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"Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy" J.K Galbraith to Deficit Commission
Posted by Michael Collins
Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy.
The conclusion to be drawn is that Social Security should in any event be off the agenda of your Commission, as it is a transfer program and not a program of public spending in the economic sense. In particular it does not use capital resources and will not drive up interest rates. This is true whether the "Social Security System" is in internal balance or not.
Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Some of the early reviews of Gore Vidal's 'Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace' called it 'inflammatory'. That's because truth is often inflammatory. It is a measure of the American descent into fascism when distinguished authors are denied access to the audience that their work, in fact, created. Neither self-publishing or the blogosphere is, as yet, the solution. Those venues, themselves, are under threat if the news we hear about Google is, in any way, true.
So --what was said by Vidal that scared the pants off the MSM, the mentally constipated, the poohbahs at the Pentagon? Simply --Vidal found fatal flaws in U.S. foreign policy that inspire desperate measures abroad and, of late, at home. An empire whose exploitation of ever greater numbers leaves them desperate invites response and retaliation. A nation-state so exploited may fight back with conventional means --armies and weapons. A 'people' so exploited has only 'terrorism' to fight back with.
Hunting for Courageous Legislators: Pennsylvania Continues to Lead USA in Animal Cruelty
by Walter Brasch
Twenty minutes South of Harrisburg, Pa., on a two hour drive to her home near Gaithersburg, Md., Heidi Prescott shed a tear. No one else saw it, only one other person could hear it in her voice. It was about 9 p.m., Tuesday, June 29.
Prescott, senior vice-president of campaigns for the 11-million member Humane Society of the United States, values her reputation as a compassionate but tough lobbyist, but more than two decades of grief and hope was in that tear. For five straight days, she had driven to the Capitol; this would be the week, she was led to believe by the House leadership, that the Legislature would finally bring forth a vote to ban live pigeon shoots. But, in a late night deal, the Legislature had come to a decision about the next year's budget, and that meant it would recess before voting on the bill to ban pigeon shoots.
Every Tuesday, when the Pennsylvania legislature is in session, Prescott spends five to 10 hours working the 50 state senators and 203 representatives, every one of whom she knows by name and by their political beliefs. She seldom eats, rushing from office to office, sitting, waiting, and talking. To staff. To elected officials. To anyone who will listen.
Der Zor Diary: A Pilgrimage to the Killing Fields of the Armenian Genocide
By Lucine Kasbarian
An exhibit of bones belonging to Armenian martyrs of Der Zor, at the Armenian
Genocide Memorial Church Complex in Der Zor.
"My heart is like shattered homes and broken pillars thrown asunder . . . Wild birds will nest in our ruins . . . Let me throw myself into the water and be food for the fish's babies . . . White waves lap upon the black sea about us and do not mix . . . In this melancholic, bewildered state, what can my darkened heart do?"
-- Lyrics translated by Armen Babamian from “Homeless” (Andouni), composed by Gomidas Vartabed in honor of Armenians broken and exiled by the Genocide
Why would I seek out the Der Zor desert -- the most infamous of the killings fields in the premeditated extermination of the Armenian people carried out by the Turkish government beginning in 1915?
Growing Thought Control in Israel
by Stephen Lendman
Since its 1948 establishment, IDF military censor authority banned or sanitized material potentially damaging to Israel's security. Thereafter, voluntary media/government agreements prevailed, all domestic and foreign news organizations abiding by censorship rulings.
Some are sensible like banning reports beneficial to adversaries. Others aren't by suppressing information the public has a right to know. For example, whatever affects their welfare and when officials commit crimes. In addition, various Supreme Court decisions limit content suppression to "tangible (or) near certain" instances of public endangerment. Of course, interpretations are crucial, authorities increasingly hardline to get their way.
How the War Racket Means the Beginning of the End for 'America'
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Used to be --there was good news and there was bad news. Of late, the bad news is that there is no good news and there may not be any good news in the foreseeable future. Unless things change, there may not be any good news ever!
I know whose fault this is! This is the result and work of American robber barons and right wing militarists who have sold America out to China as they plot more wars of naked aggression for the purpose of seizing the oil fields of the Middle East.
Much of the plan, the legacies of Reagan, Sr. and Shrub, the three henchman of the apocalypse, is already in place.
LAUREN BOOTH: AN AL QUDS DAY LETTER TO TONY BLAIR. FROM LAUREN BOOTH, IN IRAN
from Gilad Atzmon
I guess that Tony Blair’s sister in law, Lauren Booth, could easily use the phone and tell Tony what she thinks of him, his politics and his new memoir. However, being a peace activist she decided also to share it with the rest of us.
An Al Quds day letter to Tony Blair. From Lauren Booth, in Iran.
By Lauren Booth
3 September 2010
Dear Tony,
Congratulations on your political memoir becoming an instant bestseller. I’m in Iran and have the only copy in the country. I can tell you, its so fiercely fought over, it’s worth its weight in WMD’s. Note to Random House; have ‘A Journey’ translated into Farsi and Arabic asap, it’ll fly off the shelves in this part of the world.
Why You are Free and the Right Wing is Not!
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The essence of Sartre is found in a slim volume of just under 100 pages: Existentialism and Human Emotions. In a single sentence, Sartre turned several centuries of conventional thinking on its head: "Existence precedes essence". Sartre himself, however, credits Rene Descartes whose cogito ergo sum or, en francais, Je pense donc je suis; in English: "I think, therefore I am".
Sartre writes:
"For we mean that man first exists, that is, that man first of all is the being who hurls himself toward a future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being in the future. Man is at the start a plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exists prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. Not what he will want to be. Because by the word "will" we generally mean a conscious decision, which is subsequent to what we have already made of ourselves.
The Lamentation of Hadja Hassan Mohammed
from Franklin P. Lamb
"How I envy those of you who were there when my loved ones died. Did they
die thirsty? Or were you merciful enough to give them a drink?"
Dearest Franklin,
Thank you very much for forwarding this to me. It is very difficult but I recall every single event the night of 17 Sept 1982 when Mounir was brought into the Gaza Hospital emergency room by his friends. All he could say was Israelis, Haddads, Kataebs and then passed out. He was the last patent I operated on before we were ordered out of our basement operating theater by militiamen. He was shot 3 times and bled alot- his hemoglobin dropped to 4 gms
(normal 12-13 gms).
Mounir like others, lived months in the same house in Shatilla where his family was murdered, reliving the nightmares until finally they managed to get his brother and him to the USA to start a new life. I met up with Mounir many times, and even now, he would ask me to look at his scars.
'Is There a Predator Drone Near Gainesville?'
Military historian and author, Brian Downing, is more than a little perturbed at the foolishness of Koran burning in Gainesville, Florida (site of the most egregious election fraud in 2000). (Image)
As best as I can tell, that plow-hand in Gainesville has never even had the benefit of half-idiot pedagogues and broken down preachers. He acquired his theological learning by watching Jimmy Swaggart on the TV and taking copious notes. There’s a plow-hand preacher born every time a pledge number lights up on the screen. But what about congregations? They must be coming even faster than the rubes at a carnival midway. “Step right this way and see the burning books!” B. Downing
It gets better ...
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