Tuesday, February 28, 2006

"I Create My Day"


"I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. Now sometimes, because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done, it takes me a little bit to settle down and get to the point of where I'm actually intentionally creating my day. But here's the thing: When I create my day and out of nowhere little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain that I accept that that's possible. (This) gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.
So if we're consciously designing our destiny, and if we're consciously from a spiritual standpoint throwing in with the idea that our thoughts can affect our reality or affect our life -- because reality equals life -- then I have this little pact that I have when I create my day. I say, 'I'm taking this time to create my day and I'm infecting the quantum field. Now if (it) is in fact the observer's watching me the whole time that I'm doing this and there is a spiritual aspect to myself, then show me a sign today that you paid attention to any one of these things that I created, and bring them in a way that I won't expect, so I'm as surprised at my ability to be able to experience these things. And make it so that I have no doubt that it's come from you,' and so I live my life, in a sense, all day long thinking about being a genius or thinking about being the glory and the power of God or thinking about being unconditional love.
I'll use living as a genius, for example. And as I do that during parts of the day, I'll have thoughts that are so amazing, that cause a chill in my physical body, that have come from nowhere. But then I remember that that thought has an associated energy that's produced an effect in my physical body. Now that's a subjective experience, but the truth is that I don't think that unless I was creating my day to have unlimited thought, that that thought would come." -Dr. Joe Dispenza

Monday, February 27, 2006

More Than 50,000 Children Used In CIA Experiements



More Than 50,000 Children Used In CIA-Connected Experimentation Programs; Investigative Journalist Has Story Suppressed And Experiences Threats Before Its Eventual Release In Alternative Publication

Christine Hahn won't back down from threats and suppression, as she vows to get out the truth about the Duplessis Orphans.
26 Feb 2006

"Many of these individuals were in fact not orphans at all, but had been born to poor families that had difficulty caring for them, or to unwed mothers. Although no official tallies were kept, over a span of several decades, it has been estimated they numbered in the tens of thousands and perhaps as many as 100,000.
One of the main psychiatrists in the saga is Denis Lazure, president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association in 1966. From 1999 to 2001, Lazure headed the “Support Committee for Justice for the Duplessis Orphans” — an effort that, according to Rod Vienneau, betrayed those it pretended to help. Vienneau compared Lazure’s position on the committee to “a fox in the chicken coop.” In his memoirs, Medecin et Citoyen, published in 2002, Lazure wrote that in 1952, while interning at Hospice St. Jean de Dieu, a massive psychiatric facility in Montreal since renamed Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital, he and five other interns regularly administered electroshock and routinely put patients into insulin comas. Lazure breezily described how he would “start the day pushing the button on the electrical box that sends a current to provoke an epileptic-type convulsion in tens of patients who hadn’t received any preparatory medication.”
Then he was off to the insulin coma rooms, “half-lit, vile-smelling, with two dozen patients that we’d inject with doses of insulin strong enough to induce a coma. After several hours of excessive sedation, they’d receive a glucose injection, which usually brought them back to consciousness. It sometimes happened that we got the shock of a patient that failed to reawaken.” Lazure painted a disturbing picture of St. Jean de Dieu, one in which psychiatrists played with and destroyed human life. Later in 1952, Lazure left the institution for Verdun Protestant (now Douglas) Hospital, where he assisted chemical lobotomy pioneer Lehmann in tests of chlorpromazine. Montreal journalist Kristian Gravenor quipped, “Lazure went on to head hospitals and run the provincial health ministry, fried brains and accidental overdoses not slowing him down one bit.” Lazure’s statement that he and Lehmann tested chlorpromazine in 1952 lends credence to claims by Clarina Duguay and others of being forced to take the drug prior to 1953 — the year Lehmann supposedly “discovered” how to use it to straitjacket patients — and raises questions regarding how many Orphans may have been exploited as human guinea pigs.

Psychiatry Destroys Life
Children’s advocate Carol Rutz, author of A Nation Betrayed, told Freedom that based on her research, the Duplessis Orphans became prime subjects for psychiatric testing and abuse.
These children, she said, were defenseless — easy prey for ruthless doctors who inflicted pain and death under the guise of science. Many boys and girls, she said, “had no parents to return home to, hence the extent of their abuse needed no cover-up. Who would tell? They could be beaten or drugged into submission.” Orphans at St. Jean de Dieu were selected to receive electroshock, drugs and other “treatments” primarily based on whether or not they had immediate family members who might come to their defense or protection, said one source who worked at the facility. Rod Vienneau said Quebec psychiatrists viewed these children, who most often came from the province’s poorest families, as “unwanted.” They emptied Quebec’s orphanages, he said, “sending the ‘unwanted’ children to the psychiatric hospitals where psychiatrists could do any experiment that they wanted to do on 100,000 children — and no one would know.” Evidence suggests that many boys and girls became victims of a psychiatric eugenics program with connections to prominent members of the U.S. and Canadian psychiatric establishments.
“Defectives” was the sweeping label that Canadian psychiatrist Charles Kirk Clarke, a founder of the Canadian Mental Health Association, applied to immigrants from eastern and central Europe. Another Canadian eugenicist, Helen MacMurchy, a provincial “inspector of the feeble-minded,” campaigned for sterilization to prevent certain mothers from “filling the cradle with degenerate babies.” Freedom addressed this subject in a 1996 cover report in its Canadian edition entitled “The Ethnic Cleansing of the ‘Mentally Unfit’ — Sterilization in Canada.” The authors wrote, “The tools of the eugenicists thus became immigration controls, birth control, sterilization and finally euthanasia as carried out by the Nazis,” noting that the first three methods had been employed in Canada — resulting in, among other things, the involuntary sterilization of thousands of women, many of them Canadian Indian or other minorities.
With fresh allegations now surfacing that many Duplessis Orphans died or disappeared, the fourth item on the eugenicists’ agenda, euthanasia, certainly warrants official investigation.

“They Were Allowed to Kill Defenseless Children”
Indeed, the bodies of hundreds or even thousands of Duplessis Orphans, buried near Quebec psychiatric hospitals, may today hold the key to documenting what survivors have called "organized psychiatric genocide." Montreal attorney Daniel Lighter suggested that Quebec officials permit exhumation of bodies buried on hospital grounds to determine to what extent Orphans may have been used for psychiatric experimentation, including lobotomies, electroshock and mass drugging. "One can certainly argue that a free society has a responsibility to unearth the good, the bad and the indifferent of its past,” Lighter told Freedom. “There is certainly a compelling amount of evidence, even outside of a courtroom, to justify looking again at this case.” At every step of the way, the Orphans’ treatment was guided by the hand of psychiatry. Documents obtained by Freedom reveal connections between the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and Quebec psychiatric facilities where Orphans were incarcerated. As far back as 1922, photographs and other evidence show a relationship between these facilities and the APA. In 1954, for example, the APA recognized Montreal’s Verdun Protestant (now Douglas) Hospital for “notable achievements” in research. Freedom asked APA spokesperson Jason Young what this research entailed, but as of press time, had not received an answer. The APA imprimatur raises questions as to who benefited from the Orphans’ false internment and why, said Lighter. "It’s a very strange link to have the APA accrediting hospitals in Quebec. Why would that be?” he asked. “It suggests that the APA was not only intimately involved but that they were coordinating the experiments. It certainly begs questions and those questions deserve answers." A documentary that aired in September 2004 on Quebec television station TQS reported there had been roughly 300,000 children in total; 200,000 of those were adopted, while 100,000 were held in orphanages, ready for adoption but never taken. These, reporter Gary Arpin implied, were the Duplessis Orphans.
One Orphan, Jean-Guy Labrosse, 66, today a retired construction worker, authored a 1964 book about his years in Quebec institutions, My Dog’s Life, which helped to bring abuses to light. "How many of my fellow [Orphans] have died, and have gone missing?” he asked in an interview with Freedom. “And when I say missing, I mean missing without a trace. In Quebec, they were allowed to kill defenseless children.”
Rod Vienneau estimates that at least half of the Orphans incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals died or disappeared in those institutions. “If somebody disappeared, it’s because somebody got rid of the person,” he said. “They were killed or murdered.” British psychologist Francis Galton coined “eugenics” from the Greek eugenes, meaning “good in stock” or “well-born.” Galton’s theories on eugenics were, in turn, forwarded by psychologists and psychiatrists. In Germany, for example, Galton’s work was used by psychiatrist Ernst Rudin and others to provide the impetus for racial hygiene and genocide programs.

Select Memories of Former Orphans:
*A 10-year-old boy beaten to death by two guards.
*Many of the guards hired to watch over the children were young criminals who had been in reform schools. And many guards — some of whom he named — allegedly sodomized the youths.
*After being assaulted repeatedly, one boy complained to hospital authorities, and he received the ultimate “warning.” The culprits drove a knife into his left eye, blinding him, and told him that if he complained again, he would also lose the right eye.
*Three children each week were victims of operations during which vital organs such as hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers were cut out and sold in the U.S. A gray-and-black refrigerated vehicle transported the organs, he said. “Their organs could be harvested and sold and no one would be the wiser. They were the expendables simply because they were available. What remained of the bodies would be buried in cardboard boxes, three children per box, in what was known as the “pigsty” cemetery — so named because it was where pigs were kept, and where the remains of dead swine and other animals were also disposed of."
*One child saw hospital staff carrying the dead bodies of children as young as 5 to a large incinerator, where they were thrown in with the hospital’s garbage.
*The youngest children were kept out of sight in cells and cages at the back of St. Jean de Dieu under barbaric conditions — in straitjackets, heavily drugged and befouled by their own waste.
*There is evidence of such abuses as psychosurgery, electroshock, ice baths, beatings, straitjacketing, torture, sodomy and “unjustified confinement to a cell — sometimes for months or even years.
*Neurosurgeon Guy LaMarche admitted that each Wednesday, two or three lobotomies were performed on patients at St. Michel Archange, as prescribed by the institution’s head psychiatrist, even though “we had no idea” how the operations would affect the institution’s patients. “More often than not, they became vegetables.”
*" I saw eight Orphans with their heads cut wide open.”


Falsification of records, lies to families and horrific experiments bear similarities to Nazi psychiatric programs for ridding society of “undesirables." In this case, the “unwanteds” were normal children born out of wedlock, or whose families could not afford them, or who thought their children would be better taken care of when turned over to the institutions. Ewen Cameron, infamous for barbarity and a penchant for operating without patient consent, maimed men and women with electroshock, lobotomies and drugs that included chlorpromazine and LSD. An international leading light of psychiatry, Cameron served as president of the Quebec Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association. Some of Cameron’s victims were compensated by the U.S. Justice Department in 1988 with an out-of-court settlement totaling $750,000; in November 1992, the Canadian government announced it would give $100,000 apiece to victims of his experiments. Meanwhile, this man was awarded virtually every major North American psychiatric award.

Cameron received money from Sidney Gottlieb of U.S. intelligence, architect of the various “mind control” programs that utilized coercive psychiatric methods in efforts to control human behavior. A dominant figure in the psychiatric world, Cameron, following his 1952 American Psychiatric Association presidency, became a prime beneficiary of Gottlieb’s covert funding.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Having This Blog Makes Us Helpful To The Enemy! (according to Dubyah)



U.S. Fascists In Washington Want To Put Muzzle On "Bad Dogs" In The Alternative Press
Nazi-like legislation in the works to stop Bush dissent "dead in its tracks" before massive revolt begins as the Bush lies are coming to the surface and top officials know it.23 Feb 2006
By Greg Szymanski




The first sign of putting the muzzle on the "bad dogs" in the alternative press is starting to rear its ugly head on Capitol Hill, as freedom of speech leading to a citizen rebellion is one thing the fascists in Washington fear the most.

And as a way to silence Bush administration critics, many first amendment advocates for years have called attention to an eventual "clampdown" on the internet, including dissident forum bloggers, by the use of sophisticated technical means.

But now legislators and attorneys in the Justice Department are busy at work drafting 'Nazi-like' speech suppression laws, geared at putting "the finishing touches" on any serious movement that could topple the fascist neo con agenda.

It is no secret the mainstream press is in total syncopation with the administration, allowing its domestic and foreign war agenda to proceed on schedule and without serious question, leading to an eventual destruction of America.

Recently, the discussion to illegally gag the alternative press came up at a Feb. 6 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), told Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez that the administration has the "duty to pursue Fifth Column movements."

Sen. Graham, who volunteered to work with the administration to draft guidelines to suppress the "dissident press," went on to tell Gonzalez:

"I stand by this President's ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements and I don't think you need a warrant to do that Graham added."

In response, Gonzales said: "Senator, the President already said we'd be happy to listen to your ideas."

Further, other information has surfaced in relation to the NSA "spygate" story, Bush and his cronies have already been working on divisive measures to deal with Americans considered disloyal or who disseminate information "helpful to the enemy."

However, critics complain Bush is merely trying to protect groundswell of Americans from finding out about his real "lying agenda," including the administration's role in bringing about 9/11 and the fixing of the WMD evidence surrounding the Iraqi war.

Critics also contend the "masters of deception," including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, want to "cut-off" any news that undercuts the Bush policies, considering this as Rumsfeld has been quoted, "as a key method to defeating the terrorists, who are aided and abetted by news informers."

If the administration pursues this strategy, questions first need to be raised as to who is the real enemy, as many consider the real enemy to be within the White House, and where is the line drawn between suppression of speech and a legitimate search for the truth.

Two other developments have also surfaced behind the scenes, indicating the administration is already planning a deceptive campaign to house dissident Americans in concentration camps and existing military facilities.

Recently, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a Haliburton subsidiary, a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new program."

The New York Times then reported that KBR would build "the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster."

Further, there have been reports that more than 800 detention centers, both above and below ground, are ready to house millions of Americans in the event of a massive crisis, including nuclear attack.

Another similar detention program announced recently but given little attention is a small notice posted at the U.S. Army Web site, regarding the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program.

This program, according to the web site blurb, "provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations."

According to the plan's history, it was first drafted in 1997 then underwent a revision on Jan. 14, 2005, providing an agreements between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

Read more at: www.arcticbeacon.com

Saturday, February 25, 2006

the shambhala warriors


The Shambhala Warriors
Dr. Michael Sharp
Long ago and far away, A prophesy told of a day
When no more death on Earth we’d see, And balanced true to nature be.
And children laugh and dance, and swing, As joyous would all people sing,
A new day dawn, a glorious spring, And no more pain and love would sing.
...∞...
But as the Earth begins her birth, And joyously we span her girth,
They spurn to see, and scorn with glee, The painful lot in people be.
And though we hope that peace might stay, Their hand from spreading death this day
They beat their drums to tone of war, And conduct their deadly music score.
...∞...
And so we send the prophets hand, To spread the truth e’er out the land
But long ago it was foretold, That even this their hands not hold,
And when they’d realize time and day, So they would send rank death our way,
With famine, plagues and war to stay, In hopes they’d face not judgment day.
...∞...
And so we turn our eyes this day, And call the warriors out to play.
For they were sent long time ago, To prepare for this their final show.
And sleep and wait and bide their time, And work their way inside the line.
And hidden keep their spark un-shined, Till we would call them with our mind.
...∞...
And so the warriors now we see, Rise slowly, they had sleeping be,
And as the children round them scream, And poverty spreads so obscene.
And rulers through the lands they rage, And laugh obscene, at people caged,
A fire burns their eyes today, For deeply will the rulers pay.
...∞...
And as they stretch, their hands abreast, Full power claim them now’s their test.
And final warnings fail they to see, The end times fast approaching be.
And as the warriors spread their wings, Protection to God’s children bring.
And weak and old out from the cold. And men and women into the fold.
...∞...
And now as warriors do take flight, A battle glorious they do fight.
With shining sword they quickly free, The mind’s of all so truth they'll see.
And as the sword comes crashing down, The leaders faces turn to frown.
For mobs of people dance and sing, We see now all the truth you bring.
...∞...
And no longer will we play their tune, And dance 'neath their ungodly moon.
For we have seen the truth this day, And no more will the piper pay.
And as the warriors turn to face, The rulers who now stand disgraced.
One final warning we provide, To stop the madness, stand aside.
And still the kings heed not the call, Still they stand and tempt the fall.
But long ago it was foretold, When warriors came the darkness fold.
So time long past, they finally see, The warriors who had warned times three.
And as they waken from their sleep, These rulers who thought light would weep,
These despots who had ruined our day, For eons now their karma pay.
And as the final battle’s won, The warrior's job is finally done.
For truth and justice they did come. To win the day for kingdom come.
...∞...
And long ago and far away, A prophesy told of this day.
When no more death on Earth there’d be, And balanced true to nature be.
And children laugh and dance and sing, As joyous would society bring.
A new days dawn, for us to bring, A warriors song for all to sing.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

save the harp seals!!














Sign the petition below in an effort to protect the baby harp seals that are at the mercy of the hunters in Canada! We need 150,000 signatures and so far there is only 7,000. Take some action:


http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/566342047?z00m=73616&z00m=73616&ltl=1140752824


THIS IS A MUST-READ!!!


The Following Contains Actual Quotes From Bush's Abstinence-Only Education Programs:

Under the Bush Administration, federal support for "abstinence-only" education
programs has expanded rapidly. The federal government will spend
approximately $170 million on abstinence-only education programs in fiscal year
2005, more than twice the amount spent in fiscal year 2001. As a result,
abstinence-only education, which promotes abstinence from sexual activity
without teaching basic facts about contraception, now reaches millions of children
and adolescents each year.
At the request of Rep. Henry Waxman, this report evaluates the content of the
most popular abstinence-only curricula used by grantees of the largest federal
abstinence initiative. This and
other federally funded programs are not reviewed for accuracy by the federal government.
The report finds that over 80% of the abstinence-only curricula, used by over two thirds of abstinence education grantees in 2003, contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.


Here it is- a specially prepared summary of the lies being pedaled by our teachers:

1. Many of the curricula misrepresent the effectiveness of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases andpregnancy. One curriculum says that "the popular claim that ‘condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,’ is not supported by the data"; another states that "in heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31% of the time"; and another teaches that a pregnancy occurs one out of every seven times that couples use condoms. These erroneous statements are presented as proven scientific facts.

2. One curriculum states that 5% to 10% of women who
have legal abortions will become sterile; that "premature birth, a major
cause of mental retardation, is increased following the abortion of a first
pregnancy"; and that "tubal and cervical pregnancies are increased
following abortions." In fact, obstetrics textbooks teach that "fertility is not altered by an elective abortion."


3. Many of the curricula present as scientific fact the religious view that life begins at
conception. For example, one lesson states: "Conception, also known as
fertilization, occurs when one sperm unites with one egg in the upper third
of the fallopian tube. This is when life begins." Another curriculum calls
a 43-day-old fetus a "thinking person."


4. One curriculum teaches that women need "financial
support," while men need "admiration." Another instructs: "Women
gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships.
Men’s happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments."


5. One curriculum incorrectly lists exposure to sweat and tears
as risk factors for HIV transmission. Another curriculum states that
"twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty- four
chromosomes from the father join to create this new individual"; the
correct number is 23.


6. Another curriculum presents misleading information about the risk of pregnancy
from sexual activity other than intercourse. The curriculum erroneously states
that touching another person’s genitals "can result in pregnancy."


7. The curriculum also misrepresents the relationship between abortion and serious
mental health issues. The curriculum states: "Following abortion, according to some studies, women are more prone to suicide and therefore need extra support from family and health professionals." (In fact, an expert panel of the American Psychiatric Association found that "[f]or the vast majority of women, an abortion will be followed by a mixture of emotions, with a predominance of positive feelings." A longitudinal study of young women aged 14 to 21 found that "[a]lthough women may experience some distress immediately after having an abortion, the experience has no independent effect on their psychological well-being over time."


8. In some of the curricula, the moral judgments are explicitly
religious. For example, in a newsletter accompanying one popular curriculum,
the author laments that as a result of societal change, "No longer were we valued
as spiritual beings made by a loving Creator." The curriculum’s author closes the
section by signing, "In His Service."


9. In other curricula, moral judgments are misleadingly offered as scientific fact.
Although religions and moral codes offer different answers to the question of
when life begins, some abstinence-only curricula present specific religious views
on this question as scientific fact. One curriculum teaches: "Conception, also
known as fertilization, occurs when one sperm unites with one egg in the upper
third of the fallopian tube. This is when life begins."68 Another states:
"Fertilization (or conception) occurs when one of the father’s sperm unites with
the mother’s ovum (egg). At this instant a new human life is formed."


10. Several curricula offer as scientific fact moral or religious definitions of early fetuses as babies or people, in the processsupplying inaccurate descriptions of their developmental state. One curriculum that describes fetuses as "babies" describes the blastocyst, technically a ball of 107 to 256 cells at the beginning of uterine implantation, 70 as "snuggling" into the uterus.

11. One curriculum depicts emotions as limiting girls’ ability to focus. It states:
"Generally, guys are able to focus better on one activity at a time and may not
connect feelings with actions. Girls access both sides of the brain at once, so they
often experience feelings and emotions as part of every situation."
The curriculum also teaches: "The father gives the bride to the groom because he
is the one man who has had the responsibility of protecting her throughout her
life. He is now giving his daughter to the only other man who will take over this
protective role." AND PERHAPS THE MOST SHOCKING: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess."


12. In a chart of the top five women’s and men’s basic needs, the curriculum lists
"sexual fulfillment" and "physical attractiveness" as two of the top five "needs" in
the men’s section. "Affection," "Conversation," "Honesty and Openness," and
"Family Commitment" are listed only as women’s needs. The curriculum
teaches: "A male is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is
sexually attracted. . . . Women usually have greater intuitive awareness of how to
develop a loving relationship."


13. Where the Center for Disease Control chart showed that 41% of female teens with HIV reportedly acquired it through heterosexual contact, the abstinence curriculum’s chart suggests that 41% of heterosexual teens have HIV. It similarly implies that 50% of homosexual male teens have HIV.


***The website of one "Crisis Pregnancy Center" receiving major government funding states: "Our objective at the Crisis Pregnancy Center is to defend life. We desire to bring wholeness to lives traumatized by abortion; sharing the love of Jesus Christ and educate our community to adopt a Godly view of sexuality and the sanctity of human life." Crisis Pregnancy Center Anchorage (online at www.cpcanchorage.com/9073379292/aboutus.html).




Research shows youth who pledge abstinence are significantly less
likely to make informed choices about precautions when they do have sex. (big surprise)

take action here

Can't believe it? Check it out for yourself: http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20041201102153-50247.pdf

I Have Never In My Life Heard Anything This Cruel.

PETA's goal is to, by March 5, sign up 75,000 people to take the pledge to go fur-free. If you haven't already done so, please sign the pledge today, and tell everyone you know about the horrors of the fur trade and urge them to sign the pledge too. No animal abusers are more callous or arrogant than those in the fur trade. And the horrors that they force innocent animals to endure are unconscionable.
What their shocking undercover video footage of Chinese fur farms shows is awful, so please prepare yourself. All sorts of animals suffer, including raccoons, rabbits, minks, foxes, dogs, and cats. While animals are still alive and struggling desperately, workers flip them on their backs or hang them upside-down by their feet or tails to skin them. In one case, as workers began to cut skin and fur from a dog's leg, her free limbs kicked and writhed. When she struggled too much for the workers to get a clean cut, they threw her to the ground and stomped on her neck and head. When the fur was finally peeled over her head, her naked and bloody body was thrown onto a heap of carcasses. Some of the animals were still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. Before they are skinned, animals are pulled from their cages, slammed against the wall, and thrown to the ground. Workers beat them with metal rods, causing broken bones and convulsions, but not always death. Meanwhile, the other animals watch helplessly from their cages, awaiting their turn. Please, please, please—help us stop this unimaginable cruelty today! However you feel about PETA, it's irrelevant. The baby animals need us!

No article has ever brought stinging tears to my eyes quite this quickly.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Strategic Consumer Boycott



The millions of Americans who've lost their jobs due to NAFTA and outsourcing can tell you something is dead wrong in America. The thousands of corporations, such as General Electric, Ford, and General Motors, that take those jobs to Mexico and Asia are still pretending to be American companies.
The globalist juggernaut is turning the United States into a two class society of the obscenely wealthy and the struggling workers. When the top one percent of a nation own as much as the combined total of the lower ninety percent, that nation has reached a crisis point.
American workers face a ruling plutocracy which has bought most of the federal and state politicians, taken its factories to whatever countries provide the cheapest labor, paid little or no corporate income tax, and has the gall to steal our hard-earned tax dollars when it fails in its domestic and foreign investments. Thinking American workers are slowly awakening to this new feudalism, even though the plutocracy-owned news media have worked hard to keep the scandal hidden.
But perceiving the cold-blooded devastation of American workers by the "people of wealth," is no longer enough. American workers must create viable new strategies in their struggle against globalist capitalism.
When we consider what power we have in our struggle, our options narrow down to a precious few. No intelligent person would consider trying to use violence, since the ruling plutocracy has a monopoly of military, police, and litigation force. The days of the citizen warrior struggling against a weak government is two hundred years behind times. Writing to congresspersons who've been put into office through corporate donations is a futile gesture. Trying to launch a new populist party, even if you have the wealth of a Ross Perot, is fruitless. The penetrating exposés of globalist capitalism by such writers as Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, William Greider, and others, help us understand what's wrong but provide no strategy for righting the wrongs.
Meanwhile, American workers have totally overlooked the one power they have - their purchasing power. And the sensible deployment of that power is through the strategy of boycott.

The Strategy of Consumer Boycott
The United States was, in part, created through the use of consumer boycott. From 1765 to 1775, colonial nonimportation associations were organized by Sons of Liberty and Whig merchants to boycott English goods and force British recognition of political rights. We are now heirs to the success of that struggle.
Boycott as a modern strategy, however is not a simple one. To launch a consumer boycott movement requires sustained, broad-based commitment and a carefully planned general strategy.

Sustained, Broad-Based Commitment
oad The Sons and Daughters of Liberty were convinced that their situation, vis-à-vis their British rulers, was so intolerable that it was worth dedicating a large portion of their time to mount boycott offensives. Ultimately they decided that it was necessary to risk their lives in an armed revolution against Britain. We have to ask ourselves today whether we judge our plight, vis-à-vis our plutocratic rulers, to be so intolerable that we're willing to spend a great deal of time and effort to struggle for radical change. It appears that most Americans are answering no to that question--at least their indifference to the depredations of the moneyed interests would indicate this.
The question then becomes: how bad does the plight of the workers have to get before they realize they're being destroyed and fight for their very lives?
Thirty-eight million Americans are "officially" "poor." If we adjust the poverty line to a realistic amount, one in every four Americans is now living in poverty. The number of extreme poor--Americans living below 50% of the poverty line has increased from 3.5% to 5.4%--an increase of 54% from 1975 to 1996.
This increase in American poverty has occurred in an era when the profits of some "American" corporations have increased by as much as 371 percent.
Forty-three million Americans, according to the Census Bureau, lack basic health insurance.
The average real working wage (as adjusted for inflation) declined 16% between 1973 and 1993.
The federal government spends more taxpayers' dollars to subsidize weapons sales by U.S. arms merchants than it pays for federal support of elementary and secondary education.
How much worse does it have to get before the American workers wake up and begin to fight for their economic and political rights?

General Strategy
When we do begin our struggle for survival, we must decide just what it is we're attempting to realize through our boycott efforts. We shouldn't be content to merely stop a particular company from despoiling the environment or ravaging the American workforce through relocation of factories to third world countries. We must work for systemic changes in America's political, economic, legal, military, and social structures--so this grinding of the poor by the rich can't recur.
We must determine how our American boycott will relate to other nations and their people. But we must begin here in America to protect the rights of our own workers.
Some of the specific objectives we should work for include:
Disallowing corporations to avoid taxes through varied tax avoidance schemes
Halting the practice of "American" financiers receiving taxpayer money for their failed domestic and foreign adventures
Making the Made in U.S. standards more rigorous, so that a large percent of a product would be U.S.-made to qualify
Trashing the NAFTA and World Trade Organization agreements that have allowed American jobs to be taken to low-labor-cost countries
Demanding genuine election reform - making it impossible for corporations and private interests to buy politicians
Demanding legislation that would make it possible to have more than two parties - outlawing the illegal practices of the Federal Election Commission
How do we achieve this?
Mounting a nation-wide enlistment of consumers,
Supporting those U.S. companies that do not engage in outsourcing, manufacture or provide services in the U.S., do not use offshore accounts to avoid U.S. taxes
Choosing our battles - selecting those we can win and in a logical sequence,
Disciplining ourselves to buy only Made-in-America goods or goods from democratic nations,
Setting up criteria to determine which companies should be
boycotted
patronized
Denouncing the current plutocratic dictum that unrestrained self-interest is the best means to social good
Creating a moral revolution in which people begin again to care about what's happening to other people and themselves
We can begin by boycotting the corporations and the brands that support the Bush junta:
UK Brands to Boycott
1 Esso
2 Maxwell House
3 Microsoft
4 MBNA
5 Lucozade
6 ASDA
7 Hotpoint
8 AOL
9 Budweiser
10 Walkers Crisps

Top 25 Republican Party donors (1999-2003) with global consumer brands:

Altria (formerly Philip Morris) $6.5m

AT&T $5.36m

Microsoft Corp. $5.12m

United Parcel Services $4.48m

MBNA $4.38m

Citigroup $3.93m

Pfizer $3.9m

FedEx Corp. $3.4m

Bristol-Myers Squibb $3.4m

GlaxoSmithKline $3m

Wal-Mart $2.85m

General Electric $2.58m

ExxonMobil $2.35m

AOL Time Warner $2.31m

Anheuser Busch $2.23m

ChevronTexaco $2.2m

PepsiCo $1.9m

Schering Plough $1.8m

Archer Daniels Midland $1.8m

Wyeth (formerly American Home Products)$1.74m

Alticor Inc. $1.7m

American Airlines $1.62m

Ford $1.52m

BP Amoco $1.25m

Disney $1.25m
All calculations taken from the Center for Responsive Politics at
www.opensecrets.org Each of us can participate in a progressive boycott by refusing to purchase products from corporations (as those above) that support the demonic system. Each thing we do makes an impact, such as cancelling our Citicorp credit card and signing up with a more progressive credit card company such as Working Assets and buying our gas at Citgo.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Yay for brain-scanning technology!


We are moving ever closer to the era of mind control.
The military interest in new brain-scanning technology
is beginning to show a sinister side
Steven Rose
The Observer
Brain scientists are on a roll. Concern about rising levels of mental distress have resulted in unprecedented levels of funding in the US and Europe. And a range of new technologies, from genetics to brain imaging, are offering extraordinary insights into the molecular and cellular processes underlying how we see, how we remember, why we become emotional.
Brain imaging has become familiar. Scanners, known by their initials - CAT, PET, MRI - began as clinical tools, enabling surgeons to identify potential tumours, the damage following a stroke or the diagnostic signs of incipient dementia. But neuroscientists quickly seized on their wider potential. The images of regions of the brain 'lighting up' when a person is thinking of their lover, imagining travelling from home to the shops, or solving a mathematical problem, have captured the imagination of researchers and public alike. What if they could do more?
Recently I published the results of an experiment in which we looked at the regions of the brain that became active when people chose between competing products in supermarkets. Major companies, ranging from Coca-Cola to BMW, are starting to image the brains of potential customers to study how they respond to new designs or brands. They are beginning to speak of 'neuromarketing' and 'neuroeconomics.'

More seriously, there is increasing military interest in the development of techniques that can survey and possibly manipulate the mental processes of potential enemies, or enhance the potential of one's own troops. There is nothing new about such an interest. In the US, it stretches back at least half a century. Impressed by claims that the Soviet Union was developing psychological warfare, the CIA and the Defence Advanced Projects Agency (Darpa) began their own programmes. Early experiments included the clandestine feeding of LSD to their own operatives and attempts at 'brain-washing'. These were the forerunners of the hoods and white noise used by the British in Northern Ireland - until judged illegal - and more recently in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, where they inhabit an uncertain borderline between what the US government regards as an acceptable level of violence and the torture that it denies committing.
By the 1960s, Darpa, along with the US Navy, was funding almost all US research into 'artificial intelligence', in order to develop methods and technologies for the 'automated battlefield' and the 'intelligent soldier'. Contracts were let and patents taken out on techniques aimed at recording signals from the brains of enemy personnel at a distance, in order to 'read their minds'.
These efforts have burgeoned in the aftermath of the so-called 'war on terror'. One US company claims to have developed a technique called 'brain- fingerprinting', which can 'determine the truth regarding a crime, terrorist activities or terrorist training by detecting information stored in the brain'. The stress of lying under interrogation is supposed to result in a specific wave form which electrodes measuring the brain's fluctuating electrical signals can detect. We may be sceptical about the validity of such methods, but they indicate the direction in which research is heading. The company claims its procedures have been accepted in evidence in court in the US.
The step beyond reading thoughts is to attempt to control them directly. A new technique - transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) - has begun to generate interest. This focuses an intense magnetic field on specific brain regions, and has been shown to affect thoughts, perceptions and behaviour. There are suggestions it could be used to control obsessive-compulsive behaviour, while some even take seriously the scenario envisaged in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which TMS was used to erase unwanted memories of a love affair gone wrong. Currently only possible if a subject's head is put inside the relevant machine, TMS at a distance is now under active military investigation. So is chip technology, which might provide implanted prostheses to overcome sensory deficits or control behaviour, and whose potential bioethics committees around Europe have been scrutinising.
It is tempting to dismiss all these as technological fantasies and their proponents as sellers of snake oil, but the fact that a technology is faulty doesn't mean it won't be used. One only has to think of the tens of thousands of lobotomies carried out on schizophrenic patients in the past century. Britain is one of the world's leading examples of a surveillance society, observing its citizens through CCTV cameras and controlling their behaviour with Asbos and Ritalin. The potential for surveillance of citizen's thoughts has moved far beyond the visions of 1984.

Science cannot happen without major public or private expenditure but its goals are set at least as much by the market and the military as by the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. This is why neuroscientists have a responsibility to make their subject and its potentials as transparent as possible, and why the voices of concerned citizens should be heard not 'downstream' when the technologies are already fully formed, but 'upstream' while the science is still in progress. We have to find ways of ensuring that such voices are listened through the cacophony of slogans about 'better brains' - and the power of the military and the market.

Steven Rose is Professor of Biology at the Open University.

They Know Your Emotional Response... and they use this to their advantage


Pretty soon after the events of 9/11, there where people who raised serious questions about the official story of 9/11. Now, four and a half years later, the evidence that this story is a lie, is overwhelming. Question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to sit and leave it for what it is, allowing the perpetrators to continue their illegal operations? Where do you think that would lead to? What will happen with our democracy if we allow these practices? And maybe the biggest question that we might ask ourselves is: “Why is it that we still allow criminals to lead our country and more and more determine our lifes?” People of this world, please think about what you allow this world to become if you allow the present course of actions taken by leaders who seek nothing else but power and control over others and eventually total world domination!
Some may still think that the official story is true, because they simply cannot believe that our leaders would be capable of doing such terrible crimes against their people. Well, if you are one of those who live in such emotional fields that you simply cannot bear the truth that your leaders would be capable of doing these things despite the scientific evidence that they are, then please don’t read this any further, for you wouldn’t accept any of this anyway. Emotions can and do shut down one’s ability to think clearly and to examine the facts with a clear mind. Our leaders and indeed our corporate networks know this and use it to their advantage to gain control over you. Look what has happened since 9/11, the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, Afghanistan, Iraq, the American government spying on its own people, and even the Constitution being questioned! Are you really prepared to give up your freedom in order to be protected from so called “terrorism”? Is our country really any safer than it was before 9/11? Face it people, YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO BY YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT.
Apart from the wild stories that flow over the internet and the claims by our government that these are all conspiracy theories, there certainly is scientific evidence provided by scientists and students who conducted their own research and have proven beyond doubt that the official story of what happened on 9/11 is a lie. I will provide some very important facts that will tell us an entirely different story when viewed from the laws of physics and the laws of nature as we know them. What I will show you here comes from the documentary “9/11 Eyewitness” and in case you aren’t able to get that documentary yourself, which you should really try, you can read the evidence presented in this article.
First of all, forget about all the so called “evidence” provided by the government that terrorists were behind the attacks. All the information being presented can be easily faked by all the sophisticated means that the security and other government agencies have to their disposal. Evidence can be and indeed has been manufactured in many cases in order to gain what is desired, not just in the case of 9/11. That is no secret and not new. Admittedly, at the time of the events it was all so horrible that you cannot blame anyone for not having a clear mind as to what was really happening. However, the pictures and footages and recordings of the events are still there and now we may have a clearer perception of what exactly happened at the moment that these WTC buildings collapsed. Defenders of the official explanation that the jetliner crashes and fires were responsible for the total destruction of the three WTC buildings have been unable to cite even a single example of the total collapse of a high-rise steel-framed building from any cause other than controlled demolition. Consequently they have cited collapse incidents that do not even remotely resemble the cases of the World Trade Center skyscrapers.

Summary
Both towers were nearly identical and should have collapsed in roughly the same time producing roughly the same seismic energy. Yet there is a difference of 0.2 on the Richter scale, which is roughly 1.3 tons TNT. Where did the extra energy come from?

The top of the south tower did not fall as it should have according to Newton's laws, but instead the entire building came down ejecting tons of steel. Normally this type of collapse is only observed when controlled demolition is used.

Series of large explosions were heard and recorded at the basements of all three buildings producing large plumes of dust.

All three buildings fell almost at freefall on their own footprints which according to the laws of physics is impossible because of the resistence caused by air and debris. The freefall collapse of a high rise (steel framed) building can only be accomplished by means of controlled demolition.

All three buildings produced pyroclastic clouds upon collapse, indicating large explosions suspending fine dust into the air.
This phenomenon is known to occur only in three situations:
1. volcanic eruptions
2. turbidity currents
3. collapses of buildings caused by controlled demolition


For a more detailed explanation, please visit: http://www.ditrianum.org/Artikelen/artikel33en.htm

Sunday, February 19, 2006

1984- 22 years later


I'll Tell You Where The Emergency Is!

All over the United States, Canada and Britain, surveillance camera systems are being installed on street corners, in public bathrooms, in residential neighborhoods, and even in parks and forests. We are asked to trust the government underlings who control them that they are working for our best interests as said underlings are caught using the cameras to spy on naked women in their homes.
In the UK, government programs encourage citizens to spy on their neighbors and report suspicious activity as part of a CCTV channel subscriber package.
Homeland Security funding is being utilized to fund this mass expansion of the surveillance state in the US as city and state officials clamor at the teat of Big Brother to milk the cash cow of the police state and win the contracts for installing more and more sophisticated spy cameras.
The government demands to know everything about our private lives and catalogue, file and index every aspect of our existence, yet government itself becomes more and more secret with each passing day as it engages in escalating criminal activities.
The agenda behind surveillance cameras is not simply to track the movements of certain individuals. There are not enough watchers to catalogue all the information. The cameras are about behavior control and creating an omnipresent atmosphere whereby the citizen consciously regulates his own behavior so as not to seem suspicious. The surveillance cameras are there to make a statement. We are the prison guards, you are the prisoners.
As George Orwell described it in 1984,
"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard."
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
This is the prison without bars. This is the panopticon, a prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen. This is a portrait of the accelerating movement by western governments to erect giant, powerful, all-pervading mass surveillance, tracking and control grids that will keep all populations firmly under the baleful and watchful gaze of Big Brother.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Help Bring Animal Abusers To Justice!


As you know, violent criminals often harm or kill animals when they are committing acts such as burglary and arson. Legislation that would ensure that such criminals are appropriately charged for their cruel acts—Assembly Bill 9932 and Senate Bill 6720—has been introduced in the New York legislature. Today, please urge your legislators to do the right thing and support this legislation.
If it becomes law, A9932 and its identically worded sister bill, S6720, would expand the law's current definition of aggravated cruelty to animals to include harm done to animals when a felony is committed. If a companion animal suffers physical injury or death when someone commits a felony or is fleeing from the scene of the crime, that person would also face felony cruelty-to-animals charges.
Please politely urge your assembly member and your senator to support A9932 and S6720, respectively.
Please forward this message to others in your state who might be willing to lend their voices to this important issue. New York's animals are again counting on you.
Thank you for your continued compassion for animals.
Yours sincerely,
Dan Paden
Domestic Animal and Wildlife Rescue & Information

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Fantasy-Based, Non-Thinking Bush Cult


We can best get a sense of the fantasy-based non-thinking of the Bush cult from an article by Ron Suskind in the New York Times:
"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

All The Pretty Horses... Slaughtered??

Like most Americans, you are probably shocked to learn that our beloved horses are still sent to slaughter, by the tens of thousands, every year. Americans don't eat horsemeat -- there simply is no domestic demand for it. But last year, more than 90,000 American horses were either killed in one of three foreign-owned slaughterhouses in the United States or shipped to Canada or Mexico for slaughter. Our thoroughbreds, show horses, mustangs, carriage horses, and family ponies are shipped in inhumane conditions and butchered.
The Humane Society of the United States has been fighting for years to end horse slaughter, and last year in two landslide, bipartisan votes, Congress passed measures to prevent the use of tax dollars to fund horse slaughter inspections. Shocklingly, President Bush signed the final ban on November 10, 2005, and it was scheduled to take effect on March 10, less than a month away. This was a huge victory for America's horses and those of us who want to protect them from cruelty and abuse.
Never did we imagine that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), an administrative agency charged with carrying out Congress' will, might betray the members of Congress and the Americans they represent. But unbelievably, the USDA, with its ties to the livestock industry, says it will not implement this Congressional mandate. These bureaucrats are obviously hell-bent on allowing the slaughter of America's horses and they're moving forward with a plan to buck Congress' slaughter ban.

It is clear that we can not rely on the USDA alone. We must urge Congress today to pass a permanent ban on horse slaughter. It is the only way we can put our horses out of the reach of agency bureaucrats who will apparently do anything to keep American horsemeat flowing to French and Belgian chefs. Their actions are shameless, and they must be stopped!
1. Take action. We have no time to waste -- Congress must act now and pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act this year. Click here to contact your members of Congress.
2. Spread the word. Most people are shocked to learn that our horses are being slaughtered and shipped overseas for human consumption. Click here to tell your friends and family how they can help end horse slaughter.
Knowing that hundreds of thousands of our loyal companions have already been slaughtered is simply devastating. Please stand with us and do everything you can to spare the lives of our horses. With your help, I know we can prevail and save tens of thousands of American horses from the butcher block. We all must take action now to save these horses from a grim and painful end.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Do You Realize?




If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who won't survive the week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 20 million people around the world.

If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare changein a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still married and alive, you are very rare, especially in the United States.

If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.

If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read anything at all.

We are so blessed in ways we may never even know.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Is anyone listening??

M. Junaid Alam from "Left Hook" on Bush's budget:

This run-down of just some of the programs being eliminated and crippled by Bush is truly something to behold. From my limited life experience I can already size up the human effects some of this will have: all those inner-city youth in Boston who I helped tutor at my university a couple semester via GEAR-UP - POOF. All those people taking English and GED courses at the literacy center in the town next to mine where I volunteered in high school - POOF. The alternative high-school kids who were participating a poetry slam event I covered - POOF.Seriously, how does anyone get away with this? Oh, right, I remember - there is no opposition party.Meanwhile, you have all kinds of Americans lining up to join the new Protestant megachurches, all wowed and falling over themselves with joy at the social services these institutions provide - crumbs doled out from the cake the government steals from the budget. These are not tiny cuts we're talking about here either. This is taking FDR, strapping him to his wheelchair, and blowing his brains out. Imagine the hordes that will come running into more of these faith-based follies once their current lives crash in on them.I'm not the first to say it and call me alarmist if you like, but in my opinion, we are fast heading toward a state of permanentized fascism - without all the violent class struggle that preceded Hitler's ascension, and without going to war with any powerful countries. It's like, Fascism Done Right. (TM)

http://wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/budg-f13.shtml
http://wsws.org/index.shtml : News & Analysis http://wsws.org/sections/category/news/news.shtml : North America http://wsws.org/sections/category/news/namerica


¡Viva el Zapatistas!

Check out the School for Chiapas website! It is an amazing resource for anything you want to know about the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. They have a program where you could become a teacher in their new schools (After some lessons in Spanish and Tzotzil). There are also other programs where you can join a caravan or school bus to see the land, meet the people and participate in the celebration. We are so lucky to have access to this wonderful land and inspirational people. Support their fight for justice, democracy and dignity! ¡Venceremos!

http://www.schoolsforchiapas.org/

Sunday, February 12, 2006

To build a powerful movement, we need YOU!


Building a movement powerful enough to stop the war in Iraq or to successfully curb a next war in Syria or Iran or Venezuela, involves many factors. Among these, and perhaps the most fundamental, is sufficient numbers.

Please join Ezequiel Adamovsky, Vittorio Agnoletto, Michael Albert, Tariq Ali, Patrick Bond, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Bill Fletcher, Eduardo Galeano, Susan George, Marta Harnecker, Boris Kagarlitsky, Subcomandante Marcos, George Monbiot, Suren Moodlar, Hector Mondragon, Tanya Reinhart, Carola Reintjes, Arundhati Roy, Lydia Sargent, Howard Zinn, and many more in signing the following statement by using this form -- and, even more, please join us in working to encourage other people to sign it, and for them in turn to get others to sign it.

“I stand for peace and justice.
I stand for democracy and autonomy. I don’t think the U.S. or any other country should ignore the popular will and violate and weaken international law, seeking to bully and bribe votes in the Security Council.
I stand for internationalism. I oppose any nation spreading an ever expanding network of military bases around the world and producing an arsenal unparalleled in the world.
I stand for equity. I don’t think the U.S. or any other country should seek empire. I don’t think the U.S. ought to control Middle Eastern oil on behalf of U.S. corporations and as a wedge to gain political control over other countries.
I stand for freedom. I oppose brutal regimes in Iraq and elsewhere but I also oppose the new doctrine of "preventive war," which guarantees permanent and very dangerous conflict, and is the reason why the U.S. is now regarded as the major threat to peace in much of the world. I stand for a democratic foreign policy that supports popular opposition to imperialism, dictatorship, and political fundamentalism in all its forms.
I stand for solidarity. I stand for and with all the poor and the excluded. Despite massive disinformation millions oppose unjust, illegal, immoral war, and I want to add my voice to theirs. I stand with moral leaders all over the world, with world labor, and with the huge majority of the populations of countries throughout the world.
I stand for diversity. I stand for an end to racism directed against immigrants and people of color. I stand for an end to repression at home and abroad.
I stand for peace. I stand against this war and against the conditions, mentalities, and institutions that breed and nurture war and injustice.
I stand for sustainability. I stand against the destruction of forests, soil, water, environmental resources, and biodiversity on which all life depends.
I stand for justice. I stand against economic, political, and cultural institutions that promote a rat race mentality, huge economic and power inequalities, corporate domination even unto sweatshop and slave labor, racism, and gender and sexual hierarchies.
I stand for a policy that redirects the money used for war and military spending to provide healthcare, education, housing, and jobs.
I stand for a world whose political, economic, and social institutions foster solidarity, promote equity, maximize participation, celebrate diversity, and encourage full democracy.
I stand for peace and justice and, more, I pledge to work for peace and justice.”

To sign the statement and to promote the statement to others, either via email or print, please visit:

To read the complete essay please visit: http://www.zmag.org/wspj/we_work.cfm

Saturday, February 11, 2006

El Salvador leader dies


The founder of El Salvador's Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN), 75-year-old Commander Schafik Handal, died from coronary failure Jan. 24. He had just returned to El Salvador from Bolivia where he was an honored guest at the inauguration of President Evo Morales. Handal, the son ofPalestinian immigrants, was instrumental in bringing together several left groups to form the FMLN guerrilla organization in 1980. FMLN struggle against aggression from the El Salvador military, fighting for their rights of equality (for the indigenous people and for women), education, food and shelter. Many held out in the rainforests of El Salvador, awaiting the day that the battle would be won and they could be free to return to their homes. A dozen years later, following peace accords in 1992, the organization transformed into a recognized political party. Running on a left program, Handel was theparty's presidential candidate in the 2004 elections, but he lost to the candidate of the far right wing ARENA party. Many of the rights that the guerillas had fought and died for have still not been granted.


For more info on FMLN, check out the documentary "Maria's Story."

Bleeding Dogs


URGENT: Ask Minister of the Interior of the Russian Federation to Put an End to Dogsledder's Reported Cruelty!
In January, PETA began receiving complaints from outraged Russian and American citizens about French traveler Nicolas Vanier, who is reportedly crossing Russia in a dog-drawn sledge. According to news sources, Vanier's dogs have been seen "with legs covered in blood up to their knees." Three dogs have apparently given in to exhaustion, and residents of the city of Tomsk reported to Russian animal rights group VITA that the dogs were eating the hay that they were given as bedding.
If information reported in news sources is correct, Vanier may be in direct violation of Article 245 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which defines cruelty to animals as an act "that has involved their death or injury, if this deed has been conducted with malicious or mercenary motives, or the use of sadistic methods, or in the presence of minors …."
Please contact Russian Federation Minister of the Interior Rashid Gumarovich Nurgaliyev and urge him to commission an investigation into the allegations against Nicolas Vanier. Ask him to ensure that Vanier, if he is found in violation of this law, is ordered to immediately call off the remainder of his voyage and seek immediate veterinary treatment for the animals in his custody.
Polite correspondence only, please.
The Honorable Rashid Gumarovich Nurgaliyev
Minister of the Interior of the Russian Federation
ul. Zhitnaya 16117049 Moscow Russia

Educate Yourself About Fur
Furriers and their cohorts in the fashion industry are doing everything that they can to promote fur, and they're even disguising the species of the animals the fur came from or mislabeling the fur as fake. When someone—anyone—asks you what's wrong with wearing fur, please tell them: PLENTY! For starters, there is not a single law protecting the millions of animals killed each year by the U.S. fur industry. This means that it's perfectly legal to cram minks, foxes, raccoons, and chinchillas into tiny, filthy wire cages—where they stay for months or years, covered in feces and parasites and without proper food, water, or shelter from the elements—and then kill them by poisoning, gassing, neck-breaking, or anal electrocution as the animals scream and writhe in pain. And it means that it's also perfectly legal to trap lynx, coyotes, and wolves in the wild and leave them to suffer, crying out in agony, for days or even weeks before stomping them to death or skinning them alive. What's more, even dogs and cats are killed for their fur. PETA's recent undercover investigation into the Chinese fur trade revealed unimaginable cruelty. Millions of dogs and cats are bludgeoned, boiled, strangled with wire nooses, and bled to death before they are skinned for their fur. Imagine if your animal companion were stolen, killed, and then made into fur trinkets or fur trim for American consumers. It's illegal to import dog and cat fur into the United States, but that apparently hasn't stopped the fur trade. The fur industry simply mislabels the fur, saying that it is from foxes, raccoons, or other species. China supplies more than half of the finished fur garments that are sold in the United States. So if you buy anything with any fur whatsoever, you could be wearing someone's beloved dog or cat. With that in mind, when you're asked what's wrong with fur, please tell people that every fur coat, lining, or trim can represent the immense suffering of several dozen animals. That's right, several dozen—just for one garment! With so many alternatives available to consumers, why wear fur? Why perpetuate the cruel abuse and murder of millions of dogs, cats, foxes, minks, chinchillas, raccoons, and other creatures? That's the real question.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Take the last penny from the poor... AND GIVE IT TO THE BILLIONARES??


Take the last penny from the poor...
AND GIVE IT TO THE BILLIONARES??
Where would the Bush administration be without terrorism? Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77-trillion budget the president proposed to Congress on Monday.
Without terrorism, how could Bush justify to fiscal conservatives the whopping budget deficits that he has ballooned via his tax cuts for the wealthy that he now seeks to make permanent? Without terrorism, how could he convince government corruption watchdogs that the huge increases in military and homeland security - 7% and 8%, respectively - aren't simply payback to the defense contractors who so heavily support the Republicans every election cycle? Without terrorism, how could the president get away with blindly dumping $120 billion more into the war in Afghanistan and the bungled occupation of Iraq that the Bush administration had once promised would be financed by Iraqi oil sales?
In order to pay for the money pit that is Iraq, the Bush budget demands draconian cuts in 141 domestic programs, led by a $36-billion cut in Medicare spending for the elderly over the next five years. This from a president reelected after promising to expand rather than curtail healthcare services to seniors.
Many of the other proposed cuts are equally obscene, such as the termination of $1 billion in child-care funds over five years, and the complete elimination of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program that provides food assistance to low-income seniors, needy pregnant women and children.
These attacks on the social safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society are not only patently unfair, in light of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, but the simultaneous blank check for the Pentagon cannot be honestly justified by the fight against terrorism. And although the president insists that it is unpatriotic to question his strategies in fighting terrorism, let me risk his disapproval, and that of the pseudo-conservative bully boys that lie for him in the media, by doing just that.
To begin with, we must remember that this "war" was launched against an enemy, still mostly at large, who on Sept. 11 accomplished phenomenal destruction and suffering with armaments no fiercer or costlier than some box-cutters. Their key weapon, in fact, was suicidal fanaticism.
Yet, rather than sensibly investing in aggressive global detective work, collaborating with our European allies, engaging meaningfully with an independent and skeptical Arab world, and working to protect vulnerable US sites such as nuclear power plants, our leaders decided to turn logic on its head and make ignorance about the enemy into a virtue, slash civil liberties and recklessly invade a major Muslim country that had no connection to the attacks.
In other words, our response to Sept. 11 has been almost completely military in nature, granting the Defense Department an excuse to increase spending by 48% in just four years. Yet, despite all this spending, and the loss of life that has accompanied it, our standing in the Muslim world has been in free fall since we invaded Iraq, we have never captured or killed Osama bin Laden or his top strongman, we don't know how to "fix" Iraq or Afghanistan, and we have greatly strengthened the hand of our rivals in Iran.
We don't even know, as the Sept. 11 commission report revealed, much of anything about the 15 Saudi hijackers and their four leaders from other parts of the Arab world who committed the Sept. 11 attacks. We do know, however, that they weren't from Iraq, weren't funded by Iraq and weren't trained by or in Iraq; nevertheless, the huge elephant in the Bush budget is the war and occupation of Iraq, now approaching its third anniversary, not the effort to dismantle Al Qaeda.
"Since 2001, the administration liberated nearly 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan," boasts the Bush budget document. Ah, but if they have been liberated, then why the need for an additional $50-billion emergency "bridge funding" in 2007, itself coming on the heels of a supplementary $70-billion budget request last week? The answer provided by the report is that Iraq is far from being stabilized and that in Afghanistan "enemy activity has increased over the past year."
Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership in Congress is still unwilling to challenge the necessity of "winning" the war in Iraq and, as a result, its complaints about cutting needed domestic programs are framed exclusively as an argument against making Bush's tax cuts permanent. It is a losing argument, because it leaves Bush as both the big spender and the big tax-cutter once again, posturing as the savior of the taxpayer when he is in fact quite the opposite for all but the wealthiest Americans.

Can't believe it? See for yourself at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/

think the air is bad now?

EPA- Going Toxic
The Toxic Release Inventory Program, requires 26,000 factories to report toxic releases into our air, water and land. Now the EPA wants to weaken the rules to allow companies to release 10 times as much pollution before being required to report to the communities in which they are releasing the toxins.
Visit safefromtoxics.org

Thursday, February 09, 2006

3rd graders hate george bush

Today I taught a lesson about the benefits of living in the United States. Children listed several ideas like: freedom of speech, press, religion, protection, Voting for leaders, balance of power, right to impeach the president. And so on. Then they were to choose one benefit and write why they think it is the most important and then draw a picture. Without my prompting, 4 out of 22 students picked freedom of speech and stated something along the lines of:

"I think freedom of speech is the most important benefit of the United States. We can say what we feel, like "George Bush stinks" and we won't get put in jail. Freedom of speech is protected by the Constitution and the government can never take it away."

I was delighted by these responses. Even third graders can see through the bullshit.


Even so, I didn't inform the children that Bush is probably 2 seconds away from imprisoning anyone who speaks out against him and that he has already taken away a number of our constitutional right. I'm only substituting at this point; if it was my OWN class, I would have told them the truth. But I can't blow my cover before I even get on the inside of the system...
An Open Letter to President George Bush from
Military Families Speak Out Member Cindy Sheehan

November 4, 2004

Dear George,

You don’t mind if I call you George do you? When you sent me a letter offering your condolences on the death of my son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, in the illegal and unjust war on Iraq, you called me Cindy, so I naturally assume we are on a first name basis.

George, it has been seven months today since your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, my big boy, my hero, my best-friend: Casey. It has been seven months since your ignorant and arrogant lack of planning for the peace murdered my oldest child. It has been two days since your dishonest campaign stole another election…but you all were way more subtle this time than in 2000, weren’t you? You hardly had to get the Supreme Court of the United States involved at all this week.

You feel so proud of yourself for betraying the country again, don’t you? You think you are very clever because you pulled the wool over the eyes of some of the people again. You think that you have some mandate from God…that you can “spend your political capital” any way that you want. George you don’t care or even realize that 56,000,000 plus citizens of this country voted against you and your agenda. Still, you are going to continue your ruthless work of being a divider and not a uniter. George, in 2000 when you stole that election and the Democrats gave up, I gave up too. I had the most ironic thought of my life then: "Oh well, how much damage can he do in four years?" Well, now I know how much you have damaged my family, this country, and this world. If you think I am going to allow you another four years to do even more damage, then you truly are mistaken. I will fight for a true vote count and if that fails, your impeachment. Also, the impeachment of your Vice President. The only thing is, I'm not politically savvy, and I don't have a Karl Rove to plan my strategy, but I do have a big mouth and a righteous cause, which still mean something in this country, I hope.

All of this lying, fooling, and betraying must be “hard work” George. You really think you know what hard work is?

George, let me tell you what “hard work” really is.

Hard work is seeing your oldest son, your brave and honorable man-child go off to a war that had, and still has, no basis in reality. Hard work is worrying yourself gray and not being able to sleep for 2 weeks because you don’t know if your child is safe.

Hard work is seeing your son’s murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you’re enjoying the last supper you’ll ever truly enjoy again.

Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son…your first born…your kind and gentle sweet baby.

Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big “baba” into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both.

But, Dear George, do you know what the hardest work of all is? Trying to digest the fact that the leader of the country that your family has fought for and died for, for generations, lied to you and betrayed your dear boy’s sense of honor and exploited his courage and exploited his loyalty to his buddies. Hard work is having your country abandon you after they killed your son. Hard work is coming to the realization that your son had his future robbed from him and that you have had your son's future and future grand-children stolen from you. Hard work is knowing that there are so many people in this world that have prospered handsomely from your son's death.

George, I must confess that I and my family worked very HARD to re-defeat you this time, but you refuse to stay defeated. Well, we are watching you very carefully. We are going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people into a disastrous war and for mis-using and abusing your power as Commander-in-Chief. We are going to scream until our last breath to bring the rest of our babies home from this quagmire of a war that you have gotten our country in to: before too many more families learn the true meaning of Hard Work. We know it is going to be an uphill battle, knowing how Republican Congress is, but thanks to you, we know the meaning of Hard Work and we’re not afraid of hard work at all.

The 56,000,000 plus citizens who voted against you and your agenda have given me a mandate to move forward with my agenda. Also, thanks to you and your careless domestic policies, I am unemployed, so this will be my full-time job. Being your political downfall will be the most noble accomplishment of my life and it will bring justice for my son and 1125 (so far) other brave Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis your lies have killed. By the way, George, how many more innocent Iraqis are your policies going to kill before you convince them that you are better than Saddam? How many more of their cities are you going to level before you consider that they are liberated? If you really had any moral values, or if you were an honorable man at all you would resign. My son was a man who had high moral values and true courage. Humanity lost a bright light on April 04, 2004. I will live the rest of my life missing Casey desperately. Thank you for that, George. Have a nice day.

God Bless America!! We surely need it!
Cindy Sheehan
Broken hearted mother of a True American Hero: Spc Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04 Sadr City, Baghdad

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always."- Gandhi

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Some Things Never Change...

DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs And towards our distant rest
began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod.
All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped
Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –
An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie;
Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(It is sweet and right to die for your country)