Down the Rabbit Hole -- How far can you go? See Morgan Reynolds and Kevin Barrett interviewed at a Wisconsin 9/11 conference. Listen to Kevin Barrett's discussion of Edward Luttwak and his book Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook, which was a handbook for Leo Strauss, Paul Wolfowitz and the Neocons, for whom democracy is a mess that needs to be cleaned up by imposing military order. Much of this theory matches quite closely the scenario that has unfolded since Bush took office, not the theater presented in the controlled media, but the underlying actions of the shadow or permanent government. youtube.com. See also "Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neo-cons, and Iraq" at informationclearinghouse. According to Jim Lobe in "Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception" at alternet.org, Strauss, the father of the Neocon movement, believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior." For the sympathetic conservative view of Leo Strauss, see frontpagemag.com. Robert Locke says, "He believes that contemporary liberalism is the logical outcome of the philosophical principles of modernity, taken to their extremes. In some sense, modernity itself is the problem. Strauss believed that liberalism, as practiced in the advanced nations of the West in the 20th century, contains within it an intrinsic tendency towards relativism, which leads to nihilism. He first experienced this crisis in his native Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1920s, in which the liberal state was so ultra-tolerant that it tolerated the Communists and Nazis who eventually destroyed it and tolerated the moral disorder that turned ordinary Germans against it."
May 2, 2008Black PresidentsCAPE TOWN, South Africa -- It's great to fly into Johannesburg, see the Star, the local broadsheet newspaper that's a good two inches wider than the broadsheet papers in the states, and to pick up the clattering electricity of South Africa's multicultural society. While waiting to change planes for Cape Town I stopped into a bookstore -- it's great to be where the books are in English. And the books, too, reflect that amazing alternate reality of South Africa, that gem so undiscovered by so many for so long. It was a tiny bookstore in the Joberg airport, just a book nook, but there is that astonishing novelty browsing a bookstore in a different culture.There was a nice healthy Africa section, with many books about Africa, much great literature. Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black by Nadine Gordimer caught my eye. There were familiar things like Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, asking Yeats' increasingly pertinent question: "What rough beast, its hour come round at last Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" There were newer things like The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam by Lauren Liebenberg. Of course there were plenty of nice fat paperback copies of Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. And, strikingly, featured on one of the front tables was Barack Obama's Dreams from my Father. It reminds me of how much the meaning of the phrase "Black President" has changed for me since my last visit here a year ago. The story of Nelson Mandela resonates so powerfully it would be impossible to remain totally unaffected by it even in America, a place ruled by the likes of Dick Cheney, who voted to keep Mandela in prison when a resolution to urge his release came before Congress during Cheney's short stint as a congressman in 1985. Mandela had already been in prison 21 years and would remain for six long years more. Reagan and Bush were also both big supporters of the apartheid regime, temperamentally in sympathy with it. But now Mandela has entered the pantheon of great leaders and even Cheney pretends to agree that he's "a great man." But for me the story of Mandela really came to life when I was in Africa and heard the song about him sung by the South African singer Brenda Fassie. It's called "Black President" and it is a soul-stirring piece of music. (See BuildAfrica.org, photo gallery, BBC bio, Stern's Music discography, Stern's detailed discography with one-minute MP3 samples.) When I heard Brenda sing, "I will sing for my president. I would die for my president," with such volcanic passion, it reminded me of a much more innocent time when I might have believed in leaders myself, though probably never as much as she seemed to. Politics has become so corrupt and worm-eaten in the U.S. it's hard to imagine that leaders can be legitimate, that they may have a legitimate function and may on occasion live up to something beyond their own money-grubbing. But no, Mandela shows us that there are times in human affairs when there is a call for leadership and when someone sincerely rises to the challenge and devotes himself or herself to the greater good, not just to the enrichment of oneself and one's friends and co-conspirators. Now I realize that I believe Barack Obama has the potential to be a legitimate leader, even a great leader in America at this time and place when the country desperately needs a radical change from its present direction. He is up against a tremendous force, terrible odds, including flawed voting machines that the Republicans seem to be able to control and a ruthlessness that seems to preclude no method or tactic no matter how vicious. It's only incidental that he, like Mandela, could be his country's first Black president. And much as I find myself wanting to hold myself aloof from politics, that dirty, disappointing game, I find myself irresistibly caring, caring about him personally as well as about the movement he has come to represent. I find myself wanting very much for him to be the next president, not John McCain, God forbid, or even Hillary Clinton. So there it is. I confess.
April 28, 2008Votes That Don't Count -- Bev Harris, the champion of Black Box Voting who has led the charge against corporate-controlled secret vote counting, was invited to submit comments into the record for the United States Election Assistance Commission's Round Table, which, she said, "featured and agenda entirely devoted to a what is basically a celebration of computerized vote-counting." Harris took the opportunity "to tell it like it is." (See her article at opednews.com) "Like it is" is that "Any system that forces the citizenry to trust government insiders to count their votes represents a change in the original design of this nation. The United States of America was designed to uphold the right of citizen sovereignty over the government. In addition to hiding the counting of votes from public view, computer-counted elections hide the chain of custody of the vote data. Citizens are never allowed to view the original input in order to compare it to the output, and are relegated to trusting circumstantial evidence controlled by insiders. Such a system is, in fact, a transfer of power." We, the citizens of the United States, did not consent to this transfer of power.
April 22, 2008Enjoy It While You Can, McCain -- McCain sold out everything in seeking the Republican nomination, including his image as a "maverick" who sometimes stood against his own party. But he kissed the asses of the right wing from Bush to Falwell so much to gain political power, that he sacrificed his main assets. See "Why McCain Can't Win", by Bob Beckel at realclearpolitics.com.
April 19, 2008Clinton's Anti-Anti War Passion -- If it is not apparent from her actions, Hillary Clinton has made it clear she has no use for anti-war activists. According to Celeste Fremon on the Huffington Post, "At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the 'activist base' of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn.org in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had "flooded" state caucuses and 'intimidated' her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post." According to talkingpointsmemo.com, Clinton said, "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me." MoveOn executive director Eli Pariser responded: "Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim."
April 15, 2008The Circus From AfarSEVILLE, Spain -- One of the most striking things for an American abroad is the experience of being outside of the American media fishbowl. I open up AOL News, one of the most idiotic, low-minded, talking-down media sources and the top story that flashes back at me is "Obama Mocks Clinton". Oh golly! Did he really do that? That little shit! Buried somewhere the article there may be a soundbite from the performance referred to. God forbid they actually discuss some of the issues that are squeezing the American people to death. And I have not the slightest doubt that corporate America, the operator of the propaganda machine known as the mainstream media knows exactly what it is doing, making these candidates look like nasty, squabbling children, while avoiding any substantive reporting on the ongoing crises of America. Just shove all the rabble to the sidelines, keep the masses out of the way! That's the mandate of the corporate media. This is not just an accident, not just "they'll do whatever sells". No, it's worse than that, though that is bad enough considering our Constitution (remember that?) designated a free press as an essential part of a functioning republic. The forgotten document was designed explicitly to prevent abuses of power. Any idea why it's been hammered so mercilessly by the Cheneyites?
| Iraq Body Count The Toll of American Wounded Coalition Casualty Count
One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred comes invariably from people who are not fighting. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
May 5, 2008The Worst -- "A new poll suggests that President Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history," says AOL. Bush makes history. The highest disapproval rates ever. Another of many affirmations that Bush is indeed the worst.
May Day, 2008In America it's forbidden to ever suspect powerful politicians of foul play, but the so-called "suicide" of the DC Madam who was likely to expose prominent politicians is hard to swallow as an unsuspicious incident. The DC Madam predicted that she would be suicided and said that, no, she would not commit suicide. According to prisonplanet.com, "During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder. Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation's capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them." See also opednews.com, huffingtonpost.com and Washington Post.
April 23, 2008The saddest thing about the whole election circus is that we have this crazy voting system based on machines that cannot be tracked, audited, and certainly not trusted. As Jon Stokes wrote on April 21, previous to the Pennsylvania primary, "On the eve of tomorrow's hotly contested and relatively close Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania, a number of voting activists are sounding the alarm one last time about the state's election systems. Over 85 percent of PA voters will vote on paperless touchscreen machines that are hackable, failure-prone, and fundamentally unauditable. (arstechnica.com) It's hard to know who pulls the strings. How can anyone have faith in the system?SUNDAY NEWS April 20, 2008The Gory Details -- A story in The Guardian describes how General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, was "hoodwinked", according to him, into torture by top Bush administration officials. The Guardian says, "In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that: Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo. Myers believes he was a victim of 'intrigue' by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld's defence department." The Bush administration has tried to blame junior officials, but Sands' book "establishes that pressure for aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top and was sanctioned by the most senior lawyers." And of course now Bush himself has admitted authorizing it, saying "I don't know why that should surprise anyone..." No it probably shouldn't surprise anyone, knowing what sadistic, sick creeps Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. are, but one reason why it does surprise some people is that Bush repeatedly said "The US does not torture," etc. etc. Bush is such a habitual liar he apparently doesn't expect anyone to take him seriously. He certainly doesn't expect to be held accountable for anything he says or does. Wave goodbye to America as it spins down the toilet.
April 16, 2008End GameSEVILLE, Spain -- Looking at the U.S. from what feels like a relatively safe distance, here are some of the headlines that catch my eye today.
Lewis Seiler, former congressman and the president of Voice of the Environment, and Dan Hamburg, executive director of Voice of the Environment, wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle , "Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of 'an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.' Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees. According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of 'all removable aliens' and 'potential terrorists.'" That is, whoever The President deems an enemy. See also infowars.net for more on this.
April 13, 2008Deja VuMADRID -- Reporting from Spain where I just saw a huge Picasso exhibit at the Reina Sofia Museum. Picasso's Guernica screams as loud now as it did when he painted it in 1937 as a white hot expression of outrage over the bombing of the city of Guernica by German Nazi bombers in support of their fascist buddy in Spain. It's the kind of crap that has been going on in Iraq for five years now. We have become desensitized to mass mechanized killing. Why did the French and English governments recognize and thereby enable the Franco dictatorship in February 1939? The freedom-loving Spanish people were abandoned and isolated and the fascist dictator Franco held power until his death in 1975. Why? Meanwhile, couldn't help noticing some interesting things in the news.
Book Credits:
 In the 21st Century, being naive to the workings of corporate media can get you killed. Chomsky For Beginners written by David Cogswell, illustrated by Paul Gordon, published by Writers and Readers, is a documentary comicbook about Noam Chomsky the man, the linguist and the political voice, but more than anything, it is a guide to media propaganda, how the corporate-owned mass media are designed not to inform you but to manipulate you for the benefit of the owners. Order Chomsky For Beginners from Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com
See also Existentialism For Beginners.  Post Script, Fortunate Son: The Making of an American President by J.H. Hatfield, second paperback edition, published by Soft Skull Press, 2001 For more on the late J.H. Hatfield, who wrote the controversial Bush biography Fortunate Son: The Making of an American President, see below The following piece was written for the French and Spanish translations of J.H. Hatfield's Fortunate Son: The Making of an American President, published by Editions Timeli in Geneva, Switzerland. (See www.timeli.ch.)
 More Book Credits:
Interviews with Noam Chomsky
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May 7, 2008Election Fraud in North Carolina -- The vote manipulators seem to have their resources well organized and from the ground in North Carolina we are hearing outrageous reports about voter suppression. (BlueNC) The US is becoming more of a banana republic every day. It's really time for the people of the democratic republic of the United States of America to rise up and reclaim their right to vote. This is getting really sordid. It's extremely embarrassing that the place once considered the bastion of democracy no longer has it.NEWS FROM AFAR May 3, 2008Ubiquitous States of America -- No matter where you are, America looms large on the horizon. What happens in America affects the whole world, now more than ever. Here are a few news items that catch the eye even from far away.
April 29, 2008Bye Bye -- We need a new Air America. Now they got rid of Randi Rhodes. The way she tells it, the new ownership wanted to break her contract, which was a very advantageous contract because Rhodes was one of the driving forces in the formation of the station. They weren't getting what they wanted, so it was they who put the video of her private stand-up comedy performance on YouTube and publicized it. Then in the uproar about Rhodes' references to Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro as whores, they suspended her. An earlier incarnation of Air America got rid of Mike Malloy, the personnification of white hot anti-Bush fury, and one who certainly finds many like minds in the broadcast universe. He's gone. Randi Rhodes is gone. Walmart is still on. I don't care much for listening to Walmart telling me how I can get low-priced building materials there. I know about Walmart and don't want to do business with them. What happened to Air America? Someone new has to come along and recognize that the progressive audience is out there and is potentially huge. Flattening out and corporatizing Air America is not going to win the progressive audience. So what audience are they trying to appeal to? With an 80 percent anti-Bush population, you shouldn't have to become right wing to make money in broadcasting. It sounds like the typically money-mad dizzy chicken investor mentality has seized control of Air America. Ownership making very scared judgments based on strange interpretations of statistics, thinking skewed by panic and weighed down by convention. Or just flat-out coopted. Anyway, it looks like both Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy have turned up elsewhere, on Internet radio at novamradio.com.
opednews.com asks if the Supreme Court is in effect picking another president. We know how that turned out. And speaking of the not-supremes, check out "Getting Over Scalia" by William Betz in which he says, "A thug is a thug regardless of his ethnic identity, whether his thuggery is perpetrated at the point of a gun or the point of a pen. Surely there were many people who believed Hitler was charming and that Mussolini had a wonderful sense of humor. The crimes of the two, however, remain unforgivable. The crime perpetrated by black-robed thugs in 2000, a crime hidden behind pseudointellectual and dishonest legal reasoning for purely political purposes, a crime so vile that it makes a mockery of democracy, is equally unforgivable. 'Get over it,' indeed."
April 21, 2008Obamaphobia -- Morning news in the evening, not the latest news, cold off the press! I've been getting some e-mails from people who exhibit a virulent hatred for Obama that is so intense it's puzzling. The emotion in these messages about Obama is never followed up and completed by its complement in the realm of logic. These are from intelligent people, don't get me wrong. But they come on so strong in the subject line I am ready for a real bombshell in the message. But the charges seem increasingly light and without substance. It leaves me wondering why the hatred driving the message is so strong. I'm not saying I have an answer to the question. Just wondering why supporters of Hillary Clinton seem intent to portray Obama as Lucifer. I have no doubt they are sincere, and I know they are intelligent, so I'm just puzzling over it. The message I got yesterday said something about Obama dishonoring us all by giving Hillary the finger. I've seen some variations on this, and one had a link to a video of the alleged act of lowlife profanity by Obama. As I am clicking on it, I'm almost shaking in anticipation asking myself: Am I really going to see Obama giving Hillary the finger?I just cannot feature this. I have seen a few instances of George Bush very pointedly and unambiguously giving the finger to the camera, still shots, movie footage and vivid verbal descriptions. There was no doubt about it and seeing them makes it hard to doubt that these are true, sincere acts on the part of George W. In fact, it's one of the most actual and real expressions you are ever likely to see from this bad boy. And I confess I have often felt exactly the same way toward him as he expresses so tangibly in the obscene gesture and in fact in almost his every act. George Bush is giving the finger to the world. That is his meaning in history. We're talking about a very resentful frat rat who grew up with two insane parents and was so damaged he could barely read, so he had to go through his life with every break, and always falling dismally short of the example and expectations of his father. And don't forget the stern presence of George W.'s grandfather, the banker who set up a Nazi front bank in New York to raise money for the Nazi war effort until he was finally closed down years into the war under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Shut down under the Roosevelt administration, and now his descendants are getting us all back for it. He's a guy who blew up frogs with firecrackers with his best friend for kicks. He's expressing the same attitude as an adult in his scornful presentation of the bird and in his destruction of every principle held dear by a majority of Americans. After waking from 20 years of booze and cocaine abuse, he was little evolved emotionally from when he was a kid. This is what we are dealing with here. Check out Bush on the Couch for the details. Enough with Bush, we've had him to kick us around for nearly a decade and now even the Clintons are under the sway of the Bush family with their parties in Kennebunkport and Hillary's dream of sending Bill Clinton with Poppy Bush for a "fence-mending" tour. Mend fences and shore up alliances with the powerful of either party, effectively monopolizing the political system among an elite power-sharing arrangement. But none of them have to worry about the others protecting the people from them. If Clinton is elected, the Bushes have at least another term's protection from accountability for their crimes. Old man George Herbert Walker Bush is practically at the end of this tether now, so he will escape prosecution for his many crimes. But George W. still has to keep a hand on power to a certain extent to immunize him and his mob from prosecution for a while for their insane thrill kill ride through America. And there is certainly no threat to his power from McCain or from Hillary Clinton. But I digress. I could not feature Obama doing that. You don't have to in any way like him to find it very far fetched that this sharp cookie is going to be caught dead giving someone the finger. You may consider him the vilest of creatures, but you can't say he's stupid. There has been nothing in his behavior that has indicated that he could do anything to ridiculously out of control. And indeed when I opened up the thing and put on the video it was a colossal puff of hot air. There is Obama giving his speech, and looking quite good actually, and at a certain point after referring to Hillary Clinton he touches his hand lightly to his cheek, all fingers extended, but the one that actually touches is the middle one. This is the big moment for which we are to pronounce Obama suddenly an obscene, petty fool who should be denounced and exiled. Suddenly his real character is revealed! He's not only a black suprematist, black separatist, a fraud, so liberal his unamerican, he also has the mentality of a junior high punk. Sorry, I'm not buying it. That kind of scorch-and-char political strategy is short term. It may work through the Pennsylvania primary, but ultimately it will burn itself out. These increasingly absurd charges against Obama are starting to create an immunity in the public against them. So the Clintons, as is really the only correct way of referring to that candidate, may win a short-term advantage, but they are ultimately destroying themselves by their increasingly desperate foolish behavior. This thing about the dramatic story about going to Bosnia, and now to say, "I misspoke"! I love that word. Miss poke. Again, putting aside her character and intentions, what is the point of cooking up such a story about a scene that was filmed by network news? What is the intelligence of the move itself even if you believe the intentions are good? It is a very bizarre turning in history. Watching the self-destruction of the Clintons' place in history is lurid, something you feel like you shouldn't be watching. After the agony of America under the Bush-Cheney crush machine, the Clintons looked like a golden age in retrospect. If it weren't for Obama, that unlikely phenomenon of a powerful opponent, she would have sailed into the nomination it appears. She was anointed. And now there's this damned upstart. But Obama is only the expression of a large part of the population that just wants enough with the Clintons already.
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April 18, 2008
April 14, 2008Trivializing the Process -- One of AOL News' top stories is a big drama over whether Obama uttered a no-no. Apparently he said something about frustrated people becoming bitter. This statement has "given Clinton an opening." It doesn't even say what it was that he said that caused the controversy, supposedly, until deep into the article. When you read it, it's not really such a big thing, but by then you're beyond the comment and deeply into this big drama. Referring to people who are frustrated with economic conditions, he said, "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." This is what the big hassle is about? I believe that this constant trivializing of the real issues facing Americans and reducing the campaign to a series of trivial arguments over some supposedly offensive comment serves at least two purposes. It distracts people from the appalling issues that really face Americans and are relevant to their choice of whom to vote for. And secondly, it reduces it all to such petty crap that it turns people off of the whole thing. Either way it serves to keep people from the real problems and from any effective action to deal with the problems. It's all superficial talk about the campaign as a contest, not about the issues themselves, and there's little indication that the campaign has any other substance besides these totally superfical comments back and forth.
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