May 30, 2007
Letter: Ron Paul 'dangerous to the arrogant pigs'
By TOM MARTIN, Shelbyville
Dated: May 30, 2007
SOURCE: JournalGazette-TimesCourier
 |
| The Neocons' lies don't work on Ron Paul |
Ron Paul has by polls taken on the Internet won both recent presidential debates hands-down. But, all the major medias have black-balled him. They are denying him any exposure time unless it’s to tar him as a “kook” or someone too ridiculous for Americans to listen to in earnest.
Now, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, Saul Anuzis, has decided Americans need to be shielded from Paul’s logic, insights and truthfulness. Paul ventured in the last debate that constant U.S. interference in the Middle East provided a major provocation for terrorists ... the very same conclusion the establishment’s own 9/ll Commission arrived at. And yet, Rudolph Giuliani toed the establishment line when he poo-pooed Paul’s thinking as an “absurd explanation.” And now, the chairman of the Michigan GOP says he will try to bar Paul from future GOP debates!
Even the so-called “objective” talking heads on TV and radio are being sicked on Ron Paul like pit bulls. It’s the same tried-and-true tactic used by those who pulls the strings of this nation every time someone appears who has some decently thought out ideas. They call them names, defame them and make the general public see him or her as dangerous.
Ron Paul is dangerous. He’s dangerous to the arrogant pigs in Washington who have grown fat off the American people. If the GOP bar Paul from the debates, I won’t vote — especially GOP — ever again.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2007
Neo-Con Rudy Guiliani Attacks Paleo-Con Ron Paul
Rudy Giuliani v. Ron Paul, and Reality
by John Nichols
Dated: May 16, 2007
SOURCE: The Nation
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| Flabbergasted Guiliani can't believe Ron Paul would dare to tell the truth. |
The most heated moment in the debate, which aired live on the conservative Fox News network, came when the former New York mayor and current GOP front-runner angrily refused to entertain a serious discussion about the role that actions taken by the United States prior to the September 11, 2OO1, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have played in inspiring or encouraging those attacks.
Giuliani led the crowd of contenders on attacking Texas Congressman Ron Paul after the anti-war Republican restated facts that are outlined in the report of the The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Asked about his opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Paul repeated his oft-expressed concern that instead of making the U.S. safer, U.S. interventions in the Middle East over the years have stirred up anti-American sentiment. As he did in the previous Republican debate, the Texan suggested that former President Ronald Reagan's decisions to withdraw U.S. troops from the region in the 198Os were wiser than the moves by successive Republican and Democratic presidents to increase U.S. military involvement there.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2007
How MSNBC Misled the Public
by Charles Delvalle
Dated: May 11, 2007
SOURCE: Investor's Daily Edge
People who know me well know that I love politics. So being the dork that I am, I naturally watched the Republican and Democratic primary debates during the past few weeks.
But something about the Republican debate really got me steamed. And I thought I’d share it with you because it’s a perfect example of how the media can distort what’s really going on.
During the Republican debate, most people who tuned in wanted to see how well McCain, Giuliani, and Romney would do. These viewers are the political diehards. They know most of the candidates and just wanted to see them in action.
But there was a shocking standout. And viewers showed their love for him by calling him the winner in subsequent ABC and MSNBC online polls.
That person is Ron Paul.
For those who haven’t heard of Ron Paul, he’s considered a libertarian. He advocates a smaller government, lower taxes, abolishment of the IRS and the income tax (which he says is illegal since there is no law saying you have to pay them), he’s against unbacked currency (are you listening, Rusty McDougal?), and most importantly, opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.
He’s the type of person advocates of a free market love, while representing everything politicians hate. Let me explain.
American politicians do well by listening to lobbyists. So if I was a politician and Google asked me to support a bill on net neutrality (which supports a network free from hardware and communication restrictions, thereby treating every bit of traffic that goes through the network the same), I would figure out whether I was for or against it. If I was for it, I’d introduce a net neutrality bill and Google would help me get re-elected.
Now, if you’re a politician who’s against government spending, lobbyists won’t cozy up to you. And this is where Ron Paul finds himself.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2007
Ron Paul and the MSNBC Debate
By: Jacob G. Hornberger
Dated: May 10, 2007
SOURCE: Lew Rockwell
During the recent MSNBC Republican presidential debate, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made three profound points on U.S. foreign policy that the American people would be wise to heed. Needless to say, Paul’s three points, being libertarian in nature, aren’t likely to be favorably received within the Washington, D.C., establishment, especially among lobbyists for the military-industrial complex. Perhaps that is why, despite Paul's first-place finish in post-debate polls conducted by MSNBC, ABCNews.com, and C-SPAN – or maybe because of those results – the Washington Post used its lead editorial on Tuesday to specifically question Paul’s participation in the rest of the Republican presidential debates.
The first point was that the Iraq War violated the traditional American policy of foreign nonintervention that characterized our nation through most of the first 125 years of its existence. What Paul was referring to was summed up in the speech that John Quincy Adams delivered to Congress on the 50th anniversary of the Fourth of July: that America does not “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” and that, if America were ever to embrace such a policy, the “fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force” and she would become “the dictatress of the world.”
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2007
Unconstitutional Legislation Threatens Freedoms
by Congressman Ron Paul
Dated: May 7, 2007
SOURCE: www.house.gov/paul/
Last week, the House of Representatives acted with disdain for the Constitution and individual liberty by passing HR 1592, a bill creating new federal programs to combat so-called “hate crimes.” The legislation defines a hate crime as an act of violence committed against an individual because of the victim’s race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Federal hate crime laws violate the Tenth Amendment’s limitations on federal power. Hate crime laws may also violate the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and religion by criminalizing speech federal bureaucrats define as “hateful.”
There is no evidence that local governments are failing to apprehend and prosecute criminals motivated by prejudice, in comparison to the apprehension and conviction rates of other crimes. Therefore, new hate crime laws will not significantly reduce crime. Instead of increasing the effectiveness of law enforcement, hate crime laws undermine equal justice under the law by requiring law enforcement and judicial system officers to give priority to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Of course, all decent people should condemn criminal acts motivated by prejudice. But why should an assault victim be treated by the legal system as a second-class citizen because his assailant was motivated by greed instead of hate?
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:11 AM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2007
Hillary to Herd GOP Cattle
by Alex Wallenwein
Dated: May 2, 2007
SOURCE: OpEdNews.com
The GOP leader(less)ship is back at its favorite game: Herding conservative voters into the arms of “non-con” (neeocon) candidates for US President in 2008. As so often before, conservatives are being told what to think and what to fear - and this time, of course, it’s Hillary.
In an interview printed as an editorial of the Wall Street Journal, Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s representative in Washington DC was quoted by Naomi Schaefer Riley as saying that “with Hillary Clinton looming on the horizon, electability is a very important issue," continuing on by noting that "even among the unelectable" (like Brownback and Hunter) evangelicals can't make up their mind.
The editorial is basically a rundown of Land’s views on who in the republican party would make a good choice for US president according to evangelicals, who wouldn’t, and why. Schaefer Riley then editorializes in the last paragraph of her report about the interview:
“As he throws his weight around in the Republican primaries, trying to ensure a socially conservative candidate comes out on top, Mr. Land also knows the bottom line. Mrs. Clinton has announced that if she becomes president, the troops will be pulled out of Iraq within 90 days. To avoid that outcome, evangelical voters in this country might be willing to tolerate just about anything.”
So, there you have it. A new set up for installing another “lesser evil” at the helm of the nation Funny thing, that is, as evangelicals should by definition not vote for anything even remotely evil if they actually deserved their name, but, hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to stay in power or to throw your weight around, I suppose.
So, who is Land’s choice?
“Mitt Romney” (the double-talking, flip-flopping “avid hunter” who unlike Dick Cheney would luckily probably shoot his own foot before he managed to hit any external target) is “still a good possibility” he said.
Hmm.
Interesting that, from the GOP leadership’s view, the only conservative candidates who are worth electing (at least to conservatives who still believe the Republican party is “their” party) are decreed to be “unelectable.” It is always the windy ones, those who can be molded, those who change their rhetoric around whenever needed, who are declared to be “electable.”
Naturally, Republican cattle will feed werever their herders graze them, unless ...
Unless a real conservative like Ron Paul actually gets his message in front of enough people. Strangely, almost all who ever actually listen to Ron end up seriously considering the validity of his views, even though they may go against what people were trained to believe are the “hot button issues” in this election.
Just take the good folks with the “Health Care” T-Shirts who came to listen to Ron Paul at a New Hampshire stop. Watch how they listen while he talks in this YouTube clip. Not one of them actually asks a question about health care after listening to him.
It just isn’t that big a deal when you’re talking about whether this country will even exist any longer after neocon (or liberal) Bush-successors get done with their “NAU” (North American Union) program. Liberals’ only objections to this scheme are about labor or environmental issues. They don’t understand that, after the Constitution goes kaput, so will their rights to express liberal view - or any views for that matter.
The GOP leadership knows that if Ron Paul gets elected, they will utterly lose control of the white house, and they need control of the White House to push their NAU agenda.
That’s why Hillary beating Obama in the primaries is so important to them. They GOP would rather have Hillary win than a real conservative like the infamous "Congressman No."
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)
Getting Iraq War Funding Wrong Again
by Congressman Ron Paul
Dated: April 30, 2007
SOURCE: www.house.gov/paul/
This week, Congress finalized the controversial $124 billion Iraq emergency supplemental spending bill, with the House and Senate both voting in favor of final passage. The majority of my Republican colleagues and I voted against this measure, and the president has vowed to veto the legislation.
In this final version, the House leadership retained billions of dollars in pork meant to attract skeptical votes, retained a watered-down version of the problematic “benchmarks” that seek to micromanage the war effort, and continued to play politics with the funding of critical veterans medical and other assistance. In other words, this final version was even worse than the original in almost all respects.
As I wrote when this measure first came before the House, we have to make a clear distinction between the Constitutional authority of Congress to make foreign policy, and the Constitutional authority of the president, as commander in chief, to direct the management of any military operation. We do no favor to the troops by micromanaging the war from Capitol Hill while continuing to fund it beyond the president’s request.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
We Just Marched In (So We Can March Out)
by Congressman Ron Paul
Before the House of Representatives
Dated: April 17, 2007
SOURCE: Ron Paul's Speeches and Statements
All the reasons given to justify a preemptive strike against Iraq were wrong. Congress and the American people were misled.
Support for the war came from various special interests that had agitated for an invasion of Iraq since 1998. The Iraq Liberation Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton, stated that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was official U.S. policy. This policy was carried out in 2003.
Congress failed miserably in meeting its crucial obligations as the branch of government charged with deciding whether to declare war. It wrongly and unconstitutionally transferred this power to the president, and the president did not hesitate to use it.
Although it is clear there was no cause for war, we just marched in. Our leaders deceived themselves and the public with assurances that the war was righteous and would be over quickly. Their justifications were false, and they failed to grasp even basic facts about the chaotic political and religious history of the region.
Congress bears the greater blame for this fiasco. It reneged on its responsibility to declare or not declare war. It transferred this decision-making power to the executive branch, and gave open sanction to anything the president did. In fact the founders diligently tried to prevent the executive from possessing this power, granting it to Congress alone in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution.
For the full speech, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
Government and Racism
By Congressman Ron Paul
Dated: April 16, 20076
SOURCE: Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk
The controversy surrounding remarks by talk show host Don Imus shows that the nation remains incredibly sensitive about matters of race, despite the outward progress of the last 40 years. A nation that once prided itself on a sense of rugged individualism has become uncomfortably obsessed with racial group identities.
The young women on the basketball team Mr. Imus insulted are over 18 and can speak for themselves. It’s disconcerting to see third parties become involved and presume to speak collectively for minority groups. It is precisely this collectivist mindset that is at the heart of racism.
It’s also disconcerting to hear the subtle or not-so-subtle threats against free speech. Since the FCC regulates airwaves and grants broadcast licenses, we’re told it’s proper for government to forbid certain kinds of insulting or offensive speech in the name of racial and social tolerance. Never mind the 1st Amendment, which states unequivocally that, “Congress shall make NO law.”
Let’s be perfectly clear: the federal government has no business regulating speech in any way. Furthermore, government as an institution is particularly ill suited to combating bigotry in our society. Bigotry at its essence is a sin of the heart, and we can’t change people’s hearts by passing more laws and regulations.
In fact it is the federal government more than anything else that divides us along race, class, religion, and gender lines. Government, through its taxes, restrictive regulations, corporate subsidies, racial set-asides, and welfare programs, plays far too large a role in determining who succeeds and who fails in our society. This government "benevolence" crowds out genuine goodwill between men by institutionalizing group thinking, thus making each group suspicious that others are receiving more of the government loot. This leads to resentment and hostility between us.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2007
300 vs. Iran (and Herodotus)
A Racist and Insulting Film
By Gary Leupp
Dated: April 1, 2007
SOURCE: Counterpunch
I always take in the Hollywood period dramas set in ancient Greece or Rome. My film-buff son is into this too, so we went last week to see 300, the Warner Brothers' blockbuster produced by Zack Snyder and based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller about the epic battle of Thermopylae between the Greeks and Persians. It had by that time grossed over 100 million dollars and no doubt influenced a lot of minds.
The film tells a familiar historical tale. (Rather, it ought to be familiar, but history instruction in our public schools is not necessarily comprehensive.) In 480 BCE, Greece was threatened by an invasion by the Persian army, the greatest war machine of its day. The empire of King Xerxes extended from the Indus River to Egypt, and drew its troops from the ends of the realm. The king personally led them in battle against the Greeks.
Or rather, some of the Greeks. Greece at the time was a collection of city-states, politically disunited, divided as much as unified by dialect and culture. Some city-states, including Argos and Thebes, actually aligned themselves with Xerxes. Herodotus, the "Father of History" and perhaps the world's first professional historian, paints a picture of a "free" Greece united against an oppressive "Asia." But that is a chauvinistic simplification. The fact is, Persia and the Greek city-states were all slave-based societies whose notions of "freedom" had little in common with our modern conception.
According to Herodotus (our sole source), 300 Spartan warriors alongside 700 Thespian volunteers defended the pass of Thermopylae against the invaders, inflicting heavy losses on Xerxes' forces. Led by Spartan King Leonidas, they went down in defeat but gave rival Athens time to prepare the fleet that decisively defeated the Persians at Salamis a few months later.
The story has been dramatized before, notably in the 1962 Hollywood production 300 Spartans starring Richard Egan as Leonidas and David Farrar as Xerxes. This new version is distinguished by what one critic calls the "monochromatic, cartoonish quality of [its] computer-generated special effects"---and by its timing. Warner Brothers had been planning a remake of the 1962 film since the late 1990s, based on a novel by Stephen Pressfield entitled Gates of Fire, with Bruce Willis in the role of Leonidas. But that project fell through, paving the way for 300---just in time to help subliminally shape the movie-going public's perception of Persians prior to the attack planned on today's evil empire by Vice President Cheney and his neocon staffers.
Persia is Iran. (I want to say, "Persia, of course, is Iran." But I can't assume that all or even most Americans make the connection.) The word comes from "Fars," a region of modern Iran, while "Iran" is related to the word "Aryan" and connotes "land of the Aryans." In 1935 the Persian shah opted to use the name "Iran" but the two terms are basically interchangeable. "Persia" just doesn't have the emotional baggage of "Iran." During the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-81, many dealers in Iranian rugs decided to call them "rugs from Persia." Persia on occasion has thus served as the good Iran, the historical cultural Iran, as opposed to the modern evil enemy. But 300 makes Persia evil too.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2007
Why is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List?
And Who Isn't But Should Be?
By Franklin Lamb
Dated: April 6, 2007
SOURCE: Counterpunch
It was a sign of the times last week (March 27) when House Armed Services Committee Staff Director Erin Conaton declared in a memo to committee staffers that the powerful committee was scrapping the Bush Administration shop worn phrase, Global War of Terrorism. Conaton's boss, Rep. Ike Skelton,( D-Mo) the new Chairman of the Committee commented that "the overused label had become an embarrassment and had lost its meaning".
Recent research in Lebanon has turned up information previously unavailable which sheds light of the misapplication of the Terrorism label by the Bush administration.
The" T word" is often misapplied as former National Security Advisor Brzezinski reminds us as he tours the country promoting his new book, Second Chance and focusing on the "catastrophic leadership" crisis caused by the Bush administration's foreign policy.
Another area that would benefit from discarding the "terrorist label" is the Bush administration's ongoing campaign against Hezbollah. There is considerable doubt among international lawyers whether Hezbollah should ever have been classified as a terrorist organization.
At the urging of U.S. and Israel, Canada classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which limits the group's ability to raise funds and travel internationally. . A Canadian peace coalition called Tadamon Montreal is working to remove Hezbollah from the Terrorism list in Canada.
Australia and the UK distinguish between Hezbollah's security and political wings, and other countries like China, Russia, and member states of the European Union and the United Nations have refused US/Israel demands to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization at all.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2007
Rep. Ron Paul on War, Peace, and the News Media
by Michael Shank
Dated: March 23, 2007
SOURCE: Antiwar.com
Michael Shank: You've said that "It's nothing more than a canard to claim that those of us who struggled to prevent the bloodshed and now want it stopped are somehow less patriotic and less concerned about the welfare of our military personnel." During wartime this is often the case. How can one work to counter this tendency to claim that those who question or work to stop a war are unpatriotic?
Rep. Ron Paul: It's very difficult because the executive branch, and particularly the president, always has the bully pulpit. He can say it over and over and over again, and it's always heard: "If you don't vote for the money and you don't support the policy, you don't support the troops." And that's not true because if you're spending money to support a policy that puts the troops in harm's way, performing a task that's unachievable, then you're doing everything in the world to hurt the troops. You're doing everything you can to undermine the rule of law because it's an undeclared illegal war and it's very detrimental economically. So to argue that you're unpatriotic because you don't support the troops, because you don't support the policy, is a canard, it's just not true.
Even the strong opponents to the war, in the Congress here, are intimidated by that. Not so much that they believe it, but they're intimidated, they say "when I go home the people are going to say that I'm unpatriotic and I don't support the troops and I don't support national defense and I might lose my congressional seat." As political pragmatists they back away from doing what I'm quite sure a lot of them would know would be the right thing to do. And that is to change the policy and de-fund the war.
Shank: And what role does the media play in reinforcing the idea that opposition to the war is unpatriotic?
Paul: They repeat everything the president says and they don't ask tough questions. They would very rarely give those of us that have opposed the war from the very beginning any credibility. For very special reasons, I think, they aren't interested in having an anti-war policy. They have other reasons for wanting us to be there and they're not hesitant at all to continue that policy and they don't want their policy undermined.
Shank: For political or economic reasons?
Paul: There are a lot [of reasons]. There is something to the old saying about the military industrial complex and the banking system and that some countries in the Middle East like us to be there. It's not only Israel. Saudi Arabia likes us to prop them up. We've been doing that for a long, long time. There's a lot of special interest there and a lot of people who are deceived into believing that we couldn't drive our cars if we weren't over there, because we wouldn't have the oil supply protected. They don't realize that since we've been there the price of oil has tripled. It isn't very practical.
Shank: In a House floor speech you noted the "misinformation given the American people to justify our invasion" in Iraq. In perhaps the world's most free democracy, where free speech prevails, how does misinformation like this go unchallenged?
Paul: Fortunately it always gets challenged; the unfortunate thing is that it's always very late. We're getting to the bottom of the truth. People spoke out in elections. Now there's a different party in charge. There are going to be more investigations. But the real tragedy is that a lot of people die in the meantime. We finally found out that the Gulf of Tonkin was all fudged, and yet we lost 60,000 men. Now we have the misinformation, that's a generous term, about getting us involved in Iraq. We've lost a lot of people, and literally hundreds of thousands are applying for disability. And it goes on and on.
To me, it is a real tragedy. The media, if they're not in conspiracy to promote war, they're not doing a very good job by asking questions. And nobody knows what their intent really is. Sometimes the media and big industry are very often the same company.
Intellectually, if you want to stay strictly on an intellectual level, our society has been engrained with the attitude that we have a moral obligation to intervene. Some people don't think in terms of non-intervention versus intervention. The debate here in Washington is always: we intervene this way, this way, or that way, with whom and how far and how long. It's always the technicalities of intervention. But we're never taught in school what our traditions have been and what the founders advised and what the constitution allows. Even the UN charter talks more about peace; they don't even authorize war in the UN charter. And we ignore that too.
There's a lot of ignorance out there, and a lot of it is perpetuated in our universities. Except today we're getting a broader education through the Internet. More people are understanding some of our views. So I think in spite of all the pessimism, we're much better off today than we were 20 years ago when our voices were not heard at all. Today, our voices are being heard a lot easier because of the Internet.
Shank: In one of your speeches, titled "Don't Do It, Mr. President", you urged the president to not bomb Iran. Why are you so against a military invasion of Iran?
Paul: Because I'm against military activity in almost every circumstance when war isn't declared. I recognize there are a few times our president could act but I think I pointed out in one of my speeches that I can't remember a time that the president was required to act, i.e. that it was so necessary: the tanks were landing, there was a landing on our beach, the missiles were flying. It's never happened.
The president has the authority to repel an invasion or an attack. But going into Iran doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's going to expand the war, spread the war, and probably close down the Straits of Hormuz. We don't have the authority nationally or internationally. It's just the most foolish thing I could conceive of. And yet it looks like there's bipartisan consensus that we can't take anything off the table. We can't even take off the table that we might use a nuclear first strike to go after Iran. They don't even have a weapon and our CIA says they probably can't get one for 10 years. And even if they did have one, what are they going to do with it? Are they going to attack us? They wouldn't do that.
Yet at the same time we stood up against the Soviet system. They probably had 30,000 nuclear warheads and they had the capability of launching missiles at us. We didn't have to have a nuclear war to finally win the cold war. We talked to them and there were negotiations.
Their system was a failed system, and it failed. The Iranian [system] will fail too if we just leave them alone. They can never become a power capable of attacking us. They don't have an air force, they don't have a navy. It's an unbelievable, hysterical reaction on our part to become so frightened that we have to attack people like Saddam Hussein. It just bewilders me how people can fall into a trap of believing these stories that are put out and that the media propagates.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2007
Is 2008 The Year Conservatives Abandon The GOP?
by Chuck Baldwin
Constitution Party 2004 Vice-Presidential Candidate
It is no hyperbole to say that conservatives throughout America are extremely disappointed and disillusioned with the national Republican Party. This discouragement is only deepened as they peruse the field of prominent candidates being trotted out as "frontrunners."
It appears that conservatives will be asked to choose between the chameleon Mitt Romney, the pro-amnesty-for-illegal-aliens John McCain, and philanderers Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani. A few conservatives seem slightly excited that former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson is mulling entrance into the presidential race. However, a closer inspection of his voting record finds him to be just another globalist neocon, who would do little to change things in Washington, D.C. For example, Americans for Better Immigration gives him a puny career grade of "C."
The Republican Party’s unwillingness to advance a genuine conservative has left millions of grassroots Republicans on the verge of leaving the GOP. For example, a poll at the recent CPAC meeting found the "overwhelming majority of conservatives displeased with the leadership of the Republican Party, and most conservatives scowl at the thought of having to vote for Rudoph Giuliani, John McCain, or Mitt Romney."
In fact, the displeasure of grassroots conservatives with the GOP manifested itself in the creation of the Conservative Exodus Project (CEP), which was formed immediately following the recent CPAC meeting. According to organizers, CEP "is a vehicle for conservatives to leave the GOP if a real conservative presidential candidate is not chosen in 2008." Members pledge either to not vote, or to vote third party (e.g. Constitution Party).
CEP adherents use a fivefold litmus test to reveal a "real conservative." 1) He must oppose the "third-world invasion of the United States and reject amnesty and any path to citizenship for illegals." 2) He must "oppose free trade, the support of which has become an ideological suicide pact." 3) He must be a "moral candidate, critical of secularism, who embodies the virtues of the Christian Western tradition." 4) He must oppose the "illegal neocon war in Iraq." 5) He must "wish to see big government reduced in size-in all three branches-and for many offices and functions to be returned to the states, where they Constitutionally belong."
Proponents of the CEP make the following commitment: "Unless the above criteria are met, we pledge to stay home or vote third-party in 2008."
To which I say, Hallelujah! Not to the staying home part, but to the voting third-party part.
It is past time for conservatives to admit that the national Republican Party has crossed the point of no return and has no intention of nominating a genuine conservative for president. The GOP has become nothing more than a big-government, no-borders, war party. If true conservatives are going to have a voice in Washington politics, it will have to come through an independent party.
That is not to say that there are not genuine conservatives in the GOP presidential race. Congressman Ron Paul of Texas embodies everything the CEP is looking for. Beyond that, if he should miraculously win the nomination, he would, no doubt, receive broad support in the general election. He would solidify the conservative base of the GOP and would be very popular among independents, libertarians, and even conservative Democrats.
The problem is, the GOP leadership, including the money-machine, refuses to support the independent-minded Ron Paul. They want another puppet to carry out the marching orders of their CFR cronies. However, if rank and file Republicans, and if Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and other leaders of the Religious Right, would support Ron Paul, the globalist elitists within the GOP could be defeated.
Absent a Ron Paul nomination, true conservatives will have nowhere to go next year, except to a third party. In fact, it is my prayer that if Paul does not obtain the Republican nomination, he would lead the exodus to the Constitution Party.
It is time for conservatives to do more than hold their noses and vote for the "lesser of two evils." It is time for them to vote their principles and their conscience. It is time to only support genuine conservatives, even if that means such candidates can only be found in a third party.
It’s too late for business-as-usual. We need a revolution! And thanks to the wisdom, sagacity, and foresight of America’s Founding Fathers, we have a system in place whereby the American people can change their government anytime they choose to do so. I pray 2008 will be the year they choose to do so.
To learn more about the Conservative Exodus Project, go to http://www.conservativeexodusproject.com/
To learn more about the Constitution Party, go to http://www.constitutionparty.com
Posted by andrewanissi at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
Ron Paul and the naked Pajamas Media
Dated: March 19, 2007
WND Exclusive Commentary Ron Paul and the naked Pajamas Media
Posted: March 19, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
I was not asked to be a part of Pajamas Media. That was just as well, as I would have declined to participate for three reasons. The first was that I regarded it as a stupid business plan, about as well-conceived as the idea of selling dog food over the Internet. While there is some genuine demand for news and opinion, the supply approaches that post-scarcity vision of which neo-Marxian economists happily dream.
The second reason was the much-publicized involvement of various individuals I neither like nor respect. That's completely subjective, of course, but is closely connected to the third reason, which is not. This third reason was that it was clear from the start that many of those involved with Pajamas Media saw the mainstream media as a club to which they hoped to be admitted, not an unnecessary evil better disrupted and left for dead on the roadside of technological advancement.
(Column continues below)
The chief role of the media in modern American society is to act as an intellectual gatekeeper, determining which thoughts are to be deemed permissible and which are not. To give one of many possible examples, it is considered unacceptable to doubt the verity of the Holocaust or global warming, lest one be labeled a ''denier,'' whereas identical doubts about other, equally well-established facts merely causes one to be described as a ''skeptic.''
With regards to politics, the rule applies to the concept of ''electability.'' Electability has nothing to do with whether a candidate is actually considered electable based on any rational grounds such as his achievements, electoral record or appeal to the voting public, but rather how acceptable he is to the gatekeepers. Thus, a comedian, a lisping, thrice-married man holding political positions diametrically opposed to his nominal party's or a confirmed satanist serving time for child rape and murder will all be described as being more ''electable'' than a popular congressman without a hint of scandal whose best-known political cause is supported by 80 percent of the American public.
''Electable'' in this context merely means ''acceptable.''
As I wrote nearly two years ago, it is the Democratic faction's turn to take over the White House, which is why the ruling party's other faction is, according to the rules of the great game, staunchly determined to nominate a wildly unelectable individual in the Bob Dole mode. It doesn't matter if it's Giuliani and his speech impediment, McCain and his speech-banning impediment or Romney and his sacred underwear impediment, none of these men have a ghost of a chance of beating any Democratic candidate for president, let alone the Lizard Queen and her scorched-earth political destruction machine. Ironically, that's precisely what makes them ''electable'' for the purposes of the nomination.
Conservative Republicans understand this on some level, which is why so many are depressed about polls showing that the lisper has a lead on the speech banner. (No one ever took the Mormon seriously, except those who get overexcited about executive hair. Our presidential selection process would be about as genuinely democratic and would definitely be more fun if we simply had Romney and Edwards stage a Zoolanderesque hair-off for the White House.)
And the truth is that there are alternatives, genuine alternatives to the three-part multiple choice quiz, but the mainstream media is, as always, doing its best to prevent anyone from considering them. And in their best freshmen-at-the-frat-house fashion, Pajamas Media is playing precisely the same game, as evidenced by their 2008 Pajamas Media Presidential Straw Poll.
The eighth week of the PAJAMAS MEDIA PRESIDENTIAL STRAW POLL has officially begun. Bill Richardson and Rudy Giuliani were again winners in the seventh week with over 70,000 votes now cast. Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich (undeclared) were runners-up on the Democratic and Republican sides respectively.
What the headline fails to mention is that in the Feb. 19 Pajamas Media poll, Ron Paul, the Texas congressman and now a declared candidate for the Republican nomination, roundly defeated Rudy Giuliani, 43.1 percent to 20.1 percent. Moreover, he did so by winning more votes, 1,769, than Giuliani subsequently did in winning the Mar. 4 (1,431) and Mar. 11 polls (1,158).
The innocent observer might wonder how Ron Paul could slip so much in three weeks that Giuliani could surpass him with fewer votes, or that a disgraced adulterer and non-candidate for president like Newt Gingrich could claim second place. Did his actual declaration of his candidacy on Mar. 11somehow inspire a backlash against him? No, the truth is much more simple.
Because they didn't like the results, Pajamas Media simply dropped Ron Paul from the poll, while retaining the likes of George Pataki, Tommy Thompson and other no-hopers who aren't even running for president!
Pajamas Media has thus declared Rep. Ron Paul to be unelectable on the basis of his demonstrated respect for the United States Constitution, his allegiance to Republican ideals and his commitment to human liberty. This speaks rather better of Ron Paul than it does of Pajamas Media and their naked ambition to tell the American people what they are and are not permitted to think.
Posted by andrewanissi at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2007
A Note To Homos
This week, General Pace pointed out that homosexuality is wrong. People practicing homosexuality, predictably, demanded an apology. Unfortunately, General Pace, while not apologizing, still retreated, saying that he should not have spoken about his moral views, but should instead have stuck to the subject of military policy.
This was a mistake. General Pace should absolutely voice and advocate his views of what is right and wrong, and there is no reason for him to have to hide it. Furthermore, General Pace should have demanded an apology from homosexuals, for having perveted and twisted American culture and society.
This is a note to all the homosexuals out there. First of all, there is really no such thing as a "homosexual," there are only people who commit homosexual acts, just as there are people who use drugs or commit murder.
You grew up in a decadent culture which has failed to instill you with hope, glory, purpose, or identity, and your will, having been weakened by confusion, has become a slave to your basest bodily desires. You’re a pervert, and rather than admitting that sordid truth to yourself, you cling to a more neutral sounding label, and then proceed to aid in advocating that label’s place in society, thus contributing to further decadence of culture. For some of you, it’s an act of pure weakness, and for others its an act of rebellion against a civilization to which you feel that you do not belong. But when you act like this, you truly don’t belong and the rest of us don’t want you.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2007
The Scandal at Walter Reed
By Hon. Congressman Ron Paul
Before the U.S. House of Representatives
Dated: March 7, 2007
SOURCE: Ron Paul's Speeches and Statements
The scandal at Walter Reed is not an isolated incident. It is directly related to our foreign policy of interventionism.
There is a pressing need to reassess our now widely accepted role as the world’s lone superpower. If we don’t, we are destined to reduce our nation to something far less powerful.
It has always been politically popular for politicians to promise they will keep us out of foreign wars, especially before World War I. That hasn’t changed, even though many in Washington today don’t understand it.
Likewise it has been popular to advocate ending prolonged and painful conflicts like the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and now Iraq.
In 2000, it was quite popular to condemn nation building and reject the policy of policing the world, in the wake of our involvement in Kosovo and Somalia. We were promised a more humble foreign policy.
Nobody wins elections by promising to take us to war. But once elected, many politicians greatly exaggerate the threat posed by a potential enemy-- and the people too often carelessly accept the dubious reasons given to justify wars. Opposition arises only when the true costs are felt here at home.
A foreign policy of interventionism costs so much money that we’re forced to close military bases in the U.S., even as we’re building them overseas. Interventionism is never good fiscal policy.
Interventionism symbolizes an attitude of looking outward, toward empire, while diminishing the importance of maintaining a constitutional republic.
We close bases here at home-- some want to close Walter Reed-- while building bases in Arab and Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. We worry about foreign borders while ignoring our own. We build permanent outposts in Muslim holy lands, occupy territory, and prop up puppet governments. This motivates suicide terrorism against us.
Our policies naturally lead to resentment, which in turn leads to prolonged wars and increased casualties. We spend billions in Iraq, while bases like Walter Reed fall into disrepair. This undermines our ability to care for the thousands of wounded soldiers we should have anticipated, despite the rosy predictions that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq.
Now comes the outrage.
Now Congress holds hearings.
Now comes the wringing of hands. Yes, better late than never.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2007
Persian Gulf of Tonkin Incident
by Leon Hadar
Dated: February 26, 2007
SOURCE: The American Conservative
The Iraq War has produced many, sometimes contradictory, historical analogies, ranging from Munich to the fall of Saigon, as pundits highlight their dubious relevance to Mesopotamia.
Following President Bush’s Jan. 11 speech on U.S. policy in Iraq, in which he accused Tehran of meddling and threatened to “interrupt” the flow of support to Iraqi insurgents, Sen. Chuck Hagel added a new analogy: Nixon’s decision to expand the war in Vietnam into Cambodia as part of a strategy to “interrupt” the flow of support to those other insurgents, the National Liberation Front, from sanctuaries along Cambodia’s eastern border.
“[O]nce you get to hot pursuit, no one can say we won’t engage across border,” Hagel told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “Some of us remember 1970 and Cambodia, and our government lied to us and said we didn’t cross the border,” he said. “When you set in motion the kind of policy the president is talking about here, it is very, very dangerous.”
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2007
Monetary Policy is Critically Important
by Ron Paul
dated February 19, 2007
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Continue reading "Monetary Policy is Critically Important"
Posted by andrewanissi at 03:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2007
Statement on the Iraq War Resolution - by Ron Paul
HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
Before the U.S. House of Representatives
Dated: February 14, 2007
This grand debate is welcomed but it could be that this is nothing more than a distraction from the dangerous military confrontation approaching with Iran and supported by many in leadership on both sides of the aisle.
This resolution, unfortunately, does not address the disaster in Iraq. Instead, it seeks to appear opposed to the war while at the same time offering no change of the status quo in Iraq. As such, it is not actually a vote against a troop surge. A real vote against a troop surge is a vote against the coming supplemental appropriation that finances it. I hope all of my colleagues who vote against the surge today will vote against the budgetary surge when it really counts: when we vote on the supplemental.
The biggest red herring in this debate is the constant innuendo that those who don’t support expanding the war are somehow opposing the troops. It’s nothing more than a canard to claim that those of us who struggled to prevent the bloodshed and now want it stopped are somehow less patriotic and less concerned about the welfare of our military personnel.
Osama bin Laden has expressed sadistic pleasure with our invasion of Iraq and was surprised that we served his interests above and beyond his dreams on how we responded after the 9/11 attacks. His pleasure comes from our policy of folly getting ourselves bogged down in the middle of a religious civil war, 7,000 miles from home that is financially bleeding us to death. Total costs now are reasonably estimated to exceed $2 trillion. His recruitment of Islamic extremists has been greatly enhanced by our occupation of Iraq.
Unfortunately, we continue to concentrate on the obvious mismanagement of a war promoted by false information and ignore debating the real issue which is: Why are we determined to follow a foreign policy of empire building and pre-emption which is unbecoming of a constitutional republic?
Continue reading "Statement on the Iraq War Resolution - by Ron Paul"
Posted by andrewanissi at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2007
Saddam Died Beautiful
By Gary Brecher
SOURCE: eXile
FRESNO -- A lot of office boys like to talk about "old school." I'll tell you who was old school: Saddam Hussein. Saddam died beautiful. It's the truth and you know it. Fact is, the longer we stay in Iraq the better Saddam looks. He never had a tenth of our money or weaponry but he did what we can't: kept that bag of snakes in order.
And what a way to go! Damn, did you see that cellphone video of his death? A bunch of Shia monkeys in ski masks woofing at him -- safe behind their masks, with Saddam handcuffed and under guard -- woofing like cockapoos at a pit bull heading for the Pound's death cell. And Saddam laughed at them, especially when they chanted the name of their pissant Imam, Moqtada al-Sadr. You can hear him on that jerky cellphone video sneering, "Moqtada?" And Saddam earned the right to laugh; he killed Sadr Sr. and kept Junior so terrified he didn't dare show his fat face until Saddam was gone and only the wimp occupiers were in charge.
Saddam told the ski-mask monkeys they weren't real men. And he had the right to say that too. Call him what you want, but Saddam was a man, a real man. One of the last. To me, watching that execution was like watching Planet of the Apes: a bunch of de-evolved primates killing the last man. Saddam looked like the 20th century in that overcoat and hat. He'd lost weight in prison. Never flinched, not once. You try that: going to the gallows with your blood enemies screaming insults at you. See if you can hold your bladder, never mind answer back as fast and calm as he did.
Continue reading "Saddam Died Beautiful"
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2006
Out of the 20th century ashes, and a restoration of glory
by Andrew A. Anissi
Dated: November 19, 2006
I often lament that this decade, thus, far, has been nothing but a repeat of the 1980's, in terms of culture, politics, and the lack of intellectualism, but I'm quickly realizing that on a longer term basis, America appears to be repeating the 20th century entirely. We're angrily debating between evolution and creationism, as if the two were mutually exclusive. We're letting international bankers push us around which will inevitably lead to another world war. We're once again trying to re-learn that scientific method cannot operate by calculation alone, and requires reason and intuition for achievements and discoveries to be made, though for the time our academics and researchers seem to be stuck on statistics as the replacement of thought. We're too busy trying to understand how to force competing sub-cultures to co-exist rather than building a national culture by which to inspire. And worst of all, we're all to focused on trying to take money out of the system artificially by playing the market, rather than trying to create something new and add to our community. Rather than becoming a proud nation, we're becoming narcissistic, meaning we have arrogance without self-respect. We started out the 20th century as a great civilization, and we ended it in utter decadence. If we have to repeat all of our 20th century struggles, let's do it right this time and restore our people's glory.
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2006
Poor timing
by Andrew A. Anissi
When am I at my stupidest?
That would be when I'm in the same room as a girl I'm interested in. My intelligence reaches a level that only pounding a pint of bourbon or getting punched in the head could bring about so rapidly.
When am I at my smartest?
That would be about two minutes after a girl I'm interested in leaves the room. I suddenly morph into the wittiest, cleverest, most charming person imaginable. My this-is-what-I-should-have-said-and-done lines are nothing but pure genius. They could separate wives from husbands. You remember how Paris of Troy was so charming that Helen of Sparta betrayed King Menelaus and caused all of Greece to go to war? Yeah, about two minutes after a girl I'm interested in leaves the room, I'm more charming than that. It's hell.
Posted by andrewanissi at 09:24 PM
July 12, 2006
Sama
The name of the Babylonian sun god, Shammash, comes from an older word, "Sama" which meant servant. In Japanese, "Sama" means "Sir." Japan is a place of sun worship, dating back to an Aryan incursion into Japan around the historical time of Amaterasu. Is there a connection?
Posted by andrewanissi at 10:32 PM
June 01, 2006
The Haditha Massacre and the Shame of Our Leaders
Dated: June 1, 2006
SOURCE: The Nation
Why Haditha Matters
Enough details have emerged from survivors and military personnel to conclude that in the town of Haditha last November, members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment perpetrated a massacre. The killings may have been in retaliation for the death of a Marine lance corporal, but this was not the work of soldiers gone berserk. The targets (children from 3 to 14, an old man in a wheelchair, taxi passengers), the hours-long duration of killings, the number of Marines involved, the careful mop-up--all amount to willful, targeted brutality designed to send a message to Iraqis. As Representative John Murtha has pointed out, the patently false story floated afterward, blaming the killings on roadside bombs, and Marine payoffs to survivors imply a cover-up that may extend far up the chain of command.
What matters about Haditha? After all, Iraq is a place where civilians die every day. Many of them die as a result of insurgent car bombs, or at the hands of Sunni or Shiite militias. Many thousands of others died in US air attacks early in the war (as civilians did recently in airstrikes in another US war zone, Kandahar).
Even in this context there remains a distinctly sickening horror in close-up systematic killing of civilians that's at odds with the declared US mission in Iraq and is repugnant to our national ideals. Even under intense battlefield conditions, troops can instigate atrocities, or they can resist them. In the My Lai massacre, in 1968, Hugh Thompson Jr., an American helicopter pilot, saved many lives by putting himself between the guns of Charlie Company and the villagers whom those behind the guns--led by their officers--were wantonly killing. A generation of future US military officers were taught the details of the My Lai massacre as a particular lesson: What makes war crimes is criminal leadership. Whatever the responsibility of the unit commanders in Haditha, it is George W. Bush as Commander in Chief who has sent the clear message that human rights abuses and violations of international law are justified in the "war on terror."
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:37 PM
May 17, 2006
Dobbs: Bush speech satisfies nobody
by Lou Dobbs
Dated: May 17, 2006
SOURCE: CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's address from the Oval Office on border security and illegal immigration failed to satisfy either advocates of amnesty or those demanding that the government secure our borders and ports. Whether by design or not, however, the president did manage to advance public awareness of both crises.
The president finally acknowledged the unsustainable social and economic burdens of permitting millions of illegal aliens to forge documents, pressure our public schools and hospitals, and overtax our local and state budgets.
And the president, in asking for more border patrol officers and sending 6,000 National Guardsmen to our southern border to support the Border Patrol, also acknowledged the federal government's utter failure to protect the American people by securing our borders, across which as many as three million illegal aliens enter this country each year.
President Bush's five-point plan began with the words, "First, the United States must secure its borders." But the president did not assign any urgency to the national task of doing so. Deploying as many as 6,000 members of the National Guard to help secure our broken border with Mexico is positive step.
But the president's proposal to place those National Guardsmen in some sort of adjunct support role is peculiar at best, and without question, woefully inadequate. The president sounded as if he were trying to appease Mexico's President Vicente Fox, assuring him we would not militarize the border. If there is to be appeasement at all, that should fall to the Mexican government rather than President Bush.
Not only are millions of illegal aliens entering the United States each year across that border, but so are illegal drugs. More cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana flood across the Mexican than from any other place, more than three decades into the war on drugs.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 10:47 AM
April 09, 2006
Why dropping nukes may not be the best way for President Bush to 'save' Iran - or secure his place in history
by Stuart Jeffries
Dated: April 10, 2006
SOURCE: The Guardian (UK)
First the good news. Britain is unlikely to participate in the nuclear bombing of Iranian atomic weapons research facilities. Instead, our role in any forthcoming nuclear blitz will be to fill the blogosphere with sarcastic posts and make tut-tutting noises. The latter may or may not be heard above B61-11s slamming nukes into Iran's Natanz centrifuge plant, which is challengingly located 75ft below ground.
Guessed the bad news? That's right, the White House is considering nuking Iran. According to a forthcoming article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, President Bush reckons that "saving Iran is going to be his legacy". Not, then, the bang-up job he did next door. Nor the visionary way he mopped up New Orleans.
Article continues
(Incidentally, a new survey from Clerkenwell University (ie, me) concludes that the new trend in politicians seeking legacies is a bad one, geopolitically speaking. It recommends that leaders should consider ensuring their place in history in other ways. They should have, say, tea roses named after them rather than securing immortality by planting a mushroom cloud 200 miles south of Tehran. Just a thought.)
But is this really bad news? I have amazingly few Pentagon contacts, but one leading Stateside militarist rang yesterday to explain the strategy. He said: "Shut your liberal cryhole, you pussy-assed, aesthetically challenged denizen of a rain-soaked dime of a country, sir!" By which I took him to mean that a surgical strike on Natanz would be a feasible option and one that would have the defensible aim of stopping President Ahmadinejad using nuclear weapons to wipe Israel off the map.
Israel's 1981 strike on Saddam's Osirak nuclear reactor is a much-quoted precedent. That, though, was an attack using conventional weapons. US military strategists argue that what they jauntily call "nuclear penetrator munitions" are necessary to get past anti-aircraft batteries, through six-foot walls and reinforced concrete roofs to destroy Natanz's huge underground halls that may house 50,000 centrifuges that may be capable of providing enough enriched uranium for 20 nuclear warheads a year.
But even if this nuclear blitz were successful in destroying Natanz, it could still be futile relative to American aims. For all the Pentagon knows, Natanz may not be essential to Iran's nuclear weapons programme. Retired US Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner told the Washington Post: "We could bomb it, take the political cost and still not set them back." The only certain effects, then, would be increased Iranian radiation levels and an equally horrible non-nuclear fallout of more terrorism and anti-western feeling. The blitz might consolidate Ahmadinejad's position in Iran and make him even less likely to invite Ehud Olmert over for tea than hitherto.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 10:46 PM
April 07, 2006
Rochester and the Decline of Cheap Oil
by Clarke Conde
Dated: April 5, 2006
SOURCE: Rochester City News
When James Howard Kunstler's first book, "The Geography of Nowhere," came out in 1994, talk about running out of oil was akin to talk about that fake moon landing. Crackpots, oil executives, and every undergraduate geology student in the county knew we were approaching the peak of worldwide oil production, but most people had better things to worry about. Most still do.
Almost immediately after his book was published, Kunstler become the go-to guy for biting criticism of America's built environment. His four non-fiction books and popular blog (The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle) have focused on the unsustainable aspects of our culture. Like a revival preacher, he has railed against what he sees as our asinine insistence on constructing car-dependent sprawl and our blindness toward our impending energy problems. His message is to repent while there is still time.
Extreme, maybe. Wrong, maybe not. Increasingly, the concept of an end of the cheap oil era has been percolating into the mainstream culture on the wings of Iraqi war critics. Major media outlets including Time, National Geographic, and "60 Minutes" have weighed in, but none have taken Kunstler's view that the results will be an end to globalism, suburbs, and easy motoring. Kunstler sees a wholesale change in every aspect of our lives.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:38 AM
March 29, 2006
Why a War With Iran?
Why does the Neo-Con Bush Adminstration want a war with Iran? The answer is partly for commercial reasons and partly for the Israel lobby.
One commercial reason is that if Iran build nuclear power plants, it can sell a lot more oil on the international market, and the price of oil and gas will come down, directly impacting companies like Halliburton. Another commercial reason is that the Neo-Cons are heavily invested in the war industry: oil, weapons, etc. (not to mention the ease of diverting the war budget to overpriced contracts with Halliburton & friends).
The Israel lobby, of course, has been pushing extremely hard for a war on Iran, and generally enjoys American wars on Middle Eastern countries, because it gives them an opportunity to villify Muslims and thus an excuse to steal more land in their quest for Greater Israel, while slaughtering Palestinians by the truckload.
Hopefully, we will soon elect a new administration that will govern in support of American interests, rather than the interests of a few usurpers, war profiteers, and bankers who treat humanity like financial shares. I say soon, because the current adminsitration (Pres and Vice) should be impeached and removed from office, and new elections held early.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:14 PM
March 25, 2006
Nader in RIT talk lashes out at credit card ills
by Frank Bilovsky
Dated: March 25, 2006
SOURCE: The Democrat & Chronicle
here's a good chance you have something that Ralph Nader doesn't — a credit card.
"I do not have a credit card," the consumer advocate told an audience of about 350 at Rochester Institute of Technology Friday afternoon. "I have never had a credit card. And I will never have a credit card."
He doesn't like the invasion of privacy.
"Privacy, of course, is constitutionally protected, but not statutorily protected," he said. "There's an interesting discrepancy there."
He says credit cards increase the price of the goods we buy. They can tempt people to overbuy. Cardholders are exposed to "all kinds of rip-offs."
"And generally speaking, it's none of other people's business what products you buy and when you buy them," he said. "But in the credit card economy, it is."
Nader took his shots at the credit card industry during a lecture on the problems created by banking deregulation.
The speech was sponsored by RIT's College of Business, which also announced Friday that it was establishing a research center and academic concentration in consumer financial services.
Robert Manning, business professor and author of Credit Card Nation, will be director of the center. The new bachelor's degree in business will give students training in the areas of personal finance/debt.
And that, Nader says, is something virtually all of us need.
"We are losing control of our money relentlessly, year after year, and not even mobilizing against it," said the three-time Green Party presidential candidate.
He said that deregulation of the banking industry allowed the creation of superglobal banks that combined services such as insurance and financial services that until deregulation had not been permitted by law. And most usury laws were eliminated, allowing the banks to charge huge late fees and other charges.
He sees a day when 10 superbanks will be all that's left at the top. And that, he says, is a recipe for disaster.
"Studies show, the less likely to provide loans to small businesses, the bigger the bank," he said. "The more likely to charge high fees and penalties, the bigger the bank."
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:47 PM
March 20, 2006
A Collapsing Presidency
By Paul Craig Roberts
Dated: March 20, 2006
SOURCE: Counterpunch.org
| The Republicans' intolerance for debate makes many Americans uneasy about the real purpose of the $385 million detention camp that Halliburton is building in the US for the Bush administration. |
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At one time we dared not even to whisper. Now we write and read samizdat, and sometimes when we gather in the smoking room at the Science Institute we complain frankly to one another: What kind of tricks are they playing on us, and where are they dragging us? gratuitous boasting of cosmic achievements while there is poverty and destruction at home. Propping up remote, uncivilized regimes. Fanning up civil war. And we recklessly fostered Mao Tse-tung at our expense-- and it will be we who are sent to war against him, and will have to go. Is there any way out? And they put on trial anybody they want and they put sane people in asylums--always they, and we are powerless.
Things have almost reached rock bottom. A universal spiritual death has already touched us all, and physical death will soon flare up and consume us both and our children--but as before we still smile in a cowardly way and mumble without tounges tied. But what can we do to stop it? We haven't the strength?
For the full essay, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:03 PM
February 09, 2006
Strong Convictions?
by Andrew A. Anissi
I'm sitting here at Cafe Pick Me Up in the Eastwich (11th St. and Avenue A in Manhattan) trying to read Google News, and I overheard a bit of the conversation of the two girls sitting next to me. They were talking about convictions. The girl in the red sweatshirt told her friend that people with strong convictions scare her. The friend, with her legs crossed, and twirling her hair with one hand, agreed, saying, "Yeah, fuck convictions." The two young ladies went on to elaborate their belief that convictions block discussion, and that it's better not to have convictions and to always leave room for debate.
While their argument is valid, I disagree on the following ground: Strong convictions are the basis of all passion. Without any strong convictions, we might as well be dead. If you're analyzing this paragraph logically, I'll have to throw in the following axiom:
One is only truly living life when one is living it passionately. The rest of the time, one is merely watching one's self going through the motions of life, like a robot.
To disagree with me on valid grounds, you must believe that a life without passion can be worthwhile. I would counter by saying that unpassionate acts are not your own acts, but merely the acts of your physicality. However, I only say that because I'm a dualist.
Monists will put everything in terms of physicality, which typically leads to a certainty of doom, which the monist uses as an excuse for a life of self indulgent hedonism. But if I were a monist, and believed in inevitable doom, I would still insist that passionate action is the only meaningful aspect of life, and is, under monist existence, even more important because the opportunity for such action is so much more limited.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:48 PM
February 06, 2006
Perpetuating the Neo-Con Worldview
"Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld Comes to NY
by Katrina Vanden Heuval
Dated: February 6, 2005
SOURCE: The Nation
On February 17th, Secretary of Defense Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld will visit the Council on Foreign Relations, the citadel of America's foreign-policy establishment. The topic of his talk is one Terry Southern, father of "Dr Strangelove," could have devised: "New Realities in the Media Age." (The meeting starts at 12:15 and the Council is located at 58 East 68th Street in Manhattan.)
Whose "new realities" will Rumsfeld talk about? The realities of a White House in which a key aide told a reporter that this Administration has scorn for the "reality-based community"? ("We're an empire," the aide told the reporter, "and when we act, we create our own reality.")
Maybe Rumsfeld will tell us how the "new reality" foreign policy is devised by a "cabal" in this White House--a "cabal" which, according to Colonel Lawrence Wilkinson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top assistant, has hijacked our foreign policy. Or perhaps he'll explain the "new realities" of the worldview held by Vice-President Cheney, Rumsfeld and a handful of top staffers, including the indicted Scooter Libby, which has led us into a disastrous war, set the stage for torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and encouraged the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame?
For the full article, click HERE.
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:55 PM
February 03, 2006
One Party
How can one party, the Republican Party, encompass libertarians AND nationalists AND neo-cons. The interests of these factions are each so different and contary to one another, yet somehow the Republican Party is held together. What could possibly connect these people? Is it simply the fact they're united in their disgust of the Democrats' cowardice and inability to take a stance on anything? That's probably part of it. What the Republicans' laughable claim to moral superiority (e.g. Bush's insistence that we must NOT allow genetic testing with human cells, and that abortion MUST be stopped). That's the other part. But how can people not see through such a scheme? I believe people ARE starting to see through it, and that the Republican Party will be fractured. But likely, the Democrats will return to power and people will be so disgusted that they reunite the fractured Republican Party into one strong group that will be again re-elected. It's the same story again and again.
Posted by andrewanissi at 01:45 PM
February 01, 2006
President panders to anti-manimal lobby! Dr Moreau flees country in rage!
January 31, 2006
Source: Pharyngula
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"Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos."
It's pure political calculus. He throws away the mad scientist and pig-man vote, and wins the religious ignoramus vote…and we know which one has the majority here.
For the full article, click HERE.
Posted by andrewanissi at 06:42 PM
January 25, 2006
Desperate Times Call For Drastic Measures
Student calls for use of landmines to secure borders
By JOHN SOSBE
The Georgetonian
There has been a gradual invasion of our country for many years, and it is time we began to defend against it more effectively. I am of course talking about the problem of defending the Mexican border from illegal immigrants. While I am sure it will be criticized by many as harsh, or even inhumane, I advocate the use of landmines as a deterrent to illegal immigrants. I would like to think that it is not necessary to resort to such an extreme measure, but I warn you that it is indeed necessary.
By placing large fields of landmines, we could deter many illegals from trying to enter the country. This would free border patrol agents of patrolling long empty stretches of border, and funnel illegals to chokepoints where they are more likely to be captured. This would be more cost effective and successful than hiring more border guards.
Posted by andrewanissi at 09:05 AM
January 20, 2006
New York Sucks
And it's your fault.
by Krestia Degeorge
SOURCE: Rochester City News
January 18, 2005
Albany's a wreck.
But you knew that already. You've read countless articles and editorials about late state budgets, high tax rates, and other problems.
What you may not have read, though, is a comprehensive description of all those problems --- and why you should care about them --- all in one place.
That's where a recently released book comes in. "The Politics of Decline," written by the Gannett News Service's Albany bureau chief, Jay Gallagher, fills that big-picture vacuum.
There are probably few journalists as qualified to write such a book as Gallagher, who's been covering statehouse news and politics for more than two decades.
"There's no question that he's one of the elder statesmen of the capitol press corps," says Michael Cooper, Albany bureau chief for the New York Times. At press conferences, Gallagher's often first out of the box with tough questions, says Cooper, and among reporters he's known equally for his wisdom and common sense. (He's also known among capitol reporters for doing a mean Eliot Spitzer impression at correspondents' banquets.)
The book had its genesis when Gallagher noticed two simultaneous trends: the dysfunction in government --- which he'd witnessed ever since arriving in Albany --- was steadily growing worse, even as the state's economy did the same.
For the full article, click HERE
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:19 AM
December 19, 2005
Christians killed pagans, then stole their traditions
Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
Original article available HERE.
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Early Christians did more than just take the "virgin born resurrected deity" myth from the Pagans. They also took the communion, 12 disciples, the fish symbol, the star of the east, the clasped-hands prayer position, the miracle-working central cult figure, the return delusion and numerous other myths, theological fairy tales and rituals.
It wouldn't be correct to say that those early doomsday cultists actually stole these theological inventions from the pagans. Instead, what happened was that several groups of Jews began combining elements of Judaism with Greek, Egyptian and other pagan religions. They eventually became called Christians.
It would not be long, however, before these overblown doomsday cultists began committing large-scale acts of vandalism and murder, now actually stealing the fairy tales of the people they brutalized. Please don't believe the lies of the myth-pushers or their brainwashed victims.
What should we believe? Where did the pagans get the idea to make this holiday the birthday of their imaginary gods?
I have a holiday card that depicts a character who is telling the truth about the natural origins of Christmas. It says, "I'm the reason for your holiday season" -- the Sun.
I believe it is truly immoral, and even criminal, to claim that Christian fairy tales are uniquely Christian. In reality, it is an act of re-stealing from and re-murdering our ancient ancestors.
Believe the truth. Merry solstice.
Terry E. Libby
Posted by andrewanissi at 11:04 PM
December 08, 2005
And Now, the Fake News From Iraq
Our top 10 suggested headlines for the Pentagon's new, new journalism
SOURCE: The Village Voice
December 2nd, 2005 9:46 AM
by Jason Vest
So the Pentagon has been planting news stories in Iraq, eh? Yesterday, the New York Times reported that one of the headlines straight from the brass reads: "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq."
We think the long arm of the American Empire can do better than that. To wit, we submit the following:
Continue reading "And Now, the Fake News From Iraq"
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:53 PM
The Twilight of Conservatism
By Thomas E. Woods Jr.
December 5, 2005 Issue
The American Conservative
The rise of Bushism wouldn’t have surprised Robert Nisbet.
“War and the military are, without question, among the very worst of the earth’s afflictions,” an American conservative of distinction once wrote, “responsible for the majority of the torments, oppressions, tyrannies, and suffocations of thought the West has for long been exposed to. In military or war society anything resembling true freedom of thought, true individual initiative in the intellectual and cultural and economic areas, is made impossible—not only cut off when they threaten to appear but, worse, extinguished more or less at root. Between military and civil values there is, and always has been, relentless opposition. Nothing has proved more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms than has war and the accompanying military mind.”
Continue reading "The Twilight of Conservatism"
Posted by andrewanissi at 07:45 PM
December 05, 2005
The Revolt of the Generals
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Source: counterpunch.org, December 5, 2005
The immense significance of Rep John Murtha's November 17 speech calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq is that it signals mutiny in the US senior officer corps, seeing the institution they lead as "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth", to use the biting words of their spokesman, John Murtha, as he reiterated on December his denunciation of Bush's destruction of the Army.
A CounterPuncher with nearly 40 years experience working in and around the Pentagon told me this week that "The Four Star Generals picked Murtha to make this speech because he has maximum credibility." It's true. Even in the US Senate there's no one with quite Murtha's standing to deliver the message, except maybe for Byrd, but the venerable senator from West Virginia was a vehement opponent of the war from the outset , whereas Murtha voted for it and only recently has turned around.
Continue reading "The Revolt of the Generals"
Posted by andrewanissi at 09:37 AM
December 01, 2005
American Religion
The American civilization, while being the home of numerous sub-cultures, lacks a culture of its own, in many ways. While literature may be running strong and American music is still struggling to stay above water, a true home-grown American religion is one cultural necessity that has always been lacking. Everyone needs an ideal both that they can relate to and that they can respect, but Americans continue to wait for such a god to be born. The only real American religion, the only true ideal, has been that of wealth, excess, and power, and the American is left with nothing else to strive for. A cool cynicism born out of despair has made virtue no longer a virtue, while a strong sense of spirituality and a hunger for something divine has left the country divided up amongst itself. Half of the country has submitted to the ideal of wealth, excess, and power and that half lives for the American dream of crushing one’s enemies and stepping on their shoulders to financial victory, while the other half questions the validity of wealth as a spiritual ideal and the end goal of existence. The younger generations are dissociated with the old religions of thousands of years ago, born in foreign lands and times that do not in any way resemble America today, and the older generations, like a looping algorithm, carry out old religious rituals that have been handed down from ancient times, because they have no alternative and fear the lack of something to hang on to and identify themselves with.
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:25 PM
November 23, 2005
An Unnecessary Crisis - Setting the Record Straight About Iran's Nuclear Program
[This is a NY Times full-page ad by the Iranian government to explain their position on the legitimate use of nuclear technology by a sovereign nation.]
THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2005
(Author: Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United
Nations - 622 Third Avenue New York, NY 10017)
In a region already suffering from upheaval and uncertainty, a crisis is
being manufactured in which there will be no winners. Worse yet, the hysteria
about the dangers of an alleged Iran nuclear weapons program rest solely and
intentionally on misperceptions and outright lies. In the avalanche of anti-Iran
media commentaries, conspicuously absent is any reference to important facts,
coupled with a twisted representation of the developments over the past 25
years. Before the international community is led to another "crisis of choice",
it is imperative that the public knows all the facts and is empowered to make an
informed and sober decision about an impending catastrophe.
Continue reading "An Unnecessary Crisis - Setting the Record Straight About Iran's Nuclear Program"
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:34 PM
November 16, 2005
When In Paris ... What Should Algerians And Moroccans Do?
by Frances Stead Sellers
Frances Stead Sellers is an assistant editor of Outlook for The Washington Post.
Last summer I visited a woman in Paris for whom I once worked as an au pair. Over lunch in her apartment in the city's elegant 7th arrondissement, Chantal told me that she was about to leave for a trip to Iran with a few female friends, and she described - with her exquisite French fashion sense - what she planned to wear. She had bought several long robes, she explained, and they would reach from her neck out to her wrists and down to her ankles, thus shrouding her entire body. When her adult daughter suggested she could show respect for Iran's Muslim culture by covering only her hair with a simple silk scarf, she said, No. Not the slightest piece of neck must show. She planned to conceal everything but her face.
When in Iran, Chantal explained, she would do as the Iranians do.
Not that such accommodations would be expected of visitors to Paris these days, she added, slightly acerbically. Or of visitors to Amsterdam, London or Rome, for that matter. Even many immigrants who now make their homes in those cities, Chantal said, continue to live largely according to their old ways.
Continue reading "When In Paris ... What Should Algerians And Moroccans Do?"
Posted by andrewanissi at 10:23 AM
November 15, 2005
Confessions of a Repentant War Supporter
by William Frey
SOURCE: antiwar.com
I supported George W. Bush in the presidential election in 2000, believing then that he best reflected my love for America and our tradition of liberty. I supported the war in Afghanistan. In March of 2003, I believed the invasion of Iraq was justified based upon prewar revelations presented to Congress and the American people. Accordingly, the indictments contained herein apply, first and foremost, to myself.
Continue reading "Confessions of a Repentant War Supporter"
Posted by andrewanissi at 10:09 AM
October 15, 2005
How Hip
Andrew A. Anissi
It appears that how hip one can claim to be, nowadays, depends directly upon the generation of iPod one carries. My mom now owns an iPod Nano, and I'm still on my fourth generation monochrome click-wheel iPod, putting my hipness at about the level of Pavement or Mogwai. You know what I mean, they were pretty cool...back then. The only way I can catch up now is to get one of those new video iPods. Then I will be hip once again. I was about to list some current, late 2005 hip bands, but I suddenly realized that I have no idea. I'm stuck in '03 - '04. Well...I guess I can point to Electric 6. They were very 2003, but I just saw them live and they're coming out with a new album. Yeah, Electric 6. Hip like a new iPod. Sorry, that's the best I can do.
Posted by andrewanissi at 05:06 PM
October 14, 2005
Opening a closed society
A forced Islamic identity creates a profound confusion to distinguish the real Iranian identity from the forged one
October 12, 2005
Identity is a series of collective characteristics by which a person should be recognised as a part of a given group. In my article, I raise up the question whether the Iranian identity is distinct.
The main reason of this identity crisis isthe process of political and social polarisations of the Iranians in recent decades rather than a material or immaterial substance of the past histor