CounterMICC

OCCUPY discussion, West Seattle Library

2012-01-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Occupy Seattle?
Just curious?
Come to A Public Meeting
6:00 – 7:30 PM
Thurs., January 5
West Seattle Library
2306-42nd Ave SW, 98116
Meet some Occupy Seattle participants.
Bring your questions, concerns, ideas.
Find out how to get involved!
Hosted by: West Seattle Neighbors for Peace & Justice

Transcript of Ashley Joppa Hagemann at Kings Books

2011-09-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsuNhDeK48Y

ahem hm hmmm

Hello Everyone my name is Ashley Joppa Hagemann.

And, um, I don't know if any of you have heard about my husband, and our story that we, um, about our, the last few years. our struggle.

My husband is Jared August Hagemann, he was a staff sergeant in the 2nd of the 75th Ranger regiment and he was in the A company, before he took his life on June 28th.

And I know that there, um, the military is saying, that there is pending, um, an investigation into his death.

I don't understand why it is stil pending

Clearly um, it is the Rangers' fault, the command's fault, that my husband chose to free himself from the pain, and from the Rangers. That is why he took his life.

And to give you some information about my husband,
he was going on his 7th year in the military. This would have been about the 8th or 9th deployment for him.

And with the Rangers, they. About every six months, they usually re-deploy. There were a few times when my husband went for a short period of time. and the next time, they would stay longer than the usual time. The "usual time" is anywhere from 4 to 6 months.

And it all started in 2009 when he was diagnosed with PTSD

He came home from that deployment, and the day he was supposed to return back to work, he... All he did was drink himself senseless.

Which is what he did before and after... a deployment.

He said the reason before was, he wanted to distance himself, numb himself, for what he had to do.

And afterwards, it was to forget. and numb himself from what he had to do.

And so that day he was supposed to return back to work he had called the Rangers and told them I quit, I'm done.

And, so, he called me up after that and told me he was thinking about taking his life. So I rushed over there, I stood by his side like I always did. and of course rangers showed up. Tried to talk him into staying longer--staying into the Rangers and all he said was, "Get away from me. FU. I Quit. Don't you hear me? I quit. I CAN quit. "

And, people, a lot of people aren't aware, with the rangers it's a voluntary unit. You're able to leave whenever you want.

So, my husband was telling them he quit, and, after a few hours of that, we took him... well, I took him, to the ER to sober up. Then he admitted himself into Five North in Madigan, which everyone, um, it's also known as the mental ward. And there is um, there, he received some counseling, and they held him for about three days. A friday, I believe it was a friday all the way til monday, they let him out monday morning. And they told him that as long as he continued his counseling and his alcoholics class, he'd be OK. He didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay as long as he could to get the help that he wanted. He admitted himself.

About that time they moved him to HHC. They put him in the S5 Shop. And according to everybody in the Rangers, the S5 Shop is where they put the troublemakers. The problems. So they could hide you away, sit you in an office, and forget about you. And that, that was the choice that they gave my husband. Either we can hide you away, so that you can get the help, or, you can go to the regular army and we will make sure that you get a, excuse my language, we'll make sure you get a shitty job. And we'll make sure that they deploy you overseas for the normal period of time which is, I think 12 to 14 months, I'm not sure what it was at the time.

And so, my husband chose to get the help. Because that's what he wanted. So they bullied him into staying in the rangers, when he wanted out, and about a month or so later, they actually told him that the counseling and the alcoholics anonymous program that he was in, was taking up his work time. They needed him doing more important things. And that he needed to take time from his personal life, to seek the help that wanted. Which was not the deal in the beginning.

So we went and sought out our own help. We tried so many times. But every time Jared would start to talk about overseas, the counselor would try and force him to give details. and just kind of push him. And I don't know but from my experience when someone says no, No means No. And that would just set him back for about two weeks. He, he wouldn't talk to anybody. He'd start drinking again. Become aggressive. And I'd, the only time I felt that the rangers would listen was when I would call local law enforcement. But after a few times, that no longer seemed to help. All they would do was tell my husband, stay in your barracks, don't talk to your wife. Like I was the problem. It wasn't me. It was them. They did not take any responsibility for my husband. Even that last month of his life when they knew. When the police had called them and told them that they had responded to a call at our house that he had a gun to his head. That one, those two incidents, were probably two months before his death.

In that last month, he held a gun to his head three times. And by that time he had this look of despair in his eyes. And, I haven't told anybody this, but the last time he had that gun to his head, and he was yelling, "Should I do it? Would this make everybody happy?" It's as if he was asking me, Please. Let me go. And the worst part is that I love him so much. And that is what keeps me going right now. Talking. Getting in front of people. Letting everybody know about my husband. I didn't want him to suffer any more. And at that moment, I was thinking, if that is the only way that you will be at peace, do what you need to do.

And I hate myself for thinking that but to see someone in pain every single day, waking up, telling me "I hate myself. I hate my job. I hate my life. I hate what I've become."

And so the last day that I had heard from him, I hadn't talked to him directly. But he did say that he was going to kill himself. Local law enforcement knew. They said they were going to contact his chain of command. Tried calling his cellphone. He didn't pick up. Tuesday rolled around. And they said he went AWOL. That's not my husband. He has pride. He has responsibilities. He's a strong man. They took that from him.

And now, they are refusing to give my husband, who gave his life for the rangers, a memorial. At first they told me it was because they didn't want media around, to get the story. Because they know, they've learned that from me over the years, that you can't keep me quiet. I'm a fighter. I, I always stood by my husband. And now that I no longer have him, I have to stand up for him. And everybody else who wants help. Because nobody else will. That's what my husband wanted to do.

So, all I'm asking is that, as a community, that everybody gets together and stands up for these men. Because the military's not going to do it. They took what they could from these men, and they won't let them go.

Thank you.

Paul Chappell in Bellevue, Wed. Sep. 21

2011-09-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation presents
Paul K. Chappell

Why Peace is Possible and How we can Achieve it
September 21, 2011
7-9:15 pm
East Shore Unitarian Church
12700 Southeast 32nd Street Bellevue WA 98005
for more info contact Judith Shattuck
425.830.2323

7 - 8:15 pm—Intro / Peace Panel
8:15 - 9:15 pm—Keynote - Paul Chappell

International Peace Day 2011
Bellevue WA

“Paul K. Chappell has given us a crucial look at war and peace from the unique perspective of a soldier, and his new ideas show us why world peace is both necessary and possible in the 21st century.” —Archbishop Desmond Tutu Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Paul K. Chappell graduated from West Point in 2002. He served in the army for seven years, was deployed to Baghdad, and left active duty in November 2009 as a Captain. He lives in Santa Barbara, California, where he is serving as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

SEE THE VIDEO OF THIS TALK ON BLIP.TV

Additional information
about Paul K. Chappell
can be found at
PaulKChappell.com
Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Native American, Buddhist, and
Unitarian faith leaders along with Washington Physicians for Social
Responsibility, American Friends Service Committee, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, and Veterans for Peace will challenge the audience to
take responsibility for bringing peace to fruition.

Bradley Manning meeting with Randy Rowland and Jim Page

2011-08-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

Please join us for an evening to support Bradley Manning, the Army whistleblower who released thousands of military and embassy documents and media to Wikileaks, exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is part of a nationwide campaign for Bradley Manning Support Network, http://www.bradleymanning.org/dinner
Your host is Gerri Haynes, 104 7th Ave, Kirkland. Tuesday, Sep. 6th at 7:00pm. The Kirkland-Seattle bus 255 has a stop 200 feet from this location.
(MAP)

Manning, Wikleaks, and Julian Assange did THE most important releases of government secrets since The Pentagon Papers. America eventually came to a broad consensus that Daniel Ellsberg did the right thing. Understand the tensions and contradictions between our need for openness and accountability, and the tactical advantage gained by military and other agencies by secrecy. Understand the tension between having a rule of law, and moral conscience when it goes astray.

Randy Rowland will give us some discussion. He is uniquely qualified, a former GI resister, someone freed by a "free the Presidio 27" campaign, and as a media activist. The 1968 Presidio mutiny against the Vietnam War was featured in the documentary Sir No Sir:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4045645915938136883

He has produced and distributed antiwar papers on the bases, and other alternative media since 1968, including countless radio, TV, and print productions and web content. As cofounder of Indymedia and Pepperspray Collective Randy changed history. Some archives are here.
http://blip.tv/pepperspray-productions-indymedia-presents-

JIM PAGE WILL SING!

Please drop us a note if you're coming!
Todd

Quoted material follows.

Join people around the world for an evening of dining and discourse about the importance of supporting accused whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning, the weekend of September 9th and 10th. [Sept. 6 in Kirkland]

Be a host:

Hosting a dinner party can be a simple and fun way to raise awareness and funds for the Bradley Manning Defense Fund. Friendly conversation over dinner is a great opportunity to reach out to connections who might not already know about Bradley Manning’s plight.

To sign-up to be a host, set a fund-raising goal below. This is the amount that you are hoping your guests can contribute. We’ll provide you with tips and suggestions, and a brief video featuring an appeal that will explain the urgency of supporting Bradley’s defense fund–so you don’t need to worry about making the pitch by yourself!

Feel free to be creative with your party. Maybe a BBQ or an after dinner gathering would work better for your circle of friends. If September 9 or 10 doesn’t work for you, set a date that does.

Bradley Manning Support Network

The Bradley Manning Support Network is powered by people around the world volunteering countless hours to educating their communities about what is at stake regarding Bradley’s upcoming military court martial proceedings: Truth and accountability vs. a culture of secrecy and fear.

While our network is people-driven, a campaign of this magnitude is not without significant financial expenses. These costs include: fully funding Bradley’s selected civilian legal team, producing and internationally distributing campaign materials, contractors for media and technical work, and a minimal staff to facilitate grassroots action. Now that appears the military will drag out the prosecution of Bradley over the next nine months or so, we need to ensure that we continue to build our campaign as to give Bradley a fighting chance for justice.
How it works:

After pledging your goal (above), the first thing you should do is download our online invitation and fill in the sections for Host, Date, Time, Location, RSVP information, and Additional info like parking logistics, etc. Then you can attach it in e-mails to your invitees.

You’ll be sent a confirmation e-mail with a password, and a few suggested recipes. You’ll need the password to view a special video on the day of your fundraiser. You may preview the video before sharing it with your guests, but please do not share the password with others.

Aim to have at least twice as many RSVPs as people you hope to have at your party, because it’s common for some expected attendees to cancel for unforeseen reasons. You can choose to invite community members, or limit the dinner to a small gathering of family and friends. If you wish to expand your invite list, consider doing outreach to local organizations with similar missions, putting up flyers with event and RSVP information in coffee shops and other public places, and posting event information on websites that offer public calendars.
The donations:

Please have your guests donate by check or money order, payable to our sponsor, “Courage to Resist.” Note “Bradley Manning Defense” on the memo line.

All funds raised should be mailed to:

Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave #41
Oakland CA 94610.

Your tax-deductible donation made here to Courage to Resist / AfGJ, in collaboration with the Bradley Manning Support Network, will be earmarked for the defense of Army Pfc Bradley E Manning.

Courage to Resist is a program of the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ), a nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Code.

We are at an important crossroads. In a couple months, we expect the prosecution of Bradley Manning to begin in earnest with his first pre-trial hearing.

Hosting a dinner party can be a simple and fun way to raise awareness and funds for the Bradley Manning Defense Fund. Friendly conversation over dinner is a great opportunity to reach out to connections who might not already know about Bradley Manning's plight.

The Bradley Manning Support Network is powered by people around the world volunteering countless hours to educating their communities about what is at stake regarding Bradley's upcoming military court martial proceedings: Truth and accountability vs. a culture of secrecy and fear.

While our network is people-driven, a campaign of this magnitude is not without significant financial expenses. These costs include: fully funding Bradley's selected civilian legal team, producing and internationally distributing campaign materials, contractors for media and technical work, and a minimal staff to facilitate grassroots action. Now that appears the military will drag out the prosecution of Bradley over the next nine months or so, we need to ensure that we continue to build our campaign as to give Bradley a fighting chance for justice.

Corporate Suffrage, the next step

2010-02-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

Since the Supreme Court decision, striking down laws against corporations participating in politics, I've been lecturing on the value of corporate personhood in general.

Corporate stockholders are restless because of discrimination, and that great day of liberation, of equality is dawning.

For centuries, corporations have been denied the right to vote. It has been a long climb for us. Winning recognition of our companies' human rights, equal protections, and the principle that money is free speech, has taken us centuries. To be guarenteed by the supreme court, I mean.

But freedom and equality for corporations is still unfinished. Our companies, today, remain unequal to other persons, even to single individuals. And this has got to be fixed.

Those who block corporations from voting in elections are really trampling on the rights of shareholders. This prejudice is a form of ignorance. You cant blame people, up to a point.

Shareholders have a right to political expression. The key thing is, this right is a transitive right. It can be exercised through your company just as we exercise it through our realtors, or our bankers.

Just because you're exercising your political rights through your company, is no reason for society to block it. When society blocks our companies from voting it is the same thing as blocking the stockholders from voting-- and there are millions of stockholders. This is a monstrous crime.

All people are born with the right of private ownership, it's in the Constitution (and you know that can't be wrong.) Chldren must be taught that the title to things is an intrinsic property of matter, just like its weight or its temperature. What this means is all the universe, from the tiniest subatomic particle to the billions of stars above, falls under the dominion of private ownership even if the owner has not exerted their rights yet. This is in the Bible.

Most of the title to the universe has been settled, in fact, it is claimed more than once, by multiple people, in some parts of the world which is why they are all screwed up. God has blessed America with an unambiguous system where there is nobody left alive who is still disputing the ownership of things. The title to everything has been pretty much settled. And, eventually all title will be held by corporations, with eternal life.

What remains unfinished is to bring all the rest of the world under this marvelous system of title, which is also known as Freedom.

This principle is the key to wealth creation in our great, American economy -- seeing things in the universe, getting them into the private property system, acquiring them, getting people to buy and sell them, so these things can be migrated onto the balance sheets of corporations. The prophets Hernando DeSoto, Ronald Coase, Ludvig Von Mises, Michael Medved, etc. say this is inevitable.

The more time that goes by, the more critically important it will be that Corporations vote. First of all it is their duty as citizens; freedom isn't free, and it involves responsibilities. But over time, as the votes and the assets of individuals become less and less, the nation faces instability and turmoil without the enfranchisement of corporations. The stability and predictability of corporate stockholders' votes through corporations will gradually replace the arbitrary swings of individual votes.

Corporations will replace the earlier institutions where individuals have delegated their power (through the parties, who control elections and then through the people who win election to legislatures and congress. )

It is clear that corporations are a clear channel for expression of all stockholders' political interests since corporations are so democratically run. That's why we want the Directors to vote our shares, instead of the vagaries of elected representatives like congress.

I hope that this main point has come through.

Corporations are going to vote, and, they are going to be entitled to proportionate representation--- not just ONE vote. This is destiny. You can make this hard, and probably get yourself fired, or you can be reasonable, and be a responsible citizen, and end the discrimination against corporations!

In my next chapter I will discuss corporate poverty in America, and the economic assistance and affirmative action that will be needed on large scale to end the cycle of despair in corporate boardrooms,

As I have been saying, many people apparently assume corporations are all rich; that's certainly not the case. Many corporations are born into poverty and it goes downhill from there. Corporate poverty is the root of corporate crime, and it's getting worse and worse, something must be done about this grinding poverty an alienation in the boardrooms of America.

The problem has gone on so long that corporations have spun off, been acquired and disposed of so many times they've lost contact with their indigenous culture. Their cultural identity. It's like broken families.

For example hardly any corporations realize their personhood, guaranteed by the supreme court.

For example, all the larger corporations today work only thru other persons, through politicians such as Dick Cheney or Tom Delay. Instead of the full realization of corporate identity, these are mere people -- a degenerate form of political entity. They are not the pure expressions of corporatism. For instance they are greedy and avaricious for their own enrichment, whereas the corporation is a selfless expression for the enrichment of it stockholders. That is altruism. in corporations we have created entities as a pure expression of godliness.

A corporation is an exemplary creation because it is the incorporation of an actual fictional person. Now if that sounds contradictory, actual and fictional, I'm going to explain that sometime. But any lawyer will confirm to you, a corporation is a legal fiction. Most people can't hoist it in because they have so much other crap on deck, so many other beliefs they can't let go of. So they throw it overboard.

So what we have is, an actual fictional person of superhuman character, which lives forever, and has realized his cultural heritage as a corporation. Every corporation has a divine form, which is one with all other corporations. and sometimes they reveal their divine form, just like Lord Krishna on the battlefield of the Bhagavad Gita. The new breed of corporate person who speaks for himself! Corporations, have freedom of speech and know how to use it.

So if anybody in the audience asked me about the divine form of Corporations, I would have to admit that I am not that close to the Personhood itself, although without apology since I don't think anybody else is either. You see, corporate personhood is a profound mystery. It is not a physical thing of course. Is your personality a physical thing? Of course not. It is an abstract thing, and it rides upon the physical body and brain, and the mind.

I have medicated myself at the feet of this royal personhood and I have seen the divine form although I seldom talk about it in public. It is not a he or a she. Personhood of a corporation is beyond time and the limitations of liabilities, er. I mean, the physical dimensions. So it is a kind of blasphemy to talk of a particular corporation as if it were a human, although, we sometimes trivialize that in the teaching children, you know, just as they do with religious stories for children in other religions--to teach children about other things that cannot be completely revealed.

Like I was saying, the key problem is corporate poverty -- and the cancer and the rot in corporations, executives attacking other executives, that has to stop.. But the key distinction is that these executives and stockholders are mere humans and the corporate form is divine.

Note that the stockholders are billionaires, that's not the problem, there's no problem of poverty among billionnaires --among american stockholders. The corporations are broke because they have transferred all their money to the stockholders while leaving the liabilities behind.

So it's important that the right and the left both should understand, the only way to solve this problem is A) first of all, targeted tax credits for all officers or directors of corporations, to alleviate their cash flow problems that are making them drain so much of the money from corporations they control, loot the companies. But most of all, B) corporate welfare programs-- I mean this is an old idea --- but with responsibility, not just giveaways- -- to qualify, corporations would have to be current in all their debt payments to banks, and their dividend payouts, and find some other way to break out of their cycle of poverty --for example they should fire all their unnecessary employees. Also the incentive to work must not be undermined. To qualify for corporate welfare, corporations would have to hire other corporations, maybe. I mean, they would have to transfer some of the federal money to other corporations. That's how corporations "work". Like I said, a corporation is a very abstract thing.

Now I want you to look closely at this gold watch. I want you to put everything out of mind.... See it swinging, rythimically, from side to side. Your eyes are getting heavy You are feeling sleeeeeeeppppyyyy. You are asleeeeeeeepppp.....

TOdd

Peak Labor: Surplus Populations are here to stay

2010-01-03T13:42:00.001-08:00

Today, I'm afraid, the oligarchs belief is that there is a "surplus population", of course that's inevitable as machines took over most of the physical work, and computers/telecoms took over most of the mental work-- making all the routine information jobs unnecessary.

Compare this with the 20th century belief that there was a problem of "surplus resources", a surplus that suppressed prices all the way up the production chain, and threatened the entire architecture of rent capture implicit in corporate capitalism. Example: the Iraq War was built and executed by many segments of the military complex and wall street-- but its oil segment was intent on two things: the most prominent was destroying oil capacity to jack up prices. The other component of course was to literally capture the ownership and control over the oil reserves.

So we've gone from surplus resources to surplus labor, in a big way.

There seems a mathematical collision between the size of human populations, which constantly increase, and the number of jobs available in an economy constructed around profit and minimizing labor costs. Like Peak Oil, the number of jobs available raced up to a Peak, and then drops sharply. So, the unemployed are supposed to go away, and disappear, and die quietly, I suppose.

The Fallacy of Good vs. Evil in Afghanistan

2009-12-18T13:08:00.000-08:00

All the wars since at least WW2 have NOT been self defense, these have all been aggressions. The U.S. has killed millions of innocent people in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. Those people never attacked the U.S. So why did we kill them? And why do we kill, throughout Afghanistan today and onwards, into Pakistan? Did those people attack America?

90% of those people killed, were noncombatants, even in Iraq it has not changed. Children, elderly, bystanders. The U.S. Congress, the President, and the military command knowingly kills innocent civilians because they regard the lives of U.S. soldiers more valuable.

These are horrific deaths-- burned to death, buried under buildings, shot with automatic weapons, artillery, blasted by high explosives, often dying lingering deaths from infection or disease, or starvation.

I strongly disapprove of the entire US military. For shame. They are not defending us. And they know it.

Why do we allow the militarists to define their business as "honorable" when we can so easily disprove and destroy their myth? Stand tall, every day, and explain that all their killing is dishonorable and a disservice to America.

The US congress and President are institutions out of control. Their activities are obviously immoral. They are in an illegal status, violating laws and treaties. They aren't defending the U.S. --they're defending "U.S. interests" i.e cronies and contributors in corporations, many not even in the U.S. These wars are actually making the rest of us *less* safe.

More Lieberman and Cyber-Security tonight, CSPAN

2009-11-01T14:26:00.000-08:00

More Lieberman and Cyber-Security tonight, CSPAN, for 3 hours... this goes on continually....
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=schedule

Question: WHY are these, most clever, these most cunning and willful in maintaining the concentration of power in NY-WashDC worried about "cyber-security"?

Answer: Because it is so abundantly clear that the Internet would provide methods of social and political organization so superior to "voting" to send "representatives" thousands of miles away, and allowing them absolute power of lawmaking. In other words, it's obvious that some sort of applications running over the internet will replace government itself, and the use of money as a medium of exchange.

The internet will not only replace banking, not only replace elections, polling, media... it's bigger than that. We will eventually use it to organize our activites, replacing the apparatus of money, finance and government.

The problem of managing the legislative process at the federal level has proven intractable. Things are getting worse and worse, from generation to generation. Instead of reflecting the human needs of the population it continuously concentrates money and power to a political and economic elite who control the Parties, congress and the whole system of propaganda at the federal level.

In my judgment the NY-WashDC "thing" is *so* dysfunctional and unjust, and harmful, there's no need for further comment and the real question is HOW to devolve powers from the national unit to the local level-- most importatnly the money and banking powers, the tax collection power, and certain powers related to making war. These powers can and should be devolved back to lower units where we have some hope of controlling them to human priorities,

The dotcom industries were well advanced in building a whole new thing, when they were finally overcome and defeated by the BAMs and global finance-- the same movement that coincided with the toppling and banishment of neoliberal structure from NY-WashDC circa 2000, and installation of the neocons, the Bush administration,

So they lie to us, and shut down the Internet, telling us we are under attack by terrorists, by criminals, by sin itself-- by child pornography. Watch them lie their asses off again, tonight,

Todd

Need: better automation of events calendars in the region

2009-06-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Just Imagine, if you had a program that would go out and get all the events from all these Activists' Calendars and arrange them on your computer so that you could see it in a rational way, including locations, and topical interest areas.

For example, I am interested in a separate list of the events, for every future day, and I want them ranked 1,2,3... according to my formula for geographic distance and the subjects I am interested in, such as war and peace, imperialism, economic reform. etc.

http://www.scn.org/activism/calendar/

http://www.seattleactivism.org/

http://eatthestate.org/13-18/ActivistCalendar.htm

http://www.bookstore.washington.edu/calendar_iframe.taf?page=1

http://www.seattlediy.com/calendar/

http://eventful.com/seattle/events?t=Future&sort_order=Date&c=politics_activism

http://www.trumba.com/calendars/SeattleCAN

http://www.iloveseattle.org/networking-guide/group-tools-resources/seattle-event-calendars.asp

http://www.seattle.gov/calendar/

http://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+site%3Atrumba.com&num=30

http://www.google.com/search?q=the+site%3A.trumba.com%2Fevents-calendar%2Fwa%2F&num=30

http://www.seattleweekly.com/events/category/politics-activism-458040/

http://capitolhillseattle.com/events

http://calendar.thenewstribune.com/search?acat=&new=n&search=true&sort=0&srad=12&srss=50&ssrss=5&st=event&svt=text&swhat=&swhen=&swhere=seattle&trim=1&cat=2

I do not advocate merging all the separate calendars into one. That would be a terrible situation. Its operator would soon know more about you than Google!!

I do however, advocate that all calendars should publish electronic interfaces and make their calendars machine readable with standard syntax. Thereby, anybody who wanted to keep up with what's happening could have our computers come and fetch the events/dates automatically like we do with RSS for our RSS readers or news aggregators.

There have been a lot of standards for publishing Calendar events, over the years.

http://xml.coverpages.org/iCal.html

http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar

http://www.bedework.org/bedework/

http://www.imc.org/pdi/

2009-06-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

We have been working to stop wars. Implicit in *every* action we have done, or word spoken, is an assumption that what we have done has helped stopped war, within a bunch of other assumptions about what causes wars. Right?

Maybe it is time we stopped asking the question, "What are the causes of wars", and simply investigate the *process* of wars.

If you have ever done much reading on the topic of causality, itself, you'll agree that determining the "cause" of anything is is a challenging question. For the briefest time, please look at the Wikipedia article on Causality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality

To my mind, the word "Causality" itself, or at least my concept of its meaning, is a dead end. It gets you going off on the wrong direction, somehow. it almost implies purpose, or meaning, or some sort of cosmological order to the universe. Of course, there are many principles that are quite reliable in understanding or predicting the world--we are not living in a chaos. But there are unknowns.

I have been studying the Wikipedia article on War, finding it quite deficient and unsatisfying. TO understand my comments, please spend a few minutes reading the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War

There have been at least 10,000 revisions to the page in the last 3 or 4 years alone. Go ahead and page through some of them, with the History function shown on the Article.

Obviously, there are many people and organizations with a great deal of money and other things at stake, should the public ever achieve a general, well-balanced understanding war.

Here is a much better examination of the causes of war, On the Causes of War. New York, Oxford University Press, 1996. 235 p. http://www.google.com/search?q="on+the+causes+of+war"+Hidemi+Suganami

And another, Download FREE .pdf version of "On The Causes of War," 289 pages, (1.35Mb). An outline of the book chapters can be seen below. ... http://www.gzmn.org/causes.htm

War can be understood and described at the physical and mechanical level, without difficulty. The movements of people and weapons, the places where it happened, and the dates and aftermath are so easily recorded. Historians and other observers, do this quite reliably after every war.

Unsurprisingly, authors of the Wikipedia article have published a decent definition of war, in the physical sense.

Similarly, before and during the process of war, a vast collection of physical things and events are easily observed having direct contact or connection with the physical war. Obviously, people and weapons and material are organized, produced, transported, etc. before and during the fighting, bombing, killing, etc. The processes immediately preceding or adjacent to war itself, are easily observed.

In any investigation of causes, a problem of boundaries always arises.

Determining the causes of things always has this problem, it's not unique to investigation of wars.

The war process is not easily distinguished from the indigenous process of the country. The origins of every bit of physical material and every person involved in fighting and supporting the war can be traced back in time, to less and less connected people and things, to a point where they are indistinguishable from other people and material indigenous to the land and people of the country that are not involved in war.

Recognizing this fact, one should trace, and analyze, the material process of war only so far as necessary to answer necessary questions. You have to have a clear idea of what questions are necessary to ask. For example, I would suggest, the most important question is *whose* actions are effective and determinative in the stages of the war process, at which the pot boils over, and the train has left the station, etc. I assume neither that these people are numerous, nor that they are few (i.e. conspiracy theory) but rather, those people *must* be identified at least as a class, in order for the next phase of inquiry which is at the level of motivation, psychology, will.

As i said above, the processes of the wars engaged in by the U.S. during my lifetime have not been hard to observe or describe. The definition of "war" is available and accessible.

A process once recognized, is susceptible to interruption, impedance, resistance, attenuation, blockage, redirection or 100 other things.

The idea of top level strategy

2009-05-03T16:35:00.001-07:00

A government does many things, often unrelated or even contradictory. However. It't top-level strategy is so visible and slow moving that it's impossible to miss.

Since 2001, the top-level strategy of the US government has been war in the persian gulf and afghanistan, based on the premises that the top-level problems facing the country are oil and defending against terrorists, and that large-scale military operations in Iraq and Afghanstan are just the right thing to ensure more oil, and ensure less terrorism.

By now, everybody can see that the wars are yielding neither oil nor security. It is fairly clear that we have been deceived, and manipulated, by the true beneficiaries of the wars (global oil and financial interests, the weapons industry, and senior US military and civilians, among others.)

The top level strategy of the national government under Obama or McCain will be the same.

Accordingly, thinking people need to formulate top-level strategy of our own-- one that is capable of realizing our values and goals.

Those include global justice instead of wars, exploitation and greed, and stopping the needless destruction of our global air, water, and lands.

To achieve these, will require top-level strategy so large and visible, that it will be impossible to miss. A form of action that recognizes governments and corporations for what they are, and abandons all fantasy that they will save us.

A form of action that goes beyond the entire institutions of the state, and beyond the money economy and private contract. And I would submit, one which goes beyond individual NGOs or nonprofits.

Now--- what do you think our top-level strategy is? Surely, it is already underway, since it must be very large and visible and glacial, by the very nature of this problem. Don't you think the pattern is becoming clear, as to the BIGGEST problem(s) that the US population actually faces, and the MOST obvious and clear strategy to deal with them?

HINT: we know from the unvarying experience of the past 200 years, that neither presidents, governors, or federal or state legislatures are going to solve the underlying problem we have.

We're also in a pickle because there are no institutions such as unions, or academia, or the press, that are going to save us, either.

So, I think the present disastrous policies of the US, and behavior of global corporatoins will continue for some time, even as the painful consequences become worse and worse. So where does it all end?

I think there are many thinking people, people who are actually quite influential and active in their own circles of influence.

And in the aggregate, these non-participants are more powerful than special interests... of course. It goes without saying.

Needless to say, we find the duopoly parties and most other institutions, a dead end. People with normally developed thinking abilities and compassion tend to be under-represented in executive or powerholding roles in corporations or government. So, the direct assertion of power is fairly limited, and it is insufficient. It is systematically, decisively, critically insufficient.

Now-- these invisible people seem to have concluded, or resolved for themselves, to work in isolation. They think, they read, they brood, and you don't see their faces publicly except in times of very unusual crisis. That is one thing we can observe.

I seem to observe the top-level strategy of these people--the great bulk of them-- is to directly influence public opinion, and to prevent the corporate state from controlling, without criticism, the propaganda message that today, rolls out from the media, the pulpit and the school system, and the duopoly parties.

To restate this-- we have a corporate state controlling the propaganda message in three main institutions of mass culture (schools, pulpit and media). And in the other corner, we have the people criticizing this message in millions of personal and internet interactions, every day.

It is worth considering, whether this can succeed. I don't think it is sufficient.

Our top-level strategy has been to argue back hard, persistently, in so many detailed areas where policy has been corrupted by the greed and violence people, --- and to provide instead our own solutions and policies that are consistent with our own values.

We have been waging a battle of ideas. A battle for hearts and minds. And it goes far beyond the issue of war, itself. When we neglect a hundred smaller things, from economics to environment, neglecting the cause of justice, the larger policy choice of war became inevitable.

Todd

The atmosphere is paper-thin

2008-05-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

Question:

If the earth is 8000 miles in diameter, and
If the breathable atmosphere is 15,000 feet (3 miles) thick, and,
If you hold a typical, elementary school globe 12 inches in diameter, then,
how thick is the atmosphere around the globe?

answer. 3/8000ths of a foot, times 12, = .0045 = less than 5 thousandths of an inch.

Quite coincidentally, that is approximately the thickness of a typical photocopy paper: http://www.google.com/search?q=thickness+of+copy+paper

Isn't it amazing that people are allowed to drive their cars, burn all kinds of fuels and dump *endless amounts* of CO2, not to mention poisonous gases, into this thin layer of atmosphere? Without *any* restrictions, or paying *any* price to the rest of us, who are affected by the harms they are causing to us?

The most crippling and insidious belief, among peace activists

2008-04-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

>>From: Tom A. said Feb 13, 2008
>>Subject: Conversational activism during political campaigns
>>
>>I have a question for all of us:
>>
>> What have we done -- or are thinking of doing -- or would love to
>> see done -- to bring dialogue and/or deliberation and/or the
>> spirit of shared exploration and creativity to the political
>> process during election campaigns? [ and so forth... Democrat unity]

The most crippling and insidious belief, among peace activists is that we ourselves must be more peaceful, and create a more peaceful culture by example of our speech and action. Making ourselves and our neighbors more peaceful and obedient is never going to stop the 5% of Americans at the opposite end of the scale, who make up the war industry, who foment and execute wars as a way of life. They will simply continue to ignore you, even if you become a perfect angel. They don't *need* us for anything.

It helps if you conceptualize war, and warmaking, as a crime, perpetrated by criminals, who need to be stopped by somebody. Conceive of this as the wild west, where there is no law to restrain them and no agency capable of enforcing the law. But starting wars is certainly a crime against humanity.

Another crippling and insidious belief, almost universal in the peace movement, is that stopping wars has something to do with reducing injustice, remedying the causes of injustice, etc. Folks. The people who START wars are the most powerful, the richest and privileged people in our society. Not the victims.

The people of the 3rd world almost invariably, adjust to subjugation, and work harder, and do not fight. The U.S. war machine includes the military industrial complex, i.e. the permanent swarm of special interest lobbyists around the armed services committees, pentagon and military suppliers. The war machine includes the beneficiary industryes like finance, oil and global trade. It includes the mass cult phenomenon of the war churches and their hugely funded pastors and brainwashing facilities.

If you want to stop wars, then, you cannot avoid observing WHO exactly is causing the wars. you cannot avoid your responsibility to confront and argue with those people. Here is a high level diagram. on my website. http://www.rosehill.net/index.htm

Our activism to stop wars involves identifying the people and organizations who start wars. Wars are caused by some rotten sons of b*tches who work all day long to start them, for their own enrichment or in some cases, just to satisfy other urges, their egos or ideologies. Here is a 4-minute speech in which I list for you, the people who start wars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzbO6ov_8Vg

When antiwar activists stop meeting privately, and participate in the public dialog, we will *begin* to be effective. Most of us have never been leaders, never given speeches or debated in public. By now, after 5 years of war, we are much better educated, and many of us are ready to speak to our city council, school board, party caucuses and districts meetings, PTAs, professional organizations, and business assoiations--whatever you do, you must take the battle up to the microphone, in those groups--ALONE.

Stop waiting for somebody to come help you. It ain't gonna happen.

Stop training and educating peace activists.

Now, here is some ammo, to help focus the conversation. WE must begin a conversation with the public, with a statement of the problem, and provide a theory as to the causes of that problem, and recommended actions which gain control over those causes and stop them.

The physical definition of war is the indiscriminate killing, bombs dropping and bullets flying, and we say: this is a problem. There can be no license, no rationalization for killing hundreds of thousands of people, as the United States has done so many times since WW2- never for self defense. Always for some excuses.

Even people who are not a pacifists agree that random violence is wrong, and killing innocent people is wrong. Beyond that, most people seem to think war is fine and don't give it much thought, but if you get them talking they think the artillery, bombs and bullets and flames should hit "the enemy" and not the women and children and non- combatants, refugees etc. Well, 90% of the dead have been noncombatants. Peace activists know this but the general public does not.

The physical series of events that controls war are, the permanent funding that maintains the military, and the one-time event of the president and congress, starting wars (All U.S. wars since at least 1941 have been unilateral aggressions by the U.S. in other words, optional wars)

The physical cause of those senators' behavior, like Cantwell, voting for war, is their character and mentality.

These senators, in turn are allowed to seize the powers of office by winning elections.

Voters' behavior, in turn, is caused by their beliefs and desires, and their spending decisions of voters which give power to particular corporations, who then pay for media propaganda.

Now, getting to the point of this--- Wars cannot be stopped by trying to protest the onset of a particular war. Iraq, and the next wars as well, are a matter of fate and destiny as long as the Congress is filled with people who tolerate and accept and start wars. The present congress is NOT ONE BIT DIFFERENT from the Congress of 2002, or 1992 or 1982 in that regard.

The beliefs and the desires of the mass population are caused by the institutions of mass culture-- the media, the schools, and the pulpit, and some lesser ones like libraries, political associations, fraternal organizations, unions, etc.. These are *much* lesser, by factor of 1000.

This brings me back to the original asssertion: Peace activists will not be successful in ending wars, until their time and money and attention and work, is redirected away from things which are merely useful and good. Instead, their time and resources must be poured into actions which are NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT components in stopping the systemic processs that causes wars.

The root causes of war are the propensity of voters to tolerate and rationalize war, to take and enjoy profits from exploiting other peoples in the world, and of course to elect the warmakers.

These beliefs and desires were emplaced by the power of money over the mass media and the pulpit, which in turn, promote harmful lies and ideologies in the public schools.

Since we are so few, and we have no money or power over the local pastor, media corporations, or schools, our most effective action is our mouth. Speak out, name names, condemn the immorality and greed and cruelty of those people in our city who profit from war and who promote war in so many ways. The absolute top culprits in the Puget Sound region are the paycheck patrioits themselves-- the bases commiunities. The military itself, whose fulltime occupation and career are killing for money. In second place I would name Boeing executives and managers, in all their product lines-- even those which are nominally civilian such as the 737 program. They all drink from the cup of pentagon dollars, in fact their survival in the airplane market has always been subsidized by profits on weapons programs. In 3rd place of course are the oil and energy industry, and the banking, finance and investment industry. I also condemn University of Washington for its military contracts. And finally, the war churches-- the megachurches who have hosted Dick Cheney, supported the invasion of Iraq from day one, and are the source of the teen and twenties population of violent rightwing youth, as well as the college republicans.

Taxing the Rich is not just about money

2008-04-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

Progressive taxation is the application of progressively higher rates on higher levels of income or assets.

For the case on progressive property taxes see Jeff Smith's work at http://www.progress.org/geonomy/ I would just add that until people understand that "property" is itself, a takings from the commons without compensation, they're unlikely to agree to give anything back to society for the privilege of excluding everybody from their fictional boundaries. The larceny is repeated every time a house is sold. The seller receives a big payment and walks away, while, all of the neighbors and citizens whose ability to use or benefit from the property were impaired, and sold, receive nothing. Like most other transactions in a capitalist economy, most of what is being sold does not belong to the seller in the first place.

But I'm writing to make a more important point.

We have to apply higher rates of income tax to higher levels of income, not only for the sake of economic justice but to reduce the incentives for a wide range of destructive and antisocial behaviors.

Corporate executives, of course, run the world today. These greedy power holders inflict *all of the harms* on the planet. Powerholders inflict all harms, through their mismanagement and mis-leading and exploitation of the common people, globally. I say, they are responsible. I say, the condition of the planet is not an accident.

We have a wonderfully effective market system and global economy that manages every damned thing to 5 nines. We have a globally integrated supply chain, and finance. This is operated by millions of MBAs, tens of millions of lawyers and accountants, and a hundred million totally obedient software people, telecoms people, and clerks. Obedient to their bosses of course, not customers as falsely portrayed in our school textbooks.

This economy is overcentralized. It is a producer-sovereign, rather than consumer sovereign. It is not operated to serve native demand, but rather, it's operated deliberately by powerholders for their particular interests.

Now, we are tired of losing this endless, complicated chess game with corporations. The common people seem to chase one policy issue after another. Most often these are not the "prime mover" issues but are only band-aids.

The "economy" works pretty well. It is extremely agile and reorganizes itself very dynamically. Don't wait for another crash like the 1930s. Look for example at 1987 and other events in which, with all their networks and computers the whole global economy digested the collapse in financial markets and rationalized them and rebooted itself in about 2 or 3 days. Like 911, hundreds of $Billions of ownership was taken by global powerholders, from other powerholders. The losers went off licking their wounds and hardly a word was ever revealed in the papers.

Well, the prime mover behind all these crazy and criminal behaviors, ranging from a military industrial complex to global environmental destruction, the destruction of the global gene pool with GMOs, etc. is the greedy few at the top. Those most cunning, long of fang, fleet of foot.

If the possibility of making more than say, $500,000 per year is removed by steep tax rates, then all these sick, tyrannical types will have to satisfy themselves running sports club franchises etc. instead of having us all worked to death in factories and killing each other in real wars.

I think you need a continuous progressive slope starting at the median income of the population (zero tax for half of the population) and with a straight line up to 100% confiscatory taxation at around ten times the median income. And it is universally agreed, on the left as well as the right, that when tax rates get really high, there is a disincentive to "work". This is exactly the goal of progressive taxation. We don't want the insatiable, the greedy, doing that kind of "work", which is really theft.

One of the systemic problems in WA is the continual in-migration of high income and high-wealth individuals.

It undermines our society. You can only absorb so many of that kind of person before they start taking over the whole state by their power to buy elections, and dismantling schools and social services, turning the state into a Florida, which is a great place for owning a yacht, but sheer hell for everybody else.

This is the same thing we see in national politics: the ultra-wealthy, intent on nothing other than tax cuts, support Bush and Cheney, regardless of any other consequences... such as the Iraq war. In fact, they promote war ideology that they don't even believe, just to keep Bush in office, just to get the tax cuts.

Ron Sims' effort to raise an income tax in the State of Washington was a campaign which could win, in the future, with proper voter education. And at one fell swoop, chase away a lot of billionnaires and their lobbying, and protect social services for the long term.

We don't need government to guide and enable business. We have a market economy for that.

The function of government is to meet human needs and goals of society that markets leave unmet.

Caring for the sick and the elderly, educating the young, maintaining all things of the commons, the roads, law and order-- all these sorts of things. Will private enterprise handle these? No. Will charity handle them? That's a myth. The poor, the sick, mentally ill, were lucky to find a basement or barn or a crust of bread.

When business boosters show up in the congress or legislature, or the winners of great fortunes in the marketplace not wanting to pay taxes, wanting to dismantle social services they're dismantling the very purpose of having a government in the first place. A government does not exist to protect the privileges of the wealthy, to the contrary that has been done all too well by "the private sector."

2008-04-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

Make sure the public never forgets Obama's pledge, just in case he wins: One Brigade A Month, all troops out within 16 months. http://www.barackobama.com/issues/foreignpolicy/

My friends. This is a battle worth joining. Obama's commitment is a substantially better deal for us, than Hillary, or, obviously McCain.

But I am not recommending joining the Obama campaign. Please think about this, with me.

Obama's position is so much different, that it would literally decide our destiny, to shut the permanent bases in Iraq, or not. Here is the truth, whether you like it or not:

The O.B.A.M plan is under attack by broad segments of the rightwing, everybody from tax cutters to corporate lobbyists who would lose if Obama wins. Your urgent task the next 6 months, is to stand up in every public forum and smash the war position, and anybody foolish enough taking public positions in support of the Iraq occupation, war, or militarism.

The war hawks are trying to hide from the general public right now, but they continue building massive support in their captive audiences in the churches, rightwing radio and TV, and school districts they control. Basically, we have to stand up and assault the pro-war position so sharply that the war people have to either stand up and take a licking, or remain silent and surrender on the issue.

Ironically, on this particular issue, *we* own the public forums, the political caucuses and conventions, the microphone in city county and state legislatures, school boards, city councils, commissions of all kinds. The general public is extraordinarily opposed to the occupation right now. We must go into all these forums aggressively speaking out, leafletting, attacking the legitimacy of the occupation and the people who lied us into this war. We must attack the immorality of killing, the illegality of occupation of nonbelligerent countries, the $3 billion per day of military spending, and the most fundamental lie, the GWOT. There is no unusual terrorist threat, we have been working for the last 50 years to defuse the nuclear threat and Bush has reneged on ABM and NNPT! Ghastly.

Those of you who say you're antiwar, but won't put in the time and personal capital to attend local politics, are betraying the movement. Now is our time. Now is the hour for accountability. The war people are goin' down.

Join in the fun, even if you don't care about the morality, or the legality, or the fiscal trainwreck, or the dollar collapse, or the political blowback against the empire.

Todd.

ps. Make sure the public never forgets Obama's pledge: One Brigade A Month, All out within 16 months.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/foreignpolicy/

Bring Our Troops Home: Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

Mid-april, busy times in Seattle

2008-04-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Dalai Lama came to Seattle this week. The buses I rode this weekend were crowded with people going to the local corporate baseball stadium, Qwest Field for a mass swarming. These people's clothing, makeup, and behaviors were distinctly mega-church.

Well, Americans job is not to change the behavior of the Chinese government in Tibet. Americans' job is to restrain our own government's wars and aggressions, by getting out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other occupied lands.

The Green Festival also came to Seattle this week. Heaving crowds filled the Convention Center, hundreds of vendor booths, and something over fifty speeches and presentations. There was actually some talk about war and militarism. Some of the speakers put in some words. John Perkins, Amy Goodman, David Korten...

I went there to videotape the talks but the Green Festival people had already decided on some sort of exclusive arrangement, and were not allowing filming. I stuck with the 2 minute rule half the day, Saturday then saw Ed Mays shooting entire talks by Perkins, Thom Hartman, etc. so I shot a few, too. David Korten for example spoke to a packed hall of 300 people. These 4 breakout rooms didn't even have *any* cameras running. To me that is a crime against the commons, for the Festival to ban cameras and then not even film it themselves. (They announced, they would distribute audio thru their website, which is good.).

Want to find the cause of the war in Iraq? And how the power elite controls our lives? Look in your wallet. Take everything out of your wallet and burn it. Or stay on the plantation. Simple as that. The dollar economy is a monolithic thing. You have to become dead weight --a drag on the dollar system, a system out of control that no longer serves humanity.

Today thru Wednesday is the unmoney convergence conference in Seattle, which addresses this in a more concrete way. Alternatives to the legal tender, as Tom Greco describes it.

The work ethic is unethical

2008-04-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

Why We Quit. Civilian conscientious objectors

The human species, surely, has some inborn characteristics that endure over time frames of thousands of years. Our human nature is not so far from us -- it is accessible to anybody in touch with their own body and mind. It screams out to us through the desires and aversions we feel.

For example I'm a 55 year old guy. My nature tells me to drop everything about once a day, and walk out the door and bicycle or run across the landscape, for an hour or more. The exercise seems to balance my blood chemistry. The movement seems to satisfy some craving or curiosity to investigate the area.

During the dark, winter months my body tells me to curl up in a warm bed and sleep a lot-- sometimes 12 hours a day including naps.

The social order around us, obviously does not operate by the same instincts. I see a political economy run by a bunch of over-amped power trippers, and a vast population of employees apparently satisfied to do whatever instructions they're told, however useless or absurd, up to and including the war in Iraq.

Truly, there is a lot of useless commotion across the physical landscape. Needlessly large vehicles rush around, dominate the whole region with a continual roar of noise.

The only thing we really need is a wholesome diet-- it is a scientific fact that 90% of the GDP is not necessary for our biological needs. Our food needs are satisfied by less than 10% of the workforce. The other 36 hours of our 40 hours of work is art. Whimsy. We could be doing *anything*. Or nothing.

What's in the skyscrapers downtown, truly, is useless commotion - people struggling for control over the material outputs of a globally integrated economy. People, persuading, selling, manipulating and inducing and compelling other people to do things. Marketing, law, software and financial services, the accounting, the insurance, the brokers, holding companies, and corporate suites. Ask the people. Many of them openly admit their occupations are fundamentally obsolete, or corrupt, or at best unnecessary.

As a CPA for 20 years I came to realize the profession was essentially corrupt. It is a racket, which has captured the naming and semantics for tax and reporting, appointing themselves as the monopoly provider of the "truth".

My work was unnecessary in the real economy and involved only the allocation of economic resources among the powerful. Everybody wanted to recharacterize their business dealings as something else. A tax client wants every payment to be deductible, and every deposit to be nontaxable. Corporate executives want every payment to be an asset and every project to appear profitable.

Downtown Seattle contributes less than nothing to the production of goods and services. Organization, scheduling, and coordination of human is essential, and downtowns once were necessary. Acres of clerks and typists processed information.

Today however, all necessary mental work is done by computers -- all of the routine inventory, accounting, payrolls, scheduling, logistics, are all done effortlessly-- and could be even more effortless. Today's mental workers are exactly the same as earlier generations of laborers replaced by machinery. Machines of course have progressively taken over much physical work.

Many of the older, more experienced software professionals also recognize the obsolescence and harmfulness of most of today's management processes. When a barcode scan at the cash register can adjust every inventory, shipping and manufacturing schedule all the way back to the raw material suppliers, why do we need a concentration of skyscrapers downtown, let alone, to expand freeways and bridges?

Today's downtown, full of useless entrenched bureaucracies, in control of all of the earth's commons, permits no activity unless there's a way to collect rents or fees. Negatively, it prevents outbreaks of competing ways of doing anything that cannot be captured. Positively, it controls everything it posesses to maximize the gains and avoid all costs and responsibilities.

The real estate bubble and its related financial industry roars at full speed in this state, destroying our environment and saddling future generations with an unsustainable sprawl. Weapons of mass construction. By contrast, Asian cities permit subdividing into small lots, such as 20 by 30 feet, with 3 or 4 story buildings on it. Do the math, how much cheaper this would be!

There are excess resources in the urban economy, and ethical ways to get them. The economy is racing like a buzzsaw through all the resources of the planet - a motor racing without a governor. We have a duty at some point to be satisfied. To quit producing and consuming. Quitting is the only ethical thing to do. The work ethic is unethical.

Humanity learned the "work ethic" thing during the agrarian and industrial revolutions. But now it is as inappropriate as tribal mores were, during the industrial age. In fact, the people in those skyscrapers have long abandoned the work ethic. They have learned to avoid work and maximize takings. That is the business ethic. It is intrinsic to market economies, that you seek "the best deals."

My adaptation is: just quit, and mooch. Be a lazy, deadweight MF.

The Iraq war, and the military industrial complex, are the last straw, for me. I burned my CPA license and consider myself a conscientious objector. I've been thru this too many times already. The Vietnam war, the Reagan wars, the Gulf war. I'm tired of obeying the orders of unfit bosses and dictators. Are we such sheep? I will work no more forever. Or, at least, as long as there is a handout.

Transit solution: smaller roads beget smaller vehicles

2008-04-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have ridden trains and subways in major cities most of my adult life. And now Metro/ST buses.

Mass transit can never be an optimal solution because it can never serve point-to-point, and it can never be timely. It always serves only a line, whereas, the surface of the earth is a plane. This is math literacy, isn't it?

I hate todays cars. But the ultimate solution will be more like a car, than mass transit.

Cities and states should impose a standard such as, your car must fit through a 5x5 foot goalpost to get on the road, and the max weight maybe 1000 pounds loaded. This allows a massive breakthru in lower cost vehicles, lower fuel and mainenance costs. Quieter vehicles with small hard wheels. Twice as many lanes on every street. Cheaper roads, tunnels and overpasses that look like pedestrian overpasses. The end of congestion. Tiny parking spaces, including automation of parking, automation of the roadways, greater safety. A 4x4 freight pallet rolls along nicely, through a 5x5 channel. Two people side by side. Several rows of seats. Or a cargo bay, the size of a twin- sized mattress.

Everybody in the transit business knows this. So do the auto industry. But they are a heavy political/industrial complex, just as bad as the telecomm industry, the banking industry, or the military sector. Small vehicles use LESS steel, LESS fuel, LESS repairs, LESS highway dollars, LESS of everything. and MORE political enemies. get it? You end up re-examining capitalism itself.

Concentrated Benefit, Dispersed Cost, and Progressive taxation

2008-04-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

The only fair tax system is a net income tax based on progressively higher rates on high income ---and VERY high rates on very high incomes.

We are living in a mature, post-industrial economy with extensive telecom and computing. This is mostly a state-managed economy, in which the state-managed sectors capture the economic surplus of even the unincorporated sectors.

The dynamics of this economy are NOT the same as Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx. Economies of scale alone, demolished competition in many industries. Those industries collapsed disastrously into monopoly, a situation only barely restrained by antitrust laws to oligopoly in most industries.

We find that a principle of concentrated benefit and distributed costs (the special interest problem) afflicts ALL large organizations whether political, economic. Those with the most at stake work hardest to influence decision processes, while it is uneconomic and essentially impossible for the affected population to participate in every decisions.

The behavior of corporate executives and boards is one of the more visible examples of this law in action. They seize unearned wealth from customers, suppliers, workers and the community, by the power they exercise.

We find externality costs to be almost universal in a market economy system based on private contract. Although the magnitude varies greatly, the aggregate of all the externalities is quite material, surpassing the value of the measured economy.

We are finding that information economics make it impossible for meaningful competition in many markets, from presidential choices to branded online services. The concentration of power provides resources necessary for better decision support by the largest actors and first movers. First mover advantage allows firms such as ebay in the auction domain to capture nearly their entire market. Game theoretic actions, guided by OODA analysis, change facts on the ground in ways the opponent cannot overcome.

These problems are mitigated by a progressive income tax in two ways. First, it provides the economic resources necessary to redress inequity of unearned wealth stolen from society by the powerful. Second, by reducing the extreme rewards available from antisocial behavior, it disincents that behavior in the first place.

Of course there are direct measures that mitigate externalities- but until the structure of markets and contract law are changed in much more fundamental ways, progressive income tax is about the only way to prevent the largest companies and most game theoretic people in the marketplace from progressively capturing the entire economic surplus of society.

Derivatives outstanding 6/30/2007 $516 Trillion, start bailing.

2008-03-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

FINALLY, somebody who recognizes that we are in a derivatives meltdown.
Bearly Alive, by Mike Whitney on Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney03152008.html

Just one error I noticed. Mike Whitney says the volume of derivative trading FYE 6/30/2007 was $516 Trillion, but the BIS report clearly says that is notional asset value, i.e, balance sheet, not income statement.

See the BIS report http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt1920a.pdf They report the market value as $11 Trillion, or 2%. So for example if the institution had a position in a derivative based on a $100 worth of debt, such as to reduce their risk of interest rate changes, it's market value is reported as $2 and if the counterparty defaults, understand their loss is $2.

But that doesn't mean the global risk is $11 trillion. All the derivatives are pretty worthless until market interest rates, currencies, equities, oil and commodities, etc. change in a big way. Then, the market value of your hedges might become $100 trillion pretty fast... same as a stock option, when the stock price changes by 20%-- your option value becomes 20% of the underlying stock value.

So what happens if the other guy can't pay? For example oil, gold, and many other things have changed by 50% or more. Obviously, the amounts of money owed by derivatives holders, to each other, is closer to $100 Trillion than $11 Trillion, now. Furthermore, BIS reports only include reported derivatives between member banks-- omitting unknown amounts between global corporations as well as unreported amounts in private dealings of member institutions.

Obviously the global banking system itself can't handle $100 trillion of losses, that's just laughable. They are just rolling these amounts forward, like a huge ponzi scheme. Ultimately the losing institutions must merge into the winning institutions, so that both sides of the trade are owned by the same company. Ultimately, there will be one world financial institution ---not only in the dollar sphere, but all national currencies. You would have to work pretty hard not to have dealings with this sphere, such as, the Islamic Dinar, religious prohibition on debt, periodic jubilees on debt, things like that.

We're not getting the whole story from the mainstream media-- not even the financial papers. I spent Monday afternoon reading them. The Bear Stearns collapse was caused by derivatives risk. It is being framed as part of the housing collapse, or defaults by U.S. mortgage borrowers. It's being blamed on bad borrowers. No doubt our masters will convince the country to blame blacks, latinos, if not gays and drug users.. lazy people, who "couldn't pay". And now the bank regulators are doing this charade of "tightening up lending practices", blaming the mortgage issuers... laughable.

The collapse of derivatives has been long expected by CPAs, the SEC, many throughout the financial industry-- but all critics have been roundly criticized and silenced in a colossal groupthink-- an enforced conformity to a lie everybody knew about.

Read these stories and weep.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=derivatives+risk

Look at all these stories.
http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&safe=off&q=%22%24516+Trillion%22

The notional value of derivatives reported to the BIS by member institutions in 2007 was over $516 Trillion. That is up from $100 trillion only 10 years ago. What chutzpah these people have. And now they want a bailout. sheesh.

Nobody I can find in all my friends in the peace movement or the left has ever even heard of the BIS, or derivatives, swaps, etc. Their understanding of the causes of war is limited to the social, ideological dimensions.

The Bear Stearns takeover is a huge swindle of the taxpayers, on top of the continuous exploitation by the FIRE industries Michael Hudson estimated at $500 Billion/ year. We are being cheated of $30 Billions just on Bear Stearns alone. The U.S. government gave away $30 billion, paying JPMorgan to handle the BS bankruptcy, on top of $200 billion it gave away last week. This is unconstitutional, of course; spending must be authorized by the Congress. The federal reserve acts with supra-governmental powers, which are essentially taxing the dollar economy.

THERE IS NO TERRORIST THREAT

2007-06-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

At 01:04 AM 6/1/2007, Mark Jensen wrote at http://www.tacomapjh.org/:
"COMMENTARY: Christian right hate group foments anti-Muslim intolerance"

Many of the big lies of 2003 have been exposed, and discredited.

However, the most fundamental assumption, beneath the entire US war campaign in the middle east, is that there is a terrorist threat in the first place.

Once you drink the kool aid, that there is a substantial terrorist threat to the U.S., you're only left with arguments over tactics, whether a big military occupation in Afghanistan is the wrong way to stop terrorism. We've tried this argument for five years now.

So, I want you all to stand up, and go to the nearest window, and open that window and yell

THERE IS NO TERRORIST THREAT TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES

And if anybody wants to discuss it, start with math literacy. The 911 attacks killed 3000 people and demolished three buildings. That is not a significant cost or threat to the united states, even if it happened quite frequently. We have 300 million people. More than 3 million people die anyway in the U.S. every year. The 911 attack increased our mortality rate by 1/1000th.

And we can easily get another 3000 any time, by granting some visas or having sex. And we have already killed 3500 of our own troops, and over a million people in Iraq. Where is the math?

Meanwhile, all we had to do was lock the cockpit doors, and keep insane people and criminals out of the cockpits. Get it?

Now, go back to that window and yell,

THERE IS A MILITARY THREAT TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES

And that is, a nuclear strike. Nuclear weapons are intrinsically a state enterprise. They require a huge, highly visible industrial effort.

When the boy emperor and his lunatic Generals in the Pentagon attack a lot of other nations, sooner or later, one of those nations or their allies, will detonate a nuclear weapon in a U.S. city.

That is called a military attack, not a terrorist attack. Because it will come from a state, a government, a military.

Todd

Distinguishing between individual and mass communication strategies

2007-06-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

Regardless of your core beliefs about war, I think there are questions of strategy we need to discuss.

The peace movement and the antiwar movement are distinct. One is intent on moral and social improvement of the whole society to preclude war, and the other is intent on stopping the greedy and unethical people at the top of our institutions who work so hard orchestrating wars.

In either case, you have to decide whether you are involved in a mass communication strategy, or a strategy of reaching people personally, one by one.

I've concluded that there is little hope of progress with the individual approaches. I think you have to work with the 3 institutions of mass culture to replace the message and doctrine they are pushing out.

Since we have no money, we can only work with ideas. So, we have to identify which of the militarist beliefs are critical to the decisions and the behavior of the mainstream, career people working in the military industrial complex (including the 1.5 million active military employees) and demolish those. Given the fact that time is so limited, it is necessary to directly criticize those core positions, every time, in our personal and media interactions.

The MICC is a closed loop system. Here is a diagram, http://rosehill.net displaying the congress, the military, the contractors, lobbyists, the media, schools, churches, and other components of the MICC. The MICC is a closed loop system, in which people and institutions make deals with each other, and go on merrily for decades. They do not need *anything* from anybody outside their arrangement, because it is composed of stable, long established, mostly bilateral exchanges.

With substantial control over media, schools, and all layers of government, the military is the most powerful special interest group in the United States by far. With one flick of its mighty tail, it can reach 100 million people and undo all the work of the antiwar movement in a year. And if they fail, they'll pass a law.

I respect all of the work people are doing in the peace movement. I just don't think it is sufficient, or even necessary, for the goals of abolishing war, ending the foreign aggressions of the US, and downsizing the military to 20% or less its current size.

Since we don't own the media or the schools we have little choice but to be sharply dissonant, dissident, and noticeable, and newsworthy. As many of us have-- Nicholas Baptiste http://exposetheleft.net/video/scarpappy.wmv or even Ruth and I. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5714577555627102730 in which we did a rather poor job, and so would most antiwar people if you don't listen up. We are blowing it, in all these exchanges and we need to excel. We need to control the outcome better.

Before we examine the "core beliefs" that the MICC people tell us, I just want to make one more point: their talk, their ideology, is fake. It is a rationalization serving useful social and internal, psychological needs and purposes.

These are the "persona", as CG Jung would say-- these are artifacts. While their actions are made at a much more primitive level-- the subconscious mind, the reptilian brain, from the gut (same as most people in every industry). Incidentally, you are reading from Todd Boyle's persona, as well. My real self and my real actions, are as base and egoistic as the next guy.

So, I think the most useful strategy is to demolish the *rationalizations* and *justifications* for war, that exist widely in the population. Break em down.

1. That "the nation" is a legitimate enterprise for Americans to assert any force or threat on people outside our jurisdiction, our population and political system. For example, the belief is already deeply established in the U.S., in "no taxation without representation". So, it is like a sacred cow, it is unthinkable to tax other countries.

And it's just as wrong to enforce any other law, or impose any other force, since they did not have a vote. Right?

What this means is the entire foreign policy of the United States is profoundly wrong and immoral. Huge elephant in the living room. 700 bases all over the world, a $trillion dollar military completely designed for foreign expeditionary force... etc.

Obviously they have layers upon layers of supporting hoo haa. They're going to jump up and say "We have to defend ourself".

- That preemptive invasions are the new "self defense" doctrine.

- That there is a terrorist threat. I want you to go to the nearest window, and open it, and yell "There is NO TERRORIST THREAT". Because if you can't be comfortable with this, you need come in off the counter recruiting line and think it over. Once you concede there is a large scale, WMD terrorist threat, you're bagged. Long version, available on request.

2. That the people in the MICC have done *anything* good since WW2. They haven't. Every single war and invasion has been an illegal aggression, motivated by money and business interests. They have distorted the entire economy and the culture.

3. That these wars originate in the American character, the democracy, etc. THEY DON'T. The preconditions and precursors for these wars are deliberately cultivated, on a permanent basis, by well known, highly visible indoctrination programs. and the triggering events are orchestrated and controlled entirely from the top, by well known people, the same people who have caused the last ten wars.

Again, there is a long rebuttal of why we are all NOT responsible for the wars, why the oligarchy IS responsible for the wars, and why it is perfectly rational and achievable to end wars by containing these sparkplugs, these detonator people, who keep igniting and unleashing the passions of wars.

Todd

The Antiwar movement versus the Peace movement

2007-06-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

The northwest regional conference of Veterans For Peace was held Apr. 29 and 30, 2007 in Olympia, WA. The VFP is one of the most coherent and united groups in the country, for its level of activism.

One of the well known rivalries within the VFP is between traditional VFPs and the more anti-military. Over things like the flag, honoring the dead. There are also, of course, differences between conservatives, and the left, the anti-imperialist about the character of U.S. society and the U.S. economy.

A more interesting division is between the peace viewpoint and the antiwar viewpoint. This division continues to affect the substance of what we do. VFP members still remain far from resolving or reconciling between these visions.

The antiwar vision looks at war and its causes mechanically. We look at systemic causes and the people and organizations who cause these wars. We look at concrete and immediate flows of money and resources, the laws or lack thereof, to correct them. We study economic theory, the plutocracy, the corporate, monetary and governmental regime. But we are more focused on Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, the corruption in the Pentagon, the revolving door of lobbyists, the Israeli lobby and agencies, and other very unpleasant things.

The peace movement while not unaware of these things, believes the cause of war is in the human heart, the ignorance, the sinfulness, greed, anger, lust, racism, pride, etc. of the population.

The peace movement wants to go directly to these causes, hoping to reach and inspire millions of people to change their political and economic behavior-- so crucially and in such large numbers, as to end wars. They do things like Arlington West.

The antiwar movement while fully aware of these passions, the ignorance, the unresolved subconscious fears and urges of the population--we view those as preconditions, even universal preconditions but not precipitating causes. We think the Bush administration started the war in Iraq, in concert with a lot of other well-known, rotten SOBs and institutions from oil barons to Jerry Falwell to the Pentagon to banksters.

We see most of the planet living peacefully not because they are more spiritually enlightened than the average american, or because their governments or corporations are more generous or law abiding.

We think the rest of the planet is more peaceful because they don't have a gigantic, parasitic military industrial complex running out of control in their country. And consequently, their countries are not run by militarists.

I'm writing this is to strongly advise the Peace Movement to ask yourselves, what really causes wars? Is there any difference between a precipitating event, and a precondition? You are trying to remove the precondition. We are trying to remove the triggering event or sequence of events.

What are the sequences of events that you are trying to create???

What are the sequences of events that you are trying to prevent?

I am not aware of anybody in the peace movement that has a detailed, concrete map, or answer. to these questions. I suspect, perhaps unjustly but I suspect the peace movement prefers to do things that provides a pleasant and uplifting experience for themselves. An ennobling experience. Well, confronting and jailing criminals is NOT fun, especially these really nasty, cunning, highly willful, vengeful types. The core of the war movement-- still wanting war on Iraq, are in it for the money, for economic empire, and for religious extremism and racism.

Our world is full of absolutely horrific dangers that are controlled at the level of triggers not preconditions. The speeds we drive, commercial airliners, electric power or gas in our homes. The nuclear stockpile.

And finally, to those of you in the peace faction if you INSIST on trying singlehandedly to alter the developmental outcomes of the 50 million people in the educational system in the US, or the at least 100 million people under the spells of their church pastors, consider the math: will *you* change the culture or will the three institutions of mass culture continue winning? (The mass media, the pulpit, and the education system) I think we are hopelessly underfinanced and out gunned. Not enough people or money. Laughable.

It is in these 3 institutions of mass culture that racism, nationalism, and hatred and fear have been constantly nourished, the definition of masculinity, the acculturation and identity of young men to war and violence is passed on to each rising generation. The aforementioned Rotten SOBs have been there long before we arrived. They already influence these institutions decisively. That's how America became so militarized.

It is critical to go after those Rotten SOBs on the school board, in the media and in certain local churches, who are using these institutions to push war and hatred.

As proof of the efficacy of ideological purity campaigns, the McCarthyites were very successful at this in the 1950s. The Germans, have banned Nazi parties, books, and Hitler worship. The Jewish Anti Defamation leage has been very successful at demolishing overt anti-Jewish elements in US society. The African American movement likewise, demolishes any overt racist talk. None of these succeed quickly in changing the culture. Over decades they have achieved policy dominance, which is our goal.

So by all means, bring your message of peace to your local church, school board, and media. That is useful. But it is not sufficient. You have to actually go across the line, to oppose, to neutralize, the militarist.

Note carefully: when I say "the militarist" or "the flag waver", I am referring to the role of a person. I am not referring to the action of a person, and I'm certainly not referring to the whole person. First of all, you have a human being, which is sublime and infinite. And we all have our collections of thoughts and beliefs. Then, you have the behaviors such as to manufacture arms, or payoff the congress. Those I think are close to the problem. But to be precise, it is the roles, within the functioning MICC, which are to be opposed. Many of them already are illegal. For example it is not illegal to make large political contributions. It is illegal however, if those are connected with favors, in a bilateral trade.

But it is perfectly useless in stopping wars, to work on our own spiritual growth. You must drive the flagwavers, the national supremacists, the jingoists into the defensive. They have been intimidating and marginalizing the peace movement for decades. These are *real people* in your own community--- The story they're selling to the children, to their broadcast audience, or the church congregation must change. if you can't reform them, then you must drive them out, just as Don Imus was driven out. Take notes, organize, and drive them out.

That is the difference between the peace movement and the antiwar movement. We are going after the war making activity, and the war making people. Sorry about that. Some behaviors we will NOT tolerate anymore, call us intolerant.

Voting strategies are ineffective

2007-06-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

At 10:13 AM 6/1/2007, o'Kelly McCluskey wrote, at vfp92@lists.riseup.net:

GREAT Message, Tom
o'Kelly

Yes I agree-- it's a great analysis. Tom's prescription (boycott the major parties - [at bottom]) is also worth considering. However, IMO it is not likely to gain enough voters, soon enough to take hold and deliver results, in order to keep from fading away.

The reason "politics" seems dysfunctional to the observer, is that we are applying an incomplete model. For example, if you want to predict the orbits of planet, first of all you need to know its speed, its direction, and its distance from the sun. None of the orbits are perfect circles, they are elliptical.

Some people's ideas about politics leave out factors that are necessary to understand politics.

Some people's analysis of the facts is wrong. We are like ptolemy, trying to predict the planets with the wrong math. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_heliocentrism One can only imagine the mental suffering of the astronomers, with their Ptolemaic math.

So I would suggest discarding the word "political system" and at least, call it "the political economy". Better, we might call it "humanity". Because, what we are talking about is the entire domain of human behavior.

Surely I don't have to explain that the companies and wealthy individuals control lawmaking, the judiciary, and the regulatory bureaucracies, etc. What you may be missing however, is the layer that goes deeper, the layer on which corporations and the money system operate. The operation of the money economy is principally composed of people--- Including liberals as well as conservatives, engaged in the exchange of goods and services. So, the analytical model -- the predictive model-- for the political economy is WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO, not what they say they're doing, or even what they believe they are doing.

I have long complained the people in the peace movement think themselves different from Republicans and the neocons and fundamentalists, while behaving in exactly the same way 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Working in the same jobs, right alongside apocalyptic fundamentalists, sports fans, and madmen. And not even arguing with them-- but coexisting. This is corruption This is pragmatism. abandonment of principle, for material gain. It is materialism, collaboration within a vast machine that kills millions of people outside of itself.

The political economy, of course is composed mostly of companies where we are the employees, where obedience is absolute, and guided by our perverse system of notation called accounting. The number balances are absolutely not to be questioned. When was the last time you questioned the numbers in your bank account? Well you should because they are all lies. Humanity, hanging from a cross of numbers (not the cross of gold, of William Jennings Bryan) A totalitarian system, as deterministic as bees in a hive, or ants in an anthill. And we are pretty much doing it to ourselves thru our inattention and neglect. We aren't even maintaining the anthill. It is insanity. This planet is an insane asylum. Following rote procedure, as lemmings.

So, bottom line, I neither agree nor disagree with Tom's recommendation. I just think it is pathetic, insufficient. The only ethical as well as effective action of citizens today is to boycott the elements of the economy involved in the war, involved in corruption of the political system, and in the corruption of our institutions of mass culture (the moneyed interest' influence over the pulpit, the school systems, and of course the media. ) See my articl in Washington Free Press this month; in libraries and free newstands (in a couple weeks it will be at http://www.wafreepress.org ) Even our writing and educating and debating, ultimately, is useless unless millions of people actually *QUIT* the jobs they're doing now, and get up every morning and do different sorts of activities which don't contribute to the wars- and such activities are few and far between, today. Do you understand, there is no "political" behavior that is going to change the system? No gimmick, no caucus, no letters to editors-- because the governmental apparatus including elections is a department of a corporation, it is a department of the economy which is far larger. The government is not a free-standing thing.

Todd
self hating veteran, lazy deadweight mf etc.

----- Original Message ----- From:
To:
Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 10:51 PM
Subject: [VFP92] America's Dysfunctional Political System

I was saddened to read recently that the only son of Andrew Bacevich, an officer in the US Army stationed in Iraq, became one of the many casualties there recently.

Usually I don't pay too much heed to who from America dies in Iraq, but I am kind of a fan of Bacevich's. He is a former career officer in the US Army, a Vietnam vet, now a professor of international relations at Boston University, a strong critic of US foreign and military policy, and definitely a critic of Bush's war in Iraq and the neo-con gang who helped bring it to us.

He recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, which examines his responsibility for his son's death. The article is titled, "I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/25/AR2007052502032.html?hpid=opinionsbox1.

For me the article is remarkable because it fires a shot at America's political system and the way it has failed the people of America.

I am convinced that the nature of this dysfunctional, sick system is much to blame for the deploreable state of American foreign and military policy. This system has the following characteristics:

1. The politicians are chiefly concerned with maintaining their positions and the power of their parties. If the party is in control, then maintaining control is paramount. If the party is out of control, then regaining control is paramount. Other considerations, such as principle and formulating good policy are only secondary considerations.

One example of this is the number of Democrats who were only too anxious to provide Bush in 2002 with the congressional OK to invade Iraq. Clearly they were motivated strongly by the need to look tough on defense policy. There was little interest in examining this policy critically.

2. The parties demand that all hew to the party line and the two parties are nearly indistinguishable when it comes to foreign and military policy. That means that there is little diversity in thought in these areas. Therefore, nearly all politicians support a strong and dominating American military policy and nearly all politicians support Israel without question. This is true even though it is very apparent the current policies in these areas are detrimental to the interests of Americans.

3. Because of the group think process on Capitol Hill and the serious lack of consideration of alternative options, information, and opinions, the political process takes people who are good people as incoming legislators and turns them into group think automatons who must toe the party line. In many instances these people are even less informed about issues than the people they are representing. They become incredibly closed minded. Only when they are presented with a catastrophe, which is the direct result of their stupidity, (for example, the quagmire in Iraq) do they start wondering, "Well, maybe we were wrong. It's the administration's fault. They misled us."

4. Large sums of money are very important to the political process. People with a lot of money count very much. Those without, such as you or I, don't matter at all. The excessive time needed for campaigning exacerbates the corrupting influence of money. With presidential campaigning starting two years before the election, ridiculous amounts of money are spent to maintain the campaigns for this time period.

The biggest problem is the lack of diversity. There simply is little choice in American elections. You either vote Democrat or Republican and when it comes to foreign policy that is no choice at all. They are vitually the same.

I am struck by another recent op-ed written by Pat Buchanan in which he maintains the Democratic Party could support more funding for the war because the anti-war left had no other place to go. The anti-war grassroots of the Democratic Party may be unhappy with the sellout, but it is not going to vote Republican.

Maybe it is time for people to change this sick political system by refusing to vote for or support in any way any politician associated with either party. I think it is time that people BOYCOTT THE REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PARTIES. Simply refuse to vote for any member of these parties. Vote Green, vote Libertarian, vote Socialist, vote Independent, but do not vote Democrat or Republican at any level.

This is the philosophy I have adopted for myself. After what I have seen over the last few years, I will be damned if I ever vote again for another Democrat. I don't care what they say and what they stand for. Simply being a member of that party will disqualify them for my vote. Of course, the same applies to the Republican party, though there never was a great danger of me voting for a Republican.

The Iraq war should make it clear to all that this country needs a diverse political system where the choices are not limited to a duopoly. We either need independent politicians with diverse views or many parties with diverse views. Clearly, what we have now does not work.

Tom Krebsbach

WA Impeach calls Democratic Party "pathetic"

2007-02-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

The WA State Impeachment campaign's next event is tomorrow in Olympia.

Linda Boyd has been in direct contact with several Democrats in Congress, and says the response has been appalling and "PATHETIC". Each of them says the same thing: They don't want to impeach, because it is a distraction, they don't have enough evidence, the investigations have not started, etc. TRUST US, they say. WE'RE WORKING ON IT, they say.... But they're not! Nothing is in the works, says Linda. Democrats are working on their legislation, not the investigations.

I've heard one of the Democratic MC's called Eric Oemig and chewed his ass for submitting an Impeachment bill in the WA Senate, telling him that his sponsorship of the Impeachment will not succeed, will hurt his career, will hurt Democrat's agenda, etc.

Over on HorsesAss blog, http://www.horsesass.org/?p=2529 Toby Nixon is exploiting the opening, exploiting the nation's pain, to advance his political fortunes--- I guess Toby is fine with the torture, the PATRIOT act, the Wiretaps, the war in Iraq, the signing statements.

Linda says the Congressional Democrats seem to be working off a script--saying the same thing. Have the Democrats finally developed the fabled thinktanks, the fabled Democratic strategy for success, to compete with Karl Rove? Or are they just adopting HIS scripts?

We had a great chat, Linda said that when she told Rep. Jay INSLEE (D-WA) last year they'd collected 10,000 signatures for impeachment, his eyes bugged out and he said "We have to talk, after the elections" -- and not to rock the boat during 2006.. TRUST US, first, we have to win the election. Then we will investigate.

I attended Jay's town hall meetings in 2006 and heard him say the same thing. Well, Jay, its time to IMPEACH.

When will Congress stop this president from robbing us, morally as well as financially?

Countering the Military Industrial Congressional Complex

2007-01-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

The Military Industrial Congressional Complex (the MICC) is a very large thing.

It has been fueled and aided on a vast scale by people who support big military.

It can be slowed and impeded much easier than it has been fueled and aided, by citizen action.