MassMedia

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." --Joseph Stalin

Strength III

"Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice."
--Minna Thomas Antrim

Robert Byrd, R.I.P.

November 20, 1917 - June 28, 2010
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"Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

"We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends."
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Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences
by US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003

To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war.

And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.

This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of world-wide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our -- or some other nation's -- hit list. High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11.

Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher.

This Administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal.

In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders.

In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned, peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come.

Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth. Our awesome military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters cheering us on.

The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land.

Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This Administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace?

And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reigns of power after Saddam Hussein?

Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq?
Could a disruption of the world's oil supply lead to a world-wide recession? Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for nations which need the income?

In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.

One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.

But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.

Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq -- a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15 -- this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare -- this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.

We are truly "sleepwalking through history." In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings.

To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country". This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.

Home II

A song of truth & beauty for you

In the bigger scheme of things
We haven’t been around here
More than a moment

And yet / too many / it seems
Believe / we are creating a brand new world
Around us
We are creating a brand new world
Without us

Maybe it really is OK
Although we’re digging our own graves
At this moment

If we should all just disappear
The skies and waters will clear
In a world without us

And there’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
To return to

We push against the rest of life
As if we can survive without the world
Around us

Can’t have a rainbow without the rain
Can’t have a payday without the pain
Can’t have a lover / walk out without the love
Leaving with them.

There’s no place like home
No place like home
To return to

And there’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
To return to
(repeat x2)

--"No Place Like Home" by Devo, from the CD "Something For Everybody"

Player

"Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece."
--Ralph Charell

Style

"Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn."
--Gore Vidal

Rights II

"Place me not with those who are weak of mind and willingly give up the rights of others, for these poor ignorant souls know not that the rights they give up are their own!"
--Warren Friton

Thoughts

"Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody."
--Stanislaw Lec, "Unkempt Thoughts", 1962

Belief III

"Belief is when someone else does the thinking."
--Buckminster Fuller, 1972

Paint II

"If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
--Vincent Van Gogh

Handicapped

"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent."
--J. Edgar Hoover
The Elks Magazine (August 1956)

Chipped

Joe

"I am Joe Citizen, not Joe Subject"
--Author Unknown

Marched

"China, BP's execs would have already been paraded in front of a crowded stadium and have received a single shot to the head. An effective Chinese method of dealing with corporate high crimes." --Wayne Madsen, June 16, 2010

Flu Vaccine For Dogs

There's an email going around promoting a flu vaccine for dogs!

Wonderful, as if it weren't enough that the pharmaceutical drug cartel is maiming our children,

http://www.nvic.org,

http://www.squidoo.com/vaccinetoxicingredients,

http://www.rense.com/general32/thru.htm,

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0616-31.htm and

http://search.mercola.com/Results.aspx?q=vaccinations&k=vaccinations


for starters, now the pharmaceutical drug cartel wants to ratchet-up the poisoning of our furfriends???

TLC

Carousel

"They thought the carousel would continue for ever, like all gamblers. And because they are all criminals, they have no concept of the Rule of Law. On the contrary, their model is Emile Dirkheim (1858-1917) who postulated a corrupt environment in which criminal behaviour is the norm, and adherence to the Rule of Law is considered eccentric, stupid and pointless. It has come as a nasty shock to these criminal operatives to find that they have been opposed while they weren't looking. No, they were all too busy with their filthy noses in the pigsty trough."
--Christopher Story

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Bullets For I$rael

Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range

Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy results reveal

Full Article, Guardian UK, June 15, 2010

Incidental

"Justice is incidental to law and order."
--J. Edgar Hoover

More II

"If I had to live my life over again, I'd try to make more mistakes next time."
--Nadine Stair

Blindly

"When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow."
--Anais Nin, writer

When VI

"When walking through the 'valley of shadows,' remember, a shadow is cast by a light." --H.K. Barclay

Power

"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon. . . . I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."
--Oriana Fallaci, The New Yorker, June 5, 2006

"Safe"

"It's often safer to be in chains than to be free."
--Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

Obama: Here's Who's To Kick

Obama wants to know, "who's ass to kick".

Might I DISrespectfully suggest he start with Ken Salazar's, followed by his own since he had plenty of warnings not to appoint Salazar to the Department Of The Interior (under Obama, call it the "Department Of The INFerior") in the first place!

TLC

Joys

"Some of the secret joys of living are not found by rushing from point A to point B, but by inventing some imaginary letters along the way." --Douglas Pagels, Author

Made II

"They made a desert and they called it peace."
--Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus, 37 AD (AD 56 – AD 117), Roman Historian

Right V

"To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage." --Confucius

Error

[P]ast error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live. Now as ever, we do ourselves best justice when we measure ourselves against ancient tests, as in the Antigone of Sophocles: "All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride."
--Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968)
Kansas State University, March 18, 1968

Education

"Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school."
--Ivan Illich (1926-2002) Austrian philosopher, author, social critic
Source: Deschooling Society, 1971

Dissenter

"The dissenter is every human being at those times of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself." --Archibald Macleish (1892-1982), December 4, 1937 Poet, playwright, Librarian of Congress, & Assistant Secretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt

Nothing III

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
--Edmund Burke, Philosopher.

Great II

"Great minds have purpose, others have wishes."
--Washington Irving, American Author

Infinitely

"It is infinitely more exciting to live a life of catastrophic failures than a life of could-haves, should-haves and would-haves."
--M.H Meng