We're under the illusion that the lives, loves, mores and money of the rich and famous are more interesting, important and worthy of attention than our own. It's just another symptom of how messed up every aspect of our media-driven culture is. Marty Kaplan
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Guernica
Commemorating Sixty Nine Years Of Terror Bombings
By Bob Higgins April 27, 2006
Today or yesterday is an anniversary of sorts, a day of commemoration, a day to reflect on what it is in man that dooms him to endless repetition of his mistakes.
Maybe it's just a day to spit on the sidewalk, hitch up your pants and say, "same shit, different day" and let man worry about himself.
Sixty nine years ago Hitler and Mussolini decided that propping up their soul mate Francisco Franco would offer them a great opportunity to test out all the new high tech military hardware they had amassed.
This was bad news for a Basque city called Guernica and 1500 or 6000 or 16,000 of it's inhabitants. The number is uncertain, record keeping tends to go out the window when the entire universe is a collage of blood and body parts.
For in a Republic, who is 'the country'? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant, merely a temporary servant,it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
There is scarcely any part of science, or anything in nature, which those imposters and blasphemers of science, called priests, as well Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or sought to pervert to the purpose of superstition and falsehood.
Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and seeks to pursue us into eternity.
"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way-things I had no words for."
"I hate flowers...I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move."
"I've been terrified every day of my life but that's never stopped me from doing everything I wanted to do."
"The days you work are the best days."
Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time - and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.
If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.
So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. ...
Well, I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.
"...Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas.
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. James Madison, Federalist 47,1788
When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican, or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for the Republican every time.
"I don't like bipartisans. Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know that he's going to vote against me."
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix."
The Republicans believe that the power of government should be used first of all to help the rich and the privileged in the country. With them, property, wealth, comes first. The Democrats believe that the power of government should be used to give the common man more protection and a chance to make a living. With us the people come first.
There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions.
Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell.
Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.
Thought For The Day "...should the present foment in Europe not produce republics everywhere, it will at least soften the monarchical governments by rendering monarchs amenable to punishment like other criminals." Thomas Jefferson .. on hearing the news that the French had guillotined the king and established a republic 1793
As many of you know by now, The Huffington Post reported yesterday that Senator Clinton slammed the activist organization Moveon.org at a fundraiser in February:
How many economists have you read or watched on television in recent years that claimed the economy was performing well while you struggled to make ends meat and keep up with the cost of living? Indeed, until recently a happy talk virus had infected a cabal of conservative plutocrats who preached the virtues of limited regulation, market forces and free trade as wages declined and predatory lenders had a party. It seemed we were hearing conservative politicians and their mouthpieces at the Heritage Foundation or Fox news refer to the economy as "the greatest story never told" at every opportunity.
Now that the housing and credit crisis has metastasized, conservative apparatchiks are fighting to minimize government intervention on behalf of regular folks while preserving corporate welfare. They accuse anyone who raises a fuss of waging class warfare. Instead these agents of the status quo prefer we erroneously obsess about Social Security going bust and agree to privatize it for Wall Street's benefit.
In the sermon just minutes before his death, Archbishop Oscar Romero (a man who truly practiced the teachings of Christ) reminded his congregation of the parable of the wheat. "Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us. I am bound, as a pastor, by divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadoreans, even those who are going to kill me."
-These words appeared in a newspaper just two weeks before Archbishop Romero was shot (by a filthy Right Wing Death Squad supported by the US) while celebrating Holy Communion in the hospital which had been his home since his enthronement in 1977.
What will become of Costa Rica? That's the question on my mind, now that my adopted country has narrowly accepted CAFTA. Our national slogan is "Pura vida!" meaning "pure life," and it's commonly used as an affirmation that life is good. It's easy to understand how such an expression could catch on here: Costa Rica has virtually no enemies, a temperate climate, and a hell of a lot of good beaches. However, as an expatriate whose previous hometowns have been despoiled by global capitalism, I find it difficult to imagine that life will be as pure or as good once the effects of CAFTA begin to kick in. At the very least, the treaty will accelerate trends already evident in Costa Rica, such as more corporations like Intel and Procter & Gamble setting up operations. Indeed, CAFTA promises an improved "business climate" and "regulatory environment" for foreign firms and investors, but I wonder what that will mean for Costa Rica's actual landscape, and the people who inhabit it.
I first witnessed the negative effects of global capitalism from the North American side, being from Schenectady, N.Y., the original "home of General Electric," a phrase that resounded through my childhood. Known also as "the city that lights and hauls the world" in its heyday, Schenectady and General Electric grew together during the first half of the 20th century. They remained interdependent, both economically and socially, and when I was growing up in the early 1970s, G.E. was still the biggest employer in town, with about 27,000 workers. It was also the biggest polluter: the more than 1 million pounds of toxic PCBs that it dumped into the Hudson River caused various health problems for local residents, ranging from skin diseases to birth defects -- and probably cancer. In the 1980s, G.E.'s famed CEO Jack Welch initiated an aggressive strategy of eliminating and outsourcing jobs with the result that the company now employs fewer than 4,000 workers in Schenectady.
And where did the outsourced jobs go? Mexico, Malaysia, China, India, you name it. It might appear that Costa Rica will gain only from being among the nations that are insourced, but it has yet to have an industrial force that big move in and seriously befoul its environment. Nor has Costa Rica had the experience of being abandoned by such a transnational when it moves its operations to yet another country that can offer still greater savings.
Mahdi Army militiamen rode on a pickup truck in Basra on Saturday as clashes between the militia and the Iraqi Army continued. Photo: Essam Al-Sudani/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
BAGHDAD - Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.
Witnesses in Basra said members of the most powerful militia in the city, the Mahdi Army, were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 30,000 Iraqi Army and police forces involved in the assault. Fighters were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.
Senior members of several political parties said the operation, ordered by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had been poorly planned. The growing discontent adds a new level of complication to the American-led effort to demonstrate that the Iraqi government had made strides toward being able to operate a functioning country and keep the peace without thousands of American troops.
Mr. Maliki has staked his reputation on the success of the Basra assault, fulfilling a longstanding American desire for him to boldly take on militias.
But as criticism of the assault has risen, it has brought into question another American benchmark of progress in Iraq: political reconciliation.
Security has suffered as well.
Since the Basra assault began Tuesday, violence has spread to Shiite districts of Baghdad and other places in Iraq where Shiite militiamen hold sway, raising fears that security gains often attributed to a yearlong American troop buildup could be at risk. Any widespread breakdown of a cease-fire called by Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who founded the Mahdi Army, could bring the country back to the sectarian violence that strained it in 2006 and 2007.
"We don't have to rush to military solutions," said Nadeem al-Jabiri, a Parliament member from the Fadhila Party, a strong rival of Mr. Sadr's party that would have been expected to back the operation, at least on political grounds. Instead of solving the problems in Basra, Mr. Jabiri said, Mr. Maliki "escalated the situation."
BAGHDAD - American-trained Iraqi security forces failed for a third straight day to oust Shiite militias from the southern city of Basra on Thursday, even as President Bush hailed the operation as a sign of the growing strength of Iraq's federal government.
The fighting in Basra against the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement led by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, set off clashes in cities throughout Iraq. Major demonstrations were staged in a number of Shiite areas of Baghdad, including Sadr City, the huge neighborhood that is Mr. Sadr's base of power.
Although Mr. Bush praised the Iraqi government for leading the fighting, it also appeared that the Iraqi government was pursuing its own agenda, calling the battles a fight against "criminal" elements but seeking to marginalize the Mahdi Army.
The Americans share the Iraqi government's hostility toward what they call rogue elements of the Mahdi Army but will also be faced with the consequences if the battles among Shiite factions erupt into more widespread unrest.
The violence underscored the fragile nature of the security improvements partly credited to the American troop increase that began last year. Officials have acknowledged that a cease-fire called by Mr. Sadr last August has contributed to the improvements. Should the cease-fire collapse entirely, those gains could be in serious jeopardy, making it far more difficult to begin bringing substantial numbers of American troops home.
Read More at The New York Times
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah (R) awards U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney with a medal at the Royal Palace in Riyadh March 21, 2008. Cheney met Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Friday for talks expected to include cooperation to stabilise the oil market after prices reached record highs. Photo: REUTERS/Saudi Press Agency
We did it! You can well imagine the high fives, the cheers and hugs as Vice President Cheney met with King Abdullah in Riyadh last week. $100-plus oil as the norm. What a triumph for King Abdullah and his protectors and cheerleaders in the current administration, spearheaded by the oil industry's factotums in the White House, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Not since President Harding and his Teapot Dome has the oil industry had such an iron grip on our government. If anything can be called a success in these bleak seven years, it is the oil industry's triumphal avalanche of riches, having orchestrated with the White Houses' blessing, one of the greatest transfers of wealth in human memory.
At long last with oil sailing past $100 a barrel and its toll on the economy clearly discernable, with consumer confidence and future expectations at the lowest level since the 1973 oil embargo, with oil company profits at record levels while the rest of the nation can barely heat their homes and truckers are losing their rigs given the price of gas, our leaders, in a phony, belated display of public concern have gone to lengths by humiliating this nation, prostrating themselves before Saudi Royalty in order to "stabilize" oil prices. This after prices have ratcheted up by more than 400% since the day this administration was sworn into office with barely a whimper from Washington along the way
What patent hypocrisy! Where was the outrage when oil prices touched
$35/$40/$50/$60/$70/$75/$80/$90/$95 a barrel, all on their watch. Hardly a murmur. Quite the contrary, deep satisfaction at the bounty being brought home to their friends and supporters in the oil industry. Cheney's Wyoming, with its gas and oil deposits was booming as never before, so what if Maine and Minnesota and Montana were freezing.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Dr. James Hansen is widely regarded as the leading climate change scientist in the country. It was his testimony to a Senate committee in 1988 that first brought the threat of global warming to the world's attention. For the past quarter of a century he has headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA's premiere climate research center.
Just over a year ago, Dr. Hansen went public with a charge that made headlines around the world, that the Bush administration had been trying to silence his warnings about the urgent need to address climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: You may have heard Dr. James Hansen mentioned before on Democracy Now! His name has been cited by many guests on the show.
JOHN PASSACANTANDO: This government, at the behest of its oil company contributors, has been told not to put out information about global warming, not to allow the scientists to talk about their expertise with the press, about the connection between global warming and hurricanes. That happened at NOAA. There's been pressure on Dr. James Hansen at NASA.
PAUL EHRLICH: I think it's true that attitudes have changed slightly in the White House, because they now see a political issue, but they have worked very, very hard to suppress the science on global warming. For instance, they sent some junior jerk to try and keep Jim Hansen, who's one of our very top climate scientists, from saying what he thought.
CHRIS MOONEY: Apparently, a NASA aide was instructed to interfere with Hansen's ability to do press interviews. Actually, this completely backfired, because Hansen is not someone to be told to be quiet. And so, he just went to the media anyway, and it ended up exploding.
TIM FLANNERY: Can you imagine what it would be like for one of the world's leading scientists, who is revered by everyone, to have this pipsqueak who lied about his credentials controlling what he tells the public? Just appalling. And, you know, the countries around the world would -- I don't know what they'd pay to have the advice of a Jim Hansen. It's the sort of stuff we all desperately need. And here, in a country that actually pays him a salary and allows him to do his work, he is silenced. I mean, I honestly cannot see the sense of that. I can't see who benefits.
Read More at AlterNet
Followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, left, carried a poster with his likeness during a rally in Baghdad on Tuesday. Mr. Sadr called for a national civil disobedience campaign to protest a crackdown on militia members. Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, was sealed off by Iraqi troops and several American units. Photo: Ali al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
BAGHDAD - Heavy fighting broke out Tuesday in two of Iraq's largest cities, as Iraqi ground forces and helicopters mounted a huge operation to break the grip of the Shiite militias controlling Basra, and Iraqi forces clashed with militias in Baghdad. The fighting threatened to destabilize a long-term truce that had helped reduce the level of violence in the five-year-old Iraq war.
The battles, along with indications in recent weeks that militia and insurgent attacks had already been creeping up, raised fears across Iraq that Moktada al-Sadr, the renegade Shiite cleric, could pull out of a cease-fire he declared last summer. If his Mahdi Army militia does step up attacks, that could in turn slow American troop withdrawals.
There were also serious clashes in the southern cities of Kut and Hilla.
In Basra, American and British jets roared through the skies, providing air support for the Iraqi military. A British Army spokesman for southern Iraq, Maj. Tom Holloway, said that while Western forces had not entered Basra, the operation already involved nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and police forces, with more arriving. "They are clearing the city block by block," Major Holloway said.
The scale and intensity of the clashes in Baghdad kept many residents home. Schools and shops were closed in many neighborhoods and hundreds of checkpoints appeared; in some neighborhoods they were controlled by the government and in others by militia members.
Read More at The New York Times
Trucks are loaded with sugar cane, which will be used to produce biofuels, in Brazil. Photograph: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
Brown plans to resist EU plans for increased quotas as doubts multiply James Randerson and Nicholas Watt
The Guardian
Gordon Brown is preparing for a battle with the European Union over biofuels after one of the government's leading scientists warned they could exacerbate climate change rather than combat it.
In an outspoken attack on a policy which comes into force next week, Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said it would be wrong to introduce compulsory quotas for the use of biofuels in petrol and diesel before their effects had been properly assessed.
"If one started to use biofuels ... and in reality that policy led to an increase in greenhouse gases rather than a decrease, that would obviously be insane," Watson said. "It would certainly be a perverse outcome."
Under the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, all petrol and diesel must contain 2.5% of biofuels from April 1. This is designed to ensure that Britain complies with a 2003 EU directive that 5.75% of petrol and diesel come from renewable sources by 2010.
But scientists have increasingly questioned the sustainability of biofuels, warning that by increasing deforestation the energy source may be contributing to global warming.
Read More at The Guardian
Editor's note: Young boy shown here falling victim to insidious communist plot to provide free health care to the poor.
400,000 Latin Americans take up free surgery offer
Humanitarian schemes are political front, says Lima
Rory Carroll in Caracas and Andres Schipani in La Paz
The Guardian
The plane door opened and the elderly visitors, all visually impaired and in some cases blind, shuffled out slowly and carefully into Venezuela.
Disease, age and poverty had stolen their eyesight but now they were in the land of Hugo Chávez and that was about to change. A scheme called Misión Milagro - Mission Miracle - had flown them here from Peru for free surgery which would transform their lives.
A portrait of Venezuela's president gazed down from the airport terminal. "It is thanks to Chávez we are here," beamed Rosario Vilcavilca, 88, a peasant farmer in a traditional highland skirt.
Mission Miracle has helped 400,000 impoverished Latin Americans see again and cast Venezuela's revolutionary leader as the region's humanitarian benefactor.
Critics, however, see an agenda behind this and other Venezuelan-linked initatives. They claim Chávez is trying to export populist leftwing rebellions and further tilt the region away from US influence.
Read More at The Guardian
Homeless boys in San Jose, Costa Rica
Mahdi Army militiamen rode on a pickup truck in Basra on Saturday as clashes between the militia and the Iraqi Army continued. Photo: Essam Al-Sudani/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
A protest in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah (R) awards U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney with a medal at the Royal Palace in Riyadh March 21, 2008. Cheney met Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Friday for talks expected to include cooperation to stabilise the oil market after prices reached record highs. Photo: REUTERS/Saudi Press Agency
Famed NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen tells the depressing story of government censorship of years of impeccable research.
Followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, left, carried a poster with his likeness during a rally in Baghdad on Tuesday. Mr. Sadr called for a national civil disobedience campaign to protest a crackdown on militia members. Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, was sealed off by Iraqi troops and several American units. Photo: Ali al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
Trucks are loaded with sugar cane, which will be used to produce biofuels, in Brazil. Photograph: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
