Thursday, November 29, 2007

"Traitorous" Captains Say: US Out NOW!

Some people call traitors the twelve Iraq veteran captains who spoke out October 16th in the Washington Post for getting out of Iraq A.S.A.P. I just found the article The Real Iraq We Knew and felt compelled to post some of it and share this photo of a memorial by a father who lost his son in Iraq.

U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much "battle space," are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks -- on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war...

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.

This column was written by 12 former Army captains: Jason Blindauer served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Elizabeth Bostwick served in Salah Ad Din and An Najaf in 2004. Jeffrey Bouldin served in Al Anbar, Baghdad and Ninevah in 2006. Jason Bugajski served in Diyala in 2004. Anton Kemps served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Kristy (Luken) McCormick served in Ninevah in 2003. Luis Carlos Montalván served in Anbar, Baghdad and Nineveh in 2003 and 2005. William Murphy served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Josh Rizzo served in Baghdad in 2006. William "Jamie" Ruehl served in Nineveh in 2004. Gregg Tharp served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Gary Williams served in Baghdad in 2003.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

My CNN YouTube Question: Military Force against Secessionists?

Here's what I asked CNN to ask the Republican candidates during the November 25 YouTube debate. Watch the video if you can take all my eye popping! Yes, some of us baby boomer revolutionaries are still full of fire! Even if it has to make its way out through an extra sixty pounds of blubber!
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"This is Carol Moore in Washington, DC. I didn't have any say when Bush bombed Iraq. Or when Clinton bombed Serbia to help Kosovo secede from its union. Or about the US going to war with China if Taiwan secedes from their union. Like millions of Americans, I'm fed up with special interest rule and possible nuclear war. My question: would you use military force against American counties, cities or states seceding from our union?"


Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Who Can Be Conscious with All These Government Threats!

I was thinking I needed to do a post on higher consciousness after all my rants lately about nuclear threats. But just got an email that reminded me why that's so difficult. As if it isn't bad enough I have to worry about Bush and Putin and Israel's Olmerts getting me nuked, I also have to worry that the Senate IS going to pass a law that would allow a government commission to declare advocating or organizing even NON-violent secession is illegal. (Search The Politics of Fear at YouTube and see some interesting videos. If you find the BBC Three Part Special check it out!) . Here's some excerpts from the recent Baltimore Sun article Here Come the Thought Police by Ralph E. Shaffer and R. William Robinson.
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With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" passed the House 404-6 late last month and now rests in Sen. Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee. Swift Senate passage appears certain...

Ms. Harman, a California Democrat, thinks it likely that the United States will face a native brand of terrorism in the immediate future and offers a plan to deal with ideologically based violence.

But her plan is a greater danger to us than the threats she fears. Her bill tramples constitutional rights by creating a commission with sweeping investigative power and a mandate to propose laws prohibiting whatever the commission labels "homegrown terrorism."

The proposed commission is a menace through its power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths, an authority granted to even individual members of the commission - little Joe McCarthys - who will tour the country to hold their own private hearings. An aura of authority will automatically accompany this congressionally authorized mandate to expose native terrorism.

Ms. Harman's proposal includes an absurd attack on the Internet, criticizing it for providing Americans with "access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda," and legalizes an insidious infiltration of targeted organizations. The misnamed "Center of Excellence," which would function after the commission is disbanded in 18 months, gives the semblance of intellectual research to what is otherwise the suppression of dissent.

While its purpose is to prevent terrorism, the bill doesn't criminalize any specific conduct or contain penalties. But the commission's findings will be cited by those who see a terrorist under every bed and who will demand enactment of criminal penalties that further restrict free speech and other civil liberties. Action contrary to the commission's findings will be interpreted as a sign of treason at worst or a lack of patriotism at the least.

While Ms. Harman denies that her proposal creates "thought police," it defines "homegrown terrorism" as "planned" or "threatened" use of force to coerce the government or the people in the promotion of "political or social objectives." That means that no force need actually have occurred as long as the government charges that the individual or group thought about doing it.

Any social or economic reform is fair game. Have a march of 100 or 100,000 people to demand a reform - amnesty for illegal immigrants or overturning Roe v. Wade - and someone can perceive that to be a use of force to intimidate the people, courts or government.

The bill defines "violent radicalization" as promoting an "extremist belief system." But American governments, state and national, have a long history of interpreting radical "belief systems" as inevitably leading to violence to facilitate change.

So it's hard to stay balanced and conscious with a world ruled by crazed power mongers trying to beat us into submission. Happily, there are lots of meditation groups to help you try. Unhappily, most of them aren't very political.

Incredibly biased Homeland Security Subcommittee November 6, 2007 Hearing link, including video.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Bush Makes Israel's "Samson Option" Threat Against Russia

On November 7, 2007 U.S. President George Bush said: "If you want to see World War Three, you know, a way to do that is to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon." Second time he's brought up WWIII in three weeks.
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What was that madman ranting about this time? In case you haven't heard about it, it's called Israel's "Samson Option." The narrow definition that Israel supporters want us to believe is that Israel would merely nuke the country whose convention or nuclear attack did massive damage. It would nuke the heck out of it, but would only nuke that country.
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However, the real story is doubtless more like the quotes below, threatening nuclear destruction of Arab and Muslim cities, or even the world. (Hint: if Israel nukes Russia, Russia nukes the U.S.)
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From Seymour Hersh's best selling book "The Samson Option", quoting former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: "We are much more important than (Americans) think. We can take the middle east with us whenever we go." And quoting a “former Israeli govt official” with “first hand knowledge of his government’s nuclear weapons program”: “We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.”
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Hersh's book details at length Israel's targeting of the Soviet Union; their spy Jonathan Pollard was particularly interested in stealing U.S. targeting information on its cities. Do they like Russia any more now that it is giving nuclear aid and long range missiles to Iran?
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Two high profile Israel supporters - professors yet! - have written particularly chilling comments: Martin Van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem stated: "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’...We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."
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In 2002 the Los Angeles Times published an opinion piece by Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter in which he wrote: "What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens? For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away--unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans--have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?"
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I'm no big fan of (fired professor) Ward Churchill, but that comment makes Churchill's "chickens coming home to roost" statement sound "pussy." (As in little kitty cat.)
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Yeah, just like the Bush boy said, that's what the Samson Option is REALLY about - World War III.
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I'm updating my SAMSON OPTION: ISRAELI THREATS AND BLACKMAIL page to put together a really good list of articles with complete cites to send out to hundreds of media people and thousands of activists, and it can be as point of view original research as I like, and no one can squash it. PHEW! (Check back in a week or so.)
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Also, I've updated my IS NUCLEAR WAR INEVITABLE? main page - lots of photos and videos too. Need a good scare? Read it!
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Anyway, as you can see, Bush has lost it. He's just a stupid lackey of the Israelis, warning Russia that Israel can and will nuke it if they don't stop standing up the Iranians -- and they can just nuke the U.S. back if they don't like it. BRING IT ON!! Who's president does he think he is, anyway??
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Maybe it's time for me to start organizing protests again. Like a nice "NO SAMSON OPTION ON RUSSIA" protest outside the Israeli Embassy - and at next year's AIPAC conference - assuming Bush and his buddies haven't nuked most of us into oblivion by then!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Fantastic New Secessionist Video

A video sure to bring goosebumps to secessionists. Description from AStateofMine.Com: In the state of California, this age of red/blue divisions has a few people re-drawing boundaries and dreaming of secession. Part road movie, part ode to California, "A State of Mine" takes filmmaker Maureen Futtner throughout the state to ask people about their visions for a better form of governance. Some of the answers might surprise you.

Description from the YouTube.Com trailer: From north/south splits to cultural independence to outright breaking away from the Union, this documentary explores some individuals hopes to re-map the Golden State. Film coming in Winter 2008.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Women and Secession


In my SECEDE AND SURVIVE blog at VermontCommons I just posted an article Women and Secession.
Below are quotes from some right on women who support political decentralization, plus my comments on strategy. Read the whole article at the link. (And in case you don't get it, the graphic represents North America broken up into thousands of independent communities with a big feminist symbol over it!)

* In her book The Chalice and the Blade Riane Eisler writes of the partnership culture she envisions: ”As the consciousness of our linking with one another and our environment firmly takes hold, we can expect to see the old nation-state as a self-absorbed entity wither away. .. Small social units will be linked in matrices or networks for a variety of common ends, ranging all the way from the cooperative cultivation and harvesting of the oceans and space exploration to the sharing of knowledge and the advancement of the arts."

* Starhawk, in her book Dreaming the Dark, writes of similarly decentralized world where that the human ideal is "...the fully human life lived in the world, involved in community.. Historically, the institutions of domination have established themselves by destroying community--from the enclosure movement and the witch burnings in Europe, to the colonization of Africa, Asia, South America, and Polynesia. This pattern continues with the destruction of Native American communities, traditions, and ways of life in the Black Hills and the Southwest."

* Ecofeminist Ynestra King writes that for women to draw on the "Western democratic tradition" is to "work...with a political legacy that is founded on the repudiation of the organic, the female, the tribal, and particular ties between people...I am mindful that the original citizen in that tradition is male, propertied, and xenophobic..Ecofeminism supports utopian visions of harmonious, diverse, decentralized communities...”

* In her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations noted urban analyst Jane Jacobs calls for the breakup of large nation states on pragmatic economic grounds. "The very policies and transactions that are necessary to win, hold and exploit an empire are destructive to an imperial power's own cities and cannot help but lead to their stagnation and decay." She prescribes the "division of the single sovereignty into a family of small sovereignties" or "the expedient multiplication of sovereignties."

* Lesbian separatist author Sonia Johnson in her book The Ship that Sailed into the Living Room writes “living as I was suggesting would mean anarchy. A very different kind of law-and-order than they recognized, but order nevertheless, the order inherent in self-government--total and effortless, fluid, creative, and lusty...The patriarchs do not live in this knowledge and order and haven't for thousands of years. Because they do not have the spiritual and emotional health that is a precondition for freedom and true power, when they do what they want to do, the rest of us suffer.”

* Robin Morgan, former editor of MS magazine, writes in her book The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism: The State of man seems bent on ignoring this [nuclear destruction] as long as possible in its rush to an ultimate, controlled, thanatotic, orgasmic climax. Norwegian feminist theorist Beirt Ås put it succinctly: `A patriarchal state is one which is either rehabilitating from war, is presently at war, or is preparing for war.'...We live in it, this `State of War'. It saturates our lives. The whole vast grotesque State of being in which we are forced to survive is a State of emergency, a State of terror."

What’s our strategy? How do we do it? We’re too busy with paid work and house work and child care and elder care - and, if we have time, relationships!

The Greek Play Lysistrata is about women refusing to have sex with their men until they stop a war. This is the essence of non-cooperation. Considering how much work women have to do in our lives, one of the only successful protests we have time for IS refusing to work! Refusing to vote! Refusing to pay taxes! (I stopped in 1976.) Womens’ Strike for Peace remains a great idea.

The ultimate in noncooperation is Secession!

Friday, November 09, 2007

Shhhh... Scheuer Calls Israel-Firsters "Anti-American", Mentions "Treason"

My, my, these Israel critics are getting so uppity! Not only did they put "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" on the New York Times best seller list for a few weeks this summer, but now CIA agent Michael Scheuer, on that disreptutable Antiwar.Com
is calling Israel-Firsters... ahem, supporters of brave little Israel... "anti-American" and bandying about the word "treason!" And then a bunch of people went on to BLOG! the disreputable column!
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Philip Weiss on his MondoWeiss blog wonders if "60 Minutes" will ever let it's here to fore "star" Scheuer back on the show! As if such things are censored!
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OK, I'll stop being sarcastic before someone actually thinks I'm outraged. As Antiwar.com news stories and columnists point out everyday, the Israel Lobby is the main group promoting war against Iran, a war that easily could escalate to world nuclear war.
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Gosh, and they wonder why so many people after so many years of being silenced by fears of being called "anti-Semitic" are suddenly yelling "the Israelis are doing it!" Next thing you know they'll be blaming the JFK assassination, the RFK assassination and the planting of the demolition bombs in the World Trade Center on Israel's Mossad.
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What is sad, of course, is that only a small percentage of Jews in American - or even Israel - support the most aggressive acts of the most supremacist Jews who have bullied their way to power in Jewish community life, as well as in American and Israeli political life.
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Yet should Bush bomb Iran -- or follow Israel's lead in bombing it, and gasoline shoot up to $10 a gallon, thousands of American service people be killed within a few weeks, the dollar drop to the cellar and inflation rise to 30%, credit for individuals and business dry up, etc. etc. , you can bet that there will be a growing number of Americans blaming "the Jews" as well as "the Arabs" and/or "the Muslims." (Many doing the blaming will be the same people.) At least the "Israel-Firsters" will have their co-horts new Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff to lock up all those protesters holding signs saying "STOP US & ISRAEL WAR ON IRAN!"
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And if there is a nuclear war - most Jews, since they live in Israel or in large target cities - will die immediately. How many will be massacred later by angry survivors looking for someone to blame, time hopefully will NOT tell. Just hope they don't come after people who are only 1/32 Jewish like me and Christopher Hitchens! Even being a little bit Jewish can make one paranoid.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Pauloween Party Video - Guy Fawkes Fundraising Blitz


Got a head cold running in and out making this video on Halloween, but it was a fun party! A fund raiser for Ron Paul with the fun title "Pauloween." Guess what toilet article the costume prize was? And guess who won? Hint, today's the "5th of November" -- Guy Fawkes Day -- and Ron Paul raised over $4 million dollars in one day!
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Pretty good for a guy who wants to legalize pot and bring all the troops home from everywhere! CNN did a story about this fund raising miracle and there were more than a 130 articles on New.Google as of now. None of the other republicans have been able to do as well!! Well, maybe Hillary or Rudy in a room full of war profiteers.



PS. Ron Paul's money bomb' broke the Republican one day record. Doubt the warmongering neocons will learn a lesson from that. November 11, Veterans day is the next money bomb. Below is photo of MY Halloween costume - a "FOOL FOR LIBERTY." Yoo Ha! (Note Peaceful Anarchy and SECEDE! buttons.) See my reports on the November 2006 "V" protest and the March 2007 one.