The Guerrilla Campaign

by Mary Pitt 5/31/08 When I was a child growing up in Kansas during the Great Depression, toys were few and hard to come by. Almost all of my dolls were made by hand by my mother of leftover fabric scraps from her essential sewing. Others were passed down from neighborhood kids who had outgrown them. Recently, while discussing politics with a dear friend, one particular rag doll popped into my mind. This doll was a unique one, I have no recollection of its origin, and I have never seen another like it. It was made of white fabric with a painted-on face and golden yarn hair, and wore a lovely dress in pale colors that denoted a degree of gentility, with hands folded across the front of the body in a demure position. While I was admiring my new possession, my mother took it from me gently, turned it upside-down, and it became a different doll, with black face and arms, with a kerchief tied about its black hair, dressed more modestly in a long gray dress with a white apron. :"It'...

Stealth growers seed or plant on land that doesn't belong to them. The result? Plants that beautify or yield crops in otherwise neglected or vacant spaces. By Joe Robinson Special to The Times May 29, 2008 http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-hm-guerrilla29-2008may29,0,3848418.story BRIMMING with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered. "The city wasn't doing anything with it, and I had a bunch of extra plants," says Scott, as we tour the garden, cars whooshing by on both sides of Loynes Drive. Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London...

Riding in Red Neck City II

- Anti-Chavistas, That Is by Stephen Lendman 5/16/08 Who said crime doesn't pay? Read on. The Washington-based Cato Institute is all about "Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace," or so says its web site. It's been around since 1977 preaching limited government and free market religion with plenty of high-octane corporate funding for backing. It better have it for the award it presented on May 15. It was to a 23 year old fifth year Venezuelan law student at Universidad Catolica Andres Bello. Yon Goicoechea was the fourth recipient of the "Milton Friedman Liberty Prize" in the amount of $500,000. For what? What else. For serving the interests of capital back home and leading anti-Chavista protests. Goicoechea is leader of Venezuela's "pro-democracy student movement" that in Cato's words "prevented Hugo Chavez's regime from seizing broad dictatorial powers in December 2007." The reference is to the narrow defeat of Venezue...

By Sheila Samples 5/16/08 Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes. Everybody knows. - Leonard Cohen The fate of millions was sealed the moment Dick Cheney selected himself as The Destroyer whose charge to keep for the next eight years would be -- as Capitol Hill Blue's Doug Thompson so succinctly described George W. Bush -- a "criminally insane, pill-popping dry drunk." I don't know about that. I've seen some drunks in my time -- even dry ones -- and George Bush appears to be more than a little moist. Bush was the perfect foil for Cheney. The Scalia-driven 2000 election coup catapulted Bush to the top of the political heap. For the first time in his worthless, impotent, cruelly indifferent life, Bush was suddenly important -- the most powerful man o...

by Richard L. Franklin 6/12/08 The issues evaded by the three presidential candidates are huge in number, so I'm presenting one single issue I see as urgently pressing. None of the three candidates has bothered to even mention the endless, ongoing poisoning of America. I live no more than fifty yards from the beautiful Fox River. Unfortunately, paper mills dot its shoreline for many miles. And these factories have been dumping a deadly poison into that beleaguered river for over a century. That poison is dioxin. It is so deadly one dare not swim in the river or eat any fish from that river, but where American eagles unwittingly eat the poisoned dead fish that litter the shores. The poison thusly enters a food chain. Small animals eat the dead fish, and larger animals eat those animals. Waterfowl feed on aquatic vegetation tainted by dioxin and then are eaten by animals and humans alike. And so forth. The river bottoms for miles and miles are covered with megatons of poisoned mud. D...

Ratcheting Up For War on Iran by Stephen Lendman 5/12/08 Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration neocons want war on Iran. So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn't mean they'll get it. Powerful forces in Washington and the Pentagon are opposed and so far have prevailed. Nonetheless, worrisome recent events increase the possibility and must be closely watched. Recall George Bush's January 10, 2007 address to the nation. He announced the 20,000 troop "surge" and more. "Succeeding in Iraq," he said, "also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing 'terrorists' and 'insurgents' to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt (those) attacks....we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry a...

Supreme Court says states can demand photo ID for voting By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 28, 6:09 PM ET WASHINGTON - States can require voters to produce photo identification, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, upholding a Republican-inspired law that Democrats say will keep some poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_voter_id The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES GEORGE W. BUSH, et al., PETITIONERS v. ALBERT GORE, Jr., et al. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE FLORIDA SUPREME COURT [December 12, 2000] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZPC.html and so, a question. How does Indiana or the ...

by Mary Pitt 5/4/08 In this life there is one immutable truth. It is that there will be change, whether or not we may approve or desire that change. At this time, there is no place where this is more true than in the battle for the presidency of the United States. The people whom we thought we knew now appear to us as something different than we ever expected from their past performances. We hear of concerns about the possibility of a "split" in the Democratic party as the result of the no-holds-barred contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. If this is true, it is not necessarily the fault of the people involved but may be due to the failure of the American public to recognize how severely bifurcated the party has become as the result of the tension created between the desire to consider the welfare of the working class and the desire to win dominance in the halls of government. As the Democrats continue to jockey for power and privileg...

Last Barriers to War on Iran Come Down Thursday, 01 May 2008 Chris Floyd http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1498/135/ Anyone who thinks the Bush Administration does not intend to attack Iran either has rocks in the head or their head in the sand. The warmongers have raised their cacophonous howling of threat and accusation against Iran to entirely new levels. Every day now, some major Administration figure makes fiery charges that Iran is directly, deliberately killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq: a clear casus belli, if it were true, which it almost certainly is not. (That is, it a clear cause for war in the perverted logic of Establishment discourse, which ignores the fact that U.S. forces have illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, and the fact the Bush Administration itself supports the same violent sectarian Shiite factions that Iran does in Iraq, factions responsible for killing thousands of innocent people. What's more, Bush and his beloved General Petraeus are now directly pay...

by Richard L. Franklin 4/30/08 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Thomas Jefferson, who was a true son of the Enlightenment, made sure these sacred truths were given a prominent spot in the great Declaration. He placed them first among human rights because they are axiomatic for the building of a true democracy. As you know, an axiom is a self-evident truth that requires no proof or evidence to be accepted as true. Axioms are truths we can embrace without reflection or reasoning. If you had geometry in high school, you will recall having first learned a number of axioms that were givens. You then learned how to prove a variety of assertions that could always be traced back to the axioms. The Enlightenment held that certain assertions are sacred, axiomatic, and meant to be permanently built into the foun...

by Mary Pitt 4/29/08 I am constantly amazed at the obscure details that politicians will dig up to cast aspersions upon the personal lives of their opponents in order to keep the people from looking at the issues. Lately we are being exposed to the "Preacher Scandal" where each candidate is expected to tell their pastor to just shut up! The good Rev. Wright is drawing fire, much of which is singeing Senator Barack Obama, because he is a prime example of what a black pastor is expected to be, an oratorical firebrand who inspires his people to hope for freedom and equality. In return, people are looking askance at Senator John McCain for accepting the endorsement of the radical fundamentalist ministers who are cheering on our wasteful Middle East war in the hope for Armageddon The mainstream media is having a field day with this minutia while parading "experts" on both politics and religion across our screen. Hours of air time are spent on this trivia while the soldie...

I watched the NBC news tonight. these were the stories as best as I can remember. Tax rebate; Price of gas; Rev Wright & Obama; Hannah Montana; Crumbling infrastructure; Gorillas. This is what you missed. 4 US soldiers killed; militants shell Green Zone Slobodan Lekic, AP News Apr 28, 2008 15:35 EST Bombardments by suspected militants killed four U.S. soldiers Monday as troops tried to push Shiite fighters farther from the U.S.-protected Green Zone and out of range of their rockets and mortars. At least 44 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in April, making it the deadliest month for U.S. forces since September... http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=146286 The “mainstream media”, or more appropriately, the Consolidated Corporate Media of America, (CCMA) is doing its job. Its “job”, its assignment if you will, is to do whatever it can to keep the corporatists in power. The dollar is crumbling, so the price of oil is galloping, which causes food prices, and everything else to ri...

by Mary Pitt 4/23/08 Liberals, can you read the writing on the wall? The American people are being set up again. Hillary Clinton, with the assistance of the same old political tactics and the same old political mainstream media pundits has become the Come-Back Kid! Watch her march to the White House in triumph as she and her husband retaliate for the humiliation of having left it in shame. She will persuade the super-delegates of her party to end the Obama challenge and then walk all over poor old John McCain to once again take control of the government. And, once again, we will see the famous Clinton "compromise and coalition". But Hillary is not Bill. We must bear in mind the Republican roots of Senator Clinton. She still carries the thought processes of the Goldwater Girl of the 1960's and she easily slides into compliance with the Republican mindset. Early in the campaign, when the true Liberals were discussing the health crisis and pushing for universal single-payer ...

Crime Without Punishment, War Without End Sunday, 13 April 2008 http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1485/135/ The President of the United States has openly, proudly admitted that he approved the use of interrogation methods that are by every measure -- including the measure of United States law -- criminal acts of torture. It is one of the most brazen and scandalous confessions of wrongdoing ever uttered by an American leader -- and it has had no impact whatsoever. No scandal, no outcry, no protest, no prosecution. This pattern has recurred over and over throughout the Bush Administration. Bush and his minions commit crimes and atrocities in secret; they move heaven and earth to conceal their filthy deeds; they squirm and squeal like panicked rats when their some small portion of their evil comes to light; they belch forth a relentless series of self-contradictory lies to cover up, obfuscate or explain away the crimes; and when at last their malefactions can no longer be denied, th...

By Mary Pitt 4/12/08 The mainstream media is making of about the remark by Senator Barrack Obama about the residents of small-town America being "bitter". Actually, I believe that most Americans are "bitter" by now and with good reason. We can begin with the fact that the last two presidential elections have not been decided by the good common sense of the voting public but by the arcane machinations and dirty tricks of the political party machinery. First, let's explore the term, "bitter". On the scale of unhappiness, it is to be found somewhere beyond "disappointment", "disillusionment" and "desperation". Those terms have been common in recent years and with very good reason. However, as the situation of working America continues to deteriorate, we have certainly become "desperate" as nobody in government appears to truly know or care. However, being bitter does not denote surrender. In the elections of 2000, t...