Go To A Movie, Indict Dick Cheney

On February 20th, I wrote a piece in this very place, entitled "Shamefully Shallow:  Zero Dark Thirty".  (For your convenience, I've moved it up to the next position, below.)

There's an alternative celluloid vision, which would be great to see at our local Picture Palaces across the country.

As the folks at PeaceTeam point out:
"We all know there was [a] film out recently glorifying torture and making the case that torture was good and necessary to find Bin Laden, nothing but CIA propaganda dressed up in a flashy Hollywood package. Do you want to see more films like that made? Or do you want to see more films made that tell the truth about [how] we were lied into invading Iraq, using torture to get the false confessions to justify those lies?"

PeaceTeam have made that movie, and called it "The Last War Crime".

For some reason that is impossible to comprehend, whereas "Zero Dark Thirty" was nominated for multiple Oscars, "The Last War Crime" is finding it near-impossible to get screenings from our wonderful distribution system.

"There is one and only one thing that will stop this . . . and that is for those who HAVE tortured, and masterminded torture, to be held accountable for the war crimes they have committed."



PeaceTeam want your support to get the film shown in more places than trendy-liberal San Francisco.  How about Your Town?

You can request a screening by submitting this form:  http://www.peaceteam.net/tickets.php.  You can also see excerpts from the movie - "The Last War Crime film, the movie that will end torture."

Shamefully Shallow: Zero Dark Thirty

Shamefully Shallow: Zero Dark Thirty

As the razzmatazz of the Film Industry's birthday bash for itself, the Academy Awards, rushes upon us, let's take a look at a leading contender that is disturbingly symbolic of our times.

Much of Hollywood is currently just a Government propaganda system, and Kathryn Bigelow is one of the leading exponents of that dark art. There's no denying that she's a skilled filmmaker. Her last movie, “The Hurt Locker”, was highly acceptable as a dramatic study of a team of American bomb-disposal specialists in the pathetic ruins of Baghdad. It was nail-bitingly tense, at the same time as being empathetic and humanly moving. And I strongly doubt that the Pentagon had a single second's unease about its effect on recruitment.

Bigelow's latest film, “Zero Dark Thirty”, about the CIA's hunt for, and eventual killing of

Osama bin Laden, has been nominated for the Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Leading Actress, Editing and Sound Editing Academy Awards, although after an initial flurry of excitement among the Oscar-chattering classes, in the last month they seem to have shifted their allegiances to an earlier, quieter, American triumph over Moslems, in the shape of Ben Affleck's “Argo”. Perhaps a dark, pro-torture movie is deemed to be more than the Academy can stomach.

In an excellent article on the film's release, Karen Greenberg, Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, says :

On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened its notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The filmmakers and distributors are evidently ignorant of the significance of the date -- a perfect indication of the carelessness and thoughtlessness of the film, which will unfortunately substitute for actual history in the minds of many Americans.

“Zero Dark Thirty”goes into detail about American torture of Al Qaida suspects in Guantanamo Bay and in the CIA's secret “black sites” dotted around Europe and the Mid-East, including water-boarding. Details which many viewers apparently found disturbing. But graphic as it was, the film's depictions of US interrogation methods actually trod lightly on our feelings. Omitted was the medieval practice of chaining prisoners in unbearable “stress positions” for long periods; the desecration (real or simulated) of the Koran.

Also omitted was the practice of having American women smear Muslim detainees with what the victims believed to be menstrual blood. That would be disgusting to a Westerner, but to a devout Muslim it would be the vilest moral and spiritual degradation. These practices were endorsed, to its shame, by the professional body, the American Psychological Association.

One of “Zero Dark Thirty”'s major contentions, allegedly based on leaks from the CIA, is that without these torturous methods of interrogation, the vital information that led to Bin Laden would not have been forthcoming.

Yet the alleged mastermind – need we explain that it is necessary to say “alleged”, because this “nation of laws, not of men”, has not yet allowed him to come to court? - the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who's been in captivity for almost 10 years, was waterboarded 183 times and revealed no significant information.

(When he was brought before a Military Commission in 2008, journalists reported that “Mohammed was careful not to interrupt.... He lost his composure only after the Marine colonel ordered several defense attorneys to keep quiet "It's an inquisition. It's not a trial," Mohammed said in broken English, his voice rising. "After torturing they transfer us to inquisition-land in Guantanamo."”

The mysterious proceedings are still dragging on, with no resolution in sight. For an account of the strange deliberations of this dubious court, check out http://www.vice.com/read/strange-things-are-happening-at-khalid-sheikh-mohammeds-trial. And a British account of the shambolic proceedings, from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/27/khalid-mohammed-us-appeals-court. (Note that there seems to be a typo in the last paragraph of the Guardian piece; I think “conspiracy is likely to be the major charge against them because of a evidence of direct participation in 9/11” should read “because of a lack of evidence of direct participation in 9/11”)

Now what about the most evil man in the world, the leader of every terrorist group that has operated in the world since 2001 and before? Firstly, the most forgotten fact in the whole story: Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset, recruited in the early 80s.

He founded Al Qaeda, Arabic for “The Base”, to organize and train the Mujaheddin, guerrilla fighters who played a significant part in driving the Russian military out of Afghanistan, using billions of dollars provided by the CIA and Saudi Intelligence.

It has been repeatedly observed that “once you're a CIA asset, you're always a CIA asset.” In 2001, the British Guardian reported, “Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.”

He came from a family that is probably the wealthiest in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, after the far-flung Royal Family itself.

The bin Laden family were (and are) enormously influential with the leaders of the Western world, especially the Bush dynasty and its Carlyle Group of companies with their huge investments in Defense projects. Want to know how influential? Days after the 9/11 tragedy, when not a single civilian aircraft was allowed to operate in US airspace, a special exception was made for an aircraft which criss-crossed the United States, collecting members of a single family from their American homes, and taking them safely out of the country. No prizes for guessing which family received such special, kid-glove treatment.

FBI Agents who were scrambling to unearth any and all information that might lead them to the perpetrators of the NY and Washington horrors, were expressly instructed that they might not question anyone on that plane. Would it have been so traumatic for those exalted passengers to have been politely asked, “Do you happen to know where Osama is?”

Even at the time of the attacks on New York and Washington, 10 years before his death, bin Laden was seriously ill, and required kidney dialysis every day. And yet we were told that he was hiding out in a cave near the Afghan-Pakistani border, some of the harshest terrain in the world – at the same time as he was being held responsible for every terrorist incident from Bali to the clearly deranged “shoe-bomber”, Richard Reid.

Now let's turn to the night of May 1^st, 2011, the night the world's most dangerous terrorist died.

The 2 dozen Navy SEALs, some of the toughest and most skilful warriors in the world, clearly had no intention of capturing this frail man alive. (Remember that back in 2001 he was so ill that he reportedly could not survive a day without the aid of medical technology.) Think what a coup it would have been for the rule of law, to have put this vilest of international criminals on trial to face his accusers!

We have been shown photographs of our most powerful leaders biting their lips in awestruck suspense as they watched on a live TV feed, the process of Osama bin Laden's dispatch. Yet we have never been allowed to see that video.

The body was loaded onto a high-tech stealth helicopter, and DNA samples were taken to prove that we had killed the right man. And then... the body was taken out to sea and dumped!

A few words of explanation were muttered, to the effect that “we didn’t want to create a martyr” - and the media duly forgot all about it. Whatever happened to “If it bleeds, it leads”? Perhaps Osama didn't bleed.

There are plenty of good questions here: was it indeed Osama who was killed? Was he dead before the SEALs arrived? Did his kidneys finally conk out? How did he manage to disappear so finally, only to hole up in a garrison town in our ally's backyard? And having disappeared, how did he continue to mastermind, according to the movie, a vast network of ruthless assassins and bombers with tentacles reaching all around the globe?

None of this is touched in Kathryn Bigelow's film. Her story ends as the American helicopters (minus one which was destroyed) whisper away into the Arabian night.

The mainstream media have indeed reported a storm of controversy over “Zero Dark Thirty”, but it has revolved around whether the filmmakers were leaked classified information by the CIA. The more liberal end of the media spectrum have rightly latched on to the CIA lie that vital information leading to Osama was obtained by torture.

As Karen Greenberg, Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School in New York, said in her Tomgram essay, How Zero Dark Thirty Brought Back the Bush Administration:

How many times does the American public need to be told that torture did not yield the results the government promised? How many times does it need to be said that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, 183 times obviously didn’t work? How many times does it need to be pointed out that torture can -- and did -- produce misleading or false information, notably in the torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Libyan who ran an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and who confessed under torture that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

But there has been no discussion, that I've seen, of the questions I raise here. This is after all, the story that goes to the heart of our entire military and foreign policy for the last decade. Strange, ain't it?

Will your Congressperson protect Social Security?

QUOTE:  "If you promise that you won't raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires and multinational corporations, that shows whom you really represent. And if you say that you won't cut benefits for old people, sick people, poor people, that shows whom you care about, too."

Go to the Link to see what Alan Grayson has to say....

Some interesting background on North Korea

From the ANSWER Coalition:  (Up to you whether you accept their point of view, but we're not hearing this historical perspective from anywhere else....)

The war danger in Korea: Pentagon’s false propaganda conceals truth about crisis - Statement by Brian Becker, National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition:

The American war propaganda machine does a thorough job in misleading the public about the high-stakes struggle the Pentagon is waging against North Korea.

On March 28, the Obama administration ordered and the Pentagon executed a mock bombing attack on North Korea by U.S. B-2 stealth bombers equipped to drop nuclear bombs—the most advanced nuclear-capable plane in the U.S. Air Force. In recent months, the U.S. has also used nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to simulate the bombing of North Korea.

The B-2s, each of which costs taxpayers more than $3 billion, dropped inert bombs near North Korea.

It is not necessary to speculate how the United States would react if North Korea sent nuclear-capable bombers close to U.S. territory and dropped inert bombs as part of a “war game.” By itself, this B-2 mock bombing of North Korea cost approximately $5.5 million, according to Foreign Policy magazine. The B-2 flights by some estimates cost $135,000 per hour—almost double that of any other military airplane, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity.

The U.S. carpet-bombed North Korea for three years
It is not possible to overstate the impact on North Korea of this week’s simulated destruction of their country and people by U.S. war planes.
Between 1950 and 1953, U.S. bombers carpet-bombed North Korea so relentlessly that a main complaint of U.S. pilots became the absence of anything left to bomb. By July 1953, when an armistice was signed ending open military hostilities, there was not one structure standing higher than one story left in North Korea.
More than 5 million Koreans died during the war, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1967. They died from bombs and bullets. They died from disease and exposure to the cold. They died in horrific massacres committed by retreating U.S. troops, who burned “pro-communist villages” as they were fleeing in retreat from North Korea in the face of a surprise counteroffensive launched by Chinese and North Korean units in late October 1950.
It was the United States that remained after the armistice to occupy South Korea with tens of thousands of troops. The Pentagon required that its occupying troops be exempted from ever having to stand before Korean courts if they were charged with the murder or rape of Korean citizens. South Korea’s military dictators, who had earlier served as proxies of the Japanese occupation forces prior to 1945, were more than happy to oblige their new bosses.
Pentagon backed the military dictatorship in South Korea
Under the tight control and supervision of the Pentagon, a brutal military dictatorship ruled South Korea for decades.

In 1961, General Park Chung-hee, formerly an officer in the Japanese Manchuko Imperial Army during the time of Japan’s brutal colonial occupation of Korea, seized power and held it until his assassination by other military officers in 1979. Any South Korean person who said anything sympathetic about communism, socialism or North Korea was sentenced to decades-long prison terms where torture was a given.

South Korea’s current president, Park Geun-hye, is the daughter of General Park Chung-hee.

The role of the Pentagon and its continuing occupation has been decisive in Korean politics. After the assassination of Park Chung-hee, massive protests were staged in May 1980 against the military dictatorship in the South Korean city of Kwangju.

The pro-democracy movement in Kwangju was labeled “communist-inspired” and the rebellion was crushed in blood. More than 2,000 people were killed May 18 to 27, 1980. Later released secret documents revealed that it was the top brass of the U.S. occupation force that authorized soldiers of the Korean Army's 20th Division to be sent to Kwangju to suppress the protesting students.

The Pentagon and the South Korean military today—and throughout the past year—have been staging massive war games that simulate the invasion and bombing of North Korea.

Few people in the United States know the real situation. The work of the war propaganda machine is designed to make sure that the American people do not join together to demand an end to the dangerous and threatening actions of the Pentagon on the Korean Peninsula.

The propaganda campaign is in full swing now as the Pentagon climbs the escalation ladder in the most militarized part of the planet. North Korea is depicted as the provocateur and aggressor whenever they assert that they have the right and capability to defend their country. Even as the Pentagon simulates the nuclear destruction of a country that it had already tried to bomb into the stone-age, the corporate-owned media characterizes this extremely provocative act as a sign of “resolve” and a measure of “self-defense.”

As the Pentagon climbs the escalation ladder, North Korea will climb too. That is often how wars start.

The North Korea media yesterday reported Kim Jong-un "convened an urgent operation meeting" of senior generals just after midnight, signed a rocket preparation plan and ordered his forces on standby to strike the U.S. mainland, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii, state media reported. (AP, March 29)

Obama betrays humanity on GMOs - Please act now!

Hi all - this just in from Food Democracy Now! -

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we regret to inform you that late last night President Barack Obama signed H.R. 993, which contained the Monsanto Protection Act into law. This is an outrage that will not go unanswered.

While we are still waiting to hear from the administration all the final details, we understand at this time that Section 735, the Monsanto biotech rider is intact.

President Obama knowingly signed the Monsanto Protection Act over the insistence of more than 250,000 Americans who signed an urgent letter asking that he use his executive authority to veto H.R. 933 and send it back to Congress to remove the Monsanto Protection Act from the bill. Regretfully, President Obama failed to live up to his oath to protect the American people and our constitution.

Today we’re calling on President Obama to issue an executive order to call for the mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.

Tell President Obama that you're outraged that he signed the Monsanto Protection Act and it's time to label GMOs! 

Now that Congress has passed and President Obama has signed into law, the Monsanto Protection Act, Food Democracy Now! urgently requests that the President issue an executive order to support the mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.

We want to thank everyone who made tens of thousands of calls to Congress and the White House and we understand that people are upset, but now is not the time to be quiet!

Click here to make a call to the White House and let President Obama and your members of Congress know how upset you are and that it's time for GMO labeling! We will not be stopped! Every voice counts!

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/807?t=10&akid=807.198452.TxXhNy

If leadership in Washington DC can betray the public behind closed doors, it’s time that the American public gain the right to transparency about what they are eating and the food they’re feeding their families every day.

Not only is GMO labeling a reasonable and common sense solution to the continued controversy that corporations like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow Chemical have created by subverting our basic democratic rights, but it is a basic right that citizens in 62 other countries around the world already enjoy, including Europe, Russia, China, India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

In addition, mandatory labeling of GMO foods is something that President Obama promised while on the campaign trail in 2007 to Iowa farmers when he said on November 10, 2007 in Des Moines: “Here’s what I’ll do as president... we’ll let folks know whether their food has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they’re buying”.
It’s time that President Obama hold true to his campaign promise to Iowa farmers and the American people by issuing an executive order to label GMOs in our food products immediately. The American people need real leadership in Washington DC, not more backroom deals by corporate lobbyists that subvert our democracy.
Tell President Obama that you’re outraged and demand that he must immediately issue an Executive Order to label GMOs.
We recognize that this is a time of great sadness for millions of Americans, but now is not the time to sit back and do nothing. We must act collectively to demand openness and transparency, not only in our government, but also in our food supply. It’s time that President Obama stand up for the American people and immediately issue a signing statement calling for the mandatory labeling of GMOs.
The passage of the Monsanto Protection Act is another sign of how out of touch Congress and the White House are with the sentiment of the America public. The insertion of the biotech rider in a backroom deal with corporate lobbyists and Senate leaders is a new low. Since losing a court case in 2010 to Center for Food Safety for the unlawful planting of GMO sugar beets, Monsanto and other biotech companies have been desperate to find a way around court mandated environmental impact statements required as a result of a U.S. district court’s ruling.
There is a fierce urgency in the fight over the Monsanto Protection Act for family farmers and food activists across the country as 13 new genetically engineered crops await approval at the USDA and AquaBounty's GMO salmon could be approved in the FDA next month. The passage of this rider in an unrelated budget spending bill could open the floodgates for these new approvals, even if the budget agreement only last for the next six months.

Any new approvals could threaten the livelihoods of America’s farmers, as the approval of even a single one of these untested crops can lead to widespread contamination of farmers’ crops, bringing economic harm to farmers and contamination to our seed supply.

Join Food Demcoracy Now! in calling for mandatory GMO labeling today! It's time to take back our government. Every voice counts!

For the past year, family farm advocates and legal experts have fought to stop the Monsanto Protection Act, another special interest corporate giveaway that fundamentally undermines the federal courts’ ability to protect family farmers and the environment from potentially hazardous genetically engineered (GMO) crops that have not been proven safe.

We recognize that there are narrow-minded people out there who do not think that a 6-month provision that subverts our Constitution and judicial authority for another corporate handout to Monsanto is worth shutting down the federal government, but here at Food Democracy Now! we disagree.

We are greatly encouraged by the quarter million American people who have signed this letter and the tens of thousands of phone calls to Congress and the White House to demand that our basic rights are upheld by our elected officials, particularly our President. This is a sign of how urgent citizen participation is to maintaining a democracy.

Washington has failed us. It is clearer now than ever that "we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for"!

Thanks for participating in food democracy,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! teamhttp://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/obama_signs_monsanto_protection_act_time_to_label_gmos/?akid=807.198452.TxXhNy&rd=1&t=11

I'm a Brit! (LOL!)

The Guardian reports that wannabe immigrants to Britain will in future have to score at least 75% on a test of Brit knowledge, including knowing what those Pythons were up to in the 70s.  Quite right too!

You can take the Brit-quiz for yourself at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/quiz/2013/jan/27/british-citizenship-test-quiz-new.  Good luck!

[Pssssssst!  I took it, and got this result:  "You scored 10 out of a possible 10. Full marks. That is terrifically British (just so long as you don't boast about it to anyone)."]

Social Security: the Real Numbers

Congressman Alan Grayson knows whereof he speaks on matters of social programs and the Budget.  Here's what he said on a recent interview with John Fugelsang on Current TV, about the alleged crisis in "entitlement"* spending:

John Fugelsang: President Obama did meet with Senate Democrats today. And according to Politico -- and I found this a bit disturbing -- "He warned them that social insurance programs, including Social Security and Medicare, would need to be cut in some way in order to keep them going." Now, we've discussed this before. The President also said Republicans would have to agree to more revenue before he'd agree to change those programs. What do you think of that particular bargain, sir? Do social insurance programs need to be cut in order to save them, and will this particular crop of Republicans ever agree to add new revenues anyway?

Congressman Alan Grayson: No. The answer is that they don't.  Social Security has almost $2 trillion in the bank. It is the largest government fund in the entire world. That's what they've got sitting in the bank, and that's what the rest of the government and the American people owe that fund. Under current law, Social Security can pay 100% of its benefits for the next twenty-five years. which is probably longer than I'm going to need it.  And after that point, 85% to 95% of its benefits, forever. A minor tweak like, for instance, raising the cap on who has to pay Social Security taxes above the current [limit of] roughly $100,000, or, for instance, making it apply to investment income -- either one of those two things would make the program solvent forever. The situation is not terribly different for Medicare.

John: So does the President mean it when he talks about putting these cuts on the table, sir?

Alan: Look, I take no pleasure in saying this, because the President is my President. I voted for him twice, and he is the leader of my party. But in this regard, the President is wrong.

*ENTITLEMENTS - yet another example of the way (and we have to admit, it's brilliant how they get away with it) the right wing turn anything good and postive into a crime, or a source of resentment.  "Progressive"  wanting the world to be better, "Liberal", which means kind and generous - and many ohters, reduced to curse words in American political discourse.

Yes, an entitlement like Social Security or Medicare, is something people have paid for their whole working lives, which they are entitled to, and yet the masters of double-speak have reduced it to meaning scrounging or thievery.

Take a look at John Nichols' book "The S-Word", for a concise accounting of the pivotal role Socilaist ideas have played in US history - and yet no one is allowed even to utter the word....

More Glamour

Our good friend Lise Solvang has released more pictures of her wonderful, crocheted fashion-garments. Originally from Norway, Lise creates these dresses from her knowledge of ancient Scandinavian folk-tales, and imbues them with a mystery and romance that's not often seen in sunny SoCal....

And Lise's career is on a roll:  a Norwegian publisher has commissioned a coffee-table book of the glamorous designs, and they are also on display, with many other beautiful works by local artists, at an exhibition of "Fiber Art Masterpieces" at the Ojai Valley Museum.

Lise likes to make her mark on the local environment, too - with a unique sort of decorative, Performance-Art event, which she calls Yarn-Bombing.  Here's one of the milder examples:

You can "read all about it", with many more Glamour pics, at Lise's Blog,

"A Hand-Knit Life".

Karl Marx Rocks (and Rolls?)

From my "War On The 60s" Book Proposal:

“Karl Marx said that when we arrive at the perfect society, an ordinary person will be able to go fishing in the morning, spend the afternoon working and read Plato in the evening. In other words, he would be at home in Nature, he would make a willing, useful contribution to society, and he would be possessed of an educated and curious mind.

Is there anything wrong with that?”

Now the Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch - and the BBC - report that  a Chinese director is creating a Karl Marx musical in Shanghai, complete with singing and dancing.

But the idea may not be as crazy as it might at first sound:  "We will bring [Marx's] economic theories to life in a trendy, interesting and educational play, which will be fun to watch," director He Nian told the state-run China Daily.

"Those behind the project say this approach will help people understand what many consider a dry, philosophical text. But the producers promise they will not trivialise Marx's central message.

"To make sure that does not happen, Zhang Jun, an economics professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, will act as an advisor on the production. "It seems good timing to do the play when the global economic crisis has become a key phrase in people's lives," he said.

The BBC reporter says nowhere epitomises modern China's communist-capitalist approach more than the modern, capitalist city of Shanghai, "But director He said the money-driven city was a perfect place to stage the production, particularly now, with global capitalism coming under fire."

He sure has a point....

Glamour

I decided to revert to the British spelling of Glamour – it looks better!

This charming picture comes from a sweet Blog run by our new friend in the cool (60s!) town of Jerome, Arizona. Julie runs a wonderful store specializing in Kaleidoscopes. Not the toys you remember from back... then, although they have some of those, but glorious futuristic machinesthat make amazing images from something, anything, and nothing. Endless, beautiful entertainment and no cable fees!

Julie describes her Blog as “sort of a diary of my natural dyeing endeavors” - it's lovely, friendly, and you home creatives will eat it up!

Much more - glamorous and otherwise - soon....

The Curse of the Blogger

Hi folks!

Lots of ideas this week - the problem is where to start, and how to present it!  The main theme on my mind is Fracking - watch this space for the Geek's explanation of what it is, and much more on the political and environmental aspects.

Then there's Glamor - gorgeous pics up soon....

And the amazing situation of the Banks in Cyprus is unfolding daily - we'll see.

Unfortunately, The Curse of the Blogger has struck - in the form of the computer shutting down of its own volition, and leaving all the material I had collected, wandering around cyberspace.  Wouldn't you know it!?

Hopefully, it will all be retrieved and presented for your delight very shortly.

Stay tuned - back with more very soon!

COINTELPRO, Anyone?

From my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s" -

On a night in March 1971 when much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing-match, a group of activists broke into the two-man FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, with a crowbar, and emptied the file cabinets of more than a thousand documents.

They called themselves The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, and the papers revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress any challenge to the status quo.

16 days later, over the Government's objections, the “Washington Post” revealed that it had received an envelope with 14 FBI documents, detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, mail carriers and a switchboard operator at nearby Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.

The “burglars” were never identified; and the American public heard for the first time a sinister new word,: "COINTELPRO". Short for the FBI's "secret counterintelligence program," this was created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the U.S. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles," as one COINTELPRO memo put it, "to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

It wasn't until 1975-76 that the Senate mounted a full-scale investigation, known as the Church Committee after its chair, Sen. Church of Idaho. They found that the FBI, working with local Police forces, ignored the law and the Constitution....

“Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

Oui, C'est Bono! Wealth vs Poverty Today

First the good news, then the bad....

There's a witty and hopeful speech by Bono, on the massive progress we're making towards eliminating poverty in the world - almost never mentioned in the mainstream media:





And there's the struggle to make the 1% pay even a fraction of their grotesque wealth towards the common good - this came in today from the Daily Kos:

"Despite conservative screams about the “socialist communist Kenyan Muslim” in the White House, fact is that Wall Street just had its best week… ever. That’s not hyperbole -- the Dow just hit new highs ten days in a row.

Meanwhile, in real America, the sequester threatens hundreds of thousands of jobs in the midst of an anemic recovery, with DC deadlocked thanks to obstructionist Republicans. And of course, conservatives continue to insist that any budget deal include further hardships on the working class and retired.

But Sens. Tom Harkin and Sheldon Whitehouse have a better idea -- a Wall Street speculation tax. The burden on traders would be minimal -- just three pennies on every $100 traded, or 0.03 percent.

This absurdly modest tax would raise $352 billion over 10 years, or one-third of what the sequester will cut, creating and saving jobs, and putting the burden where it belongs -- on those who created our economic problems, profited most from taxpayer bailouts, and continue to profit today.

As is usually the case in DC, the roadblock isn’t public opinion -- 81 percent of Americans support a tax on trading. What we need are bold leaders to take on the corporatist lobby, and a grassroots army to have their backs.
Join with Daily Kos, Democracy for America, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse by signing the petition telling Congress to tax Wall Street speculation.

Keep fighting,
Markos Moulitsas
Publisher and founder, Daily Kos"

And this from Food Democracy Now, about the Monsanto gangsters, and their plan to control the world's Food Supply:

"Dear Friend,

Once again, Monsanto and the biotech industry are working behind closed doors to undermine your basic rights. This time they’ve gone too far!

This week, Senator Mikulski (D-MD) has introduced an outrageous rider giving a blank check to Monsanto and other corporations to plant illegal genetically engineered crops and it could be voted on tomorrow!

This dangerous rider was not included in the House-passed CR, and we are extremely disappointed to see that Senator Mikulski has included it in the Senate version.

Thanks to our pressure Senator Tester has introduced an amendment (#74), co-sponsored by Senators Boxer, Gillibrand, and Leahy, to strike the rider from the Continuing Resolution!

Hidden under the guise of a “Farmer Assurance Provision” (Section 735), the provision strips the rights of federal courts to halt the sale and planting of genetically engineered crops during the legal appeals process.

In the past, legal advocates have successfully won in court the right to halt the sale and planting of unapproved GMO crops while the approval of those crops is under review by a federal judge.

Join us in putting a stop to the Monsanto Protection Act!

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/stop_the_monsanto_protection_act_today_senate/"

There you have it - the Good, the Bad, and the Plenty To Do!

Peace and Love,

Richard. (Click on the links to sign the Petitions!)

Do I Give a Sh*t About The Pope?

I ask myself, Do I Give a Sh*t About The Pope?

When I was about 12, my Grandfather, an amiable old guy who enjoyed life, didn't work too hard, and attended a High Anglican, not Roman Catholic, Church, went to Rome.  With his jolly English Church group, he stood with thousands of others in St Peter's Square, to be waved at by a very old guy in a dress.

(For a hilarious take on Church vestments as a fashion show, check out the great Italian Director Federico Fellini's "Roma" -

)

Dear old Pop sent home a postcard of the cheering crowd at St Peter's, with his personal report of seeing the Pope on the balcony: "He's such a good man". 

I was just a kid, but I had a questioning mind, and I remember thinking, "How does he know he's a good man?  Has he met him?"

I feel about the same when I watch the hoopla on the media about the selection of the new incumbent to be head of this strange organization.  I don't believe in God, I definitely don't believe that the Pope, always old, always frail, usually Italian, is the chosen voice of God, divinely selected in an unbroken line from Jesus' buddy, Peter.  Years ago I learned that the Roman Church is the largest holder of stocks and shares in the world; if that's no longer true, I'm sure it's still a contender.  Is that how you do the work of God, by amassing the largest fortune in the world, while your flock includes millions of the poorest people on the planet?

(As I point out in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s", Jesus can be very well described as a Hippie Socialist.)

Why is the secular, non-Catholic media always fascinated by the pomp and circumstance of a discredited organization?  An organization which is at the center of a foul scandal of child rape?  Which is known to have helped many leading Nazis to escape justice at the end of Word War 2?

My only guess so far, is that they want to be on the right side of an Establishment institution, and in the process, bolster that Establishment's grip on the minds of the masses worldwide.  Wonderful!


The respected investigative journalist, Robert Parry, who exposed Ollie North and Iran-Contra, and won a Polk Award, has been digging into the past career of their new Pope, who's chosen to take the name of another flower child, Francis of Assisi:

‘Dirty War’ Questions for Pope Francis

March 13, 2013

Exclusive: The U.S. “news” networks bubbled with excitement over the selection of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be Pope Francis I. But there was silence on the obvious question that should be asked about any senior cleric from Argentina: What was Bergoglio doing during the “dirty war,” writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry (Updated March 14, 2013, to delete incorrect reference to Bergoglio in Guardian article)
If one wonders if the U.S. press corps has learned anything in the decade since the Iraq War – i.e. the need to ask tough question and show honest skepticism – it would appear from the early coverage of the election of Pope Francis I that U.S. journalists haven’t changed at all, even at “liberal” outlets like MSNBC.
The first question that a real reporter should ask about an Argentine cleric who lived through the years of grotesque repression, known as the “dirty war,” is what did this person do, did he stand up to the murderers and torturers or did he go with the flow. If the likes of Chris Matthews and other commentators on MSNBC had done a simple Google search, they would have found out enough about Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to slow their bubbling enthusiasm.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, in 2008. (Photo credit: Aibdescalzo)

Bergoglio, now the new Pope Francis I, has been identified publicly as an ally of Argentine’s repressive leaders during the “dirty war” when some 30,000 people were “disappeared” or killed, many stripped naked, chained together, flown out over the River Plate or the Atlantic Ocean and pushed sausage-like out of planes to drown.
The “disappeared” included women who were pregnant at the time of their arrest. In some bizarre nod to Catholic theology, they were kept alive only long enough to give birth before they were murdered and their babies were farmed out to military families, including to people directly involved in the murder of the babies’ mothers.
Instead of happy talk about how Bergoglio seems so humble and how he seems so sympathetic to the poor, there might have been a question or two about what he did to stop the brutal repression of poor people and activists who represented the interests of the poor, including “liberation theology” priests and nuns, during the “dirty war.”
Here, for instance, is an easily retrievable story from Guardian columnist Hugh O’Shauhnessy from 2011, which states:
“To the judicious and fair-minded outsider it has been clear for years that the upper reaches of the Argentine church contained many ‘lost sheep in the wilderness’, men who had communed and supported the unspeakably brutal Western-supported military dictatorship which seized power in that country in 1976 and battened on it for years.
“Not only did the generals slaughter thousands unjustly, often dropping them out of aeroplanes over the River Plate and selling off their orphan children to the highest bidder, they also murdered at least two bishops and many priests. Yet even the execution of other men of the cloth did nothing to shake the support of senior clerics, including representatives of the Holy See, for the criminality of their leader General Jorge Rafael Videla and his minions.
“As it happens, in the week before Christmas [2010] in the city of Córdoba Videla and some of his military and police cohorts were convicted by their country’s courts of the murder of 31 people between April and October 1976, a small fraction of the killings they were responsible for. The convictions brought life sentences for some of the military.
“These were not to be served, as has often been the case in Argentina and neighbouring Chile, in comfy armed forces retirement homes but in common prisons. Unsurprisingly there was dancing in the city’s streets when the judge announced the sentences.
“What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentine hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church’s collaboration … in these crimes. The extent of the church’s complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence),” which alleges Bergoglio’s complicity in human right abuses.
The Guardian article stated: “The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio’s name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.
“One would have thought that the Argentine bishops would have seized the opportunity to call for pardon for themselves and put on sackcloth and ashes as the sentences were announced in Córdoba but that has not so far happened. … Cardinal Bergoglio has plenty of time to be measured for a suit of sackcloth – perhaps tailored in a suitable clerical grey.”
Now, instead of just putting forward Bergoglio’s name as a candidate for Pope, the College of Cardinals has actually elected him. Perhaps the happy-talking correspondents from the U.S. news media will see no choice but to join in the cover-up of what Pope Francis did during the “dirty war.” Otherwise, they might offend some people in power and put their careers in jeopardy.
In contrast to the super-upbeat tone of American TV coverage, the New York Times did publish a front-page analysis on the Pope’s conservatism, citing his “vigorous” opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the ordination of women. The Times article by Emily Schmall and Larry Rohter then added:
“He was less energetic, however, when it came to standing up to Argentina’s military dictatorship during the 1970s as the country was consumed by a conflict between right and left that became known as the Dirty War. He has been accused of knowing about abuses and failing to do enough to stop them while as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship."

Geek of The Week #3

From a 2007 blog by David Sessions:  How much does a racehorse pee?

"The third leg of horse racing's Triple Crown takes place on Saturday, with the running of the Belmont Stakes. Around 60,000 fans will be watching in Elmont, N.Y., as they put down beer and the track's signature cocktails. Needless to say, they'll probably be peeing as much as the racehorses. Wait, how much does a racehorse pee?

A lot. Horses typically produce several quarts of urine every four hours, for a total of about 1.5 to 2 gallons per day. (By contrast, an adult male human pees 1 or 2 quarts per day.) The stream, usually one-third to a half-inch in diameter, can last up to 30 seconds. In general, the larger the animal, the more it pees. A Clydesdale, for example, weighs twice as much as a Thoroughbred and produces urine in greater volume (and with a more pungent smell). An average pasture horse that spends its day grazing might also beat a racehorse in a peeing match: Pasture grass contains a lot more water than the carefully prepared grains and pellets fed to racehorses."

Don't Call Me a Radical!

I'm an Abraham Lincoln Republican....

As a child of the 60s, I'm for freedom and fulfillment; and I'm a Lincoln Republican - a seeker of Government of the people, by the people, and above all, for the people.

As you might imagine, I've run up against my share of “Conservatives” in the course of researching my book, "The War On The 60s". You probably have too. The kind of people who have no interest in listening to anything you have to say, only in shooting it down, preferably before you've had time to even get the words out. People who reject any change without a moment's consideration, and who habitually “shoot the messenger” rather than debate his ideas. One of their favorite tricks, I've found, is to assume they know what you think, and attack that, rather than waiting to find out what you actually have to say.

Does this sound familiar at all?

The real state of American Equality

Thanks to the mighty John Equality Osmand for sharing this.  It's a wee bit slow, but the pay-off is worth it.

Video link:  http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/wealth-inequality/

The Frackers use Psy-Ops on the (Pennsylvania) People

In a [Conference] session entitled “Designing a Media Relations Strategy To Overcome Concerns Surrounding Hydraulic Fracturing,” Range Resources communications director Matt Pitzarella spoke about “overcoming stakeholder concerns” about the fracking process.

“We have several former psy ops folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments,” Pitzarella said. “Really all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of psy ops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.”

(Another) presenter can be heard recommending that his colleagues download a copy of the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual. That’s because, he said, the opposition facing the industry is an “insurgency.”

Read the full report, "Oil Executive Calls Anti-Fracking Movement an Insurgency, Applies Psy-Ops" here:  http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/oil-executive-calls-anti-fracking-movement-an-insurgency-applies-psy-ops/

................................................................
For a detailed account of what Fracking is, and its effects, go here:  http://www.environmentnewyork.org/reports/nye/costs-fracking

Wanna be a Climate Activist?

This in today from the brilliant Bill McKibben, dedicated Climate Change activist and leader of the campaign to stop the insane Keystone XL pipeline.  After the Alberta tarsands have been poisoned to release a small amount of oil by viciously destructive and wasteful fracking, the corrupt elite in the State Department - State is in there because it involves Canada - want to allow said oil to be transported thousands of miles by pipe, to the Gulf of Mexico. 

WHY?  God knows. 

Oh wait!  It couldn't be for short-term profit, could it?

Read on, Friends....

Bill McKibben says: 

Friends,

Yesterday Time Magazine declared that Keystone had become the Stonewall and the Selma of the climate movement -- and today we got a reminder of just how tough those fights were, and how tough this one will be.

On a Friday afternoon, with Secretary of State John Kerry half a world away and D.C. focused on the budget fight, the State Department released a new environmental impact statement for the pipeline. Like the last such report, it found that approving a 800,000 barrel-a-day fuse to one of the planet’s biggest carbon bombs was “unlikely to have a substantial impact” on the tar sands or the climate.

That, in a word, is nonsense -- some of our most important climate scientists in the U.S. have written the State Department to explain exactly how dangerous Keystone is. Just yesterday Europe’s top climate diplomat pointed out that it would send a truly terrible signal to the rest of the world.

President Obama will be making a decision in a few short months. I won’t lie: today’s report makes the odds look even tougher -- and the power of the fossil fuel lobby hasn’t waned one bit.

But I’m reminded that the last time the State Department issued an environmental impact statement about the pipeline, we were just beginning this fight. That day in 2011, 50 people were arrested at the White House during the very first wave of protests against the pipeline.

This time around we’re tens of thousands of people stronger, and once again, I think we are just beginning to fight.

In these next months we need to send a signal to the White House that we’re not standing down. There are two things I think we should begin working on immediately.

First -- since it’s clear that the polite but firm warnings of our top climate scientists aren’t being heard -- anytime that the President or Secretary of State Kerry appears in public, it’s crucial that we let them know that we won’t accept this pipeline or the damage it will do to our climate. We need a team of rapid responders coast-to-coast who can turn around with 24 hours notice and raise a ruckus at these events when we find out about them.

If you can be on call to respond quickly when they visit near you, let us know by adding your name here: act.350.org/signup/kxl-rapid-response/

I should also say that with our global network, both President Obama and Secretary Kerry can expect to hear from folks when they head abroad as well.
Second, we need to raise the heat this spring and summer. Significantly. To get a jump on the season, 350.org and our allies will be hosting a massive day of action and training at venues across the country in May. It will be the first muster for the grassroots army we hope will fan out across the nation this summer, and a unified statement of our intention to fight this pipeline.

If you’re keen to get involved, click here to add your name as well and we’ll get in touch about how to make it happen: act.350.org/signup/may-day-of-action/

Even as we stick it to the pipeline, we’re going on offense as well, with a student-led divestment campaign that grows by the day (and increasingly moves off campus to city governments and faith communities too), and a Global Power Shift gathering this June in Turkey to gather young leaders across the globe.

I don’t know how this will all go down -- only that it won’t go down easily. After watching Arctic sea ice practically disappear last summer, and Superstorm Sandy hit New York, I can also tell you that this is a key moment for our planet, and your role in it will be remembered for a long, long time -- as will the President’s.

Here’s how Time put it yesterday: “There are many climate problems a President can’t solve, but Keystone XL isn’t one of them. It’s a choice between Big Oil and a more sustainable planet.” As with those historic moments at Stonewall or Selma, “The right answer isn’t always somewhere in the middle.”

Thanks for all you’ve done, and thanks for all you’ll do.

Bill McKibben

P.S. - We're also going to be hosting strategy sessions across the country on March 10th to cover these things and more. A few have already been set up -- see here: act.350.org/event/2013-strategy-sessions/ -- but if you'd like to host a gathering to plan on all these things together, click to sign up here: act.350.org/event/2013-strategy-sessions/create/

What The F**k Department....

This is what our tax dollars pay for, while the morons who rule us are busy cutting Health Care and Pensions?

Bernie says: "Tax Corporations!"

Please vote in Sen. Bernie Sanders Poll.

"Some $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts are due to take effect beginning Friday unless President Obama and Congress agree on an alternative. In poll after poll, large majorities of Americans agree with Bernie that the way to lower deficits is to stop letting the wealthiest Americans and profitable corporations use offshore tax shelters and other loopholes to evade taxes. The American people also are clear that they do not want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, education and other important programs. “It's unfortunate,” Bernie told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing on Wednesday, “that Congress is not listening.”

Watch the Video: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/media/view/?id=1aede735-5056-a032-529f-9e1c43af66e2

The Poll is here: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/polls/?uid=b6ddcbb9-6f60-48e6-b98b-4ea97e490d41

Have a great day!