Saturday, May 19, 2007
"FUCK YOU!", SAID SEN. MCCAIN (R-AZ) TO SEN. CORNYN (R-TX)
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Friday, May 18, 2007
ANTON CORBIJN'S JOY DIVISION FILM AT CANNES (I PAID MY MICHAEL MOORE DUES, THANK YOU)
CANNES, FRANCE--This sounds incredible. Anton Corbijn actually directed a video for Joy Division, and has done a 2 hour movie casting the late-Ian Curtis with an unknown (Sam Riley). The movie by Corbijn is titled "Control." It's based partly on the book by Curtis's widow, Deborah, titled "Touching from a Distance," which I have read. What you get from the book is that she didn't know her husband very well at all, but it's a good read. It sounds like her book is just one source of the screenplay, and that Corbijn has done his homework here. Joy Division was probably the last word in rock.
After 1980, it gets sketchy. Most people don't know that Genesis P.Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Ian Curtis had a correspondence (telephone) for years, and that both of them attempted suicide at the same time. Gen lived. Ian Curtis is the James Dean of nihilist-rock. I love his dead ass. If you had felt the hope that punk stirred (only to self-destruct and end by 1978), and you had epilepsy, you might have hung yourself by 1980 too. He deserved better, and so do we. Now if Corbijn can do a biopic on Captain Beefheart (Don van Vliet), the world will be a much better place. Ian Curtis was 23 when he hung himself.
"I was just besotted," the Guardian, 04.11.2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1456541,00.html
Reuters Today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070518/film_nm/cannes_joydivision_dc
After 1980, it gets sketchy. Most people don't know that Genesis P.Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Ian Curtis had a correspondence (telephone) for years, and that both of them attempted suicide at the same time. Gen lived. Ian Curtis is the James Dean of nihilist-rock. I love his dead ass. If you had felt the hope that punk stirred (only to self-destruct and end by 1978), and you had epilepsy, you might have hung yourself by 1980 too. He deserved better, and so do we. Now if Corbijn can do a biopic on Captain Beefheart (Don van Vliet), the world will be a much better place. Ian Curtis was 23 when he hung himself.
"I was just besotted," the Guardian, 04.11.2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1456541,00.html
Reuters Today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070518/film_nm/cannes_joydivision_dc
"HEALING" AT THE WORLD BANK: WHO NEEDS IT?
THE WORLD BANK/IMF--Honestly, considering much of what they do is to develop regions for exploitation by multinationals, who really cares if they ever recover? I don't. Nearly everyone I know doesn't care, if they even know what the World Bank and the IMF exist for at all. Ostensibly, their stated mission is to lift people out of poverty, but if you look at their actual record, what they do is cause tiny nations to become indebted to the most economically powerful ones. Well duh. Here's an excerpt from their mission statement (mind the fine-print):
Our mission is to help developing countries and their people reach the goals by working with our partners to alleviate poverty. To do that we concentrate on building the climate for investment, jobs and sustainable growth, so that economies will grow, and by investing in and empowering poor people to participate in development. (worldbank.org)
Those are some pretty high-flown words. Most of the rhetoric of the World Bank is internationalist and has a ring of classical humanism and liberalism to it. That's usually where it ends. As with the failed war in Iraq, the reality of this rhetoric and the reality on the ground are substantially different things.
Many anti-globalization critics contend that the World Bank has hijacked the issue of poverty, purposely underestimating the real numbers of poor in the world, as well as science-fiction reports on actual-wages (and their very real drop in the developed world in the last 30 years). Without giving a rundown of the literature--which is vast--defining poverty is difficult. On the World Bank's site, there is a statement that a person making "$1 dollar a day" can be considered to be living-in-poverty, but this can be seen as culturally relative.
Take America's working-poor, who make several-times the income of people in the Third World, yet whose quality-of-life could be termed worse than someone with an average income in Russia, or a Guatemalan or Mexican peasant with a broader social-network that they can rely on (friends, extended-families, clan-ties, etc.). Also, purchasing-power doesn't necessarily equate to empowerment at all, something that should be obvious to anyone.
It doesn't translate into sustainability, but dependence on manufactured-goods, as well as the overarching-goal: domestic exploitation of natural resources for transnational corporations, including cheap-labor. It's not unlike the cartel model, but that's probably because it is. This is the realm of the "oligopoly," where democracy isn't part of the equation.
The primary property of oligopoly is a small number of competing firms. Thus, to be able to best compete, firms make decisions based on planning against their rivals. That is the key property of oligopolies: all firms in oligopolies execute strategic planning. Sometimes, a market is only an oligopoly in theory. Some oligopolies act as cartels, in which many firms act as one. There are technically several firms but they all confer together to act as a monopoly. This practice is illegal in many places, though it still does happen. (library.thinkquest.org, "Competition")
Oh yes, it does still happen. Considering that the World Bank consists of individuals attached to the major financial institutions--primarily Western ones--of the world, it's easy to see the World Bank as merely representing private banking, industry, and speculative interests. At the moment, America is predominant, and so has the ability to choose who heads the World Bank and the IMF, though there are trends that are increasing China's influence. Indeed, China is doing an incredible amount of lending in the Third World, not just underwriting the war in Iraq through the purchase of American currency bonds.
Wolfowitz is just a symptom of American dominance of the World Bank, but also a sign that that hold is eroding. Japan and Europe want more representation and influence within decision-making circles, as do delegates of the Third World. It's likely that Bush will choose the successor anyway, and will force it through if they and American economic & financial elites encounter any resistance. Yes, Mr. Swinging-dick is typical of appointments by American presidents, but one has to wonder if the Europeans and Japan are tiring of the games at the World Bank. Could they withdraw?
By tradition, the World Bank president has always been appointed by the US government, while the Europeans have had the right to nominate the head of the IMF. Now this convention is under attack. In a letter to the World Bank, 200 leading development organisations have called for and open process for selecting the new leader that includes "transparency of process, and competence of prospective leadership without regard to national origin". (BBC, 05.18.2007)
With American influence diminishing throughout the world, it's possible. Another galling appointment by George W. Bush could be the final straw. The influence of a nation on the executive board is based on the size of their economy, but with EU consolidation, and China's growth, the American veto could be endangered soon. Development: China's preferred region of development right now is in Africa, particularly where there are coveted natural resources like oil.
In January 2005, China offered Angola a $2 billion loan to repair its infrastructure. And this past January, China's top offshore oil producer, Cnooc, agreed to pay $2.3 billion for a stake in a Nigerian oil and natural gas field - its largest ever overseas acquisition. China has rejected Western efforts to attach aid and loans for African countries to demands for improved human rights and government accountability, saying countries should choose their own development priorities. (IHT, 05.22.2006)
And in 2006 they were loaning Nigeria $1 billion to rebuild their railway system so that China can import their oil more-readily. The Nigerian government has to match the funds in the deal. What does fighting poverty have to do with any of this?
It should be remembered at this point that Paul Wolfowitz was the architect of the war in Iraq, which never won him any friends outside of the White House (it went bad, so he's a loser) and the oil industry (same thing). Somehow, Wolfowitz thought he could literally do whatever he wanted to, but who taught him these lessons? Surely it was his faceless masters in finance, the military-media-technocratic-industrial complex, and all the other rich-backers who created him for us to be entertained by.
How else are we going to ignore the real individuals behind globalization? A diversion has always served them well, and Wolfowitz has played this role very well. He's playing it right now, just like George W. Bush. Here's to the imminent-collapse of the World Bank!
Many analysts expect that the new fund will look for ways to lighten China's holdings of dollar-denominated assets, particularly low-yielding U.S. Treasury bonds. At the end of 2006, China held $350 billion worth of T-bills. Fitch estimates that China holds another $230 billion in bonds from government-backed agencies such as Freddie Mac, Fortune 500 and Fannie Mae.
Others predict the fund will bankroll efforts of state-owned resource giants like Sinopec or CNOOC to secure oil, gas, coal and other raw materials abroad. But Arthur Kroeber, editor of the China Economic Quarterly, argues that Beijing will find it difficult to achieve either goal. Few assets offer the depth and liquidity of T-bills. And any effort to finance acquisitions by Chinese companies risks igniting the sort of controversy that scuttled CNOOC's bid for Unocal. (CNN/Fortune, 05.03.2007)
This isn't good news for Western financial elites, and they're trying to contain the activity. What's interesting is that the Chinese want to dispense with the so-called legitimacy of the World Bank, and just go out and loan to nations whose resources they want--it's actually pretty transparent what they want. What they want to do is what the World Bank and the IMF do under the guise of humanitarian-rhetoric, and their directness is refreshing in a world of double-talk.
The West lacks such candor and openness on their methods, but that's an issue of perception management. With the rising power of China, the World Bank appears that it's going to be replaced soon anyway. They're irrelevant. With China's announcement on May 3rd of the creation of what is being termed "the world's largest investment fund," this is likely to become a reality...on the ground.
BBC today on the Wolfowitz resignation, and more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6668415.stm
Thinkquest.org on "Competition": http://library.thinkquest.org/C004323/low/micro2.html
The International Herald Times on some of China's international loans, 05.22.2006: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/22/news/nigeria.php
CNN/Fortune magazine on China's world investment fund, 05.03.2007: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100024842/index.htm?section=money_topstories
Our mission is to help developing countries and their people reach the goals by working with our partners to alleviate poverty. To do that we concentrate on building the climate for investment, jobs and sustainable growth, so that economies will grow, and by investing in and empowering poor people to participate in development. (worldbank.org)
Those are some pretty high-flown words. Most of the rhetoric of the World Bank is internationalist and has a ring of classical humanism and liberalism to it. That's usually where it ends. As with the failed war in Iraq, the reality of this rhetoric and the reality on the ground are substantially different things.
Many anti-globalization critics contend that the World Bank has hijacked the issue of poverty, purposely underestimating the real numbers of poor in the world, as well as science-fiction reports on actual-wages (and their very real drop in the developed world in the last 30 years). Without giving a rundown of the literature--which is vast--defining poverty is difficult. On the World Bank's site, there is a statement that a person making "$1 dollar a day" can be considered to be living-in-poverty, but this can be seen as culturally relative.
Take America's working-poor, who make several-times the income of people in the Third World, yet whose quality-of-life could be termed worse than someone with an average income in Russia, or a Guatemalan or Mexican peasant with a broader social-network that they can rely on (friends, extended-families, clan-ties, etc.). Also, purchasing-power doesn't necessarily equate to empowerment at all, something that should be obvious to anyone.
It doesn't translate into sustainability, but dependence on manufactured-goods, as well as the overarching-goal: domestic exploitation of natural resources for transnational corporations, including cheap-labor. It's not unlike the cartel model, but that's probably because it is. This is the realm of the "oligopoly," where democracy isn't part of the equation.
The primary property of oligopoly is a small number of competing firms. Thus, to be able to best compete, firms make decisions based on planning against their rivals. That is the key property of oligopolies: all firms in oligopolies execute strategic planning. Sometimes, a market is only an oligopoly in theory. Some oligopolies act as cartels, in which many firms act as one. There are technically several firms but they all confer together to act as a monopoly. This practice is illegal in many places, though it still does happen. (library.thinkquest.org, "Competition")
Oh yes, it does still happen. Considering that the World Bank consists of individuals attached to the major financial institutions--primarily Western ones--of the world, it's easy to see the World Bank as merely representing private banking, industry, and speculative interests. At the moment, America is predominant, and so has the ability to choose who heads the World Bank and the IMF, though there are trends that are increasing China's influence. Indeed, China is doing an incredible amount of lending in the Third World, not just underwriting the war in Iraq through the purchase of American currency bonds.
Wolfowitz is just a symptom of American dominance of the World Bank, but also a sign that that hold is eroding. Japan and Europe want more representation and influence within decision-making circles, as do delegates of the Third World. It's likely that Bush will choose the successor anyway, and will force it through if they and American economic & financial elites encounter any resistance. Yes, Mr. Swinging-dick is typical of appointments by American presidents, but one has to wonder if the Europeans and Japan are tiring of the games at the World Bank. Could they withdraw?
By tradition, the World Bank president has always been appointed by the US government, while the Europeans have had the right to nominate the head of the IMF. Now this convention is under attack. In a letter to the World Bank, 200 leading development organisations have called for and open process for selecting the new leader that includes "transparency of process, and competence of prospective leadership without regard to national origin". (BBC, 05.18.2007)
With American influence diminishing throughout the world, it's possible. Another galling appointment by George W. Bush could be the final straw. The influence of a nation on the executive board is based on the size of their economy, but with EU consolidation, and China's growth, the American veto could be endangered soon. Development: China's preferred region of development right now is in Africa, particularly where there are coveted natural resources like oil.
In January 2005, China offered Angola a $2 billion loan to repair its infrastructure. And this past January, China's top offshore oil producer, Cnooc, agreed to pay $2.3 billion for a stake in a Nigerian oil and natural gas field - its largest ever overseas acquisition. China has rejected Western efforts to attach aid and loans for African countries to demands for improved human rights and government accountability, saying countries should choose their own development priorities. (IHT, 05.22.2006)
And in 2006 they were loaning Nigeria $1 billion to rebuild their railway system so that China can import their oil more-readily. The Nigerian government has to match the funds in the deal. What does fighting poverty have to do with any of this?
It should be remembered at this point that Paul Wolfowitz was the architect of the war in Iraq, which never won him any friends outside of the White House (it went bad, so he's a loser) and the oil industry (same thing). Somehow, Wolfowitz thought he could literally do whatever he wanted to, but who taught him these lessons? Surely it was his faceless masters in finance, the military-media-technocratic-industrial complex, and all the other rich-backers who created him for us to be entertained by.
How else are we going to ignore the real individuals behind globalization? A diversion has always served them well, and Wolfowitz has played this role very well. He's playing it right now, just like George W. Bush. Here's to the imminent-collapse of the World Bank!
Many analysts expect that the new fund will look for ways to lighten China's holdings of dollar-denominated assets, particularly low-yielding U.S. Treasury bonds. At the end of 2006, China held $350 billion worth of T-bills. Fitch estimates that China holds another $230 billion in bonds from government-backed agencies such as Freddie Mac, Fortune 500 and Fannie Mae.
Others predict the fund will bankroll efforts of state-owned resource giants like Sinopec or CNOOC to secure oil, gas, coal and other raw materials abroad. But Arthur Kroeber, editor of the China Economic Quarterly, argues that Beijing will find it difficult to achieve either goal. Few assets offer the depth and liquidity of T-bills. And any effort to finance acquisitions by Chinese companies risks igniting the sort of controversy that scuttled CNOOC's bid for Unocal. (CNN/Fortune, 05.03.2007)
This isn't good news for Western financial elites, and they're trying to contain the activity. What's interesting is that the Chinese want to dispense with the so-called legitimacy of the World Bank, and just go out and loan to nations whose resources they want--it's actually pretty transparent what they want. What they want to do is what the World Bank and the IMF do under the guise of humanitarian-rhetoric, and their directness is refreshing in a world of double-talk.
The West lacks such candor and openness on their methods, but that's an issue of perception management. With the rising power of China, the World Bank appears that it's going to be replaced soon anyway. They're irrelevant. With China's announcement on May 3rd of the creation of what is being termed "the world's largest investment fund," this is likely to become a reality...on the ground.
BBC today on the Wolfowitz resignation, and more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6668415.stm
Thinkquest.org on "Competition": http://library.thinkquest.org/C004323/low/micro2.html
The International Herald Times on some of China's international loans, 05.22.2006: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/22/news/nigeria.php
CNN/Fortune magazine on China's world investment fund, 05.03.2007: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100024842/index.htm?section=money_topstories
THE NEWS WHITE-OUT ON MICHAEL MOORE'S "SICKO" SCREENING AT CANNES HAS BEGUN!
"Well, going quietly to Cannes, I guess, was not to be. For some strange reason, on May 2nd the Bush administration initiated an action against me over how I obtained some of the content they believe is in my film. As none of them have actually seen the film (or so I hope!), they decided, unlike with "Fahrenheit 9/11," not to wait until the film was out of the gate and too far down the road to begin their attack." --Michael Moore today.
CANNES, FRANCE--Considering the real story tomorrow at the film festival will be Michael Moore's "Sicko," we're getting a lot of truly inane stories already, starting with the news that Jerry Seinfeld has a movie with people in bee-suits in it. Then today, we're hearing that--gasp!--Pamela Anderson is getting booed by the paparazzi there! My God, the gall! Next to a captioned photo of actor Dean Hamilton looking at her fake-tits, the article...I'm sorry, it doesn't constitute an article, it's crapulence. What's next? A headline stating, "A bum farts in the direction of Jerry Lewis"? SACRE BLUE!!!!
In a Felliniesque-aside, the paparazzi were pissed that she was late for the shoot, then only stayed for a few-minutes. OK, granted that these folks are just doing their jobs taking the Michigan bimbo's photo, but I'll give her some credit: she was late and didn't stay long because she wanted to be with her kids first. That's admirable. What isn't admirable is AP using this non-story to downplay the explosion coming tomorrow with Moore's documentary on the broken American health care system.
You can see those tentacles of power pulling all the meaning out of the coverage. This week had an interview between Moore and Entertainment Weekly, with a stunning first question (stunning in its possible credulity):
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So what makes you think there's a problem with our health care system?
MICHAEL MOORE: [laughs hard] I said to the crew on the first day, ''Let's not insult the audience by telling them that the health care system is broken. Let's start with the assumption that people know it. What kind of film would we make then?'' (EW, 05.15.2007)
I don't usually bother naming journalists who reported on and authored a piece, but in this case it's appropriate. If Daniel Fierman is kidding, my bad, but what universe does this perspective come from? Could anyone ask this question in any seriousness without seeming completely out-of-touch and/or daft? I contend that there will be an army of these shills telling all of us in the United States that nothing is wrong with our current health care system at all--every one of them having a connection to that system for a living in some form (shills gotta eat, unfortunately).
Mr. Fierman should really hope he was kidding, because if he's not, we're all really in much bigger trouble than we imagined. But there really are bourgeois-types who are this sheltered. They're stuck in their own bubble, just like the president. The president's father famously walked into a grocery store through the wrong door during the 1992 campaign, mainly because he had never bought groceries for himself. It's possible he had never been in one before that moment since the help usually did it. People like this should be in office? How can they know the needs of anyone?
Meanwhile--not back at the ranch in Crawford--Michael Moore has filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request on the Treasury Department's OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control ) investigation into his trip to Cuba with ailing 9/11 first-responders earlier this year. E! online repeats most of the boring attacks in their article on this request, spending most of the piece simply bashing Moore, but whoever said they were journalists was probably drunk when they said it.
So despite the fact that Sicko premieres Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, where Fahrenheit 911 won the Palme d'Or three years ago, the storm clouds are gathering in Washington. [Ed.--my emphasis, sort of!] ..."They started this," Moore said, "and I think that somehow by making some sort of example of me, that helps them with a certain community in terms of voters." The leftwinger also sent a duplicate copy of Sicko to a "safe house" outside of the United States to ensure that he wouldn't have a problem providing the Cannes fest with his film. (E! online, 05.17.2007)
You know, if Natalie Finn--the author of this piece--wants to be a real prostitute, she should have called up Deborah Jeane Palfrey to pay her rent. So, lady, what are these "storm clouds gathering in Washington" exactly? We know what past fines have been, and that a stiff one will be paid immediately by the Weinsteins if it's excessive. That's the worst-case scenario here, and we can safely assume the production is insured too. Another thing that makes this slanting so obvious is that Moore can appeal this. What you and our scumbag president want is to smear Moore with a brush that makes him appear to have broken-the-law. It's baseless.
There's no reason to think Michael Moore should be fined more than a couple thousand dollars personally, considering the New York Yankees just paid $70,000 in fines to the Treasury Department. They must have taken a lot of players on that one, and it's impossible to mistake their trip for anything except business. Considering Michael Moore was filming a documentary, he's still protected under existing laws governing travel to Cuba under the First Amendment. It's too-bad for the cultural managers that the Bush administration botched the whole program--the whole approach. Now, they have even more damage control to contend with.
Statements in articles like Finn's and Fierman could be nothing, or they could be a propaganda campaign that might even be funded with our taxes. This could be the reason for Moore's FOIA. We'll see. Ignore the white-out, the coverage will be on the internet regardless. I think it's high-time Mr. Moore began some libel suits, starting with former-Senator Thompson. It's a safe bet that what we're witnessing are the cheap-shots of Big Pharma, the HMOs, and the rest of our corrupt health care industry in a nation that refuses to recognize basic human rights. This is life in a plutocracy where money rules, and where even hints at the truth are forbidden. This is dehumanization, the inhuman-side of our society.
AP Today, reporting a lot of unimportant bullshit: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070518/ap_on_en_mo/people_pamela_anderson
Entertainment Weakly, asking stupid questions? http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20038926,00.html
E! online, vomiting lies & grotesque bias, 05.17.2007: http://news.yahoo.com/s/eonline/20070517/en_celeb_eo/c8f3b3f48e5f_42b8_b68b_71eb6f0f0a90
CANNES, FRANCE--Considering the real story tomorrow at the film festival will be Michael Moore's "Sicko," we're getting a lot of truly inane stories already, starting with the news that Jerry Seinfeld has a movie with people in bee-suits in it. Then today, we're hearing that--gasp!--Pamela Anderson is getting booed by the paparazzi there! My God, the gall! Next to a captioned photo of actor Dean Hamilton looking at her fake-tits, the article...I'm sorry, it doesn't constitute an article, it's crapulence. What's next? A headline stating, "A bum farts in the direction of Jerry Lewis"? SACRE BLUE!!!!
In a Felliniesque-aside, the paparazzi were pissed that she was late for the shoot, then only stayed for a few-minutes. OK, granted that these folks are just doing their jobs taking the Michigan bimbo's photo, but I'll give her some credit: she was late and didn't stay long because she wanted to be with her kids first. That's admirable. What isn't admirable is AP using this non-story to downplay the explosion coming tomorrow with Moore's documentary on the broken American health care system.
You can see those tentacles of power pulling all the meaning out of the coverage. This week had an interview between Moore and Entertainment Weekly, with a stunning first question (stunning in its possible credulity):
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So what makes you think there's a problem with our health care system?
MICHAEL MOORE: [laughs hard] I said to the crew on the first day, ''Let's not insult the audience by telling them that the health care system is broken. Let's start with the assumption that people know it. What kind of film would we make then?'' (EW, 05.15.2007)
I don't usually bother naming journalists who reported on and authored a piece, but in this case it's appropriate. If Daniel Fierman is kidding, my bad, but what universe does this perspective come from? Could anyone ask this question in any seriousness without seeming completely out-of-touch and/or daft? I contend that there will be an army of these shills telling all of us in the United States that nothing is wrong with our current health care system at all--every one of them having a connection to that system for a living in some form (shills gotta eat, unfortunately).
Mr. Fierman should really hope he was kidding, because if he's not, we're all really in much bigger trouble than we imagined. But there really are bourgeois-types who are this sheltered. They're stuck in their own bubble, just like the president. The president's father famously walked into a grocery store through the wrong door during the 1992 campaign, mainly because he had never bought groceries for himself. It's possible he had never been in one before that moment since the help usually did it. People like this should be in office? How can they know the needs of anyone?
Meanwhile--not back at the ranch in Crawford--Michael Moore has filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request on the Treasury Department's OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control ) investigation into his trip to Cuba with ailing 9/11 first-responders earlier this year. E! online repeats most of the boring attacks in their article on this request, spending most of the piece simply bashing Moore, but whoever said they were journalists was probably drunk when they said it.
So despite the fact that Sicko premieres Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, where Fahrenheit 911 won the Palme d'Or three years ago, the storm clouds are gathering in Washington. [Ed.--my emphasis, sort of!] ..."They started this," Moore said, "and I think that somehow by making some sort of example of me, that helps them with a certain community in terms of voters." The leftwinger also sent a duplicate copy of Sicko to a "safe house" outside of the United States to ensure that he wouldn't have a problem providing the Cannes fest with his film. (E! online, 05.17.2007)
You know, if Natalie Finn--the author of this piece--wants to be a real prostitute, she should have called up Deborah Jeane Palfrey to pay her rent. So, lady, what are these "storm clouds gathering in Washington" exactly? We know what past fines have been, and that a stiff one will be paid immediately by the Weinsteins if it's excessive. That's the worst-case scenario here, and we can safely assume the production is insured too. Another thing that makes this slanting so obvious is that Moore can appeal this. What you and our scumbag president want is to smear Moore with a brush that makes him appear to have broken-the-law. It's baseless.
There's no reason to think Michael Moore should be fined more than a couple thousand dollars personally, considering the New York Yankees just paid $70,000 in fines to the Treasury Department. They must have taken a lot of players on that one, and it's impossible to mistake their trip for anything except business. Considering Michael Moore was filming a documentary, he's still protected under existing laws governing travel to Cuba under the First Amendment. It's too-bad for the cultural managers that the Bush administration botched the whole program--the whole approach. Now, they have even more damage control to contend with.
Statements in articles like Finn's and Fierman could be nothing, or they could be a propaganda campaign that might even be funded with our taxes. This could be the reason for Moore's FOIA. We'll see. Ignore the white-out, the coverage will be on the internet regardless. I think it's high-time Mr. Moore began some libel suits, starting with former-Senator Thompson. It's a safe bet that what we're witnessing are the cheap-shots of Big Pharma, the HMOs, and the rest of our corrupt health care industry in a nation that refuses to recognize basic human rights. This is life in a plutocracy where money rules, and where even hints at the truth are forbidden. This is dehumanization, the inhuman-side of our society.
AP Today, reporting a lot of unimportant bullshit: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070518/ap_on_en_mo/people_pamela_anderson
Entertainment Weakly, asking stupid questions? http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20038926,00.html
E! online, vomiting lies & grotesque bias, 05.17.2007: http://news.yahoo.com/s/eonline/20070517/en_celeb_eo/c8f3b3f48e5f_42b8_b68b_71eb6f0f0a90
Brilliant: Blogger saves automatically now!
BLOGGER.COM--Yep, I was thinking they needed this feature for a loooooong time. I've had to rewrite so many posts it's not true, this is impressive. Now, if they can add a few more features like captioning for images, more fonts, and more options for layout--but I'm sure those are coming eventually. Way to go blogger!
Thursday, May 17, 2007
BREAKTHROUGH AGREEMENT IN IMMIGRATION BILL: AGRIBUSINESS AND CHEAP EMPLOYERS BREATH A SIGH OF RELIEF
"It is not amnesty. This will restore the rule of law." --Sen. Arlen Specter today, on the "compromise." (AP, 05.17.2007)
WashIntUhN d.C.--It's hard to feel good or bad about this agreement over the McCain/Kennedy proposal. Most illegales will get a fine of $5,000 (where will they earn enough to pay for this?), and it should take 8-13 years for naturalization as an American citizen. The question is: how will this affect the status of these migrant workers as far as how much they make, whether they have legal-protections so they cannot be blackmailed by employers who have hired them illegally (then, exploiting them with low-wages, undercutting them and American workers), and whether companies who employ illegales will have to finally bear-the-brunt of legal violations. As it stands, illegales bear this brunt.
One could readily expect that this legislation protects the status quo of employing illegal aliens from Mexico and Latin America, but the details coming-out are vague. A "temporary worker" program just means these unsavory employers in agribusiness and manufacturing get their free-pass, but they usually do. This is all to ensure that the pressure on American workers is maintained, keeping wages as low as possible. Really, all this amounts to is a proposal, and a symbolic agreement. No bill has been passed yet, but the hoopla could easily give one the impression that one has.
The key breakthrough came when negotiators struck a bargain on a so-called "point system" that prioritizes immigrants' education and skill level over family connections in deciding how to award green cards. ...The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and — after paying fees and a $5,000 fine — ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first. They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed. (AP, 05.17.2007)
For illegal immigrants, it sounds like a raw deal. It's also a raw deal for the American worker. Interestingly, Democrats seem to be siding-with those sundry employers who covet those illegales for cheap labor to exploit. It's unsurprising, as interests overlap, coupled with the fact that many political donors give to both parties. What's missing from all of this coverage is the influence of lobbying (see the business press for candor in this area). To be fair, many Democrats simply want a direct path to citizenship, allowing aliens to reside permanently within the continental United States. That's just facing the reality that they aren't going anywhere, and it's more pragmatic. The problem is reactionaries in both parties.
Today was a first-step--a baby-step--but a step forward nonetheless. In that sense it can lauded as a good move, and the only area of the Bush legacy that has shown any enlightenment or pragmatism--but the votes of all these future citizens are coveted. Thankfully, the GOP is obsessed with blowing its own foot off. It's unlikely they will ever recover from last year's call for making all illegal aliens felons under H.R. 4437 of the do-nothing 109th Congress, and that the Democratic Party has those votes in the bag. H.R. 4437 passed the House (239-182), but never made it to the Senate. Again, the future voters are coveted.
This was wise, considering the national protests it stimulated, as well as casting the GOP in the adversarial-role with the Hispanic community in the United States. But that was late-2005, and much has changed since then. But what hasn't changed is the bizarre commitment to constructing the 700 mile Hadrian's wall between Mexico and the US, as well as increased funds from Homeland Security to patrol and surveil the border. These sections of H.R. 4437 are likely to remain intact with the new compromises, and are a saddening waste of tax-dollars that could be used to meet human needs.
The temporary worker program is pretty awful: it's going to break-up Mexican families, which is a big-deal in their culture. There will be very serious repercussions in the future over it, and they'll be political ones. George W. Bush wasn't the first American politician calling for amnesty and citizenship for illegales, there were many activists within the Hispanic community who have for decades (even before Caesar Chavez). This has happened before with the Bracero Treaty during WWII when the labor was badly-needed:
The Great Depression saw a heightening of discrimination as people viewed Mexicans as a drain to the economy. In response, the U.S. and Mexican governments co-sponsored a repatriation program that returned thousands of immigrants to Mexico. Approximately one-sixth of all people of Mexican descent living in the U.S. in 1930, were repatriated by 1939. The tide turned when the U.S. entered World War II in 1942 and labor was siphoned from all sectors of U.S. industry. The U.S. signed a formal Bracero Treaty, allowing approximately 5 million Mexicans into the U.S. with temporary contracts to work for American growers and ranchers. (ailf.org, updated 05.14.2006)
Then the war ended, but the immigration kept coming, and many people just atayed in the US. By the 1980s, there was more clamoring from the public for controls, and Reagan and Congress agreed on The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which was just another quick-fix (keeping employers satisfied). One has to be curious whether any new legislation will be anything more than another short-term solution. Question: where the hell are the unions?
This is a golden opportunity to change the dynamic in this country for the average worker--including Mexicans--giving us all the upper-hand over employers. Perhaps they were blinded by all their honey-deals with the boss, because a ten-year-old could tell you unionizing Mexican workers will change everything. It would raise the wages of Hispanics, Blacks, Whites, and everyone else who works for a living. Not to court them is incredibly stupid, but that's a labor boss for you. Bloomberg actually noted some of the pressures coming from lobbying, being more honest than Reuters and AP:
Farm owners and restaurants have backed legislation to let immigrants at least temporarily take jobs in the U.S. that might otherwise go unfilled. The Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business federation, supports "an earned pathway to legalization'' and a "carefully monitored guest or essential worker program,'' according to a statement on its Web site. ...Outlines of a possible deal hinge on the willingness of Republicans to compromise over a guest-worker program and on concessions from Democrats on reunification of immigrant families, lawmakers said. (Bloomberg, 05.16.2007)
Maybe they all prefer wildcat and general strikes that nobody can control through official-channels, and demonstrations over families that have been split-up. 8-13 years is too-long for naturalization, as well the "points system," it solves nothing about the overall demographic picture. It all seems a little too-early to announce this, but the "breakthrough" must be pretty real in the Senate. We can only wait-and-see what it finally entails. A bourgeois-hoot.
AP Today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070517/ap_on_go_co/immigration_congress
"Mexican Voices, American Dreams:A Celebration of Mexican Immigration": http://www.ailf.org/exhibit/ex_mexican_files/mexicans04exhibit.asp
December 2005, text of H.R. 4437 (of the 109th Congress): http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-4437
Bloomberg, 05.13.2007: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDV9WZg_GLlA&refer=us
Justice for Immigrants: http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/
WashIntUhN d.C.--It's hard to feel good or bad about this agreement over the McCain/Kennedy proposal. Most illegales will get a fine of $5,000 (where will they earn enough to pay for this?), and it should take 8-13 years for naturalization as an American citizen. The question is: how will this affect the status of these migrant workers as far as how much they make, whether they have legal-protections so they cannot be blackmailed by employers who have hired them illegally (then, exploiting them with low-wages, undercutting them and American workers), and whether companies who employ illegales will have to finally bear-the-brunt of legal violations. As it stands, illegales bear this brunt.
One could readily expect that this legislation protects the status quo of employing illegal aliens from Mexico and Latin America, but the details coming-out are vague. A "temporary worker" program just means these unsavory employers in agribusiness and manufacturing get their free-pass, but they usually do. This is all to ensure that the pressure on American workers is maintained, keeping wages as low as possible. Really, all this amounts to is a proposal, and a symbolic agreement. No bill has been passed yet, but the hoopla could easily give one the impression that one has.
The key breakthrough came when negotiators struck a bargain on a so-called "point system" that prioritizes immigrants' education and skill level over family connections in deciding how to award green cards. ...The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and — after paying fees and a $5,000 fine — ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first. They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed. (AP, 05.17.2007)
For illegal immigrants, it sounds like a raw deal. It's also a raw deal for the American worker. Interestingly, Democrats seem to be siding-with those sundry employers who covet those illegales for cheap labor to exploit. It's unsurprising, as interests overlap, coupled with the fact that many political donors give to both parties. What's missing from all of this coverage is the influence of lobbying (see the business press for candor in this area). To be fair, many Democrats simply want a direct path to citizenship, allowing aliens to reside permanently within the continental United States. That's just facing the reality that they aren't going anywhere, and it's more pragmatic. The problem is reactionaries in both parties.
Today was a first-step--a baby-step--but a step forward nonetheless. In that sense it can lauded as a good move, and the only area of the Bush legacy that has shown any enlightenment or pragmatism--but the votes of all these future citizens are coveted. Thankfully, the GOP is obsessed with blowing its own foot off. It's unlikely they will ever recover from last year's call for making all illegal aliens felons under H.R. 4437 of the do-nothing 109th Congress, and that the Democratic Party has those votes in the bag. H.R. 4437 passed the House (239-182), but never made it to the Senate. Again, the future voters are coveted.
This was wise, considering the national protests it stimulated, as well as casting the GOP in the adversarial-role with the Hispanic community in the United States. But that was late-2005, and much has changed since then. But what hasn't changed is the bizarre commitment to constructing the 700 mile Hadrian's wall between Mexico and the US, as well as increased funds from Homeland Security to patrol and surveil the border. These sections of H.R. 4437 are likely to remain intact with the new compromises, and are a saddening waste of tax-dollars that could be used to meet human needs.
The temporary worker program is pretty awful: it's going to break-up Mexican families, which is a big-deal in their culture. There will be very serious repercussions in the future over it, and they'll be political ones. George W. Bush wasn't the first American politician calling for amnesty and citizenship for illegales, there were many activists within the Hispanic community who have for decades (even before Caesar Chavez). This has happened before with the Bracero Treaty during WWII when the labor was badly-needed:
The Great Depression saw a heightening of discrimination as people viewed Mexicans as a drain to the economy. In response, the U.S. and Mexican governments co-sponsored a repatriation program that returned thousands of immigrants to Mexico. Approximately one-sixth of all people of Mexican descent living in the U.S. in 1930, were repatriated by 1939. The tide turned when the U.S. entered World War II in 1942 and labor was siphoned from all sectors of U.S. industry. The U.S. signed a formal Bracero Treaty, allowing approximately 5 million Mexicans into the U.S. with temporary contracts to work for American growers and ranchers. (ailf.org, updated 05.14.2006)
Then the war ended, but the immigration kept coming, and many people just atayed in the US. By the 1980s, there was more clamoring from the public for controls, and Reagan and Congress agreed on The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which was just another quick-fix (keeping employers satisfied). One has to be curious whether any new legislation will be anything more than another short-term solution. Question: where the hell are the unions?
This is a golden opportunity to change the dynamic in this country for the average worker--including Mexicans--giving us all the upper-hand over employers. Perhaps they were blinded by all their honey-deals with the boss, because a ten-year-old could tell you unionizing Mexican workers will change everything. It would raise the wages of Hispanics, Blacks, Whites, and everyone else who works for a living. Not to court them is incredibly stupid, but that's a labor boss for you. Bloomberg actually noted some of the pressures coming from lobbying, being more honest than Reuters and AP:
Farm owners and restaurants have backed legislation to let immigrants at least temporarily take jobs in the U.S. that might otherwise go unfilled. The Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business federation, supports "an earned pathway to legalization'' and a "carefully monitored guest or essential worker program,'' according to a statement on its Web site. ...Outlines of a possible deal hinge on the willingness of Republicans to compromise over a guest-worker program and on concessions from Democrats on reunification of immigrant families, lawmakers said. (Bloomberg, 05.16.2007)
Maybe they all prefer wildcat and general strikes that nobody can control through official-channels, and demonstrations over families that have been split-up. 8-13 years is too-long for naturalization, as well the "points system," it solves nothing about the overall demographic picture. It all seems a little too-early to announce this, but the "breakthrough" must be pretty real in the Senate. We can only wait-and-see what it finally entails. A bourgeois-hoot.
AP Today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070517/ap_on_go_co/immigration_congress
"Mexican Voices, American Dreams:A Celebration of Mexican Immigration": http://www.ailf.org/exhibit/ex_mexican_files/mexicans04exhibit.asp
December 2005, text of H.R. 4437 (of the 109th Congress): http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-4437
Bloomberg, 05.13.2007: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDV9WZg_GLlA&refer=us
Justice for Immigrants: http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
SPINNING WHEEL: DEMOCRATS MAKE FIRST-MOVES AT SHUTTERING BUSH ADMINIATRATION'S TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHIEST IN 2008 BUDGET
Washington D.C.--This is the Democratic majority putting things bluntly to the Bush administration (over-and-over): it's over, and we're going to reverse everything you did, even in your first term. While it's non-binding, the approved $2.9 trillion budget for 2008 will effectively shutter Bush's tax cuts for the rich, cutting those for the middle and working-classes. Also slated for a new round of taxation, are dividends from stock shares. But, there's a hitch in the bill:
The Democratic budget promises a $41 billion surplus in 2012, but does so by assuming taxes on income, dividends and stock sales go up in 2011 instead of being extended as called for by Republicans and Bush. Republicans credit the tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, with reviving the economy, but most Democrats say they are tilted in favor of wealthier taxpayers.Tax cuts aimed at the middle class could be renewed under the compromise, including provisions establishing a 10 percent rate on the first $12,000 of a couple's income, as well as relief for married couples, people with children and those inheriting large estates. (AP, 05.16.2007)
This is generally a good move, but why the "relief for...those inheriting large estates"? That needs to be changed, but since it's non-binding, that can be done later. Estate taxes should remain high for the wealthy, period. To exclude that element isn't a step in the right direction. Inheritance is income, and it's part of one's social responsibility to pay their taxes--their fair share. This compromise has to be removed from the legislation for it to be very meaningful.
But is it surprising? It shouldn't be in Washington, where private power is God. There's no need to study primates in Africa, the Capital is the best example of simian politics there is. AP points-out something very amusing about the legislation (no name for it given--S.Con.Res.21--the usual standard of the wires): there are no outlays for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan "after 2009" figured into how they can balance the budget by 2012. The plan even contends a $41 billion surplus by that year.
The writing is truly on the wall, and it appears that they're only going to do two-month appropriations for operations in the Middle East in Congress. None of this would have been possible under the former-GOP majority, and can be seen as very tangible progress. It's going to be interesting to see if the Bush administration fights over the tax-cuts for the rich and the Democrats' increases in domestic spending, like the bill's increases at the Department of Education.
The House last week passed legislation funding the war on two separate, 60-day installments. The Senate must take the next step by passing its own measure. Given the political forces at work, that legislation will be a placeholder, its only purpose to trigger three-way negotiations involving the House, Senate and Bush administration on a final compromise. As a result, officials said during the day that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had discussed jointly advancing a bill so barebones that it contained no funds, and did little more than express congressional support for the troops. Negotiations on the final compromise are expected to take days. Bush has already signaled he will not accept the type of troop withdrawal timetables that Democrats want. For their part, Republicans hope to craft a measure that signals to the public that their patience for the war is running out. (AP, 05.15.2007)
He wouldn't short change the kids, would he? Well, yes, he would. This saga began on February 4th, remember? That's when the president submitted his budget to Congress. If you want proof of how much things have changed, it's that Bush no longer gets his rubber-stamp on legislation. The standoff could continue several more months, and the Democrats have everything to gain by continuing this, but I think the Bush administration will eventually have to capitulate...on nearly everything.
The Republicans are sending a lot of mixed-signals these days, aren't they? For those who wish to stand by the president and continue their support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: expect to be removed from office in upcoming-elections. It could be much sooner than you think. When you have such arch-conservatives like Hillary Clinton finally caving-in and supporting a bill by Dennis Kucinich, you know which way the wind is blowing (she's our national weather vane).
The reports of dozens of Iraqis dead daily are becoming the norm, and the occupation of the country is crumbling. In a very short time, you're going to be seeing GOP incumbents losing their cool and jumping-ship on the president and his war. Nominating a "War Czar" (finding the biggest sucker in the military, it seems) isn't going to change anything either. Bush has threatened a veto on any legislation that "exceeds" his targets for his own budget-balancing plan (just like the plan for postwar-Iraq). The current budget proposed by Democrats usurps his plan.
Responsibility for the war and its execution reside with the Executive, the branch that wanted the war and pushed very hard to have it--even doctoring intelligence to get it, and bullying traditional American allies and domestic critics. Polls in late-2002 showed clearly that 2/3rd's of the American public were against a prolonged-conflict, and so a short one was promised, and one that wouldn't cost the taxpayer. As we know--and most of us knew at that time--these were lies. Just this last-week, we've learned that billions in Iraqi oil have gone missing, while anywhere from $5-15 million in funds for the war and reconstruction go missing daily. It's time to end this circus.
AP Today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070516/ap_on_go_co/congress_budget
"Clinton, Obama back Iraq fund cutoff": http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070516/ap_on_el_pr/us_iraq;_ylt=AtdJnbnb4M8SuwWwkxJ9KeiMwfIE
CQ on Bush's promise of a veto, 05.11.2007: http://public.cq.com/docs/cqm/cqmidday110-000002510357.html
S.Con.Res.21: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-sc21/show
The Democratic budget promises a $41 billion surplus in 2012, but does so by assuming taxes on income, dividends and stock sales go up in 2011 instead of being extended as called for by Republicans and Bush. Republicans credit the tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, with reviving the economy, but most Democrats say they are tilted in favor of wealthier taxpayers.Tax cuts aimed at the middle class could be renewed under the compromise, including provisions establishing a 10 percent rate on the first $12,000 of a couple's income, as well as relief for married couples, people with children and those inheriting large estates. (AP, 05.16.2007)
This is generally a good move, but why the "relief for...those inheriting large estates"? That needs to be changed, but since it's non-binding, that can be done later. Estate taxes should remain high for the wealthy, period. To exclude that element isn't a step in the right direction. Inheritance is income, and it's part of one's social responsibility to pay their taxes--their fair share. This compromise has to be removed from the legislation for it to be very meaningful.
But is it surprising? It shouldn't be in Washington, where private power is God. There's no need to study primates in Africa, the Capital is the best example of simian politics there is. AP points-out something very amusing about the legislation (no name for it given--S.Con.Res.21--the usual standard of the wires): there are no outlays for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan "after 2009" figured into how they can balance the budget by 2012. The plan even contends a $41 billion surplus by that year.
The writing is truly on the wall, and it appears that they're only going to do two-month appropriations for operations in the Middle East in Congress. None of this would have been possible under the former-GOP majority, and can be seen as very tangible progress. It's going to be interesting to see if the Bush administration fights over the tax-cuts for the rich and the Democrats' increases in domestic spending, like the bill's increases at the Department of Education.
The House last week passed legislation funding the war on two separate, 60-day installments. The Senate must take the next step by passing its own measure. Given the political forces at work, that legislation will be a placeholder, its only purpose to trigger three-way negotiations involving the House, Senate and Bush administration on a final compromise. As a result, officials said during the day that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had discussed jointly advancing a bill so barebones that it contained no funds, and did little more than express congressional support for the troops. Negotiations on the final compromise are expected to take days. Bush has already signaled he will not accept the type of troop withdrawal timetables that Democrats want. For their part, Republicans hope to craft a measure that signals to the public that their patience for the war is running out. (AP, 05.15.2007)
He wouldn't short change the kids, would he? Well, yes, he would. This saga began on February 4th, remember? That's when the president submitted his budget to Congress. If you want proof of how much things have changed, it's that Bush no longer gets his rubber-stamp on legislation. The standoff could continue several more months, and the Democrats have everything to gain by continuing this, but I think the Bush administration will eventually have to capitulate...on nearly everything.
The Republicans are sending a lot of mixed-signals these days, aren't they? For those who wish to stand by the president and continue their support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: expect to be removed from office in upcoming-elections. It could be much sooner than you think. When you have such arch-conservatives like Hillary Clinton finally caving-in and supporting a bill by Dennis Kucinich, you know which way the wind is blowing (she's our national weather vane).
The reports of dozens of Iraqis dead daily are becoming the norm, and the occupation of the country is crumbling. In a very short time, you're going to be seeing GOP incumbents losing their cool and jumping-ship on the president and his war. Nominating a "War Czar" (finding the biggest sucker in the military, it seems) isn't going to change anything either. Bush has threatened a veto on any legislation that "exceeds" his targets for his own budget-balancing plan (just like the plan for postwar-Iraq). The current budget proposed by Democrats usurps his plan.
Responsibility for the war and its execution reside with the Executive, the branch that wanted the war and pushed very hard to have it--even doctoring intelligence to get it, and bullying traditional American allies and domestic critics. Polls in late-2002 showed clearly that 2/3rd's of the American public were against a prolonged-conflict, and so a short one was promised, and one that wouldn't cost the taxpayer. As we know--and most of us knew at that time--these were lies. Just this last-week, we've learned that billions in Iraqi oil have gone missing, while anywhere from $5-15 million in funds for the war and reconstruction go missing daily. It's time to end this circus.
AP Today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070516/ap_on_go_co/congress_budget
"Clinton, Obama back Iraq fund cutoff": http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070516/ap_on_el_pr/us_iraq;_ylt=AtdJnbnb4M8SuwWwkxJ9KeiMwfIE
CQ on Bush's promise of a veto, 05.11.2007: http://public.cq.com/docs/cqm/cqmidday110-000002510357.html
S.Con.Res.21: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-sc21/show
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
MICHAEL MOORE'S LETTER TO BLOWHARD SEN. FRED THOMPSON
Tues May 15 2007 6:00:01 ET
LETTER:
May 15, 2007
Senator Fred Thompson
American Enterprise Institute
110 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Senator Thompson,
Given that it has been publicly reported in The Weekly Standard, a leading neo-conservative publication, that you support Fidel Castro and the Cuban regime by being a purveyor of fine Cuban exports despite the trade embargo, I was surprised to see your recent op ed in a more traditional conservative outlet, The National Review, regarding my trip to Cuba (I suspect you choose The National Review in an effort to pander to an outlet that had criticized you for your opposition to medical malpractice legislation).
In your May 2, 2007 National Review article, “Paradise Island,” you specifically raised concerns about whether my trip to Cuba with 9/11 heroes, who have suffered serious health problems as a result of their exposure to toxic substances at Ground Zero that have gone untreated was somehow going to support Castro ad the Cuban government:
“It always leaves me shaking my head when I read about some big-time actor or director going to Cuba and gushing all over Castro.” [http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWNhNzA2YmY3NTNjZjZhNjE1NmZjMDFkOTdjN2Q4ZmE=]
Putting aside the fact that you, like the Bush Administration, seem far more concerned about the trip to Cuba than the health care of these 9/11 heroes, I was struck by the fact that your concerns (including comments about CastroÕs reported financial worth) apparently do not extend to your own conduct, as reported in The Weekly Standard’s April 23, 2007 story, “From the Courthouse to the White House Fred Thompson auditions for the leading role” (emphasis added):
“Thompson’s work space looks just like what the home office of a successful politician or CEO should look like — though a little messier: a large desk, dark wood, leather furniture, lots of books and magazines and newspapers, a flat-screen TV, and box upon box of cigars — Montecristos from Havana.” [http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13528&R=1136E33842]
In light of your comments regarding Cuba and Castro, do you think the “box upon box of cigars — Montecristos from Havana” that you have in your office have contributed to Castro's reported wealth?
While I will leave it up to the conservatives to debate your hypocrisy and the Treasury Department to determine whether the “box upon box of cigars” violates the trade embargo, I hereby challenge you to a health care debate.
Survey after survey has indicated that health care is one of the top issues to the American voters. Today, more than 46 million people lack health are coverage, including 9 million children. We pay significantly more than any other country in the world — and get less back. Americans life expectancy is lower than other Ground Zero 9/11 workers live in a society where the Bush Administration has shown more concern about their travel than about their health.
Our debate would provide you an opportunity to appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party by continuing to attack me; it would give me a chance to discuss health care and tell you exactly what happened in Cuba, given your apparent inters; and it would provide the American people an opportunity to see just how serious Hollywood can be, with a purported conservative and an avowed progressive Hollywood personality on stage. Over the course of the debate, we could specifically address the following issues:
(1) Your work as a lobbyist in light of the fact that the health care and insurance industries have maintained the current health care system through their effective control of the political establishment.
(2) The fact that you raised hundred of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the health care and insurance industries.
(3) Discuss the fact, highlighted in yet another conservative outlet The New York Sun, that you inexplicably wanted to cut funding for AIDS research. [http://www.nysunpolitics.com/blog/2007/05/thompsons-1994-issue-positions.html]
(4) Your relationship with the Frist family and by extension HCA, one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains. It has been reported that former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who was renowned for his over-the-television-screen Schiavo diagnosis) is serving as one of your confidantes on your potential presidential campaign. The Frist family has historically controlled HCA, which paid a record $1.7 billion in civil and criminal fines, including a $631 million penalty for Medicaid fraud — in other words, ripping off the taxpayers.
(5) Discussing whether Arthur Branch, as the District Attorney of Manhattan, supports a woman’s right to choose, gun safety reforms, gay marriage, the trans fat ban and anti-smoking laws (which would impact Cuban cigars, including your Montecristos).
Like American Idol, we could even have the country vote to determine which one of us wins the debate. Though in the spirit of full disclosure, I feel obligated to forewarn you that I was the winner of the 1971-72 Detroit Free Press Debate Award for the state of Michigan.
The winner of our health care debate could even light a Victory cigar with one of your Montecristos (though we may want to consider shopping them to the safe house where I have put a master copy of SiCKO in the event that the Bush Administration tries to seize the film).
Sincerely,
Michael Moore
LETTER:
May 15, 2007
Senator Fred Thompson
American Enterprise Institute
110 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Senator Thompson,
Given that it has been publicly reported in The Weekly Standard, a leading neo-conservative publication, that you support Fidel Castro and the Cuban regime by being a purveyor of fine Cuban exports despite the trade embargo, I was surprised to see your recent op ed in a more traditional conservative outlet, The National Review, regarding my trip to Cuba (I suspect you choose The National Review in an effort to pander to an outlet that had criticized you for your opposition to medical malpractice legislation).
In your May 2, 2007 National Review article, “Paradise Island,” you specifically raised concerns about whether my trip to Cuba with 9/11 heroes, who have suffered serious health problems as a result of their exposure to toxic substances at Ground Zero that have gone untreated was somehow going to support Castro ad the Cuban government:
“It always leaves me shaking my head when I read about some big-time actor or director going to Cuba and gushing all over Castro.” [http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWNhNzA2YmY3NTNjZjZhNjE1NmZjMDFkOTdjN2Q4ZmE=]
Putting aside the fact that you, like the Bush Administration, seem far more concerned about the trip to Cuba than the health care of these 9/11 heroes, I was struck by the fact that your concerns (including comments about CastroÕs reported financial worth) apparently do not extend to your own conduct, as reported in The Weekly Standard’s April 23, 2007 story, “From the Courthouse to the White House Fred Thompson auditions for the leading role” (emphasis added):
“Thompson’s work space looks just like what the home office of a successful politician or CEO should look like — though a little messier: a large desk, dark wood, leather furniture, lots of books and magazines and newspapers, a flat-screen TV, and box upon box of cigars — Montecristos from Havana.” [http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13528&R=1136E33842]
In light of your comments regarding Cuba and Castro, do you think the “box upon box of cigars — Montecristos from Havana” that you have in your office have contributed to Castro's reported wealth?
While I will leave it up to the conservatives to debate your hypocrisy and the Treasury Department to determine whether the “box upon box of cigars” violates the trade embargo, I hereby challenge you to a health care debate.
Survey after survey has indicated that health care is one of the top issues to the American voters. Today, more than 46 million people lack health are coverage, including 9 million children. We pay significantly more than any other country in the world — and get less back. Americans life expectancy is lower than other Ground Zero 9/11 workers live in a society where the Bush Administration has shown more concern about their travel than about their health.
Our debate would provide you an opportunity to appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party by continuing to attack me; it would give me a chance to discuss health care and tell you exactly what happened in Cuba, given your apparent inters; and it would provide the American people an opportunity to see just how serious Hollywood can be, with a purported conservative and an avowed progressive Hollywood personality on stage. Over the course of the debate, we could specifically address the following issues:
(1) Your work as a lobbyist in light of the fact that the health care and insurance industries have maintained the current health care system through their effective control of the political establishment.
(2) The fact that you raised hundred of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the health care and insurance industries.
(3) Discuss the fact, highlighted in yet another conservative outlet The New York Sun, that you inexplicably wanted to cut funding for AIDS research. [http://www.nysunpolitics.com/blog/2007/05/thompsons-1994-issue-positions.html]
(4) Your relationship with the Frist family and by extension HCA, one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains. It has been reported that former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who was renowned for his over-the-television-screen Schiavo diagnosis) is serving as one of your confidantes on your potential presidential campaign. The Frist family has historically controlled HCA, which paid a record $1.7 billion in civil and criminal fines, including a $631 million penalty for Medicaid fraud — in other words, ripping off the taxpayers.
(5) Discussing whether Arthur Branch, as the District Attorney of Manhattan, supports a woman’s right to choose, gun safety reforms, gay marriage, the trans fat ban and anti-smoking laws (which would impact Cuban cigars, including your Montecristos).
Like American Idol, we could even have the country vote to determine which one of us wins the debate. Though in the spirit of full disclosure, I feel obligated to forewarn you that I was the winner of the 1971-72 Detroit Free Press Debate Award for the state of Michigan.
The winner of our health care debate could even light a Victory cigar with one of your Montecristos (though we may want to consider shopping them to the safe house where I have put a master copy of SiCKO in the event that the Bush Administration tries to seize the film).
Sincerely,
Michael Moore
AFTER DECADES OF OBSTRUCTION, THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT BELATEDLY AGREES TO OPEN BAD AROLSEN HOLOCAUST ARCHIVES
Bad Arolsen, Germany--This is the name of the town in-which the 16 miles of files is housed. For over sixty years, an 11-nation commission--the International Tracing Service--have administrated the meticulous files kept by the Nazis for millions of victims of the Holocaust/Shoah. The usual excuse was Germany's strict (especially for people who murdered tens-of-thousands personally) privacy laws, with the nation's representative generally obstructing the release of documents for researchers and historians, especially in within the last 20 years. The real reason was to protect Nazi war criminals, and to allow the clock to run out so they could die in-obscurity.
This week, efforts to lift the 52-year-old blanket of secrecy from this historical treasure are likely to take a big step forward. The 11-nation commission governing the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, meets in Amsterdam Monday and Tuesday to decide when and how to make electronic copies of its files available to researchers. ...But survivors have been pressing for direct access, unsatisfied with the formalistic and partial answers to questions about the persecution they suffered. So a year ago the commission decided to unlock the vast storehouse for research. (AP, 05.13.2007)
But even with survivors clamoring to have the archives in Bad Arolsen opened, one can discern a pattern of neglect and abuse. Just a cursory-glance at the billions owed to slave-laborers and victims of Nazi-confiscations will show you how serious German leadership is about reparations and justice. By the late-1980s, the excuse of "privacy" was becoming threadbare and insulting. It only took one of the 11-nation board to quash an opening of the archives over the years, and it was generally the German government who did that obstructing.
For the last 20 years, it was Germany who was doing the obstructing, allowing many of the guilty to escape justice let alone identification. Thanks to several German governments (frequently under the conservatives in the former-West Germany), Holocaust revisionism has proliferated throughout the developed world, even further-penetrating into the Middle East as evinced by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's (پايگاه اطلاع رساني رياست جمهوري ) comments denying the event ever occurred in December 13th, 2005. The Palestinian crisis hasn't helped either. Of course, the Nazis were spreading anti-Semitism throughout the region during WWII--the beginnings of the dissemination of the classic forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Ahmadinejad:
"They have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets," Ahmadinejad said in an address carried live on state television. ...But Wednesday was the first time Ahmadinejad declared that the Holocaust had not happened, and the assertion served to further undermine Iran's efforts to persuade other countries that it can be trusted with its nuclear program. (Washington Post, 12.14.2005)
Comments like Ahmadinejad's don't deserve serious debate, and are not credible on any basis. We know full-well that the Shoah occurred, and to deny it betrays a desire to make it happen again, though this writer wagers it was classic "Jew-baiting" on the Iranian President's part, his regime has been in trouble for some time. Again, blame the outsider when your governance is being questioned. The opening of the archives should dispell most all of the myths, and ample documentation will be everytwhere on the internet soon through the ITS.
Again, why the scapegoating? In the case of skinheads, it's more complicated, and has more to do with the self-destructive behavior of the poor and miserable. Taking their class rage out on minorities is their lot, the burden of the damned. Like their predecessors under National Socialism, they want that Big Daddy to tell them when to eat and when to think, and it's almost understandable living in the uncertainties of this modern technological age. These uncertainties are very real in the former-East Germany and Russia, and a subsequent rise in skinhead and neo-Nazi groups is the result, frequently in a nationalist-context.
This brings us to another facet of protecting Nazi war criminals: Germany's death penalty and its genesis from 1948-49. Like the decision to keep the archives at Bad Arolsen closed based on "reasons of privacy," the laws created banning the death penalty were expressly designed to hide to identities of the guilty to shield them from allied and civil justice. Noting American programs that co-opted ex-Nazis like Operation Paperclip, most of the Western allies had no problem as long as it served the interests of power. We can assume that by now, most of the worst-offenders have passed from this existence. On Article 102:
Some habits are hard to break. But the shielding of ex-Nazis can also be seen as part of an overarching policy in the postwar (Cold War) years to limit the spread of the Left in Western Europe, emboldened by their role in the resistance. Europe was radicalized by WWII, and for millions, the old-structures of power were delegitimized. Many ex-Nazis and fascists throughout Europe were utilized in the Cold War NATO program "GLADIO," paramilitary armies that were created to limit the Left, and a hypothetical Soviet invasion that never happened.
Preserving fascist-networks was counterintelligence and pacification of a radicalized Europe, and hiding the crimes of the expediters was crucial. Perhaps the Bader-Meinhof gang were right. The Bad Arolsen archives should have remained open from 1955-on. Germany hasn't done much to allay the fears of the world here, but who wants to face the fact that their grandfather murdered thousands of people? This writer would have, because wrong is wrong.
AP on the update to the opening of the Bad Arolsen archives (05.13.2007)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070513/ap_on_re_eu/nazi_archive
Der Spiegel on the opening of the Bad Arolsen, 04.19.2006:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,411983,00.html
The Washington Post on Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial (12.14.2005): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402403.html
"The Paradoxes of a Death Penalty Stance," The Washington Post, 06.04.2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/03/AR2005060301450.html
This week, efforts to lift the 52-year-old blanket of secrecy from this historical treasure are likely to take a big step forward. The 11-nation commission governing the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, meets in Amsterdam Monday and Tuesday to decide when and how to make electronic copies of its files available to researchers. ...But survivors have been pressing for direct access, unsatisfied with the formalistic and partial answers to questions about the persecution they suffered. So a year ago the commission decided to unlock the vast storehouse for research. (AP, 05.13.2007)
But even with survivors clamoring to have the archives in Bad Arolsen opened, one can discern a pattern of neglect and abuse. Just a cursory-glance at the billions owed to slave-laborers and victims of Nazi-confiscations will show you how serious German leadership is about reparations and justice. By the late-1980s, the excuse of "privacy" was becoming threadbare and insulting. It only took one of the 11-nation board to quash an opening of the archives over the years, and it was generally the German government who did that obstructing.
For the last 20 years, it was Germany who was doing the obstructing, allowing many of the guilty to escape justice let alone identification. Thanks to several German governments (frequently under the conservatives in the former-West Germany), Holocaust revisionism has proliferated throughout the developed world, even further-penetrating into the Middle East as evinced by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's (پايگاه اطلاع رساني رياست جمهوري ) comments denying the event ever occurred in December 13th, 2005. The Palestinian crisis hasn't helped either. Of course, the Nazis were spreading anti-Semitism throughout the region during WWII--the beginnings of the dissemination of the classic forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Ahmadinejad:
"They have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets," Ahmadinejad said in an address carried live on state television. ...But Wednesday was the first time Ahmadinejad declared that the Holocaust had not happened, and the assertion served to further undermine Iran's efforts to persuade other countries that it can be trusted with its nuclear program. (Washington Post, 12.14.2005)
Comments like Ahmadinejad's don't deserve serious debate, and are not credible on any basis. We know full-well that the Shoah occurred, and to deny it betrays a desire to make it happen again, though this writer wagers it was classic "Jew-baiting" on the Iranian President's part, his regime has been in trouble for some time. Again, blame the outsider when your governance is being questioned. The opening of the archives should dispell most all of the myths, and ample documentation will be everytwhere on the internet soon through the ITS.
Again, why the scapegoating? In the case of skinheads, it's more complicated, and has more to do with the self-destructive behavior of the poor and miserable. Taking their class rage out on minorities is their lot, the burden of the damned. Like their predecessors under National Socialism, they want that Big Daddy to tell them when to eat and when to think, and it's almost understandable living in the uncertainties of this modern technological age. These uncertainties are very real in the former-East Germany and Russia, and a subsequent rise in skinhead and neo-Nazi groups is the result, frequently in a nationalist-context.
This brings us to another facet of protecting Nazi war criminals: Germany's death penalty and its genesis from 1948-49. Like the decision to keep the archives at Bad Arolsen closed based on "reasons of privacy," the laws created banning the death penalty were expressly designed to hide to identities of the guilty to shield them from allied and civil justice. Noting American programs that co-opted ex-Nazis like Operation Paperclip, most of the Western allies had no problem as long as it served the interests of power. We can assume that by now, most of the worst-offenders have passed from this existence. On Article 102:
But the actual history of the German death penalty ban casts this claim in a different light. Article 102 was in fact the brainchild of a right-wing politician who sympathized with convicted Nazi war criminals -- and sought to prevent their execution by British and American occupation authorities. Far from intending to repudiate the barbarism of Hitler, the author of Article 102 wanted to make a statement about the supposed excesses of Allied victors' justice. ...Meanwhile, there was little opposition in West Germany to capital punishment for ordinary criminals. A poll by the Allensbach Institute in February 1949 showed that 77 percent of West Germany's population favored it. The largest left-wing party, the Social Democrats, had a long anti-death-penalty tradition, but, given the political climate, it did not campaign on it. (Washington Post, 06.04.2005)
In a real sense, skinheads and Aryan nations-types are useful in collaring the most radical elements of the Western subproletariat, and help serve a traditional role in governance that requires a scapegoat minority. For centuries, the Jews served as this minority, and one can be assured that Turks will fill this much needed void in governance. This is one reason why Turkey is being stalled in their bid for entry into the EU, but this is also a complicated story that involves their own human rights violations. However, anti-Turk racism certainly figures-in.Some habits are hard to break. But the shielding of ex-Nazis can also be seen as part of an overarching policy in the postwar (Cold War) years to limit the spread of the Left in Western Europe, emboldened by their role in the resistance. Europe was radicalized by WWII, and for millions, the old-structures of power were delegitimized. Many ex-Nazis and fascists throughout Europe were utilized in the Cold War NATO program "GLADIO," paramilitary armies that were created to limit the Left, and a hypothetical Soviet invasion that never happened.
Preserving fascist-networks was counterintelligence and pacification of a radicalized Europe, and hiding the crimes of the expediters was crucial. Perhaps the Bader-Meinhof gang were right. The Bad Arolsen archives should have remained open from 1955-on. Germany hasn't done much to allay the fears of the world here, but who wants to face the fact that their grandfather murdered thousands of people? This writer would have, because wrong is wrong.
AP on the update to the opening of the Bad Arolsen archives (05.13.2007)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070513/ap_on_re_eu/nazi_archive
Der Spiegel on the opening of the Bad Arolsen, 04.19.2006:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,411983,00.html
The Washington Post on Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial (12.14.2005): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402403.html
"The Paradoxes of a Death Penalty Stance," The Washington Post, 06.04.2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/03/AR2005060301450.html
JERRY FALWELL DEAD AT 73: THE END OF A DEMAGOGUE
"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." --Jerry Falwell
Good-riddance asshole. He told America that we're a religious nation--we sure are, and it's been an albatross around our necks for decades. Believers need to keep their morality out of politics, we don't want you, go-away. As disgusting as Larry Flynt is, he was right about you: you were a scumbag who was lower than a pornographer, the Big Pimp selling lies and false-hope to the miserable. Finally, you're going to be useful--fertilizing the flowers. Consider the lilies, asswipe.
No-thanks for the Moral Majority, no-thanks for legislating petty morality, no-thanks for your ugly-mug on my tv set, no-thanks for your phony university, and no-thanks for your fake version of Jesus and his teachings. When the planes slammed-into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, Falwell blamed the ACLU!
And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen." (Washington Post, 09.14.2001)
What a jackass, but at least Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, and Al Goldstein outlived Falwell. That's because God liked them more, obviously. When all these evangelists who believe that their personal wealth is attached to their beliefs lose all their money in a crash, it's going to entertaining to watch them blame themselves as their moronic grandparents did over seventy-years-ago. This is because they never learn, and never will.
Falwell dying is a watershed, and the ending of 27 years of bullshit from the religious right. They're in-disarray, and need to be kept that way. To neutralize them and their arguments isn't enough--they need to be inundated with truth, fact, and empiricism, daily. I'm not advocating the stifling of these folks' right to their own faith, but Americans also deserve the right to freedom from religion, and these twits have made it clear they want to force their beliefs on all of us. It seems he didn't like Jews either:
In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies'' show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children. Falwell was re-energized after family values proved important in the 2004 presidential election. (AP, 05.15.2007)
Yeah, 2004, the good-old-days, eh? When you're protecting raw power, you need ambulance chasers, pimps, preachers, and shills. This is what makes them anti-democratic and basically worthy of targeting for criticism and debate, though most of them aren't worthy of either. What's best is to ignore them in the mainstream dialog, while limiting their influence everywhere one can within the law. They found Falwell like they did Stalin.
There is something that Falwell and Flynt share: both of his families were engaged in bootlegging-hooch during Prohibition. Welcome to oblivion, Jerry, you never mattered. Welcome to darkness and the void. The lives of you and your parsonage aren't worth any more than anyone else, and you were never special. What you were was an embarrassment to most reasonable Americans and human beings the world over.
Your death couldn't have come at a better time, when your theocratic president is embattled, and your agenda is dying. Yes, there are few of your mutants in the Supreme Court, but they're going to become more-and-more isolated and marginalized, coming-off as a dowdy reminder of bad-times when our nation truly lost its mind and acted accordingly. Nobody had to catch you with an ugly, white-trash prostitute like Swaggert--we all assumed you were the same kind of trash. Your death is a blip. Jew-baiter, feminist-baiter, gay-baiter, nigger-baiter--you were a scumbag and worthless-piece-of-squirm. Your university will close, and you'll be a sad-footnote in American history, just like that other racist demagogue, Gerald L.K. Smith.
AP Today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6634769,00.html
Good-riddance asshole. He told America that we're a religious nation--we sure are, and it's been an albatross around our necks for decades. Believers need to keep their morality out of politics, we don't want you, go-away. As disgusting as Larry Flynt is, he was right about you: you were a scumbag who was lower than a pornographer, the Big Pimp selling lies and false-hope to the miserable. Finally, you're going to be useful--fertilizing the flowers. Consider the lilies, asswipe.
No-thanks for the Moral Majority, no-thanks for legislating petty morality, no-thanks for your ugly-mug on my tv set, no-thanks for your phony university, and no-thanks for your fake version of Jesus and his teachings. When the planes slammed-into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, Falwell blamed the ACLU!
And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen." (Washington Post, 09.14.2001)
What a jackass, but at least Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, and Al Goldstein outlived Falwell. That's because God liked them more, obviously. When all these evangelists who believe that their personal wealth is attached to their beliefs lose all their money in a crash, it's going to entertaining to watch them blame themselves as their moronic grandparents did over seventy-years-ago. This is because they never learn, and never will.
Falwell dying is a watershed, and the ending of 27 years of bullshit from the religious right. They're in-disarray, and need to be kept that way. To neutralize them and their arguments isn't enough--they need to be inundated with truth, fact, and empiricism, daily. I'm not advocating the stifling of these folks' right to their own faith, but Americans also deserve the right to freedom from religion, and these twits have made it clear they want to force their beliefs on all of us. It seems he didn't like Jews either:
In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies'' show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children. Falwell was re-energized after family values proved important in the 2004 presidential election. (AP, 05.15.2007)
Yeah, 2004, the good-old-days, eh? When you're protecting raw power, you need ambulance chasers, pimps, preachers, and shills. This is what makes them anti-democratic and basically worthy of targeting for criticism and debate, though most of them aren't worthy of either. What's best is to ignore them in the mainstream dialog, while limiting their influence everywhere one can within the law. They found Falwell like they did Stalin.
There is something that Falwell and Flynt share: both of his families were engaged in bootlegging-hooch during Prohibition. Welcome to oblivion, Jerry, you never mattered. Welcome to darkness and the void. The lives of you and your parsonage aren't worth any more than anyone else, and you were never special. What you were was an embarrassment to most reasonable Americans and human beings the world over.
Your death couldn't have come at a better time, when your theocratic president is embattled, and your agenda is dying. Yes, there are few of your mutants in the Supreme Court, but they're going to become more-and-more isolated and marginalized, coming-off as a dowdy reminder of bad-times when our nation truly lost its mind and acted accordingly. Nobody had to catch you with an ugly, white-trash prostitute like Swaggert--we all assumed you were the same kind of trash. Your death is a blip. Jew-baiter, feminist-baiter, gay-baiter, nigger-baiter--you were a scumbag and worthless-piece-of-squirm. Your university will close, and you'll be a sad-footnote in American history, just like that other racist demagogue, Gerald L.K. Smith.
AP Today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6634769,00.html
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Give President Cheney and George W. Bush your opinions on Michael Moore's trip to Cuba
wArSHINtuHn/ www.michaelmoore.com --The confrontation between Michael Moore and the Bush administration isn't the first time, we can be assured that someone at Disney was tapped to pull the film from their distribution schedule back in 2004. As we all know, it backfired in an astonishing-sense: it made the documentary a much bigger hit than it would have been otherwise. If you think that the Weinsteins and Moore didn't figure the fines into their budgets, you're mistaken. Also, these things can be appealed for years. Once the Bush administration's cronies are out-of-office, the charges and fines--if there ever are any--will likely be dropped.
It seems everyone in the mainstream media wants to speculate (wildly) over what the fines are likely to be. At-most, they shouldn't be more than what Oliver Stone's Ixtlan Productions paid in toto, which was $6,322.20, spread amongst four individuals. The New York Yankees were recently fined $70,000, so we can assume they brought a lot of players there on business. To fine Michael Moore more would be obvious discrimination against Michael Moore, and censorship of anyone outside of Establishment media who wants to convey the real story of the conditions in Cuba--Americans are the last-to-know about nearly everything pertinent in the island nation, and how American foreign policy really works. You don't have to inform the victims, they know better than anyone.
Tell the crooks how you feel: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
It seems everyone in the mainstream media wants to speculate (wildly) over what the fines are likely to be. At-most, they shouldn't be more than what Oliver Stone's Ixtlan Productions paid in toto, which was $6,322.20, spread amongst four individuals. The New York Yankees were recently fined $70,000, so we can assume they brought a lot of players there on business. To fine Michael Moore more would be obvious discrimination against Michael Moore, and censorship of anyone outside of Establishment media who wants to convey the real story of the conditions in Cuba--Americans are the last-to-know about nearly everything pertinent in the island nation, and how American foreign policy really works. You don't have to inform the victims, they know better than anyone.
Tell the crooks how you feel: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
An interview with Dr. Noam Chomsky, from "Interpol Magazine," February 1995 (Part 1 of 2)
This was an interview conducted through the mail with Dr. Chomsky while I was finishing my degree in American History at Ball State University. Just two-months after I received his answers in the mail, we all witnessed the Oklahoma City bombing, and the stirrings of the war on terror (really a domestic one against all of us). It's been a long road from the Spring of 1995. At that time, the internet was just starting to become accessible, and its impact on the political and cultural discourse is only now being realized.
1995 was a year when the "zine revolution" was occurring, and it was quickly-supplanted by the high-price of paper and the internet. This interview was done for one of those little zines--my own--called "Interpol." I actually got copies of it in zine-central, the legendary Quimby's Queer Store in Chicago. It was pretty surreal going-up to the Windy City and seeing those copies in the store (I never got paid, incidentally), it felt pretty good.
All that said, I would never trade the blog format, it's superior in every respect to that old digest format, and it's getting better all the time. Dr. Chomsky is a very friendly and encouraging person, and when he passes from this world, we will have lost a wonderful human being. Appreciate the flowers in life, they are fleeting. Try to be that person you admire, and strive to make a better world for all. That's the meaning of life.
Matt Janovic: Dr. Chomsky, in the past you've made comments on the importance of the FBI's COINTEPROs (Counterintelligence Programs) against the Black Panthers and the multi-faceted "New Left" as having a preponderant effect on the demise of these groups in the 1960s and early 1970s--do you feel that the effect of this element of American History is overlooked by most historians?
Noam Chomsky: There is no doubt that this material has been marginalized--by historians, the media, and the intellectual community general. Merely to give one personal example, I have a long article on "domestic terrorism" that is still unpublished after 15 years, apart from excerpts way at the margins. Recently, a leading criminologist asked for it for an anthology, but was finally unable to work it in (not his judgement; he wanted it).But the story is far more dramatic. Simply consider the relative attention given to Watergate and to COINTELPRO. It's a very revealing comparison. They were disclosed at the very same time. COINTELPRO was vastly more significant: it was a program by the national political police, acting on the highest authority through three administrations, to undermine and destroy independent thought and political action; its methods reached as far as Gestapo-style political assassination, under Nixon. These facts are not contested. In contrast, Watergate was a tea party.
For unknown reasons some tenth-rate burglars ransacked a Democratic Party headquarters; one minor part of COINTELPRO was massive disruption of a legal political party, which has the same status as the Democrats in our constitutional system, except that it has no private wealth behind it (the Socialist Workers Party)--that single episode is far more significant than all of Watergate. There was great outrage over Nixon's "enemy list"; nothing happened to anyone on it, as I know personally, since I was on it. But also on it were the head of IBM, McGeorge Bundy, etc., and to call powerful people bad names in private is a scandal that undermines the foundations of the republic. In contrast, to assassinate a Black Panther organizer in an FBI-organized early morning police raid, killing him in bed (probably drugged), is quite OK. And on, and on.
Now, simply check the reaction to these simultaneous disclosures. Ask yourself how Watergate and COINTELPRO figure into the political culture and history crafted by the privileged and educated, and what the impact has been on the repeated disclosure of these very startling and revealing facts. There is only one conclusion: it's a crime to annoy the powerful, but it's fine to terrorize and disrupt the lives of the weak. It could hardly be more clear that that is the dominant value of the political-intellectual culture.
MJ: In past interviews, you've refrained from any call for specific action, yet your analysis of the present domestic and world situation regarding the rights of individuals seems bleak. In the face of such widespread oppression and exploitation by various transnational corporations (usually implemented by the apparatus of domestic governments), why do you generally refrain from doing so?
NC: I don't refrain from calls to specific action. I've undertaken plenty myself, and recommend them to others. What I don't do is stand up on a podium and say: Do This or That. I don't feel I have any right to do so. What I try to do--whether successfully or not others can judge--is to lay out the situation as I see it, encourage others to inquire with independent minds, and when they draw their own conclusions, to act to change what I am convinced they will see as dangerous and often horrifying developments. If asked about specific actions, I always try to answer. And as I mentioned, I've undertaken plenty myself, including organizing direct resistance.
MJ: How did the discussions on the Donahue/Pozner show [Ed-the short-lived political talk show from the early-1990s] on CNBC come about? Did the main host, Mr. Donahue, have any serious problems taking you on a network that is mostly owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor to the Pentagon?
NC: My impression is that Phil Donohue would be very pleased to have people like me on his show regularly, and to get enough corporate sponsorship (it's not easy to get any other, in our system of private tyranny) to allow such discussions to be widely heard. My impression also is that it's not easy even for a person of his stature in the mainstream media to break the rigid rules of Political Correctness imposed by private power, largely. As to whether these impressions are accurate in this particular case, you'd have to inquire elsewhere, of course.
MJ: This is probably pretty pedestrian to you by now, but: do you feel as an older man that youth culture can have a serious and positive impact towards humanistic thought and action, or is it just another social dynamic that we can only exert a minimal amount of control over? Specifically, I'm talking about non-conformist rock culture.
NC: I'm too ignorant to comment, frankly. My impression--and again it's only that--is that the rock culture has had an effect on getting young people to think and act independently. But like the youth culture generally, it's been readily absorbed into the vast system of private power, which wants to distort it to serve its own ends of commercialization, separation of people from one another, and so on. How these tendencies play out, others who know better than I would have to say.
MJ: Why do you think that Europe has maintained a greater tradition of Leftism than the United States.
NC: Europe has been rather different from the US in many respects. As England has fallen more into the US orbit, there are by now quite striking differences between an even broader Anglo-American model and a continental European-Japanese model. It shows up quite clearly in many features of the societies. Take family values: they have been under severe attack for the past 15 years in the Anglo-American model, while support systems have been encouraged and sustained these values in the contrasting model. This has been studied in some depth right in the mainstream, and the results are pretty striking, but you'd have to find all that out. I have some references and comment in the January and February issues of Z Magazine.But this is only one facet. It's even recognized by the Courts. Thus, the Sixth Court of Appeals in a 1994 decision denying legal protection to older workers thrown out of their jobs takes explicit not that "Unlike law and social policy in many European countries, the laws of the United States do not prohibit" actions by owners undertaken for private profit, whatever the effect on workers and communities. In brief, the prevailing values here are that what counts is private power, not human beings. The Court's decision is accompanied by a good deal of utter nonsense about "legal and economic theory," but the distinction the Court draws is quite real, and has been for a long time. US labor history, for example, is unusually violent. Even the right-wing press in England was appalled, for many decades, at the brutal treatment of American workers by the government security forces mobilized by the owners.
What are the reasons? It's a complicated story, but in part it reflects the fact that American society began as a kind of "blank slate," once the native population was exterminated or driven away. It therefore reflected the quite sharply the values of those who had domestic power, business interests overwhelmingly. Of course, they never believed in a free market, and still don't: the US is also unusual in its record of extreme protectionism and public subsidy to private power through the state system ("welfare for the rich," we would call it, if honesty were permitted).
That's the primary reason for the very rapid economic growth of the US. But though the business world has always demanded ample state protection from market discipline, and still does, they've naturally demanded such discipline be imposed rigorously on the poor and defenseless at home and abroad, and have relied extensively on state power to insure that result as well. In societies where industrial capitalism grew out of existing social networks, support systems, traditional societies that recognized a "right to life," etc., the edges of the system were softer, a labor movement was able to survive and grow, and a social contract was achieved that is scarcely known here.
In an era of transnational capital, those systems are eroding everywhere; that's a large part of the perceived value of globalization of production and the huge expansion of speculative financial capital. The whole industrial world is leveling downward under consciously undertaken social policy, for reasons that are well understood. That's not inevitable; contrary to their illusions, these are human decisions taken within human institutions with their own historically contingent power relations, not laws of physics (let alone economics). But it is entirely natural as private tyranny increases its sway worldwide.
On the other hand, there are respects in which the US is much more free than other societies. Take freedom of speech, for example. Since the 1960s, at least, the US leads the world in defending this fundamental right--and it didn't just "happen"; the great 1964 victory at the Supreme Court was part of the civil rights movement, to mention one example. There's also a streak of independence and a lack of deference and class subordination in American social life that's very refreshing, and different from most of the industrial world. More generally, it's a complicated story, and one should be wary of easy formulas.
End of Part 1 (and statement of intellectual ownership): This interview is the intellectual property of Dr. Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic. Permission to reprint, quote, or reproduce can be obtained through written permission from the authors. All rights reserved as of 2007, Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic.
Friday, May 11, 2007
REPS. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA) & JEFF FLAKE (R-AZ) NSA OVERSIGHT AMENDMENT PASSED TODAY: FISA MUST BE OBEYED
“When Congress said the Administration must get court approval for domestic surveillance, we meant it. Today, Congress reaffirmed that basic protection.” --Rep. Adam Schiff, today.
Washington D.C.--Both Reps. Schiff and Flake deserve some thanks from all of us--they've ended the Bush administration's illegal warrantless surveillance programs early this morning. The bill was H.R. 2082, or the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2007, and reaffirms the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978. In other words, you have to have authorization from a federal FISA court for a warrant to surveil suspected terrorists, and whatnot. You cannot simply declare some arcane loophole, or create your own signing-statements or creative interpretations--you have to have a warrant from a FISA judge, period.
Schiff also made some comments today that there could very well be a need for another committee to investigate all of the violations of FISA during the Bush administration, much like the Church Committee in mid-1970s. FISA came out of the findings of the Church Committee that more oversight was needed when the Executive branch was authorizing wiretappings in domestic cases. Congress created these laws because of rampant criminality during the Cold War, and particularly within the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. COINTELPRO needs to be brought-up in the dialog over this, as well as CABLE SPLICER, GARDEN PLOT, and CHAOS. Heady times, eh?
Washington D.C.--Both Reps. Schiff and Flake deserve some thanks from all of us--they've ended the Bush administration's illegal warrantless surveillance programs early this morning. The bill was H.R. 2082, or the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2007, and reaffirms the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978. In other words, you have to have authorization from a federal FISA court for a warrant to surveil suspected terrorists, and whatnot. You cannot simply declare some arcane loophole, or create your own signing-statements or creative interpretations--you have to have a warrant from a FISA judge, period.
Schiff also made some comments today that there could very well be a need for another committee to investigate all of the violations of FISA during the Bush administration, much like the Church Committee in mid-1970s. FISA came out of the findings of the Church Committee that more oversight was needed when the Executive branch was authorizing wiretappings in domestic cases. Congress created these laws because of rampant criminality during the Cold War, and particularly within the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. COINTELPRO needs to be brought-up in the dialog over this, as well as CABLE SPLICER, GARDEN PLOT, and CHAOS. Heady times, eh?
MICHAEL MOORE SHOOTS-BACK, JUST NOT LIKE DICK CHENEY
wAsHInTuhN/ http://www.michaelmoore.com/ --This is getting pretty interesting, and we all knew it was just going to feed-into the publicity of the film "Sicko." Well, everybody knew it except "dry-drunks" Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, our two co-presidents. It's mind-boggling to imagine how stupid or chemically-impaired one has to be to miss this fact: you never respond to the request by Michael Moore to get permission to go shooting his footage in Cuba (Spielberg was granted his right-away, while Oliver Stone had to pay a minimal-fine), then you wait to "bust" him the month before the release of the film with an absurd letter you direct the Secretary of the Department of the Treasury (Henry Paulson) to write and send to Moore with no specific charges or penalties listed in them.
It just doesn't even make any sense. CNN and Fox were chiming-in that "Moore could expect fines up to one million per-violation," which is a lie. A lie is a lie. Not one American filmmaker has ever been fined in such a fashion, and certainly not in the ballpark CNN was claiming. Bizarre, but when you don't have the truth on your side, lies are all you have. I'm proud of Michael Moore for defending himself and confronting this stupid attack on his integrity, and of his film. Nobody has even seen it yet, and we get this. What they want to do is create the appearance of criminality where it simply doesn't exist. Did the Bush administration kill Oliver Stone's "Comandante"? It's a question worth asking.
It all reminds me of the controversies surrounding The Last Temptation of Christ and Apocalypto, only this time the volleys are coming from: the media/press, Big Pharma, the insurance companies, and the White House and their allies in Congress. It's going to be a fine, we all know this. It's unlikely that the Treasury Department are going to want to confiscate the footage of the 9/11 first-responders getting health care they couldn't afford in the United States, that's like shitting on the flag. Moore hit them hard in his open letter to Secretary Paulson:
I believe that the decision to conduct this investigation represents the latest example of the Bush Administration abusing the federal government for raw, crass, political purposes. Over the last seven years of the Bush Presidency, we have seen the abuse of government to promote a political agenda designed to benefit the conservative base of the Republican Party, special interests and major financial contributors. From holding secret meetings for the energy industry to re-writing science findings to cooking the books on intelligence to the firing of U.S. Attorneys, this Administration has shown time and time again that it will abuse its power and authority.
(michaelmoore.com, 05.11.2007)
When you're right, you're right, and Michael Moore is right about this. It's been obvious even before they took-office that this was a bunch of criminals, and now they're trying to create the impression that others are. This is typical criminal behavior, and it's not going to wash in the current political environment. Perhaps because they don't share any of the traditional values the public does, they're just completely unaware of how horrible they truly are.
Even so, the coordinated campaign against "Sicko" is like giving the Weinsteins, Lionsgate, and Michael Moore the best free-advertising one could ever hope for. The stunning thing about all this is that this is the GOP's and the Bush administration's second clumsy attempt at sinking a Moore documentary, only insuring that a critical-mass of publicity comes out of it. It will also insure record box-office for the film, making a wider-release for Moore's next documentary inevitable. After this, Michael Moore is a household name, all thanks to the blundering of dumb CEOs and corrupt politicians. It's been fun watching his work grow since 1989, and I think he's on the right course.
He's not a Father Coughlin or a Huey Long--he's much better than that, and he comes from a solidly blue-collar background. Technology--just as it did with radio in the 1930s--is transmitting the next wave of progressivism, and there will be pratfalls. That's life. I applaud Michael Moore for his activities, he's hitting the right targets, and we all know it. The time has come to bite back, and to never forget that you never let-go. That's the rule of the jungle, you have to do some hitting-back, and you have to defend yourself. It's time that the working-class did just that.
It just doesn't even make any sense. CNN and Fox were chiming-in that "Moore could expect fines up to one million per-violation," which is a lie. A lie is a lie. Not one American filmmaker has ever been fined in such a fashion, and certainly not in the ballpark CNN was claiming. Bizarre, but when you don't have the truth on your side, lies are all you have. I'm proud of Michael Moore for defending himself and confronting this stupid attack on his integrity, and of his film. Nobody has even seen it yet, and we get this. What they want to do is create the appearance of criminality where it simply doesn't exist. Did the Bush administration kill Oliver Stone's "Comandante"? It's a question worth asking.
It all reminds me of the controversies surrounding The Last Temptation of Christ and Apocalypto, only this time the volleys are coming from: the media/press, Big Pharma, the insurance companies, and the White House and their allies in Congress. It's going to be a fine, we all know this. It's unlikely that the Treasury Department are going to want to confiscate the footage of the 9/11 first-responders getting health care they couldn't afford in the United States, that's like shitting on the flag. Moore hit them hard in his open letter to Secretary Paulson:
I believe that the decision to conduct this investigation represents the latest example of the Bush Administration abusing the federal government for raw, crass, political purposes. Over the last seven years of the Bush Presidency, we have seen the abuse of government to promote a political agenda designed to benefit the conservative base of the Republican Party, special interests and major financial contributors. From holding secret meetings for the energy industry to re-writing science findings to cooking the books on intelligence to the firing of U.S. Attorneys, this Administration has shown time and time again that it will abuse its power and authority.
(michaelmoore.com, 05.11.2007)
When you're right, you're right, and Michael Moore is right about this. It's been obvious even before they took-office that this was a bunch of criminals, and now they're trying to create the impression that others are. This is typical criminal behavior, and it's not going to wash in the current political environment. Perhaps because they don't share any of the traditional values the public does, they're just completely unaware of how horrible they truly are.
Even so, the coordinated campaign against "Sicko" is like giving the Weinsteins, Lionsgate, and Michael Moore the best free-advertising one could ever hope for. The stunning thing about all this is that this is the GOP's and the Bush administration's second clumsy attempt at sinking a Moore documentary, only insuring that a critical-mass of publicity comes out of it. It will also insure record box-office for the film, making a wider-release for Moore's next documentary inevitable. After this, Michael Moore is a household name, all thanks to the blundering of dumb CEOs and corrupt politicians. It's been fun watching his work grow since 1989, and I think he's on the right course.
He's not a Father Coughlin or a Huey Long--he's much better than that, and he comes from a solidly blue-collar background. Technology--just as it did with radio in the 1930s--is transmitting the next wave of progressivism, and there will be pratfalls. That's life. I applaud Michael Moore for his activities, he's hitting the right targets, and we all know it. The time has come to bite back, and to never forget that you never let-go. That's the rule of the jungle, you have to do some hitting-back, and you have to defend yourself. It's time that the working-class did just that.
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