Monday, January 21, 2013

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" speech

One year to the day before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he made his, "Beyond Vietnam" speech on April 4, 1967 outlining that his anti-war and anti-imperialism stance was the same fight as for civil rights in America.



A transcript of the speech can be read here:  Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Various comments

An open letter to President Obama:

Why did you bail out the banks, make them bigger, allow huge bonuses to continue, put a moratorium on foreclosure and not prosecute one executive from a major bank?

Why did you reappoint former GWB appointees such as Bernake and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates? Even if it was only for appearances sake, why didn't you change the positions to bring in your own people?

Why do you keep appointing conservatives and blue dog democrats when you ran on a very progressive platform? e.g. Economic Advisor Robert Rubin, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, proposed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

Thank you for taking water boarding out of the CIA's playbook but why did you allow rendition to continue where everyone knows that torture continues under CIA supervision? For that matter, why weren't black sites closed down?

Why did your administration go to great lengths to stop prosecution of former Bush executives both inside and outside the country? On another note, how was it possible that not one low level government official was prosecuted for torture where the detainees died at the hand of their torturers? Correction, why was the only CIA official charged was John Kiriakou? — who didn't torture anyone.

After you promised to usher in a new era of transparency and accountability, why has your administration relentlessly prosecuting whistleblowers?

Why do you keep renewing the Patriot Act when you said you wouldn't? Why do you continue with warrantless wiretapping when you said you wouldn't?
Where is the accountability and transparency that you said you would usher in?

Why do you continue to terrorize people worldwide with drone strikes knowing full well it doesn't make America safer? Why do you insist on keeping the ability to apprehend American citizens on American soil and detain them indefinitely, especially in light of your statement that you will never invoke that law?

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I've saved a collection of comment from various sites that I found be more insightful and persuasive than my own:
V4Vendeta's comment on America to Give Afghanistan a Fleet of Drones:
Obama has done an amazing job... selling the idea that his drone warfare is actually "humanitarian" and "compassionate" because it spares US troops from having to actually go into combat and risk being injured or killed.

The problem with this spin job is that it is the height of tyranny for a US president to decide who lives or dies based on his say alone. What kind of nation have we become where the president can order the termination of even US citizens without any oversight whatsoever? It makes a mockery of the notion we are a nation of laws.

The president feels he can order the assassination of US citizens or imprison them indefinitely without any judicial oversight and the Congress concurs (even though they weren't consulted). We have entered a dangerous new stage in crony capitalism where no opposition to unbridled corruption will be tolerated. In fact, under the current "legal" framework now in place, Obama could claim that an internet post is "aiding and abetting" the enemy because it exposes criminality and he could order the arrest and incarceration of the author without telling his/her family members or anyone else. He also doesn't have to allow the person access to a lawyer and can torture the "suspect." The worse that can happen is a slap on the wrist for the offending authorities if that.

We are essentially now living in a 1984-style police state with a video camera on every corner and every single piece of communication sent is monitored. You can be assassinated on the presidents say and even your family can assassinated for no other reason than being related to you. If the president decides to spare your life you can be indefinitely detained without any legal recourse and tortured. It's scary...
George Washington's comment on Noam Chomsky blasts Obama: He has no moral center:
Yes. Thank you, Professor Chomsky. Let's be candid for a change on the most obvious aspects of Obama's presidency: Obama is a staunch supporter of every facet of 21st Century American empire.He supports the sell-off (at fire sale prices) of public goods to transnational corporations. He supports the privatization of govt.
He supports the Walmartization of the U.S. economy. He supports the FoxNewsification of journalism and the triumph of free market fundamentalist dogma (and religious fundamentalist dogma) over science.
He supports the dismantling and destruction of public education.
He supports energy extraction and economic growth even if it means ecocide and planetary ruin.
He supports the American Exceptionalist packaging and perpetuation of the phony "war on terror" in the Middle East. He supports the pillaging of foreign countries using U.S. military against helpless civilians, all for the purposes of stealing natural resources (and labor) on behalf of transnational energy companies and closing more deals with the arms merchants and chemical companies that control Washington.
He supports increased domestic surveillance and suspension of habeas corpus at home. He cheerleads the witch hunt against govt and corporate whistleblowers, encouraging greater secrecy and lawlessness by govt officials. He supports what the military is doing at Guantanamo. He endorses a future in which U.S. citizens can be whisked away by military police and held indefinitely in solitary confinement with no access to attorneys and no due process of any kind.
Obama is a transnational corporatist in everything related to labor policy, trade, the environment, and foreign policy. His presidency is a model of how to use federal military and police powers to reinforce the power of global business elites.
Griffon's comment from Medical marijuana proprietor gets 10-year prison sentence:
"I'm asking for an explanation of your words, not an excerpt of someone else'."
No, your first statement was to obama's effectiveness during his first three years in office:
"How do you figure that? According to a recent FBI Uniform Crime Report, Marijuana arrests were down 11% during President Obama's first three years in office
I provided sourced facts that contradicted your implied post that obama's policy was not the destructive and vindictive mess that it obviously is; with obama's full malice aforethought as reflected in his chosen appointments.
Now, apparently, you've switched your question to wondering why I hold obama voters responsible for their continued support of a lying, bush-doctrinaire, Wall St.-suck, drone-bombing, NDAA-signing,war-expanding, spying-expanding, War-criminal-coddling,
Kill-List-assembling, Cluster-bomb-advocating, Monsanto-lackey-appointing, Torture-defending, BP-colluding, Whistleblower-persecuting, Transparency-scuttling, Public-Option-killing, Due-Process-denying, Lobbyist-fellating, weaselly sack of venal bullsh*t.
The point is that supposedly thinking voters didn't unilaterally reject both obama and the democratic party for offering such a Quisling bastard to get a second term.

The contempt with which I hold the obama voter is higher since, after 8 f*cking years of bush, (and four more of a neocon obama) you spineless submissive sh*ts should have known better; should have admitted to yourselves what was happening before your eyes. Instead, you passively accepted that the machine held sway and you were powerless to say "enough."
I must have missed the coercive and armed paramilitary thugs who no-doubt held guns to the heads of voters forcing them to proactively select the lying neocon Coward-in-Chief for anotherdisastrous four years. Those apparent armed threats weren't at my
polling station.
The obama voters should have rejected obama right after his capitulation to block War Crimes trials, or after his expansion of bush's WoT, or after obama's expansion of Domestic Spying, or after obama's TSA program, or after obama's killing of the Public Option in a backroom deal with the pharms and hospital lobbies, or after obama's execution of American Citizens without due process, judicial oversight or even charges, or after obama's Indefinite Detention program.....etc.
Instead, they slavishly did what they were told by the MSM; capitulated to a gamed system rather than speak up for the baldly obvious right-and-wrong of the current Ratchet Effect/Duopoly (link).
Third party voters, on the other hand, aren't stupid enough to interminably keep playing the electoral Three-Card-Monte game, run entirely by two corporate-owned party machines, and myopically expect a different outcome.

They know full well that the "First Past the Post"(link) system guarantees that the moneyed interests will control representation and policy.
The third-party+ advocates realize this disparity and vigorously reject a gamed and broken system that incessantly hands power to the closest thing America has to insurgent dictatorships: Corporations.


Both parties routinely abdicate their responsibility to the will of the people and instead venally barter away the people's will to entities that hold no allegiance to any nation, Constitution or system of moral authority. Corporations who buy our leaders, buy our representatives, count our votes without oversight or confirmation, taint our food and foul our water and air, sicken our workers and benefit from their deaths. The corporations' allegiance is to only money; nothing else.
The democrats and republicans serve these cancers over their electorate: the People.
obama chose the Corporate Cancer over the health and welfare of the People in a backroom meeting with the hospital and pharma lobbies to kill the Public Option and pharma price negotiations, thereby surrendering the People's will (some 75%+ of which favored joining the rest of the world in adopting Universal Healthcare,) to a Corporate Dictatorship; a Cancer that directly caused the healthcare crisis to begin with.
Both failed parties passed Torture-as-Official State Policy,
Assassination of American Citizens without Due Process or Judicial Oversight, Corporate Welfare, a Bloated Security State, a Bloated Pentagon, Detention without Trial, War Crimes as State Policy, Unilateral Drone Murder, Deregulation of the Disastrous Banking Industry,.....the list is long, quite obscene and absolutely futile to continue as standard procedure.
Together, the two failed parties have facilitated one of the greatest economic failures in US history; with no substantive indictments or prosecutions of Wall St. and Bankster fraud, allowing the thieves to walk away, scot-free, with billions.
And the obama-party submissives sucked it up and passively asked for more rather than holding their "party" to account. The party submissives sat on their hands for four long years making pathetic apologist excuses for obama's atrocities, then declared "victory" for putting a Drone-murdering lobbyist-fellating, corporatist psycho back in office.
"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
~Morpheus

Is the NRA the government's friend or foe?

Food for thought: Is the government pro-NRA or anti-NRA?

Keep that thought in mind for a moment. Glenn Greenwald wrote about the over-Zealous prosecution of Aaron Swartz (on 1/16/13) which lead to depression and, ultimately, his suicide. It's a worthwhile read highlighting the two tiered system of justice in America: If you have access to the government, then no law is an obstacle that cannot be circumvented but if you oppose the government in any meaningful way then the government will attack you will the full force and might of the federal government. They will attack you, break you and destroy your life whether it be physically, mentally, financially, socially or other. Here's the article: Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann: accountability for prosecutorial abuse.

On the same day that Obama laid out his gun control plan in a White House press event. The NRA has dismissed it outright and the chances of congress passing any meaningful gun control measures are slim. Why is it that the NRA is so powerful? Is this an example of a citizens' movement that beats down the government every time? The answer to that question is "No!" as the NRA is funded by the gun manufacturers See this and this.

Steven Rosenfeld is writing a series of articles on the NRA and its history which is excellent:
The Suprising Unknown History of the NRA
Overview: America's Gun and Violence Crisis; And: How the 2nd Amendment Got Hijacked by the NRA and Antonin Scalia
Can Obama Slay the NRA Beast?

Still, and this goes back to the "Food for thought" question, if the government is anti-NRA then the NRA sets an excellent example for a citizens lobbying group on how to take on the government and win. If the government is pro-NRA then back to the drawing board. So, is the government pro-NRA or anti-NRA?

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Aaron Swartz's fight against SOPA/PIPA

Aaron Swartz's speech on May 2012 about his efforts to protect Internet freedom and the battle to defeat the SOPA/PIPA bills:



Arron Swartz (November 8, 1986 - January 11, 2013) R.I.P.  

Update

The best tributes I've read: