The False Flag:

Are you scared? Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the acceptance.

Where are the black boxes? Where are the beams from the world trade center?

Afganistan Revealed - Watch it to understand.

Understanding comes at a great cost.

The procacution of Condiliza Rice for War Crimes, Torture, and Lies

War Criminals Teach our students at Stanford and Berkley.

How many heros have to F!@#$%^ die?

(CBS/AP) Exactly how Ciara Durkin died remains a mystery. The Army National Guard soldier from Massachusetts was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan last week, and now her family is demanding answers from the military.

Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries "suffered from a non-combat related incident" at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation.

Durkin had a desk job doing payroll in an office about three miles inside the secure Bagram Air Base. About 90 minutes after she left work last Friday, her family says she was found dead near a chapel on the base with a single gunshot wound to the head.

The 30-year-old soldier, who was born in Ireland and came to the U.S. as a little girl, felt safer deployed in Afghanistan over Iraq, her family told CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace. Yet she was found dead within a highly secure base, with few answers.

"The family has been informed that she was in the compound, and she was shot in the head," Durkin's sister, Fiona Canavan, told the Boston Globe. "She was in a secure area of the compound, which, even though the investigation is not complete, leads the family to believe it was what is called friendly fire," she said.

Adding to the mystery is something the Army Specialist told her family: if something happened to her in Afghanistan, they should look into it. She was concerned about things she was seeing over there, one of her eight brothers and sisters said in an interview.

Canavan told the Quincy, Mass. Patriot Ledger on Wednesday that when her sister was home three weeks ago, she told her about something she had come across that raised some concern with her: "She was in the finance unit and she said, 'I discovered some things I don’t like and I made some enemies because of it.'"

Canavan revealed that Durkin said if anything happened to her, to make sure it was investigated.

"At the time we thought it was said more as a joke," Canavan told the paper.

The family is also wondering whether Durkin's sexual orientation - she was gay - played a role in her death.

"We just want full disclosure, that's all we want - to know what happened to our sister," Diedre Durkin said.


more...

Obama speeks to West Point on Afganistan

Want to be Informed? Watch FRONTLINE first!


Did Obama lay out a plan?
Did he define victory?
Does he have an EXIT Strategy?
What is the threat to the US? (starving people throwing rocks)

NPR

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?

Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.
Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.
We're counting on you.


Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. There's still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President.

The End of the University of California System

On Friday, November 20, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now reported on the student protests throughout california. (exert below)

According to Bob Samuels (president of the University of California, American Federation of Teachers. (He runs the blog Changing Universities) money is being funneled into the compensation of the star faculty and the star administrators, because in the UC system there’s over 3,000 people who make over $200,000. And many of them make $400,000, $500,000. 


Apparently, the University of California has been used by Republican appointees to the UC Board of Regents as a slush fund to finance private business interests. By investing the UC Pension fund in 'sub-prime' student loans and housing stock, they have shifted billions into the private sector. Current UC President, Mark Yudof, appointed from University of Texas in march 2008, with a compensation package worth $750,000 per year, says that the UC System is starving for money and must raise student tuition by 32% next year, even as the UC System loans out hundreds of millions to the State at 7% interest, and raises administrator salaries across the board. As long as we let Senior Vice Presidents from Wachovia Bank run our university we are bound to fail.


Learn More

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Samuels, just explain the situation right now. Why are these student hikes? What’s the justification for the 32 percent increase in student fees?

BOB SAMUELS: Well, President Yudof, the president of the University of California system, says that because of state cut to the UC budget from 20 percent of the state contribution, which is—the state only contributes about—contributes only about 15 percent of the total budget, but because of that cut, they say they have to raise student fees. And our argument has been that this is actually a record year of revenue for the UC system, and the problem is they just don’t want to spend the money on instruction. So what they’re doing instead—

AMY GOODMAN: How could it be a record year?

BOB SAMUELS: They brought in a lot of money from the federal stimulus money. They had a record year in their research grants. They had a record year in medical profits. Most of their money is brought in by selling parking, housing and medical services throughout California. So they had a record year in that revenue. They had a record year in grants. And so, actually, last year they ended up getting more money than before from the state, because they got the federal stimulus money.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what is the justification then? Explain further where that money goes.

BOB SAMUELS: Well, you know, the university says that it’s poor, that it can’t spend money from its other areas on students, on instructions, and so it has to basically—what it’s doing now is laying off hundreds of faculty members, especially the non-tenured lecturers, and it’s increasing class size.

And money is being funneled into the compensation of the star faculty and the star administrators, because in the UC system there’s over 3,000 people who make over $200,000. And many of them make $400,000, $500,000. A lot of them are mostly administrators and staff, and so the university has—basically has fewer and fewer faculty, more and more students and more and more administrators.

And so, what’s going to happen is it takes students longer to graduate. They can’t get the classes they need. And I teach required writing classes at UCLA, and they just laid off our entire department. And we have required classes, so we don’t know what they’re going to do. And the dean of our division told us the university simply does not have money for undergraduate education.

AMY GOODMAN: Doesn’t have money for undergraduate education. But what about the administration, the money that goes into the non-teaching staffs at the university throughout the system? And we’re talking about three basic tiers, right?

BOB SAMUELS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that.

BOB SAMUELS: Well, in California, we have the University of California, and some of the schools are UCLA, UC Berkeley. We have the CSU system. And then we have the community college—

AMY GOODMAN: And the CSU system is…?

BOB SAMUELS: The California State University system. And then we have the community college system. And the way it’s supposed to work is there’s a master plan, and the top students are supposed to go to the University of California. It’s the top ten percent of California students. And then another large group is supposed to go to the California State Universities. And then everyone else is supposed to go to the community college.

What’s going now is California right now has the second lowest rate of students who go directly from high school to a four-year university. It’s the only—only Mississippi has fewer students. And what we’re afraid is with these fee increases, what they’re talking about doing is raising the fees and basically lowering enrollment and increasing the amount of out-of-state students. So California next year will be—have the lowest rate of students who go directly from high school to college in the entire country.

AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of the non-teaching staffs, the administration?

BOB SAMUELS: That the administration keeps on expanding and growing. They keep on hiring more and more administrators. We’re not exactly sure what they do. And our joke at University of California is, when two administrators walk into a room, three always walk out. So we never know exactly what they do, but there’s just more and more of them.

AMY GOODMAN: So what kind of cuts are they suffering, the administrators?

BOB SAMUELS: The administrators are cutting—are virtually no cuts. In fact, the same meeting, when they decided to raise student fees, they voted on millions of dollars of increased salaries and special bonuses to administrators and to the highest-paid people. And so, there has been several compensation scandals in the UC system. And what they discovered is the UC has secret packages that it gives a lot of its administrators and athletic coaches and some of its star faculty, a small percentage, and that it makes these secret deals, it breaks its own rules, and that money continually floats to the top of the university. So while we think the universities are often these progressive institutions, they often are run like large corporations. And that’s one of our concerns.

One of the stories I want to talk about is just that UC lost over $23 billion in investments in the last two years. And one reason why it lost so much money is that it invested heavily in toxic assets and in real estate. And it followed the Yale model of investing in these high-risk assets, and at first it gained a lot of money. And what’s happening across the country are universities, especially the private universities, they’re losing so much money in their endowments that they’re having to raise, once again, their tuition and also cut classes, cut faculty, and especially the non-tenure track faculty are the most vulnerable. And at the UC system, the non-tenure track faculty teach over 50 percent of the classes, and those are the ones that they’re laying off and that they’re firing. And they’re also basically reducing the salaries of the workers and also increasing their workload. At the same time, they’re refusing to negotiate with the unions.

AMY GOODMAN: What is President Yudof’s strategy?

BOB SAMUELS: I think his main strategy is basically to blame the state for everything, while they try to privatize the university. And a very telling moment came. After the UC’s budget was cut by the state, the UC turned around and lent $200 million to the state. And people said, how can you lend $200 million to the state while you’re giving faculty furloughs and while you’re raising student fees and while you’re cutting classes? And he said, “When we lend money to the state, we make a profit from interest. But when we spend money just on teachers’ salaries, that money just disappears.” So, from his perspective, instruction is a losing proposition, and the university should just try to get out of the business of basically teaching students and hiring faculty.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve talked about a great deal of money being lost.

BOB SAMUELS: Right. Well, that money, the $23 billion, is mostly in the pension fund and its endowment and its short-term investments. And so, that’s really a long-term problem. And the UC still has a $20 billion budget. It had more money brought into the system last year than any year before. It doesn’t have to raise student fees. It doesn’t have to fire faculty. It doesn’t have to cut courses. They’re talking about eliminating minors and majors. They’re talking about moving classes online. They’re doing these drastic things. And what we’re seeing is just basically undergraduate students are subsidizing research, they’re subsidizing administrators, they’re subsidizing things that have nothing to do with undergraduate instruction.

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Samuels, the implications of what’s happening here in California for the rest of the country?

BOB SAMUELS: Well, basically, what we’re seeing, especially at the major prestigious universities, is more and more—only upper middle class, upper class students can go to them. And they’re privatizing these institutions. And the institutions—what happened about 1980 was that states started to cut their funding of higher education, and so universities looked for other ways of making money, and so they concentrated on raising funds and doing research, and especially research funded by corporations and the federal government. And so, basically now at a lot of universities, instruction only represents about ten percent of the budget, and so it’s a minor aspect of the universities.

And most people don’t know that, that universities, in some ways, are just kind of fronts for investment banks and investments, because at the University of California, the regents, who are the main financial overseers of the university, are appointed by the governor for twelve-year terms. And most of the regents now are Republicans, who not only have voted against taxes and have not only tried to defund higher education—and they’re the ones in charge in many ways—but they’re also business people chosen by Republican governors. And those—and they are real estate people, they’re investment bankers. The new head of the—the chair of the UC Regents is the former head of Wachovia, and he actually—they sold subprime student loans, right? And they profit from the student loans. And also, they pushed the UC into investing heavily into mortgage-backed securities and into real estate right when those were tanking.

And so, I really think that the Board of Regents basically is forcing the UC or motivating the UC to make a lot of incredibly bad investments, and when the investments turn bad, then they try to take it out on the students, on the faculty and the workers.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to just end with this USA Today latest study of compensation, revealing that at least twenty-five college head football coaches make $2 million or more this season, slightly more than double the number two years ago.

BOB SAMUELS: The UC Berkeley faculty last week voted a resolution to stop subsidizing the athletic department. Apparently UC Berkeley has been paying, subsidizing out of student fees, $3 million to $4 million a year. What most people don’t know is most athletic departments lose money, and the big departments lose a lot of money. And student fees often go to paying for athletic departments. And also, we found out that student fees go as collateral to—for construction bonds.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end with Zen Dochterman.

Just a correction: I said that fifty-two students were arrested at Campbell Hall at UCLA. It was actually at UC Davis, at University of California, Davis, when they refused to leave the administration building.

Zen Dochterman, what are the plans now?

ZEN DOCHTERMAN: Well, first of all, I just wanted to reiterate a lot of what Bob Samuels said, is that students are fighting not just these 32 percent fee increases, but they are fighting the links of the university to the larger economic system as a whole. We are fighting the privatization of the university and the effects that has. We’re fighting the re-segregation of the university and the way in which these fee hikes also exclude people of color and working-class people from attending higher education, and that public education is supposed to have a universal—a universal scope. But what we’re seeing is an antagonism between that mission and everything that is going on.

So I think what is important for many of us is to recognize that we are part of a larger international student movement that sprung up in places as far away as Vienna and Heidelberg, and Berkeley also, of course, and London, and that really what we need to be focusing on is not so much the issue of fee hikes and layoffs, which are also important, but really that the universities need to belong to the students and the workers who work there.

And so, I would say that the next sort of step for many of us will be talking to our departments, talking to our unions. And many of us have also been working with people in the unions at the UC, such as AFSCME, the UAW, UPTE, so talking more with the unions, more with the student groups, more with our departments, and even more with our friends, and organizing.

We also have a big day coming up, March 4th, which is a public education system-wide day of protest. There have been many thoughts about what kinds of actions there might be on that day, going everything—

AMY GOODMAN: March 4th?

ZEN DOCHTERMAN: —going to everything from system-wide shutdowns of campuses, also going to tuition—tuition strike. So there are many things being talked about now, but we can definitely say that March 4th will be the next sort of November 18th and 19th in the—not just at the UC, but at the public education—

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Zen Dochterman, I want to thank you very much for being with us, UCLA graduate student, on the phone with us. And Bob Samuels, president of the University of California American Federation of Teachers, runs that blog called “Changing Universities.”

Ira Glass - Audio

The Honor of G.W. Bush Revealed.

The Paradigm Shift - Real War

Get Off Obama's Back ...second thoughts from Michael Moore

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Friends,

Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize. "No, I don't think so," I replied. I thought it was important to remind him he's now conducting the two wars he's inherited. "Yeah," she said, "but to tell him, 'Now earn it!'? Give the guy a break -- this is a great day for him and for all of us."

I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack's big day. Did I -- and others on the left -- do the same?

We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation -- financially and morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving too slow for most of us -- but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell?

Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted. What keeps us from forming the same local groups we put together to get out the vote last November? C'mon! We're the majority now -- the majority by a significant margin! We call the shots -- and we need to tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say -- or else.

All I ask of those who voted for Obama is to not pile on him too quickly. Yes, make your voice heard (his phone number is 202-456-1414). But don't abandon the best hope we've had in our lifetime for change. And for God's sake, don't head to bummerville if he says or does something we don't like. Do you ever see Republicans behave that way? I mean, the Right had 20 years of Republican presidents and they still couldn't get prayer in the public schools, or outlaw abortion, or initiate a flat tax or put our Social Security into the stock market. They did a lot of damage, no doubt about that, but on the key issues that the Christian Right fought for, they came up nearly empty handed. No wonder they've been driven crazy lately. They'll never have it as good again as they've had it since Reagan took office.

But -- do you ever see them looking all gloomy and defeated? No! They keep on fighting! Every day. Our side? At the first sign of wavering, we just pack up our toys and go home.

So, at least for this weekend, let us celebrate what people elsewhere are celebrating -- that America now has a sane and smart man in the White House, a man who truly wants a world at peace for his two daughters.

Many, for the past couple days (yes, myself included), have grumbled, "What has he done to earn this prize?" How 'bout this:

The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Because on that day the murderous actions of the Bush/Cheney years were totally and thoroughly rebuked. One man -- a man who opposed the War in Iraq from the beginning -- offered to end the insanity. The world has stood by in utter horror for the past eight years as they watched the descendants of Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson light the fuse of our own self-destruction. We flipped off the nations on this planet by abandoning Kyoto and then proceeded to melt eight more years worth of the polar ice caps. We invaded two nations that didn't attack us, failed to find the real terrorists and, in effect, ignited our own wave of terror. People all over the world wondered if we had gone mad.

And if all that wasn't enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.

So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace to the world -- and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every other nation feel like they had won, too. When you've got billions of people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.

One other thought. The Peace Prize historically has been given to those who have worked to throw off the yoke of racial discrimination and segregation (Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu). I think the Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio). The fact that this one man could cause this seismic historical event to occur -- and to do so with such grace and humility, never succumbing to the bait, but still not backing down (yes, he asked to be sworn in as "Barack Hussein Obama"!) -- is more than reason enough he should be in Oslo to meet the King on December 10. Maybe he could take us along with him. 'Cause I also suspect the Nobel committee was tipping its hat to all of us -- we, the American people, had conquered some of our racism and did the truly unexpected. After seeing searing images of our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans -- and poor whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had been raised to hate -- we had all seen enough. It was time for change.

Thank you, Barack Obama, for giving us the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Now for the tasks ahead. We need you to do all that you promised to do. We need it. The world needs it.

My prediction for the future? You become the first *two-time* winner of the Nobel Peace Prize! Yeah!

Fred (that's Norwegian for "Peace"),
Michael Moore

Congratulations President Obama on the Nobel Peace Prize -- Now Please Earn it!

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Dear President Obama,

How outstanding that you've been recognized today as a man of peace. Your swift, early pronouncements -- you will close Guantanamo, you will bring the troops home from Iraq, you want a nuclear weapon-free world, you admitted to the Iranians that we overthrew their democratically-elected president in 1953, you made that great speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, you've eliminated that useless term "The War on Terror," you've put an end to torture -- these have all made us and the rest of the world feel a bit more safe considering the disaster of the past eight years. In eight months you have done an about face and taken this country in a much more sane direction.

But...

The irony that you have been awarded this prize on the 2nd day of the ninth year of our War in Afghanistan is not lost on anyone. You are truly at a crossroads now. You can listen to the generals and expand the war (only to result in a far-too-predictable defeat) or you can declare Bush's Wars over, and bring all the troops home. Now. That's what a true man of peace would do.

There is nothing wrong with you doing what the last guy failed to do -- capture the man or men responsible for the mass murder of 3,000 people on 9/11. BUT YOU CANNOT DO THAT WITH TANKS AND TROOPS. You are pursuing a criminal, not an army. You do not use a stick of dynamite to get rid of a mouse.

The Taliban is another matter. That is a problem for the people of Afghanistan to resolve -- just as we did in 1776, the French did in 1789, the Cubans did in 1959, the Nicaraguans did in 1979 and the people of East Berlin did in 1989. One thing is certain through all revolutions by people who wish to be free -- they ultimately have to bring about that freedom themselves. Others can be supportive, but freedom can not be delivered from the front seat of someone else's Humvee.

You have to end our involvement in Afghanistan now. If you don't, you'll have no choice but to return the prize to Oslo.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Your opposition has spent the morning attacking you for bringing such good will to this country. Why do they hate America so much? I get the feeling that if you found the cure for cancer this afternoon they'd be denouncing you for destroying free enterprise because cancer centers would have to close. There are those who say you've done nothing yet to deserve this award. As far as I'm concerned, the very fact that you've offered to walk into the minefield of hate and try to undo the irreparable damage the last president did is not only appreciated by me and millions of others, it is also an act of true bravery. That's why you got the prize. The whole world is depending on the U.S. -- and you -- to literally save this planet. Let's not let them down.

Beware: Sonic Weapons used on US Citizens by Pittsburgh Police during peaceful assembly.

Prepare yourselves for the revolution. Buy 10 non lethal sonic weapons, aim them only at police who are breaking their oath to uphold the Constitution and its first amendment.

School Board Learns Lessons

Thanks to Ray Lutz of the Citizens Oversight Project for this video.

Only heros like the citizens and parents at this meeting can take our country back. Help us with our Media Reform.
http://www.libertyoneradio.com

Re: Sonic Weapons used by Local Sheriff in San Diego

Nice picture; good coverage of the topic and follow-up by some of the links.  Michael T. Russell, 214-906-8834 --- On Tue, 9/15/09, russell michael <philosopher2000@yahoo.com> wrote: From: russell michael <philosopher2000@yahoo.com> Subject: Sonic Weapons used by Local Sheriff in San Diego To: "M.T. Russell" <twinman72@yahoo.com>, "315pm blogger" <philosopher3000.315pm@blogger.com> Cc: "Idus Martiae" <mike@315pm.org> Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 10:50 PM This is getting out of hand. I took a picture at my local congresswoman's 'healthcare for idiots' rally, of a strange divice used for crowd control. I posted it on the website at Liberty One Radio, and now it has become used around the world over the internet. Now I can honestly say that I've become the media. See stories: http://eastcountymagazine.org/?q=node/1874 http://axiomamuse.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/sonic-weapons-used-in-iraq-positioned-at-congressional-townhall-meetings-in-san-diego-countyc/ http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/homeland_security_patriot_act_fema/news.php?q=1252945252 http://www.newstin.com/related.a?edition=us&group_id=en-010-018312688&similarFilter=UK http://thisfuckingwar.blogspot.com/ End of message. Michael Russell PO Box 91062 San Diego, CA 92169 (619) 206-4361 --------------------------------------- Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances. === First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -------------------------------------- This message is intended solely for the individual(s) and entity(s) addressed. It is confidential and may contain legally privileged information. The use, copying or distribution of this message or any information it contains, by anyone other than the addressee, is prohibited.

Sonic Weapons used by Local Sheriff in San Diego

This is getting out of hand. I took a picture at my local congresswoman's 'healthcare for idiots' rally, of a strange divice used for crowd control. I posted it on the website at Liberty One Radio, and now it has become used around the world over the internet. Now I can honestly say that I've become the media.

See stories:
http://eastcountymagazine.org/?q=node/1874

http://axiomamuse.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/sonic-weapons-used-in-iraq-positioned-at-congressional-townhall-meetings-in-san-diego-countyc/

http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/homeland_security_patriot_act_fema/news.php?q=1252945252

http://www.newstin.com/related.a?edition=us&group_id=en-010-018312688&similarFilter=UK

http://thisfuckingwar.blogspot.com/

End of message.

Michael Russell
PO Box 91062
San Diego, CA 92169
(619) 206-4361

---------------------------------------
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances. ===

First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
--------------------------------------

This message is intended solely for the individual(s) and entity(s) addressed. It is confidential and may contain legally privileged information. The use, copying or distribution of this message or any information it contains, by anyone other than the addressee, is prohibited.

No US Soldier Ever Had This Much Courage

Xe (i.e. Blackwater) vs. DynCorp, tough competition.

Which is better; a religious crusade for cash that uses government contracts to slaughter innocent people or an amoral contractor for hire who uses teenage sex-slaves to pass the time. Xe (i.e. Blackwater) vs. DynCorp, tough competition.

“...a DynCorp employee in Bosnia who "weighed 400 pounds and would stick cheeseburgers in his pockets and eat them while he worked.The problem was he would literally fall asleep every five minutes. One time he fell asleep with a torch in his hand and burned a hole through the plastic on an aircraft." This same man, according to Johnston, "owned a girl who couldn't have been more than 14 years old. It's a sick sight anyway to see any grown man [having sex] with a child, but to see some 45-year-old man who weighs 400 pounds with a little girl, it just makes you sick." It is precisely these allegations that Johnston believes got him fired.”

-- opednews.com

So, the Obama White House is deciding to not renew the contract with the private contractor accused of massacring civilians in Nisoor Square, whose founder Erik Prince has publicly stated Blackwater was in Iraq to wage a crusade against Islam, and is deciding to instead give the contracts instead to a contractor that has engaged in sex trafficking or sex with children?

The sad part isn't that America has hired private security contractors that commit such foul acts. What's really sad and despicable is that pigs will keep finding food in the trough as long as the U.S. continues to engage in war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.

If we have troops in a country, there will be contractors getting rich off of taxpayer dollars and showing complete and total disregard for humanity.

9/11 - The Myth and the Reality, David Ray Griffin

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4069714733894389451#

Terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy.

Stop attacking people with unmanned bombers and high flying satellites and they will not be motivated to kill you.

No End In Sight

See the movie.

Goodbye GM

by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

When Healers Harm

The Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on a new endeavor, to expose and hold accountable the professional healthcare workers, doctors and psychologists, who participated in the U.S. torture programs in the war on terror.

Please visit their new web site http://whenhealersharm.org/ and find out how you can help.

Congress Laughs at the people, while organized insurance lobbyists destroy the Single Payer Universal Healthcare option

Senator laughs at us, and jokes "We need more police" when confronted with protests for universal healthcare.

Obama decides truth is too dangerous for us to know.

News rolled out from the White House that the Obama administration was making an about face, and deciding to fight the court order to release the torture photos. It's an extraordinary story, and people are right to be outraged.

Ken Gostzola, a student at Columbia College, pulled together the tortured logic of the Obama argument in Obama Employs Bush Administration Tactic to Halt Release of Detainee Photos.

Brilliant Undercover Agents Infiltrate Community Organization Ring!

In January the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo which named Ruckus an "anarchist extremist" group likely to be a cyber threat. The DHS released a report early this year titled, "Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade". In it, The Ruckus Society is targeted as an "anarchist extremist" group by DHS Field Agents.

The goal of the Ruckus Society is "Sustainability and self-determination for all communities".

OOOh the horror!

Restore the Rule of Law, BushTruthCommission.org

http://bushtruthcommission.com/

Change-Congress.org

If you think special-interest influence warps our public policy, last week we saw an outrage that vindicates that belief entirely.

Sen. Dick Durbin offered a bill that would allow families at risk of losing their homes -- but with an ability to pay their mortgage if their monthly rates were lower and extended over more years -- to legally get that option.

The very banks that taxpayers kept alive with bailouts had the audacity to spend millions lobbying Congress to oppose this bill that would save homes. They also showered politicians with campaign contributions.

The bill was defeated. Senator Durbin declared that banks "frankly own the place." Will you continue to support politicians who support this corrupt system? Or will you demand that any politician you donate to support reform?

Please join Change Congress's political "donor strike" today.

Support a Truth & Reconciliation Commission

I have proposed the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate abuses during the Bush-Cheney Administration -- so they never happen again. These abuses may include the use of torture, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and executive override of laws.

Please sign this online petition, urging Congress to consider establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's abuses.

Thank you,
Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator

-----------------The Petition ----------------

I hereby join Senator Patrick Leahy's call for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's constitutional abuses so we make sure they never happen again. These abuses may include the use of torture, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and executive override of laws.

A truth and reconciliation commission should be tasked with seeking answers so that we can develop a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past. Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened. The best way to move forward is getting to the truth and finding out what happened -- so we can make sure it does not happen again.

Signed by:
[Your name]

'Prosecution of George W Bush for Murder!' Vincent Bugliosi

All American's should be OUTRAGED over what the Bush Administration has done.

Is SHELL OIL responsible for suppressing freedom for profit?

Fifteen Years Ago: Shell Oil apparently paid the Nigerian Military to suppress a popular non-violent uprising that might have effected their oil stream. If that is true, then anyone who buys gas from a Shell Station today is contributing to murder and tyranny. We need to bring this case to trial, and get to the truth.

Zeitgeist Movement Orientiation

Please open your mind. Click full screen. Begin.

What if you just made the decision that ended the world.

"Unless you act, the economy of the world will meltdown by Monday."
Throw your principals out the door. Save capitalism at all costs?

At what point do we admit that the system is bankrupt?
We need to act now to begin again. The game is over.

I've said it before, but now I'm not alone, watch:

• Zeitgeist Addendum
  
• Bill Moyers
  
• This American Life
  
• Frontline
  

Announcing War Criminals Watch

A project of World Can't Wait.

It's only been 10 weeks since George Bush left the White House. Former members of the regime are entering into lucrative careers with military contractors, becoming lobbyists, consulting with right-wing think-tanks, or continuing as spokespeople for the US empire.

But some are entering, or returning to, academia. War Criminals Watch is going to students, faculty, and other members of universities with the challenge: Will these criminals ever face justice for the war crimes and crimes against humanity? Will people allow a John Yoo or a Condozeeza Rice -- or a Douglas Feith who cooked up the justification of the Iraq invasion -- to teach, write, speak publicly without being challenged? Will the brand "war criminal" follow them wherever they go, or will the be seen as normal human beings?

The motto of of War Criminals Watch is "no sanctuary from prosecution." The project is allied with other groups who are working on the legal cases and assembling evidence. We are not organizing people to appeal to Congress to prosecute. We are going among the people to create a political situation where, more and more, the continuation of these crimes -- no matter who is the president -- is not acceptable.

Here is a sample of a message sent to students at Georgetown University:

George Tenet held the position of Director of Central Intelligence (1997-2004) during the George W. Bush administration. Today he is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

George Tenet:

• Shares responsibility for policy of war and torture.
  
• Presented Bush with blueprint for "war on terror."
  
• Allowed erroneous information about WMD in Iraq to be used to justify attack on Iraq.
  
• Was CIA director when CIA was authorized to use waterboarding.
  

People of conscience must insist on accountability for the actions of U.S. officials. If you're interested in getting involved to get Tenet out of Georgetown and prosecuted, please contact warcriminalswatch@worldcantwait.net.

Help organize an Unwelcoming Committee for George J. Tenet! Douglas Feith's contract at Georgetown was not renewed because of student and faculty protest. Let's do it again!

John Negroponte is at Yale. Douglas Feith is at Harvard. Torture professor John Yoo is at UC Berkeley, on loan to Chapman University. Condoleeza Rice is at Stanford, as is Donald Rumsfeld. There's a whole country to cover.

Stay tuned for more on how to be involved in the War Criminals Watch. To get things started, please donate for this special project.

War Criminals Watch is a project of World Can't Wait and is endorsed by AfterDowningStreet.org and Veterans for Peace.

War Criminals Watch Advisory Board:
H. Candace Gorman, lawyer for Guantanamo detainees
Ray McGovern, former CIA agent and authority on war crimes
David Swanson, writer and initiator of After Downing Street, tracing the Bush war crimes
Lawrence Velvel, Dean of Massachusetts School of Law

"We the People" to "King of the World": "YOU'RE FIRED!" ...a letter from Michael Moore

Nothing like it has ever happened. The President of the United States, the elected representative of the people, has just told the head of General Motors -- a company that's spent more years at #1 on the Fortune 500 list than anyone else -- "You're fired!"

I simply can't believe it. This stunning, unprecedented action has left me speechless for the past two days. I keep saying, "Did Obama really fire the chairman of General Motors? The wealthiest and most powerful corporation of the 20th century? Can he do that? Really? Well, damn! What else can he do?!"

READ THE REST OF MICHAEL MOORE'S LETTER HERE.

Frank Partnoy, Author of FIASCO, on Fresh Air

On Wed, March 25th, 2009, Terry Gross interviewed Frank Partnoy: a master of the American Finance System.

This interview was very eye opening. I've was surprised to find that President Bill Clinton deregulated the derivative markets on Christmas Eve 2000, by signing the repeal of Glass-Segal.

To hear a former trader tell us that he doesn't invest in such securities, and that most of these speculators on Wall Street invest in U.S. Treasury Bonds, showed a hypocritical cynicism that undercuts the "free market" capitalists at the knees.

How much greed does it take to kill a nation? Read FIASCO and find out.

John Stewart is My Hero.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Ethical Leadership in a time of Economic Crisis

Some people, having lost confidence in the economy, are scared, and search desperately for an ethical leader, they see Warren Buffet as such a person. But Buffet is an opportunist, not a leader, he knows the system, does his homework, and invests his capital wisely. He is not an aggressive eagle who earns his dinner, but a scavenging wolf, perfectly willing to eat road kill on the economic highway, and unwilling to take on a raging bear without a strong pack of hungry dogs.

To those who are afraid of the Bush Depression, have courage. Here is a link to a video that may cause you to calm yourselves down and gain hope that this nation will resolve this crisis and be stronger for it.

Charlie Rose: A conversation with Timothy Geithner, U.S. Treasury Secretary

The pace of decline has already slowed, just six weeks into the Obama administration. President Obama has surrounded himself with the smartest people on the planet. Warren Buffet knows that, and knows his place in this crisis.

Soon Obama will:
1) Implement the Recovery Stimulus
2) Fix Housing Crisis
3) Get Credit Flowing
4) Reform the Financial System
5) Get the World Moving with US

He will improve education, fix healthcare, end the wars, and begin the transition to a sustainable energy economy. Those of us who understand the situation, know exactly where we are, and where we need to go. We should remain calm in this crisis and lead the worthy to safety. It is our job to do our part to educate our neighbors and make sure that our representatives don't get in the way.

Obama is laying the foundation for a more productive, efficient, transparent economy. This is economically sensible, fiscally responsible, and fulfills our moral obligations.

The US people are now in the analysis stage, finding out how deep the problems truly are. I have no doubt that we need a series of paradigm shifts in our national economic systems, and the economic landscape will be completely different on the other side of this crisis, but only the corrupt 1% who have benefited most from the past 8 years need worry, the vast majority have nothing to loose and the world to gain.

Please do not give heed to any Republican sheep-people, they are not sane and can not think for themselves. They are the losers here, and as elitists they can't stand the fact they utterly failed. They have been following false profits (sic) and have no idea what to do now. Having claimed that they should be our leaders, they have been lying to themselves,now their schemes have crashed, proving them unworthy, and shattering their self delusions. They are adrift, lost in darkness, in denial, and the uncertain future panics them. Best to give them the rope to hang themselves, and just step back.

The Public Media shouldn't be owned by private corporations

Hysterical about the possibility that the Fairness Doctrine might be brought back, on Feb 26, 2009, with no other warning, a nauseatingly named and so-called "Broadcaster Freedom Act" was passed as an amendment to the DC voting rights bill in the Senate. It happened so fast that none of the congressional bill tracking sites have an update on this yet.

Probably never before has such a hideously misleading provision been snuck into a totally unrelated bill on such flimsy pretext.

The reason why the right wing is so petrified about the return of
real fairness to our media is that it is only by perpetuating
monopoly over the major news sources that they can effectively
exclude alternative viewpoints from public debate. It is their
last ditch attempt to stop the march of people's democracy.

Look up your local prosecuting attorney and sick them on the traitors who tried to destroy the U.S. Constitution.

Rethink Afghanistan

President Obama has committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This decision raises serious questions about troops, costs, overall mission, and exit strategy. Historically, it has been Congress' duty to ask questions in the form of oversight hearings that challenge policy-makers, examine military spending, and educate the public. After witnessing the absence of oversight regarding the Iraq war, we must insist Congress hold hearings on Afghanistan.

Make the Recovery Act work for America

Join Common Cause

Right now, billions of tax dollars from the economic stimulus bill are being sent to our local and state governments. The point? Create jobs. Better our schools. Help thousands of struggling Americans.

But without regulation powerful lobbyists and crooked contractors could lay claim over these hard-earned tax dollars to fund their pet projects and line their pockets. Together, we can stop that from happening.

Check the progress at Recovery.Gov

Go ON STRIKE to Change Congress

Sometimes Humor Hurts

When is the time for Accountability?

How To Destroy The Economy: Just add accountability.

Will You Help Me With My Next Film? ...a request from Michael Moore

February 11, 2009

Friends,

I am in the middle of shooting my next movie and I am looking for a few brave people who work on Wall Street or in the financial industry to come forward and share with me what they know. Based on those who have already contacted me, I believe there are a number of you who know "the real deal" about the abuses that have been happening. You have information that the American people need to hear. I am humbly asking you for a moment of courage, to be a hero and help me expose the biggest swindle in American history.

All correspondence with me will be kept confidential. Your identity will be protected and you will decide to what extent you wish to participate in telling the greatest crime story ever told.

The important thing here is for you to step up as an American and do your duty of shedding some light on this financial collapse. A few good people have already come forward, which leads me to believe there are many more of you out there who know what's going on. Here's your chance to let your fellow citizens in on the truth.

If you have any info that would help, please contact me at my private email address: bailout@michaelmoore.com.

For the rest of you on my email list who don't work in the financial industry, you're probably wondering, "What the heck is this all about? I thought he said he was making a romantic comedy!"

Well, I just can't say much right now. I'm sure you can understand why. One thing I can tell you is that you're gonna like this movie when I'm done with it. Oh, yeah...

So, again, if you work for a bank, a brokerage firm or an insurance company -- or if you have seen things or heard things that you believe the American people have a right to know -- please contact me at bailout@michaelmoore.com.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Yours,
Michael Moore
bailout@michaelmoore.com
MichaelMoore.com

"The Curvature of Constitutional Space: What Lawyers Can Learn From Modern Physics," 103 Harvard Law Review 1 (1989).

In 1989, while the rest of us were in Juvenile Hall defending ourselves against both the administration and the predators, Barack Obama was working with harvard professors to further the understanding of law by comparing constitutional patterns to those of physics. I'm not saying he is smarter than I am, I couldn't get access to his the archive to read Laurance H. Tribe's article, but I know that it took me till I was 24 to understand realitivity, and I was past 32 when I finally grasped Quantum Mechanics, I'll be 40 soon, and I still don't see the social consequences of M-Theory (a subset of String-theory), or any way to a GUT. Yet at age 30, Obama was trying to inform people about the new understanding of curved legal space.

Listen to this podcast essay from PRI, and judge for yourself. Are you smarter than Obama? I'm not, and that's saying something.

Should we hold them Accountable, or look forward?

Did anyone who comments here actually listen to the conversation on the video? There are two forms of 'world order'; one that controls the world, a top-down pyramid, and its opposite, a pyramid upside-down, where the world is a sustainable place composed of one world, no nations, tribes, or families, of sovereign individuals. We have to build a just system, a reverse pyramid, with the people on top, but just like the architecture, this new model defies the gravity of human nature, only a clever social architect can succeed.



The traitors who have killed the U.S. Constitution in the name of 'Security' while stuffing their fascist pockets deserve to hang. The term 'which hunt' refers to a false accusation, a fictional justice, to scape goat innocent, and our history is full of them, always they are started by the elite, the conservative, and the religious. This is not a which hunt.

IN THIS CASE, we have direct evidence of an evil conspiracy to destroy the Bill of Rights, imprison and torture American Citizens, and subvert the rule of law. All of the accused are guilty by their own admission in the press, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Rice, Wu, Gonzalez, and others, all admitted to treason and breaking their oath of office, by outing our secret CIA agents, and authorizing torture, rendition, and going to the "dark side". If we don't hold them accountable then the next President above the law will do worse.

There is an alternative, with the unitary executive powers that our new war time President, Barack H. Obama inherits from G.W., he could declare Bush and the others all enemy combatants, take them to off-shore prisons and torture the truth out of them, and be fully within his rights under the law. May he be a benevolent dictator.

These Republican Bastards have destroyed the U.S. Constitution, and taken our country. It is time to fight and get it back.

Inaugurate Yourself!

Sander Hicks California to Washington DC "Inaugurate Yourself!" Tour Starts in San Diego.

Independent Media Advocate and former Green Party for US Senate Candidate Sander Hicks kicking off his whistle-stop tour challenging us to bring change to ourselves and to DC - a caravan of peace & truth rom the grassroots upwards.

Author: Charles Carroll Migeot, too.

How will the American people set an agenda in Washington that guarantees the deep change we've worked for? What can we do to guarantee that Barack Obama will fulfill the hope and promise he has represented? Don't wait for DC....

Inaugurate Yourself! is a grassroots tour that will gather fellow rebels and radicals, spiritual people and political instigators, people who want to speak out and support Sander Hicks' "Three New Imperatives" at tour stops including:

• San Diego, 
  
• Los Angeles, 
  
• Oklahoma City OK, 
  
• Austin TX, 
  
• Shreveport LA, 
  
• Cincinnati OH 
  

and on to Washington DC for the Presidential inauguration.

Three New Imperatives for President Elect Obama:
1. Commitment to Non-Violence and the End of Global Militarization.
2. Green Venture Capital Economy for the U.S. - Renew, Restore, Rebuild, Re-Employ. See Sander's new article on Venture Capital Green Tech funding at AlterNet.org: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/110406/let's_cut_out_the_banks_and_finance_american_innovation/
3. Restore Transparency and Trust in Government. "Sunshine is the best disinfectant" (Judge L Brandeis) vs "Secrecy is the beginning of Tyranny" (Heinlein) Real Change means full transparency in the information age. Open investigations into murders of Dr King, the Kennedys, the 9/11/01 cover-up, missing Pentagon $billions, CIA-sanctioned overthrow of elected governments, and where the Bailout money went, Mr Paulson?

San Diego Peace and Democracy Action Group

Tuesday Jan 6, 2009 7pm
The New American Censorship
special guest:
Peter Phillips
Professor of Sociology and Director of Project Censored


Founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, Project Censored is a media research program working in cooperation with numerous independent media groups in the US. Its principle objective is training of Sonoma State University students in media research, First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of free press rights in the United States. Project Censored has trained over 1,500 students in investigative research in the past three decades.

Through a partnership of faculty, students, and the community, Project Censored conducts research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 most censored nationally important news stories in the yearbook, Censored: Media Democracy in Action. Recent Censored books have been published in Spanish, Italian and Arabic.

Prof. Phillips will be signing "Censored 2009"

www.projectcensored.org

First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego
4190 Front Street, Hillcrest, San Diego 92103 (opposite UCSD Medical Center)

$5-10 Donation requested - for info: 858-459-4650

sponsor:
Peace & Democracy Action Group of the
First Unitarian Universalist Church

Directions:
From Washington St, north on First St, 3 blocks, left one block, church is on the left, opposite Medical Center

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www.ActivistSanDiego,org
Networking for Social Justice
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"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Mahatma Gandhi