Friday, April 10, 2009
The Different ‘Four Questions’ at the White House Passover Seder
INTRODUCTORY QUESTION: WHY IS THIS DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION GOING TO SUCCEED WHERE OTHERS HAVE FAILED?
1. Why is it that during all other recent Democratic Administrations we eat HUMBLE PIE, but during this Administrations we eat the GOP's LUNCH?
2. Why is it that during all other recent Democratic Administrations, the GOP brands us as hippie/commie/vegetarians, but during this Administration overwhelming majorities would prefer even this to eating the GOP's BITTER HERBS?
3. Why is it that during all other recent Democratic Administrations, we did not know how to handle the GOP dip-shits, but during this Administration we have learned how to dip the GOP dip-shits in their own bullshit at least twice a minute?
4. Why is it that that during all other recent Democratic Administrations, we were caught off-guard by GOP ATTACKS either sitting or reclining, but during this Administration we can easily kick their ass even while eating in a reclining position?
Happy Easter
Flagellants whip their backs during Maundy Thursday Lenten rites in Angeles city, Pampanga province, north of Manila April 9, 2009. The Roman Catholic church frowns on the gory spectacle held in the Philippine village every Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday but that does nothing to deter the faithful from emulating the suffering of Christ and taking a painful route to penitence.
Our fancy Internet infrastructure operates on a wire and a prayer
by Larry Dignan
While it's unclear what exactly happened, AT&T is offering a $100,000 reward to find the vandals that cut into fiber optic wires and whacked everything from hosting centers—including a few of our own—911 calls and other communication (Techmeme). Sam said it best: No matter how advanced we get we're still hooked up to a big wire somewhere.
That's not going to change. The big question: How are we going to protect those big wires?
Barrett Lyon asks whether it's possible to destroy the network with a hacksaw. In a word: Yup. It happened yesterday. AT&T used Twitter—home of the Fail Whale—to communicate with customers. Anyone see the irony in that one?
What's truly scary is that we're not just talking about the Internet here. The electric grid is vulnerable. Our transportation grid is vulnerable. Our infrastructure in the U.S. is a big sitting duck. The grid and the Internet are top of mind today, but I'm reminded of the overall infrastructure vulnerability every trip into Penn Station. Every once in a while you'll see heavily armed police with their K-9 dogs in Penn Station's lobby. It's a common sight. However, if you really wanted to bring down the train station and subway it's nothing a stray backpack couldn't take care of.
Simply put, it's impossible to completely secure all of the infrastructure out there. And everyone knows it. In 2003, a student dissertation raised national security concerns. It's not rocket science to map infrastructure and cook up scenarios.
A series of Phoenix newspaper columns sheds light on the insanity of our country's immigration policies
by Tom Danehy
She told of a Phoenix family that had been kidnapped and held at gunpoint for ransom not once, but twice. That's the puzzling part, since the odds of that happening even once are astronomical.
About two-thirds of the way into the first column, it began to make sense. It seems that a couple, Jaime and Araceli, came here illegally from Mexico several years ago and settled in Phoenix. Jaime found work smuggling other people across the border, which, obviously, is a lucrative position with plenty of growth potential. However, through a translator, he says that he stopped a few years back.
Yes, he's been here a decade and still needs a translator. I know that sounds like redneck humbug, but I—a person who absolutely sucks at speaking other languages—am pretty sure that if I were to sneak into Peru or Germany or (God help me) France with the intent of living there for the rest of my life, I'd make the effort to learn that country's language. That seems to be the very, very least I could do.
Anyway, he says that he got out of the hands-on part of human smuggling when it began to turn violent. Some enterprising coyotes figured out that they could charge to smuggle people across the border and then hold people for ransom from friends or family members once they got here. America is indeed the land of opportunity.
Jaime got out of the actual smuggling business and began making money buying cars and selling them to the smugglers to use in their smuggling/kidnapping schemes. I wonder how you say "rationalization" in Spanish. Or I guess you could just put your hands at shoulder height, palms out, and say, "Yo no fui." (It wuddn't me.)
I'm fairly certain that Roberts didn't write the columns to drum up sympathy for people who broke the law to come here and then lived a fairly comfortable life with money gained from committing multiple felonies. At least I hope she didn't.
Her focus was mainly on what happened to the family the second time they got jacked by fellow smugglers. After armed men broke into their apartment and got away with $1,300 in cash and a bunch of gold jewelry, the family moved to a house in another part of Phoenix. A year later, it happened again: Gunmen broke into the house, which was home to the family and several relatives. One man put a gun to Araceli's head as her children screamed. When her husband emerged from the bathroom, he was beaten and kicked as demands for money were issued.
The gunmen eventually left, taking vehicles, cell phones and Jaime. He was taken to another location where he was beaten and tortured for three days as the kidnapers issued sporadic ransom demands. Araceli called the cops, and the police nabbed one of the guys when he arrived to pick up the ransom. After hours of negotiation, during which the charge of kidnapping was taken off the table, he led police to the house where Jaime was being held.
The guy was offered a sentence of 12 1/2 years, but turned it down, ostensibly because he believed that his homies would see to it that Jaime and Araceli would not testify. But they did testify, and the thug got a sentence of 54 years. Now he says that he didn't understand the original offer, and he'll take the 12 1/2 years, to which the courts have thus far replied, "Uh ... no."
People with high blood pressure will be thrilled to learn that Jaime and Araceli are now living in this country legally and are applying for a visa given to crime victims. They came here illegally, but now they get to stay because they were the victims of a crime brought about by their having committed countless crimes themselves. Land of opportunity, hell; this is the land of all-out zaniness.
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/danehy/Content?category=1063741
What's Next? MAY DAY
What's next after April 3rd and 4th?
WE MUST NOT LET RACISM DIVIDE WORKING PEOPLE
MARCH WITH US ON
MAY DAY
On April 3rd & 4th, around the country thousands converged on Wall Street, Los Angeles, and Raleigh, N.C. to demand "Bail out the people, not the banks and corporations."
Clearly, the fight to bail out the people will not end in April. We must continue to build a movement that will guarantee jobs, homes, health care, an end to repression and war, and everything the people need during this growing economic crisis.
What's next? Come out on May 1st! In 2006, immigrants and their supporters demonstrated in record numbers. They held some of the biggest demonstrations not seen in decades and decades. They demanded an end to the unbelievably repressive proposed legislation, the Sensenbrenner bill which penalized immigrant workers. The Bush administration attempted to criminalize going to work.
This legislation was directed against all U.S. workers.
Since 2006, workers have come out to commemorate May 1st, International Workers Day. Despite the raids and deportations, immigrant workers, the sector whose struggle bore May Day in Chicago two centuries ago, have revived May Day, a day celebrated by billions around the world every year. In 2005, workers and activists reclaimed May Day once again and held several May Day demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere.
There is now a great opportunity for workers in general to help continue reviving the legacy of May Day in the spirit of unity and common interest.
Now more than ever the union saying "An injury to one is an injury to
all" is relevant. Immigrant rights are workers rights. Workers rights are immigrant rights. The struggle of one is the struggle of the other. The globalization of the banks and corporations demonstrate that there must be no borders in the workers struggle.
The Gestapo-like raids and deportations, the criminalizing of workers, the beatings and killings are meant to divide us, to keep us fighting one another instead of the real enemy.
These attacks are used to further cop killings and criminalization of Black & Latino(a) youth. They are used to justify the neglect and cutting of vital services and education, especially towards communities of color. They are used to help feed racist divisions and apathy on the part of white workers in relation to the conditions of people of color. And they attempt to hide Wall Street's theft of pensions and homes while money is diverted to the banks and for imperialist war abroad.
Are not immigrants forced to come here as a result of U.S. foreign and economic policy? Is it immigrants who foreclose homes or shut down factories and move them abroad where labor is more exploited? Who is it that is bailing out the rich, while the poor and working class bear the brunt of a crisis they did not create?
With solidarity and unity there is victory! The Bail Out the People Movement urges everyone to take the next step after April 3/4 and come out in record numbers on May 1st. Actions will be held in cities around the country, from the east and west and from the north to the south.
We urge you to organize a Bail out the People contingent at these events.
May 1st 2009 marks the first 100 days of the Obama administration. A united movement of people with documents and without, Black, Latino(a), Asian, Arab, Native and white, young and old, employed and unemployed, women, men, LGBT or straight, able-bodied and disabled, will send a clear message to Washington and to Wall Street:
Clearly, the fight to bail out the people will not end in April. We must continue to build a movement that will guarantee jobs, homes, health care, an end to repression and war, and everything the people need during this growing economic crisis.
What's next? Come out on May 1st! In 2006, immigrants and their supporters demonstrated in record numbers. They held some of the biggest demonstrations not seen in decades and decades. They demanded an end to the unbelievably repressive proposed legislation, the Sensenbrenner bill which penalized immigrant workers. The Bush administration attempted to criminalize going to work.
This legislation was directed against all U.S. workers.
Since 2006, workers have come out to commemorate May 1st, International Workers Day. Despite the raids and deportations, immigrant workers, the sector whose struggle bore May Day in Chicago two centuries ago, have revived May Day, a day celebrated by billions around the world every year. In 2005, workers and activists reclaimed May Day once again and held several May Day demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere.
There is now a great opportunity for workers in general to help continue reviving the legacy of May Day in the spirit of unity and common interest.
Now more than ever the union saying "An injury to one is an injury to
all" is relevant. Immigrant rights are workers rights. Workers rights are immigrant rights. The struggle of one is the struggle of the other. The globalization of the banks and corporations demonstrate that there must be no borders in the workers struggle.The Gestapo-like raids and deportations, the criminalizing of workers, the beatings and killings are meant to divide us, to keep us fighting one another instead of the real enemy.
These attacks are used to further cop killings and criminalization of Black & Latino(a) youth. They are used to justify the neglect and cutting of vital services and education, especially towards communities of color. They are used to help feed racist divisions and apathy on the part of white workers in relation to the conditions of people of color. And they attempt to hide Wall Street's theft of pensions and homes while money is diverted to the banks and for imperialist war abroad.
Are not immigrants forced to come here as a result of U.S. foreign and economic policy? Is it immigrants who foreclose homes or shut down factories and move them abroad where labor is more exploited? Who is it that is bailing out the rich, while the poor and working class bear the brunt of a crisis they did not create?
With solidarity and unity there is victory! The Bail Out the People Movement urges everyone to take the next step after April 3/4 and come out in record numbers on May 1st. Actions will be held in cities around the country, from the east and west and from the north to the south.
We urge you to organize a Bail out the People contingent at these events.
May 1st 2009 marks the first 100 days of the Obama administration. A united movement of people with documents and without, Black, Latino(a), Asian, Arab, Native and white, young and old, employed and unemployed, women, men, LGBT or straight, able-bodied and disabled, will send a clear message to Washington and to Wall Street:
- Bail out the people, not the banks or corporations!
- Jobs, not jails! Pass EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act)!
- Stop the foreclosures! Union jobs with union wages for all!
- Stop the raids & deportations!
For a list of cities with May 1st actions visit the BOPM website:
www.bailoutpeople.org
You can also call us at: (New York) (212) 633-6646 or (Los Angeles) (310) 677-6407 or email us at http://bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml
www.bailoutpeople.org
You can also call us at: (New York) (212) 633-6646 or (Los Angeles) (310) 677-6407 or email us at http://bailoutpeople.org/cmnt.shtml
Ethnic Kurds file class action in Baltimore against chemical makers
Dr. Aaron Milstone examines Mohammed Aziz, who endured a mustard gas attack in 1988 in Iraq. He has been treated at VUMC since 2001. Photo by Dana Johnson/Vanderbilt Medical Center
Filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, the lawsuit says the companies supplied the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with the chemical precursors and compounds needed to make the poison gases used in the six-month long "Operation Anfal."
One of the companies, Alcolac Inc., was headquartered in Baltimore at the time of the attacks but is now defunct. Some of its assets were acquired by a French firm, Rhodia Inc., which is mentioned in the complaint but not named as a defendant.
A spokesman for Rhodia, David Klucsik, said Alcolac was not acquired until 1989 - by a predecessor to Rhodia called Rhone-Poulenc. Rhodia, the chemicals arm of Rhone-Poulenc was spun off in 1998.
"Rhodia did not exist until 1998," Klucsik said. "And, Rhone-Poulenc had no awareness of the allegations against Alcolac because the acquisition didn't occur until 1989."
Kenneth McCallion of New York, the lead attorney in the case, told The Associated Press he filed the complaint in Maryland because all three companies have operations there and because Alcolac pleaded guilty in 1989 to knowingly violating export laws by shipping a mustard-gas ingredient that ultimately went to Iran.
The lawsuit accuses the companies — Alcolac; West Chester, Pa.-based VWR International LLC; and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. of Waltham, Mass. — of selling lab materials and chemicals used in the manufacture of chemical weapons. Valerie Collado, spokeswoman for VWR International, said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
The plaintiffs claim the use of mustard and nerve gases during the attacks is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention of 1925.
Israel Cries Wolf
ISTANBUL — "Iran is the center of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is in my view more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb, whereas the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option."Benjamin Netanyahu 2009? Try again. These words were in fact uttered by another Israeli prime minister (and now Israeli president), Shimon Peres, in 1996. Four years earlier, in 1992, he'd predicted that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.
You can't accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf. Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.
Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel's attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:
"You don't want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran."
I must say when I read those words about "the wide-eyed believer" my mind wandered to a recently departed "decider." But I'm not going there.
The issue today is Iran and, more precisely, what President Barack Obama will make of Netanyahu's prescription that, the economy aside, Obama's great mission is "preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons" — an eventuality newly inscribed on Israeli calendars as "months" away.
I'll return to the ever shifting nuclear doomsday in a moment, but first that Netanyahu interview.
This "messianic apocalyptic cult" in Tehran is, of course, the very same one with which Israel did business during the 1980's, when its interest was in weakening Saddam Hussein's Iraq. That business — including sales of weapons and technology — was an extension of Israeli policy toward Iran under the shah.
It's also the same "messianic apocalyptic cult" that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to "the axis of evil," and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.
I don't buy the view that, as Netanyahu told Goldberg, Iran is "a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest." Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs.
Yet Netanyahu insists (too much) that Iran is "a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation." Huh?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09iht-edcohen.html?th&emc=th
Glenn Beck and the rise of Fox News' militia media
by Eric BoehlertAfter a night of drinking, followed by an early-morning argument with his mother, with whom he shared a Pittsburgh apartment, 22-year-old Richard Poplawski put on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his guns, including an AK-47 rifle, and waited for the police to respond to the domestic disturbance call his mother had placed. When two officers arrived at the front door, Poplawski shot them both in the head, and then killed another officer who tried to rescue his colleagues.
In the wake of the bloodbath, we learned that Poplawski was something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America. He was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Specifically, Poplawski, as one friend described it, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." (FYI, there is no Obama gun ban in the works.) The same friend said the shooter feared America was "going to see the end of our times."
We learned that Poplawski hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he visited the website of 9-11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years. More recently, Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception (that's the name of Jones' new documentary DVD) and how President Obama is bound to destroy America.
Who's Alex Jones? Even according to some conservative bloggers, the anti-government, anti-Obama talker is a "freak" who's popular with "the tin foil hat crowd." Like with Poplawski, apparently.
Jones might be a "freak," but he has recently been embraced -- and mainstreamed -- by Fox News, as part of the news channel's unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America's democratic demise under the new president.
During a March 18 webcast of FoxNews.com's proudly paranoid "Freedom Watch," Andrew Napolitano introduced a segment about "what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away." And with that, he welcomed onto the show "the one, the only, the great Alex Jones," who began ranting about "exposing" the New World Order and the threat posed by an emerging "global government."
"I appreciate what you're exposing," Napolitano assured his guest.
Waving around a copy of his Obama Deception, Jones warned Fox News webcast viewers about Obama's "agenda" for "gun confiscation" and the new president's plan to "bring in total police-state control" to America.
Jones also noted with excitement that Fox News' Glenn Beck had recently begun warning about the looming New World Order on his show, just like Jones had for years. "It is great!" cheered the conspiracist. (Like Jones, Beck recently warned viewers that "the Second Amendment is under fire.") Concluding the interview, Fox News' Napolitano announced "it's absolutely been a pleasure" listening to Jones' insights.
We don't know if Poplawski tuned in to watch Jones' star turn for Fox News last month. But is there any doubt that Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing the type of paranoid insurrection rhetoric that people like Poplawski are now acting on? By stoking dark fears about the ominous ruins that await an Obama America, by ratcheting up irresponsible back-to-the-wall scenarios, Fox News has waded into a territory that no other news organization has ever dared to exploit.
What Fox News is now programming on a daily (unhinged) basis is unprecedented in the history of American television, especially in the form of Beck's program. Night after night, week after week, Beck rails against the president while denouncing him or his actions, alternately, as Marxist, socialist, or fascist. He felt entirely comfortable pondering whether the federal government, under the auspices of FEMA, was building concentration camps to round up Americans in order to institute totalitarian rule. (It wasn't until this week that Beck was finally able to "debunk" the FEMA conspiracy theory.) And that's when Beck wasn't gaming out bloody scenarios for the coming civil war against Obama-led tyranny. In just a few shorts months, Beck raced to the head of Fox News' militia media movement.
Just prior to the Pittsburgh massacre, Beck's often bizarre on-air performances, in which his rants against the Obama administration's dark forces were mixed in with his tearful proclamations of love of country, had turned him into a highly rated laughingstock. "That is a shaky cat," Dennis Miller recently giggled while describing Beck. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough broke into hysterics after a montage of Beck's most weepy moments. And TV satirists have had a field day at the Fox News host's expense. (Stephen Colbert: "Crank up the crazy and rip off the knob!")
But I'm not sure people should be laughing.
Suit: Shell complicit in execution of Nigerian rights activist
by Stephen C. Webster
The Center for Constitutional Rights and Earth Rights International, along with Mr. Wiwa's son, allege the International oil company "financed, armed, and otherwise colluded with the Nigerian military forces that used deadly force and conducted massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta."
They claim Shell was complicit in the 1995 military executions of nine activist leaders, including Ken Saro-Wiwa.
"Shell began oil production in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in 1958," the groups say on a new Web site dedicated to promoting the suit. "After more than 30 years of environmental devastation and exploitation by Shell, a popular nonviolent movement of the Ogoni people developed in the early 1990s in opposition to its presence in the region. At the request of Shell, and with Shell's assistance and financing, Nigerian soldiers used deadly force and massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni people throughout the early 1990s to repress the growing movement against the oil company."
"Ken Saro-Wiwa, with eight other Ogoni rights activists, was executed by Nigeria's military dictatorship in 1995," reported the Guardian. "The men were a constant irritant to the generals, reminding the world that their lands in the Niger Delta were being wrecked and their health and livelihoods destroyed by gas flaring, oil spills and military attacks. Imprisonment and beatings failed to shut them up. So the government constructed false charges against these men, paid people to pose as witnesses and hanged them."
"The suit says the company tried to bribe two men to testify against Saro-Wiwa at his trial before a special tribunal," reported the Financial Times.
"'Almost daily you get a reminder that your father was hanged for a crime he didn't commit,' Mr Saro-Wiwa Jr told the Financial Times. 'We've always maintained that Shell was complicit in the conspiracy to silence my father and thousands of other Ogonis.'
"Shell says the allegations contained in the case are false and that the company appealed for clemency for Saro-Wiwa. 'We in no way encouraged or advocated any acts of violence against Ken Saro-Wiwa or the other Ogonis,' said Rainer Winzenried, a Shell spokesman. 'We believe that the evidence will show clearly that Shell was not responsible for these tragic events.'"
"Shell accounts for more than 40% of Nigeria's total petroleum production of 899,000 barrels per day from more than eighty fields," noted Persian network PressTV.
"Oil revenues account for 90% of Nigerian export earnings and 80% of the government's total revenue. Shell accounts for just over half of Nigeria's total production."
Chief Judge Kimba Wood of the Southern District of New York ordered the trial to go forward May 26.
"Shell could be forced to pay millions of dollars in damages if found responsible in the case that was first filed in 1996 by the family of Saro-Wiwa, an environmentalist and author," reported Reuters.
The following video was published to YouTube by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Suit_Shell_complicit_in_execution_of_0408.html
The Abuse of the Desire for Money or Capitalism's Addicts
by: François Flahault | Visit article original @ Le Monde
Are politicians thinking about the common good when they talk about "moralizing capitalism?" Undoubtedly, they are primarily thinking that they must calm discontent to maintain their credibility: a democratic state is supposed to fulfill the function of third party between the powerful and the weak. Yet now, even in the United States, which, through skillful electoral marketing, had long succeeded in making the poor vote for the rich (a success that has created imitators), the crisis has just reminded everyone that a gap exists between those two groups. Must the search for the common good translate itself into a "moralization of capitalism?" All things considered, that would be a rather advantageous compromise for economic actors. Since everyone is painting themselves over in green (as ecology makes compulsory), why not also "communicate" the ethical character of companies, as long as a few concessions are being made anyway?
To the extent that it underestimates the balance of power, moral discourse plays its role, however involuntarily, in concealing those power relationships, that is, in the staging of rationality. The big economic and financial groups are powers, forces. We need to extend Montesquieu's great idea about the limitation of powers to the relations between politics and the economy. Since every power naturally tends to exert and extend itself, none self-limits of its own volition. Only one force can limit another force. In these last few months many economists have said what must be done to reform capitalism. Now, it remains to gather together the forces that would allow it to be done: a thing all the more difficult to do, given that one of the great victories of economic power has been to convert politicians to a doctrine which facilitates the supremacy of economic power.
Economic science generally and the free market doctrine in particular can be seen as a staging of rationality. Justifiable and convincing in many respects, that staging only makes it all the easier to forget power relations and the desire for power.
As we have seen, the faith in self-regulation applied to financial markets is altogether illusory. But if the role attributed to it in economic theory is questionable, there's another role it plays that the theory does not discuss, but which it fulfills particularly well: convincing economic actors (especially the most powerful ones), and, where possible, politicians, that it is useless to concern themselves with the common good, useless to worry about the long term. One need only leave it to the invisible hand: natural providence which all by itself achieves the common good. Under the appearance of rationality, the lack of accountability that is encouraged this way leaves the field wide open to the strongest.
