Freedom or Employment. Choose

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.23.07]

The Imus affair is a slippery slope. If you don’t like what someone says or something you see, change the channel. Censorship from the left is still just censorship.

The hyprocrisy of getting a man fired over his speech is highlighted in an article by Ted Rall (via smirking chimp):

Talk radio host Don Imus’ April 4 reference to female members of the Rutgers University basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” prompted calls for his ousting by an ad hoc alliance of politically correct liberals and opportunistic conservatives (Imus, a political liberal, had been on the right’s hit list).

As Josh Silver, writing for the center-left Huffington Post, summarized the let-them-rant-in-the-streets argument: “For those who feel that the firing of Imus has been an affront to First Amendment free speech protections, consider this: Imus still is still a free person. He can start a blog.”

“Mel Gibson can still say whatever he wants,” a reader wrote to the New York Times. “So can Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. That personal consequences may follow free speech (like losing your job or learning not to say vicious things) doesn’t violate the Constitution.”

In other words, your boss should be able to fire you if you say something he deems “vicious”–criticizing the president, say.

Behold the Gospel of the Economic Censors! The First Amendment remains in full force for them–at full pay–but scaled back for those they don’t like. Snoop Dogg and his fellow gangsta rappers should be free to peddle their smut on CD-Rs on Harlem sidewalks, they say–but not to have it distributed and sold in stores. You know, where most people buy music.

Moving Images

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.20.07]

This 8-minute animation from Dutch artist Michael Dudok De Wit, called Father and Daughter, is so well done. I was moved by the story itself, but the artistry of the telling and drawing of it is beautiful.

The Massacre from Afar

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.19.07]

La Journada, Mexico

This is an alarming tendency that must cause the authorities in that country to reflect: what has occurred that things should have come to this?

Filmmaker Michael Moore has no doubt: the school massacres are due to the pathology of violence and fear that prevails in the country, which has the highest rate of gun killings in the world and where there number of firearms exceeds that of voters or television sets.

El Pais, Spain

In the U.S., gun control measures are systematically challenged by an abusive interpretation of The Second Amendment - which was written before there was a National Army or National Guard.

O Povo, Brazil

Without a source of internal strength, without an anchor that can keep them on the ground and in good condition - like beings trapped in a trans-historical dimension and deemed expendable by others - people end up losing any reference to their humanity. Once in a while they explode in destructive and murderous fury, going against everything and everyone, randomly identifying them as the executioners of their misfortune.

This is a phenomenon more and more present in post-industrial society, and it’s an unequivocal sign of the imbalance and severe illness that affects our hedonistic civilization.

JongAng Daily, South Korea

The most effective hands to heal the terrible wounds of this crime will be of Koreans living in the United States. Koreans should show their strong willingness to share the sorrow, take emotional responsibility and heal the wounds together with the Americans. They should offer prayers, plan memorials and scholarship projects, and take measures to prevent this from ever happening again. They should roll up their sleeves to volunteer in the region where they live.

If both governments and Korean-Americans share their thoughts and wisdom, then the 33 fallen flowers will serve as a precious tribute to improved mutual relations.

Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates

In many respects, America is currently in the best of positions. Its people are among the best cared for in the world by virtue of the affluence and systems that support life in that nation. Yet, without doubt, something is ailing that society at its very core, symptoms of which are evident in cases like the Virginia one.

Whether this has something to do with the overall weakening of its value system or America’s pre-occupation with the affairs in the rest of the world leaving it little time to care for its own affairs, is simply a matter of conjecture.

Le Monde, France

The slaughter at Virginia Tech University forces American society to once again confront itself, its violence, the gun fetishism that preoccupies part of the population and the dissoluteness of young people subject to the dual-tyranny of abundance and competition.

SpeigelOnLine, Germany

Across the continent on Tuesday, European media rubber-neck at Monday’s massacre in the United States. Most seem to agree about one thing: The shooting at Virginia Tech is the result of America’s woeful lack of serious gun control laws. In the strongest editorialized image of the day, German cable news broadcaster NTV flashed an image of the former head of the National Rifle Association, the US gun lobby: In other words, blame rifle-wielding Charlton Heston for the 33 dead.

TimesOnLine, London

Perhaps of all the elements of American exceptionalism – those factors, positive or negative, that make the US such a different country, politically, socially, culturally, from the rest of the civilised world – it is the gun culture that foreigners find so hard to understand.

The country’s religiosity, so at odds with the rest of the developed world these days; its economic system which seems to tolerate vast disparities of income; even all those strange sports Americans enjoy – all of these can at least be understood by the rest of us, even if not shared.

The Daily Telegraph, Australia

Well, Virginia is not only the land of the free, and the birthplace of Washington and of Lee; it’s the place also of the freely available gun. In Virginia, you can buy a handgun any time you want.

Now, in our country, most of us take a different view. We’re not happy about our record - still intact, courtesy of the Port Arthur massacre - for having the greatest number of shooting deaths in a single incident.

Yesterday’s should remind us of an undeniable truth - there is no “right'’ to carry weapons. Those who make the tired argument that “it’s people not guns'’ who kill others, should wake up.

Toronto Sun, Canada

But as shocking as yesterday’s tragedy is, the list of those that preceded is perhaps more shocking. Incidents occur with such terrifying regularity it’s almost like a war — more than three dozen serious school shooting incidents in the last three decades.

There will be talk in the coming days about gun control, but that hasn’t protected us in Canada. [W]e have seen our share of tragic school shootings.

It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s an upscale community in Colorado, a rural Amish community in Pennsylvania, a downtown neighbourhood of Montreal — nobody is immune.

It’s high time we committed ourselves to finding some [answers].

Text Someone, Kill a Bee Colony

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.18.07]

If crazed university gun men aren’t enough to make your day, how about mass starvation?

The world’s bee colonies are dying mysteriously, and a study from Landau University suggests that mobile phones may be to blame. The colonies are subject to “Colony Collapse Disorder,” and the disorder accounts for the death of anywhere from 50-70 percent of bee colonies. Since bees pollinate most crops, flowers and fruiting trees, the end of bees is seriously bad news for the world’s food supply.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

It’s been long understood that bees respond to electromagnetic radiation. Dr Jochen Kuhn at Germany’s Landau University has shown that bees don’t return to their hives when cellphones are present. The study doesn’t prove that cellphones are responsible for CCD, but it does provide evidence that mobile phones are implicated in the death of hives.

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.

From boing boing.

Real Reason We’re in Iraq

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.18.07]

Susie Bright has an interesting take on the scandal surrounding Paul Wolfowitz’s promotion and salary increase of his lover and unearths some info I wasn’t aware of.

The appointment of George Bush’s leading hawk as head of the World Bank was heading for a crisis over his relationship with a senior British employee.

Influential members of staff at the international organisation have complained to its board that Paul Wolfowitz, a married father of three, is so besotted with Oxford-educated Shaha Riza he cannot be impartial.

Extraordinarily, they claim she played a key role in pushing the 61-year-old Pentagon official into the Iraq War. And the row comes amid claims that Wolfowitz’s wife Clare once warned George Bush of the threat to national security any infidelity by her husband could cause.

A British citizen - at 51, eight years younger than Wolfowitz’s wife - Ms Riza grew up in Saudi Arabia and was passionately committed to democratising the Middle East when she allegedly began to date Wolfowitz.

After they moved to America, Shaha worked for the Iraq Foundation, set up by expatriates to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. She subsequently joined the National Endowment for Democracy, created by President Ronald Reagan to promote American ideals.

Bulent Riza said Shaha started to “talk to Paul” about reforming the Middle East. And New Yorker magazine’s respected commentator Paul Boyer observed that a senior World Bank official “named Shaha Ali Riza” was an “influence”.

From Hullabaloo (April 2005)

And even though staff complained then, it didn’t change anything. So, the pen is mightier than the sword?

The World Bank is staffed by a well-paid, highly educated secretariat, the vast majority of whom are non-Americans. … Nearly 90 percent of the staff opposed Wolfowitz’s nomination. A day after the banks directors confirmed his appointment, Bank Swirled, a satirical magazine produced by bank employees, reported that a moving crew had delivered some personal items to his new office, including a 1768 map of Iraq, with hundreds of red X’s denoting WMD’s, hundreds of black X’s denoting ‘Oil Well$,’ and one blue X denoting a ‘decent sushi restaurant’.

The zine is as good as The Onion in it’s way and worth a look see (latest issue here).

It may have sounded goofy when it first came out in 2005, but now that he’s had to apologize for the girlfriend fiasco, evidently it was all too true: we went into Iraq as part of a top-bottom love triangle between Wolfie, his mistress and her ex-husband! And I thought Condie was butch!

As Susie says:

So World Bank Prez Paul Wolfowitz’s siphoning of $100,000’s to tip his demanding dominatrix mistress has backfired. This wasn’t the spanking he had in mind.

Woe is he! The whole bank staff booed him when Wolfie tried to “explain,” and you can hardly blame them.

The hubris of Bush’s unpopular appointee provides the “sexy” reason the Bank’s Board can use to force his removal, since apparently ruining the world on the whim of one’s own conceits is not cause for dismissal.

“His womanising has come home to roost,” a Washington insider said.

Born to Shop

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.17.07]

Miss Cellania is re-running her Mars and Venus series from 2005. The map above reminds me of myself and every girlfriend I’ve ever had.

A few excerpts of her Introduction to the series, available here:

*Relationships:*

Women: When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled “All Men Are Idiots”. Then she will get on with her life.

Men: A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the break-up, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say,”I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I’ll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you’re a total floozy. But I want you to know that there’s always a chance for us.” This is known as the “I Hate You / I Love You” drunken phone call, that 99% of all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need.

*Sex:*

Women: They prefer 30-40 minutes of foreplay.

Men: They prefer 30-40 seconds of foreplay. Men consider driving back to her place part of the foreplay.

*Mirrors:*

Men: Men are vain and will check themselves out in a mirror.

Women: They are ridiculous; they will check out their reflections in any shiny surface: mirrors, spoons, store windows, bald guys’ heads.

Hasn’t Left Her Flat in 3 Years

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.17.07]

You have to check this out! They’re not half bad actually and the some of the cuts are funny. From Miss Cellania.

The average age of The Zimmers is 78. Lead singer Alf Carrera is 90 years old. Other band members are 99 and 100 years old! The single will be released on May 14th. Visit The Zimmers’ Myspace page.

What Price Surge?

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.15.07]

From the New York Times, April 2nd:

The most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq has rejected an American-backed proposal to allow thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to return to government service, an aide to the cleric said Monday.

The rejection by the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, appears certain to fuel hostility between the majority Shiites and the former ruling Sunni Arabs, since many Sunni Arabs say they were unfairly purged from the government in the clampdown on the Baath Party.

The Americans say a partial reversal of the de-Baathification process, which began in 2003, is one of the most crucial steps the Iraqi government can take in wooing back disaffected Sunni Arabs and draining the Sunni-led insurgency of its zealotry. The White House has repeatedly told the Iraqi government that the process must be changed.

Cenk Uyger has written an article about this development. In the Iraqi world, it’s the turning point for the American experiment in Iraq. Let’s just break down the article into an easy-to-read schedule of developments, as follows:

1. Sunnis denied government jobs by Shiite Ayotollah; have no incentive to join in legitimizing the government; fight back against a government that excludes them

2. Insurgency grows and“surge” fails to stem growing insurgency
-either-2a. U.S. begins withdrawal; is replaced by Shiite militias

-or-

2a. “Stay the course”

2b. Shiite militias become impatient with lack of progress; begin attacking Sunnis

2c. U.S. engages Shiite militias in battle

3. U.S. is now in the middle of a Civil War, fighting both sides

-either-

3a. We hastily withdraw

-or-

3a. Our military experience heavy losses

4. We withdraw

The King’s Sycophant

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.11.07]

From Brent Budowsky:

Thomas Paine once wrote that in absolute governments, the King is law, and in free nations, the Law is king.
The fundamental problem is not that Alberto Gonzales lied, prevaricated, misrepresented or played Pinocchio when he falsely stated he was not involved in the decisions to fire the U.S. attorneys.

Gonzales-ism is the problem, not Gonzales.

Gonzales-ism is the notion that the highest legal officer in the land is not the agent of the law, or the Constitution, or the people, but is the sycophant and agent of the Crown.

Gonzales should be removed; Gonzales-ism should be destroyed. It is the hallmark of the corruption of partisan conservatives that they supported policies and practices that every principled conservative should abhor in our democracy, as much as every principled liberal.

Criticize Bush, Forget about Flying

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.11.07]

Ever wonder just who is really on those “terror watch lists” you hear about? Like when the former pop-singer Cat Stevens (above) was turned back from landing in America a year or so ago. Here’s some news about what it takes to get on that list — nothing having to be with being a terrorist, that’s sure. (from boing boing)

Professor Walter F. Murphy, a Korean war hero and McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) at Princeton, was delayed while flying because he’s on a “terrorist watch list.” The check-in clerk told him that he was probably added because he gave a speech that was critical of the president (who dodged his military service).

“I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution.

“That’ll do it,” the man said. “

Just Saying No

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.10.07]

From the Boston Globe:

In an emerging revolt against abstinence-only sex education, states are turning down millions of dollars in federal grants, unwilling to accept White House dictates that the money be used for classes focused almost exclusively on teaching chastity.

In Ohio, Governor Ted Strickland said that regardless of the state’s sluggish economic picture, he simply did not see the point in taking part in the controversial State Abstinence Education Grant program anymore.

Five other states — Connecticut, Rhode Island, Montana, New Jersey, and Wisconsin — have dropped out of the program or plan to do by the end of the year. The program is managed by a unit of the US Department of Heath and Human Service.

Strickland, like most of the other governors who are pulling the plug on the funding, said in pulling out of the program last month that it has too many restrictions and rules to be practical.

Job Fairs in Germany

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.9.07]

Maybe they’re a little bit more candid, a little less pc about the realities of corporate employment over there in the Duetscheland. Or maybe more able to laugh at it all. The below is the entrance to a recent job fair in Hamburg.

From boing boing via Ads of the World.

Raised by Tigers

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.9.07]

The Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand is famous for their unique attractions, fun shows, and the ability for tourists to get close to (and often touch) the tigers. However, the most famous attraction is the couplings of pigs and tigers:

These pictures show two year old Saimai, a Royal Bengal tigress, with the six piglets she is raising.

From Say No to Crack (more pix).

Latest Poll: Natives Restless

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.6.07]

From Bob Scheer’s Saddam Has the Last Laugh on Truthdig:

For 3 years, the Iraqi people have been polled at great risk by 150 pollsters sponsored jointly by ABC, BBC and USA Today.

The 2006 results are in.

Percentage of Iraqis who:

believe that the country is better off today than under Hussein — 38
oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq — 79
think it is OK to attack coalition troops — 51
-Sunnis — 94
-Shiites — 35
-Kurds — 7
agree that “from today’s perspective, and all things considered,” it was “wrong that U.S.-led coalition forces invaded Iraq in spring 2003.” — 53
call the availability of jobs “bad” — 80
call the availability of electricity “bad” — 88
call the availability of clean water and medical care “bad” — 69
call the availability of fuel for cooking and driving “quite bad” — 88
say the U.S.-led coalition has done a bad job — 76
say the source of neighborhood violence is “unnecessary violence against citizens by U.S. or coalition forces” — 44
say Bush or coalition forces are the most to blame for the violence occurring in the country — 40
say al-Qaida is most to blame — 18

Man and Wife

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.6.07]

The number one podcast show in the Health category is Man and Wife. It is the greatest! Sex advice every episode (there are about 20 now) in a video podcast by a stocky black couple. Their interplay could not possibly be scripted. They take calls, give out advice, fight a bit, all the while doing everything from shoveling snow in front of the house to soaking in the bath.

The advice is dead-on and the visuals of them doing the show together tell you all you need to know about how couples get along. They introduce every show with their 3 rules:

Check it out!

Savage Love

Dan Savage reviewed Joan Sewell’s I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido and Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion last month:

I’m saddened to report that, according to Sewell … there’s no such thing as a woman who wants sex constantly. They don’t exist—never did.

All that yammering about women with voracious sexual appetites during Sex And The City’s long reign of terror? A cruel hoax. Women have naturally lower sex drives, Sewell writes. It’s a hormonal thing.

So if straight women don’t want sex—or as much sex—what do they want? Chocolate, says Sewell, or a good book.

For a while, women with high libidos were normal, and women with low libidos were freakish. Now women with low libidos can hand their husbands Sewell’s book and rip open a bag of Doritos.

But there’s a silver lining. Back when women with low libidos were regarded as abnormal—way back at the beginning of the month—it was fashionable to blame the man in a woman’s life for her lack of desire. For years, whenever I printed a letter from a guy who wasn’t getting any, or wasn’t getting much, mail would pour in from women insisting that he had to be doing something wrong.

I called them the “if only” letters: If only she didn’t have to do all the housework, she would want to have sex. If only he would talk with her about her day, she would want to have sex. If only she weren’t so exhausted from taking care of the kids, she would want to have sex. If only he didn’t ask for sex, she would want to have sex.

Well now, thanks to Sewell, straight guys everywhere know that it doesn’t matter how much housework you do, or how sincerely interested you are in her day, or how much of the child care you take on: She still won’t want to fuck you. So leave the dishes in the sink, grab a beer, and go play a video game, guys. Your “if only” nightmares are over.

One thing that hasn’t changed in the wake of Sewell’s book is my advice to women with low libidos: You can have strict monogamy or you can have a low libido, ladies, but you can’t have both.

And finally, a word about a book I have read: In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins tears the intelligent-design idjits into a million little pieces. I feel bad about piling on—almost. Hey, intelligent-design idjits? If God really wants us to have heterosexual sex only, and then only within the bounds of holy matrimony, and if adultery offends Him so much—it’s a stoning offense, right up there with gay sex—how come He designed men and women to be sexually incompatible?

Well, I should say that He designed straight men and straight women to be sexually incompatible. Lesbian couples, with their bags of Doritos, and gay couples, with our mutually insatiable sexual appetites, seem pretty intelligently designed. Thank you, Jesus!

Dan now has podcasts and they are just about as good as his columns. His is the top podcast in the Sexuality sub-category under Health at iTunes. Check it out!

Stalemate

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.5.07]

Matt Taibbi comments on the political situation in Washington vis a vis continually re-funding the War in Iraq, instead of ending it:

In my visits to Washington in the past few months I’ve heard different stories from Democratic congressional aides about what the party’s intentions are. Some say they think the leadership is just going to stall and pass a bunch of non-binding, symbolic, Kumbayah horseshit to help propel whoever the Democratic candidate is into the White House two years from now.

Others claim with a straight face that all of these non-binding resolutions are only a start, that the strategy is to really end the war via a death-by-a-thousand-cuts type of legislative grind, with the leadership sending to the floor bill after bill after bill designed to eat away at either war policy or war funding. They claim that all of these votes are exercises in coalition-building, necessary steps to gathering the support needed to pass real biting measures later on.

But I’ll believe that when I see it. Right now, it all looks too convenient. With Bush a thrashing, drowning lame-duck whose endorsement in ‘08 will almost certainly be political poison to whomever has the misfortune to earn it, Republicans like Hagel and Oregon Senator Gordon Smith are conspicuously free to break ranks and save themselves.

Moreover, the Democratic measure is crafted in such a way that the Hagels and Smiths and Ben Nelsons of the world can safely get on a soapbox about the war without having to face accusations of depriving the troops of equipment and “what they need” to fight, which just so happens to be the leitmotif/preoccupation of the Rush/Hannity talk shows of late.

You’ll know that something real is going on in Washington when either a) the Democrats force the “antiwar conservatives” to actually cast a vote on whether or not to cut off spending for the war, or b) a dozen or so more Republicans cross the picket line to set up a possible override of a Bush veto.

Until and unless one of those unlikely moments arrives, it sure looks like what we’ve got is one of those rare “good for both teams” baseball trades, an arranged standoff in which everybody gets to suck a little of that hot nourishing blood in the ballooning antiwar poll numbers.

Food for a Hungry World

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.4.07]

In Shandong Province, China, a woman has setup a breeding farm for flies. These insects may seem disgusting for most of us, but to Ai Baorong, these are beautiful little “angels”.

Ai Baorong, a Jinan University graduate, was seeking employment in every way after her graduation, but was unsuccessful in finding her ideal job. She tried selling mats and even opened a small shop, and in the end a report which mentioned raising bugs to become rich initiated her enormous interest.

Baorong has since started to breed houseflies. Each maggot contains 60% protein, 15% fat, but also has some vitamins, and its protein nutritional value is several times higher compared to animal protein.

After the cleansing, deodorization and dehydration processes, the concentrated protein can be used for the production of soy sauce and MSG - which makes it a product with great market value.

From Spluch via neatorama.

Touch Faith

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.3.07]

A prominent member of Bush’s inner sanctum, chief campaign strategist for the 2004 presidential election Matthew Dowd, has broken with Bush, saying in a New York Times interview that his faith in Dubya was misplaced.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

This is the guy who created the flip-flopper slogan against Kerry. He’d been with Bush since ‘99. “I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things. I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

The article goes on to describe Dowd as melancholy and subdued, as if disillusioned.

He said his decision to step forward had not come easily. But, he said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role in helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.

Full article here.

Another Legacy from Rummie

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.4.07]

For awhile there in 2006, I thought it was prudent to drink diet soda. Sure it tastes funny, kind of metallic, but diet soda had less carbs than sugared sodas. Aspartame is the sweetener in most diet sodas. Surprisingly, it’s also in over 5,000 foods, drugs and medicine.

My diet soda jag wasn’t going well. Why was I having headaches and other minor ills? It could’ve been many things, caffeiene, alcohol, novacaine. Anyway, I decided to check trusty old google for aspartame references. And whoa! Who came up, but Donald Rumsfeld!?

During a time he was between appointments in Washington Searle made him CEO. Why would a drug company make a Washington insider with no real business experience one of their top executives? The operative word here is “insider.”

A little history:

Asparteme interacts with other drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical hyper-sensitization agent.

The FDA’s own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and violated the Delaney Amendment which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause Cancer. Detailed information on this can be found in the Bressler Report (FDA report on Searle).

Since its discovery in 1965, controversy has raged over the health risks associated with the sugar substitute. From laboratory testing of the chemical on rats, researchers have discovered that the drug induces brain tumors. On Sept 30, 1980 the Board of Inquiry of the FDA concurred and denied the petition for approval.

But then Ronald Reagan was elected 5 weeks later. Rumsfeld was on President Reagan’s transition team and a day after taking office Ronnie appointed Arthur Hull Hayes to be FDA Commissioner.

As recorded in the Congressional Record of 1985, then CEO of Searle Laboratories Donald Rumsfeld had said that he would “call in his markers” to get aspartame approved.

And though, for good reason, no FDA Commissioner in the previous sixteen years had allowed aspartame on the market, in 1981, the newly appointed Hayes ignored the negative ruling and approved aspartame. Later Hayes went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer, Burson-Marstellar, and has refused to talk to the press ever since.

[Sources for this story from Sepp Hasselberger, Mission Possible and News with Views, and there are thousands of references to this under-reported story and to the dangers of aspartame on Google.]

Good News from India

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.3.07]

From Daily Reckoning Australia:

Last week, we met with our new partners from India. One thing that surprised us was the Indian labour market:

“Yes…there are more than a billion people in India…” said our partner, “but just go and try to find someone. The labor market is very tight. People who have been to business school - if they’ve been to a good one - can get a job anywhere. Not just in India, but almost anywhere in the world. So their salaries are up at world levels. If you want someone to sweep your driveway…yes, that will be very cheap. But if you want someone to do the kind of work we do…well, you will pay almost as much as you would in America. Salaries are rising fast.”

This from Associated Press:

“An annual survey by Hewitt Associates revealed that Indian salaries are likely to rise an average 14.5 percent in 2007, with banks and financial services companies offering the biggest hikes.

April Fool

[Initially posted on goofyblog 4.2.07]

This clip from Catherine Crier’s show on Court TV, the Crier Wire, is absolutely the best recap of the Bush presidency, including the recent MC Rove stupidity. If George Were King. Check it out!

81 Every Day

This may put the school shootings into perspective.

The New York produced the graphics below on daily American gun deaths. The last available data is from 2004. I find it interesting there are not enough black suicides to rate even one bullet in any of the age groups, while whites, white men in particular, rate at the least four except in the very youngest category.

Keep in mind while looking at this: over twice this figure (176) were injured by gun fire -- daily.

In the next 2 groups, suicide by gun becomes more prominent.

This last one gets me: lots of old white men. What's up with that? Does Charlton Heston know that part of the equation? Have a gun around the house, and the older you get, the more likely you'll use it -- on yourself.

Link (Via neatorama)

The Worst Company(s) in the World

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.30.07]

The Consumerist (Consumers Bite Back) had a poll asking their readers who is the worst company in the world. Halliburton came in second, but the RIAA tops the list.

This organization has been suing 7-year olds and parapalegics in a futile effort to preserve Big Music’s business model, a model no longer having any relevance. Recently, the RIAA demanded that universities keep records on their students, a move the universities say would cost them money they don’t have in their budgets.
Cd prices have always been too high and even though the technology took strong root by the early ’90s, making it possible to offer the consumer lower prices — via economies of scale; instead the prices have gone higher, yet the artists gets just about the same cut as they always did.

Treating music consumers like feudal serfs is typical of these bullies. But as David Byrne said at this year’s South by Southwest (NY Times):

That year will be the “tipping point,'’ much like the mid-to-late ’80s when CDs overtook cassette sales. Once download sales became the norm, Byrne said, it will allow manufacturing and distribution costs to approach zero. “That is a fact,'’ he said.

He said at that point, record labels will be faced with a sort of choice — to ramp up marketing services to use music as a loss leader for tours and merchandise revenue, or aim only for international stars of the ilk of Britney Spears.

The RIAA is just a front group for a few mega-large music companies, so the Consumerist identified them here.

UPDATE: An attorney for one of the many being sued by the RIAA has successfully had his client’s suit dismissed after he sent the following to attorneys for Sony Music:

The Evidence Code sections are quite clear: settlement negotiations of all kinds may not be used to prove the validity of any claim or defense. Mr. Merchant has and had no more duty to respond to attempts to “sell” him one of your clients’ boilerplate, non-negotiable $3750 settlements than he has to return cold calls from pushy life insurance salespeople. If your client (and your law firm?) are seeking probable cause shelter in a settlement negotiations house of straw (as suggested by your March 23 letter), all of you should consider the prevailing winds of the Evidence Code before making yourselves too comfortable. Straw will burn.

Your client takes the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients’ claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, “You’ve got to be kidding.” The extensive press that has been generated over computer security (and the insecurity of Windows XP and its predecessors) underscores the complete absence of facts on which probable cause to sue my clients could be established and your clients’ willingness (even insistence) that others be implicated in Big Music’s speculative, “driftnet” litigation tactics. Sorry: Mr. Merchant cannot and will not expose himself to still more litigation by speculating.

From Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

Now a Word from our Founders

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.30.07]

Just discovered these quotes from our long-distant past:

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war — the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security, to institutions, which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.

– Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 8

The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse, of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts & at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging & are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

– James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

And from the present:

There can be no denying that the Framers’ efforts to protect the nation from involvement in unnecessary and unjust wars and from an enormous standing army have failed. The two mainstays of their plan — a small defensive military force and a constitutional separation of war powers — are dead letters. The country is routinely engaged in conflicts in every corner of the globe, none of which has anything to do with the military’s only legitimate purpose: to defend the country from invasion. The power to wage war has coalesced under the executive and the government maintains an increasingly imperialistic foreign policy. Free of the constitutional chains that the Framers imposed upon it, the federal government is now on a road of empire, intervention, militarism, aggression, occupation, and torture, not to mention increased taxes, inflation, and despotism at home.

– Bart Frazer, program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation

False Conquest

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.28.07]

Chalmers Johnson has just released Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, completing his trilogy on the United States as empire. He’s been making the circuit, giving long interviews.

What follows is the most logical explanation of why we invaded Iraq, the reaction of the Arab world and a cognizant assessment of the developing political and military situation:

Karlin: When Bush says we have to accomplish the mission, or Cheney says we have to achieve victory, the question hangs out there as to what our mission is now? And what could possibly be victory in these circumstances? To them, mission or victory mainly means that we are perceived as winning and Iraq remains under our control.

Johnson: I believe that’s absolutely true. It’s one of the reasons why we didn’t have a withdrawal strategy from Iraq — we didn’t intend to leave. Several people who retired from the Pentagon in protest at the start of the war — I’m thinking of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman particularly — have testified that the purpose of the invasion was to establish a new, stable pillar of power for the United States in the Middle East. We had lost our main two bases of power in the region — Iran, which we lost in 1979 because of the revolution against the Shah, whom we ourselves placed in power — and then Saudi Arabia, because of the serious blunder made after the first Gulf War — the placing of American Air Force and ground troops in Saudi Arabia after 1991. That was unnecessary. It’s stupid. We do not have an obligation to defend the government of Saudi Arabia. It was deeply resented by any number of sincere Saudi patriots, including former asset and colleague, Osama bin Laden. Their reaction was that the regime that is charged with the defense of the two most sacred sites of Islam — Mecca and Medina — should not rely upon foreign infidels who know next to nothing about our religion and our background.

The result was that, over the 1990s and going into the 2000s, the Saudis began to restrict the uses we had of Prince Sultan Air Base at Riyadh. They became so restricted that, finally, in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we moved our main headquarters to Qatar and conducted the war from there. This left us, however, with only the numerous small bases we have in the Persian Gulf. But these are in rather fragile countries.

Iraq was the place of choice, to these characters, who knew virtually nothing about the Middle East. Spoke not a word of Arabic or knew even the history of it. Iraq was the one they picked out because it’s the second largest source of oil on earth, and it looked like an easy conquest.

We now know that the President himself didn’t understand the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam — that he did not appreciate that Saddam Hussein’s regime was a minority Sunni dictatorship over the majority Shia population. That once you brought about regime change there, the inevitable result would be unleashing the Shia population, who had previously been suppressed, to run their country, and that they would align themselves with the largest Shia power of all, a Shia superpower, namely, Iran, right next door, where most of their leaders had spent the period of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship.

That’s essentially what’s happened. It’s hard to imagine how this served our interests, given the deep hostility between Iran and the United States ever since we started interfering in that country back in 1953. It is hard to imagine how this served the interests of Israel, in that it gave Shia support there. Support from Iran now spreads throughout the Middle East to Hezbollah, Hamas, and other organizations.

Full interview is here.

Conservatives Fight Back!

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.27.07]

WASHINGTON– An alliance of prominent national conservatives today announced the formation of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA).

The AFA’s mission is to reign in abuses of executive power … that have the greatest likelihood of adversely affecting personal liberties without appropriate checks and balances: the judicial and criminal justice system; national security; and the proper role of congressional oversight.

The launch of the AFA, and its mission to restore executive accountability, Tuesday coincided on the same day that the Justice Department’s Inspector General testified before Congress on his findings regarding DOJ’s misuse of its power to use warrantless searches to secretly go through people’s financial, Internet and other records.

AFA Chairman Bruce Fein said: “As fellow conservatives, we believe we have a greater responsibility than most to stand up to this particular Administration and demand that it respect the checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, regardless of party affiliation, and we can no more remain silent to the abuses occurring under President Bush than we could if a President Clinton were in office.”

The AFA outlined a legislative package that would bind the current and all future occupants of the White House, irrespective of party affiliation, to restore congressional oversight, personal civil liberties, and governmental checks and balances through the following:

• Restore habeas corpus to prevent the illegal imprisonment of American citizens;
• Prohibit torture and extraordinary rendition;
• Prohibit unconstitutional wiretaps, email and mail openings via warrantless searches;
• Protect journalists from prosecution under the Espionage Act for reporting on stories on national significance that do not reveal troop locations;
• Prohibit Presidential Signing Statements that allow the President to sign into law legislation passed by Congress while rejecting line-item aspects of that same law;
• Reform the ability of the federal government to win dismissal of constitutional grievances by private parties by claiming state secrets;
• Reform executive privilege by creating legislative-executive committees to arbitrate disputes.

“We do not favor a crippled Executive,” said Congressman Barr, who will work with his former colleagues to seek passage of the AFA’s legislative package. “Rather, it is our belief that in times of danger, checks and balances will make for a stronger – not weaker – government because the people will more readily accept a muscular Executive if barriers against abuses are strong. We want to ensure that no man is above the law.”

Goofy facts: M & M

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.26.07]

• A new study published last week in the Lancet proposes that drugs should be classified by the amount of harm that they do … The new [way of] ranking [by harm] places alcohol and tobacco [as] … more harmful than cannabis, and substantially more dangerous than the Class A drugs LSD, 4-methylthioamphetamine and ecstasy.


• “Unlike many other drugs, morphine has a very wide safety margin,” wrote Dr Rob George, Consultant in Palliative Medicine, from the University College London, in his commentary about the research. “Evidence over the last 20 years has repeatedly shown that, used correctly, morphine is well tolerated, does not cloud the mind, does not shorten life, and its sedating effects wear off quickly. This is obviously good for patients in pain.” –from Science Daily.
  

Thousands of angry Iraqis pillage billion-dollar U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.26.07]

Congress has appropriated nearly $1 billion to build the largest embassy in the world. A significant portion of that money is for security infrastructure. This future “fortress” is housed in Saddam Hussein’s former palace — providing more bad symbolism to the Iraqis.

The embassy complex is on 104 acres, with 21 buildings and facilities. It will eventually house a U.S. staff of 5,000. According to a recent report in the Washington Post, it has more than twice the staff and 20 times the budget of our Beijing embassy. The embassy will surpass all others in terms of size and staffing. from Alternet

The embassy is set to open this summer…

Happy Anniversary, Schafer Commission

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.24.07]

Did you hear the news? The Shafer Commission released their report on drug policy and dropped this bombshell:

[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession [of marijuana] even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior, which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of [marijuana] use … is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance.

… Therefore, the commission recommends … [that the] possession of marihuana for personal use no longer be an offense, [and that the] casual distribution of small amounts of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration, no longer be an offense.

What Commission was it? In 1971, President Nixon commissioned the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse — chaired by ex-Gov. Shafer (PA). In March ’72, they stated the above excerpt and more.

Since the Commission issued it’s report, 35 years ago:

• Approximately 16.5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana violations — more than 80 percent of them on minor possession charges.
  

• U.S. taxpayers have spent well over $20 billion enforcing criminal marijuana laws, yet marijuana availability and use among the public remains virtually unchanged.
  

• Nearly one-quarter of a million Americans have been denied federal financial aid for secondary education because of anti-drug provisions to the Higher Education Act. Most of these applicants were convicted of minor marijuana possession offenses.
  

• Total U.S. marijuana arrests increased 165 percent during the 1990s, from 287,850 in 1991 to well over 700,000 in 2000, before reaching an all-time high of nearly 800,000 in 2005. However, according to the government’s own data, this dramatic increase in the number of persons arrested for pot was not associated with any reduction in the number of new users, any reduction in marijuana potency, or any increases in the black market price of marijuana.
  

• Currently, one in eight inmates incarcerated for drug crimes is behind bars for pot, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $1 billion per year.
  

From AlterNet.

Hometown Baghdad

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.23.07]

The first 3 webisodes of the new series detailing life amongst the vanishing educated peoples of Baghdad are up and running.

My favorite is “Forbidden Salad,” the new notion that eating a mixed salad is punishable by death narrated and starring 23-year-old Adel (pictured below).

Check it out!

A Conservative Believes. . .

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.22.07]

In a recent post (here), Robert Borosage lists the 2 major problems for a democratic republic when Conservatives rule the Executive Branch (at least in the past 40 years):

• Conservative presidents–from Nixon to Reagan to Bush–believe in the imperial presidency. They assume that in the area of the national security, the president operates above the law, or as Nixon put it, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” They operate routinely behind the shield of secrecy and executive privilege, with utter disdain for the law. So Reagan spurned the Congress when it cut off funds for his loony covert war on tiny Nicaragua. And Bush trampled the laws to set up the torture camps in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere. Each would seek to keep their lawlessness secret; and that would foster lies, obstruction of justice and ultimately disgrace.


• Second, conservatives are acutely aware that they represent a minority, not a majority, position in America. From Nixon to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove, they play politics and exploit America’s divides with back-alley brass knuckles–from Reagan’s welfare queen to Bush’s impugning the patriotism of Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero who literally sacrificed his limbs in the service of his country. They excel in the politics of personal destruction, as Democratic presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and John Kerry discovered. And in the grand tradition of the establishment in American politics, they are relentless is seeking to suppress the vote, particularly of the poor and minorities who would vote against them in large numbers.
  

10D -- The Core of the Universe

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.21.07]

The cosmic energy released in the Big Bang that started the Universe 13 billion years ago has been mapped by satellites and can now be used by mathematicians to test “string theory,” the proposition that everything in the universe, from subatomic particles to entire galaxies, is made of tiny strings of energy.

The mathematics of string theory suggests that the world we know is not complete. In addition to our four familiar dimensions - three-dimensional space and time - string theory predicts the existence of six extra spatial dimensions, “hidden” dimensions curled in tiny geometric shapes at every single point in our universe.

Though currently the front-runner to explain the framework of the cosmos, the theory remains, to date, untested.

So scientists are starting to test the theory with the satellite map of cosmic energy, looking for clues to the 6 other dimensions (represented by the theoretical picture above). The European Space Agenc’s Planck satellite (launching 2008)will provide more detailed maps of cosmic energy and bring mathematicians closer to proving string theory and determing what geometric model was chosen at the moment of the big bang.

The implications of such a possibility are profound, says Henry Tye, a physicist at Cornell University. “If this shape can be measured, it would also tell us that string theory is correct.”

And if string theory is correct? Maybe warp speed, travel great distances in little time, unlimited energy sources. It took 100 years for the mathematical theory of algebra to be physically morphed into rudimentary computers (George Boole published his tome in 1849). But things have accelerated since. We may be on the brink of something truly revolutionary here.

From neatorama and Science Daily.

Slavery Lives in the US

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.21.07]

When you’re in a restaurant, ever wonder what’s going on in the kitchen? Here’s one possibility:

In a restaurant somewhere in New Orleans, black women were working in the kitchen being paid $10/hour.

They were all fired and replaced by undocumented workers who were paid $8 an hour.
Later, they were all fired and replaced by Brazilian H-2b visa holders at $6/hr. Those workers had paid $10,000 to get the necessary papers to come to the United States.

–Saket Soni, spokesman for the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity on Democracy Now March 15.

The vast influx of illegal immigrants, which the Bush plan to allow “guest” workers will only exacerbate, drives wages down and steals jobs from American citizens so that businesses can stay “competitive”(?)

Does that mean keeping the price of a dish of bacon & eggs as low as the next restaurant that is hiring illegals or other “guest/slave” labor? Who knows what the term competitive means in this context.

So what would happen if employers had to hire the workforce what was available and pay them a fair rate? And what would happen if those workers on the lower rungs of the work ladder were not under the constant threat of being replaced by the latest desperate Latin who just got out of the coyote van?
Would your bacon & egg dish go from $6 to $8? or $10? It’s just not right to take advantage of people this way. Bush’s plan would make for rampant exploitation of immigrants while simultaneously driving down wages and curtailing opportunity for the present workforce.

Foreign citizens who come to the United States as guest workers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to live in squalid conditions, and denied medical care for workplace injuries, a report released Monday by a civil rights group found.

The report — “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States” — comes as Congress is poised to debate a major bill that would create a large temporary worker program and offer a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

- Cox News Service, March 13.

Future Changes II: Regime Change

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.16.07]

The Shawnee chief Tecumseh (Panther Passing Across) was born in 1768 in central Ohio. Tall, muscular, intelligent and highly charismatic, Tecumseh proved to be a master tactician and an exceptional orator.

In battle, Tecumseh demonstrated his strength, skill and leadership ability; while in council, he demonstrated his firm opposition to any concessions to the whites. He soon developed a circle of equally militant followers, including his younger brother, Tenskwatawa.

Tecumseh and his followers went to Deer Creek in western Ohio and in 1795 founded a village made up of Native American warriors linked by their militancy, not by their tribal affiliation.
By 1805 military and legal means against the whites had failed the Shawnee. Tecumseh began to instigate a revolution.

An Indian Insurgency

He believed that no treaty, border or land agreement would protect the land and the native peoples against the whites. The only way was for all Indian tribes to unite - not in a loose temporary confederation with each tribe under their own governance, but in a single political body with unified leadership.

This way the whites would not be able to play one tribe against the other as they had in the past. If the whites wished to make war, they would have to face an enormous army comprising all the warriors of all the Indian tribes.

On October 5, 1813, Tecumseh and his forces met Americans under the command of future-President William Henry Harrison. The Native Americans fought doggedly, but were forced to retreat, leaving their casualties on the battlefield.

Among those casualties - as he had predicted the night before to his followers - was the 44-year-old Tecumseh. With the great Shawnee chief gone, the dream of a grand alliance was shattered.

A Prediction

But nearly a year before his final battle, Tecumseh told his brother, Tenskwatawa, the following:

Brother, be of good cheer. Before one winter shall pass, the chance will yet come to build our nation and drive the Americans from our land. If this should fail, then a curse shall be upon the Great Chief of the Americans, if they shall ever pick Harrison to lead them.

His days in power shall be cut short. And for every twenty winters following, the days in power of the Great Chief which they shall select shall be cut short.

Our people shall not be the instrument to shorten their time. Either the Great Spirit shall shorten their days or their own people shall shoot them. This is not all.

Each contest to select their Great Chief shall be marked by sharp divisions within their nation. Within seven winters of each contest, there shall be a war among their people, either within their nation or with other nations, I know not which. Our people shall prosper only if they can avoid these wars.

The Record Since

In 1840, former General William H. Harrison was elected President winning with only a narrow margin of the popular vote. Harrison delivered a very long inaugural address on a cold, windy day. Then he was caught in a rainstorm. He caught a cold which turned for the worse and led to his death. He was president for 30 days.The Mexican War broke out in 1846.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president with a small plurality. The country divided and the War Between the States broke out within months. Lincoln was shot and died April 15, 1865.






In 1880, James A. Garfield was elected president with a margin of less than 7,100 popular votes. He took office on March 4, 1881 and was shot in July, dying on September 19, 1881.


In 1900, William McKinley was elected to a second term. The election was hard fought and marked the merger of the Democrat and Populist parties. McKinley was shot and died in September 1901.

In 1920, Warren G. Harding was elected president after a contentious campaign, the main issue being U.S. membership in the League of Nations. He died in office August 2, 1923.








In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt was urged not to break tradition and seek a third term. America entered World War II on December 7, 1941. FDR died in office April 12, 1945.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president by narrow margin, even through there were widespread reports of fraud. Kennedy was shot and died November 22, 1963.

In 1980, America was once again divided. Ronald Reagan was elected amidst the end of Iran hostage crisis. On March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot as he was boarding his presidential limousine.

• A few years ago, I watched a documentary on the assassination attempt. I was astonished to see the interview with Secret Service Agent Jerry Parr, the man who saved Reagan’s life


• Reagan was shot in the underarm and would have bled to death in minutes. Thinking quickly, Parr held Reagan’s arm down and ordered the driver to nearby George Washington Hospital.


• Though Reagan walked into the hospital in a show of Presidential “strength,” he collapsed in a pool of his own blood as soon as he got inside. Doctors said he had lost nearly half of his blood as they feverishly searched for the bullet, eventually finding it inches from his heart.

In 2000, George Bush got 50,456,002 votes versus 50,999,897 votes for Gore. In Florida, Bush won by just 537 votes. His election and consequent misguided rule bitterly divided the nation. Within the year, America had been attacked and was at war with Afghanistan, then Iraq, then. . . ?

The Scooter Libby conviction is the beginning of the end of the Bush Presidency. Within the year, we will see a new Vice President (my money is on Condie), but probably sooner. What more?

Tecumseh’s Legacy

Tecumseh’s warnings about the threat the whites posed proved truer than even he could imagine. His portrait hangs in many Shawnee homes today, not so much for his predictions as for his willingness to stand up to the whites and defend his culture, his land and his people.

Live your life that the fear of death
can never enter your heartTrouble no one about his religion…
Respect others in their views
and demand that they Respect yours…

Love your Life, Perfect your Life…
Beautify All things in your Life…
Seek to make your life long
and of service to your people…

Prepare a noble death song for the dayWhen you go over the great divide..
Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting
or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place
Show respect to all people, but grovel to no one…
When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light,
for your Life, for your Strength
Give Thanks for your Food and for the joy of Living…
If you see no reason to give thanks…
The Fault Lies in……..Yourself.

– Parts of the above from the Shawnee Web Ring here, here and here, and from Martin Kelly here.