Another tax on working stiffs the Plutocrats deny!

It's the junk mail and television that does it!

Robber Barons in the Junk Mail
by

Lisa Rowe Fraustino

What fun. I just got off the phone with someone at MBNA, the credit card issuer that "earned 1.5 times more profit than McDonalds in 2004." I called for clarification on some points in the document I had just read, or attempted to read, entitled "Important Changes to Your Credit Card Account," which, fortunately, I had not slung out with all the other junk mail my husband and I receive from credit card companies on a daily basis.

This one also appeared junky-its return address had a post office box and city but no company name anywhere on the envelope, the postage was a preprinted bulk mail imprint instead of a stamp, and my own address had that distinctive spat-out appearance that happens with mass mailings-but it also had a line printed across the bottom stating "Important Amendments to Your Credit Card Agreement Enclosed."

Uh-oh.

As someone who had once before been burned by a similar amendment, that is, as someone who had once gone through a credit card statement to find an unexpected increase in the interest rate, only to learn upon calling the company that, apparently, the changes had been sent to me but had somehow escaped my notice. Somehow. Like, concealed in junk mail trappings so I wouldn't pay attention. Anyway, I knew to open this one, and with a sinking feeling read the terms.

Yes, on the very same day that Congress approved a bill to protect all those poor abused credit card companies from all those evil deadbeat bunkruptcy filers, I had received notice from the most profitable credit card company in the world that they were changing my terms from a 5.9 percent fixed rate to a higher variable rate; that they were changing the default APR pricing comparably, and the grace period, and the payment due date, plus upping the late fee, etcetera etcetera, and they must have noticed that I went to Thailand in January, or maybe it was my airline and hotel reservations to an upcoming conference in Winnipeg that gave them the brilliant idea to add a "Foreign Transaction Fee" of three percent, and, oh, "the conversion rate will be reduced by one percent campared to the way it was previously determined."

So, anyway, the human voice I finally contacted at MBNA, after many minutes of musical button punching followed by many more minutes on hold, told me that I had read the small print right, that indeed my sweet fixed rate of 5.9 percent would be increasing to a nasty variable rate (currently 8.99 percent), that this would happen as of May 25, 2005, and that I may reject the increase and default APR pricing if I give notice in writing, in which case my rate will remain fixed at 5.9 percent until it is paid off as long as I never use the card again after May 24, or if I do use it then the changes will kick in anyway even if I didn't accept them.

This is an improvement over the last time a credit card company tried to stick it to me-at least I can freeze the rate. The last company allowed card holders to reject terms but only if they paid off the balance and canceled the account. That, of course, I indeed accomplished by switching credit card companies. There's always a better offer coming in the mail, if not today, maybe next next week. And so I will reject these changes in big letters highlighted with yellow marker handwritten on scrap paper to show the underpaid paper pusher at MBNA what I think of her boss, and I will wait for another hungry company to lure me and reel me in. They all want me, you know-I'm very attractive, hot even, with my truly excellent credit rating and my record of always paying bills on time and my secure job teaching at a state university while carrying a stubborn credit balance that refuses to go away.

Hey, I got divorced a few years back. And remarried last summer. And I have three kids in college. And I live in Connecticut. Where I moved from a much cheaper state for a new job in 2002. Any one of those would be reason enough to rack up some credit card debt, but it's getting harder and harder to pay off with the various and sundry ways our economy is causing middle-class ends not to meet. I've always been pretty good with finances, shopping around for the lowest interest rates, trying hard to keep the debt load down, driving used cars with good gas mileage, wearing old shoes and only buying last season's clothes on sale (but not at Wal-Mart).

Meanwhile gas and heat prices have gone up and up and up (one frigid month we had an electric bill of $429 for heat in our 1500-foot home, which we keep at a toasty 65 degrees in winter), and so have the property taxes on said home, by over $800 a year-which, of course, would have made a nice dent in the credit card balance. Thank you very much, Republicans, for that clever little transfer of the burden, which, if I did my math right, adds up to more than my so-called "tax cuts" from Mr. Bush.

My husband and I know full well what we need to do. We need to save money to prevent disaster in the case of disaster like cancer or not getting tenure, but to save we need to stop incurring debt and pay off the mortage and the car loans and the student loans and the credit cards. With the credit card companies increasing their interest rates at the same time as consumer borrowing is increasing to pay for escalating costs in basic needs, it becomes harder and harder for people to pay off debts, save money, and, wow, wouldn't this be nice, maybe even invest in stocks, like, wow, MBNA stocks, which I predict will have a lovely rate of return after May 25, 2005 (just a little hunch, there). But I'm thinking maybe the stock market isn't all that interested in middle-class pocket change, unless it comes out of the big collective pockets of social security.

By the looks of their profit returns, MBNA didn't need to raise my interest rates or anyone else's. They really ought to watch out where they put their greedy fingers. Haven't they heard the old adage about not biting the hand that feeds? What about the consumer economy? Don't they want us to be able to afford to buy new stuff to pay them exorbitant interest on? Do they actually want to drive middle-class people into a back-breaking and inescapable debt ratio just because they can? Are our wealthy citizens who run these businesses and own shares in them really that greedy? Are our elected representatives really that short sighted in allowing credit card companies to change the rules at will, always benefitting themselves and never their consumers?

When we sign papers for fixed rates on mortgages, car loans, and student loans, fixed means fixed. We know the deal and can budget accordingly. But credit card companies get to change all the rules whenever they want, and consumers can't do a damned thing about it except pay up or move debt around. There's something wrong with this system. We might even call it morally bankrupt. Instead of blaming the debtor and making it harder to erase credit card debts in bankruptcy, instead of catering to the desires of big business, our government representatives ought to be taking a hard look at the needs of their constituents.

Constituents. That means people. People who vote. Corporations, the last I checked, don't get to vote. They just get to make profit, and externalize whatever costs they can, including human costs. The constituents who elect government officials are not unfeeling, profit-driven companies but living, breathing people who need government regulations to counterbalance the sociopathic effects of capitalism. I'm all for the aspects of capitalism that promote economic health and democratic principles, but there's a greed line that ought not be crossed in a society symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, on whose pedestal is inscribed: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.."

How rich DO the rich have the right to get? On the backs of the working poor and middle class? It would be understandable if MBNA had to change its terms of agreement for sound fiscal health, but they're already in perfect health and are taking more than their fair share to gain even more wealth, like the robber barons of old. Just because they can.

Why don't our elected officials protect the huddled masses from credit card policies that amount to theft? They ought to. They really ought to.

This essay originally appeared at: http://www.commondreams.org/
Lisa Rowe Fraustino teaches English at Eastern Connecticut State University specializing in children's and young adult literature. Her most recent book is

I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials.

She can be reached at FraustinoL@easternct.edu.

This essay is reprinted in the Flyer with her permission.

Posted on the Round Rooster Barn Circuit last weekend.

A Country Curmudgeon’s take on:
Tree House Hero’s short feature movie
"Four More Years."

By yer scribbling publisher, Michael Caddell


Tree House Hero
"Four More Years"
[3.5 Meg secured live line feed.]
https://home.comcast.net/~treehousehero/films.htm

or

http://tinyurl.com/5dzxr

Someone in Kansas needs to see the scariest short feature movie made before the pope's funeral.

(Since it has been 24/7 wall to wall Popery [post-national vegetative state ala Florida] I think some confession and penitence is in order. The much-awaited but delayed installment of the "Bush Phone Tree" series is my rotten fault. I have confessed to have been to the tree house, did not find anyone there and snuck off with a picture. I credited it at the time when churning on the cut line, but it was without notification. You know the photo of the "white trash" Republican sitting on his porch toilet.

It is located here: http://tinyurl.com/6vwvb scroll down you cannot miss it. I have stopped gore viewing the pope's funeral long enough and struck by a desire for contrition from the neighborhood Tree House Hero write these words. The internet neighborhood is that small folks. The film "Four More Years" linked upstairs is another genius discomfort production who gave us the sorely missed drunk Republican porch monkey. - see * note below.)


The animated feature "Four More Years" is no flash and burn - quick edit to pounding music. This is the kind of dark humor that will be flashing on public computer monitors along the dirty hallways of some future worker anthill housing our grandchildren.

Believe me the short feature is that good. I have my friends over and watch their mouths drop open from the images while hearing the Bush barely edited voice-over.

The flashes of Bush "666" carved Charlie Manson style upon Mt. Rushmore, the head pikes and crucifixions of Lady Liberty will give the hardest Passion of Christ viewers flashback attacks while eating their vote for our "war on the brain" fearless leader. The visible brain warp shown on the faces of viewers is worth inviting "Last Supper" style the next-door neighbors, or even better Ma and Pa Kettle down the road.

Debt slaves and low wage conservatives need to view this while over to the home sucking suds and yucking over the baseball game on the teevee. The classic runs shorter than the commercials and is a great trick to play on them when it's grill time at the BBQ. Another good setting is to seat them with headsets on at damn near full blast and leave the room.


Tree House Hero is a venerable title of honor among Kansans since so many sodbusters working for the spreading tentacles of the Big Ag Combines are bulldozing down hedgerows in pursuit of every square inch of ground for profit.

A “Tree House Hero” is as good as one can expect to be called in a land where trees are rarely spared the Dust Bowl imperative of free market economics, out here Bush rules are applied. The current rage among farmers has been to cultivate the land for the “bio - diesel” fuel “alternative.” “Bio – diesel fuels” a rather fashionable oxymoronic phrase is sweeping the patriotic “War on Terrorism” rural economy.

Blow-dried, pancake make up graduates from the local University School of Journalism stand in the daunting plowed fields hold their microphones up to the gravel voiced, heavily mortgaged landed tenant pontificate on “doing our part” in making America “free from foreign oil” and “energy independent.”

Bull doze the trees and hedgerows, drive out the wildlife and grow what you ask? More soybeans and corn, of course. Damn few Tree House Heroes in Kansas.

The Internet is spreading throughout the Kansas countryside …

Computer internet hooks in the countryside are popping up everywhere so when the day comes for an internet bar in Nortonville, Ks. I know what I am going to do.

I can see the red-cheeked glow of the same friendly Bush loving Hayseed as he stumbles up to the internet feed at the local veteran's bar and clicks that connection to the Tree House Hero link.

He bobs a little, sways slightly, burps, and starts mumbling about "what that damns Fightin' Cock dick is talking about … a Tree House Hero?"

He clicks and the images start flashing across his face.

Another Kansas hayseed gurgling beer and mumbling about "gettin' screwed again" or some widowed church lady sitting quietly at her computer staring wide – eyed and murmuring in a post – Pope JP haze “I always thought he was evil.”

Go there and check out a real Tree House Hero at:

https://home.comcast.net/~treehousehero/films.htm

*A short revision since circulated on the reader list.

See, the internet is that small! Blue Barn HQ just received official word from our Tree House Hero to charge forward with our truthseeking project!

The drunk Republican porch monkey will be returning with new low wage conservative friends in the not - so - distant future. The end is near, hope you have a sense of humor.

He didn't listen then, he's not listening now!

When "pro - life" George didn't listen ... to the "anti - war" Pope.

"I BELIEVE IT! EVERY WORD ... EVERY SINGLE WORD!"

God's OK On Abortion

"And when he hath made her drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed." (Numbers 5:27-28)


Comment
This nonsensical ritual, prescribed by God, to a woman suspected of infidelity, must undergo the drinking of a vile concoction made of bitter water and dust from the floor of a tabernacle. A priest calls a curse upon the woman's head to insure that if she has acted in adultery the drinking of the liquid will cause her to have a miscarriage. If she comes out clean, then she shall conceive.

Regardless of how ridiculous this procedure seems, any person who believes every word of the Bible must come to terms with the realization that the quoted God here sometimes authorizes abortion.
(also see Num. 5:1-25)

The Talking Donkey

"And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff. And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, 'What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?' And Balaam said unto the ass, 'Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee.' And the ass said unto Balaam, 'Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee?' And he said, 'Nay.'" (Numbers 22:27-30)


Comment
Here we have, as absurd as it may seem, a talking donkey. If we came across a talking animal, would we not feel amazed? Yet, oddly, Balaam here seems not the least bit concerned and converses with the ass as if nothing unusual had happened!
Given that millions of fundamentalists believe every world in the Bible, they would have us also believe that the Bible has its own version of Mr. Ed.
Notice that Balaam's cruel behavior to the donkey seems to have mimicked God's jealous behavior towards His people. Yet God responds to Balaam: "thy way is perverse before me." (Num. 22:32)

"If the bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe it."
-William Jennings Bryan-

Pray in the Closet

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hyprocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (Matthew 6:5-6)

Comment
The Religious Right wishes to put into law public prayer. How many Christians realize that the Biblical Jesus strongly opposed public prayer?
The wall of separation between Church and State, actually protects the religious liberties for all of us in the United States and here we have Biblical justification for keeping prayer private.

Happy To Kill Children

"Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." (Psalms 137:9, KJV)

"How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones Against the rock." (Psalms 137:9, New American Bible)

"Happy the man who shall seize and smash your little ones against the rock!"
(Psalms 137:9, New American Bible)

"a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock!"
(Psalms 137:9, Jerusalem Bible)

Comment
Ask a Christian friend whether he or she should feel happy to dash a child against the rocks. Your friend will most likely stare at you in horror, much less believe this idea exists in their sacred Bible.

Many Churches have found this verse quite embarrassing. It gives no wonder why priests, Jews, and Christians alike, who quote from Psalms 137, always leaving out this last verse.
(See also Isaiah 13:16; Hosea 13-16)

God Condones Slavery

"Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids." (Leviticus 25:44 , KJV)

"As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may aquire male and female slaves." (Leviticus 25:44, NRSV)

Comment
The Biblical meaning rings clear: God not only condones slavery, but gives permission to buy and own slaves. The Southern United States fought The Civil War over such Scriptural teachings.

God Accepts Slavery

"And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever." (Exodus 21:5-6)

Comment
The Bible bears witness to the fact that God accepts not only slavery but violence against such slaves (in this case a awl driven through the ear) for the innocent statement of love for their master, wife and children.

It came from precisely these verses that justified, in many peoples minds, the tortures inflicted on African slaves when they tried to leave their cruel masters in the American colonies. "Good" Christians of the day would drive nails and spikes through the ears of defenseless slaves whose only offense came from the will to no longer serve as slaves.

Not until after the Civil War did federal laws become enacted to protect African Americans from gross physical abuse. Even today, the KKK and "the Aryan Race" use the Bible as justification for their attacks against "Negroes."

Slaughter Of Innocents

"And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain." (Deuteronomy 2:34)

"And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Hesbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city. But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities we took for a prey to ourselves." (Deuteronomy 3:6-7)

Comment
Such words helped give justification to mediaeval Crusaders who slaughtered men, women and children along their way to Jerusalem and stole the spoils of the cities. Even today, many Christian military men use Scripture to justify their actions. If any soldier harbors doubt about killing his fellow humans, he need only consult a military chaplain or read the Bible to calm their worries. Even George Bush (the First), with Billy Graham beside him, proclaimed the Gulf War as "moral." George Bush (the Second) continued in his father's steps by killing thousands of Iraqi civilians in the Iraqi war. Such moral wars result in thousands of "utterly destroyed" innocent men, women and children.;

(For a few more examples [but not all] see also Deuteronomy 3:3, 7:2, 20:16-17 , 25:19; Joshua 6:21, 8:26, 10-28-40; Numbers 31:17-18; I Samuel 15:3; Isaiah 13:16; and Hosea 13:16)

ALL THE ABOVE FROM:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/

American Center for International Law

The Battle For World Order IS The Neocon Revolution

A lesser form of "World War IV" might be occurring right now, but it's certainly not the one that Mr. Bush's neocon extremists have concocted in their fevered imaginations. [1]

According to Martin Jacques' latest essay, "The Neocon Revolution," the Bush neocons' "preemptive unilateralism" is a calculated paradigm shift in US foreign policy to shatter the post-WW II collective security agreement.

Furthermore, the neocons are currently attempting to extend their regressive influence into the very architecture of the international order by placing neocons John Bolton at the UN and Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. Hence, Mr. Jacques laments the EU's apparent capitulation to neocon pressure on these appointments.

Finally, he questions both the EU's craven acceptance of the neocons' strategic moves from Washington and Europe's reluctance to stand up for an international order that is based on the rule of law and collective security. [2]

According to former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook's latest essay, "Why American Neocons Are Out For Kofi Annan's Blood," we're immersed in a no-holds-barred power struggle between:

(A) the neocon crypto-fascists, who are attempting to impose American supremacy on an unwilling world by machtpolitik (i.e., by "might-makes-right" politics); versus

(B) UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is attempting to preserve the present egalitarian system of multilateral global governance by initiating a procedural and structural reformation of the UN Security Council. [3]

Overarching Conclusion:

Destroying World Order To Create World Hegemony.

Of course, we mortals cannot know the future with certitude. However, the neocons' ongoing attempt to dismantle the international order must have some strategic purpose. When one considers both Mr. Bush's second-term foreign-policy appointments AND the Pentagon's recently-released national "defense" plan, the clear implication is that the Bush administration has resoundingly reaffirmed its militaristic imperialist offensive strategy, which foreshadows more petro-state wars of aggression. Finally, the essays cited in endnote four will provide more probative evidence that this conclusion is NOT dismissible as mere speculation. [4]

The Bottom Line:

If more unjust and illegal wars of aggression are looming on the horizon, it's our job as responsible people of conscience to stop them through either constitutional impeachment proceedings or collective civil disobedience -- which is to say, through our nonviolent noncooperation with evil. [5]

ENDNOTES

[1] A. John Brown's 3-30-05 CD/TD essay, "Why World War IV Can't Sell":
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0330-32.htm
B. Jim Wallis' September 2003 Sojourners essay, "Dangerous Religion:
George W. Bush's Theology Of Empire": http://tinyurl.com/4fxwc
[2] Martin Jacques' 3-31-05 CD/GU essay, "The Neocon Revolution": h ttp://www.commondreams.org/views05/0331-27.htm
[3] Robin Cook's 4-1-05 CD/GU essay,"Why American Neocons Are Out For Kofi Annan's Blood": http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0401-28.htm
[4] A. Ray McGovern's 4-1-04 CD/MH essay, "Honest Intelligence Needed":
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0401-22.htm
B. Evan Augustine Peterson III's 3-31-05 VH essay, "On The USA's Tragic Withdrawal From The Rule Of Law: Pentagon Confirms that Unilateral Preemptive Strikes Are US Policy": http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=28775
C. Adam Williams' 3-29-05 DV essay, "Terrorism And The New National Defense Strategy Of The U.S.": http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar05/Williams0329.htm
D. Mark Jensen's 2-25-05 AOL article, "Scott Ritter Says U.S. Plans June Attack On Iran": http://tinyurl.com/696uc

[5] A. Stephen Zunes' 3-31-05 CD/FPIF essay, "Recognizing the Power of Nonviolent Action": http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0331-31.htm
B. Baltimore Chronicle's 3-30-05 article, "Veterans Group Calls On Congress To Impeach George W. Bush And Dick Cheney":
http://tinyurl.com/6by3a

Author: Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., is the Executive Director of the American Center for International Law ("ACIL").
It is published with Mr. Peterson's permission.
© 2005 EAPIII

A cockadoodle - do heard around the world!

Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas" was the spark.

Dear Michael

Today I read your article "A Message to Conservative Readers & Legislators" reproduced by Anwaar Hussain at his blog Fountainhead (linked at left in the Flyer-MC).

The grapevine has it that a few folk got riled! Seems you've touched just about every hot button there is. Folks sure are sensitive. So, I have a recommendation. In future, clean up your language (inter alia, rename the blog presently known as Fightin' Cock Flyer), and tell people only what they want to hear. Paramount: language and PR.

What they want to hear is as follows: America is great and good. In fact, we are the best. Evils committed in the service of nationalistic pride and imperial gain have nothing but the purest motives. Hence, we commit no evil. You know: collateral damage, and all that? Wiping out Fallujah, for example, leaving the residents in groaning misery, with generations to come of DU related disease and torment - a small price for them to pay. Cause look: George says we're bringing them democracy, freedom and liberty. Michael, remember those three words. Weave them into all your articles.

Now, what? Oh, yes, you lie about the state of our economy, and "maybe you dance". I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how the two parts of that sentence fit together, but take no never mind. When we're all steamed up for god and country, some things simply sound good.

If it's all the same, however, I'll skip the dance part, cause I haven't recently read much good relevant political dogma on the subject. As for the economy, your correspondent, together with most of the other idiots who voted for George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and all the other blood thirsty warmongering lying thieves are well and truly ignorant how our economy is being ravaged. Unlikely anything I might say would impact. But there's an excellent book out with the word 'Kansas' in the title. I'd like to recommend it. "What's the Matter with Kansas," written by Thomas Frank.

However, here I must confess. I read only about a third of the book and had to put it down before throwing up. Let me hasten to reassure your readers, however. The author used no "bad language". He simply told the truth. And the truth about Kansas and about this country is real barf material - only for the strong of stomach.

Before coming to Mr. Hussain, let me say one more thing, following on the previous paragraph. I am not an "America hater". I love my country and all its inhabitants.

It shouldn't be necessary to explain, but I will: There are lots and lots and lots of good Americans. And there are lots and lots and lots of rich Americans. I myself live in an area where poverty is not obvious. But, swear to god, George and the neocons are creating poverty that will be our bane for decades to come. Saying this gives me no pleasure, and I happily would eat crow if proven wrong. But what I totally loathe / hate / abhor is that our Constitution is being systematically shredded, that we are never told the truth, that there appears to be no deep national feeling of shame over the wanton destruction we bring to others who have the great misfortune to be deemed "not us" (and, may, incidentally, be sitting on national treasure that we covet).

As though our creator, whoever she may be, made "insiders" and "outsiders", with the bounty of creation intended only for the "insiders" (happily, us). What shortsighted, self-serving, ungodly arrogance. Who is this god we worship?

Now for Mr Hussain, who saw fit to publish your material on his blog, Fountainhead. I assume he did so because he has a certain sympathy with what you write. Indeed, his blog is an alternative point of view, one not commonly indulged in by those fed from the slop put out by mainstream American media. His point of view is shared by millions of people outside the United States. Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves just why that is. That they "hate us for our freedom" is such simple-minded fall-back clap trap.

Far be it for me to make generalizations on behalf of others, but let me make an educated guess why the United States is not winning any international popularity contests. Try these on for size:


The fact that we kill and plunder virtually at will comes at the top of the list.

The fact that we ignore other people's beliefs and traditions merits mention.

The fact that our environmental "policies" and greed are rapidly (possibly irreversibly) rendering uninhabitable this one and only planet that we share doesn't go down too well.

The fact that human rights is now a nearly meaningless concept, attested to by our secret gulag of torture chambers, causes a bit of concern.

If truly, in our national psyche, life were deemed sacred, we would treat it as such. For the American national psyche, however, consumerism is sacred, with multinational corporations (and the neocons) astride the throne, wielding their trillions of dollars, minus any shred of humility or compassion. Therefore, some of us look at the sanctimonious spectacle with full saturation-style drooling media coverage circling around one dying person for weeks on end and we have a word: HYPOCRISY.

Kindest regards,
Evelyn

Help send POAC to the St. Louis Media Reform Convention this May, 2005.

The Project for the Old American Century needs just a few more pullover shirts sold with images like the above to raise the funds for their trip to the important St. Louis Media Reform Convention this early May, 2005. And the refrigeration magnets look nifty at home, too!

"Naming names and telling it like it is."

An Important Commentary

Printed at CounterPunch, April 2 – 3, 2005 Weekend Edition:

Operation (Un)Truth
A Trojan Jackass for the Anti-War Movement

by

STAN GOFF

Fayetteville, North Carolina

"To mark the second anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq on March 19, various anti-war groups are planning to protest in Fayetteville, N.C., the home of Fort Bragg. It's not the protest, but the location that has some people upset.

"An organization representing veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan said demonstrators are 'wrong and insensitive' to take their complaints to Fort Bragg, because it blames the warriors for the war.

"'The decision makers are not at Fort Bragg, they are in Washington. Rallying against the war by marching at Fort Bragg is like protesting the cows if you don't like McDonalds,' said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Operation Truth."

- from "Anti-War Groups Protesting US Troops Instead of Decision-Makers," by Susan Jones, CNSNews.com, March 17, 2005

Everyone knows the story of the Trojan Horse. An act of friendship used to smuggle the enemy force inside your gates.

Actually, that's the dumbed down version.

The Greeks led the Trojans to believe that the great wooden horse was a Greek war offering to Athena, alleging it had been abandoned on the battlefield. The Greeks left a soldier behind, pretending he was now a non-combatant, to convince the Trojans that if they didn't carry the ligneous steed back into fortified Troy, the Trojans themselves would risk the wrath of the goddess Athena. It's a better story this way. Maybe it's a more apt metaphor, too, for what Paul Rieckhoff and "Operation Truth" are up to with the antiwar movement.

Paul Rieckhoff, a former first-looey in the Reserves who went to Iraq, has now found his political niche as a plant for the Democratic Party, using his outfit's non-profit status to give him plausible deniability. The NGO in question is Operation Truth, which has somehow managed to pass itself off as an antiwar group every since its inception while explicitly not taking a position against the war.

It's a little like calling Camille Paglia a feminist or James Carville a leftist. Say it a couple of times in the press and its riveted together in the public consciousness. Feminist Camille Paglia... "from the left, James Carville." Basically, people can get away with any damn thing these days, or think they can. Not this, though.

Let me be frank. Operation Truth is a sham, and it's staff commandant is a jackass.

Just so no one tries to attribute my remarks to anyone or any organization or any campaign I might be in now, or any in the future, I say again... I am speaking for myself. I have a number of friends and colleagues who are a good deal more diplomatic than I am that can speak for their organizations. But after Reickhoff's creepy little attack on the Fayetteville, North Carolina antiwar action of March 19th , I can hold my tongue no longer on either Rieckhoff or the attempt by the operatives of liberal imperialism more generally to blunt the sharpening anti-imperial edge of the broad movement against the Mesopotamian misadventure.

Let me reiterate again that I am speaking for myself, personally, representing no organization... so no one like Rieckhoff can attribute anything I say to any of my allies in any current or campaign within the antiwar movement.

I'm speaking for myself as an unabashed leftist -- that's someone who opposes capitalism, in case this term is confusing. (James Carville is not a leftist. He is an obnoxious asshole, which is just one current within the Democratic Party... the Republicans have a lot of obnoxious assholes, too.) Leftism is part of the broad antiwar movement, openly so, and we argue openly for our position: that capitalism as a system, and not some moral or intellectual failure, causes these wars.

My reaction here doesn't only include Operation Truth, but the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), and all the rest of these bombardier-liberal shills. I haven't gotten ugly with any of them in public in the past because they were still mixed in with us when the pre-2004-election antiwar efforts were homogenized within a movement that was not antiwar, but anti-Bush. And this is the first time they have very publicly attacked those of us who are organizing among military families, veterans, and GI's.

Just two weeks ago, Operation Truth's Rieckhoff launched a full frontal bullshit assault against that action in the press saying, "If you support the troops, don't protest them in their backyards -- especially not as they're sent to war or returning home."

Of course, the entire call-up for that event was painfully clear from the very beginning that this was not a protest "against troops," which is a red herring in any case, and the speaker line-up was ponderously heaped with the families of military members, veterans, and the surviving families of the war dead. Rieckhoff knew this, and he lied about the character of the demo anyway.

Anyone who cares to search Rieckhoff's Operation Truth website, by the way, hungry for a single statement opposing either the invasion or occupation of Iraq will go home with an empty stomach. That's because it is not an antiwar NGO. It is criticizing the conduct of the war and the actions of the Republican administration on veterans benefits in a way calculated to bewilder people into believing it is an ally of the antiwar movement.

So here's my message to Rieckhoff. We got your number. Go home to your imperial buddies.
The same goes for Eric Gustafson who heads up the Education for Peace in Iraq Coalition (EPIC), another vet mired in the issue-policy swamp of liberal pluralism.

From their own news release in which they piled onto the campaign of lies directed at the Fayetteville action: "Founded in 1998 by human rights advocates, EPIC promotes peace, human rights, and democracy for the people of Iraq. Since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq two years ago this week, EPIC has advocated U.S. and international assistance for Iraqi-led nation-building and opposed the withdrawal of UN-sanctioned forces until Iraq is able to provide for its own security."

EPIC's website claims is "was" against the war, but now... here's the uniform mantra among these fronts... WE cannot "abandon" Iraq. The caps are intentional, and the claim is mendacious. Their opposition was not to invading and occupying Iraq, but to the way in which the neocons went about it... that is, without a resolution from the UN Security Council.
'Give me a Security Council resolution, and I'll release my masculine energy on those wogs in a cloudburst of 500-pound bombs!'

The other speciality of this "tendency" is to red-bait. So I might as well take that away right here. I'm as red as a baboon's ass and proud of it.

I don't have to put on a red hat, though, to talk about this WE business... this WE must not "abandon Iraq." Even my movement allies in the hardly-seditious North Carolina Council of Churches -- who co-sponsored the Fayetteville action -- know that support of ANY continuation of ANY imperial military occupation is NOT antiwar. If you support a military occupation, then you are supporting a war. Two plus two. This is not complicated.

Just for the record, Paul & Eric, the US military is not in Iraq to do a damned thing for the Iraqi people. What particular brand of cheap magical-mystery acid does someone take when he implies that Pizarro should be nominated to help the Incas with reconstruction? WE are the barbarians here!

This benevolent force you are arguing to leave in Iraq has been used to enforce attacks and sanctions that are slouching toward a body count of 2 million, microtoxified the entire environment with a radioactive condiment that produces babies born without brains, slaughtered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children, trashed the social and economic infrastructure, imprisoned thousands of people in indiscriminate round-ups (including children, by the way), subjected detainees to sexual humiliation, beatings, rape, murder, and other methods of systematic torture, bombed whole neighborhoods, kicked in the doors of sleeping families and waved guns at their infants and grandmothers, surrounded a city (Fallujah, in case WE forgot), then blocked the exits against "military-aged males," who the US armed forces then exterminated, Warsaw-style, by the thousands. You know, Paul & Eric , that I could go on with this list for some time.

That's why the antiwar movement is going to reject your little containment mission for the liberal bourgeoisie (Oh my God, he used another one of those commie words!). It doesn't take a Red to see the White-Man's-Burden stamp across this box of goods you are selling. WE can't abandon the Iraqis, indeed!

There is no WE. There is a THEY. I may as well explain this wild-eyed leftist claim. THEY are an imperial ruling class. THEY really do exist, and with about a month's dedicated research, it would be possible for a small staff to list them out with names and addresses... but then someone would accuse us of developing hit lists.

Hmmm.

THEY operate very like a mafia, and THEY rely very much on their US state to keep things running smoothly, including sending out hirelings to kill their enemies and victims. The difference is that the hirelings, who are vast numbers of working class kids, have been convinced all their lives by a zillion-dollar-a-year Orwellian brainwashing apparatus to believe that killing for bankers and currency speculators and politicians is some noble cause.

THEY just sent hundreds of thousands of working class people in uniform to kill hundreds of thousands of unfashionable brown people in order to establish the redisposition of a post-Cold War imperial military into Southwest Asia. THEY have not for one milisecond considered, nor will THEY ever consider, the welfare of Iraqis except when it is politically and militarily expedient.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq will not be converted into a Botticelli painting.
THEY want to establish permanent military bases there, and every day that they stay there puts them one day closer to that... or more likely to some humiliating denouement like Vietnam, so we can ring up the carcass numbers in five figures with the only body count THEY keep -- American dead. Iraqis don't count, you see. So as long as we're playing the pronoun game, let me point out that YOU and the flabby Democratic Party bosses you ultimately work for when you attack us on actions like Fayetteville... YOU are arguing precisely what your correlatives did during the Vietnam occupation.

YOU and all the rest of the civil-societist gasbags in the alphabet soup of issue-policy NGO's are advising moderation in the face of a world that is already deeply in the grip of the very barbarism that Rosa Luxemburg warned us about. (She was red, too.) That's what YOU always do when big sections of the people start to look left. It's your nasty little job, and the latte fumes meandering up from your cups have always masked the smell of spilt blood... because what YOU are endorsing is nothing more nor less than the continuation of Wolfowitz's lethal Caligulan fantasy in Iraq to save capitalism from its own dirty, dangerous, and expensive messes.

In Fayetteville, where you would like to have shut us up, Cindy Sheehan tore open the tender wound of her grief for the hundredth time before a crowd, describing the moment when she learned that the child she pushed out of her own body no longer existed, that he had disappeared in a sustained moment of terror and pain during the Sadr rebellion, a rebellion incited gratuitously by the occupation authorities.

She puts that grief on display again and again in the hope that others won't have to experience it, when she could stay home and let the wound heal. So I am not going to be diplomatic with Paul Rieckhoff and his ilk, when they misrepresent the action in Fayetteville as somehow being directed against those bewildered, economically caged-in workers in uniform we call "the troops."


Of course, class has been off their agenda for a long time. More and more of us already know who is served by trying to check the growing militancy within the antiwar movement, and we recognize the Kiplingesque racism that props up their flaccid argument that the Iraqis are uniquely unqualified to take control of their own destiny. It's not Iraq they are concerned with, after all, is it?

They are worried, just like any Democratic Party boss or entrenched union bureaucrat that the left shift in the movement, where a lot of "ordinary" people now seek out and speak with known socialists, will eat into their careerist base. This has always been the motivation for cluster-bomb Democrats. Nothing freaks them out worse than school teachers and postal workers and janitors who are educating themselves on the deeper meaning of words like "imperialism."

It's this fear that motivates the cheap attack on the Fayetteville action, because when the resistance is carried into the dark heart of the imperial military itself a storm threat appears on the horizon, and not just for the war but for the bosses at home.

The left in this movement is not "against" the soldiers. Speaking for myself, I am on the soldier's side, not as a soldier, but as a human being. I encourage all soldiers to resist. I won't conceal the fact that my encouragement of that resistance is aimed at utterly gutting the capacity of that institution to continue operations in the charnel house they've made of Iraq. Because when the institution of the military can no longer occupy other nations and kill their people, then our sons and daughters will quit returning as torn flesh and pain in mobile burn units, wheelchairs, and body bags.

Oh, but WE can not abandon Iraq! Hearing this from Rieckhoff who has never claimed to oppose the war has created the controversy it has partly because many in the antiwar movement, including the alternative media, feted this barn weasel. They thought that his noisy entreaties for better body armor and more Prozac for PTSD were "progressive" for the same reason people voted for that Boston Basset hound, John Kerry. They believe the war is about George W. Bush instead of capitalism.

One pampered, intellectually challenged, legacy admission to the White House does not explain the direct line that can be drawn between an airplane flying into a skyscraper and a kid that will kill for a pair of shoes. It doesn't explain the straight line from Abu Ghraib to Pelican Bay. It doesn't explain the connection between Ken Lay and My Lai, between the battering of a wife in Cleveland and the sexual torture of a prisoner in Afghanistan, or between a flood victim in Princeville, North Carolina, and a tsunami victim in Aceh.

But there are connections, and they become clearer to people the longer they stay in the antiwar movement, because they want answers. The drivel about staying the course is unsatisfactory. People can see Luxemburg's prediction of barbarism right in front of them. It's here, and this WE finds it unacceptable for future generations.

Take your big wooden jackass home and leave us to be on our way. We taking that left turn ahead in the road.

And to the soldiers... resist!

This commentary is published here with Stan's permission.

Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000), "Full Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and "Sex & War" which will be released approximately December, 2005. He is retired from the United States Army. His blog is at www.stangoff.com.
Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org

An important book review from the outstanding Left Hook!

This is just one feature of the good content at the "Left Hook."
Go to: http://www.lefthook.org/ where aesthetics and youthful critical thought meet.

A Virus Among Us: Book Review
The Liberal Virus: Permanent War And The Americanization Of The World. Samir Amin. (Monthly Review Press, 2004)

by

Seth Sandronsky

Are liberals in control? Do they really hurt the people they try to help? How you answer depends on your definition of the "L" word.


Once, to be a liberal meant to privilege the market over people. So wrote Adam Smith, the guru of capitalism, over two centuries ago. For him, liberalism was nations and peoples pursuing their self-interest, or freedom, in the marketplace. Thus freed, society would prosper.


Currently, liberalism describes policies or views that run counter to the market freedom that Smith backed. His vision was the traditional meaning of liberalism. Today it is actually the conservative, or free-market, approach.


In George W. Bush's America, such liberalism is a dangerous sickness, writes author Samir Amin, a top social scientist based in Dakar, Senegal. In his book titled The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World (Monthly Review Press, 2004), he argues that the global consequences of this virus are spawned by a theory of an imaginary market. It presents an idealized version of the capitalist economy. Thus regular people's struggles against racism, sexism and militarism vanish. In their places are "natural" rates of unemployment and "preventive" wars.


Reading Amin's book helps us to see more clearly the distinction between the imaginary market and real capitalism. A case in point is the Pentagon's smashing of Iraq as Halliburton Corp. is looting its energy resources. This trend of might makes right for corporate profits is barbaric, he notes.


Say that in public and many Americans-including co-workers, friends and family-might question your sanity. Why? They are infected with what Amin terms the "liberal virus," that the market brings us the opportunity for liberty.


For him, this virus flows, historically, from a U.S.-centered belief system of extreme individualism. Tragically, it has crushed the concept of equity. By contrast, equity has been central to European liberalism since the French Revolution that inspired revolutionary Haitians, and others.


The opposite has been and is the case on our side of the Atlantic. Two examples are the U.S. legacy of genocide and slavery. We and the world are the worse for the resulting sickness of America's political culture. Amin pulls no punches in criticizing the U.S.


"American society despises equality," he writes. "Extreme inequality is not only tolerated, it is taken as a symbol of "success" that liberty promises. But liberty without equality is equal to barbarism." I better understand now why Europeans work fewer hours and have better health care than Americans.


Amin has much faith in Europeans to forge policies that put humanity before profitability. I see the American people-you and me-as the key to changing the world system from one that glorifies brutality into one that nurtures humanity. Still, I am heartened by Europeans strong opposition after 9/11 to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that is establishing American military bases there.


America's war on terror, Amin reasons, is partly a cover for a weak U.S. economy in decline since the Vietnam War. American military aggression is a response to the rise of Asian and European commercial rivals.


Amin's radical analysis of politics and economics is a knockout. Consider his section on the "peasant question." Peasant agriculture, accounting for 3 billion humans, faces economic extermination by 20 million modern farms, he warns. Such capitalist agribusiness is driving these small farmers off their land and into big cities in the Third World and the U.S. that lack livable employment. Case in point is commercial pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement that are smashing small farming in Mexico.


I applaud Amin for critiquing the ideology of America's permanent war culture. However, I wanted more on how market ideology is produced.


Believing the market myths on FOX-TV is one thing. Yet people's lives generate market ideology in other ways. Take the nature of their work in a rich capitalist nation such as the U.S. Such relations of inequality between laborers and bosses force most folks most of the time to accept workplace tyranny as a natural law, like gravity. How can there be a "free" job market in the absence of freedom on the job?


Protect yourself against the dangerous sickness of market mystification.

Read Amin's incisive new book.

This book review was published with Seth's permission.

Seth Sandronsky, a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper. He can be reached at: ssandron@hotmail.com.

More "Ground Reports" from Left Hook's

2nd Anniversary march, rally and arrests in Harlem! Go to: http://troopsoutnow.org for more information and photographs.

"When you see people praying and throwing up it's already a rough ride."

The United Vegetative States of America

by

Anwaar Hussain

Where is the free American media and their kind hearted patrons when their G.I. Joes are pumping up Iraq with depleted uranium, napalm bombs, cluster munitions and poisonous gases even as these lines are being written? Is death less camera-friendly in Iraq or is it less worthy of the Americans' attention? Are Iraqis children of a lesser god? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.


After having lived for 15 years in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schindler Schiavo crossed over from here to the hereafter on the last day of March.

With her blood scent up in the air, the feral American media went berserk in the last two weeks of Schiavo's life. Using this so called freest press in the world, the American public was lead on a leash by the right-wing activists with a not so subtle help from the neofundos ruling the roost in their great country. The pro-life campaigners remained at the point of this bizarre national entertainment.

Americans never fail to astound the world with their penchant for sensationalism. Just when it appears that they’ve scaled new peaks, they manage to notch themselves up yet higher into the dizzying summits of luridness. While the carnival of mayhem is progressing ahead in full tide in Iraq, the Americans love and sympathy for the plight of Terri Schiavo is the very embodiment of duplicity. Hypocrisy in its truest form, it speaks volumes of their OJ Simpson syndrome.

Every facet of Schiavo’s affliction was dissected with microscopic focus by the voracious lens of the American media. The American public gobbled it all up like starved men on a king's feast.

Consider the following.

The dizzying media blitz surpassed even the Asian tsunami three months ago that left approximately 300,000 people dead or missing. According to TVEyes-the digital monitoring service-in this period the cable outlets and networks have mentioned “Schiavo” more than 15,000 times. On the other hand, these same outlets mentioned “tsunami” only 9,000 times during the two weeks following the Asian humanitarian crisis. Internet chat rooms, letters to editors, opinion columns, television talk shows and all national debate forums buzzed with arguments on Schiavo's right to live or die.

The American President played a lead role in this theater of the absurd. On her death he said, "I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life… The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life."

Some hypocrisy, some gall, some double bloody standards. As the Americans applaud their president who makes murder acceptable and lies seem true, they neither challenge the serious doubts and questions in Iraq's case nor force their government for a presumption in the favor of Iraqi's lives. While their president urges the Americans to build a culture of life, he sanctions his strong forces to make it their duty to prey on innocent lives in Iraq with nauseating impunity. No such debate is taking place on the main stream American media on the false dichotomies of their government's conduct.

Forever reined by their corporate controlled media, the American nation lapped at the pool of misery of a suffering human being. For two tumultuous weeks, the American public really excelled-in the festive ambiance of human misfortune duly projected by their so called world’s freest media.

It would not have been so out of place had the Americans shown the same tenderness for the misery of other human beings, especially for the ones upon whom they have inflicted it themselves. The long-forgotten Iraq war got just about 2,900 TV mentions over the same two weeks that Schiavo obsession ran wild.

When they were shedding tears on Schiavo like events, not very long back an Iraqi girl Fatima was being repeatedly raped by the beasts that guarded Abu Ghareeb prison. Here is an excerpt from her heart rending letter to Iraqi resistance fighters;

"…I say to you: our wombs have been filled with the children of fornication by those sons of apes and pigs who raped us. Or I could tell you that they have defaced our bodies, spit in our faces, and tore up the little copies of the Qur’an that hung around our necks? ….By God, we have not passed one night since we have been in prison without one of the apes and pigs jumping down upon us to rip our bodies apart with his overweening lust. Kill us along with them! Destroy us along with them! Don’t leave us here to let them get pleasure from raping us….Leave their tanks and aircraft outside. Come at us here in the prison of Abu Ghurayb.They raped me on one day more than nine times. Can you comprehend? Imagine one of your sisters being raped. Why can’t you all imagine it, as I am your sister. With me are 13 girls, all unmarried. All have been raped before the eyes and ears of everyone. They took our clothes and won’t let us get dressed. As I write this letter one of the girls has committed suicide. She was savagely raped. A soldier hit her on her chest and thigh after raping her. He subjected her to unbelievable torture. She beat her head against the wall of the cell until she died, for she couldn’t take any more. Brothers, I tell you again, fear God! Kill us with them so that we might be at peace. Help! Help! Help!" One hundred resistance fighters launched a fierce attack on the prison lead by Fatima's elder brother. People died, Fatima among them. Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

While the Americans and their media kept a macabre death-watch over Schiavo's plight, Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of “the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens” has reported the destruction that American troops have inflicted on Fallujah. Here is a brief gist;

"7000 totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed, homes in all districts of Fallujah. - 8400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, etc. destroyed. - 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries demolished - 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges destroyed. - 13 government buildings leveled. - Four libraries, that housed thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books, gutted completely. – on and on and on…." Human beings lived in those buildings; make your own guess of their toll. Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

It seems that having wallowed in the deceptions, lies, crimes and war mongering of their rulers for centuries, and now immersed neck deep in a smothering swamp of consumerism, the Americans have lost their sense of impartiality, justice and fairness. It also seems that there are too many Americans with blood lust out there who look at pictures of butchered Iraqi kids and rejoice.

The coverage of Schiavo like events allows the Americans to whet their appetite for tragedy, hone the fine art of hypocrisy and feed their morbid addiction of calamity. It may be a blatant affront to the sense and sensibilities of the enlightened world citizenry, they don't care.

Haven't the lies of their rulers now been fully exposed? Why is it that the common Americans do not see the Iraqi butchery for what it is--a brazen plan for occupation, suppression and theft of vital resources of an already aggrieved and impoverished nation, whatever the human cost. Or is it that they see it and agree with the plan of maintaining white man's license for as long as possible? Why else would they reelect this gang of criminals and thus be responsible for the carnage by default. Or has the American nation too lapsed into a persistent vegetative state and thus did not notice the gang sneaking into the white House? Should their country now be named as the United Vegetative States of America?

Why can't they see the horrendous atrocities that the United States military is visiting upon unarmed Iraqis who never posed any danger to their beloved country? Why can't their free media catch on its eagle eyed lens the raining cluster bombs, the showering napalms, and the tortures in the dungeons? If the BBC can broadcast an interview with a grieving Iraqi woman whose pregnant daughter had been machine-gunned by U.S. troops, why is there nothing on the US media? Why the common Americans are not out on the streets protesting the horrendous actions of their administration and the sinister complicity of their media? Would they show the same stoic indifference if a couple of tons of depleted uranium are shot up the New York alleys? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

Where was this concern for human misery when the death toll in Iraq shot past the 100,000 mark? Where were the tears of human compassion when Fallujah was razed to the ground and its citizens-men, women and children alike-gunned down by the valiant American troops and left on the streets for the dogs to feed on? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

Where is the free American media and their kind hearted patrons when their G.I. Joes are pumping up Iraq with depleted uranium, napalm bombs, cluster munitions and poisonous gases even as these lines are being written? Is death less camera-friendly in Iraq or is it less worthy of the Americans' attention? Are Iraqis children of a lesser god? Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

When it comes to Iraq, the Americans' sympathy wells suddenly dry up. While they shed tears for a woman who remained in a halfway house for the past 15 years, the dead and the maimed of other nations are forgotten as soon as their media leads them to yet another thrilling topic. Or are these crocodile tears that they shed when they are ready to devour?

Who was it that said, "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity."?

The American writer Lee Harris was spot on the dot in his article “Good American Hypocrisy” when he wrote,” America’s current critics need to recognize that in pursuing its self-interest the United States is hardly unique-what singles us out from among nations is our obdurate hypocrisy. We have to pretend to ourselves that we are doing the right thing-often at the cost of actually doing it.” Go talk of Schiavo's right to live or die.

"Long live the United Vegetative States of America."

Courtesy : Fountainhead
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
Email : eagleeye@emirates.net.ae

Controversial Ohio War Opposition Speech during 2nd Anniversary rallies

From March 21, 2005, CounterPunch :
http://www.counterpunch.org/ferner03212005.html

On the Second Anniversary of the US Invasion of Iraq
Serving, Refusing, Impeaching
By MIKE FERNER

Remarks commemorating the Second Anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq given at rallies in Columbus March 19 and Cleveland March 20, 2005.


As we gather here this afternoon, our colleagues in Toledo are debuting "Arlington at Toledo," a cemetery with over 1700 white, wooden tombstones to commemorate each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Over the past weeks, my wife and I painted a few hundred of these in our kitchen. Last Saturday we started putting labels on them with the name, age, rank and home state of each G.I. killed. As we sat on our living room floor, surrounded by stacks of tombstones representing so many young men and women, we listened to an old Dire Straits album. The track titled "Brothers in Arms" came on with these telling lines: "Every man has to die/But it's written in the starlight/And in every line on your palm/We're fools to make war/On our brothers in arms."


Sue looked at the tombstone with a 19 year-old soldier's name on it she was holding and dissolved into sobs crying, "He was someone's baby."

We are here today to recommit ourselves to ending this slaughter of someone else's babies, whether American or Iraqi. We are here to demand an end to George Bush's criminal war.
We must end Bush's war to prevent more deaths and traumatic amputations of arms and legs, more quadriplegics who will be bedridden the rest of their lives. We must end Bush's war because every day it continues, it produces more injuries we will never see until they explode years later at home. I'm talking about thousands MORE soldiers who will return from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the injury that leaves minds riddled with flashbacks, anxiety, unpredictable outbursts of anger, depression, addictions and suicide.

If you've not read "Achilles in Vietnam" by Jonathan Shay, get it. Read it. You will learn helpful ways to listen to returning combat veterans. If your Uncle Bob still needs a compelling reason why war is not the answer, you'll learn it here. If you want proof that Bush's war is not only devastating Iraq but our own country, it's in "Achilles in Vietnam."

Here's just one example reduced to numbers: over a decade after the last combat troops left Vietnam, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study found that over 40% of combat vets ­ that's 300,000 men ­ reported engaging in 3 or more acts of violence in the previous year. Imagine how that continues to reverberate through our society, and how Bush has now guaranteed it will continue beyond this generation.

Shay stresses that PTSD "incapacitates its victims from participating in the domestic, economic, and political life of the nation. The painful paradox is that fighting for one's country can render one unfit to be its citizen." His book led me to inescapable conclusions: sending people to war profoundly changes every one of them, not usually for the better; and if we truly want to support our troops, we should never turn them into troops in the first place.

And lest we think there is some huge gulf between us and the behavior we've seen from GIs in Iraq, we should keep in mind what Shay calls the "comforting fantasy" that our own character would hold up under equally extreme pressure. "Those injured by combat trauma make us painfully aware that in all likelihood one's own character would not have stood firm." That's why it's often difficult to be a good listener to combat veterans or to deny the truth of their stories: they threaten our sense of self respect.

Hearing what we sent these soldiers to do may cause us discomfort or disbelief, but allowing them to tell their story to a trusted friend who will retell it honestly can be the best thing we can offer.

One former soldier who has told his story many times is Stan Goff, a retired Special Forces Master Sgt. He spent two decades, starting in Vietnam, learning the most highly developed killing skills the U.S. government had to offer. Stan is now a Veteran for Peace.

He says: "We know that some vets cling to denial, some are broken in body and spirit, some rage, and some turn their anger in on themselves and crawl into a needle or a bottle or the chamber of a pistol.

But there's a way out of that wilderness, and it's the path of the witness. Witnessing will heal you. Who better to out the thieves and mass murderers posing as statesmen than those of us closest to their criminal hearts in their time of need. Because we were there, we know what these people have sent our children to do; what they have sent our children to become."

Sgt. Goff tells our soldiers in Iraq: "If you want a target for your rage, there they are: The Suits ­ the same ones who are the enemies of peace, and the enemies of your families, especially if they are Black families, or immigrant or poor families. They'll skin and grin while they are getting what they want from you, and throw you away like a used condom when they are done. Ask the vets who are having their benefits slashed now.

Bush and his cronies are parasites.

They get the money. You get the prosthetics, the nightmares, and the mysterious illnesses."


Having taken care of hundreds of young soldiers used up and thrown away during Vietnam, and witnessing yet another generation led to slaughter on a lie, it gives me particular satisfaction to publicly announce that on Monday, the Veterans for Peace national office, representing 118 chapters across the country, will notify the entire Congress of the United States of our demand that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney be impeached!!


VFP is calling for Bush and Cheney's impeachment because ­ and this is important to understand ­ when the Senate adopts an international treaty, it becomes part of the supreme law of the land, the same as an act of Congress. It's clearly stated in par. 2, Article VI, of the U.S. Constitution. This means Bush and Cheney have specifically and continually violated Article VI of the constitution and the U.S. War Crimes Act passed by Congress in 1996.


We are calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney because they continue to commit what are clearly defined by the Nuremberg Principles ­ legally binding on the U.S. ­ as "crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes."


Because Bush and Cheney initiated two years ago and continue to this day what the UN Charter ­ legally binding on the U.S. ­ defines as a war of aggression because the Bush administration, in clear and specific violation of the Geneva Conventions ­ also legally binding on the U.S. ­ has tortured and killed prisoners, purposely targeted and killed civilians, prevented the delivery of medical relief. ALL of which are also violations of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. War Crimes Act to say nothing of international law and basic humanity.


Veterans for Peace is calling for impeachment because it is our responsibility as citizens to do so. The words of a village sheik I spoke with in Iraq last year haunt me every day. Even as he assured me that he recognized the difference between the government and the people of the United States, he asked, "but you say you live in a democracy. How can this be happening to us?"


It is our responsibility to impeach this criminal leadership. As citizens, every one of us is complicit with its crimes. By virtue of that complicity, we are compelled not only by the law but by human morality and by history to do whatever we can to stop this war of aggression; stop these crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Tribunals following WWII did not favorably judge the first nation the world determined had waged a war of aggression, nor its "good citizens" who obeyed their government.


But, my friends, we must do more than sign an impeachment petition or get a new bumper sticker. The effort to evict this criminal gang from Washington will help end the war, but we must do more than attend demonstrations, pass out leaflets, or write letters.

I'm suggesting we look to the heroic history of Ohioans who in their day fought the legalized evil of slavery. Just south of here, residents of Urbana confronted federal marshals who had come to capture and return a runaway slave under the Fugitive Slave Act. At the point of a gun the people of Urbana drove the marshals out of town and preserved that former slave's freedom. They knew that morality called upon them to do more than just obey the law.


Historian Howard Zinn gives us sound advice on this question: "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of their leaders and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."


So what must conscientious Americans do today? Should we follow the letter of the Fugitive Slave Act and return our fellow human beings to slavery? Should we write our congressman and then stand by like good Americans and watch our government continue to wage its war of aggression? Should we continue to legitimize a government of war criminals by paying our taxes?


The times call upon us to do more than we've already done; more than we think we can do. We can no longer afford to limit our protests to what Good Americans are allowed in these terrible days. And we must stop funding this administration's crimes against humanity. We must delegitimate, disobey and disrupt this war and this system.


When the next soldier decides he or she cannot go to Iraq, we must already know which local church will provide sanctuary and not stop there. We need to surround that church with thousands of disciplined, nonviolent citizens for as long as it takes, daring federal marshals to return that soldier to slavery. Can we do less than those citizens of Ukraine who stayed in the streets for weeks to get a legitimate government? Can we do less than people in Iraq who are losing their lives and limbs under this criminal occupation?


Americans and Iraqis, young and old, soldier and civilian are slaughtered daily for Empire. What can we do that is commensurate with what the times demand? Some of our more heroic friends refuse to pay a penny in taxes; some refuse to pay the war machine's portion. Others purposely limit their incomes so they owe nothing to the IRS.


But here's something that every one of us can do right now that is not particularly heroic; that carries little or no risk. Withhold a token amount from what the IRS says you owe. You will eventually get a series of letters trying to collect your 25 or 100 dollars. They will expend much time, effort, and stationery to no avail. Millions of us doing this will send the message that we will delegitimate, disobey and disrupt this war and this system.


Today I beseech every soldier, sailor, marine, reservist and guardsman who can hear my voice or gets this message: brothers and sisters in arms, in the name of humanity, think about what you are being ordered to do. It is not only your right it is your duty to disobey unlawful orders. This war is grotesquely and monstrously unlawful. It is precisely what was condemned at Nuremberg. Look deep within yourselves.

Do the right thing and say NO to this war. Hold on to your humanity. Refuse to participate. Apply for c.o. status. Turn from this criminal operation into the arms of a loving, disciplined and powerful movement that will be there for you as long as you need it.


It is already beginning to happen. Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Hinzman and Kevin Benderman have quit publicly. Nearly 6,000 soldiers have deserted quietly in the last two years. If even today you are on your way to Iraq, scheduled to pass through Shannon airport like 160,000 U.S. troops did last year, know that members of the Irish Parliament along with a former commandant of the Irish Army are urging you to not get back on that plane, to seek asylum in Ireland.


If we are well organized; if we are there for young soldiers who leave the military; if we refuse to be silenced and frightened by an immoral law; if we refuse to be "Good Americans;" if we do what history demands in this critical hour we can grind this war machine to a halt. We can put an end to the suffering and the war crimes. We can absolve our complicity. Will we do this together?


(Mike Ferner is a former Navy Hospital Corpsman and a member of Veterans for Peace. He spent three months in Iraq, before and after the U.S. invasion, and is writing a book about his experiences. He can be reached at: mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net )

An April Fool's Joke - Henry Kissinger has a heart!

APRIL FOOL'S JOKE: KISSINGER HAS A HEART

He did not dare to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize

by Henk Ruyssenaars, Senior Editor, Foreign Press Foundation (FPF)

According to the mainstream media, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is "resting comfortably" after heart surgery.

'Disinformation', as many all over the world think, knowing that something like this creature which has wrecked so many countries and is guilty of the murder of millions, definitely can not have a heart.

Nor a humanely functioning brain.

It's surprising that this insensitive henchman did not dare to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize he was mistakenly awarded by the Norwegian Nobel committee in 1973. In many stories 'Newspeak' is used to positively refer to the scandal when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize* in 1973: ''for his role in ending the U.S. military engagement in Vietnam'' as it was explained in a press release.

This was a rude insult to the horror in Vietnam I had seen last in 1971, and was light-years away from reality. All other Nobel Prizes by the way, are awarded in the Swedish capital Stockholm, only the 'Nobel Peace Prize' is awarded by the 'Nobel Peace Committee' in Oslo, Norway. Being accredited in Stockholm as a 'Scandinavia correspondent', from September 1974 I of course covered the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo too, on December 10th 1974.

Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho, one of the North Vietnamese peace negotiators. Le Duc Tho alone should have gotten the prize, but 'politics' interfered. Myself being declared 'Persona non Grata' in Pinochet's Chile in July 1974, five months before Kissinger's Peace Prize, I was in the right mood to ask 'Killer Kissinger' about his bloody CIA/NSA coup, 'suiciding' president Salvador Allende and ending the start of chilean democracy.

According to an interview I did in Santiago, three days after the bloody coup, with Dutch gin smelling Pinochet Junta member Admiral Merino: ''the first three days cost the lives of at least 3000 (three thousand) people in the capital Santiago and surroundings."

Just one more of Kissinger's murderous actions. He and his ilk should have been in jail decades ago.

In Oslo I requested an interview with Kissinger and Le Duc Tho , but was like all others turned down, receiving Newspeak press releases instead. However Aasa Lionaes, the chairwoman of the Nobel Peace committee, wanted to talk. After asking me about the CIA's and Kissinger's murderous massacre of Chile, she fully acknowledged that awarding the Peace Prize to Kissinger: " Was a dreadful mistake: Kissinger understands this as well, and hasn't even dared to pick up the Nobel medal, prize money or the award's diploma," Lionaes said.

The interview was, as far as I know, shown in many countries all over the world, but never used in the United States.

But the harm was done and - as is shown today - the mainstream media distort as usual and refer to Kissinger not as the global war criminal he is, with hands dripping of the blood and smelling of Agent Orange, of the millions of innocent people Kissinger with his gun boat diplomacy has killed.

In the 'Jewish Virtual Library'* it's written: "Time will place Henry Alfred Kissinger in his proper place in American history." and I do totally agree that he finally will be shown as the 'Pol Pot of the World'. Kissinger is to the world what Sharon is to the Palestinians: genocide.

At present Kissinger's friends - running most of the media - write his stories and biography including the undelivered 1973's Peace Prize: stories that are light years away from reality.

Kissinger's Torah only seems to have one page and one line: Exodus 15:3; Hertz, p. 271]: The Lord is a Man of wars forgetting that in the same Torah prophet Yeshayah 2:4 reads: "One nation will not lift a sword against another nation and they will not study any more how to battle. Then all the people will truly benefit in peace and prosperity from this beautiful world that God created for everyone's enjoyment."

Not only the heart is missing: Kissinger's eyesight too.He was and is a one man Axis of Evil, and should be treated as such.

Henk Ruyssenaars

How You Can Do What the Government Won't: Arrest Henry Kissinger by James Ridgeway - Village Voice - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6nt7e

Kissinger's coup in Chile - Google - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6nln6

Kissinger's war crimes - Google 60.900 hits: Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6qes5

Jewish Virtual Library: How is Kissinger looked upon in his own circles? - Url. : http://tinyurl.com/4mmvw

Newspeak by the American government service Associated Press: http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050331/ap/d89681f80.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION http://tinyurl.com/3tro9

Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars http://tinyurl.com/66dmo

The Netherlands FPF@Chello.nl

The Dutch author this far has worked abroad 4 decades for international media as a fully independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East.

Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism !

At present 'Persona non Grata' in Holland :-) - because:

"He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.
When he talks about it in the fields at home, he is often accused of lying,
For the obdurate people will not believe Inexperience, I believe,
Will give little credence to my song. 'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse