Oaxaca Burning

Among the things not covered by our corporate Media is the ongoing situation in Mexico. The corruption of the last election has led to shut downs, protests and in Oaxaca, the taking over of the city by the people. Throughout part of Mexico alternative People's governments are building Dual Power.

The Mexican ruling class, empowered through electoral corrution and US backing has now stormed Oaxaca attacking the citizens organized in the Peoples Poplular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO). It was in reporting this action that indimedia journalist Brad Will was killed. We share many of the issues the people of Mexico do. Like them, we have a corrupt, illegitimate government out of control. We too should be building our own Popular Assemblies but whether we do or not, we know our own police are trained and on the ready to move against us should we organize at work or in the streets. Our Mexican brothers and sisters need our solidarity and support.

All's Not Quiet

on the front as active duty troops voice dissent in growing numbers. We need to support them in this effort. If the military itself has had enough, it's over for this administration's illegal war (and maybe, pre-emptively, the next).

Of October Suprises & November Realities

We are moving toward the exciting windup of an election that promises the empty hope of Democrats winning a narrow majority of Congressional seats. As the editorial in Swan's Commentary points out, "With US midterm elections nearing, the Democrats are salivating with hopes of capturing both the House and the Senate. Toward that end they've fielded strong candidates that reflect the values of the party and its dominant force, the Democratic Leadership Council. Take Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., a DLC New Democrat and member of the Blue Dog Coalition who is campaigning in Tennessee for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist: Ford is a hawk on foreign policy and immigration; he is anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, and pro-guns; he supported the Terri Schiavo intervention and favors a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution and the abolition of the estate tax... Of course he voted for the Military Commission Act of 2006. Ironically, he is rated as a "liberal moderate" -- Welcome to the New Democrats of USA, Inc."

Never the less, we must remember that in the Will to Power mentality of the extremists in the Whitehouse, they will do anything that they feel will keep them in power. This brings us to the danger at hand. In an attempt at provocation they have sceduled Naval War Games off the coast of Iran to begin on October 31st. Just in time for an attack we must respond to with another Gulf of Tonkin"resolution justifying war before the election.

Terror on the Home Front

Keith Olberman exposes the real terrorist threat we face. Olberman, like many others urges us to to make the vital choice of rejecting this illigitmate administration and everything it stands for at the polls. We should do so but with the knowledge that what plagues our nation cannot be undone there. Even in the absence of rigged electronic voting and discarded ballots, the best we can get in this set-up seems to be conservative opportunist democrats and nothing really changes.

As Jefferson said, government derives it's legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Given the nature of our electoral system, the crisis of legitimacy will continue after the next bogus election and the one after that. Though touching the screen could be seen as legitimizing, it should not be so. It is important to choose the candidate that will be the least damaging to us but it is vitally important to realize the limitations of that choice and that the pretence is just that.

We need to be honest with ourselves about the nature of the system we are up against and, as Olberman says, the stakes. Then we need to organize and work outside of that system for something better, even to the point of developing the next, legitimate system and implementing it in our communities while doing all we can to expose the corruption, class nature and illigitmacy of the Ancien Régime.

America's Post Mortem

Watch This Video!

Michael Franti reaches out in Baghdad and Palestine

Riverbend Returns

and it's good to know she is alive unlike so many of her compatriots. In her comments on the Lancet study citing the deaths of 650,000 deaths due to our invasion and occupation of her country she says:

"We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons – with so many different ways to die, is the number so far fetched?

There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.

Let's pretend the 600,000+ number is all wrong and that the minimum is the correct number: nearly 400,000. Is that better? Prior to the war, the Bush administration kept claiming that Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report published in The Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al."

Even we who opposed this neocon debacle from the start are responsible for the horror our country has inflicted. It is up to us to bring justice to the lying murderous bastards who usurp leadership of our nation with no respect for law or life. It is up to us to make what amends we can.

What Fresh Hell Is This!?

As Iraq devolves into the unmittigated bloody disaster predicted by much of the world and most progressives in the US, our attention is drawn away from Palestine. Israel, in partnership with our monstrous national security junta is busy testing new weapons on on the Palestinian population. The use and testing of these horrible new weapons of an imprisoned civilian population amounts to a genocidal policy. As in Darfur, it's time for a UN intervention.

Death of America -- Soulless New World

Keith Olberman isn't kidding in mourning the passing of Habeus Corpus and the Bill of Rights. Just as the German Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933 turning state power over to the Fuerher's discretion, our congress has enacted similar legislation calling it the Military Commissions Act. As in 1933, we have officially created the police state and done away with the last vestages of the republic. Welcome to the Soulless New World!

Who can we thank for supporting the traitorus nullification of our constitution?

The 65 senators who voted in favor of this tyrannical Act, all 65 of them (53 Republicans and 12 Democrats) -- Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, and Warner: Thank you Senators. You have officially declared that the once-United States of America has now become a banana republic. May your names go down in infamy.

It's Hard!

Exposure & the Greater Scandal

Congressional outing at the YMCA?

OK, that's funny in a sick way but a closer look reveals the greater problem of knowledgeable expediancy and hypocritical realpolitik in the Republican Party.