Global

Just before dawn on December 26th, an earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale centered near the ancient city of Bam hit Iran.  Approximately 70% of the buildings in the historic city of Bam have collapsed, leaving many trapped and others homeless.  Some 570 villages have also been affected.  The devastated area is very vast and available equipment and facilities are limited  With two hospitals destroyed by the quake, all medical facilities are at capacity.  Electricity, gas, water and telephone services have ceased.  

The following agencies are collecting donations that are sent to the people in need:

1.  Iranian Students and Scholars Association at the Ohio State University.

Make your check payable to: Iranian Students & Scholars Association, P.O. Box #3597, Columbus, Ohio 43210-0597; phone:  614-292-6080.

One clear reason the right wing think tanks that have been at the root of the right wing's success in politics have received so much money from wealthy businessmen is these think tanks have envisioned national policies that will make megacorporations megabucks. The Here are 17 "what ifs" that are very doable.

Today,  I was reviewing the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) document that describes the Bush pre-emptive war policy, published in 2000, even before Bush was  president. The document, titled REBUILDING AMERICA'S DEFENSES; Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century,  has the following credits; DONALD KAGAN, GARY SCHMITT, Project Co-Chairmen and THOMAS DONNELLY Principal Author

I'd done some research on Kagan and Schmitt but I hadn't checked out Donnelly. So I Googled him.  His little writing exercise for PNAC certainly paid off. He went from being executive director for PNAC to... are your ready for this? ... Director, strategic communications and initiatives, Lockheed Martin Corporation, 2002. Now, would you like to guess how many billions his strategic plan has made for Lockheed? Nice payoff.

Misuse of words can make them meaningless and they become another transparent propagnada tool.  Israeli attacks in two days around Christmas left 15 Palestinian civilians dead in the occupied areas but was not described as terrorism (even though considered war crimes by the 4th Geneva Convention).  This was followed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attacking Israeli soldiers at a bus stop. Parroting Israeli officials, this act (sanctioned by International law) was labeled a "terror" attack and other media outlets spke of breaking "relative calm".   During the "relative calm" over 117 Palestinians were killed*.  Another example of word butchery is attacking those who speak out against the atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation forces by labeling them as "anti-Semitic" ("self hating Jew" if Jewish).

Recently, the U.S. government officially acknowledged the presence of a lame cow slaughtered in Washington State that had the degenerative disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). This disease is caused by the prion, a recently understood biological concept, and represents a new threat to public health. The beef industry is guilty of distributing and actually speeding the evolution of this disease due to their grossly inhumane feeding and slaughtering practices. The majority of people are complicit in this crime because they pay to run the factory farms, slaughterhouses and rendering plants that dominate cattle farming today regardless of their inhumane nature.

A Review of We are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism, Edited by Notes from Nowhere collective; Verso Books, 2003

      (AGR)-- There is a rumbling beneath the global foundation of money and power. Sometimes you have to listen carefully, putting your hand to the floor to feel the vibration of thousands of people hacking away at their concrete cage as they organize their neighborhoods into self-governed communities, or when South African activists illegally hook up water to a family's house that could not afford to pay the water bill. Other times you can't help but notice as the foundation cracks in places like India as farmers burn a field of genetically modified cotton planted by Monsanto; or when thousands of activists lay siege to the IMF/World Bank meetings in Prague. For those who have not felt this rumbling of discontent, reading We are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism may very well feel like an earthquake.

Dear editor,     

I have written President George W. Bush about America's energy future. I wrote that America should rely on renewable solar and wind power, and natural gas in the meantime while the former become cost-effective.

     We are all too-familiar with the GOP's view of energy, and the associated problems.  Burning coal releases methylmercury in the atmosphere, and also arsenic and lead.  Diesel engines cause respiratory problems.  We all know the GOP turns a deaf ear to our suggestions.

     I ask your readers write to the president asking him to change the administration's energy policies.  Please refer to my name and RNC membership number (517305426-N711).

Thank you,
Daniel Barker

I just saw a 10,000 square foot modern brick school building on 1.3 acres of land listed for sale on Ebay (under real estate, land) in Paradise, Kansas (population 66), for $45,000. It is being sold by the Russell County Government, subject to their approval of proposed use. It looks to me like it would make a nice starting facility (central to the US) for a low-cost non-corporatized progressive university, which I believe the children of the progressive community are in sore need of. The motivation for this email is to bring together those that would like to be involved in such a project or similar ones of their own design (either new or ongoing), either as students, professors, planners/administrators, possible donors, or fundraisers, and let them work out the details (using instant runoff voting, hopefully, to select leadership and make decisions).

No doubt Lenny Bruce would have laughed with at least a tinge of bitterness if -- like millions of Americans -- he picked up a newspaper the day before Christmas 2003 and read that he’d been “pardoned” by the governor of New York for an obscenity conviction.

In their own time, people who are stubbornly ahead of it usually get a lot more grief than accolades. And decades later -- in this case, 39 years after Bruce’s bust for a nightclub performance and 37 years after his death -- the belated praise from on high is predictably insufferable.

The New York Times lead sentence on Dec. 24 called Bruce “the potty-mouthed wit who turned stand-up comedy into social commentary.” Actually, far from being “potty-mouthed” in an emblematic way, Lenny Bruce was a Fool in the Shakespearean sense, jousting with a society dominated by various aspiring Lears -- and quite a few Elmer Gantrys.