Coming June 3: the twin towers of Internet censorship and atomic reactor terror
US Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman are linking Internet censorship with atomic power in a way that should terrify us all.
McCain is the real power behind Lieberman-Warner global warming bill on which the Senate could vote as early as Tuesday, June 3. As a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, McCain is pushing hard for massive subsidies to build new atomic reactors. Despite his "free market" ideology, this bill may hand a half-trillion taxpayer dollars to an industry that cannot get private backing for a failed, terror-target technology.
Now its official co-sponsor, Connecticut's Lieberman, has taken the issue into the realm of Internet censorship. In a recent floor speech, he demanded that YouTube remove numerous postings that he claims promote terrorism. Yet the very bill he and McCain are pushing would force taxpayers to fund atomic reactors that are easily accessible to terrorists as machines of radioactive mass destruction.
McCain is the real power behind Lieberman-Warner global warming bill on which the Senate could vote as early as Tuesday, June 3. As a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, McCain is pushing hard for massive subsidies to build new atomic reactors. Despite his "free market" ideology, this bill may hand a half-trillion taxpayer dollars to an industry that cannot get private backing for a failed, terror-target technology.
Now its official co-sponsor, Connecticut's Lieberman, has taken the issue into the realm of Internet censorship. In a recent floor speech, he demanded that YouTube remove numerous postings that he claims promote terrorism. Yet the very bill he and McCain are pushing would force taxpayers to fund atomic reactors that are easily accessible to terrorists as machines of radioactive mass destruction.
Did the Limbaugh effect also flip Michigan?
With Hillary Clinton rejecting the compromise that Michigan Democratic leaders just crafted, the Democratic Rules Committee has a dilemma. Clinton keeps demanding that Michigan's delegates be apportioned according to the January 15 vote, where she was the sole major candidate on the Democratic ballot. But there's another twist that no one has raised—the impact of a Rush Limbaugh-style crossover on the Michigan vote. Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" quite likely gave Clinton Indiana, provided much of her 4-point Texas margin, buttressed her Ohio win, and decreased Obama's margin in Mississippi. But no one talks about the impact of crossovers on Clinton's self-proclaimed Michigan victory, without which her unopposed candidacy would still have gotten less than 50 percent.
The myth of Clinton's popular vote lead
Given the disappointment of so many Hillary Clinton supporters that the woman they thought would be America's first female president will not be, the more they hear the suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama's win is illegitimate the more likely they are to bolt. If Senator Clinton's voters embrace that story that "a man took it away from a woman,"
denying her a victory she rightly deserved, they're at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and the get-out-the-vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail.
That's why it's so unfortunate that Clinton continues to claim that "we are winning the popular vote." Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has spoken about the need for the party to come together.
Look at Clinton's math. She leads only if you give her 328,000 votes for the Soviet-style Michigan election, while giving Obama zero for not being on the ballot. And we count her full Florida margin, though Obama couldn't campaign there and do what he did in state after state by erasing all or most of once-massive Clinton leads once he began to campaign.
That's why it's so unfortunate that Clinton continues to claim that "we are winning the popular vote." Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has spoken about the need for the party to come together.
Look at Clinton's math. She leads only if you give her 328,000 votes for the Soviet-style Michigan election, while giving Obama zero for not being on the ballot. And we count her full Florida margin, though Obama couldn't campaign there and do what he did in state after state by erasing all or most of once-massive Clinton leads once he began to campaign.
The flip side of glory
An American soldier’s sexual assault of a 14-year-old Okinawan girl has caused a diplomatic crisis that could result in Japan’s refusal to increase its participation in the Iraq war, creating a rare situation indeed: an instance in which rape matters to the U.S. military.
President Bush apologized. Condi Rice even told Japanese leaders that the United States would “try” to prevent such incidents from happening again. My opinion: “Try” is already an admission of helplessness.
The military has no idea what to do with its rape problem because it’s part of the core contradiction out of which today’s military tradition has grown. Military rape, and the denial and/or blame-the-victim vehemence with which it is generally greeted, exposes, perhaps like nothing else, the lunacy of so much of our foreign policy, which is built on assumptions of that tradition that have long been abandoned in most other spheres of life, beginning with the need for a dehumanized, soulless “other” who is the “enemy.”
President Bush apologized. Condi Rice even told Japanese leaders that the United States would “try” to prevent such incidents from happening again. My opinion: “Try” is already an admission of helplessness.
The military has no idea what to do with its rape problem because it’s part of the core contradiction out of which today’s military tradition has grown. Military rape, and the denial and/or blame-the-victim vehemence with which it is generally greeted, exposes, perhaps like nothing else, the lunacy of so much of our foreign policy, which is built on assumptions of that tradition that have long been abandoned in most other spheres of life, beginning with the need for a dehumanized, soulless “other” who is the “enemy.”
Indictment and trial of Bush and Cheney
Remarks made on May 24, 2008, in Radford, Va., at the Building a New World Conference: http://www.wpaconference.org
In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted the current president and vice president of the United States for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international law, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions on "imperial fantasies." If the editorial had been about Bush and Cheney robbing a liquor store or killing a small number of people or robbing a small amount of money or torturing a single child, then the writers at the New York Times would have demanded immediate prosecution and incarceration. Can you guess what they actually demanded? They demanded that we sit back and hope the next president and vice president will be better.
I read a nice column within the past week or so on CommonDreams.org by a college professor named David Orr. He opened with these lines:
In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted the current president and vice president of the United States for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international law, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions on "imperial fantasies." If the editorial had been about Bush and Cheney robbing a liquor store or killing a small number of people or robbing a small amount of money or torturing a single child, then the writers at the New York Times would have demanded immediate prosecution and incarceration. Can you guess what they actually demanded? They demanded that we sit back and hope the next president and vice president will be better.
I read a nice column within the past week or so on CommonDreams.org by a college professor named David Orr. He opened with these lines:
HBO'S "Recount" demands a sequel for 2004...and a prayer for 2008
This weekend's fast-moving, long-overdue HBO docu-drama on the theft of the 2000 election stopped four years short. It did a riveting job of portraying how Team Bush, headed by James Baker, strong-armed its way into the presidency. But it's now time for the major media to finally face up to Act 2 of the GOP's rape of the American electoral system, and produce a piece of equal heft and clout about Ohio 2004. And let's hope it won't be necessary to follow with a third piece on how the GOP could steal 2008.
The most telling moment in this generally credible HBO offering comes at the very end. Al Gore's Florida point man, Ron Klain (as played by Kevin Spacey), spots the victorious James Baker getting on his private plane. Ever the gentleman, Klain approaches Baker to congratulate him, and ask "if the best man won." Baker responds he thinks so.
The most telling moment in this generally credible HBO offering comes at the very end. Al Gore's Florida point man, Ron Klain (as played by Kevin Spacey), spots the victorious James Baker getting on his private plane. Ever the gentleman, Klain approaches Baker to congratulate him, and ask "if the best man won." Baker responds he thinks so.
The politics of peace
So we blink, take a breath, stare once more at the vote total: 149 nay, 141 yea. War funding request denied!
This is a first, fleeting and fluky though it may be. Look quickly and imagine a Congress that doesn’t feed the war god every time it pounds the table. Look quickly and imagine what courage can accomplish. We can breach the fortress of special interests that is our government and let historic change flow in.
Well, maybe. This isn’t the time to get carried away. If the “victory” for peace last week in the U.S. House of Representatives turns out to have historic significance, it will be because history has a sense of humor.
I say this not to denigrate the passionate effort that peace-minded citizens put into it; their lobbying and calls to power have created a constituency that 147 Democrats and two Republicans were unable to ignore.
This is a first, fleeting and fluky though it may be. Look quickly and imagine a Congress that doesn’t feed the war god every time it pounds the table. Look quickly and imagine what courage can accomplish. We can breach the fortress of special interests that is our government and let historic change flow in.
Well, maybe. This isn’t the time to get carried away. If the “victory” for peace last week in the U.S. House of Representatives turns out to have historic significance, it will be because history has a sense of humor.
I say this not to denigrate the passionate effort that peace-minded citizens put into it; their lobbying and calls to power have created a constituency that 147 Democrats and two Republicans were unable to ignore.
Can a civil rights/feminist presidential union put John Edwards on the Supreme Court?
As the end game for the Democratic nomination takes shape, the historic union of the feminist and civil rights movements has never been more in evidence. Nor has the next upcoming appointment to the US Supreme Court ever been more pivotal.
It's no accident that for the first time in history, we have both an African-American and a female contender. No matter what one may think of the two individuals -- their stands on the issues, their personalities, their "baggage" -- the margins between them are very small. They are each a product of historic movements that have come to this moment precisely at the same time, and in partnership. It will be difficult for the Democrats to win without the full, enthusiastic support of both of them.
Part of this confluence can be told through parallel voting rights histories. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, allegedly guaranteed the right to vote "regardless of race." The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing the ballot for women, came a full fifty years later.
Does that say this country is more sexist than racist?
It's no accident that for the first time in history, we have both an African-American and a female contender. No matter what one may think of the two individuals -- their stands on the issues, their personalities, their "baggage" -- the margins between them are very small. They are each a product of historic movements that have come to this moment precisely at the same time, and in partnership. It will be difficult for the Democrats to win without the full, enthusiastic support of both of them.
Part of this confluence can be told through parallel voting rights histories. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, allegedly guaranteed the right to vote "regardless of race." The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing the ballot for women, came a full fifty years later.
Does that say this country is more sexist than racist?
Gravediggers of the world unite! Capitalism must die...
"What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have… .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”
–Derrick Jensen
(Perhaps my profane words will offend, but in light of the fact that we are in a race to eradicate capitalism before it renders the Earth uninhabitable, I don’t give a fuck).
Yes. It’s another anti-capitalist rant by Jason Miller. Big surprise! I’m the associate editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online, the anti-capitalist tool. We’re not big fans of free market ideology and its tacit socioeconomic license to rape, pillage and plunder.
–Derrick Jensen
(Perhaps my profane words will offend, but in light of the fact that we are in a race to eradicate capitalism before it renders the Earth uninhabitable, I don’t give a fuck).
Yes. It’s another anti-capitalist rant by Jason Miller. Big surprise! I’m the associate editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online, the anti-capitalist tool. We’re not big fans of free market ideology and its tacit socioeconomic license to rape, pillage and plunder.
The penta-pundits
Well, why shouldn’t the Pentagon put its four-stars on the tube to ladle out patriotic talking points to the American public like mess hall stew?
There’s a straightforward quasi-honesty to government-managed news, which only has a weird feel because the Penta-pundits had to pose as impartial analysts and play along with the image the networks wanted to project: seriousness, independence, etc. How demeaning that their meetings with the Secretary of Defense had to be secret — an embarrassment awaiting ultimate exposure by the New York Times.
Let us consider the awkwardly evolving nature of war. Even as its psychological support diminishes among a public grown skeptical of any enterprise that requires ultimate sacrifice and absolute faith — and influenced, at least at the margins of its consciousness, by a permanent and growing pro-peace movement — it is more necessary than ever, as the engine that drives such a large part of the economy and makes so many people rich. The war machine can’t simply be dismantled. War must remain “inevitable.”
There’s a straightforward quasi-honesty to government-managed news, which only has a weird feel because the Penta-pundits had to pose as impartial analysts and play along with the image the networks wanted to project: seriousness, independence, etc. How demeaning that their meetings with the Secretary of Defense had to be secret — an embarrassment awaiting ultimate exposure by the New York Times.
Let us consider the awkwardly evolving nature of war. Even as its psychological support diminishes among a public grown skeptical of any enterprise that requires ultimate sacrifice and absolute faith — and influenced, at least at the margins of its consciousness, by a permanent and growing pro-peace movement — it is more necessary than ever, as the engine that drives such a large part of the economy and makes so many people rich. The war machine can’t simply be dismantled. War must remain “inevitable.”