Can’t Wait For Next Prez Election: Get Off The Cross Already, Will Ya!

Gingrich’s 2012 Campaign Places More Emphasis On Religious Faith February 27, 2011 “Today’s New York Times reports that as former House speaker Newt Gingrich gears up for a run for the 2012 Republican nomination for President, in his public appearances he is placing a new emphasis on religious faith.  The Times says that on the campaign trail, Gingrich will: “have to grapple with aspects of his life and career that could give pause to elements of the Republican primary electorate, including a lack of a well-established association with religious conservatives and attendant questions about his two divorces. So as he travels the country, he is striking two related notes: that the nation faces not just a fiscal crisis but also a loss of its moral foundation, and that his conversion to Catholicism two years ago is part of an evolution that has given him a deeper appreciation for the role of faith in public life.”

Ryan Keith Bach, The Lord Giveth: Christian ‘Health Insurance’, the Role of State Insurance Regulation, and the Aftermath of Kentucky v. Reinhold, (February 22, 2011).

Julie A. Nice, How Equality Constitutes Liberty: The Alignment of CLS v. Martinez, (Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Vol. 38, p. 631, 2011).

Pence Amendment Not Just About Abortion, But About Thwarting Contraception
Religion Dispatches
In the wake of the House passage of the Pence Amendment, cutting off federal family funding under Title X, the influential religious right think tank the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society senses an opportunity. Discussion around the Pence …

The Unconscionable ‘Right to Conscience’
Huffington Post (blog)
While the Religious Right is propagating the myth that doctors will now be coerced into performing abortions against their will, that particular protection has been in place for that for decades, and is untouched by Obama’s revision. …

Religious Right Doubles Down on DOMA
Religion Dispatches
To defend “God’s design” for marriage, religious right outfits like the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and the National Association of Evangelicals have circulated emails urging their supporters to urge Congress “to stand up …

Religious Right OK with Contraceptives for Horses, Not Women
Opposing Views
While Burton isn’t — by any means — the biggest figure in Congress when it comes to the religious right, he is definately no great supporter of secular government. Why is there such great intolerance to contraceptive usage for human beings and not …

The Tea Party’s Religious Inspiration
The Atlantic
There’s nothing new about the religious right’s drive for political power, which helped sweep Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980, when liberal stalwarts were swept out of the Senate. What does seem new is the increased dominance of the …

Run Down by Traffic in Both Directions: Is it Possible to Have a Rational …
History News Network
Likewise, angrily rejecting our criticism that the history of separation of church and state was dismissed and distorted in the standards, the Liberty Institute jubilantly declared, after another word search, that the phrase does indeed appear in the …

Constitutionality of school-voucher bill unclear in Indiana
Louisville Courier-Journal
The other is the state’s language on the separation of church and state — language that legal scholars say goes beyond what the US Constitution requires. Indiana’s constitution includes a direct prohibition on state aid to religious institutions: “No …

Mike Huckabee and Haley Barbour: A Tale of Two Souths
Politics Daily
He doesn’t shy away from his religion or the belief that the separation of church and state is impossible. He understands grassroots mobilizing, thanks to his church background and will be able to energize the religious-right base. …

Church accused of crossing the political line
Examiner.com
It points out that members are asked to pray for the two candidates from the pulpit – something that some would say violates the “separation of Church and State,” and should cause the church to lose it’s tax-exempt status. Yes, there is supposed to be …

Lake View: Country established for religious freedom
Lakenewsonline.com
According to Joseph J. Ellis, who is a Ford Foundation professor of history, the founders created the first “wholly secular state” by insisting on the complete separation of church and state. They also felt that by creating political parties they would …

Opinion: Myths about the separation of church and state
Associated Baptist Press
Following is a series of commonly held myths about the separation of church and state. Myth #1: We don’t have separation of church and state in America, because those words are not in the Constitution. True, the words are not there, but the principle …

Case of the radical Baptist church
GetReligion
Keep reading, and the main sources turn out to be an official with the local chapter of Americans for Separation of Church and State, two former church members (one quoted anonymously) and a black pastor critical of the Confederate flag. …

Opinion: Arab youth want democracy, not theocracy
CNN (blog)
A huge campaign is underway, to convince the American people, the founding fathers never intended a separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson’s role as a founding father is played down. In some cases Jefferson is smudged. …

Biblical Chastisement = Dead Children; USA funds Saudi’s Luxuries; US human medical research & more

“Our nation’s laws should never be based solely on private religious beliefs. All religious bodies have a right to speak out on public issues, but elected officials must uphold the principles of the Constitution, not religious doctrine. Legislators represent people of many different faiths (and some who follow no spiritual path at all). Decisions about legislation should reflect the public interest, not personal beliefs about religion.”

~ Sandhya Bathija Feb 25, 2011

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Alleged ‘biblical chastisement’ trial delayed again Feb 19, 2011 “The Schatz’ are accused of causing the death of a 7-year-old adopted girl and serious injuries to her 11-year-old sister during separate “biblical chastisements” with a whip-like instrument in February 2010 at their family home.” http://www.religionnewsblog.com/25736/alleged-chastisement-trial-delayed

Why unions are worth fighting for Feb 27, 2011″The unions’ fight with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker over collective bargaining may not end their slide into irrelevance, but it has shown their necessity as workers’ advocate and much-needed balance to the political system.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/12650_wisconsinprotestswhyunionsareworthfightingfor

US citizen recalls ‘humiliating’ post-9/11 arrest Feb 28, 2011 “Over the next 16 days he would be strip-searched repeatedly, left naked in a jail cell and shower for more than 90 minutes in view of other men and women, routinely transported in handcuffs and leg irons, and kept with people who had been convicted of violent crimes. On a long trip between jails, a federal marshal refused to unlock al-Kidd’s chains so he could use the bathroom. Eight years later, the Supreme Court is weighing whether al-Kidd’s arrest and detention violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110228/ap_on_re_us/us_supreme_court_ashcroft_lawsuit

Pipers unite against white supremacists Feb 27, 2011 “Pipe players of Brittany on Sunday united against a group of US based white supremacists who are campaigning to discredit the French region’s top piper, who happens to be a black man.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8350550/Pipers-unite-against-white-supremacists.html

Scientologist Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology Feb 14, 2011 “On August 19, 2009, Tommy Davis, the chief spokesperson for the Church of Scientology International, received a letter from the film director and screenwriter Paul Haggis. “For ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego,” Haggis wrote. Before the 2008 elections, a staff member at Scientology’s San Diego church had signed its name to an online petition supporting Proposition 8, which asserted that the State of California should sanction marriage only “between a man and a woman.” The proposition passed. As Haggis saw it, the San Diego church’s “public sponsorship of Proposition 8, which succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California—rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state—is a stain on the integrity of our organization and a stain on us personally. Our public association with that hate-filled legislation shames us.” Haggis wrote, “Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.” He concluded, “I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.” http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright

As long ago as 1996, U.S. officials noted that such unrestrained behavior could fuel a backlash against the Saudi elite. Feb 28, 2011 …..But the US kept and keeps giving them billions of dollars Americans could use. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110228/wl_nm/us_wiki_saudi_money

Polling Evangelicals: Cut Aid to World’s Poor, Unemployed Feb 19, 2011 “The House of Representatives is working day and night in its effort to cut more than $60 billion from the federal budget. The House is considering a continuing resolution, a bill used to fund the federal government for the remainder of the year. The bill includes deep cuts for environmental agencies, education, and foreign aid (except those related to security). It makes modest reductions for defense, homeland security, and police.” http://www.religionnewsblog.com/25733/polling-evangelicals-cut-aid-to-worlds-poor-unemployed

Christian medical plans get pass from health law Feb 26, 2011 “Christians are exempt from insurance mandates,” ,.., “the only organized health care concept to receive a special exemption from the taxes, penalties and regulations that the law imposes on insurers,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/26/AR2011022601295.html

Ugly history of human medical testing Feb 27, 2011 “Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.”  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110227/ap_on_he_me/us_med_experiments_on_humans

Planned Parenthood and the Rape of American Women Feb 28, 2011  “Too spineless to criminalize women who seek abortions outright, Religious Right politicians instead choose to pillage health care provisions that keep women from falling deeper into poverty, illness, and economic dependence.” http://www.intersectionssouthla.org/index.php/story/opinion_planned_parenthood_and_the_rape_of_american_women/

The Essay: Ten Commandments – Secularism is essential Feb 26, 2011 “Its establishment clause reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Under this law every religion can flourish without fear or favour or interference from the Government.” http://www.varsity.co.uk/opinion/3355

Reasons to Not Be Mormon Feb 27, 2011 “Laci Green listing off a number of reasons she’s no longer a Mormon.“ http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/02/27/reasons-to-not-be-mormon/

Dictates of Imperialism

Revolution #225, February 27, 2011

Bob Avakian,, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

http://revcom.us/

“Backing cruel despotic regimes, in many parts of the world, is not some kind of “mistake” on the part of the U.S. government. The whole bloodthirsty history of the U.S. in this regard—installing and keeping in power governments which brutally oppress the people, in the Middle East and throughout the Third World—is not just a matter of policy but of the inner nature and necessity of capitalist imperialism. This imperialism, by its very nature and in accordance with its fundamental dynamics, depends upon and cannot do without the life-stealing exploitation and the vicious oppression and suppression of the masses of people in those countries. Imperialists view and treat these peoples and their countries as nothing more than instruments of profit-making and pawns in a global contest for domination and “opportunity” for exploitation. And that is why, despite all their talk about “siding with the people” and about “freedom” and “democracy,” administrations in Washington, D.C., whether Democrat or Republican, will continue in their relentless drive to ruthlessly subordinate the countries of the Third World, and their peoples, to the dictates of imperialism.”

Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?

By Matt Taibbi

February 16, 2011 9:00 AM ET

This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

“Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”

I put down my notebook. “Just that?”

“That’s right,” he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. “Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there.”

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What’s more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even “one dollar” just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick “The Gorilla” Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

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Glenn Beck thinks the spread of protests is a little too convenient. But this is what happens when ordinary people discover their power.

Dear Glenn Beck: It’s Not Conspiracy, It’s Courage

by Sarah van Gelder, Feb 24, 2011

Glenn Beck has made a startling discovery. People are working together to make change!

Beck used my recent article, “Wisconsin: First Step in an American Uprising?” as a backdrop during his Wednesday show on Fox News, where he talked in dark, hushed tones about the spread of the UK Uncut movement to the United States. “A coincidence?” he asked. Is it a coincidence that citizens of both countries are holding protests in multiple locations on February 26?

Hardly! Organizers of US Uncut have made no secret of the fact that they were inspired by the British upstart group. UK Uncut started when 12 people meeting at a London pub decided they were fed up waiting for “someone to do something” about the fact that, in response to budget shortfalls caused by the financial crisis, the government was planning drastic cuts to public services while big businesses were raking in record profits. “Why don’t we just start?” they wondered. “If we do it, maybe everybody will stop asking why it isn’t happening and join in.”

Continue

Do You Want To Prove To Your Children That Your God Is Great?

Follow these guidelines:

1. Plan a family trip to a area in a foreign country;

a. make sure the area is considered “unsafe” and “hostile”

b. pack light

2. Once there, try to meet as many people as possible; aggressively evangelize;

a. tell those you meet that your god is the real god

b. and if they followed in your footsteps, your god will prove this to them

3.  Now wait.

 

While waiting, read the following excerpt of a story that will prove to you, that this is the way you create believers, especially amoung children:

• Kenya Attackers Kill Dutch Missionary, Wife Raped, February 26, 2011

“The 36-year-old Dutch missionary Ebel Kremer has been shot and killed in Kenya during a robbery, his church confirmed Friday, February 25. His wife Lora Kremer, 34, was reportedly raped in the overnight attack in the town of Athi River near the capital Nairobi.” ,…, “The young children of the missionary couple, who witnessed the tragedy, “have been brought to safety,” ,…., “In some areas, an increase in persecution is the result of aggressive evangelism by the church,” (Source: http://www.religionnewsblog.com/25762/kenya-attackers-kill-dutch-missionary-wife-raped)

 

On a side note, lets see how Christians in the area treat others (Just like in the good ole’ days in the USA):

Kenyan witch-hunt targets elders December 27, 2009. “The poverty-stricken western district, known as Kenya’s sorcery belt, has seen an increase in mob attacks on individuals and even killings. The poor and elderly in particular are being targeted. Three months ago, a group of youths tortured five suspected witches before setting them on fire.”

 

Mental Illness Runs Ramant In Those There Parts Too:

Kenya: Thousands pray for pastors to rise from dead February 24, 2010 “Two pastors in the Kingdom Seekers Fellowship International church were killed in a road accident on Monday last week and the faithful believed that God would resurrect them if they prayed hard enough.”

 

Oh, and Mental Illness Runs Rampant in the USA too:

 

This is how it all begins….not following your own moral laws:

 

 

 

 

How Obama, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, liberals, PBS and the Washington Post helped to create Scott Walker

Gov. Scott Walker can thank Michelle Rhee for making teachers unions the enemy

Richard D. Kahlenberg, Sunday, February 27, 2011

Education writer explains how the former D.C. schools chief helped stoke anti-union fires

A half-century ago, Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to pass legislation allowing collective bargaining for public employees, including educators. At the time, teachers across the country, who make up a significant share of public employees, were often underpaid and mistreated by autocratic administrators. In the fight for greater dignity, union leaders such as Albert Shanker in New York City linked teacher unionization to the fledgling civil rights movement.

Today, Wisconsin is again at the forefront of a union battle – this time in Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to cut his state’s budget deficit in part by curtailing collective bargaining for teachers and other public employees. How did it become okay, once more, to vilify public-sector workers, especially the ones who are educating and caring for our children?

On the most obvious level, teachers unions are taking a pounding because Republicans have gained power in recent state elections, and the GOP has a strong partisan interest in undermining public-employee unions, which provide troops and treasure to the Democratic Party. In Wisconsin, Walker’s campaign to restrict the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other groups to the issue of wages is transparently partisan. Exempt from his plan are two unions that supported him politically: those representing police and firefighters.

But Walker’s argument – that greedy teachers are putting their own interests over the interests of the public – resonates in part because in recent years, many Democrats have made that argument as well.

Exhibit A is former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Under Democratic mayor Adrian Fenty, she repeatedly clashed with the Washington Teachers’ Union, which she said put the interests of adults over those of children. “Cooperation, collaboration, and consensus-building are way overrated,” Rhee said at the Aspen Institute’s education summit in 2008. She told journalist John Merrow it is imperative that teachers-union bargaining rights exclude issues such as devising a fair teacher-evaluation system.

Since resigning as chancellor last year, Rhee has launched a new organization, StudentsFirst, with the express goal of raising $1 billion to counter teachers unions. Her approach remains confrontational. In a profound sense, Democrats like Michelle Rhee have paved the way for Scott Walker.

But Rhee couldn’t have done it alone. Then-candidate Barack Obama endorsed Rhee in a 2008 debate as a “wonderful new superintendent” and later applauded the firing of every single unionized teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. (The teachers were later rehired.) Rhee’s agenda also received a big boost from liberal movie director Davis Guggenheim, whose film, “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ “ implies that teachers unions are to blame for the failures of urban education and that non-unionized charter schools are the solution. The movie includes no acknowledgment that the things teachers want for themselves – more resources devoted to education, smaller class sizes, policies that allow them to keep order in the classroom – are also good for kids.

Continue:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022506611.html

People need to face the future together and strengthen the social fabric of our communities. This is not a future you can, or should, face alone.

Fearful, Alone, & Ashamed

by Sarah Byrnes, Chuck Collins

Presently in the United States we are witnessing the emergence of politics based on fear and the erosion of status. Millions of people saw their livelihoods and dreams collapse in the aftermath of the economic meltdown. People lost their homes, jobs, savings, and sense of a positive future. They’ve had to adjust their expectations—for example, facing the reality that they may never be able to retire or improve their standard of living.

Some people respond to these circumstances by blaming themselves and feeling ashamed about their difficulties. Many are hunkering down, feeling depressed and withdrawn. In the U.S., we tend to think everything is about the individual—even blaming ourselves for things that are largely beyond our control.

Others of us respond by scapegoating others, often those more disadvantaged. These responses often come from a place of fear, isolation, and shame.

Continue

Most Americans Favor Citizenship for U.S.-Born Children of Illegal Immigrants

“While Americans still favor strong measures to crack down on illegal immigration, they oppose proposals to change the Constitution so that children born here to illegal immigrants would not automatically become citizens, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted Feb. 2-7.” MORE

it’s important never to forget that the narrow line that separates democracy from authoritarianism

“….. it’s important never to forget that the narrow line that separates democracy from authoritarianism is always crossed by a single first step–believing in the power to decide, for example, how often people can travel to a certain country, or who can travel there and who cannot–and it is the responsibility of those who grow up in fully free societies to never jeopardize their foundations.”

Cuban Blogger on Rubio, Menendez and Jeopardizing American Democracy, Anya Landau French — Feb 21, 2011

Since democracy has many meanings,

“Since democracy has many meanings, it is preferable to speak in terms of human rights, defined as an interdependent and indivisible set of universal legal norms rather than a menu from which to pick and choose. Civil and political rights are as important as economic, social and cultural rights.”

Cuba: Time For Reform and Liberalization, Arturo Lopez-Levy — Feb 24, 2011

Libya: Are the US and EU Pushing for Civil War to Justify NATO Intervention?

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, 25 February 2011

“Of all the struggles going on in North Africa and the Middle East right now, the most difficult to unravel is the one in Libya. After Egypt, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya focuses on the maelstrom unfurling next door and mulls over Libya’s ominous future. Is “manufactured destruction” or creative destruction at work? Is oil-rich Libya being set up for a civil war to pave the way for a U.S. and NATO armed intervention? Qaddafi is an independent Arab dictator; one should be opposed to dictatorship, but should also not forget about foreign tutelage.” MORE

I am one of the luckiest people….

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I am one of the luckiest people,

I know this.

Yet, this will not bring back Shiva.

I would do almost anything to touch my Shiva again,

To end this dream-state that I reside in,

Since she moved on.

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Sunday Sermons and Recent Stories You May Have Missed

 

The U.S.A has always struggled with the two class system…it all depends on who is in power that makes the country what it is. Throughout history conservative Christianity has always supported oppression of the minority once they become the majority. They are more dangerous than any outside force of terrorism.

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Oh, So That’s Why the Christchurch Quake Happened…

By Hemant Mehta

“I assume it’s a Poe, but the rhetoric is really no different than what you’d hear a Christian mouthpiece say, so the point is made.

One website claims to have a good idea why the recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand occurred“

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Christian Persecution in the United States

This Myth Perpetrated by Fundamentalists Need to Be Debunked

Al Stefanelli, 2-27-2011

United Atheist Front: Atheists are not the only goup effected by Fundamentalists. The doctrines, dogmas and superstitions of these religionists are making mainstream believers look bad, as well.

“Christian Fundamentalists walk to and fro on the earth with Gibraltar-sized chips on their shoulders complaining that they are being persecuted. While there are countries in certain parts of the world where they are being persecuted, the United States is not on that list. Still, they whine and cry about how they are being treated unfairly and compare themselves with David in that mythical story we all know so well. They add to their claim of persecution whenever the sporadic Freethinker billboard pops up because, after all, there are almost no Christian billboards out there…” MORE

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Bad Conscience: Obama Administration Rejects Oppressive Bush Medical Regulations

Rob Boston, Tue Feb 22, 2011

“Last week, the Obama administration did something that didn’t capture much media attention but should have: It officially overturned a bad policy from the Bush years and issued a series of final regulations dealing with health care and the right of “conscience.”

A little background: In December of 2008, the lame-duck Bush administration issued a sweeping series of regulations giving health-care workers a right to refuse to take part in any procedure that they say violates their religious beliefs. The astonishingly broad and far-sweeping reach of the regulations extended beyond reproductive healthcare, such as sterilization and abortion, to cover areas such as end-of-life directives, care of patients with HIV, and even use of psychiatric medicines.

At the time, Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, observed in a press release, “This regulation was a parting gift from President Bush to the Religious Right, and it ought to be returned to sender. The last thing this country needs is more Religious Right meddling in our health care.” MORE

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Largest crowds since Vietnam War march in Wisconsin

“A crowd estimated at more than 70,000 people on Saturday waved American flags, sang the national anthem and called for the defeat of a Wisconsin plan to curb public sector unions that has galvanized opposition from the American labor movement.

In one of the biggest rallies at the state Capitol since the Vietnam War, union members and their supporters braved frigid temperatures and a light snowfall to show their displeasure.”

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Spanish High Court Rules Torture Case Against US Can Proceed

By Joshua Holland On February 25, 2011

“Spain’s highest court ruled that a controversial case against US officials for authorizing the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay could proceed, rejecting an attempt by a Spanish prosecutor to end the investigation. The decision is a major victory for human rights activists, and a blow to the US government.”  MORE

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Shocker: Tea Partiers More Evangelical, Socially Conservative

“The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is out with a new poll and analysis that concludes that Tea Partiers are more conservative on abortion and same sex marriage than even Republicans, and that evangelicals are more likely than other religious groups to identify with the Tea Party.”

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65-Year-Olds Don’t Go To Planned Parenthood for Abortions

“…..low income women come to Planned parenthood clinics for a variety of services. As Planned Parenthood spokespersons endlessly repeat, only 3 percent of the organization’s services involve abortion, and no public funds are used to subsidize those procedures. The elderly woman mentioned in the blog was presumably there,  like Tanya herself, for an annual exam that includes breast and cervical cancer screenings, and Tanya was there as well for reduced -costs birth control pills.

So, to address the obvious question: why these attacks, at both the state and federal levels by virulent opponents of abortion, on an organization whose mission, contained in its very name, is to reduce unplanned pregnancies?  How did Planned Parenthood come to be so demonized? This after all, is an organization once so mainstream that the wife of conservative icon Barry Goldwater founded its Arizona chapter and in 1965 former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower agreed to be co-chairs of an honorary advisory board.

For me, the two most compelling answers to this question lie in the reframing of contraception within antiabortion circles, and the continued dominance of the religious right in Republican circles, all the buzz about the Tea Party notwithstanding. As I discuss at greater length in my recent book, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars, while once politicians on both sides of the abortion divide viewed contraception as true “common ground” (in the late 1970s, as a Texas congressman, George H.W. Bush was such an enthusiast for subsidized family planning, that his nickname in the House was “Rubbers”), over time this understanding broke down.

Particularly after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 with the active help of social conservatives, contraception, and the facilities that provided such services, such as Planned Parenthood clinics, came to be seen as “supportive of the abortion mentality,” because often these two services were delivered in the same building (albeit with strict separation of funding).”  MORE

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Family Research Council (FRC) Seeks to “Tear Down” Planned Parenthood’s “Spiritual Strongholds” With Prayer Rallies” “If you need any more proof that “strategic level spiritual warfare” is makings its way from the outward fringes into the heart of the Religious Right movement, look no further than this new Family Research Council prayer update calling upon its activists to “tear down the spiritual strongholds” of Planned Parenthood by holding prayer rallies outside the offices of their members of Congress this Friday.” MORE

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Walker’s Wisconsin Blueprint for Neo-Feudalism

Paul Rosenberg On February 26, 2011

“This is, in short, a massive attempt to restructure the state’s power-relations permanently and fundamentally away from a republican form of government, in which all sectors of the society have a say in how society is governed and back toward a form of feudalism, in which the property relations of the most powerful actors dominate virtually every aspect of public–and even private–life. This neo-fuedal model was first popularly treated by the cyber-punk writers of the early 1980s, just as Ronald Reagan was laying the initial foundations, and what we see in Walker’s “budget repair” bill is the clearest outline seen so far of just how this transformation is intended to be carried out.” MORE

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More Sunday Sermons, aka Recent stories you may have missed:

Carole Joffe reminds that, noise from the Religious Right not withstanding, only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services involve abortion and no public funds are used.

“Blue Dog” (fake Democrat), Mike Ross, from Arkansas cosponsored a bill to reaffirm “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States.

The U.S. has one of the highest unplanned pregnancy rates in the developed world. So why are conservatives trying to defund Planned Parenthood?

Send your tampons to Congress folk trying to pass bills that make illegal to have a miscarriage: Georgia Rep. Bobby Franklin is pushing legislation to criminalize miscarriage.  Jill Filipovic suggests we help him by sending in our used tampons.

Vatican: Priests Have Been Raping Nuns to Avoid Hookers with HIV

Charges initiated against Pope for crimes against humanity

By PATSY MCGARRY – IRISH TIMES
Added: Thursday, 24 February 2011 at 12:34 PM

TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity.

Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.

They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”.

They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”.

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Greenspan’s Fraud – How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy

“People called him a maestro, a visionary, the best economist ever. But who was this person who had catapulted into the spotlight from virtually nowhere? Did the world really know Alan Greenspan?…He may be a legendary figure in the eyes of many but when you carefully explore what he has wrought, the aura of public reverence around him can evaporate quickly…”

–Excerpt from ‘Greenspan’s Fraud’ by Ravi Batra

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Press Release

Greenspan’s Fraud

How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy

In this hard hitting and comprehensive look at Alan Greenspan’s career over the last two decades, bestselling author Ravi Batra reveals the devastating economic effects of the Federal Reserve Chairman’s ideas and policies. Greenspan has reigned over the U.S. economy since 1987, if not since 1981, outlasting at least three presidents. His views have shifted so frequently with the political tides that his actions, in Batra’s opinion, amount to an intellectual as well as a tax fraud against the people. This is unfortunate, because the chairman’s words resonate loudly around the world.

Greenomics, Batra argues, has extracted trillions of dollars in excess taxes from the American middle class, lowered wages for working families, and hurled millions into poverty. He pinpoints Greenspan’s glaring inconsistencies on Social Security, income tax cuts, free trade and the minimum wage and shows that many of his views are illogical and deeply flawed. Batra demonstrates how Greenspan unwittingly brought about a global crash; how he helped spread the virus of regressive taxation, which is the main culprit behind stagnating wages around the world.

In this revealing portrait, the enigmatic head of the Fed stands exposed. Few realize that he once regarded President Kennedy as a fascist dictator, considered America’s big business as a persecuted minority, argued that inflation hurts the stock broker more than the elderly, and paid lower wages to female employees while taking “better quality” work from them. In short, Greenspan emerges as a true friend of the rich and a covert foe of the poor and toiling workers. Not surprisingly, the U.S. economy, shepherded by the chairman for over two decades, now stays afloat on a subsidy of nearly $2 billion per day from the rest of the world. Such a pitiful state cannot endure. Batra offers practical economic reforms to do away with Greenomics and restore the comforts of the middle class that have vanished in the Greenspan era.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in bringing sanity to the global economy, which is currently afflicted with numerous debts, deficits and special interests. It is also a must read for those seeking an objective evaluation of the Bush administration’s policies making headlines today. The simplicity with which Batra presents his arguments and counters the orthodoxy will astound you.

The book also includes Batra’s forecast made in 1980 that Islam would convulse the western world around the year 2000. The 9/11 massacre was clearly foreseen by the author.

More: http://www.ravibatra.com/gsfrd.html

 

Reviews of Book:

Book Review: Greenspan’s Fraud, by Ravi Batra

December 05, 2005

Here is a book by an outstanding professor of economics, who predicted the date of the crash of the end-of-’90s economic bubble. Ravi Batra deflates Greenspan’s reputation as an economic wizard by presenting in great detail how Greenspan undermined the global economy. Batra calls Greenspan a fraud because Greenspan flip-flopped often in order to stay in the good graces of powerful people. Although supposedly a conservative, the main principle he followed was to always please the rich and powerful.

Greenspan, as head of the Federal Reserve, was supposed to maintain an economy that supports us all. But Batra says this about Greenspan’s approach:

“Greenspan’s economics may be abbreviated to Greenomics, which essentially turns out to be Greedomics, signifying a view that nothing should be done to interfere with business greed and the pursuit of profits.”

Greenspan believes in rugged individualism and laissez faire. He and Ayn Rand were of the same mind about the virtue of selfishness. I had read some time ago that Ayn Rand said that Big Business is America’s “persecuted minority.” From Batra I learned that she got that idea from Greenspan.

More: http://www.watchblog.com/democrats/archives/002990.html

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“Greenspan’s Fraud” — Thom Hartmann’s Independent Thinker Review

07/07/2005

What do you do when you want to screw only the working people of your nation with the largest tax increase in history and hand those trillions of dollars to your wealthy campaign contributors, yet not have anybody realize you’ve done it? If you’re Ronald Reagan, you call in Alan Greenspan.

Through the “golden years of the American middle class” – the 1940s through 1982 – the top income tax rate for the hyper-rich had been between 90 and 70 percent. Ronald Reagan wanted to cut that rate dramatically, to help out his political patrons. He did this with a massive tax cut in the summer of 1981.

The only problem was that when Reagan took his meat axe to our tax code, he produced mind-boggling budget deficits. Voodoo economics didn’t work out as planned, and even after borrowing so much money that this year we’ll pay over $100 billion just in interest on the money Reagan borrowed to make the economy look good in the 1980s, Reagan couldn’t come up with the revenues he needed to run the government.

Coincidentally, the actuaries at the Social Security Administration were beginning to get worried about the Baby Boomer generation, who would begin retiring in big numbers in fifty years or so. They were a “rabbit going through the python” bulge that would require a few trillion more dollars than Social Security could easily collect during the same 20 year or so period of their retirement. We needed, the actuaries said, to tax more heavily those very persons who would eventually retire, so instead of using current workers’ money to pay for the Boomer’s Social Security payments in 2020, the Boomers themselves would have pre-paid for their own retirement.

More: http://blog.buzzflash.com/hartmann/10015

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More on Greenspan:

Alan Greenspan: The Fraud – Alan Greenspan attempts to save face in his new book by revising history. September 20, 2007

Obama is planning to allow 100 million Muslim immigrants into the USA as a plot to Islamize the USA by the end of his second term

Special Guests: Promoting Conspiracy

Richard Bartholomew

2-20-2011

A few days ago, a publicity agency called Special Guests received some attention for a press release promoting Avi Lipkin, an Israeli pundit who has reportedly spoken “in over 1000 churches and synagogues in the United Sates, Canada, England, Greece, Israel, and other countries”. Lipkin claims that Obama is planning to allow 100 million Muslim immigrants into the USA as a plot to Islamize the USA by the end of his second term; this somewhat extravagant conspiracy theory caught the attention of David Corn at Mother Jones, and Corn took a closer look at Lipkin’s promoter:

“According to its website, the organization has collaborated with the National Right To Life Committee, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, the Second Amendment Foundation, and other conservative groups. The site boasts, “We regularly place guests on radio shows including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity Radio, [and] Michael Savage.” The group says it only promotes causes that “are pleasing to The Maker, our Creator.” It asks potential clients, “What is your special message? Is it helpful to humanity? Is it God-honoring?”
Apparently, it pleases God to accuse the president of covertly plotting–and implementing!–a Muslim takeover of the United States.”

Special Guests’ other clients include Walid Shoebat, and he and Lipkin are packaged as “available as guests individually or together as a panel.”

MORE: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/2/26/123531/114

This movie was my first eye opening of the horrors of war and US’s imprint on the world: “Casualties of War

“Casualties of War is a 1989 war drama directed by Brian De Palma, with a screenplay by David Rabe, based on the actual events of the incident on Hill 192 in 1966 during the Vietnam War. It starred Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn. An article written by Daniel Lang for The New Yorker in 1969 was the movie’s primary source.” Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_War

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Casualties of War (1989) IMDb:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097027/

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Related article:

‘There Is Yet More to Casualties of War’

Wednesday, Aug 30 1989

A few rare films stun the senses. They send you reeling from the theatre. They set you brooding about them for days. This is how it is with Casualties of War, Brian DePalma’s tale of an atrocity in the Vietnam War. All at once it is stunning, frightening, depressing–and a mesmerizing and unforgettable piece of moviemaking. For more than two hours you are unwillingly drawn to the awful events unfolding on the screen.It is a picture so powerful that having seen it once, you may never dare to view it again.

More: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1989-08-30/news/there-is-yet-more-to-casualties-of-war/1/

The Vanishing Middle Class

The Vanishing Middle Class

By Jake Whitney

“Thirteen years ago, the economists Sara Solnick and David Hemenway conducted a study that revealed a great deal about how Americans define happiness. Subjects, all of whom were middle class or lower, were asked which they wanted more: to earn $50,000 while everyone else got only half as much, or to earn $100,000 while everyone else earned $200,000. The increase in the subject’s earnings from the first scenario to the second was, of course, dramatic. But that didn’t matter to most. What mattered was how rich they were compared to others: 56% said they would take $50,000 less as long as they were richer than everyone else.”

,…,

“And it’s gaping in a lot of places. In case you haven’t heard, the gap between the rich and poor in the US is currently wider than it’s been since the Great Depression. It’s even worse here than in Egypt or Tunisia, where the income gap helped ignite the unrest. In the last 30 years, the richest 1% of Americans has seen its share of wealth jump from under 9% of the total pie to approximately 25%. Many fiscal conservatives argue that this is good because of the trickle-down theory that says increased riches for the wealthy eventually find their way to everyone else. But this simply hasn’t happened. Over the past three decades — the period when the rich have become superrich — real wages for the middle class have declined and the poor have only gotten poorer. The truth is that the dramatic increase in the wealth of our richest citizens has had devastating consequences for our middle and lower classes.”

,…,

“What political and corporate pressures? Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the longest serving woman in the US House of Representatives, told me in an interview that when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, one of the first things they did was to impose fees on savings accounts to encourage spending. At about the same time, as a recent book about the 2008 financial crisis reveals, the large banks and mortgage companies undertook an advertising campaign to de-stigmatize second mortgages and home equity loans. These efforts went far in changing American thinking that had previously held saving money and fiscal responsibility in high regard. Suddenly being in debt wasn’t frowned upon. In fact, it became the norm — for the middle and lower classes, that is.”

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2005: Vatican-backed course on exorcism taught at the Pontifical Academy Regina Apostolorum, run by the Legion of Christ, a controversial, notoriously authoritarian conservative religious order.

Exorcism and religious intolerance

Diane Vera

“Exorcism and “spiritual warfare” are often accompanied by religious intolerance and attempts to impose theocracy — at least in the context of the “New Apostolic Reformation,” as has been pointed out many times, by Rachel Tabachnick, Bruce Wilson, and others, here on Talk To Action.

Question:  To what extent is this also true of Catholic exorcism?

Recently there’s been a flurry of mass media attention to Catholic exorcism, due to the premiere of the movie The Rite, loosely based on the book ‘The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist’ by Matt Baglio.”

MORE: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/2/1/84633/59450

The “Patriot” movement (aka T-Baggers, Conservative Christians, Racists…) is becoming more overt.

Patriot Movement more overt

ArchaeoBob

“A couple of incidents including a news story suggest that the patriot movement is becoming more overt.

Today in the news, there is an article about a homicide detective being fired because he had publicly renounced his American Citizenship and declared himself a “Sovereign Citizen”.  Sunday, my wife and I were driving to church and ended up behind a van advertising that they were members of the Patriot movement.

I’ve had people hit me up to join the patriot movement for years.   When I was in the Assemblies of God, several members were tax protesters and were having meetings (which I never attended in spite of pressure from those individuals).  After walking and going back to the Episcopal church, I encountered a few more Patriot movement types who tried to get me to join over the 24 year span we attended those churches.  (Most of those people were ‘ex-Assemblies’*, although there were a couple of life-long Episcopalians who also tried to get me involved.)  The point is, they were all very hush-hush about it, and expressed fear that the government would persecute them for their beliefs.  They didn’t want to be caught.”

MORE: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/2/22/11821/5514

ALL A LIE – Conservative Christian with heart-wrenching story about the event that changed her from being a pro-choice advocate to becoming an anti-abortion spokesperson?

Anti-Abortion Dream Team: Former P P Director Joins Lila Rose’s Live Action

Bill Berkowitz

“Abby Johnson, a former director of a Texas Planned Parenthood clinic, has been hired by Lila Rose’s Live Action, the group surreptitiously video taping visits to Planned Parenthood clinics in order to entrap staffers into illegal behavior, as its Chief Research Strategist. What if the heart-wrenching story she’s been telling for more than a year about the event that changed her from being a pro-choice advocate to becoming an anti-abortion spokesperson isn’t true? As a result of her story, she’s gained a measure of celebrity, financial security and has become a sought after speaker at anti-abortion events and a frequent guest on conservative radio and television programs. Now, her story, as explained in her new memoir, has led her to Lila Rose’s anti-abortion group, Live Action.”

MORE: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/2/25/14359/3508

“In a world marked by profound class divisions and social inequality, to talk about “democracy”….

“What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both.”

~ Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP,USA). From the talk, “Why We’re in the Situation We’re in Today… And What to Do About It: A Thoroughly Rotten System and the Need for Revolution”

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“In a world marked by profound class divisions and social inequality, to talk about “democracy”— without talking about the class nature of that democracy and which class it serves—is meaningless, and worse. So long as society is divided into classes, there can be no ‘democracy for all’: one class or another will rule, and it will uphold and promote that kind of democracy which serves its interests and goals. The question is: which class will rule and whether its rule, and its system of democracy, will serve the continuation, or the eventual abolition, of class divisions and the corresponding relations of exploitation, oppression and inequality.”

~ Bob Avakian, Chairman of the RCP,USA

AMERICAN TAX PAYER’S: Federally Funded ‘Missionaries’ Now Teach in Florida Public Schools

EXCERPT: “US law forbids organizations receiving federal funds from evangelizing, but every abstinence event I attended [in Uganda] involved much praying and discussion of Jesus. As Human Rights Watch points out, it was sometimes hard to tell what the aim of these organizations actually was–preventing AIDS or saving souls. “

Bruce Wilson

2-24-2011

“Government funded missionaries in public schools? The idea would flabbergast many of America’s founders, most certainly the architects of the United States Constitution. Here’s the background: As a February 23rd, 2011 story from the Florida Independent, by Andy Kopsa, describes, the American leader of the Florida-based abstinence-only education program Project SOS endorses Martin Ssempa, a leading Uganda backer of the so-called “Kill the gays” bill that may soon come up for a vote in Uganda’s parliament. Project SOS has received over six and a half million dollars in federal funding, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2002, to teach abstinence education in Florida public schools. The funding continues into the present – in September SOS received over $450,000 from HHS.

But the Uganda tie is far from the most controversial aspect–the founder and head of SOS says the program was inspired by God, and her church identifies the Project SOS program as one of the “ministries” it supports, with SOS head Pam Mullarkey as a “missionary”…federally funded, that is.”

MORE: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/2/24/141125/808

 

Americans: Don’t you want to go back to the times when you had to piss your pants at work…..

Don’t you want to go back to the time when you had to piss your pants at work because your boss wouldn’t allow you a bathroom break?

You better be good at “holding it” at least 16 hours, otherwise you will surely be shunned due to the smell when can’t.

I am sure doing this in the 6 sometimes 7 days a week you work, will not do much damage to your body.

Besides, you don’t have health care, and do not accrue any “sick days” and certainly cannot ask for a day off.

What would be the point of asking, and why would you be welcoming a heavy beating or rape from your bosses, to teach you a lesson?

My advice would be to remember not to drink fluids, and god-forbid, do not eat any food prior to arriving at work…that opens up a whole list of images and aromas.

You can thank your bosses for helping you with the food issue, because they do not allow you a break for lunch or even a snack.

Just keep a stiff upper lip.

You may say “Well at least I got a job, and I can buy new clothes and do some laundry”.

But, will this be possible when you make an hourly wage, your boss decides on?

This most likely will be lower than what could offer you at least a “living standard” that many believe should be bestowed upon all, to fulfill their unalienable Rights, that include; “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and not live like a slave.

Either way, all the “income” you make goes back to your employer, when you utilize the cot you rent at the factory that your employer so graciously has awarded you for all your hard work.

You will be spending most of your time at work, so this seems like the most logical reason for not renting a room outside your work place.

Keep in mind too, that it is all about “location, location, location” as the old saying goes.

Living at work, helps you eat too.

You need to make sure you are in the dark back alleys, where trash is deposited by the resturants where the wealthy go out to eat.

This allows you the ability to dig through the trash being put out, before someone else does, so you can get a meal.

If you are lucky, it will still be warm and you grab it before a rat or stray dog starts chewing on it, tainting it with some unknown virus that would surely make you ill, or even be deadly.

All this, and you being only 12 years old must make you feel lucky when others have less.

You also need to be grateful you spend most of your time inside and in no danger of being shot because you are never going to join those crazy people who stand in their lines trying to “have their voices heard”, and get shot dead by one of those hired by your bosses to shut them up.

You want to stay on your employers good side.

What a great early American life to have before Socialism (Democratic Socialism, Unions, “We the People”) took hold.

When Americans get their head’s out of their asses, and find out what America was like at one time, the better off we will all be.

I doubt I will live to see it get bad as it once was, but I’ll bet my left lung and kidney that these dark days are coming and maybe that is what it will take to change America for the better.

The leader of the free world.” That’s what they always say about this country. But this is a Big Lie.

The Revolution We Need…  The Leadership We Have

A Message, And A Call, From The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

This Is NOT The Best of All Possible Worlds…  And We Do NOT Have to Live This Way

Full article: http://www.rwor.org/a/170/Revolution_we_need-en.html

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“The leader of the free world.” That’s what they always say about this country. But this is a Big Lie.

The truth is that we live under a system that, from the start in this country, built up its wealth and power by enslaving millions of Black people, stealing land from Indians and Mexicans through war and genocide, and working many people, including children, literally to death. It is by such murderous means that this system has expanded “from sea to shining sea” across this continent—and around the whole world.

It is a system of capitalism-imperialism…a system in which U.S. imperialism is the most monstrous, most oppressive superpower…a system driven by a relentless chase after profit, which brings horror upon horror, a nightmare seemingly without end, for the vast majority of humanity: poverty and squalor…torture and rape…the wholesale domination and degradation of women everywhere…wars, invasions and occupations…assassinations and massacres…planes, missiles, tanks and troops of the USA bombarding people in faraway lands while they sleep in their homes or go about their daily lives, blasting their little children to pieces, cutting down men and women in the prime of life, or in old age, kicking down their doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night…while here in the USA itself the police harass, brutalize and murder youth in the streets of the inner cities—over and over again—and then they spit out their maddening insults, insisting that this is “justified,” as if these youth are not human beings, have no right to live, deserve no respect and no future.

Throughout the world, as a result of this system, a billion people or more go hungry every day…with many facing the threat of starvation. Hundreds of millions of children are forced to work like slaves and to live in putrid slums, in the midst of garbage and human waste. Waves of immigrants, unable to live in their own homelands, travel the earth in search of work—and if they find it, they are worked until they can hardly stand and are forced into the shadows, with the constant fear that they will be deported and their families broken apart. Growing numbers of people cannot find work at all now, with many losing their homes as well as their jobs, while others are worked even more mercilessly. Everyone is lured and driven to consume more and more, at the cost of ever-mounting debt and the loss of any sense of larger purpose or meaning to life or any deeper connection with other human beings. Many are being pushed to the edge…growing numbers are going over the edge, often lashing out in crazed desperation.

Young women in the millions are traded like cattle and forced into sexual slavery, shipped across countries and continents, while women everywhere are degraded, demeaned, and brutalized in a thousand ways—beaten and raped in huge numbers, treated as objects of sexual gratification and breeders of children instead of full human beings. The idea of an intimate loving relationship with another human being is made into a sick joke, perverted into a property or commodity relation, weighed down by repressive patriarchal tradition and denied or restricted for people of the same sex.

The environment and human destiny itself is being taken to the brink of disaster.

All this because of the dictates of this system—because of its stranglehold on humanity. All this while technology and wealth exist on a scale and in forms never before imagined—technology and wealth produced by millions, billions, throughout the world who are nameless and faceless to the powers that be—technology and wealth that could and should be a resource belonging to humanity as a whole and used to meet the needs of people everywhere for a decent and ever-enriched material, intellectual and cultural life.

Look at what this system is doing to youth right here in the USA. For millions in the inner cities, if they are not killed at an early age, their likely future is prison (nearly 1 in 8 young Black men is incarcerated, the prisons are overflowing with Blacks and Latinos, and this country has the highest rate of incarceration of women in the world). This system has robbed so many youth of the chance for a decent life and has got far too many living, dying and killing for nothing—nothing good—nothing more than messing up people and murdering each other on the streets of the cities here…or joining the military, being trained to be murderers on a mass scale, massacring people in countries across the globe. A system which offers millions and millions of youth no greater purpose, no better fate, than crime and punishment, or to become a mindless killing machine for the system itself—that alone is reason enough to sweep this system from the face of the earth!

And, despite the good intentions of many teachers, the educational system is a bitter insult for many youth and a means of regimentation and indoctrination overall. While, particularly in some “elite” schools, there is some encouragement for students to think in “non-conformist” ways—so long as, in the end, this still conforms to the fundamental needs and interests of the system—on the whole, instead of really enabling people to learn about the world and to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, education is crafted and twisted to serve the commandments of capital, to justify and perpetuate the oppressive relations in society and the world as a whole, and to reinforce the dominating position of the already powerful. And despite the creative impulses and efforts of many, the dominant culture too is corrupted and molded to lower, not raise, people’s sights, to extol and promote the ways of thinking, and of acting, that keep this system going and keep people believing that nothing better is possible.

Look at the lies they constantly tell us—with all their honeyed words about “democracy” for the people and “human rights,” while they are ruthlessly dictating over people, with force and violence, all over the world, and right here at home. Oh, and now they come on with Obama…to make us think they will be bringing some kind of change for the better. But Obama represents this system, and all this system can bring is more of the same: more torture and torment, more oppression and brutality, more war and destruction.

Some say this is all “god’s will” and we just have to “put it all in god’s hands.” But it was not some god that got us in this situation…and it won’t be some god that will get us out of it. The truth is, there are no gods…and we don’t need them!

MORE: http://www.rwor.org/a/170/Revolution_we_need-en.html

Should the Judicial Ethics Code Apply to Supreme Court Justices Like It Does To Other Federal Judges

“The Washington Post explains here that 100 law professors have asked Congress to subject Supreme Court justices to a judicial ethics code like the one that all other federal judges apply to themselves. One concern is the recent attendance of Supreme Court justices at events sponsored by conservative groups.”

MORE: http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2011/02/should-the-judicial-ethics-code-apply-to-supreme-court-justices-like-it-does-to-other-federal-judges.html

The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power.

“[T]he majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.”

~ Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture (Literature), 2005

Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter(46 minutes)

Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture was pre-recorded, and shown on video on 7 December 2005, in Börssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Murdering Abortion Doctors is NOT “Justifiable Homicide” – Bills in both Iowa and Nebraska could put abortion providers at serious risk

Dangerous Anti-Choice Laws Spread

Emily V., Care2 Action Alerts

I thought we were through with legalizing the murder of abortion doctors when South Dakota shelved its “justifiable homicide” bill. Public sentiment was loud and clear: Making loopholes that encourage violence against abortion doctors is not acceptable

But the trend is spreading. Now anti-choicers are going after women’s rights in Iowa and Nebraska too. Bills in both these states could put abortion providers at serious risk.

Supporters of the bills insist that the point isn’t to declare open season on abortion doctors. But they need to face up to facts. In the past, people who’ve killed abortion providers have tried — and thus far, failed — to invoke the “justifiable homicide” defense. Law enforcement is worried the bill, if passed, could lead to more violence and killings.

But at their core, the bills seeks to take away the hard-fought rights of women by granting rights to fetuses.

Public outcry killed the bill in South Dakota, but we need to keep up the pressure.

Sign the petition in support of women in Nebraska and Iowa and spread the word to your friends in these states and around the country. Post the petition to Facebook, Tweet it to your network, or email your friends.

The Republicans’ insistence on cutting back government spending is ultimately a disguised way to advance their agenda

The Role of Government

By Angela Bradbery, 2-25-2011

The Republicans’ insistence on cutting back government spending is ultimately a disguised way to advance their agenda of selectively limiting the role of government in society. (It is selective because they and their corporate backers DO support an aggressive role for government when it comes to policies and activities that benefit big corporations.)

That the real issue is the role of government itself is underscored by congressional Republican budget proposals. As Congress debates a short-term government funding bill, not only are the Republicans proposing to slash vital programs, they are seeking to block, stop or undermine government restraints on Big Business — an array of rules, regulations, programs and enforcement schemes that have little or no budgetary impact, but are hugely important for protecting the public and the environment from predatory corporations.

Among many, many other troubling measures, the House Republican proposals would:

• Eliminate funding for a new consumer product safety database. Removing its funding would deprive consumers of a critical tool — three years in the planning — to report and research safety incidents on toys and other products.

• Slash the budget for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by roughly a third. Saving only $50 million, this measure would completely hamstring the agency charged with implementing some of the most important components of the Wall Street reform law.

• Eliminate the presidential public financing system.

• Stop the Environmental Protection Agency from listing coal ash as hazardous waste, enforcing rules that would curtail mountaintop-removal coal mining, issuing new rules that would protect rivers from coal waste, or improving air quality standards.

It’s important to emphasize in this discussion that the Obama administration budget proposals, while far superior to the Republican alternative, accept many of the Republican premises — including the most important one, that the government should be reducing spending.

At a time when one in six people who would like a full-time job are unable to find one, the government should be spending more money to put people back to work, get the economy moving and prevent the waste of letting workers and plants remain idle. Instead, the Obama administration has essentially conceded the need for austerity.

Adopting the false politics of scarcity, the president needlessly proposes to shortchange vital public programs. A distressing example is his proposal to slash $3 billion from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides cash assistance to poor people to help them pay their utility bills.

One can go program by program, or rider by rider, and explain how misguided are proposals from both the Republicans and the administration. But even more important is to insist on what we want our government to do. We need a strong government. There are of course government programs that should be eliminated or improved. But we do need a government that is able to educate our children, ensure access to health care for all, move us to a clean energy future, keep the economy working, provide a social safety net, and protect us from corporate predations. We need a government that takes seriously its duty to advance the General Welfare.

MORE: http://www.citizenvox.org/2011/02/25/on-wisconsin-and-america/