Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy , Cindy Sheehan : Rhetoric or Substance

Barack Obama interview Keth Olbermann & Chris Mathews




Anyway here is a commentary by Ted Kennedy about his support for Barack Obama as the leader of the Democratic Party and possibly the next President of the United States:

Huffington Post Barack Obama January 28, 2008

Earlier today I endorsed Barack Obama for president, and I couldn't be more excited for the Democratic Party, the nation -- and the world.

Barack inspires me -- it's that simple. In the words of President Kennedy:

"The world is changing. The old ways will not do... It is time for a new generation of leadership."

In Barack, I see that next generation of American leadership: a figure who can transcend the divisions in this country that my family and I have fought so hard to tear down.

We were all moved four years ago as Barack told us a profound truth: We are not red states and blue states, but one United States. Since then, he has matched that rhetoric with action, traveling the country to inspire record turnouts of men and women of all ages, races, parties and faiths. Barack has forged consensus in the Senate on contentious issues such as immigration and pushed through necessary reforms like the most far-reaching ethics reform in its history.

But I'm not only supporting Barack because of what he has done. What counts in our leadership is not the length of years in Washington, but the reach of our vision, the strength of our beliefs, and that rare quality of mind and spirit that can call forth the best in our country and our people.

That's why I'm most excited about the promise of President Obama:

As president, Barack Obama will break the Washington gridlock to finally make health care what it should be in America.

He will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion and bridge the divisions of race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation that plague our country.

He will end a war in Iraq that he has always stood against, that has cost us the lives of thousands of our sons and daughters, and that America never should have fought.

He will close the door on the old economics that has written off the poor and left the middle class poorer and less secure.

He will make the United States the great leader and not the great roadblock in the fateful fight against global warming.

When Barack Obama raises his hand on Inauguration Day a new generation of American leadership will take charge and restore the hope, peace and prosperity the country so desperately needs.

Looking out from the stage today, I realized just how powerful his campaign has become. It's a movement for change -- and one that I'm proud to be a part of.


It all sounds so positive . But is it just more rhetoric. Though I have to admit I have become more impressed by Barack Obama in the last couple of weeks. Part of his appeal though derives from the nasty gutter style politicking of the Clintons. And the glowing endorsement by Ted Kennedy lends credence to the idea that Barack Obama is not merely good at making speeches but is also someone of sincerity and integrity and a candidate of substance.

The question is still whether Barack Obama as president will tackle all of the difficult tasks facing America.

For instance this would mean a reversal in American foreign policy. Will the American People accept that America is to no longer continue with Empire Building.

Will he shut down Guantanamo prison and any of the secret prisons being operated by American personnel.

Will obama take steps to help those detainees or those kidnapped by American personnel and then handed over to countries that engage in torture.

Will Barack Obama stop the Renditions Program and the torturing of detainees.

Will he bring those to justice who participated in these policies. This will be difficult for Obama for it means that Americans have to accept the fact that there are those in th Bush Regime and in the CIA and Pentagon who took part in these crimes. Obama as president could call for the removal and resignations of all those who took part in these illegal and immoral practices.

Will he ensure that Iraq War vets are taken care of and given the best medical and psychiatric treatment possible.

Will Obama stop the hiring of special contractors , also known as Mercenaries such as Blackwater. Will he insists that private contractors be investigated for their practices in Iraq or elsewhere and if need be prosecute the individual employees along with their superiors where it is deemed they have committed crimes or even War Crimes.

Will Obama take a proactive stance to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina so that they can be returned to New Orleans and their other former residences and not just left herded into these makeshift trailer parks .

Will Obama take action to make changes in the various government departments which the Bush Regime have in one way or another illegally interfered with such as the Dept. of Justice, the JAGs , the Environmental Protection Agency etc.

Will Obama take a more positive and sensible approach to practices engaged in by industries which have led to a disregard for impacts on the environment such as the disastrous Mountain Top Mining or allowing the forestry industries and others into National Parks and protected areas within the United States.

But it would be nice if Barack Obama is the real deal.

And here's a message to the Democrats and others to take some form of action against the Bush Regime and it's lies and propaganda from anti-Iraq War activist Cindy Sheehan
Dead For Lies, By Cindy Sheehan



27/01/08 "ICH" -- -- Once, before I camped out in Crawford, Tx, I was speaking at a venue in DC and I called George Bush a "lying bastard." This was in May 2005; right after we discovered the revelations of the Downing Street Minutes which we believed was the smoking gun that would bring down BushCo in short order.

We held hearings in June of 2005 that Congressman John Conyers convened (in a crowded basement room in the Capitol) that exposed the deceit of the "yellow cake uranium from Niger" lie and the fact that Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby made many trips to the CIA offices to "cherry-pick" intelligence. Along with myself, Ambassador Joe Wilson, and ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern: Constitutional Attorney John Bonifaz wrapped up the panel to explain how and why the criminal Bush regime should be impeached and imprisoned.

Since then, I have been hailed or condemned for my strong language and told that if I "framed" my language better, I could be more effective. On the other hand, some people have told me to not dare temper my language because what our government is doing to people is so heinous that someone needs to strongly speak out against it. Now something has again surfaced that alternately angers and sorrows me.

A recent report found that BushCo told 935 lies in the two-year run-up to the war! We all know they lied, and frankly, I am surprised that the number is only 935, but it was an apparently exhaustive study by two media analysis groups.

Calling the President of the USA a "lying bastard" may, on the face of things, seem disrespectful, but there are two definitions of the word that seem appropriate to BushCo: 1) something of illegitimate or dubious origin (stolen elections) or 2) someone mean or nasty.

After nearly four years of living with the horrible knowledge that my son was killed in Iraq for the lies of the lying bastards of the Bush regime, I still mourn him and miss him with all my heart and soul and I don't know if I will ever be able to go through a day without being reminded that he should be alive and well and home with his family. Presidential daughter Jenna Bush will be getting married soon and I can't help but feel that Casey should have been able to have the same opportunity to get married and have his own children and future.

We cannot place the blame solely at the foot of BushCo, though. We have two Senators vying for their party's presidential nomination who are nothing but spoiled Demo-Brats who snipe and bicker at each other instead of calling for the immediate removal of our troops from Iraq and the ouster of the liars who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the tragic creation of millions of broken hearts (when we buried Casey, I discovered that the term is not just a figure of speech).

We have a Speaker of the House who has taken impeachment "off the table" and refuses to even consider doing her job because impeachment would be too "divisive" when so many families have been physically, emotionally, and politically divided by Republican and Democratic war crimes and support of war crimes.

It is imperative that BushCo be impeached for past, present and future high crimes and misdemeanors. They have not only lied about the reasons for invading and occupying Iraq, but they have used their war of terror to redefine and lie about torture and commit unspeakable crimes against humanity.

Accountability should not be a politically partisan issue. No one should be above the law in a democracy and this is not a game of power plays or revenge for a past impeachment for lying about oral sex in the oval office.

We know they lied and now we must demand hearings from our dysfunctional employees in DC to find out why they lied so we can prevent it from ever happening again.

What's more obscene? The word "bastard" or the travesty and tragedy of wars based on so many lies told by so many liars?



and so it goes,
GORD.

Monday, January 28, 2008

BUSH :STATE OF THE UNION - U.S.THE TORTURE STATE

There was an excellent CBC/ BBC Documentary Mystery Flights on the CBC's The Passionate Eye on Renditions and torture which can be watched in segments on YOUTUBE. Unfortunately , for some reason Embedding has been disabled on YOUTUBE- is it a matter of copyright or censorship?

Here's the link:
CIA MYSTERY FLIGHTS at YouTube PlanetUSAnia
CIA MYSTERY FLIGHTS


It is described as :

For some time now it has been an open secret that the CIA has flown terror suspects across the globe and handed them over to governments notorious for their poor human rights record. Critics see this as a ruse to outsource torture seeking to avoid legal responsibility. But not all 'delicate' questioning is delegated to foreign governments. In cooperative countries so-called 'black sites' were set up where US agents had full control but due to fact that the sites were nominally under foreign jurisdiction (like Guantanamo Bay) human rights guaranteed by US law were considered not applicable by the administration. Yet still the agents would assume typically governmental activities like arresting, detaining and interrogating suspects, even under foreign jurisdiction.


STATE OF THE UNION - U.S.THE TORTURE STATE



Here once again is Condoleeza Rice defending kidnappings / renditions, torture and other crimes . She also warns Europeans that the U.S. is the Super Power and can find ways to silence any European government . Next they could have European leaders or family members or friends disappeared or just make things very difficult for those countries who object in any way to U.S .foreign policies. Condi " makes them an offer they can't refuse". One wonders if she had been in power when Martin Luther King in the 1960s was making his speeches and holding illegal demonstrations would she have sent him to Guantanamo or just disappeared .Remember at that time the U.S. was involved in the Cold War with Russia and China and fighting a war in Vietnam so King could have been characterized as being guilty of sedition and giving aid and comfort to America's enemies. One must also remember in the 60s there were millions of Americans who either were suspicious of Dr. King or just hated him because he was claiming that America was in fact not a just society. It also shows that just because someone is an African American woman doesn't mean that she automatically is in support of human rights except for those who are middle class or wealthy.

Gitmo on CBC- Renditions and the Disappeared
Aired on June 11, 2007
The Bush Administration is flinching under a series of blows to its enemy combatant policy.

A U.S. appeals court which has ruled that the government cannot indefinitely detain an immigrant named Ali Al-mari without laying charges.

And twenty-five CIA agents face a judge in Rome...accused of kidnapping a muslim man who was flown to Egypt -- where he says he was tortured.

At the same time, European investigator Dick Marty has just released a report with what he calls proof of CIA secret prisons in Poland and Romania.

Michael Scheuer worked for the CIA for 22 years and is the author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. Architect of the original rendition program under the Clinton administration, he defends the practice.




He calls it successful yet it is generally agreed that most of the people imprisoned are not guilty of terrorist actions. Besides war is tough and if you have to use Nazi style techniques that's just too bad. So forget the Nuremberg trials or Universal Human Values . This he believes is just more wailing and crying of those crazy human rights groups . He seems to believe Human Rights can be taken away from anyone who is deemed an enemy of American security or interest .So the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights can not be applied in a time of war and surely should not protect the rights of non-Americans . And as a recent Judgement in the U.S. court claims all " detainees " are " Non-persons" and so have no legal rights .

For more on Gitmo's legal limbo, Avi talks to Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who calls it a 'breakdown of justice'.



Ah well it doesn't matter we in the west have our own set of values . We are by definition superior to all other peoples in the world . So we have permission from God I guess to treat all non Westerners in whatever way we please. Though Americans view all Non-Americans as all being inferior to the American Race or Nationality . Their only loyalty is to their Father Land and not to other peoples or nations.

and for more on the Bush legacy here's Al-Jazeera
C.I.A. Burn Video Tapes of Terror Suspect Torture- Al-Jazeera
The U.S. C.I.A. admit burning old interrogation videotapes to hide the brutal methods used against suspects. (less)
Added: December 09, 2007




In case you missed it here's Keith Olbermann on Torture Tape Destruction
SPIES, LIES AND VIDEO TAPE ~OLBERMANN
DECEMBER 07, 2007 KEITH OLBERMANN






and so it goes,
GORD.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

CLINTONS' BID FOR PRESIDENTIAL THIRD TERM



As for the Clintons' bid for a third term in office to extend their dynasty like the Bush dynasty -Americans should remember Bill Clinton was no great reformer & dropped the ball on the ' Rwanda Genocide ' and continued with the brutal sanctions on Iraq which led to the Unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Civilians & did not rein in Israel or end the Death Penalty in the US or reform the judiciary and end the racist policies which lead to a disproportionate number of African-Americans being arrested and incarcerated And he continued with the insane War on Drugs and did not push for legalization of Marijuana for instance -yet he is treated as if he had been the new FDR well it ain't true my friends he was just another "political animal" - so check out this article from TruthOut.ORG for instance as a reality check:

Obama vs. Billary By Scott Galindez t r u t h o u t

Thursday 24 January 2008

The race for the Democratic Party nomination for president has increasingly become a three-way race. The problem for John Edwards is he is no longer the third person in the race, Bill Clinton is.

... I am also puzzled as to why poor people think Bill Clinton was good for them. Clinton's domestic agenda was first announced as a gigantic jobs-creation program coupled with a determined effort to guarantee health care for all. The truth is, his focus on eliminating the budget deficit meant he did very little for the poor and working people in America. While he was much better than Reagan or Bush, there was definitely room for improvement.

Clinton's small gestures toward social democracy did not come close to what was needed in a nation where one-fourth of the children lived in poverty; where homeless people lived on the streets in every major city; where women could not look for work for lack of child care; where the air, the water were deteriorating dangerously.

More than being merely inadequate to the needs of America's millions of truly disadvantaged citizens, the Clinton administration actually attacked the disproportionately non-white poor in numerous interrelated ways. Clinton signed a punitive welfare reform bill that ended the federal government's guarantee of financial help to impoverished families with dependent children. He also scored points with conservatives by taking welfare benefits away from legal as well as illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, Clinton increased economic insecurity in poor and working-class American communities by signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA destroyed tens of thousands of American industrial jobs by tearing down long-established regulatory barriers to the movement of corporate capital and commodities across the US-Mexican border.

Clinton claimed "the era of big government is over."

O.K., Bill Clinton is not running for president, but since so many seem to be voting for him and not Hillary, I thought I'd remind them NAFTA and welfare reform were on his watch.


And from AlterNet we get this article on the mean spirited Clintons Campaign:

Bill Clinton's Old Politics: Demeaning and Disingenuous, Robert Reich's Blog January 25, 2008.

Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign.

I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a “fairy tale”) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it.


And here's another sobering and unsettling article about how the leading three Democratic candidates and their stand on Capital Punishment. Most of the worlds governments have taken a stand against capital punishment as being immoral and having no real merit in terms of deterrence. Yet the U.S.is still in favor of this barbaric form of punishment. Odd especially since the U.S. declares itself as a a Christian Nation and therefore on the side of the angels and righteousness . But it is also a nation that believes in Law and Order which trumps any ethical and moral qualms some liberal types may have . But what can one expect from a country that thinks it is necessary and a good thing to use " torture " and "renditions" and to suspend "Habeas Corpus ". Even Bill Clinton was not against giving people lethal injections or frying them while still alive with a million volts or so.

Give Them Death: Three Leading Democratic Candidates Support Capital Punishment By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. January 25, 2008.

Opposing the death penalty used to distinguish Democrats from Republicans. Now, across party lines, death is just another day at the office.

Politicians like to see moral challenges when it's convenient. The candidates have labeled the war in Iraq, global warming and the economy "moral challenges" before various audiences in the past few months. But there's one topic the leading Dems systematically exclude from their morality crusade, one that begged to be addressed before an African-American audience in a Southern state: the death penalty.

It's not news that African-Americans are disproportionately represented on death row. While 12 percent of the country is African-American, more than 40 percent of the country's death row population is black -- and although blacks and whites are murder victims in nearly equal numbers, 80 percent of the prisoners executed since the death penalty was reinstated were convicted for murders in which the victim was white. Study upon study in states across the country have discovered racial bias at every stage of the death penalty process, including one that found that the more "stereotypically black" a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death. Add to that the fact that over 20 percent of black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all-white juries, and the racial reality of the death penalty becomes impossible to ignore.


Still, not one leading Democrat is about to make criminal justice reform -- let alone the death penalty -- central to his or her platform.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards all support capital punishment. It's a position you'd be hard pressed to find on their websites, and they might not be bragging about it the way they might have in, say, 2000. Or 1996. Or 1992, the year their party's pro-death penalty stance was codified in its official party platform and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton made a campaign trail detour to Arkansas, where he presided over the execution of mentally damaged prisoner Ricky Ray Rector. Nevertheless, all three hold on to their pro-death penalty stance, as have virtually all leading Democrats running for office in the past 20 years.


UPDATE 10:00 pm Jan. 26

Why Some Feminists Aren’t Supporting Hillary Clinton,by Biodun , Firedoglake January 25, 2008.

She remains highly suspect to her cohort: middle- and upper-middle-class educated and professional white women over 40 years old.

Rebecca Traister gives her own reason why she's not supporting her:

Unlike its sister gem, "I'm not a feminist, but ..." (an utterance that nearly always gives away the fact that its speaker is in fact a feminist), the Hillary disavowal, in my case, has been true: I really am not a Hillary Clinton supporter. A feminist by trade, I have wished that I could get behind Clinton, a woman I admired when she first arrived in the White House 15 years ago. But there has been nothing in her steady, ineluctable move to the center that I could embrace; I understood why she did it, but it cost her my support.

And Frances Kissling states her own reason:

The sad fact is that Clinton has felt compelled to run as a stereotypical male. In her own mind it is only a certain kind of man who is qualified to be president and she will be that man: tough on everything from war, flag burning, kids' access to video games, illegal immigrants and Palestinians. She has missed the opportunity to talk about what it really means for women to be equal in this country. She has shown no interest in using her extensive international experience to push for more women in party leadership, state legislatures and even the Senate. A woman candidate who considered her gender a strength (as opposed to something she needed to overcome) would announce a series of measures specifically designed to ensure that women's needs and rights were at the forefront of her agenda.

In 30 Ways of Looking at Hillary, a recently published anthology in which thirty well-known women writers reflect on the candidate, Susan Morrison (who edited the book) says:

As I talked with women about their reactions to Hillary, some themes came up again and again. Many women were divided within themselves as to how they feel about her, and I noticed a familiar circle of guilt: these women believe they should support Hillary as a matter of solidarity. But, because they expect her to be different from (that is, better than) the average male politician, she invariably disappoints them; then they feel guilty about their ambivalence. Some feel competitive with her. Having wearily resigned themselves to the idea that "having it all" is too much to hope for, they view Hillary as a rebuke: how did she manage to pull it off--or, at least, to appear to pull it off? Other women say they want to like her but are disturbed by the anti-feminist message inherent in the idea of the first woman president getting to the White House on her husband's coattails.


also see for another reality check on race and gender affecting voting :
Election08 News Flash: Caucasian is a "Race"; Male is a Gender, by Joshua Holland, AlterNet January 26, 2008.

Folks need to get a grip.

Earlier in the week...Fox News analyst Dick Morris warned: "if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton." So, in Morris' view, blacks are "bloc-voting." But according to a poll released this week by MSNBC and McClatchy Newspapers, 25 percent of SC blacks are supporting Clinton -- about 40 percent less support than she gets nationwide -- while just ten percent of white South Carolina Dems say they'll vote for Obama -- fully 70 percent less than his nationwide support. So, who's "bloc-voting" according to race? Are we supposed to believe that the 90% of South Carolina whites who won't vote for the negro are really just unimpressed with his message of hope? You can, but I'm not buying.

And what about gender? Whites may be "bloc-voting" against Obama, but it's a good bet that white men are not breaking the same way as white women. John Edwards, with 13 percent support across the country, is leading among South Carolina whites with 40 percent in the MSNBC/McClatchy poll -- triple his nationwide numbers. White is a race, male is a gender, but Dick Morris and the rest of the punditocracy seem unperturbed by the possibility that those silly, emotional white guys are casting their votes for Edwards based on nothing more than group identity. That's because, unconsciously at least, most people think of white folks as the default humans, while people of color belong to a "race"; male is the standard model, and only women belong to a gender.

Let's also consider the biological determinism inherent in the conventional wisdom about race and gender. I'm a white guy who's supported Edwards based on the policies he's proposed. But I wouldn't be disappointed to see either Hillary or Obama get the nomination, despite the fact that I consider both to be centrist tinkerers who are very unlikely to bring about the kind of change I want to see. Why am I OK with the idea of my preferred candidate coming up short? Because I think it would be a significant step for the country to have a black man or a woman elected to the nation's highest office. In other words, I'm a white male who is positively influenced by the gender and ethnicity of the two leading Dems -- but people like me don't make it into any of the analyses because the assumption is that identity politics fall along clean lines.

There are other problems with the narrative. First, it ignores how close Clinton and Obama are on the issues. If it weren't for the fact that it's tough to draw meaningful distinctions between the two candidates' proposals -- with a few exceptions -- race and gender wouldn't be so prominent in this primary fight. Clinton and Obama are so similar in their ideology and legislative approach that everyone's looking at something else -- something aside from their positions on the issues -- to determine a favorite. Race and gender are certainly more legitimate reasons to pick a candidate than whether one would like to have a beer with him or her or any of a dozen other brainless criteria that voters use all-too-often to choose "their guy" (or gal).


and so it goes,
GORD.

Friday, January 25, 2008

BUSH LIES & NATO SEEKS NUCLEAR FIRST- STRIKE OPTION

Update see below the Clintons' Campaign and US in Iraq to stay-

NATO seeks first-strike option
Keith Olbermann Iraq War Lies
MINI-ME CLINTON CLINTON ONE AND CLINTON TWO

So let's begin with a little music dedicated to NATO AND GEORGE BUSH AND HILLARY CLINTON- JUST KILL THEM ALL TO SAVE CHRISTENDOM -

Johnny Cash -When The Man Comes Around



A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.
12308




It is odd and disturbing that the legislators in the United States including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not talking about Impeaching Cheney Bush and the rest of these enemies of Democracy - Cheney and Bush have turned American Democracy on its head - now torture , renditions , massive surveillance and the threat of Martial Law are considered the norm as they play the Fear card .

How far will Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama go in their bid for Presidency in appealing to those on the right . Will the world be no better off with either of these two in power instead of Bush. Will it just be business as usual. Hillary for instance says it will take her as President several years to get troops out of Iraq . She is also willing in every other speech she gives to use 9/11 and the Fear card to claim that she must act within this new reality. Is she afraid to challenge the notion that the United States must have control( hegemony ) over a large part of the world without taking into consideration what the governments or the people of other " Sovereign Nations " want. This is all just part of the American belief in " Manifest Destiny ". Other countries must Kow-Tow to American needs and beliefs or suffer the consequences . So if the People of Pakistan rise up against their American backed dictator Musharraf then America will send more weapons and money to Musharraf to combat the democratic forces at work in Pakistan. Of course the other plan the Americans have is to replace Musharraf with a kinder and gentler dictator who will act on America's behalf - this was the role Bhutto was to play. We should remember e when she was in power she too was corrupt and was running a brutal dictatorship herself. One can easily see why Hillary Clinton approved of Bhutto and considered her a personal friend one as completely corrupt as the other ( sisters in corruption ).

PERPETUAL WAR ORWELLIAN STYLE

Anyway here's another disturbing story : Yes NATO we are told that in the present " crisis" (?) must have the ability to launch Nuclear Weapons without consulting the U.N. . So we are back to the Cold War years always just about to launch nuclear weapons . But if for instance NATO nukes Iran then their allies may decide to launch. This is really just Bush's shock and awe ratcheted it up a bit. It appears that the fear is that a non-NATO or Non-Western country might be the first to use nuclear weapons . So in order to protect Western Civilization against the " Evil Barbarians " at the gates the West must be the first to strike against all those evil countries who might have nuclear weapons or other Weapons of Mass Destruction or might be developing nuclear weapons or other WMDs because the assumption is that those countries main aim is to try to wipe out Western Civilization .

The problem is that a terrorist group exploding a nuclear weapon on Western soil does not necessarily represent a specific country . So will NATO just drop a nuclear bomb on the country or countries from which these terrorists come. Using this logic the United States or NATO would have been justified in launching a nuclear attack on Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan after 9/11 . Would this have made the world safer. If then any other country which possesses Nuclear Weapons could reasonably assume that they would be justified in using their Nukes against a perceived enemy . For instance what argument could be used to prevent Pakistan or India from attacking one another with Nukes or for that matter Israel could argue it had the right to drop nukes on Lebanon, Palestine or Iran etc. This is a matter of opening Pandora's Box or letting the Genie out of the bottle . Any of these scenarios might draw other nations such as Russia or North Korea or China into at the least a limited nuclear war or an all out nuclear war.

Does that include Israel and Pakistan North Korea India . Even Israel could in the future be taken over by extremists ( though think it already has been taken over by extremists )who might think that they would be justified in dropping a couple of nuclear weapons on Palestine or Lebanon in retaliation to on-going rocket attacks . If this happened Would NATO take action against Israel . The answer is probably not since Israel they tell us can do no wrong while these "Evil " Arab and Muslim Countries are pure evil and can do nothing right.

Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strike a Key Option, NATO Told

By Ian Traynor

22/01/08 "The Guardian" --- - The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the “imminent” spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a “first strike” nuclear option remains an “indispensable instrument” since there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”.

The five commanders argue that the west’s values and way of life are under threat, but the west is struggling to summon the will to defend them. The key threats are:

· Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

· The “dark side” of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

· Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential “environmental” migration on a mass scale.

· The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

To prevail, the generals call for an overhaul of Nato decision-taking methods, a new “directorate” of US, European and Nato leaders to respond rapidly to crises, and an end to EU “obstruction” of and rivalry with Nato. Among the most radical changes demanded are:

· A shift from consensus decision-taking in Nato bodies to majority voting, meaning faster action through an end to national vetoes.

· The abolition of national caveats in Nato operations of the kind that plague the Afghan campaign.

· No role in decision-taking on Nato operations for alliance members who are not taking part in the operations.

· The use of force without UN security council authorisation when “immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings”.


---
And here's an article by Paul Craig Roberts at Information Clearing House (ICH):
The “Brutal World”

How did Western Civilization get a monopoly on “moral conscience” when it has no morality?

By Paul Craig Roberts

“The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” Five Western military leaders.

23/01/08 "ICH" -- -- I read the statement three times trying to figure out the typo. Then it hit me, the West has now out-Owellled Orwell: The West must nuke other countries in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction! In Westernspeak, the West nuking other countries does not qualify as the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The astounding statement comes from a paper prepared for a Nato summit in April by five top military leaders--an American, a German, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, and a Brit. It can be found here: [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/nato/story/0,,2244782,00.html ]

The paper, prepared by men regarded as distinguished leaders and not as escapees from insane asylums, argues that “the West’s values and way of life are under threat, but the West is struggling to summon the will to defend them.” The leaders find that the UN is in the way of the West’s will, as is the European Union which is obstructing NATO and “NATO’s credibility is at stake in Afghanistan.”

And that’s a serious matter. If NATO loses its credibility in Afghanistan, Western civilization will collapse just like the Soviet Union. The West just doesn’t realize how weak it is. To strengthen itself, it needs to drop more and larger bombs.

Who, what is threatening the West’s values and way of life? Political fanaticism, religious fundamentalism, and the imminent spread of nuclear weapons, answer the five asylum escapees.

By political fanaticism, do they mean the neoconservatives who believe that the future of humanity depends on the US establishing its hegemony over the world? By religious fundamentalism, do they mean “rapture evangelicals” agitating for armageddon or Christian and Israeli Zionists demanding a nuclear attack on Iran? By spread of nuclear weapons, do they mean Israel’s undeclared and illegal possession of several hundred nuclear weapons?

No. The paranoid military leaders see all the fanaticism, religious and otherwise, and all the threats to humanity as residing outside Western civilization (Israel is inside). The “increasingly brutal world,” of which the leaders warn, is “over there.” Only Muslims are fanatics. All us white guys are rational and sane.

There is nothing brutal about the US/Nato bombing of Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, or the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, or the genocide Israel hopes to commit against Palestinians in Gaza.

All of this, as well as America’s bombing of Somalia, America’s torture dungeons, show trials of “detainees,” and overthrow of elected governments and installation of puppet rulers, is the West’s necessary response to keep the brutal world at bay.

Brutal things happen in the “brutal world” and are entirely the fault of those in the brutal world. None of this would happen if the inhabitants of the brutal world would just do as they are told. How can the civilized world with its monopoly on morality allow people in the brutal world to behave independently? I mean, really! God forbid, they might attack some innocent country.

The “brutal world” consists of those immoral fanatics who object to being marginalized by the West and who reply to mass bombings from the air and to the death and destruction inflicted on them through myriad ways by strapping on a suicide bomb.

Unable to impose its will on countries it has invaded with conventional arms, the West’s military leaders are now prepared to force compliance with the moral world’s will by threatening to nuke those who resist. You see, since the West has the monopoly on morality, truth, and justice, those in the outside world are obviously evil, wicked and brutal. Therefore, as President Bush tells us, it is a simple choice between good and evil, and there’s no better candidate than evil for being nuked. The sooner we can get rid of the brutal world, the sooner we will have “freedom and democracy” everywhere that’s left.

Meanwhile, the United States, the great moral light unto the world, has just prevented the United Nations from censuring Israel, the world’s other great moral light, for cutting off food supplies, medical supplies, and electric power to Gaza. You see, Gaza is in the outside world and is a home of the bad guys. Moreover, the wicked Palestinians there tricked the US when the US allowed them to hold a free election. Instead of electing the US candidate, the wicked voters elected a government that would represent them. The US and Israel overturned the Palestinian election in the West Bank, but those in Gaza clung to the government that they had elected. Now they are going to suffer and die until they elect the government that the US and Israel wants. I mean, how can we expect people in the brutal world to know what’s best for them?
and :

US to Demand Free Reign in Iraq Long After Bush Leaves,Attaturk , Firedoglake, January 25, 2008.

So Iraq is now more democratic than we are?

U.S. to Insist Iraq Grant It Wide Mandate in Operations:

Well, you know what the modern GOP says about the bigger the cushion...the better meme to be pushin'.

With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire in 11 months, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors specific legal protections from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials.

This emerging American negotiating position faces a potential buzz saw of opposition from Iraq, with its fragmented Parliament, weak central government and deep sensitivities about being seen as a dependent state, according to these officials.

You know that is ridiculous, but it is the Bush Administration, adding ridiculous to the tragic is its raison d'etre. The contractor immunity is a farce of the first rank and it's kind of impressive in a way that even in their eighth year they still "got it" -- even if no one wants them to "have it".
--------------------



and so it goes,
GORD.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Antiwar Speech of Martin Luther King Jr.- The Tragedy of Vietnam & Iraq



Are these the evil terrorists we are told about Palestinians cross-border shopping for soap and food and other necessities . Where are the rocket launchers M16s, Kalashnikov or even Molotov cocktails ? Will Israel be embarrassed into at least permitting food and other necessities into the blockaded areas

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 by The New York Times
Palestinians Topple Gaza Wall and Cross to Egypt

by Steven Erlanger and Graham Bowley

RAFAH, Egypt - Thousands of Palestinians streamed from the Gaza Strip into Egypt on Wednesday after a fence at the Rafah border crossing was toppled, going on a buying spree of fuel, medicine, soap, cigarettes and many other supplies that have been cut off during days of blockade by Israel.0123 01

The scene at the border was one of a great bazaar, with Palestinians piling donkeys, carts and motorcycles high with goats, mattresses, chickens, televisions, cement and other goods they had been unable to buy in Gaza.

Israel ordered the closing of its border crossings into Gaza last week, halting all shipments except for emergency supplies, after a sustained and intense barrage of rocket fire into Israel by militant groups in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Hamas. Israel allowed in some fuel, medical supplies and food on Tuesday, as temporary relief, but has said that its closure policy remains in place.

----------

Update: On Canada's role in America's dirty little wars :

According to the Geneva Conventions it is a criminal act to hand over prisoners , detainees to a country or armed forces personnel or others who it is reasonable to believe that the detainees may be tortured but that's what Canadian forces personnel are accused of doing. Are we to go down the same path as Bush & co. as we hand over detainees to be tortured and then claim ignorance.

And as the Globe and Mail reports:
Detainee Torture Remains a Reality, Reports Show,Document tells of Canadian official finding instruments of torture beneath a chair in interrogation room of an Afghan police prison
by Paul Koring

Compelling evidence that Canadian-transferred detainees are still being tortured in Afghan prisons emerged yesterday from the government’s own follow-up inspection reports, documents it has long tried to keep secret.

In one harrowing account, an Afghan turned over by Canadian soldiers told of being beaten unconscious and tortured in the secret police prison in Kandahar. He showed Canadian diplomats fresh welts and then backed up his story by revealing where the electrical cable and the rubber hose that had been used on him were hidden.

“Under the chair we found a large piece of braided electrical cable as well as a rubber hose,” reads the subsequent diplomatic cable marked “secret” and distributed to some of the most senior officials in the Canadian government and officers in the Canadian military.

The Globe and Mail has established that the report of the case is recent, written after a Nov. 5, 2007, inspection of the National Directorate of Security prison in Kandahar. That was six months after a supposedly improved transfer agreement was put in place to monitor detainee treatment. The agreement was designed to address problems raised by critics about the ill treatment of prisoners taken by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and handed over to Afghan authorities with insufficient follow-up.

The documents were made available yesterday by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, which, along with Amnesty International Canada, is seeking a Federal Court injunction to stop further prisoner transfers. Both rights groups have filed a Federal Court action contending that international law and Canada’s own Constitution bar the government from transferring prisoners to those likely to torture or abuse them.

---------------------
As these articles show the words of Martin Luther King Jr. are still as relevant today as they were some 40 years ago.

Antiwar Speech by MLK
from: leelue at YouTube
" This is a video that my brother created to remind everyone that Martin Luther King Jr. also stood against the Vietnam War."



For entire speech see:
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,By Rev. Martin Luther King,4 April 1967

This speech was and can still be a plea for sanity in the face of madness and delusion. The war in Iraq is an unnecessary and immoral war . Bush and his supporters have lied and deceived the American people and the world about the purposes and aims of this war. Having created chaos in Iraq they keep asking for more time to make things right. But their aims have little to do with benefiting the people of Iraq. They are just continuing to build and extend the American Empire and to make themselves and their friends even more wealthier than they are. Their intentions are not noble or honorable . Those who have the power to act yet fear to act are as guilty as those who drop bombs on defenseless citizens. To terrorize a whole nation to slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians and then blame the victims is not just dishonorable but cowardly. We should not be fooled their high-sounding tone as they make light of the deaths of those they characterize as barbaric. But who are the real barbarians.They are cowardly men and women who hide behind ' National Security " and Executive Privilege " and " State of Emergency " .If the world were a better place the United Nations would pass resolutions condemning the Bush Regime. And if this did not work the United Nations or other countries on their own would place sanctions on the United States blocking trade and commerce with the United States. But in this imperfect world the rich and powerful often do get away with murder.

Below are some excerpts from this speech .
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

...I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

...Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

...When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

.... The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.


and as King adds:

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality...


and so it goes,
GORD.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Racism and Incarceration in the U.S. and " Hate Crimes "

HATE CRIMES USA

Jena 6-KKK



and in case you missed it here is a summary of the events in the Jena 6 case
Of White Trees, Black Boys, & Jena
by Mumia Abu-Jamal recorded 7/21/07 from Death Row



In previous posts I have been looking at racism in America and the struggle of Black people in America with regard to the life of Martin Luther King Jr. But the struggle did not end with the passing of Civil-Rights legislation in the 1960s. In deed the struggle did not end when slavery was finally abolished in America in 1865. African-Americans were told that they would thenceforward be treated as equals in America but this they soon found out was not the case. After slavery came Jim Crow and racial segregation . And with these came vigilantes in the guise of the Klan and the use of lynchings to enforce the laws and perverted values of the segregationists. Lynchings were considered lawful and continued as regular form of punishing black men and women who broke the Jim Crow laws or the unwritten code of the racist white majority especially in the South into the late 1960s. Over 5,000 lynchings took place during that time yet no one who participated in these murders were brought to justice.

And as mentioned in my last post the U.S. Senate had not just refused to pass legislation outlawing the practice of lynching for some eighty to a hundred years but in fact did everything it could to interfere with any attempts to pass such legislation. It was not until 2005 that the U.S. Senate finally apologized for its past behavior . But it was merely an apology and did not go so far as to bring charges against those who might still be alive for their participation in these lynchings. Nor did the Senate agree to some form of reparations for the families of the victims or to the black communities from which the victims came. It was all merely symbolic as a way to ease the consciences of these law makers .

But even now Black Americans do not receive equality before the law. The U.S. Justice system appears to treat Blacks differently than it does white Americans. Black Americans are much more likely to harassed by the police being stopped either on foot or in their cars just because they are black . Blacks are more likely to be victims of police brutality. Black Americans are more likely to be incarcerated for their alleged crimes than are White Americans for their alleged crimes.In the case of murder a Black man is much more likely to receive a harsher sentence including capital punishment than is a White Male for a similar crime.


Status of bill C-250/2004-APR-29 :
Race and US Prison Statistics

Summary findings US Department of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics

Summary findings

On December 31, 2006 —

– 2,258,983 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails – an increase of 2.9% from yearend 2005, less than the average annual growth of 3.4% since yearend 1995.
– 1,502,179 sentenced prisoners were under State or Federal jurisdiction.
– there were an estimated 501 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents – up from 411 at yearend 1995.
– the number of women under the jurisdiction of State or Federal prison authorities increased 4.5% from yearend 2005, reaching 112,498, and the number of men rose 2.7%, totaling 1,458,363.

At yearend 2006 there were 3,042 black male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,261 Hispanic male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 Hispanic males and 487 white male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 white males.
Links to full size graphic and data
In 2004 there were an estimated 633,700 State prisoners serving time for a violent offense. State prisons also held an estimated 265,600 property offenders and 249,400 drug offenders

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Human Rights Watch US Punishment and Prejudice
III. INCARCERATION AND RACE

The disproportionate representation of black Americans in the U.S. criminal justice system is well documented.17 Blacks comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail,18 and 49 percent of those in prison.19 Nine percent of all black adults are under some form of correctional supervision (in jail or prison, on probation or parole), compared to two percent of white adults. 20 One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 was either in jail or prison, or on parole or probation in 1995.21 One in ten black men in their twenties and early thirties is in prison or jail. 22 Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws.23

Admissions to Prison
and the war crimes continue on the part of Israel maybe its because our expectaations are somewhat higher that those for other countries . Israel is the Jewish state created by those who knew 2000 years of humiliating and unjust , brutal and deadly antisemitism which led to Auschwitz . So maybe it is unfair to Israel to treat it as if it were a separate case from other countries we have Musharraf in Palestine and Olmert in Israel and a George Bush in Washington how are they really that different


Racial disparities in incarceration increased in the 1980s and 1990s as the number of blacks sent to prison grew at a faster rate than the number of whites. 24 Between 1979 and 1990, the number of blacks as a percentage of all persons admitted to state and federal prisons increased from 39 to 53 percent.25 Although the admissions for both races, in absolute numbers, rose sharply, the increase was greatest for blacks (Figure 1).

Human Rights Watch has been able to analyze state prison admissions based on raw data on 37 states gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice through its National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) for 1996, the most recent year for which this data is available. In 17 of these states, blacks constituted more than half of all prison admissions (Table 2). Maryland had the highest percentage of black admissions, 79 percent, followed by Illinois with 74 percent, Louisiana with 73 percent, and New Jersey with 72 percent.
---------
Canada has always had high incarceration rates compared to those of other countries. To
some extent, this is due to variations in the age of majority among countries and different
classifications of prison sentences. However, simply put, Canada relies heavily on
prisons, and we incarcerate at a rate of 130 of every 100,000 adult and juvenile
Canadians (Canada, Solicitor General Canada, Corrections Population Growth,


It should be noted that the United States still outdoes Canada by having four times as many people incarcerated that is 529 out of 100,000 to Canada's 130 of every 100,000.

The other matter which I mentioned earlier is that of " Hate Crimes ". So today I wish to add just a couple of comments . Hate Crimes for instance include threats and intimidation and statements to the effect of calling for violent actions against particular groups especially minorities such as African-Americans or other persons of color or religious groups such as Jews or Catholics etc. Hate Crimes also include for instance; the burning of a cross, or the hanging of " nooses " as in the Jena 6 case, or displaying other symbols such as Swastikas on a Black person's property or adjacent to it or on school property , or in the town square or outside a church attended by Black Americans as a means of terrorizing Black individuals or the Black community as a whole.These symbols such as a burning cross are considered to be a form of speech and communication and what such a symbol says is quite obvious to the community as a whole.

Anyway I was discussing the difference between the laws against Hate Crimes in the United States compared to Canada and other countries.

So here is an outline of The Hate Crimes Law in Canada as it now stands:

Religious Tolerance.ca ,Hate speech in Canada:Sven Robinson's private member's bill C-250

The bill was given royal assent by the Queen's representative in Canada on 2004-APR-29. It took immediate effect. It is now part of the legal code of Canada. Some propaganda directing hatred against persons of any sexual orientation, heterosexuals, homosexuals and/or bisexuals, is now a crime in Canada. Sexual orientation has now joined four other groups protected against hate speech on the basis of their "color, race, religion or ethnic origin." 1 However, a "not withstanding" type clause allows hate speech if it is religiously motivated. In essence, the law states that the freedom of one person to express religiously-motivated hatred is given higher priority that the freedom of another person to be free of hatred expressed against them.

The Criminal Code of Canada: Hate Propaganda:

Before 2004-APR-29, the "Hate Propaganda" section of the Criminal Code of Canada (Section 318 & 319) prohibited the expression of hatred against -- or the advocacy of genocide of -- four "identifiable groups:" people distinguished by their "color, race, religion or ethnic origin." 1 Curiously enough, sex, disability, and other criteria are not included. Apparently one can deliver a speech that "willfully promotes hatred" -- even one which "advocates or promotes genocide" -- against women or the disabled and enjoy immunity of prosecution under the law. Hatred against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation was not protected either. An individual could promote hatred or even advocate genocide against heterosexuals, bisexuals, or homosexuals with impunity, as long as the speech was directed at persons with a specific sexual orientation. Bill C-250 changed this when it was signed into law.

Who can be convicted under Section 319?

Section 318 deals with genocide. Section 319 deals with hate speech:

1. If it can be shown that the speech was so abusive that it was likely to incite listeners or readers into violent action against an identifiable group, and if the the speech was made in a public place, then a person could be convicted.
2. If the speech promoted hatred against an identifiable group, but was not likely to incite a listener to violence, then a person could still be convicted. However there are many safeguards that could give that person immunity. A person could not be convicted if:
The hate speech was expressed during a private conversation.
If the person can establish that the statements made are true.
If, "in good faith, he expressed or attempted to establish by argument an opinion on a religious subject." This would give clergypersons immunity from conviction for a hate-based sermon, for example.
If the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, and if, on reasonable grounds, the person believed them to be true. This would give additional protection for the clergy.
If he described material that might generate feelings of hatred for an identifiable group "for the purpose of removal" of that hatred.
If the provincial Attorney General refused to give permission. The Attorney General's consent is required before charges can be laid.. 1

In this section of the Code, the term "statements" includes spoken words, written words, published text, gestures, signs and other visible representations.


Though this is a fairly good law it is more than likely that it is no used as much as it should be. The law also applies to the internet in Canada so you will not find nearly as many websites set up various Hate groups which use the hateful and sickening sort of language on them in comparison to U.S. Hate Groups on the American internet as it were.Even a number of European Hate Groups to get around the Hate Crimes laws governing the internet in their respective countries have set up sites through U.S. servers which can be viewed around the world . This is one of the negative side to the Internet that such Hate Groups are able to use this incredible tool to spread their venom and hatred .

and so it goes,
GORD.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

LYNCHINGS CELEBRATED in AMERICA - U.S. SENATE APOLIGIZED IN 2005

updated 12:17 PM Jan. 22,2008

Postcard Photo of a Lynching
The lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas 1893
First modern spectacle lynching
at American Lynching photos


After preaching a sermon condemning Klan cross burning near Berkley, Michigan, a Detroit suburb, Reverend Oren Van Loon received this indelible souvenir in 1924.


FESTIVITIES FOR AN AMERICAN LYNCHING


“Lynchings were not simply executions. Often the victims were first tortured, sometimes for hours, before they were murdered. Men were castrated and women disemboweled. The form of execution was just as often burning at the stake as it was strangulation; the death throes were long and horrible. Afterwards, the corpses were sometimes ripped apart, and pieces of the victims sold as souvenirs.” That comes from a book called “Buried In The Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America.”

Author Elliott Jaspin went to great lengths to tell readers just what occurred during lynchings. He could have added one other detail: In addition to cutting up the black bodies and handing the parts around as souvenirs, members of lynch mobs took pictures of lynchings and sold them as postcards.



FROM: Commentary: Not Only Does the Golf Channel’s Dimwit Anchor Need Schooling – So Does Tiger Woods, January 16, 2008,By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com

GOLFWEEK THINKS NOOSES AND LYNCHINGS ARE FUNNY !
NOOSES: A SYMBOL OF HATE & TERROR !!!



PHOTO: THE Lynching of Emmitt TILL






EMMITT TILL 14 YEARS OLD




POEM FOR EMMITT TILL






And on the Historical Reality of Black Oppression in America here's some music and video on Lynchings of Black People in America:America's Shame!

Strange Fruit - Lynchings In America



For more on Lynchings and other atrocities committed by so-called Civilized Christian Americans see:

The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950 by Robert A. Gibson

Lynching in America: Statistics, Information, Images

African American Holocaust

America's Black Holocaust Museum

NOTE UPDATE: 1217 PM , The U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing for not actively opposing Lynchings and in fact obstructing any legislative action which would make lynching a criminal offense.Note both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted in favor of the resolution.

109th Congress
1st Session,S. RES. 39,Apologizing to the victims of lynching and the descendants of those victims for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,FEBRUARY 7, 2005


be it
Resolved, That the Senate

(1) apologizes to the victims of lynching for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation;
(2) expresses the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States; and
(3) remembers the history of lynching, to ensure that these tragedies will be neither forgotten nor repeated



Unfortunately even today there are Americans who think references to Lynching or the hanging of a noose on a tree or in a school locker or in some contractor's office or a bureaucrat's office is seen as " funny ". But a noose symbolizes hate and terror but in America they call such signs of Hate 'Freedom of Expression" like the burning of a cross or having Uniformed Nazis or Klansmen march through a black or Jewish neighborhood as being " freedom of Speech". But shouldn't there be some limits to freedom of speech.Here in Canada we have used a bit of common sense and some sensitivity to others so that certain modes of expression are restricted as is also true in most European Countries. As someone once said yes you should have freedom of speech but not to the extent of shouting " FIRE " in a crowded theatre.

In the American view one can call for the extermination and murder of groups of people and this is seen as somehow enlightened; of course I see this as a form of of irresponsible liberalism . But as I say I am a Canadian and don't find Swastika and Nazis and Klansmen as funny ; rather I see them as homegrown " Terrorists " like the Anti-Abortionists who threaten to kill doctors who perform abortions or who actually do kill doctors who perform abortions - but Americans like Ann Coulter think that someone who kills abortion doctors are , in fact, heroes.

Americans do have strange ideas about what constitutes democracy and freedom . For instance they believe as did 19th century Brits that the poor and the homeless have the right to freeze to death or to starve or to die because they can not afford proper health care .

And at one time up until the 1960's white people in America had the right to Lynch Black People. Note Black People did not have the right to Lynch a white man who killed or raped a black person .


To far too many Americans the Lynching of Black men , women and children was believed to be justified and a matter of getting justice done. These racists believed that Blacks or people of color did not have a right to a trial . The right to a trial was a white privilege in their view.

We should remember that the U.S. Senate didn't apologize to the Black People of America for their continuing to delay legislation making Lynching a crime until 2005.So much for America as " the land of the free and the home of the brave ". What sort of freedom is symbolized by dead black people hanging from trees while " the good Christian white folk " celebrate while having their picnic lunches with their children teaching them to hate anyone who is not white and anyone who dare befriend someone of color.

A Senate Apology for History on Lynching, Vote Condemns Past Failure to Act

By Avis Thomas-Lester
Washington Post
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The U.S. Senate last night approved a resolution apologizing for its failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation decades ago, marking the first time the body has apologized for the nation's treatment of African Americans.

One-hundred and five years after the first anti-lynching bill was proposed by a black congressman, senators approved by a voice vote Resolution 39, which called for the lawmakers to apologize to lynching victims, survivors and their descendants, several of whom watched from the gallery.

In passing the measure, the senators in essence admitted that their predecessors' failure to act had helped perpetuate a horror that took the lives of more than 4,700 people from 1882 to 1968, most of them black men. At the turn of the last century, more than 100 lynching incidents were reported each year, many of them publicly orchestrated to humiliate the victims and instill fear in others. Lynching occurred in all but four states in the contiguous United States, and less than 1 percent of the perpetrators were brought to justice, historians say.

The U.S. House of Representatives three times passed measures to make lynching a federal offense, but each time the bills were knocked down in the Senate. Powerful southern senators, such as Richard B. Russell Jr. (D-Ga.), whose name was given to the Senate office building where the resolution was drafted, used the filibuster to block votes.

Excerpts from the Congressional Record show some senators argued that such laws would interfere with states' rights. Others, however, delivered impassioned speeches about how lynching helped control what they characterized as a threat to white women and also served to keep the races separate, according to records provided by the Committee for a Formal Apology, a group that has lobbied the Senate.

"Whenever a Negro crosses this dead line between the white and the Negro races and lays his black hand on a white woman, he deserves to die," segregationist Sen. James Thomas Heflin (D-Ala.) said in 1930.

In a 1938 debate, Russell repeatedly referred to a hypothetical lynching victim with a derogatory derivative of the word "Negro."


and while the Senate made it's lame belated apology once again there was no effort made to expand on Hate Law Legislation !!!

for instance see the article in New America Media :Apology for Lynching, But Nothing for Hate Crimes? Pacific News Service, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinshon, Jun 09, 2005

LOS ANGELES--If they were still alive, NAACP executive directors James Weldon Johnson, Walter White and Roy Wilkins would smile at the Senate's plan to apologize for lynching with a non-binding resolution next week. But their smiles would be faint because Congress still refuses to pass an expanded hate crimes law.

The late civil rights leaders fought a tireless, frustrating battle for a half century to get eight presidents and Congress to pass an anti-lynching law. The White House and the lawmakers ducked, dodged and stonewalled efforts to get the law passed.

That was the government's shame. Lynching was the dirtiest of dirty stains on American democracy. Between 1890 and 1968 there were nearly 5,000 known lynchings. The carnage was probably much higher as many killings weren't reported. The majority of the victims were black. The coming Senate resolution offers "solemn regrets" to their descendants. At least it would make it official that the feds fumbled the ball badly when it came to protecting blacks. The Senate resolution, however, doesn't answer why eight presidents and Congress did nothing to stop lynching. It also doesn't tell why Congress still refuses to go all out to nail hate-mongers today.

The foot-dragging presidents and Congress rebuffed the NAACP with excuse after lame excuse. Some officials claimed that if they pressed too hard the Southerners who dominated Congress would filibuster anti-lynching bills to death, paralyze the government and bottle up other more "important" legislation. Others claimed it was up to the states to prosecute the killers and there was nothing the federal government could or should do. Still others were mute on the issue and hoped it would go away. They were all disingenuous and hypocritical.


and for some views on recent racist remarks and images in the media:

Local black leaders outraged by 'Noose' cover:By Lucas Sullivan, January 19, 2008

SPRINGFIELD — Local black leaders are saddened and disappointed by Golfweek magazine's decision to put a noose on its cover this week in the wake of a Golf Channel anchor's "lynch" comment about golfer Tiger Woods.

Those attending Friday's Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration in Springfield said the magazine should know better.


"Some people don't understand that words like lynching and a noose, attached to race, represent years of oppression of black people," said John Young, interim dean of students at Wittenberg University. "Literally thousands of our people have been lynched or hanged without any due process or for no reason at all.

Lynchings and nooses represent "fear" and "intimidation" of black people, Young said.

"To me that is like putting the Confederate flag on the front of the magazine," Young said.

Golfweek fired editor and vice president Dave Seanor Friday morning after the Jan. 19th issue was published.

Seanor said Thursday he approved the cover that shows a noose set against a purple sky accompanied by the headline "Caught in a Noose."

Turnstile Publishing Co., which owns the magazine, also removed the magazine's image from its Web site.


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Note To Golfweek: Lynching Isn't Funny by Erik Sass, Monday, Jan 21, 2008

AH, THE POWER OF THE press. Sometimes a little magazine can stir controversy and publicity with great investigative reporting or an incisive, well-argued opinion column. But you can also do it by just being really, really stupid.

The controversy surrounding Golf Channel commentator Kelly Tilghman's on-air remark of Jan. 4--when she jokingly suggested that junior players might have to "lynch" Tiger Woods to have a chance of winning --was fair warning that lynching is not a comedy gold mine in public discourse. It's more like a third rail.

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Commentary: Not Only Does the Golf Channel’s Dimwit Anchor Need Schooling – So Does Tiger Woods, January 16, 2008,By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com

I don’t celebrate “Be Kind to Stupid Black People Week.” I apply the same standard to Caucasians.

Kelly Tilghman, an on-air commentator for the Golf Channel, might well qualify for my Stupid White Person of the Decade at the end of 2010. Can you believe this dimwit said as a joke that Tiger Woods' golf competitors might want to lynch him in a back alley as a way of getting an edge?

Oh, she’s apologized up the wazoo for the remark. And the Golf Channel has suspended her for two weeks (I’ve heard the suspension is with pay; if that’s true, then it’s not a suspension. It’s what you and I call a vacation.).

According to the Archives at Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched in America during the years 1882-1968. Black victims accounted for 3,446 of the lynchings, and 1,297 whites were lynched. The racial group that made up only 11 percent of the population accounted for 73 percent of the lynchings.

That doesn’t just make lynchings lynchings; they bordered on genocide.

For all the talk about how Tilghman’s use of the word "lynch" was inadvertent and how she meant no offense, Tilghman and her defenders know one thing: If she had been talking about a Jewish golfer, she would never have said “inadvertently” or with no offense that his competitors should get together and gas him in an oven.

The word is that Tilghman has a history degree from Duke University. So she’s heard of the Holocaust. She knows that kind of comment about a Jewish golfer would have been out of bounds. And even if she were stupid enough to say it, those rushing to her defense with all this talk of “inadvertent” and “inoffensive” language wouldn’t be uttering such nonsense.

But some Americans feel it’s perfectly okay to know about the Holocaust and be totally ignorant about the true history of lynching in this country, especially as it relates to black people. You can bet Tilghman hasn’t read Jaspin’s book and that it’s not even on her “to buy” list. It’s a safe bet Mr. Cablinasian hasn’t read it either.

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Language Was Hurtful, But Actions Were Profane,Washington Post, By Michael Wilbon, January 20, 2008

Sadly, it seems the few conversations we have about race and sports anymore are limited to extreme reactions to language. They're not so much conversations as they are confrontations, usually angry ones and increasingly with severe consequences. Our parents never told us that words could hurt just as much as sticks and stones.

Already a broadcaster has been suspended, a magazine editor fired, and feelings deeply bruised from the inappropriate use of one of America's ugliest images: lynching. And we certainly haven't heard the last of the Kelly Tilghman-Tiger Woods-Golfweek Magazine controversy because Woods opens his 2008 season this week, which might be remembered more for what he says about all this than how he plays.

Sen. Barack Obama even weighed in from the presidential campaign trail in Pittsburgh on Saturday morning when he said Golfweek Magazine's use of a noose on its cover showed "a lack of sensitivity to some of the profound historical and racial issues. . . . We have to understand there's nothing funny about a noose. There's a profound history that people have been dealing with, and those memories are ones that can't be played with."


and so it goes,
GORD.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Martin Luther King , Jr. " Letter From Birmingham Jail " On Civil Disobedience


Photo: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Updated Jan. 21, 2008, 6:25 PM
And on the Historical Reality of Black Oppression in America here's some music and video on Lynchings of Black People in America:America's Shame
Strange Fruit - Lynchings In America



For more on Lynchings and other atrocities committed by so-called Civilized Christian Americans see:

The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950 by Robert A. Gibson

Lynching in America: Statistics, Information, Images

African American Holocaust

America's Black Holocaust Museum



Here are some excerpts from Martin Luther King's " Letter From A Birmingham Jail " in which he explains the necessity of taking some form of action against those who oppress black people . King also explains the strategy of Peaceful Civil-Disobedience and Non-Co-operation :

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture...

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws.


...A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes and "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things...

An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because they did not have the unhampered right to vote.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

(The Failure of the White Churches )

I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of the stained-glass windows.

I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, "follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.


In deep disappointment, I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love.

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgement of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.


To read full text of the speech see:
Martin Luther King Jr. "Letter From a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963"

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In a similar fashion the Bush regime has become a law unto itself which answers not to the American people or to the International Community. Through deceit and manipulation and fear it has passed unconstitutional laws . It has engaged in an unnecessary , illegal and immoral war. Yet few in America dare stand up to this illegitimate and immoral regime.

The Bush Regime also came to power under a cloud of uncertainty . The election results were in question. Yet the Bush regime was permitted to stop any official inquiries into possible wrong-doing on the part of election officials. The American people appeared to have been uninterested in such allegations. The American churches also were silent on this issue. And even now some seven or eight years later there is still little action being advocated for officially exploring these allegations. Many people were either prevented from voting or their votes were not counted or were given to a member of the competing party . Most of those who were affected were blacks or Latinos who often voted for the Democrats and not the Republicans.
If this were a third world country there would be a call for having an international group of observers to come into America to ensure that the next elections will be fair and that thousands are not arbitrarily disenfranchised.

As the White Churches in general were silent in America during the civil-rights movement or in fact were antagonistic to the movement. The Churches in America also for the most part were silent in the face of an illegal and unnecessary and immoral war in Vietnam. Somehow Christians and their Churches believed that war and civil rights were not their business unless it was to support the war. In the end all that mattered was that they either be silent or that they support the " status quo ".

It seems that once again the church and Christians have sat silent while injustices have been committed by the Bush regime from ' renditions' & ' torture ' to curbing and undermining the rights of America's citizens to the unjust and brutal war and occupation of the once sovereign country of Iraq.

The Bush Regime's propaganda machine tells Americans in subtle and not so subtle ways that all Iraqis are the enemy and that they are a " barbaric " and " inhuman race " who do not value human life as we in the West do. . They have been demonized to such an extent that many Americans are unable to sympathize or empathize with their sufferings since the Iraqis are seen as not quite human. As the anti-Semite perceives and characterizes Jews as the enemy as members of " The Satanic Synagogue " so too do the Anti-Islamic bigots characterize the majority of Muslims and Arabs as if they were merely the " minions " of Satan or of the Antichrist.

Even now where is the outrage heard from the Christian Churches . No instead once again in the face of evil there is silence.

The only loud voices of Christians we hear are from those who have allied themselves with the anti-democratic forces and with those who continue to beat their drums for even more wars and even more brutal treatment of all those who are designated as the " enemy".

And who is the enemy. The enemy are they tell us not just the terrorists and their supporters but also innocent civilians who protest in Iraq or in America. Anyone who dares protest against the war or against the abuse of " detainees " or who call for justice when American forces have allegedly committed atrocities in Iraq. But if all Iraqis are the enemy and are therefore seen as enemy combatants then they are according to the U.S. courts " Non-persons " who therefore have no rights .

As in the sixties the media is still self-serving providing us with entertainment rather than substance. As for the news the Media likes the catchy 'soundbite 'which plays into the hands of the Bush Regimes propaganda and the ' Spin-Doctors '. There is little need for in depth coverage of events when it can all be reduced to a matter of 'slogans ' and 'good' versus 'evil '. Shades of nuance and complexity of an issue or an event we find tedious and boring . Then those in power tell us in no uncertain terms which is which so we therefore do not need to tax our little brains about the matter.

We are spoon fed whatever the 'Status Quo' wants us to believe. And in the end how are we to decide on an issue of importance when we become so cynical that it becomes difficult to know when we are being told the truth and when we are being deceived. It is no wonder so many well meaning people become the victims of the most outrageous of ' conspiracy theories ' in a world of cynicism and doubt. While other members of the public do not want to hear about the 'bad news' and want their reality 'sugar-coated'.

So the media feeds us all the grizzly details of a particular murder case and we lap it up . But we do not want to hear about the grizzly details about 'detainees ' being abused , humiliated and tortured and having their basic legal rights denied to them.

Nor do we want to hear about the grizzly details about an unnecessary, illegal and immoral war supposedly being fought on our behalf. We like our wars 'sanitized' with very little blood-shed. We do not want to hear about the the broken bodies , the limbs torn asunder , bodies burned beyond recognition either of those fighting on our side or those who are supposedly our enemies including elderly men and women or children and babies shot to pieces by an M16 in the hands of our valiant soldiers. Nor do we want to hear about entire towns and cities bombed till all that remained was rubble.

Nor do we want to hear that many of those soldiers on our side do not understand what their mission is besides that of killing anything that moves. Nor do we want to hear about those soldiers who refuse to fight or kill who would prefer prison or escaping to some foreign country in order not to have kill one more person whom their superiors call the ' enemy ' .

and so it goes,
GORD.