Joe Stack did more than just go to the window and scream "I'm as mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore". He chose to make a statement against a tyrannical government long ago pried loose from any semblance of morality. Not that I would personally recommend flying an airplane into a government building full of people to make a statement but it takes a lot to shake the television lobotomized sheeple these days. Of course since Stack wasn't one of those dirty Muslim devils, therefore making his 'terrorist' attack no asset to the Israeli warmonger coddling corporate media to fuel the frenzy for endless wars of imperialism his story was simply flushed down the memory hole in favor of the grand spectacle of Tiger Woods' press conference the very next day.
If accountability is off the table, so is Democracy.
In an age when the rich and powerful have more control over the creation of the law than ever we face the greatest threat to our Democracy we have ever known. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
If the rich and powerful can bribe lawmakers to do their bidding AND those lawmakers are not subject to the same laws they are supposed to uphold than there is no freedom, there is no equality, there is no justice. The biggest threat to our democracy is not a man with a bomb in his pants or a hijacker flying a plane, it is a man with unlimited power and no one that he must answer to. If that man is an American he is capable of doing more damage to America than any terrorist could ever dream of.
If you love freedom and Democracy please join me below the fold.
"There's been a coup - have you heard? It's the CIA coup.
The CIA runs everything! They run the military .. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on these Countries...It's not even the Military that does it. The CIA runs this. ...And, of course, the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve.
And yet, think of the harm they have done since they were established since World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, they're in drug businesses, and they take out dictators......We need to take out the CIA!"
In the US, of course, there is no such attempt to hold to account Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the large number of war criminals that comprised the Bush Regime, notes Paul Craig Roberts....>>>>>
I can't believe that the Nobel Peace Committee could possibly, with a straight face, give out this award to the man who has been escalating Warfare, ever since he took office, and escalating human slaughter (including civilian bombings from unmaned, computerized War drones) throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, and who has been actually increasing the presence of private Contractors (e.g., Blackwater, at the expense of poor American middle class taxpayers) in War torn Iraq, and who refuses to close the foreign Military Bases there, or bring about any end to that shameful tyrannical War.
In addition, Obama has been using (abusing) the high office of the Presidency to protect and defend Bush administration officials against any judicial action or accountability (even fighting against the ACLU, and mandated Court orders in the process). He has continued the shameful practise of "secret renditions" to black site prisons (where the human torture continues), and has been transfering prisoners to Bagram -- the new "Abu Grahib", while failing on his so-called promise by choice to "end Guantanimo". Obama has not only perpetuated the many War Crimes of the Bush administration, in all their various forms, he has blocked any effort to allow any cleansing or healing to take place, for this Country or for the World, that would be realized by a public government rebuke and prosecution of these War Crimes. Conversely, he has portrayed them as legitimate public policy, and maintained legal defense on behalf of them.
The lies upon lies to which our corrupt U.S. Foreign Policy is built upon hasn't changed at all, with the 2008 Election and a new President. Unknown perhaps to most Americans, we today are just getting spoon-fed even more and more lies.
Quoting from Eric Margolis excellant article in CommonDreams.org: Afghanistan
An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic. This week's stage-managed vote in Afghanistan for candidates chosen by western powers is unlikely to bring either peace or tranquility to this wretched nation that has suffered 30 years of war.
The Taliban and its nationalist allies rejected the vote as a fraud designed to validate continued foreign occupation and open the way for western oil and gas pipelines.
The Taliban, which speaks for many of Afghanistan's majority Pashtun, said it would only join a national election when U.S. and NATO troops withdraw.
The current war in Afghanistan is not about democracy, women's rights, education or nation building. Al-Qaida, the other excuse, barely exists. Its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan.
The war really is about oil pipeline routes and western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin.
There will be neither peace nor stability in Afghanistan until all ethnic groups are enfranchised. The West must cease backing minority Tajiks and Uzbeks against majority Pashtun -- who deserve their rightful share of power and spoils.
We can't solve Afghanistan's social or political problems by waging a cruel and apparently endless war. The solution to this unnecessary war is not more phoney elections but a comprehensive peace agreement among ethnic factions that largely restores the status quo before the 1970 Soviet invasion.
It was 4 years ago when we had a stubborn President hellbent on waging endless, barbaric, aimless, and self-destructive unprovoked Warfare, based upon demonstrable lies and fraudulent ideological-driven dogma (and control of World Oil if the truth be told). As the U.S. News Media fawned over that President, and swept the horror and the criminality of his actions under the rug, one woman had the guts to stand up and publically confront that President. That woman was Cindy Sheehan. Her selfless act of courage inspired the public at large to finally question and rethink the merits, ethics, and wisdom of our "Shock and Awe" Foreign Policy.
This shift in the public tide also culminated in the surprise sweeping of the once "dead" Democratic Party back into positions of real political power in both the 2006 and 2008 Elections.
I find myself, on some level, torn between my highly strained faith in American democracy and a perception that it no longer exists. I applaud and encourage political activism and cherish the activists that I know, but for all their heroism, commitment and hard work, I see us sliding steadily backwards. This has been my observation for the past 40 years. We progressives have faced unremitting defeat at the hands of the ultra-conservative 'system', which clearly serves our super-wealthy overlords - not us.
Any more the bad news comes like the steady downpour of the tropical monsoon.
There is no time to catch one's breath.
There is no pause to absorb the outrages of the day, no interlude to break the tragedies into digestible chunks, no relief for the overwhelmed between the vicious punches to the gut, the finger jabs to the eyes, the thunder kicks to the groin.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey and three other top Bush administration officials are weighing in against legislation that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources who provide sensitive, sometimes embarrassing information about the government.
The Free Flow of Information Act proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, could harm national security and would encourage more leaks of classified information, the four officials wrote in letters to senators made public Thursday.
The legislation gives an overly broad definition of journalists that "can include those linked to terrorists and criminals," wrote Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.
"All individuals and entities who 'gather' or 'publish' information about 'matters of public interest' but who are not technically designated terrorist organizations, foreign powers or agents of a foreign power will be entitled to the bill's protections," Mukasey and McConnell stated.
Journalists, press freedom. How quaint. What an old fashioned idea.
Remember when they were an opposition party? Remember when they were on our side? I'm sure most of you have noticed by now that they just aren't anymore.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
