Hey, American People!

By Sheila Samples
December 13, 2010

"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whew. Nasty. That was one hell of a campaign season; one hell of an election. Democrats emerged, bruised and broken, yet their mindset seems to be -- hey, we survived Bush, how bad can it be? Sadly, the grim truth they refuse to face is -- we didn't survive Bush...

The radical right-wing, neo-conservative, religious-based, hate-empowered GOP once again owes the half-crazed ideologues in the Supreme Court a hearty thanks for plunging yet another dagger into the heart of democracy with its Citizens United corporate giveaway. And no Justice on that venerable body is more ideologically rigid than Dick Cheney's hunting buddy Antonin Scalia, who ramrodded the Court's 2000 Presidential "Selection" for George W. Bush, and is now out there taking aim at the century-old 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which is literally the last barrier to a corporate-owned nation.

The 17th Amendment allows U.S. Senators to be elected by the people, rather than by individual state legislatures. Recently, referring to the Constitution, Scalia said the 17th Amendment "has changed things enormously. We changed that in a burst of progressivism in 1913, and you can trace the decline of so-called states’ rights throughout the rest of the 20th century..."

We need another "burst of progressivism" -- and soon. We are in the throes of a political convulsion, an intellectual and moral battle that we are increasingly in danger of losing. It's time to stop, take a deep national breath, and then...take a deep national bath. This nation has been in a spiraling nose dive for a decade...We need to make a genuine effort to actually see what we've only been looking at -- actually listen to what we've only been hearing.

Neither party spent much time talking about the issues; the real problems facing this country. Perhaps that's because the Republican party is a greedy force, too corrupt and venal to change -- and the Democratic Party is a shameless enabler, too timid and flabby to make a difference. Throw the corporate media in there, where it's all politics all the time because that's where the money is, and it's easy to see -- if you're really looking -- why we're caught up in the patriotic spirit of waving the flag for more tax cuts, trading freedoms for safety and following our presidential Pied Piper into the quagmire of endless war.

Republicans are dangerous. Like Bush, they are morally depraved, in that they feel no guilt or remorse for anything they say or do, regardless of the outcome. It's far too easy in this Tea Party sodden society to rationalize that murdering, wounding, displacing millions of innocent human beings was, and continues to be, necessary in order to protect the American people.

They say they are against big government, and justify their destruction of the social network by repeating "the american people...the american people...the american people" in mind-numbing repetition, much as Bush justified his bloodlust with a constant "september the 11th...september the 11th...september the 11th."

The only things Republicans have ever given to the American people is depression, poverty and despair. And their foot-stomping threats to shut down the government until their billionaire donors get a tax cut is a clear warning that more is on the way.

Having a Black man within a country mile of the Oval Office has driven a majority of Republicans, and some Democrats -- as liberal radio commentator Mike Malloy says -- "bat-shit crazy," and they are determined to destroy President Obama. Just days before the mid-term election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Really? With the barrage of critical issues swirling throughout this nation -- more than 15-million "american people" unemployed and, every day, more losing jobs, homes, unemployment insurance, health insurance, their very lives -- yet nothing is more important than destroying the President?

Lest anyone think the old Kentuckian was racist, just days after the election, he chucked his hood and went into safe, regressive "american people" spin, saying for all practical purposes -- the american people reminded us this week that we work for the american people and we owe it to the american people and to future generations of the american people to work together to find solutions to present troubles of the american people and to help guide our nation of american people to better days...

“The formula is simple, really," McConnell said. "When the administration agrees with the American people, we will agree with the administration. When it disagrees with the American people, we won’t … If the administration wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction.”

Simple translation -- what all Republicans are saying if you listen -- Our way, or the highway -- and to hell with the American people.

Neither party can escape its history. American people struggling to prevent the American Flag from becoming their funeral shroud should remember that the Great Depression did not come about by accident. While Americans were standing in soup lines, the Republican administration was carrying Big Business through the crisis. Banks, insurance companies and corporate donors all got bailed out; big business got tax cuts -- but there was no relief for "the american people."

Sound familiar? Yes, because President Obama, in his cowering attempt at bipartisanship, is taking us "forward to the past" so rapidly that our knees are hitting our chins for nothing less than endless war, a recession caused by a permanent rich-man's tax cut and the final shredding of our social safety net. It is likely that our veterans, our children, our elderly will be forgotten or cast aside simply for the enrichment of lobbyists who paid for Republican campaigns and are now swarming all over the Capital.

Time is running out. Like Jon Stewart said when explaining the reason for his Oct. 30 Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall, the American people -- regardless of their political affiliation -- "Know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together."

So let's do it! The time is right. Let's give Scalia another badly needed "burst of progressivism." After all -- like McConnell says -- we're the american people...

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is an OpEd editor, and a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.

Federal Wage Freeze:

It's Like Tipping the Rich for Being Rich
the Rude Pundit
11/30/2010
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/federal-wage-freeze-its-like-tipping.html

see also:
Obama imposes pay freeze on 2.1 million federal workers
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/fede-n30.shtml

Unemployed and Unnoticed
http://pr.thinkprogress.org/2010/11/pr20101130/index.html


Let us not argue for a moment the economics of President Obama's proposed federal employee pay freeze, except to say that it's about as uselessly symbolic a gesture as giving a piece of fruit to a fat man. Instead, let us think for a moment about the utterly dumbfounding and worthless political nature of the act. Because the Republicans are like that fat guy, and they're gonna take that fruit and say, "That's great. Now give us the rest of the groceries 'cause we're fucking fat and hungry here."

There was something just sorrowfully pathetic about watching the President, in the midst of negotiating some kind of endgame on tax cuts and while trying to figure out how to extend unemployment benefits, decide to triangulate and unilaterally give in to one of the Republicans' demands. What the hell happens now? Does the White House think that John Boehner will all of a sudden understand that the President is serious about working with the GOP? John Boehner doesn't fucking care. Motherfucker just had a meeting with Randall Terry, a terrorist as much as any radical imam anywhere.

The freeze applies to the across-the-board increases in salaries of federal employees, amounting to about 1.4%. It's not enough, of course, for Republicans. It's never enough. Odd-looking Mormon Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Nevada said that "the proposal does not appear to curb step increases. If that is the case, this announcement is nothing more than a hollow press release. At the end of the day, this policy will serve only to frustrate current employees while doing nothing to curb our debts." You know what that means? There's a chart of salary steps within each federal pay grade. For Chaffetz, who, as a congressman, earns more than about 99% of federal employees, it's not enough to freeze cost of living pay increases. Nope. Even within an unchanged pay scale of the government, you cannot advance salary-wise. That means that the poor fucker who's making $23,296, at grade 3, step 3, to clean Chaffetz's piss off toilets at the Capitol not only won't get a pissant general raise, but he can't move up a step to $24,024. You may say, "Well, that's the nature of a freeze," but you're not wiping up after Jason Chaffetz.

But let us not neglect that the backdrop for the pay freeze is deciding whether or not federal tax cuts should expire on income over $250,000 (or $1,000,000) a year. Essentially what Obama is saying is that a shit mopper at the Capitol ought to make less money so that the Koch brothers can afford to make more ads about what a socialist fucker Barack Obama is.

Two million people are about to lose their unemployment checks. Wall Street execs are making more money than ever while attempting to have their taxes cut. That's about as clear a case for wealth redistribution as one can make, except, of course, is that the right wants it redistributed to the rich. What President Obama doesn't seem to get, or hasn't demonstrated that he gets, is that the Republicans don't fucking care about anything other than making Barack Obama pay for being Barack Obama.

And if this post seems incoherent, like sputtering without meaning, it's because the Rude Pundit doesn't get it, either. What he doesn't get is why the pay freeze? Why another capitulation? What does it achieve, other than alienating even more people? When Obama finally caves on tax cuts for the wealthy, it'll be like federal workers just gave a tip to rich people just because rich people are so fucking great because they're rich.

The thing about a line in the sand is that, the second the sand shifts, the line disappears, as if it was never there to begin with.

Only If We Let It

By Sheila Samples
October 17, 2010

"History will repeat itself -- only if we let it"~~Mike Malloy

Hardly a day goes by that we are not inundated with demands to attack Iran. Our media, our Congress -- packs of neoconservatives -- have been howling for war on Iran for years. And years.

This reckless axis has been relentless in its orchestrated effort to manipulate and influence public opinion. And, if we are to believe the myriad of polls, it's working. According to investigative journalist Gareth Porter, who wrote on July 30 that "polling data for 2010 show a majority of Americans have been manipulated into supporting war against Iran -- in large part because more than two-thirds of those polled have gotten the impression that Iran already has nuclear weapons."

Horror Tent Revival

Is it possible that a majority of Americans can be lured again into the tent of horror to support yet another bloody war? Have we learned nothing from history -- the blatant lies that catapaulted us into Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan? It's amazing how easily our handlers control us; enrage us; shape our beliefs, our opinions. As George Orwell wrote in 1948 about those controlled by Big Brother...

"A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."

For centuries, those in power have known that fear is the easiest of emotions to work with. As with Iraq, and now Iran, we are paralyzed with fear; fear of "known unknowns" -- of factually unsubstantiated threats about Iran's lust for Israeli blood. Many of us have been ducking and covering for so long that we have lost the ability to reason; even to think beyond the "truth" that is hammered into our national consciousness with blow after blow of an Orwellian sledge hammer -- we must support, and protect, Israel, no matter the cost.

It's tempting to pretend that we believe Iran's refusal to give up its nuclear energy program -- which it has every right to pursue as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- is proof that it is an "evil Islamic regime" whose maniacal leaders are feverishly working to wipe Israel off the map. Tempting to take at face value the sinister warnings of those like Reuel Marc Gerecht, a resident fellow at AEI and Weekly Standard contributing editor, who warned in his April 2006 article, "To Bomb, or Not to Bomb -- That is the Iran Question"...

"Given the Islamic Republic's dark history, the burden of proof ought to be on those who favor accommodating a nuclear Iran. Those who are unwilling to accommodate it, however, need to be honest and admit that diplomacy and sanctions and covert operations probably won't succeed, and that we may have to fight a war -- perhaps sooner rather than later -- to stop such evil men from obtaining the worst weapons we know."

Gerecht, a former consular officer for the State Department and CIA Mid-East specialist, is, like most of his neoconservative peers, pathologically obsessed with Iran's destruction, and is as good as it gets when using fear and misinformation to justify that destruction.

Porter also wrote in his July article that "the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran." Porter pointed out that Gerecht first revealed his "Israeli-neocon fantasy as early as 2000, before the Iranian nuclear program was even taken seriously, in an essay written for a book published by the Project for a New American Century." Gerecht argued that, if Iran could be caught in a "terrorist act," the U.S. Navy should "retaliate with fury."

Now, a decade later, that appears to still be Gerecht's position. In his ponderous July 26, 2010 Weekly Standard piece, he writes...

"...if nuclear weapons in the hands of Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards are an existential threat to the Jewish state -- and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like his predecessors, has said that they are -- Jerusalem has little choice. Bombing is the only option that could likely alter the nuclear equation in Iran before Khamenei produces a weapon. The Obama administration might fume, but it is hard to imagine the president, given what he has said about the unacceptability of Iranian nukes, scolding Jerusalem long. [...] The left wing of the Democratic party has been going south on the Jewish state for 30 years, but congressional Democrats, who've been pushing for new sanctions against Iran more aggressively than the White House, are not that far gone. By and large, the Republican party would hold behind the Israelis."

Here, Gerecht is echoing the belief blurted out by Netanyahu in 2001 when talking about a broad attack on Palestine and undermining the Oslo Accords -- "I know what America is," Netanyahu said. "America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way."

Sadly, there many more like Gerecht -- Dick Cheney and his efforts to do an "end run" around a balking Bush to force an attack on Iran; Norman Podhoretz with his constant refrain "bomb Iran before Iran bombs us"; National Review's Larry Kudlow who says if Israel furiously attacks Iran, it will be "doing the Lord's work"; the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol and Daniel Pipes with their confident forecast that Bush would attack Iran before leaving office if Obama won the election.

Then, there's the US Congress, whose members can agree on absolutely nothing to ease the suffering of their own citizens, but stand shoulder-to-shoulder in passing resolution after shameful resolution for Israel's right to defend itself and against Iran's right to do the same. If Senator Joe Lieberman's mouth is moving, you can bet he is demanding an attack on Iran -- and he was joined by his cohort Senator Lindsey Graham just last month, who said we must sic our military on Iran, "with the goal of overthrowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

But by far the the most strident is the wild and woolly former UN ambassador John Bolton. He runs at top speed from one media outlet to another, calling for Iran's destruction -- just as he did for Iraq. I can't help it. This guy is grotesquely fascinating. As I wrote in September 2008 about this issue...

It's no laughing matter, but the sight of this tousle-headed, "got milk?" maniac running in circles, warning of -- demanding -- a nuclear holocaust is good for a grin, albeit a grim one. Even as he was being forced onto the United Nations over national and international objections, Bolton was hot on Iran's trail. He insisted that Iran is the most dangerous critter out there -- harboring terrorists, arming terrorists, training terrorists -- sending bombs, IEDs, weapons to Iraq to kill Americans. If it weren't for Iran, there would have been no 9-11 attack because Iran provided safe haven for the box-cutting killers headed our way. Bolton warned if Iran managed to produce a single nuclear weapon, Israel, the United States -- the world -- was toast. He promised that Iran will come after us. "That's the threat," Bolton barked, "that's the reality whether you like it or not. And it will be just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time."

Time Out

Considering the consequences of history repeating itself, perhaps we should call a "time out" and take a closer look at Iran. We didn't bother to check out the accusations made by these same bloodthirsty warmongers against Iraq -- false cries of weapons of mass destruction, lies about Saddam Hussein aiding and harboring Al Qaeda terrorists -- we had but a scant 45 minutes to dive under our duct-taped plastic or we would surely die. Now, after hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings have been destroyed -- millions displaced -- trillions of dollars wasted, far too many of us say we were not to blame. Hey -- we were lied to. Besides, that was years ago. It's all history now.

Iran, as a major civilization, dates back to 4000 BC and, although it has been invaded by Greeks, Arabs, Turks, even Mongols, it has no modern history of attacking or occupying other nations. However, unlike other areas that continue to be devastated by US and Israeli assaults, history shows that Iran is capable of defending itself. Both its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and frisky little president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have promised to do exactly that if attacked.

In August, Khamenei said "the consequences of a US attack would be grave...not merely regional, but will cover a vaster scene." If our warmongering babblers took a closer look at that "scene," they would see the destruction of the 32 US bases in the region as well as the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz -- the gateway to the world's oil.

Regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions, both Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have said over and over (and over) that Iran seeks nuclear power for generating electricity for medical purposes and for its growing population. In 2005, Khamenei issued a Fatwa that "the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that Iran shall never acquire these weapons." And, in spite of blatant lies and distortions to the contrary, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to verify Iran's pursuit of peaceful nuclear energy.

The timeline of Iran's nuclear program from the 1950s shows that Iran has never sought nuclear energy for anything other than peaceful purposes. In 1957, the Shah opened the American Atoms for Peace in Tehran, and signed an agreement with the US for cooperation in research on peaceful uses of nuclear technology. And, in 1968, Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on the first day it opened for signature.

Before we buy into railings from those like Gerecht about evil Iran's "dark history" in pursuing nuclear weapons, perhaps we should study the dark history of two other nations -- one that obliterated the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in mere moments just 65 years ago...that used napalm, chemical weapons, and deadly toxins against the Vietnamese...that uses deadly depleted uranium to wipe out entire generations and to deform future generations...or perhaps the other one that takes great delight in dropping white phosphorus bombs on a trapped civilian population with nowhere to run...

The Choice is Ours

If our evil axis succeeds in its lust for war on Iran, yet another March 19, 2003 "Shock and Awe" will come roaring through. We can choose to sit, once again transfixed by sounds of explosions, gunfire, sirens, screams -- and once again listen to Mike Malloy say in a dead voice stripped of all emotion...
"This is a dark day.
This is a filthy day.
This is a day for shame..."

Or we can rise up and stand firm. As Malloy also says, over and over (and over) -- "We know the truth. We no longer have an excuse for remaining silent."

History is replete with examples of citizens uniting and changing the course of history. When that happens, empires -- even a shining empire on a hill -- must change...or fall.

History. Round and round it goes. Will the US and Israel attack Iran? Will history repeat itself?

Yes, but only if we let it. The choice is ours.

nine years later

Tear Down The Statue Of Liberty

by Mary Pitt
September 19, 2010
　
It seems that the Statue of Liberty has lost its meaning and so might as well be razed and the island on which it stands can be put to better use, something like another huge amusement park for the enrichment of Disney or some other large entertainment corporation. If you doubt that this is true, try reading and really thinking about the words that are inscribed on its base:

Send me your tired, your poor
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Your huddles masses yearning to be free
Send these your tempest-toss'd to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door

Does that make sense to you? As if we didn't have enough tired, poor, and wretched refuse of our own! Why should we import more? There just isn't enough money to keep them alive but they would be better off dead, right? Just ignore them and let God handle the problem.

If those who sprung from the Tea Party to win the primary elections really represent the "will of the people", we all have to change our political philosophy. A good start at that can be accomplished by the destruction of the Statue of Liberty. It, like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, has become another tool for the take-over of our government. We all need to "dumb down" even more than during the Bush administration and stop bothering to read those historic documents and the history of the country. You see, our leaders will be those who wear Statue of Liberty costumes to Tea Parties even though the impressive statue was not even there during the Revolution. It was a gift from France (!) to celebrate the centennial of our beginning and the assistance that we gave them in the fight for their own democracy.

The ultra-religious Right has also neglected to familiarize themselves with the contents of the Constitution. They insist that President Obama is not a citizen despite his birth in Hawaii because his father was Nigerian. In one place, the Constitution speaks of "natural-born" and in others the phrase "within the jurisdiction of the United States". This means that anybody who is born in a facility or location where the laws of the United States apply is, thus, a natural-born American citizen. There was no outcry about John McCain being born in Panama both because his parents were American and because he was born in a military facility. Further, upon the granting of independence of the Philippines, children of one Philippine citizen and an American could choose their nationality.

Now we find ourselves faced with the problem of the tired, the poor, the tempest-tossed wretched refuse from Mexico and points South. There are too many of them to deport all at once and many are parents of United States citizens who are too young to leave behind. Would it over-crowd the country to let them stay? Surely, this great nation can manage to do all the paperwork that would be necessary to document them. Then, perhaps rather than to build walls, we could build ports of entry at the border where they could present themselves for documentation. After a computer check to prove that they are not felons or diseased, the proper papers could be furnished to let them walk in openly. Initially, it might be necessary to provide housing while they wait but, if the Golden Door will open for them, they will tolerate it patiently.

That Golden Door has opened for people from every nation in the world and every one of them who came with the yearning for a better life has become a productive part of society. Why not now? Because it would take too much money? Aye, there's the rub! We would have to pay taxes to cover the expenses and the payment of taxes has become a burden to those with "money to burn." And the more they have, the harder they hang onto it. They don't want to pay an honest wage for an honest day's work and they don't want to pay taxes!

Despite their loud protestations of Christianity, they have chosen to serve Mammon. AND THEY ARE WINNING! We thought our nation had undergone a change for the worse during the Bush administration but, if we allow this union between the religious right and the extremely wealthy to succeed in taking over our country, none of our sacred documents will mean a thing. In that case, we may as well tear down the Statue of Liberty, burn the Constitution, and stack the Declaration with the other books of fairy tales.

"Once upon a time, in a land far, far way, there was a beautiful land where all people were created equal and had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."

This writer is eighty years old and has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System.

With Friends Like These

by Mary Pitt
September 7, 2010

My middle-American heart swelled with pride in January, 2009, as our new President took his oath of office: pride in an America that could choke back two hundred years of prejudice and go to vote for a young, untried man to lead us out of the swamp in which the last holder of that seat had stranded us; pride that we had survived with sufficient strength that we could avail ourselves of the opportunity to rebuild out nation to the land of freedom and opportunity that we once enjoyed, and pride that the common people had come out in force to win the election and restore our ownership of our own democracy.

How wrong!

The very same people who elected this man and, in addition, gave him a predominantly Democratic Congress to assist him in his task, are the ones who are sitting on their haunches and wailing like a pack of forlorn hound dogs. "He set the wrong priorities!" "He isn't doing enough!" :He isn't doing it fast enough!" He's a failure!" These are not the words from the opposition. They are the words of his supporters! Those same people who turned out in droves and, at times, literally fought their way to the polling places so they could participate in the re-birth of a nation. The same ones who declared their Progressive stances celebrated the end of Bush-Cheney with hoots and cheers. We were admirers and friends of Barrack Hussein Obama and were aching to get on with the task ahead. These wonderful people are now opting to get off the bandwagon and walk!

It started very early. "He should not have appointed Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State. She will sell him down the river." "He has kept too many retreads from Bush and Clinton administrations." "He failed to jam the health care measures that we wanted down the throats of Congress." In short, while Obama has completed some tasks which many thought, and attempted to prove, were highly improbable, he is now being condemned for failing to perform the impossible! "The budget is still not balanced!" "The deficit is growing!" "We still have combat troops overseas!" This sort of thing is to be expected from the right wing as they attempt to regain their congressional control but to hear it from Democrats and even Progressives is disheartening, to say the least.

This widespread depression among the Progressives is certainly understandable. We wanted universal health insurance issued by the government with uniform premiums, total coverage, reasonably priced with no allowance for profit; we wanted some form of public employment to compensate for the loss of jobs; we wanted re-negotiation on all the "fair trade" agreements which took the factories offshore; we wanted a prompt end to the Bush wars. We wanted Christmas! However, we were not able to provide a Congress with a sufficient majority to carry those plans through against the determined opposition of the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats arrayed against us.

So now what do we do? We sulk in a corner, vote third party or vote with our feet! We act like a bunch of unhappy children on Christmas morning because "Santa Claus is a fake!" This is the time for us to re-affirm the dedication that we professed for the improvement of humanity by stepping up, stepping out and working for the new Congressional Progressive candidates for re-election and giving the President as much support as we did before his election. We can still control the damage inflicted by the Tea Party and the millionaire manipulators behind the Republican Party so we can continue to get as much improvement as possible in the next session.

It's time to put on our Big Boy pants, roll up our sleeves and get out the vote for Our Side. Just remember that it took eight years for George Bush to tear down the nation as we knew and loved it and it was silly of us to expect Barack Obama to re-assemble it in less than two years. Let's get out and promote the Progressive viewpoint, turn out the vote, and give the only President we have as much assistance as we can for the next two years. Then there will be plenty of time for us to choose a new progressive candidate for 2012. Allowing Republicans to take total control will result in the cancellation of improvements that we have accomplished and cause still more damage to democracy. Otherwise, we will find ourselves with another Great Depression and/or another war.

The choice is ours.

Mary Pitt is eighty years old and has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System.

Conspicuously Silent on the Hurricane Katrina Anniversary

Right-Wingers Are Conspicuously Silent on the Hurricane Katrina Anniversary:
by the Rude Pundit
8/31/2010
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/08/right-wingers-are-conspicuously-silent.html

Michelle Malkin, whose Shih Tzu yips of desperation for relevance have grown hoarse of late, puts the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in context for us all: "[D]on't expect any of these reconciliation-seeking leaders to confront the indelible stain of racial demagoguery left by the left in Katrina's aftermath." Yep, that's right. For Malkin, it's time for the left (especially the black left) to apologize to white people for saying mean things about them because of Katrina. Or implying mean things, as when she slams Jimmy Carter for saying, at Coretta Scott King's funeral, "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans." That bastard.

The conspicuous silence from the right wing punditeratti on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was almost comical. While MSNBC and CNN did extensive reporting from New Orleans and with their major show host offering commentary, over on Fox "news," it seems like Murdoch garbled out an order to avoid the topic. For, truly, if the best you've got is Neil Cavuto doing an in-studio talk with disgraced FEMA director and horse wrangler Michael "Brownie" Brown, then your network just doesn't give a rat's ass about the subject. Otherwise, a couple of brief reports, a Shepard Smith thing, and we're out.

Nothing from O'Reilly, from Hannity. Not a word from Limbaugh. No oh-so-precious tweets from Palin.

Indeed, in daring to even evoke Katrina, Malkin stands out as having a kind of idiotic bravery, for she veered from all Beck and all "mosque" to actually speak the name that dare not be spoken: George W. Bush (as in, "Hating George W. Bush means never having to say you're sorry").

You'd've thought someone from the Bush administration might wanna say something, maybe even Cheney or the man hisself. But perhaps he's still waiting for that judgment of history, which he seems to think will vindicate every fuck-up and reverse all the damage he did. Or maybe he's just hoping, aided and abetted by the right, that everyone will just forget he was there.

August 9, 1945

Sanctions against Iran

Iran's nuclear standoff: who is the loser?
Kourosh Ziabari
July 25, 2010

It's more than 8 years that the world's newspapers are filled with miscellaneous news, reports and commentaries concerning Iran's nuclear program. Controversy over Iran's nuclear program has spanned through two administrations in Iran: ex-President Mohammad Khatami's government and the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration. The term "Iran nuclear program" returns more than 6 million results in Google web search. Thousands of scholars, journalists, politicians and political pundits have made their own statement regarding this debatable subject.

Terminologically, Iran's nuclear program calls to mind the words holocaust, Israel, Zionism, Axis of Evil, George W. Bush, stretched hands and uranium enrichment. The world is watching the uninteresting continuation of confrontation over Iran's nuclear program and the opportunist journalists find this tedious charade the best subject to entertain their readers and enrich their portfolio.

Iran says that it needs enriched uranium to meet its energy demands and produce electricity. The United States and its European allies claim that Iran wants to produce nuclear weapons in order to launch a military strike against Israel. Israel, over the past 5 years, has been incessantly threatening Iran with a preemptive attack, warning that it would not allow Iran to achieve nuclear technology.

The United Nations Security Council, under the pressure of United States and its stalwart allies, has imposed 4 rounds of backbreaking financial sanctions against Iran to dissuade it from developing "nuclear weapons". Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected the claims that they're moving towards developing nuclear weapons and called the sanctions ineffective, valueless.

These scenarios have been taking place over the past 8 years repeatedly and there was not a single magnanimous politician to put an end to the exhausting war of words between Iran and the West categorically.

There are only two possibilities which can terminate Iran's nuclear deadlock. The first solution is that Iran has to withdraw from its nuclear accomplishments and submit to the calls of Western politicians by giving up its uranium enrichment program. The other solution would be the West's abandonment of its uncompromising stance by accepting a new nuclear power in the Middle East.

Both of the solutions, however, seem to be impractical and unattainable as none of the parties involved in Iran's nuclear standoff have so far shown any sign of flexibility and reasonability. The West staunchly insists that Israel should remain the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and the employment of nuclear energy by the other countries, even for peaceful purposes, violates the policy of a Middle East with an unrivaled nuclear Israel. Iran, on the other hand, insists that it would never accede to halt its uranium enrichment program in lieu of receiving a certain amount of uranium enriched by a third country to be consequently transferred to Iran to be used in the nuclear reactors in Bushehr and Natanz.

Both sides of the game continue to stick to their stubbornness and adamancy. None of them retreat from their stances which have been indicated a number of times that are baseless and unfounded. The game which they've started has no winner. It's a "lose-lose" competition. Amidst their erosive and probably unending clashes, the Iranian people seem to be the only loser. They're the ones who should tolerate the intolerable consequences of financial sanctions. They're the ones who will be deprived of the barest rudiments of their daily life as a result of the financial sanctions which are purportedly imposed on the government of Iran.

The Iranian people are the only loser of power game between Iran and the West. They're competing to surmount each other in a nonstop match which is designed to show the most powerful competitor.

Once the turn comes to boasting of respecting the human rights and freedom, the Western leaders chant that they want the well-being, liberty and safety of the Iranian people. Once it's time to keep silent and watch, they interfere disturbingly and affect the political destiny of a nation. I'm referring to Iran's June 2009 presidential elections in which the Western politicians blatantly took the side of the reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi and made an opposition figure out of him, laying the groundwork for his being demonized domestically; however, once it's time for them to take action and prevent the Iranian nation from being affected by the grave consequences of a meaningless power game, they vote in favor of a fourth round of financial sanctions against Iran unilaterally and prove that their claims are drastically futile and unrealistic.

The only losers of this power game are the ordinary Iranian people. There's no doubt about that.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist. He has received the national medal of superior Iranian youth from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.


additional reading:

Invisible Holocaust: Iraqi Sanction Criminals Seek Reprise in Iran
Written by Chris Floyd Tuesday, 20 July 2010 00:14
http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1993-invisible-holocaust-iraqi-sanction-criminals-seek-reprise-in-iran.html

Harsh new US penalties against Iran
By Peter Symonds 5 July 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/iran-j05.shtml

Amiri 'told CIA Iran had no bomb program'
By Gareth Porter July 20, 2010
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LG21Ak01.html

Scary Anti-Iran Talk Is Escalating
- And Weapons May Be Moving Into Position for Attack
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus July 12, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/147504/

Chomsky: Is the US Gearing Up for the Destruction of Iran?
By Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky's Official Site July 15, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/147572/

Stirrings of a New Push for Military Option on Iran
by Jim Lobe, July 10, 2010
http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2010/07/09/stirrings-of-a-new-push-for-military-option-on-iran/

Terror in Iran:
Another Day, Another Atrocity in the World of Dirty War
Written By Chris Floyd Thursday, 15 July 2010 21:28
http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1991-another-day-another-atrocity-in-the-world-of-dirty-war.html

The Glory of White-Wing Politics

By Sheila Samples
July 5, 2010

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress...but then, I repeat myself."
- Mark Twain

Much has been written -- argued heatedly by ideological TV pundits -- over the past several years about the inability of members of Congress to agree on anything. Republicans stomp around like elephants in a china closet, shouting "No! No! Hell No!" no matter what legislation comes before them. Democrats, in a timid effort to reach across the aisle, stumble and fall down, where they just sit, plaintively begging, "Please don't hurt me..."

Both parties are adrift; cut loose from their moorings -- in total disarray. Much of the chaos is a result of the previous administration lighting a myriad of fuses before slinking into the shadows, setting off a string of political and financial explosions designed to blow this republic all to hell. What they failed to consider -- and what the bumbling members of Congress have yet to realize is -- when the ship of state sinks, everybody on board is going down with it.

Which appears to be what the race-baiting Rush Limbaugh, the self-appointed "leader" of the Republican Party, is feverishly attempting to provoke. Anybody who doubts that Limbaugh hasn't been in racist meltdown since 2007 when it became obvious that Barack Obama was a threat to White-Wing Limbaughesque "values" just hasn't been paying attention. Throughout the campaign -- from constantly airing the insulting Barack, the Magic Negro jingle to calling Obama and actress Halle Berry "Halfrican-Americans," to accusing Obama of "disowning his white half and deciding to go all in on the black side" -- Limbaugh led the pack.

And he still does. Republicans are united in support of the "I Hope He Fails" Limbaugh Doctrine which El Rushbo announced as millions of relieved -- even giddy -- Americans gathered at the nation's capitol for Obama's inauguration. Just a day later, Limbaugh hit the racist trail, telling Fox's Sean Hannity...

"[r]acism in this country is the exclusive province of the left. We're witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We're being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles. Bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president. We've got to accept this. The racism that everybody thinks exists on our side of the aisle has been on full display throughout their primary campaign. So I think they've done a great job, the media has, of covering up his deficiencies."

So, it's all the Democrats' fault. The Democrats are militantly racist. If we buy into Limbaugh's rationale, none of his hateful, cruel, racist remarks would have been necessary if the Democrats hadn't selected a Halfrican-American who threw his grandma under the bus and then backed over her before going over to the black side as their candidate for president. On his October 12, 2009 show, Limbaugh explained just how innocent and colorblind he is...

"I'm interested in people's hearts and their souls, because that's what animates us as human beings. Not our skin color. I'm colorblind. I have reached the point where everybody professes we need to go. I treat everybody equally. Nobody is -- in the political arena -- I don't care. Male, female, black, white, gay, straight, bisexual. If you are opposed to the things I think are great for the country, I'm going to say so. I'm going to criticize you. Not because of whatever it is distinguishes you from me on a surface basis, but because of ideas. I'm just a lone guy here, in the arena of ideas, sharing mine."

The Democrats quake with fear at the thought of being labeled "racist." When Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in their January 2009 book, Game Change, wrote that, during the campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was delighted that Obama was the Democratic presidential candidate, and had said privately that "Obama, as a black candidate, could be successful thanks, in part, to his "light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," all hell broke loose.

Reid immediately apologized to the media, to "any and all Americans," and personally called President Obama, as well as "House Democrats Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Barbara Lee of California; the Rev. Al Sharpton; CNN political contributor and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; NAACP chairman Julian Bond; and the head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Wade Henderson."

If there is evidence of Limbaugh or any of his White-Wing cohorts in the media, in Congress, or in the dangerously leaderless, out-of-control Teabagging movement offering even the semblance of an apology for their hateful rhetoric, I am unaware of it. Just last week, on July 2, Limbaugh was in full, bouncing racist fervor. According to Media Matters...

Rush stated that President Obama is "no different than Castro, in the sense that neither will be stopped by a governing document." He also asserted that "[w]e are not a Third World country here, putting up shacks and huts like the president's brother lives in." And if that wasn't bad enough, Rush "speculate[d]" that Michelle Obama did not attend the late Sen. Robert Byrd's funeral because of her "authentic slave blood."

Is anybody, other than a bunch of Dittoheads or his obedient followers in Congress, listening to this guy? As if we didn't have history to remind us, racism rots the soul of a nation, and the upheaval in Congress has its roots in racism.

This is about so much more than destroying one man, or even one party. Americans -- not just Democrats -- must find the courage to shout "No! No! Hell No!" to the destruction planned for this republic. Unless we stand up, shake ourselves off, and dare to fight back, the evil glory of White-Wing Politics will devour us.

We have no choice. Because this ship is going down.

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is an OpEd editor, and a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.

Progressives: What Do You Really Want?

by Mary Pitt
June 22, 2010　

After the national outpouring of support which thrust Barack Obama into the presidency in November, 2008, one would suppose that he had a solid majority of Americans behind him and would have little trouble in making the changes which he had promised. Immediately faced with an opposition minority who declared intentions to make sure that he would fail, the new President nonetheless toiled on in the effort to do what he could to make the lives of working Americans better, safer, and healthier.

First, of course, he had to deal with the collapse of the entire banking system as well as record unemployment due to a decade of outsourcing of American jobs. The "stimulus" bill for the banks had been pushed through by the Bush administration just before the close of their term and the economy staggered under the load of bailing out the very people who caused the crash and continued their old practices of gouging the public for the enrichment of their own investors.

Next, it became apparent that the unemployment was likely to worsen due to the financial condition of the American automobile manufacturers. So much borrowed money had been funneled to the banks that it required a good deal of ingenuity to be able to salvage what was almost the last industry in the nation and prevent the additional layoffs of their workers. President Obama was blasted for accepting shares of stock from General Motors as collateral for their loan but that seems to be working out.

Then came the blockbuster! Health care reform! Sure, we all wanted a program of universal health care as it exists in most of the world but, by then, it was clear that the Republicans would never allow such a measure through the Senate. Then we prayed for the "public option" so that, as taxpayers, we could pay only the true costs of health care rather than further enriching the health insurance corporations. The political wall went up again. Republicans are strange creatures who find that compulsory health insurance where we all pay into corporate profits is preferable to paying a bit more in taxes in order to save everybody more money.

Now the poor man is under fire for the way he "handled" the Gulf oil spill. He didn't go down to the Gulf soon enough or do enough about it! What did we expect him to do? Would it have helped if he had flown over on his way home from vacation and had pictures of him looking out the window at the devastation below published in all the papers? Or maybe he should have gone to New Orleans and given a rousing speech? Even the Progressives are acting as if they expected him to go out on a fishing boat and suck the crude oil up with a long straw?

Yes, that's facetious but I am angry! The people's movement moved the Democratic Party far to the left and elected a highly-intelligent, thinking man to lead the nation. Now everybody is angry because he is not doing precisely what we each imagined that he would do. He has not and cannot, with a wave of his hand, make the Bush/Cheney administration simply disappear into the mists of Avalon. Those two pesky wars are still with us and we must forgive the President for taking the time to feel his way into a decent solution to the problem of ending them. Our international relations were as strained as last year's girdle but are slowly improved in most areas, thanks to delicate diplomacy.

The situation of the United States is still precarious on all fronts. The Party of NO in partnership with the Blue Dogs seem determined that any plans or ideas proposed by the President must be stopped in their tracks. With an election facing us, any loss of Progressive Democratic support will be a death knell to what small reforms have already been accomplished. The Tea Partiers are running rampant with their campaign to return us to colonial days of "every-man-for-himself" while the Progressives whine their disappointment and look over third-party candidates.

If this is the ambition of the Progressive Democrats among you, congratulations, you are right on track. If not, we need to come back together and stay together to add to our majorities in Congress so that those reforms that have been begun can be advanced and those that have not yet been attempted will not be dead a-borning. It is time fort all of us who worked so hard to make radical changes in the governance of the country to roll up our sleeves, pull up our pants, and redouble our efforts to complete the job at hand, to get rid of the congressional obstructionists and replace them with people who truly realize that freedoms which we have enjoyed are still in mortal danger.

If we do not get behind the President whom, by our super-human efforts, we were able to elect, then we wasted our time and his and can look forward to another administration even worse than the last. We Progressives must decide whether we really want "progress" or if we prefer to become only single-issue voters without representation as a group in the halls of government. If the latter is the case we can flush our American Dreams, and join the many other nations throughout history who thought it possible to establish a lasting government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

This writer is eighty years old and has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System.

Obama sharply increases secret military operations

By Bill Van Auken
5 June 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/spec-j05.shtml


The Obama administration has sharply increased the use of US Special Operations forces in secret military interventions around the world, according to a report Thursday by the Washington Post.

The Post reports that the administration has increased to 75 the number of countries where these elements, including US Army Delta Force and Green Beret troops, Navy Seals and other secretive units, are operating, compared to 60 at the beginning of 2009.

Funding for these operations has risen accordingly. The Obama White House has requested a 5.7 percent increase in appropriations for Special Operations in fiscal 2011, amounting to a total budget of $6.3 billion. It has also sought another $3.5 billion in contingency funding for Special Ops in 2010.

Citing senior US military and administration officials, the Post presents a telling picture of the Janus-like character of the Obama administration’s foreign and military policy: “Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy, and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret US war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups,” the newspaper states.

The article continues, “The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.”

In other words, while mouthing phrases about diplomacy, universal values and the rule of law, Obama has presided over a dramatic escalation in the use of killing squads that have been responsible for assassination programs, torture and the murder of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The use of these methods has been extended secretly to numerous other countries.

The Post noted that, “In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.”

“One advantage of using ‘secret’ forces for such missions,” according to the Post, “is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral US raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.”

What is “politically useful” about these secret killing campaigns? Clearly they are not being kept secret from the populations where people are dying as a result. Those living where US Special Operations forces are operating know that these American units, referred to within the military as “manhunters,” are responsible for death and mayhem in their countries. In most cases, governments of these countries also are aware of their presence.

Those being kept in the dark through this secrecy are the American people, the majority of whom voted for Obama in 2008 based on the misapprehension that he was opposed to the policies of international military aggression and criminality that pervaded the Bush administration.

The kind of operations in which these forces are engaged has repeatedly been exposed in Afghanistan in incidents involving the massacre of civilians. In one case last February, Special Operations troops conducted a night raid in the village of night raid in the village of Khataba in eastern Afghanistan, killing an entire family, including two pregnant women and a teenage girl. Afterwards, according to Afghan investigators, the troops dug the bullets out of the bodies in an attempt to cover up their responsibility.

The US military has been forced this week to acknowledge that Special Forces troops called in air strikes against three minibuses in Afghanistan’s southern Uruzgan Province, slaughtering at least 23 men, women and children earlier this year. [US reprimands six over deadly air strike in Afghanistan]

Atrocities of a similar character are undoubtedly being carried out in Yemen, where an official told the Post that US forces are engaged in training and joint operations with Yemeni forces as well as conducting “unilateral strikes.”

And US forces are involved in a growing level of bloodshed in Somalia, where Special Operations units are arming and “advising” forces in a campaign against Al-Shabab and other Islamist militias that control much of the country. On Thursday, these US-backed forces shelled neighborhoods in Mogadishu, the capital of the impoverished country, killing at least 17 civilians and wounding scores more.

Either country could easily become the arena for a far wider US military intervention.

The Post article suggests a close affinity between the Obama White House and the Special Operations command, which, even in the US military, is viewed as somewhat of a breed apart because of its culture of assassination and terror.

“Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush’s administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the Post reports.

“We have a lot more access,” one of these commanders told the newspaper. Describing relations with the Obama White House, he added, “They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly.”

Another military commander told the Post that Obama has allowed these forces to do “things that the previous administration did not.”

According to the report, there are 13,000 US Special Operations forces currently deployed overseas, 9,000 of them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Post article follows the release Wednesday of a report by the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, which condemns the US as the world’s number one practitioner of targeted killings, i.e., assassinations.
[http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf]

The report reserves special condemnation for the CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan, which have claimed hundreds if not thousands of lives, the majority of them civilians. The program, the rapporteur, Philip Alston, writes, is part of a “strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability.”
[http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/06/20106325050780296.html]

He notes that, while the last three years of the Bush administration saw 45 drone attacks on Pakistan, since Obama took office a year-and-a-half ago there have been 53 strikes, 39 of them this year alone.

“Because this program remains shrouded in official secrecy, the international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed,” he writes.

The report further calls attention to the sinister character of the drone warfare, conducted from the safety of computer stations in the US. “Because operators are based thousands of miles from the battlefield…there is a risk of developing a ‘PlayStation’ mentality to killing,” it states. “A lack of disclosure gives states a virtual and impermissible license to kill.”

It further warns that the unsanctioned character of these strikes leaves CIA operatives participating in it liable to prosecution “under the domestic law of any country in which they conduct targeted drone killings.”

Alston accuses Washington of inventing a “law of 9/11” to justify its overriding of international law governing military conflict and human rights.

Indeed, as the Washington Post noted in its article Thursday, this is the sole basis invoked by the Obama administration to justify its ever wider use of military force—the authorization for the use of military force passed by Congress in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington nearly nine years ago. That resolution gave the White House authority to use military force against any nation, organization or individual who “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11 attacks.

The newspaper quoted John B. Bellinger, III, a senior legal adviser in the Bush administration, who helped craft the notion that as president and commander in chief Bush had constitutional authority to wage war at will, a position formally eschewed by the Obama White House.

“While they seem to be expanding their operations both in terms of extraterritoriality and aggressiveness, they are contracting the legal authority upon which those expanding actions are based,” Bellinger warned in relation to the new administration.

The forces being hunted by Special Operations troops in Somalia and Yemen clearly had nothing to do with September 11. This only underscores the illegality of the Obama administration’s foreign military operations, which increasingly resemble those of a state incarnation of Murder Incorporated.

Why don't they publish us?

Kourosh Ziabari
May 7, 2010

From the Guardian and New York Times to the Washington Post and Reuters, I've submitted several op-ed pieces and articles to the world's mainstream media outlets and newspapers over the past years. All of my submissions were responded identically: "Rejected"!

Intrinsically, it's an ambition of every journalist to reach out to a greater audience, achieve more exposure, make progress and improve his portfolio. Putting aside the primary motive of being renowned as a reference of public attention, the journalist aims to elevate his own viewpoint and advertise the way he looks into different matters as a precise and rectified account. The journalist is primarily looking for ways to exalt his own interpretation of stories and inculcate the reader a supposedly reliable, accurate analysis of a certain incident which is presumably "what he believes".

Thinking of methods to expand his coverage, journalist's principal purpose is to get in touch with the global audiences, instruct them on the basis of his own mindset, advocate a certain philosophy and denounce the other scopes of thought. This is actually how the journalist accomplishes his mission regardless of his ideological and reflective belongingness.

The inherent mission of a journalist is to enlighten the public opinions, help them distinguish the right from wrong and encourage the value of critical thinking. Although the journalism of 21st century has become an instrumental mechanism of disseminating falsehood, launching black propaganda and psychological warfare, the foremost responsibility of a journalist is to tell the truth even at the cost of his own defeat.

Anyway, I haven't come this long way to advocate the principles and fundamentals of journalism and sermonize about the basis of ethnic journalism; neither have I come to enumerate the responsibilities of a decent journalist and itemize his duties in respect of the public opinions. What I would like to discuss is the reasons why "they" don't publish "us". So who are these "they" and who are those "us"?

"They" are the chained, corporate media outlets whose interests are intertwined with together. "They" are the news networks, websites, magazines and journals who are afraid of the other side of story, so "they" prefer to withhold it from the public or distort it the other way.

"They" are the media outlets who are wise enough to recognize the difference between "nuclear energy" and "nuclear bomb", and that's why they use them interchangeably while translating the speeches of Iranian President.

"They" are the media outlets who are courteous and considerate enough to refer to the American President as President Obama and call the Iranian President "the hardliner".

"They" are the media outlets who feel free to run the most insulting and offensive cartoons about the Prophet of Islam whom some 1.5 billion people around the world venerate and glorify, because the "freedom of speech" allows them to do so. Interestingly, the same "freedom of speech" disallows them to publish a cartoon questioning the veracity of holocaust or an interview with a German political prisoner who has been jailed for 7 years simply due to his "visa overstay"!

"They" are the media outlets who can ridicule a 70-million nation by calling them "terrorists" collectively. "They" are the media outlets who can equalize a divine religion with radical terrorism, simply because they're free to express whatever they think by the virtue of "freedom of expression". "They" are the media networks who can invite the government opponents in a Third World country to break out into the streets, vandalize the public properties and stage a color revolution, because they have the authority and influence to do so.

"They" are those who can disregard the massacre of 1300 Palestinians as "collateral damage" and conflate the vicious carnage of Gaza with Israel's right to self-defense. "They" are those who can't ever tolerate for Israel only five minutes of the disastrous incidents which the Palestinian people are undergoing.

"They" are those who are affluent enough to finance the Arab media outlets in the Middle East to drop the name "Persian" off the term "Persian Gulf" because they know that the magnificent civilization of Iran is interweaved with the honorable history of Persian Gulf and Iranians are sensitive about this.

So, who is this "us"? It is us, who can't turn a blind eye to the atrocities of a racist regime whose existence is hinged on killing, destroying and devastating. It's us, who can't keep silent, remain indifferent and unconcernedly tolerate the offensive massacre of Palestinian people in the most brutal way. It's us who can't digest the double standards of the hegemonic superpowers. Why should the United States who has dropped hundreds of nuclear bombs on the heads of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and seized the lives of millions of innocent people impose financial sanctions on Iran which is trying to develop nuclear energy for civilian purposes? What's the fault of millions of Iranian people who are in dire need of special types of medicine which should be imported from the European countries? It's us, who can't call these unilateral and crippling sanctions a respectful homage to the so-called virtue of human rights; if these medicines are not imported to the country, millions of "human beings" will be exposed to the risk of death; it's us who want to call the hegemonic powers to minimally respect the "human rights" which they've invented themselves.

It's "us", who don't classify people on the basis of their color, race, religion or nationality. We don't consider the black, impoverished Africans to be socially lower or less important than the sumptuous, well-off whites in the Northern Europe. We don't call the Muslims terrorist altogether simply because an irreligious, American-manufactured pawn named Osama Bin Laden carries out terrorist attacks all around the world. Who is unaware of the extensive relations between the families of George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden? Who can demonstrate that Bin Laden is a practicing Muslim? Who can demonstrate that he says prayers during the day and takes fast in the month of Ramadan? Who can rule out the possibility that Al-Qaeda is an American-funded group which is established to portray a brutal and inhuman image of the Muslims all around the world?

It's "us", who don't reiterate the obsolete threatening sentence of "all options are on the table". Unlike President Obama and his affiliated media outlets including, among others, Fox News and Voice of America we don't threaten any country of a nuclear strike and don't stage a propaganda project against any nation to demoralize them 24 hours a day.

There are countless differences between "they" and "us" and that's why they'll never publish something which is written by "us". The other side of story has to remain obscured and unrevealed routinely. It will not be a privilege for them to discuss something which is "out of context" or out of "popular interest", so it's not that much of a surprise to receive emails, telling us that "we receive many more submissions than we can publish; thank you this time, but we may regret that…"

In their eyes, our writings always contain a hoard of grammatical slips, factual errors, contextual deviations and whatever of the writing gaffes and inaccuracies you may visualize. That's why they don't publish us.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His works have appeared on Press TV, Tehran Times, Foreign Policy Journal, Islam Online and Atlantic Free Press.

Waste Management:

Congress Pushes Surge in Ongoing War Against Iran
Written By Chris Floyd
Saturday, 24 April 2010 22:59
http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1960-waste-management-congress-pushes-surge-in-ongoing-war-against-iran.html


There was a striking story in the papers on Friday: "Congress OKs Surge in Undeclared War against Iran!"

Well, that wasn't exactly the headline – but it was the truth behind the reports about the vote in the House of Representatives to tighten the ligature of sanctions around the neck of Iran, as Antiwar.com reports. In accordance with the "diplomacy" of the Peace Laureate in the Oval Office, the House wants to "cripple" the Iranian economy by starving the human beings who live there of gasoline and other vital goods necessary to maintain a modicum of ordinary life.

In other words, the popularly elected leaders of the world's greatest democracy – champions of liberty, justice and human rights – want to stop ambulances from transporting sick and dying children to the hospital. They want whole families to burn to death, whole city blocks to go up in flames while fuelless fire trucks stand idle. They want deliveries of food and medicine to grind to a halt, setting off spirals of starvation, disease, chaos and vast suffering. They want to see tens of millions of innocent human beings driven into a low and brutal level of subsistence, to languish, diminish – and die – in deprivation and misery. This is what they want to see happen. This is the clear intent of their "diplomatic" strategy.

And why are they doing this? Because – ostensibly because – the government of Iran is pursuing the development of a nuclear energy program in accordance with international treaties and under international supervision. And if the above condign punishment of millions of innocent people does not force the government of Iran to give up this legal, carefully inspected program, then the champions of liberty, justice and human rights have proclaimed their intent to unilaterally attack Iran with all the "options" at their command, up to and including the "option" of immolating multitudes of innocent human beings with nuclear weapons.

Now, the government of Iran is an odious regime. Not nearly as odious as, say, the regime of America's staunch ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, of course, but odious enough. But as restrictive as it has been to its own citizens, it has not – in the last decade alone – launched and maintained massive wars of aggression and domination that have killed, by direct and collateral hand, more than a million innocent people. The bipartisan champions of liberty, justice and human rights in Washington have done that, and are doing that.

They seek to break Iran not because it is an odious regime, but because it defies the imperial will, and balks the bipartisan imperial agenda to impose domination on the oil lands. If Iran agreed to become an American client state tomorrow, it would not matter in the least how odious its regime might be -- as we saw in the long, atrocious decades when America's pet tyrant, Reza Pahlavi, ruled there. But because Iran has not agreed to this, it is now a target for decimation: by sanctions and the ongoing campaign of American-backed terrorism and covert operation (all of which are themselves acts of war, including most emphatically the sanctions, as noted here recently), or else by direct military action by American war machine or its proxy in Israel.

And that is why we hear the constant regurgitation of ludicrous charges from our national leaders on the "great threat" that Iran poses to the entire planet. Indeed, Harry Reid, the leading Democrat in the United States Senate -- lauding the House vote and licking his chops to advance this escalation bill to final approval in his bailiwick -- declared that Iran was "a festering sore in the world": crude, dehumanizing language familiar to anyone with even the slightest knowledge of Nazi propaganda. Reid went on:

"As [the House] get [the bill] out, I will move everything within my power to move it to the floor [of the Senate] The Middle East is unstable. This will help stabilize it."

Just think of the towering stupidity of that remark. Whatever else you might say about tightening sanctions on Iran -- even if you believed it was the right thing to do -- the one thing you could not say is that such a move will "help stabilize" the Middle East. Indeed, Iran hawks of every stripe -- from the sanctionist strangulators to the bomb-em-now brigade -- openly, even proudly aver that their ultimate aim is to overthrow the current Iranian regime: that is, to greatly, vastly, decisively de-stabilize the Middle East by bringing down one of its most powerful governments. And of course, the sanctions themselves -- like all the other war measures launched by the United States against Iran, and like all the aggressive, constant threats to attack, punish, even obliterate Iran -- are clearly and deliberately aimed at provoking retaliation by the Tehran government: blowback which will, by design, make the Middle East more unstable ... thus 'justifying' whatever measures the United States takes to further its dominationist agenda.

Reid knows this, of course. He does not believe -- not for a single nano-second -- that tightening the noose around Iran's neck will "help stabilize" the Middle East. But he -- like our entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment -- thinks that you are stupid enough to believe it.

Reid's warmongering lies were echoed by another top Democrat, Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who, as AFP reports, forthrightly declared that "the world faces no security threat greater than the prospect of a nuclear Iran."

O lucky world! The greatest thing we have to fear -- in all the world -- is the prospect that Iran -- whose leaders consistently denounce even the idea of nuclear weapons as the gravest sin, and whose nuclear energy program (we repeat for the nth time) is under the closest international supervision ever imposed on a nation -- might, somehow, someday, produce a nuclear weapon. If the mere prospect of this remote possibility is the greatest thing we have to fear in the modern world, then by Godfrey we are in a lot better shape than I thought.

But again, none of this is true. And Berman -- even though he is one of many Congressfolk who seem to believe that they actually represent a district located somewhere between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea -- knows it is not true. He knows, as any sentient being knows, that even if Iran did produce a nuclear weapon, it would not and could not pose an "existential threat" to Israel -- or to the United States for that matter. Any nuclear attack by Iran on Israel would result in a massive retaliation from Israel's nuclear arsenal (obtained and maintained illegally, outside any international treaty or supervision). And even if Israel had no nukes, a nuclear attack by Tehran in the close quarters of the Middle East would rain deadly fallout back on Iran itself. Not to mention the distinct possibility of retaliation by the United States -- or indeed Russia or any number of nuclear states who would feel threatened by this wanton, self-destructive act of nuclear aggression.

In any case, all of this speculation -- every bit of it -- is itself the purest fantasy. It is not going to happen -- and our champions of liberty, justice and human rights who sit ensconced in the midst of thousands of nuclear weapons while directing wars of aggression -- know it is not going to happen. The "Iranian threat," as promulgated by the leaders of both parties in the United States, is the basest of falsehoods -- as the promulgators themselves well know.

I realize it is deeply insulting to the intelligence of anyone with a modicum of intelligence to point out these glaringly, tediously obvious facts -- but when you are dealing with the vast amount of crude, Nazi-like propaganda that daily inundates the American people on the subject of Iran, this kind of waste treatment is necessary.

"Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black"

by Tim Wise

Posted by Sara and Brian Brandsmeier
on Thursday, April 22, 2010
http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.
[Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.]

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care.

a comment
April 24, 2010 12:26 AM
Deborah Brancheau said...
I was just talking about this with my family before I read this and I thought of the same principle but in a different way.

In the 60s and 70s there were the Black Panthers and other "militant" black civil rights groups. These Americans had a legitimate reason to feel the need to protect their lives and the lives of their families. And how did conservatives view them both then and now? They don't even want them in their history books anymore.

Health Care Reform 2010

Keep The Change

By Sheila Samples
March 22, 2010

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives
- Alvin Toffler, "Future Shock"

Each time it appears that Republicans can't get any nastier, any more bereft of morality, they wrap themselves in the flag, grab their guns and Bibles, and manage once again to hit the bottom of the ethical barrel. A good example is Ben Smith's recent startling revelation in Politico.com, which exposed the dirty tricks Republican National Committee (RNC) operatives were planning to play, not only on Democrats in the upcoming elections -- but on their own donors. Smith writes...

"Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC -- Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms -- but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms."

One page, headed “The Evil Empire,” pictures Obama as the Joker from Batman, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively."

Ruh-Roh. I can't help it -- that's good for a grin, albeit a ghoulish one. And the “tchochkes,” or swag, such as T-shirts, tote bags, baseball caps, and other useless crap they planned to give to their donors in exchange for big bucks made some of us laugh out loud.

But that's just the funny part. The far more frightening aspect is the lengths the rabid radical right -- not just the Republican Party -- is willing to go in order to destroy President Obama and the "socialist commies" who elected him. They are very open about it; proud to be the "Party of No," and brag about burying Obama under a burning health-care pyre. Nearly a year ago, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint gloated -- "this health-care issue is D-Day for freedom in America...If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

Former Bush speech writer David Frum admitted to MSNBC's Ed Shultz on his March 18 show that negotiation has never been on the Republican's health-care table. Frum said...

"It's critical for everybody, and not just the president. It's critical for us on the Republican side, too. If this thing passes, there is going to be an accountability moment on the Republican side. We had a choice, do we negotiate and try to get some of our values in the bill? Or do we go for total defeat of the president and bet everything on that?

"I was one of those who said negotiate. That advice was rejected. We went for total defeat of the president. If he prevails, it is going to be a shutout of Republican views in one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed in the United States."

Some are disillusioned with Obama because they feel he has not been forthcoming with his promise of change. They do not seem to realize that, for more than a decade, change in this nation has been overwhelming. Since the Kafkaesque mutation of the Republican establishment, whose metamorphosis into a destructive force was sudden as a result of five right-wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court stopping the Florida recount in December 2000 and handing the presidency to one of their own even though his opponent won the national popular vote by more than a half million ballots, the change within the Republican party has been nothing less than frenetic.

This is no longer about politics, where opposing sides butt heads, twist arms and kick ass until they manage to agree on legislation that will benefit American citizens on both sides of the aisle. It is not, as Frum said, about merely defeating this president. It is about destroying him; about weaving a noose for him out of lies and dirty tricks; about sending a message to future generations of African Americans that the "White" House means just that.

If you doubt that the right-wing crusade is about race, you are either so oblivious of the past that you see nothing unusual about the present -- or you haven't been to a Tea Party lately. At Tea Parties across the nation, Obama is not only portrayed in hideous caricatures as the Joker, but as others such as Adolph Hitler, Karl Marx and Osama bin Laden.

Initially, the Tea Party movement was started by Congressman Ron Paul to appeal to Americans who were frustrated and fed-up with such things as taxes and wars, but it was immediately co-opted by right-wing think tanks and by Fox News whose target-eyed pundits brayed 24/7 about a massive "white culture" crusade taking over the nation. Racist hatemongers joined the party, especially Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and,in no time at all, had David Duke, a "white nationalist" and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,looking like a rank amateur.

These guys aren't crazy -- okay, maybe they are -- but they know exactly what they're doing. They learned from eight years of K-K-Karl Rove and Dick Cheney that fear and hate are the two easiest emotions to work with. Stir in a generous helping of rage, and entire cultures can be manipulated into a frenzy. And, when those emotions feed on racism, a gathering can be turned into a mob, which can then be whipped into a destructive, extremist riot.

In the Spring 2010 Intelligence Report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Mark Potok examines the "Rage on the Right." He writes...

"Since the installation of Barack Obama, right-wing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers. Racist skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the nation’s first black president. One man from Brockton, Mass. -- who told police he had learned on white supremacist websites that a genocide was under way against whites -- is charged with murdering two black people and planning to kill as many Jews as possible on the day after Obama’s inauguration. Most recently, a rash of individuals with anti-government, survivalist or racist views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases.

"As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn). Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory -- the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps -- before finally “debunking” it.

"Last year also experienced levels of cross-pollination between different sectors of the radical right not seen in years. Nativist activists increasingly adopted the ideas of the Patriots; racist rants against Obama and others coursed through the Patriot movement; and conspiracy theories involving the government appeared in all kinds of right-wing venues."

The SPLC also reports that just in the first year of the Obama presidency, "an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) -- a 244% jump."

We are falling apart. We have lost our sense of decency, our sense of direction. The past is overtaking us, and will soon be our future. We are surrounded by increasingly violent gun-toting "Patriots" who are eager to water the Tree of Liberty with the blood of loony liberals, Commies, and Socialists -- starting with their Black President who, according to the mad dogs on the right, is determined to destroy the freedoms of loyal Americans.

Are we going to stand here, suffering from change shock -- too much change in too short a period of time -- and do nothing? It's tempting, but as Chris Hedges warns,

"To give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others, who we may never meet, to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them. No act of resistance is useless. ... But we will have to resist and then find the faith that resistance is worthwhile, for we will not immediately alter the awful configuration of power. And in this long,long war a community to sustain us, emotionally and materially, will be the key to a life of defiance. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow."

I agree. We must resist -- in order to stop the right-wing's race to destruction before it's too late -- and to change the shock of our children's future.

Sheila Samples http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/ is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is an OEN editor, and a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.