Rudy spells out the hypocrasy, unknowingly

From Eschaton:

Jim Cramer is interviewing Rudy. I don't have the sound on, but the captions are funny. First one.

Giuliani: The US Should Increase Its Coal Supply Through Government Subsidies

About 4 minutes later:

Giuliani: Business And Government Are Separate - And That's Non-Negotiable

atrios.blogspot.com

Rudy inadvertently spelled out the "free trade" fallacy with these two statements.

Where would Wal-Mart or any big corporation be without subsidies? Fewer places. They'll take all the government money they can get, but anything else the government (or the People) try to give them (like regulations and taxes) is "socialist," "unAmerican," the like. I can't think of any better way to describe what is so fucked up with free trade cheerleaders than this contradiction.

All you have to do is listen to them speak for 4 minutes and they'll prove their stupidity on their own.

Want change? Restore democracy

From Alternet:

Consumer-Driven Culture Is Killing Our Democracy
Terrence McNally interviews Robert Reich

TM: I've been saying since the 2004 election that we need a Restore Democracy Trifecta: media reform for a more informed democracy -- stop (and reverse if possible) media consolidation, offer less false balance (i.e., global warming skeptics are equal to global warming scientists) and more statements of fact. Campaign reform -- public financing, free TV time. Election reform -- transparent, accurate, inclusive and verifiable.

If all progressives got together, campaigned for those three things and succeeded to a meaningful extent, only then would they have a realistic chance to get environmental, healthcare, education, civil liberties or whatever legislation passed. Is that basically in sync with what you're saying?

RR: Absolutely. I keep telling progressives who have particular issues they want to advance [that] nothing is going to happen on your issue or any other progressive issue unless you get together with everybody else who wants change and rescue democracy first.

clickhereforallofit

Every time I ponder the social changes that must be made in my lifetime, I end up at the same conclusion: we need campaign finance reform. Bottom line, no buts about it, it's the only way to get government back on the people's side. Most people would agree, yet they don't seem fired up to do anything about it. I for one will never stop talking about the need for this reform and I'll never stop endorsing independent and good Green Party candidates who take anonymous campaign donations.

A wise man once said you need social change before policy change, and that's how we have to go about it. Everyone who realizes that their representatives are putting corporate interests first needs to stop voting for corporate candidates. More people need to talk about candidates who are going to do good for the people. As Jello Biafra says, don't hate the media BECOME the media, and that's what blogs, vlogs, whatever, have made much easier. But it doesn't stop at the internet. Call your representatives and tell them what you want. Make sure they know that you know they're not really working for you. And tell them why you didn't vote for them, or why you won't vote for them and their party again. Tell them. Email, letter, phone, picket line, anything.

The time for change was yesterday.

Greening the Corporation

From Nader.org:

When business sees environmental management as saving it money, increasing productivity, becoming more competitive and attracting young talent, the prospect of sustainable policies taking root becomes more likely.

Obviously, it was not always viewed this way by corporate bosses who, not long ago, saw our air, water and soil as their toxic sewers.

[...]

No corporation illustrates this broad continuum better than the Atlanta-based Interface Corporation—the country’s largest commercial carpet tile manufacturer. In 1994, founder Ray Anderson started his company on its goal as a “restorative enterprise,” which he described as zero net pollution and 100% recycling by 2020. The company is 45 percent there, he estimates. (http://www.interfaceinc.com/)

[...]

“Sustainability,” Anderson told the New York Times, “pays in customer loyalty, employee spent-hard cash,” plus 336 million dollars in savings since 1995.

clickhereforallofit

If I'm not mistaken, this Anderson guy speaks in The Corporation, a Mark Achbar documentary about....corporations. Anderson (if I'm right) is a capitalist gone conservationist who is one of the few legitimate corporate voices for sustainability.

I was recently disgusted to see corporately owned NBC parading "Green Week" earlier this month, complete with an all-green peacock logo and public service announcements about conserving energy, "brought to you by WAL-MART." Something is going either incredibly right or incredibly wrong when Wal-Mart is preaching green ideals, and in this case I'm pretty sure something is going incredibly wrong. Greens have been gaining ground for a while, and the boys at the top have seen the progress. They're using the bandwagon for their own wasteful gain, and that just burns my grits.

If Wal-Mart is going to be the new spokesman for energy conservation and green living, they're gonna have to make some changes. Stop building new stores RIGHT NOW, start selling more American made products, and get rid of the Wal-Mart gas stations if you want any kind of credibility in the eyes of true greens. It's not enough to encourage us to buy "this funny looking lightbulb" from Wal-Mart. Sure, I'll buy those kinds of bulbs but I will buy them from whoever I fucking choose.

I'm glad that the whole idea of "going green" is catching on, but I think it might be getting watered down and tainted by corporate interests, we have to be really careful about who might profiteer off of whole-hearted green efforts. If we leave it to Wal-Mart to help save the planet, I get the feeling we might get the opposite of what we want.

The Texas prison system sucks, and it's going to get worse

From the Texas Observer:

Break the Chain

Voters just approved $233 million in bonding authority to build three more prisons without considering how much it will cost to operate them. Building prisons and increasing sentences is like crack cocaine for ambitious politicians. There are nearly 2,000 felonies in the Texas penal code. Between 1997 and 2002, the average amount of time served by prisoners increased 83 percent in part because of harsher sentencing laws.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Increasing parole rates for nonviolent, first-time offenders by only 4 percent would eliminate the need for any new prison beds in the short term, according to the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. The group’s Web site (www.criminaljusticecoalition.org) has a number of commonsense solutions to prison overcrowding, including increased drug treatment and probation reform. For what we spend on each addict in a Texas prison, five could be given drug treatment at nearly the same cost.

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The editorial also notes the poor conditions of the prisons themselves and gives more statistics. It just goes to show that militant, close-minded people who vote for corporate candidates (mostly Republican in this case) are really the ones who squander tax payer money. Anything to lock up minorities for as long as possible, that's what they care about, justice and logic be damned. Some Republican (and Democrat) voters probably don't realize the consequences of building more prisons and increasing sentence terms. They think they're cleaning up the streets but they're really cleaning out the state's pockets, and making the streets and communities worse in the long run.

Why we should pull out now: Peace lies in the Iraqis' hands

Courtesy of Alternet:

The Real Story Behind the Falling Casualty Rate in Iraq
By Brandon Friedman
DailyKos

When someone tells you that the "surge" is working, you must walk them through this chain of events:

On August 7, 2007, near the end of America's bloodiest summer in Iraq, the New York Times reported the following:

Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

[...]

Such bombs [...] are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants.

The "Shiite militants" described by the New York Times were, in fact, members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

[...]

Then, barely three weeks after the New York Times article ran, 50 Muslim pilgrims were slaughtered in sectarian fighting in Karbala. In response, Muqtada al-Sadr announced that he had

ordered his militia to suspend offensive operations for six months.

[...]

But rather than recognize this for what it was, notable Republicans and other right-wingers immediately began to spin the story as if this was the result of the "surge"[.]

clickhereforallofit

It's clear the US military presence HAS NO CONTROL over Iraq. They've got no credibility in the region either, never had it. Every government they try to set up fails, I wonder why. The best thing we can do is pull out all combat forces, give our "Green Zone" back to Iraqis, and switch the mission to "lets fix all the shit we blew up and put the Bush mob on trial." What ever government comes to power in Iraq after that, it shouldn't be too hostile towards us (at least in the long run) if we do what I just described.

Of course, the real issue at hand (that the corporate media will not touch with a ten foot pole) is that our government, our bureaucracy, Blackwater, Halliburton, the oil industry, and every leading presidential candidate, has NO PLAN TO LEAVE Iraq in this life time. There's too much money to be made, too many brown people to subjugate and kill It's gonna take a lot more opposition than the trendy, polite, "Bush sucks!" shit we've got right now, it's gonna take mass protests, EVERY DAY, for months or years, to get us out of the new Vietnam.

I think we can do it.

WELCOME to 1984

From Yahoo! News:

RFID Chips in School Uniforms Track Students

How would feel about this: Tracking chips in kids' school clothing so that school officials can know their whereabouts during the school day?

Oh, it's happening. Ten students in a secondary school in the United Kingdom are being tracked through RFID implants in their school uniforms in a pilot program.

[...]

One possible side effect: Uniform sales may pick up as kids try to procure extra non-RFID-tagged clothing. As security expert Bruce Schneier writes on his blog: "So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere."

clickhereforallofit

That last statement there from Bruce Schneier says it all. It's not enough to implant the chips in the clothes, it's too easy to trick the computer if you just have your friend carry around your shirt. Eventually, to make the system really work, the chips would have to be implanted into the body. Can you say SCARY? This idea needs to be shot down before it reaches more people, like the general public. In America. Or Oceana, as it might be called by then.

Bush Is Right to Worry If Waterboarding Is Defined as Torture

By Jane Smiley, HuffingtonPost.com via Alternet:

"Jack L. Goldsmith, who served in the Justice Department in 2003 and 2004, wrote in his recent memoir, The Terror Presidency, that the possibility of future prosecution for aggressive actions against terrorism was a constant worry inside the Bush administration." Another expert points out that future prosecutors "... would ask not just who carried it out, but who specifically approved it. Theoretically, it could go all the way up to the president of the United States; that's why he'll never say it's torture."

[...]

One of the enraging things about the Bush administration is the way that they have consistently written their own rules [...] (and in fact, George W. Bush, according to Gail Sheehy, was well known among his friends for changing the rules of a game until he could engineer a win -- and isn't that how they won in 2000?).

[...]

Someone whose car hits another person in a crosswalk might have been too frightened to stick around or might not have even realized he had hit someone, but the law still prosecutes these crimes, because a responsible citizen is expected to conform to the laws no matter what his emotional state. Same with Cheney and Bush.

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This article pretty much says a lot of stuff we already know, but it's good for reiteration. The article has some pictures of a waterboard from Cambodia and a painting by an ex prisoner there showing what waterboarding looks like.

I was listening to NPR this Thursday on my way to the Houston area for a visit and on a program called "Fresh Air" they interviewed one of the main overseers from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison, who's name I forget. The NPR anchor was excrutiatingly polite (as I suppose they always are) to this asshole who never answered a single question asked him. When asked "Are torture tactics used at Guantanamo Bay?" he said that last year, the Army redefined their definition of torture to fit the definition commonly used in the international community (like Saudi Arabia and Turkey?). He never answered "yes" or "no," he simply went on to talk about all the nice things the prisoners have, like Subway sandwiches and 5 prayer times a day. To top it off, after listing all the "perks" the prisoners get at Guantanamo Bay, the man douchebaggedly concluded that "If that's what the UN sees as torture then..." yada yada yada, the guy was full of shit and though I'm an NPR fan, they should have called him on it.